I've been partial to Clockwork Dragons and Cloudposts since I opened my first pack of Mirrodin, so #21 is easily my favorite on the list. I kept my deck fairly innocent, although I did start turning towards the dark side once Lodestone Golum was printed...
Next time, bring a "broken" deck though. You win just as often and you have far more fun doing it. The trick is to find the "broken" that the least amount of people were ready for... and get a little lucky too.
Thank you. It's a pity that the other formats are much more difficult to work on without at least another person. Over the next few weeks, I'll be making some effort to take a look at Modern, try to qualify for the MOCS season 1 and have a deck by then but the notice towards the MOCS format was too short for me to react to. Hope to be back next month to be able to share something substancial.
i would like the fatal hour because the way i play esp in draft i tend to let my life drop to protect my creatures anyway so i can stabilize and comeback. fatal is for me
I agree for the obvious choices green doesn't cut it but LE as I pointed out is rather known for his interesting choices that make an otherwise meh card better than we thought.
Also I really like the GerryT deck concept but not the deck itself. Brad Nelson did a revision taking out the red actually for more black and I must say the esper version is insanely sweet.
Honestly lately mono-green just seems bad. I have a friend who runs the mostly mono green wolf run deck with dungroves and he does well with it, mostly because he is a good player though not so much because green is that great. I think you can have a monogreen deck, but it will definitely have some glaring holes.
Interesting analysis of IC. I am not sure I would compare a 1-2 shot spell to a planeswalker. Very few cards measure up to that. If you are trying to say Jace is unplayable and better that might be true and it might not be.
For one thing we may be talking about different levels of magic. I am almost NEVER discussing top level decks because the top is usually fairly limited to whatever rock-paper-scissors configuration exists with little room for creative building.
Where as at lower tiers (particularly facing random opponents) some strategies become not only playable but popular because the hate for them is mitigated by the randomness of the selection.
For another, there is a deck that abuses Runic Repetition (self milling along the lines of Doomsday decks of yore.) As far as I know it is not (nor will ever be) a top tiered deck but it seems like with the right cards it could be up there. IC would fit in with it, which is what I referring to.
I like the idea of Mind Control as a creature but then again I am thinking more along the lines of a tribal wars legacy effect (read niche) rather than standard top tier type decks.
I think it has merit in niche formats where as obviously no one plays Mind Control in Pro level decks. Well unless you count ones designed by Chapin and the like (http://affinityforislands.wordpress.com/tag/pro-tour/).
Good point on heartless...got excited by the idea of making it playable in a timely manner, and forgot I'd also need a way to make it deal damage. Too bad there are no good equipments to toss on it.
Enjoyed the read. It was nice to actually see an article with - gasp! - words and paragraphs in relation to classic preparation and theory. Congrats on the winter success!
Undying can be better, but fateful hour is more interesting to me.
I'm surprised by Winter.Wolf's card selection. Soul Seizer is just a worse Mind Control, and that card didn't eliminate titans. The heartless version doesn't deal damage, hence useless on its own. Increasing Confusion seems extremely slow. You have 7 lands, tap them all, mill 12 cards, then you spend 3 manas to get it back, one more to put it in your graveyard, and tap out again to mill 12 cards. Compare it to Jace, Memory Adept, which mills 10 cards and stays on the battlefield. I would say Increasing Confusion can be a one-of in self milling decks, as those can put it in the graveyard easily. But it doesn't make mill decks playable. If other cards do that, then it can be played in those decks.
There is already the hex parasite. So we have that.
As Winter.Wolf on mtgo my preference is for fateful hour. It is one of those johnny abilities that are hard to break in a competitive environment but will see some shenanigans in any format where there is time to set up a combo.
Though so far my favorite preview card is the Soul Seizer. The licid mechanic was hard to use but fun and this looks easier to use and more fun. Simply give it unblockable in some form and viola steal a creature. (Preferably a titan). In fact I suspect titan based decks may be history while this card is in standard. I can see a heartless version being cheap enough to warrant main deck Naturalizes or other quick forms of enchant hate.
Also of interest is the new mill with flashback card (Increasing Confusion). I can see that being used in a turbo mill deck with just paying blue and x=0 and then flash back for x and then recall it with the card that unexiles flashback cards.
LE it was my pleasure to write the article and I'm glad you were happy with it. Every week you provide us with lots of inspiration in the form of deck lists and tech. Some of my favorites are touched on here. BUG anything, Solar Flare, Olivia variants, heartless pod, etc. (Also some of my least favorites, lol standard is so wide open: Delver, RDW. )
I've noticed no mention of monogreen options. Are they just too limited or is it simply a color you don't like in mono? (I have a hard time with any mono colored deck because I like having multiple angles.)
Jeffery, I am obviously talking about MTGO and not MTG (as this is an online Magic site). You may want to check www.mtgotraders.com for prices. As of now, Snapcaster costs $9,00 per copy.
And thanks Ricardo, I'm glad to hear that someone will find this article useful.
I haven't yet had the time to read this but at first glance this should deserve more than 5 fireballs. I'll expand this as soon as I can read the interview properly! :-)
Yup, this is Great. I especially second this: (Winter.Wolf: Please allow me to disagree slightly with this last statement and omit the second class part. I respectfully submit that Lord Erman is one of the, if not THE most influential writers on Puremtgo and in fact all of MTGO. Not for the pros of course. Certainly not for the limited only players. And not necessarily for the die-hard fans of specific niches. But for most of the rest of us who struggle to build, win and enjoy, Lord Erman makes MTGO that much more interesting.)
Kudos to Lord Erman for his dedication and to Winter.Wolf for making this dedication even clearer to the rest of us!
i mean i completely understand the point of value in strict financial terms but what about individual perceived value? I mean I personally enjoy standard due to the constant influx and eventual rotation of cards. I mean sure a deck might stick around for a while but i also know it will eventually rotate out as well. In classic it seems to me that while there is some variation in the meta its more of a cycle to me and not a constantly changign thing, if that makes sense.
One more thing I would like pointed out is what is the value of your collection when you are finished playing?
Standard players are forces to constantly buy cards at their peak values, knowing full well that in 2 or less years those cards will only fetch a small fraction of what they paid for them. Buying standard cards is investing in a rapidly depreciating asset.
This is NOT the case with classic sets, however. Several years down the line, the people who bought in to Classic will have collections worth MORE than what they orignially paid for them, not less. Those of us who have been with classic from the beginning rememebr getting forces for $13, Tarmogoyfs for $15, Null Rods for $10, etc. etc.
The questions then becomes: does the added availablilty of Standard events make up for the devaluation of your collection. If you are someone who plays constantly, 4 or 5 events a week, then it almost surely does and Standard is your best bet. I think this (and the big buy-in) is why most classic players tend to be older people with families. We werent going to be able to play in more than 1 event a week anyway, so for us it is pretty irrelevant how many events a week fire, so long as the one we could play in does.
If someone wants to play for profit, I suggest taking some time and making efforts to becoming better than everyone else. Rapidly firing does not equal profit unless you're much more resourceful and skillful than others. On my side, I would suggest playing something you enjoy (and can afford). Honestly, I would recommend constructed as a whole to be profitable but I can't say what format to play in because I would believe that I fall directly at the wrong end of what you are saying about how standard, pauper, momir and block would be profitable (which is why I dropped out from those formats).
Because even though you can quickly profit from Standard/Black, you must continually spend your profits to build new decks as it rotates. With Classic, generally that's not the case, and that's what the thrust of Pete's section was.
In the end, it depends really entirely on HOW MUCH magic you can play. If you are a 20 year-old intent on ignoring your studies or a 23 year-old with a job but no wife/kids, and you've got 8 hours a day or more to spend on Magic, there's probably no way you could beat STD, as your availablity lets you take advantage of STDs massive schedule.
If you find you are not able to put that much time into magic... like you are reduced to 4-6 hours a week because Magic time is only a weekend thing for you - due to whatever reasons - you are not in a position to take advantage of STD at all - you'll never make a profit in this area.
Also, your scenario requires to you be good enough at magic to consistently place in events. I'm sorry to tell you that if you are visiting a magic strategy site such as this one, you are sadly talking to a minority of players. Average players DON'T place that much in events. However, investment in classic has shown to be the only area where you can come out ahead by simple ownership and market forces. You don't have to win a god-damned thing in Classic to come out ahead.
In other words, if you are a magic nut who has the time to become a winner, play standard. If not, the only way you'll profit is by investing long-term.
First, I'm not really sure where you get that this is my mindset. Like I said, I prefer Classic to Standard and have been playing more events in it, when I feel like playing classic I jump in the queue.
However, unless someone wants to base competitive play around scheduling a couple events a week or somehow has the ability to convince a huge portion of magic players to change what they are doing, competitive standard is much much cheaper than competitive classic. Suppose you average 4 tickets profit per event played, (this is a fairly low average and is a little under 3-1'ing every other event and never 4-0ing,) you can fairly quickly start to pay off your deck. How long would this take you in classic? How many classic daily's have even fired for a player to have a chance this week?
If someone wants to play competitive magic for cheap/little bit of profit, and I was going to be honest with them, I would never ever suggest classic. Pauper, Momir, and Block are the formats that would be at the top, but Standard is so far ahead of Classic in ease to come out ahead.
Catch-22 there I think. I mean the people not joining probably have in the past then thought it wouldn't fire but forgot to leave, went to do something else time consuming only to come back to eventual auto losses. Not say that happens very often but I can imagine that being one reason people wait to join.
I've been partial to Clockwork Dragons and Cloudposts since I opened my first pack of Mirrodin, so #21 is easily my favorite on the list. I kept my deck fairly innocent, although I did start turning towards the dark side once Lodestone Golum was printed...
I like the monoblue version better.
holy mackeral lots of dex!
Next time, bring a "broken" deck though. You win just as often and you have far more fun doing it. The trick is to find the "broken" that the least amount of people were ready for... and get a little lucky too.
Thank you. It's a pity that the other formats are much more difficult to work on without at least another person. Over the next few weeks, I'll be making some effort to take a look at Modern, try to qualify for the MOCS season 1 and have a deck by then but the notice towards the MOCS format was too short for me to react to. Hope to be back next month to be able to share something substancial.
Undying is sick - espec if there is an enchantment -"Creatures You Control Have Undying" un: d0tstar
i would like the fatal hour because the way i play esp in draft i tend to let my life drop to protect my creatures anyway so i can stabilize and comeback. fatal is for me
I agree for the obvious choices green doesn't cut it but LE as I pointed out is rather known for his interesting choices that make an otherwise meh card better than we thought.
Also I really like the GerryT deck concept but not the deck itself. Brad Nelson did a revision taking out the red actually for more black and I must say the esper version is insanely sweet.
Honestly lately mono-green just seems bad. I have a friend who runs the mostly mono green wolf run deck with dungroves and he does well with it, mostly because he is a good player though not so much because green is that great. I think you can have a monogreen deck, but it will definitely have some glaring holes.
Interesting analysis of IC. I am not sure I would compare a 1-2 shot spell to a planeswalker. Very few cards measure up to that. If you are trying to say Jace is unplayable and better that might be true and it might not be.
For one thing we may be talking about different levels of magic. I am almost NEVER discussing top level decks because the top is usually fairly limited to whatever rock-paper-scissors configuration exists with little room for creative building.
Where as at lower tiers (particularly facing random opponents) some strategies become not only playable but popular because the hate for them is mitigated by the randomness of the selection.
For another, there is a deck that abuses Runic Repetition (self milling along the lines of Doomsday decks of yore.) As far as I know it is not (nor will ever be) a top tiered deck but it seems like with the right cards it could be up there. IC would fit in with it, which is what I referring to.
I like the idea of Mind Control as a creature but then again I am thinking more along the lines of a tribal wars legacy effect (read niche) rather than standard top tier type decks.
I think it has merit in niche formats where as obviously no one plays Mind Control in Pro level decks. Well unless you count ones designed by Chapin and the like (http://affinityforislands.wordpress.com/tag/pro-tour/).
Good point on heartless...got excited by the idea of making it playable in a timely manner, and forgot I'd also need a way to make it deal damage. Too bad there are no good equipments to toss on it.
Enjoyed the read. It was nice to actually see an article with - gasp! - words and paragraphs in relation to classic preparation and theory. Congrats on the winter success!
Undying can be better, but fateful hour is more interesting to me.
I'm surprised by Winter.Wolf's card selection. Soul Seizer is just a worse Mind Control, and that card didn't eliminate titans. The heartless version doesn't deal damage, hence useless on its own. Increasing Confusion seems extremely slow. You have 7 lands, tap them all, mill 12 cards, then you spend 3 manas to get it back, one more to put it in your graveyard, and tap out again to mill 12 cards. Compare it to Jace, Memory Adept, which mills 10 cards and stays on the battlefield. I would say Increasing Confusion can be a one-of in self milling decks, as those can put it in the graveyard easily. But it doesn't make mill decks playable. If other cards do that, then it can be played in those decks.
There is already the hex parasite. So we have that.
As Winter.Wolf on mtgo my preference is for fateful hour. It is one of those johnny abilities that are hard to break in a competitive environment but will see some shenanigans in any format where there is time to set up a combo.
Though so far my favorite preview card is the Soul Seizer. The licid mechanic was hard to use but fun and this looks easier to use and more fun. Simply give it unblockable in some form and viola steal a creature. (Preferably a titan). In fact I suspect titan based decks may be history while this card is in standard. I can see a heartless version being cheap enough to warrant main deck Naturalizes or other quick forms of enchant hate.
Also of interest is the new mill with flashback card (Increasing Confusion). I can see that being used in a turbo mill deck with just paying blue and x=0 and then flash back for x and then recall it with the card that unexiles flashback cards.
LE it was my pleasure to write the article and I'm glad you were happy with it. Every week you provide us with lots of inspiration in the form of deck lists and tech. Some of my favorites are touched on here. BUG anything, Solar Flare, Olivia variants, heartless pod, etc. (Also some of my least favorites, lol standard is so wide open: Delver, RDW. )
I've noticed no mention of monogreen options. Are they just too limited or is it simply a color you don't like in mono? (I have a hard time with any mono colored deck because I like having multiple angles.)
Really excited for Undying. Hoping for a evil combo that requires the removal of a +1/+1 counter.
Jeffery, I am obviously talking about MTGO and not MTG (as this is an online Magic site). You may want to check www.mtgotraders.com for prices. As of now, Snapcaster costs $9,00 per copy.
And thanks Ricardo, I'm glad to hear that someone will find this article useful.
LE
I haven't yet had the time to read this but at first glance this should deserve more than 5 fireballs. I'll expand this as soon as I can read the interview properly! :-)
Yup, this is Great. I especially second this: (Winter.Wolf: Please allow me to disagree slightly with this last statement and omit the second class part. I respectfully submit that Lord Erman is one of the, if not THE most influential writers on Puremtgo and in fact all of MTGO. Not for the pros of course. Certainly not for the limited only players. And not necessarily for the die-hard fans of specific niches. But for most of the rest of us who struggle to build, win and enjoy, Lord Erman makes MTGO that much more interesting.)
Kudos to Lord Erman for his dedication and to Winter.Wolf for making this dedication even clearer to the rest of us!
Belin Gianluca, ti te de Zena pure tie? :D
(Transl. : Hey Gianluca, are you from Genoa too? :D )
i mean i completely understand the point of value in strict financial terms but what about individual perceived value? I mean I personally enjoy standard due to the constant influx and eventual rotation of cards. I mean sure a deck might stick around for a while but i also know it will eventually rotate out as well. In classic it seems to me that while there is some variation in the meta its more of a cycle to me and not a constantly changign thing, if that makes sense.
One more thing I would like pointed out is what is the value of your collection when you are finished playing?
Standard players are forces to constantly buy cards at their peak values, knowing full well that in 2 or less years those cards will only fetch a small fraction of what they paid for them. Buying standard cards is investing in a rapidly depreciating asset.
This is NOT the case with classic sets, however. Several years down the line, the people who bought in to Classic will have collections worth MORE than what they orignially paid for them, not less. Those of us who have been with classic from the beginning rememebr getting forces for $13, Tarmogoyfs for $15, Null Rods for $10, etc. etc.
The questions then becomes: does the added availablilty of Standard events make up for the devaluation of your collection. If you are someone who plays constantly, 4 or 5 events a week, then it almost surely does and Standard is your best bet. I think this (and the big buy-in) is why most classic players tend to be older people with families. We werent going to be able to play in more than 1 event a week anyway, so for us it is pretty irrelevant how many events a week fire, so long as the one we could play in does.
If someone wants to play for profit, I suggest taking some time and making efforts to becoming better than everyone else. Rapidly firing does not equal profit unless you're much more resourceful and skillful than others. On my side, I would suggest playing something you enjoy (and can afford). Honestly, I would recommend constructed as a whole to be profitable but I can't say what format to play in because I would believe that I fall directly at the wrong end of what you are saying about how standard, pauper, momir and block would be profitable (which is why I dropped out from those formats).
Because even though you can quickly profit from Standard/Black, you must continually spend your profits to build new decks as it rotates. With Classic, generally that's not the case, and that's what the thrust of Pete's section was.
In the end, it depends really entirely on HOW MUCH magic you can play. If you are a 20 year-old intent on ignoring your studies or a 23 year-old with a job but no wife/kids, and you've got 8 hours a day or more to spend on Magic, there's probably no way you could beat STD, as your availablity lets you take advantage of STDs massive schedule.
If you find you are not able to put that much time into magic... like you are reduced to 4-6 hours a week because Magic time is only a weekend thing for you - due to whatever reasons - you are not in a position to take advantage of STD at all - you'll never make a profit in this area.
Also, your scenario requires to you be good enough at magic to consistently place in events. I'm sorry to tell you that if you are visiting a magic strategy site such as this one, you are sadly talking to a minority of players. Average players DON'T place that much in events. However, investment in classic has shown to be the only area where you can come out ahead by simple ownership and market forces. You don't have to win a god-damned thing in Classic to come out ahead.
In other words, if you are a magic nut who has the time to become a winner, play standard. If not, the only way you'll profit is by investing long-term.
First, I'm not really sure where you get that this is my mindset. Like I said, I prefer Classic to Standard and have been playing more events in it, when I feel like playing classic I jump in the queue.
However, unless someone wants to base competitive play around scheduling a couple events a week or somehow has the ability to convince a huge portion of magic players to change what they are doing, competitive standard is much much cheaper than competitive classic. Suppose you average 4 tickets profit per event played, (this is a fairly low average and is a little under 3-1'ing every other event and never 4-0ing,) you can fairly quickly start to pay off your deck. How long would this take you in classic? How many classic daily's have even fired for a player to have a chance this week?
If someone wants to play competitive magic for cheap/little bit of profit, and I was going to be honest with them, I would never ever suggest classic. Pauper, Momir, and Block are the formats that would be at the top, but Standard is so far ahead of Classic in ease to come out ahead.
Catch-22 there I think. I mean the people not joining probably have in the past then thought it wouldn't fire but forgot to leave, went to do something else time consuming only to come back to eventual auto losses. Not say that happens very often but I can imagine that being one reason people wait to join.