Uhm, I feel like you're equaling green ramp to Boundless Realms. One of my most successful Commander decks is Kamahl, and it certainly uses ramp spell like Wood Elves, Cultivate, Skyshroud Claim and Hunting Wilds, but the real deal is the triad of Mana Reflection, Caged Sun and Vorinclex (on top of the most effective mana rocks). If you let me keep 5 lands and those, I can still easily power up 200+ damage out of Kamahl.
But can't you just answer anything that comes out of the ramp? It's just a mean to an end, not a wincon in itself. Blue does Show and Tell into Ulamog. You need Hallowed Burial. Green ramps into Ulamog. You still need Hallowed Burial. In fact, if you don't have something like Hallowed Burial, you'll also lose to an Uril deck casting Uril.
Red has card drawing in the form of looting. Red draws card by discarding cards. It's pretty powerful and pretty common.
White doesn't have card drawing because it already has everything else. There's nothing white can't deal with. If you gave card drawing to white, it'd be the king of colors. Plus, it's due to white philosophy, white is ordered and rigid, it lacks the chaotic surge, the random intuition, and the willing to recycle resources the other colors have, and that lead to them drawing cards.
I don't share your view on Sylvan Primordial. I still think it was a weird ban. I can admit it became an instant staple, but not a particularly crucial one. It doesn't even start to compare with Primeval Titan (the difference between them is well represented by the difference between $20 and $0.1). The Titan fetches you endgames. The Primordial in late game does next to nothing besides the removal, which is healthy just as effects like Decimate are, keeping everyone in check. And if it's a matter of abusing it, well, you can just abuse Woodfall Primus instead (by the way, green has literally dozens of noncreature removals with no downsides. Beast Within has a downside because it hits creatures, and Terastodon has a downside because it can be used to destroy a single player. I can't think of other cases where green destroys a noncreature and gives something in exchange).
What really warranted a ban was the main enabler of such abuse, which is Deadeye Navigator. Here's an obscene card for you. And one which pretty much ignores the ban of Primordial, just like most green decks did - they used the Primordial as an answer, now they're back to one of the many other options in that slot.
I'll tie to your article in mine tomorrow, giving my personal answer to what I'd like for the future of Commander.
Thanks for the feedback. I will 'up' the quality of the recordings in future.
You're right about the pack rats, that was my failure to correctly read the board state.
Regarding your other observations; Mending touch is probably bad in that matchup. In fact, it is probably only useful against Supreme Verdict decks.
The Abrupt Decay was a misplay. I was a but tilted by then. The good thing about recording you videos is that it allows you to go back and critique your plays and see what you could have done differently. Thanks for pointing this out.
Underworld Connections can be important if he had a Gray Merchant. He was already 100% committed to the pack rat plan though.
In the RW burn matchup, holding back the second Aspect does a few things (greedy future play, using it too early may leave us with no future combat trick, it changes the plan of our opponent etc) Most importantly I held it back for the possiblility of using it defensively. Drawing in to the giant growth changed this. I need to slow down an explain my decisions in greater detail.
With the magma jet/anger I miscalculated the math. He made the right play, although it wasn't as efficient as it could have been due to my Rangers Guile. Thanks for pointing that out
Game 3 i waited with the burning tree for a bigger rev hunter, i didn't play the BTE on turn 2 in to the Dryad Militant as i wanted to protect the militant with the giant growth. Playing both i could protect neither. When my opponent tapped out on their turn 2 i was free to resolve a big rev hunter. Having a 5/5 Rev hunter puts it out of reach of any singular (constructed playable) burn spell (except maybe fated conflagration?) so it would need to be double burned.
Mistcutter Hydras were in the original build, they're cheap and they do have a good purpose. I can see them only being cast for 3 or 4, but as a late game draw they're not bad. Its the text box that is important, even if it is only a 3/3.
Default example of virtual card advantage seems to be Nessian Asp, at least these days. When opp plays Nessian Asp, many of your creatures (even ones often still in your hand) are neutralized.
Thank you so much for bringing that Overdriven article to my attention. Those few paragraphs told a story spanning years that, sadly, contained no small amount of sorrow. It makes me appreciate how giving Blippy is to the community, even after facing circumstances that would have left many other people bitter at this messy world of ours. (I feel bad I missed a shout out to my own column too. I'll have to make up for that someday!)
Virtual card advantage example: BBE. BTE is an example of tempo bears. Tempo giving you a jump ahead of your opponent. The downside to it is that the extra body doesn't help if your opponent can outclass it or sweep it. But that is a risk usually worth taking since it adds two to your clock (which is significant in an aggro deck) and or board presence to slow a clock or maybe occasionally as fast sacrificial fodder for some combo. (Not that that will happen often...particularly in those colors but it's possible.) Occasionally instead of being a tempo enhancer it acts as a fixer if you lack one of the colors and need it. None of its functions give you card advantage directly.
Thanks for the feedback. I do not feel that Master of Waves is the achilles heel of the deck. I also prefer the mono-red aggro strategy as the burn really makes up for the lack of reach that the green deck has. I decided to cover this deck because a few people are having success with this archetype and it cost just $10 to make. Financial cost is a huge barrier for people to get in to constructed play. Regarding the VCA, I suppose i have misunderstood the definition. I figured a 'free' card like BTE gives VCA because it allows you to play above your curve; above 100% efficiency. i.e. casting a bear for 2cmc. Thanks for the link. I guess the virtual card advantage is conditional upon us winning before our opponent can cast cards. Outside of that there is no card advantage.
If Master of Waves is a problem you can use Time to Feed instead of Pit Fight. I can imagine this deck just losing to Master of Waves if it ever sticks. It's a sweet deck, but I think Mono-Red is better. Burn acting as reach comes up more often than you think.
Good work on the article. It's clear you put a lot of effort into it and as someone who writes similar style articles I appreciate the work that goes into articles like this.
Watching your video content I have a few observations. The first is that you could do with upping the video quality as it's very difficult to read any text in the videos. The other points are more play and commentary related
Mono-Black Devotion
• You discussed how your opponent could activate Pack Rat X-number of times disregarding the fact he had no cards in hand.
• Your assessments of who had the upperhand at any given point seemed to be poor – perhaps due to a misunderstanding of the game state (particularly when it came to Pack Rat).
• You question the opponent discarding Underworld Connections despite the fact he only had 2 life when he did so. They were going to get one activation out of it max so it seems very reasonable to pitch it.
• Is Mending Touch actually good in this matchup given it’s useless against Bile Blight and Devour Flesh?
• Didn’t want to Mending Touch your Brushstrider in response to the Abrupt Decay?
RW Burn
• Seemed like a weird video to show us given the bizarre concession Game 1. Game 2 is decent at least.
• In Game 2, on Turn 3 what was the reasoning behind not using both Aspect of Hydra? Not saying it was wrong it's just an interesting play and probably one worth explaining from a commentary standpoint.
UR Burn
• Is UR Burn a popular deck? I haven't really been following Standard lately but it seems a little weak.
• In Game 1, you seem very reluctant to hardcast Slaughterhorn. Wouldn’t it have been better to hardcast it and evolve both your Experiment Ones rather than Bloodthirst for an extra 3 damage or were you playing around Dissolve?
• I don’t understand your comments regarding your opponent’s use of Magma Jet in response to Ranger's Guile. Anger of the Gods wouldn’t have killed the Reverent Hunter as it was going to be a 4/4 until end of turn so he used Magma Jet to clear your board with Anger. I can’t see how this was a misplay.
• In Game 3, why don’t you play the Burning-Tree Emissary into Dryad Militant? You say for the Reverent Hunter but that doesn’t actually make sense. Are you trying to protect it from removal? Seems a lot better to put 4 power on the board rather than 2 and if you don’t draw a land you are just going to running out the Emissary on its own next turn.
• Mistcutter Hydra doesn’t seem very good in a deck with 20 lands and no Nykthos.
I hope these comments don't come across too critically as I think this was largely a well done article.
In one of the best Overdriven! articles Blippy did actually explain the 'reasons' which you guys seem to be uncomfortable talking about. The number 84 - impressive writing.
I think they have deliberately fogged the line between the two to give themselves slack. However the way they've written this years announcement causes me to think that they are more interested in the votes aspect than in the nominations aspect of the community participation.
Virtual card advantage is based on the weakness that card advantage tracking has in regards to things like making tokens and playing decks with no creatures, not ramping up your board in quickly with Burning Tree Emissary, which is typically a tempo-oriented card.
Shoot, you're not even that far off - there is a "free ritual" attached to the 2/2, but at the same time, abilities are expected on 2/2s for 2 colored mana, at least to be playable in constructed, so I don't really view that as much of a virtual card advantage point, just a tempo point.
I don't want to beat you up. This is a typical type of mistake that annoys me, but isn't really a bad thing, or horribly wrong, so I wanted to try to correct it.
Otherwise, the deck seems sweet, and I'm sure Michael Jacob would approve as well.
The problem with that solution is that they'll just flashback Gainsay to stop you from banning them. Banning is obviously in the Blue part of the color pie, and would be open to Gainsay, is what I'm getting at.
I'm not sure that the changes to the CC are bad - I think they were meant to be tweaks/adjustments to something that is mostly a PR thing. They just didn't communicate or handle them well.
The right way to do it would be to emphasize Erik, the tradition of it, while pointing to a shift in focus, a little bit, to try to include paper magic players and new people more.
Instead they just kind of vomited the changes up like a coyote that got into antifreeze-ridden meat.
I don't know, I must not know the real meaning of "nomination". If they want to count votes, then just call the thing voting. Nominations implies that someone could gain entry for having a better "resume" even with only a few nominations.
Imho it was always a popularity contest a little bit but WOTC clearly had most of the say in the decisions. Sounds like this year they are just taking whomever the community votes for. Which may mean a lot of random people (not randoms) we've never heard of if we aren't involved in the larger community.
I see this as a good and bad thing. Good because there are plenty of people out there deserving of praise and acknowledgement and bad because it makes room for voting abuse via multiple accounts and may encourage the sort of "campaigning" that Josh and AJ were talking about today.
I am also aware (obviously) but again, it's not my thing to talk about, I have a little tact, even though he has spoken about it before.
It reads to me like it's being handled by a new guy unaware of what has previously transpired.
I am aware, but it isn't my place to broadcast that, at least without checking with him first.
Uhm, I feel like you're equaling green ramp to Boundless Realms. One of my most successful Commander decks is Kamahl, and it certainly uses ramp spell like Wood Elves, Cultivate, Skyshroud Claim and Hunting Wilds, but the real deal is the triad of Mana Reflection, Caged Sun and Vorinclex (on top of the most effective mana rocks). If you let me keep 5 lands and those, I can still easily power up 200+ damage out of Kamahl.
But can't you just answer anything that comes out of the ramp? It's just a mean to an end, not a wincon in itself. Blue does Show and Tell into Ulamog. You need Hallowed Burial. Green ramps into Ulamog. You still need Hallowed Burial. In fact, if you don't have something like Hallowed Burial, you'll also lose to an Uril deck casting Uril.
Red has card drawing in the form of looting. Red draws card by discarding cards. It's pretty powerful and pretty common.
White doesn't have card drawing because it already has everything else. There's nothing white can't deal with. If you gave card drawing to white, it'd be the king of colors. Plus, it's due to white philosophy, white is ordered and rigid, it lacks the chaotic surge, the random intuition, and the willing to recycle resources the other colors have, and that lead to them drawing cards.
I don't share your view on Sylvan Primordial. I still think it was a weird ban. I can admit it became an instant staple, but not a particularly crucial one. It doesn't even start to compare with Primeval Titan (the difference between them is well represented by the difference between $20 and $0.1). The Titan fetches you endgames. The Primordial in late game does next to nothing besides the removal, which is healthy just as effects like Decimate are, keeping everyone in check. And if it's a matter of abusing it, well, you can just abuse Woodfall Primus instead (by the way, green has literally dozens of noncreature removals with no downsides. Beast Within has a downside because it hits creatures, and Terastodon has a downside because it can be used to destroy a single player. I can't think of other cases where green destroys a noncreature and gives something in exchange).
What really warranted a ban was the main enabler of such abuse, which is Deadeye Navigator. Here's an obscene card for you. And one which pretty much ignores the ban of Primordial, just like most green decks did - they used the Primordial as an answer, now they're back to one of the many other options in that slot.
I'll tie to your article in mine tomorrow, giving my personal answer to what I'd like for the future of Commander.
Thanks for the feedback. I will 'up' the quality of the recordings in future.
You're right about the pack rats, that was my failure to correctly read the board state.
Regarding your other observations; Mending touch is probably bad in that matchup. In fact, it is probably only useful against Supreme Verdict decks.
The Abrupt Decay was a misplay. I was a but tilted by then. The good thing about recording you videos is that it allows you to go back and critique your plays and see what you could have done differently. Thanks for pointing this out.
Underworld Connections can be important if he had a Gray Merchant. He was already 100% committed to the pack rat plan though.
In the RW burn matchup, holding back the second Aspect does a few things (greedy future play, using it too early may leave us with no future combat trick, it changes the plan of our opponent etc) Most importantly I held it back for the possiblility of using it defensively. Drawing in to the giant growth changed this. I need to slow down an explain my decisions in greater detail.
With the magma jet/anger I miscalculated the math. He made the right play, although it wasn't as efficient as it could have been due to my Rangers Guile. Thanks for pointing that out
Game 3 i waited with the burning tree for a bigger rev hunter, i didn't play the BTE on turn 2 in to the Dryad Militant as i wanted to protect the militant with the giant growth. Playing both i could protect neither. When my opponent tapped out on their turn 2 i was free to resolve a big rev hunter. Having a 5/5 Rev hunter puts it out of reach of any singular (constructed playable) burn spell (except maybe fated conflagration?) so it would need to be double burned.
Mistcutter Hydras were in the original build, they're cheap and they do have a good purpose. I can see them only being cast for 3 or 4, but as a late game draw they're not bad. Its the text box that is important, even if it is only a 3/3.
Default example of virtual card advantage seems to be Nessian Asp, at least these days. When opp plays Nessian Asp, many of your creatures (even ones often still in your hand) are neutralized.
Thank you so much for bringing that Overdriven article to my attention. Those few paragraphs told a story spanning years that, sadly, contained no small amount of sorrow. It makes me appreciate how giving Blippy is to the community, even after facing circumstances that would have left many other people bitter at this messy world of ours. (I feel bad I missed a shout out to my own column too. I'll have to make up for that someday!)
Virtual card advantage example: BBE. BTE is an example of tempo bears. Tempo giving you a jump ahead of your opponent. The downside to it is that the extra body doesn't help if your opponent can outclass it or sweep it. But that is a risk usually worth taking since it adds two to your clock (which is significant in an aggro deck) and or board presence to slow a clock or maybe occasionally as fast sacrificial fodder for some combo. (Not that that will happen often...particularly in those colors but it's possible.) Occasionally instead of being a tempo enhancer it acts as a fixer if you lack one of the colors and need it. None of its functions give you card advantage directly.
Thanks for the feedback. I do not feel that Master of Waves is the achilles heel of the deck. I also prefer the mono-red aggro strategy as the burn really makes up for the lack of reach that the green deck has. I decided to cover this deck because a few people are having success with this archetype and it cost just $10 to make. Financial cost is a huge barrier for people to get in to constructed play. Regarding the VCA, I suppose i have misunderstood the definition. I figured a 'free' card like BTE gives VCA because it allows you to play above your curve; above 100% efficiency. i.e. casting a bear for 2cmc. Thanks for the link. I guess the virtual card advantage is conditional upon us winning before our opponent can cast cards. Outside of that there is no card advantage.
Thanks for the feedback.
I read your comments and I disagree with them. That's pretty simple to me.
If Master of Waves is a problem you can use Time to Feed instead of Pit Fight. I can imagine this deck just losing to Master of Waves if it ever sticks. It's a sweet deck, but I think Mono-Red is better. Burn acting as reach comes up more often than you think.
As for the "Virtual Card Advantage" debate, Mike Flores recently put out an article on it: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/lo/303
BTE is board advantage and a tempo play, but not really Virtual Card Advantage.
Good work on the article. It's clear you put a lot of effort into it and as someone who writes similar style articles I appreciate the work that goes into articles like this.
Watching your video content I have a few observations. The first is that you could do with upping the video quality as it's very difficult to read any text in the videos. The other points are more play and commentary related
Mono-Black Devotion
• You discussed how your opponent could activate Pack Rat X-number of times disregarding the fact he had no cards in hand.
• Your assessments of who had the upperhand at any given point seemed to be poor – perhaps due to a misunderstanding of the game state (particularly when it came to Pack Rat).
• You question the opponent discarding Underworld Connections despite the fact he only had 2 life when he did so. They were going to get one activation out of it max so it seems very reasonable to pitch it.
• Is Mending Touch actually good in this matchup given it’s useless against Bile Blight and Devour Flesh?
• Didn’t want to Mending Touch your Brushstrider in response to the Abrupt Decay?
RW Burn
• Seemed like a weird video to show us given the bizarre concession Game 1. Game 2 is decent at least.
• In Game 2, on Turn 3 what was the reasoning behind not using both Aspect of Hydra? Not saying it was wrong it's just an interesting play and probably one worth explaining from a commentary standpoint.
UR Burn
• Is UR Burn a popular deck? I haven't really been following Standard lately but it seems a little weak.
• In Game 1, you seem very reluctant to hardcast Slaughterhorn. Wouldn’t it have been better to hardcast it and evolve both your Experiment Ones rather than Bloodthirst for an extra 3 damage or were you playing around Dissolve?
• I don’t understand your comments regarding your opponent’s use of Magma Jet in response to Ranger's Guile. Anger of the Gods wouldn’t have killed the Reverent Hunter as it was going to be a 4/4 until end of turn so he used Magma Jet to clear your board with Anger. I can’t see how this was a misplay.
• In Game 3, why don’t you play the Burning-Tree Emissary into Dryad Militant? You say for the Reverent Hunter but that doesn’t actually make sense. Are you trying to protect it from removal? Seems a lot better to put 4 power on the board rather than 2 and if you don’t draw a land you are just going to running out the Emissary on its own next turn.
• Mistcutter Hydra doesn’t seem very good in a deck with 20 lands and no Nykthos.
I hope these comments don't come across too critically as I think this was largely a well done article.
In one of the best Overdriven! articles Blippy did actually explain the 'reasons' which you guys seem to be uncomfortable talking about. The number 84 - impressive writing.
That's the reason the avatars like Necropotence and the like fell a lot but Serra Angel (alt) was a very rare avatar until the post CCC momir tourney.
I think they have deliberately fogged the line between the two to give themselves slack. However the way they've written this years announcement causes me to think that they are more interested in the votes aspect than in the nominations aspect of the community participation.
If this site had sigs I might use that last line :p
I'm not sure where you got "weakness" but sure, try to misapply the meme back to me.
There should be a path in the Twin Plan.
Obliterator being pseudo moat is still rather unimpressive.
Virtual card advantage is not based on "weakness." It's called "virtual" because it doesn't depend on counting cards.
Virtual card advantage is based on the weakness that card advantage tracking has in regards to things like making tokens and playing decks with no creatures, not ramping up your board in quickly with Burning Tree Emissary, which is typically a tempo-oriented card.
Shoot, you're not even that far off - there is a "free ritual" attached to the 2/2, but at the same time, abilities are expected on 2/2s for 2 colored mana, at least to be playable in constructed, so I don't really view that as much of a virtual card advantage point, just a tempo point.
I don't want to beat you up. This is a typical type of mistake that annoys me, but isn't really a bad thing, or horribly wrong, so I wanted to try to correct it.
Otherwise, the deck seems sweet, and I'm sure Michael Jacob would approve as well.
The problem with that solution is that they'll just flashback Gainsay to stop you from banning them. Banning is obviously in the Blue part of the color pie, and would be open to Gainsay, is what I'm getting at.
I'm not sure that the changes to the CC are bad - I think they were meant to be tweaks/adjustments to something that is mostly a PR thing. They just didn't communicate or handle them well.
The right way to do it would be to emphasize Erik, the tradition of it, while pointing to a shift in focus, a little bit, to try to include paper magic players and new people more.
Instead they just kind of vomited the changes up like a coyote that got into antifreeze-ridden meat.
I don't know, I must not know the real meaning of "nomination". If they want to count votes, then just call the thing voting. Nominations implies that someone could gain entry for having a better "resume" even with only a few nominations.
I thought the real reason no avatar was worth anything anymore was because they took away Vanguard.
I'm still pretty miffed at that decision. To me it just felt like it was a bit of laziness on their part.
I still won! But Darkness was a pretty neat answer for a deck that needed one outside of Cryptic Command maybe?
Imho it was always a popularity contest a little bit but WOTC clearly had most of the say in the decisions. Sounds like this year they are just taking whomever the community votes for. Which may mean a lot of random people (not randoms) we've never heard of if we aren't involved in the larger community.
I see this as a good and bad thing. Good because there are plenty of people out there deserving of praise and acknowledgement and bad because it makes room for voting abuse via multiple accounts and may encourage the sort of "campaigning" that Josh and AJ were talking about today.