i second mathu's comment about going 1-2 in swiss play. happens to me frequently, and i'm not certain what to do about it. i have another question that's unrelated to this draft, however: what's your issue with 4322s? just curious.
congrats on the win, and thanks for the write-ups. very good insomniac fodder.
Emeria Angels are way cheap so you should pick up the remaining two for under a ticket. They are quite nice (cf:'angelfall' deck in my latest article) Holding the sky very well against a variety of opposition.
The first time out, I got beat by a deck running Eye of Ugin to tutor up artifact creatures & a kicked Rite of Replication on a Lodestone Golem. That was funny.
But, the next couple went much better - and one was a comeback from near death win over vamps. I can't fault people for playing vamps in casual - heck, it's tribal, and cheap, but I still get annoyed at them from time to time. So, this win came at a good time.
Most of that happened in two turns. Avenger for tokens, then next turn clarion->avenger + lands + Amulet + amulet untaps -> clarion. Something like that, it was ugly. About half the tokens are 9/10, rest are 6/7 I think. And some junk bird tokens too :P.
My deck is just a little different:
Only 3 Cobras, because that's all I've drafted (all in pre-release...none since.)
Only 2 Emerias, because that's all I've got.
3 Avengers
4 Ruin Ghosts
2 Tideforce Elementals - I'm still testing these, may shift to something else. If nothing else, great target to attract removal early on and it's not crucial to anything, only handy.
im definitely going to try to pick up the egg deck..i haven't priced the 10 land stompy, though i dont see a need too for a year since we dont have land grant. Unless of course Wizards is smart and puts legacy staples from masques into MED4. Because honestly I think Masques block will sell less than exodus did.
I know this is definitely the worst and most minimal of the "rogues" and perhaps it stretches the definition (and yes I was just as much laughing at vampires as you were) but I did try to narrow them down a little and thought some were at least worth mentioning on that chance someone could find a gem out of the dirt
the decks in my pt2 are much more a group of "competent" underdogs, but there is merit in some of these.. as we've already seen there is a group looking at Dream Halls already cuz of the price increases
it's funny in pt2 I show the pie chart with these decks removed so you can see what part of the "rogues" they made up, the result is interesting
I am curious as to the placement of some of these list. It's one thing to do well in bigger tournaments, but if your deck places in a 12 man is it really that big of a deal? Some of them just appear to be full of crap. I know they are supposed to be rogue, but Vampires, seriously.
I know you are just doing the research and this is exactly what makes rogue decks rogue. When I wrote my articles I decided on only including 2 rogue lists simply because at some point you must stop researching.
TrinketStalker list is interesting, there was a version running around in classic that did pretty good for awhile. I believe Whiffy created the classic list.
Show and Tell and Dream Halls, I realize they are different, but I'd say they belong in the same category.
Rector Order looks like something I'd be willing to tinker with. Leyline Helm looks like a shoot off of Red death type decks which seem like they have a legitimate place in the right meta. I've already seen Hypergenesis running around the practice room.
I am mostly excited for Dream Halls and can't wait to mess around with Show and Tell
I am anticipating your next article to include some better decklists, I'm looking at you Team America!
While I love the idea of reanimator in pauper, I think the concept is fundamentally flawed for one very simple reason: lack of reanimator-quality finishers. The whole point of reanimation is obviously to get a hard to remove beast into play as early as possible and smash face with it in a couple turns. "True" reanimator decks are geared towards getting these finishers in the graveyard, bringing them out and protecting them. In pauper we simply do not have a Spirit of the Night or an Akroma equivalent, I'm afraid.
Another reason I'm not sold in the idea is can you imagine how crap it is to have exhume in hand when your opponent has something like Mulldrifter in the grave? Or Aven Riftwatcher? Mogg War Marshal? Since pauper is so much more creature based, and since pauper creatures aren't remotely "unfair", when you exhume you won't get as much of an advantage as you should over your opponent.
Hate to be a party-pooper but even though I love exhume, I don't think we can "break" it in pauper. Which doesn't mean there aren't some interesting deck design avenues that it could open.. just means we have to put it to a very different use from what's been done in other formats.
So I'm supposed to lie and say something else? I won and lost matches from mana screw, does this not compute?
I don't need a good promo to qualify, but having a good one makes me want to qualify more. Isn't it a good idea to make people want to Q for MOCS? I think so. I'm not bothering this month because Emeria Angel is fairly worthless.
Thank you for the comment. I too believe that game reports are very important. But just for this week I wanted to write a "less active" article.
Input from the readers is always important. This week I learned that readers who read my articles value my game reports over "dry" strategy talk. I will keep this in mind as long as I write.
Deck, Blue: Vapor Snare, Mysteries of the Deep, Living Tsunami, Summoner's Bane, Windrider Eel, Voyager Drake, Calcite Snapper, Aether Tradewinds, Into the Roil, Treasure Hunt, Wind Zendikon
Blue, other: Cancel, Twitch, Aether Tradewinds (those 3 sided in at least once each), Selective Memory, Spell Contortion, Trapfinder's Trick, Tempest Owl
Black, other: Mire Blight, 2 Soul Stair Expedition, Mindless Null, Scrib Nibblers, Dead Reckoning (sided in about half the time), Brink of Disaster, Needlebite Trap
Red: Goblin Roughrider, Magma Rift, Tut-tuk Scrapper, Cosi's Ravager, Ruinious Minotaur, Claws of Valakut, Molten Ravager, Crusher Zendikon, Skitter of Lizards, Highland Berserker
One of my favorite tricks is Crystal Shards out. Cast Mull with evoke, put the evoke on the stack and return the drifter to my hand. so for 4 mana I get 2 cards...Perhaps not as fun as getting a 2/2 body +2 cards for 5 but it works.
If you evoke mulldrifter, will evoke go on the stack with the card draw, in a way that you can blink it, draw 4 cards, and not have to sac the drifter... or will you lose the drifter afterall?
Just a quick thought -> evoke + exhume can be quite nice-> mulldrifter and aether snipe are creatures that you may want to exhume and aren't totally useless without. Mournwhelk is also an option. Maybe UB Tortured Existence + Dredge + Exhume could work? Or splash W for blink and make some evoke craziness, also Rift Watchers will be nice. Or you can keep the BG way and make it like Morkje said with exhume being an additional effect.
agree with d_stille - would appreciate an entire pool or at worst, like you say, if UB is the only playable combination, I'd want to see what cards did not make the cut such that you are running some awk cards in ur deck.
was going to talk about pulse tracker and explorer's scope - but looks like it was already covered.
in any event, i like that you write a report for the MOCS events - perhaps I should too.
I skipped to the comments seeing that your complete pool is missing. That's just the most awful thing you can do in this kind of report. Yes, you tell a bit about it... but that just doesn't cut it.
Anyway. Pulse Tracker and Explorer's Scope are in general horrible in sealed and shouldn't make the cut in this deck. Tracker may be boarded in against some decks, but he should never see the maindeck if you aren't way more aggressive. Scope is way worse, you need a heavy landfall theme to make it playble. In your deck it's just a virtuel mulligan. 18 lands are more appreciated. Your creatures are all way too expenesive to get an use out of it. Cancel and Dead Reckoning are better cards that should have seen play in the maindeck.
Hagra Crocodile also looks horrible in your deck. It can't block.
Without seeing anything I'd say either swap 3 cards and go UB with 18 Lands, or try to splash some white. With the Refuge and the Ornithopter you can easily splash for Apex Hawks ( yes, Wind Drake is a good card ) and Iona's Judgment. And no, it wouldn't screw you to 7-3. The chance this pool makes t8 in such a tourney without byes is slim any way.
Lol btw at calling the blue Zendikon undervalued. Uktabi Drake was a cool card, and this one has echo.
I'm with you about 2 Day - Events. Going x-1 in 9 or 10 rounds is just sick.
Thanks for the insights Godot, I'm always amazed at the high quality of play in these draft articles, and I wish there were more like them. Part of the reason I read these articles is that I feel I draft similar powered decks, but lose more often.
I wouldn't say I'm a "bad" player, but certainly not an expert. Probably middle of the road. I'm also definitely not new to magic, but never took it so seriously as many of the posters seem to (not that there is anything wrong with that).
My question for you may be out of place in this article, and probably should have been posed in part one, and is about deck construction. I seem to always play a very similar deck to my own in round 1, it seems to stand to reason that this would be true, as I am usually cutting my color (or passing another) to my next one or two drafters. Would you use this information to build a main deck to win round 1 in an 8-4? Would this affect your MD build at all?
Also, I have been running a lot of swiss drafts, they are perfect for me as I really don't have the time or patience to run multiple 8-4's in an attempt to come out ahead, and I'm perfectly happy with the slow bleed (I immediately sell all my money cards after every draft- the only constructed I play is pauper and occasionally my extended specter deck). In these drafts, I would say that 60-70% of the time the winner of the draft is either me or my first round opponent (them more often than me). Is this an indicator of something I am doing wrong when drafting, or something I am doing right? It's frustrating to lose match one so much, but somewhat comforting to go 2-1 and only have lost to the eventual champ.
i second mathu's comment about going 1-2 in swiss play. happens to me frequently, and i'm not certain what to do about it. i have another question that's unrelated to this draft, however: what's your issue with 4322s? just curious.
congrats on the win, and thanks for the write-ups. very good insomniac fodder.
I'm not clear...when is Exhume getting printed again, and what are the details?
Emeria Angels are way cheap so you should pick up the remaining two for under a ticket. They are quite nice (cf:'angelfall' deck in my latest article) Holding the sky very well against a variety of opposition.
The first time out, I got beat by a deck running Eye of Ugin to tutor up artifact creatures & a kicked Rite of Replication on a Lodestone Golem. That was funny.
But, the next couple went much better - and one was a comeback from near death win over vamps. I can't fault people for playing vamps in casual - heck, it's tribal, and cheap, but I still get annoyed at them from time to time. So, this win came at a good time.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/mr_grieves/web/epictokenwinoverva...
Most of that happened in two turns. Avenger for tokens, then next turn clarion->avenger + lands + Amulet + amulet untaps -> clarion. Something like that, it was ugly. About half the tokens are 9/10, rest are 6/7 I think. And some junk bird tokens too :P.
My deck is just a little different:
Only 3 Cobras, because that's all I've drafted (all in pre-release...none since.)
Only 2 Emerias, because that's all I've got.
3 Avengers
4 Ruin Ghosts
2 Tideforce Elementals - I'm still testing these, may shift to something else. If nothing else, great target to attract removal early on and it's not crucial to anything, only handy.
im definitely going to try to pick up the egg deck..i haven't priced the 10 land stompy, though i dont see a need too for a year since we dont have land grant. Unless of course Wizards is smart and puts legacy staples from masques into MED4. Because honestly I think Masques block will sell less than exodus did.
How about Lady Orca (7/4)as a finisher??
lol yea and I'm sure 10 land stompy is pretty cheap too, for Legacy that kind of entrance price is shocking and tempting
ill say it the egg deck looks awesome, not to mention it only costs 52 tickets
Worthless but sweet art. :/
Or four from a bounce land.
I know this is definitely the worst and most minimal of the "rogues" and perhaps it stretches the definition (and yes I was just as much laughing at vampires as you were) but I did try to narrow them down a little and thought some were at least worth mentioning on that chance someone could find a gem out of the dirt
the decks in my pt2 are much more a group of "competent" underdogs, but there is merit in some of these.. as we've already seen there is a group looking at Dream Halls already cuz of the price increases
it's funny in pt2 I show the pie chart with these decks removed so you can see what part of the "rogues" they made up, the result is interesting
I am curious as to the placement of some of these list. It's one thing to do well in bigger tournaments, but if your deck places in a 12 man is it really that big of a deal? Some of them just appear to be full of crap. I know they are supposed to be rogue, but Vampires, seriously.
I know you are just doing the research and this is exactly what makes rogue decks rogue. When I wrote my articles I decided on only including 2 rogue lists simply because at some point you must stop researching.
TrinketStalker list is interesting, there was a version running around in classic that did pretty good for awhile. I believe Whiffy created the classic list.
Show and Tell and Dream Halls, I realize they are different, but I'd say they belong in the same category.
Rector Order looks like something I'd be willing to tinker with. Leyline Helm looks like a shoot off of Red death type decks which seem like they have a legitimate place in the right meta. I've already seen Hypergenesis running around the practice room.
I am mostly excited for Dream Halls and can't wait to mess around with Show and Tell
I am anticipating your next article to include some better decklists, I'm looking at you Team America!
Keep up the excellent work!
While I love the idea of reanimator in pauper, I think the concept is fundamentally flawed for one very simple reason: lack of reanimator-quality finishers. The whole point of reanimation is obviously to get a hard to remove beast into play as early as possible and smash face with it in a couple turns. "True" reanimator decks are geared towards getting these finishers in the graveyard, bringing them out and protecting them. In pauper we simply do not have a Spirit of the Night or an Akroma equivalent, I'm afraid.
Another reason I'm not sold in the idea is can you imagine how crap it is to have exhume in hand when your opponent has something like Mulldrifter in the grave? Or Aven Riftwatcher? Mogg War Marshal? Since pauper is so much more creature based, and since pauper creatures aren't remotely "unfair", when you exhume you won't get as much of an advantage as you should over your opponent.
Hate to be a party-pooper but even though I love exhume, I don't think we can "break" it in pauper. Which doesn't mean there aren't some interesting deck design avenues that it could open.. just means we have to put it to a very different use from what's been done in other formats.
So I'm supposed to lie and say something else? I won and lost matches from mana screw, does this not compute?
I don't need a good promo to qualify, but having a good one makes me want to qualify more. Isn't it a good idea to make people want to Q for MOCS? I think so. I'm not bothering this month because Emeria Angel is fairly worthless.
Thank you for the comment. I too believe that game reports are very important. But just for this week I wanted to write a "less active" article.
Input from the readers is always important. This week I learned that readers who read my articles value my game reports over "dry" strategy talk. I will keep this in mind as long as I write.
Thanks again.
LE
How about adding exhume to Parlor Tricks. It has plenty of removal to kill whatever they get and can be another part of the tool box.
Lands: Eye of Ugin, Arid Mesa, 2 Kazandu Refuge, Seijeri Refuge, Teetering Peaks, Khalni Garden, 2 Kabira Crossroads
Artifacts, deck: (Pilgrim's Eye, Walking Atlas, Explorer's Scope, Blazing Torch)
Artifacts: Amulet of Vigor, Razor Boomerang
Deck, Black: Caustic Crawler, 2 Jagwasp Swarm, Hagra Crocodile, Hideous End, Corrupted End, Pulse Tracker, Disfigure
Deck, Blue: Vapor Snare, Mysteries of the Deep, Living Tsunami, Summoner's Bane, Windrider Eel, Voyager Drake, Calcite Snapper, Aether Tradewinds, Into the Roil, Treasure Hunt, Wind Zendikon
Blue, other: Cancel, Twitch, Aether Tradewinds (those 3 sided in at least once each), Selective Memory, Spell Contortion, Trapfinder's Trick, Tempest Owl
Black, other: Mire Blight, 2 Soul Stair Expedition, Mindless Null, Scrib Nibblers, Dead Reckoning (sided in about half the time), Brink of Disaster, Needlebite Trap
Red: Goblin Roughrider, Magma Rift, Tut-tuk Scrapper, Cosi's Ravager, Ruinious Minotaur, Claws of Valakut, Molten Ravager, Crusher Zendikon, Skitter of Lizards, Highland Berserker
Green: 2 Zendikar Farguide, 2 Mold Shambler, 2 Khalni Heart Expedition, Graypelt Hunter, Predatory Urge, Beastmaster's Ascension, Canopy Cover, Grappler Spider, Explore, Arbor Elf
White: Apex Hawks, Kitesail Apprentice, Kor Aeronaut, Kor Firewalker, Iona's Judgment, Brave the Elements, Bold Defense, Nimbus Wings, Sunspring Expedition, Veteran's Reflexes, Shieldmate's Blessing
As you can see, not much to work with there.
One of my favorite tricks is Crystal Shards out. Cast Mull with evoke, put the evoke on the stack and return the drifter to my hand. so for 4 mana I get 2 cards...Perhaps not as fun as getting a 2/2 body +2 cards for 5 but it works.
If you evoke mulldrifter, will evoke go on the stack with the card draw, in a way that you can blink it, draw 4 cards, and not have to sac the drifter... or will you lose the drifter afterall?
Just a quick thought -> evoke + exhume can be quite nice-> mulldrifter and aether snipe are creatures that you may want to exhume and aren't totally useless without. Mournwhelk is also an option. Maybe UB Tortured Existence + Dredge + Exhume could work? Or splash W for blink and make some evoke craziness, also Rift Watchers will be nice. Or you can keep the BG way and make it like Morkje said with exhume being an additional effect.
agree with d_stille - would appreciate an entire pool or at worst, like you say, if UB is the only playable combination, I'd want to see what cards did not make the cut such that you are running some awk cards in ur deck.
was going to talk about pulse tracker and explorer's scope - but looks like it was already covered.
in any event, i like that you write a report for the MOCS events - perhaps I should too.
I skipped to the comments seeing that your complete pool is missing. That's just the most awful thing you can do in this kind of report. Yes, you tell a bit about it... but that just doesn't cut it.
Anyway. Pulse Tracker and Explorer's Scope are in general horrible in sealed and shouldn't make the cut in this deck. Tracker may be boarded in against some decks, but he should never see the maindeck if you aren't way more aggressive. Scope is way worse, you need a heavy landfall theme to make it playble. In your deck it's just a virtuel mulligan. 18 lands are more appreciated. Your creatures are all way too expenesive to get an use out of it. Cancel and Dead Reckoning are better cards that should have seen play in the maindeck.
Hagra Crocodile also looks horrible in your deck. It can't block.
Without seeing anything I'd say either swap 3 cards and go UB with 18 Lands, or try to splash some white. With the Refuge and the Ornithopter you can easily splash for Apex Hawks ( yes, Wind Drake is a good card ) and Iona's Judgment. And no, it wouldn't screw you to 7-3. The chance this pool makes t8 in such a tourney without byes is slim any way.
Lol btw at calling the blue Zendikon undervalued. Uktabi Drake was a cool card, and this one has echo.
I'm with you about 2 Day - Events. Going x-1 in 9 or 10 rounds is just sick.
definitely
Thanks for the insights Godot, I'm always amazed at the high quality of play in these draft articles, and I wish there were more like them. Part of the reason I read these articles is that I feel I draft similar powered decks, but lose more often.
I wouldn't say I'm a "bad" player, but certainly not an expert. Probably middle of the road. I'm also definitely not new to magic, but never took it so seriously as many of the posters seem to (not that there is anything wrong with that).
My question for you may be out of place in this article, and probably should have been posed in part one, and is about deck construction. I seem to always play a very similar deck to my own in round 1, it seems to stand to reason that this would be true, as I am usually cutting my color (or passing another) to my next one or two drafters. Would you use this information to build a main deck to win round 1 in an 8-4? Would this affect your MD build at all?
Also, I have been running a lot of swiss drafts, they are perfect for me as I really don't have the time or patience to run multiple 8-4's in an attempt to come out ahead, and I'm perfectly happy with the slow bleed (I immediately sell all my money cards after every draft- the only constructed I play is pauper and occasionally my extended specter deck). In these drafts, I would say that 60-70% of the time the winner of the draft is either me or my first round opponent (them more often than me). Is this an indicator of something I am doing wrong when drafting, or something I am doing right? It's frustrating to lose match one so much, but somewhat comforting to go 2-1 and only have lost to the eventual champ.
Thanks Again!
well I would have liked a visual on the deck u talked about, but I love the cube idea and personally I'd like to read more on it