Also in r2g2 u may have actually just domed your opponent for the 2 damage.it activates your vampire,u deal 6 that way that turn and negate his lifegain from gladeheart actively.Of course it leaves u open to a harrow blowout,but then his leaving the sphinx on defense seems a little strange.if he had whiplash trap then his non-attack is kinda odd also.But if u knew his hand was land,land say.then burning him to "blood" your vamp is correct.maybe im missing something
I was waiting for others to comment, but none had my question. While I agree attacking the the dragon was probably wrong in the final game I don't understand your following comment about him needing to draw more lands or not play a spell. As it was you had a 1/1 and a 5/5 creature out to his 2/2 and 3/3. With Divine Verdict in his hand why can't he just attack for 5 each turn and force you to make a move? If you block with your dragon you lose him, if you attack with him you lose him. It may be better to force him to leave mana untapped giving you time to draw something, but ultimately you have to make the first move or am I missing something?
I love this deck. I wanted to play Magosi as soon as it was spoiled. I'm definitely building this because I already own the Magosis and everything expensive except the planeswalkers. Something to keep in mind while playing this deck is that you can just play Magosi as printed and not abuse it. That's perfectly fine, especially with the flashback Fog.
I replied to an earlier post about the casual thing. Really, I think that one guy just flipped out when he saw the infinite turn combo. If he had read the play-by-plays more carefully he'd realize that what you're basically doing is playing a 'real' game of Magic followed by an "I win" combo at the end. This is not a prison deck. And it's an impractical combo at that. This is totally casual, don't worry. Don't stop making decklists like these because they might ruin someone's commander game.
Bonus points for using so many staples in the decklist. That should either make it easier to build, or give people a good reason to build (at least most) of it. Also, lots of overlap here with 8-post, which is another deck that's cheap to build, fun, and already built by many people.
Storm Combo: Draw, go. Draw, go. Draw, I win next turn.
Painter-Grindstone: Draw, go. Draw, go. Draw, I win.
Hulk-Flash: I win. Don't bother I have FoW.
Charbelcher: Draw, go. Draw, I win! (Or self-destruct.)
Steve's Deck: Play part one of a four card combo, go. Wait, during your turn, disarm one of your plays. Next turn play part 2/4. Then play Fog during your attack. And so on.
Steve's deck goes back and forth. A combo victory can be plenty casual, especially if it's four pieces. Steve plays a good game with fun stuff like Remand + Top, planeswalkers, and Hedron Crab + fetches. This is what the casual room SHOULD be about!
Great article. Only suggestion I have is more pictures in the gameplay write-ups. Your write-ups themselves are top-notch and full of great detail, but they still have the overwhelming-wall-of-text-effect without the occasional picture to break it up.
I'll admit, I'm a filthy rare-drafter and would have jumped on those duals without a second thought. Since this was Swiss, those two picks essentially give you 2 wins before you even start playing. With just one match win, you've essentially gone 3-0. But that's the 'going infinite' mentality and not playing to win - good job fighting off the temptation.
Ooh I'm sorry, didn't know it wasen't visible to others. My apologies. It was basically a nice discussion about the format and about tribes that are as good as vamps.
Ouch. Tough opponents. But then again, they were all in the right room. TP is for strong decks, meaning decks that you might wager tickets on winning. The casual room is for everything else. Thoughtseize into Hippie is casual. The deck has to be playable somewhere.
Although the accelerated storm combo is borderline. You probably faced a pauper deck there, twice. I could see people confusing pauper with casual. (I'm going to assume dannymit didn't play a Tinker and no artifact like you said he did.)
Also, Classic casual is a beast. Most casual, Vintage-legal decks are probably mean, too. Casual Extended and Standard are maybe a little nicer. Of course then, no All Hallows Eve.
Great write-up, enjoyed it quite a bit. One suggestion: always take the screenshots at the beginning of your turn when you sling 'What would you do this turn?' questions at us. You did do this for the most part, but there were a couple situations where the screenshot showed half of our land tapped or a key creature tapped and it took a moment to figure out when exactly the screenshot was taken.
Congrats on the win and the packs, though! Only bad thing about winning online opposed to real life is you can't roll around in your prize packs Scrooge McDuck style.
My main goal with Explorations is to write about decks that are interesting in some way and give players ideas for strategies that they might want to try out on their own. While four card, infinite turn combos are not everyone's cup of tea... There's definitely a section of the playerbase that loves shuffling up these types of decks. I try to switch it up big time from week to week though, to keep things interesting. If you didn't like this week's strategy then check out next week when the decks will be totally different/
I just wrote a long post here about the whole casual thing, but but something timed out and it didn't end up posting =( So I'm going to write a piece on this topic and include it in my next article.
no he isn't avoiding FoWs he was challeged earlier this year that he couldn't come up with competitive decks and place without using FoWs in the decks during the 2009 classic player of the year race.
I think what Whiffy was saying is that while some Decks are clearly not Casual others are borderline. Obviously a bad player playing a good deck is more prone to lose than a good player playing a good deck. :) But a bad player playing a great deck can just win. It doesn't always take skill to be lucky. And the old saying "Rather be lucky than good!" comes to mind here.
Imho Steve's deck is very casual being low on hard counters even with an infinite turn engine (which I find very annoying to play against). It is easy to disrupt if you gun for it (sideboarding helps here). On the other hand casual gaming varies from person to person and so according to the Ferrett does not really exist. But it does because people think it does. Some people manage a concensus on what it means and others don't.
Well tuned tier 1 decks that win in the first few turns of the game are never considered to be casual even by the best pros. They might be looked down upon if an answering deck exists that crushes that deck but that is a different story.
Combo decks that go off before they can be disrupted and or need to be hardcountered to stop them are not casual.
Decks with concentrated amounts of counters and or land/hand disruption can be considered not casual.
With all that said, given the right state of mind, playing against any of the above can be rewarding if you are tuning your deck to beat them. Not an easy task and perhaps best left for the TP room but not always a noncasual one.
I think the biggest point to be made is that if you make the rules of your table when you sit down and advertise them well you should have few complaints. I find that a lot of players whom I play who enjoy casual games also will rise to the occasion if they know the challenge is noncasual.
Good write-up, I like people to go into depth and analyze play scenarios like you did. Well done for that! The only suggestion I have is to include more screenshots of the actual game situations you're describing, I find that makes reading and thinking about them easier. However, with the current status of replays on MTGO I can see that might be hard to do.
Hehe most of them are ones I couldn't field myself so I can't really speak to how they work from the deck's perspective, but overall the two I find most offensive are the Grinder's Servant and Helmline combos. Particularly losing to them is just aggravating. Those two just really get my goat. Squirrelcraft is nasty too but somehow doesn't get me going. Maybe because I used to own a beautiful set of handmade Squirrel Tokens. Dunno.
I do think that B/R lists are tricky to maintain because it can be a slippery slope. The same issue pertains to another Classiclite format: 100cs which I think could stand some rethinking on its Banned list particularly in light of the number of ways to tutor combo wins. One of the most annoying things to hear though is that Sensei's Divining Top should be banned because it is "ubiquitous". Sure it is but so is Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile. And I still don't get why Skullclamp gets a ban when the Swords of * & * are free to be played. I think banned and restricted lists need to be very carefully designed. I also think that pressure needs to be applied to make that happen for any format where it matters or the status quo will be maintained by default.
So this begs the question asked I guess many times here on PUREMTGO
What is Casual and what is not?
I think in the end no decks are really casual because everybody wants to win, so whatever the concoction made be it using baneslayer, elves, Steves combo deck here or just a good old fashioned terror/Painter combo in the end it comes to budget and reading the plays but in the end you still want to win. No one likes to lose every game.
Bad players can have good cards but it's doesn't make them great players.
I'll grant that one or two of these are arguable, as I said above. It's easy to nitpick specific options, but I think it's pretty clear that there are a large number of extremely powerful combos in the Classic card pool that can be grafted on to tribal shells.
As for Counterbalance/Top specifically, it was broken enough to get banned in Extended. That's sufficient to warrant a mention, from my perspective. It's an also EXTREMELY easy graft onto Faeries, Humans, Merfolk, or Wizards.
That shows that you are of a competitive nature which is a good thing. I don't think accounting for your mistakes is terrible but dwelling on them isn't particularly healthy. "Oh! That card plays as an instant! Stupid me! Next time I'll read the damned card." :P Yes its a mistake I've made in prereleases. Heck I've done things like that in casual play with new cards. Very annoying but if you let it get to you, your future games may be tainted by your self-recriminations. When something like that happens, IF I am aware of the mistake, it makes me tighten up and play a little more carefully. I only really get down afterward if I missed it entirely.
Im sorry I don't mean irrelevant on a game by game basis but on the overall scheme of things. I haven't played as much limited as Id like lately but my experience with it is that usually mana issues are not the deciding factor on how a series of matches go. Sometimes they are and that sucks but you have to roll with it. It is MUCH harder to overcome a mana problem when you are down a game and facing pressure to not lose. That was my point. On the other hand Ive come from way behind in limited with mana issues and still won so it isn't an auto loss. I agree that constructed may be a little easier since you can play fixers to help overcome such problems but I think people play limited precisely for the narrow nature of the field.
To each his own. To me, I find it disappointing to lose to bad luck or simply because my deck is a pile of steaming dung, but when I make game-deciding mistakes it really eats me inside. Can't help it. Of course after a little bit I cool off, I dont have a huge list of mistakes I keep tormenting myself with. Bygones bygones, but when its still fresh.. oooh, it devours me. :)
Also in r2g2 u may have actually just domed your opponent for the 2 damage.it activates your vampire,u deal 6 that way that turn and negate his lifegain from gladeheart actively.Of course it leaves u open to a harrow blowout,but then his leaving the sphinx on defense seems a little strange.if he had whiplash trap then his non-attack is kinda odd also.But if u knew his hand was land,land say.then burning him to "blood" your vamp is correct.maybe im missing something
I was waiting for others to comment, but none had my question. While I agree attacking the the dragon was probably wrong in the final game I don't understand your following comment about him needing to draw more lands or not play a spell. As it was you had a 1/1 and a 5/5 creature out to his 2/2 and 3/3. With Divine Verdict in his hand why can't he just attack for 5 each turn and force you to make a move? If you block with your dragon you lose him, if you attack with him you lose him. It may be better to force him to leave mana untapped giving you time to draw something, but ultimately you have to make the first move or am I missing something?
I love this deck. I wanted to play Magosi as soon as it was spoiled. I'm definitely building this because I already own the Magosis and everything expensive except the planeswalkers. Something to keep in mind while playing this deck is that you can just play Magosi as printed and not abuse it. That's perfectly fine, especially with the flashback Fog.
I replied to an earlier post about the casual thing. Really, I think that one guy just flipped out when he saw the infinite turn combo. If he had read the play-by-plays more carefully he'd realize that what you're basically doing is playing a 'real' game of Magic followed by an "I win" combo at the end. This is not a prison deck. And it's an impractical combo at that. This is totally casual, don't worry. Don't stop making decklists like these because they might ruin someone's commander game.
Bonus points for using so many staples in the decklist. That should either make it easier to build, or give people a good reason to build (at least most) of it. Also, lots of overlap here with 8-post, which is another deck that's cheap to build, fun, and already built by many people.
Sorry the Saber Ants must have slipped past my proof read ;)
"I'm going to assume dannymit didn't play a Tinker and no artifact like you said he did"
He did play the Tinker and no artifact, a bit strange but I think it was just to up his storm count.
Storm Combo: Draw, go. Draw, go. Draw, I win next turn.
Painter-Grindstone: Draw, go. Draw, go. Draw, I win.
Hulk-Flash: I win. Don't bother I have FoW.
Charbelcher: Draw, go. Draw, I win! (Or self-destruct.)
Steve's Deck: Play part one of a four card combo, go. Wait, during your turn, disarm one of your plays. Next turn play part 2/4. Then play Fog during your attack. And so on.
Steve's deck goes back and forth. A combo victory can be plenty casual, especially if it's four pieces. Steve plays a good game with fun stuff like Remand + Top, planeswalkers, and Hedron Crab + fetches. This is what the casual room SHOULD be about!
Great article. Only suggestion I have is more pictures in the gameplay write-ups. Your write-ups themselves are top-notch and full of great detail, but they still have the overwhelming-wall-of-text-effect without the occasional picture to break it up.
I'll admit, I'm a filthy rare-drafter and would have jumped on those duals without a second thought. Since this was Swiss, those two picks essentially give you 2 wins before you even start playing. With just one match win, you've essentially gone 3-0. But that's the 'going infinite' mentality and not playing to win - good job fighting off the temptation.
Yes the Hippie was a replacement card for another card .... which now i have
not sure on the rest of your comments though
Ooh I'm sorry, didn't know it wasen't visible to others. My apologies. It was basically a nice discussion about the format and about tribes that are as good as vamps.
LE
I'm not a big fan of the Standard Tribal option. Also, LE, your link is to a private group.
Ouch. Tough opponents. But then again, they were all in the right room. TP is for strong decks, meaning decks that you might wager tickets on winning. The casual room is for everything else. Thoughtseize into Hippie is casual. The deck has to be playable somewhere.
Although the accelerated storm combo is borderline. You probably faced a pauper deck there, twice. I could see people confusing pauper with casual. (I'm going to assume dannymit didn't play a Tinker and no artifact like you said he did.)
Also, Classic casual is a beast. Most casual, Vintage-legal decks are probably mean, too. Casual Extended and Standard are maybe a little nicer. Of course then, no All Hallows Eve.
Great write-up, enjoyed it quite a bit. One suggestion: always take the screenshots at the beginning of your turn when you sling 'What would you do this turn?' questions at us. You did do this for the most part, but there were a couple situations where the screenshot showed half of our land tapped or a key creature tapped and it took a moment to figure out when exactly the screenshot was taken.
Congrats on the win and the packs, though! Only bad thing about winning online opposed to real life is you can't roll around in your prize packs Scrooge McDuck style.
My main goal with Explorations is to write about decks that are interesting in some way and give players ideas for strategies that they might want to try out on their own. While four card, infinite turn combos are not everyone's cup of tea... There's definitely a section of the playerbase that loves shuffling up these types of decks. I try to switch it up big time from week to week though, to keep things interesting. If you didn't like this week's strategy then check out next week when the decks will be totally different/
I just wrote a long post here about the whole casual thing, but but something timed out and it didn't end up posting =( So I'm going to write a piece on this topic and include it in my next article.
Here's a nice discussion about Standard Tribal Wars and about tribes that could be viable in the format.
http://www.mymtgo.com/group/24/discussion/270/
LE
no he isn't avoiding FoWs he was challeged earlier this year that he couldn't come up with competitive decks and place without using FoWs in the decks during the 2009 classic player of the year race.
Paul
an answer to your earlier suggestion
It's ok to make it Ext but we would go back to the problem of regulating the decks
If we were to try for STD even on it's limit card pool it would
A. bring back the sprit of the Tourny I.E critter beats,
B, limit the combos
C, Gives access to newer players that don't have access to the cards of the last few years.
Also solve the argument of the banning list, sure its limited but is that not idea that was tribes in the first place.
I think what Whiffy was saying is that while some Decks are clearly not Casual others are borderline. Obviously a bad player playing a good deck is more prone to lose than a good player playing a good deck. :) But a bad player playing a great deck can just win. It doesn't always take skill to be lucky. And the old saying "Rather be lucky than good!" comes to mind here.
Imho Steve's deck is very casual being low on hard counters even with an infinite turn engine (which I find very annoying to play against). It is easy to disrupt if you gun for it (sideboarding helps here). On the other hand casual gaming varies from person to person and so according to the Ferrett does not really exist. But it does because people think it does. Some people manage a concensus on what it means and others don't.
Well tuned tier 1 decks that win in the first few turns of the game are never considered to be casual even by the best pros. They might be looked down upon if an answering deck exists that crushes that deck but that is a different story.
Combo decks that go off before they can be disrupted and or need to be hardcountered to stop them are not casual.
Decks with concentrated amounts of counters and or land/hand disruption can be considered not casual.
With all that said, given the right state of mind, playing against any of the above can be rewarding if you are tuning your deck to beat them. Not an easy task and perhaps best left for the TP room but not always a noncasual one.
I think the biggest point to be made is that if you make the rules of your table when you sit down and advertise them well you should have few complaints. I find that a lot of players whom I play who enjoy casual games also will rise to the occasion if they know the challenge is noncasual.
Good write-up, I like people to go into depth and analyze play scenarios like you did. Well done for that! The only suggestion I have is to include more screenshots of the actual game situations you're describing, I find that makes reading and thinking about them easier. However, with the current status of replays on MTGO I can see that might be hard to do.
Keep it up!
Hehe most of them are ones I couldn't field myself so I can't really speak to how they work from the deck's perspective, but overall the two I find most offensive are the Grinder's Servant and Helmline combos. Particularly losing to them is just aggravating. Those two just really get my goat. Squirrelcraft is nasty too but somehow doesn't get me going. Maybe because I used to own a beautiful set of handmade Squirrel Tokens. Dunno.
I do think that B/R lists are tricky to maintain because it can be a slippery slope. The same issue pertains to another Classiclite format: 100cs which I think could stand some rethinking on its Banned list particularly in light of the number of ways to tutor combo wins. One of the most annoying things to hear though is that Sensei's Divining Top should be banned because it is "ubiquitous". Sure it is but so is Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile. And I still don't get why Skullclamp gets a ban when the Swords of * & * are free to be played. I think banned and restricted lists need to be very carefully designed. I also think that pressure needs to be applied to make that happen for any format where it matters or the status quo will be maintained by default.
So this begs the question asked I guess many times here on PUREMTGO
What is Casual and what is not?
I think in the end no decks are really casual because everybody wants to win, so whatever the concoction made be it using baneslayer, elves, Steves combo deck here or just a good old fashioned terror/Painter combo in the end it comes to budget and reading the plays but in the end you still want to win. No one likes to lose every game.
Bad players can have good cards but it's doesn't make them great players.
Paul,
I'll grant that one or two of these are arguable, as I said above. It's easy to nitpick specific options, but I think it's pretty clear that there are a large number of extremely powerful combos in the Classic card pool that can be grafted on to tribal shells.
As for Counterbalance/Top specifically, it was broken enough to get banned in Extended. That's sufficient to warrant a mention, from my perspective. It's an also EXTREMELY easy graft onto Faeries, Humans, Merfolk, or Wizards.
That shows that you are of a competitive nature which is a good thing. I don't think accounting for your mistakes is terrible but dwelling on them isn't particularly healthy. "Oh! That card plays as an instant! Stupid me! Next time I'll read the damned card." :P Yes its a mistake I've made in prereleases. Heck I've done things like that in casual play with new cards. Very annoying but if you let it get to you, your future games may be tainted by your self-recriminations. When something like that happens, IF I am aware of the mistake, it makes me tighten up and play a little more carefully. I only really get down afterward if I missed it entirely.
Best. Limited writer. Ever.
Epic win once again, everyone else doing draft/sealed recaps on the internet, seriously, just concede to Godot :)
Im sorry I don't mean irrelevant on a game by game basis but on the overall scheme of things. I haven't played as much limited as Id like lately but my experience with it is that usually mana issues are not the deciding factor on how a series of matches go. Sometimes they are and that sucks but you have to roll with it. It is MUCH harder to overcome a mana problem when you are down a game and facing pressure to not lose. That was my point. On the other hand Ive come from way behind in limited with mana issues and still won so it isn't an auto loss. I agree that constructed may be a little easier since you can play fixers to help overcome such problems but I think people play limited precisely for the narrow nature of the field.
To each his own. To me, I find it disappointing to lose to bad luck or simply because my deck is a pile of steaming dung, but when I make game-deciding mistakes it really eats me inside. Can't help it. Of course after a little bit I cool off, I dont have a huge list of mistakes I keep tormenting myself with. Bygones bygones, but when its still fresh.. oooh, it devours me. :)