Makes sense - if a format is "balanced" or "wide open" then you'll run into all sorts of randomness, and you may not be able to prepare as well as you would for a defined meta.
would also like to see the "seasons" dates..or a link to them, ie.. Modern 3-1-14 thru 6-1-14 , as far as paper world goes, because that does affect the prices and demand on MTGO as well.
Classic and Legacy. It is legal in eternal formats (other than Modern.)
I play True-Name Nemesis in both formats. Commander 2013.
Edit: Sorry - misread your line. The deck has a bunch of cards rarely seen in constructed. Pith Driller, Scuttlemutt, etc. All good in draft in their formats. The Angel, though, only appears in Cube.
Well, I couldn't afford them when Legends packs were $11/pack and not much has changed other than the price of Legends has increased significantly. I figured you guys were getting these donated by CFG, but if you are buying them, then might I suggest the next pack be Exodus.
I'm of the mindset that there is almost no chance we see the old frames in VM. It would be a huge surprise to me if they were actually to release them in the old frame.
The pack cracking segment is pretty cool, though when are we going to get some high stakes pack cracking going on? I want to see some Legends or Beta packs (I never got the chance to open those back in the day)!!
I do follow Romellos' writings with interest, which is part of how I formed that opinion of his deckbuilding fingerprint. I've faced Romellos dozens of times, and particularly at this event, his style is very distinctive.
Look through his decklists and you will find dozens of cards shoehorned in purely on the strength of 'being strong cards' regardless of any relevance to a given tribe, most egregiously when a tribe is already among the strongest. Human decks with Tarmogoyf and Deathrite Shaman, Cat decks Zooing it up with Kird Ape, 'goyf and Knight of the Reliquary, and most famously, swords of X and Y wherever they fit, something you yourself raised when he spoke out against them being in the format.
'Lazy narrative shortcuts' are very much his calling card alongside very nonbasic-heavy manabases, much like my tendency to go overboard on mass removal and to include incremental value land type exploiters.
Yeah, but rom isn't just that. You have to read his Modern articles to see that he has other styles, too, and he's no stranger to flavor-oriented choices, even.
Plus, there's always a middle ground to everything. As I said, there's an intellectual justification (and even a flavor one, if you want) for Baneslayer Angel helping Serra Ascendant (you can also see Angelic Destiny being both strong AND flavorful). KotR doesn't even have a mechanical reason to be there, it's just in the Tarmogoyf role. If you looked at deckbuilding as if it was filmmaking (and I do), that would be called a lazy narrative shortcut.
Good point walkerdog, indeed, and I agree with you. I did not explain it well enough, I meant to say match-up luck is the difference maker between 2-2 and 3-1 & 3-1 and 4-0 like you said.
Also I was trying to make the point (perhaps not effectively) that the recent restrictions have made the meta much more diverse so far, I see a lot more landstill, tezz decks, delver, etc... It seems those decks have taken favor in the DE's with the departed STAX builds. If you knew you would face 1 or 2 workshop decks in a DE packing 4-6 mass artifact kill cards in your SB and even some MD made sense, now doing so hurts you many times because you have a strong likelihood to never face workshop decks.
" I'm the first to respect the inclusion of off-tribe creatures that complete one tribe's strategy or helps its chances of success, so I understand the presence of some more lifegaining creatures (Baneslayer Angel, Scavenging Ooze) for the sake of Serra Ascendant; but Knight of the Reliquary seems to be there only because she's a strong creature in the right colors. The build would have been more elegant without her, I think."
I'm correspondingly the last person to respect off-tribe creatures, but this is something of a disservice to Romellos' deckbuilding style, namely the tightest possible deck with the best possible cards. This is a clever variation on Bant humans, with Avacyn's Pilgrim in for Noble Hierarch and a similar selection of roles across the team. Elegance is very much an irrelevance to him. I was one of the four previous monk players (Possibly two of them), but I forget how the deck did back in the day.
Resto is a big favourite of mine too. I have to say I haven't seen many Illness in the Ranks though that it some interesting tech against Splinter Twin/Exarch.
The KCI deck was really cool. I might have to give that deck a try at some point.
The format wasn't designed with the purpose of being a cheap constructed format, nor is the "whole reason" for its existence the ability to reprint cards. That's a popular myth held by many players. The fact that they are not bound by the reserved list is relevant to Wizards only to the extent that it means they can sell expensive "premium" sealed product relating to the format. In other words, it's so that WotC can make money, not so you can have a cheap deck. They don't care at all about that, people have complained about the cost of top tier decks in every format for 20+ years, and those complaints have had no effect on the game's growth. In fact, with the Modern format, they now DEPEND on the fact that the secondary market for singles is high to create buzz around things like Modern Masters and the Modern Event Deck.
Even if they truly wanted to lower the cost of Modern, a format can't really be manipulated in that way to any great extent, because supply and demand operates not only at the level of singles, but also at the level of entire decks. The demand for each card in a top tier deck is connected, to some degree, to demand for the other cards that appear with it in top decks. If they reprint a few rares/mythics from one deck, other ones that weren't reprinted become the new bottleneck to assembling that deck, and then THAT card shoots up to keep the price of a top tier deck about the same overall.
I'm not sure I buy your feelings on "This leads me to my current thinking that match-up luck has become the difference maker for most events."
So, it can be the difference-maker between a 3-1 and a 4-0, sure. Or a 3-1 and a 2-2. But if you're seeing that you can't win enough matchups to prevent you from moneying, it might be that the deck(s) you're running are just kind of weak against enough decks that they are closer to Tier 1.5 or 2 decks, not that the format has become matchup-dependent.
Like, bad matchups happen in a lot of formats without them devolving into matchup-dependency.
Since my BNG set review got eaten by my computer last week, I'll give a short-short version: Courser of Kruphix was my #2 favorite for tribal behind only Brimaz. So naturally I played Centaurs first chance I got! I wanted to maximize the fun and power of Courser of Kruphix, and Knight of the Reliquary is great with both the Courser's landfall-ish lifegain ability and for the ability to see the top of your deck and shuffle it away. I also included Domri Rade and Mirri's Guile to go along with that theme. I expect to play Centaurs again this year, Courser of Kruphix is the best thing they've ever had as a "build-around" creature. The tribe has a minor theme of using the threshold mechanic, and I expected the ample use of fetches and KotR to make that work, but it never proved relevant in any game. If better Centaurs are printed in Journey Into Nyx, I hope to re-work the tribal base without so much focus on threshold. Threshold is a tough mechanic to get going in tribal wars without some real dedicated enablers like Careful Study or Faithless Looting.
Despite the added difficulty of winning 2 matches out of only 3 rounds for the challenge, Leys7 came so close, I would have SWORN that archer tribal should be a favorite against bats in round 3, they have all those flying creatures with 1 or 2 toughness to shoot! But Leys7 flooded out a bit, and I have to give some props to Deonmag's "bleeder" style deck construction. Leys7 would hit the point where he was clearly stabilizing and gained board advantage, but without any lifegain it was just inevitable that he was gonna die to a 2-point life drain from some random bat.
Ah! That's why I was pressing the reload button over and over, thinking I had broken the internet! No worries, getting my State of the Program on time for Friday night (my time) is certainly worth a few typos. :)
Dark Depths was supposed to go on the Legacy list, where it is seeing play. Fixed the table for next week.
And Wizards announced that MTGO would use the method of pairings described in the Magic Tournament Rules. Yes, the "not" should be "now." I'll quote the rules for next week.
Sorry for the typos - I was really rushed this week, and submitted way late. Joshua didn't have enough time to proofread - he barely had enough time to post this week's article.
Makes sense - if a format is "balanced" or "wide open" then you'll run into all sorts of randomness, and you may not be able to prepare as well as you would for a defined meta.
This posting has been a great help to my draft game...But, can you add in the shuffler factor...lol.
Not just MOCS went down but all the events now, so much for manual assists...
... and the MOCS may have crashed. Should be an interesting week!
Well you should. Some of us work very hard to avoid the impression of laziness. :/
would also like to see the "seasons" dates..or a link to them, ie.. Modern 3-1-14 thru 6-1-14 , as far as paper world goes, because that does affect the prices and demand on MTGO as well.
I didn't imply we're not all a bit lazy sometimes. :)
I just want to push everyone away from their comfort zones!
It's a Classic?
Classic and Legacy. It is legal in eternal formats (other than Modern.)
I play True-Name Nemesis in both formats. Commander 2013.
Edit: Sorry - misread your line. The deck has a bunch of cards rarely seen in constructed. Pith Driller, Scuttlemutt, etc. All good in draft in their formats. The Angel, though, only appears in Cube.
Well, I couldn't afford them when Legends packs were $11/pack and not much has changed other than the price of Legends has increased significantly. I figured you guys were getting these donated by CFG, but if you are buying them, then might I suggest the next pack be Exodus.
You buy them and we will be happy to crack them.
I'm of the mindset that there is almost no chance we see the old frames in VM. It would be a huge surprise to me if they were actually to release them in the old frame.
The pack cracking segment is pretty cool, though when are we going to get some high stakes pack cracking going on? I want to see some Legends or Beta packs (I never got the chance to open those back in the day)!!
I do follow Romellos' writings with interest, which is part of how I formed that opinion of his deckbuilding fingerprint. I've faced Romellos dozens of times, and particularly at this event, his style is very distinctive.
Look through his decklists and you will find dozens of cards shoehorned in purely on the strength of 'being strong cards' regardless of any relevance to a given tribe, most egregiously when a tribe is already among the strongest. Human decks with Tarmogoyf and Deathrite Shaman, Cat decks Zooing it up with Kird Ape, 'goyf and Knight of the Reliquary, and most famously, swords of X and Y wherever they fit, something you yourself raised when he spoke out against them being in the format.
'Lazy narrative shortcuts' are very much his calling card alongside very nonbasic-heavy manabases, much like my tendency to go overboard on mass removal and to include incremental value land type exploiters.
Quote: "..including a bunch of cards I have rarely seen outside limited. ... Angel of Finality?"
Sorry that was meant as a reply to AJ's post.
Yeah, but rom isn't just that. You have to read his Modern articles to see that he has other styles, too, and he's no stranger to flavor-oriented choices, even.
Plus, there's always a middle ground to everything. As I said, there's an intellectual justification (and even a flavor one, if you want) for Baneslayer Angel helping Serra Ascendant (you can also see Angelic Destiny being both strong AND flavorful). KotR doesn't even have a mechanical reason to be there, it's just in the Tarmogoyf role. If you looked at deckbuilding as if it was filmmaking (and I do), that would be called a lazy narrative shortcut.
Good point walkerdog, indeed, and I agree with you. I did not explain it well enough, I meant to say match-up luck is the difference maker between 2-2 and 3-1 & 3-1 and 4-0 like you said.
Also I was trying to make the point (perhaps not effectively) that the recent restrictions have made the meta much more diverse so far, I see a lot more landstill, tezz decks, delver, etc... It seems those decks have taken favor in the DE's with the departed STAX builds. If you knew you would face 1 or 2 workshop decks in a DE packing 4-6 mass artifact kill cards in your SB and even some MD made sense, now doing so hurts you many times because you have a strong likelihood to never face workshop decks.
" I'm the first to respect the inclusion of off-tribe creatures that complete one tribe's strategy or helps its chances of success, so I understand the presence of some more lifegaining creatures (Baneslayer Angel, Scavenging Ooze) for the sake of Serra Ascendant; but Knight of the Reliquary seems to be there only because she's a strong creature in the right colors. The build would have been more elegant without her, I think."
I'm correspondingly the last person to respect off-tribe creatures, but this is something of a disservice to Romellos' deckbuilding style, namely the tightest possible deck with the best possible cards. This is a clever variation on Bant humans, with Avacyn's Pilgrim in for Noble Hierarch and a similar selection of roles across the team. Elegance is very much an irrelevance to him. I was one of the four previous monk players (Possibly two of them), but I forget how the deck did back in the day.
Thanks for the comment.
Resto is a big favourite of mine too. I have to say I haven't seen many Illness in the Ranks though that it some interesting tech against Splinter Twin/Exarch.
The KCI deck was really cool. I might have to give that deck a try at some point.
Now you've got me wondering how the Commander-only Angel of Finality could show up in a limited format.
The format wasn't designed with the purpose of being a cheap constructed format, nor is the "whole reason" for its existence the ability to reprint cards. That's a popular myth held by many players. The fact that they are not bound by the reserved list is relevant to Wizards only to the extent that it means they can sell expensive "premium" sealed product relating to the format. In other words, it's so that WotC can make money, not so you can have a cheap deck. They don't care at all about that, people have complained about the cost of top tier decks in every format for 20+ years, and those complaints have had no effect on the game's growth. In fact, with the Modern format, they now DEPEND on the fact that the secondary market for singles is high to create buzz around things like Modern Masters and the Modern Event Deck.
Even if they truly wanted to lower the cost of Modern, a format can't really be manipulated in that way to any great extent, because supply and demand operates not only at the level of singles, but also at the level of entire decks. The demand for each card in a top tier deck is connected, to some degree, to demand for the other cards that appear with it in top decks. If they reprint a few rares/mythics from one deck, other ones that weren't reprinted become the new bottleneck to assembling that deck, and then THAT card shoots up to keep the price of a top tier deck about the same overall.
I'm not sure I buy your feelings on "This leads me to my current thinking that match-up luck has become the difference maker for most events."
So, it can be the difference-maker between a 3-1 and a 4-0, sure. Or a 3-1 and a 2-2. But if you're seeing that you can't win enough matchups to prevent you from moneying, it might be that the deck(s) you're running are just kind of weak against enough decks that they are closer to Tier 1.5 or 2 decks, not that the format has become matchup-dependent.
Like, bad matchups happen in a lot of formats without them devolving into matchup-dependency.
Hey, I missed the "archers shooting at bats" aspect of that match! That's hilarious. Guess those elusive bats aren't as easy a target as they look.
Since my BNG set review got eaten by my computer last week, I'll give a short-short version: Courser of Kruphix was my #2 favorite for tribal behind only Brimaz. So naturally I played Centaurs first chance I got! I wanted to maximize the fun and power of Courser of Kruphix, and Knight of the Reliquary is great with both the Courser's landfall-ish lifegain ability and for the ability to see the top of your deck and shuffle it away. I also included Domri Rade and Mirri's Guile to go along with that theme. I expect to play Centaurs again this year, Courser of Kruphix is the best thing they've ever had as a "build-around" creature. The tribe has a minor theme of using the threshold mechanic, and I expected the ample use of fetches and KotR to make that work, but it never proved relevant in any game. If better Centaurs are printed in Journey Into Nyx, I hope to re-work the tribal base without so much focus on threshold. Threshold is a tough mechanic to get going in tribal wars without some real dedicated enablers like Careful Study or Faithless Looting.
Despite the added difficulty of winning 2 matches out of only 3 rounds for the challenge, Leys7 came so close, I would have SWORN that archer tribal should be a favorite against bats in round 3, they have all those flying creatures with 1 or 2 toughness to shoot! But Leys7 flooded out a bit, and I have to give some props to Deonmag's "bleeder" style deck construction. Leys7 would hit the point where he was clearly stabilizing and gained board advantage, but without any lifegain it was just inevitable that he was gonna die to a 2-point life drain from some random bat.
Ah! That's why I was pressing the reload button over and over, thinking I had broken the internet! No worries, getting my State of the Program on time for Friday night (my time) is certainly worth a few typos. :)
Ahh yeah. That's how it was. I must be getting old.
Thanks for catching my screw-ups.
Dark Depths was supposed to go on the Legacy list, where it is seeing play. Fixed the table for next week.
And Wizards announced that MTGO would use the method of pairings described in the Magic Tournament Rules. Yes, the "not" should be "now." I'll quote the rules for next week.
Sorry for the typos - I was really rushed this week, and submitted way late. Joshua didn't have enough time to proofread - he barely had enough time to post this week's article.