You are forgetting Gush, Fact or Fiction and Obsessive Search. The storm deck is really fun but I always find a way to play it in the wrong way. Usually, when I lose a game with the storm deck it is because I did something wrong.
Due to the recent changes to Wizard's gatherer page, the auto import tool we use to import sets to gatherling needs to be updated, this means that VMA has not yet been added to the deck legality checker on the site.
Newly common cards from VMA are legal, but require a workaround to include in your deck until we are able to import the VMA set. Simply include a different legal card in the deck list, and use the comments field to note the changes.
For example:
Deck:
4x Crookshanks Kobalds
Comments:
4x Crookshanks Kobalds standing in for 4x Chainer's Edict
True, I also run into that with Black and Red. I was probably a little too focused on the Ulamog's Crusher itself in this article and didn't include things that just plain prevent it from hitting the field.
Unmake certainly works, it's just not one I see very often in Pauper games. I was trying to hit a lot of the main threats with the idea behind this article. It's not comprehensive, but I thought it was a good starting point to get someone thinking about how an opponent will respond to their threats.
In a similar vein green does have Lignify that would neutralize a Crusher, but it's not a card I see played often and personally I don't like Lignify much because it leaves behind a blocker.
Exactly, this is not a deck about Reveillark shenanigans. It's an entirely different deck and one that has zero room for including the tools you mention (by design: if I wanted to find the best way to build a deck around Horde of Notions, I wouldn't take the strictly Tribal Wars legal route). As you can see, once you include the tools Horde needs, there's just no space left for much. The Elementals must perform on their own, just knowing they'll be resurrected by Horde eventually.
Plus it's a casual deck (well, sort of, I just played a game where everything worked super-quickly and it destroyed its opponents, but I doubt it'll always be like that). And one that's very committed to its trick. You say Reveillark brings back Mulldrifter? Well, Horde brings back Mulldrifter, too! By just paying 5 mana, which is actually much less effort than Reveillark would require to achieve the same goal.
Of course, you have to reach the 5-color threshold first, which is the whole challenge.
Yeah, it would work better with Selenia as she is life loss that it always accessible. I kind of messed around with this when I made Selenia years ago, but I think you're right.
These are the buy prices of a popular bot chain. Below are the top 10 cards.
Temple of Epiphany [JOU] 1.96
Eidolon of Blossoms [JOU] 2.75
Pharika, God of Affliction [JOU] 2.8
Athreos, God of Passage [JOU] 3.15
Keranos, God of Storms [JOU] 3.55
Eidolon of the Great Revel [JOU] 4.5
Prophetic Flamespeaker [JOU] 4.8
Temple of Malady [JOU] 5.6
Mana Confluence [JOU] 6.8
Ajani, Mentor of Heroes [JOU] 11.5
Reveillark doesn't interact well with elementals? Lets see it gets back mulldrifter, harbinger, forgotten ancients, Animar, wispmare, voidstalker, soulstoke, smokebraider, ashling, and the list goes on...plus if you toss in some non-tribals: Karmic Guide + Reveillark is a thing. As is Witness + Lark. I won't say its a must include but to be discarded as non-interactive seems wrong. I know, she's a pet of mine but she's a pet because she's good (!) with elementals! :D As for her leaves play trigger not repeating, well there are tons of ways to make that happen without sacrifices. (Combat, Bounce, Exile (opponent), etc) I think it fairer to say that she fits just fine but that she asks to be built around because she is so powerful and that is a reason to not include her else the deck becomes about Lark shenanigans.
Cavern of Souls: It should be there, indeed. It's easy to replace one of the other lands that produce any color.
Smokebraider: As a rule, I never use mana dorks in Commander, they're really too fragile in a format where a creature sweeper hits the board every other turn. Joiner Adept is there because it gives me all the 5 colors at once. Otherwise, Wood Elves is the mana fixer for me, since it gives me the color I miss, but in a way that it's not easily disrupted.
Bloom Tender: Same as above, but I guess it could be alluring in a deck where it could generate as much as 5 mana per tap. It does so once I already managed to reach 5 colors, though, and to double the amount, Mana Reflection and Mirari's Wake are, again, more resilient.
Walker of the Grove: As mentioned in the article, I discarded all the Elementals from Morningtide with death triggers, because they would also need a sacrifice outlet to be fully exploited by Horde of Notions. I can evoke them once, then Horde just brings them back, and that's it. I made a combo deck with Walker and Paleoloth once, which would consistently abuses the trigger by re-evoking it again and again. As a one-shot effect, I'm not really that excited by it. But the Thornling slot is always open (I'd still like Silvos better, though).
Splinterfright: It might make sense. I'm always shy about random self-milling, it's a tech I don't have much affinity with.
Good on you for always trying new things even if they don't turn out the way you like. I'm in the same boat. A big draw of EDH for me is seeing and experiencing new things. I have no love for the more popular stuff because I've seen them too much that it's no longer exciting.
I doubt Suicide Black is ever a good idea. Too much drawback for too little gain in EDH, made even worse because you're putting yourself into the red zone.
The only "suicide" I could see would be something like Near-Death Experience, Angel's Grace, things that do massive damage to everyone, extra turns, counterspells to back up your flimsy combo, etc. Would need multiple colors and would be very janky.
I love elementals (almost equal to merfolk). I was surprised by a few omissions though. Smoke Braider And Walker of the Grove, Bloom Tender and Cavern of Souls. Splinterfright might even be fun.
I was on the closed beta the other night and found out a few things in regards to the deck editor.
1) If a deck is loaded, you can right click on the deck field and can save a copy (names new copy like windows, that is my.dek copies to my.dek(2)). You can then right click again and select properties to rename it before making changes; so you have the new and old versions of the deck.
Alternately, you can right click on a deck name and open a copy of a deck, then change the name.
2) If you right click on a deck name, there is an option to export the deck which saves it in the .dek format to the folder where local decks get saved in V3 (in my case, I made a "My Decks" folder in "My Document" and pointed V3 to that rather than the V3 defaults to for local deck saving [../users/username/AppData/Roaming/Wizards of the Coast/Magic Online/3.0/Decks]). I also import decks from here to Beta.
There are still 3 full months of drafting VM. Prices are not going to skyrocket any time soon, and the prices will continue to fall once most people interested in Power have acquired theirs. Also, packs of VM are being handed out like Halloween candy through constructed events, so there is still a ton of VM to enter the system (assuming they keep paying out Legecy/Vintage with VM come October).
I've heard MTG judges talking about this one as well for paper. If you start casting a spell, use Selvala's ability, but don't hit enough mana to cast it, what do you do? People have already drawn cards, but the ability is unwound and she is untapped ready to try again and see if you get enough mana this time.
Selvala is not bugged, it's how she's supposed to work online: they said they can't let her ability activate as a mana ability because with MTGO you can undo mana abilities, and that would allow you to cheat, forcing the opponents to reveal their cards, then undoing.
I didn't consider that Council's Judgment circumvent hexproof & co., that's a great application of will of the council. It's the only single-target card that can exile Progenitus!
And I guess Selvala is good for being a 2/4 for 3. I just dread to tap her, get nothing from the effect, and then my opponent draws a card. I suppose I should play with her to better judge her strength. It's interesting that she's a Scout, there are 2 good new Scouts among these cards.
If you are willing to wait long term, you may make a little money. However, the extent of just how high the moxen will go is based upon the actual popularity of the format and how long they pay out that format in packs. Modern is popular, but do they still pay out modern in MM packs? If vintage catches on, then maybe the cards get more rare and the price goes up. Only time will tell if this will pay dividends for you or not. I honestly think that the lowest prices for all of the power have came and went, unless the format tanks because of either lack of support (probably not) or people selling off because of the beta switchover (probably so)
You are forgetting Gush, Fact or Fiction and Obsessive Search. The storm deck is really fun but I always find a way to play it in the wrong way. Usually, when I lose a game with the storm deck it is because I did something wrong.
One quick note.
Due to the recent changes to Wizard's gatherer page, the auto import tool we use to import sets to gatherling needs to be updated, this means that VMA has not yet been added to the deck legality checker on the site.
Newly common cards from VMA are legal, but require a workaround to include in your deck until we are able to import the VMA set. Simply include a different legal card in the deck list, and use the comments field to note the changes.
For example:
Deck:
4x Crookshanks Kobalds
Comments:
4x Crookshanks Kobalds standing in for 4x Chainer's Edict
Thanks
Josh your match against LSV is up on channelfireball. Assuming that's the same one you were talking about on the cast.
True, I also run into that with Black and Red. I was probably a little too focused on the Ulamog's Crusher itself in this article and didn't include things that just plain prevent it from hitting the field.
Green's defence of tron usually is in attacking the lands to prevent crusher from appearing in the first place.
Thermokarst, Mwonvuli Acid-Moss, Desecration Plague
Unmake certainly works, it's just not one I see very often in Pauper games. I was trying to hit a lot of the main threats with the idea behind this article. It's not comprehensive, but I thought it was a good starting point to get someone thinking about how an opponent will respond to their threats.
In a similar vein green does have Lignify that would neutralize a Crusher, but it's not a card I see played often and personally I don't like Lignify much because it leaves behind a blocker.
What about unmake?
Exactly, this is not a deck about Reveillark shenanigans. It's an entirely different deck and one that has zero room for including the tools you mention (by design: if I wanted to find the best way to build a deck around Horde of Notions, I wouldn't take the strictly Tribal Wars legal route). As you can see, once you include the tools Horde needs, there's just no space left for much. The Elementals must perform on their own, just knowing they'll be resurrected by Horde eventually.
Plus it's a casual deck (well, sort of, I just played a game where everything worked super-quickly and it destroyed its opponents, but I doubt it'll always be like that). And one that's very committed to its trick. You say Reveillark brings back Mulldrifter? Well, Horde brings back Mulldrifter, too! By just paying 5 mana, which is actually much less effort than Reveillark would require to achieve the same goal.
Of course, you have to reach the 5-color threshold first, which is the whole challenge.
Yeah, it would work better with Selenia as she is life loss that it always accessible. I kind of messed around with this when I made Selenia years ago, but I think you're right.
Power Conduit should be in this deck to exchange age counters for +1/+1 counters
These are the buy prices of a popular bot chain. Below are the top 10 cards.
Temple of Epiphany [JOU] 1.96
Eidolon of Blossoms [JOU] 2.75
Pharika, God of Affliction [JOU] 2.8
Athreos, God of Passage [JOU] 3.15
Keranos, God of Storms [JOU] 3.55
Eidolon of the Great Revel [JOU] 4.5
Prophetic Flamespeaker [JOU] 4.8
Temple of Malady [JOU] 5.6
Mana Confluence [JOU] 6.8
Ajani, Mentor of Heroes [JOU] 11.5
My Psychatog Upheaval deck wrecked the draft I built it in. Dr. Teeth is not unplayable quite yet.
Reveillark doesn't interact well with elementals? Lets see it gets back mulldrifter, harbinger, forgotten ancients, Animar, wispmare, voidstalker, soulstoke, smokebraider, ashling, and the list goes on...plus if you toss in some non-tribals: Karmic Guide + Reveillark is a thing. As is Witness + Lark. I won't say its a must include but to be discarded as non-interactive seems wrong. I know, she's a pet of mine but she's a pet because she's good (!) with elementals! :D As for her leaves play trigger not repeating, well there are tons of ways to make that happen without sacrifices. (Combat, Bounce, Exile (opponent), etc) I think it fairer to say that she fits just fine but that she asks to be built around because she is so powerful and that is a reason to not include her else the deck becomes about Lark shenanigans.
Karona and the true gods - rock band featuring covers of Led Zep, Clapton, and Jimmy Hendrix :D
Cavern of Souls: It should be there, indeed. It's easy to replace one of the other lands that produce any color.
Smokebraider: As a rule, I never use mana dorks in Commander, they're really too fragile in a format where a creature sweeper hits the board every other turn. Joiner Adept is there because it gives me all the 5 colors at once. Otherwise, Wood Elves is the mana fixer for me, since it gives me the color I miss, but in a way that it's not easily disrupted.
Bloom Tender: Same as above, but I guess it could be alluring in a deck where it could generate as much as 5 mana per tap. It does so once I already managed to reach 5 colors, though, and to double the amount, Mana Reflection and Mirari's Wake are, again, more resilient.
Walker of the Grove: As mentioned in the article, I discarded all the Elementals from Morningtide with death triggers, because they would also need a sacrifice outlet to be fully exploited by Horde of Notions. I can evoke them once, then Horde just brings them back, and that's it. I made a combo deck with Walker and Paleoloth once, which would consistently abuses the trigger by re-evoking it again and again. As a one-shot effect, I'm not really that excited by it. But the Thornling slot is always open (I'd still like Silvos better, though).
Splinterfright: It might make sense. I'm always shy about random self-milling, it's a tech I don't have much affinity with.
Good on you for always trying new things even if they don't turn out the way you like. I'm in the same boat. A big draw of EDH for me is seeing and experiencing new things. I have no love for the more popular stuff because I've seen them too much that it's no longer exciting.
I doubt Suicide Black is ever a good idea. Too much drawback for too little gain in EDH, made even worse because you're putting yourself into the red zone.
The only "suicide" I could see would be something like Near-Death Experience, Angel's Grace, things that do massive damage to everyone, extra turns, counterspells to back up your flimsy combo, etc. Would need multiple colors and would be very janky.
I love elementals (almost equal to merfolk). I was surprised by a few omissions though. Smoke Braider And Walker of the Grove, Bloom Tender and Cavern of Souls. Splinterfright might even be fun.
I was on the closed beta the other night and found out a few things in regards to the deck editor.
1) If a deck is loaded, you can right click on the deck field and can save a copy (names new copy like windows, that is my.dek copies to my.dek(2)). You can then right click again and select properties to rename it before making changes; so you have the new and old versions of the deck.
Alternately, you can right click on a deck name and open a copy of a deck, then change the name.
2) If you right click on a deck name, there is an option to export the deck which saves it in the .dek format to the folder where local decks get saved in V3 (in my case, I made a "My Decks" folder in "My Document" and pointed V3 to that rather than the V3 defaults to for local deck saving [../users/username/AppData/Roaming/Wizards of the Coast/Magic Online/3.0/Decks]). I also import decks from here to Beta.
You keep the mana until it empties.
There are still 3 full months of drafting VM. Prices are not going to skyrocket any time soon, and the prices will continue to fall once most people interested in Power have acquired theirs. Also, packs of VM are being handed out like Halloween candy through constructed events, so there is still a ton of VM to enter the system (assuming they keep paying out Legecy/Vintage with VM come October).
I've heard MTG judges talking about this one as well for paper. If you start casting a spell, use Selvala's ability, but don't hit enough mana to cast it, what do you do? People have already drawn cards, but the ability is unwound and she is untapped ready to try again and see if you get enough mana this time.
Selvala is not bugged, it's how she's supposed to work online: they said they can't let her ability activate as a mana ability because with MTGO you can undo mana abilities, and that would allow you to cheat, forcing the opponents to reveal their cards, then undoing.
I didn't consider that Council's Judgment circumvent hexproof & co., that's a great application of will of the council. It's the only single-target card that can exile Progenitus!
And I guess Selvala is good for being a 2/4 for 3. I just dread to tap her, get nothing from the effect, and then my opponent draws a card. I suppose I should play with her to better judge her strength. It's interesting that she's a Scout, there are 2 good new Scouts among these cards.
Seems like you need some suggestions for themes...
- Ramirez DePietro (pirate creatures, plundering, finding treasures, ships, Sea's Claim, Nausea, etc.)
- Karona and the TRUE gods (all 15 Theros Gods)
- Mistform Ultimus (the Deck of Lords)
- Yosei (white has quite some number of reanimation to abuse his death triggers) or his brothers
- Masako, Tomorrow, Maga, Zo-Zu, Isao... (there are a lot of interesting Kamigawa legends)
If you are willing to wait long term, you may make a little money. However, the extent of just how high the moxen will go is based upon the actual popularity of the format and how long they pay out that format in packs. Modern is popular, but do they still pay out modern in MM packs? If vintage catches on, then maybe the cards get more rare and the price goes up. Only time will tell if this will pay dividends for you or not. I honestly think that the lowest prices for all of the power have came and went, unless the format tanks because of either lack of support (probably not) or people selling off because of the beta switchover (probably so)