An improvement would be to *ease* up on the wall of text. I don't recall any of your past articles having this problem, but I just lose the will to read it to the end because of the deck being the only non-text thing in the article.
Instead of describing your matches, perhaps make a youtube video, like in Scoop Phase. Pictures tell a thousand words.
1- Shockingly and surprisingly Spikes also have a "taste". Spikes do not play a format just because there are prizes offered at the end. Spikes are not mindless robots who are attacking and consuming and exploiting each and every official format with prizes until it's dead.
2- "The author of the article" sees nothing ironic about his statements about the current state of Standard Tribal Wars. As he said above, Spikes (including the author of the article himself) are not mindless robots. If a format is not fun, they just don't play it. Prizes don't matter. Which of course proves that the so called Achilles Spikes are not "very few and far between" but on the contrary that they are the majority.
3- Another good example could be this:
WotC_Mike talks about Vanguard and why they are replacing it with Singleton Standard:
---Unfortunately, the Vanguard format has been being played less and less this last year. This has led us to decide to try another new format in its place. This format is code named "Standardton".---
So why is no one playing Standard Vanguard? It is an official format, it has its own tournaments and queues. So why the format is now promoting(!) to the casual status?
Because it is totally unfun. One totally unbalanced vanguard comes and dominates the meta until another even more unbalanced one comes. Totally and absolutely unfun. And now Spikes are abandoning the format. Which again proves that the so called Achilles Spikes are the majority. Because otherwise, no matter how broken, the Agamemnon Spikes would have continued playing the format just because of the prizes. But that isn't the case.
4- The author of the article finds it hard to believe that Spikes drive the vast majority of players out of formats. The author looks for example at Pauper and sees only an increasing number of players after it became an official format full with Spikes. If Spikes drive people out of the formats, then Pauper should have died a long time ago.
Seeing Spikes love to play Standard, Classic and Extended and seeing how many casual players are also enjoying those formats, makes it even harder for the author of the article to believe that Spikes cause people to stop playing.
5- The author of the article is totally aware that it is not possible that everyone would agree with what he said. Therefore he respects all other viewpoints. He also wants to thank everyone for taking time and commenting on his article. He wants to add that he really appreciates it.
I definitely agree with you w.r.t. sideboards, otherwise it just becomes a case of "which broken deck has nobody pre-sideboarded against this week?".
On the other hand, I'm not sure about the "spikes driving everybody else away from the format" theory. I mean, you still get lots of people playing standard, or pauper, for instance (although I agree that you don't see as wide a range of decks). It's a difficult point to argue with tribal though, because as of now there is nobody playing tribal, so there isn't really anybody to drive away? I tend to just play my tribal decks in extended, as it's impossible to find a tribal game.
Anyway, I'd definitely be interested in taking part in a PRE.
I really love WW (I've been playing it for 2 years in standard), so naturally I love your article ;)
I was tinkering with Soldiers WW build, but they didn't prove very effective (as you and many others pointed in the comments of my article). So I realized that the suspend variant of the deck was the right answer.I tried playing something very similar to your build, but with Sinnew Sliver and Spinneret Sliver and the effect wasn't very good either - The true Sliver decks just slaughtered me! Finally I saw your version of the deck in PDCchallenge forums and I loved it!!! I think that this build is almost as close to perfect as any deck can be in a fast changing meta!
Few comments on the cards:
Dust to Dust is one of my favorite answers for affinity and I really like what it is doing for this deck.
Have you tried playing with 3 or 4 Ivory Giants? My opinion is that this card is THAT good and deserve it.
Congrats for the deck building skills and the effort to write articles every week :)
This is a very thought provoking article, and one I really want to respond to. My response is going to be long, though, so I'll probably make it my Friday article (unless I write an MED III selaed primer, in which case look for it in two weeks.)
The short version - I think you are 100% wrong.
Spikes do not drive formats. Spikes drive the vast majority of players out of formats.
Your so-called "Achilles Spikes" are actually very few and far between. The vast majority of spikes are "Agamennon Spikes." On the other hand, by far the largest percentage of deckbuilders and innovators are not spikes - they are people like AJ who just build every deck they can think of. They drive innovation. Once in a while their decks prove good enough to win a PTQ and become recognized as Tier 1 decks, but that does not change the fact that they are the innovators.
I disagree most strongly with this paragraph:
"Spikes play Standard. Spikes play Extended. Spikes play Classic. Spikes play almost every format there is. Are you not playing those formats just because Spikes play them too? Do you stop playing Standard just because you hate Spikes? Do you sell all your Extended cards and stop playing it just because there are Spikes out there playing the format? Pernicious Deed is legal in Classic. What will you do now? Stop playing the format just because you're a casual player and can't afford it?
No. You don't do those things. You keep playing the format(s) you love. There are Spikes in every format and you can avoid them if you want to."
I have been watching and writing about both casual and competitive play for over a decade. I have seen many, many formats come and go. I can tell you this: You *cannot* avoid Spikes once they enter a format. Players *do* stop playing formats when the spikes arrive. In most cases, *the majority* of the players leave a format when the spikes arrive.
What spikes do is find the best decks, and play those. Repeatedly. If you play in hte format, you will face those decks. If you are not playing those decks, you will lose to those decks - because they are the best decks. If you find something that can beat them, then the spikes will adopt it, and it will become the deck you keep losing to. That's what happens when spikes enter a format. Any format.
I found the comments about the author not wanting to play current Standard TW because of the dominance of the Fae, Merfolk & Kithkin decks quite ironic. Those are the best decks that a spike-driven format can produce. That is what having spikes create. That is the goal that the author is arguing for throughout the article, and he is unhappy with the result.
When spikes enter a format, it is not just "budget players" that cannot compete. It is any deck that does not have the same power level as the best decks. All tribes are not created equal, and in a highly competitive format, the lesser powered tribes are simply unplayable. In a less competitive format, the percentage of players and matches in which you may face something "interesting," like Oozes or Pegasi, is higher. In spike-driven formats, those matches are few and far between.
And, no, in spike-driven formats, you cannot dodge the spikes. Not even in the causal room.
Yes, once Pauper was the format for a lot of players who liked to build strange decks. Those players could bring their 20 Bears deck into a pauper match and have a pretty good chance of enjoying the match. Then Pauper got competitive and suddenly, even in casual, those Bears just kept losing to Crypt Rats, or Golem Blue, or GW Slivers, over and over and over. The Bears players did what those players always do when the spikes arrive - they left. They went to play Tribal Wars, or RSH, or PPH, or any other format the spikes have not yet found.
You can either have a format with a lot of interesting / underpowered decks, or a format with spikes and a few Tier 1 decks. You cannot have both.
Anyway, that's the summary. I'll have to flesh this out a bit - maybe on Friday.
I'd recommend picking up the book "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. It's a tiny little book of about 100 pages that is a must read for anyone interested in writing in the English language.
Excellent article, as always. Please keep those walkthroughs flowing.
I might be misreading your last game, but it seems that you had a 2/2 first-striking flyer against his 3/2 and 2/1 flyer. How did he punch through your griffin?
On turn 5 you have enough lands to play all your cards. There is no reason not to throw away the land in your hand when you decide to discard the Wall. Your deck doesnt need a 4th Island. If your opponent plays another vanilla guy you can use the Wall as a foil for that.
Also, there is no reason to play the Pacifism on the Pegasus, since you can always just play the Pacifism later in the game. Your life total is a resource and you should be using it as such to get more value out of your Looter and to get more time to place your powerful spells (i.e. the Pacifisms) on stronger cards your opponent could play. The board is stalled pretty well as is and you will never fall behind as long as you keep your spells.
Obviously you shouldve countered the armor and shouldnt have played the Mind Control that early until your opponent would have a real threat, but you know all of that already i presume.
If you want to talk about tough languages to learn, try Croatian. I'm half Croat myself, and I still can't for the life of me sort the grammar out. English is widely accepted as one of the simpler languages to learn, but that probably owes a lot to its ubiquity (ie. switch on a radio or TV almost anywhere in the world and you get some instant exposure to it).
As for the article - I don't play Classic myself, but still read Whiffy every week, so he must be doing something right...
A very interesting read and I look forward to AJ's counter.
As a concept I like the idea of Tribal. My favourite deck of all time is goblins and I also hate Elves (as any good goblin should). lol
I'm a very bad deck builder so the rules of the format help focus my thoughts in a direction which helps.
I guess my biggest issue here is the power level. I'd like to have some good games with my goblins against the Elves, Clerics, Zombies, Merfolk out there. I'd also like to goof about with Golems, Myr, and other not so great tribes. Now if my goblins face your Myr it's not going to be fun for either of us. Same as if my Golems run into competative Merfolk it's pointless.
I'm not sure if making the format competative would kill off the more fun tribes. I don't play tribal wars at all at the moment as I only have the goblins built and I suspect that most tribal wars players are not going to be happy to see Mountain, Lackey, pass as thier opponents turn 1 play. I really don't want to make Tribal Wars un-fun for people who like to play casual games. Mind you there is the TP room for the 'big' tribes and the casual room for all the others. It should work in theory but there is always that big debate over what is 'casual' and what isn't and there always will be.
Having said that if the format is not to die off I do agree that support in some form or another is required. Perhaps even just starting a 2/4/8-Man queue would allow WotC to see what effect it has on the format without them needing to spend the effort of running PE's
I'm still undecided and waiting for AJ's take on all this.
Excellent, educational write-up as ever. I wish I could have you with me when I'm drafting to point out my many dreadful picks. And I'm totally with you on the Baneslayer, can't believe it's over 10 tix personally.
A link to the current B&R would have been useful. Last time I played, the wishes were legal. Is that still the case? I can safely say that they are as broken as something very broken in tribal.
Edit: alreet, it's here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/tribal
Wishes aren't banned, so the format's probably still nuts. It seems like any effect which allows you to choose a creature type is banned though. Is Tsabo's decree really too powerful?
the best pauper writer ever : analyzis, originality, videos ... much better than everyone else here about pauper format. It missed, so it has to be say.
I gave this deck a whirl in some 2-mans and an 8-man. I started off great going 5-1 in my first 6 matches, losing only to storm(which is a bad matchup, but was not as bad as I thought it would be). I beat Bu control, burn(twice), goblins, and some trinket mage deck. However the next day when I came back to just abuse this deck for profit things turned and im now 6-6 with the deck. Although 3 of the losses were against GW cloak. As it turns out once they land a shield of the oversoul the game is over. This teaches me that Aaron knows better than I, and I should have left his sb as is, b/c I had removed the naturalize and had nothing to help me in this matchup.
Maybe it's my age, but I prefer this broadsheet style over articles with irrelevant random images dotted about. Also safer to read at work ;-)
I totally agree.
is there part of this article missing?
Nice article, easy to read and enlightening as always.
-R
An improvement would be to *ease* up on the wall of text. I don't recall any of your past articles having this problem, but I just lose the will to read it to the end because of the deck being the only non-text thing in the article.
Instead of describing your matches, perhaps make a youtube video, like in Scoop Phase. Pictures tell a thousand words.
Otherwise good article.
I don't want classic to turn into "vintage without power".. we need the power cards.
I really enjoyed reading about this. It has a good balance of theory and practice and an entertaining style.
Very well done - niice history.
I agree completely with oyur analysis.
I posted my long response under Lord Erman's piece, and I'll probably write a full follow-up Real Soon Now.
1- Shockingly and surprisingly Spikes also have a "taste". Spikes do not play a format just because there are prizes offered at the end. Spikes are not mindless robots who are attacking and consuming and exploiting each and every official format with prizes until it's dead.
2- "The author of the article" sees nothing ironic about his statements about the current state of Standard Tribal Wars. As he said above, Spikes (including the author of the article himself) are not mindless robots. If a format is not fun, they just don't play it. Prizes don't matter. Which of course proves that the so called Achilles Spikes are not "very few and far between" but on the contrary that they are the majority.
3- Another good example could be this:
WotC_Mike talks about Vanguard and why they are replacing it with Singleton Standard:
---Unfortunately, the Vanguard format has been being played less and less this last year. This has led us to decide to try another new format in its place. This format is code named "Standardton".---
So why is no one playing Standard Vanguard? It is an official format, it has its own tournaments and queues. So why the format is now promoting(!) to the casual status?
Because it is totally unfun. One totally unbalanced vanguard comes and dominates the meta until another even more unbalanced one comes. Totally and absolutely unfun. And now Spikes are abandoning the format. Which again proves that the so called Achilles Spikes are the majority. Because otherwise, no matter how broken, the Agamemnon Spikes would have continued playing the format just because of the prizes. But that isn't the case.
4- The author of the article finds it hard to believe that Spikes drive the vast majority of players out of formats. The author looks for example at Pauper and sees only an increasing number of players after it became an official format full with Spikes. If Spikes drive people out of the formats, then Pauper should have died a long time ago.
Seeing Spikes love to play Standard, Classic and Extended and seeing how many casual players are also enjoying those formats, makes it even harder for the author of the article to believe that Spikes cause people to stop playing.
5- The author of the article is totally aware that it is not possible that everyone would agree with what he said. Therefore he respects all other viewpoints. He also wants to thank everyone for taking time and commenting on his article. He wants to add that he really appreciates it.
LE
I definitely agree with you w.r.t. sideboards, otherwise it just becomes a case of "which broken deck has nobody pre-sideboarded against this week?".
On the other hand, I'm not sure about the "spikes driving everybody else away from the format" theory. I mean, you still get lots of people playing standard, or pauper, for instance (although I agree that you don't see as wide a range of decks). It's a difficult point to argue with tribal though, because as of now there is nobody playing tribal, so there isn't really anybody to drive away? I tend to just play my tribal decks in extended, as it's impossible to find a tribal game.
Anyway, I'd definitely be interested in taking part in a PRE.
I really love WW (I've been playing it for 2 years in standard), so naturally I love your article ;)
I was tinkering with Soldiers WW build, but they didn't prove very effective (as you and many others pointed in the comments of my article). So I realized that the suspend variant of the deck was the right answer.I tried playing something very similar to your build, but with Sinnew Sliver and Spinneret Sliver and the effect wasn't very good either - The true Sliver decks just slaughtered me! Finally I saw your version of the deck in PDCchallenge forums and I loved it!!! I think that this build is almost as close to perfect as any deck can be in a fast changing meta!
Few comments on the cards:
Dust to Dust is one of my favorite answers for affinity and I really like what it is doing for this deck.
Have you tried playing with 3 or 4 Ivory Giants? My opinion is that this card is THAT good and deserve it.
Congrats for the deck building skills and the effort to write articles every week :)
i cant even start with how my rating has dropped over 150 point just due to m10! ack.
so wheres the med3 strategy guide ham?
This is a very thought provoking article, and one I really want to respond to. My response is going to be long, though, so I'll probably make it my Friday article (unless I write an MED III selaed primer, in which case look for it in two weeks.)
The short version - I think you are 100% wrong.
Spikes do not drive formats. Spikes drive the vast majority of players out of formats.
Your so-called "Achilles Spikes" are actually very few and far between. The vast majority of spikes are "Agamennon Spikes." On the other hand, by far the largest percentage of deckbuilders and innovators are not spikes - they are people like AJ who just build every deck they can think of. They drive innovation. Once in a while their decks prove good enough to win a PTQ and become recognized as Tier 1 decks, but that does not change the fact that they are the innovators.
I disagree most strongly with this paragraph:
"Spikes play Standard. Spikes play Extended. Spikes play Classic. Spikes play almost every format there is. Are you not playing those formats just because Spikes play them too? Do you stop playing Standard just because you hate Spikes? Do you sell all your Extended cards and stop playing it just because there are Spikes out there playing the format? Pernicious Deed is legal in Classic. What will you do now? Stop playing the format just because you're a casual player and can't afford it?
No. You don't do those things. You keep playing the format(s) you love. There are Spikes in every format and you can avoid them if you want to."
I have been watching and writing about both casual and competitive play for over a decade. I have seen many, many formats come and go. I can tell you this: You *cannot* avoid Spikes once they enter a format. Players *do* stop playing formats when the spikes arrive. In most cases, *the majority* of the players leave a format when the spikes arrive.
What spikes do is find the best decks, and play those. Repeatedly. If you play in hte format, you will face those decks. If you are not playing those decks, you will lose to those decks - because they are the best decks. If you find something that can beat them, then the spikes will adopt it, and it will become the deck you keep losing to. That's what happens when spikes enter a format. Any format.
I found the comments about the author not wanting to play current Standard TW because of the dominance of the Fae, Merfolk & Kithkin decks quite ironic. Those are the best decks that a spike-driven format can produce. That is what having spikes create. That is the goal that the author is arguing for throughout the article, and he is unhappy with the result.
When spikes enter a format, it is not just "budget players" that cannot compete. It is any deck that does not have the same power level as the best decks. All tribes are not created equal, and in a highly competitive format, the lesser powered tribes are simply unplayable. In a less competitive format, the percentage of players and matches in which you may face something "interesting," like Oozes or Pegasi, is higher. In spike-driven formats, those matches are few and far between.
And, no, in spike-driven formats, you cannot dodge the spikes. Not even in the causal room.
Yes, once Pauper was the format for a lot of players who liked to build strange decks. Those players could bring their 20 Bears deck into a pauper match and have a pretty good chance of enjoying the match. Then Pauper got competitive and suddenly, even in casual, those Bears just kept losing to Crypt Rats, or Golem Blue, or GW Slivers, over and over and over. The Bears players did what those players always do when the spikes arrive - they left. They went to play Tribal Wars, or RSH, or PPH, or any other format the spikes have not yet found.
You can either have a format with a lot of interesting / underpowered decks, or a format with spikes and a few Tier 1 decks. You cannot have both.
Anyway, that's the summary. I'll have to flesh this out a bit - maybe on Friday.
whiffy,
I'd recommend picking up the book "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. It's a tiny little book of about 100 pages that is a must read for anyone interested in writing in the English language.
Actually you can read it online here:
http://www.bartleby.com/141/
Excellent article, as always. Please keep those walkthroughs flowing.
I might be misreading your last game, but it seems that you had a 2/2 first-striking flyer against his 3/2 and 2/1 flyer. How did he punch through your griffin?
I think you really punted game g1 in round 2.
On turn 5 you have enough lands to play all your cards. There is no reason not to throw away the land in your hand when you decide to discard the Wall. Your deck doesnt need a 4th Island. If your opponent plays another vanilla guy you can use the Wall as a foil for that.
Also, there is no reason to play the Pacifism on the Pegasus, since you can always just play the Pacifism later in the game. Your life total is a resource and you should be using it as such to get more value out of your Looter and to get more time to place your powerful spells (i.e. the Pacifisms) on stronger cards your opponent could play. The board is stalled pretty well as is and you will never fall behind as long as you keep your spells.
Obviously you shouldve countered the armor and shouldnt have played the Mind Control that early until your opponent would have a real threat, but you know all of that already i presume.
The wishes are legal, but wishing in a timed game gets you nothing, especially now the exiled zone exists.
If you want to talk about tough languages to learn, try Croatian. I'm half Croat myself, and I still can't for the life of me sort the grammar out. English is widely accepted as one of the simpler languages to learn, but that probably owes a lot to its ubiquity (ie. switch on a radio or TV almost anywhere in the world and you get some instant exposure to it).
As for the article - I don't play Classic myself, but still read Whiffy every week, so he must be doing something right...
A very interesting read and I look forward to AJ's counter.
As a concept I like the idea of Tribal. My favourite deck of all time is goblins and I also hate Elves (as any good goblin should). lol
I'm a very bad deck builder so the rules of the format help focus my thoughts in a direction which helps.
I guess my biggest issue here is the power level. I'd like to have some good games with my goblins against the Elves, Clerics, Zombies, Merfolk out there. I'd also like to goof about with Golems, Myr, and other not so great tribes. Now if my goblins face your Myr it's not going to be fun for either of us. Same as if my Golems run into competative Merfolk it's pointless.
I'm not sure if making the format competative would kill off the more fun tribes. I don't play tribal wars at all at the moment as I only have the goblins built and I suspect that most tribal wars players are not going to be happy to see Mountain, Lackey, pass as thier opponents turn 1 play. I really don't want to make Tribal Wars un-fun for people who like to play casual games. Mind you there is the TP room for the 'big' tribes and the casual room for all the others. It should work in theory but there is always that big debate over what is 'casual' and what isn't and there always will be.
Having said that if the format is not to die off I do agree that support in some form or another is required. Perhaps even just starting a 2/4/8-Man queue would allow WotC to see what effect it has on the format without them needing to spend the effort of running PE's
I'm still undecided and waiting for AJ's take on all this.
um you know in your list 6 and 5 are backwards...
Excellent, educational write-up as ever. I wish I could have you with me when I'm drafting to point out my many dreadful picks. And I'm totally with you on the Baneslayer, can't believe it's over 10 tix personally.
A link to the current B&R would have been useful. Last time I played, the wishes were legal. Is that still the case? I can safely say that they are as broken as something very broken in tribal.
Edit: alreet, it's here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/tribal
Wishes aren't banned, so the format's probably still nuts. It seems like any effect which allows you to choose a creature type is banned though. Is Tsabo's decree really too powerful?
There is a Green Stompy :) I'll add a decklist in my next article.
the best pauper writer ever : analyzis, originality, videos ... much better than everyone else here about pauper format. It missed, so it has to be say.
I gave this deck a whirl in some 2-mans and an 8-man. I started off great going 5-1 in my first 6 matches, losing only to storm(which is a bad matchup, but was not as bad as I thought it would be). I beat Bu control, burn(twice), goblins, and some trinket mage deck. However the next day when I came back to just abuse this deck for profit things turned and im now 6-6 with the deck. Although 3 of the losses were against GW cloak. As it turns out once they land a shield of the oversoul the game is over. This teaches me that Aaron knows better than I, and I should have left his sb as is, b/c I had removed the naturalize and had nothing to help me in this matchup.