Yeah, there were a fair number of Blinding Mages, though all but the first one were in pack 3. By that point I could have gone for a double splash off my three Rampant Growth, playing blue/green splash black splash white, but I think that could potentially lead to enough mana problems to negate the boost in power. Or I could have ditched black and gone green/blue splash white, but Assassinate is a pretty solid splash and gets things gone for good rather than just disabled, so I didn't see a strong reason to switch. I will admit, Blinding Mage combined with Assassinate can be a juicy combo.
White was pretty open in this draft, along with the blue/green I ended up in. That's why the red/white drafter ended up with such a strong deck - though he still lost to the other blue/green player, and I think I might have been able to beat him as well. In addition to the Blinding Mages I passed multiple Pacifism, Stormfront Pegasus, and Safe Passage. There probably could have been a strong blue/white or green/white deck out of this draft too, if I'd gone a different direction.
Hmmm. Perhaps my post came out wrong. I am very much for people playing whatever the most powerful thing in the format is, and liked flippers' deck (haven't seen erman's deck, but I assume it's similarly hawt). In this case the most powerful thing is clearly random 2-card wins, and when I next get to play in an event, I will build my deck with this in mind.
I am simply of the opinion that I would prefer a format in which those weren't the most powerful strategies available. It seems pretty ridiculous to me that they would ban arboria, while helm-leyline (and various others)remains legal.
Just for the record, I already told somewhere else that I won't be playing any Combo decks from now on and will only play decks that are "true to the heart and soul" of the format.
That, however, doesn't mean that I will be playing less competitive decks. Anyone playing me should expect a tough fight. But at least no turn 3 instant wins.
I'm thinking your UBG list was based off my own deck that was listed on PDCMagic. When I was running it against powered 100s decks I made certain changes. First of all I took out all the karroos because land destruction (or land stealing by blue decks) were all too common. Also there is a lot of rare prot black and prot red, so I now run both edicts and gloomwidow's feast which do a great job of mopping up stuff like Akroma. You also expect the good equipment like the swords and skullclamp etc, so have plenty of removal for that. A lot of 100s decks rely on resolving just one or two big threats, so ensuring you draw plenty of removal and small threats can allow a pauper deck to compete. I agree that the counterspell route is a good one, as there is no other real way to avoid more powerful effects like Timestop.
My clan have run some pauper 100s leagues, and while UBG has been good it has always struggled against the UBW decks that run cip effects with creature bounce and g/y recursion.
Well, I know feel led to finally speak my piece...ok so as host of the Tribal Apocalypse PRE held saturday afternoons at 1:30pm in /join tribal, i guess i do have a few opinions. First off let me still say congratulations to Flippers_Giraffe and Lord Erman for winning week 1 and week 2 respectively. Did I think Giraffes Helm-Line or Erman Painters-Stone combos were inappropriate? No. Both fit the rules of tribal, Rogues and Humans. Both players played tightly and both suceeded in their goals. Now, the tough part...do I feel those decks have a place? er..not really. While I know it is inevitable and people will bring whatever they want and as long as its tribal its cool, I would love to see the true nature of the format embraced and have huge creature on creature battles. That to me is the essence of tribal. Two opposing smashing into each other, let the best one win. But I will never make any decisions regarding what is and is not "appropriate" for tribal play unless it reaches a point where attendance is being negatively impacted. All players and any deck they choose to bring regardless of cards...as long as you fit basic tribal rules are welcome.
just an editing note, you have 2 copies of both Grim Harvest and Spring Cleaning listed. Just figure those should be changed in case someone new to the format thinks its still alegal deck. other than that i like it man, freed was alwayys my favorite classic/extended pauper deck.
I hardly think that 1 tribal PRE/week is going to cause tribal to "lose the fun decks". They probably won't show up in the events themselves, though. I'm still quite strongly of the opinion that the format should either; feature a sideboard, use the extended cardpool, or just ban the shazbot out of pretty much every classic combo in existence.
Your deck was cool, I liked that you used the rogues to prevent people from having an answer to the combo, and I agree that you might as well play the most powerful thing available in the format. I just think there's a problem with the format itself, as allowing all of this random degenerate stuff does nothing to differentiate tribal from regular classic.
I have to disagree here. I'm typically and consistently cynical about MTGO development, but this announcement is a step in the right direction. Many members of the community are smart enough to see good software, or are even in software industry themselves. For WotC to give us information as though we are all 13 years old is insulting and demonstrates that much of the Business of MTGO is poorly run. It's further insulting that for the last few releases, it has been record breaking. This says two things: 1) player base is increasing, and consequently 2) profits are increasing. With the increased revenues, we are still seeing bubkis in terms of actual client performance (UI improvement where art thou?). This announcement at least spells out what is in the works on a technical level, which gives the technically inclined players such as Hamtastic, a good sense of how far we are from where V3 needs to be in terms of the player experience.
I'm not holding my breath for these improvements, but I sure am glad to know that someone at the mothership has thought about them and created a player memo to that regard.
I have to agree with your sentiment MechtaK. I've been waiting for Leagues since I came back to MTG:O and discovered that they had vanished.
It's no longer the loss of leagues that winds me up. I can accept that, for whatever reason, they are dead and gone. It's a shame but life is like that.
I'm just getting mighty fed up with WotC treating me like a child and telling me that it will all be ok 'tomorrow'. In this case 'tomorrow' is a couple of years down the line but the actual time frame doesn't matter. Please, someone at WotC, grow some and announce that Leagues are a part of MTG:O history. I'd have a little bit more respect for you then. Not much but a little....
Unless you are my dad. I have even gotten to the point that I will eat his cooked mushrooms where at one point I was totally paranoid. (He is very careful, and he did educate me fairly thoroughly on the really nasty ones.)
Amen about the sitting. If only we could do the job while walking at a serene yet hard pounding pace. :)
Grats on the Volcanic! Nice interview. Interesting comment about the Aqueducts. I think people underestimate the power of the bounce lands because they open you up to tempo loss with bounce/ld, but if your opponent isn't running that kind of strategy you get a boost and can replenish things like gemstone mine (yeah yeah not pauper but still...) or as LSV says discard it to satisfy a cost. Good article.
Excellent ideas. I haven't the foggiest how your build will do but it looks like it might be a gas to play. I am thinking some of the counters you are running might be better as stuff like Capsize etc but I guess you have to experiment with it until you find the right mix. This format is one of the hardest to to tune I think. Look me up online if you need to practice (Winter.Wolf)
Good job on the Tribal Wars win. :) If you need a Kaleido player let me know and Ill try and cobble something together for our mutual amusement or dismay as the case may be.
RE: Crackleburr, it seems like a fun card, and I've got one just for my singleton decks but everytime I put it in, I end up taking it out again. Not sure why. Usually its just bolt bait. Seldom does it actually come online...maybe that's why its always on the sidelines.
Im a little disappointed as I expected 2 lists for some reason.
"You may be thinking at this point that’s all very nice but what about the decks you are going to show me this article well the first one is based around a card I’ve not used before Crackleburr it looks like fun so I thought I'd give it a try."
This is the reason I think. I know you caveat out of it at the end but that's not cool. Building up expectations and not delivering. I feel you could do better. I recognize from personal experience how hard it is to write an article with feeling and depth and I know it is terrible when things get out of hand by the time you get around to editing it all. But if I were you I'd have rewritten this one from scratch.
Congrats! The post brings back memories for me of a couple years ago.
I did 500 continuous miles on the AT from Harpers Ferry up through CT, as well as other parts in the Whites and the Smokies. Never had a sufficient stretch of time for a thru-hike (nor likely the patience to do it all at once) but I'd like to get up to the Maine wilderness at one point.
In the software lifecycle, waiting for 2 years for leagues is the equivalent of saying, "This isn't gonna happen." With all the changes, new card sets and rules, database and client management changes, they will probably still be working out these kinks in 2011, which will probably push the leagues back even further (2013? -end of the world is in 2012, if you believe it!).
Why don't they just come out and say it, because I'm getting tired of the "promise" of leagues, only to find out it's just not even on the radar. Just dump the leagues and get it over with so I can move on and dump MTGO. I don't think I want to wait until 2011 (more than likely much later than that) just to get back to what I like about MTGO in the first place.
XML was the basis for the Open Magic Data project on sourceforge I was proud to be a part of (Though all I did was write the help for the one client we had going (Deck Mentor)). I have to say as the basis for a deck editor it seemed pretty darned quick once it loaded. Of course the load times were fairly large (at least on my old machine at the time). I can imagine thousands of decks being stored in XML form and the amount of space that must take up. I am impressed that they aren't using some kind of SQL backend instead.
Thanks for the translation there Hammy. In other news kudos to actually going out to play paper magic. Its been a few years since I did anything but shuffle proxies IRL and only that to entertain the gf. Sounds like you had fun. I imagine you will get to do plenty more of that in Austin.
I have to ask...why the drop in Scapeshift? Seems like it would be more popular now, not less with the possibility of massive landfall triggers.
Your optimism has the potential to be infectious, but I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid. That Development Update is a lot of talk designed to disguise the fact that there's not a lot of action:
The Phase One deliverable is specifications and a prototype, a necessary prerequisite so the external resources can use user-centered usability studies to drive refinements.
Mmmm, close your eyes and it feels like you're playing it already!
Silverlight? OK maybe it has promise. Or maybe they saw the newest shiny and are completely overengineering yet again, creating a flashy clusterf--- that meets all the latest buzz talk but fails to actually, you know, work. The most measurable benchmark should be re-enabling Leages, something that was already working, and what we've seen since v3's release is that for every month of work the expected date gets pushed back by 3. They're losing ground!
OK so I'm a bit cynical and pessimistic here. But why? Well, how about XML in the database!!! That just boggles the mind. It would be a laugh riot to tour the headquarters. Whenever they need to save a Word document, they must print it out and take a digital photo, then store that! This is why I need more than a pending diagram and a promise for user-centered interfaces.
Promises and internal measurements get no credit with me. They're easily replaced and forgotten with the next update. I'll wait until the improvements are real and functional and *then* I'll praise the work.
Yeah I know what you mean about the sedentary. I used to go backpacking all the time, and still go hiking a lot - but haven't carried a full pack in quite some time. Let's just say that when your job involves sitting in front of a computer for 10 hours or so per day... you lose some of your physical abilities.
I know everything I need to know about mushrooms - stay away from mushrooms in the wild =)
Yeah, there were a fair number of Blinding Mages, though all but the first one were in pack 3. By that point I could have gone for a double splash off my three Rampant Growth, playing blue/green splash black splash white, but I think that could potentially lead to enough mana problems to negate the boost in power. Or I could have ditched black and gone green/blue splash white, but Assassinate is a pretty solid splash and gets things gone for good rather than just disabled, so I didn't see a strong reason to switch. I will admit, Blinding Mage combined with Assassinate can be a juicy combo.
White was pretty open in this draft, along with the blue/green I ended up in. That's why the red/white drafter ended up with such a strong deck - though he still lost to the other blue/green player, and I think I might have been able to beat him as well. In addition to the Blinding Mages I passed multiple Pacifism, Stormfront Pegasus, and Safe Passage. There probably could have been a strong blue/white or green/white deck out of this draft too, if I'd gone a different direction.
Hmmm. Perhaps my post came out wrong. I am very much for people playing whatever the most powerful thing in the format is, and liked flippers' deck (haven't seen erman's deck, but I assume it's similarly hawt). In this case the most powerful thing is clearly random 2-card wins, and when I next get to play in an event, I will build my deck with this in mind.
I am simply of the opinion that I would prefer a format in which those weren't the most powerful strategies available. It seems pretty ridiculous to me that they would ban arboria, while helm-leyline (and various others)remains legal.
Just for the record, I already told somewhere else that I won't be playing any Combo decks from now on and will only play decks that are "true to the heart and soul" of the format.
That, however, doesn't mean that I will be playing less competitive decks. Anyone playing me should expect a tough fight. But at least no turn 3 instant wins.
LE
I'm thinking your UBG list was based off my own deck that was listed on PDCMagic. When I was running it against powered 100s decks I made certain changes. First of all I took out all the karroos because land destruction (or land stealing by blue decks) were all too common. Also there is a lot of rare prot black and prot red, so I now run both edicts and gloomwidow's feast which do a great job of mopping up stuff like Akroma. You also expect the good equipment like the swords and skullclamp etc, so have plenty of removal for that. A lot of 100s decks rely on resolving just one or two big threats, so ensuring you draw plenty of removal and small threats can allow a pauper deck to compete. I agree that the counterspell route is a good one, as there is no other real way to avoid more powerful effects like Timestop.
My clan have run some pauper 100s leagues, and while UBG has been good it has always struggled against the UBW decks that run cip effects with creature bounce and g/y recursion.
Well, I know feel led to finally speak my piece...ok so as host of the Tribal Apocalypse PRE held saturday afternoons at 1:30pm in /join tribal, i guess i do have a few opinions. First off let me still say congratulations to Flippers_Giraffe and Lord Erman for winning week 1 and week 2 respectively. Did I think Giraffes Helm-Line or Erman Painters-Stone combos were inappropriate? No. Both fit the rules of tribal, Rogues and Humans. Both players played tightly and both suceeded in their goals. Now, the tough part...do I feel those decks have a place? er..not really. While I know it is inevitable and people will bring whatever they want and as long as its tribal its cool, I would love to see the true nature of the format embraced and have huge creature on creature battles. That to me is the essence of tribal. Two opposing smashing into each other, let the best one win. But I will never make any decisions regarding what is and is not "appropriate" for tribal play unless it reaches a point where attendance is being negatively impacted. All players and any deck they choose to bring regardless of cards...as long as you fit basic tribal rules are welcome.
just an editing note, you have 2 copies of both Grim Harvest and Spring Cleaning listed. Just figure those should be changed in case someone new to the format thinks its still alegal deck. other than that i like it man, freed was alwayys my favorite classic/extended pauper deck.
Leagues, and multiplayer that actually works. The dream.
I hardly think that 1 tribal PRE/week is going to cause tribal to "lose the fun decks". They probably won't show up in the events themselves, though. I'm still quite strongly of the opinion that the format should either; feature a sideboard, use the extended cardpool, or just ban the shazbot out of pretty much every classic combo in existence.
Your deck was cool, I liked that you used the rogues to prevent people from having an answer to the combo, and I agree that you might as well play the most powerful thing available in the format. I just think there's a problem with the format itself, as allowing all of this random degenerate stuff does nothing to differentiate tribal from regular classic.
I have to disagree here. I'm typically and consistently cynical about MTGO development, but this announcement is a step in the right direction. Many members of the community are smart enough to see good software, or are even in software industry themselves. For WotC to give us information as though we are all 13 years old is insulting and demonstrates that much of the Business of MTGO is poorly run. It's further insulting that for the last few releases, it has been record breaking. This says two things: 1) player base is increasing, and consequently 2) profits are increasing. With the increased revenues, we are still seeing bubkis in terms of actual client performance (UI improvement where art thou?). This announcement at least spells out what is in the works on a technical level, which gives the technically inclined players such as Hamtastic, a good sense of how far we are from where V3 needs to be in terms of the player experience.
I'm not holding my breath for these improvements, but I sure am glad to know that someone at the mothership has thought about them and created a player memo to that regard.
I have to agree with your sentiment MechtaK. I've been waiting for Leagues since I came back to MTG:O and discovered that they had vanished.
It's no longer the loss of leagues that winds me up. I can accept that, for whatever reason, they are dead and gone. It's a shame but life is like that.
I'm just getting mighty fed up with WotC treating me like a child and telling me that it will all be ok 'tomorrow'. In this case 'tomorrow' is a couple of years down the line but the actual time frame doesn't matter. Please, someone at WotC, grow some and announce that Leagues are a part of MTG:O history. I'd have a little bit more respect for you then. Not much but a little....
Ah Okay that makes sense.
Unless you are my dad. I have even gotten to the point that I will eat his cooked mushrooms where at one point I was totally paranoid. (He is very careful, and he did educate me fairly thoroughly on the really nasty ones.)
Amen about the sitting. If only we could do the job while walking at a serene yet hard pounding pace. :)
Grats on the Volcanic! Nice interview. Interesting comment about the Aqueducts. I think people underestimate the power of the bounce lands because they open you up to tempo loss with bounce/ld, but if your opponent isn't running that kind of strategy you get a boost and can replenish things like gemstone mine (yeah yeah not pauper but still...) or as LSV says discard it to satisfy a cost. Good article.
Excellent ideas. I haven't the foggiest how your build will do but it looks like it might be a gas to play. I am thinking some of the counters you are running might be better as stuff like Capsize etc but I guess you have to experiment with it until you find the right mix. This format is one of the hardest to to tune I think. Look me up online if you need to practice (Winter.Wolf)
Good job on the Tribal Wars win. :) If you need a Kaleido player let me know and Ill try and cobble something together for our mutual amusement or dismay as the case may be.
RE: Crackleburr, it seems like a fun card, and I've got one just for my singleton decks but everytime I put it in, I end up taking it out again. Not sure why. Usually its just bolt bait. Seldom does it actually come online...maybe that's why its always on the sidelines.
Im a little disappointed as I expected 2 lists for some reason.
"You may be thinking at this point that’s all very nice but what about the decks you are going to show me this article well the first one is based around a card I’ve not used before Crackleburr it looks like fun so I thought I'd give it a try."
This is the reason I think. I know you caveat out of it at the end but that's not cool. Building up expectations and not delivering. I feel you could do better. I recognize from personal experience how hard it is to write an article with feeling and depth and I know it is terrible when things get out of hand by the time you get around to editing it all. But if I were you I'd have rewritten this one from scratch.
>why the drop in Scapeshift?
Because it already had a run up, and this is the post-hype dropoff.
Congrats! The post brings back memories for me of a couple years ago.
I did 500 continuous miles on the AT from Harpers Ferry up through CT, as well as other parts in the Whites and the Smokies. Never had a sufficient stretch of time for a thru-hike (nor likely the patience to do it all at once) but I'd like to get up to the Maine wilderness at one point.
In the software lifecycle, waiting for 2 years for leagues is the equivalent of saying, "This isn't gonna happen." With all the changes, new card sets and rules, database and client management changes, they will probably still be working out these kinks in 2011, which will probably push the leagues back even further (2013? -end of the world is in 2012, if you believe it!).
Why don't they just come out and say it, because I'm getting tired of the "promise" of leagues, only to find out it's just not even on the radar. Just dump the leagues and get it over with so I can move on and dump MTGO. I don't think I want to wait until 2011 (more than likely much later than that) just to get back to what I like about MTGO in the first place.
Might as well be my swan song...
XML was the basis for the Open Magic Data project on sourceforge I was proud to be a part of (Though all I did was write the help for the one client we had going (Deck Mentor)). I have to say as the basis for a deck editor it seemed pretty darned quick once it loaded. Of course the load times were fairly large (at least on my old machine at the time). I can imagine thousands of decks being stored in XML form and the amount of space that must take up. I am impressed that they aren't using some kind of SQL backend instead.
Thanks for the translation there Hammy. In other news kudos to actually going out to play paper magic. Its been a few years since I did anything but shuffle proxies IRL and only that to entertain the gf. Sounds like you had fun. I imagine you will get to do plenty more of that in Austin.
I have to ask...why the drop in Scapeshift? Seems like it would be more popular now, not less with the possibility of massive landfall triggers.
Your optimism has the potential to be infectious, but I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid. That Development Update is a lot of talk designed to disguise the fact that there's not a lot of action:
The Phase One deliverable is specifications and a prototype, a necessary prerequisite so the external resources can use user-centered usability studies to drive refinements.
Mmmm, close your eyes and it feels like you're playing it already!
Silverlight? OK maybe it has promise. Or maybe they saw the newest shiny and are completely overengineering yet again, creating a flashy clusterf--- that meets all the latest buzz talk but fails to actually, you know, work. The most measurable benchmark should be re-enabling Leages, something that was already working, and what we've seen since v3's release is that for every month of work the expected date gets pushed back by 3. They're losing ground!
OK so I'm a bit cynical and pessimistic here. But why? Well, how about XML in the database!!! That just boggles the mind. It would be a laugh riot to tour the headquarters. Whenever they need to save a Word document, they must print it out and take a digital photo, then store that! This is why I need more than a pending diagram and a promise for user-centered interfaces.
Promises and internal measurements get no credit with me. They're easily replaced and forgotten with the next update. I'll wait until the improvements are real and functional and *then* I'll praise the work.
Any of the old reprinted world championship decks to play with?
Those things are a blast
Maybe I should write an article about how to get your girlfriend to play Magic? =)
Thanks Godot, appreciate the congrats!
Thanks man appreciate it!
Yeah I know what you mean about the sedentary. I used to go backpacking all the time, and still go hiking a lot - but haven't carried a full pack in quite some time. Let's just say that when your job involves sitting in front of a computer for 10 hours or so per day... you lose some of your physical abilities.
I know everything I need to know about mushrooms - stay away from mushrooms in the wild =)