Great article! I liked BYOS before reading this and now I just love it. The sheer diversity of decks makes it one of the most interesting formats on MTGO. I hope Wizards will realize this at some point and embrace it as an official format. The run down you give of the format is amazing.
And I have to say the fact that you brought different decks to each tournament is beyond awesome. That's just hardcore!
A last note is: Have you considered taping your matches and putting them on youtube? "Show it, don't tell it" you know. Many of the matches you describe sounds to me extremely exicting and I would just die to get an opportunity to watch them. Especially the mirrorweave match and Flipper_giraffe's finale.
You seem to put castigate into the deck more often than not. Would you consider a maindeck spot? What would you remove? Augur of skulls? I like the transmute addition as well. I've been thinking of building a pestilence version too, it just seems to work better than crypt rats. I thought more along the lines of mono black though with corrupt and tendrils (the bad guys of the pauper world, kind of like blightning in standard right now). thoughts?
I had this thought as well when I was adding the May column and was thinking of 6 months, it all depends on the width of the card names as to how many columns can fit in. Cards like The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale dont help matters.
I'll keep adding until I run out of room and see how it looks each month.
I finally got the Hulks and remaining artifact lands I needed to build the deck. Played vs. WW and I have to disagree with your assesment of the matchup. Every creature they play outside of the 1cc are bigger and better in combat or at least equal to yours. The only creature that can tangle with Golem is Hulk and there are only 2 of those in the deck. Their Skyfishers and Riftwatchers bounce off of yours and poor Mulldrifter is left hanging. For a 3 mana investment, Order kills every non-flyer in this deck outside of Hulk.
Maybe I just got really slow/bad draws and my opponent had very good ones, but as I see it, the deck needs more removal to effectively fight WW.
Having no Nature's Claim in sb and only 2 Chain of Vapor slowed you down more so than usual when faced with opening hand Leylines?
Grudge works perfectly against Crypts and Relics, but Ray of Revelation is not that good vs Leyline imo for a number of reasons; 1. Ray is primarily an answer to Leyline (Wheel/Confinement rarely} so the flashback cost is irrelevant(most of the time) 2. Being 2cc is <1cc and the format is Wasteland packed.
Did you run into any Jailers and was 2 Chain, 2 Truth and 1 Darkblast enough?
Did you use Terastodon or Duplicant much? I would think not so much with Tera due to the Grudge/Ray/Bounce.
Agreed, but the list in the article is running of a fetchland - duals manabase, so I figured that cost wasn't a factor here (my online version is straight U/G because of cost restrictions).
On a budget, I still think that the black splash for putrefy could be more powerful than red. Neither helps with those infernal moats though!
You did a pretty bad job making that deck, i can seee why you went 0-3. Your blue was weak. There was no need to play it at all. The only strong colors you had were black and green, with a few good removal spells in red. I wouldve made something like what mattlewis propsed, except i wouldnt play with perish the thought, and i for sure wouldve played the staggershock.
Kozilek is very playable in sealed, unless you have a really quick deck. He is a game winning bomb and would fit perfectly into the black green splash red deck you shouldve made.
Your pool was somewhat weak, but you easily couldve gone 2-2 or 3-1 if built right.
And bala ged scorpion kills tons of things, walls, levelers, etc. Always a maindeck card, at the very worst its going to be a 2/3 that kills a spawn token.
I don't think they could core-set ohran viper because it's a snow creature, but I'd certainly like to see it re-printed!
My build of snakes varies quite a bit from these ones. I run more land, and 4xsakura-tribe elder. With the amount of cantrips in the deck and recurring summons, plus ohran-rief (which you often don't want to use for mana) I find that you need a lot of mana so you can start playing 2-3 spells per-turn quite easily.
One thing I am a bit confused by is the splash for fire/ice. I've never really found the deck to have problems with the kind of small creatures that fire can deal with, and ice isn't exactly overpowering. IMHO, given a suitably stable manabase, the strongest splash is black for maelstrom pulse. This gives you removal for everything except lands, in a deck which has no natural removal (and permanently deals with a moat, which you're otherwise cold to, barring into the roil+mystic snake shenanigans, which takes a few turns).
Anyway, I guess my list will get put up whenever the tribal pre article from last week goes up.
I think you can go several ways with snakes. One is building a high tech fully competitive (meaning very expensive) Snakes deck using one of todays Standard decks as a shell; the Mythic Conscription deck.
25 Lands
any 25 useful lands including Treetop Village and Faerie Conclave
28 Creatures
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
4x Lotus Cobra
4x Coiling Oracle
4x Ohran Viper
4x Lorescale Coatl
4x Patagia Viper
4x Sovereigns of Lost Alara
7 Other Spell
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2x Eldrazi Conscription
The mana snakes help you ramp quickly into Sovereigns of Lost Alara and from there it's a beating your opponent will never forget.
Or you can play less competitive (less expensive) cards and try something like this:
23 Lands
any 23 useful lands including Treetop Village and Faerie Conclave
15 Other Spell
4x Cryptic Command
4x Snakeform
3x Sosuke's Summons
2x Exhaustion
2x Sword of Ice and Fire
Shisato, Whispering Hunter can lock your opponent pretty badly if she can deal her combat damage. And to assure that you will use Exhaustion + Cryptic Command and he/she will never get to untap.
Interesting how that one game shaped the rest. By the way when you say foreboding you mean foreshadowing. Though I am sure you felt foreboding as you entered that match.
Welcome Jeff I can ID with some of your points being something of a johnny spike myself. I don't much Net Deck but entirely agree with the reasons one should do so that you postulate here. I am not certain you must test/test/test vs even the haphazard rogue deck your drunkard friend compiled but I do think testing is a key element in learning how a particular deck works. Plus reading articles on specific decks isn't bad tech either. (Assuming they are good articles.)
I used to use the term "semi-pro" to describe my friends at NG who would occasionally qualify for the PT but rarely stayed on it. But I get what you mean here. I used the term "Amature Competitor" to describe myself back when I was semi-competitive. To show that a) I didn't consider myself a pro, and b) that I was still competitive despite that. I believe The Ferret talked about that too for awhile.
I totally get what you mean by Cheap. I tend to trade off cards when they hit a price point around 2-10x their initial price when I got them which means I end up (normally) buying lots of janky cards. Cards that are no longer in favor often find their way into my collection if I see a need for them casually or if they are a former staple that I wanted but couldn't afford. This means I am more cheap than budget minded. I should really be buying as many expensive cards as I can and holding on to them in the hopes they will become even more expensive. But I am forever reminded of gravity. What comes up eventually will come down unless given wings (Force of Will for example has wings even though it is doing some crazy up and downs.) If I had been around during ME1 (thanks WOTC for denying a large portion of us that pleasure by knocking us offline!) I would love to think I would have gotten 4 cheaply and kept them. Likelihood is they would be long gone by now.
Anyway Welcome to Pure (I seem to be saying that a lot lately.)
Interesting deck. I have always had a thing for pestilence and its ilk. And by its ilk I mean Thrashing Wumpus and now Pestilence Demon. Crypt Rats always seemed too fragile and comboish to me where Pestilence is so much more about board control and burn. Interesting Choices. Not sure I could stand running Renewed Faith. Particularly when that slot could be taken up by something with protection from black. I realize the life gain seems crucial in terms of stalling but it also seems redundant with 4 walls and 4 birds. The cantrip aspect I can dig but still, it goes against the grain. That said I don't play Pauper and certainly not competitively so if you say it wins, I guess I have to believe you.
Changelings + stuff is becoming a popular tribal deck these days. Thanks to Flippers_Giraffe I started messing with various different mixed tribal builds including rebels/slivers changelings. Your monoblack david bowie impression is pretty cool. By the way welcome to Pure. Nice first article. :D
I've had a love affair with mystic snake for years and years but until I was able to get some on MTGO as part of TSB I didn't realize there was a nice combo involving snakes and crystal shard. I have posted a few articles on this, namely the first one I wrote for this site: Desolation Row (featuring other ways to abuse enters the battlefield creatures like Desolation Giant, Harmonic Sliver, and Stonecloaker.) One thing I found is that having just 1-2 snakes in an otherwise counter free deck was perfectly acceptable by most players as a casual thing and some even commented on the coolness of the wacky lock.
Lorescale really ups the ante quite a bit. I find that you and I see alot of the same things in creatures. I admit I would love to throw Ohran Viper x 4 in a deck but that card has always been slightly too expensive (tickets wise) for me for it's narrowish function. Certainly a nice innovation. Your real interesting tech besides the exhaustion which wrecked me, was Fire/Ice. I always forget the split cards until they bring it home. Fire/Ice is such a good call since you can either kill a potential blocker (or blockers), burn off the opponent or tap out a blocker and draw a card (growing the lorescale). The rest seems rather easy to put together from there.
Sosuke's summons was more annoying than good imho. In our match during the PRE I was running bojuka bogs and had the option to take out your summons but got distracted by something and mized and by then you were casting Mystic Snake to counter my whatever. I'd still rather have Niv-Mizzet but hey we each do our own thing with the decks we make.
Overall I am not sure Snakes is cool in casual because of the counters aspect. Some people get really angry with that so I find it hard to bring them. Occasionally I stop caring and the games are usually fairly even as it isn't a top tier tribe or anything. Certainly Vipers bring it up a notch. (Hence their price tag. If there was going to be a snake printed in M11 Id vote for that one.)
I think you under rate Bala Ged Scorpion and Sporecap Spider. Both are extremely solid cards that always make the cut for me.
My build would be B/G with a Splash of red. Red would be for Devastating Summons and Brimstone Mage, and possibly Surreal Memoir. You want Kozilek in the deck. Maindecking Naturalize is something I'm playing around with.
I would not run Staggershock, as the deck already features a similar effect on colour.
I'd run 18 lands, no Prophetic Prism. 8/8/2 , Forests/Swamps/Mountains.
2 Last Kiss
1 Vendetta
1 Virulent Swipe
1 Corpsehath
1 Perish The Thought
--you played too many colors... 4 is too many; heck even 3 is too many unless the third is only a small splash (you do have prisms to go 3)
--you didn't play the better blue cards you did have. Lay Bare is surprisingly good at stopping game winning spells after turn six or seven. Stuff like Eldrazi and Gelatinous Genesis. Echo mage is ridic once levelled if you actually can use the ability. Staggershock you for 6 EOT, 6 on my turn? Pretty good.
--Last Kiss doesn't actually kill anything you want it to kill, and is best in SB. It's good against some bombs (Tuskcaller), but against others, especially Drana decks, is a dead card.
I'd have tried this U/B/r
1 Champion's Drake
1 Hada Spy Patrol
2 Halimar Wavewatch
1 Narcolepsy
1 Sea Gate Oracle
1 Lay Bare
1 Echo Mage
1 Eel Umbra (save my guy in response to your removal, sounds good)
9 blue
Just a *slight* clarification because it streamlines the process a bit: You don't need to add land before saving. I save out a 22- or 23-card deck w/o basics, load it into the regular editor, filter to find "basic land -" and check the "show all versions" box. from there I can quickly find the Unhinged lands and add them (I have moved every basic land that's not Unhinged or Zendikar full frame off my account).
I have it down to enough of a science now that I'm rarely the last person to submit a deck.
I really enjoy teaching children about insects, probably the same reason why I enjoy writing. The nice thing is I don't have to use valuable extra time because my employer lets me do it during business hours. The only problem is that sometimes it does interfere with my daily duties of running a service business. It's all good though because I really do enjoy it.
You don't really need to supply them yourself and the easiest thing to do is just place (pic=Card Name) in various points of your article to a) emphasize a particular paragraph or just to break the wall of text and maybe add some aside humor or commentary. In addition there is plenty of stuff online magic related that you can search for using google. Again no need to involve your own machine. Just make sure the hosts are OK with you linking to their graphics.
Great article! I liked BYOS before reading this and now I just love it. The sheer diversity of decks makes it one of the most interesting formats on MTGO. I hope Wizards will realize this at some point and embrace it as an official format. The run down you give of the format is amazing.
And I have to say the fact that you brought different decks to each tournament is beyond awesome. That's just hardcore!
A last note is: Have you considered taping your matches and putting them on youtube? "Show it, don't tell it" you know. Many of the matches you describe sounds to me extremely exicting and I would just die to get an opportunity to watch them. Especially the mirrorweave match and Flipper_giraffe's finale.
Keep up the good work!
You seem to put castigate into the deck more often than not. Would you consider a maindeck spot? What would you remove? Augur of skulls? I like the transmute addition as well. I've been thinking of building a pestilence version too, it just seems to work better than crypt rats. I thought more along the lines of mono black though with corrupt and tendrils (the bad guys of the pauper world, kind of like blightning in standard right now). thoughts?
I had this thought as well when I was adding the May column and was thinking of 6 months, it all depends on the width of the card names as to how many columns can fit in. Cards like The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale dont help matters.
I'll keep adding until I run out of room and see how it looks each month.
I finally got the Hulks and remaining artifact lands I needed to build the deck. Played vs. WW and I have to disagree with your assesment of the matchup. Every creature they play outside of the 1cc are bigger and better in combat or at least equal to yours. The only creature that can tangle with Golem is Hulk and there are only 2 of those in the deck. Their Skyfishers and Riftwatchers bounce off of yours and poor Mulldrifter is left hanging. For a 3 mana investment, Order kills every non-flyer in this deck outside of Hulk.
Maybe I just got really slow/bad draws and my opponent had very good ones, but as I see it, the deck needs more removal to effectively fight WW.
Nice report few questions.
Having no Nature's Claim in sb and only 2 Chain of Vapor slowed you down more so than usual when faced with opening hand Leylines?
Grudge works perfectly against Crypts and Relics, but Ray of Revelation is not that good vs Leyline imo for a number of reasons; 1. Ray is primarily an answer to Leyline (Wheel/Confinement rarely} so the flashback cost is irrelevant(most of the time) 2. Being 2cc is <1cc and the format is Wasteland packed.
Did you run into any Jailers and was 2 Chain, 2 Truth and 1 Darkblast enough?
Did you use Terastodon or Duplicant much? I would think not so much with Tera due to the Grudge/Ray/Bounce.
Agreed, but the list in the article is running of a fetchland - duals manabase, so I figured that cost wasn't a factor here (my online version is straight U/G because of cost restrictions).
On a budget, I still think that the black splash for putrefy could be more powerful than red. Neither helps with those infernal moats though!
Yeah well if youve got pulses run them. $15x4 = $60 which is a lot for a casual deck.
You did a pretty bad job making that deck, i can seee why you went 0-3. Your blue was weak. There was no need to play it at all. The only strong colors you had were black and green, with a few good removal spells in red. I wouldve made something like what mattlewis propsed, except i wouldnt play with perish the thought, and i for sure wouldve played the staggershock.
Kozilek is very playable in sealed, unless you have a really quick deck. He is a game winning bomb and would fit perfectly into the black green splash red deck you shouldve made.
Your pool was somewhat weak, but you easily couldve gone 2-2 or 3-1 if built right.
And bala ged scorpion kills tons of things, walls, levelers, etc. Always a maindeck card, at the very worst its going to be a 2/3 that kills a spawn token.
This is going to be one heck of a nice list :)
Would love it if you just keep adding columns for each month and keep last 5 or something.
I don't think they could core-set ohran viper because it's a snow creature, but I'd certainly like to see it re-printed!
My build of snakes varies quite a bit from these ones. I run more land, and 4xsakura-tribe elder. With the amount of cantrips in the deck and recurring summons, plus ohran-rief (which you often don't want to use for mana) I find that you need a lot of mana so you can start playing 2-3 spells per-turn quite easily.
One thing I am a bit confused by is the splash for fire/ice. I've never really found the deck to have problems with the kind of small creatures that fire can deal with, and ice isn't exactly overpowering. IMHO, given a suitably stable manabase, the strongest splash is black for maelstrom pulse. This gives you removal for everything except lands, in a deck which has no natural removal (and permanently deals with a moat, which you're otherwise cold to, barring into the roil+mystic snake shenanigans, which takes a few turns).
Anyway, I guess my list will get put up whenever the tribal pre article from last week goes up.
I think you can go several ways with snakes. One is building a high tech fully competitive (meaning very expensive) Snakes deck using one of todays Standard decks as a shell; the Mythic Conscription deck.
25 Lands
any 25 useful lands including Treetop Village and Faerie Conclave
28 Creatures
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
4x Lotus Cobra
4x Coiling Oracle
4x Ohran Viper
4x Lorescale Coatl
4x Patagia Viper
4x Sovereigns of Lost Alara
7 Other Spell
3x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2x Eldrazi Conscription
The mana snakes help you ramp quickly into Sovereigns of Lost Alara and from there it's a beating your opponent will never forget.
Or you can play less competitive (less expensive) cards and try something like this:
23 Lands
any 23 useful lands including Treetop Village and Faerie Conclave
26 Creatures
4x Coiling Oracle
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
4x Ohran Viper
4x Mystic Snake
4x Patagia Viper
4x Reveillark
2x Selkie Hedge-Mage
11 Other Spell
4x Momentary Blink
4x Psionic Blast
3x Bant Charm
Momentary Blink + those creatures with ETB abilities can be abused quit nicely.
Finally you can build a more *tricky* Snakes deck such as this one:
24 Lands
any 24 useful lands including Treetop Village and Faerie Conclave
21 Creatures
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
4x Coiling Oracle
4x Ohran Viper
4x Patagia Viper
3x Shisato, Whispering Hunter
2x Mystic Snake
15 Other Spell
4x Cryptic Command
4x Snakeform
3x Sosuke's Summons
2x Exhaustion
2x Sword of Ice and Fire
Shisato, Whispering Hunter can lock your opponent pretty badly if she can deal her combat damage. And to assure that you will use Exhaustion + Cryptic Command and he/she will never get to untap.
Just a couple of ideas.
LE
Interesting how that one game shaped the rest. By the way when you say foreboding you mean foreshadowing. Though I am sure you felt foreboding as you entered that match.
Welcome Jeff I can ID with some of your points being something of a johnny spike myself. I don't much Net Deck but entirely agree with the reasons one should do so that you postulate here. I am not certain you must test/test/test vs even the haphazard rogue deck your drunkard friend compiled but I do think testing is a key element in learning how a particular deck works. Plus reading articles on specific decks isn't bad tech either. (Assuming they are good articles.)
I used to use the term "semi-pro" to describe my friends at NG who would occasionally qualify for the PT but rarely stayed on it. But I get what you mean here. I used the term "Amature Competitor" to describe myself back when I was semi-competitive. To show that a) I didn't consider myself a pro, and b) that I was still competitive despite that. I believe The Ferret talked about that too for awhile.
I totally get what you mean by Cheap. I tend to trade off cards when they hit a price point around 2-10x their initial price when I got them which means I end up (normally) buying lots of janky cards. Cards that are no longer in favor often find their way into my collection if I see a need for them casually or if they are a former staple that I wanted but couldn't afford. This means I am more cheap than budget minded. I should really be buying as many expensive cards as I can and holding on to them in the hopes they will become even more expensive. But I am forever reminded of gravity. What comes up eventually will come down unless given wings (Force of Will for example has wings even though it is doing some crazy up and downs.) If I had been around during ME1 (thanks WOTC for denying a large portion of us that pleasure by knocking us offline!) I would love to think I would have gotten 4 cheaply and kept them. Likelihood is they would be long gone by now.
Anyway Welcome to Pure (I seem to be saying that a lot lately.)
Interesting deck. I have always had a thing for pestilence and its ilk. And by its ilk I mean Thrashing Wumpus and now Pestilence Demon. Crypt Rats always seemed too fragile and comboish to me where Pestilence is so much more about board control and burn. Interesting Choices. Not sure I could stand running Renewed Faith. Particularly when that slot could be taken up by something with protection from black. I realize the life gain seems crucial in terms of stalling but it also seems redundant with 4 walls and 4 birds. The cantrip aspect I can dig but still, it goes against the grain. That said I don't play Pauper and certainly not competitively so if you say it wins, I guess I have to believe you.
Changelings + stuff is becoming a popular tribal deck these days. Thanks to Flippers_Giraffe I started messing with various different mixed tribal builds including rebels/slivers changelings. Your monoblack david bowie impression is pretty cool. By the way welcome to Pure. Nice first article. :D
I've had a love affair with mystic snake for years and years but until I was able to get some on MTGO as part of TSB I didn't realize there was a nice combo involving snakes and crystal shard. I have posted a few articles on this, namely the first one I wrote for this site: Desolation Row (featuring other ways to abuse enters the battlefield creatures like Desolation Giant, Harmonic Sliver, and Stonecloaker.) One thing I found is that having just 1-2 snakes in an otherwise counter free deck was perfectly acceptable by most players as a casual thing and some even commented on the coolness of the wacky lock.
Lorescale really ups the ante quite a bit. I find that you and I see alot of the same things in creatures. I admit I would love to throw Ohran Viper x 4 in a deck but that card has always been slightly too expensive (tickets wise) for me for it's narrowish function. Certainly a nice innovation. Your real interesting tech besides the exhaustion which wrecked me, was Fire/Ice. I always forget the split cards until they bring it home. Fire/Ice is such a good call since you can either kill a potential blocker (or blockers), burn off the opponent or tap out a blocker and draw a card (growing the lorescale). The rest seems rather easy to put together from there.
Sosuke's summons was more annoying than good imho. In our match during the PRE I was running bojuka bogs and had the option to take out your summons but got distracted by something and mized and by then you were casting Mystic Snake to counter my whatever. I'd still rather have Niv-Mizzet but hey we each do our own thing with the decks we make.
Overall I am not sure Snakes is cool in casual because of the counters aspect. Some people get really angry with that so I find it hard to bring them. Occasionally I stop caring and the games are usually fairly even as it isn't a top tier tribe or anything. Certainly Vipers bring it up a notch. (Hence their price tag. If there was going to be a snake printed in M11 Id vote for that one.)
Excellent article I loved though you may want to check the prices of the changeling deck. Its about a dollar cheaper than you have listed ;)
I think you under rate Bala Ged Scorpion and Sporecap Spider. Both are extremely solid cards that always make the cut for me.
My build would be B/G with a Splash of red. Red would be for Devastating Summons and Brimstone Mage, and possibly Surreal Memoir. You want Kozilek in the deck. Maindecking Naturalize is something I'm playing around with.
I would not run Staggershock, as the deck already features a similar effect on colour.
I'd run 18 lands, no Prophetic Prism. 8/8/2 , Forests/Swamps/Mountains.
2 Last Kiss
1 Vendetta
1 Virulent Swipe
1 Corpsehath
1 Perish The Thought
1 Devastating Summons
1 Growth Spasm
1 Spider Umbra
1 Kozilek
1 Broodwarden
1 Ondu Giant
1 Stomper Cub
1 Sporecap Spider
1 Bramblesnap
1 Aura Gnarlid
1 Brimstone Mage
2 Bala Ged Scorpion
1 Bloodrite Invoker
1 Nirkana
1 Zulaport Enforcer
Exhaustion is pretty sweet tech. I've always liked snakes, and it seems like you got them down pretty well. Nice article.
--you played too many colors... 4 is too many; heck even 3 is too many unless the third is only a small splash (you do have prisms to go 3)
--you didn't play the better blue cards you did have. Lay Bare is surprisingly good at stopping game winning spells after turn six or seven. Stuff like Eldrazi and Gelatinous Genesis. Echo mage is ridic once levelled if you actually can use the ability. Staggershock you for 6 EOT, 6 on my turn? Pretty good.
--Last Kiss doesn't actually kill anything you want it to kill, and is best in SB. It's good against some bombs (Tuskcaller), but against others, especially Drana decks, is a dead card.
I'd have tried this U/B/r
1 Champion's Drake
1 Hada Spy Patrol
2 Halimar Wavewatch
1 Narcolepsy
1 Sea Gate Oracle
1 Lay Bare
1 Echo Mage
1 Eel Umbra (save my guy in response to your removal, sounds good)
9 blue
1 Corpsehatch
1 Nirkana Revenant
1 Skeletal Wurm
1 Vendetta
1 Zulaport Enforcer
5 black
1 Brimstone Mage
1 Staggershock
1 Vent Sentienl
1 Forked Bolt
4 red
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
2 Reinforced Bulwark (more early D... needed)
2 Prophetic Prism
5 colorless
17 lands
9 islands
5 swamps
3 mountains
While I can't claim to know the format that well yet. This build is better than what you ran.
Just a *slight* clarification because it streamlines the process a bit: You don't need to add land before saving. I save out a 22- or 23-card deck w/o basics, load it into the regular editor, filter to find "basic land -" and check the "show all versions" box. from there I can quickly find the Unhinged lands and add them (I have moved every basic land that's not Unhinged or Zendikar full frame off my account).
I have it down to enough of a science now that I'm rarely the last person to submit a deck.
I really enjoy teaching children about insects, probably the same reason why I enjoy writing. The nice thing is I don't have to use valuable extra time because my employer lets me do it during business hours. The only problem is that sometimes it does interfere with my daily duties of running a service business. It's all good though because I really do enjoy it.
Cool, sort of a "respect the things you hunt" vibe. The educational aspect is pretty nice of you. Its hard to find the extra time for stuff like that.
"...but I still have to work on Anger. " me too. Hard one that ;P
You don't really need to supply them yourself and the easiest thing to do is just place (pic=Card Name) in various points of your article to a) emphasize a particular paragraph or just to break the wall of text and maybe add some aside humor or commentary. In addition there is plenty of stuff online magic related that you can search for using google. Again no need to involve your own machine. Just make sure the hosts are OK with you linking to their graphics.