:/ Ive been playing a pretty simililary deck to 4c Doran for some time now (Doran, Gaddock Teeg, Rhox War Monk, Tidehollow Sculler, Wilt-Leaf Liege are in both) so all the "Nice deck" Ive gotten with it might be at an end :/
Great Article, its always nice to be able to know the winning lists.The interview got a little short and I would like to see more videos.But besides that great job
i agree with Whiffy about propelsis9's deck : it is more like a Landstill archetype green splashed tutored by Intuition to me. An "intuition control" name seem to fit it very well also.
Great article i enjoyed all parts of it. I realize that classic is not your fortey and appreciate that you are trying and give other articles to help the reader get in there, but i gott be a nit picker. Numbers wise you are spot on but when it comes to a pe necro is vastly underplayed. there are on avereage either 0 or 2 pilots in anygiven pe. The "threshold" list is not actually thrsehold at all. this is a straight control deck that happens to have a thresh critter in it. more acuartly this is a intuition control deck. lastly the most popular stratgies in classic appear to be rdw and zoo varients in the most played section, followed by some of the decks you posted. I understand that its hard going off of just top 8 data but the pe's to not actuaratly show the meta, i,e, necro being the most played and what not. Thx for the fantastic article as even with a bit of a loose trail you still followed a format you dont call home and i was mightly enjoyed reading the article.
ps, i spit out my coffe when i saw the last deck in the classic top 8's. Team america as it is more commonly known instead of the joke name i put in to the article as an inside joke to a buddy of mine. lol i cant believe that name stuck as others have called the deck the same thing.
If the focus of the article is mostly on the picks, then you should spend more time explaining them. For instance, the pick that is getting the most criticism is the p1p2, where you say:
3 Nice cards here: Courier's Capsule,Bone Splinters and Blood Cultist. I like the Cultist over the Splinter here.
You don't really explain your rational here. Most people posting think that the default most powerful card here is Bone Splinters. Do you think Blood Cultist is actually just a more powerful card, or are there other reasons behind this pick?
i really enjoyed this article : useful for all, looks good ...
All the decks presented here are powerful.
About classic which is the format i know better, i ran couple tournament couple of time, i had to deal with each of these decks and i just want to congrat all players mentioned who are all strong competitors : a powerful deck is nothing when it is not well piloted... A special mention for the Sliver Flash deck : Javasci build is maybe the most original deck i saw recently.
We need to have more article as this one. Take care & go on !
If you thought turn one is impressive, you shoulda seen before they nerfed the deck. Turn 0 win was a regular occurance esp with no fow to keep it at bay.
"Sliver Flash snagged a win in one of the events also. With a turn 1 possible kill its relies on Flashing a Protean Hulk into play and attacking with 5 slivers, 4x Virulent Sliver and a Heart Sliver that gave them haste." LOL, only possible in classic. This makes me wonder the amazing possibility of magic cards that come together =)
As for the article, again, very clean, very sleek, good information and a nice way to get geared for the comming ptq's
Just have one question, how has writing improved your game? or, in other way, has writing these articles made you improve your game? I saw you rapidly rise from a 1600 to almost 1800 in a matter of few months :P
"Sliver Flash snagged a win in one of the events also. With a turn 1 possible kill its relies on Flashing a Protean Hulk into play and attacking with 5 slivers, 4x Virulent Sliver and a Heart Sliver that gave them haste." LOL, only possible in classic. This makes me wonder the amazing possibility of magic cards that come together =)
As for the article, again, very clean, very sleek, good information and a nice way to get geared for the comming ptq's
Just have one question, how has writing improved your game? or, in other way, has writing these articles made you improve your game? I saw you rapidly rise from a 1600 to almost 1800 in a matter of few months :P
I think the acceptable-ness (is that a word?) of things like combos depend entirely on the players in the game. If everyone in the game has a strong deck and high level of playskill, then combos are fine. Both you and your opponents will know what possibilities are out there and have the tools/tutors to disrupt them.
It's when you play with the guy who has a shards block deck and thinks (lush growth) is a good card that it becomes bad form. He won't know to counter (gifts ungiven) and probably doesn't even know that (sundering titan) exists. Letting a game develop for 20 minutes and then saying "whoops sorry, it's over" out of the blue is very frustrating for a newer player trying to learn the format. You don't have to let him win of course, but if you win through normal board superiority methods, at least he'll be able to see how stronger cards/mechanics affect the game state and learn from it.
I have no problem with combos played against me, and run some combos in a few of my decks. But I only try to assemble them when I feel my opponents are at a certain skill level, or if it's my only escape from death.
----
The best decks are not 5 color, because those decks are inherently slower due to manabase issues and because the generals are less exploitable.
The 3 most powerful deck archetypes are braids, zur, and erayo, which can all effectively lock up a game by turn 4-5, while a 5c deck would still be trying to fix its mana.
I have a scion of the ur-dragon deck that's pretty strong, but I'd rank it below my sharuum, intet, and rafiq in sheer power (and of course, all of those are trumped by the above 3).
----
Also, I want to comment on one of the cards you praised. While (ethersworn adjudicator) will certainly see play, I don't think it's very good.
It's an oft-repeated mantra that since multiplayer games are slower, repeated effects are better than one-time effects, but my actual experience (and I've played a ton of EDH) contradicts that in many cases, especially when it comes to offensive effects. If you cast an adjudicator for example, every opponent is going to be thinking "crap, what if he targets my stuff? I have to kill that thing while it still has summoning sickness." Any one particular opponent may not have a removal spell, but when there are 3 hands full of cards, odds are good that someone will. Plus, it's the nature of multiplayer EDH for the board to be wiped every so often, and playing slow repeatable effects means you get hurt badly by these.
By comparison, (angel of despair) doesn't have to wait a turn to kill something, and this effect isn't stopped by removal. Often, since the damage is already done, the removal that would have been used on a delayed threat will instead get saved or used against an opponent. Even in long drawn out games, I've found cards like angel of despair and duplicant to be better than visara, avatar of woe, etc. The adjudicator is no different (well, except that he costs mana to use).
There are obviously exceptions of course, but one-shot effects tend to be efficient and immediate, while repeatable effects are delayed and costly. I've found in case after case, that the mantra is often wrong - fast/cheap cards beat slow/clunky. (Momentary blink) is better than (mistmeadow witch). (Tidings) is better than (scepter of insight).
I think this misconception perpetuates because entirely too many players rely on their draw phase as their sole source of card drawing. If you do that, you'll inevitably run out of gas, at which point repeatable effects start looking pretty good. But from experience, I can say it's much more effective to devote a chunk of your deck to making sure you don't run out of gas and make that gas efficient and effective than it is to just use slow-burning fuel.
----
You're totally right about magister sphinx though. I've entombed it, then blinked sharuum to animate it at EOT, and untapped and swung for (lethal) 10 in the air. Even in a deck that can't abuse it like that, it's one of the better finishers in the format, presenting a 2-turn clock regardless of an opponent's life total.
As you can See I post the ones that have what I feel to be hard / interesting picks. The game recaps are obviously horrible but if you red my first draft article you can see I usually post the videos but mtgo replays where not working at the moment.For my next ones I've already posted the videos.
Despite the formatting, this was a good article as always. Keep up the good work with these, you're really helping the format gain some much needed attention!
The main reason domain was good in block in the past was that the creatures couldnt kill you by turn 4-5. This format is significantly faster than that.
Another reason is that the domain deck in the past had access to Harrow. AAC has sphere, which essentially costs 4; that green card that costs 4 to get mtn, plains, island, swamp and is a sorcery; and sac lands that grab lands that dont come into play untapped. The tri-lands, which are the sets best mana-fixers, dont count towards domain.
Finally, why would you play cards that COULD get huge if you have the right amount of domain in play versus cards that already are huge on their own at about the same casting cost? Its just the wrong format for them.
I echo many of the other comments on this article. Many of the picks seem like the range from unusual to quite poor. I admit I did not pay as much attention to the rest of the article after seeing the 2nd pick of the draft, I was so disheartened by how poor the pick was.
Also, the game recaps are pretty much pointless. Draftbetter, for instance, has pretty good game by game recaps in his articles, although he is far from an expert drafter. It is my opinion that your game recaps should be either much more indepth, or the entire article should be more about the picks, with more information regarding each pick, and then maybe provide a paragraph at the end about how the matches went. As these articles are currently formatted, they seem like thinly veiled brags.
Do you cherrypick drafts that you felt went well, and that you won, or are you posting all of your drafts, or the ones you feel were most interesting?
I am playing combos in some of my EDH decks. If none plays anything I would think was to unfair I won't use them, but if someone plays black Braids (this might get removed from my list since I havn't been that impressed with its strength when Ive met her), Zur, Jhoria or Arcum (not to impressed with the decks Ive seen with him either) or some combos (strong combos - not mere synergy) I will...
I dislike mass land destruction (I will not quit to it, but you will need some more time to get into my top 10).
Btw. I think you should mention Martial Coup. It is quite strong in the format. Drop ~10 1/1s just after a wrath is decent.
I would disagree that any color combination including green and black is bad.
Green got stuff like Witness, primal command, Deadwood treefolk, the I-combo-with-nearly-everything Seedborn Muse and the best anti graveyard card, Night soil (99% of the time the problem is creatures) AND it is the only color containing mana accel to any measureable degree - white got some quite powerfull cards in this category but they are quite limited in numbers.
Black got some of the best tutors, Puppeter clique (If you do not belive that that card is that good try it once) and some amount of wraths (I do not think you need much more then black got in a deck). It also got 3 low cost enchantment based reanimation spells which can get creatures from any gy. When it got stuff like repeated tutor - Demonic Collusion. Hint: if in green find life from the loom - and certain skulls.
Btw. the simplest answer to 5 color is killing them before they can get their game started.
Well you have to than Brian Robinson for that=P
:/ Ive been playing a pretty simililary deck to 4c Doran for some time now (Doran, Gaddock Teeg, Rhox War Monk, Tidehollow Sculler, Wilt-Leaf Liege are in both) so all the "Nice deck" Ive gotten with it might be at an end :/
Good to see some Classic analysis as well. Being a full time classic player myself, it is good to see some focus on this fun format too!
Keep these fantastic articles coming!
I too prefer the Cultist. It has a more long term impact on the table and its less situational than the cultist.
Great Article, its always nice to be able to know the winning lists.The interview got a little short and I would like to see more videos.But besides that great job
i agree with Whiffy about propelsis9's deck : it is more like a Landstill archetype green splashed tutored by Intuition to me. An "intuition control" name seem to fit it very well also.
Great article i enjoyed all parts of it. I realize that classic is not your fortey and appreciate that you are trying and give other articles to help the reader get in there, but i gott be a nit picker. Numbers wise you are spot on but when it comes to a pe necro is vastly underplayed. there are on avereage either 0 or 2 pilots in anygiven pe. The "threshold" list is not actually thrsehold at all. this is a straight control deck that happens to have a thresh critter in it. more acuartly this is a intuition control deck. lastly the most popular stratgies in classic appear to be rdw and zoo varients in the most played section, followed by some of the decks you posted. I understand that its hard going off of just top 8 data but the pe's to not actuaratly show the meta, i,e, necro being the most played and what not. Thx for the fantastic article as even with a bit of a loose trail you still followed a format you dont call home and i was mightly enjoyed reading the article.
ps, i spit out my coffe when i saw the last deck in the classic top 8's. Team america as it is more commonly known instead of the joke name i put in to the article as an inside joke to a buddy of mine. lol i cant believe that name stuck as others have called the deck the same thing.
If the focus of the article is mostly on the picks, then you should spend more time explaining them. For instance, the pick that is getting the most criticism is the p1p2, where you say:
3 Nice cards here: Courier's Capsule,Bone Splinters and Blood Cultist. I like the Cultist over the Splinter here.
You don't really explain your rational here. Most people posting think that the default most powerful card here is Bone Splinters. Do you think Blood Cultist is actually just a more powerful card, or are there other reasons behind this pick?
jvs
i really enjoyed this article : useful for all, looks good ...
All the decks presented here are powerful.
About classic which is the format i know better, i ran couple tournament couple of time, i had to deal with each of these decks and i just want to congrat all players mentioned who are all strong competitors : a powerful deck is nothing when it is not well piloted... A special mention for the Sliver Flash deck : Javasci build is maybe the most original deck i saw recently.
We need to have more article as this one. Take care & go on !
If you thought turn one is impressive, you shoulda seen before they nerfed the deck. Turn 0 win was a regular occurance esp with no fow to keep it at bay.
Sorry for the triple post but in my pc it said the page was not available so I refreshed it a couple of times and it answered in triplicate ;S
"Sliver Flash snagged a win in one of the events also. With a turn 1 possible kill its relies on Flashing a Protean Hulk into play and attacking with 5 slivers, 4x Virulent Sliver and a Heart Sliver that gave them haste." LOL, only possible in classic. This makes me wonder the amazing possibility of magic cards that come together =)
As for the article, again, very clean, very sleek, good information and a nice way to get geared for the comming ptq's
Just have one question, how has writing improved your game? or, in other way, has writing these articles made you improve your game? I saw you rapidly rise from a 1600 to almost 1800 in a matter of few months :P
Keep them comming, It's always great to read you
"Sliver Flash snagged a win in one of the events also. With a turn 1 possible kill its relies on Flashing a Protean Hulk into play and attacking with 5 slivers, 4x Virulent Sliver and a Heart Sliver that gave them haste." LOL, only possible in classic. This makes me wonder the amazing possibility of magic cards that come together =)
As for the article, again, very clean, very sleek, good information and a nice way to get geared for the comming ptq's
Just have one question, how has writing improved your game? or, in other way, has writing these articles made you improve your game? I saw you rapidly rise from a 1600 to almost 1800 in a matter of few months :P
Keep them comming, It's always great to read you
Forgo to add the final:
See you soon,
Andrea Fonseca, Dust_ @MTGO
Everyone else hates the Blue Mage....LOL
hmm, is there a way to autocard in these replies?
I think the acceptable-ness (is that a word?) of things like combos depend entirely on the players in the game. If everyone in the game has a strong deck and high level of playskill, then combos are fine. Both you and your opponents will know what possibilities are out there and have the tools/tutors to disrupt them.
It's when you play with the guy who has a shards block deck and thinks (lush growth) is a good card that it becomes bad form. He won't know to counter (gifts ungiven) and probably doesn't even know that (sundering titan) exists. Letting a game develop for 20 minutes and then saying "whoops sorry, it's over" out of the blue is very frustrating for a newer player trying to learn the format. You don't have to let him win of course, but if you win through normal board superiority methods, at least he'll be able to see how stronger cards/mechanics affect the game state and learn from it.
I have no problem with combos played against me, and run some combos in a few of my decks. But I only try to assemble them when I feel my opponents are at a certain skill level, or if it's my only escape from death.
----
The best decks are not 5 color, because those decks are inherently slower due to manabase issues and because the generals are less exploitable.
The 3 most powerful deck archetypes are braids, zur, and erayo, which can all effectively lock up a game by turn 4-5, while a 5c deck would still be trying to fix its mana.
I have a scion of the ur-dragon deck that's pretty strong, but I'd rank it below my sharuum, intet, and rafiq in sheer power (and of course, all of those are trumped by the above 3).
----
Also, I want to comment on one of the cards you praised. While (ethersworn adjudicator) will certainly see play, I don't think it's very good.
It's an oft-repeated mantra that since multiplayer games are slower, repeated effects are better than one-time effects, but my actual experience (and I've played a ton of EDH) contradicts that in many cases, especially when it comes to offensive effects. If you cast an adjudicator for example, every opponent is going to be thinking "crap, what if he targets my stuff? I have to kill that thing while it still has summoning sickness." Any one particular opponent may not have a removal spell, but when there are 3 hands full of cards, odds are good that someone will. Plus, it's the nature of multiplayer EDH for the board to be wiped every so often, and playing slow repeatable effects means you get hurt badly by these.
By comparison, (angel of despair) doesn't have to wait a turn to kill something, and this effect isn't stopped by removal. Often, since the damage is already done, the removal that would have been used on a delayed threat will instead get saved or used against an opponent. Even in long drawn out games, I've found cards like angel of despair and duplicant to be better than visara, avatar of woe, etc. The adjudicator is no different (well, except that he costs mana to use).
There are obviously exceptions of course, but one-shot effects tend to be efficient and immediate, while repeatable effects are delayed and costly. I've found in case after case, that the mantra is often wrong - fast/cheap cards beat slow/clunky. (Momentary blink) is better than (mistmeadow witch). (Tidings) is better than (scepter of insight).
I think this misconception perpetuates because entirely too many players rely on their draw phase as their sole source of card drawing. If you do that, you'll inevitably run out of gas, at which point repeatable effects start looking pretty good. But from experience, I can say it's much more effective to devote a chunk of your deck to making sure you don't run out of gas and make that gas efficient and effective than it is to just use slow-burning fuel.
----
You're totally right about magister sphinx though. I've entombed it, then blinked sharuum to animate it at EOT, and untapped and swung for (lethal) 10 in the air. Even in a deck that can't abuse it like that, it's one of the better finishers in the format, presenting a 2-turn clock regardless of an opponent's life total.
As you can See I post the ones that have what I feel to be hard / interesting picks. The game recaps are obviously horrible but if you red my first draft article you can see I usually post the videos but mtgo replays where not working at the moment.For my next ones I've already posted the videos.
Despite the formatting, this was a good article as always. Keep up the good work with these, you're really helping the format gain some much needed attention!
The main reason domain was good in block in the past was that the creatures couldnt kill you by turn 4-5. This format is significantly faster than that.
Another reason is that the domain deck in the past had access to Harrow. AAC has sphere, which essentially costs 4; that green card that costs 4 to get mtn, plains, island, swamp and is a sorcery; and sac lands that grab lands that dont come into play untapped. The tri-lands, which are the sets best mana-fixers, dont count towards domain.
Finally, why would you play cards that COULD get huge if you have the right amount of domain in play versus cards that already are huge on their own at about the same casting cost? Its just the wrong format for them.
-M
I echo many of the other comments on this article. Many of the picks seem like the range from unusual to quite poor. I admit I did not pay as much attention to the rest of the article after seeing the 2nd pick of the draft, I was so disheartened by how poor the pick was.
Also, the game recaps are pretty much pointless. Draftbetter, for instance, has pretty good game by game recaps in his articles, although he is far from an expert drafter. It is my opinion that your game recaps should be either much more indepth, or the entire article should be more about the picks, with more information regarding each pick, and then maybe provide a paragraph at the end about how the matches went. As these articles are currently formatted, they seem like thinly veiled brags.
Do you cherrypick drafts that you felt went well, and that you won, or are you posting all of your drafts, or the ones you feel were most interesting?
jvs
name submissions were due march 9th
Username: Jens521
Deck Name: Garden of Feedin'
Tremors
I am playing combos in some of my EDH decks. If none plays anything I would think was to unfair I won't use them, but if someone plays black Braids (this might get removed from my list since I havn't been that impressed with its strength when Ive met her), Zur, Jhoria or Arcum (not to impressed with the decks Ive seen with him either) or some combos (strong combos - not mere synergy) I will...
I dislike mass land destruction (I will not quit to it, but you will need some more time to get into my top 10).
Btw. I think you should mention Martial Coup. It is quite strong in the format. Drop ~10 1/1s just after a wrath is decent.
I would disagree that any color combination including green and black is bad.
Green got stuff like Witness, primal command, Deadwood treefolk, the I-combo-with-nearly-everything Seedborn Muse and the best anti graveyard card, Night soil (99% of the time the problem is creatures) AND it is the only color containing mana accel to any measureable degree - white got some quite powerfull cards in this category but they are quite limited in numbers.
Black got some of the best tutors, Puppeter clique (If you do not belive that that card is that good try it once) and some amount of wraths (I do not think you need much more then black got in a deck). It also got 3 low cost enchantment based reanimation spells which can get creatures from any gy. When it got stuff like repeated tutor - Demonic Collusion. Hint: if in green find life from the loom - and certain skulls.
Btw. the simplest answer to 5 color is killing them before they can get their game started.