If they had draft leagues, where you do one draft in the week, and then play some number of rounds against people in the league, I would love that. I'd probably do 10 a week, since it would be easy for me to squeeze in the 30 minute draft + all the rounds here or there.
On the Doomsday point, I concur. It isn't so much a case of squeezing a combo into a tribal deck, it's making whatever tribe you choose completely blank. Hell, you could win the Unicorn challenge achievement with it because you'd never have to play a unicorn.
Against unfair combo decks? Maybe. But when your opponent is not playing one, I'm sure you'll have several other bullets that Enlightened Tutor will more regularly dig for. Out of my unofficial count, the 4 players that Rest in Peace in Tribal had the other half of the combo as well. Enlightened Tutor is against the spirit of the format which should be enhancing the creature aspect.
Great article as always.
I also agree wholeheartedly with your opinions section, and with comments above (also a professional with 2 young kids).
I also love limited, but lack of short events means I've not done one for ages.
I have gotten into block constructed lately, and the 2 man events are great time-wise... but are pretty terrible in terms of prizes (since booster packs are always lower than 4 tix). Daily events have the opposite problem (great prizes, poor for short time).
Just wondered if you guys have read Matt Sperling's article on "Magic on-Demand" (on Channel Fireball). It seemed like a very interesting solution to the problem, for both constructed and sealed. Worth a read, and worth promoting to WotC. (I feel they must have read the article, but using any opportunity to raise it's profile can only be good, assuming you like the idea, which I do!!).
I'd be interested to know if his proposal would/wouldn't solve your problems. :-)
Not sure where the hate for Enlightened Tutor is coming from, but the card has great potential *against* unfair combo decks. I've dabbled in using it with a toolbox of anti-combo cards such as Rest in Peace, and it still has utility in non-combo matches by being able to fetch swords. It's important that there be anti-combo cards available that aren't dead in non-combo matchups, and Enlightened Tutor toolbox packages are a great weapon in keeping the world safe for fair decks.
Dream Halls can easily go off on Turn 3 unless they get one of their lands Wasted, since they play Sol Lands and the double-mana sac-lands. Those lands are not as conducive to early library manipulation cantrips (Brainstorm, Ponder) which does hold it back. Still, that's a fast combo deck, even if not as fast as Show and Tell.
Elfball wouldn't be as well-positioned in this format if people played more Pyroclasms and Firespouts instead of relying on 4-mana wrath effects so heavily.
I agree that the sub-format rotations have made most of the super-obnoxious combo decks less obnoxious by reducing their frequency, I think we've talked about that before.
The Doomsday deck would just be 4 copies of Doomsday, the 5 cards that go in your "win the game" pile, and a largely irrelevant tribe stapled onto that shell. Maybe the tribe draws cards for you to find Doomsday, or maybe you're using Labratory Maniac as a win-con and use Humans/Wizards for convenience, but it hardly matters. You could play 20 Unicorns you had no way to even cast and still win games just with Doomsday and your 5-card pile. That's why I think it has no place in Tribal, even the first time somebody plays it, the deck will just be a joke at the expense of the format. I'm no purist, I'll play offtribe creatures and offtribe win-conditions, but Doomsday is too pointless for me.
There was just something off about this episode. There was a distinct lack of "holy catfish." There just needs to be holy catfish. Holy catfish is on the same level of more cow bell. More holy catfish.....
There was just something off about this episode. There was a distinct lack of "holy catfish." There just needs to be holy catfish. Holy catfish is on the same level of more cow bell. More holy catfish.....
Kuma, only three of the fifteen minutes of my deck tech video was posted here. What happened to the rest? Did it not arrive to you in one piece?
On other matters. With little feel for the format, Singleton is probably my least favorite as well. I like deckbuilding exercises and wouldn't mind a week each month dedicated to a more wacky tribal variant, of which singleton might be just one week a year, modern tribal might be another, Alpha as a third, etc.
I'd be one for expanding the tribal ban list. Maybe Grindstone, maybe Belcher, but honestly, how in the world is Enlightened Tutor in the spirit of the format? Rather, it mostly undermines it (except maybe for artifact tribes). I'd rather see a longer list myself. Another possibility is not to ban cards but win cons that are outside the spirit of the format - like don't ban either Painter or Stone, but instead ban PainterStone. People who attempt the combo get a game or match loss, and must replace the combo with lands or a tribe member for future rounds.
1. I suggest Chandra, Pyromaster could be tracked in your Standard section. It isn't quite a staple, seeing mostly fringe play, but certainly more than Angel of Serenity or Archangel of Thune lately.
2. Who did Natural Order videos this week? Kinda like to check that out.
Sometimes when I really want to play but don't have much time I consider joining an 8-4 draft. I figure that the odds of me making the finals in any of the present-day formats is low (I haven't played them much). So, the draft won't actually take that much time. On the few occasions that I do this, I'm overly tempted to rare-draft. Then I figure that if I want is the cards, I'm much cheaper off buying singles.
Dredge isn't played much as well. Only Chamale did it consistently, and mostly only to clear achievements. This year, that wasn't allowed, so I don't think dredge was played at all.
These kinds of decks are so extreme that you can maybe want to play them once, to see how they do. But in an environment like Tribal Wars, you'll get soon pushed towards something else that's more fun and diverse to play. Not to mention, the fact that the 4 sub-formats in the rotation are quite different from one another pushes even further towards a diversification of each player's range of decks.
Historically, the worst offender during these nearly 150 events has been Elfball, and only because it's tribal-based, so you feel like you're playing a legit tribal build with it, even if in the end you're just playing a creature-based storm deck. Plus, it doesn't use any novelty or expensive cards that you have to expressly acquire and that will end up sitting in your collection taking dust afterwards.
This said, I seriously hope someone will try Doomsday at some point I'm sure it will be a lone attempt, anyway, so it's just sort of a challenge now.
By the way, when evaluating the "dangerous combos" you don't have to consider only what it's needed to stop them. It's also important to look at the timing. Where the opponent would be at when the combo goes off? If it's something that goes off at, say, turn 6, that's fair regardless (you can even just outrace it). That's Dream Halls (without Show and Tell), for instance. If something consistently goes off at turn 3, instead, that's an issue, because you might have all the removal you want, but if they were on the play, you have two lands in play and maybe you're tapped out. That's what happens with Elfball a lot of the times. Elfball ALWAYS goes off at turn 3, if not disrupted. You don't have to draw into a combo, the whole deck is a combo. Disrupting it is easy enough, but once you fail, you're done. And you can't succeed every time, even if you went in fully prepared.
When you don't have time to play competitive multi-round magic and single-round competitive doesn't appeal to you, then you are a casual player. You are a serious casual player, but you invest a casual amount of time.
Welcome to the casual room. Make a dozen or so Commander decks and get in there!
I am one of these people. I love Magic. I live in the middle of nowhere. I have disposable income. I used to set a $50 budget per month for MTGO, though I play exclusively limited events, but I would often not even meet that dollar amount. I've since reached a point where I no longer pay to do my drafts, but I have been in this situation.
Ideally, I should have been sinking that $50 into MTGO every single month. I was 100% willing to do that. I had set aside that money just for that purpose. Instead, I just had a gradually increasing bankroll. Then, I started investing that money into other games that I could play for shorter time periods during the day.
The problem is that I just didn't have an outlet to spend that money. Like I've said, I work about 60 hours a week. I'm also married, and I have two kids. Carving out 2.5 consecutive hours for a draft is almost impossible. If I want to draft, I have to schedule my entire day around devoting that time to drafting. Because of this, I just don't play MTGO every day. Even though I am 100% the best target demographic for MTGO, I just don't have an outlet to spend that money.
It is easy for me to carve out 45 minutes from my day. Those kind of time lengths come up spontaneously very frequently. Example; I get home from work, and I've got about 45 minutes before dinner is ready. Since I've got two kids, I want to eat dinner with my family, and spend time with them, so I can't draft at this time, but I'll often load up League of Legends, or some other game. Another example; when my kids have bath time, I can't really spend that time playing with them. Since there are two, it takes about 45 minutes to get both baths done. This is a time that I can play games. After the kids go to bed, I generally stay up for another hour before I go to bed.
Since I'm an English teacher, I also have to regularly bring home piles of papers to grade. It would be great if I could reward myself after grading for two hours with an MTGO sanctioned limited event that would only take about 45 minutes. I would do that several times in the day if it was available.
Honestly, I would play MTGO around 4 hours every day, if I could just do it in 45 minute increments. When I was still spending money on MTGO with my $50 budget, I would often come short by 20 to 30 dollars, and I would then sink that money somewhere else, like buying a book that I would have checked out from the library otherwise, or putting the money into another game, with League of Legends as an example.
I know that the MTGO team is working on Leagues, and that they are supposed to be coming out soon. But we really do need them, because I would love to give WotC some more of my money.
I an in the exact same boat with MTGO and created an account specifically to echo these sentiments. Please Wizards give us family men and professionals a forum to play. Because it is just such a terrible feeling when you are put in the position of finishing an event that you have invested an hour or two into and your time and energy or making dinner and having a conversation with your family. I don't know how many drafts I have bailed on after round two not because of play or the cards but because life gets in the way, and I certainly don't want to know how many times I have disappointed my family because I want to finish that third round.
I agree with the time issue on MTGO. I have to schedule in draft time a few times a week to do them. I miss leagues a lot since I enjoyed them way back when and they were easier to squeeze in. I too draft a lot until I get most of a std deck. Then play that in 2mans or an occasional Daily. But there are many other games that are easier to find time for. I can't block out 4 hours all the time when I feel like playing. On the plus side, not being able to play MTGO every day is keeping my finances happy. If leagues ever come back, I will need to get a second job!
Painter's Servant is a fun card with other applications, it's kind of sad that Grindstone is so good it makes playing any other combo with him seem silly.
I agree with Kuma's remarks about Grindstone. The combo itself is readily disrupted, since all you have to do is kill Servant in response to the Grindstone activation. Much like Splinter Twin combo or Cephalid Breakfast, it's powerful but also vulnerable to being disrupted by the most common type of spell in Tribal Wars: removal. It may not be "fun" to play against, but most decks have several spells that can attempt to stop the combo. The version played in January with a playset of Force of Will I think looked even stronger than this one, though I won't fault this one for having some backup plans, and I'll wait until I can watch the videos to see if my opinion changes.
The only combo deck I continue to believe shouldn't be legal in the format is dredge, because it is the only one that people generally have no way to interact with. (I don't think Doomsday should be legal either, simply because it makes a joke out of the entire idea of tribal wars, but since NOBODY plays it, I guess it doesn't matter.)
As for that infinite combo with Gravecrawler and Rooftop Storm, I would think it works. It says that you may pay 0 to cast a Zombie and you are indeed casting Gravecrawler from the graveyard. It doesn't specify "from your hand".
Just wanted to clarify one thing about the domain. I'm not able to disclose any details about us acquiring it but I am able to say that I did not in any way profit from the domain mtgo.com. Just wanted to clear up any assumptions. :)
It seems like if this is really a tempo deck as you describe, then it wants vaporkin. Boon satyr seems pretty bad, is that a substitute worth exploring? It gets boosted by master of waves for the lolz too. Anyway, the rise of the deck over the past week is certainly interesting and shows there's still some room for innovation in the format. It'll be interesting to see where it goes from here, it feels to me like its worst 10 cards are worse than other deck's options though so it might not have staying power.
Thanks for taking a look at it, I appreciate it since I listen to all of these. For whatever reason, the separation made it really jarring and disorienting to listen to, even by the end I hadn't gotten used to it.
If they had draft leagues, where you do one draft in the week, and then play some number of rounds against people in the league, I would love that. I'd probably do 10 a week, since it would be easy for me to squeeze in the 30 minute draft + all the rounds here or there.
I make the finals in 70% of my drafts, so I really have to plan around that.
o_0
On the Doomsday point, I concur. It isn't so much a case of squeezing a combo into a tribal deck, it's making whatever tribe you choose completely blank. Hell, you could win the Unicorn challenge achievement with it because you'd never have to play a unicorn.
Against unfair combo decks? Maybe. But when your opponent is not playing one, I'm sure you'll have several other bullets that Enlightened Tutor will more regularly dig for. Out of my unofficial count, the 4 players that Rest in Peace in Tribal had the other half of the combo as well. Enlightened Tutor is against the spirit of the format which should be enhancing the creature aspect.
Great article as always.
I also agree wholeheartedly with your opinions section, and with comments above (also a professional with 2 young kids).
I also love limited, but lack of short events means I've not done one for ages.
I have gotten into block constructed lately, and the 2 man events are great time-wise... but are pretty terrible in terms of prizes (since booster packs are always lower than 4 tix). Daily events have the opposite problem (great prizes, poor for short time).
Just wondered if you guys have read Matt Sperling's article on "Magic on-Demand" (on Channel Fireball). It seemed like a very interesting solution to the problem, for both constructed and sealed. Worth a read, and worth promoting to WotC. (I feel they must have read the article, but using any opportunity to raise it's profile can only be good, assuming you like the idea, which I do!!).
I'd be interested to know if his proposal would/wouldn't solve your problems. :-)
Not sure where the hate for Enlightened Tutor is coming from, but the card has great potential *against* unfair combo decks. I've dabbled in using it with a toolbox of anti-combo cards such as Rest in Peace, and it still has utility in non-combo matches by being able to fetch swords. It's important that there be anti-combo cards available that aren't dead in non-combo matchups, and Enlightened Tutor toolbox packages are a great weapon in keeping the world safe for fair decks.
Dream Halls can easily go off on Turn 3 unless they get one of their lands Wasted, since they play Sol Lands and the double-mana sac-lands. Those lands are not as conducive to early library manipulation cantrips (Brainstorm, Ponder) which does hold it back. Still, that's a fast combo deck, even if not as fast as Show and Tell.
Elfball wouldn't be as well-positioned in this format if people played more Pyroclasms and Firespouts instead of relying on 4-mana wrath effects so heavily.
I agree that the sub-format rotations have made most of the super-obnoxious combo decks less obnoxious by reducing their frequency, I think we've talked about that before.
The Doomsday deck would just be 4 copies of Doomsday, the 5 cards that go in your "win the game" pile, and a largely irrelevant tribe stapled onto that shell. Maybe the tribe draws cards for you to find Doomsday, or maybe you're using Labratory Maniac as a win-con and use Humans/Wizards for convenience, but it hardly matters. You could play 20 Unicorns you had no way to even cast and still win games just with Doomsday and your 5-card pile. That's why I think it has no place in Tribal, even the first time somebody plays it, the deck will just be a joke at the expense of the format. I'm no purist, I'll play offtribe creatures and offtribe win-conditions, but Doomsday is too pointless for me.
There was just something off about this episode. There was a distinct lack of "holy catfish." There just needs to be holy catfish. Holy catfish is on the same level of more cow bell. More holy catfish.....
There was just something off about this episode. There was a distinct lack of "holy catfish." There just needs to be holy catfish. Holy catfish is on the same level of more cow bell. More holy catfish.....
Kuma, only three of the fifteen minutes of my deck tech video was posted here. What happened to the rest? Did it not arrive to you in one piece?
On other matters. With little feel for the format, Singleton is probably my least favorite as well. I like deckbuilding exercises and wouldn't mind a week each month dedicated to a more wacky tribal variant, of which singleton might be just one week a year, modern tribal might be another, Alpha as a third, etc.
I'd be one for expanding the tribal ban list. Maybe Grindstone, maybe Belcher, but honestly, how in the world is Enlightened Tutor in the spirit of the format? Rather, it mostly undermines it (except maybe for artifact tribes). I'd rather see a longer list myself. Another possibility is not to ban cards but win cons that are outside the spirit of the format - like don't ban either Painter or Stone, but instead ban PainterStone. People who attempt the combo get a game or match loss, and must replace the combo with lands or a tribe member for future rounds.
1. I suggest Chandra, Pyromaster could be tracked in your Standard section. It isn't quite a staple, seeing mostly fringe play, but certainly more than Angel of Serenity or Archangel of Thune lately.
2. Who did Natural Order videos this week? Kinda like to check that out.
Sometimes when I really want to play but don't have much time I consider joining an 8-4 draft. I figure that the odds of me making the finals in any of the present-day formats is low (I haven't played them much). So, the draft won't actually take that much time. On the few occasions that I do this, I'm overly tempted to rare-draft. Then I figure that if I want is the cards, I'm much cheaper off buying singles.
Dredge isn't played much as well. Only Chamale did it consistently, and mostly only to clear achievements. This year, that wasn't allowed, so I don't think dredge was played at all.
These kinds of decks are so extreme that you can maybe want to play them once, to see how they do. But in an environment like Tribal Wars, you'll get soon pushed towards something else that's more fun and diverse to play. Not to mention, the fact that the 4 sub-formats in the rotation are quite different from one another pushes even further towards a diversification of each player's range of decks.
Historically, the worst offender during these nearly 150 events has been Elfball, and only because it's tribal-based, so you feel like you're playing a legit tribal build with it, even if in the end you're just playing a creature-based storm deck. Plus, it doesn't use any novelty or expensive cards that you have to expressly acquire and that will end up sitting in your collection taking dust afterwards.
This said, I seriously hope someone will try Doomsday at some point I'm sure it will be a lone attempt, anyway, so it's just sort of a challenge now.
By the way, when evaluating the "dangerous combos" you don't have to consider only what it's needed to stop them. It's also important to look at the timing. Where the opponent would be at when the combo goes off? If it's something that goes off at, say, turn 6, that's fair regardless (you can even just outrace it). That's Dream Halls (without Show and Tell), for instance. If something consistently goes off at turn 3, instead, that's an issue, because you might have all the removal you want, but if they were on the play, you have two lands in play and maybe you're tapped out. That's what happens with Elfball a lot of the times. Elfball ALWAYS goes off at turn 3, if not disrupted. You don't have to draw into a combo, the whole deck is a combo. Disrupting it is easy enough, but once you fail, you're done. And you can't succeed every time, even if you went in fully prepared.
When you don't have time to play competitive multi-round magic and single-round competitive doesn't appeal to you, then you are a casual player. You are a serious casual player, but you invest a casual amount of time.
Welcome to the casual room. Make a dozen or so Commander decks and get in there!
Loved the editorial section this week.
I am one of these people. I love Magic. I live in the middle of nowhere. I have disposable income. I used to set a $50 budget per month for MTGO, though I play exclusively limited events, but I would often not even meet that dollar amount. I've since reached a point where I no longer pay to do my drafts, but I have been in this situation.
Ideally, I should have been sinking that $50 into MTGO every single month. I was 100% willing to do that. I had set aside that money just for that purpose. Instead, I just had a gradually increasing bankroll. Then, I started investing that money into other games that I could play for shorter time periods during the day.
The problem is that I just didn't have an outlet to spend that money. Like I've said, I work about 60 hours a week. I'm also married, and I have two kids. Carving out 2.5 consecutive hours for a draft is almost impossible. If I want to draft, I have to schedule my entire day around devoting that time to drafting. Because of this, I just don't play MTGO every day. Even though I am 100% the best target demographic for MTGO, I just don't have an outlet to spend that money.
It is easy for me to carve out 45 minutes from my day. Those kind of time lengths come up spontaneously very frequently. Example; I get home from work, and I've got about 45 minutes before dinner is ready. Since I've got two kids, I want to eat dinner with my family, and spend time with them, so I can't draft at this time, but I'll often load up League of Legends, or some other game. Another example; when my kids have bath time, I can't really spend that time playing with them. Since there are two, it takes about 45 minutes to get both baths done. This is a time that I can play games. After the kids go to bed, I generally stay up for another hour before I go to bed.
Since I'm an English teacher, I also have to regularly bring home piles of papers to grade. It would be great if I could reward myself after grading for two hours with an MTGO sanctioned limited event that would only take about 45 minutes. I would do that several times in the day if it was available.
Honestly, I would play MTGO around 4 hours every day, if I could just do it in 45 minute increments. When I was still spending money on MTGO with my $50 budget, I would often come short by 20 to 30 dollars, and I would then sink that money somewhere else, like buying a book that I would have checked out from the library otherwise, or putting the money into another game, with League of Legends as an example.
I know that the MTGO team is working on Leagues, and that they are supposed to be coming out soon. But we really do need them, because I would love to give WotC some more of my money.
Even if you had profited from it, I wouldn't hold it against you. It's business.
I an in the exact same boat with MTGO and created an account specifically to echo these sentiments. Please Wizards give us family men and professionals a forum to play. Because it is just such a terrible feeling when you are put in the position of finishing an event that you have invested an hour or two into and your time and energy or making dinner and having a conversation with your family. I don't know how many drafts I have bailed on after round two not because of play or the cards but because life gets in the way, and I certainly don't want to know how many times I have disappointed my family because I want to finish that third round.
Give us something and we will support it.
I agree with the time issue on MTGO. I have to schedule in draft time a few times a week to do them. I miss leagues a lot since I enjoyed them way back when and they were easier to squeeze in. I too draft a lot until I get most of a std deck. Then play that in 2mans or an occasional Daily. But there are many other games that are easier to find time for. I can't block out 4 hours all the time when I feel like playing. On the plus side, not being able to play MTGO every day is keeping my finances happy. If leagues ever come back, I will need to get a second job!
Painter's Servant is a fun card with other applications, it's kind of sad that Grindstone is so good it makes playing any other combo with him seem silly.
I agree with Kuma's remarks about Grindstone. The combo itself is readily disrupted, since all you have to do is kill Servant in response to the Grindstone activation. Much like Splinter Twin combo or Cephalid Breakfast, it's powerful but also vulnerable to being disrupted by the most common type of spell in Tribal Wars: removal. It may not be "fun" to play against, but most decks have several spells that can attempt to stop the combo. The version played in January with a playset of Force of Will I think looked even stronger than this one, though I won't fault this one for having some backup plans, and I'll wait until I can watch the videos to see if my opinion changes.
The only combo deck I continue to believe shouldn't be legal in the format is dredge, because it is the only one that people generally have no way to interact with. (I don't think Doomsday should be legal either, simply because it makes a joke out of the entire idea of tribal wars, but since NOBODY plays it, I guess it doesn't matter.)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it does now. It just never came up for me.
Great article as always Leviathan.
As for that infinite combo with Gravecrawler and Rooftop Storm, I would think it works. It says that you may pay 0 to cast a Zombie and you are indeed casting Gravecrawler from the graveyard. It doesn't specify "from your hand".
It seems like if this is really a tempo deck as you describe, then it wants vaporkin. Boon satyr seems pretty bad, is that a substitute worth exploring? It gets boosted by master of waves for the lolz too. Anyway, the rise of the deck over the past week is certainly interesting and shows there's still some room for innovation in the format. It'll be interesting to see where it goes from here, it feels to me like its worst 10 cards are worse than other deck's options though so it might not have staying power.
Thanks for taking a look at it, I appreciate it since I listen to all of these. For whatever reason, the separation made it really jarring and disorienting to listen to, even by the end I hadn't gotten used to it.