i wasn't really of the mind that Unstable Footing was a playable card. Did this change in Zendikar? I think i would have preferred the Battlesinger or possibly Grim Discovery- Raise Dead is playable in Sealed if you have a lot of worthwhile creatures. (The Corrupted Zendikon doesn't REALLY want you to play Grim Discovery though, but Dread Sanctuary may)
I would agree that the format favors control a bit more. Blue/White allies is probably the most powerful archtype right now in my mind, you have a lot of very good commons available and some bomb-ish rares that get looked over at times- Loremaster.
Unfortunate results with a decent deck, best yourself up and try again i would say.
I really enjoyed reading this:
"I also have two white cards - Join the Ranks and Ondu Cleric that are good if I build clerics, but not too hot otherwise."
I Never knew the clerics subtheme was good in ZEN- block, but i guess you mean allies :P hehehe...
Hey Nafiz, Thanks for commenting and your thoughts on the deck
I started out using red, with both the "spread em" manabase and 12 cascade spells (Violent outburst, Ardent plea and Captured sunlight) My aim-spells were 4 spreading seas and 3 dragon fodder, paired with a set of goblin assaults for the 3cmc slot. That didn't work.. As the cascading revealed your gameplan and sideboard cards.
Against red you could just board out the seas and fodder and have consecutive Kor Firewalkers, but against the rest of the field, things got complicated.
This deck is not a one trick pony. It plays like and is often mistaken to be, Chapin's UW control build. 20% of your games are still won by riding your Jace, the Mind Sculptor to victory using the rest of the control cards to protect it.
I didn't have all the cards online, because of budget issues following the opening of about 200 worldwake boosters in the release week. I would have loved to run it through 100x 2-mans and work out the details, but we did playtest the deck offline against some of the level 3+ dutch pro players who were preparing for grand prix Oakland. That should count for something right?
I really like playing the deck and as soon as i regain some budget i'll run it through the 2-man and 8-man qeues online. Follow me on my freshly created twitter account Rayjinn_Ftw to keep you posted about any changes.
Both the Corrupted Zendikon and bombs like the Dragon and the Sparkmage REALLY want you to play the Grim Discovery... And if you want to incorporate the Allies, the Battlesinger is not too bad; it triggers Ally effects, still hits for 2 and trades for X/1's.
Heh, funny that, I was just looking at the Tournament Rules and Floor Rules myself this week. I had a kind of bllalargh experience drafting at an unsanctioned store last week and I was wondering what the official rules were. The store I went to had no intention of ever becoming sanctioned, surprisingly. But now I certainly prefer sanctioned play. And yeah, MTGO rocks for all the little technical things.
Again, best wishes for you and your new B&M store! I hope it works out great for you.
Obviously, by trading for them and by playing in future ME123 nix-pax events. Actually, did you know that this week (until 3/3) you can crack a new FoW in a draft? Your next chance will be 6/9 - 6/16.
Of course, that's assuming the MED drafts fire. :P Which they're currently not.
I've been beating Jund a lot lately with a deck you will read about tomorrow. There are ways to consistently beat Jund and cheating Iona into play is one of them; as long as you can do that on time of course.
A quick question: How does this deck do in practice? I mean, all decks are Pro Tour calibre on paper but when you go out and do some battles, things change. How does it do against the rest of the field? Mono Red menace is quite fast, I even lost to it with TWO Kor Firewalkers on table. How does your deck handles it?
What do you do against Control decks? I know I had troubles against them with Iona. I was naming White and they were playing Rite of Replication or worse a Mind Control. I was naming Blue and then it was Journey to Nowhere. Against them I found out that Progenitus is a better choice than Iona.
I also believe that Polymorph decks could use a little bit help from Red. Not only because Red supplies the deck with nice burn spells, but it also gives the deck some good token generators; Goblin Assault being the most important one. Khalni Garden surely is nice but maybe replacing Green with Red would give you better options to control the game.
For me it was the original nintendo game that hooked me: Romance of the 3 Kingdoms. Then of course there was Destiny of an Emperor. Which really helped seal the deal. :D
I think I'm the only person in the community who feels this way, but ever since first picking up an old school nightsky aggro deck, I've felt that the manabase of the deck was what made it strong. Specifically, cycling lands combined with Basilica (and now Skyfisher, perhaps) are what made this deck function. They solve mana flood, providing crucial midgame drawing power.
i agree to a point. While most of portal stuff is junk. I do like having access to three kingdoms. I have always loved the storyline since i first played dynasty warriors 3 so its mostly flavor. But also at least in the states we had a very very short paper print run, so the cards are obscenely hard to get.
well two things, personally I would have gone with extended which makes winning through Felidar Sovereign much more of a reasonable route just due to previous life-gain effects like Martyr of Sands combos and Beacon of Immortality and such. However Flippers did make a deck that was successful at winning and he did it the smart way. While every game may not have been one by obtaining 40+ life with a sovereign, relying on only one win condition is not a very good idea. At least his backup plan of a white aggro deck worked out well. Maybe too well. But that is not a reason for all the criticism.
This will be a great series.. I've been looking up those unreleased cards lately to see what's left. So much Portal crap! I really wish they had planned out all the ME sets at once so they would have all been balanced and there would have been a natural and even progression of chase rares being released.
I have to agree - any price point based on zero quantity is unreliable data. And such was the case for all of last week's scores.
Of course that means a chart this week would be a dot, and thus no chart at all. So it's irrelevant for the moment. But going forward it would be wrong to put 1.50 as a starting price for something that was never really sold below 5.
It is perfectly understandable. Standard is very popular even in casual play. That is not the point. As far as I am concerned, this deck is comparable to somebody announcing that he is going to make a poison deck and ending up with something with less than one third of the non-land cards related to poison counters and winning most of the time through conventional damage.
If you can do a winning life gaining deck in standard fine, but I haven't seen it in this article, or perhaps I misunderstood everything right from the beginning and simply the possibility of winning through life gaining is enough for what you intended to do.
The reason I was attracted to the game in the first place was to experiment with a variety of concepts. I expected something different and in this article, I haven't seen it.
There's a few tens of thousands of still-active paper players from the early 90s, and a few thousand copies of the high end vintage cards. Add to that players from the more current eras, who would happily own high end vintage cards and you have $1,000 loti and $400 moxen and $250 Tabernacles. Basic supply and demand, and we have a good idea of what the number of these cards were printed and can formulate an idea of what level of circulation there actually is for these cards.
It's a lot harder to know how many Force Of Wills were ever opened/awarded online. 500? 5,000? 50,000? 500,000? How many active online legacy tournament players are there, and how many does wizards envision having in the future? If that number is 10,000, and there are less than, say, 25,000 online FoWs in existence, there will be a supply/demand crunch that prohibits players from getting involved in legacy, at least with the same decks that the paper players do.
This phenomenon was already seen with previous extended seasons. The online results simply did not match up with paper ones. In that case it was Orim's Chant, and to a lesser extent Pernicious Deed. MTGO Traders has a foil chant right now running for $227.00, and regulars running $40. When winning first prize in a tournament might only get you a tiny portion of the cost of ONE rare slot, the basic economics of the situation prohibit large numbers of players from joining. It gives credence to players complaining about MTG being a game in which you can buy a victory. And basically, for situations like these, YOU CAN. Someone with a $500 budget is not going to be able to compete across a range of formats, and maybe even a single format, with someone with a $2,500. And even $500 is itself a LOT to ask for in the middle of the worst recession in 60 years.
Dangers article was great at addressing that. You could also take a look at the next article I am due to have published (submitted, I am asssuming it should be up on Monday or Tuesday). It shows pricing relative to cards on mtgo. Unfortunately some of those decklists have cards not online yet so the pricing will need to be adjusted once they arrive. Legacy lists run from around 90 bucks to 1000.
Thanks for the comment, it is a lot, but one of those things you can bookmark it for later reference, and with all the deck options there is something for everyone
What I did with the pie chart was look at all the decks I found for 09 Legacy and put em in order starting with those that appeared most in Legacy tournaments to the least showings.. then as I said cut them to 25.. I'm going to start on a second article I think to cover the "Other" section, its simply a showing of popularity as opposed to strength
To get an idea at what the costs are I really recommend checking the section at the top where I talk about other articles on Legacy.. there was a great one to answer that question by DangerLinto, Embracing Legacy Online
Ruin Ghost is incredible when paired with Halimar Depths, Sejiri Steppe, and Kabira Crossroads (as well as Khalni Gardens)
i wasn't really of the mind that Unstable Footing was a playable card. Did this change in Zendikar? I think i would have preferred the Battlesinger or possibly Grim Discovery- Raise Dead is playable in Sealed if you have a lot of worthwhile creatures. (The Corrupted Zendikon doesn't REALLY want you to play Grim Discovery though, but Dread Sanctuary may)
I would agree that the format favors control a bit more. Blue/White allies is probably the most powerful archtype right now in my mind, you have a lot of very good commons available and some bomb-ish rares that get looked over at times- Loremaster.
Unfortunate results with a decent deck, best yourself up and try again i would say.
I really enjoyed reading this:
"I also have two white cards - Join the Ranks and Ondu Cleric that are good if I build clerics, but not too hot otherwise."
I Never knew the clerics subtheme was good in ZEN- block, but i guess you mean allies :P hehehe...
Hey Nafiz, Thanks for commenting and your thoughts on the deck
I started out using red, with both the "spread em" manabase and 12 cascade spells (Violent outburst, Ardent plea and Captured sunlight) My aim-spells were 4 spreading seas and 3 dragon fodder, paired with a set of goblin assaults for the 3cmc slot. That didn't work.. As the cascading revealed your gameplan and sideboard cards.
Against red you could just board out the seas and fodder and have consecutive Kor Firewalkers, but against the rest of the field, things got complicated.
This deck is not a one trick pony. It plays like and is often mistaken to be, Chapin's UW control build. 20% of your games are still won by riding your Jace, the Mind Sculptor to victory using the rest of the control cards to protect it.
I didn't have all the cards online, because of budget issues following the opening of about 200 worldwake boosters in the release week. I would have loved to run it through 100x 2-mans and work out the details, but we did playtest the deck offline against some of the level 3+ dutch pro players who were preparing for grand prix Oakland. That should count for something right?
I really like playing the deck and as soon as i regain some budget i'll run it through the 2-man and 8-man qeues online. Follow me on my freshly created twitter account Rayjinn_Ftw to keep you posted about any changes.
Both the Corrupted Zendikon and bombs like the Dragon and the Sparkmage REALLY want you to play the Grim Discovery... And if you want to incorporate the Allies, the Battlesinger is not too bad; it triggers Ally effects, still hits for 2 and trades for X/1's.
Heh, funny that, I was just looking at the Tournament Rules and Floor Rules myself this week. I had a kind of bllalargh experience drafting at an unsanctioned store last week and I was wondering what the official rules were. The store I went to had no intention of ever becoming sanctioned, surprisingly. But now I certainly prefer sanctioned play. And yeah, MTGO rocks for all the little technical things.
Again, best wishes for you and your new B&M store! I hope it works out great for you.
Obviously, by trading for them and by playing in future ME123 nix-pax events. Actually, did you know that this week (until 3/3) you can crack a new FoW in a draft? Your next chance will be 6/9 - 6/16.
Of course, that's assuming the MED drafts fire. :P Which they're currently not.
I've been beating Jund a lot lately with a deck you will read about tomorrow. There are ways to consistently beat Jund and cheating Iona into play is one of them; as long as you can do that on time of course.
A quick question: How does this deck do in practice? I mean, all decks are Pro Tour calibre on paper but when you go out and do some battles, things change. How does it do against the rest of the field? Mono Red menace is quite fast, I even lost to it with TWO Kor Firewalkers on table. How does your deck handles it?
What do you do against Control decks? I know I had troubles against them with Iona. I was naming White and they were playing Rite of Replication or worse a Mind Control. I was naming Blue and then it was Journey to Nowhere. Against them I found out that Progenitus is a better choice than Iona.
I also believe that Polymorph decks could use a little bit help from Red. Not only because Red supplies the deck with nice burn spells, but it also gives the deck some good token generators; Goblin Assault being the most important one. Khalni Garden surely is nice but maybe replacing Green with Red would give you better options to control the game.
Just some thoughts.
LE
Coming in part 4! And yes, I hope we can get it online in ME4. I think it stands a really good chance.
Can I get some Candelabra please?
Apocalypse won't work unless you o ring your win con first, otherwise it won't work even if you do have 11 mana and both cards
For me it was the original nintendo game that hooked me: Romance of the 3 Kingdoms. Then of course there was Destiny of an Emperor. Which really helped seal the deal. :D
I think there's going to be a second article where I cover the other/rogue decks more
dragon stompy should have been mentioned : )
I think I'm the only person in the community who feels this way, but ever since first picking up an old school nightsky aggro deck, I've felt that the manabase of the deck was what made it strong. Specifically, cycling lands combined with Basilica (and now Skyfisher, perhaps) are what made this deck function. They solve mana flood, providing crucial midgame drawing power.
i agree to a point. While most of portal stuff is junk. I do like having access to three kingdoms. I have always loved the storyline since i first played dynasty warriors 3 so its mostly flavor. But also at least in the states we had a very very short paper print run, so the cards are obscenely hard to get.
well two things, personally I would have gone with extended which makes winning through Felidar Sovereign much more of a reasonable route just due to previous life-gain effects like Martyr of Sands combos and Beacon of Immortality and such. However Flippers did make a deck that was successful at winning and he did it the smart way. While every game may not have been one by obtaining 40+ life with a sovereign, relying on only one win condition is not a very good idea. At least his backup plan of a white aggro deck worked out well. Maybe too well. But that is not a reason for all the criticism.
This will be a great series.. I've been looking up those unreleased cards lately to see what's left. So much Portal crap! I really wish they had planned out all the ME sets at once so they would have all been balanced and there would have been a natural and even progression of chase rares being released.
I have to agree - any price point based on zero quantity is unreliable data. And such was the case for all of last week's scores.
Of course that means a chart this week would be a dot, and thus no chart at all. So it's irrelevant for the moment. But going forward it would be wrong to put 1.50 as a starting price for something that was never really sold below 5.
It is perfectly understandable. Standard is very popular even in casual play. That is not the point. As far as I am concerned, this deck is comparable to somebody announcing that he is going to make a poison deck and ending up with something with less than one third of the non-land cards related to poison counters and winning most of the time through conventional damage.
If you can do a winning life gaining deck in standard fine, but I haven't seen it in this article, or perhaps I misunderstood everything right from the beginning and simply the possibility of winning through life gaining is enough for what you intended to do.
The reason I was attracted to the game in the first place was to experiment with a variety of concepts. I expected something different and in this article, I haven't seen it.
There's a few tens of thousands of still-active paper players from the early 90s, and a few thousand copies of the high end vintage cards. Add to that players from the more current eras, who would happily own high end vintage cards and you have $1,000 loti and $400 moxen and $250 Tabernacles. Basic supply and demand, and we have a good idea of what the number of these cards were printed and can formulate an idea of what level of circulation there actually is for these cards.
It's a lot harder to know how many Force Of Wills were ever opened/awarded online. 500? 5,000? 50,000? 500,000? How many active online legacy tournament players are there, and how many does wizards envision having in the future? If that number is 10,000, and there are less than, say, 25,000 online FoWs in existence, there will be a supply/demand crunch that prohibits players from getting involved in legacy, at least with the same decks that the paper players do.
This phenomenon was already seen with previous extended seasons. The online results simply did not match up with paper ones. In that case it was Orim's Chant, and to a lesser extent Pernicious Deed. MTGO Traders has a foil chant right now running for $227.00, and regulars running $40. When winning first prize in a tournament might only get you a tiny portion of the cost of ONE rare slot, the basic economics of the situation prohibit large numbers of players from joining. It gives credence to players complaining about MTG being a game in which you can buy a victory. And basically, for situations like these, YOU CAN. Someone with a $500 budget is not going to be able to compete across a range of formats, and maybe even a single format, with someone with a $2,500. And even $500 is itself a LOT to ask for in the middle of the worst recession in 60 years.
Most informative and best presented article I've seen in quite some time. Get yo stats on my mathematical brother!
Dangers article was great at addressing that. You could also take a look at the next article I am due to have published (submitted, I am asssuming it should be up on Monday or Tuesday). It shows pricing relative to cards on mtgo. Unfortunately some of those decklists have cards not online yet so the pricing will need to be adjusted once they arrive. Legacy lists run from around 90 bucks to 1000.
....the same way people get the old dual lands and Force of Wills perhaps?
Thanks for the comment, it is a lot, but one of those things you can bookmark it for later reference, and with all the deck options there is something for everyone
What I did with the pie chart was look at all the decks I found for 09 Legacy and put em in order starting with those that appeared most in Legacy tournaments to the least showings.. then as I said cut them to 25.. I'm going to start on a second article I think to cover the "Other" section, its simply a showing of popularity as opposed to strength
To get an idea at what the costs are I really recommend checking the section at the top where I talk about other articles on Legacy.. there was a great one to answer that question by DangerLinto, Embracing Legacy Online