I think its funny how your round one opponent played Shivan Hellkite, Sengir Vampire, AND wins with Overrun. Did he take out the Red or something?
I have a hard time playing the little to no removal and few tricks deck you ended up with. I'd think that black (Assasinate, Essence Drain, and Gravedigger) or red (Anaba Bodyguard x2, Arcane Teachings, Shock, and Guerilla Tactics-mabye) is an auto-include. You get swayed to playing White for the Serra and other flyers, which seems ok but not great, but then you play a third color (Blue) which doesnt fix the problems of the deck. AKA, no removal or tricks.
The Serra is good but not a big enough bomb to make up for no removal.
I played Eggs as well during the season, just dropped it because of the hate already given to elves and such. About the hypercascade link it was my pleasure since it provided a way to talk about a now heavily played deck without making the article too extense.
man what a much more enjoyable read. Good job. You were able to keep that fresh humor and make the article longer and more enjoyable to read through it throuness. keep em coming t rexy.
Great Broad article, it is easy to find the metagame I am looking for, which at the moment happens to be block. Have fun in Honolulu. Thanks for the Hypercascade shoutout.
I think you mean to classify Naya Cloak as aggro-combo intead of control-combo, right?
In your GW list I´d play Safehold Elite before Benevolent Bodyguard, at least in the maindeck. Not only elite has also built-on defenses but also it´s easier to cast than your other multicolor 2-drops.
Also haven't seen a single Bituminous yet, either via opening or the pass.
Probably just me too, but my luck with mythics has been horrible - opening 30-40 packs now via draft & winnings and just a single copy of the 3BG graveyard dude (name eludes me at the moment). I've been passed a Thrax as well.
I wish they'd leave the 3x formats up indefinitely, I really enjoy them. I wish I'd had more time in CONx3 - still missing lots of cards in there.
I like the egg decklist, its awesome, thats why i've top 8'd with it 3 times...odd enough wotc has only posted one top 8. This deck is so versitle....not much hate really kills it.
Well being paid is always a nice bonus but its not clearly the motivation for writing. I'm involved in a number of non-renumerated Magic projects, but still PureMTGo is a growing force in the Community and they reward accordantly their writers.
another article, you've been pouring them out, guess you need money for MODO testing, lol,
Liked it a lot, but i think I miss your draft reviews, lately you've been focusing on deck reviews, albeit good and insightful, personally, i'd like to see a little more variety
Blue is kind of useless if you dont have nothing to draw into. You can looter all you want but if don't have nothing to draw whats the point?Rbr may be a good combination give the cards you have but I dont see blue as a main color.
Well the Archdruids would be a variation into a diferent build not really concentrated on the combo part but more of a casual "steal your lands" vibe. But test it and tell us how it went!
I checked quickly, but UGb looks quite obvious to me.
Green gives you good creatures and mana fixing (you can easily maindeck dryad and probably even shaman if needed).
Blue gives you sift and counsel which are great, some (but not enough) fliers, and some other good spells, as well as 2 looters, which are really good in that format, help you to easier run your splash and get your bombs.
and assasinate, essence drain, gravedigger should make a decent splash
I just built that elves! deck for standard but i substituted gilt-leaf arch druid for regal force since i only had 1 regal force but 3 arch-druids -- but i think i like the archdruid better -- its really not hard to get 7 druids out! I borrowed a page from the extended version (which I also have built) and put in mirror entity to make the druid a tiny bit easier to activate, as well as one predator dragon. Then I added fire-lit thickets and ancient ziggurats to help cast the nongreen cards (would add wooded bastions, but don't have any).
I also substituted forests instead of all the rest of that painland stuff because its cheaper and anathemancer gets played.
Anyway its a really fun deck and surprisingly good -- managed to activate the arch-druid vs Sanity Grinding which seems like it would be impossible but it happened -- and I beat him in game 1 too.
Great Article.
I agree with Tarmotog, but I actually think a case could be made about splashing red instead of blue.
Shock and 2x Guerrilla Tactics seem like good enough over card advantage, since that when I see the deck, when I cast a card drawing spell I'm only looking for platinum.I also think that probably Arcane Teachings would have made the cut.Still good luck for the remaining seasons
The path u took is correct.
Basically, u played
#1 ur bomb => serra angel
#2 evasion
#3 mana fixing into blue
#4 card draw (sift n soratami which are both really very strong in Xed cos cards are vanilla anyway.. u need to grind down cards at a 1 for 1 basis most of the time.)
However, u did not manage to maximize ur deck with the cards you had.
You need to take out scion, pinching beetle, heart of light, suntail hawk as a start because playing subpar cards in 3c does not help you at all.
-scion is just plain small and lets you lose more to simple removals.. it's a win more card.
-pinching beetle is bad in ur deck cos it doesn't let you attack favorably not block favorable most of the time
-heart of light stops ur own plan.. the dehydration sitting in ur sb can easily replace this
-1 mana 1/1 flying is too small to matter
Since you have fliers and good attackers, you want cards that can gum the board. As such even the lumengrid 1/3 is much better in your deck than the above mentioned few, depending on how afraid you think you are of 2/2s.
A card you missed was merfolk looter which can be very valuable in the format where you change excess lands into proper spells or get you out of mana problems too.
You could possibly add aven fisher into the deck too.
Finally u would naturally up the number of islands by probably 1 since u have mana fixers.
One thing to note is that you can actually board out blue and play black/red very easily depending on what you see in game 1 because getting into a color that can attack the opponent's playstyle can be quite strong.
For example, if your opponent is playing smaller cards, you can go into red for ur arcane teachings/shock/tactics
if you opponent is slappin ur with 3/3s, black can be a good way to go.
Still, I would play blue first, at least, because it would let you maximize the strength of your main deck, until you figure out that you can use something else to strengthen your attack angle.
Your plan of "going faster" is not a very good plan because you don't have enough supporting cards for you to go aggro like a couple of giant growth effects so if your opponent drops a 3/3 vs ur 2/2, u'll be stopped in ur tracks without much effort.
comments on the linked cards, however. for example, you listed seismic 3 times. all of them link to the 10E version. the meddling mage price you state is the one from invasion block, but it's linked to the ARB version.
Much easier to wrap our brains around with your new Sealed formatting.
Yes, Heart of light is bad. Sylvan scrying I would only consider if I was playing 3 or more colors or if I had a good man-land (red, green or blue).
I like your cards, but the good ones are all spread out among all the colors. I like to play 2 colors if at all possible in Xth. Your deepest colors are green (nice critters, no bombs), blue (card draw, looters, but no bombs) and black (solid beaters, a bit of removal, no bombs). Red has nice removal but otherwise lacks - it could be splashed. White has Serra but not enough else. Big Plats is your bomb.
I would have gone G/B. With the baloth and big plats, I'd go 18 land (both terremorphics and the quicksand in. 2 drops - Rushwood dryad (yes, play her main) 3 drops - rootwalla, civic wayfinder, scion of the wild, viridian shaman (yes, main), 2 looming shade, phyrexian rager 4 drops - giant spider, stalking tiger, 2 highway robber, gravedigger, bog wraith 5+ drops - seedborn muse, enormous baloth, platinum angel Spells - aggresive urge, assasinate, essence drain.
Yeah, that's only 20. Now I'm looking to shore up the curve - and canopy spider moves in as a 2 drop and leonin scimitar as a 1 drop. The hate weaver would be fine or the bats.
While I would never side out green (fixing) , I could see moving whole cloth into 3 color playing the best of the red removal (teachings, tactics, and shock) and dropping color intensive black cards.
But I would feel fortunate to top 8 with this deck.
B/G splashing red removal. Civic + 2 Expanses is all the mana fixing you needed. Black and green had great, efficient creatures and 7F 7S 2TE 1M for land, running 17 creatures + Shock/2GT/Aggressive Urge/Drain/Leonin (or 16 and adding the dubious Assassinate) might have been money. (Back of napkin math is about 56% chance you get one of Civic/TE/M in your opening hand.) Good article.
Well, I stand by my statement, "Never use a slot on a card that only mills unless you intend to win by milling." If you draft 3+ Mind Funerals and that is your plan for winning, OK, but I still don't fear it with a good Jund or Naya deck. You are probably going to have to cast three Mind Funerals to win, and if you have spent six mana in the first six turns of an RRR draft on spells that don't affect the board, you are going to lose against any fast deck.
If it were me, I think I would have gone with red. Hard not to include Shock, Guerilla Tactics and Lightning Elemental.
Thanks for writing such a detailed report. I appreciate your honesty about the mistakes you might have made. Best of luck to you on getting the rest of those QPs! Can't wait for the next Bandwagon article...
Oops, thought that said the Anaba pinger guy. Not the first striker. My bad.
Just curious as to the result of the draft at the end of the article?
I think its funny how your round one opponent played Shivan Hellkite, Sengir Vampire, AND wins with Overrun. Did he take out the Red or something?
I have a hard time playing the little to no removal and few tricks deck you ended up with. I'd think that black (Assasinate, Essence Drain, and Gravedigger) or red (Anaba Bodyguard x2, Arcane Teachings, Shock, and Guerilla Tactics-mabye) is an auto-include. You get swayed to playing White for the Serra and other flyers, which seems ok but not great, but then you play a third color (Blue) which doesnt fix the problems of the deck. AKA, no removal or tricks.
The Serra is good but not a big enough bomb to make up for no removal.
-M
I played Eggs as well during the season, just dropped it because of the hate already given to elves and such. About the hypercascade link it was my pleasure since it provided a way to talk about a now heavily played deck without making the article too extense.
man what a much more enjoyable read. Good job. You were able to keep that fresh humor and make the article longer and more enjoyable to read through it throuness. keep em coming t rexy.
Great Broad article, it is easy to find the metagame I am looking for, which at the moment happens to be block. Have fun in Honolulu. Thanks for the Hypercascade shoutout.
I think you mean to classify Naya Cloak as aggro-combo intead of control-combo, right?
In your GW list I´d play Safehold Elite before Benevolent Bodyguard, at least in the maindeck. Not only elite has also built-on defenses but also it´s easier to cast than your other multicolor 2-drops.
Nice article!
Also haven't seen a single Bituminous yet, either via opening or the pass.
Probably just me too, but my luck with mythics has been horrible - opening 30-40 packs now via draft & winnings and just a single copy of the 3BG graveyard dude (name eludes me at the moment). I've been passed a Thrax as well.
I wish they'd leave the 3x formats up indefinitely, I really enjoy them. I wish I'd had more time in CONx3 - still missing lots of cards in there.
I like the egg decklist, its awesome, thats why i've top 8'd with it 3 times...odd enough wotc has only posted one top 8. This deck is so versitle....not much hate really kills it.
Great article, as most articles i've seen from you.
I really apreciate your T2 and Block annalysis, they are both quite usefull.
Gz.
Well being paid is always a nice bonus but its not clearly the motivation for writing. I'm involved in a number of non-renumerated Magic projects, but still PureMTGo is a growing force in the Community and they reward accordantly their writers.
The ledgewalker is a girl, isn't she?
Have you played around with steel of the godhead as pants? Unblockable lifelink looks like fun. Mayhaps a U/W control deck.
another article, you've been pouring them out, guess you need money for MODO testing, lol,
Liked it a lot, but i think I miss your draft reviews, lately you've been focusing on deck reviews, albeit good and insightful, personally, i'd like to see a little more variety
again, 5* article
Blue is kind of useless if you dont have nothing to draw into. You can looter all you want but if don't have nothing to draw whats the point?Rbr may be a good combination give the cards you have but I dont see blue as a main color.
Well the Archdruids would be a variation into a diferent build not really concentrated on the combo part but more of a casual "steal your lands" vibe. But test it and tell us how it went!
I checked quickly, but UGb looks quite obvious to me.
Green gives you good creatures and mana fixing (you can easily maindeck dryad and probably even shaman if needed).
Blue gives you sift and counsel which are great, some (but not enough) fliers, and some other good spells, as well as 2 looters, which are really good in that format, help you to easier run your splash and get your bombs.
and assasinate, essence drain, gravedigger should make a decent splash
I just built that elves! deck for standard but i substituted gilt-leaf arch druid for regal force since i only had 1 regal force but 3 arch-druids -- but i think i like the archdruid better -- its really not hard to get 7 druids out! I borrowed a page from the extended version (which I also have built) and put in mirror entity to make the druid a tiny bit easier to activate, as well as one predator dragon. Then I added fire-lit thickets and ancient ziggurats to help cast the nongreen cards (would add wooded bastions, but don't have any).
I also substituted forests instead of all the rest of that painland stuff because its cheaper and anathemancer gets played.
Anyway its a really fun deck and surprisingly good -- managed to activate the arch-druid vs Sanity Grinding which seems like it would be impossible but it happened -- and I beat him in game 1 too.
Great Article.
I agree with Tarmotog, but I actually think a case could be made about splashing red instead of blue.
Shock and 2x Guerrilla Tactics seem like good enough over card advantage, since that when I see the deck, when I cast a card drawing spell I'm only looking for platinum.I also think that probably Arcane Teachings would have made the cut.Still good luck for the remaining seasons
The path u took is correct.
Basically, u played
#1 ur bomb => serra angel
#2 evasion
#3 mana fixing into blue
#4 card draw (sift n soratami which are both really very strong in Xed cos cards are vanilla anyway.. u need to grind down cards at a 1 for 1 basis most of the time.)
However, u did not manage to maximize ur deck with the cards you had.
You need to take out scion, pinching beetle, heart of light, suntail hawk as a start because playing subpar cards in 3c does not help you at all.
-scion is just plain small and lets you lose more to simple removals.. it's a win more card.
-pinching beetle is bad in ur deck cos it doesn't let you attack favorably not block favorable most of the time
-heart of light stops ur own plan.. the dehydration sitting in ur sb can easily replace this
-1 mana 1/1 flying is too small to matter
Since you have fliers and good attackers, you want cards that can gum the board. As such even the lumengrid 1/3 is much better in your deck than the above mentioned few, depending on how afraid you think you are of 2/2s.
A card you missed was merfolk looter which can be very valuable in the format where you change excess lands into proper spells or get you out of mana problems too.
You could possibly add aven fisher into the deck too.
Finally u would naturally up the number of islands by probably 1 since u have mana fixers.
One thing to note is that you can actually board out blue and play black/red very easily depending on what you see in game 1 because getting into a color that can attack the opponent's playstyle can be quite strong.
For example, if your opponent is playing smaller cards, you can go into red for ur arcane teachings/shock/tactics
if you opponent is slappin ur with 3/3s, black can be a good way to go.
Still, I would play blue first, at least, because it would let you maximize the strength of your main deck, until you figure out that you can use something else to strengthen your attack angle.
Your plan of "going faster" is not a very good plan because you don't have enough supporting cards for you to go aggro like a couple of giant growth effects so if your opponent drops a 3/3 vs ur 2/2, u'll be stopped in ur tracks without much effort.
Good luck =)
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1192419
nice article, as usual.
comments on the linked cards, however. for example, you listed seismic 3 times. all of them link to the 10E version. the meddling mage price you state is the one from invasion block, but it's linked to the ARB version.
Much easier to wrap our brains around with your new Sealed formatting.
Yes, Heart of light is bad. Sylvan scrying I would only consider if I was playing 3 or more colors or if I had a good man-land (red, green or blue).
I like your cards, but the good ones are all spread out among all the colors. I like to play 2 colors if at all possible in Xth. Your deepest colors are green (nice critters, no bombs), blue (card draw, looters, but no bombs) and black (solid beaters, a bit of removal, no bombs). Red has nice removal but otherwise lacks - it could be splashed. White has Serra but not enough else. Big Plats is your bomb.
I would have gone G/B. With the baloth and big plats, I'd go 18 land (both terremorphics and the quicksand in. 2 drops - Rushwood dryad (yes, play her main) 3 drops - rootwalla, civic wayfinder, scion of the wild, viridian shaman (yes, main), 2 looming shade, phyrexian rager 4 drops - giant spider, stalking tiger, 2 highway robber, gravedigger, bog wraith 5+ drops - seedborn muse, enormous baloth, platinum angel Spells - aggresive urge, assasinate, essence drain.
Yeah, that's only 20. Now I'm looking to shore up the curve - and canopy spider moves in as a 2 drop and leonin scimitar as a 1 drop. The hate weaver would be fine or the bats.
While I would never side out green (fixing) , I could see moving whole cloth into 3 color playing the best of the red removal (teachings, tactics, and shock) and dropping color intensive black cards.
But I would feel fortunate to top 8 with this deck.
B/G splashing red removal. Civic + 2 Expanses is all the mana fixing you needed. Black and green had great, efficient creatures and 7F 7S 2TE 1M for land, running 17 creatures + Shock/2GT/Aggressive Urge/Drain/Leonin (or 16 and adding the dubious Assassinate) might have been money. (Back of napkin math is about 56% chance you get one of Civic/TE/M in your opening hand.) Good article.
Well, I stand by my statement, "Never use a slot on a card that only mills unless you intend to win by milling." If you draft 3+ Mind Funerals and that is your plan for winning, OK, but I still don't fear it with a good Jund or Naya deck. You are probably going to have to cast three Mind Funerals to win, and if you have spent six mana in the first six turns of an RRR draft on spells that don't affect the board, you are going to lose against any fast deck.
If it were me, I think I would have gone with red. Hard not to include Shock, Guerilla Tactics and Lightning Elemental.
Thanks for writing such a detailed report. I appreciate your honesty about the mistakes you might have made. Best of luck to you on getting the rest of those QPs! Can't wait for the next Bandwagon article...