Cracking article as always. Played just over 20 odd drafts too and your research matches my current experience, with one difference though in that I've not been able to draft a successful RB deck at all nor have I seen one in action. I'll admit that I don't generally start out trying to draft RB so maybe that's the reason. Still given that you say they have a good win percentage, I'd love to see what a successful one looked like.
Overall, reckon you were right on the money with your previous article, this is definitely seems a tempo orientated environment. Once someone starts making a board presence it feels like you have to be doing something to the board every turn; missing a land drop really hurts. The format feels very much like Avacyn Restored, even to the point that RG is a weak deck archetype. Do you think it's because R and G contain the most common monstrous creatures and so are more susceptible to being 'set back' in tempo by bounce and other removal spells? As with RB I'd love to know what makes a good RG deck.
You sound like you've got lots to say still, so please, please give us another article!
Oh, and just one other thing, I know you said your research tended to smaller sample sizes. I'd be interested in knowning the actual size of your samples when you report your stats, maybe as a footnote to the charts perhaps?
Anyway, as I started saying - really good article! thanks for taking the time.
If you're recording matches and putting them up, make them into articles on Pure and get some cash for them! Plus they'll be more visible to other Classic fans!
I'm pretty sure I'm a terrible person to take advice from, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt, but given that Chalice and mana screw seems to be your main problem against Stax, have you thought about 2 Factories in the board. Dodges Chalice at 0 and 1, gives you a bit of extra mana, and can trade with Revoker and Golem.
I particularly enjoyed the opening bit, kind of encapsulated my thoughts on the format. On the one hand, the fact that you don't have Power opens up a bit of deckbuilding space, but without it, Shops warp the format instead of balancing out the Broken Blue decks like it does in Vintage. I also watched the Community Build video and left a couple comments that either didn't go through or are in limbo. True Believer did land against Cat Weasel, but she had an Abrupt Decay.
As for my deck, Zach kind of hit the nail on the head in that I was kind of tilting my sails towards Shops and Dredge as opposed to blue decks, but I'll go over the questions that PW had.
Path: Zach pretty much said it, but I'd also like to add that Path also got better with Oath decks switching to Griselbrand over Emrakul. Obviously, you don't want Griselbrand to hit the board, but if it does and you have a removal spell, you would much rather have Path over Swords. I also like Path against Blightsteel because 11 life is a lot to give them and I don't have a quick clock. I agree Swords is better against Fish decks, but I haven't been seeing a lot of other Fish decks in the DEs lately.
Dryad Arbor: Solely there as a GSZ target to ramp me into a three drop like Trygon or Knight.
Edric v. Selkie: I have a Selkie in the board and bring it in to matchups that it is better in than Edric, but I don't think it is as clear-cut as you are making it. The only situations in which Selkie is the obviously superior card is when you either have multiple Hierarchs out who can't deal damage by themselves or you are playing a blue deck with blockers. Even if you have two Pridemages out, Edric is better, because you can attack with 6 power and draw 3 cards as opposed to attacking with Selkie and 2 Exalted triggers and attacking with 3 power and drawing 3 cards.
Trygon: I agree it is weak against Shops if you are trying to play it on curve, but in the right deck with good mana accel, it can be devastating. For instance, my deck has 4 Hierarchs, 2 Shamans, and 3 GSZ to grab Dryad Arbor on turn 1, which can all easily set up a turn 2 Trygon.
Also, Darkleebs can speak to Caltrops more than me, but I played him and he boarded it in against me,. It was annoying and slowed me down, but I was eventually able to draw into Kataki + 2 Serenity + Trygon.
Also, not to be a self-promoter, but I do record all my DE matches and post them up on YouTube, so if anyone is interested, it is http://www.youtube.com/user/mikepeters011
Tangle Wire is redonk. I always lose to it in Affinity mirror matches. That version of the deck is definitely better. I just don't have any because of money. And for all the Masques drafts I did when it was out, I never pulled a Tangle Wire.
I wouldn't have blamed you guys for skipping over my decklist. It's hardly anything remarkable.
Though I do want to point out how much disdain I have for Metalworker. Most Metalworker builds only have 20-21 lands. I would rather have a higher land count and not wait a full turn, especially on the draw, in order to start dropping real threats. What happens too often for my liking with MW builds is that you get enough mana to cast a MW, then don't have enough lands to do anything else if they StP/Bolt/Decay your MW and follow that up with a Wasteland. To me, without Power, MW is a trap card. Too much spot removal running around for my taste.
It seems your judge friend is correct and at least in a 1v1 situation, the opponent can decide not to pay anything. I have no clue about multiplayer though. Will he still have to attack someone else then to satisfy Fumiko's clause?
Honestly I have no idea. I had an 1v1 situation where Fumiko and Prison were both out and my opponent would tap all his remaining mana before the combat step so he couldn't pay it. I never had an opponent declare attacking me and then refuse to pay it with mana available. Whether this was because my opponents weren't allowed to or they all simply didn't know about this loophole, I can't be sure.
Nice article, again. Glad to see you back writing after the short absence.
I agree with the comments about this not being "budget". There are some more affordable fat green dudes to consider before spending big $$$. I've been running green hypermana decks in the One Buck Challenges with some success. Garruk's Horde, Giant Adephage, and Skarrg Goliath are big tramplers with handy abilities and they won't break the bank.
A quirk in the OBC rules allows the use of the rare devotion land, but I am not paying the cash for it. If I continue with hypermana, I'll try to focus on something like Karametra's Acolyte. Gyre Sage might work in a budget version as well, keeping in mind it does not boost mana at all until evoled.
I get what you're saying, it's correct in both ways, but Commander (Commander, not EDH) was considered by WotC even in official pages an "online format" and listed among the "MTGO formats" for a long time. There hasn't been any paper release for EDH until Commander became popular on MTGO. When the first Commander product was released, it was commented as "Commander jumps into the paper world".
But, mind you, if now it's just one of the supported formats, and undergoes the same releasing rules of any other format, that's actually a good thing. (Probably marketing-oriented: "What's this?" "It's that format they play on MTGO" "Ugh, who cares about MTGO, not interested." <<< This isn't what they want to happen.)
The name is, in fact, absurd. Shouldn't it follow the rule of the core set? We had Magic 2014, and a few months later, a 2013 product? (This said, the core sets actually have validity over a restricted amount of time, while Commander 2013 doesn't really care which year it is.)
I knew I didn't much chance of the top prize, but the odds of a participation prize looked good so I played all the rounds and struck booster gold like a boss! Thank you gwyned, the tix from selling my booster have already been converted into most of my Theros wants for pauper.
I enjoyed what I could play in, choosing a different deck every match and losing to some fun decks I hadn't expected to face. My favourite match was a very close victory by extort over mill.
The biggest problem was hooking up with opponents in different timezones.
Videos are always good. You are welcome to post your videos on my YouTubeChannel. We are getting close to 1000 subscribers and we really need someone to do Standard videos (we are 12 people making videos right now, but noone does Standard). Having the subscriber base will hopefully provide you with more feedback for the articles etc. Send me a message on Youtube.com/magicgatheringstrat or tweet me at @MagicGathStrat if you are interested
That is an interesting interpretation of events. The name is indeed from the online version of the format however part of the reason the paper version is no longer called Elder Dragon Highlander is both versions were merged under the purview of the committee that wrote and maintained the paper version rules. While the name is more streamlined than the original, for ease of use, the games played online and off are identical afaik. IE: Commander online is a copy of the offline rules (sans house rules which have not been implemented yet (and bugs))
I don't see it as weird at all but then again maybe I'm the oddball. However there is a strangeness in the naming of the set. 2013 does technically end after December but that is very very last minute to call it a commander 2013 product. And that does cause some dissonance. A better name might have been The End of 2013 Commander release. :p
Commander was originally the online implementation of Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), which is now apparently obsolete. Commander, being an online format originally, is slightly different than EDH, just like online 2HG is slightly different from paper 2HG.
So yeah. It's weird that the online release of a product originally designed for online play is being delayed for the paper release. Go figure. But par for the course.
I found this article and I thought this was an interesting idea, specifically your plan to force your opponents to attack after you set up your pillow fort. Unfortunately a friend of mine looked into the rules involving Fumiko vs Ghostly Prison, (he is a judge of some level) and he told me that the interactions do not work this way. The Ghostly Prison apparently cannot force an opponent to tap mana, so all your opponent needs to do is declare they are attacking you and refuse to pay the mana cost associated with that, then their attack fizzles. This goes against your strategy of forcing them to attack each other.
Yeah, I think mono black is the worst deck for nythkos simply because there aren't that many awesome things to do with all that mana. The "no coloured mana" opening hand issue is also very much worth bearing in mind.
And oops re underworld, for some reason I thought you would target it before sacrificing it, but that's obviously not right. That's a clear candidate for cutting there.
Cracking article as always. Played just over 20 odd drafts too and your research matches my current experience, with one difference though in that I've not been able to draft a successful RB deck at all nor have I seen one in action. I'll admit that I don't generally start out trying to draft RB so maybe that's the reason. Still given that you say they have a good win percentage, I'd love to see what a successful one looked like.
Overall, reckon you were right on the money with your previous article, this is definitely seems a tempo orientated environment. Once someone starts making a board presence it feels like you have to be doing something to the board every turn; missing a land drop really hurts. The format feels very much like Avacyn Restored, even to the point that RG is a weak deck archetype. Do you think it's because R and G contain the most common monstrous creatures and so are more susceptible to being 'set back' in tempo by bounce and other removal spells? As with RB I'd love to know what makes a good RG deck.
You sound like you've got lots to say still, so please, please give us another article!
Oh, and just one other thing, I know you said your research tended to smaller sample sizes. I'd be interested in knowning the actual size of your samples when you report your stats, maybe as a footnote to the charts perhaps?
Anyway, as I started saying - really good article! thanks for taking the time.
If you're recording matches and putting them up, make them into articles on Pure and get some cash for them! Plus they'll be more visible to other Classic fans!
I'm pretty sure I'm a terrible person to take advice from, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt, but given that Chalice and mana screw seems to be your main problem against Stax, have you thought about 2 Factories in the board. Dodges Chalice at 0 and 1, gives you a bit of extra mana, and can trade with Revoker and Golem.
Nice videos. That first round was epic.
I particularly enjoyed the opening bit, kind of encapsulated my thoughts on the format. On the one hand, the fact that you don't have Power opens up a bit of deckbuilding space, but without it, Shops warp the format instead of balancing out the Broken Blue decks like it does in Vintage. I also watched the Community Build video and left a couple comments that either didn't go through or are in limbo. True Believer did land against Cat Weasel, but she had an Abrupt Decay.
As for my deck, Zach kind of hit the nail on the head in that I was kind of tilting my sails towards Shops and Dredge as opposed to blue decks, but I'll go over the questions that PW had.
Path: Zach pretty much said it, but I'd also like to add that Path also got better with Oath decks switching to Griselbrand over Emrakul. Obviously, you don't want Griselbrand to hit the board, but if it does and you have a removal spell, you would much rather have Path over Swords. I also like Path against Blightsteel because 11 life is a lot to give them and I don't have a quick clock. I agree Swords is better against Fish decks, but I haven't been seeing a lot of other Fish decks in the DEs lately.
Dryad Arbor: Solely there as a GSZ target to ramp me into a three drop like Trygon or Knight.
Edric v. Selkie: I have a Selkie in the board and bring it in to matchups that it is better in than Edric, but I don't think it is as clear-cut as you are making it. The only situations in which Selkie is the obviously superior card is when you either have multiple Hierarchs out who can't deal damage by themselves or you are playing a blue deck with blockers. Even if you have two Pridemages out, Edric is better, because you can attack with 6 power and draw 3 cards as opposed to attacking with Selkie and 2 Exalted triggers and attacking with 3 power and drawing 3 cards.
Trygon: I agree it is weak against Shops if you are trying to play it on curve, but in the right deck with good mana accel, it can be devastating. For instance, my deck has 4 Hierarchs, 2 Shamans, and 3 GSZ to grab Dryad Arbor on turn 1, which can all easily set up a turn 2 Trygon.
Also, Darkleebs can speak to Caltrops more than me, but I played him and he boarded it in against me,. It was annoying and slowed me down, but I was eventually able to draw into Kataki + 2 Serenity + Trygon.
Also, not to be a self-promoter, but I do record all my DE matches and post them up on YouTube, so if anyone is interested, it is http://www.youtube.com/user/mikepeters011
LOLOLOLOLOL. Zur, maybe?
... that the 3/1 Pro:opponent's stuff merfolk rogue would've been spoiled for us to discuss in this podcast.
COMBO WITH PARIAH????
Oops never mind.
Tangle Wire is redonk. I always lose to it in Affinity mirror matches. That version of the deck is definitely better. I just don't have any because of money. And for all the Masques drafts I did when it was out, I never pulled a Tangle Wire.
I wouldn't have blamed you guys for skipping over my decklist. It's hardly anything remarkable.
Though I do want to point out how much disdain I have for Metalworker. Most Metalworker builds only have 20-21 lands. I would rather have a higher land count and not wait a full turn, especially on the draw, in order to start dropping real threats. What happens too often for my liking with MW builds is that you get enough mana to cast a MW, then don't have enough lands to do anything else if they StP/Bolt/Decay your MW and follow that up with a Wasteland. To me, without Power, MW is a trap card. Too much spot removal running around for my taste.
Well but actually the commander sets are now only out for 1 year before they cycle. So Commander 2014 would make perfect sense.
It seems your judge friend is correct and at least in a 1v1 situation, the opponent can decide not to pay anything. I have no clue about multiplayer though. Will he still have to attack someone else then to satisfy Fumiko's clause?
Honestly I have no idea. I had an 1v1 situation where Fumiko and Prison were both out and my opponent would tap all his remaining mana before the combat step so he couldn't pay it. I never had an opponent declare attacking me and then refuse to pay it with mana available. Whether this was because my opponents weren't allowed to or they all simply didn't know about this loophole, I can't be sure.
I'll try and find the answer and get back to you.
Nice article, again. Glad to see you back writing after the short absence.
I agree with the comments about this not being "budget". There are some more affordable fat green dudes to consider before spending big $$$. I've been running green hypermana decks in the One Buck Challenges with some success. Garruk's Horde, Giant Adephage, and Skarrg Goliath are big tramplers with handy abilities and they won't break the bank.
A quirk in the OBC rules allows the use of the rare devotion land, but I am not paying the cash for it. If I continue with hypermana, I'll try to focus on something like Karametra's Acolyte. Gyre Sage might work in a budget version as well, keeping in mind it does not boost mana at all until evoled.
I get what you're saying, it's correct in both ways, but Commander (Commander, not EDH) was considered by WotC even in official pages an "online format" and listed among the "MTGO formats" for a long time. There hasn't been any paper release for EDH until Commander became popular on MTGO. When the first Commander product was released, it was commented as "Commander jumps into the paper world".
But, mind you, if now it's just one of the supported formats, and undergoes the same releasing rules of any other format, that's actually a good thing. (Probably marketing-oriented: "What's this?" "It's that format they play on MTGO" "Ugh, who cares about MTGO, not interested." <<< This isn't what they want to happen.)
The name is, in fact, absurd. Shouldn't it follow the rule of the core set? We had Magic 2014, and a few months later, a 2013 product? (This said, the core sets actually have validity over a restricted amount of time, while Commander 2013 doesn't really care which year it is.)
I knew I didn't much chance of the top prize, but the odds of a participation prize looked good so I played all the rounds and struck booster gold like a boss! Thank you gwyned, the tix from selling my booster have already been converted into most of my Theros wants for pauper.
I enjoyed what I could play in, choosing a different deck every match and losing to some fun decks I hadn't expected to face. My favourite match was a very close victory by extort over mill.
The biggest problem was hooking up with opponents in different timezones.
Izzet Staticaster is such good tech against Affinity. He got me with that guy, too.
Videos are always good. You are welcome to post your videos on my YouTubeChannel. We are getting close to 1000 subscribers and we really need someone to do Standard videos (we are 12 people making videos right now, but noone does Standard). Having the subscriber base will hopefully provide you with more feedback for the articles etc. Send me a message on Youtube.com/magicgatheringstrat or tweet me at @MagicGathStrat if you are interested
Karn, Silver Golem or Juggernaut
That is an interesting interpretation of events. The name is indeed from the online version of the format however part of the reason the paper version is no longer called Elder Dragon Highlander is both versions were merged under the purview of the committee that wrote and maintained the paper version rules. While the name is more streamlined than the original, for ease of use, the games played online and off are identical afaik. IE: Commander online is a copy of the offline rules (sans house rules which have not been implemented yet (and bugs))
I don't see it as weird at all but then again maybe I'm the oddball. However there is a strangeness in the naming of the set. 2013 does technically end after December but that is very very last minute to call it a commander 2013 product. And that does cause some dissonance. A better name might have been The End of 2013 Commander release. :p
Commander was originally the online implementation of Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), which is now apparently obsolete. Commander, being an online format originally, is slightly different than EDH, just like online 2HG is slightly different from paper 2HG.
So yeah. It's weird that the online release of a product originally designed for online play is being delayed for the paper release. Go figure. But par for the course.
Was it born out of MTGO?
I found this article and I thought this was an interesting idea, specifically your plan to force your opponents to attack after you set up your pillow fort. Unfortunately a friend of mine looked into the rules involving Fumiko vs Ghostly Prison, (he is a judge of some level) and he told me that the interactions do not work this way. The Ghostly Prison apparently cannot force an opponent to tap mana, so all your opponent needs to do is declare they are attacking you and refuse to pay the mana cost associated with that, then their attack fizzles. This goes against your strategy of forcing them to attack each other.
Are they correct about this?
Yeah, I think mono black is the worst deck for nythkos simply because there aren't that many awesome things to do with all that mana. The "no coloured mana" opening hand issue is also very much worth bearing in mind.
And oops re underworld, for some reason I thought you would target it before sacrificing it, but that's obviously not right. That's a clear candidate for cutting there.
mono green, has way to many huge creatures; to deal with.