Any chance you can point me to articles, or discuss here, how prices change over time for new cards and boosters online? I'd like to use this to know when to buy and sell cards (generally speaking) based on historical movements.
I know one tournament went in the direction that Shard and the others didn't like, but don't get too down. In my opinion Classic Tribal is still one of the best formats to play. Why? Because you can start a Classic Tribal game in the casual room and you will never know what you will be up against. All the games are fun, and while you do run into the standard decks, you are just as often going to run into a tribe you've never seen before. I think this is mostly due to Shard et al. running the tournament and more importantly writing about it. It gets people's creative juices flowing and those juices spill over the the casual room. So thank you for running the tournament and writing about it, even though I've only been able to make it once because of other conflicts, I wouldn't enjoy tribal in the casual room without it.
I have 2 suggestions if you want the tournament to remain fun for all and at the competitive level you want.
1. It's been suggested before, but run a swiss tournament with prizes given for wins, such as 1 credit per win. There will still be prizes, but no loaded prize for the winner.
2. Come up with restricted builds or theme builds for the week. Such as all creatures, only blue or white cards, tribal singleton, etc... Being a casual format it wouldn't be hard to enforce, if someone doesn't follow the build, their opponent should PM you. Three or four weeks worth of builds could be posted in this forum so players would have plenty of advance notice.
Just make a custom banned list. Tribal should be a fun format to play. Ban Thopter Foundry, Vial, Survival, Grindstone, Oath, etc. It's not too hard to pick out the cards that are being used to fuel rather un-interactive combos. A similar list exists in a lot of the Pauper formats (like Disciple/Artifact Lands) and even some of the other PRE formats. It's unfortunate that's it's a bit more work, but it'll both shake up the meta and make the event more enjoyable for anyone involved.
Couldn't agree with you more Shard. That is the exact reason I plan on writing another article focusing around cards that aren't blue. If people say FOW is a barrier to enter into the format, then lets give em a reason to think overwise.
"@anon#1 - How is the Knight slow? It's a 1drop, and later in the game you can just hardcast it. How is Amrou Scout or Aven Riftwatcher, the cards it would be competing with, any faster? Not only that, it can attack into any flyer your opponent would usually block you with."
It's a one drop that doesn't attack or block until turn 4. How is that not slow? Not to mention it's your least desirable one drop, so if you have multiple plays on turn one he's going to get bumped to turn 2, or have to be hard cast. Much better options exist at 1cc and 4cc.
It's also not really competing with Amrou Scout and Aven Riftwatcher. Both of those were simply meta cards for goblins/burn, and were an instrumental part of pushing them out of the format. Now that they're gone I don't see why people are still playing them. Considering the meta before the last PE was Teachings heavy people really had no business playing them at all.
WW is near and dear to my heart, but it's a deck that plays roles. White is a deep color that can adapt to different metas easily. During meta shifts each card in the deck should be heavily scrutinized. Everything card in it should be improving your matchups against the main decks, and Knight of Sursi improves none of them right now.
I think the recent success of WW has more to do with the fact it's an aggro-ish deck that's not goblins more so than WW actually being a good deck. The Naya Cloak list from the PE pretty much backs me up on this. Any decent aggro deck has a good chance of winning until WW switches back to a slower, more aggro stopping list of cards. Once that happens it will give control some breathing room again. Then we get to start the whole cycle over unless some new tech makes a huge splash.
Playing stinkweeds doesn't mean you're trying to play control against WW. When up against WW you're still on the offense but they can try stalling while racing you from above. Stinkweeds just push them into full defense mode without a way of racing you. A longer game is always in favor of Dead Dog because it takes longer to run out of steam, or if you have TE you never do.
You might be right about boarding the brownscales for stinkweeds though. Goblins and burn is falling out of popularity for now.
Crypt Rats doesn't kill prot black dudes, you're right. WW only runs 4 of them and doesn't even have obsidian acolyte in their SB anymore, but Murphy's Law dictates that they will bust out at least two of them in the first 4 turns each game if festercreep is removed. That's the only reason why I'm still running the creep, otherwise rats would be superior.
Rancor is good but hard to find the extra slots for.
Oh, it will be. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be in your face. It'll be like a Monster Truck commercials supercharged with Powerthirst. I'll be busting out decks with power levels so high it'll make yo eyez bleedz! Over 9000? More like OVER INFINITY!!!
Bonus Stats Analysis: Pros/Cons of popping your Terramorphic Expanse at your EOT in response to your opponents popping their own Terramorphic Expanse, then taking over a minute to choose a basic land. I call it the "Piss You Off" factor.
Goblins is not nearly a large enough part of the meta to justify maindeck Brownscales. They're just discard fodder against every other matchup. They would be much better suited as sideboard material, with some combination of Duress/Shinobi maindeck. I'm personally not a huge fan of stinkweed, as trying to play control against WW as this deck generally seems poor, but they also would outperform Brownscales in game 1 against 90% of the field.
Using "it's bad against control" as an argument against Edict is a pretty poor position as well. You're boarding out whatever removal you have against control, it's only there for the mirror/WW/GW/etc. Ideally you have Festercreep/Nausea for Goblins and not spot removal, so that argument doesn't really work either. If you're going to pack removal, Edict is without a doubt the best option.
Also, @aboveposters Crypt Rats doesn't kill pro black dudes. Not an option. I also am a fan of Rancor, as its "weakest" matchup is against control decks that you're favored against as well. Helps race everything else.
I think stinkweed imp is stronger than the faceless butcher here, because it handles the deck's weakness (flyers) while still being dredgable, which the butcher is not. If the opponent has more than one flyer out, removing one from play is less powerful than stopping all of them by putting a stinkweed in front of them. I believe crypt rats is the strongest removal that Dead Dog has access to, since you can board wipe any problem creature while your key creatures can all become fat enough to survive.
Dead Dog's primary weakness in the metagame is flyers. I think that's why it hasn't broken into the meta yet (that, and only 1-2 people play the deck per PE as opposed to the 7-8 WW / UB / Storm each time). That makes WW / UWblink / Faeries the problem decks. It doesn't help that white also has access to exile removal. I was probably wrong about cutting my stinkweed count from 3 to 2.
Its other weakness is creature-combo, like GWCloak and Slivers, but I wouldn't modify the deck to beat those because I only encounter them once in a while in tournament practice and never in queues. I would've thought Affinity would have the advantage too with Rush of Knowledge but most games I can actually race them.
The only way a deck can get better is if more people take their own unique perspective on it. I know my own version isn't perfect, which is why I greatly appreciate seeing what changes other people do with the deck. Good analysis on how it plays and thank you for sticking with it!
@fenix - Hehe, okay I might have hyped the next one up a bit much, but I'm nearly done writing it and the results look good. It's not making brand new competitive decks but showing a quick way at finding the strongest archetypes.
@anon#1 - How is the Knight slow? It's a 1drop, and later in the game you can just hardcast it. How is Amrou Scout or Aven Riftwatcher, the cards it would be competing with, any faster? Not only that, it can attack into any flyer your opponent would usually block you with.
Goldmeadow Harrier isn't strictly better than Unmake, but it too is a 1drop (speed), helps protect your other threats from Edict / Blood, and pings for 1 when you don't need to use its ability. I'd say that's better when you want to face control.
@Baldr - If the control deck is counter-heavy then Okiba makes sense, but if its removal heavy then the okiba's 2 toughness is just a liability and setting you up for tempo loss if it's immediately dealt with. On the other hand, if it connects you're in a very good position to win. It's a risk I'm usually not willing to take.
@ Paul - Thanks, he really did a huge overhaul. Almost every paragraph had multiple corrections. Grammar isn't my forte! I need to read more books.
@deluxeicoff - I think everyone will walk into the first force spike, you'll always have that surprise factor since it's not a popular card at the moment. After that, it depends if the opponent is smart or not. It's not a bad card as I said, but removal keeps its use throughout the match. Spike is really nice for stopping turn 2 ravenous rats when you're on the draw with only one land.
@anon#2 - That's true, it could be good in the late game. I just wouldn't want to see it early. It might be an interesting 1of in a Teachings deck.
@anon#3 - Augur / Duress are better cards, but if you want to consistently beat Storm you need more than that. That's why the Cloak is there, or Thrull Surgeon. Remember Storm likes going off turns 3-4 so you need a lot of early disruption to stop them.
No its not. It doesn't counter early enough, and is too expensive as a "draw X" spell. You can't even reliably use it EOT to draw because you still need a spell on the stack to target. Flexibility is great in 100CS - but not at this high a price.
It is possible that is the meta shifts more heavily towards control and winning counter wars then this might find a place - but even then its utility is questionable in my mind.
Logic Knot is also a viable counter, early game its an expensive powersink, but late game when your graveyard is full of used counters it becomes just as good as everybody's favorite, "the king" Counterspell
I think you really just start banning these ridiculous 2 card I win combos. Sure the regulars already know not to run things like this in order to make it a more casual competitive environment so why not just make it official? Like I said in Paul's article you could ban or restrict cards like force of will or vial. You could try something like this and see how it does, maybe it will clean up the tournament. This is just my opinion and my two sense.
I have played at least a dozen varieties of this deck at this point between the casual room and the tournament practice room. I think you underestimate the value of Stinkweed Imp. Once Tortured Existence is in play, dredging the Imp (or Brownscale) acts a means of deck search to get the Wild Mongrel and Vampire Hounds into your hand quicker. In addition, Stinkweed Imp is vital for the mirror or when facing another mid-range deck.
The best variation I have seen of this deck included Vines of the Vastwood. Vines provides pump and protection and thwarts the best strategy I have found in dealing with this deck. In order to defeat this deck, you must punish their creatures in such a manner as to force the Dead Dog player to discard more cards than they want to keep the Wild Mongrel or Vampire Hounds alive. Lightning Bolt after they have discarded a creature to their Mongrel or Hounds forces the opponent to discard more cards or lose their heavy hitter.
Dead Dog drives itself off of a large hand and the threat of one-sided combat trades, but diminishing their hand limits their options and during their rebuilding phase, it is possible to knock down their life. Post sideboard, enchantment control limits their options and removes their ability to dredge the Golgari Brownscale and discard it fo Tortured Existence to recur a more powerful creature.
I also think the Rancor should at least be in the sideboard. That card ensures that Dead Dog can push damage through and against some other decks that will be vital in a race.
I won TPDC season 12 Champs with WW running 4 Knight of Sursi maindeck. I beat Teachings 3 times, Parlor Tricks, and Storm. So tell me why Knight is bad again?
if i could offer advice it would be for newer players to focus on getting the tarmogoyfs first. FoW is great but is not really splashable in any stretch of the imagination, whereas most decks can afford 1 green mana
I'm like you in that I love looking at established "must haves" and going the other way! I like not seeing blink in U/W. I think force spike is a bit underplayed/rated, true about playing around it - but so many folks are chompin at the bit to play their answer/creature the nanosecond they draw it, that it feels good even mid-late for me anyways:) I'm not going to be able to play this Friday, but I hope to see you all next weekend~
first off, tarmo is super high because of extended and legacy speculation. in paper there going for 90 each, and its not just because zoo is a teir 1 deck in ext. As soon as this current ext season is over EVERYONE who wants tarmo should get them, online legacy is around the cornopr and as this very article shows, tarmo is the numba 1 kill slot in decks that that can splash him. He will only get more and more rediculos and I dont see wotc ever reprinting it as they veiw him as a mistake and they wont make a functional reprint of him thats fixed at GG instead of 1G.
FoW has hit high 70's, right now its in the mid 60s and I would again say that if your interested in Classic/Legacy/Vintage u had better just pony up the mony and get a pset. Sell your std mythics to get them if u have to. You know what baneslayer will be worth next year if they dont reprint it? yea not even close to what it is now. You know what fow will be worth next year? Yea a heck of a lot more then it is now, and fow is one of the very very very few cards that will not get reprinted. according to worth wolpert.
Any chance you can point me to articles, or discuss here, how prices change over time for new cards and boosters online? I'd like to use this to know when to buy and sell cards (generally speaking) based on historical movements.
thanks,
I know one tournament went in the direction that Shard and the others didn't like, but don't get too down. In my opinion Classic Tribal is still one of the best formats to play. Why? Because you can start a Classic Tribal game in the casual room and you will never know what you will be up against. All the games are fun, and while you do run into the standard decks, you are just as often going to run into a tribe you've never seen before. I think this is mostly due to Shard et al. running the tournament and more importantly writing about it. It gets people's creative juices flowing and those juices spill over the the casual room. So thank you for running the tournament and writing about it, even though I've only been able to make it once because of other conflicts, I wouldn't enjoy tribal in the casual room without it.
I have 2 suggestions if you want the tournament to remain fun for all and at the competitive level you want.
1. It's been suggested before, but run a swiss tournament with prizes given for wins, such as 1 credit per win. There will still be prizes, but no loaded prize for the winner.
2. Come up with restricted builds or theme builds for the week. Such as all creatures, only blue or white cards, tribal singleton, etc... Being a casual format it wouldn't be hard to enforce, if someone doesn't follow the build, their opponent should PM you. Three or four weeks worth of builds could be posted in this forum so players would have plenty of advance notice.
Just make a custom banned list. Tribal should be a fun format to play. Ban Thopter Foundry, Vial, Survival, Grindstone, Oath, etc. It's not too hard to pick out the cards that are being used to fuel rather un-interactive combos. A similar list exists in a lot of the Pauper formats (like Disciple/Artifact Lands) and even some of the other PRE formats. It's unfortunate that's it's a bit more work, but it'll both shake up the meta and make the event more enjoyable for anyone involved.
Couldn't agree with you more Shard. That is the exact reason I plan on writing another article focusing around cards that aren't blue. If people say FOW is a barrier to enter into the format, then lets give em a reason to think overwise.
"@anon#1 - How is the Knight slow? It's a 1drop, and later in the game you can just hardcast it. How is Amrou Scout or Aven Riftwatcher, the cards it would be competing with, any faster? Not only that, it can attack into any flyer your opponent would usually block you with."
It's a one drop that doesn't attack or block until turn 4. How is that not slow? Not to mention it's your least desirable one drop, so if you have multiple plays on turn one he's going to get bumped to turn 2, or have to be hard cast. Much better options exist at 1cc and 4cc.
It's also not really competing with Amrou Scout and Aven Riftwatcher. Both of those were simply meta cards for goblins/burn, and were an instrumental part of pushing them out of the format. Now that they're gone I don't see why people are still playing them. Considering the meta before the last PE was Teachings heavy people really had no business playing them at all.
WW is near and dear to my heart, but it's a deck that plays roles. White is a deep color that can adapt to different metas easily. During meta shifts each card in the deck should be heavily scrutinized. Everything card in it should be improving your matchups against the main decks, and Knight of Sursi improves none of them right now.
I think the recent success of WW has more to do with the fact it's an aggro-ish deck that's not goblins more so than WW actually being a good deck. The Naya Cloak list from the PE pretty much backs me up on this. Any decent aggro deck has a good chance of winning until WW switches back to a slower, more aggro stopping list of cards. Once that happens it will give control some breathing room again. Then we get to start the whole cycle over unless some new tech makes a huge splash.
Playing stinkweeds doesn't mean you're trying to play control against WW. When up against WW you're still on the offense but they can try stalling while racing you from above. Stinkweeds just push them into full defense mode without a way of racing you. A longer game is always in favor of Dead Dog because it takes longer to run out of steam, or if you have TE you never do.
You might be right about boarding the brownscales for stinkweeds though. Goblins and burn is falling out of popularity for now.
Crypt Rats doesn't kill prot black dudes, you're right. WW only runs 4 of them and doesn't even have obsidian acolyte in their SB anymore, but Murphy's Law dictates that they will bust out at least two of them in the first 4 turns each game if festercreep is removed. That's the only reason why I'm still running the creep, otherwise rats would be superior.
Rancor is good but hard to find the extra slots for.
Oh, it will be. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be in your face. It'll be like a Monster Truck commercials supercharged with Powerthirst. I'll be busting out decks with power levels so high it'll make yo eyez bleedz! Over 9000? More like OVER INFINITY!!!
Bonus Stats Analysis: Pros/Cons of popping your Terramorphic Expanse at your EOT in response to your opponents popping their own Terramorphic Expanse, then taking over a minute to choose a basic land. I call it the "Piss You Off" factor.
yeah, i'm going to try out the crypt rats from your article Doctor Anime, i think they seem a little better.
Goblins is not nearly a large enough part of the meta to justify maindeck Brownscales. They're just discard fodder against every other matchup. They would be much better suited as sideboard material, with some combination of Duress/Shinobi maindeck. I'm personally not a huge fan of stinkweed, as trying to play control against WW as this deck generally seems poor, but they also would outperform Brownscales in game 1 against 90% of the field.
Using "it's bad against control" as an argument against Edict is a pretty poor position as well. You're boarding out whatever removal you have against control, it's only there for the mirror/WW/GW/etc. Ideally you have Festercreep/Nausea for Goblins and not spot removal, so that argument doesn't really work either. If you're going to pack removal, Edict is without a doubt the best option.
Also, @aboveposters Crypt Rats doesn't kill pro black dudes. Not an option. I also am a fan of Rancor, as its "weakest" matchup is against control decks that you're favored against as well. Helps race everything else.
I think stinkweed imp is stronger than the faceless butcher here, because it handles the deck's weakness (flyers) while still being dredgable, which the butcher is not. If the opponent has more than one flyer out, removing one from play is less powerful than stopping all of them by putting a stinkweed in front of them. I believe crypt rats is the strongest removal that Dead Dog has access to, since you can board wipe any problem creature while your key creatures can all become fat enough to survive.
Dead Dog's primary weakness in the metagame is flyers. I think that's why it hasn't broken into the meta yet (that, and only 1-2 people play the deck per PE as opposed to the 7-8 WW / UB / Storm each time). That makes WW / UWblink / Faeries the problem decks. It doesn't help that white also has access to exile removal. I was probably wrong about cutting my stinkweed count from 3 to 2.
Its other weakness is creature-combo, like GWCloak and Slivers, but I wouldn't modify the deck to beat those because I only encounter them once in a while in tournament practice and never in queues. I would've thought Affinity would have the advantage too with Rush of Knowledge but most games I can actually race them.
The only way a deck can get better is if more people take their own unique perspective on it. I know my own version isn't perfect, which is why I greatly appreciate seeing what changes other people do with the deck. Good analysis on how it plays and thank you for sticking with it!
sad fenix is sad....i though it would be a super deckbuilding extravaganza.
@fenix - Hehe, okay I might have hyped the next one up a bit much, but I'm nearly done writing it and the results look good. It's not making brand new competitive decks but showing a quick way at finding the strongest archetypes.
@anon#1 - How is the Knight slow? It's a 1drop, and later in the game you can just hardcast it. How is Amrou Scout or Aven Riftwatcher, the cards it would be competing with, any faster? Not only that, it can attack into any flyer your opponent would usually block you with.
Goldmeadow Harrier isn't strictly better than Unmake, but it too is a 1drop (speed), helps protect your other threats from Edict / Blood, and pings for 1 when you don't need to use its ability. I'd say that's better when you want to face control.
@Baldr - If the control deck is counter-heavy then Okiba makes sense, but if its removal heavy then the okiba's 2 toughness is just a liability and setting you up for tempo loss if it's immediately dealt with. On the other hand, if it connects you're in a very good position to win. It's a risk I'm usually not willing to take.
@ Paul - Thanks, he really did a huge overhaul. Almost every paragraph had multiple corrections. Grammar isn't my forte! I need to read more books.
@deluxeicoff - I think everyone will walk into the first force spike, you'll always have that surprise factor since it's not a popular card at the moment. After that, it depends if the opponent is smart or not. It's not a bad card as I said, but removal keeps its use throughout the match. Spike is really nice for stopping turn 2 ravenous rats when you're on the draw with only one land.
@anon#2 - That's true, it could be good in the late game. I just wouldn't want to see it early. It might be an interesting 1of in a Teachings deck.
@anon#3 - Augur / Duress are better cards, but if you want to consistently beat Storm you need more than that. That's why the Cloak is there, or Thrull Surgeon. Remember Storm likes going off turns 3-4 so you need a lot of early disruption to stop them.
Must be a bad joke.
No its not. It doesn't counter early enough, and is too expensive as a "draw X" spell. You can't even reliably use it EOT to draw because you still need a spell on the stack to target. Flexibility is great in 100CS - but not at this high a price.
It is possible that is the meta shifts more heavily towards control and winning counter wars then this might find a place - but even then its utility is questionable in my mind.
cloak of confusion? it seems like a terrible idea, why? why not augur's you can bring back and reuse, it makes no sense to me, please enlighten.
is teetering peaks really helping you? your deck seems more defensive, what about dumping the blue and playing up cantrips like shelter?
I'm going to go with
FoW
Brainstorm
Lightning Bolt
Krosan Grip
Swords to Plowshares
Logic Knot is also a viable counter, early game its an expensive powersink, but late game when your graveyard is full of used counters it becomes just as good as everybody's favorite, "the king" Counterspell
I think you really just start banning these ridiculous 2 card I win combos. Sure the regulars already know not to run things like this in order to make it a more casual competitive environment so why not just make it official? Like I said in Paul's article you could ban or restrict cards like force of will or vial. You could try something like this and see how it does, maybe it will clean up the tournament. This is just my opinion and my two sense.
I have played at least a dozen varieties of this deck at this point between the casual room and the tournament practice room. I think you underestimate the value of Stinkweed Imp. Once Tortured Existence is in play, dredging the Imp (or Brownscale) acts a means of deck search to get the Wild Mongrel and Vampire Hounds into your hand quicker. In addition, Stinkweed Imp is vital for the mirror or when facing another mid-range deck.
The best variation I have seen of this deck included Vines of the Vastwood. Vines provides pump and protection and thwarts the best strategy I have found in dealing with this deck. In order to defeat this deck, you must punish their creatures in such a manner as to force the Dead Dog player to discard more cards than they want to keep the Wild Mongrel or Vampire Hounds alive. Lightning Bolt after they have discarded a creature to their Mongrel or Hounds forces the opponent to discard more cards or lose their heavy hitter.
Dead Dog drives itself off of a large hand and the threat of one-sided combat trades, but diminishing their hand limits their options and during their rebuilding phase, it is possible to knock down their life. Post sideboard, enchantment control limits their options and removes their ability to dredge the Golgari Brownscale and discard it fo Tortured Existence to recur a more powerful creature.
I also think the Rancor should at least be in the sideboard. That card ensures that Dead Dog can push damage through and against some other decks that will be vital in a race.
Congrats on the success with this deck.
I won TPDC season 12 Champs with WW running 4 Knight of Sursi maindeck. I beat Teachings 3 times, Parlor Tricks, and Storm. So tell me why Knight is bad again?
if i could offer advice it would be for newer players to focus on getting the tarmogoyfs first. FoW is great but is not really splashable in any stretch of the imagination, whereas most decks can afford 1 green mana
maybe swap the festercreeps for crypt rats then, to take the air guys?
I'm like you in that I love looking at established "must haves" and going the other way! I like not seeing blink in U/W. I think force spike is a bit underplayed/rated, true about playing around it - but so many folks are chompin at the bit to play their answer/creature the nanosecond they draw it, that it feels good even mid-late for me anyways:) I'm not going to be able to play this Friday, but I hope to see you all next weekend~
first off, tarmo is super high because of extended and legacy speculation. in paper there going for 90 each, and its not just because zoo is a teir 1 deck in ext. As soon as this current ext season is over EVERYONE who wants tarmo should get them, online legacy is around the cornopr and as this very article shows, tarmo is the numba 1 kill slot in decks that that can splash him. He will only get more and more rediculos and I dont see wotc ever reprinting it as they veiw him as a mistake and they wont make a functional reprint of him thats fixed at GG instead of 1G.
FoW has hit high 70's, right now its in the mid 60s and I would again say that if your interested in Classic/Legacy/Vintage u had better just pony up the mony and get a pset. Sell your std mythics to get them if u have to. You know what baneslayer will be worth next year if they dont reprint it? yea not even close to what it is now. You know what fow will be worth next year? Yea a heck of a lot more then it is now, and fow is one of the very very very few cards that will not get reprinted. according to worth wolpert.
just my 2 cents.