Yeah the browser thing was apparently so much smoke. Too bad as it seemed like a perfect solution to the platform differences the community has. (Macs, Linux machines, iDevices, android devices, etc.)
I am glad you were inspired bdgp009 and I look forward to seeing what you produce!
Nice interview. I think I need to learn a lot from winterwolf about making an interview. Full of emotions. A lot of things that was discuss was a revelation to me on how much i don't know about the community. I really hope to be as good on writing articles and giving info to the community as these guys. Peace and God Bless
No, Worldspine is just a little out of the realm of reasonable so far. Though I did build a wurms breach deck for Modern. Main villain there is Mannequin which catches the wurm as it dies or is discarded.
I especially like the vampire package, it's pretty great.
The main difference was I went with a lot of ETB creatures for ramp, tutoring, and destruction. That way I would get an effect and get a chump blocker. I also packed more graveyard hate for dealing with combo.
One card that I loved playing that you didn't include was Soul's Might. Like Tainted Strike this often made Skullbriar into a one hit killer, but with commander damage.
Looks like I'll have to head to MTGOTraders and buy some more cards to update my deck.
could be. Or it could be the players who were looking for inexpensive sanctioned play moved from 4 pack sealed to pauper. I'll try to remember to watch pauper event sizes towards the end of each season. Pauper was firing at about minimum at the start of RtR.
Truth be told, I share your concerns about Tooth and Nail. I don't know, maybe I just like it too much, and want to see if the 9-mana barrier isn't worth it. You're probably right, though, and you sound like you ran simulations to find out that the average mana threshold of the deck is 7. And if, say, 80% of the time Tooth and Nail is going to be used in the non-entwined version, it's probably not worth it.
And the thing about 4 Natural Orders is that then I don't like the look of them. It makes it look too easy. You end up with 4 mana on turn 3, you do NO, you fetch a fattie with shroud. That's very nondescript, you can do that with every green tribe, it has nothing to do with the structure of the deck.
I'll probably go with the Trap version (which is, you know, the 5-0 version! :), maybe I'll like them better once I got the chance to use them more.
I really think you're looking at Regal Force from the wrong angle, though. It's not a fattie, it's a drawing spell that can be fetched with creature-fetching tools. I don't understand your example, if you think that drawing 7 cards in the deck equal to draw only mana dorks, then that's true of the opening hand too. How is drawing 7 new cards after downloading your full hand a bad thing? :)
But it's probably because you envision it as something you draw into when you'd need to draw into a threat instead. I envision it as something you fetch at the right moment. Of course, going back to the Trap build, Regal Force is semi-useless, since it would be only based on the luck of drawing into it when it's needed.
And at this point, this might be true of Woodfall Primus as well (or Terastodon; do you like the Treefolk better? I generally do, but Terastodon is probably more powerful overall, and I thought you would ditch the Primus because of the smaller body. Terastodon is more versatile in that you can use it as an overwhelming attack force when it has no targets, putting the surplus lands to use). If there's nothing to really fetch the solution when it's needed, you can't count on a singleton copy to show up right after the opponent has dropped the noncreature thing that's killing you.
Bottom line: if I go back to Traps, I won't change anything in the build but lands. :)
...so Sinkhole is pretty good. Isolated Chapel was actually an accidental include because I just had a pile of nonbasics in the deckbuilding window before the DE to compare them and accidentally left it in. Encroach in the sideboard is extra sad.
where Worldspine really shines is when you can either discard it for value (assuming you don't NO it into play) or where you can sneak it into play somehow. I agree that it isn't something you want to try and cast straight unless you are playing some super ramp engine.
Infinite combos should be tourney-only as well. If you're in a casual game where the guy doesn't freak out over your combo, you can demonstrate the win, and then one of the two of you can hit the "concede" button, with you feeling a moral victory either way.
If you want to run a variant of the deck, by all means make it your own, make it fit your playstyle. Just offering suggestions about your proposed changes.
The problem with Regal Force is this: once you reach 7 mana to cast it, most of the cards you could draw are nearly irrelevant. At 7 mana, the only thing that matters is drawing into fatties, you don't care about the chaff. In the game we played, had you wiped my board, a fist full of Cobras and Sakura-tribe Elders wouldn't have won me the game. Only the fatties matter at that stage.
Look at it like this. Regal Force will not win you the game with its body against any decent opposition. If the Regal Force draws you into a creature that WILL win the game, which is the best case scenario, then you may as well have just replaced Regal Force with that creature in the first place. If it draws you a grip full of manadorks, then it was basically useless.
If you don't like the variance of Trap and want to try something else -- which I understand, although I consider a whiffed Trap to at least have put 7 useless cards on the bottom of my library, which isn't nothing -- I still think you should go all in on either NO or T&N rather than split, and then retool the deck accordingly. If you don't want to play an instant win combo with Tooth and Nail, it really isn't worth playing IMHO. If you're just fetching fatties with it, at sorcery speed, you're setting yourself a turn behind, and you may not have a turn to lose against some decks. If you're putting fatties into play, it's only really an improvement over just casting them when you have two fatties in hand. If you're entwining, that's great, but for 9 mana, which is much tougher than 7 in this deck, you should be instantly winning the game.
If I was ditching the traps, I would go 4 NO, cut a Sky Swallower for a Woodfall Primus, and call it a day. The only reason I suggested the green Exarch is that, even in a ramp deck, he's more realistically castable if he's in your hand than those 8 and 9 drop guys are. If I run the deck again, I will stick with Traps, but will replace one SSS with a Woodfall Primus.
Seems like a cool guy! I think the biggest problem with the client this time around is that we were lead on to believe we would get this browser based, fantastic, huge improvement over the current client, and it just isn't anywhere near that. (In my opinion.)
1. I was thinking of this kind of deck (which is from 1 year ago). Legacy, not Extended Rock. Won a StarCity invitational. They use GSZ as a toolbox and they always have/had the Hermit in there.
3. The thing is: your crappy white-bordered WoG costs pretty much the same as a black-bordered 10th Edition one! I'm sorry, I can't condone the use of any white-bordered card, ever. :)
4. The 6-mana guy from Scars block? Brutalizer Exarch? That leaves a pretty lame body behind, can't be Legacy material. What would you take out for this slot, anyway?
Regal Force and Sphinx of Uthuun have different functions to me. The Sphinx digs for specific things you'd like to draw, it's a Fact or Fiction. And it's blue, which means you either draw into it or you need to have some particular fetcher like Chord of Calling, which I don't see happen (also because you would have, like, 100 better targets to fetch with that). At that point, it's better to run a real Fact or Fiction in her place (or, you know, a Jace). On the other hand, in the right deck Regal Force completely restores your hand. It's like restarting: what your deck did until that point, you're going to do it all over again. Time it well, and it'll creates an unrecoverable situation for the opponent. I don't think I ever lost a game where a Regal Force gave me 5-6 fresh cards. The body is just a bonus at that point, the fact that it's a creature only matters in that you can Natural Order it or GSZ for it and so. Being green makes it easier.
Think about your board position in our game. You did that whole explosive start, you filled the board with mana creatures, then you had one Simic Sky Swallower and an empty hand. If I had managed to activate the Pernicious for 7, you would have lost everything, and very likely the game. If you didn't have that single Swallower in hand, I would have swept the board next turn, and again you would have lost right there. But if at that point you had a Regal Force, or a mean to fetch it, that would have given you 7 fresh cards, which mean even if I had swept the board, you would have restarted your battleplan all over again while my resources would have been depleted.
Both Regal and Gaea's Cradle are used in Elf decks. But the thing is: those decks work in a very similar way to this one. You can learn from them and translate their tricks into new forms. The Cradle is just amazing in Tribal, everywhere. You just need two creatures on the board to make it good. People aren't using it too much because has become impossibly pricey. If it were 1-tix, you'd see it in every deck. Back when I bought mine, it was 10 tix or less. Then it became expensive and I never got to buy another one, also because one is great, two in a deck that's not all about abusing them can screw your starting hand. But every deck with 20 creatures is enough for the Cradle to be good.
I don't want to go the Tooth and Nail combo route with this deck. It would become a whole different deck really quick. You put 1x Kiki-Jiki and 1x Sky Hussar in there, then you'd need Brainstorm to shuffle them back if you draw into them, and so on. It'll change the deck entirely. This isn't meant to be a combo deck, I see it as more streamlined. Same goes for Worldspine Wurm. I like the Wurm very much, it's a great Natural Order target, possibly one of the top 3 now. But this isn't a Natural Order deck. What if I draw into the Wurm? It's a 11-mana creature, it would be stuck in my hand forever, and I don't have ways to shuffle it back. I considered Empyrial Archangel myself, but I just assumed you did too and discarded it because with Swallower and Elesh you don't really need her. Swallower is a better finisher. And what's the scenario where Empyrial does better than Elesh? If you are facing a horde of weenies, Elesh just sweeps them away. If you're facing stuff that Elesh can't sweep away, the Empyrial isn't going to last either. Plus, she's 8 mana with 3 different colors and double white.
All in all, I feel confident to try 2x Natural Order and 2x Tooth and Nail in place of the Traps. Looking at Tooth and Nail like a 7-mana tutors for 2 finishers, which occasionally works as 7-mana double Show and Tell, and occasionally as a 9-mana sort-of-endgame. You can easily do a noncombo endgame where you win 90% of the times fetching Hornet Queen and Craterhoof Behemoth. Except I still have Regal Force, Craterhoof Behemoth and Terastodon all competing for 1 slot which isn't even there yet. :) I think I'm going to add something as a 61st card.
1. Hornet Queen was suggested as a possibility, but Nic Fit is one of those "pet decks" that certain players have, and there isn't much that is standard about it's fattie selection other than Grave Titan. But yes, in essence, I suppose it would be similar to the role Deranged Hermit used to play in Extended Rock decks.
3. The crappy white bordered Wrath of Gods were purchased for a UW Reveillark tribal deck I haven't run yet, and I'm pretty sure I bought them when I was low on funds so just got the cheapest ones available to playtest it. You can maybe tell from my deck history and comments in videos that I'm more of a Firespout kind of guy than a Wrath kind of guy. If they had the original Quinton Hoover art available I'd pay a premium to own that, but they do not.
4. If I were running the deck again, I would consider Woodfall Primus or Terastodon (or maybe the 6 mana guy from Scars block, can't recall the name) just to at least have one out against noncreature permanents.
Although I never ran Regal Force, I did try out Sphinx of Uthuun on the same principle, with the idea that it would dig me five cards deep into another fattie for the next turn. I tested Sphinx in several matches and ran one copy in the event last fall. The problem is neither Regal Force nor the Sphinx is something I can really count on to do much for me. They don't provide enough board presence on their own against the linear aggro decks, which is absolutely essential because there is no room for sweepers or spot removal. And they don't act as effective finishers, because of their vulnerability to Swords to Plowshares and other spot removal.
I am a pretty big fan of Summoning Trap to help increase the density of fatties, making sure I can always get one out ASAP. Summoning Trap basically acts as another copy of one of my good finishers. Eight fatties is generally considered enough to hit on Trap often enough for it to be worth it (for example, the old standard Valakut decks that ran 4 Primeval Titan, 4 Inferno Titan.)
If you didn't run Trap, I agree that Natural Order would be a solid Plan B. I would consider Worldspine Wurm as a target. It has an StP problem, but ok fine I'll gain 15, that buys me a few more turns. Empyrial Archangel would be legit in that deck too. I would either stay completely away from Tooth and Nail, or else go all-in on it and put an instant-win two-creature combo in there. I would also advise that in my experience playing this deck, it is not too hard to reach 6/7 mana but reaching 9 in the early turns doesn't happen quite so often.
Re: Gaea's Cradle, I've never owned one or played with one, so I sort of overlooked it until I saw it in slug360's build. I usually only buy money cards if it's the kind of thing I'd play in "real" legacy or in modern, and I always wrote that one off as an Elves card I had no interest in. Since my mana acceleration starts with a 2-drop, there would be some number of hands where my 2-drop gets killed and suddenly the Cradle is really awkward. But obviously it can be pretty explosive as well. If I had one, I would likely try it in place of the Pendelhaven. Cradle is much stronger in slug360's tokens build than it would be in my build.
1. Ah, Nic Fit! I was coincidentally looking at that recently, because as you saw I happen to have playsets of all the expensive pieces now (Pernicious Deed, Scavenging Ooze, Bayou, Liliana), and it's a nice solid Legacy deck that doesn't care about Tarmogoyf. In the game vs. you didn't show, but Scavenging Ooze is really really powerful, I can see why it's overshadowing Tarmo in more than one pro player's opinion.
Is Hornet Queen used in place of Deranged Hermit then?
3. And yet, you don't have them in your collection! :P (You also have some terrible, white-bordered Wraths of God :P)
4. I'm building my own version of the Snake ramp for future use. Mana fixing aside (I do have Windswept Heath, and also 1x Savannah, but only 1x Tropical Island, so I'm going to use Breeding Pool and maybe Reflecting Pool), I'm going to replace Pendelhaven with Gaea's Cradle (you didn't use it out of budget issues only, or there's some other reason?) Then maybe I'll try and find some room for a Regal Force. Did you consider it?
I like slug360's choices of supporting creatures, actually (purists always turn up their noses at this, but choosing the right support for a ramping tribe, like you said in the video, is far from easy and may lead to a complicate balance in the deck). Craterhoof Behemoth is killer in his build. Would be good in ours too, but Elesh kinda covers that field, if in a less explosive way. Also, some kind of silver bullet, like, in his case, Nullmage Shepherd, or maybe Woodfall Primus/Terastodon might be warranted, even if I wouldn't know what to take out, since Elesh is out of discussion, and 2x Hornet Queens are something I really want to keep. Maybe just +1 Regal Force, -1 Swallower?
This leads me to the only real thing I'd change, which is Summoning Trap. I don't entirely like it (although the instant effect is sweet), possibly because I've a terrible history with it. I can think of two alternatives here, one lower in the curve: Natural Order; one higher: Tooth and Nail. Both would allow me to fetch for Regal Force or the hypothetical silver bullet, whereas your build can't. Do you think the 9 mana for Tooth and Nail make it too risky? Then again, you can fetch Elesh+Hornet at the same time. Or, if you have 7 mana and no finisher in hand, you can fetch 2 of them for 7 and play them in the next two turns. On the other hand, Natural Order would allow me to fetch anything but Elesh, very fast, putting pressure on the opponent with, say, a turn-3 Swallower. What do you think? Maybe 2 of each?
When Scars and M12 were soon to be leaving Standard and RTR was announced, Pauper prices skyrocketed and then RTR metagame rolled in, Pauper plummeted. Now the Standard metagame is being shook up again as people await the (albeit smaller) changes Gatecrash makes and Pauper rises again. Could this be a trend?
Your 5 differences between MTG and MTGO are interesting. But I believe they are mostly a "why TOURNAMENT COMPETITIVE MTG is different from TOURNAMENT COMPETITIVE MTGO". "The game" and "the game played at a tournament competitive level" are two very different things already. Outside assistance, intentional draws, judges, and chess clocks only matter in a tournament competitive environment. They're not inherently part of the game, they're part of the game as it's usually played within that environment.
Now, the infinite rule affects all instances of the game, instead. My opinion on that is similar to my opinion on the chess clocks: the MTGO way is the way that should be, but that the paper world can't apply or afford. In this sense, MTGO is MTG in an ideal universe. In our imperfect universe, we can't have chess clocks at every Magic table (which would include your kitchen table). Also, in our imperfect universe, we need to find an answer to the question, "How many tokens do you create?" When, for the sake of convenience, we allow a player to say, "One million", that's an approximation. And it's a very bad one, because it affects the game in so many ways (including the trending of combo decks). It's also irritating to me, because, no, there's no way you could create one million tokens. It's like pretending you have a superpower that lets you stop time and, worse, perfectly handle a number of objects that the human mind can't possibly handle. Even just saying out loud "I create a token" one million times while tapping and untapping your contraption would take more than one month of time. It's preposterous. Worse: it takes out the strategic choice of deciding how many of those damn tokens you need (I experience this any time I go for a Kiki-Jiki infinite endgame, for instance: he's at 20 life, are 7 Restoration Angels enough? Or is he going to kill one? And so on.) This becomes time management when playing with the clock, a skill you don't need to have on MTG.
There's also a simple proof that the MTGO way is the correct way that the paper universe just can't sustain: they never tried or planned to program into MTGO a dialog box where the client asks you how many times do you want to use an infinitely recursive effect. It wouldn't be that hard to create. But it would be wrong. Ironically, MTGO works within the boundaries of the real life more than MTG in this case.
My 5 differences between MTG and MTGO, overall, competitive play be damned, are these:
1. When you play MTG, you need to move your cards between decks, put them into sleeves, shuffle them, and physically interact with them in several ways. There's not an equivalent for this on MTGO, for better (cards don't deteriotate, you don't need more than 4 copies of any of them) or worse (you don't really own and "feel" a physical object).
2. When you play MTG, you need to manually keep track of life, turns, and counters; do the math on combat damage; flip transformers back and forth; fetch tokens; and whatnot. When you play MTGO, the client takes care of all this stuff, sparing you some brain power, reducing brain exhaustion, and letting you focus on your game choices rather than on accounting work.
3. When you play MTGO, you see the material representation of the rules, the always elusive stack, and even what the rules define as "the game" checking for the status of things. Barring bugs, you don't have to argue with the opponent about a rule, or call for a judge every third turn: the game is your supreme judge. (Of course, as said, bugs permitting.) All this makes you understand the game a lot better than when playing MTG, improving your MTG play too.
4. When you play MTG, you can read your opponent's face, like in a (real life) poker game. When you play MTGO, this aspect is completely lost (if not for some weak stuff like tapping yor mana to bluff an answer or pausing for a miracle). On the same lines, when you play MTG, you're playing a board game, and board games improve your social skills. When you play MTGO, you're playing a videogame, and videogames aren't as good for your social life.
And of course, the most important difference:
5. When you play MTG in public, you need to have your pants on. When you play MTGO, you don't.
In addition to what Cownose says LED is also a highly desirable and played card in Legacy! I don't forsee this card price falling to much if anything at all.
I do like that you can build a tier 1 deck almost instantly online (provided you can afford it), but I don't like the functionality of the program. Nor do I necessarily enjoy the lack of format diversity in paper. Neither one fits me quite right...
I don't really think that LED is going to drop much in price once Vinatge arrives and it becomes restricted. Due to all the shops, nobody is really playing storm in Classic--and storm has been absent from the format for nearly a year as far as I can remember. Either way, I don't see much of the demand for LEDs coming from classic players (unless they are holding $400 worth of LEDs and just not playing with them), so my guess is that changing classic to Vintage wouldn't affect the price by all that much (I actually think LED might be played more in Vintage than it currently is in classic).
1. Although I think Kuma ran Hornet Queen in an insect deck last year, I got the idea to run it from one of the legacy specialists on Team CFB discussing Hornet Queen as an option in his Nic Fit deck. (Nic Fit is the legacy deck that sort-of-ramps into Grave Titans with Veteran Explorer -- whereas most legacy ramp decks use 12-post/Candelabra and don't really look like normal ramp decks.)
2. Ayanam1's avatar deck was pretty solid, but when you're playing ramp decks you have to love sitting down across from the guy with Show and Tell :-) The system only recorded one of our games in Round 3. He did nearly race me in game 2 with a S&T'd Progenitus, but I put Hornet Queen into play off his S&T and was able to follow it up with Elesh Norn to pump the bees (Hornet Queen is 16 flying power with Elesh Norn) to race the nearly un-raceable Proggy. On any given week, I would expect Ayanam1's decklist to be among the favorites for going undefeated, but people do play weird stuff on Underdog week so you never know.
3. As both an instrument and a magic card, glad to see the didgeridoo get the love it deserves at long last.
Thanks for the commentary fellas.
Yeah the browser thing was apparently so much smoke. Too bad as it seemed like a perfect solution to the platform differences the community has. (Macs, Linux machines, iDevices, android devices, etc.)
I am glad you were inspired bdgp009 and I look forward to seeing what you produce!
Nice interview. I think I need to learn a lot from winterwolf about making an interview. Full of emotions. A lot of things that was discuss was a revelation to me on how much i don't know about the community. I really hope to be as good on writing articles and giving info to the community as these guys. Peace and God Bless
No, Worldspine is just a little out of the realm of reasonable so far. Though I did build a wurms breach deck for Modern. Main villain there is Mannequin which catches the wurm as it dies or is discarded.
You've been testing some pretty big mana decks in standard, I remember you mentioned a Door deck, ever go big enough for Worldspine Wurm?
Skullbriar is a fun commander. I made a deck around him and it was a blast to play, and it too won more than I thought it should when I made it.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/multiplayer-monkeyshines-zombies-among-us
Although, as usual, your tek is better than mine.
I especially like the vampire package, it's pretty great.
The main difference was I went with a lot of ETB creatures for ramp, tutoring, and destruction. That way I would get an effect and get a chump blocker. I also packed more graveyard hate for dealing with combo.
One card that I loved playing that you didn't include was Soul's Might. Like Tainted Strike this often made Skullbriar into a one hit killer, but with commander damage.
Looks like I'll have to head to MTGOTraders and buy some more cards to update my deck.
could be. Or it could be the players who were looking for inexpensive sanctioned play moved from 4 pack sealed to pauper. I'll try to remember to watch pauper event sizes towards the end of each season. Pauper was firing at about minimum at the start of RtR.
Truth be told, I share your concerns about Tooth and Nail. I don't know, maybe I just like it too much, and want to see if the 9-mana barrier isn't worth it. You're probably right, though, and you sound like you ran simulations to find out that the average mana threshold of the deck is 7. And if, say, 80% of the time Tooth and Nail is going to be used in the non-entwined version, it's probably not worth it.
And the thing about 4 Natural Orders is that then I don't like the look of them. It makes it look too easy. You end up with 4 mana on turn 3, you do NO, you fetch a fattie with shroud. That's very nondescript, you can do that with every green tribe, it has nothing to do with the structure of the deck.
I'll probably go with the Trap version (which is, you know, the 5-0 version! :), maybe I'll like them better once I got the chance to use them more.
I really think you're looking at Regal Force from the wrong angle, though. It's not a fattie, it's a drawing spell that can be fetched with creature-fetching tools. I don't understand your example, if you think that drawing 7 cards in the deck equal to draw only mana dorks, then that's true of the opening hand too. How is drawing 7 new cards after downloading your full hand a bad thing? :)
But it's probably because you envision it as something you draw into when you'd need to draw into a threat instead. I envision it as something you fetch at the right moment. Of course, going back to the Trap build, Regal Force is semi-useless, since it would be only based on the luck of drawing into it when it's needed.
And at this point, this might be true of Woodfall Primus as well (or Terastodon; do you like the Treefolk better? I generally do, but Terastodon is probably more powerful overall, and I thought you would ditch the Primus because of the smaller body. Terastodon is more versatile in that you can use it as an overwhelming attack force when it has no targets, putting the surplus lands to use). If there's nothing to really fetch the solution when it's needed, you can't count on a singleton copy to show up right after the opponent has dropped the noncreature thing that's killing you.
Bottom line: if I go back to Traps, I won't change anything in the build but lands. :)
The video makes the cards pretty hard to read. Also not being able to see what flipped the delvers is a little annoying.
...so Sinkhole is pretty good. Isolated Chapel was actually an accidental include because I just had a pile of nonbasics in the deckbuilding window before the DE to compare them and accidentally left it in. Encroach in the sideboard is extra sad.
where Worldspine really shines is when you can either discard it for value (assuming you don't NO it into play) or where you can sneak it into play somehow. I agree that it isn't something you want to try and cast straight unless you are playing some super ramp engine.
Infinite combos should be tourney-only as well. If you're in a casual game where the guy doesn't freak out over your combo, you can demonstrate the win, and then one of the two of you can hit the "concede" button, with you feeling a moral victory either way.
Dec 8, 2012 - Uploaded by allisandroid Exynos 4412 Quad Core ICS Phone: Freelander I20 with 720P Gorilla Glass Screen & 13MP Camera More ...
If you want to run a variant of the deck, by all means make it your own, make it fit your playstyle. Just offering suggestions about your proposed changes.
The problem with Regal Force is this: once you reach 7 mana to cast it, most of the cards you could draw are nearly irrelevant. At 7 mana, the only thing that matters is drawing into fatties, you don't care about the chaff. In the game we played, had you wiped my board, a fist full of Cobras and Sakura-tribe Elders wouldn't have won me the game. Only the fatties matter at that stage.
Look at it like this. Regal Force will not win you the game with its body against any decent opposition. If the Regal Force draws you into a creature that WILL win the game, which is the best case scenario, then you may as well have just replaced Regal Force with that creature in the first place. If it draws you a grip full of manadorks, then it was basically useless.
If you don't like the variance of Trap and want to try something else -- which I understand, although I consider a whiffed Trap to at least have put 7 useless cards on the bottom of my library, which isn't nothing -- I still think you should go all in on either NO or T&N rather than split, and then retool the deck accordingly. If you don't want to play an instant win combo with Tooth and Nail, it really isn't worth playing IMHO. If you're just fetching fatties with it, at sorcery speed, you're setting yourself a turn behind, and you may not have a turn to lose against some decks. If you're putting fatties into play, it's only really an improvement over just casting them when you have two fatties in hand. If you're entwining, that's great, but for 9 mana, which is much tougher than 7 in this deck, you should be instantly winning the game.
If I was ditching the traps, I would go 4 NO, cut a Sky Swallower for a Woodfall Primus, and call it a day. The only reason I suggested the green Exarch is that, even in a ramp deck, he's more realistically castable if he's in your hand than those 8 and 9 drop guys are. If I run the deck again, I will stick with Traps, but will replace one SSS with a Woodfall Primus.
Seems like a cool guy! I think the biggest problem with the client this time around is that we were lead on to believe we would get this browser based, fantastic, huge improvement over the current client, and it just isn't anywhere near that. (In my opinion.)
1. I was thinking of this kind of deck (which is from 1 year ago). Legacy, not Extended Rock. Won a StarCity invitational. They use GSZ as a toolbox and they always have/had the Hermit in there.
3. The thing is: your crappy white-bordered WoG costs pretty much the same as a black-bordered 10th Edition one! I'm sorry, I can't condone the use of any white-bordered card, ever. :)
4. The 6-mana guy from Scars block? Brutalizer Exarch? That leaves a pretty lame body behind, can't be Legacy material. What would you take out for this slot, anyway?
Regal Force and Sphinx of Uthuun have different functions to me. The Sphinx digs for specific things you'd like to draw, it's a Fact or Fiction. And it's blue, which means you either draw into it or you need to have some particular fetcher like Chord of Calling, which I don't see happen (also because you would have, like, 100 better targets to fetch with that). At that point, it's better to run a real Fact or Fiction in her place (or, you know, a Jace). On the other hand, in the right deck Regal Force completely restores your hand. It's like restarting: what your deck did until that point, you're going to do it all over again. Time it well, and it'll creates an unrecoverable situation for the opponent. I don't think I ever lost a game where a Regal Force gave me 5-6 fresh cards. The body is just a bonus at that point, the fact that it's a creature only matters in that you can Natural Order it or GSZ for it and so. Being green makes it easier.
Think about your board position in our game. You did that whole explosive start, you filled the board with mana creatures, then you had one Simic Sky Swallower and an empty hand. If I had managed to activate the Pernicious for 7, you would have lost everything, and very likely the game. If you didn't have that single Swallower in hand, I would have swept the board next turn, and again you would have lost right there. But if at that point you had a Regal Force, or a mean to fetch it, that would have given you 7 fresh cards, which mean even if I had swept the board, you would have restarted your battleplan all over again while my resources would have been depleted.
Both Regal and Gaea's Cradle are used in Elf decks. But the thing is: those decks work in a very similar way to this one. You can learn from them and translate their tricks into new forms. The Cradle is just amazing in Tribal, everywhere. You just need two creatures on the board to make it good. People aren't using it too much because has become impossibly pricey. If it were 1-tix, you'd see it in every deck. Back when I bought mine, it was 10 tix or less. Then it became expensive and I never got to buy another one, also because one is great, two in a deck that's not all about abusing them can screw your starting hand. But every deck with 20 creatures is enough for the Cradle to be good.
I don't want to go the Tooth and Nail combo route with this deck. It would become a whole different deck really quick. You put 1x Kiki-Jiki and 1x Sky Hussar in there, then you'd need Brainstorm to shuffle them back if you draw into them, and so on. It'll change the deck entirely. This isn't meant to be a combo deck, I see it as more streamlined. Same goes for Worldspine Wurm. I like the Wurm very much, it's a great Natural Order target, possibly one of the top 3 now. But this isn't a Natural Order deck. What if I draw into the Wurm? It's a 11-mana creature, it would be stuck in my hand forever, and I don't have ways to shuffle it back. I considered Empyrial Archangel myself, but I just assumed you did too and discarded it because with Swallower and Elesh you don't really need her. Swallower is a better finisher. And what's the scenario where Empyrial does better than Elesh? If you are facing a horde of weenies, Elesh just sweeps them away. If you're facing stuff that Elesh can't sweep away, the Empyrial isn't going to last either. Plus, she's 8 mana with 3 different colors and double white.
All in all, I feel confident to try 2x Natural Order and 2x Tooth and Nail in place of the Traps. Looking at Tooth and Nail like a 7-mana tutors for 2 finishers, which occasionally works as 7-mana double Show and Tell, and occasionally as a 9-mana sort-of-endgame. You can easily do a noncombo endgame where you win 90% of the times fetching Hornet Queen and Craterhoof Behemoth. Except I still have Regal Force, Craterhoof Behemoth and Terastodon all competing for 1 slot which isn't even there yet. :) I think I'm going to add something as a 61st card.
1. Hornet Queen was suggested as a possibility, but Nic Fit is one of those "pet decks" that certain players have, and there isn't much that is standard about it's fattie selection other than Grave Titan. But yes, in essence, I suppose it would be similar to the role Deranged Hermit used to play in Extended Rock decks.
3. The crappy white bordered Wrath of Gods were purchased for a UW Reveillark tribal deck I haven't run yet, and I'm pretty sure I bought them when I was low on funds so just got the cheapest ones available to playtest it. You can maybe tell from my deck history and comments in videos that I'm more of a Firespout kind of guy than a Wrath kind of guy. If they had the original Quinton Hoover art available I'd pay a premium to own that, but they do not.
4. If I were running the deck again, I would consider Woodfall Primus or Terastodon (or maybe the 6 mana guy from Scars block, can't recall the name) just to at least have one out against noncreature permanents.
Although I never ran Regal Force, I did try out Sphinx of Uthuun on the same principle, with the idea that it would dig me five cards deep into another fattie for the next turn. I tested Sphinx in several matches and ran one copy in the event last fall. The problem is neither Regal Force nor the Sphinx is something I can really count on to do much for me. They don't provide enough board presence on their own against the linear aggro decks, which is absolutely essential because there is no room for sweepers or spot removal. And they don't act as effective finishers, because of their vulnerability to Swords to Plowshares and other spot removal.
I am a pretty big fan of Summoning Trap to help increase the density of fatties, making sure I can always get one out ASAP. Summoning Trap basically acts as another copy of one of my good finishers. Eight fatties is generally considered enough to hit on Trap often enough for it to be worth it (for example, the old standard Valakut decks that ran 4 Primeval Titan, 4 Inferno Titan.)
If you didn't run Trap, I agree that Natural Order would be a solid Plan B. I would consider Worldspine Wurm as a target. It has an StP problem, but ok fine I'll gain 15, that buys me a few more turns. Empyrial Archangel would be legit in that deck too. I would either stay completely away from Tooth and Nail, or else go all-in on it and put an instant-win two-creature combo in there. I would also advise that in my experience playing this deck, it is not too hard to reach 6/7 mana but reaching 9 in the early turns doesn't happen quite so often.
Re: Gaea's Cradle, I've never owned one or played with one, so I sort of overlooked it until I saw it in slug360's build. I usually only buy money cards if it's the kind of thing I'd play in "real" legacy or in modern, and I always wrote that one off as an Elves card I had no interest in. Since my mana acceleration starts with a 2-drop, there would be some number of hands where my 2-drop gets killed and suddenly the Cradle is really awkward. But obviously it can be pretty explosive as well. If I had one, I would likely try it in place of the Pendelhaven. Cradle is much stronger in slug360's tokens build than it would be in my build.
1. Ah, Nic Fit! I was coincidentally looking at that recently, because as you saw I happen to have playsets of all the expensive pieces now (Pernicious Deed, Scavenging Ooze, Bayou, Liliana), and it's a nice solid Legacy deck that doesn't care about Tarmogoyf. In the game vs. you didn't show, but Scavenging Ooze is really really powerful, I can see why it's overshadowing Tarmo in more than one pro player's opinion.
Is Hornet Queen used in place of Deranged Hermit then?
3. And yet, you don't have them in your collection! :P (You also have some terrible, white-bordered Wraths of God :P)
4. I'm building my own version of the Snake ramp for future use. Mana fixing aside (I do have Windswept Heath, and also 1x Savannah, but only 1x Tropical Island, so I'm going to use Breeding Pool and maybe Reflecting Pool), I'm going to replace Pendelhaven with Gaea's Cradle (you didn't use it out of budget issues only, or there's some other reason?) Then maybe I'll try and find some room for a Regal Force. Did you consider it?
I like slug360's choices of supporting creatures, actually (purists always turn up their noses at this, but choosing the right support for a ramping tribe, like you said in the video, is far from easy and may lead to a complicate balance in the deck). Craterhoof Behemoth is killer in his build. Would be good in ours too, but Elesh kinda covers that field, if in a less explosive way. Also, some kind of silver bullet, like, in his case, Nullmage Shepherd, or maybe Woodfall Primus/Terastodon might be warranted, even if I wouldn't know what to take out, since Elesh is out of discussion, and 2x Hornet Queens are something I really want to keep. Maybe just +1 Regal Force, -1 Swallower?
This leads me to the only real thing I'd change, which is Summoning Trap. I don't entirely like it (although the instant effect is sweet), possibly because I've a terrible history with it. I can think of two alternatives here, one lower in the curve: Natural Order; one higher: Tooth and Nail. Both would allow me to fetch for Regal Force or the hypothetical silver bullet, whereas your build can't. Do you think the 9 mana for Tooth and Nail make it too risky? Then again, you can fetch Elesh+Hornet at the same time. Or, if you have 7 mana and no finisher in hand, you can fetch 2 of them for 7 and play them in the next two turns. On the other hand, Natural Order would allow me to fetch anything but Elesh, very fast, putting pressure on the opponent with, say, a turn-3 Swallower. What do you think? Maybe 2 of each?
When Scars and M12 were soon to be leaving Standard and RTR was announced, Pauper prices skyrocketed and then RTR metagame rolled in, Pauper plummeted. Now the Standard metagame is being shook up again as people await the (albeit smaller) changes Gatecrash makes and Pauper rises again. Could this be a trend?
Just noticed - the second deck I listed under Modern is actually Legacy. The part about winning the GP is right, but the GP was Legacy.
Your 5 differences between MTG and MTGO are interesting. But I believe they are mostly a "why TOURNAMENT COMPETITIVE MTG is different from TOURNAMENT COMPETITIVE MTGO". "The game" and "the game played at a tournament competitive level" are two very different things already. Outside assistance, intentional draws, judges, and chess clocks only matter in a tournament competitive environment. They're not inherently part of the game, they're part of the game as it's usually played within that environment.
Now, the infinite rule affects all instances of the game, instead. My opinion on that is similar to my opinion on the chess clocks: the MTGO way is the way that should be, but that the paper world can't apply or afford. In this sense, MTGO is MTG in an ideal universe. In our imperfect universe, we can't have chess clocks at every Magic table (which would include your kitchen table). Also, in our imperfect universe, we need to find an answer to the question, "How many tokens do you create?" When, for the sake of convenience, we allow a player to say, "One million", that's an approximation. And it's a very bad one, because it affects the game in so many ways (including the trending of combo decks). It's also irritating to me, because, no, there's no way you could create one million tokens. It's like pretending you have a superpower that lets you stop time and, worse, perfectly handle a number of objects that the human mind can't possibly handle. Even just saying out loud "I create a token" one million times while tapping and untapping your contraption would take more than one month of time. It's preposterous. Worse: it takes out the strategic choice of deciding how many of those damn tokens you need (I experience this any time I go for a Kiki-Jiki infinite endgame, for instance: he's at 20 life, are 7 Restoration Angels enough? Or is he going to kill one? And so on.) This becomes time management when playing with the clock, a skill you don't need to have on MTG.
There's also a simple proof that the MTGO way is the correct way that the paper universe just can't sustain: they never tried or planned to program into MTGO a dialog box where the client asks you how many times do you want to use an infinitely recursive effect. It wouldn't be that hard to create. But it would be wrong. Ironically, MTGO works within the boundaries of the real life more than MTG in this case.
My 5 differences between MTG and MTGO, overall, competitive play be damned, are these:
1. When you play MTG, you need to move your cards between decks, put them into sleeves, shuffle them, and physically interact with them in several ways. There's not an equivalent for this on MTGO, for better (cards don't deteriotate, you don't need more than 4 copies of any of them) or worse (you don't really own and "feel" a physical object).
2. When you play MTG, you need to manually keep track of life, turns, and counters; do the math on combat damage; flip transformers back and forth; fetch tokens; and whatnot. When you play MTGO, the client takes care of all this stuff, sparing you some brain power, reducing brain exhaustion, and letting you focus on your game choices rather than on accounting work.
3. When you play MTGO, you see the material representation of the rules, the always elusive stack, and even what the rules define as "the game" checking for the status of things. Barring bugs, you don't have to argue with the opponent about a rule, or call for a judge every third turn: the game is your supreme judge. (Of course, as said, bugs permitting.) All this makes you understand the game a lot better than when playing MTG, improving your MTG play too.
4. When you play MTG, you can read your opponent's face, like in a (real life) poker game. When you play MTGO, this aspect is completely lost (if not for some weak stuff like tapping yor mana to bluff an answer or pausing for a miracle). On the same lines, when you play MTG, you're playing a board game, and board games improve your social skills. When you play MTGO, you're playing a videogame, and videogames aren't as good for your social life.
And of course, the most important difference:
5. When you play MTG in public, you need to have your pants on. When you play MTGO, you don't.
In addition to what Cownose says LED is also a highly desirable and played card in Legacy! I don't forsee this card price falling to much if anything at all.
I do like that you can build a tier 1 deck almost instantly online (provided you can afford it), but I don't like the functionality of the program. Nor do I necessarily enjoy the lack of format diversity in paper. Neither one fits me quite right...
Good article as always Pete, one thing though:
I don't really think that LED is going to drop much in price once Vinatge arrives and it becomes restricted. Due to all the shops, nobody is really playing storm in Classic--and storm has been absent from the format for nearly a year as far as I can remember. Either way, I don't see much of the demand for LEDs coming from classic players (unless they are holding $400 worth of LEDs and just not playing with them), so my guess is that changing classic to Vintage wouldn't affect the price by all that much (I actually think LED might be played more in Vintage than it currently is in classic).
1. Although I think Kuma ran Hornet Queen in an insect deck last year, I got the idea to run it from one of the legacy specialists on Team CFB discussing Hornet Queen as an option in his Nic Fit deck. (Nic Fit is the legacy deck that sort-of-ramps into Grave Titans with Veteran Explorer -- whereas most legacy ramp decks use 12-post/Candelabra and don't really look like normal ramp decks.)
2. Ayanam1's avatar deck was pretty solid, but when you're playing ramp decks you have to love sitting down across from the guy with Show and Tell :-) The system only recorded one of our games in Round 3. He did nearly race me in game 2 with a S&T'd Progenitus, but I put Hornet Queen into play off his S&T and was able to follow it up with Elesh Norn to pump the bees (Hornet Queen is 16 flying power with Elesh Norn) to race the nearly un-raceable Proggy. On any given week, I would expect Ayanam1's decklist to be among the favorites for going undefeated, but people do play weird stuff on Underdog week so you never know.
3. As both an instrument and a magic card, glad to see the didgeridoo get the love it deserves at long last.
Well I'll be a monkey's uncle! You can! I didn't realize cause my cursor didn't change when I hovered over. Good work, dudes.