It is interesting to see that one of the main reasons I returned to Magic is one of the main reasons why you're driving away from it (planeswalkers).
It is true that it is hard to deal with them. But it is ment to be like that. However by saying that you feel cheated when someone playing them against you, you clearly show a weakness in your deckbuilding to me. Because planeswalkers are there and everyone, including you, should adjust their decks accordingly. Just because you ignore them and your opponent doesn't and just because you're unprepared for them, doesn't mean that you are cheated but mean that you're simply ignoring them.
You can kill them with direct damage. If you don't have direct damage in your deck, then you can kill them with your creatures. If you don't have both because you play say, some kind of a creatureless mono blue control deck, you can still bounce the planeswalker back and counter it when the opponent casts it again.
So EVERY deck out there can deal with them. EVERY one of them. If yours can't, than you have a weakness in your deckbuilding and you have to work on it. Red has direct damage, white has O-Ring, blue has bounce, black too has direct damage (Corrupt) and green has tons of creatures. And you feel cheated when one gets played against you?
You can still advertise your game as "NO PLANESWALKERS" if you don't want to see them.
First of all, thanks for this in depth comment. Hopefully this reply fleshes out some of my ideas and card choices.
I agree, my results are skewed to the Queues. I have no relevant data from participating in PE's or in the PDC events. However, I have played well over 200 matches in the 2 man Queues. When I am running my list, my constructed rating will bounce between 1750 and 1800.
I ran 1 copy of Disciple of the Vault for a long while, as it was nice to know there was one in the deck that I could dig for if needed. I found that Disciple was best against control decks (naturally), but was often just a way to finish an opponent quickly. With careful play, the most important aspect of the deck was to successfully cast Rush of Knowledge for 6 or 7 cards. This was what I found to be the most critical element for winning a game. Inevitability swings your way when you do this, and Disciple of the Vault doesn't contribute to casting Rush of Knowledge in any way in this deck.
Storm Combo: Should have definitely covered this, as it is an important matchup. Not much you can do pre board, but hold back a Shaman in case they go Goblins, and dig for a Sunbeam Spellbomb to try and get out of Grapeshot range. It gets better for you after boarding, as you can bring in some good disruption. Board in all your pyroblasts and hydroblasts. Target the blue card drawing spells and the red mana producers. Keep Krark Clan Shaman in the deck in case they go with producing goblins. Board out 2 Quicksilver Behemoth, 1 Bonesplitter, 1 Leonin Squire, 1 Rush of Knowledge, 1 Aether Spellbomb. Board in the 6 blasts.
As for combatting hate, I would choose not to run this deck if the field was fully prepared for it. If someone wants to beat Affinity, they can beat Affinity. Having said that though, I'd take my list over the standard list. When trying to fight through hate, the most important thing is to be able to maintain your mana base. This list allows you to run 6 lands that do not die to artifact destruction (outside of Dust to Dust, which is a death sentence for Affinity). With Squire and Trinket Mage, you can get lands back from your graveyard or dig them out of your deck.
Being limited to 15 Sideboard cards, I wanted main deck answers to pesky decks. Having Trinket Mage, with recursion possible with the Squires, allows a pseudo silver bullet strategy, allowing me to dedicate more sideboard slots to what I think are the most troublesome matchups. Echoing Truth does not recur with the Squire, and you cannot dig for it with Trinket Mage. Plus, it does not contribute to your Affinity count.
Not to steal thunder but I went the other way today. I played Necro for one last harrah. The reason I did was because I really wanted to try out an idea I had and this would be the last chance.
NEC-GRO
3 Ponder
3 Tendrils of Agony
4 Force of Will
1 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Necropotence
3 Cabal Ritual
4 Daze
4 Underground Sea
1 Breeding Pool
3 Brainstorm
1 Swamp
4 Demonic Consultation
2 Dark Ritual
4 Soul Spike
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Polluted Delta
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
The sideboard is whats important here. The idea is you side into a gro deck with Tendrils back up to make things weird for the opponent. Sideboarding is +all 15 for -4 Necro -4 Spike -3 C. Ritual -2 D. Ritual -1 Consultation -1 Tendrils.
Rd1 Kaxon Necro
I win the die roll and despite resolving turn 1 Necro with Daze back up a long game goes to the clan mate.
Game 2 starts off a bit slow and I remember putting up a brave fight but succumbing anyway.
Rd2 Phantastic WB agro disruption
Game 1 I race a Savannah Lion with my combo.
Game 2 I make the full sb switch and run into 0 hate. He does get a Worship down though and a Tombstalker later locks the game away.
Game 3 is all about Necro and being awsome at math. I resolve a turn one Necro and draw up 17 cards. No Spikes but i do have a lethal double Tendrils through 2x Consultations. I end the game with 1 card in my deck after making a risky play for tutoring up a 2 of card in my 30ish deck.
Rd3 Romain 75 No show
Rd4 Kerric Vial Fish
Game 1 sees him slow me down with Wastelands and beat in with man lands but I am eventually able to pulll out my combo.
Game 2 I do the full switch and in his endstep kill my self with a Consultation gone wrong leaving me with 17 cards and no win cons when going for a turn 2 Dryad.
Game 3 I start on Duress for FoW I believe and he gets a turn 1 or 2 needle. Luckily for me im a sac and he is mana flooded so I play lands on 2 and 3 and then on turn 4 I use up my 8 card hand to Tendrils for +7 and then +8 killing him in one turn.
Rd5 WizardnotoftheCoast Necro (9th place)
Game 1 I win the die roll and we play some great great magic. Vicky is a superb player and this was hands down my most favorite match ever with this deck. We attrition each other out but in the end I stuck Necro first so I had more amunition with mini Tendrils and Spikes.
Game 2 She mulls to 5 and I think I have it. I go for Duress and hit necro I believe. She top decks a Compost and plays it out. Even though I get Necro going I give her way to many cards and I lose to a Spike with a lethal Tendrils storm on the stack.
Game 3 she mulls to 4 and I am able to just go about taking large chunks out of her with a pair of mini Tendrils before Necroing up my Spikes.
Top 8 Eggraid Merfolks.
Game 1 goes south and merfolk do its thing to me.
Game 2 full sb and Im pretty sure my 5/5 Dryad and 6/6 Coatl were nowhere near his radar when he sided.
Game 3 Is once again decided by lots of growing and Smothering and Gushing with a touch of agony.
Top 4 stabel Merfolk
He wins a tough game 1 but I was kind of expecting it.
Game 2 is the full switch and even though I have surprise on my side he just had to many answers and was able to counter a Coatl that was key to me turning it around again.
I had fun with Necro one last time and im glad that the sb was actually relavant in doubling my prize by winning the top 8,.... but thank goodness the 2 new restricted cards are gonskys.
Using the queues to justify your results is a poor strategy for determining a deck's strength in Pauper. The queues do not present anything similar to a PE metagame, as you are just running into random decks with 0-0 records; it is the same as playing round one of a major event over and over and over- you just never know what you are going to get. The queues are not totally without value, especially if your goal is to just win queues. However, when preparing for a PE, you would do much better to have a group of people to test against who would be running the decks you expect to see in a PE. There is also the dirty little secret that a lot of the queue players are, well, bad- I have managed to win totally unwinnable matchups (RW aggro with no Obsidian Acolyte vs MBC) in the queues thanks to people just picking up a pile of sixty and running it at you. Know who you're testing against if you want to use queues as proper testing grounds.
Perfect example: Burn. This deck was just over 2% of the recent PE (2 people out of 92 competitors), yet you list it as a key matchup. If these results were from PE 1, I'd agree with you tagging that deck as one to beat, but Burn has been a fringe player since March.
You also completely ignore Storm combo, which is a consistent threat to any Pauper tournament. How do you go about this matchup, as your entire game seems to be based around winning with Rush of Knowledge, unlike other Affinity which has the DotV back up plan (being able to go Oops, I win, on turn 3 is pretty key against a deck like Storm).
How do you plan on combating the hate that is sure to come with the deck recently winning the PE? While you are set up to fight in the mirror (resolving Rush first, for example, with Lens [which doesn't matter, since other Affinity runs Lotus Petal and Drum, enabling at earliest a turn three Rush]), you do not really have a way to fight hate. Now I understand that this was written before the most recent PE, but still, many of the choices seem knee jerk and not carefully thought out. Cards like Echoing Truth slide into Affinity very well and can blow out Aura aggro. I would have liked to have seen a more in depth discussion about they you went with these cards and why you eschewed DotV, since you are running the Sac Outlets anyone.
Congrats on the T8. I meant to include the link to those decks, but it somehow got left out. Arcanis was an avatar I always wanted to play with, but Nekrataal and Reaper King were just too strong.
I totally agree, though, that more avatars inherently means more balance. Just like more cards in extended prevents certain strategies from getting out of hand.
I understand what you and the next poster are getting at, that maybe patience will help, but when I include Mortifies and Naturalize in my deck to deal with non-creature permanents, and my opponent plays a planeswalker, I still feel cheated.
That chart is the total QPs this year, so 207 would be over *two* months (eight weeks, actually).
Also, I have it on good authority that WotC is checking the activity on all the accounts that are near the top of the standings and there is nothing suspicious going on, they are just that successful.
All the choices in this deck were carefully worked on and tested in the Queues. I'm not going to claim this is the best version of Affinity but it does have a plan for every matchup. I ran with the average Affinity build for quite a while, but I don't like a deck that has no answers to a G/W creature with a Shield of the Oversoul/Armadillo Cloak on it. As a general philosophy, I always like to have outs.
I'm not sure you could say that Springleaf Drum is better than Prismatic Lens; they are different in how they play. I tried out the Drum, but am much happier with the Lens, as it is more resilient in the face of Gorilla Shaman. The Shaman will take out a Drum for 3 mana, while you need 5 mana to blow up a Lens.
As for the timing of this article, I began writing it prior to the most recent PE, and submitted it the following week; I thought people would enjoy a build that was different, with some more choices and a different strategy in how it plays. Thanks for reading.
Planeswalkers are tough because there is no removal made for them. There has been many cards made to destroy each other type of permanant except planeswalker. Making the mythic rarity (and then putting pw mythic) just made it so the people who spend more $ are the people who have the pw.
Planeswalker are fine in all formats, its a new card type so it will take wizards time to have the ways that deal with them catch up. There is a common answer for them though. Oblivion ring was reprinted in alara specifically for Planeswalkers. Yeah they are a little hard to deal with. Just like anything that has black in its casting cost and a high toughness.
I've never been disappointed to have Disciple of the Vault. He makes blocking bad for your opponent, and at the very least diverts a removal spell from one of your more imposing creatures. As for a sac outlet, you have the perfectly fine Krark-Clan Shaman.
Some of your choices seem odd. Prismatic lens over Springleaf drum? No lotus petal?
I'm always glad to read an article, and thanks for taking the time to read it, but I do have to agree with the other person in that we just had an Affinity pauper article (and I happen to like his list better, though I've tried trinket mage before for effect)
I like fringe formats too (and - still - also vanguard most of all), mainly because if you are (or atleast think you are) a decent deck constructor (that meanes that you will proberly not make a protour winning decks the next couple month ;)) you can't really compete in std or ext, but the fringe formats allow you a chance to construct decks that might actually be quite close to the top
Since the "death" of vanguard, Ive played a litte of pauper (and alot EDH - even without events :/) to get that part covered but I prefer something there you must play a deck made for the format and which got tournements (Affinity and GW haterator is both quite common decks in pauper, while even then Dragon storm was hot it wasnt the best deck in Std Van - just the most played in PEs).
But about vanguard:
First a small disagrement. You CAN make new discoveries with the few vanguards left. In the last PE I (and a person I suspect copied my deck) - as the only onces - ran Arcanis Elves (Heritage druid + 2 x nettle sentinal = draw your deck and get infinite mana - remember Ranger of Eos (double tutor for combo). I won the event and he finished 3rd-4th...
Futheremore top 8 (the numbers after the vanguard is the place they finnished) contained:
Reaper king 5-8 - this was the most played deck I think
Ashling the pilgrim 5-8 - Glad I did only meet that deck once and not in t8
Goblin warchief 2 - this and Ashling was a suprise to me and I were well prepared.
Stonehewer Giant 3-4 - Salvage Titan was quite nice :)
I do not know the 2 last.
Futheremore there were a serra angle on 9th.
So I wouldnt say that you couldnt discover new tricks with the few in std vanguards.
BUT I would agree that the all-vanguards version were alot better in that regard. First of all there were more non-agro decks, which to me makes a format look more healthy.
Therefore I would join you in your proposal for the any vanguard version. It felt a bit like a cope out when they said they dropped it because it was to hard to balance. First of all many vanguards AUTOMATICALY makes the format more balanced because you can build something out of the ordinary from alot of the good vanguards. Naturally not counting the keyword specifick like Kresh. Second of all wouldnt std be easier to balance (this is a bad example because std is very important for wizard) if you just allowed preconstructed decks?
EDIT: On annother note: in a way what I consider the most interresting thing about Std Van is that it is FASTER then ext, which seems to suprise ppl.
I agree with your comments about vanguard. I played it a good bit on V2 and it could be kind of a crazy format sometimes but I really enjoyed it. After the switch to V3 I never got back into it and one of the main reasons I haven't built any decks for it is because of the weird avatar legality rule. I always liked being able to see new cards and think how awesome they would be for my favorite avatar but now I don't really even know what avatars are legal. Good article and I look forward to articles about formats that are off the beaten path.
This has bothered me since the beginning of the QP's. HOW does one get SO many points in one season? Im not saying they are cheating, but how is it physically possible? They would have to be online playing darn near 24/7. I trust you Hammy, please inform this poor poor player.
It is interesting to see that one of the main reasons I returned to Magic is one of the main reasons why you're driving away from it (planeswalkers).
It is true that it is hard to deal with them. But it is ment to be like that. However by saying that you feel cheated when someone playing them against you, you clearly show a weakness in your deckbuilding to me. Because planeswalkers are there and everyone, including you, should adjust their decks accordingly. Just because you ignore them and your opponent doesn't and just because you're unprepared for them, doesn't mean that you are cheated but mean that you're simply ignoring them.
You can kill them with direct damage. If you don't have direct damage in your deck, then you can kill them with your creatures. If you don't have both because you play say, some kind of a creatureless mono blue control deck, you can still bounce the planeswalker back and counter it when the opponent casts it again.
So EVERY deck out there can deal with them. EVERY one of them. If yours can't, than you have a weakness in your deckbuilding and you have to work on it. Red has direct damage, white has O-Ring, blue has bounce, black too has direct damage (Corrupt) and green has tons of creatures. And you feel cheated when one gets played against you?
You can still advertise your game as "NO PLANESWALKERS" if you don't want to see them.
LE
First of all, thanks for this in depth comment. Hopefully this reply fleshes out some of my ideas and card choices.
I agree, my results are skewed to the Queues. I have no relevant data from participating in PE's or in the PDC events. However, I have played well over 200 matches in the 2 man Queues. When I am running my list, my constructed rating will bounce between 1750 and 1800.
I ran 1 copy of Disciple of the Vault for a long while, as it was nice to know there was one in the deck that I could dig for if needed. I found that Disciple was best against control decks (naturally), but was often just a way to finish an opponent quickly. With careful play, the most important aspect of the deck was to successfully cast Rush of Knowledge for 6 or 7 cards. This was what I found to be the most critical element for winning a game. Inevitability swings your way when you do this, and Disciple of the Vault doesn't contribute to casting Rush of Knowledge in any way in this deck.
Storm Combo: Should have definitely covered this, as it is an important matchup. Not much you can do pre board, but hold back a Shaman in case they go Goblins, and dig for a Sunbeam Spellbomb to try and get out of Grapeshot range. It gets better for you after boarding, as you can bring in some good disruption. Board in all your pyroblasts and hydroblasts. Target the blue card drawing spells and the red mana producers. Keep Krark Clan Shaman in the deck in case they go with producing goblins. Board out 2 Quicksilver Behemoth, 1 Bonesplitter, 1 Leonin Squire, 1 Rush of Knowledge, 1 Aether Spellbomb. Board in the 6 blasts.
As for combatting hate, I would choose not to run this deck if the field was fully prepared for it. If someone wants to beat Affinity, they can beat Affinity. Having said that though, I'd take my list over the standard list. When trying to fight through hate, the most important thing is to be able to maintain your mana base. This list allows you to run 6 lands that do not die to artifact destruction (outside of Dust to Dust, which is a death sentence for Affinity). With Squire and Trinket Mage, you can get lands back from your graveyard or dig them out of your deck.
Being limited to 15 Sideboard cards, I wanted main deck answers to pesky decks. Having Trinket Mage, with recursion possible with the Squires, allows a pseudo silver bullet strategy, allowing me to dedicate more sideboard slots to what I think are the most troublesome matchups. Echoing Truth does not recur with the Squire, and you cannot dig for it with Trinket Mage. Plus, it does not contribute to your Affinity count.
Matt
Not to steal thunder but I went the other way today. I played Necro for one last harrah. The reason I did was because I really wanted to try out an idea I had and this would be the last chance.
NEC-GRO
3 Ponder
3 Tendrils of Agony
4 Force of Will
1 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Necropotence
3 Cabal Ritual
4 Daze
4 Underground Sea
1 Breeding Pool
3 Brainstorm
1 Swamp
4 Demonic Consultation
2 Dark Ritual
4 Soul Spike
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Polluted Delta
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
Sideboard
4 Quirion Dryad
4 Gush
4 Lorescale Coatl
3 Smother
The sideboard is whats important here. The idea is you side into a gro deck with Tendrils back up to make things weird for the opponent. Sideboarding is +all 15 for -4 Necro -4 Spike -3 C. Ritual -2 D. Ritual -1 Consultation -1 Tendrils.
Rd1 Kaxon Necro
I win the die roll and despite resolving turn 1 Necro with Daze back up a long game goes to the clan mate.
Game 2 starts off a bit slow and I remember putting up a brave fight but succumbing anyway.
Rd2 Phantastic WB agro disruption
Game 1 I race a Savannah Lion with my combo.
Game 2 I make the full sb switch and run into 0 hate. He does get a Worship down though and a Tombstalker later locks the game away.
Game 3 is all about Necro and being awsome at math. I resolve a turn one Necro and draw up 17 cards. No Spikes but i do have a lethal double Tendrils through 2x Consultations. I end the game with 1 card in my deck after making a risky play for tutoring up a 2 of card in my 30ish deck.
Rd3 Romain 75 No show
Rd4 Kerric Vial Fish
Game 1 sees him slow me down with Wastelands and beat in with man lands but I am eventually able to pulll out my combo.
Game 2 I do the full switch and in his endstep kill my self with a Consultation gone wrong leaving me with 17 cards and no win cons when going for a turn 2 Dryad.
Game 3 I start on Duress for FoW I believe and he gets a turn 1 or 2 needle. Luckily for me im a sac and he is mana flooded so I play lands on 2 and 3 and then on turn 4 I use up my 8 card hand to Tendrils for +7 and then +8 killing him in one turn.
Rd5 WizardnotoftheCoast Necro (9th place)
Game 1 I win the die roll and we play some great great magic. Vicky is a superb player and this was hands down my most favorite match ever with this deck. We attrition each other out but in the end I stuck Necro first so I had more amunition with mini Tendrils and Spikes.
Game 2 She mulls to 5 and I think I have it. I go for Duress and hit necro I believe. She top decks a Compost and plays it out. Even though I get Necro going I give her way to many cards and I lose to a Spike with a lethal Tendrils storm on the stack.
Game 3 she mulls to 4 and I am able to just go about taking large chunks out of her with a pair of mini Tendrils before Necroing up my Spikes.
Top 8 Eggraid Merfolks.
Game 1 goes south and merfolk do its thing to me.
Game 2 full sb and Im pretty sure my 5/5 Dryad and 6/6 Coatl were nowhere near his radar when he sided.
Game 3 Is once again decided by lots of growing and Smothering and Gushing with a touch of agony.
Top 4 stabel Merfolk
He wins a tough game 1 but I was kind of expecting it.
Game 2 is the full switch and even though I have surprise on my side he just had to many answers and was able to counter a Coatl that was key to me turning it around again.
I had fun with Necro one last time and im glad that the sb was actually relavant in doubling my prize by winning the top 8,.... but thank goodness the 2 new restricted cards are gonskys.
Using the queues to justify your results is a poor strategy for determining a deck's strength in Pauper. The queues do not present anything similar to a PE metagame, as you are just running into random decks with 0-0 records; it is the same as playing round one of a major event over and over and over- you just never know what you are going to get. The queues are not totally without value, especially if your goal is to just win queues. However, when preparing for a PE, you would do much better to have a group of people to test against who would be running the decks you expect to see in a PE. There is also the dirty little secret that a lot of the queue players are, well, bad- I have managed to win totally unwinnable matchups (RW aggro with no Obsidian Acolyte vs MBC) in the queues thanks to people just picking up a pile of sixty and running it at you. Know who you're testing against if you want to use queues as proper testing grounds.
Perfect example: Burn. This deck was just over 2% of the recent PE (2 people out of 92 competitors), yet you list it as a key matchup. If these results were from PE 1, I'd agree with you tagging that deck as one to beat, but Burn has been a fringe player since March.
You also completely ignore Storm combo, which is a consistent threat to any Pauper tournament. How do you go about this matchup, as your entire game seems to be based around winning with Rush of Knowledge, unlike other Affinity which has the DotV back up plan (being able to go Oops, I win, on turn 3 is pretty key against a deck like Storm).
How do you plan on combating the hate that is sure to come with the deck recently winning the PE? While you are set up to fight in the mirror (resolving Rush first, for example, with Lens [which doesn't matter, since other Affinity runs Lotus Petal and Drum, enabling at earliest a turn three Rush]), you do not really have a way to fight hate. Now I understand that this was written before the most recent PE, but still, many of the choices seem knee jerk and not carefully thought out. Cards like Echoing Truth slide into Affinity very well and can blow out Aura aggro. I would have liked to have seen a more in depth discussion about they you went with these cards and why you eschewed DotV, since you are running the Sac Outlets anyone.
-Alex
Congrats on the T8. I meant to include the link to those decks, but it somehow got left out. Arcanis was an avatar I always wanted to play with, but Nekrataal and Reaper King were just too strong.
I totally agree, though, that more avatars inherently means more balance. Just like more cards in extended prevents certain strategies from getting out of hand.
I understand what you and the next poster are getting at, that maybe patience will help, but when I include Mortifies and Naturalize in my deck to deal with non-creature permanents, and my opponent plays a planeswalker, I still feel cheated.
My article archive begs to differ.
Typo in my last comment. Should be "taking the time to write it" not "taking the time to read it"
One of my favorites is when someone kills my Tidehollow Sculler in response to it's come into play trigger. Instant 2 for 1.
Please write!
That chart is the total QPs this year, so 207 would be over *two* months (eight weeks, actually).
Also, I have it on good authority that WotC is checking the activity on all the accounts that are near the top of the standings and there is nothing suspicious going on, they are just that successful.
All the choices in this deck were carefully worked on and tested in the Queues. I'm not going to claim this is the best version of Affinity but it does have a plan for every matchup. I ran with the average Affinity build for quite a while, but I don't like a deck that has no answers to a G/W creature with a Shield of the Oversoul/Armadillo Cloak on it. As a general philosophy, I always like to have outs.
I'm not sure you could say that Springleaf Drum is better than Prismatic Lens; they are different in how they play. I tried out the Drum, but am much happier with the Lens, as it is more resilient in the face of Gorilla Shaman. The Shaman will take out a Drum for 3 mana, while you need 5 mana to blow up a Lens.
As for the timing of this article, I began writing it prior to the most recent PE, and submitted it the following week; I thought people would enjoy a build that was different, with some more choices and a different strategy in how it plays. Thanks for reading.
Planeswalkers are tough because there is no removal made for them. There has been many cards made to destroy each other type of permanant except planeswalker. Making the mythic rarity (and then putting pw mythic) just made it so the people who spend more $ are the people who have the pw.
I thought this was just a brilliant idea and loved seeing what was going on throughout the tourny. I hope i can make into the next one.
Planeswalker are fine in all formats, its a new card type so it will take wizards time to have the ways that deal with them catch up. There is a common answer for them though. Oblivion ring was reprinted in alara specifically for Planeswalkers. Yeah they are a little hard to deal with. Just like anything that has black in its casting cost and a high toughness.
I've never been disappointed to have Disciple of the Vault. He makes blocking bad for your opponent, and at the very least diverts a removal spell from one of your more imposing creatures. As for a sac outlet, you have the perfectly fine Krark-Clan Shaman.
Some of your choices seem odd. Prismatic lens over Springleaf drum? No lotus petal?
I'm always glad to read an article, and thanks for taking the time to read it, but I do have to agree with the other person in that we just had an Affinity pauper article (and I happen to like his list better, though I've tried trinket mage before for effect)
I like fringe formats too (and - still - also vanguard most of all), mainly because if you are (or atleast think you are) a decent deck constructor (that meanes that you will proberly not make a protour winning decks the next couple month ;)) you can't really compete in std or ext, but the fringe formats allow you a chance to construct decks that might actually be quite close to the top
Since the "death" of vanguard, Ive played a litte of pauper (and alot EDH - even without events :/) to get that part covered but I prefer something there you must play a deck made for the format and which got tournements (Affinity and GW haterator is both quite common decks in pauper, while even then Dragon storm was hot it wasnt the best deck in Std Van - just the most played in PEs).
But about vanguard:
First a small disagrement. You CAN make new discoveries with the few vanguards left. In the last PE I (and a person I suspect copied my deck) - as the only onces - ran Arcanis Elves (Heritage druid + 2 x nettle sentinal = draw your deck and get infinite mana - remember Ranger of Eos (double tutor for combo). I won the event and he finished 3rd-4th...
Futheremore top 8 (the numbers after the vanguard is the place they finnished) contained:
Reaper king 5-8 - this was the most played deck I think
Ashling the pilgrim 5-8 - Glad I did only meet that deck once and not in t8
Goblin warchief 2 - this and Ashling was a suprise to me and I were well prepared.
Stonehewer Giant 3-4 - Salvage Titan was quite nice :)
I do not know the 2 last.
Futheremore there were a serra angle on 9th.
So I wouldnt say that you couldnt discover new tricks with the few in std vanguards.
BUT I would agree that the all-vanguards version were alot better in that regard. First of all there were more non-agro decks, which to me makes a format look more healthy.
Therefore I would join you in your proposal for the any vanguard version. It felt a bit like a cope out when they said they dropped it because it was to hard to balance. First of all many vanguards AUTOMATICALY makes the format more balanced because you can build something out of the ordinary from alot of the good vanguards. Naturally not counting the keyword specifick like Kresh. Second of all wouldnt std be easier to balance (this is a bad example because std is very important for wizard) if you just allowed preconstructed decks?
EDIT: On annother note: in a way what I consider the most interresting thing about Std Van is that it is FASTER then ext, which seems to suprise ppl.
You rock. Great article.
SpikeboyM doesn't top8 pauper and tarmotog doesn't in 100cs. I guess you are their equivalent in std van.
Someone already wrote this article on affinity in pauper already on this site. Something new please.
Who was top 8 ?
I agree with your comments about vanguard. I played it a good bit on V2 and it could be kind of a crazy format sometimes but I really enjoyed it. After the switch to V3 I never got back into it and one of the main reasons I haven't built any decks for it is because of the weird avatar legality rule. I always liked being able to see new cards and think how awesome they would be for my favorite avatar but now I don't really even know what avatars are legal. Good article and I look forward to articles about formats that are off the beaten path.
Yep.. 4x it's "real power" so 8.. lol
Just to point out that berserk on a doublestriker will still only double the damage;
e.g. twinclaws normally swing for 4, with berserk they swing for 8.
Swap it for a might or giant growth and you have a pretty awesome attack.
This has bothered me since the beginning of the QP's. HOW does one get SO many points in one season? Im not saying they are cheating, but how is it physically possible? They would have to be online playing darn near 24/7. I trust you Hammy, please inform this poor poor player.