Join me for the next article, where you see all of the events from the past week and you can see how many I win and lose. I like to bring interesting drafts, the better I do, the more interactions I get to see my deck have and usually find those recaps more interesting.
I have to disagree here. I think Gravedigger is a stronger card than Arcane Teachings. It is a great enchantment but isn't as strong as Blanchwood Armor. I would rather take it 3-6th pick. If I wanted to force Red, it would be a fine pick there.
I've played Scion a bunch of times and you rarely want to get stuck with Dragons in hand, for that you really want get Demonic Collusion into your hand early. This allows you to discard your dragons and get Patriach's Bidding. You will probably want both Mystical and Vampiric Tutor in there as well. 42 land is also extremely high. I know that you are running 5c but most decks will run about 37 or down to 32 depending on the deck. Plus you are playing green so you have access to some awesome land fetchers. Try Seedguide Ash, Gaea's Balance w/ Life from the Loam, Mulch, and Harrow.
The format is on the slower side so you don't really need the Chrome Mox, Petal, and Mox Diamond. You might want to play Coalition Relic though. That gives you a lot more options. The Nephilim seems weak as does Dragonstorm since you are not really ritualing into it.
Arcane Teachings is clearly the best card P1P1. I also like shock over Chimeric Staff (staff is pretty good though), and anything over Ancestor's Chosen.
as i alluded to in the end of the article, mogg fanatic is a huge pain in the rear, i could defenatly see stompy eating this deck alive off a t1 moon, however if it gets to go first you have the option of getting a noble down and no amount of moons or cotv is gonna stop you. if all else fails you could try agresivly mullaganing into mox diamond( one reason its so much better then chrome) also you can get the shoal for no colored mana going against a magus to let you untap with colored mana.
I always love reading your articles (cause you mysteriously always win ;D),
but I don't like playing them at all.
That is because I was never good at making decks so much and for them to give me a choice between cards... eh... :P
But I still go sometimes and its fun. I know the 1st time I ever drafted on MTGO was when only Shards Of Alara where out and I got 2 Vol Sarkhans in 1 draft! :D But from then on I always lost and got bad cards (probably cause I choose bad ;P) so now I only draft like every week or so.
Good rules of thumb for sure and very applicable to M10 limited. I am looking forward to the M10 Release events; people will have to adjust their expectations for a mana base after Alara Block...
Pack 1 Pick 1: I take Arcane Teachings here over anything in the pack. Creature enchantments should be used carefully, but this is a good one. Combine with Hermit Crab and U for hilarious effect.
One thing I did notice in building this was that I had a 'Pauper Players' perception of what rares actually cost. By that I mean I only knew about Pauper legal cards and chase rares like FoW or the Dual lands.
There are plenty of rares out there that are good for Commander that are junk for other formats. Usually because the mana cost is so high they would never be cast in a duel. This keeps the cost of them down.
Add to that it's a singleton format and you only ever need one of each card.
I'd have to go back and check but I'm pretty sure that I didn't pay over 1 tix for most of the cards. I know that it only cost me 13 Tix for the whole deck and I didn't have most of the cards in that list.
Give it a go with whatever you have and a few cheap additions then just build it up slowly. That's what I plan on doing.
Right now all I play is ALA Block format.
And myself I use 5cc (yeah that nasty Cruel)! :D
So this thread really helped me, so thanks.
But I was wondering any ideas for puting some low mana -2 spells into the deck because Aggro Jund decks can easily get you to less then 10 hp or kill you before you get that 3 mana and put out some wall of denial (if you got one in your hand that is) and even then you can be swarmed. Even if you get that 4x Infest inside it still cost 3 mana to play it.
So was wondering if anyone knows (cause I didn't saw anyone playing yet) what would be good spell to add in that is -2 mana and "goes" with the deck.
I couldn't come up with anything cause nothing helps me nor is affective against (like outlanders) now popular decks and its also hard to put stuff out; so any help appreciated.
I managed to get into an M10 pre release event over the weekend and so many people were complaining about the shuffler and getting mana screwed. I played one guy who needed 4 different coloured mana for his deck to function and in an M10 sealed pool that really wasn't going to happen too often.
you simply can't just pick your best spells and hope to be able to cast them all.
I'm very bad at sealed but I always go by the 'new boy rules of thumb' I heard way back when I started Leagues.
(1) 40 card deck (no more cards however good)
(2) 17 creatures
(3) 17 land
(4) 6 other spells
(5) Try and stay two colours or two with a splash
(6) Never splash double coloured mana cards (like 1RR for example)
(7) If you splash then you need 3 mana sources of that colour.
Now there are all sorts of exceptions and special circumstances where you might break those rules. not least of which being the style of the block that you are playing in. (I heard these rules before Ravinca never mind Alara and we had not long been out of Mirrodin). They have however been reasonable good to me over the years.
Oh and yeah, 2-2 in the pre-release because of monumental bad plays of mine in my last game! :o(
Way to blow my MTG:O budget for a couple of months in a day. ROFL.
Great work Paul! I like the article very much and I really was hooked up by the Commander format. I think I'll give it a try, maybe with a Pauper deck. I just need to find a cheap legendary creature I like... ;)
FYI: not sure if anybody follows up on these threads a couple days after, but i just wanted to let everybody know that Worth was extremely nice and helpful and hooked me up w/ some free product support after i contacted him. So it was worth my time to let him know i was frustrated by the changes announced seeing as how i was new to the game. Thanks for the suggestion to contact him hamtastic!
One of the things I do when building a deck in Alara Block is count the number of ways I could possibly use to get a particular colour of mana. For example, 5 Swamps, 1 Savage Lands, and 1 Grixis Panorama would count as 7 black mana sources, 2 red sources, 1 green, 1 blue. What about 4 Forests, 1 Trace of Abundance, 1 Sylvan Bounty, 1 Pale Recluse? This would only count as 5 sources of Green Mana. For Trace of Abundance and Sylvan Bounty you need green mana to run these, so they should *not* be counted as sources of Green mana. Howerver, they can be used to figure out if you have enough sources of your splash mana. Pale Recluse counts as a green mana source because of its colourless land cycling.
For main colours, I want 7 or 8 sources of that colour. For a 1 card splash, 3 sources is good, 2 is marginal. A 2 or 3 card splash, 5 sources. Armillary Sphere will count as a source for every colour, ditto for Rupture Spire. Trace of Abundance won't count for Green, but if you are running a Naya deck, then I don't worry about the red or white mana, and count it as a source for all 4 colours save green. This is a good rule of thumb for building mana bases, but don't go crazy with it.
Here's an example of a bad splash. Lorescale Coatl can be a powerful card, and I like to squeeze it in whenever I can. But let's say your are playing a Jund build with just a smidge of green in there. Running Coatl off of a Bant Panorama, 1 Forest, 1 Island and a Fiery Downfall would be a stretch. Sometimes you'll need that Fiery Downfall to grab a swamp, and sometimes you'll need that Bant Panorama to get both a forest and an island, which obviously it can't do. If your deck also included Rupture Spire and Armillary Sphere (can you tell I love these 2 cards from Conflux?), then you could consider a splash like Lorescale Coatl, but with that mana base, I'd be looking more towards my 6 or 7 cc bombs like Enigma Sphinx.
Using all of your available mana fixing can be a mistake in sealed deck. Too much mana fixing and you dull the power level of your deck. Not enough, and you can't get your deck up and running. Finding that balance is the easiest way to improve your sealed deck performance.
Thanks for your comment! When I was getting into the Alara block sealed events, I also looked around for some sealed deck articles and found very little. That was my main inspiration for putting down some of my ideas on the format; it was only through practice and repetition that I became comfortable with the format.
In general, 17 or 18 lands is correct in sealed deck, and often in draft too. Every now and then you have to adjust to a new environment. For example, in Mirrodin sealed deck, it was often correct to run 15 or 16 lands, because of the mana producing Myr, and the presence of spell bombs. Keeping one land opening hands was doable as well. The presence of a lot of artifacts made mana bases much more forgiving.
On the other hand, you have Onslaught limited, with tons of morph creatures running around. If you didn't hit 3 mana on turn 3, you could quickly get way behind. 18 lands was the benchmark in that environment.
Figuring out the correct 'rule' for building mana bases in a particular format can give you a large advantage over other players who haven't figure it out yet. In Alara block, if I have a land cycler from Conflux, and a borderpost let's say, then I'd be comfortable running 17 land. Throw in a Pale Recluse and one or two other cyclers (like Viscera Dragger and a Jund Sojourner), then I'd be ok with 16. Cycling spells allow you to cut lands from your deck to a point. You still need lands to get started, and that's when you tend to use the cycling cards, but later on, instead of drawing land you are drawing useful spells.
As for efficiency in creatures, this is true. Creatures are being more aggressively costed by WOTC. However, the gold creatures of Alara Block also allow for more aggressively costed creatures, so I expect there will be a bit of an Alara Block 'hangover' when Zendikar comes out.
Very good article. I echo your statements on leagues and the new 4 round sealed tourneys. I'm enjoying the new tourneys, but they definitely take more time/rd than 8 mans.
One thing that really caught my eye in your article was the statement about successfully running 16 (or even 15) lands in a sealed deck build. I know you stated that the mana-fixing is excellent, but do you also think it is because of Wizards making more efficient creatures recently? I ask this because many of the basic "how to do sealed" articles you find mention running 17 or 18 lands. These articles were written years ago, however, so they might not be applicable given Wizards recent push to make creatures better.
There aren't many sealed articles running around and certainly no regular sealed columns, so I'd really appreciate it if you continue doing this kind of article as we head into M10 and beyond.
Both decks did in fact play four Great Stable Stag sideboard. They havn't shown up for whatever reason. Thats why it says the decks sideboards are 11 cards.
Its nice to see the decklist you commented about in the thread on Staxless Stax over at Classic Quarter. It looks like a very interesting list and a lot more like the extended haterade that I was talking about earlier except with a wish board.
I know its not played very much at all but do you think you would run into a problem with a deck like dragon stompy or something that runs a lot of manabase disruption and some burn for your noble hierarchs? It seems like a turn 1 blood moon effect would be tough for this deck.
"The other breakout deck at US Nationals was Conley Woods' Mannequine deck. Like The Spanish Inquisition, the only cards from M10 are the four Great Sable Stags in the sideboard. Other than that, it is playable pre M10."
I cannot see any Great Sable Stags in neither of those decks. Something's wrong?
I have played quite a lot of Commander, and am also a reasonably budget player (No expensive duals etc.). I've actually found that due to it's Singleton and Multiplayer nature Commander is actually quite a budget friendly format. For two reasons:
1)Lands. Sure shiny MED duals look neat, but the difference between 20/20 Mountains/Forests and 20/19/1 Mountains/Forests/Taiga? Not actually all that big. Your manabase actually looks a lot like most of mine, Vivids, Panoramas, Bouncelands + add whichever rare lands you have available. I'd even go as far as to say Ravinca Bouncelands are more powerful than flashy duals, nothing wins more Multiplayer games than card advantage. The one land I would massively suggest for EVERY Commander deck is Thawing Glaciers. I've lost track of the number of games this card has won me almost single-handedly. And it's currently only $2.50 from MTGOTraders! (Current time of posting/subject to change/blah blah blah).
2)Big Splashy Spells. Look for things that were too big for Standard. In your colors, Verdant Force? Insurrection? Just examples, but both big and powerful, and cheap as anything. A lot of the big Giants/Dragons/Demons etc. go for junk rare prices, as in almost any other format they're far far too slow. In Commander? They're just right.
Hope you get another go at the format soon, most of the people I've played with are quite welcoming (even if they are just biding their time till they can triple-Time Stretch you!), the more people interested in the format the better!
I went 4-2 in the ipa. From me and my clanies discussions were expecting the draft sets to go for between 14-18 next week when ipa nix tix drafts start. BTW nice article those final 2 lists were like the top 2 that missed the cut for my article. (mainly due to getting tired of writing and not wanting to put every list that got 1x t8's) but those 2 were very good.
Thanks for taking the time to read portions of my article. To reiterate:
1. This is not my deck, this is the exact 60 that took three spots across two top eights.
2. Rather than make changes before testing the deck, I wanted to play the deck as is to understand everything about it.
3. With regards to Beckon Apparition, I don't believe it belongs maindeck.
4. Castigate is quite good, but the problem is Black-White, outside of this deck, is not. Obviously, a deck that can cast Castigate would want to have it in their sixty.
I would appreciate it very much if the next time you choose to post, you read my entire article, as I make a point of saying the Beckon Apparition does not belong in the maindeck all the time (in my tuned version of the deck, it is absent).
Have a wonderful day,
-Alex
"If you are testing in the TP room you should just stop now and pay the 2 tix to get real testing in. You see the TP room is a casual area and your results will be off no matter how good the opposing decks may seem."
I was watching some games in the TP Room today for Classic and Pauper. Most matches I saw had this breakdown:
1.) Players conceding if a small thing didn't go their way. I watched a Pauper player concede because his opponent bounced his Ravenous Rats while the same opponent had Ninja of Deep Hours in play. Yes, it is a minor inconvience, but not a game stealer.
2.) Players playing bad decks. I saw a Classic deck playing the all-mighty combo of Countersquall, Lobotomy, and Salt Marsh. Well, he would have played them, but his hand was stripped by turn 2.
Join me for the next article, where you see all of the events from the past week and you can see how many I win and lose. I like to bring interesting drafts, the better I do, the more interactions I get to see my deck have and usually find those recaps more interesting.
I have to disagree here. I think Gravedigger is a stronger card than Arcane Teachings. It is a great enchantment but isn't as strong as Blanchwood Armor. I would rather take it 3-6th pick. If I wanted to force Red, it would be a fine pick there.
I've played Scion a bunch of times and you rarely want to get stuck with Dragons in hand, for that you really want get Demonic Collusion into your hand early. This allows you to discard your dragons and get Patriach's Bidding. You will probably want both Mystical and Vampiric Tutor in there as well. 42 land is also extremely high. I know that you are running 5c but most decks will run about 37 or down to 32 depending on the deck. Plus you are playing green so you have access to some awesome land fetchers. Try Seedguide Ash, Gaea's Balance w/ Life from the Loam, Mulch, and Harrow.
The format is on the slower side so you don't really need the Chrome Mox, Petal, and Mox Diamond. You might want to play Coalition Relic though. That gives you a lot more options. The Nephilim seems weak as does Dragonstorm since you are not really ritualing into it.
Arcane Teachings is clearly the best card P1P1. I also like shock over Chimeric Staff (staff is pretty good though), and anything over Ancestor's Chosen.
jvs
as i alluded to in the end of the article, mogg fanatic is a huge pain in the rear, i could defenatly see stompy eating this deck alive off a t1 moon, however if it gets to go first you have the option of getting a noble down and no amount of moons or cotv is gonna stop you. if all else fails you could try agresivly mullaganing into mox diamond( one reason its so much better then chrome) also you can get the shoal for no colored mana going against a magus to let you untap with colored mana.
I always love reading your articles (cause you mysteriously always win ;D),
but I don't like playing them at all.
That is because I was never good at making decks so much and for them to give me a choice between cards... eh... :P
But I still go sometimes and its fun. I know the 1st time I ever drafted on MTGO was when only Shards Of Alara where out and I got 2 Vol Sarkhans in 1 draft! :D But from then on I always lost and got bad cards (probably cause I choose bad ;P) so now I only draft like every week or so.
Tho, great article as always~
Thx :)
Good rules of thumb for sure and very applicable to M10 limited. I am looking forward to the M10 Release events; people will have to adjust their expectations for a mana base after Alara Block...
Pack 1 Pick 1: I take Arcane Teachings here over anything in the pack. Creature enchantments should be used carefully, but this is a good one. Combine with Hermit Crab and U for hilarious effect.
Thanks.
One thing I did notice in building this was that I had a 'Pauper Players' perception of what rares actually cost. By that I mean I only knew about Pauper legal cards and chase rares like FoW or the Dual lands.
There are plenty of rares out there that are good for Commander that are junk for other formats. Usually because the mana cost is so high they would never be cast in a duel. This keeps the cost of them down.
Add to that it's a singleton format and you only ever need one of each card.
I'd have to go back and check but I'm pretty sure that I didn't pay over 1 tix for most of the cards. I know that it only cost me 13 Tix for the whole deck and I didn't have most of the cards in that list.
Give it a go with whatever you have and a few cheap additions then just build it up slowly. That's what I plan on doing.
Right now all I play is ALA Block format.
And myself I use 5cc (yeah that nasty Cruel)! :D
So this thread really helped me, so thanks.
But I was wondering any ideas for puting some low mana -2 spells into the deck because Aggro Jund decks can easily get you to less then 10 hp or kill you before you get that 3 mana and put out some wall of denial (if you got one in your hand that is) and even then you can be swarmed. Even if you get that 4x Infest inside it still cost 3 mana to play it.
So was wondering if anyone knows (cause I didn't saw anyone playing yet) what would be good spell to add in that is -2 mana and "goes" with the deck.
I couldn't come up with anything cause nothing helps me nor is affective against (like outlanders) now popular decks and its also hard to put stuff out; so any help appreciated.
Thanks~ :)
I'll agree that mana is very important.
I managed to get into an M10 pre release event over the weekend and so many people were complaining about the shuffler and getting mana screwed. I played one guy who needed 4 different coloured mana for his deck to function and in an M10 sealed pool that really wasn't going to happen too often.
you simply can't just pick your best spells and hope to be able to cast them all.
I'm very bad at sealed but I always go by the 'new boy rules of thumb' I heard way back when I started Leagues.
(1) 40 card deck (no more cards however good)
(2) 17 creatures
(3) 17 land
(4) 6 other spells
(5) Try and stay two colours or two with a splash
(6) Never splash double coloured mana cards (like 1RR for example)
(7) If you splash then you need 3 mana sources of that colour.
Now there are all sorts of exceptions and special circumstances where you might break those rules. not least of which being the style of the block that you are playing in. (I heard these rules before Ravinca never mind Alara and we had not long been out of Mirrodin). They have however been reasonable good to me over the years.
Oh and yeah, 2-2 in the pre-release because of monumental bad plays of mine in my last game! :o(
Way to blow my MTG:O budget for a couple of months in a day. ROFL.
Great work Paul! I like the article very much and I really was hooked up by the Commander format. I think I'll give it a try, maybe with a Pauper deck. I just need to find a cheap legendary creature I like... ;)
Thanks for the clarification. I look forward to future articles!
FYI: not sure if anybody follows up on these threads a couple days after, but i just wanted to let everybody know that Worth was extremely nice and helpful and hooked me up w/ some free product support after i contacted him. So it was worth my time to let him know i was frustrated by the changes announced seeing as how i was new to the game. Thanks for the suggestion to contact him hamtastic!
One of the things I do when building a deck in Alara Block is count the number of ways I could possibly use to get a particular colour of mana. For example, 5 Swamps, 1 Savage Lands, and 1 Grixis Panorama would count as 7 black mana sources, 2 red sources, 1 green, 1 blue. What about 4 Forests, 1 Trace of Abundance, 1 Sylvan Bounty, 1 Pale Recluse? This would only count as 5 sources of Green Mana. For Trace of Abundance and Sylvan Bounty you need green mana to run these, so they should *not* be counted as sources of Green mana. Howerver, they can be used to figure out if you have enough sources of your splash mana. Pale Recluse counts as a green mana source because of its colourless land cycling.
For main colours, I want 7 or 8 sources of that colour. For a 1 card splash, 3 sources is good, 2 is marginal. A 2 or 3 card splash, 5 sources. Armillary Sphere will count as a source for every colour, ditto for Rupture Spire. Trace of Abundance won't count for Green, but if you are running a Naya deck, then I don't worry about the red or white mana, and count it as a source for all 4 colours save green. This is a good rule of thumb for building mana bases, but don't go crazy with it.
Here's an example of a bad splash. Lorescale Coatl can be a powerful card, and I like to squeeze it in whenever I can. But let's say your are playing a Jund build with just a smidge of green in there. Running Coatl off of a Bant Panorama, 1 Forest, 1 Island and a Fiery Downfall would be a stretch. Sometimes you'll need that Fiery Downfall to grab a swamp, and sometimes you'll need that Bant Panorama to get both a forest and an island, which obviously it can't do. If your deck also included Rupture Spire and Armillary Sphere (can you tell I love these 2 cards from Conflux?), then you could consider a splash like Lorescale Coatl, but with that mana base, I'd be looking more towards my 6 or 7 cc bombs like Enigma Sphinx.
Using all of your available mana fixing can be a mistake in sealed deck. Too much mana fixing and you dull the power level of your deck. Not enough, and you can't get your deck up and running. Finding that balance is the easiest way to improve your sealed deck performance.
Thanks for your comment! When I was getting into the Alara block sealed events, I also looked around for some sealed deck articles and found very little. That was my main inspiration for putting down some of my ideas on the format; it was only through practice and repetition that I became comfortable with the format.
In general, 17 or 18 lands is correct in sealed deck, and often in draft too. Every now and then you have to adjust to a new environment. For example, in Mirrodin sealed deck, it was often correct to run 15 or 16 lands, because of the mana producing Myr, and the presence of spell bombs. Keeping one land opening hands was doable as well. The presence of a lot of artifacts made mana bases much more forgiving.
On the other hand, you have Onslaught limited, with tons of morph creatures running around. If you didn't hit 3 mana on turn 3, you could quickly get way behind. 18 lands was the benchmark in that environment.
Figuring out the correct 'rule' for building mana bases in a particular format can give you a large advantage over other players who haven't figure it out yet. In Alara block, if I have a land cycler from Conflux, and a borderpost let's say, then I'd be comfortable running 17 land. Throw in a Pale Recluse and one or two other cyclers (like Viscera Dragger and a Jund Sojourner), then I'd be ok with 16. Cycling spells allow you to cut lands from your deck to a point. You still need lands to get started, and that's when you tend to use the cycling cards, but later on, instead of drawing land you are drawing useful spells.
As for efficiency in creatures, this is true. Creatures are being more aggressively costed by WOTC. However, the gold creatures of Alara Block also allow for more aggressively costed creatures, so I expect there will be a bit of an Alara Block 'hangover' when Zendikar comes out.
Very good article. I echo your statements on leagues and the new 4 round sealed tourneys. I'm enjoying the new tourneys, but they definitely take more time/rd than 8 mans.
One thing that really caught my eye in your article was the statement about successfully running 16 (or even 15) lands in a sealed deck build. I know you stated that the mana-fixing is excellent, but do you also think it is because of Wizards making more efficient creatures recently? I ask this because many of the basic "how to do sealed" articles you find mention running 17 or 18 lands. These articles were written years ago, however, so they might not be applicable given Wizards recent push to make creatures better.
There aren't many sealed articles running around and certainly no regular sealed columns, so I'd really appreciate it if you continue doing this kind of article as we head into M10 and beyond.
Both decks did in fact play four Great Stable Stag sideboard. They havn't shown up for whatever reason. Thats why it says the decks sideboards are 11 cards.
Its nice to see the decklist you commented about in the thread on Staxless Stax over at Classic Quarter. It looks like a very interesting list and a lot more like the extended haterade that I was talking about earlier except with a wish board.
I know its not played very much at all but do you think you would run into a problem with a deck like dragon stompy or something that runs a lot of manabase disruption and some burn for your noble hierarchs? It seems like a turn 1 blood moon effect would be tough for this deck.
While I know you have many articles on Pauper now I feel my credentials of having won a PE make me well suited to write this article.
Pete you wrote:
"The other breakout deck at US Nationals was Conley Woods' Mannequine deck. Like The Spanish Inquisition, the only cards from M10 are the four Great Sable Stags in the sideboard. Other than that, it is playable pre M10."
I cannot see any Great Sable Stags in neither of those decks. Something's wrong?
LE
I have played quite a lot of Commander, and am also a reasonably budget player (No expensive duals etc.). I've actually found that due to it's Singleton and Multiplayer nature Commander is actually quite a budget friendly format. For two reasons:
1)Lands. Sure shiny MED duals look neat, but the difference between 20/20 Mountains/Forests and 20/19/1 Mountains/Forests/Taiga? Not actually all that big. Your manabase actually looks a lot like most of mine, Vivids, Panoramas, Bouncelands + add whichever rare lands you have available. I'd even go as far as to say Ravinca Bouncelands are more powerful than flashy duals, nothing wins more Multiplayer games than card advantage. The one land I would massively suggest for EVERY Commander deck is Thawing Glaciers. I've lost track of the number of games this card has won me almost single-handedly. And it's currently only $2.50 from MTGOTraders! (Current time of posting/subject to change/blah blah blah).
2)Big Splashy Spells. Look for things that were too big for Standard. In your colors, Verdant Force? Insurrection? Just examples, but both big and powerful, and cheap as anything. A lot of the big Giants/Dragons/Demons etc. go for junk rare prices, as in almost any other format they're far far too slow. In Commander? They're just right.
Hope you get another go at the format soon, most of the people I've played with are quite welcoming (even if they are just biding their time till they can triple-Time Stretch you!), the more people interested in the format the better!
I went 4-2 in the ipa. From me and my clanies discussions were expecting the draft sets to go for between 14-18 next week when ipa nix tix drafts start. BTW nice article those final 2 lists were like the top 2 that missed the cut for my article. (mainly due to getting tired of writing and not wanting to put every list that got 1x t8's) but those 2 were very good.
Thanks for taking the time to read portions of my article. To reiterate:
1. This is not my deck, this is the exact 60 that took three spots across two top eights.
2. Rather than make changes before testing the deck, I wanted to play the deck as is to understand everything about it.
3. With regards to Beckon Apparition, I don't believe it belongs maindeck.
4. Castigate is quite good, but the problem is Black-White, outside of this deck, is not. Obviously, a deck that can cast Castigate would want to have it in their sixty.
I would appreciate it very much if the next time you choose to post, you read my entire article, as I make a point of saying the Beckon Apparition does not belong in the maindeck all the time (in my tuned version of the deck, it is absent).
Have a wonderful day,
-Alex
"If you are testing in the TP room you should just stop now and pay the 2 tix to get real testing in. You see the TP room is a casual area and your results will be off no matter how good the opposing decks may seem."
I was watching some games in the TP Room today for Classic and Pauper. Most matches I saw had this breakdown:
1.) Players conceding if a small thing didn't go their way. I watched a Pauper player concede because his opponent bounced his Ravenous Rats while the same opponent had Ninja of Deep Hours in play. Yes, it is a minor inconvience, but not a game stealer.
2.) Players playing bad decks. I saw a Classic deck playing the all-mighty combo of Countersquall, Lobotomy, and Salt Marsh. Well, he would have played them, but his hand was stripped by turn 2.