I don't mind playing against the occassional tier 1 deck in the casual room. The people playing them are usually not very good, or they'd be in the tournament practice room. You then get a nice warm feeling inside when you beat them, and if you don't you don't feel bad because, hey, it's tier 1!
I do think there are lots of other things which are frowned upon in casual, and it's strangely cyclic. i.e. combo is frowned upon because counters and discard are frowned upon, so nobody can stop the combo.. (I won't go into my usual rant about how this just ends up with multiplayer being 900 cloudposts)
In the end, you just seem to end up with lots of creatures smashing each other in the casual room, and that leads to even more frowning.
Personally, I'll play anything other than a tier-1 deck in the casual room, and that does include a whole range, from Toshiro Umezawa (no jitte's!) to a standard goblin deck which I've done pretty well in the queue's with. I've never had very many complaints, and those that i have had in the last 6 months have ALWAYS related to casual players not liking Earwig Squad. I think Cranial Extraction effects in general are frowned upon in the casual room..
It's a nice card that won't be played except casually. A deck will have to make too many concessions in order to realize the full potential of this card.
It's good in the same way that Nulltread Gargantuan is good; a 5/6 for three man with what seems to be a minor drawback except the kind of deck that wants to play it can't afford that kind of drawback.
It's just not as good as it seems it to be.
I think the problem here is that you happened to pick Slivers and there is a Tier-1 Sliver deck out there for Pauper already, has been for a while. Your deck was always going to be compared against it.
I don't think you need to play sanctioned stuff with your decks if you are not comfortable that they are good enough.
You perhaps need to avoid building a deck that exists unless you are making some point about the original or some comparison between it and what you build.
All my articles are budget based, I choose to look at the Pauper format this time round.
Sanctioned play is something I've never tried to be honest as I never feel my decks are good enough.
Would you the readers find it more interesting if I took this step out of the casual room and tried the queues or a Daily Event (I dont have time for more than 4 rounds at any one time), leave a reply I'm very interested to find out.
The article looks great. I really enjoy reading this article on Fridays.
I just have one small suggestion.
For the price history graphs, it's impossible to which card you're looking at until you click to expand the link. Is it possible to have a readable link to these graphs? We don't even really need a thumbnail, just the name of the card would be nice.
Yeah I have to say it's mostly my fault since WOTC sent this out saturday but it got passed by in my e-mail and then Chris talked to me about it on Monday. Oh well at least everyone has the same disadvantage and of course the siiiick prizes.
I absolutely love all the graphs following the price history of a card. Amazing work. I missed it the first time I read through though. If you could implement some way to bring more attention to the hidden content section/links I think it would help a bit. For those that only use the links to find the information it's hard to miss because it brings them right to that information, but for those of us who read the entire thing straight through it seemed easy (at least for me) to miss that content in my first pass read through. Maybe it's something I'll just have to get used to, but if it happens to anyone else it might be something to consider.
Just a mechanical comment: your table for price change should list change percentage as a value between 0 and 100 (with truncation), not 0-1 with infinite decimals.
Great organization of the article, but the decks aren't very strong. GW Slivers has proven itself and I don't think the red addition is necessary.
I've played White Weenie in the 2-man queues quite a bit and it is a strong choice. However, I think the soldier-variation makes it a bit clunkier and it loses some of its punch (it's no longer playing all of the best, independently powerful, White dudes.)
Since you're targeting Pauper I don't know that it's necessary to also consider 'on a budget'. While there are a few decks that are just more expensive, there are several tier 1 or 2 decks that are both powerful and cheap.
I enjoyed the article's layout and readability - I'd like to see more if you dive into sanctioned play and report your findings in the queues or a Premier Event.
The core of your Build 2 (and especially Build 3) Sliver Zoo decks are the basic staples of the G/W Slivers deck that is popular in the Pauper scene. That core is: Muscle Sliver, Sinew Sliver, Plated Sliver and Virulent Sliver. One consideration you might have is stealing one more creature from that popular deck - Spinneret Sliver. It's superior to Canopy Spider in almost every way, especially when combined with either Muscle, Sinew or Plated Sliver.
I do like the concept of blending in Red slivers to give you access to potent red spells such as Lightning Bolt, however.
Excellent job Hammy, SotP only gets better each week. The new format is awesome and makes it very easy to read what you want to read. Definately the best version I've seen so far.
It seems to me to be a huge difference between alive and dead. Particularly with 2 in hand. You gained life this turn to keep you alive from my 3 point swing but now at the beginning of your end step Im dealing 10 to you...how alive could you be?? Yes there are ways to make this less effective but I think its fans are a bit justified in singing its praises.
The thing is, it doesn't stop the initial life gain, so it's unlikely to ever kill anybody because your 5 life loss has already been offset to some extent with their life gaining. I certainly think it could lead to some fun mind-games, but realistically I think the best situation you can imagine for it is trapping from an attacking rhox war monk or something. In that case, you've payed B for a fog and a syphoning of 2 life. That sounds ok, but I think terminate would usually just be better?
The other thing with this trap is that it's absolute unplayable rubbish at it's real CMC, wheras most of the others are poor value at their real cmc, but not absolutely awful. Maybe in a meta with massive amounts of lifegain this might be a role player, but I don't see a meta that skewed emerging. Remember, it basically just fogs baneslayer angels, and is only ever going to turn up in aggro.
I've seen many decklists with Dragon's Claw in their sideboard especially against BR Aggro. This new card will punish them for playing Dragon's Claw. You gain 1 life and all of a sudden for a mere B, you lose 5 life and I gain 5 life.
Also please note that it doesn't deal damage but makes the opponent lose life. That is also very important. I think that it will be worth sideboarding this new one in BR Aggro decks after ZEN.
At first i thought of this life flames of the blood-hand, but flames still burned for 4 when the opponent doesn't gain any life, wheras this does nothing. I guess it's potentially sideboard material if there's a very lifegain heavy deck out there, but i'm not really convinced.
At first I thought of it as nothing special, but my Blightning Burn will looove to have access to this card. Lifegain can be such a pain in the behind for a burn deck.
There is little difference in game terms between a creature blown up with a Lightning bolt or Terminated after it lands on the table and one that gets counterspelled before it reaches the table.
I think the problem, if you want to call it that, is most people start playing the game as a game of creature combat. That is certainly how I viewed it in the early days and I still prefer playing Aggro to control or combo. A lot of people would like the game to be just about creature combat and almost strictly divided into 'my turn - your turn' thing like Chess or some other board game. Look at the reaction to the M10 combat damage stacking change compared to the reaction to say, the Mana change. (Yeah, I was there with my "WotC ruined my game" T-shirt and my "The sky is falling" banners. ). The majority of players are invested into the combat step much more than any other part of the game.
Now I certainly don't mean to say that attitude is wrong, inferior or negative in any way. This game is good enough to support all styles of play and allow people to enjoy it on many many different levels.
The issue only occurs when people of different 'levels' come into contact. Actually levels is the wrong word because it implies that one level is above or below another. As it's magic I'm talking about I'll call them Planes instead.
One reason I think people see Counterspell as unfair is because they want thier game of Magic to be about a titanic combat between fantastic monsters. It's all Holywood fantasy where its all right and proper and cinematic for that huge Craw worm to be turned to dust by a terminate or that Goblin to be blown apart with a lightning bolt. How many films get to the big battle at the end only for one side to not have it's army turn up? Imagine Lord of the Rings if Gandalf simply Counterspells the Ring Wraiths in chapter one. It's the sense of anti climax that upsets the person who is looking forward to the fight scene. It's ok for them to be blown up but it's not ok for them to somehow never get into play be it counterspell, discard or LD making them uncastable.
The second reason which is as valid as the first but harder for me personally to understand is the whole issue of permission. Nobody really likes to be told what to do. Your (boss/teacher) or (Parent/Significant other) has been telling you what to do all day. (pick the one that applies most). You sit down for some Magic fun to unwind and then your opponent starts;
You can't play that spell....
No you can't play that either....
Throw away those good spells you were holding....
Let me look at your hand and take the spell you most want to play...
You'll never play that spell because you will never have enough land...
It's electronic nagging at it's best. And just what the person was hoping for a break from.
I also think that people let counters be far more effective than they should be because of the way they tend to learn magic. The idea of 'play land, play monster, attack, end of my turn' seems to be a mantra and walks straight into the open arms of the permission player. To compound the problem people prefer not to play against permission so tend not to learn how to stockpile resources and overload the permission or play around it.
Then there are the people who quit because they are not winning but there is nothing to be done about them or any point in trying to understand them.
Ok, another wall ot text from me! Just want to make sure that nobody thinks I'm bashing thier style of play or what they enjoy about the game. Just throwing out my ideas about why I think some things are not regarded as 'casual'....
For the record, I'm GMT+2 and the beauty about GMT+2 is that when I'm online, all the fareastern plus Australian players are online as well as the whole Europe. So one game I play against a Chinese player and the other against a French player. Definately fun.
I don't mind playing against the occassional tier 1 deck in the casual room. The people playing them are usually not very good, or they'd be in the tournament practice room. You then get a nice warm feeling inside when you beat them, and if you don't you don't feel bad because, hey, it's tier 1!
I do think there are lots of other things which are frowned upon in casual, and it's strangely cyclic. i.e. combo is frowned upon because counters and discard are frowned upon, so nobody can stop the combo.. (I won't go into my usual rant about how this just ends up with multiplayer being 900 cloudposts)
In the end, you just seem to end up with lots of creatures smashing each other in the casual room, and that leads to even more frowning.
Personally, I'll play anything other than a tier-1 deck in the casual room, and that does include a whole range, from Toshiro Umezawa (no jitte's!) to a standard goblin deck which I've done pretty well in the queue's with. I've never had very many complaints, and those that i have had in the last 6 months have ALWAYS related to casual players not liking Earwig Squad. I think Cranial Extraction effects in general are frowned upon in the casual room..
I agree. If you want to practice 100 CS at all, you have to do it in the casual room.
all that matters on modo is who gets their bombs\mana first
It's a nice card that won't be played except casually. A deck will have to make too many concessions in order to realize the full potential of this card.
It's good in the same way that Nulltread Gargantuan is good; a 5/6 for three man with what seems to be a minor drawback except the kind of deck that wants to play it can't afford that kind of drawback.
It's just not as good as it seems it to be.
I think the problem here is that you happened to pick Slivers and there is a Tier-1 Sliver deck out there for Pauper already, has been for a while. Your deck was always going to be compared against it.
I don't think you need to play sanctioned stuff with your decks if you are not comfortable that they are good enough.
You perhaps need to avoid building a deck that exists unless you are making some point about the original or some comparison between it and what you build.
Hope that helps....
Thanks for the reply
All my articles are budget based, I choose to look at the Pauper format this time round.
Sanctioned play is something I've never tried to be honest as I never feel my decks are good enough.
Would you the readers find it more interesting if I took this step out of the casual room and tried the queues or a Daily Event (I dont have time for more than 4 rounds at any one time), leave a reply I'm very interested to find out.
I did look at Spinneret Sliver but the mana cost put me off, I'll give it a try and see how it plays out.
The article looks great. I really enjoy reading this article on Fridays.
I just have one small suggestion.
For the price history graphs, it's impossible to which card you're looking at until you click to expand the link. Is it possible to have a readable link to these graphs? We don't even really need a thumbnail, just the name of the card would be nice.
I absolutely love all the graphs following the price history of a card. Amazing work. I missed it the first time I read through though. If you could implement some way to bring more attention to the hidden content section/links I think it would help a bit. For those that only use the links to find the information it's hard to miss because it brings them right to that information, but for those of us who read the entire thing straight through it seemed easy (at least for me) to miss that content in my first pass read through. Maybe it's something I'll just have to get used to, but if it happens to anyone else it might be something to consider.
Keep up the good work as always.
Just a mechanical comment: your table for price change should list change percentage as a value between 0 and 100 (with truncation), not 0-1 with infinite decimals.
Great organization of the article, but the decks aren't very strong. GW Slivers has proven itself and I don't think the red addition is necessary.
I've played White Weenie in the 2-man queues quite a bit and it is a strong choice. However, I think the soldier-variation makes it a bit clunkier and it loses some of its punch (it's no longer playing all of the best, independently powerful, White dudes.)
Since you're targeting Pauper I don't know that it's necessary to also consider 'on a budget'. While there are a few decks that are just more expensive, there are several tier 1 or 2 decks that are both powerful and cheap.
I enjoyed the article's layout and readability - I'd like to see more if you dive into sanctioned play and report your findings in the queues or a Premier Event.
The core of your Build 2 (and especially Build 3) Sliver Zoo decks are the basic staples of the G/W Slivers deck that is popular in the Pauper scene. That core is: Muscle Sliver, Sinew Sliver, Plated Sliver and Virulent Sliver. One consideration you might have is stealing one more creature from that popular deck - Spinneret Sliver. It's superior to Canopy Spider in almost every way, especially when combined with either Muscle, Sinew or Plated Sliver.
I do like the concept of blending in Red slivers to give you access to potent red spells such as Lightning Bolt, however.
Excellent job Hammy, SotP only gets better each week. The new format is awesome and makes it very easy to read what you want to read. Definately the best version I've seen so far.
LE
Love the format great job! Thanks for all your hard work, I look forward to reading this every week :)
Hehe I went and decided that it wasn't but I can see the argument for it.
It seems to me to be a huge difference between alive and dead. Particularly with 2 in hand. You gained life this turn to keep you alive from my 3 point swing but now at the beginning of your end step Im dealing 10 to you...how alive could you be?? Yes there are ways to make this less effective but I think its fans are a bit justified in singing its praises.
The thing is, it doesn't stop the initial life gain, so it's unlikely to ever kill anybody because your 5 life loss has already been offset to some extent with their life gaining. I certainly think it could lead to some fun mind-games, but realistically I think the best situation you can imagine for it is trapping from an attacking rhox war monk or something. In that case, you've payed B for a fog and a syphoning of 2 life. That sounds ok, but I think terminate would usually just be better?
The other thing with this trap is that it's absolute unplayable rubbish at it's real CMC, wheras most of the others are poor value at their real cmc, but not absolutely awful. Maybe in a meta with massive amounts of lifegain this might be a role player, but I don't see a meta that skewed emerging. Remember, it basically just fogs baneslayer angels, and is only ever going to turn up in aggro.
Obviously, I could be wrong!
I've seen many decklists with Dragon's Claw in their sideboard especially against BR Aggro. This new card will punish them for playing Dragon's Claw. You gain 1 life and all of a sudden for a mere B, you lose 5 life and I gain 5 life.
Also please note that it doesn't deal damage but makes the opponent lose life. That is also very important. I think that it will be worth sideboarding this new one in BR Aggro decks after ZEN.
LE
At first i thought of this life flames of the blood-hand, but flames still burned for 4 when the opponent doesn't gain any life, wheras this does nothing. I guess it's potentially sideboard material if there's a very lifegain heavy deck out there, but i'm not really convinced.
At first I thought of it as nothing special, but my Blightning Burn will looove to have access to this card. Lifegain can be such a pain in the behind for a burn deck.
The card seems fine :)
This card has savage synergy with grove of the burn willows and fiery justice. works with swords to plowshares as well!
There is little difference in game terms between a creature blown up with a Lightning bolt or Terminated after it lands on the table and one that gets counterspelled before it reaches the table.
I think the problem, if you want to call it that, is most people start playing the game as a game of creature combat. That is certainly how I viewed it in the early days and I still prefer playing Aggro to control or combo. A lot of people would like the game to be just about creature combat and almost strictly divided into 'my turn - your turn' thing like Chess or some other board game. Look at the reaction to the M10 combat damage stacking change compared to the reaction to say, the Mana change. (Yeah, I was there with my "WotC ruined my game" T-shirt and my "The sky is falling" banners. ). The majority of players are invested into the combat step much more than any other part of the game.
Now I certainly don't mean to say that attitude is wrong, inferior or negative in any way. This game is good enough to support all styles of play and allow people to enjoy it on many many different levels.
The issue only occurs when people of different 'levels' come into contact. Actually levels is the wrong word because it implies that one level is above or below another. As it's magic I'm talking about I'll call them Planes instead.
One reason I think people see Counterspell as unfair is because they want thier game of Magic to be about a titanic combat between fantastic monsters. It's all Holywood fantasy where its all right and proper and cinematic for that huge Craw worm to be turned to dust by a terminate or that Goblin to be blown apart with a lightning bolt. How many films get to the big battle at the end only for one side to not have it's army turn up? Imagine Lord of the Rings if Gandalf simply Counterspells the Ring Wraiths in chapter one. It's the sense of anti climax that upsets the person who is looking forward to the fight scene. It's ok for them to be blown up but it's not ok for them to somehow never get into play be it counterspell, discard or LD making them uncastable.
The second reason which is as valid as the first but harder for me personally to understand is the whole issue of permission. Nobody really likes to be told what to do. Your (boss/teacher) or (Parent/Significant other) has been telling you what to do all day. (pick the one that applies most). You sit down for some Magic fun to unwind and then your opponent starts;
You can't play that spell....
No you can't play that either....
Throw away those good spells you were holding....
Let me look at your hand and take the spell you most want to play...
You'll never play that spell because you will never have enough land...
It's electronic nagging at it's best. And just what the person was hoping for a break from.
I also think that people let counters be far more effective than they should be because of the way they tend to learn magic. The idea of 'play land, play monster, attack, end of my turn' seems to be a mantra and walks straight into the open arms of the permission player. To compound the problem people prefer not to play against permission so tend not to learn how to stockpile resources and overload the permission or play around it.
Then there are the people who quit because they are not winning but there is nothing to be done about them or any point in trying to understand them.
Ok, another wall ot text from me! Just want to make sure that nobody thinks I'm bashing thier style of play or what they enjoy about the game. Just throwing out my ideas about why I think some things are not regarded as 'casual'....
For the record, I'm GMT+2 and the beauty about GMT+2 is that when I'm online, all the fareastern plus Australian players are online as well as the whole Europe. So one game I play against a Chinese player and the other against a French player. Definately fun.
LE
I play Vess in the casual room and so far nobody complaint about her.
LE