thanks for the info. well, I don't think it was anything near tournament-quality. It's just a playset of countersqualls. :/ oh well. at least, now I know. :D
what's with the tone and 'witty' repartee? i don't see any need to get so agitated about it. some people love the card, some don't. much like most other cards.
Just because he comments on its matchups with the most popular decks and posts a video against a good deck doesn't mean that he's writing an article about a tournament-worthy deck. You can be remarkably short-sighted Alex. By the way, the abrasive way in which you criticize makes it become very close to bashing. He clearly stated that this wasn't meant to be a "try this new competitive deck", but rather "try this new fun deck that doesn't do badly versus many tournament-type decks. As I've said before, you really go too far it attacking others, and you do not consider that you could be misunderstanding them or be simply mistaken. I hesitate to say this, but you seem to have a overly large opinion of yourself and the importance of your views (don't take this as an insult, rather as a criticism). Stop treating anything that isn't part of your 'metagame' (used literally and figuratively) as wrong.
By the way, the top 2 decks of the recent Pauper PE were both MBC, which have few relevant plays before turn 3 (Edict is the only one in Roaroftheoden's blue-splashing build, IIRC).
As always, thanks for everyone taking the time to comment and add in their two cents. Just a few responses on my part.
Architects: This is one of those cards that I personally really like, it's just so elegant. While I try and be as rigorous as I can when giving out Tier ratings, there is a lot of a gray area, and I stand by calling this guy a tier III - as by my definition and my opinion he is a better than average creature because he cycles when needed, and he has a really slick ability. However, I could also see the case for calling him a tier IV.
Soul Manipulation: I mucked up... should be a III, I even gave it pick orderings similar to other III cards.
I may have been a bit too harsh on the Mask of Riddles - its playable, I just find it too cumbersome most of the time.
Finally, Mind Funeral: I stand by what I said, I am never, ever going to play this card. Any game that would be lost to it is a game that you were losing anyways. Even in you draft the dream milling deck with a bunch of these and cathartic adepts and whatnot - its still bad. Sure you can spend turns 3, 4... whatever casting these spells - but any deck worth its salt will just take that opportunity and drop you to 0 life before you take out their library. Statistically these do nothing to the other deck either.
The key difference between the Nemesis and Mind Funeral/Cathartic adept whathaveyou - Board presence. Nemesis is a huge guy that must be dealt with. He could just as easily spit four poison counters at your opponent - the fact that he mills is irrelevant - he will kill you in three turns. Playing Mind funeral on the other hand does nothing to affect the board... and while you may even get 15 cards or whatever, it is still not worth giving your opponent a tempo time walk
I couldn't disagree with your disagreement more. That other anonymous poster nailed it perfectly.
A UB Blightning? Reordering the top of a library is not equivalent to discarding two and taking three to the face (and even Blightning isn't a super high pick). It makes Soul Manipulation a cantrip? Any creature in the yard makes Soul Manipulation a cantrip. If there weren't nine other commons in Reborn alone that also make Soul Manipulation a cantrip, that feature might matter more.
Wait a sec...are you the same anonymous poster defending singleton Mind Funerals?
Come on people, make accounts already, and join the discussion for real!
Architects of Will at Tier III seems crazy overrated to me. Cycling is fine, don't get me wrong, and the ability can be pretty solid, but to say that 'Four for a 3/3 is slightly above par in this format' is flat-out wrong. Canyon Minotaur is generally considered filler, as well he ought to be. Just at common, we have a cycle of 3/2s at two mana; we have a regularly 3/3 (Nacatl) for *one* mana; we have a 3/3 first striker (Ember Weaver) for three; a 4/4 for three that's barely a Tier III pick in his own right; heck, we have a 3/3 *flyer* for 4! Architects are fine, but they've never been more than filler-level fine for me, I'd put them somewhere on the lower levels of Tier IV (under this scale) and shading into Tier V, and I'm never surprised to see them table.
He quotes matchups against tournament decks and has a test game against a tournament style deck.
And I do not view my comments as bashing his ideas, but rather questioning them to see if they can be improved upon.
If you think criticism equates to bashing, then I just feel sorry for you.
All good common LD costs 3, which is easily searchable for with Captured Sunlight.
Also remember with cascade cards, their effects might look shoddy (yep 4 life for 4 mana..) but you should consider them together with what they can net you in the right design. So 4 life + destroy target land for 4 mana? Sign me up for that.
Also, regarding Motu's efforts, well done.Don't know if any of these decks could ever be competitive, but that doesn't matter, what matter is stirring up creativity within the pauper community. We have vast amounts of deck design space to explore, and this sort of article does a great job at stimulating people to endeavour to do the same instead of same-old-same-old MBC, MUC, slivers, etc decklists. Thanks for this, Motu.
Shambling Remains looks more essential in the Zombie deck than Lightning Reaver. With Void, Lavalanche, and 4x of another 5-drop and 6-drop Zombie, Lightning Reaver seems the odd man out. It's still Jund Charm resistant too.
For the Wizards, rather than just running 16x creature removal, I think a handful of Countersquall might be worthwhile to give the deck an out to a non-creature and to help protect Circu / Triplets. (I'd say Trial/Error but that's not much use in Tribal.) If only Recoil were Extended-legal...
A singleton Mind Funeral is a terrible card to have in your deck. A singleton Nemesis of Reason is not, it's downright bomby.
"All you need to do is stabilize the board, and drop [Mind Funeral] for the win."
Really? I thought the card milled until it found four lands, I didn't realize it read, "If the board is stabilized, you win target game."
If you saw a game won by a singleton Mind Funeral, it qualifies as an edge case as I stated above, not even remotely outweighing MF's predominant status as a spell with the effect "Mulligan to six, waste one turn."
Not only that, the MF may not have mattered to the win unless the holder of the Mind Funeral had the smaller library. Back in the day, good mill players stopped using slots on Millstone because the key to victory was total board control, not actually milling.
Anyway, if you think the edge case where MF ends a stalemate faster than it would have ended otherwise makes it playable, go ahead and run it. It's not good Magic, though.
The last two drafts I've been in have both been one by either Nemesis of Reason or Mind Funeral. All you need to do is stabilize the board, and drop either for the win.
Any scenario anyone can construct where Mind Funeral in a non-mill deck is "good" is an edge case that will not make it better on average than an 18th land or virtually any castable creature.
I agree, however in a game where you have played long enough to get to the last 10 or so cards and you have little land left in your deck a Mind Funeral becomes a lot stronger. Not saying that happens often but it does happen. On the other hand it is still probably a VII even if you do have the possibility to increase the odds in your favor in the case of a stalemated position. As I said I mostly agree.
Well i'm just going to speculate on the cascade LD deck since we haven't gotten anything from someone more "in the know."
There are only 5 cascade spells in pauper. I think we can rule out Demonic Dread and Violent Outburst right off the bat because i can't think of any LD spell that cost 2 mana or less. Stormcaller's Boon seems marginal at best since its in the 2 colors that doesn't have LD spells and giving your creatures flying doesn't exactly add much to the game plan of an LD deck.
So that leaves 2 cascade spells, Captured Sunlight and Deny Reality. One is GW and other is UB, their colors don't overlap so i think a deck would be hard pressed to play both of them. Both of these cards only have LD spells in one of its color (green and black respectively), and the effect of both these spells are only marginally useful to an LD deck. Life gain and bounce are both good, but for 4 or 5 mana seems steep.
So based on what i've speculated above, a Cascade LD deck would have to be either GW with only green LD spells, or UB with only black LD spells, or tri-colored with LD spells in a 3rd color, but still with only 4 marginally useful cascade spells in the deck. I don't see how this would be any better than just a 2 colored LD deck with just 4 more LD spells instead of 4 cascade spells.
Spending your third turn on a Mind Funeral with no plan to deck your opponent is not a good play.
"Let's play a game of Magic, but I'll go ahead and mulligan to six without looking, and I promise my only play on turn three will be to drop a land."
The vast majority of the time, that's what you will be doing with a turn-three Mind Funeral, and occasionally you will be providing your opponent with unearth, Soul Manipulation, or other beneficial graveyard fodder to boot.
Citing the potential to mill someone's bomb as a plus is a classically misinformed pro-milling argument. You are just as likely to mill away the cards on top of your opponent's bomb as you are to mill the bomb. At the moment you decide to cast a mill spell, there is exactly the same chance that they will draw their bomb next whether you mill or not.
A singleton Mind Funeral is absolutely bottom-tier unplayable in limited. If you convince yourself that dedicated mill cards have worth outside of a decking win condition, you have a hole in your game that needs plugging. Don't worry though, you are not alone, it's a common leak.
If only Yavimaya Elder were around. I think he and Crop Rotation would have a few things to say about this deck.
Nice article btw. I think I played against you in TP (if not you it was someone running this decklist). I was running MUC. When you first started playing I assumed you were playing Thunder, and I thought I might be in for some trouble. That being said, I think Resounding Thunder would help your MUC match-up quite a bit. They can't counter it. You've already got the swamps in there.
Finally, I've not heard of this cascade ld deck either. What is it? Anyone know?
As a fellow lover of huge mana and x-spells, I love this deck idea, and am planning on building a versions to tweak around.
But one thing struck me in the article and I've been looking everywhere for a topic, post, list, something, anything on the cascade LD deck, because the idea frankly scares me, lol. Anyone got a link for me?
I'd be happy to drop a turn three funeral on you for its true purpose which is mana screw. Think about it. Worst case I send ~25% of your land to the graveyard. Best case I send those land plus border posts, obelisks, land cyclers, and/or maybe a bomb. What's not to like about that? True, it loses power as the game goes on and the opponent builds out his mana base, but a VII card... I don't think so.
Hi, I'm Alex. I play competitive Pauper. It is going to be my stance on anything, especially since Motu is talking about the deck in the context of tournament staples. If he had prefaced this by saying "this is casual" I would not have even commented, as Casual Pauper is not my game.
But go ahead and hide behind the anonymity of the internet, coward.
thanks for the info. well, I don't think it was anything near tournament-quality. It's just a playset of countersqualls. :/ oh well. at least, now I know. :D
i am starting to see you as the Sheldon Cooper of MTGO.
what's with the tone and 'witty' repartee? i don't see any need to get so agitated about it. some people love the card, some don't. much like most other cards.
Just because he comments on its matchups with the most popular decks and posts a video against a good deck doesn't mean that he's writing an article about a tournament-worthy deck. You can be remarkably short-sighted Alex. By the way, the abrasive way in which you criticize makes it become very close to bashing. He clearly stated that this wasn't meant to be a "try this new competitive deck", but rather "try this new fun deck that doesn't do badly versus many tournament-type decks. As I've said before, you really go too far it attacking others, and you do not consider that you could be misunderstanding them or be simply mistaken. I hesitate to say this, but you seem to have a overly large opinion of yourself and the importance of your views (don't take this as an insult, rather as a criticism). Stop treating anything that isn't part of your 'metagame' (used literally and figuratively) as wrong.
By the way, the top 2 decks of the recent Pauper PE were both MBC, which have few relevant plays before turn 3 (Edict is the only one in Roaroftheoden's blue-splashing build, IIRC).
Cantrip in that you can Cycle it and get it back, not in that Soul Manip just gets it back. Sorry, I should have been more specific.
As always, thanks for everyone taking the time to comment and add in their two cents. Just a few responses on my part.
Architects: This is one of those cards that I personally really like, it's just so elegant. While I try and be as rigorous as I can when giving out Tier ratings, there is a lot of a gray area, and I stand by calling this guy a tier III - as by my definition and my opinion he is a better than average creature because he cycles when needed, and he has a really slick ability. However, I could also see the case for calling him a tier IV.
Soul Manipulation: I mucked up... should be a III, I even gave it pick orderings similar to other III cards.
I may have been a bit too harsh on the Mask of Riddles - its playable, I just find it too cumbersome most of the time.
Finally, Mind Funeral: I stand by what I said, I am never, ever going to play this card. Any game that would be lost to it is a game that you were losing anyways. Even in you draft the dream milling deck with a bunch of these and cathartic adepts and whatnot - its still bad. Sure you can spend turns 3, 4... whatever casting these spells - but any deck worth its salt will just take that opportunity and drop you to 0 life before you take out their library. Statistically these do nothing to the other deck either.
The key difference between the Nemesis and Mind Funeral/Cathartic adept whathaveyou - Board presence. Nemesis is a huge guy that must be dealt with. He could just as easily spit four poison counters at your opponent - the fact that he mills is irrelevant - he will kill you in three turns. Playing Mind funeral on the other hand does nothing to affect the board... and while you may even get 15 cards or whatever, it is still not worth giving your opponent a tempo time walk
I couldn't disagree with your disagreement more. That other anonymous poster nailed it perfectly.
A UB Blightning? Reordering the top of a library is not equivalent to discarding two and taking three to the face (and even Blightning isn't a super high pick). It makes Soul Manipulation a cantrip? Any creature in the yard makes Soul Manipulation a cantrip. If there weren't nine other commons in Reborn alone that also make Soul Manipulation a cantrip, that feature might matter more.
Wait a sec...are you the same anonymous poster defending singleton Mind Funerals?
Come on people, make accounts already, and join the discussion for real!
i agree. we should see first if this will be consistent and not just an exceptional one-and-done.
I couldn't disagree with this more... Architects at common is A UB Blightning, with cycling. It also makes Soul Manipulation a Cantrip
It more or less reads... "I have won 2 4322 drafts with this card so pick me"
Architects of Will at Tier III seems crazy overrated to me. Cycling is fine, don't get me wrong, and the ability can be pretty solid, but to say that 'Four for a 3/3 is slightly above par in this format' is flat-out wrong. Canyon Minotaur is generally considered filler, as well he ought to be. Just at common, we have a cycle of 3/2s at two mana; we have a regularly 3/3 (Nacatl) for *one* mana; we have a 3/3 first striker (Ember Weaver) for three; a 4/4 for three that's barely a Tier III pick in his own right; heck, we have a 3/3 *flyer* for 4! Architects are fine, but they've never been more than filler-level fine for me, I'd put them somewhere on the lower levels of Tier IV (under this scale) and shading into Tier V, and I'm never surprised to see them table.
He quotes matchups against tournament decks and has a test game against a tournament style deck.
And I do not view my comments as bashing his ideas, but rather questioning them to see if they can be improved upon.
If you think criticism equates to bashing, then I just feel sorry for you.
-Alex
Quote from Motu.. "Today's Forecast has been fun to play and a welcomed change of pace but it's certainly not the most competitive option."
Of course, you'd know that if you read the entire article before getting half way through and bashing his ideas.
All good common LD costs 3, which is easily searchable for with Captured Sunlight.
Also remember with cascade cards, their effects might look shoddy (yep 4 life for 4 mana..) but you should consider them together with what they can net you in the right design. So 4 life + destroy target land for 4 mana? Sign me up for that.
Also, regarding Motu's efforts, well done.Don't know if any of these decks could ever be competitive, but that doesn't matter, what matter is stirring up creativity within the pauper community. We have vast amounts of deck design space to explore, and this sort of article does a great job at stimulating people to endeavour to do the same instead of same-old-same-old MBC, MUC, slivers, etc decklists. Thanks for this, Motu.
Love those decks!
Shambling Remains looks more essential in the Zombie deck than Lightning Reaver. With Void, Lavalanche, and 4x of another 5-drop and 6-drop Zombie, Lightning Reaver seems the odd man out. It's still Jund Charm resistant too.
For the Wizards, rather than just running 16x creature removal, I think a handful of Countersquall might be worthwhile to give the deck an out to a non-creature and to help protect Circu / Triplets. (I'd say Trial/Error but that's not much use in Tribal.) If only Recoil were Extended-legal...
A singleton Mind Funeral is a terrible card to have in your deck. A singleton Nemesis of Reason is not, it's downright bomby.
"All you need to do is stabilize the board, and drop [Mind Funeral] for the win."
Really? I thought the card milled until it found four lands, I didn't realize it read, "If the board is stabilized, you win target game."
If you saw a game won by a singleton Mind Funeral, it qualifies as an edge case as I stated above, not even remotely outweighing MF's predominant status as a spell with the effect "Mulligan to six, waste one turn."
Not only that, the MF may not have mattered to the win unless the holder of the Mind Funeral had the smaller library. Back in the day, good mill players stopped using slots on Millstone because the key to victory was total board control, not actually milling.
Anyway, if you think the edge case where MF ends a stalemate faster than it would have ended otherwise makes it playable, go ahead and run it. It's not good Magic, though.
The last two drafts I've been in have both been one by either Nemesis of Reason or Mind Funeral. All you need to do is stabilize the board, and drop either for the win.
Any scenario anyone can construct where Mind Funeral in a non-mill deck is "good" is an edge case that will not make it better on average than an 18th land or virtually any castable creature.
I agree, however in a game where you have played long enough to get to the last 10 or so cards and you have little land left in your deck a Mind Funeral becomes a lot stronger. Not saying that happens often but it does happen. On the other hand it is still probably a VII even if you do have the possibility to increase the odds in your favor in the case of a stalemated position. As I said I mostly agree.
Well i'm just going to speculate on the cascade LD deck since we haven't gotten anything from someone more "in the know."
There are only 5 cascade spells in pauper. I think we can rule out Demonic Dread and Violent Outburst right off the bat because i can't think of any LD spell that cost 2 mana or less. Stormcaller's Boon seems marginal at best since its in the 2 colors that doesn't have LD spells and giving your creatures flying doesn't exactly add much to the game plan of an LD deck.
So that leaves 2 cascade spells, Captured Sunlight and Deny Reality. One is GW and other is UB, their colors don't overlap so i think a deck would be hard pressed to play both of them. Both of these cards only have LD spells in one of its color (green and black respectively), and the effect of both these spells are only marginally useful to an LD deck. Life gain and bounce are both good, but for 4 or 5 mana seems steep.
So based on what i've speculated above, a Cascade LD deck would have to be either GW with only green LD spells, or UB with only black LD spells, or tri-colored with LD spells in a 3rd color, but still with only 4 marginally useful cascade spells in the deck. I don't see how this would be any better than just a 2 colored LD deck with just 4 more LD spells instead of 4 cascade spells.
Spending your third turn on a Mind Funeral with no plan to deck your opponent is not a good play.
"Let's play a game of Magic, but I'll go ahead and mulligan to six without looking, and I promise my only play on turn three will be to drop a land."
The vast majority of the time, that's what you will be doing with a turn-three Mind Funeral, and occasionally you will be providing your opponent with unearth, Soul Manipulation, or other beneficial graveyard fodder to boot.
Citing the potential to mill someone's bomb as a plus is a classically misinformed pro-milling argument. You are just as likely to mill away the cards on top of your opponent's bomb as you are to mill the bomb. At the moment you decide to cast a mill spell, there is exactly the same chance that they will draw their bomb next whether you mill or not.
A singleton Mind Funeral is absolutely bottom-tier unplayable in limited. If you convince yourself that dedicated mill cards have worth outside of a decking win condition, you have a hole in your game that needs plugging. Don't worry though, you are not alone, it's a common leak.
If only Yavimaya Elder were around. I think he and Crop Rotation would have a few things to say about this deck.
Nice article btw. I think I played against you in TP (if not you it was someone running this decklist). I was running MUC. When you first started playing I assumed you were playing Thunder, and I thought I might be in for some trouble. That being said, I think Resounding Thunder would help your MUC match-up quite a bit. They can't counter it. You've already got the swamps in there.
Finally, I've not heard of this cascade ld deck either. What is it? Anyone know?
As a fellow lover of huge mana and x-spells, I love this deck idea, and am planning on building a versions to tweak around.
But one thing struck me in the article and I've been looking everywhere for a topic, post, list, something, anything on the cascade LD deck, because the idea frankly scares me, lol. Anyone got a link for me?
I'd be happy to drop a turn three funeral on you for its true purpose which is mana screw. Think about it. Worst case I send ~25% of your land to the graveyard. Best case I send those land plus border posts, obelisks, land cyclers, and/or maybe a bomb. What's not to like about that? True, it loses power as the game goes on and the opponent builds out his mana base, but a VII card... I don't think so.
Hi, I'm Alex. I play competitive Pauper. It is going to be my stance on anything, especially since Motu is talking about the deck in the context of tournament staples. If he had prefaced this by saying "this is casual" I would not have even commented, as Casual Pauper is not my game.
But go ahead and hide behind the anonymity of the internet, coward.
-Alex