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By: Flippers_Giraffe, Simon Smith
Apr 20 2015 12:00pm
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Hello again readers, welcome back to the madhouse!

First up before I go into the decks of this article I wanted to touch on something.

MTGO from what I can tell from a causal players perspective seems to be on the decline. While the eternal formats have some amazing numbers for the sanctioned events, which keep getting better the casual side seems to be taking a rather heavy hit to the face. During the week (evenings in the UK) it's so hard to find a game of Vintage that I've actually stopped looking and play standard instead. On average it takes about 15 minutes to find a game which usually doesn't even last that long. I've checked the number of Legacy games that are firing and the format seems to be in the same situation as Vintage.

The tournament practice room actually has more games firing than the casual room, is this a sign that the casual players have moved on to a more competitive environment for a chance at winning prizes or have they just stopped playing and sold out. The prices of cards are not that bad considering you can use any card that's online. Was the divide between Vintage and Legacy casual players too much for the old classic crowd? 

But does it really matter in the long run, looking at the prices of all the cards online, you can pick up a lot of standard rares for $1 nowadays, does this mean that casual players are no longer required as part of a healthy MTGO. The drafters feed the rares and mythics into the system and the prices are governed by the tournament players and wizards setting certain cards at Mythic rarity. If it wasn't for the mythics the online traders wouldn't make any money from Standard cards at all.  

The answer is something I don't have, I know that all the players I used to play with back when classic was a format are no longer around, is it just a case of waiting for the new players to discover the eternal formats as their cards start to rotate or will they end up as Modern players.

I'm going to keep showing at least one vintage deck an article to help capture some interest but if I can't find the games then my articles will become more standard orientated until Modern Masters II fixes the prices on some of the outrageous prices in the format.

I had a look at the number of people in the various chat rooms to give me some idea of what's going on. On average there were about 600 players in just for fun, over a thousand in just starting out, 900 in tournament practice, the limited and scheduled events chat rooms had about 6000 players in each. It doesn't look great for casual players at the moment, Wizards on the other hand must be making a fortune.

That's enough doom and gloom from me for one day, let's have a look at what I've been playing over the last few weeks.

First up and into standard. I found an interesting card that I wanted to make work, it has some issues and required a helping hand. The card is Goblin Kaboomist, The goblin that likes to go boom, sometimes literally. Here's what the little guy looks like.

For two mana you get a 1/2 goblin with a very unstable ability, At the beginning of your upkeep, put a colorless artifact token named Land Mine onto the battlefield. You then flip a coin, if you lose the flip, Goblin Kaboomist deals 2 damage to itself. The landmines are quite cool you pay one  mana and sacrifice the artifact to deal 2 damage to an attacking creature without flying. I wanted to try and find a way to keep this guy alive and also give us a card to build the deck around. I choose Citadel Siege, with the Khans ability you can put two +1/+1 counters on our little Goblin keeping him out of harms way, of course he will be at risk for a few turns if you cast him on turn two but that's the joys of being a goblin!

As our goblin is pretty useless at blocking I included Omenspeaker as our early blocker and she does a fine job at it, she also helps us manipulate the top of our deck with Scry. Then we move onto our next creature which I've only included a few copies of Frost Lynx he is quite good at tapping out dragons but other than that he's pretty average until he starts getting boosted via Citadel Siege. As our creatures will be getting big quite quickly I included Flamewake Phoenix, when your creatures power go's above four you can start bringing back the phoenix every turn from the graveyard. Lastly on the creature front we have Felhide Spiritbinder, He has a great ability than when he untaps you can pay two mana and copy another creature in play which gains haste until end of turn and then dies.

Now we have our card draw cards Divination (I prefer the artwork on the Born of the Gods version), Dig Through Time and the rather excellent Monastery Siege. The removal is pretty standard in the deck as well in the form of Banishing Light and Lightning Strike.

As the deck went into three colours I tried to limit the amount of cards that had more than one coloured mana in its casting cost. There's 9 cards in total that have more than one so I made sure there were a few dual lands including the staple Mystic Monastery. The fetch lands Evolving Wilds and Flooded Strand make the deck playable without those you could easily be stuck without that critical extra  or  mana when you need it. 

Overall the deck plays quite well, I don't get to blow up as many creatures as I thought I would but the Citadel Siege card more than makes up for it. 

    Creatures     Lands
Felhide Spiritbinder  4 Evolving Wilds
4 Flamewake Phoenix Flooded Strand
2 Frost Lynx 5 Island
Goblin Kaboomist 1 Mountain
Omenspeaker 4 Mystic Monastery
    4 Plains
  Spells 4 Wind-Scarred Crag
Banishing Light    
Citadel Siege    
Dig Through Time    
4 Divination    
4 Lightning Strike    
4 Monastery Siege    
       
       

Our second deck of the article remains in the Standard format this week, I wanted to cheat some big bad dragons into play and with a re-animation deck. The card I had in mind when I was building the deck was Fearsome Awakening it lets you bring back a creature from your graveyard into play and if it's a dragon it also gains +1/+1. The other spell I included is Endless Obedience which again lets you bring back a creature from your graveyard into play, but you can also bring back a creature from your opponents graveyard as well.

 

Now let's now have a look at the Dragons that we have to play with. First is Atarka, World Render, he gives other dragons double strike when they attack. Then we have Dromoka, the Eternal who bolsters other creatures when he attacks. Lastly on the Dragon front we have Ojutai, Soul of Winter who taps a creature when she attacks (same ability as the Frost Lynx). I did look at replacing them with the new Elder Dragons which have a bigger body but then they wouldn't work so well with the next card.

The next card being Soulflayer, you can pay for part of his casting cost with delve any creatures that are removed with delve that have an ability like trample are transferred to Soulflayer. With the dragons this makes him quite good but with Chromanticore he becomes amazing, gaining flying, first strike, vigilance, trample and lifelink. Of course we can also bring Chromanticore back from our graveyard with our re-animation spells as well.

Of course we do need a way to put all these big creatures into our graveyard to start with, which is where Monastery Siege comes in handy again by choosing Khans. The other card that lets us put cards into our graveyard is Sultai Ascendancy. I will warn you though when you have both of these cards in play you will start to burn through your deck very quickly.

We are running a few denial/removal cards in the deck to help us along as well. The denial is in the form of Dissolve with its in built Scry which is really useful every time I play it. Then on the removal front we have Murderous Cut which is another delve spell, you just need to make sure you don't click on any creatures. We also have a creature that I'm going to bring up as well Ruthless Ripper which can be cast for one mana and acts as a Typhoid Rats or you can play it as a morph creature and unmorph it to catch your opponent off guard with her deathtouch ability.

Our mana fixer in the deck is Sylvan Caryatid one of the best mana creatures in the game I think, I put her up there alongside Birds of Paradise. Because of her we also have the ability to cast all of our dragons as well and if we have two in play Chromanticore as well, which I've done a few times.

Heres our final deck list. 

    Creatures     Lands
Atarka, World Render  3 Evolving Wilds
3 Chromanticore Forest
1 Dromoka, the Eternal 3 Island
Ojutai, Soul of Winter 4 Opulent Palace
Ruthless Ripper 4 Polluted Delta
Soulflayer 6 Swamp
Sylvan Caryatid     
Typhoid Rats     
       
  Spells    
3 Dissolve    
3 Endless Obedience    
4 Fearsome Awakening    
Monastery Siege    
Murderous Cut    
Sultai Ascendancy    
       

 

 

Now we delve into the final deck of the article the madness of Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded . When I was browsing through the planeswalkers on www.mtgotraders.com I came cross this guy, in the bargain box so to speak so I thought I'd show him a bit of love and picked up a play set to build a deck round.

There is a reason he's so cheap which is because he doesn't have that much to offer....or does he? 

Let's have a look he's two red mana to cast which is quite good and comes with two loyalty points. To gain one you can draw a card and then discard one at random. For -4 he deals damage to target player for the amount of cards they have in hand. For his ultimate at -6 you gain control of all creatures target opponent controls until end of turn untapping them and giving them haste.

 

The best cards I decided that most suited Tibalt are cards with Madness. When we draw our extra cards the cards we throw away can be cast at a lower casting cost via Madness. Our Madness cards on the creature front are Basking Rootwalla, Arrogant Wurm and Reckless Wurm. I'm also using Fiery Temper as well for direct damage.

There's always going to be a time when the wrong card is discard so we have a few cards to retrieve them from the graveyard as well, The first is Eternal Witness and then we also have Regrowth. I also added in a newer card to bring back those Eternal Witness's Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, which is the only reason I'm running duals with white mana in. Alesha is a 3/2 first striker who's ability is triggered when he attacks, which is for two white/black mana he can return a creature from your graveyard with power two or less tapped and attacking. As the Eternal Witness comes into play you can return another card from your graveyard into your hand.

This leaves us with a few other cards to mention, on the direct damage front we have Lightning Bolt and then we have a nice little, I bet you weren't expecting that card Berserk. Ratchet Bomb was also added as well as it has so many uses even with zero charge counters it's going to be taking out Mox's. If we pull off Tibalt's ultimate we also have High Market as well which we can sacrifice one of the creatures too before it's returned to its owner.

Speaking of Mox's the deck has quite a few mana ramp cards, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Mox Emerald, Mox Ruby and Sol Ring to all help ramp into our creatures early on.

The deck is really fun to play and can do quite amazing things with all the mana ramp. I have had a lot of people quit on me though saying that it's copied from a net deck, I've got no idea what they are talking about though, is Tibalt really that scary or is it his mate Sarkhan Vol who makes an appearance every now and then the contributing factor, it's quite beyond me.   

    Creatures     Artifacts 
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death  1 Mana Crypt
4 Arrogant Wurm Mana Vault
4 Basking Rootwalla 1 Mox Emerald
Eternal Witness 1 Mox Ruby
Reckless Wurm 2 Ratchet Bomb
    1 Sol Ring
  Spells     
Berserk   Lands
Fiery Temper High Market 
Lightning Bolt Mountain
1 Regrowth 3 Plateau
    4 Rootbound Crag
  Planeswalkers Savannah
Sarkhan Vol Strip Mine
Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded Taiga
    Wooded Foothills
       

That's all from me for now, I've started playing with the new cards from Dragons of Tarkir so expect another article from me in the not too distant future.

Flip 

15 Comments

Lack of Casual Online by Meyou at Mon, 04/20/2015 - 15:45
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You make me want an entire article on the subject. In brief, the negativity about MTGO from professional writers on other sites doesn't help. Whether you like it or not, MTGO has gotten a bad reputation. It doesn't help either that nobody writes about casual for MTGO. If you want casual to be a thing online, I implore you to be a champion for the casual format. If nobody promotes it, nobody will play it. Lastly, the mothership doesn't highlight online like they should on the front page. If Wizards is to blame for anything, it is their bad PR history. I can overlook many of MTGO's cons, but headquarters does a bad job of highlighting the great things about it. They "should" have a column in their regular rotation to highlight the pros of playing on MTGO. Just my thoughts in brief and good luck.

It is partially my fault that by Paul Leicht at Mon, 04/20/2015 - 17:09
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It is partially my fault that "no one" writes for casual play (anymore since I did used to write monthly articles on that very thing, here.) If I wasn't too enmeshed in my not-writing I would be churning out casual content. But I have read at least 2-3 articles a month on this site that seem very casual indeed.

Thanks for the comment Meyou, by Flippers_Giraffe at Mon, 04/20/2015 - 17:57
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Thanks for the comment Meyou, I was going to do a full article on the subject but it made me feel too sad and I like to share my decks to help spark someone's imagination.

Back in the day when I was writing weekly for Pure the casual population was amazing, you would always find a game online in any format, the players though have vanished over time like cards in the mist.

I currently have two main hobbies and only so much time in the week. A return to form isn't imposable, it just means I have to drag my behind out of MTGO retirement.

I did notice a comment on the State of the Program article a few weeks ago from Adam who has also noticed the decline.

Flips as per usual great by Paul Leicht at Mon, 04/20/2015 - 17:12
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Flips as per usual great article! :) I am tempted build your version of the flayercore deck because I built mine and decided the JuFF room wasn't weak enough to handle my versions and lost track after the initial builds. I still think it is a fun deck. I'd probably toss in Torrent Elemental and a Tasigur or two + maybe Sidisis 1 & 2.

Some good ideas there Paul, by Flippers_Giraffe at Mon, 04/20/2015 - 17:47
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Some good ideas there Paul, actually you have just given me a cool new deck idea involving Torrent Elemental, watch this space.

It's good to see you're still around even if you only pop in for a read every now and then.

I love the way everything by Joe Fiorini at Mon, 04/20/2015 - 17:22
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I love the way everything looks in your articles. I think the deck lists look sweet, and the layout and everything are awesome.

I used to play in the just for fun room back when I had my first MTGO account, in 2007 approx. I won a lot, and always thought about playing in tournaments, because I had lots of experience in paper tournament from my first run in magic.

This time around, I stopped playing in the JUFF room as soon as I had Mono Black Devotion built, and I got delusions of grandeur - thinking that I might take my game to the next level.

Sometimes, though, I think that I had more fun when I didn't take the game so seriously.

Cheers Joe I always like my by Flippers_Giraffe at Mon, 04/20/2015 - 18:01
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Cheers Joe I always like my articles to look nice.

I always wanted to play in tournaments as well but found it too stressful to be honest and the amount of time required sat in front of a screen also was a big turn off.

Another thing I found is you always end up playing the same decks over and over again, after a while I get bored and look for the next interesting thing to build around.

Hey, Flipper. If you were by Procrastination at Tue, 04/21/2015 - 08:45
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Hey, Flipper. If you were thinking of getting into casual Modern, no reason to wait for mm15. Other than a few corner cases, casual is already cheap in Modern. Lots of interesting cards, like Wild Pair, Heartles Summoning, Sunforger, Null Profusion and more could use the attention of a brewer like you. Plus I rarely have to wait for a casual game, so it is a win win!

I usually find there's at by Flippers_Giraffe at Tue, 04/21/2015 - 17:50
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I usually find there's at least one card in a deck that I build that is a bit expensive, sometimes I wish I never sold my collection but that's the way it goes sometimes.

I built a nice Modern deck tonight that's quite interesting so will be playing it over the next few weeks, not sure if it will be in the next article or the one after.

For some reason I find that the most competitive players currently reside in Modern.

Great article - unfortunately by Bartimäus at Tue, 04/21/2015 - 16:08
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Great article - unfortunately your starting words contain too much truth; just when my collection allows for variable Takes on prismatic and singleton and stuff a bleeding starts and today i did not know anyone in casual and my buddies are grey all day long: of course, one individual allows no stats but for me this coerced me into competetive .. and this ins not dir the better gaming fun- Not least attitude wise where i appreciate at least a hello of playing a game.

Sadly it isn't great at the by Flippers_Giraffe at Tue, 04/21/2015 - 17:44
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Sadly it isn't great at the moment for us casual players.

Tibalt by Elbinac at Tue, 04/21/2015 - 17:07
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I've been wondering if there is a workable Life from the Loam/Punishing Fire style list for him but haven't really given it much more consideration than that.

Yeah I'm sure it could work by Flippers_Giraffe at Tue, 04/21/2015 - 17:40
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Yeah I'm sure it could work quite well although it would require a playset of Grove of the Burnwillows which aren't cheap at the moment.

If you went tri-coloured with black or blue you could have fun with some delve cards as well.

Casual Vintage by Rerepete at Tue, 04/21/2015 - 19:58
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Before the Power 9 came online, I used to play casual classic in the JFF room a lot. But now it is incredibly Un-fun to constantly play against power in casual games.

Now I play some Legacy (Sultai Delver), Modern ( Hardened Affinity) or even Standard (Tinkering with a UW control deck with Ojutai Exemplars).

Casual? by Cownose at Wed, 04/22/2015 - 11:21
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I used to play quite a bit of casual before Vintage Masters (primarily EDH and 100CS with the extremely rare Prismatic game I could find), but I have not gone into JFF in probably 5 or 6 months. I played a lot of EDH as a stand-in for Vintage because classic was not firing (I never played casual classic/vintage because a large % of the people I played against were extremely unpleasant and complained incessantly about foils and expensive cards even when those cards were being used in a causal context), but now that we have Vintage and there are enough games, I rarely get the itch to play EDH online anymore (though I still play it a lot in paper). I'm not sure how many people were like me, but maybe that is part of the problem.

I think a larger part of the problem is that while MTGO is basically all competitive players have, casuals have much better options nowadays. Both Hex and Hearthstone offer a largely better play experience for a lower cost--I can't blame casual players for flocking to them literally by the millions. This is a major long-term concern for all of us on MTGO because it is the casual players that drive demand for the vast majority of cards (see: paper prices). Without them, the only cards anyone will want are tournament staples and those become more and more expensive. I wish WotC had not completely screwed up the program (I have wished this segveral times over the last 10 years online), but at least they **seem** to see the writing on the wall and have started to hire actual programmers and spend actual money on improving the play experience (things are much better now than they were last summer). I just hope it is not going to be too little too late.