That does little to quell the other utility role of Dragon's Breath, which is pushing him through after a tense battle with duplicants and metamorphs. I appreciate the banter though. Watch my vids this week in YSO and let me know your thoughts. I'd appreciate it.
"I'm going to suggest that if you want to avoid making emotional outbursts like "Dear God I wish you'd put it together" over questioning such a choice, you'd better come prepared to defend that choice with some actual footage of those matches."
If you think THAT is an emotional outburst you do not know me too well. I also think recording TP room matches do little to drive home any points. I will have the matches I played with the deck for the current season 2 of mmogg's league up in YSO this week.
I'm starting to think you just don't like people taking your suggestions as gospel. I have no problem discussing decks and the reason I played this or didn't play that. Don't take it personally guy.
I'm definitely aware of how Channel works in this deck, I brought it up because there are so many ways to tutor for channel that you are going to have the option to find it and then cast it after playing crypt plenty.
I would run this deck but I lack FOW online, which is the biggest problem with classic/legacy on MTGO, obviously.
If you are that afraid of Jace due to the nature of your deck's win condition, maybe you should have 1 REB maindeck, and probably 2 more sideboard. REB/Pyroblast is the best answer to Jace ever printed, and it makes a pretty good mystical tutor target.
That if RL drafting is significantly different from MTGO, it might hurt either MTGO or RL. Either people who use MTGO to test for RL events will not be able to replicate the situation or people who draft in RL who would rather not tip their hand will forego drafting in RL, either altogether or simply shift online.
I'm in agreement it is a not a good execution of an idea that really doesn't seem worth climbing out of the box for.
i dare say that if you are going to run around saying come with footage or your wrong, you should maybe play the deck.
You have such a concrete view on how it should be built, yet you have never played it. put in the playtesting and tuning that zach and i did and then show us videos of how we are wrong.
until then we have differeing opinions and thats that.
also Im pretty sure that we have never claimed that this deck is the evolution of oath, its just an idea that we are fleshing out.
No prob man. I do leave my com on and doze off lol. Understand you have a family too and they are your priority so was wondering you might be spending time with them. Thanks for the compliment, will try to produce articles that are of better quality.
I just gotten a Pyromancer's Swath deck running would love to test! I'm not sure about the time difference but from Google 10PM PST is 6AM GMT. Right now as of writing it is 3.53AM my time. =)
dual face cards are a huge mistake. While they may make little to no difference online, offline drafting is going to be horrible. I wont be drafting this set in paper because it is not worth having to buy sleeves just to do a draft.
This set looks extremely boring so far, and the general consensus seems to be that its already a huge failure as a set.
Transform is a very subpar mechanic even without the dual face nonsense. Its just bad, throw in dual face and it becomes bad and harmful to the game.
Your argument for not running Sol ring was that it would only give you an Early SnT.
And I made the point that is what makes Sol Ring so awesome it's only allowed in classic - to give you an early ANYTHING is the reason to run it.
If SnT is really the third option for your deck (and I think you'll find that's not evident in the videos, and to boot I'd suggest from the videos it appears more like the 1st option), I'd suggest that you don't need 3 of them in your deck, and one more in the sideboard. With 4 Mystical Tutor, you can easily get 1 after you've tried Channel, and add in other goodies.
Well let's see- from the videos shown here it looks like you played one Jace/Tezz deck (and lost), a couple of fish decks and oath and one nothing deck in rd 4 with a middling record - not much to write home about.
If you've tested it so thoroughly vs Shops and vs all these other decks - so much so that you feel the need to include something as narrow as and as remotely useful as Breath over something as mind-bogglingly useful as Sol Ring, I'm going to suggest that if you want to avoid making emotional outbursts like "Dear God I wish you'd put it together" over questioning such a choice, you'd better come prepared to defend that choice with some actual footage of those matches.
It's funny, but I was thinking about putting together a SnT deck just last week (I'd need 3 more) but this decklist and the videos have done little to convince me such a choice is worthwhile.
Dear God I wish you guys would put it together and run it.... I tested this thing EXTENSIVELY and the breath(s) were cut and added and cut and re-added for a simple reason that would be blatantly obvious if you ran the deck. Without the dragon's breaths there is almost NO OUT to jace. Sure you can beast within, but they are blue and could easily stop that plan. Not to mention the stax decks running 4+ duplicant/metamorph removal effects. The dragon's breaths give us inevitability. The sol Ring does jack.... Try it if you don't believe me.
I understand you guys want to find something to pick apart, but until you run it is this argument is meh...... Sol Ring adds nothing :////
(Look through the list and dispute what I said. I would really love to hear your out to a resolved Jace)
P.S. - aside from situational removal (hurkyl, etc) the number one card I side out is S&T. Only GREAT matchup for s&t is fish, and now they run karakas :(
Looking at the list, My guess would be breath - mostly because with 4 Enmmy in the deck you chance of hitting Breath through Oath is pretty shallow. Hard to say for certain, though.
Sol could gives us an early... O hey wait we run NONE of those spells. Tinker was actually IN the original iteration but was cut as we do not have moxen to support it. Honestly you are wrong Mike, due to the fact the show and tells are the WORST POSSIBLE win condition (see: third option), and the crypt can help there.
I didn't just throw this hot mess together, I tested PLENTY with Sol Ring :/
Sol Ring just gives you an early Jace
Sol Ring just gives you an early Tinker
Sol Ring just gives you an early Time Vault
Sol Ring just gives you the early mana to pay for the Spell Pierce that will counter your gas
... the list goes on. There is basically no argument for not running a Sol ring in a deck that runs as it's main win condition a spell with 2 colorless mana in it. Getting an early ANYTHING in classic is win.
Two cards don't work well together, agreed. You do know channel in this deck is like "play me by turn 4 or I am useless", your argument doesn't really make much sense :/
(if you DO happen to play crypt later, or want to cast channel later with crypt out, the deck runs hurkyl or beast within...)
Decks that want to play Restore Balance, much like Boom/Bust or any other cascade style deck, have serious limitations built around them.
Restore Balance isn't the type of deck that can, or even wants to, go off on turn 1, like a Hypergenesis. Hand Disruption is very good against it, you can counter a lot of the critical plays, and it can't play counterspells to defend itself, again, due to the nature of cascade.
I think a deck like Restore Balance, of which there are many builds, is ultimately not that bad, because it is so inconsistent, can't defend itself, and can be interacted with on several different levels.
As a comparison, I would call Restore Balance a Belcher style glass cannon combo deck, and 12-post as more of a Reanimator/ANT with Mystical Tutor still in the format. Being 1 or 2 turns faster at the cost of consistency and disruption is fine.
I was saying specifically that Mana Crypt and Channel do not play well together, and, truthfully, they do not.
I'm not saying that you want to run Sol Ring at the exclusion of Mana Crypt, I'm saying you want to run Sol Ring, period. I'm not sure what I would cut since I haven't played the deck, but Dragon Breath would probably be the first thing I looked at, and then depending on metagame, Duress.
I think Sol Ring is better than Mana Crypt most of the time, whether or not that is true in this deck is tough to say. If you want that type of effect, and this deck clearly does, Sol Ring should probably be in your deck.
Thanks LE, I enjoyed this article as well. The mic you had may take some getting used to. As you know it was low and you kept breathing into it. But aside from that I'm really glad you can do voice commentaries during gameplay now.
One opponents deck really caught my eye, the Shadow deck. I remember in high school when I played Magic alot during lunch 13 years ago, I had a really nice B/W pestilence deck that had that killing yourself theme and worship, sun droplet, or pariah to save you last minute. That deck was very fun to play for me back then. If you have time you think you can try playing a Shadow deck in an article? After your vacation of course. I'm not sure if flesh reaver is legal still but he was pretty decent with the theme. I wish they would reprint pestilence. Now I'm stuck in Legacy where everyone runs super powerful cards. Besides, my original pestilence deck was made for multiplayer also, so I had to do some tweaking.
I also noticed so many people run Chalice now that it makes the entire deck shut down. Chalice just seems too good against so many pro decks. You said yourself Shadow/suicide was a good theme deck. I'd like to see your take on it and some videos with a commentary.
consider this hand.
emrakul, show and tell, fetch land, oath of druids, channel fow and sol ring.
t1 land sol ring, misstep, do you pitch snt to foW, or if it were crypt you could play snt t1.
same hand but your on the draw. you get a petal. t1 land go from them, t1 land petal channel, he spell pierces you fow he force of wills, if the sol ring were a mana crypt again, you would run it out and win through spell pierce.
since the deck is designed to cheat emrakul into play as fast as possible, then there you go. the life loss is a risk im willing to take, and it has not some up a signifagant amount of times.
I'm not sure if ROE and Shards block were two of the best formats ever, or if it was drafting them next to M10/ZZW, but ROE is probably my favorite format all-time. It just had a ton of removal, situationally powerful cards and seemingly endless archetypes that were all viable.
Any format that gives blue a common counterspell for UU, common removal for all creatures, and still has it as one of the weaker colors is pretty good set design, all things considered.
It isn't that Sol Ring and Channel are synergystic, it is that Mana Crypt and Channel have anti-synergy. You need to be at 16 life for channel to be worthwhile. If you have played Mana Crypt and lost a single die roll, after fetches or cards like Vampiric Tutor it is unlikely you can channel for 15, making it essentially useless.
Your life is relevant vs shops as is colorless mana.
Also, you have 4 FOW 3/4 SnT and Beast Within, and that's not even counting casting multiple 1 colorless spells in a turn, or casting through shops style disruption, spell pierce etc.
I don't know if it was unclear, but I agree with you, Boom/Bust is not "the answer" to 12 post, I just think due to the strategy it will probably have a decent matchup. It is most certainly a crapshoot to hit Boom/Bust, but the general strategy of the deck, Armageddon beats, is going to be fairly strong vs any ramp deck.
The problem of 12-post being generally unanswerable is still an issue with the format. I think it is a far more oppressive strategy than Valakut based decks, and I'm expecting a Cloudpost or Vesuva ban.
I would personally like to see what happens to the format with Valakut in it but Vesuva banned. I'm on the fence about Scapeshift, since it is an easy memoricide target if the deck is too fragile, and cards like blood moon are actually good against Valakut/scapeshift decks.
The format has a serious lack of non-combo viable archetypes and I'm hoping for a lot of changes on and off the banned list to shake it up after the PT.
@ waste/strip.
I feel like this is a much more combo orientated build of oath, and with the myriad and redundant ways to get emrakul into play, its more important to have lands in play.
@ sol ring
Like zach said. Mana crypt is the sol ring. There is litterly no 2colorless costs besides SnT. I will say that yes, against shops sol ring would be great. But thats it, with the prevalence of misstep sol ring is just not the right card for the deck, and it has zero synergy with channel. if we changed around a few slots, well then sure maybe we might want it then. Im with zach i dont think it belongs.
@at beast within
Yea sometimes i miss things, like that interaction. Im pretty sure i acknowledge the mistake in the videos, sorry.
@oath+orchard
Oath trigger goes on the stack and i can not tap a orchard in response. I must have more guys when my t starts, to have the search/mill trigger.
@ Channel.
Yes sometimes fow, misstep, and vamp get in the way, as well as fetches. but sometimes you go t2 channel misstep the pierce and win
Glad to get so many comments on the article. thanks for watching and talking.
That does little to quell the other utility role of Dragon's Breath, which is pushing him through after a tense battle with duplicants and metamorphs. I appreciate the banter though. Watch my vids this week in YSO and let me know your thoughts. I'd appreciate it.
LOL?
"I'm going to suggest that if you want to avoid making emotional outbursts like "Dear God I wish you'd put it together" over questioning such a choice, you'd better come prepared to defend that choice with some actual footage of those matches."
If you think THAT is an emotional outburst you do not know me too well. I also think recording TP room matches do little to drive home any points. I will have the matches I played with the deck for the current season 2 of mmogg's league up in YSO this week.
I'm starting to think you just don't like people taking your suggestions as gospel. I have no problem discussing decks and the reason I played this or didn't play that. Don't take it personally guy.
I'm definitely aware of how Channel works in this deck, I brought it up because there are so many ways to tutor for channel that you are going to have the option to find it and then cast it after playing crypt plenty.
I would run this deck but I lack FOW online, which is the biggest problem with classic/legacy on MTGO, obviously.
If you are that afraid of Jace due to the nature of your deck's win condition, maybe you should have 1 REB maindeck, and probably 2 more sideboard. REB/Pyroblast is the best answer to Jace ever printed, and it makes a pretty good mystical tutor target.
That if RL drafting is significantly different from MTGO, it might hurt either MTGO or RL. Either people who use MTGO to test for RL events will not be able to replicate the situation or people who draft in RL who would rather not tip their hand will forego drafting in RL, either altogether or simply shift online.
I'm in agreement it is a not a good execution of an idea that really doesn't seem worth climbing out of the box for.
i dare say that if you are going to run around saying come with footage or your wrong, you should maybe play the deck.
You have such a concrete view on how it should be built, yet you have never played it. put in the playtesting and tuning that zach and i did and then show us videos of how we are wrong.
until then we have differeing opinions and thats that.
also Im pretty sure that we have never claimed that this deck is the evolution of oath, its just an idea that we are fleshing out.
No prob man. I do leave my com on and doze off lol. Understand you have a family too and they are your priority so was wondering you might be spending time with them. Thanks for the compliment, will try to produce articles that are of better quality.
I just gotten a Pyromancer's Swath deck running would love to test! I'm not sure about the time difference but from Google 10PM PST is 6AM GMT. Right now as of writing it is 3.53AM my time. =)
dual face cards are a huge mistake. While they may make little to no difference online, offline drafting is going to be horrible. I wont be drafting this set in paper because it is not worth having to buy sleeves just to do a draft.
This set looks extremely boring so far, and the general consensus seems to be that its already a huge failure as a set.
Transform is a very subpar mechanic even without the dual face nonsense. Its just bad, throw in dual face and it becomes bad and harmful to the game.
Your argument for not running Sol ring was that it would only give you an Early SnT.
And I made the point that is what makes Sol Ring so awesome it's only allowed in classic - to give you an early ANYTHING is the reason to run it.
If SnT is really the third option for your deck (and I think you'll find that's not evident in the videos, and to boot I'd suggest from the videos it appears more like the 1st option), I'd suggest that you don't need 3 of them in your deck, and one more in the sideboard. With 4 Mystical Tutor, you can easily get 1 after you've tried Channel, and add in other goodies.
Well let's see- from the videos shown here it looks like you played one Jace/Tezz deck (and lost), a couple of fish decks and oath and one nothing deck in rd 4 with a middling record - not much to write home about.
If you've tested it so thoroughly vs Shops and vs all these other decks - so much so that you feel the need to include something as narrow as and as remotely useful as Breath over something as mind-bogglingly useful as Sol Ring, I'm going to suggest that if you want to avoid making emotional outbursts like "Dear God I wish you'd put it together" over questioning such a choice, you'd better come prepared to defend that choice with some actual footage of those matches.
It's funny, but I was thinking about putting together a SnT deck just last week (I'd need 3 more) but this decklist and the videos have done little to convince me such a choice is worthwhile.
Dear God I wish you guys would put it together and run it.... I tested this thing EXTENSIVELY and the breath(s) were cut and added and cut and re-added for a simple reason that would be blatantly obvious if you ran the deck. Without the dragon's breaths there is almost NO OUT to jace. Sure you can beast within, but they are blue and could easily stop that plan. Not to mention the stax decks running 4+ duplicant/metamorph removal effects. The dragon's breaths give us inevitability. The sol Ring does jack.... Try it if you don't believe me.
I understand you guys want to find something to pick apart, but until you run it is this argument is meh...... Sol Ring adds nothing :////
(Look through the list and dispute what I said. I would really love to hear your out to a resolved Jace)
P.S. - aside from situational removal (hurkyl, etc) the number one card I side out is S&T. Only GREAT matchup for s&t is fish, and now they run karakas :(
Won't play here either.
Looking at the list, My guess would be breath - mostly because with 4 Enmmy in the deck you chance of hitting Breath through Oath is pretty shallow. Hard to say for certain, though.
Sol could gives us an early... O hey wait we run NONE of those spells. Tinker was actually IN the original iteration but was cut as we do not have moxen to support it. Honestly you are wrong Mike, due to the fact the show and tells are the WORST POSSIBLE win condition (see: third option), and the crypt can help there.
I didn't just throw this hot mess together, I tested PLENTY with Sol Ring :/
Sol Ring just gives you an early Jace
Sol Ring just gives you an early Tinker
Sol Ring just gives you an early Time Vault
Sol Ring just gives you the early mana to pay for the Spell Pierce that will counter your gas
... the list goes on. There is basically no argument for not running a Sol ring in a deck that runs as it's main win condition a spell with 2 colorless mana in it. Getting an early ANYTHING in classic is win.
@char
Two cards don't work well together, agreed. You do know channel in this deck is like "play me by turn 4 or I am useless", your argument doesn't really make much sense :/
(if you DO happen to play crypt later, or want to cast channel later with crypt out, the deck runs hurkyl or beast within...)
Apparently the attached file isn't quite right. Downloaded it as 0bytes.
Decks that want to play Restore Balance, much like Boom/Bust or any other cascade style deck, have serious limitations built around them.
Restore Balance isn't the type of deck that can, or even wants to, go off on turn 1, like a Hypergenesis. Hand Disruption is very good against it, you can counter a lot of the critical plays, and it can't play counterspells to defend itself, again, due to the nature of cascade.
I think a deck like Restore Balance, of which there are many builds, is ultimately not that bad, because it is so inconsistent, can't defend itself, and can be interacted with on several different levels.
As a comparison, I would call Restore Balance a Belcher style glass cannon combo deck, and 12-post as more of a Reanimator/ANT with Mystical Tutor still in the format. Being 1 or 2 turns faster at the cost of consistency and disruption is fine.
I was saying specifically that Mana Crypt and Channel do not play well together, and, truthfully, they do not.
I'm not saying that you want to run Sol Ring at the exclusion of Mana Crypt, I'm saying you want to run Sol Ring, period. I'm not sure what I would cut since I haven't played the deck, but Dragon Breath would probably be the first thing I looked at, and then depending on metagame, Duress.
I think Sol Ring is better than Mana Crypt most of the time, whether or not that is true in this deck is tough to say. If you want that type of effect, and this deck clearly does, Sol Ring should probably be in your deck.
Thanks LE, I enjoyed this article as well. The mic you had may take some getting used to. As you know it was low and you kept breathing into it. But aside from that I'm really glad you can do voice commentaries during gameplay now.
One opponents deck really caught my eye, the Shadow deck. I remember in high school when I played Magic alot during lunch 13 years ago, I had a really nice B/W pestilence deck that had that killing yourself theme and worship, sun droplet, or pariah to save you last minute. That deck was very fun to play for me back then. If you have time you think you can try playing a Shadow deck in an article? After your vacation of course. I'm not sure if flesh reaver is legal still but he was pretty decent with the theme. I wish they would reprint pestilence. Now I'm stuck in Legacy where everyone runs super powerful cards. Besides, my original pestilence deck was made for multiplayer also, so I had to do some tweaking.
I also noticed so many people run Chalice now that it makes the entire deck shut down. Chalice just seems too good against so many pro decks. You said yourself Shadow/suicide was a good theme deck. I'd like to see your take on it and some videos with a commentary.
consider this hand.
emrakul, show and tell, fetch land, oath of druids, channel fow and sol ring.
t1 land sol ring, misstep, do you pitch snt to foW, or if it were crypt you could play snt t1.
same hand but your on the draw. you get a petal. t1 land go from them, t1 land petal channel, he spell pierces you fow he force of wills, if the sol ring were a mana crypt again, you would run it out and win through spell pierce.
since the deck is designed to cheat emrakul into play as fast as possible, then there you go. the life loss is a risk im willing to take, and it has not some up a signifagant amount of times.
I was more or less thinking out loud. I am aware that you were saying Boom/Bust was narrow, and I was just agreeing with you.
What about Restore Balance decks, eh?
They are designed to only cascade into Balance, so assuming you get a Garagdon suspended, I think that would be GG against post...
Again, not a great answer, but I think it is more reliable than Boom//Bust. Still loses to Remand though, but again risk v reward.
I'm not sure if ROE and Shards block were two of the best formats ever, or if it was drafting them next to M10/ZZW, but ROE is probably my favorite format all-time. It just had a ton of removal, situationally powerful cards and seemingly endless archetypes that were all viable.
Any format that gives blue a common counterspell for UU, common removal for all creatures, and still has it as one of the weaker colors is pretty good set design, all things considered.
It isn't that Sol Ring and Channel are synergystic, it is that Mana Crypt and Channel have anti-synergy. You need to be at 16 life for channel to be worthwhile. If you have played Mana Crypt and lost a single die roll, after fetches or cards like Vampiric Tutor it is unlikely you can channel for 15, making it essentially useless.
Your life is relevant vs shops as is colorless mana.
Also, you have 4 FOW 3/4 SnT and Beast Within, and that's not even counting casting multiple 1 colorless spells in a turn, or casting through shops style disruption, spell pierce etc.
@Apaulogy
I don't know if it was unclear, but I agree with you, Boom/Bust is not "the answer" to 12 post, I just think due to the strategy it will probably have a decent matchup. It is most certainly a crapshoot to hit Boom/Bust, but the general strategy of the deck, Armageddon beats, is going to be fairly strong vs any ramp deck.
The problem of 12-post being generally unanswerable is still an issue with the format. I think it is a far more oppressive strategy than Valakut based decks, and I'm expecting a Cloudpost or Vesuva ban.
I would personally like to see what happens to the format with Valakut in it but Vesuva banned. I'm on the fence about Scapeshift, since it is an easy memoricide target if the deck is too fragile, and cards like blood moon are actually good against Valakut/scapeshift decks.
The format has a serious lack of non-combo viable archetypes and I'm hoping for a lot of changes on and off the banned list to shake it up after the PT.
@ waste/strip.
I feel like this is a much more combo orientated build of oath, and with the myriad and redundant ways to get emrakul into play, its more important to have lands in play.
@ sol ring
Like zach said. Mana crypt is the sol ring. There is litterly no 2colorless costs besides SnT. I will say that yes, against shops sol ring would be great. But thats it, with the prevalence of misstep sol ring is just not the right card for the deck, and it has zero synergy with channel. if we changed around a few slots, well then sure maybe we might want it then. Im with zach i dont think it belongs.
@at beast within
Yea sometimes i miss things, like that interaction. Im pretty sure i acknowledge the mistake in the videos, sorry.
@oath+orchard
Oath trigger goes on the stack and i can not tap a orchard in response. I must have more guys when my t starts, to have the search/mill trigger.
@ Channel.
Yes sometimes fow, misstep, and vamp get in the way, as well as fetches. but sometimes you go t2 channel misstep the pierce and win
Glad to get so many comments on the article. thanks for watching and talking.