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Hello everyone, and welcome to your weekly report of all things tribal.  This week we will take a look at the metagame for the first week post-banning.  And what a week it was.  I will also give my thoughts on some of the new cards in M11 as well as actually discuss a few of the banned cards and why they are like that.  Which I failed to do last week.  As always we hold this event on Saturdays at 12:30pm EDT.  All you have to do is sign in to the client and type /join Tribal in a text box.  You can also find the weekly event thread here.  We also have a community group where information regarding banlists will be congregated and eventually information for new players will be posted.  Let's not waste any more time.  Due to the success of this weekend we have about nine decklists to get through.

2-1 Decks

 

First of the decks is Fliebana's Dragons.  Dragons are always a personal favorite tribe of mine.  I mean in all of fantasy there are not many things stronger than dragons.  Fliebana has a plan of early defense, sweepers and a little ramp, to get things ready for dropping some dragons.  Overall it's an interesting deck.  My only suggestion is adding a couple Bear Umbra.  It's in color and can give you infinite attacks or make your Flameblast Dragon hit that much harder with correct trigger stacking.

Jhoke13 gets in the money again with his take on Bant Wizards.  Some obvious choices show through here with Qasali Pridemage protecting against some of the more annoying enchantments in the game, while Magus of the Moat provides the same protection as Moat though slightly more vulnerable. The minor combo of Privileged Position and Primeval Light can also turn a stalemate into a winning proposition.

Newcomer ChrisMH77 did well with his Angel deck this week.  I don't know where is inspiration for the deck came from, but if anyone read LordErman's Casually Good article from the other week, this is a great example of how to port his Angel deck into Tribal Wars.  Playing against this deck was a constant uphill battle with the removal, sweepers and reanimation.  Overall a very strong deck really only lacking in early creatures.  Thought with the only option there being Angelic Page..{Wizards, come on make Angelic Wall an angel already}, his reliance on Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile was certainly a better way to go.

Yes the title of this deck is sort of selfish.  But I'm taking all the credit for this one.  I didn't design it, I didn't tweak it, I didn't play it for him...So wait what did I do?  Well JustSin was unsure what deck to play this week.  It was this or shaman I think.  JustSin told me to pick one and I picked zombies.  So thanks to me he was able to get in the money.  What?  I didn't do enough to deserve the credit?  Well too bad, its MY article.  Kidding aside, this deck is really well put together.  It has more removal than you can shake a stick at and enough pump to make the creatures threats no matter what point in the game you are at.  A well protected Creakwood Liege is a great example of inevitability here. 

Yes another deck named after Fullmetal Alchemist, It's one of my favorite stories of all time.  AJ brought the tribe of Golems this week.  A tribe of multiple members and near infinite possibilities.  His nice little trick here though was Spreading Plague.  Getting this down early enough really laughs at mono-colored decks or heavy gold decks.  Meanwhile his lovely beasts of colorless proportions are still free to do anything they want.  Yet another evil deck of AJ's where I'm honestly mostly just bitter that he thought of the concept before I did.

Allies are back in Tribal as of now.  Raf brought the Bloodbraid Elf powered Allies to the table this weekend and it served him well.  The Goblin Bushwhacker was an interesting choice but as a singleton can be a good card to grab with Ranger of Eos for the game-ending damage boost.  Dauntless Escort provides a cost efficient attacker as well as a counter to all the regular sweepers that see play.

While this is not the first time someone brought Slivers to the party.  It is the first time I remember doing well with them.  Slivers have always been in the back of my mind as a deck to watch out for.  They aren't that bad.  Really no more synergistic than Elves, Goblins, or Merfolks and 12 of their lords.  It was nice seeing a Sliver deck finally emerge.  I'm wondering about the lack of Virulent Sliver but then I'm sure he had his reasons.  Though this has inspired me to finally build my RUG Slivers for the event.

Due to the number of entrants we ended up with 2 players undefeated at the end of 3 rounds of swiss.  In order to have a final champion the two of them faced off in a battle of the ages.  These were the results

Ranth is once again hanging out in his favorite place.  Which is always as close to the top as he can possibly get if not the top.  His build of Blue/Black Rogues with a White splash for Silence carried him to a 3-1 finish this week.  Utilizing the discard power of (Oon's Blackguard) he pummeled his way through the first three rounds.  Unfortunately mana issues held him back in the finals.  (Oon'a Prowler) is a great low-costed 3/1 flyer.  I remember it being quite popular when Lorwyn first debuted as it's ability is a lose/lose for opponents.  You either take three or give up a card in hand.  Neither of those is a great choice.

Ok I'll be honest.  I have an unhealthy love/hate relationship with Rage Forger.  Ability wise it is one of my all time favorite cards.  I love this guy.  Tribal wise, I really really hate Shaman.  If this guy had helped Elementals or Goblins or something, I would play him every week.  Enough with that though.  This Black Red shaman deck is quite creative.  Normally its the mono-Red or Red-Green Shaman we see around here.  The black splash added some interesting card choices.  The Shadow of Doubt came into play a few times as a I saw it foil a few activations of Fetchlands throughout the event.  Meanwhile Fulminator Mage further crippled opponent's mana options.  The end game of declare attackers and take eight due to double Rage Forger is also highly brutal and hard to recover from.

That is it this week deck wise.  Now time to look at some M11 goodies.  I'm only going to look at a handful of the newer cards and none of the reprints.  These are only cards that I think may make an impact on the format.

Squadron Hawk-Squadron Hawks here should see some play in some of the more fringe Bird decks we see from time to time.  Being able to search out all the copies is a great ability in many ways.  This is abusable with obvious cards like (Jace, the Mindsculptor) as well as the same set card Fauna Shaman.

Knight Exemplar-We already have access to tons of Knights in tribal.  Knight Exemplar just makes all your White Knight, Silver Knight, Sigiled Paladin and more that much better and INDESTRUCTIBLE!.

Fauna Shaman- (Survival of the Fittest) on legs.  I don't know how much I have to actually say to show how good this is.  Tribal wise its already an Elf Shaman two great tribes that already see play.  Also there is always the possibility of Turn 2 Fauna Shaman, Turn 3 activate it discarding Vengevine for Bloodbraid Elf, Turn 4 Bloodbraid Elf hitting an number of cheaper elves in the deck.  Let's say Elvish Archdruid.  Now you get back the Vengevine and have 11 power you can attack with on turn 4.

Angelic Arbiter- Angelic Arbiter is certainly worth consideration in the big white decks we see.  It greatly restricts your opponents options and leaves them forced to use removal on it.  And if they don't have removal then things can get very hairy indeed.

Aether Adept- Wizards now also gets an on-tribe (Man o' War) in Aether Adept.  I certainly expect to see this coming down across the table really soon.

Conundrum Sphinx- If anyone chooses to revisit Sphinx post-M11 I fully would expect to see this guy as a 4-of.  Not only is he a great creature but his ability is amazing with cards like Preordain, Ponder, and Halimar Depths.

Scroll Thief- Obviously had to give a shout-out to the Merfolk Ophidian.  Scroll Thief will almost certainly see play in some versions of Fish.

Garruk's Companion- Garruk's Companion.   A 3/2 trample for 2 green mana.  This is a boon for more budget-minded players like myself and will certainly fit in mono green or green/red beast decks.

Obstinate Baloth- Obstinate Baloth.  Another great beast creature who may be Garruk's Companion's partner in crime.  I'll be buying four for sure.

Honorable Mentions: All the Titans obviously, Roc Egg, Gaea's Revenge and Miotic Ooze.  These all will surely see play I'm just not sure how much.  Neat combo:  Roc Egg+Sun Titan.  Block, get a bird, bring it back the next turn.

That's it for White, Green, and Blue.  I will give my opinions on Red, Black, and the Artifacts next week.  Note: This list is not all-encompassing this are just the cards that jumped out at me.

The Bannings

As many of you already know we recently did a rather large overhaul of the banned list for Tribal Apocalypse.  I meant to do this last week but at this time I will explain why various cards were banned.

- These three were banned because in all honesty, they were just getting unfun.  Very very few people, in fact one person to my knowledge, ever hardcast any of them.  The majority of the time they were cheated into play by turn four, normally signaling game over.  They kept people from playing and were causing more issues than banning them causes.

- These two got the axe from various combos.  Helm of Obedience is in a combo with Leyline of the Void.  It was chosen over the Leyline, since the Leyline does have other uses.  Only far flung fringe examples or people purposefully trying to prove me wrong will use Helm.  Painter's Servant was also paired with Grindstone.  It got the axe because of how much it can combo with other cards versus Grindstone.  Ranth has a detailed list he went other with me showing the amount of game-locking abuse servant can cause.  Hence it's banning.

- this card is just never used for anything productive.  It's farts out large, hard to stop creatures and wins.  The earliest it can go off reliably is turn 4 in my opinion.  So turn four drop even just 2-3 of the Mythic Eldrazi well, that's game.  Games like that are not what we are going for.  You have legacy for that.

- this card is evil.  The ability to pull any 5 cards into a new library screams combo.  And if you're going down to only five cards its nearly guaranteed that combo is nothing people want to mess with.

- this is tribal, why are you searching for combo pieces.  At least Enlightened Tutor gets equipment and (Worldy Tutor) gets creatures.  Play the format don't break it.  Not too mention It's only ever used to get combo pieces. 

- Turn 2 41/41 Hasty tramplers is fun for no one.  NO ONE.

Ok those are the reasons.  Yes most cards were banned with an eye towards avoiding game ending combos.  The format is Tribal.  I'm trying to push the event in a creature based direction and so far it seems to be working out nicely.

 

Alright well that is all for this week.  Thanks everyone for reading, and please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, in the comments below.

-Shard