You absolutely lost me in pack 2. No offense, but I've never been so completely in disagreement with someone's drafts picks in a walkthrough... heh
P2P1: I don't agree with taking the Scourglass, since your picks from pack 1 are not even remotely Esper-ish. Not sure what you see in your first 15 cards that makes you think you should be Esper. You've picked up Bone Splinters, unearth dudes, Visionary... I think you got way too attached to forcing Elspeth into your deck. You would have been better off accepting that the white isn't flowing and to abandon trying to play it, and being happy with the 18 tix you are going to sell it for. And then instead focusing on a solid Jund deck, that you chose not to draft. Here you passed Gharial, Rhox Charger, Blister Beetle and another Dragger.
P2P2: Again, choosing the weaker white card over Resounding Thunder, Savage Lands and Blood Cultist.
P2P3: I actually said "WTF" out loud on this pick. Visionary... over Jund Charm, Mosstadon and Jund Panorama? Really? Ignoring that fact that you're passing Jund Charm which is like 18x more powerful than the elf, even the Panorama would have been a way better pick for your deck. A 1/1 elf is something you pick up mid-to-late in a pack. I see walkthroughs like this one later mention how they didn't get much fixing in the draft and this is why.
Pack 3: And even though you shipped all these great Jund cards to your neighbor in pack 2, you still were given back the chance to grab 2x Dark Temper, which would have been fantastic in the Jund Deck that I was building in my head. Who knows what else you could have grabbed in this pack had you went full-force Jund in pack 2.
As always, despite my criticism of your picks, I do certainly appreciate people like you taking the time to do these articles. Thank you very much.
"I'm fairly concerned about the falling prices in Classic playable cards."
I think the absence of replays could be behind this... it's just too complex for me to explain atm.
Ah.. I meant a small group of players forming the committee rather than players in general. (Like 4-5 veterans contributing feedback towards bannings so that they would be done more carefully)
Sorry about the confusion. I would have the same opinion as you if I had to choose between a "open-banned list" (where people are free to make changes) or an unpredictable one.
The "take another turn" spells aren't useful, no. Just another fun variant. I've made use of Progenitus when I didn't have the Conflux, since it can be cast off of any card in the deck.
While there are some aspects that are not optimal, such as the sound volume gap between the speakers or how some episodes of the podcast end up rather soft, this is one of the better podcasts available online (especially since it is very new) that I enjoy listening to. It is an easy way to keep up with what is happening in the wizards forums, the game news, the client news, the secondary market and how formats are shaping up online.
About discussions, there are some podcasts where people can skip talking about Magic altogether for a period of time. At least ham & runeliger keep within Magic talk. Discussions help people gain some insight into the game itself, making it a very useful aspect of the podcast so I would give a vote for discussions.
Nothing's perfect (like a certain game client we know) but still 1/5 is too much discredit. Whatever the podcast is meant to do, it did it well.
Wow.. This is new...
Sensei's Divining Top? I've never personally considered it a very threatening card.
While it does help significantly in the control/control matchup, the matchup is greatly hinged on other factors that the top helps at.
Why ban something banned in extended ONLY because of time issues??
It is almost indestructable in some sense so getting it out is definitely a big plus.
However, it adds more power in non-blue decks as well, allows a far more diverse field, allows more consistent games and its real use alone can be rather limited. I would think that these factors that are not directly found in solely blue decks would be the reason to keep it in the format.
The real question we should think about is "how powerful does a card need to be before it's ban-worthy?"
Is Singleton 100 an ultra watered down classic with a restriction on cards that should eliminate everything that can be problematic?
At the rate where everything goes up for banning, we might end up self-destroying the format.
I hope that the first line of defense would be to find an in-game method to fight the cards (as seen from umezawa's jitte. There will always be a wide variety of cards that we won't be able to handle in games. That's how Magic is.
Until games come to a point where "OMG! IT's YYY! Scoop!", we should not casually ask for bannings.
One card that immediately comes to mind is Bribery which was voiced out to be a ban candidate. I never understood why that card is anywhere near ban-worthy and people wanted it banned because it was wrecking them.
Ultimately, we need to prepare ourselves for an age of more broken Magic rather than try to confine the format into a simple format of simple aggro vs simple control. With sets like Exodus waiting at the door, there is no saying what the future would be like and not to mention the almighty Urza's block.
If we start banning everything in sight, we will get ZERO benefit out of those sets coming online. In fact, it'll be better if they don't release the old sets at all because the problems start there.
With the "young" format still evolving slowly, let us hope that bannings is the very last resort we take because simply banning powerful cards is not a smart way. It's what is happening now and we should not encourage it.
If I had to choose between the DCI and online commenters soley making the ban list, I'll take the DCI all day. I would like it if there was SOME input from the players though.
The idea for Progenitus works but as I said in the article, whiffy identified that in his list of classic combo decks and I wanted to try something innovative. Also, I was looking to cut costs for the deck as much as possible. When I found a win conidition using a $0.12 rare, I went for it.
Jitte helps the mono-red a little, but it doesn't work all that well on the creatures that mono-red burn decks like to use such as Hell's Thunder, Ball Lightning, and Blistering Firecat.
Jitte helps White Weenie and Aggro/Naya Creature decks A TON. They can search it out with Steelshaper's Gift and Enlightened Tutor. They can put it on protection from red creature, mana elves, double strikers, they no longer need to overcommit against control decks. It generally makes White Weenie and other Aggro Creature decks more viable.
Right now my understanding is that White Weenie and Aggro Creature decks have a slight edge against burn decks. However they both have terrible match-ups versus control decks. (For me it's close to an auto-loss) Red burn decks have a reasonable good match-up against control decks.
If Jitte comes back, you will get more White Weenie and Aggro Creature decks because they will have a much better shot against the whole field. You will therefore get fewer mono-red burn decks because they have a worse match-up against those types of decks.
Control may come back because you have fewer red burn decks and more of a rock-paper-scissors type metagame.
You say "If you have a way to take out Necropotence, then make sure to do so AFTER they pay a bunch of life but BEFORE they actually draw their cards."
I tried this once (guy activated Necropotence in his first main phase, I disenchanted it in his second main phase) and he STILL drew all the cards that were RFG'ed by the now dis-enchanted necropotence.
Was that a bug or is that how its supposed to work?
If it was a bug, can anyone else confirm it happened to them and if it has been fixed?
"Do you ban a card that dominates a matchup, when the decks that use it most effectively aren't even the decks on top of the metagame?"
It's not just a "matchup," it's an entire archtype. It's more than that actually. It's essentially any non-aggro matchup - which is HUGE! Skullclamp is worthless in control vs control matchups, but there is no question that it should be banned. I think you'd find very few people that disagree with this. Control has typically been very dominant in 100CS, and just because this second might be an exception, doesn't mean that we should forget that Blue > All.
For what it's worth, if it were up to me, this would be the 100CS banned list:
I can see the use in Searing Wind, as a variant to Wound Reflection, but the take another turn spells with progenitus don't really make sense. I can see using progenitus as a finisher if there is no combo, except you can't cast him unless you have the combo, and if you have the combo, might as well ultimatum
Anything we can do to make the podcast better, we'll try to make happen.
Re: too long. Was it the discussion of the specific topics you found over the top, or just discussing them in general? Would it be more beneficial to have a 'quick hits' at the beginning that just covers the news/events with minimal conversation and then have the remaining time for discussion about the mentioned events?
To me, the commentary parts of a podcast are the most interesting as the basic news is generally pretty easy to find (usually in the show notes and/or my State of the Program articles)... so maybe I'm a bit biased towards how much of the news is 'known' vs. how much is really known.
It may be true that Sensei's Top will dominate a control on control match, but the last PE T8 clearly showed that control is not dominating the format. Do you ban a card that dominates a matchup, when the decks that use it most effectively aren't even the decks on top of the metagame?
I do understand the argument for banning it and it would likely be on my watch list once the format balances itself out and control and mid-range are able to come back into the picture, but it is not making a significant T8 showing. Only 2 of 8 decks in the last PE even played it compared to 6 of 8 decks running Sword of Fire and Ice and 5 of 8 decks running Sword of Light and Shadow.
@Tarmatog - Tutors are not strongly hated in Prismatic. Myself and quite a few others have argued that prismatic became stale and less diverse from the unilateral banning of decent tutors from the format. It's the casual crowd of Prismatic players that disliked them. Removing them from the format only served to make aggro dominate, which lead to many decks looking almost identical because there was no efficient way to build decks around quirky "build around me" cards since you couldn't find your engine reliably enough to make those types of strategies viable.
I agree with unbanning the Black Tutors as well as Mana Crypt at the present. I believe cards need to prove themselves to be a problem via actual results to be banned.
I have to agree that Sensei's Diving Top should be banned because of the weight it carries in any game where one player has it and the other does not. It is incredibly beneficial to the control player and, like tumultous pointed out, in a control mirror the player who gets it first wins almost every time.
I thought I'd also point out that (in my opinion) unbanning Umezawa's Jitte would actually increase the potency of the mono-red decks that are out there. Jitte should remain banned, right alongside Skullclamp. They're simply too good for this format.
Don't know that anyone cares, but I figured I'd post the latest updates to this deck.
OUT:
Stone Calendar
Sculpting Steel
Mirari
Island
IN:
Panoptic Mirror
Oblivion Stone
Mystical Tutor
Tolaria West
With much regret, I had to pull the Stone Calendar and Mirari in favor of mass removal and a potential game ender. The more I play, the more I realize Mirari is essentially overkill. Oblivion Stone is a must have - don't know how I missed that.
Tolaria West and Mystical Tutor were added to get more useful cards in tight situations. The ability to get disruption or removal at instant speed was just too good to pass up.
We appreciate the feedback even if it's negative. I'll show this to the guys so that they can improve. Thanks for taking the time to tell us this and hopefully they will be better in the future.
You absolutely lost me in pack 2. No offense, but I've never been so completely in disagreement with someone's drafts picks in a walkthrough... heh
P2P1: I don't agree with taking the Scourglass, since your picks from pack 1 are not even remotely Esper-ish. Not sure what you see in your first 15 cards that makes you think you should be Esper. You've picked up Bone Splinters, unearth dudes, Visionary... I think you got way too attached to forcing Elspeth into your deck. You would have been better off accepting that the white isn't flowing and to abandon trying to play it, and being happy with the 18 tix you are going to sell it for. And then instead focusing on a solid Jund deck, that you chose not to draft. Here you passed Gharial, Rhox Charger, Blister Beetle and another Dragger.
P2P2: Again, choosing the weaker white card over Resounding Thunder, Savage Lands and Blood Cultist.
P2P3: I actually said "WTF" out loud on this pick. Visionary... over Jund Charm, Mosstadon and Jund Panorama? Really? Ignoring that fact that you're passing Jund Charm which is like 18x more powerful than the elf, even the Panorama would have been a way better pick for your deck. A 1/1 elf is something you pick up mid-to-late in a pack. I see walkthroughs like this one later mention how they didn't get much fixing in the draft and this is why.
Pack 3: And even though you shipped all these great Jund cards to your neighbor in pack 2, you still were given back the chance to grab 2x Dark Temper, which would have been fantastic in the Jund Deck that I was building in my head. Who knows what else you could have grabbed in this pack had you went full-force Jund in pack 2.
As always, despite my criticism of your picks, I do certainly appreciate people like you taking the time to do these articles. Thank you very much.
The new Helix version sells for twice the price, not the same price.
The price increase for Helix is a bit misleading. Helix didn't increase, there's just a new Helix version that sells for the same price.
Now, Hypergenesis... I don't get it. I have two, I guess now's the time to sell, but is there really anyone who'll buy for that price?
"I'm fairly concerned about the falling prices in Classic playable cards."
I think the absence of replays could be behind this... it's just too complex for me to explain atm.
Thanks for your weekly report, very interesting.
Ah.. I meant a small group of players forming the committee rather than players in general. (Like 4-5 veterans contributing feedback towards bannings so that they would be done more carefully)
Sorry about the confusion. I would have the same opinion as you if I had to choose between a "open-banned list" (where people are free to make changes) or an unpredictable one.
?
Whiffy knows everything.
well said
The "take another turn" spells aren't useful, no. Just another fun variant. I've made use of Progenitus when I didn't have the Conflux, since it can be cast off of any card in the deck.
While there are some aspects that are not optimal, such as the sound volume gap between the speakers or how some episodes of the podcast end up rather soft, this is one of the better podcasts available online (especially since it is very new) that I enjoy listening to. It is an easy way to keep up with what is happening in the wizards forums, the game news, the client news, the secondary market and how formats are shaping up online.
About discussions, there are some podcasts where people can skip talking about Magic altogether for a period of time. At least ham & runeliger keep within Magic talk. Discussions help people gain some insight into the game itself, making it a very useful aspect of the podcast so I would give a vote for discussions.
Nothing's perfect (like a certain game client we know) but still 1/5 is too much discredit. Whatever the podcast is meant to do, it did it well.
Wow.. This is new...
Sensei's Divining Top? I've never personally considered it a very threatening card.
While it does help significantly in the control/control matchup, the matchup is greatly hinged on other factors that the top helps at.
Why ban something banned in extended ONLY because of time issues??
It is almost indestructable in some sense so getting it out is definitely a big plus.
However, it adds more power in non-blue decks as well, allows a far more diverse field, allows more consistent games and its real use alone can be rather limited. I would think that these factors that are not directly found in solely blue decks would be the reason to keep it in the format.
The real question we should think about is "how powerful does a card need to be before it's ban-worthy?"
Is Singleton 100 an ultra watered down classic with a restriction on cards that should eliminate everything that can be problematic?
At the rate where everything goes up for banning, we might end up self-destroying the format.
I hope that the first line of defense would be to find an in-game method to fight the cards (as seen from umezawa's jitte. There will always be a wide variety of cards that we won't be able to handle in games. That's how Magic is.
Until games come to a point where "OMG! IT's YYY! Scoop!", we should not casually ask for bannings.
One card that immediately comes to mind is Bribery which was voiced out to be a ban candidate. I never understood why that card is anywhere near ban-worthy and people wanted it banned because it was wrecking them.
Ultimately, we need to prepare ourselves for an age of more broken Magic rather than try to confine the format into a simple format of simple aggro vs simple control. With sets like Exodus waiting at the door, there is no saying what the future would be like and not to mention the almighty Urza's block.
If we start banning everything in sight, we will get ZERO benefit out of those sets coming online. In fact, it'll be better if they don't release the old sets at all because the problems start there.
With the "young" format still evolving slowly, let us hope that bannings is the very last resort we take because simply banning powerful cards is not a smart way. It's what is happening now and we should not encourage it.
If I had to choose between the DCI and online commenters soley making the ban list, I'll take the DCI all day. I would like it if there was SOME input from the players though.
for the white and green parts of conflux, you can just find 2 more conflux fyi.
The idea for Progenitus works but as I said in the article, whiffy identified that in his list of classic combo decks and I wanted to try something innovative. Also, I was looking to cut costs for the deck as much as possible. When I found a win conidition using a $0.12 rare, I went for it.
Yep you're right, that's my mistake:
"Removing Necropotence from play will not stop the cards from the life-payment ability from being put into your hand at the end of turn."
Jitte helps the mono-red a little, but it doesn't work all that well on the creatures that mono-red burn decks like to use such as Hell's Thunder, Ball Lightning, and Blistering Firecat.
Jitte helps White Weenie and Aggro/Naya Creature decks A TON. They can search it out with Steelshaper's Gift and Enlightened Tutor. They can put it on protection from red creature, mana elves, double strikers, they no longer need to overcommit against control decks. It generally makes White Weenie and other Aggro Creature decks more viable.
Right now my understanding is that White Weenie and Aggro Creature decks have a slight edge against burn decks. However they both have terrible match-ups versus control decks. (For me it's close to an auto-loss) Red burn decks have a reasonable good match-up against control decks.
If Jitte comes back, you will get more White Weenie and Aggro Creature decks because they will have a much better shot against the whole field. You will therefore get fewer mono-red burn decks because they have a worse match-up against those types of decks.
Control may come back because you have fewer red burn decks and more of a rock-paper-scissors type metagame.
You say "If you have a way to take out Necropotence, then make sure to do so AFTER they pay a bunch of life but BEFORE they actually draw their cards."
I tried this once (guy activated Necropotence in his first main phase, I disenchanted it in his second main phase) and he STILL drew all the cards that were RFG'ed by the now dis-enchanted necropotence.
Was that a bug or is that how its supposed to work?
If it was a bug, can anyone else confirm it happened to them and if it has been fixed?
"Do you ban a card that dominates a matchup, when the decks that use it most effectively aren't even the decks on top of the metagame?"
It's not just a "matchup," it's an entire archtype. It's more than that actually. It's essentially any non-aggro matchup - which is HUGE! Skullclamp is worthless in control vs control matchups, but there is no question that it should be banned. I think you'd find very few people that disagree with this. Control has typically been very dominant in 100CS, and just because this second might be an exception, doesn't mean that we should forget that Blue > All.
For what it's worth, if it were up to me, this would be the 100CS banned list:
Skullclamp
Sensei's Divining Top
I can see the use in Searing Wind, as a variant to Wound Reflection, but the take another turn spells with progenitus don't really make sense. I can see using progenitus as a finisher if there is no combo, except you can't cast him unless you have the combo, and if you have the combo, might as well ultimatum
bring us another article necropotent!
Anything we can do to make the podcast better, we'll try to make happen.
Re: too long. Was it the discussion of the specific topics you found over the top, or just discussing them in general? Would it be more beneficial to have a 'quick hits' at the beginning that just covers the news/events with minimal conversation and then have the remaining time for discussion about the mentioned events?
To me, the commentary parts of a podcast are the most interesting as the basic news is generally pretty easy to find (usually in the show notes and/or my State of the Program articles)... so maybe I'm a bit biased towards how much of the news is 'known' vs. how much is really known.
FYI, I'm 'the other guy' in the podcast. :)
It may be true that Sensei's Top will dominate a control on control match, but the last PE T8 clearly showed that control is not dominating the format. Do you ban a card that dominates a matchup, when the decks that use it most effectively aren't even the decks on top of the metagame?
I do understand the argument for banning it and it would likely be on my watch list once the format balances itself out and control and mid-range are able to come back into the picture, but it is not making a significant T8 showing. Only 2 of 8 decks in the last PE even played it compared to 6 of 8 decks running Sword of Fire and Ice and 5 of 8 decks running Sword of Light and Shadow.
@Tarmatog - Tutors are not strongly hated in Prismatic. Myself and quite a few others have argued that prismatic became stale and less diverse from the unilateral banning of decent tutors from the format. It's the casual crowd of Prismatic players that disliked them. Removing them from the format only served to make aggro dominate, which lead to many decks looking almost identical because there was no efficient way to build decks around quirky "build around me" cards since you couldn't find your engine reliably enough to make those types of strategies viable.
I agree with unbanning the Black Tutors as well as Mana Crypt at the present. I believe cards need to prove themselves to be a problem via actual results to be banned.
I have to agree that Sensei's Diving Top should be banned because of the weight it carries in any game where one player has it and the other does not. It is incredibly beneficial to the control player and, like tumultous pointed out, in a control mirror the player who gets it first wins almost every time.
I thought I'd also point out that (in my opinion) unbanning Umezawa's Jitte would actually increase the potency of the mono-red decks that are out there. Jitte should remain banned, right alongside Skullclamp. They're simply too good for this format.
Don't know that anyone cares, but I figured I'd post the latest updates to this deck.
OUT:
Stone Calendar
Sculpting Steel
Mirari
Island
IN:
Panoptic Mirror
Oblivion Stone
Mystical Tutor
Tolaria West
With much regret, I had to pull the Stone Calendar and Mirari in favor of mass removal and a potential game ender. The more I play, the more I realize Mirari is essentially overkill. Oblivion Stone is a must have - don't know how I missed that.
Tolaria West and Mystical Tutor were added to get more useful cards in tight situations. The ability to get disruption or removal at instant speed was just too good to pass up.
Thanks for all the comments!
true
this card is awesome, but in a competitive build, it is hard to abuse of its symetrical effect in a way you are unaffected