Thanks for the article! I've been thinking of jumping from Limited to Constructed recently but wasn't sure how to best make the transition. It's nice to read about someone else's experience before wasting a lot of time and money.
I've also had the same experience with P.T. One insult after another, even when he's winning, but especially when he's losing. It's not hard to ignore but there should be some sort of recourse against such poor sportsmanship. Thanks for sharing the link on how to report players like him.
Hey props to you Hammy for keeping your cool with that idiot. It's players like him that keep me in the casual rooms, and that's a shame because I know there's a lot more players who want to try their hand at competetive play and don't because of people like your opponent. Great article as usual!
Just wanted to say that these kind of articles are always hard for the writer because there is absolutely no chance that people will agree with you totally. Everyone will always reject and say that you overvalued this and undervalued that. This is the nature of these articles. You should be aware of this and you should welcome all such comments(I'm not saying you're not btw).
But this doesn't change the fact that I like these kind of articles. I'm not a draft player myself so my limited knowledge is limited :). This information is therefore valueable for me (if some day I decide to draft, I know where to look).
But I think that you should have done these articles a little bit early when the set was new and everyone was looking for some advise what to draft and what not to. The new set is around the corner and I'm sure that limited players already are familiar with Conflux by now (this was a comment I think you should consider for the next set).
And a suggestion: Just because the next set is all-gold, you cannot divide it into colors. But maybe you can divide it into card types. Like creatures first, enchantments (if there will be sufficient) next and sorceries/instants in a 3rd article. Or you can go by the number of colors. 2-color cards first, 3-color cards next and then the rest.
Sorry bout that. I put pix up for tempest but i skipped it this time for stronghold because it felt like showing what the cards do seems to be an unpopular option when writing about cards (because maybe some people think that this information is freely available and putting it in is a waste of space?). The last time i copied pictures from the client and put put them into the article. I'll make sure I'll do so again the next time round.
Thanks for the feedback. For now, I think maybe having the gatherer open in another window with stronghold cards filtered out might be useful.
(I am secretly wishing that they have pop-up links like those on channelfireball.com so that the card shows itself over the link but even so, without the cards actually in the database yet, such an option might not be useful for talking about "new cards". )
Please don't take offense to this, as the following comment is also directed at many past articles on virtually every Magic site ever:
Why do articles that mention a ton of new cards for us to learn about, not link any of them to a source that actually shows what they do? Am I the only Magic player to not know what every single past card does?
horn of green => the yyy there refers to azusa, lost but seeking which allows you to play 2 additional lands per turn.
wall of souls => the hellion is volcano hellion.
sorry bout those..
Additional info:
wall of blossoms can go into the ug deck of the week..
and dream halls has some interesting interactions with gold cards as seen in magicthegathering.com's article about using the card conflux to chain into more confluxes and big spells. It might be possible to create a very powerful deck that runs on dream halls but it sounds rather hypothetical.
Suppose we have conflux, we could search for cruel ultimatum, violent ultimatum, 2 feeding cards and 1 more big spell (like nicol bolas?) which hopefully cruel ultimatum draws can feed?
Dream Halls in "TurboZvi" seems like it would be very good, because now it can kill with Cunning Wish for Brain Freeze, instead of killing with a force-your-oppponent-to-draw spell or Unyaro Bee Sting.
Burgeoning seames to be among the strongest EDH cards in the Stronghold (I would put it as the best personly but ymmv), because the abillity to get 5 mana turn 2 without doing anything speciel is very very strong.
Btw. I would play Hermit Druid in EDH, seeing that he has a draw a card for 1 mana abillity which is quite good.
I noticed you were wondering about the UW aggrocontrol deck running only 26 lands. This is made possible only by our special Highlander Mulligan rule:
"For one of the starting hands during each game only, each player may "reject" any number of cards from his or her hand. They set these cards aside, draw the corresponding number of cards from their deck and, after that, reshuffle the set-aside cards back into their library. The opponent cuts the deck afterwards (mandatory). Note that this is a slight change as of 04/15/2007 since you can now choose the hand from which you reject cards, e.g. with a very bad initial hand of 7 you may decide to take a normal mulligan without rejecting any cards. You may then apply the new mulligan to your 6-card-hand."
Hi!
iim testing maryr deck and its awesome...and really fun (but not for my rivals...)
im searching for another finisers other than Guardian of the Guildpact and Cenn's Enlistment because are really slow.
any sugestions?
i think this was a very much needed step for mtgo to introduce these season championships. i mean, look at the std daily events now, there are almost everytime far more than 40 players. the month before QPs i had events with less than 30 players. it just shows imo that the online community of magic needed something like this.
I'll have to try out some 8mans then... right now I'm 2-0 in 2mans :)but I suspected that the 8mans would just be completely filled with sharks trying to get QPs...
Another awesome way to play pauper for all most no money and it's a FREE event with prize support
TPDC Build Your Own Standard
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
WHO
All are welcome, even if you've never played PDC before. Stop by and try it out for the first time, or keep coming back to continue the competition!
WHEN and WHERE
General event coordination and pairings will be announced in /join tpdc.
Registration will open at 8:30 p.m. EST in /join tpdc_results.
The first round will begin approximately thirty minutes later.
ENTRY FEE
None!
LEGAL CARDS and PROXIES
The format for this event will be Classic Pauper - Build Your Own Standard, using the built-in client Pauper format. Slivers are banned from this event.
The Choose Your Own Standard rules are:
* Build a Pauper-legal deck from your choice of any two blocks and one Core Set.
* Coldsnap is considered part of Ice Age Block (Ice Age, Alliances, and Coldsnap commons).
* Lor/Mor/Sha/Eve are considered to be one single block, so you can choose that block plus one more block plus a Core Set.
* Master's Edition is not a Core Set, but ME and ME2 can be considered a "Block" if you like.
* Duel Decks are neither a Core Set or a Block, and so are not legal.
* Shards is a legal Block, with only two sets available.
* Tempest is a legal Block with only one set available.
* Only cards printed as commons in the chosen blocks and Core Set are legal. For example, you could only play Twisted Abomination if you choose Onslaught block; you can't play it as part of Time Spiral Block (unless you also choose Onslaught block). Similarly, Crypt Rats were only common in Visions, and can't be played if you are only playing 7th Edition and not Mirage Block.
* Sticking to our normal rules - proxies are permitted for cards in your chosen blocks and Core Set. So if you have chosen Onslaught block, you can play a proxy Time Spiral Timeshifted Twisted Abomination, or an actual Onslaught Twisted Abomination.
* In order to increase the level of fun and deckbuilding exploration, as well as to make this event be not just another regular TPDC, cards with only Creature Type - Sliver are banned today. Note that Changelings are still legal, since they are not only Slivers.
* Any questions, let me know via PM or in the thread below.
THIS WEEK'S PRIZES
* TPDC provides 4 or 8 lots of prizes for each event.
* A Door Prize will be reserved for a randomly-selected player who completes all 3 rounds of Swiss competition, but does not make the finals.
* After the final round of Swiss play, finalists should PM the host with any preferences from among the prize lots. The host will award prizes at the end of the quarter and semifinals, holding back prizes requested by players who advanced beyond those rounds.
* Prize selection order among places 5-8, and among places 3-4, are in order of Swiss finish.
Thanks for a great series. I too enjoy it every Friday. Your advice to start playing constructed is well thoughtout and I will make that move from drafts. I still miss leagues quite a bit, but the 2-man queues are a cheap way to get into it.
As for the missing ratings, I noticed one opponent had added "1931" to his username as if to say that was his rating. Not likely since I beat him 2-0 in draft...
Could you post the link to see the list of players with points? I'm too lazy to look it up.
I think that you missed an obvious extension to Part 3 of the article. Worship may or may not end up being important. I would not classify it into category 3. You simply will not know until you have your opponent nearly dead with lethal damage on the stack. Because of this I would rate destroying the Worship as both unimportant and not urgent right along with Raking Canopy. This means that you should not be destroying the Worship until such time that it becomes both Important and Urgent. What happens if your opponent top decks a Sword of Light and Shadow the turn after you just killed his Worship? You would then be in a very bad position as now your opponent has a faster clock and your Royal Assassin on the board becomes far less useful.
I see people make these kinds of mistakes all of the time. Just because one has removal does not always mean that he/she should use it. However, it could also be that on turn 3 it was incorrect to use removal on a specific threat, but on turn 10 it is now correct to use the same removal on that same threat. One constantly has to reevaluate Importance vs. Urgency. Doing my laundry may not be important, but it all of a sudden becomes so when I run out of boxers.
Way back when I was advocating WW as a deck, I never lost to MBC, even when they would cast repetitive Corrupts, Tendrils, and Rats. The secret would be keeping another creature on the board with an Order of Leitbur. At this time, I was also running 4 Riftwatchers main, which would often keep me in positive life totals regardless of how hard MBC tried to burn me out. I ran Obsidian Acolytes in the board, but no COP. Rather, Prismatic Strands does a better job since you can just catch MBC off guard.
I don't thik Dream Halls is potent enough anymore to be anything but a casual card. YOu can cheat things into play at greatly reduced costs, but it is symetrical, and there are better options. If I want a big discount on my Inkwell Levithan, I could play Master Transmuter, which would not allow my opponent to play Progenitus by simply discarding some random card. Fun card - sure. Competitive? Probably not.
Hermit Druid was a great combo enabler, back in the day, but I think modern decks will have way too many answers. The classic HErmit Druid decks used HD to drop their entire libraries in the graveyard, then reanimated a 20+/20+ Sutured Ghoul with Dragon Breath to give it haste. Sure - that works. However, that assumes that you did not have your reanimation spell Thoughtseized away or countered, that a 1/1 Druid lived long enough to become active, that the reanimation spell wasn't countered, that no one had Extirpate or Relic of Progenitus to remove the target, and that, once the big Ghoul comes rumbling over, the opponent does not have Swords of Path to Exile or Celestial Purge or even Rushing River. I'm afraid that the Hermit Druid decks have gone the way of the ProsBloom and Alluren decks: the poeces are here, but the deck is just not good enough to beat Countertop Goyf and friends.
OTOH, those were two cards I going to include while I was toying with adding one more set of four. However, then I would have gone for original Mana Leaks and stuff that was pure bling, so I skipped it.
In theory, it seems like that will work out, and was my expectation as well. The reality (at least in block that I've experienced) is that the better players and the better decks are in the Dailies than in the 8 mans and 2 mans. Which kind of makes sense, as there's more prizes for the tix and more qualifier points to be had. The weekend Premier Events might be much better for getting more players to play against than the very cut-throat dailies.
You get a lot more play for the money, but the chances of winning anything seem lower than in the 8 mans, at least, as far as I've seen anyway.
I've kind of been doing the same thing as you, I was mainly a sealed player and now I'm moving into Constructed events. So far, the 2 to 8 to DE has felt better than jumping into the DE's without first having wracked up some wins in the 8 man queues.
One point of discussion... You stted that the natural progression for standard players is TP > 2 player queues > 8 player > Daily Events.
I'd like to state that I think that snce Daily Events are Swiss and you can play 5-8 rounds they are actually a better stepping up point than the 8-man queues which are single elimination as they cost the same and provide much more play value as you can really get to practice your deck in a competitive environment. At least this is the theory I'm using as I transition from a limited only player to a constructed player :)
I was surprised to not see Hermit Druid on your Stronghold list. That guy is good enough to be banned in Legacy, I'm interested to see what he does in Classic.
Also the best black card ever printed is Contract From Below...
Thanks for the article! I've been thinking of jumping from Limited to Constructed recently but wasn't sure how to best make the transition. It's nice to read about someone else's experience before wasting a lot of time and money.
I've also had the same experience with P.T. One insult after another, even when he's winning, but especially when he's losing. It's not hard to ignore but there should be some sort of recourse against such poor sportsmanship. Thanks for sharing the link on how to report players like him.
Hey props to you Hammy for keeping your cool with that idiot. It's players like him that keep me in the casual rooms, and that's a shame because I know there's a lot more players who want to try their hand at competetive play and don't because of people like your opponent. Great article as usual!
Just wanted to say that these kind of articles are always hard for the writer because there is absolutely no chance that people will agree with you totally. Everyone will always reject and say that you overvalued this and undervalued that. This is the nature of these articles. You should be aware of this and you should welcome all such comments(I'm not saying you're not btw).
But this doesn't change the fact that I like these kind of articles. I'm not a draft player myself so my limited knowledge is limited :). This information is therefore valueable for me (if some day I decide to draft, I know where to look).
But I think that you should have done these articles a little bit early when the set was new and everyone was looking for some advise what to draft and what not to. The new set is around the corner and I'm sure that limited players already are familiar with Conflux by now (this was a comment I think you should consider for the next set).
And a suggestion: Just because the next set is all-gold, you cannot divide it into colors. But maybe you can divide it into card types. Like creatures first, enchantments (if there will be sufficient) next and sorceries/instants in a 3rd article. Or you can go by the number of colors. 2-color cards first, 3-color cards next and then the rest.
Just some suggestions. Good job overall.
LE
Sorry bout that. I put pix up for tempest but i skipped it this time for stronghold because it felt like showing what the cards do seems to be an unpopular option when writing about cards (because maybe some people think that this information is freely available and putting it in is a waste of space?). The last time i copied pictures from the client and put put them into the article. I'll make sure I'll do so again the next time round.
Thanks for the feedback. For now, I think maybe having the gatherer open in another window with stronghold cards filtered out might be useful.
(I am secretly wishing that they have pop-up links like those on channelfireball.com so that the card shows itself over the link but even so, without the cards actually in the database yet, such an option might not be useful for talking about "new cards". )
Please don't take offense to this, as the following comment is also directed at many past articles on virtually every Magic site ever:
Why do articles that mention a ton of new cards for us to learn about, not link any of them to a source that actually shows what they do? Am I the only Magic player to not know what every single past card does?
Paragraph 2 made you sound like a dick, and I stopped reading from that point.
Errata:
horn of green => the yyy there refers to azusa, lost but seeking which allows you to play 2 additional lands per turn.
wall of souls => the hellion is volcano hellion.
sorry bout those..
Additional info:
wall of blossoms can go into the ug deck of the week..
and dream halls has some interesting interactions with gold cards as seen in magicthegathering.com's article about using the card conflux to chain into more confluxes and big spells. It might be possible to create a very powerful deck that runs on dream halls but it sounds rather hypothetical.
Suppose we have conflux, we could search for cruel ultimatum, violent ultimatum, 2 feeding cards and 1 more big spell (like nicol bolas?) which hopefully cruel ultimatum draws can feed?
events in the PE room doesnt give promo cards, it's only in the daily events room that you can get some (firebolt, disenchant, force spike)
Dream Halls in "TurboZvi" seems like it would be very good, because now it can kill with Cunning Wish for Brain Freeze, instead of killing with a force-your-oppponent-to-draw spell or Unyaro Bee Sting.
for the price changes, could we get the comparison to the previous week, it seems to be missing
You realize you can pretty much dredge for infy and win taht way too right? You don't have to run the sutured ghoul kill.
Burgeoning seames to be among the strongest EDH cards in the Stronghold (I would put it as the best personly but ymmv), because the abillity to get 5 mana turn 2 without doing anything speciel is very very strong.
Btw. I would play Hermit Druid in EDH, seeing that he has a draw a card for 1 mana abillity which is quite good.
I noticed you were wondering about the UW aggrocontrol deck running only 26 lands. This is made possible only by our special Highlander Mulligan rule:
"For one of the starting hands during each game only, each player may "reject" any number of cards from his or her hand. They set these cards aside, draw the corresponding number of cards from their deck and, after that, reshuffle the set-aside cards back into their library. The opponent cuts the deck afterwards (mandatory). Note that this is a slight change as of 04/15/2007 since you can now choose the hand from which you reject cards, e.g. with a very bad initial hand of 7 you may decide to take a normal mulligan without rejecting any cards. You may then apply the new mulligan to your 6-card-hand."
From http://www.highlandermagic.info/index.php?id=mulligan
Thank you from Germany for your interesting views on HL/Singleton 100!
Hi!
iim testing maryr deck and its awesome...and really fun (but not for my rivals...)
im searching for another finisers other than Guardian of the Guildpact and Cenn's Enlistment because are really slow.
any sugestions?
i think this was a very much needed step for mtgo to introduce these season championships. i mean, look at the std daily events now, there are almost everytime far more than 40 players. the month before QPs i had events with less than 30 players. it just shows imo that the online community of magic needed something like this.
very nice article
I'll have to try out some 8mans then... right now I'm 2-0 in 2mans :)but I suspected that the 8mans would just be completely filled with sharks trying to get QPs...
Another awesome way to play pauper for all most no money and it's a FREE event with prize support
TPDC Build Your Own Standard
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
WHO
All are welcome, even if you've never played PDC before. Stop by and try it out for the first time, or keep coming back to continue the competition!
WHEN and WHERE
General event coordination and pairings will be announced in /join tpdc.
Registration will open at 8:30 p.m. EST in /join tpdc_results.
The first round will begin approximately thirty minutes later.
ENTRY FEE
None!
LEGAL CARDS and PROXIES
The format for this event will be Classic Pauper - Build Your Own Standard, using the built-in client Pauper format. Slivers are banned from this event.
The Choose Your Own Standard rules are:
* Build a Pauper-legal deck from your choice of any two blocks and one Core Set.
* Coldsnap is considered part of Ice Age Block (Ice Age, Alliances, and Coldsnap commons).
* Lor/Mor/Sha/Eve are considered to be one single block, so you can choose that block plus one more block plus a Core Set.
* Master's Edition is not a Core Set, but ME and ME2 can be considered a "Block" if you like.
* Duel Decks are neither a Core Set or a Block, and so are not legal.
* Shards is a legal Block, with only two sets available.
* Tempest is a legal Block with only one set available.
* Only cards printed as commons in the chosen blocks and Core Set are legal. For example, you could only play Twisted Abomination if you choose Onslaught block; you can't play it as part of Time Spiral Block (unless you also choose Onslaught block). Similarly, Crypt Rats were only common in Visions, and can't be played if you are only playing 7th Edition and not Mirage Block.
* Sticking to our normal rules - proxies are permitted for cards in your chosen blocks and Core Set. So if you have chosen Onslaught block, you can play a proxy Time Spiral Timeshifted Twisted Abomination, or an actual Onslaught Twisted Abomination.
* In order to increase the level of fun and deckbuilding exploration, as well as to make this event be not just another regular TPDC, cards with only Creature Type - Sliver are banned today. Note that Changelings are still legal, since they are not only Slivers.
* Any questions, let me know via PM or in the thread below.
THIS WEEK'S PRIZES
* TPDC provides 4 or 8 lots of prizes for each event.
* A Door Prize will be reserved for a randomly-selected player who completes all 3 rounds of Swiss competition, but does not make the finals.
* After the final round of Swiss play, finalists should PM the host with any preferences from among the prize lots. The host will award prizes at the end of the quarter and semifinals, holding back prizes requested by players who advanced beyond those rounds.
* Prize selection order among places 5-8, and among places 3-4, are in order of Swiss finish.
1. Conflux booster donated by lathspel
2. TBD
Door Prize: TBD
Thanks for a great series. I too enjoy it every Friday. Your advice to start playing constructed is well thoughtout and I will make that move from drafts. I still miss leagues quite a bit, but the 2-man queues are a cheap way to get into it.
As for the missing ratings, I noticed one opponent had added "1931" to his username as if to say that was his rating. Not likely since I beat him 2-0 in draft...
Could you post the link to see the list of players with points? I'm too lazy to look it up.
Cheers!
I think that you missed an obvious extension to Part 3 of the article. Worship may or may not end up being important. I would not classify it into category 3. You simply will not know until you have your opponent nearly dead with lethal damage on the stack. Because of this I would rate destroying the Worship as both unimportant and not urgent right along with Raking Canopy. This means that you should not be destroying the Worship until such time that it becomes both Important and Urgent. What happens if your opponent top decks a Sword of Light and Shadow the turn after you just killed his Worship? You would then be in a very bad position as now your opponent has a faster clock and your Royal Assassin on the board becomes far less useful.
I see people make these kinds of mistakes all of the time. Just because one has removal does not always mean that he/she should use it. However, it could also be that on turn 3 it was incorrect to use removal on a specific threat, but on turn 10 it is now correct to use the same removal on that same threat. One constantly has to reevaluate Importance vs. Urgency. Doing my laundry may not be important, but it all of a sudden becomes so when I run out of boxers.
thanks for taking the time to do this each week...this article has come a long way from way back when you started...I look forward to it every Friday!
Way back when I was advocating WW as a deck, I never lost to MBC, even when they would cast repetitive Corrupts, Tendrils, and Rats. The secret would be keeping another creature on the board with an Order of Leitbur. At this time, I was also running 4 Riftwatchers main, which would often keep me in positive life totals regardless of how hard MBC tried to burn me out. I ran Obsidian Acolytes in the board, but no COP. Rather, Prismatic Strands does a better job since you can just catch MBC off guard.
-Alex
I don't thik Dream Halls is potent enough anymore to be anything but a casual card. YOu can cheat things into play at greatly reduced costs, but it is symetrical, and there are better options. If I want a big discount on my Inkwell Levithan, I could play Master Transmuter, which would not allow my opponent to play Progenitus by simply discarding some random card. Fun card - sure. Competitive? Probably not.
Hermit Druid was a great combo enabler, back in the day, but I think modern decks will have way too many answers. The classic HErmit Druid decks used HD to drop their entire libraries in the graveyard, then reanimated a 20+/20+ Sutured Ghoul with Dragon Breath to give it haste. Sure - that works. However, that assumes that you did not have your reanimation spell Thoughtseized away or countered, that a 1/1 Druid lived long enough to become active, that the reanimation spell wasn't countered, that no one had Extirpate or Relic of Progenitus to remove the target, and that, once the big Ghoul comes rumbling over, the opponent does not have Swords of Path to Exile or Celestial Purge or even Rushing River. I'm afraid that the Hermit Druid decks have gone the way of the ProsBloom and Alluren decks: the poeces are here, but the deck is just not good enough to beat Countertop Goyf and friends.
OTOH, those were two cards I going to include while I was toying with adding one more set of four. However, then I would have gone for original Mana Leaks and stuff that was pure bling, so I skipped it.
In theory, it seems like that will work out, and was my expectation as well. The reality (at least in block that I've experienced) is that the better players and the better decks are in the Dailies than in the 8 mans and 2 mans. Which kind of makes sense, as there's more prizes for the tix and more qualifier points to be had. The weekend Premier Events might be much better for getting more players to play against than the very cut-throat dailies.
You get a lot more play for the money, but the chances of winning anything seem lower than in the 8 mans, at least, as far as I've seen anyway.
I've kind of been doing the same thing as you, I was mainly a sealed player and now I'm moving into Constructed events. So far, the 2 to 8 to DE has felt better than jumping into the DE's without first having wracked up some wins in the 8 man queues.
Your milage may vary. :)
One point of discussion... You stted that the natural progression for standard players is TP > 2 player queues > 8 player > Daily Events.
I'd like to state that I think that snce Daily Events are Swiss and you can play 5-8 rounds they are actually a better stepping up point than the 8-man queues which are single elimination as they cost the same and provide much more play value as you can really get to practice your deck in a competitive environment. At least this is the theory I'm using as I transition from a limited only player to a constructed player :)
I was surprised to not see Hermit Druid on your Stronghold list. That guy is good enough to be banned in Legacy, I'm interested to see what he does in Classic.
Also the best black card ever printed is Contract From Below...