Dont worry about Hypergenesis it's not forgotten, I've been testing it this week and its a real killer ;) 4 Bogardan Hellkite and Kokusho, the Evening Star's leaves a real mess.
Your angel deck wont work very well as you cant run multiples of the same legend, it causes lots of issues when you have the same two in your hand.
hey flip. the decks names are as follows [ref deckcheck.com] :
fae is more knowns as next level blue or wizards
the aggro deck is a naya zoo build
red storm is demigod stompy or all in red
Raven's Crime is nice with the retrace ability but it dosent have that pull where you can look at the opp's hand and take near enough any card you want. I would rather have Blackmail.
Seems strong! I never seem to be available when this event's on, and can't really afford to spend on the deck I'd been thinking of.. It's a pretty obvious port that I'm surprised nobody's tried yet: Basically, copy and past an extended/legacy cascade-hypergenesis list and run it as either dragons:
4 Bogardon Hellkite
4 Hellkite Overlord
2 Karthuss, tyrant of jund
2 Rorix Bladewing
8 other hasty dragons (can't remember their names)
or angels
4 Angel of Despair
3 Akroma, angel of wrath
4 twilight shepherd
2 Redkroma
some other angels (razia, etc)
The dragon list is more likely to kill immediately, but if you can't manage an immediate kill, it's vulnerable to wrath effects. The angels build is more resilient to wraths and stuff, and can nuke anything too dangerous that they drop with aod, but will never kill the turn it goes off.
Elementals could also be fitted into the same shell, i think, but I don't really have the tickets to invest, and don't really enjoy playing combo-decks (possible exception of the casual roflthopter deck in extended).
The sick's deck is pretty interesting, i would think about 2 points :
1) this deck is not running FoW
I think this point is pretty important to highlight : there was not a lot of competitive blue shell deck wihtout FoW recently. This is important regarding the budget but also provides informations about the meta. Some mounths ago, almost no one of blues decks werent running fow...
2) Colossus
This a choice. In many cases, i found inkwell much better thank to its ability to avoid stp effects ... and to help Fow to resolve in some cases. But Colossus remains 11/11 trample. An this is HUGE. I dont know what is the best choice between them. I like the possibility to pump colossus for a winning turn (berserk!), but as i said, i found inkwell better a lot of time. Probably here a meta choice also. and the results obtained with this deck seem to say sickx7 was pretty correct.
Yup - something is different / something I'm remembering wrong. I'm pretty sure that I didn't miss swing for the win in the draft. I looked over my options a dozen times.
That was a half dozen drafts ago, and MEDIII drafts start to run together.
What I do remember clearly was the final turn - my only out at that point was to let him lose. I trued to reconstruct the game going backwards, and I obviously screwed something up.
great article. I have a comment on Pyromancer's Ascension: If you don't try to accelerate it and just play it straight-forward in a Burn deck, I think it's outclassed by Quest for Pure Flame. Why? Both cards need four spells to go off, but the Ascension has two disadvantages: The four spells have to be two pairs of the same spell, and you can't play it on turn one (unless you help it via Lotus Petal etc.), so effectively it prevents you from playing your first burn spell on turn one. Imagine this for a Burn deck in Classic:
Turn one, Mountain
Turn two, Mountain, Ascension
Turns three and four: two pairs of any 3-damage burn spell, enabling a Fireblast kill on turn four.
With Quest for Pure Flame this translates into:
Turn one, Mountain, Quest
Turns two and three, one Mountain and any four 3-damage burn spells, enabling a Fireblast kill on turn three.
I can't say how excited I am to read about Oliver's progress! It's a little weird except I realize I am imagining my much younger son doing the same thing one day. Very fun stuff and thanks for the Candyland tip!!!
Good stuff Paul, and definately a better one than the first one.
But I just noted something after reading the whole thing: Louigi, rukcus and pierrebai were my opponents in wave 1! What a coincidence! Very interesting.
Good article! It would be nice to talk about the stuff rotating out of extended this time, ie: the ols block elves will really change the elf dec a lot. Then affinity will rotate out next spring. The new rotation schedule will make this a much more fluid extended environment.
reading about your kids is awesome...though depressing to me for the simple fact that they seeem to be picking it up better than my suitemates in college, who constantly ask me about the game. maybe oliver could teach them so i could get my papers done.
Let my 3 year old win at Candyland as if ;). Actually Candyland is much better then Chuttes and Ladders, it is harder to cheat in their favor. Great article and thanks for the update on teaching Magic to your kids.
You're right runeliger. Your opponent has two blockers and you have 4 attackers with 2+ power to attack for exactly lethal.
The problem was our article writer seems to have overthought the situation due to his opponent having cards in hand:)
Unless the presentation of the problem is erronous at the start.
There are only 2 tricks I can think of that would affect your decision: heal or disharmony. The only one to worry about is heal as you lose dramatically to disharmony regardless of what you do. However,I'm a fan of saying here that if he has it, he has it. You can't really stop the flyer from winning this game and he probably has 2 lands in hand but you don't want him drawing an out.
There are virtually no tricks in MED3.Thus, it is important to pretend they don't really exist unless your opponent is making it obvious(giant growth/disharmony).
Been playing a lot of Classic recently but with not much success, I was just wondering how the elves deck plays out with only 15 land, what I mean is opening hands and stuff
I have always turned away from elves so I haven’t got a clue.
Some comments:
Sudden Death is a decent removal card for black in extended. Particularly against the majority of creatures. I realize that doesn't combo very nicely with your Savra but it does work nicely. Dredge should die (or slow to a crawl) to Extirpate so maybe mainboard those. I am not a huge fan of Thoughtseize and Duress isn't up there on my list either. I'm not saying don't play discard but realize it isn't always an optimal answer.
FYI: I find that my Desolation Row deck does nicely against most of these archetypes and has a 60/40 against Affinity if the draw is mediocre or better. If not then Affinity gets out broken.combo (pick one) and wins. Yes broken.combo is casual according to those who pilot it. :D Basically the idea is that people don't pay attention to board sweeping as a tactic because everyone runs spot removal and only sweeps to get rid of pesky shrouded dudes. (In from the sideboard) So they play out their hands without thinking about the potential for a wrath etc. (This is casual after all and how casual are sweepers?) So if I were building this deck (and had the budget for it) Id include 4x Damnation.
Neat stuff, but I think you're vastly overrating crypt of agadeem. If we completely ignore the enemy fetches, i still think oran-rief is the best colourless card by quite some way.
Also, you didn't mention Into the Roil in Blue, which I think is very very good. Probably the best blue card in the set for non-eternal formats, actually. Sphinx of lost dreams also deserves a mention, I feel.
Good stuff in general though. I have already ordered my set of Pyromancer Ascensions, and am working on a decklist based arond Gifts Ungiven to get it active. I figure cramming them both into a U/R tron shell and hurling double banefires at peoples heads must be the way to go...
OMG! OMG! OMG! HE didn't!! OMG! THIS ARTICLE SUCKS! ...
Anyways, *cough*, a little joke doesn't hurt anyone, but Godot as before and always lovely article and can't wait to see more :) ... Mostly can't wait to see Zendikar "hit the MTGO shelves", cause of all the decks I want to build ... /slimming
Hm. Isn't the correct play in the original scenario just attacking with everything?
That way you avoid your opponent drawing into any type of out and the other things he could have would kill you regardless of what turn you attack. 4 Attackers, all with 2 power or great and 2 blockers = at least 4 damage I think.
Most of the bots I trade have 4 copies of it every time I open a trade with them. Strangely the only promo land they do have is Plains. It seems that people sell their Plains without thinking but hold on very tight to their Swamps and Islands and Mountains. Really strange.
Dont worry about Hypergenesis it's not forgotten, I've been testing it this week and its a real killer ;) 4 Bogardan Hellkite and Kokusho, the Evening Star's leaves a real mess.
Your angel deck wont work very well as you cant run multiples of the same legend, it causes lots of issues when you have the same two in your hand.
hey flip. the decks names are as follows [ref deckcheck.com] :
fae is more knowns as next level blue or wizards
the aggro deck is a naya zoo build
red storm is demigod stompy or all in red
gro decks usually involve brainstorm,ponder,serum visions,disrupt,daze,gush,mox diamond,stifles,tarmos and some use winter orb
Raven's Crime is nice with the retrace ability but it dosent have that pull where you can look at the opp's hand and take near enough any card you want. I would rather have Blackmail.
and of course, no sideboards...(grumble)
Seems strong! I never seem to be available when this event's on, and can't really afford to spend on the deck I'd been thinking of.. It's a pretty obvious port that I'm surprised nobody's tried yet: Basically, copy and past an extended/legacy cascade-hypergenesis list and run it as either dragons:
4 Bogardon Hellkite
4 Hellkite Overlord
2 Karthuss, tyrant of jund
2 Rorix Bladewing
8 other hasty dragons (can't remember their names)
or angels
4 Angel of Despair
3 Akroma, angel of wrath
4 twilight shepherd
2 Redkroma
some other angels (razia, etc)
The dragon list is more likely to kill immediately, but if you can't manage an immediate kill, it's vulnerable to wrath effects. The angels build is more resilient to wraths and stuff, and can nuke anything too dangerous that they drop with aod, but will never kill the turn it goes off.
Elementals could also be fitted into the same shell, i think, but I don't really have the tickets to invest, and don't really enjoy playing combo-decks (possible exception of the casual roflthopter deck in extended).
The sick's deck is pretty interesting, i would think about 2 points :
1) this deck is not running FoW
I think this point is pretty important to highlight : there was not a lot of competitive blue shell deck wihtout FoW recently. This is important regarding the budget but also provides informations about the meta. Some mounths ago, almost no one of blues decks werent running fow...
2) Colossus
This a choice. In many cases, i found inkwell much better thank to its ability to avoid stp effects ... and to help Fow to resolve in some cases. But Colossus remains 11/11 trample. An this is HUGE. I dont know what is the best choice between them. I like the possibility to pump colossus for a winning turn (berserk!), but as i said, i found inkwell better a lot of time. Probably here a meta choice also. and the results obtained with this deck seem to say sickx7 was pretty correct.
Yup - something is different / something I'm remembering wrong. I'm pretty sure that I didn't miss swing for the win in the draft. I looked over my options a dozen times.
That was a half dozen drafts ago, and MEDIII drafts start to run together.
What I do remember clearly was the final turn - my only out at that point was to let him lose. I trued to reconstruct the game going backwards, and I obviously screwed something up.
Hi,
great article. I have a comment on Pyromancer's Ascension: If you don't try to accelerate it and just play it straight-forward in a Burn deck, I think it's outclassed by Quest for Pure Flame. Why? Both cards need four spells to go off, but the Ascension has two disadvantages: The four spells have to be two pairs of the same spell, and you can't play it on turn one (unless you help it via Lotus Petal etc.), so effectively it prevents you from playing your first burn spell on turn one. Imagine this for a Burn deck in Classic:
Turn one, Mountain
Turn two, Mountain, Ascension
Turns three and four: two pairs of any 3-damage burn spell, enabling a Fireblast kill on turn four.
With Quest for Pure Flame this translates into:
Turn one, Mountain, Quest
Turns two and three, one Mountain and any four 3-damage burn spells, enabling a Fireblast kill on turn three.
sorry, affinity goes away next fall.
I can't say how excited I am to read about Oliver's progress! It's a little weird except I realize I am imagining my much younger son doing the same thing one day. Very fun stuff and thanks for the Candyland tip!!!
Good stuff Paul, and definately a better one than the first one.
But I just noted something after reading the whole thing: Louigi, rukcus and pierrebai were my opponents in wave 1! What a coincidence! Very interesting.
LE
Good article! It would be nice to talk about the stuff rotating out of extended this time, ie: the ols block elves will really change the elf dec a lot. Then affinity will rotate out next spring. The new rotation schedule will make this a much more fluid extended environment.
reading about your kids is awesome...though depressing to me for the simple fact that they seeem to be picking it up better than my suitemates in college, who constantly ask me about the game. maybe oliver could teach them so i could get my papers done.
Yep, I'd just send the team.
Interesting article like always.
loved Oliver’s Magical Beginnings! that should be a seperate column on itself ;)
Let my 3 year old win at Candyland as if ;). Actually Candyland is much better then Chuttes and Ladders, it is harder to cheat in their favor. Great article and thanks for the update on teaching Magic to your kids.
You're right runeliger. Your opponent has two blockers and you have 4 attackers with 2+ power to attack for exactly lethal.
The problem was our article writer seems to have overthought the situation due to his opponent having cards in hand:)
Unless the presentation of the problem is erronous at the start.
There are only 2 tricks I can think of that would affect your decision: heal or disharmony. The only one to worry about is heal as you lose dramatically to disharmony regardless of what you do. However,I'm a fan of saying here that if he has it, he has it. You can't really stop the flyer from winning this game and he probably has 2 lands in hand but you don't want him drawing an out.
There are virtually no tricks in MED3.Thus, it is important to pretend they don't really exist unless your opponent is making it obvious(giant growth/disharmony).
Been playing a lot of Classic recently but with not much success, I was just wondering how the elves deck plays out with only 15 land, what I mean is opening hands and stuff
I have always turned away from elves so I haven’t got a clue.
Any chance on some advice….
Sort of a budget Rock deck. Nice ideas.
Some comments:
Sudden Death is a decent removal card for black in extended. Particularly against the majority of creatures. I realize that doesn't combo very nicely with your Savra but it does work nicely. Dredge should die (or slow to a crawl) to Extirpate so maybe mainboard those. I am not a huge fan of Thoughtseize and Duress isn't up there on my list either. I'm not saying don't play discard but realize it isn't always an optimal answer.
FYI: I find that my Desolation Row deck does nicely against most of these archetypes and has a 60/40 against Affinity if the draw is mediocre or better. If not then Affinity gets out broken.combo (pick one) and wins. Yes broken.combo is casual according to those who pilot it. :D Basically the idea is that people don't pay attention to board sweeping as a tactic because everyone runs spot removal and only sweeps to get rid of pesky shrouded dudes. (In from the sideboard) So they play out their hands without thinking about the potential for a wrath etc. (This is casual after all and how casual are sweepers?) So if I were building this deck (and had the budget for it) Id include 4x Damnation.
Neat stuff, but I think you're vastly overrating crypt of agadeem. If we completely ignore the enemy fetches, i still think oran-rief is the best colourless card by quite some way.
Also, you didn't mention Into the Roil in Blue, which I think is very very good. Probably the best blue card in the set for non-eternal formats, actually. Sphinx of lost dreams also deserves a mention, I feel.
Good stuff in general though. I have already ordered my set of Pyromancer Ascensions, and am working on a decklist based arond Gifts Ungiven to get it active. I figure cramming them both into a U/R tron shell and hurling double banefires at peoples heads must be the way to go...
Another outstanding article.
The limited strategy part was very well as always, but second part was even more cool.
I'm prawd of you ;)
OMG! OMG! OMG! HE didn't!! OMG! THIS ARTICLE SUCKS! ...
Anyways, *cough*, a little joke doesn't hurt anyone, but Godot as before and always lovely article and can't wait to see more :) ... Mostly can't wait to see Zendikar "hit the MTGO shelves", cause of all the decks I want to build ... /slimming
Hm. Isn't the correct play in the original scenario just attacking with everything?
That way you avoid your opponent drawing into any type of out and the other things he could have would kill you regardless of what turn you attack. 4 Attackers, all with 2 power or great and 2 blockers = at least 4 damage I think.
Can someone show me what I'm missing?
Most of the bots I trade have 4 copies of it every time I open a trade with them. Strangely the only promo land they do have is Plains. It seems that people sell their Plains without thinking but hold on very tight to their Swamps and Islands and Mountains. Really strange.
LE