I actually fine-tuned an Esper Aggro deck for a friend because he liked the deck, didn't have much money, but wanted it to do better. It was for T2 but mostly was block cards:
This was actually the best I could come up for in Standard while staying true to the theme of a quick, low-curve attack. I started w/ Court Homunculus, but it sucked (and was rarely played t1), while my singleton Puppet Conjurer was an amazing staller, instantly boosted MoE and Glaze Fiend and gave a bounce target for Esperzoa. Outlander was me wanting another 2 drop, but Canonist is mostly useless, while Outlander blocks red things forever. The single Summoner and Sharuum are just there to give you the occasional out when youre not messing around bouncing things in & out of play or out of your graveyard and into play.
It's not great, and if you don't have a really fast start you fold to 5CC. And you almost always fold to Faeries. However you do decently against more aggressive decks because your aggressive hands are stupid and you tend to have more spells b/c of the lower land base. Not T1 or 2 at all in standard, but im curious to try it in block now. The only thing I could see being a problem is the mana base, which sucks a lot when you don't have the filter lands.
again, pretty nice overview of diffent classic decks !
If pox is on the decline, it is maybe only because it was heavy ran and attractive new cards from Alara pushed players to try them (hierarch, progenitus ...). I see no real reason to not play it again, this deck seems still consistent in our meta. Maybe also Chicago GP's results incited players to try others build.
It is also funny to follow the evolution of merfolks. It is a traditional tribal deck that that was played since beginning of mtg (with phantasmal terrain & stuff). Recently, it was (and it is) very very often played. I wrote a thread about it 2 mounths ago (http://www.classicquarter.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1726) about this hype. Today, your article is giving us a good analyzis about it, and confirmed what i expected about it.
i cant wait for next article of this new series. I like old deck too much, maybe because i knew mtg with the unlim set ... nostalgy ? yes a bit ! I like old decks too much.
Cadaverous is i great card, with a lot of different possible uses as you well mentioned.
I often played it with City of Solitude to play a looooong turn :)
And of course if you're the greedy player who puts 4x Gaea's Cradle in a mono-green creature-based deck, you're gonna get everything you deserve. You can't write a program to solve everything. :)
Now if only there was some way to implement Jay's chart which relates mana curve, land count, and deck strategy. You program fails if some noob orders 20 land. But then again, who said this was for idiots? Even if you're playing 17 non-basics your land choices will get down to "2-4 Swamps, 2-4 Islands, pick 3" and this tool will tell you how to slot your last 3 lands perfectly.*
*Unless you're fearing the Lord of Atlantis beatdown. Then the correct answer is 3 Swamps...
I believe the MTGO suggest land feature simply counts your mana symbols, calculates the ratio, and then adds lands up to 40. So if you build a 30 card deck it'll add only 10 lands. And of course, it only checks the printed casting cost. It ignores activations and such.
Just imagine Jay saying "Ghitu Encampment? I'm gonna tick it up one. Mistmeadow Witch? Tick each one once, then go back and add another one."
I love this idea for an article! Though you started to lose me when you simultaneously decided to Casual It Up(tm) and budgetize the first deck. I dislike Hulk-Flash, but not as nearly as much as I like weak decks like "Dark Depths + Aether Snap + Lightning Greaves". In my experience that kind of 3 card combo looks like fun in the deck editor, and it's fun to write about, but it's crap to shuffle up and actually use. But to be fair, I haven't played any of your Bloom decks. So I shouldn't say that.
The updated Blood Rites though looks very interesting! I'm missing the Dark Rituals and Soul Spikes, but I'd buy those and play that. To add to the idea, Soul's Fire is tragically red, and 3 mana, but it is an instant. That let's you win during your opponent's turn. I love chances to do that. The red strategy might use Ankh of Mishra, Manabarbs, or something like that to take the lead. Since all you really need is the lead anyway.
I love the idea of this article set, I am looking forward to more of these examining old decks that were broken in their time. I've always been interested in these decks and not really versed in them. Keep it up!
(also, I fixed the Prosperity link in the first paragraph, and the linking for the last deck)
It will certainly be a series. Probably not weekly due to other commitments and not wanting to run through too many ideas too quickly. :) I just see all these cool, crazy combos when sets are getting spoiled and then they disappear and that's really unfortunate I think.
If you wanna make the Wall of Blood combo a little less comboish, how about throwing in some Rebel action! Children of Korlis makes it easy to pull off the combo without actually being ahead on life and the rebel package can be versatile enough to win you games even if you don't draw any of the combo. Aven Riftwatcher can be a great roadblock/life gain and the Rebel mechanic is a slow, but effective way to thin your deck while waiting for your combo pieces.
I'm a pauper player, so I am not really familiar with much outside of that format, but I used to have a paper version of Rebels with Bound in Silence and some other stuff. It may not be very competitive (haven't really tried it yet), but it lets you play an interactive game. Aggro/Control/Combo FTW!
great article...I do like these after the month reports...I do feel that rdw has declined...and painter has fallen off....I think classic is growing by leaps and bounds.
Good stuff. I really like the idea behind this (I hope) series. More ideas about fun casual stuff are always interesting. Looking forward to future installments.
The issue you're seeing there is that the "desired" number of lands is in fractions, when (of course) you can only deal out lands in whole numbers. So, for example, a deck may want 4.56 Swamps and 19.12 Islands. When we get in this situation, I add 4 Swamps and 19 Islands into the deck, and then do my best to deal out the "leftover lands" in the proper colors based on the fraction remaining.
The situation you forced, is where there's a leftover land and each color (other than white) wants it equally. In this situation I do give them out in the color order that you figured out (nice job, btw). So let's say that your deck wants 4.9 Mountains, 4.9 Swamps, and 10 Islands. After giving out 10 Islands, 4 Mountains, and 4 Swamps, there's one land left over. Mountain and Swamp want it equally as bad, so I have to make a choice which one to give it to. This is what you are seeing.
I wonder if it's better to provide information about these "leftover" lands, and say something like: this deck wants four Swamps and nineteen Islands. This doesn't divide evenly, so there's one land left over.
Thanks for programming this aplication. It looks real slick.
I took the testing of it a bit further than above poster. I set land to 1, and U,B,R,G all to one single mana count then rest as W single mana to make 60. I then decreased the W and increased land count to see what would happen...
Here is what I found: (Total land(range), #W,#U,#B,#R,#G land counts)
1-10, all W
11-17, 1B, rest W
18-22, 1U, 1B, rest W
23-26, 1U, 1B, 1R, rest W
27-32, 1U. 1B, 1R, 1G, rest W
33-34, 1U, 2B, 1R, 1G, rest W
35-36, 2U, 2B, 1R, 1G, rest W
37-38, 2U, 2B, 2R, 1G, rest W
39-41, 2U, 2B, 2R, 2G, rest W
When you start with the other colors, you find the single lands are added in the order of B,U,W,R,G. All the singleton colors should show up at the same time.
That said, I have it added as a button in IE8.
Any suggestions of how to take into account alternate costs like upkeep, morph, echo, transmute, activation costs, etc.??
In reference to Pox I was more concerned about Duress, Thoughtsieze and Duress that the deck packs rather than the pox effects per say. A well built pox deck running Null Rod from the board and abundant Main deck discard is problematic for ANT at least in my testing of an old build of ANT (running infernal tutor and orims chant maindeck).
I guess this is as good of a time as any to suggest a somewhat on topic suggestion!
I'm currently running a Classic Based clan, which is a chapter of the PureMTGO clans. I sort of stalled out after first starting it up but I think that now, more than ever, the players who want to play good Classic Casual decks need to band together.
If anyone is interested in a Clan that has a Classic focus and won't concede/block/complain(too much) about the strength of the opposing decks, please hit me up in game.
PureMTGO Clans have access to a Ventrillo Voice Chat Server, if anyone's interested in that and they get some extra discounts at the 'traders site as well.
I've seen and experienced horror stories about the very poor sportsmanship in the casual room. And I'm fed up with it. Let's all get together and shun the nonbelievers Charlie. SHUNNNNUNNNN
I actually fine-tuned an Esper Aggro deck for a friend because he liked the deck, didn't have much money, but wanted it to do better. It was for T2 but mostly was block cards:
1 Sharuum the Hegemon
1 Sphinx Summoner
4 Sanctum Gargoyle
4 Esperzoa
4 Master of Etherium
4 Glaze Fiend
4 Puppet Conjurer
1 Vedalken Outlander
3 Courier's Capsule
3 Agony Warp
4 Executioner's Capsule
3 Plains
4 Swamp
6 Island
4 Arcane Sanctum
4 Sunken Ruins
2 Mystic Gate
This was actually the best I could come up for in Standard while staying true to the theme of a quick, low-curve attack. I started w/ Court Homunculus, but it sucked (and was rarely played t1), while my singleton Puppet Conjurer was an amazing staller, instantly boosted MoE and Glaze Fiend and gave a bounce target for Esperzoa. Outlander was me wanting another 2 drop, but Canonist is mostly useless, while Outlander blocks red things forever. The single Summoner and Sharuum are just there to give you the occasional out when youre not messing around bouncing things in & out of play or out of your graveyard and into play.
It's not great, and if you don't have a really fast start you fold to 5CC. And you almost always fold to Faeries. However you do decently against more aggressive decks because your aggressive hands are stupid and you tend to have more spells b/c of the lower land base. Not T1 or 2 at all in standard, but im curious to try it in block now. The only thing I could see being a problem is the mana base, which sucks a lot when you don't have the filter lands.
again, pretty nice overview of diffent classic decks !
If pox is on the decline, it is maybe only because it was heavy ran and attractive new cards from Alara pushed players to try them (hierarch, progenitus ...). I see no real reason to not play it again, this deck seems still consistent in our meta. Maybe also Chicago GP's results incited players to try others build.
It is also funny to follow the evolution of merfolks. It is a traditional tribal deck that that was played since beginning of mtg (with phantasmal terrain & stuff). Recently, it was (and it is) very very often played. I wrote a thread about it 2 mounths ago (http://www.classicquarter.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1726) about this hype. Today, your article is giving us a good analyzis about it, and confirmed what i expected about it.
Waiting for the next article, take care hammer ;)
i cant wait for next article of this new series. I like old deck too much, maybe because i knew mtg with the unlim set ... nostalgy ? yes a bit ! I like old decks too much.
Cadaverous is i great card, with a lot of different possible uses as you well mentioned.
I often played it with City of Solitude to play a looooong turn :)
And of course if you're the greedy player who puts 4x Gaea's Cradle in a mono-green creature-based deck, you're gonna get everything you deserve. You can't write a program to solve everything. :)
Now if only there was some way to implement Jay's chart which relates mana curve, land count, and deck strategy. You program fails if some noob orders 20 land. But then again, who said this was for idiots? Even if you're playing 17 non-basics your land choices will get down to "2-4 Swamps, 2-4 Islands, pick 3" and this tool will tell you how to slot your last 3 lands perfectly.*
*Unless you're fearing the Lord of Atlantis beatdown. Then the correct answer is 3 Swamps...
I believe the MTGO suggest land feature simply counts your mana symbols, calculates the ratio, and then adds lands up to 40. So if you build a 30 card deck it'll add only 10 lands. And of course, it only checks the printed casting cost. It ignores activations and such.
Just imagine Jay saying "Ghitu Encampment? I'm gonna tick it up one. Mistmeadow Witch? Tick each one once, then go back and add another one."
I love this idea for an article! Though you started to lose me when you simultaneously decided to Casual It Up(tm) and budgetize the first deck. I dislike Hulk-Flash, but not as nearly as much as I like weak decks like "Dark Depths + Aether Snap + Lightning Greaves". In my experience that kind of 3 card combo looks like fun in the deck editor, and it's fun to write about, but it's crap to shuffle up and actually use. But to be fair, I haven't played any of your Bloom decks. So I shouldn't say that.
The updated Blood Rites though looks very interesting! I'm missing the Dark Rituals and Soul Spikes, but I'd buy those and play that. To add to the idea, Soul's Fire is tragically red, and 3 mana, but it is an instant. That let's you win during your opponent's turn. I love chances to do that. The red strategy might use Ankh of Mishra, Manabarbs, or something like that to take the lead. Since all you really need is the lead anyway.
Which one are you the guy or the dog?
Go inside the cave Charlie! Magical wonders are to behold when you enter!
"Put a banana in my ear? But I'd rather it stay clear!"
LOVE IT!
It will certainly be a series. Probably not weekly due to other commitments and not wanting to run through too many ideas too quickly. :) I just see all these cool, crazy combos when sets are getting spoiled and then they disappear and that's really unfortunate I think.
Glad you liked it!
Oh, BTW, my six year old nephew has been recently singing "Put a banana in your ear..." Charlie is the Banana King!
If you wanna make the Wall of Blood combo a little less comboish, how about throwing in some Rebel action! Children of Korlis makes it easy to pull off the combo without actually being ahead on life and the rebel package can be versatile enough to win you games even if you don't draw any of the combo. Aven Riftwatcher can be a great roadblock/life gain and the Rebel mechanic is a slow, but effective way to thin your deck while waiting for your combo pieces.
I'm a pauper player, so I am not really familiar with much outside of that format, but I used to have a paper version of Rebels with Bound in Silence and some other stuff. It may not be very competitive (haven't really tried it yet), but it lets you play an interactive game. Aggro/Control/Combo FTW!
great article...I do like these after the month reports...I do feel that rdw has declined...and painter has fallen off....I think classic is growing by leaps and bounds.
Good stuff. I really like the idea behind this (I hope) series. More ideas about fun casual stuff are always interesting. Looking forward to future installments.
It may just be that the sample is size is too small. I am not sure of a reason why Pox should drop off the radar at this time.
The issue you're seeing there is that the "desired" number of lands is in fractions, when (of course) you can only deal out lands in whole numbers. So, for example, a deck may want 4.56 Swamps and 19.12 Islands. When we get in this situation, I add 4 Swamps and 19 Islands into the deck, and then do my best to deal out the "leftover lands" in the proper colors based on the fraction remaining.
The situation you forced, is where there's a leftover land and each color (other than white) wants it equally. In this situation I do give them out in the color order that you figured out (nice job, btw). So let's say that your deck wants 4.9 Mountains, 4.9 Swamps, and 10 Islands. After giving out 10 Islands, 4 Mountains, and 4 Swamps, there's one land left over. Mountain and Swamp want it equally as bad, so I have to make a choice which one to give it to. This is what you are seeing.
I wonder if it's better to provide information about these "leftover" lands, and say something like: this deck wants four Swamps and nineteen Islands. This doesn't divide evenly, so there's one land left over.
YAY! Another Charlie fan. Funny stuff, that Charlie.
Not a bad idea... I may have to tweak the deck a bit more to get them in. It's a fun deck to just surprisingly win from out of nowhere.
A card I thought of after the article went to print is "Ragged Veins", which is a crazy surprise for any creature that attacks into a wall of blood...
it's a magical place charliiiiiieeeeeeee.
Thanks for programming this aplication. It looks real slick.
I took the testing of it a bit further than above poster. I set land to 1, and U,B,R,G all to one single mana count then rest as W single mana to make 60. I then decreased the W and increased land count to see what would happen...
Here is what I found: (Total land(range), #W,#U,#B,#R,#G land counts)
1-10, all W
11-17, 1B, rest W
18-22, 1U, 1B, rest W
23-26, 1U, 1B, 1R, rest W
27-32, 1U. 1B, 1R, 1G, rest W
33-34, 1U, 2B, 1R, 1G, rest W
35-36, 2U, 2B, 1R, 1G, rest W
37-38, 2U, 2B, 2R, 1G, rest W
39-41, 2U, 2B, 2R, 2G, rest W
When you start with the other colors, you find the single lands are added in the order of B,U,W,R,G. All the singleton colors should show up at the same time.
That said, I have it added as a button in IE8.
Any suggestions of how to take into account alternate costs like upkeep, morph, echo, transmute, activation costs, etc.??
Why is Pox on the decline?
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
In reference to Pox I was more concerned about Duress, Thoughtsieze and Duress that the deck packs rather than the pox effects per say. A well built pox deck running Null Rod from the board and abundant Main deck discard is problematic for ANT at least in my testing of an old build of ANT (running infernal tutor and orims chant maindeck).
4 Spinning Darkness
The non-black part probably a small problem, but the free 3 life might be worth a look
Some sadly true points there, Danger. :(
I guess this is as good of a time as any to suggest a somewhat on topic suggestion!
I'm currently running a Classic Based clan, which is a chapter of the PureMTGO clans. I sort of stalled out after first starting it up but I think that now, more than ever, the players who want to play good Classic Casual decks need to band together.
If anyone is interested in a Clan that has a Classic focus and won't concede/block/complain(too much) about the strength of the opposing decks, please hit me up in game.
PureMTGO Clans have access to a Ventrillo Voice Chat Server, if anyone's interested in that and they get some extra discounts at the 'traders site as well.
I've seen and experienced horror stories about the very poor sportsmanship in the casual room. And I'm fed up with it. Let's all get together and shun the nonbelievers Charlie. SHUNNNNUNNNN