There are a number of times in the podcast where you say some stuff, then say you're going to edit it out, then do a 5,4,3,2,1 countdown. Now the reason I'm bringing this up is not because I think it should be edited out like you say you will, but because I think it should be left in. I love hearing what you guys think, the mistakes you make, it adds a sense of humour to the podcast.
Also, I *cast* Rite of Flame, followed by another Rite of Flame, followed by seething song on the rating of the podcast.
@looter use comments: this is a topic worthy of some column space, so I will address it in an upcoming article.
@paul: I have always drafted a lot of blue, just not usually with many counters; I'm usually in it for the flyers and the card draw. Ditching the counters on the looting wasn't disdain or lack of comfort with them, I simply thought they were the correct spells to ditch in those spots.
If I over analyze in my column it's because I have the time to! In games I will take a long time with crucial decisions, but I'm definitely less analytical in the moment, where you just don't have time to be. My hope is that being highly analytical in the post-mortem will help me make better decisions on the fly in the future.
@mconstant: In hindsight, EQ was probably correct given that all I was giving up was Essence Scatter. I hate splashing with fewer than three sources for the splash color, though. Many pros seem content with a mountain and an expanse to support an earthquake or fireball, but I'm not comfortable with that, I want three red sources. Still, I can take the quake, look for an expanse, and just not play it if it doesn't happen. The risk is probably worth an Essence Scatter. An interesting question is: what is the *worst* blue card that could have been in that pack that you would have taken over earthquake?
@kevin: that wall has very little value in the matchup. By keeping and playing the land, I give myself mana to both cast Pacifism and Cancel. Never mind that I didn't actually cast the Cancel... As for the Pacifism, holding off on it may have been correct if you had decided to be controlling, let him recover, and then answer that recovery. I decided to play aggressively against land-screwed opponent, and tried to push that advantage and use my mana each turn while I could. Accordingly, I really don't mind the mind control on his looter. It was a justifiable play in the context of kicking a guy while he was down instead of waiting for him to get up. Again, he's stuck at three lands and the looter is crucial for him in that spot. Taking away his ability to dig for land while giving myself the best of my top three cards each turn seemed like an excellent path to victory. If he had not had Unsummon and then missed his land drop for another turn or two, I would have been in great shape.
In my haste to finish and submit the article, I didn't really do R2G2 justice, I left it kinda murky. Villain played a Veteran Armorsmith on turn three, which I only mentioned by saying he duplicated his R1G1 turn three. Then I never included another screen, so understandable that the game state was not clear: he had a swordsmith and armorsmith both at 3/3 beating on me.
The Extended card pool should be examined before saying say or no to Extended Tribal Wars. But when I hear the word Extended, immediately I think of Elves. Is there a way to stop them without a sideboard? Are there equally strong tribes? If yes, then why not?
I have been a fan of Dawn Charm in white builds. Fog, or counter spells targeting you, or regen a critter. It works great vs corrupt, fire blast, and edict. But is does sometimes just clog up the hand and make you wish it was another dude.
My Lord, sorry if "author of the article" offeded. "Author of my orinigal comments" was too lazy to scroll back up when I forgot how to spell Ernam.
Maybe we have a different definition of spike. To me, Achilles Spikes seem more like Johnies. Maybe if you make the definition of spike wide enough to include everyone, I'd agree.
The spikiest spikes I know are on the Pro Tour. They will play formats they hate, when the prizes are worth it, and don't play formats without great prizes. To them, it is all about the EV.
The EV on Standard Vanguard is actually pretty bad, given the up front cost of researching decks and the random nature of the format.
Back to defining Spikes - maybe my point is less about Spikes than the Teir One decks they bring with them. Once the Tier One decks reach a critical mass, the players who's goal is to build lots of new decks just keep losing. That's no fun, so they find another format.
This happened with Prismatic, and Rainbow Stairwell Highlander, and 100 Card Singleton, and on and on. At one time, each of these formats was full of random decks with a lot of players. Over time, a few competitive decks started dominating the tourney practice room, then they moved to the casual room "because we can't find matches in tourney practice," then the number of players in the format dropped to a hard core of tournament players.
Standard is the most common constructed format in existence - it is played at stores all over the world every Friday night. Pauper is the cheapest constructed format in existence. They are the entry level formats - and the constant stream of new entrants balances out the stream of disillusioned Johnies and Timmies the Spikes drive back into more casual formats. Standard and Pauper are exceptions. A better example are formats like Prismatic, paper 5Color, or 1-1-1 Emperor once the New Frontiers decks dominated.
Has Vampire TES (or Jyhad as I prefer to call it) really failed? They just released a new expansion. From their website (http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/) it looks like it's still pretty popular in Europe and Asia. Kind of like Jethro Tull... ;)
I have enjoyed both of these articles immensely, no surprise since I think you guys are two of the best Magic writers on the intertubes. Its probably no surprise that i agree mostly with AJ. I've been playing tribal since I got back into Magic (around 9th edition/Mirrodin block) and I've always gravitated towards Tribal because it allows a Timmy/Vorthos like myself to scratch his Johnny itch without straining too many brain cells. I think the "Tribal Classic is broken" theory is about to get a lot worse soon. I already run into Hymn to Tourach turn 2 all the time in tribal classic casual games.
As for a Player Run Event, I concur that that would be a great way to expand the tribal playerbase. If I could make a suggestion, if we can agree the classic card pool is too "polluted" with broken cards for Tribal, then how about Extended? Basically the same card pool as K-scope, ban Jitte for sanity's sake, and have a somewhat competitive but still fun environment. Plus with the new rotation rules in place, one that will not become stagnant?
Just my 2 tix.
Pauper has a different problem. With next to no budget restrictions, there is almost no casual pauper. With thee the exception of players new to the format, just about anyone can get ahold of MUC or Slivers or Fish. Or whatever won the last PE. So there is absolutely no barrier to netdecking in pauper.
I think the crux of the situation is that for Classic Tribal to remain a beloved format, the populace of Classic Tribal players needs to expand.
Once upon a time I worked part-time for a ccg company (not WotC) and the biggest wisdom of the orientation boiled down to, "It doesn't matter how good the game, people play the games for which they can find opponents."
There have been other ccgs with designs that would clearly fit the personalities of many Magic players better than M:TG (e.g, Magi-Nation, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Legend of the Burning Sands, Warhammer 40K, Warlord, 7th Sea, etc.). The failure of each of these games boils down to an inability to develop a large enough fanbase to support the cost of producing the game.
Formats in MTGO have a similar challenge. They need to develop a critical mass of supporters so that any potential players (i.e., the rest of the MTGO players) can see sufficient reason to devote their resources (time, cards, lost opportunity to pursue other formats) to playing that format.
Classic Tribal Wars has lost that critical mass. As MTGO seems to be growing its player base right now, it is terrible timing for Tribal Wars to floundering right now.
If tournaments help expand the format, I can live with spikes. Both articles seemed to agree that Player Run Events are one avenue to pursue this, but PREs seem to take time to grow and I am not sure how many new players they bring into a format.
On v2.5, I always thought one of the great things about Pauper was that there was a chatroom where many of the pauper players congregated. Some of that format's staunchest supporters hung out in that room and where willing to answer questions and play games when someone drifted in. My v3 knowledge is still underwhelming, so I don't know if that is even a possibility now.
The other difference I see is that AJ wants to maintain the self-policing of the current Tribal players while LE was willing to codify these policies through the Banned/Restricted list. I actually think LE's approach works better when discussing the expansion of a pool of players. Unlike meeting at the local gaming store or in someone's house, each new player will be bringing their own perception of what is fair in a format like Classic Tribal and that can lead to players who are unhappy with shifts in the "fair-use" card pool of their favored format.
Nice job to both article writers, lots to think about.
Being an uber casual/budget player I haven't witnessed much as far as the birth & life of new formats go, but I can sympathize with both points.
I've been playing the Civic Ranger deck since I read this article and I enjoy it. I love the acceleration of it, and I always hated decks that played Resounding Thunder with no way to cycle it.
My only comment is why did you mention Sprout Swarm and Deny Reality but not use them? It didn't really seem like a "Here are other cards I thought about included but didn't because..." section.
I really enjoyed this article, and not just because of the in depth explanation of the Teachings deck type. I like the fact that there is one place I can bookmark that has several decks for me to try. I enjoy Pauper the most because I can take 4 or 5 tix and build a competitive deck, if I don't like it I can build another without being out a lot of money.
I've played most of the ones on here, except for Tilling Thunder, which I tried out last night. I enjoyed it but it seemed to lag behind occasionally. It was still fun playing it as a newbie though trying to figure out the optimum timing to play each card.
I also wanted to note that I got my butt handed to me by a teachings deck. I've tried several versions of it but I just don't enjoy control that much, especially the kind that delays everything your opponent does while you slowly widdle them down with your 4 or 8 creatures. One of my forays into playing against it, I should have lost the game but my opponent ran out of time for playing too slow.
yes i also enjoy reading articles at work and walls of text are the best!
youtube video is blocked at work and most random images/card images are blocked at work too, and the ones that aren't block i just scroll thru them as quickly as i can, but walls of text, they are great! luv just plain text!
It's a question of format diversity: The pressure to win shrinks the range of decks beng played. Since getting a Tribal Wars game in Tournament Practice was unlikely, everyone ended up around our communal kitchen table in the casual room.
In this matchup, Piracy Charm is great.
But here's the thing, the deck in question ran 12 bounce spells. Does it really need another way top handle the aura? I'm not sold.
In addition, Fish has Spellstutter Sprite, which answers just about every card in Nightsky. While Charm may be great there, it simply pushes the match over the top, and in my opinion, is not required.
How is piracy charm subpar vs nightsky again? Correct me if im wrong but aren't nip,mourning thrull, and nightsky all X/1 pre edge? Thus you get a 2 for one when they try to drop edge. Also you of all people should know how often back in the day that piracy charm was a completely underrated sb card infact for a time it was even thought to be strong enuf to be part of peoples main 60. While yes i agree there are better sb cards out there.... they just don't happen to be blue.
There are a number of times in the podcast where you say some stuff, then say you're going to edit it out, then do a 5,4,3,2,1 countdown. Now the reason I'm bringing this up is not because I think it should be edited out like you say you will, but because I think it should be left in. I love hearing what you guys think, the mistakes you make, it adds a sense of humour to the podcast.
Also, I *cast* Rite of Flame, followed by another Rite of Flame, followed by seething song on the rating of the podcast.
@looter use comments: this is a topic worthy of some column space, so I will address it in an upcoming article.
@paul: I have always drafted a lot of blue, just not usually with many counters; I'm usually in it for the flyers and the card draw. Ditching the counters on the looting wasn't disdain or lack of comfort with them, I simply thought they were the correct spells to ditch in those spots.
If I over analyze in my column it's because I have the time to! In games I will take a long time with crucial decisions, but I'm definitely less analytical in the moment, where you just don't have time to be. My hope is that being highly analytical in the post-mortem will help me make better decisions on the fly in the future.
@mconstant: In hindsight, EQ was probably correct given that all I was giving up was Essence Scatter. I hate splashing with fewer than three sources for the splash color, though. Many pros seem content with a mountain and an expanse to support an earthquake or fireball, but I'm not comfortable with that, I want three red sources. Still, I can take the quake, look for an expanse, and just not play it if it doesn't happen. The risk is probably worth an Essence Scatter. An interesting question is: what is the *worst* blue card that could have been in that pack that you would have taken over earthquake?
@kevin: that wall has very little value in the matchup. By keeping and playing the land, I give myself mana to both cast Pacifism and Cancel. Never mind that I didn't actually cast the Cancel... As for the Pacifism, holding off on it may have been correct if you had decided to be controlling, let him recover, and then answer that recovery. I decided to play aggressively against land-screwed opponent, and tried to push that advantage and use my mana each turn while I could. Accordingly, I really don't mind the mind control on his looter. It was a justifiable play in the context of kicking a guy while he was down instead of waiting for him to get up. Again, he's stuck at three lands and the looter is crucial for him in that spot. Taking away his ability to dig for land while giving myself the best of my top three cards each turn seemed like an excellent path to victory. If he had not had Unsummon and then missed his land drop for another turn or two, I would have been in great shape.
Thanks for the commments!
In my haste to finish and submit the article, I didn't really do R2G2 justice, I left it kinda murky. Villain played a Veteran Armorsmith on turn three, which I only mentioned by saying he duplicated his R1G1 turn three. Then I never included another screen, so understandable that the game state was not clear: he had a swordsmith and armorsmith both at 3/3 beating on me.
The Extended card pool should be examined before saying say or no to Extended Tribal Wars. But when I hear the word Extended, immediately I think of Elves. Is there a way to stop them without a sideboard? Are there equally strong tribes? If yes, then why not?
LE
I have been a fan of Dawn Charm in white builds. Fog, or counter spells targeting you, or regen a critter. It works great vs corrupt, fire blast, and edict. But is does sometimes just clog up the hand and make you wish it was another dude.
To be honest the author of the article offended a little bit. Anyway, anxiously waiting for your article this Friday. Just don't tear me up okay?
Oh and it is ERMAN :).
LE
My Lord, sorry if "author of the article" offeded. "Author of my orinigal comments" was too lazy to scroll back up when I forgot how to spell Ernam.
Maybe we have a different definition of spike. To me, Achilles Spikes seem more like Johnies. Maybe if you make the definition of spike wide enough to include everyone, I'd agree.
The spikiest spikes I know are on the Pro Tour. They will play formats they hate, when the prizes are worth it, and don't play formats without great prizes. To them, it is all about the EV.
The EV on Standard Vanguard is actually pretty bad, given the up front cost of researching decks and the random nature of the format.
Back to defining Spikes - maybe my point is less about Spikes than the Teir One decks they bring with them. Once the Tier One decks reach a critical mass, the players who's goal is to build lots of new decks just keep losing. That's no fun, so they find another format.
This happened with Prismatic, and Rainbow Stairwell Highlander, and 100 Card Singleton, and on and on. At one time, each of these formats was full of random decks with a lot of players. Over time, a few competitive decks started dominating the tourney practice room, then they moved to the casual room "because we can't find matches in tourney practice," then the number of players in the format dropped to a hard core of tournament players.
Standard is the most common constructed format in existence - it is played at stores all over the world every Friday night. Pauper is the cheapest constructed format in existence. They are the entry level formats - and the constant stream of new entrants balances out the stream of disillusioned Johnies and Timmies the Spikes drive back into more casual formats. Standard and Pauper are exceptions. A better example are formats like Prismatic, paper 5Color, or 1-1-1 Emperor once the New Frontiers decks dominated.
Has Vampire TES (or Jyhad as I prefer to call it) really failed? They just released a new expansion. From their website (http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/) it looks like it's still pretty popular in Europe and Asia. Kind of like Jethro Tull... ;)
100 card Singleton has the same problem right now.
I have enjoyed both of these articles immensely, no surprise since I think you guys are two of the best Magic writers on the intertubes. Its probably no surprise that i agree mostly with AJ. I've been playing tribal since I got back into Magic (around 9th edition/Mirrodin block) and I've always gravitated towards Tribal because it allows a Timmy/Vorthos like myself to scratch his Johnny itch without straining too many brain cells. I think the "Tribal Classic is broken" theory is about to get a lot worse soon. I already run into Hymn to Tourach turn 2 all the time in tribal classic casual games.
As for a Player Run Event, I concur that that would be a great way to expand the tribal playerbase. If I could make a suggestion, if we can agree the classic card pool is too "polluted" with broken cards for Tribal, then how about Extended? Basically the same card pool as K-scope, ban Jitte for sanity's sake, and have a somewhat competitive but still fun environment. Plus with the new rotation rules in place, one that will not become stagnant?
Just my 2 tix.
My guess is that Lotus Petal is climbing because Mana Drain was released.
hooray for my ego!
im glad you keep coming back and the feeling is mutal with out of the blue.
really, awesome stuff steve thx.
Pauper has a different problem. With next to no budget restrictions, there is almost no casual pauper. With thee the exception of players new to the format, just about anyone can get ahold of MUC or Slivers or Fish. Or whatever won the last PE. So there is absolutely no barrier to netdecking in pauper.
I think the crux of the situation is that for Classic Tribal to remain a beloved format, the populace of Classic Tribal players needs to expand.
Once upon a time I worked part-time for a ccg company (not WotC) and the biggest wisdom of the orientation boiled down to, "It doesn't matter how good the game, people play the games for which they can find opponents."
There have been other ccgs with designs that would clearly fit the personalities of many Magic players better than M:TG (e.g, Magi-Nation, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Legend of the Burning Sands, Warhammer 40K, Warlord, 7th Sea, etc.). The failure of each of these games boils down to an inability to develop a large enough fanbase to support the cost of producing the game.
Formats in MTGO have a similar challenge. They need to develop a critical mass of supporters so that any potential players (i.e., the rest of the MTGO players) can see sufficient reason to devote their resources (time, cards, lost opportunity to pursue other formats) to playing that format.
Classic Tribal Wars has lost that critical mass. As MTGO seems to be growing its player base right now, it is terrible timing for Tribal Wars to floundering right now.
If tournaments help expand the format, I can live with spikes. Both articles seemed to agree that Player Run Events are one avenue to pursue this, but PREs seem to take time to grow and I am not sure how many new players they bring into a format.
On v2.5, I always thought one of the great things about Pauper was that there was a chatroom where many of the pauper players congregated. Some of that format's staunchest supporters hung out in that room and where willing to answer questions and play games when someone drifted in. My v3 knowledge is still underwhelming, so I don't know if that is even a possibility now.
The other difference I see is that AJ wants to maintain the self-policing of the current Tribal players while LE was willing to codify these policies through the Banned/Restricted list. I actually think LE's approach works better when discussing the expansion of a pool of players. Unlike meeting at the local gaming store or in someone's house, each new player will be bringing their own perception of what is fair in a format like Classic Tribal and that can lead to players who are unhappy with shifts in the "fair-use" card pool of their favored format.
-Mike
Nice job to both article writers, lots to think about.
Being an uber casual/budget player I haven't witnessed much as far as the birth & life of new formats go, but I can sympathize with both points.
I've been playing the Civic Ranger deck since I read this article and I enjoy it. I love the acceleration of it, and I always hated decks that played Resounding Thunder with no way to cycle it.
My only comment is why did you mention Sprout Swarm and Deny Reality but not use them? It didn't really seem like a "Here are other cards I thought about included but didn't because..." section.
Please keep the Pauper articles coming!
I really enjoyed this article, and not just because of the in depth explanation of the Teachings deck type. I like the fact that there is one place I can bookmark that has several decks for me to try. I enjoy Pauper the most because I can take 4 or 5 tix and build a competitive deck, if I don't like it I can build another without being out a lot of money.
I've played most of the ones on here, except for Tilling Thunder, which I tried out last night. I enjoyed it but it seemed to lag behind occasionally. It was still fun playing it as a newbie though trying to figure out the optimum timing to play each card.
I also wanted to note that I got my butt handed to me by a teachings deck. I've tried several versions of it but I just don't enjoy control that much, especially the kind that delays everything your opponent does while you slowly widdle them down with your 4 or 8 creatures. One of my forays into playing against it, I should have lost the game but my opponent ran out of time for playing too slow.
Well chosen cards in the Text.
Ambition's Cost *laughter*
yes i also enjoy reading articles at work and walls of text are the best!
youtube video is blocked at work and most random images/card images are blocked at work too, and the ones that aren't block i just scroll thru them as quickly as i can, but walls of text, they are great! luv just plain text!
Don't worry: the Podcast and Hamtastic's excellent 'State of the Program' are seperate and distinct entities. Look for the next SOTP on Friday.
It's a question of format diversity: The pressure to win shrinks the range of decks beng played. Since getting a Tribal Wars game in Tournament Practice was unlikely, everyone ended up around our communal kitchen table in the casual room.
If so, do not want. I miss text :(.
In this matchup, Piracy Charm is great.
But here's the thing, the deck in question ran 12 bounce spells. Does it really need another way top handle the aura? I'm not sold.
In addition, Fish has Spellstutter Sprite, which answers just about every card in Nightsky. While Charm may be great there, it simply pushes the match over the top, and in my opinion, is not required.
-Alex
How is piracy charm subpar vs nightsky again? Correct me if im wrong but aren't nip,mourning thrull, and nightsky all X/1 pre edge? Thus you get a 2 for one when they try to drop edge. Also you of all people should know how often back in the day that piracy charm was a completely underrated sb card infact for a time it was even thought to be strong enuf to be part of peoples main 60. While yes i agree there are better sb cards out there.... they just don't happen to be blue.