I am not sure "fails" is the word you want. English has plenty of vagaries and odd usages but so do most polyglot languages. Keep in mind its roots include Latin, French, German (Saxon, Angle and Jute), Norse, "Olde" English, Medieval English, American Idioms including indigenous tribal languages, Modern English and any number of culture references that have added to it over the centuries.
I don't think that makes it a failure as a language. It does make it a little tougher to learn. On the other hand it is probably a lot easier to learn than any of dozens of other languages. I remember learning Spanish grammar in school and wondering why the male nouns end in o and the female in a. That seemed entirely illogical to me.
While wayfinders are great for helping out domain, the only worthy card that comes to my mind in the format is matca rioters. He seems like he could be good in the deck, but I am not sure he is worth of a spot. I don't like the idea of taking out one of the 2 drop creatures, and the spiders are too much trouble for too many decks.
Your amount of playable spells in hand doesn't diminish with use of Merfolk Looter.
I personally would use Looter each time I have at least 1 card in hand that I'm not going to cast until my next turn and a better card in deck. At worst you're 1 card closer whatever you need from your deck.
Whether I'm doing it on my turn or opponents depends on, do I search for something to play on my turn or not.
I agree with the previous posters about the looting. You were basically just putting the top card of your library into the graveyard a few times, or at most imporving your card quality very slightly. Eventually you're going to start drawing lands, and you're not going to have spells to play since you discarded a bunch of them.
It's true. I realize that I use grammer horribly, it is the weakest part of my game followed closely by spelling. I recently did get an offer to write a 2nd column and while it may not pan out(computer issues) it got me to thinking that I should start taking some core english and creative writing classes. One of the things that I love doing is writing, I didn't know this untill I started up the lunch box though. Another thing I love is magic, 14 years and no end in sight means I would one day hope to land a gig somewhere in the wotc infrastructre, I am not a pro and im probably not good enough at the game to get into rad or any other aspects of making the game but I honestly feel like I could write articles on par with some of the wotc writing staff. All this being said I appreciate the harshness as while I feel I have gotten better I know I need to keep improving.
thanks for the time.
Good to have something good to read on Tuesday again!
Some comments on the draft:
P2P5: You took Mind Spring and mentioned a comparison to Divination. I am firmly in the Divination > Mindspring camp. I think Mindspring flat out sucks in most decks. In WU (my 2nd favorite archetype in M10), you have the tools to be really aggressive and having a Mindspring in your opening hand just blows. For that pick that you faced, I would honestly take the Unsummon over the Mind Spring. Unsummon, while taking a hit with the rules change, is still really handy in the days of M10. When you are in WU, tempo is everything lots of the time. If they can't kill/block your first 2 guys, they lose. It really punishes green decks with big fatties, it get's annoying blockers out of the way, it reduces huge Mold Adders back to 1/1's, it kills opposing Illusionary Servants, it takes care of Ice Cages somewhat, it blows-out newbs who overvalue bad Auras and is effective against good players who play the good ones. I'm not saying that Unsummon is some amazing bomb, but I take it over the highly conditional Mind Spring here. (FTR, I do see the tremendous upside to Mind Spring, I just don't think it is worth it)
P3P2: Earthquake or Essence Scatter? EARTHQUAKE!! Dude, the only reason I am even remotely ok with this pick is that Earthquake does very little vs. your deck. But man, you already have a Bolt, I would be looking to splash this like a mofo. Earthquake is super strong, I would look to pick up terramorphics if I could, but even with 2-3 mountains and a Looter I would be fine with the 'Quake. Essence Scatter is not even in the same league when compared to the awesome Earthquake.
P3P3: Rod of Ruin or Stormfront Pegasus? I am not sure who thinks the Rod is a great card, I haven't heard that opinion. It's solidly mediocre at best. It is ridiculously slow and inefficient, and I didn't even give it a thoughy compared to the really good Pegasus. I would take the rod much later and probably not even run it.
P3P4: Safe Passage #2 over Ecommunicate? Interesting spot. I think the Safe Passage is the better card, but this deck really likes Excommunicate a LOT. I would have taken the Safe Passage on the spot, but in hindsight I think the Excomm is slightly better.
Regarding clicking through Counters: ALL. THE. TIME. Just the other night I had a castable Essence Scatter in hand and let my opponent resolve an Enormous Baloth. lol wth. I am just not used to it and get hasty with the OK button. You sir, are not alone.
To loot or not to loot?: What is your policy on looting after you get the Looter out? Do you loot every turn no matter what, or wait to draw unneeded lands and then just loot those away. If you have one card in hand, do you loot? What is the rationale behind when to loot and when not to loot? Is it simply, "One card will always be better than another, so I will just choose between the two?"
I see Cryptic Command ALOT in casual in all kinds of formats. Maybe CTW is different than all the other casual formats (I don't play it much) but Id suggest that casual these days means something different from the friendly gents games of yesteryear. Very little consideration for opponents goes on casual these days and I am not sure that's a bad thing. After all magic is really a spike's world at least online.
Speaking of spike archetypes, you mentioned the Agamemnon and Achilles types but didn't talk about the Oddyseus Spikes. You know the type. They play traps, lull you into thinking they are Johnnies or even timmies and then you commit to a shaky strategy thinking it is solid because of misinformation and bam! Dead. Sure those are the ones to really look out for. :)
Yeah, I do'nt get using looter when all the cards in hand are ones you want to keep. I'm all for improving card quality, but sometimes you just have to say no to looting, otherwise u have to keep throwing away nice spells, and then when you finally hit land, your spells are gone. That part didn't make sense to me.
My grammar in Korean is probably better than my English due to the fact that I actually had to study the grammar and not be born to use it correctly. And in English there and their sound the same so I find that English fails in many aspects of what a language should be.
On to the article- I found it somewhat boring for me probably because I dont know what cards you are referencing to but I looked it up so no biggie. Also Im a player who was introduced to MTG around the time Tempest or Stronghold came out but didnt start buying my own cards till Saga/Legacy came out. Ever since then I love the Saga block in all it is. I still think its the best block. Cmon- Skittering Skirge. I love that card.
Welcome back! :)Obviously the first guy was an idiot but it is juicy irony that he felt compelled to call you one. Yes you did get lucky cracking a Baneslayer but it was a good pick and who doesn't take good picks?? Particularly in the colors you had so patiently drafted. I can see you were not on your game match 2. Plus it is tough to face that particular mirror. The flood didn't help matters either but isn't an excuse. You were simply not at your best. Countermagic is tricky in MODO because you can't say "Hey! Wait I want my priority back!" (You shouldn't say that irl but some people do and others allow it.)
MODO is unforgiving because the UI is designed to be unforgiving and unfriendly. But that means you have to be wide awake playing reactive spells. I auto play a lot when tired (or bored) and make some goofy mistakes as a result. Sometimes it doesn't matter when you are playing a scrub but against decent opponents that one trivial mistake can be costly. Discarding counters says to me you really don't like playing blue despite liking the blue draw. I could be wrong but that's how it seems from my perspective. The spike in you demands that you play the best cards but you aren't comfortable with them.
Also it seems to me you have some very tense games at times where you over-think things and it seems that your analysis gets fuzzy after you do that enough. Perhaps that is only the effect of seeing it from hindsight and through your memory filter. (As is the perspective of reading about your drafts from your articles.)
I hope my comments don't come off as too critical I know that you beat yourself up and I don't want to be adding to that. Keep playing and keep the reports coming, and may you get top dollar for that angel. :)
long time ago,i used to play pauper decks, even when i didn't know of existence of this format xD
(i just made decks with a bunch of cheap common cards, just to have fun and beat my friends!)
This format seems exactly what i wanna play, as it fits my playstyle and bankroll.
Looking the decklists, i'm kind of disapointed because i don't see any green classic agresive deck.
other than the elvish deck,there's not much green creature cards.You kno' what i mean;
Green old' fashion Stompy deck: rogue elephant, harvest wurm, jungle lion etc,,,
Well, i guess it'd be listed if it was any good, but anyway, i'll try to run faster than lightning's!!!
I suppose that post was a bit more harsh than I wanted. What I should have said is that you are good enough of a player and write clearly enough on the whole that you could possibly find your way into a 'paid to write' position at some point. A quick grammatical fix could increase your chances of that while keeping your anal readers happy. (For the record, I didn't know I was one of those readers, but apparently I am.)
Loved the article. That being said, I almost vomited when I saw the fourth misusage of the word 'there.' I realize grammar might not be a strong point, but you used the word 'there' eleven times and only used it properly five of those eleven.
I like what you have to say and the thought you've put into it, but I also appreciate when others take the time to get *their* point across clearly.
I agree with your points but i really cant for the life of me seeing thresh decks playing strand over the gu fetch as a small example. it just makes so much more sense. on top of that it dosent really afect eternal formats so much but it will be awsome for 14 years of ext fetchlands and 2 more for std. the formats will be really nifty with those in it.
Im with you on the legacy split, whiff. Poiisbly killing classic to set up a pseudo-legacy format is not good business until Urza is out and the MED series is wrapped up.
Enemy Fetchlands are very nice, but I'm not really sure they will make much of an impact for those who are running duals anyway. Although they allow for 1-of basics and can technically smooth out manabases a bit, inreality I dont think very many people will even notice having slightly better saclands. There is really not very much we can do with them that we couldnt be without them anyway.
wtf, you went 4-2 and only got 2 packs... that is really a lousy payout.
And yeah, no Classic / legacy split until Med 4 brings some real goodies, the formats wont differ that much ( though I might be wrong cause I never played with the Urza Cards ).
I've been playing Tribal since I joined MTGO. And i completely understand the position AJ took about your Damnation play. For a lot of players, tribal was the place they could go to play "casual" Magic. Where we could plan our games without $10 cards in mind. Since there is no "budget" format, us budget players are constantly at the mercy of the Spikes and moneybags out there, and for a lot of us Tribal has been a refuge from overpriced shenanagins.
On the Classic/Standard split, I think we need a bigger card pool than std for a competitive environment. Howsabout mirroring K-Scope and playing Tribal Ext?
I keep loving your pauper articles time and again. You make worthy decks time after time! I think I'm gonna try the Civic Ranger deck this time.
Though, the Cloudpost deck you posted there seems to be an almost exact copy of the "Today's Forecast" deck, that you posted a while back except for the Evincar's Justice in place of the Mindstabs.
hmmm right now i am in school so it would probably have to be a weekend but possible times could be saturdays or sundays at 2pm EST...this should make it 11am on the west coast and i think roughly 5pm GMT...
for the lands i believe its simply you save and submit the deck then load it into deck editor and you can pick whatever style lands you want...though i may be confusing this with sealed...?
I am not sure "fails" is the word you want. English has plenty of vagaries and odd usages but so do most polyglot languages. Keep in mind its roots include Latin, French, German (Saxon, Angle and Jute), Norse, "Olde" English, Medieval English, American Idioms including indigenous tribal languages, Modern English and any number of culture references that have added to it over the centuries.
I don't think that makes it a failure as a language. It does make it a little tougher to learn. On the other hand it is probably a lot easier to learn than any of dozens of other languages. I remember learning Spanish grammar in school and wondering why the male nouns end in o and the female in a. That seemed entirely illogical to me.
While wayfinders are great for helping out domain, the only worthy card that comes to my mind in the format is matca rioters. He seems like he could be good in the deck, but I am not sure he is worth of a spot. I don't like the idea of taking out one of the 2 drop creatures, and the spiders are too much trouble for too many decks.
Your amount of playable spells in hand doesn't diminish with use of Merfolk Looter.
I personally would use Looter each time I have at least 1 card in hand that I'm not going to cast until my next turn and a better card in deck. At worst you're 1 card closer whatever you need from your deck.
Whether I'm doing it on my turn or opponents depends on, do I search for something to play on my turn or not.
Congratulations, your article has succeeded in convincing me that Tribal Wars should never be allowed to become a "Spike" format again.
I agree with the previous posters about the looting. You were basically just putting the top card of your library into the graveyard a few times, or at most imporving your card quality very slightly. Eventually you're going to start drawing lands, and you're not going to have spells to play since you discarded a bunch of them.
It's true. I realize that I use grammer horribly, it is the weakest part of my game followed closely by spelling. I recently did get an offer to write a 2nd column and while it may not pan out(computer issues) it got me to thinking that I should start taking some core english and creative writing classes. One of the things that I love doing is writing, I didn't know this untill I started up the lunch box though. Another thing I love is magic, 14 years and no end in sight means I would one day hope to land a gig somewhere in the wotc infrastructre, I am not a pro and im probably not good enough at the game to get into rad or any other aspects of making the game but I honestly feel like I could write articles on par with some of the wotc writing staff. All this being said I appreciate the harshness as while I feel I have gotten better I know I need to keep improving.
thanks for the time.
Thanks!
Heh I thought that was Pauper. (The refuge for poor players that is.)
Good to have something good to read on Tuesday again!
Some comments on the draft:
P2P5: You took Mind Spring and mentioned a comparison to Divination. I am firmly in the Divination > Mindspring camp. I think Mindspring flat out sucks in most decks. In WU (my 2nd favorite archetype in M10), you have the tools to be really aggressive and having a Mindspring in your opening hand just blows. For that pick that you faced, I would honestly take the Unsummon over the Mind Spring. Unsummon, while taking a hit with the rules change, is still really handy in the days of M10. When you are in WU, tempo is everything lots of the time. If they can't kill/block your first 2 guys, they lose. It really punishes green decks with big fatties, it get's annoying blockers out of the way, it reduces huge Mold Adders back to 1/1's, it kills opposing Illusionary Servants, it takes care of Ice Cages somewhat, it blows-out newbs who overvalue bad Auras and is effective against good players who play the good ones. I'm not saying that Unsummon is some amazing bomb, but I take it over the highly conditional Mind Spring here. (FTR, I do see the tremendous upside to Mind Spring, I just don't think it is worth it)
P3P2: Earthquake or Essence Scatter? EARTHQUAKE!! Dude, the only reason I am even remotely ok with this pick is that Earthquake does very little vs. your deck. But man, you already have a Bolt, I would be looking to splash this like a mofo. Earthquake is super strong, I would look to pick up terramorphics if I could, but even with 2-3 mountains and a Looter I would be fine with the 'Quake. Essence Scatter is not even in the same league when compared to the awesome Earthquake.
P3P3: Rod of Ruin or Stormfront Pegasus? I am not sure who thinks the Rod is a great card, I haven't heard that opinion. It's solidly mediocre at best. It is ridiculously slow and inefficient, and I didn't even give it a thoughy compared to the really good Pegasus. I would take the rod much later and probably not even run it.
P3P4: Safe Passage #2 over Ecommunicate? Interesting spot. I think the Safe Passage is the better card, but this deck really likes Excommunicate a LOT. I would have taken the Safe Passage on the spot, but in hindsight I think the Excomm is slightly better.
Regarding clicking through Counters: ALL. THE. TIME. Just the other night I had a castable Essence Scatter in hand and let my opponent resolve an Enormous Baloth. lol wth. I am just not used to it and get hasty with the OK button. You sir, are not alone.
To loot or not to loot?: What is your policy on looting after you get the Looter out? Do you loot every turn no matter what, or wait to draw unneeded lands and then just loot those away. If you have one card in hand, do you loot? What is the rationale behind when to loot and when not to loot? Is it simply, "One card will always be better than another, so I will just choose between the two?"
Thanks for the great articles as always.
(btw, my 1st favorite archetype in M10 is BW)
I see Cryptic Command ALOT in casual in all kinds of formats. Maybe CTW is different than all the other casual formats (I don't play it much) but Id suggest that casual these days means something different from the friendly gents games of yesteryear. Very little consideration for opponents goes on casual these days and I am not sure that's a bad thing. After all magic is really a spike's world at least online.
Speaking of spike archetypes, you mentioned the Agamemnon and Achilles types but didn't talk about the Oddyseus Spikes. You know the type. They play traps, lull you into thinking they are Johnnies or even timmies and then you commit to a shaky strategy thinking it is solid because of misinformation and bam! Dead. Sure those are the ones to really look out for. :)
Nice article.
Yeah, I do'nt get using looter when all the cards in hand are ones you want to keep. I'm all for improving card quality, but sometimes you just have to say no to looting, otherwise u have to keep throwing away nice spells, and then when you finally hit land, your spells are gone. That part didn't make sense to me.
I really enjoyed this article! I'm looking forward to a closer look on Tilling Thunder.
My grammar in Korean is probably better than my English due to the fact that I actually had to study the grammar and not be born to use it correctly. And in English there and their sound the same so I find that English fails in many aspects of what a language should be.
On to the article- I found it somewhat boring for me probably because I dont know what cards you are referencing to but I looked it up so no biggie. Also Im a player who was introduced to MTG around the time Tempest or Stronghold came out but didnt start buying my own cards till Saga/Legacy came out. Ever since then I love the Saga block in all it is. I still think its the best block. Cmon- Skittering Skirge. I love that card.
Fetchlands are always good.
Welcome back! :)Obviously the first guy was an idiot but it is juicy irony that he felt compelled to call you one. Yes you did get lucky cracking a Baneslayer but it was a good pick and who doesn't take good picks?? Particularly in the colors you had so patiently drafted. I can see you were not on your game match 2. Plus it is tough to face that particular mirror. The flood didn't help matters either but isn't an excuse. You were simply not at your best. Countermagic is tricky in MODO because you can't say "Hey! Wait I want my priority back!" (You shouldn't say that irl but some people do and others allow it.)
MODO is unforgiving because the UI is designed to be unforgiving and unfriendly. But that means you have to be wide awake playing reactive spells. I auto play a lot when tired (or bored) and make some goofy mistakes as a result. Sometimes it doesn't matter when you are playing a scrub but against decent opponents that one trivial mistake can be costly. Discarding counters says to me you really don't like playing blue despite liking the blue draw. I could be wrong but that's how it seems from my perspective. The spike in you demands that you play the best cards but you aren't comfortable with them.
Also it seems to me you have some very tense games at times where you over-think things and it seems that your analysis gets fuzzy after you do that enough. Perhaps that is only the effect of seeing it from hindsight and through your memory filter. (As is the perspective of reading about your drafts from your articles.)
I hope my comments don't come off as too critical I know that you beat yourself up and I don't want to be adding to that. Keep playing and keep the reports coming, and may you get top dollar for that angel. :)
hey! amazing post !
long time ago,i used to play pauper decks, even when i didn't know of existence of this format xD
(i just made decks with a bunch of cheap common cards, just to have fun and beat my friends!)
This format seems exactly what i wanna play, as it fits my playstyle and bankroll.
Looking the decklists, i'm kind of disapointed because i don't see any green classic agresive deck.
other than the elvish deck,there's not much green creature cards.You kno' what i mean;
Green old' fashion Stompy deck: rogue elephant, harvest wurm, jungle lion etc,,,
Well, i guess it'd be listed if it was any good, but anyway, i'll try to run faster than lightning's!!!
Thanks for this good constructive post & GL
I suppose that post was a bit more harsh than I wanted. What I should have said is that you are good enough of a player and write clearly enough on the whole that you could possibly find your way into a 'paid to write' position at some point. A quick grammatical fix could increase your chances of that while keeping your anal readers happy. (For the record, I didn't know I was one of those readers, but apparently I am.)
Loved the article. That being said, I almost vomited when I saw the fourth misusage of the word 'there.' I realize grammar might not be a strong point, but you used the word 'there' eleven times and only used it properly five of those eleven.
I like what you have to say and the thought you've put into it, but I also appreciate when others take the time to get *their* point across clearly.
I agree with your points but i really cant for the life of me seeing thresh decks playing strand over the gu fetch as a small example. it just makes so much more sense. on top of that it dosent really afect eternal formats so much but it will be awsome for 14 years of ext fetchlands and 2 more for std. the formats will be really nifty with those in it.
Im with you on the legacy split, whiff. Poiisbly killing classic to set up a pseudo-legacy format is not good business until Urza is out and the MED series is wrapped up.
Enemy Fetchlands are very nice, but I'm not really sure they will make much of an impact for those who are running duals anyway. Although they allow for 1-of basics and can technically smooth out manabases a bit, inreality I dont think very many people will even notice having slightly better saclands. There is really not very much we can do with them that we couldnt be without them anyway.
The Cloudpost deck is indeed a "Today's Forecast" update. I included the decklist for those who might not have read the article.
wtf, you went 4-2 and only got 2 packs... that is really a lousy payout.
And yeah, no Classic / legacy split until Med 4 brings some real goodies, the formats wont differ that much ( though I might be wrong cause I never played with the Urza Cards ).
I've been playing Tribal since I joined MTGO. And i completely understand the position AJ took about your Damnation play. For a lot of players, tribal was the place they could go to play "casual" Magic. Where we could plan our games without $10 cards in mind. Since there is no "budget" format, us budget players are constantly at the mercy of the Spikes and moneybags out there, and for a lot of us Tribal has been a refuge from overpriced shenanagins.
On the Classic/Standard split, I think we need a bigger card pool than std for a competitive environment. Howsabout mirroring K-Scope and playing Tribal Ext?
I keep loving your pauper articles time and again. You make worthy decks time after time! I think I'm gonna try the Civic Ranger deck this time.
Though, the Cloudpost deck you posted there seems to be an almost exact copy of the "Today's Forecast" deck, that you posted a while back except for the Evincar's Justice in place of the Mindstabs.
hmmm right now i am in school so it would probably have to be a weekend but possible times could be saturdays or sundays at 2pm EST...this should make it 11am on the west coast and i think roughly 5pm GMT...
for the lands i believe its simply you save and submit the deck then load it into deck editor and you can pick whatever style lands you want...though i may be confusing this with sealed...?