Awesome job at exploring the tribal side. There are a few other options I believe like MonoGreen Elves where you can use rancor, moldervine cloak, blanchwood armor,beastmaster's ascension and primal rage.
One suggestion on the w/g version is if possible you could use Sigil of the Empty Throne for more angels or Burgeoning to ramp your mana.
yes it would completely stop perhaps 90% of the decks out there, but it would require a change in the creature base of this deck because the only fliers come from Luminarch Ascension
well it definitely seems that tribal has balanced out in the casual room, was kinda what I was trying to say, but I was taking that expectation from back when I had last played any number of tribal games which was before LOR hit
A silly comment, but in your Madness deck list Vampire Hounds is a creature, not an "other spell". Also - noticed that you sideboard out Rancor for all of the top decks...is that an indication that it may be a better sideboard card than a maindeck card?
All good points. Haha I really want to like Warp World, because in theory it should be a fun card. But in practice, the only way I've ever seen it used is in decks that immediately win when it's cast.
That has been the case for some time. Mirror Entity also sees plenty of play. Also sometimes I use Moonglove Changeling in black to give an early defender.
I'm quite surprised that you expect to come across so many elf decks. I haven't found that to be the case with tribal at all. I do seem to come across a higher than average amount of merfolk and goblins, but as a rule, I'd say I see a good variety of stuff.
I have recently discovered that changelings are now counting towards your tribal limit, which I think is letting a lot of people test out more marginal tribes, because they can trim the weakest members for taurean maulers or chameleon collossi (I'm still nowhere near my G/R Badger deck though)...
Maro somewhat recently linked back to an article he had written ages ago about the randomness in chess. He convinced me that Chess is over 90% skill, but not quite a 100%. Something trivial to solve like tic-tac-toe is 100% skill.
His examples of randomness in chess were: your opponent in next round, the matchup of your playstyle versus the villain's, and anytime you have to resort to fuzzy logic. Because we're only human, and because chess isn't tic-tac-toe, we can't solve the game down to the final move in our heads. So anytime we have to chose between two or more attractive moves we're making essentially random decisions. Just because one move is 65% awesome and the alternative is 45% awesome doesn't make it wrong to choose the 45% move, even if you're unsure of why. (Which is because you're not sure if you've evaluated the moves correctly yourself, not because you're making a bad play to psyche your opponent out.)
Some games also have the Yomi layers thing going on. (He's thinking that I'm thinking that he's thinking that, so I will... etc.) Street Fighter is the classic example of second guessing your opponent but chess has it too. Practically, what ends up happening in these games is that luck decides who has the advantage in a tied game state. The next pair of moves make the difference between advantage, disadvantage, or another tied game state. I'll never ever beat a chessmaster if the game is chess. The difference in skill is too great for me to try to outwit him or her. But in a master vs master game either player could win.
Cascade - I think what you don't like about Cascade is how obviously awesome it is. Everyone's using it, and everyone wants to use it. Timmy and Spike are holding hands. As a result games are coming down to who can have better cascades, who draws more cascade enablers, or who wins the coin toss. Clash meets your criteria of being random, but not game-breaking. Likewise, I'm sure you hate affinity in MRD/COK Standard right? It's not that the mechanic is random, but what it does to the normally "good types of random" that Magic is supposed to have when it's healthy?
saying that theres that much skill in magic is ridiculous, sure theres a threshold of knowledge without which youll get creamed but once youre reasonably skilled the game becomes very much a balance between luck and skill, putting this on a graph like that is pretty arbitrary anyway. If the game was only 10% luck I wouldnt see LSV getting owned by bad players in draft all the time.
He means canyon wildcat, and i played against 3 WW that tournament going 1-2 only beating one first round by getting game 1 through him only having shadow guys so no blockers and game 2 I got a torture chamber on-line.
He means canyon wildcat, and i played against 3 WW that tournament going 1-2 only beating one first round by getting game 1 through him only having shadow guys so no blockers and game 2 I got a torture chamber on-line.
Interesting food for thought Cotton. A couple things: Chess while not at all luck based does have variables. I TEND to be a very strong chess player (averaging around 1900 on good days) but I have moments when I 'burn out'. I have also noticed some variations lead to me winning or losing (or drawing) more than others so I tend to avoid the lines I know are worse for me. But occasionally I do play them anyway just because. So while none of these factors are luck based they are unknown factors for my opponent who may also have hidden factors for me to discover. Also different people's playing style can either inspire or bore me and so change my own level of play. When I am inspired I may suddenly see the 3 move forced combination that ends the game when I felt I was losing or in a no win situation. When bored I may move too hastily and not think all the way through the consequences of moves I make. (Ah the downside of playing 'blitz'.) That is how Chess can be fun still once you reach a certain level of proficiency in it. You never can tell the outcome before hand even against partners you've played with for years. Given all that I concede that it is very unlikely My Dad would ever win against me in chess unaided despite his brilliance in many fields. Chess isn't his game, and it is mine.
Poker while having a large element of math in it (thus the skill) is subject to the same vagaries of psychology that chess is. (Most games of skill are.) As for your father's examples of rummy/canasta...well the skill threshold is much lower than poker and so once you hit the learning curve apex it becomes relatively even. So in a sense your dad said it right. You did have a sudden leap in skill. Only since it still felt novel to you, you had not fully internalized what you learned about the game.
Learning to master magic is imho a long and frustrating road even for the top players. For us mere mortals it often means completely forgetting what we know about gaming in general and relearning how MAGIC goes from scratch. Rules interactions, timing and tempo, card advantage, tactics, sacrifice, recursion, there are tons of things to know. And like it or not there is a strong factor of luck. Which is mitigated because we do get to build the deck usually. Even a 1 card difference in a deck can make it play differently.
I can not abide by Momir. I rarely ever win in it. That is why I sold my Avatar after the big tourney. It was a nightmare I'd not soon repeat willingly. I do get why some people find it fun but the lunacy of it makes me want to rip the virtual cards to shreds. Strangely, I love frenetic efreet and there are a few other coinflippers that I enjoy. Warp World is just tons of fun (though not strictly a coin flip it does bring random elements to each side of the game.)
I disagree with Cascade needing to be removed from the game. I understand WHY it irks people but I find it to be relatively balanced. Broken in the context of specific games perhaps but in general I don't think it is. If it was, Hypercascade would win everything and it doesn't. Cascade IS a strong mechanism despite the luck factor involved but the fact that you can build luck OUT of your deck with it to me makes it a skill test. You can choose to play a cascade chain with nothing else to break your chain but you have to build your deck to do that. Adding random other cards will break the chain and thus make it harder to get your desired result. The likelyhood though is even if you do resolve a cascade spell it won't necessarily save you from say a Baneslayer Angel or something else "broken". I will admit it has warped the formats it's useful in but that is what happens when a strong mechanic dominates. Some people feel LANDFALL is too strong in Zendikar. I don't agree with that either.
w/e ur full of shit about the shuffler. i played magic for 3 years and have never been dicked over as bad as i have been in a week of mtgo. i don't mana weave or even know what that is but that shuffler is the biggest piece of shit in the history of technology. the dvd rewinder is more intelligently designed than that piece of shit shuffler. start a hand with three lands and by turn 10 still have 3 lands? what a joke. mtgo must have a clause where it checks how much money you've paid and how much wizards of the coast dick you've sucked to see if you get to not get fucked in the ass by a spiked mace.
I've toyed with all three of the first three zoo variants you mentioned and settled on the Bant Charm Zoo as the one I've been playing in the PTQ's and tournament practice room online. I think I ended up 37th in the last online PTQ with it and the deck is really strong. But like you said, and it can't be emphasized enough, scapeshift blows it out. I've only beaten the new breed of green red scapeshift decks once or twice in competitive play and that is purely on the back of having 8 sideboard cards for the match. Even then I usually lose, dramatically. My numbers against the scapeshift decks with blue are even worse. When they tap their six lands to go off they usually have a counter to back up the scapeshift if you even happen to have a negate in hand. And it isn't like you can back off and play around mana leak because if you are backing off then you will certainly lose.
But, against affinity, fast zoo, many red decks and other random creature decks baneslayers backed up by bant charms can usually get there. I almost think of my baneslayers as a one card combo. If I play it unanswered or with protection I just win. Otherwise nacatls and goyfs and burn do what they do.
I suspect the bitterness is not at the fail but at the act of hording whether it is successful or not. It creates an environment of suspicion and paranoia as people try to figure out whether the formerly .25 card is now worth the $10 price tag the dealers demand for it. I think the fail part is wishful thinking. (I should note I am not talking about a specific card...no idea whether Counterbalance will sky rocket or not.)
The bitterness at hordering fail is insane. If this mystery person fails why would anyone be bothered? If all the CB really are gone then I doubt it will stay at 1.
i just like scartore hate the fact almost every single creature is referred to as a he.
Knight of the reliquery- boobs
baneslayer- boobs
noble hierarch- boobs
wild nacatl- boobs
this is really disntictive in the art and yet all 4 of these cards are consistently referred to as he and him or his. seriously most people may not notice art right awayt but if u constantly play these cards and think about them enough to write an article shouldnt you notice that they are packing sweater meat?
Rant aside i liked this mr todd dont really play extended but i do like following it and i got to say that although bant charm zoo may not be as consistenly good as one drop and rubin i love the versatility it gives to an otherwise pretty straight forward deck.
As for blood braid, well i can only see him getting better and better in the following seasons as md5 and chk block rotate out of ext.
It was maindeck - and it is not really that good against a deck full of fat and fliers, which he saw game one. It is a very slow pinger that cannot kill anything. (Okay - if you Giant Growth it, then it can, but it is a 0/1.)
On the other hand, having done the raredrafting thing, I'm pretty sure he was at least three colors and 20 lands, because he had a card pool full of Hive Minds and other, unplayable rares.
Awesome job at exploring the tribal side. There are a few other options I believe like MonoGreen Elves where you can use rancor, moldervine cloak, blanchwood armor,beastmaster's ascension and primal rage.
One suggestion on the w/g version is if possible you could use Sigil of the Empty Throne for more angels or Burgeoning to ramp your mana.
yes it would completely stop perhaps 90% of the decks out there, but it would require a change in the creature base of this deck because the only fliers come from Luminarch Ascension
well it definitely seems that tribal has balanced out in the casual room, was kinda what I was trying to say, but I was taking that expectation from back when I had last played any number of tribal games which was before LOR hit
"Make sure to prepare your goat sacrifices before queue'ing up."
Hilarious!
Your deck only have 58 cards in it. Did you leave out 2x Stinkweed Imp?
A silly comment, but in your Madness deck list Vampire Hounds is a creature, not an "other spell". Also - noticed that you sideboard out Rancor for all of the top decks...is that an indication that it may be a better sideboard card than a maindeck card?
Its an enchantment and would shut down a lot of decks.
All good points. Haha I really want to like Warp World, because in theory it should be a fun card. But in practice, the only way I've ever seen it used is in decks that immediately win when it's cast.
That has been the case for some time. Mirror Entity also sees plenty of play. Also sometimes I use Moonglove Changeling in black to give an early defender.
Man you nailed every point. All I can say is "precisely. And when did you get so smart?"
I'm quite surprised that you expect to come across so many elf decks. I haven't found that to be the case with tribal at all. I do seem to come across a higher than average amount of merfolk and goblins, but as a rule, I'd say I see a good variety of stuff.
I have recently discovered that changelings are now counting towards your tribal limit, which I think is letting a lot of people test out more marginal tribes, because they can trim the weakest members for taurean maulers or chameleon collossi (I'm still nowhere near my G/R Badger deck though)...
Maro somewhat recently linked back to an article he had written ages ago about the randomness in chess. He convinced me that Chess is over 90% skill, but not quite a 100%. Something trivial to solve like tic-tac-toe is 100% skill.
His examples of randomness in chess were: your opponent in next round, the matchup of your playstyle versus the villain's, and anytime you have to resort to fuzzy logic. Because we're only human, and because chess isn't tic-tac-toe, we can't solve the game down to the final move in our heads. So anytime we have to chose between two or more attractive moves we're making essentially random decisions. Just because one move is 65% awesome and the alternative is 45% awesome doesn't make it wrong to choose the 45% move, even if you're unsure of why. (Which is because you're not sure if you've evaluated the moves correctly yourself, not because you're making a bad play to psyche your opponent out.)
Some games also have the Yomi layers thing going on. (He's thinking that I'm thinking that he's thinking that, so I will... etc.) Street Fighter is the classic example of second guessing your opponent but chess has it too. Practically, what ends up happening in these games is that luck decides who has the advantage in a tied game state. The next pair of moves make the difference between advantage, disadvantage, or another tied game state. I'll never ever beat a chessmaster if the game is chess. The difference in skill is too great for me to try to outwit him or her. But in a master vs master game either player could win.
Cascade - I think what you don't like about Cascade is how obviously awesome it is. Everyone's using it, and everyone wants to use it. Timmy and Spike are holding hands. As a result games are coming down to who can have better cascades, who draws more cascade enablers, or who wins the coin toss. Clash meets your criteria of being random, but not game-breaking. Likewise, I'm sure you hate affinity in MRD/COK Standard right? It's not that the mechanic is random, but what it does to the normally "good types of random" that Magic is supposed to have when it's healthy?
You Mr Anon, see LSV getting 'owned'? Where is your proof? Or is it just cool to say?
saying that theres that much skill in magic is ridiculous, sure theres a threshold of knowledge without which youll get creamed but once youre reasonably skilled the game becomes very much a balance between luck and skill, putting this on a graph like that is pretty arbitrary anyway. If the game was only 10% luck I wouldnt see LSV getting owned by bad players in draft all the time.
He means canyon wildcat, and i played against 3 WW that tournament going 1-2 only beating one first round by getting game 1 through him only having shadow guys so no blockers and game 2 I got a torture chamber on-line.
He means canyon wildcat, and i played against 3 WW that tournament going 1-2 only beating one first round by getting game 1 through him only having shadow guys so no blockers and game 2 I got a torture chamber on-line.
When you tagged Canyon Minotaur, what creature is it actually supposed to be?
Interesting food for thought Cotton. A couple things: Chess while not at all luck based does have variables. I TEND to be a very strong chess player (averaging around 1900 on good days) but I have moments when I 'burn out'. I have also noticed some variations lead to me winning or losing (or drawing) more than others so I tend to avoid the lines I know are worse for me. But occasionally I do play them anyway just because. So while none of these factors are luck based they are unknown factors for my opponent who may also have hidden factors for me to discover. Also different people's playing style can either inspire or bore me and so change my own level of play. When I am inspired I may suddenly see the 3 move forced combination that ends the game when I felt I was losing or in a no win situation. When bored I may move too hastily and not think all the way through the consequences of moves I make. (Ah the downside of playing 'blitz'.) That is how Chess can be fun still once you reach a certain level of proficiency in it. You never can tell the outcome before hand even against partners you've played with for years. Given all that I concede that it is very unlikely My Dad would ever win against me in chess unaided despite his brilliance in many fields. Chess isn't his game, and it is mine.
Poker while having a large element of math in it (thus the skill) is subject to the same vagaries of psychology that chess is. (Most games of skill are.) As for your father's examples of rummy/canasta...well the skill threshold is much lower than poker and so once you hit the learning curve apex it becomes relatively even. So in a sense your dad said it right. You did have a sudden leap in skill. Only since it still felt novel to you, you had not fully internalized what you learned about the game.
Learning to master magic is imho a long and frustrating road even for the top players. For us mere mortals it often means completely forgetting what we know about gaming in general and relearning how MAGIC goes from scratch. Rules interactions, timing and tempo, card advantage, tactics, sacrifice, recursion, there are tons of things to know. And like it or not there is a strong factor of luck. Which is mitigated because we do get to build the deck usually. Even a 1 card difference in a deck can make it play differently.
I can not abide by Momir. I rarely ever win in it. That is why I sold my Avatar after the big tourney. It was a nightmare I'd not soon repeat willingly. I do get why some people find it fun but the lunacy of it makes me want to rip the virtual cards to shreds. Strangely, I love frenetic efreet and there are a few other coinflippers that I enjoy. Warp World is just tons of fun (though not strictly a coin flip it does bring random elements to each side of the game.)
I disagree with Cascade needing to be removed from the game. I understand WHY it irks people but I find it to be relatively balanced. Broken in the context of specific games perhaps but in general I don't think it is. If it was, Hypercascade would win everything and it doesn't. Cascade IS a strong mechanism despite the luck factor involved but the fact that you can build luck OUT of your deck with it to me makes it a skill test. You can choose to play a cascade chain with nothing else to break your chain but you have to build your deck to do that. Adding random other cards will break the chain and thus make it harder to get your desired result. The likelyhood though is even if you do resolve a cascade spell it won't necessarily save you from say a Baneslayer Angel or something else "broken". I will admit it has warped the formats it's useful in but that is what happens when a strong mechanic dominates. Some people feel LANDFALL is too strong in Zendikar. I don't agree with that either.
w/e ur full of shit about the shuffler. i played magic for 3 years and have never been dicked over as bad as i have been in a week of mtgo. i don't mana weave or even know what that is but that shuffler is the biggest piece of shit in the history of technology. the dvd rewinder is more intelligently designed than that piece of shit shuffler. start a hand with three lands and by turn 10 still have 3 lands? what a joke. mtgo must have a clause where it checks how much money you've paid and how much wizards of the coast dick you've sucked to see if you get to not get fucked in the ass by a spiked mace.
Cool article.
I've toyed with all three of the first three zoo variants you mentioned and settled on the Bant Charm Zoo as the one I've been playing in the PTQ's and tournament practice room online. I think I ended up 37th in the last online PTQ with it and the deck is really strong. But like you said, and it can't be emphasized enough, scapeshift blows it out. I've only beaten the new breed of green red scapeshift decks once or twice in competitive play and that is purely on the back of having 8 sideboard cards for the match. Even then I usually lose, dramatically. My numbers against the scapeshift decks with blue are even worse. When they tap their six lands to go off they usually have a counter to back up the scapeshift if you even happen to have a negate in hand. And it isn't like you can back off and play around mana leak because if you are backing off then you will certainly lose.
But, against affinity, fast zoo, many red decks and other random creature decks baneslayers backed up by bant charms can usually get there. I almost think of my baneslayers as a one card combo. If I play it unanswered or with protection I just win. Otherwise nacatls and goyfs and burn do what they do.
I suspect the bitterness is not at the fail but at the act of hording whether it is successful or not. It creates an environment of suspicion and paranoia as people try to figure out whether the formerly .25 card is now worth the $10 price tag the dealers demand for it. I think the fail part is wishful thinking. (I should note I am not talking about a specific card...no idea whether Counterbalance will sky rocket or not.)
Pretty sure Bloodbraid elf is also female, though admittedly not as obviously so as the other cards you mentioned, but female nonetheless.
The bitterness at hordering fail is insane. If this mystery person fails why would anyone be bothered? If all the CB really are gone then I doubt it will stay at 1.
i just like scartore hate the fact almost every single creature is referred to as a he.
Knight of the reliquery- boobs
baneslayer- boobs
noble hierarch- boobs
wild nacatl- boobs
this is really disntictive in the art and yet all 4 of these cards are consistently referred to as he and him or his. seriously most people may not notice art right awayt but if u constantly play these cards and think about them enough to write an article shouldnt you notice that they are packing sweater meat?
Rant aside i liked this mr todd dont really play extended but i do like following it and i got to say that although bant charm zoo may not be as consistenly good as one drop and rubin i love the versatility it gives to an otherwise pretty straight forward deck.
As for blood braid, well i can only see him getting better and better in the following seasons as md5 and chk block rotate out of ext.
It was maindeck - and it is not really that good against a deck full of fat and fliers, which he saw game one. It is a very slow pinger that cannot kill anything. (Okay - if you Giant Growth it, then it can, but it is a 0/1.)
On the other hand, having done the raredrafting thing, I'm pretty sure he was at least three colors and 20 lands, because he had a card pool full of Hive Minds and other, unplayable rares.