For my fellow rules nerds, the term for the PW's dying has been termed the Planeswalker Uniqueness Rule (aka 420.5q) and it has the same effect as the Legend Rule (which is 420.5e). :)
If two or more permanents with the same name have the supertype legendary, all are put into their owners' graveyards. This is called the "legend rule." If only one of those permanents is legendary, this rule doesn't apply.
You'd think that, but in practice it didn't work out; it became too easy to be stuck without enough islands for jokulmorder to do something after he came online. This is precisely the reason why I agree with whiffy on more detailed match descriptions.
Remember, jokulmorder needs an island to untap every turn, and you have to actually play the island, so that's the reason for those 2 additional islands. (Also, there just isn't that much that needs a forest here.)
I dont really think that Endemic Plague should continue to be on the banned list for Classic Tribal. I've looked at the other cards and I think they should remain. I did think twice about Tsabo's Decree it is very powerful but at a high mana cost. In the end I think it should stay banned due to Dark Ritual making it possible to cast this a lot earlier in game and destroying the other players hand.
I cant think of any other cards that should be banned (not looked at Alara yet) as classic is such a huge format there are answers to most cards. Its a case of having the right card at the right time, which makes creatures with comes into play abilities very useful.
I was the Myr player above and the worst card I've faced in the last few weeks for me is Austere Command, talk about devastating when your playing artifact lands and creatures.
I believe that is totally legal in Magic Online play as neither Wizards of the Coast or Adepts for that matter can be certain if someone else is on the account. For example Player of the Year race has shown that realistically speaking it isn't the same person on at any given point and there isn't much they can do to stop this. The benefit of getting outside advice isn't to dramatic and anyone is able to do it.
Thanks
Keep on commenting and don't forget to comment on your liking of articles etc? What do viewers wanna see?
"This time I am going to show you a draft that earned me another point, and a draft that turned out to be a wreck, and could have been better if I did not let bad habits get in the way. While it may not serve anyone well, I think that showing drafts that go wrong can be a very good learning expirence for both myself and you the reader."
Actually, speaking as a bad drafter who loves trying anyway, I'd be thrilled to see more examples of "drafts that go bad"
While the drafts that go perfect and win the queue are certainly informative, I think a lot could be learned from those drafts that just don't go as expected. Especially when you get things like a color suddenly drying up or just those times when you end up with a mediocre deck.
Now, obviously the first response is "if you end up with a bad deck, then you didn't draft correctly". Well, duh! But how NOT to draft can help just as much (if not more) than hey I first picked 2 bombs, got passed solid cards then entire time, and never had a mana or color screw while playing...guess what I won!
As I said, I'm a poor drafter, but I love it anyway. I can't even count how many times I've either drafted what I know is a pile or at least a sub-standard deck...but just can't figure out where things went wrong. Or even worse, I draft what I consider to be a pretty good deck and just get blown out of the water by someone who (if I didn't know better), I'd swear was somehow able to stack his deck and have exactly what he needed every time he needed it.
Heck, last draft, the guy hit me with 5 removal spells in a row! How the heck did he even manage to draft 5 solid removal spells, much less actually have them all in hand at need! :(
So, yeah, I'd love to see more info on "bad drafts" put up here with comments and analysis.
As always great article Wiffy, I had thought the new rotation would have and adverse effect on the price of cards. Hopefully this new rotation will not last all that long and they will realize their mistake. Luckily the set they chose to do it with was stronghold, although it does cause some issues with tempest cards too I beleive. Meddling Mage being reprinted probally was very good for the community and hope they will take a look at other cards they may be good to reprint in future sets as well. Good luck on the Lunch Box and POY race.
As someone who used to play a lot of tribal but none in the past two years, I think I would want a sideboard (if it can now be programmed), have WoG/Damnation banned, weed out the dumb entries of the banned list, and probably up the percentage of tribal to 50% for the Classic version.
WotC had a nice format several years ago, but years of neglect on their part killed it.
I had 8 other cards from arb that i thought could be "ok" possibly . they were.
Lord of Extinction
Mage Slayer
Behomth Sledge
Spell Breaker Behomth
Urill, the Mist Stalker
Time Seive
Sen Triplets
Putrid leech
not sure why they werent in the finished article i may have accidently erased the table contating them and not noticed. anyways i thought that these cards while being weak for classic showed some potential.
as for gush atog, i cant speak for sick but intodays combo met game d. tutor is a touch to slow since it will take two turns to play anything but gush and its not an instant so you cant find an answer on your opponets turn. Disrupt and standstill fly in the face of what this deck is trying to do with disrupt costing mana for to small of an effect and standstill is way to defensive to fit in this arch type.
thx for the comments guys and speks i hope to see you in more classic pe's even if your playing a deck i hate lol.
I think you were right to go esper it was clearly open especially since you tabled a Sludge Strider in Conflux. You definitely made some questionable picks but I've found that sometimes Esper isn't what you need it to be in the third pack and you don't get any Mechanists, Strix, or Alchemists and you end up with an esper deck similar to what it was in SSS and you just can't do much. The picks that stand out for me are:
Pack 1 Pick 5
Metallurgeon over Esper Battlemage
I think the Battlemage is a much better choice for esper although Metallurgeon isn't a bad pick at all. Personally I like the Battlemage alot more.
Pack 3 Pick 3
Cormorants over Strix
I'm not exactly sure how much black you were playing but if you're playing black I think the Strix is the better pick the 4 point life swing is pretty important but again not a terrible pick I used to always go Cormorants over Strix.
Pack 3 Pick 4
Paragon over Visions/Outlander
This is where you really punted the pick. You weren't going to be able to use the Paragon's ability and 3 for a 2/2 firststrike isn't very impressive in this format. Visions would be perfect if you needed the fixing and Outlander is alot better than some people think. It stops Naya completely. I've lost games strictly because of my inability to get passed an outlander. This was really the only bad pick.
Pack 3 Pick 7
Esperzoa over Outlander/Darklit Gargoyle
At this point you had no good targets for the Esperzoa and unless you pick up a Kaliedostone you're not going to have any targets and even then it's too much of a tempo loss for your deck to return anything. There are decks where Esperzoa could be one of your best cards but you're deck didn't look like one of those decks. The Gargoyle is great if you need early aggression and works especially well with Master of Etherium letting you pump twice in a turn. Also the Outlander is even better since it turns on both Parasitic Strix and Sedraxis Alchemist if you have them in a deck.
Almost forgot about the Skill Borrower pick it just isn't very good there wasn't anything you'd probably end up playing in that pack but the Obelisk or Blister Beetle are much better since the Blister Beetle can be good against certain deck and the Obelisk could help you splash something in the second or third pack. Altogether though you're deck looked pretty decent I'm suprised you didn't do well.
I would have to agree with previous poster. You won but I couldn't have passed those jund battlemages. IMO the 2nd best mage behind naya. Unchecked it can win a game so maybe it is better than naya. I would take one in any deck that can activate the token generator.
i wasent overly critical of the deck itself. i understand its a cas/fun deck and even though im a spike at heart i also enjoy crazy timmy decks like eye of nowhere or day of the dragons + sway of the stars + mana elves. my beef was not with the deck or the content as i thought what content there was was actually well thought out and pleasing to my funny bone. my beef was that this article was pretty much just a deck list adn 2 paragraphs. there wasent enough content for me to get anything more then a very non committle "meh":. if there had been some more reasons for why he added cards and subtratced cards other then this deck need more lands i would have given it a much higer rating. ie throught out playtesting in incarnation 1 i noticed that i was always 1-2 mana shy of stablizing so here is why i want to cut x cards for y lands. also maybe a little bit of explantion as to how the deck typically plays or runs when not goldfishing would have been benificial. most people can get the idea that you play a huge dude and stop the trigger but how does the deck actually work when there is pressure ? thats y i gave it a low score. i to agree that dr. trex should continue doing articles but in the future should go in depth a little more, at least for my taste and im sure no body would hate it if there was more to read about decks like this.
Now probably this isn't a ALA block problem but many ALA block games come down to who gets the best start. I have found that many of the games that I have lost are probably because I didn't mulligan aggresively enough. Or didn't draw well enough.
Something to consider when playing ala block. Maybe this is an entire column itself.
Draft one seems to fall into the trap of the ends justifing the choices. Congrats on the win, but I feel that there were some mispicks in this draft as well
P1P4/5 after 2 Drumhunters in a row I would look to be more of a 5-Power archetype.
P1P7 Incurable Ogre is seriously underrated
Pack 2 had most of the questionable picks
P2P1 Savage is fine
P2P3 Very doubtful any good stuff wheels, but not much fault in taking the "I win"
P2P4 Rakeclaw over J. Battlemage over Fodder-there are just soooo many 2 drops in Green why take the worst of the three?
P2P5 Topan for sure
P2P7 Signal Blessing>Roar, not to mention the way late Warmonk, Squire, or even J. Battlemage
P3P3 Fall over Exp. Boarders all day long
For the second draft I agree you should have been more flexible
P1P3 I would have taken Blister Beetle, very good in Esper
P1P4 Look at all the late good G/W stuff
P1P5 I would take Battlemage as a threat over Sculptor
P1P9 There's that Blister Beetle again
At the end of pack one note how little good Esper cards you saw. No Strix, or Gargoyles, might want to look at your stack and be ready to audible another dirrection.
P2P7 Late Knight if you had reconsidered your options
P2P11 Panorama here for options
In all not the seat you needed to be in to run Esper
I agrre with that. PTE is great for mana fixing. In the same moment your oponent kill some of your creatures, you can take the oportunity for PTE your creature first an let him with a "spell wasted" taste in her mouth.
Creatures: 24
4 Grozoth
4 Leviathan
4 Inkwell Leviathan
4 Kederekt Leviathan (Thing from the Deep once online)
4 Simic Sky Swallower
4 Bringer of the Blue Dawn
The Rest: 16
4 Dichotomancy
4 Searing Wind (could change to Denying Win once online to focus more on Leviathan beats)
4 Intuition
4 Dream Halls
Very casual, as it folds to counterspells, but playing Grozoth turn 3 to fetch up to 19 other cards (23 once Thing from the Deep is online) is great fun. Also, this list is Tribal.
i was your opponent from rd 3, i definitely got super lucky that day and won some matches that i had no right winning. my 1st classic event ever and my 1st top 8 ever heh.
i remember in game 1, i was still looking thru your deck that u removed with consult and u were already done sideboarding.
nice tourney report!
If you add green mana search you shouldn't replace forests with islands but vice versa. Land change should have been -2 island (easier to find, thanks to green spells) and + 4 forest (you want to cast those green spells).
I find it interesting that Stephan Steiner, while avoiding the full-on Tiago, did admit to receiving outside assistance in the form of discussing plays with his girlfriend. I'm not sure if that's against MTGO's ToS and/or CoC, but it sure wouldn't fly in a DCI-sanctioned tournament.
In that it's crying out for stifle to enable turn 3 or 4 Eaters and turn 4 or 5 Sky Swallowers. You can also use spare trickbind or stifle effects as ersatz wild growths with the karoo triggers. Still, welcome aboard.
I like your focus about cascade. To me, this effect sounds good, but i am not convinced by he effect of the cards providing cascade. I am probably wrong, and i will test it as soon as i could. That being said, i really like he nexus which seems to be a much larger abusable card (with dream halls ? :P)
I will test the hypergenesis build : i like the concept, but i am feeling a big sensitivity to stifle. Maybe i am wrong, or maybe stifle & trickbind are not so much played in Ext (i didnt know this meta enough). Maybe this build could run 2-3 dramatic entrance or even maelstrom archangel ?
For my fellow rules nerds, the term for the PW's dying has been termed the Planeswalker Uniqueness Rule (aka 420.5q) and it has the same effect as the Legend Rule (which is 420.5e). :)
If two or more permanents with the same name have the supertype legendary, all are put into their owners' graveyards. This is called the "legend rule." If only one of those permanents is legendary, this rule doesn't apply.
What is the legend rule?
You'd think that, but in practice it didn't work out; it became too easy to be stuck without enough islands for jokulmorder to do something after he came online. This is precisely the reason why I agree with whiffy on more detailed match descriptions.
Remember, jokulmorder needs an island to untap every turn, and you have to actually play the island, so that's the reason for those 2 additional islands. (Also, there just isn't that much that needs a forest here.)
When you resort to name calling, you detract from your argumentation.
extinction will get the ax soon enough.
and damnation/wog kills all creatures - not just your opponents, that's why its banned you dumb dumb
I dont really think that Endemic Plague should continue to be on the banned list for Classic Tribal. I've looked at the other cards and I think they should remain. I did think twice about Tsabo's Decree it is very powerful but at a high mana cost. In the end I think it should stay banned due to Dark Ritual making it possible to cast this a lot earlier in game and destroying the other players hand.
I cant think of any other cards that should be banned (not looked at Alara yet) as classic is such a huge format there are answers to most cards. Its a case of having the right card at the right time, which makes creatures with comes into play abilities very useful.
I was the Myr player above and the worst card I've faced in the last few weeks for me is Austere Command, talk about devastating when your playing artifact lands and creatures.
I believe that is totally legal in Magic Online play as neither Wizards of the Coast or Adepts for that matter can be certain if someone else is on the account. For example Player of the Year race has shown that realistically speaking it isn't the same person on at any given point and there isn't much they can do to stop this. The benefit of getting outside advice isn't to dramatic and anyone is able to do it.
Thanks
Keep on commenting and don't forget to comment on your liking of articles etc? What do viewers wanna see?
(Currently 18 QP Points / 25 QP Points )
"This time I am going to show you a draft that earned me another point, and a draft that turned out to be a wreck, and could have been better if I did not let bad habits get in the way. While it may not serve anyone well, I think that showing drafts that go wrong can be a very good learning expirence for both myself and you the reader."
Actually, speaking as a bad drafter who loves trying anyway, I'd be thrilled to see more examples of "drafts that go bad"
While the drafts that go perfect and win the queue are certainly informative, I think a lot could be learned from those drafts that just don't go as expected. Especially when you get things like a color suddenly drying up or just those times when you end up with a mediocre deck.
Now, obviously the first response is "if you end up with a bad deck, then you didn't draft correctly". Well, duh! But how NOT to draft can help just as much (if not more) than hey I first picked 2 bombs, got passed solid cards then entire time, and never had a mana or color screw while playing...guess what I won!
As I said, I'm a poor drafter, but I love it anyway. I can't even count how many times I've either drafted what I know is a pile or at least a sub-standard deck...but just can't figure out where things went wrong. Or even worse, I draft what I consider to be a pretty good deck and just get blown out of the water by someone who (if I didn't know better), I'd swear was somehow able to stack his deck and have exactly what he needed every time he needed it.
Heck, last draft, the guy hit me with 5 removal spells in a row! How the heck did he even manage to draft 5 solid removal spells, much less actually have them all in hand at need! :(
So, yeah, I'd love to see more info on "bad drafts" put up here with comments and analysis.
As always great article Wiffy, I had thought the new rotation would have and adverse effect on the price of cards. Hopefully this new rotation will not last all that long and they will realize their mistake. Luckily the set they chose to do it with was stronghold, although it does cause some issues with tempest cards too I beleive. Meddling Mage being reprinted probally was very good for the community and hope they will take a look at other cards they may be good to reprint in future sets as well. Good luck on the Lunch Box and POY race.
As someone who used to play a lot of tribal but none in the past two years, I think I would want a sideboard (if it can now be programmed), have WoG/Damnation banned, weed out the dumb entries of the banned list, and probably up the percentage of tribal to 50% for the Classic version.
WotC had a nice format several years ago, but years of neglect on their part killed it.
I had 8 other cards from arb that i thought could be "ok" possibly . they were.
Lord of Extinction
Mage Slayer
Behomth Sledge
Spell Breaker Behomth
Urill, the Mist Stalker
Time Seive
Sen Triplets
Putrid leech
not sure why they werent in the finished article i may have accidently erased the table contating them and not noticed. anyways i thought that these cards while being weak for classic showed some potential.
as for gush atog, i cant speak for sick but intodays combo met game d. tutor is a touch to slow since it will take two turns to play anything but gush and its not an instant so you cant find an answer on your opponets turn. Disrupt and standstill fly in the face of what this deck is trying to do with disrupt costing mana for to small of an effect and standstill is way to defensive to fit in this arch type.
thx for the comments guys and speks i hope to see you in more classic pe's even if your playing a deck i hate lol.
I think you were right to go esper it was clearly open especially since you tabled a Sludge Strider in Conflux. You definitely made some questionable picks but I've found that sometimes Esper isn't what you need it to be in the third pack and you don't get any Mechanists, Strix, or Alchemists and you end up with an esper deck similar to what it was in SSS and you just can't do much. The picks that stand out for me are:
Pack 1 Pick 5
Metallurgeon over Esper Battlemage
I think the Battlemage is a much better choice for esper although Metallurgeon isn't a bad pick at all. Personally I like the Battlemage alot more.
Pack 3 Pick 3
Cormorants over Strix
I'm not exactly sure how much black you were playing but if you're playing black I think the Strix is the better pick the 4 point life swing is pretty important but again not a terrible pick I used to always go Cormorants over Strix.
Pack 3 Pick 4
Paragon over Visions/Outlander
This is where you really punted the pick. You weren't going to be able to use the Paragon's ability and 3 for a 2/2 firststrike isn't very impressive in this format. Visions would be perfect if you needed the fixing and Outlander is alot better than some people think. It stops Naya completely. I've lost games strictly because of my inability to get passed an outlander. This was really the only bad pick.
Pack 3 Pick 7
Esperzoa over Outlander/Darklit Gargoyle
At this point you had no good targets for the Esperzoa and unless you pick up a Kaliedostone you're not going to have any targets and even then it's too much of a tempo loss for your deck to return anything. There are decks where Esperzoa could be one of your best cards but you're deck didn't look like one of those decks. The Gargoyle is great if you need early aggression and works especially well with Master of Etherium letting you pump twice in a turn. Also the Outlander is even better since it turns on both Parasitic Strix and Sedraxis Alchemist if you have them in a deck.
Almost forgot about the Skill Borrower pick it just isn't very good there wasn't anything you'd probably end up playing in that pack but the Obelisk or Blister Beetle are much better since the Blister Beetle can be good against certain deck and the Obelisk could help you splash something in the second or third pack. Altogether though you're deck looked pretty decent I'm suprised you didn't do well.
I would have to agree with previous poster. You won but I couldn't have passed those jund battlemages. IMO the 2nd best mage behind naya. Unchecked it can win a game so maybe it is better than naya. I would take one in any deck that can activate the token generator.
i wasent overly critical of the deck itself. i understand its a cas/fun deck and even though im a spike at heart i also enjoy crazy timmy decks like eye of nowhere or day of the dragons + sway of the stars + mana elves. my beef was not with the deck or the content as i thought what content there was was actually well thought out and pleasing to my funny bone. my beef was that this article was pretty much just a deck list adn 2 paragraphs. there wasent enough content for me to get anything more then a very non committle "meh":. if there had been some more reasons for why he added cards and subtratced cards other then this deck need more lands i would have given it a much higer rating. ie throught out playtesting in incarnation 1 i noticed that i was always 1-2 mana shy of stablizing so here is why i want to cut x cards for y lands. also maybe a little bit of explantion as to how the deck typically plays or runs when not goldfishing would have been benificial. most people can get the idea that you play a huge dude and stop the trigger but how does the deck actually work when there is pressure ? thats y i gave it a low score. i to agree that dr. trex should continue doing articles but in the future should go in depth a little more, at least for my taste and im sure no body would hate it if there was more to read about decks like this.
You never mentioned mulliganing.
Now probably this isn't a ALA block problem but many ALA block games come down to who gets the best start. I have found that many of the games that I have lost are probably because I didn't mulligan aggresively enough. Or didn't draw well enough.
Something to consider when playing ala block. Maybe this is an entire column itself.
-Jamie
Draft one seems to fall into the trap of the ends justifing the choices. Congrats on the win, but I feel that there were some mispicks in this draft as well
P1P4/5 after 2 Drumhunters in a row I would look to be more of a 5-Power archetype.
P1P7 Incurable Ogre is seriously underrated
Pack 2 had most of the questionable picks
P2P1 Savage is fine
P2P3 Very doubtful any good stuff wheels, but not much fault in taking the "I win"
P2P4 Rakeclaw over J. Battlemage over Fodder-there are just soooo many 2 drops in Green why take the worst of the three?
P2P5 Topan for sure
P2P7 Signal Blessing>Roar, not to mention the way late Warmonk, Squire, or even J. Battlemage
P3P3 Fall over Exp. Boarders all day long
For the second draft I agree you should have been more flexible
P1P3 I would have taken Blister Beetle, very good in Esper
P1P4 Look at all the late good G/W stuff
P1P5 I would take Battlemage as a threat over Sculptor
P1P9 There's that Blister Beetle again
At the end of pack one note how little good Esper cards you saw. No Strix, or Gargoyles, might want to look at your stack and be ready to audible another dirrection.
P2P7 Late Knight if you had reconsidered your options
P2P11 Panorama here for options
In all not the seat you needed to be in to run Esper
later,
___helper_monkey on MODO
I agrre with that. PTE is great for mana fixing. In the same moment your oponent kill some of your creatures, you can take the oportunity for PTE your creature first an let him with a "spell wasted" taste in her mouth.
Regards
Lands: 20
4 Irrigation Ditch
4 Sulfur Vent (Saprazzan Skerry once it's online)
4 Svyelunite Temple
1 Teferi's Isle
7 Island
Creatures: 24
4 Grozoth
4 Leviathan
4 Inkwell Leviathan
4 Kederekt Leviathan (Thing from the Deep once online)
4 Simic Sky Swallower
4 Bringer of the Blue Dawn
The Rest: 16
4 Dichotomancy
4 Searing Wind (could change to Denying Win once online to focus more on Leviathan beats)
4 Intuition
4 Dream Halls
Very casual, as it folds to counterspells, but playing Grozoth turn 3 to fetch up to 19 other cards (23 once Thing from the Deep is online) is great fun. Also, this list is Tribal.
i was your opponent from rd 3, i definitely got super lucky that day and won some matches that i had no right winning. my 1st classic event ever and my 1st top 8 ever heh.
i remember in game 1, i was still looking thru your deck that u removed with consult and u were already done sideboarding.
nice tourney report!
If you add green mana search you shouldn't replace forests with islands but vice versa. Land change should have been -2 island (easier to find, thanks to green spells) and + 4 forest (you want to cast those green spells).
Loved the article, very fun and creative and casual... the hardcore Spikes are gonna hate it.
I find it interesting that Stephan Steiner, while avoiding the full-on Tiago, did admit to receiving outside assistance in the form of discussing plays with his girlfriend. I'm not sure if that's against MTGO's ToS and/or CoC, but it sure wouldn't fly in a DCI-sanctioned tournament.
In that it's crying out for stifle to enable turn 3 or 4 Eaters and turn 4 or 5 Sky Swallowers. You can also use spare trickbind or stifle effects as ersatz wild growths with the karoo triggers. Still, welcome aboard.
I like your focus about cascade. To me, this effect sounds good, but i am not convinced by he effect of the cards providing cascade. I am probably wrong, and i will test it as soon as i could. That being said, i really like he nexus which seems to be a much larger abusable card (with dream halls ? :P)
I will test the hypergenesis build : i like the concept, but i am feeling a big sensitivity to stifle. Maybe i am wrong, or maybe stifle & trickbind are not so much played in Ext (i didnt know this meta enough). Maybe this build could run 2-3 dramatic entrance or even maelstrom archangel ?