In my Momir tournament, I lost the first 3 rounds, round 4 was someone from Korea who timed out giving me the "win", got beaten again round 5, then round 6 my internet connection died on my laptop right before the round start. I tried every trick I usually do to get it to connect again and none of them worked, then I zipped over to my desktop machine to boot it up and got in too late. Trying to make sure I had actually missed the round I kept trying to scroll down to my name, and MTGO kept scrolling me back to the top of the list, but I finally managed to see my defeat in the list. End result, 1-5, pretty pathetic.
I guess I know why I haven't been playing Momir Basic much. Just not my kind of format at all. I lost one game due to a stupid mistake, the others were due to them getting bombish and/or evasive creatures, and me not getting 'em. I lost one game to Asmira, Holy Avenger. Another game I laughed when my opponent got an early Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore and I thought that'd slow him down so much I'd win for sure with one of my bigger drops. But I got no way to get damage through, nor a wall that could block the eye, and he got huge flying blockers like Zodiac Dragon, and I got beaten down by 8 turns of hits from that eye.
I'm sure most of the people that played in that tournament had fun with it, but I wasn't one of them. I still call it "Slot Machine Magic".
Based on the nature of magic, you've built sample bias into these "studies".
Higher cost cards (and cards with double colored mana in their cost) have a built in advantage in your ranking, because their use implies you've avoided color/mana screw.
i saw that game game between aj and LE, the irony. i also love the fact wotc is going to choke on the bazillion requests for avatars. all of momir is sick sick luck,
i saw that game game between aj and LE, the irony. i also love the fact wotc is going to choke on the bazillion requests for avatars. all of momir is sick sick luck,
Im glad to see you worked out of your rut and found a deck you like. I hate Spreading Seas type cards but at least it is a cantrip, and if soft mana denial works hey, why not?
For the momir tourney: My game blowouts for the most part had nothing to do with the guys I got (or failed to get as the case was several times) and much to do with my opponents getting incredible (for the board position) flips. I did manage to get Progenitus one game and came back from behind to get a concession from my opponent (who then proceeded to be an ass for the rest of the match.) Most of the flips that killed were things like Akromas and other fliers or unblockables. I had a few situations where I got a 187 on a stick just to lose it to my opponent's flip, before I could use it and generally I felt I had absolutely no control over any of the games. Most dispiriting as what I love about magic is the planning and seeing how that planning pans out.
Overall a vast improvement from previous podcasts. Sebastian I noticed your enunciation was much much clearer than in the past and on the whole the cast flowed smoothly through my ears without much in the way of wince worthy moments. The only thing I missed was AJ's cool accent to spice things up. I did notice that the cast itself cut in and out but as a technical issue I am not really sure what the fix is for that.
I noticed that steam vents went up to 17 tickets and was like "Oh Ive got 3!" but then I realized they aren't mine but are loaners. Bummer. I'd sell them in a heart beat if they were mine.
Momir was a total disappointment to me, culminating in a 1-5 loss and a totally unpleasant round with some teenager? who was not graceful at all despite having that in his name but he was quite windy (talkative) at least. Anyway I gave that round up halfway through just because he was so abusive and obnoxious. I thought about reporting his blatant trolling but then decided it wasn't worth the effort. Instead I just blocked him. Sadly blocking doesn't work IN Tourney so I had to put up with his harrasment through out the games.
Overall my opinion of the format is not high. The match I won was purely about the luck of the flip. I think I gave a way a game or 2 I could have won if I was more astute but generally all the primers and practice led to naught. Oh what the heck free avatar and MULTIBALL!
Thanks guys for making it possible and thanks WotC for giving us the chance to play.
@Holding the Hexmage Back: after swinging with both Bloodghasts the situation is the following:
Him: 10/10 Gatekeeper with sword, 4/3 Bloodghast.
Me: 2x Bloodghast (both tapped), Hexmage.
Now, if he's smart on his turn he plays Hexmage, moves sword to Bloodghast and swings with everything. If I do as you suggested I'm still dead since after blockers are declared he sacks his Hexmage to pump the Bloodghast to 6/5. It's still a good play though since I didn't know he had a Hexmage.
Anyway I could have survived had I blocked the Gatekeeper and then removed the counters from the Bloodghast, taking only 2 damage in the process. So "fogging" with the Hexmage was the better play and the one that should come natural with abilities requiring the sacrifice, don't know why I didn't see it. I definitely made a bad mistake =(.
Again, I think that tuktuk grunts being at the top of your list means you have to reevaluate your methods. Grunts is a bad card that unlike crypt ripper or steppe lynx, is bad in almost every deck. It's slow and weak, competing with much better red 5 drops. It's not even great in allies. I think these statistics are more misleading than helpful.
Of course these are sealed results, so the low placement of zektar shrine and shortcutter have merit, but the data is still unhelpful.
I like the concept but this needs more content, right now you're just stating the basic stuff as to what the cards do rather than how they play or help your strategy, it's very shallow content wise and doesn't really contain any analysis
Good job! As someone else said, love the bits where you stop and analyse a game situation, very reminiscent of Godot's articles - keep doing that! Also, I'm a limited player with aspirations (not more than that really..) of going infinite and have been finding it really difficult. I hadn't thought of giving constructed a try, but after reading your article I think I'll go for Zendikar block constructed. Good start for your writing "career", keep it up.
Can't you hold the hexmage back as a blocker, then sacrifice it after first strike damage to kill the blocked creature? This way he doesn't have lethal, even with his hexmage.
Nice article. I liked they hypos you set up in the game situations.
Since the goal of the series is to "go infinite" I know I would appreciate more information about how much you are putting into the game, and how much you are getting out. Cost breakdowns, winnings, whatever. Obviously you start off in the hole in the beginning, but I would like to know how deep that hole is, and when you actually break even.
I too have been thinking about playing constructed online. Much cheaper than drafting! But I do love the cracking of packs to see what's there. Thanks for the 411 on vampire decks. Much to mull.
Lands by themselves aren't enough to support to enemy colors.
For W/R I had these landfixing options:
Arid Mesa
Terramorphic Expanse
Naya Panorama
Jungle Shrine
Rupture Spire
Ancient Ziggurat (Which is bad with 2 Ajanis and Elspeth)
Exotic Orchard (Which is basically a gamble if you're only playing 2 colors)
This really isn't enough to make a decent 2 aggro deck play consistently. Especially one that wants to have both WW and RR available by turn 5.
With Naya or basically green in general you have a lot more options.
Green with 2 splash colors is a lot easier than White/Red because Green has Birds of Paradise, Lotus Cobra, Borderland Ranger, and Rampant Growth which can fix any color you need.
What is funny is the link in that archive is so old that the referenced article is no longer stored on starcityccg.com. and isn't on the new starcitygames.com either.
I agree with most of the above comments on the limited variety deck choices in Standard Singleton.
Another factor that limits deck building choices is the lack of enough enemy pair dual lands. After I got tired of playing Naya or Jund, I built a Boros (Red/White) aggro deck, and I had a lot more probablems with the mana than I ever did with Naya.
True... I did have a fun time in a game last night with an ANT build where I was able to cast a bunch of free Pacts while I had Angel in play. That has definitely warmed me up to the Angel recently.
I got pessimistic watching the angel get destroyed when being used by a couple of buddies running oath (a krosan grip, already commonly sideboarded in vs oath decks, a shattering spree, ancient grudge, and even a shattering spree once, used by a belcher deck, I think). But I've also seen FatManInALittleCoat/Richie (is that you using GoblinLackeyIsBlue's account? I'm confused) do pretty well with angel in play keeping him alive, so i guess I've just filtered out the positives.
And I guess there was one time I was pretty worried that i might mill myself to death because opponent had a leyline in play. It ended up not mattering, because i had 5 cards left in deck after two successful oath triggers, Iona and Foil Progenitus out on the field, so i had plenty of time to kill. But that felt a little too close. I wouldn't have been as worried about being milled with Angel in play. So that's also worth consideration.
Truth be told, I only recently started maindecking Tinker. Early on, I didn't run oath builds that maindecked enough artifacts to make it worth maindecking Tinker. I'm sure savagebeatdown should have more experience with artifact heavier Oath builds that have tinker maindeck than I do, he seems to maindeck Sphinx often and does pretty well.
Inkwell, as ShardFenix reminded me, is definitely be worth exploring too. I'll have to try that if I'm going to maindeck Tinker. I only put that off at first because it just seemed so lackluster compared to stuff like Sphinx (which outrace it), Iona, and Foil Progenitus. I did have a few bad experiences with people StPing/PtEing my Sphinx. Maybe if I foil the Inkwell, it will almost be comparable to my non-foil Sphinx (foil Sphinx is so expensive now...).
Essentially, the format is shallow and there is little room for creativity due to power level disparities. I have looked at about 15 decks, and the same cards appear again and again and again in my lists. The only way to get some new cards is to play a 1-2 color deck (meaning you have to play marginal cards to fill out your deck) or to make decks focused on synergy (and run the risk of losing if you don't random into the key cards).
The main gap in playables comes in the 1-3 casting cost range. The Standard cardpool doesn't give you many options for the early game at the power level of Negate, Doom Blade, Terminate, BOP, Llanowar Elf, etc. (esepcially if you are not playing Green).
I like the format, because it is a real challenge to make a deck that can beat Jund/Naya goodstuff consistently. But I can see how a person would find the same old shenanigans tedious (because, quite frankly, the format is usually the same thing again and again and...)
In my Momir tournament, I lost the first 3 rounds, round 4 was someone from Korea who timed out giving me the "win", got beaten again round 5, then round 6 my internet connection died on my laptop right before the round start. I tried every trick I usually do to get it to connect again and none of them worked, then I zipped over to my desktop machine to boot it up and got in too late. Trying to make sure I had actually missed the round I kept trying to scroll down to my name, and MTGO kept scrolling me back to the top of the list, but I finally managed to see my defeat in the list. End result, 1-5, pretty pathetic.
I guess I know why I haven't been playing Momir Basic much. Just not my kind of format at all. I lost one game due to a stupid mistake, the others were due to them getting bombish and/or evasive creatures, and me not getting 'em. I lost one game to Asmira, Holy Avenger. Another game I laughed when my opponent got an early Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore and I thought that'd slow him down so much I'd win for sure with one of my bigger drops. But I got no way to get damage through, nor a wall that could block the eye, and he got huge flying blockers like Zodiac Dragon, and I got beaten down by 8 turns of hits from that eye.
I'm sure most of the people that played in that tournament had fun with it, but I wasn't one of them. I still call it "Slot Machine Magic".
Plus the nature of conceding makes this methodology even worse.
My opponent has 2 2/2 fliers and I am at 4 life. No cards in hand, etc.
If I draw a disfigure, I will kill one of them and probably lose. Disfigure goes down in your rankings.
If I draw a crypt ripper, I will concede without playing it. Crypt Ripper's ranking is unchanged.
Also I sincerely hope you did this by copy/pasting the game log into a text file and using grep.
Based on the nature of magic, you've built sample bias into these "studies".
Higher cost cards (and cards with double colored mana in their cost) have a built in advantage in your ranking, because their use implies you've avoided color/mana screw.
i saw that game game between aj and LE, the irony. i also love the fact wotc is going to choke on the bazillion requests for avatars. all of momir is sick sick luck,
i saw that game game between aj and LE, the irony. i also love the fact wotc is going to choke on the bazillion requests for avatars. all of momir is sick sick luck,
Im glad to see you worked out of your rut and found a deck you like. I hate Spreading Seas type cards but at least it is a cantrip, and if soft mana denial works hey, why not?
For the momir tourney: My game blowouts for the most part had nothing to do with the guys I got (or failed to get as the case was several times) and much to do with my opponents getting incredible (for the board position) flips. I did manage to get Progenitus one game and came back from behind to get a concession from my opponent (who then proceeded to be an ass for the rest of the match.) Most of the flips that killed were things like Akromas and other fliers or unblockables. I had a few situations where I got a 187 on a stick just to lose it to my opponent's flip, before I could use it and generally I felt I had absolutely no control over any of the games. Most dispiriting as what I love about magic is the planning and seeing how that planning pans out.
Overall a vast improvement from previous podcasts. Sebastian I noticed your enunciation was much much clearer than in the past and on the whole the cast flowed smoothly through my ears without much in the way of wince worthy moments. The only thing I missed was AJ's cool accent to spice things up. I did notice that the cast itself cut in and out but as a technical issue I am not really sure what the fix is for that.
I noticed that steam vents went up to 17 tickets and was like "Oh Ive got 3!" but then I realized they aren't mine but are loaners. Bummer. I'd sell them in a heart beat if they were mine.
Momir was a total disappointment to me, culminating in a 1-5 loss and a totally unpleasant round with some teenager? who was not graceful at all despite having that in his name but he was quite windy (talkative) at least. Anyway I gave that round up halfway through just because he was so abusive and obnoxious. I thought about reporting his blatant trolling but then decided it wasn't worth the effort. Instead I just blocked him. Sadly blocking doesn't work IN Tourney so I had to put up with his harrasment through out the games.
Overall my opinion of the format is not high. The match I won was purely about the luck of the flip. I think I gave a way a game or 2 I could have won if I was more astute but generally all the primers and practice led to naught. Oh what the heck free avatar and MULTIBALL!
Thanks guys for making it possible and thanks WotC for giving us the chance to play.
Nice going in the 2 mans. Maybe test it out in a pe? Anyways, great article keep up the good work:)
Instead of complaining, why dont you offer a way he should do his statistics and did you know that 83% of statistics are made up. =)
@Holding the Hexmage Back: after swinging with both Bloodghasts the situation is the following:
Him: 10/10 Gatekeeper with sword, 4/3 Bloodghast.
Me: 2x Bloodghast (both tapped), Hexmage.
Now, if he's smart on his turn he plays Hexmage, moves sword to Bloodghast and swings with everything. If I do as you suggested I'm still dead since after blockers are declared he sacks his Hexmage to pump the Bloodghast to 6/5. It's still a good play though since I didn't know he had a Hexmage.
Anyway I could have survived had I blocked the Gatekeeper and then removed the counters from the Bloodghast, taking only 2 damage in the process. So "fogging" with the Hexmage was the better play and the one that should come natural with abilities requiring the sacrifice, don't know why I didn't see it. I definitely made a bad mistake =(.
Again, I think that tuktuk grunts being at the top of your list means you have to reevaluate your methods. Grunts is a bad card that unlike crypt ripper or steppe lynx, is bad in almost every deck. It's slow and weak, competing with much better red 5 drops. It's not even great in allies. I think these statistics are more misleading than helpful.
Of course these are sealed results, so the low placement of zektar shrine and shortcutter have merit, but the data is still unhelpful.
my apologies guys my next article i will be in more card to card detail and basic strategies
agreed with the other poster .... basically the card links are the extent of this article.
I like the concept but this needs more content, right now you're just stating the basic stuff as to what the cards do rather than how they play or help your strategy, it's very shallow content wise and doesn't really contain any analysis
also, thornling gets to 7/1 not 9/1
I was involved on some trade?! Woah!
Good job! As someone else said, love the bits where you stop and analyse a game situation, very reminiscent of Godot's articles - keep doing that! Also, I'm a limited player with aspirations (not more than that really..) of going infinite and have been finding it really difficult. I hadn't thought of giving constructed a try, but after reading your article I think I'll go for Zendikar block constructed. Good start for your writing "career", keep it up.
Can't you hold the hexmage back as a blocker, then sacrifice it after first strike damage to kill the blocked creature? This way he doesn't have lethal, even with his hexmage.
Nice article. I liked they hypos you set up in the game situations.
Since the goal of the series is to "go infinite" I know I would appreciate more information about how much you are putting into the game, and how much you are getting out. Cost breakdowns, winnings, whatever. Obviously you start off in the hole in the beginning, but I would like to know how deep that hole is, and when you actually break even.
I too have been thinking about playing constructed online. Much cheaper than drafting! But I do love the cracking of packs to see what's there. Thanks for the 411 on vampire decks. Much to mull.
Lands by themselves aren't enough to support to enemy colors.
For W/R I had these landfixing options:
Arid Mesa
Terramorphic Expanse
Naya Panorama
Jungle Shrine
Rupture Spire
Ancient Ziggurat (Which is bad with 2 Ajanis and Elspeth)
Exotic Orchard (Which is basically a gamble if you're only playing 2 colors)
This really isn't enough to make a decent 2 aggro deck play consistently. Especially one that wants to have both WW and RR available by turn 5.
With Naya or basically green in general you have a lot more options.
Green with 2 splash colors is a lot easier than White/Red because Green has Birds of Paradise, Lotus Cobra, Borderland Ranger, and Rampant Growth which can fix any color you need.
Oh because you had to cut down on the pano lands?
Fmialc is GLiB. :) What is funny is I did not remember that I wrote an article about Ritchie years ago (2001)
http://outofthebrokensky.com/newart/newarts.asp?ID=17 here is the archive. (It was originally posted on neutralground.net back when that was where I had a bi weekly column.)
What is funny is the link in that archive is so old that the referenced article is no longer stored on starcityccg.com. and isn't on the new starcitygames.com either.
I agree with most of the above comments on the limited variety deck choices in Standard Singleton.
Another factor that limits deck building choices is the lack of enough enemy pair dual lands. After I got tired of playing Naya or Jund, I built a Boros (Red/White) aggro deck, and I had a lot more probablems with the mana than I ever did with Naya.
True... I did have a fun time in a game last night with an ANT build where I was able to cast a bunch of free Pacts while I had Angel in play. That has definitely warmed me up to the Angel recently.
I got pessimistic watching the angel get destroyed when being used by a couple of buddies running oath (a krosan grip, already commonly sideboarded in vs oath decks, a shattering spree, ancient grudge, and even a shattering spree once, used by a belcher deck, I think). But I've also seen FatManInALittleCoat/Richie (is that you using GoblinLackeyIsBlue's account? I'm confused) do pretty well with angel in play keeping him alive, so i guess I've just filtered out the positives.
And I guess there was one time I was pretty worried that i might mill myself to death because opponent had a leyline in play. It ended up not mattering, because i had 5 cards left in deck after two successful oath triggers, Iona and Foil Progenitus out on the field, so i had plenty of time to kill. But that felt a little too close. I wouldn't have been as worried about being milled with Angel in play. So that's also worth consideration.
Truth be told, I only recently started maindecking Tinker. Early on, I didn't run oath builds that maindecked enough artifacts to make it worth maindecking Tinker. I'm sure savagebeatdown should have more experience with artifact heavier Oath builds that have tinker maindeck than I do, he seems to maindeck Sphinx often and does pretty well.
Inkwell, as ShardFenix reminded me, is definitely be worth exploring too. I'll have to try that if I'm going to maindeck Tinker. I only put that off at first because it just seemed so lackluster compared to stuff like Sphinx (which outrace it), Iona, and Foil Progenitus. I did have a few bad experiences with people StPing/PtEing my Sphinx. Maybe if I foil the Inkwell, it will almost be comparable to my non-foil Sphinx (foil Sphinx is so expensive now...).
Essentially, the format is shallow and there is little room for creativity due to power level disparities. I have looked at about 15 decks, and the same cards appear again and again and again in my lists. The only way to get some new cards is to play a 1-2 color deck (meaning you have to play marginal cards to fill out your deck) or to make decks focused on synergy (and run the risk of losing if you don't random into the key cards).
The main gap in playables comes in the 1-3 casting cost range. The Standard cardpool doesn't give you many options for the early game at the power level of Negate, Doom Blade, Terminate, BOP, Llanowar Elf, etc. (esepcially if you are not playing Green).
I like the format, because it is a real challenge to make a deck that can beat Jund/Naya goodstuff consistently. But I can see how a person would find the same old shenanigans tedious (because, quite frankly, the format is usually the same thing again and again and...)