I'm not entirely sure but I believe that's what the bug was. I don't know if it would crash events (didn't listen to that link above) but I guess anything could be the issue at this point.
Glacial Chasm was mentioned by someone else recently and seems like it would be a great addition to the deck. I didn't even think about it, partially because I don't think I own one. Pristine Talisman is also good and would help with the ramp as well.
I don't have as many sweepers and X spells, but like I pointed out they would be great with Repercussion and a lower creature count. Glad you liked the deck! It's been a while since I've run into anyone playing him, so it's good to hear that he's still getting used!
When you activate Ashiok's second ability, the game asks you what converted mana cost you'd like to choose for the creature to put into play and I believe you couldn't cancel or change that value.
He is a very fun commander to play, and Red is nice for having cheap sweepers for annoying elves, soldiers, and goblins.
If I could make a couple suggestions from my own Hidetsugu deck - Have you considered Pristine Talisman? It takes away the "is your life odd or even" bit completely because you can just tap it for mana to make sure you're always odd! And then, Glacial Chasm, to make your Hidetsugu not kill you.
Mine is more "control heavy" with Tabernacle and only a few utility guys (Fireheart is probably my biggest mana sink/curve topper...but I might have Titan and Hostility too). Mostly the deck is just all the best X burn spells in existence, from Red Sun and Disaster to Rolling Earthquake and Banefire (priority given to burns that exile of course).
Anyway, sorry kind of rambled on. Just wanted to say sweet brew lol.
What I find interesting is that in all of the discussions about the DE's being taken down it is not mentioned that the crash was so bad that WotC stopped all running DE's and had to close all future ones (the long list of Do Not Join) and repopulate. While it may not have affected DEs in the past whatever the issue was certainly affected them this time.
I agree. I think you should buy into MTGO. Older sets haven't budged much. I'm gearing up for another 500 - 800 credit order to Cape Fear. I can't play paper MTG anymore, I just don't have the patience to go to LGS's to beat up on kids who are the same age as when I started playing cards.
Nice article and appreciate the calm and considered perspective. Ironically though, having been through most of what you described, I wasn't panic'ing until I read in your article that others were :)
Strike one up for the suggestibility of your readership!
We had a guest on our postcast, Competetive Pauper Cast (episode 13) that claimed that it was known that Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, is the cause of the bug and that players who know exactly what the bug is can crash Theros events at will and that was the reason that everything had to be taken down. Podcast available here: http://mtgostrat.com/2013/11/competitive-pauper-cast-13-sweet-taste-bitt...
Nice article and puts things into perspective compared to our past pains. One point on your security hole scenario - I agree that WOTC having a full security hole is unlikely. What seems more likely is they are having denial of service (DoS) attacks. If someone is losing a MOCS, then they bombard the WOTC servers to crash it and try to get undeserved compensation and/or play in a make-up event.
Wiki on DoS - One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communications requests, so much so that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered essentially unavailable.
Huh!! I looked it up and you are right. That is pretty crazy.
They should just change the wording to "as you draw a card" rather than "the last card you drew." That's what the original wording seemed to imply anyway.
Yeah - I forgot to mention Thragtusk. The first search I did when building my Roon deck was for creatures with both ETB effects AND leaves-play effects and Thragtusk jumps out immediately, alongside Deadwood Treefolk and Aven Riftwatcher.
I certainly prefer Mistmeadow to Smuggler but find Smuggler's superior timing very useful quite regularly. For example, exiling a creature at instant speed with Duplicant or stealing a creature at instant speed with Gilded Drake. I guess Smuggler would be on my Watch List, though, so it is a borderline call.
Ghostway is a nonbo with Progenitor Mimic but combos with pretty much every other creature in the deck, so I am happy with it. Ghostway with 3 or more creatures on the battlefield feels like a bit casting Cruel Ultimatum for 2W at instant speed.
I take your point about Karmic Guide working with Reveillark to form a recursive loop. If you haven't yet drawn Reveillark, do you generally choose not to pay the echo cost on the Guide and let it die, or do you use Roon or other flicker effects to reset it?
Apparently City in a Bottle once saw tournament play in vintage as the cheapest way to destroy bazaar of baghdad. certainly one of the oddest cards ever made.
Why not just use the same technique used in paper for miracle cards? Once the card has touched your hand, you can no longer show that it was the card just drawn, and therefore can not activate abilities that require a card to have just been drawn.
Jandor's Ring of course has the distinction of being the only card (in paper) that the rules can't stop you from cheating with: There's not an enforceable way to keep "the last card you drew" separate from the rest of your hand and visible to other players. Of course, it would work fine Online, but it's not even on MTGO!!!
Totally ignoring the sky falling bit, why Tribal Flames?? There are dozens of better spells for the same cost or better? If you were running some weird greedy land base where you had domain = 5 on turn 4 or 5 most of the time I'd see the reasoning but at best it deals 2...
I don't use ghost way because it flickers them all; tokens included which means hornet tokens an progenitor mimic tokens; I thus opted not to include it or sudden disappearance or planar guide.
Karmic guide vs deadwood treefolk; karmic has power two; deadwood doesn't. Karmic can be combined with reveillark-- hence my reasoning
My major regret now actually is not including thragtusk.
Most of my inclusions don't really require instant flicker as opposed to return at end of turn flicker; so
Mistmeadow, being repeatable, seems better than the smuggler.
I have a Roon deck of my own and we share a lot of the same ideas. I focused upon the fact that, although Roon can trigger Leaves-the-Battlefield effect at instant speed, ETB effects will only occur at the end of turn. Some of your alternative flicker effects return instantly but your creature base needs to reflect the limitations of your commander – no Draining Whelk or similar creatures.
Some observations & comparisons :
I'm pleased to see that you too found Gilded Drake. It is awesome in a Roon deck! Twilight Shepherd is also great, with persist being great in combination with Flicker effects.
I don't consider 7 mana too much if the creature is superb. Indeed, you use Hornet Queen but I prefer certain other cards which you mentioned - Angel of Serenity and Diluvian Primordial. 4 1/1 deathtouch flyers is nice but not in the same league as casting multiple spells from opponents’ graveyards or exiling 3 creatures.
Woodfall Primus is ok at 8 mana but you could also consider Bane of Progress – my Roon deck plays fewer artifacts than yours so this works very well for me.
Nephalia Smuggler – unlike Mistmeadow Witch, the targeted creature returns to play immediately. Despite deck design being impacted by Roon’s clumsier timing, there are still plenty of situations where this is important.
Crystal Shard is a useful alternative to Erratic Portal.
At only 1 extra mana, I find Ghostway to be much better than Flicker or Liberate.
My version uses more early drops. Wall of Blossoms, Wall of Omens, Aven Riftwatcher, Coiling Oracle and Kitchen Finks all make my version.
Seedborn Muse/Prophet of Kruphix & Murkfiend Liege all make my deck. The abiilty to use Roon’s ability multiple times is awesome and exactly what this deck wants.
I avoided echo creatures, as they still have to pay echo costs, and found Deadwood Treefolk considerably better than Karmic Guide.
I'm not entirely sure but I believe that's what the bug was. I don't know if it would crash events (didn't listen to that link above) but I guess anything could be the issue at this point.
Glacial Chasm was mentioned by someone else recently and seems like it would be a great addition to the deck. I didn't even think about it, partially because I don't think I own one. Pristine Talisman is also good and would help with the ramp as well.
I don't have as many sweepers and X spells, but like I pointed out they would be great with Repercussion and a lower creature count. Glad you liked the deck! It's been a while since I've run into anyone playing him, so it's good to hear that he's still getting used!
Ahh. So you click it and select, say, X = 2, but then want to change to X = 3 and it won't let you? And this crashes the game somehow?
Sorry, trying to figure out why such a thing would have such a profound effect on events. Thanks for the enlightenment.
And with the most recent rules changes, it now destroys all Kird Apes and Cities of Brass. Those are pretty good cards, right?
When you activate Ashiok's second ability, the game asks you what converted mana cost you'd like to choose for the creature to put into play and I believe you couldn't cancel or change that value.
all depends on mana resources and game state; but i generally let it die or cast blink instantly to use it at least twice
He is a very fun commander to play, and Red is nice for having cheap sweepers for annoying elves, soldiers, and goblins.
If I could make a couple suggestions from my own Hidetsugu deck - Have you considered Pristine Talisman? It takes away the "is your life odd or even" bit completely because you can just tap it for mana to make sure you're always odd! And then, Glacial Chasm, to make your Hidetsugu not kill you.
Mine is more "control heavy" with Tabernacle and only a few utility guys (Fireheart is probably my biggest mana sink/curve topper...but I might have Titan and Hostility too). Mostly the deck is just all the best X burn spells in existence, from Red Sun and Disaster to Rolling Earthquake and Banefire (priority given to burns that exile of course).
Anyway, sorry kind of rambled on. Just wanted to say sweet brew lol.
What's this Ashiok bug? I haven't played in a few weeks as we've got other stuff going on at the house.
What I find interesting is that in all of the discussions about the DE's being taken down it is not mentioned that the crash was so bad that WotC stopped all running DE's and had to close all future ones (the long list of Do Not Join) and repopulate. While it may not have affected DEs in the past whatever the issue was certainly affected them this time.
I agree. I think you should buy into MTGO. Older sets haven't budged much. I'm gearing up for another 500 - 800 credit order to Cape Fear. I can't play paper MTG anymore, I just don't have the patience to go to LGS's to beat up on kids who are the same age as when I started playing cards.
I thought the Ashiok bug was fixed. :/
Nice article and appreciate the calm and considered perspective. Ironically though, having been through most of what you described, I wasn't panic'ing until I read in your article that others were :)
Strike one up for the suggestibility of your readership!
We had a guest on our postcast, Competetive Pauper Cast (episode 13) that claimed that it was known that Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, is the cause of the bug and that players who know exactly what the bug is can crash Theros events at will and that was the reason that everything had to be taken down. Podcast available here: http://mtgostrat.com/2013/11/competitive-pauper-cast-13-sweet-taste-bitt...
Nice article and puts things into perspective compared to our past pains. One point on your security hole scenario - I agree that WOTC having a full security hole is unlikely. What seems more likely is they are having denial of service (DoS) attacks. If someone is losing a MOCS, then they bombard the WOTC servers to crash it and try to get undeserved compensation and/or play in a make-up event.
Wiki on DoS - One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communications requests, so much so that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered essentially unavailable.
...although the card is so bad that cheating with it wouldn't be worthwhile anyway.
Huh!! I looked it up and you are right. That is pretty crazy.
They should just change the wording to "as you draw a card" rather than "the last card you drew." That's what the original wording seemed to imply anyway.
Yeah - I forgot to mention Thragtusk. The first search I did when building my Roon deck was for creatures with both ETB effects AND leaves-play effects and Thragtusk jumps out immediately, alongside Deadwood Treefolk and Aven Riftwatcher.
I certainly prefer Mistmeadow to Smuggler but find Smuggler's superior timing very useful quite regularly. For example, exiling a creature at instant speed with Duplicant or stealing a creature at instant speed with Gilded Drake. I guess Smuggler would be on my Watch List, though, so it is a borderline call.
Ghostway is a nonbo with Progenitor Mimic but combos with pretty much every other creature in the deck, so I am happy with it. Ghostway with 3 or more creatures on the battlefield feels like a bit casting Cruel Ultimatum for 2W at instant speed.
I take your point about Karmic Guide working with Reveillark to form a recursive loop. If you haven't yet drawn Reveillark, do you generally choose not to pay the echo cost on the Guide and let it die, or do you use Roon or other flicker effects to reset it?
Apparently City in a Bottle once saw tournament play in vintage as the cheapest way to destroy bazaar of baghdad. certainly one of the oddest cards ever made.
Why not just use the same technique used in paper for miracle cards? Once the card has touched your hand, you can no longer show that it was the card just drawn, and therefore can not activate abilities that require a card to have just been drawn.
Jandor's Ring of course has the distinction of being the only card (in paper) that the rules can't stop you from cheating with: There's not an enforceable way to keep "the last card you drew" separate from the rest of your hand and visible to other players. Of course, it would work fine Online, but it's not even on MTGO!!!
What he said. It only works cuzza Nylea's Presence; it's a very Johnny "combo".
I assume it's because once you get a nylea's presence down, tribal flames does 5.
Totally ignoring the sky falling bit, why Tribal Flames?? There are dozens of better spells for the same cost or better? If you were running some weird greedy land base where you had domain = 5 on turn 4 or 5 most of the time I'd see the reasoning but at best it deals 2...
Great comments!
I don't use ghost way because it flickers them all; tokens included which means hornet tokens an progenitor mimic tokens; I thus opted not to include it or sudden disappearance or planar guide.
Karmic guide vs deadwood treefolk; karmic has power two; deadwood doesn't. Karmic can be combined with reveillark-- hence my reasoning
My major regret now actually is not including thragtusk.
Most of my inclusions don't really require instant flicker as opposed to return at end of turn flicker; so
Mistmeadow, being repeatable, seems better than the smuggler.
Thanks for the comments!
I have a Roon deck of my own and we share a lot of the same ideas. I focused upon the fact that, although Roon can trigger Leaves-the-Battlefield effect at instant speed, ETB effects will only occur at the end of turn. Some of your alternative flicker effects return instantly but your creature base needs to reflect the limitations of your commander – no Draining Whelk or similar creatures.
Some observations & comparisons :
I'm pleased to see that you too found Gilded Drake. It is awesome in a Roon deck! Twilight Shepherd is also great, with persist being great in combination with Flicker effects.
I don't consider 7 mana too much if the creature is superb. Indeed, you use Hornet Queen but I prefer certain other cards which you mentioned - Angel of Serenity and Diluvian Primordial. 4 1/1 deathtouch flyers is nice but not in the same league as casting multiple spells from opponents’ graveyards or exiling 3 creatures.
Woodfall Primus is ok at 8 mana but you could also consider Bane of Progress – my Roon deck plays fewer artifacts than yours so this works very well for me.
Nephalia Smuggler – unlike Mistmeadow Witch, the targeted creature returns to play immediately. Despite deck design being impacted by Roon’s clumsier timing, there are still plenty of situations where this is important.
Crystal Shard is a useful alternative to Erratic Portal.
At only 1 extra mana, I find Ghostway to be much better than Flicker or Liberate.
My version uses more early drops. Wall of Blossoms, Wall of Omens, Aven Riftwatcher, Coiling Oracle and Kitchen Finks all make my version.
Seedborn Muse/Prophet of Kruphix & Murkfiend Liege all make my deck. The abiilty to use Roon’s ability multiple times is awesome and exactly what this deck wants.
I avoided echo creatures, as they still have to pay echo costs, and found Deadwood Treefolk considerably better than Karmic Guide.