• Scoop Phase - Black Red Vampires   15 years 13 weeks ago

    This deck is strictly worse than monoblack vampires. You lose Mind Sludge choosing this build over the monocolored one. Sludge is your best card in multiple matchups and easily ends the majority of games when it is cast. By playing red you are choosing a slower, weaker manabase, and much worse discard suite. And all you gain is access to the worst manland and ruinblasters, which are not necessary to beat jund or u/w if you just have sludge in the first place. You're not running Nocturnus, which I assume is due to the budget nature of the deck, but you could just as easily run a monocolored list without Nocturnus and still produce much stronger results.

    Hexmage over Black Knight if you really care about Jace that badly.

  • 1020 in 2010, part 5 (#66-80): The Forgotten Legends   15 years 13 weeks ago

    "he's the only black creature in the entire history of magic to have forestwalk"

    Nope.

    http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text=+[forestwalk]&color=+[B]

    Boggart Loggers in plain old black, and they're even the twins of the Boggart Arsonists you mention as plainswalkers. (Plus two more, a multicolor and a hybrid black forestwalker.)

  • Scoop Phase - Black Red Vampires   15 years 13 weeks ago

    I'm not sure that it's accurate but I've heard that using Slave of Bolas on Sprouting Thrinax will net you the Saproling tokens when you sac it at eot.
    Perhaps that's why they where in the suggested sideboard vs Jund?

  • Scoop Phase - Black Red Vampires   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Also, have you dismissed vampire hexmage vs. Jace?

  • Scoop Phase - Black Red Vampires   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Just wanted to say that I always enjoy your articles no matter what. The extra effort you put in with the videos is MUCH appreciated. Looking forward to your future ones.

  • 1020 in 2010, part 5 (#66-80): The Forgotten Legends   15 years 13 weeks ago

    I think Rashka was made as an answer to Sengir Vampire. That doesn't make her any better, just noticing.

    Great article as always!

  • Scoop Phase - Black Red Vampires   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Nice article. What do you like to bring in/out during the Jund matchup?

  • State of the Program - March 26th 2009   15 years 13 weeks ago

    I think Classic will become just another word for "casual". In paper people tend to follow the Vintage restricted list and call it casual. And when people build their paper casual decks, yeah you put your well-worn Sol Ring in there, but you don't usually do the "right thing" and add your 3x Bayou + Demonic Tutor. So "Casual" means "Legacy plus whatever Vintage cards you might coincidentally own." My casual zoo decks tend to run my FtV: Exiled copy of Balance, for example. So it would be better if the casual room sticks to Classic. Or put another way, since no one is going to bring 4x Oath of Druids to the casual room, the difference between the two is minor with a slight advantage for Classic. And we *will* get Sol Ring regardless of the P9 issue. Once we do then Classic's place as the casual format of choice will be solidified.

    As always, <3 the price graphs and trend analysis. In my opinion, we're seeing a flood of new players who think that they want to play Legacy. I don't believe that the sudden price spikes are due to speculation. However, the prices will drop if/when this booming generation of new Legacy players decides that they want to quit. But don't bet on that happening, because it never happened to paper. Legacy players play forever.

  • State of the Program - March 19th 2010   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Sorry, I suck at spelling and I guess I'm bad at explaining it, thanks Amar. But, I've always just "got" economics. The thing is so many people just lossly use the term "printing money" and have no idea that the fed is increaseing the money supply through the banking system.

  • Basics of Drafting - Cutting Colors   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Well of course a deck with 3 Hideous End may lose to a Black-dominate deck: they're kind of like drawing blanks.

  • State of the Program - March 26th 2009   15 years 13 weeks ago

    got an email back from wotc CS, they said it was an error (obv) and that new emails will show the fix., still i pooped myself..hope to see it right soon...

  • Duels of the Planeswalkers *Xbox 360 Review*   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Sorry, I meant NOT having the ability to tap manually is a drawback. :P

  • Duels of the Planeswalkers *Xbox 360 Review*   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Personally, the lack of deck customization is just annoying to me, but I'm willing to live with that. The fact that we can't tap our own lands (but have to rely on the AI to do it for us) is a real problem. Besides needing the ability to allocate mana manually, there are a few nice combos that rely on you being able to mana burn yourself, and I think at the very least the ability to tap lands manually (adding mana to the pool for use) is a HUGE drawback to the game.

  • Pauper to the People- Exhuming in Pauper   15 years 13 weeks ago

    As I said before this list is not acceptable. Think that with eldarazi locking on turn 2 you can go two ways. One is to try it as combo deck like Storm. If you follow this path I suggest making it UB, and looking roughly like this:

    3 (Chromatic Star)
    3 (Chromatic Sphere)
    4 (Dark Ritual)
    4 (Cabal Ritual)

    4 (Ideas Unbound)
    3 (Ponder)
    4 (Careful Study)
    4 (Mental Note)
    4 (Sign in Blood)

    4 Eldarazi Guys
    4 Exhume

    4 (Lotus Petal)

    And some lands possibly with the invasion lands, and (Bojuka Bog)

    Than sideboard would be some discards for Storm and some counters for combo protection. Maybe it could work, but I still think Storm is better.

    The second thought is to make it an GB control with Tortured Existence, the idea is to have it working like Oath combo. You dredge all your library away and then put some cards on top of your library with Battlefield Scrounger, stall the game with moment's peace and reccuring rootwallas/grave scrabblers, gain card advantage with Yavimaya Elder's and play eldarazi via exhume or making enough mana and reccur it with tortured existence. Something like this:

    4 (Tortured Existence)
    4 Exhume

    4 (Wild Mongrel)
    3 (Basking Rootwalla)
    4 (Grave Scrabbler)
    3 (Yavimaya Elder)

    2 (Battlefield Scrounger)
    3 Eldarazi

    4 (Stinkweed Imp)
    3 (Golgari Brownscale)

    4 Moment's Peace

    And about 22 lands.

    What do you think?

  • State of the Program - March 26th 2009   15 years 13 weeks ago

    This is the article I look forward to the most on puremtgo. I love the price tracking, the graphs and the explanations for why things are moving.

  • Basics of Drafting - Cutting Colors   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Q: How do you call a draft where you pick three Hideous End, three Disfigure, two Mind Sludge, a Burst Lightning and lose to a Br deck?
    A: ZZZ.

    (real story)

    Alara was so much more fun :-).

  • Pauper to the People- Exhuming in Pauper   15 years 13 weeks ago

    The deck still relies entirely on 4 Exhume. It's not going to work without another reanimation spell, you're too vulnerable to Duress or counter magic, or just not drawing your Exhumes.

  • State of the Program - March 26th 2009   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Just a thought but if the paper Legacy card players are coming on board they may be buying the cards that are expensive in the paper world first. This could mean that Karakas will catch up in time.

  • State of the Program - March 26th 2009   15 years 13 weeks ago

    I'm surprised Karakas is still so low. It's just as rare as Tabernacle, equally played in the 'land' deck, but also played in additional decks because it bounces Iona and Gaddock Teeg. I mean if Tabernacle is pushing near 8ish, why isn't Karakas also? Could it be people are hoarding one and not the other?

  • State of the Program - March 26th 2009   15 years 13 weeks ago

    I remember picking up Knight of the Reliquary for .5 each based upon an article on here called Bazaar of Heath. I wish that guy would write a new version. I was hunting around for Entomb about two weeks ago, offering to buy for more than market, and could barely find anything. Finally managed to snag two at 14 tix each. Too bad I couldn't find more.

  • Fun with Vanguard #27: Quest for Ula's Temple   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Don't forget Changlings are serpents/octupi/kraken/leviathan.

    Nice deck though. I been looking for something simular to play in my casual paper group. This helps.

  • State of the Program - March 26th 2009   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Is there a site that has the price charts for specific cards? Or are the price charts put together by your weekly query to infobot?

  • State of the Program - March 26th 2009   15 years 13 weeks ago

    I love reading this every week. Better than anything on the mothership. Tracking prices is helpful on many levels.

  • Deck Divination 9: A Blight of Red Amongst a Field of Black   15 years 13 weeks ago

    My apologies.

  • Deck Divination 9: A Blight of Red Amongst a Field of Black   15 years 13 weeks ago

    Welcome to the internet.