So...why dont you like the Windwright Mage's? They swing the mid game to your favor so often...They are superior to the Steelclad Serpent, Yoked Plowbeast, and Coma Veil. Have you never played them? Its like saying the Screechers are bad cause they are only 2-power flyers for 3. But these flyers gain life and can be returned with Sanctum Gargoyle. Clearly that makes them good, doesnt it?
Also you took Yoked Plowbeast over Call to Heel when you have 2x Sanctum Gargoyle and Sharuum. That is clearly the wrong pick. Drawing a card, returning another artifact, and potentially killing one of his guys or countering a removal spell...Also clearly good in this deck.
You dont take Deft Duelist cause this "isnt the type of deck for it". Deft Duelist is a card that gets you through the early game weenie rush of the RGx type decks, which you otherwise lose to. Hes not an aggro card in this shard, like when you run him in Bant, but he still serves a clear role in Esper: Hold off the early ground weenie rush of RGx decks so that you can win in the air.
The Excommunicates are also good in Esper if you have an aggressive version. If you had picked a version with Kiss of Ameneshia and Couriers Capsule then dont run the Excommunicate. However, if youve got the Kalrathi Screecher, Cloudhearth Drake type Esper (which you did) then they become quite good.
Finally, you passed on hate drafting the 2x Jungle Weaver in the last four picks, taking instead Steelclad Serpents. Guess you had to to fill out the deck with them...?
I'd have to agree that you could have ended up with a much better deck overall.
I don't want to steal Whiffy's Thunder, but wish to add, by way of appendix, my tournament play by play for those interested in picking up the deck.
Round 1 – karash82, playing Slivers
Game 1 – I play first and draw: 2 LED, 2 Helm, 2 Swamps, 1 DC. I mull, but it is probably keepable if you care to Consult for Mana Crypt and not deck yourself. My new hand is: 1 Shrine, 1 Petal, 1 LED, 1 Infernal Tutor, 1 Helm. Perfect, both combo pieces, mana, and acceleration. Actually, since I can only generate three extra mana, I drop the Helm to tutor for turn 1 Necro, draw eight cards and start from there. I went all-in risking a loss to turn 1 Force of Will. Result: turn 2 combo, unimpeded.
Game 2 – I keep 2 Swamps, 1 Shrine, 1 LED, 1 DC, 1 Infernal Tutor, 1 LED. It has no pieces, but plenty of mana and tutors, and the matchup doesn’t really scare me. I draw a Necro and Consult at EOT for Dark Ritual. I draw a Leyline and simply dump it in play via Ritual. Third turn, after not much pressure and no disruption, I draw a Swamp, play Infernal Tutor, sac both LEDs in response, get Helm and combo him out.
Round 2 – Wizard not of the Coast, playing Necro
Game 1 – I play second and draw: Fetch, Swamp, Leyline, 2 Helm, Petal, and Ritual. I keep, and she Brainstorms and Duresses me (Ritual). I draw Dark Ritual, which means I can go off with my acceleration and Helms. However, I know she plays Daze maindeck and I only had 4 mana this turn so I decided to pass. This is risky since she could draw into Force of Will or Necro into Force of Will. Turn 2 indeed she Forces, pitching another. She Consults for Necro on her third turn and ends up drawing her deck after a couple of turns with me on three life and concedes, despite the fact I have no outs in my remaining 21 cards to beat her (eventually I will deck myself).
Game 2 – I play second and draw: Swamp, Lake, Petal, Cabal Ritual, Needle, Helm, and Serum Powder. I could mull with Powder, but turn 1 Needle is too tempting. I draw Leyline, and I play Swamp, Petal (Daze protection), and she DC’s for a FOW to stop my Needle. Dern. Turn 2 She Rituals into Necro, and even discard Needle which spells trouble. I have no action on my turn, and she has a turn 3 kill.
Game 3 – I draw: 1 Fetch, 1 Petal, 2 Dark Ritual, 1 Cabal Ritual, 1 LED, 1 Tombstalker and mull. This was dumb since turn 1 Tombstalker is likely very good, assuming it survives FoW. Even so, I now draw: 2 Shrine, 2 Stalker, 1 DC, and Serum Powder. I mull via Powder for 1 Swamp, 2 DC, 1 LED, 1 Thoughtseize, and 1 Powder. This is keepable since I can disrupt via Thoughtseize and possibly a Needle via Consultation. However, I thought I could do better and mulled, mistakenly not with Powder, and drew 5: Leyline, Swamp, Duress, Petal, Infernal. Pretty good. First turn Duress sees FoW, Ponder, Dark Ritual, Zombie Infestation, Soul Spike, and lands. I take Ponder, denying her a turn one play, FoW fodder, and any active play. I draw LED and play Infernal Tutor for Necro, popping the Diamond with three mana available, but apparently I had sideboarded it out (curses!), so I settle for Pithing Needle on Necro. With zero gas in the tank I quickly lose to Zombie Infestation. Bad play on my part!!!
Round 3 – Whiffy Penguin, playing HelmLine
Mirror, lucky to win.
Round 4 – mK1, playing Elves
Game 1 – I play first and draw: 1 Shrine, 1 Swamp, 2 Dark Rituals, 2 DC, and 1 Infernal Tutor. No combo pieces, but plenty of mana, acceleration, and tutors. On the draw vs. Elves, I would have been more likely to try my luck on a mull. At EOT, I Consult for Leyline. I draw a Cabal Ritual, and play the Leyline with Shrine and a Dark Ritual. At least this stops any Eternal Witness shenanigans. On turn 3, I draw a useless Tombstalker. His board is 1 Forest and three elves with a likely combo next turn. With 2 Swamps and Leyline in play and DC, Infernal, Dark Ritual, and Cabal Ritual in hand, can you spot the win? It took me about 5 minutes, since I don’t have enough mana to tutor for and activate Helm. My solution was to Consult for LED, play it, play Dark and Cabal, and then Infernal Tutor (popping LED along the way) for the magical threshold of 5 mana, which equals activating a Helm that turn.
Game 2 – I foolishly keep Helm, Leyline, Consultation, Serum Powder, Tombstalker, Explosives, Infernal. Drawing one Swamp wins almost instantly, but I never manage that feat in four turns as I get beatdown quickly.
Game 3 – I draw 1 Fetch, 1 Petal, 1 Ritual, 2 LED, and 1 Infernal Tutor. I keep, put the Leyline in play, play all accelerants, crack LEDs while Infernal is on the stack, to fetch Helm for the turn 1 win.
Round 5 – petkos, playing Toolbox Zoo
Game 1 – Replay lost. I won the die roll. I remember having a good hand with a probable turn 2-3 kill, and keep. I Duressed him on the 2nd turn seeing Goyf, Helix, Bolt, and Enlightened Tutor. He didn’t have any white mana sources at this point, but I was taking no chances that Tutor represented Pithing Needle so I buried it. My clock looked like 4 turns, but I got some other good draws and beat him with at least one turn 2 spare, maybe 2.
Game 2 – On the draw, I get: 1 Consultation, 1 CoP: Red, 1 Duress, 1 Crypt, 1 Petal, 1 Vindicate, and 1 Powder. There is some decent hate here, but no stable mana, no acceleration, and pieces. I use Powder to mull into: 1 Fetch, 1 Shrine, 1 LED, 1 DC, 1 Ritual, 1 Tombstalker, 1 Leyline. He plays a Savannah and passes, representing a turn 1 Enlightened Tutor. On my first turn, with Leyline in play, I draw another fetchland and go for: LED, Ritual, Consult, popping LED for 5 mana, allowing me to activate Helm on the turn for another first turn kill.
Quarterfinals – GimliColby, playing StifleNought
Game 1 – I play first and draw: 2 Tombstalker, 1 Swamp, 1 Petal, 1 Seal, 1 Leyline, 1 Serum Powder. I kept it, which is just unexcusably bad. Three unusable spells in the hand, and Seal can’t get anything relevant. It wouldn’t have mattered as a Duress in a couple of turns revealed he had a double FoW draw with plenty of protection. I lose to Mishra beats very easily.
Game 2 – On the play, I keep Shrine, 2x Petal, Dark Ritual, Vamp Tutor, Defense Grid, Powder. Turn 1 Defense Grid seems too sexy to pass up, but I never really draw into anything juicy afterwards. I even tutor for and play a second Defense grid with no obvious win in sight (he only needs to get to three mana to turn on his FoW again), but he Wastelands my shrine, and has a turn 4 Dreadnought to disillusion me. 0-2 vs. a tough matchup, at least given the current configuration.
It's a report that reads like a story - sign of good writing. You have a great message to share, some key tangental insights, have a logical flow, and keep it light. Nice job!
Hey thanks for your comments. I completely agree that I made some ridiculous errors in this draft, errors I intend to fix as I work on my drafting. Your comments are definitely appreciated.
That said, I still feel the domain cards have a scalable power level that makes them some of the best cards in conflux.
That could of easily happended in std, ext, pauper, name your flavor. He had nine points from their tiebreakers choose who went, I am sure that has never happended in std (sarcasm incase you dont understand) Dont bash a fomat if your unwilling to put up your name. Feel free to come play a classic tourney and show how easy it is, I am sure you can top 8 with little trouble being that you think its so easy.
very interesting article whiffy, congrat!
I really enjoyed your analyzis.
My feeling about classic meta is that classic decks are seperated in 2 families (as doctors are) : generalist & specialist. I mean specialist decks could be extremly powerful or totaly irrelevant in a specific meta, instead generalist decks are good in average in all kind of meta.
For example : 2 land Belcher (a "combo specialist" deck) is extremly powerful in a rdw meta instead it could win no matches in a heavy blue control meta ... and Landstill (generalist deck) is as good (not excellent but good) in rdw environment as it is in heavy blue environement.
And i think FoW, like some other high prices card like Pernicious Deed or E.Explosives for example, allowed to players to build performant generalist decks = these cards could be remedee to a lot of illness. However, there is no deck stricly better than every other : you can win a PE with Elves!, with Painter, with Pox or Thresh ....
If you are running a specialist deck, you do a bet : if the meta is synergical with your deck, you will have a meta advantage and lot of chance to win. If not, it would harder for you, it would be really difficult to reach the top8... If you are running a generalist deck, it would be difficult to win, but your chances to reach Top8 are almost similar everytime.
Players are often searching a "safe" situation and that is why FoW and allstars cards are considered as "you dont have it, dont play classic". But as you very well mentionned, it does not mean victory.
That's only my opinion. Take care, and i wainting the next article.
PS : i hope my weak english does not malke this comment unreadable... sorry for that if it is the case...
This is a very deep article and i like that you are showing people the possibilities of playing the format, you are one of the reasons i got into Classic. Hope you can convince others as well.
I saw Classic as a $400+ benchmark. Bringing us this cheap perspective is great. Granted I think I'd enjoy the format a bit more if I were running the duals of old, I think I'll pick up something mono color for now to break into the format. Maybe when the money is flowing later I can pick up some duals (though I expect they'll only go up in price.. doh!)
Its the kind of argument when I talk about Druid. If the accelerations is not vital for the deck to suceed(like if the curve is really heavy) then I would prefer the 18th land to the obelisk
Thats fair I can accept your argument with Viscera and Obelisks are dead sometimes especially in decks not focused towards ramping (as many of mine are).
I'll have to disagree on a few issues. Druid of the Anyma is not worth picking over the viscera. I prefer a land to an accelerator for the same principle I would prefer an 18th land to a 23rd filler. The Druid doenst actually fix you up while the dragger smooths your draws and pumps the devour guys besides being a solid Hill Giant. Obelisks IMO are not overrated but I would only play them if needed like in this deck since in general they're just bad draws.
p1p4 - jund panorama over thrash - thrash comes late and isn't very good imo, where as mana fixing often is a premium and should be taken as such
p1p6 - druid of anema over viscera dragger - at the end of the day dragger is a nice utility card where as druid not only fixes your colors but accelerates a color filled with expensive bombs
p1p7 - knight of skyward eye over bant panorama - if anyhting i don't want my oppenents having access to this guy and you could still end up in naya at this point
p2p2 - rockslide over zombie - as noted before zombie comes so late and rockslide is extremely good especially in jund where devour and sacrifice effects are abundant
p2p3 - branching bolt over hellkite - removal is very important to this deck and you will almost always have plenty of game-ending fatties that taking one of clutch removal is typically unnecessary
p2p9 - obelisks are very undderated in my opinion
p3p1 - no definite answer to this one, i prefer carbonize however in the type of deck that you've drafted necrogenisis is going to be very good so taking it over a 5cc removal is probably alright
p3p3 - bone splinters over tar fiend - not close in my opinion you really need the removal here and tar fiend isn't enough of a "bomb" to make it worth taking it over bone splinters
p3p4 - cavern thoctar over resounding roar - i guess since you were removal light you may just need the roar to fill that role however i still think thoctar is just a much better card, i may be very biased but i think i'd also take the jund obelisk here over the roar as well consider the high amount of expensive cards your deck is playing
I do prefer Jund over Naya and that obviously influences my decisions. I dont think It was worth the 4c drafting and I felt Like I come up with a pretty solid deck.
I guess you could have lumped me into one of those people who though Classic was format rules by wallets and bank accounts.
I've recently started collected cards for the format that cost at or under $1, and I was surprised how many I got (19 different play sets, and 2 I left to get later). It's really boosted a lot of my casual decks. Reading this article makes me want to play some of these events, though. I've paid over $100 for a casual deck, and trimming a little fat on a few of these decks can get it under that. Once I get the money, I'd love to give this a try.
I think the draft was fine. The thing with drafting esper in shards is that it is the weakest shard, so your deck is usually going to be worse than an average naya deck (see round 2). The curve was definitely too high (3 steelclad serpents is too much) but i thought you were in the right colors and there wasnt a lot of other quality cards.
Tezzeret vs. Oring: Oring is definitely the right pick. 5 mana for summoning a tower gargoyle is not a bomb card. Oring is the best removal in the set as it deals with almost everything (case and point vein drinker in round 1 that you would have lost to without oring). The untapping of artifacts is ok, but tezz is a really slow planeswalker that really doesn't affect the board as much as his brethren. And the final ability is not a bomb as if you have enough artifacts to make it worth it, you are probably going to win that game anyway. Also im pretty sure tezz is only worth like 2 tix, i could be wrong though.
Punish Ignorance: Counterspells are generally bad in limited, especially ones with very restrictive mana costs.
So...why dont you like the Windwright Mage's? They swing the mid game to your favor so often...They are superior to the Steelclad Serpent, Yoked Plowbeast, and Coma Veil. Have you never played them? Its like saying the Screechers are bad cause they are only 2-power flyers for 3. But these flyers gain life and can be returned with Sanctum Gargoyle. Clearly that makes them good, doesnt it?
Also you took Yoked Plowbeast over Call to Heel when you have 2x Sanctum Gargoyle and Sharuum. That is clearly the wrong pick. Drawing a card, returning another artifact, and potentially killing one of his guys or countering a removal spell...Also clearly good in this deck.
You dont take Deft Duelist cause this "isnt the type of deck for it". Deft Duelist is a card that gets you through the early game weenie rush of the RGx type decks, which you otherwise lose to. Hes not an aggro card in this shard, like when you run him in Bant, but he still serves a clear role in Esper: Hold off the early ground weenie rush of RGx decks so that you can win in the air.
The Excommunicates are also good in Esper if you have an aggressive version. If you had picked a version with Kiss of Ameneshia and Couriers Capsule then dont run the Excommunicate. However, if youve got the Kalrathi Screecher, Cloudhearth Drake type Esper (which you did) then they become quite good.
Finally, you passed on hate drafting the 2x Jungle Weaver in the last four picks, taking instead Steelclad Serpents. Guess you had to to fill out the deck with them...?
I'd have to agree that you could have ended up with a much better deck overall.
-M
I don't want to steal Whiffy's Thunder, but wish to add, by way of appendix, my tournament play by play for those interested in picking up the deck.
Round 1 – karash82, playing Slivers
Game 1 – I play first and draw: 2 LED, 2 Helm, 2 Swamps, 1 DC. I mull, but it is probably keepable if you care to Consult for Mana Crypt and not deck yourself. My new hand is: 1 Shrine, 1 Petal, 1 LED, 1 Infernal Tutor, 1 Helm. Perfect, both combo pieces, mana, and acceleration. Actually, since I can only generate three extra mana, I drop the Helm to tutor for turn 1 Necro, draw eight cards and start from there. I went all-in risking a loss to turn 1 Force of Will. Result: turn 2 combo, unimpeded.
Game 2 – I keep 2 Swamps, 1 Shrine, 1 LED, 1 DC, 1 Infernal Tutor, 1 LED. It has no pieces, but plenty of mana and tutors, and the matchup doesn’t really scare me. I draw a Necro and Consult at EOT for Dark Ritual. I draw a Leyline and simply dump it in play via Ritual. Third turn, after not much pressure and no disruption, I draw a Swamp, play Infernal Tutor, sac both LEDs in response, get Helm and combo him out.
Round 2 – Wizard not of the Coast, playing Necro
Game 1 – I play second and draw: Fetch, Swamp, Leyline, 2 Helm, Petal, and Ritual. I keep, and she Brainstorms and Duresses me (Ritual). I draw Dark Ritual, which means I can go off with my acceleration and Helms. However, I know she plays Daze maindeck and I only had 4 mana this turn so I decided to pass. This is risky since she could draw into Force of Will or Necro into Force of Will. Turn 2 indeed she Forces, pitching another. She Consults for Necro on her third turn and ends up drawing her deck after a couple of turns with me on three life and concedes, despite the fact I have no outs in my remaining 21 cards to beat her (eventually I will deck myself).
Game 2 – I play second and draw: Swamp, Lake, Petal, Cabal Ritual, Needle, Helm, and Serum Powder. I could mull with Powder, but turn 1 Needle is too tempting. I draw Leyline, and I play Swamp, Petal (Daze protection), and she DC’s for a FOW to stop my Needle. Dern. Turn 2 She Rituals into Necro, and even discard Needle which spells trouble. I have no action on my turn, and she has a turn 3 kill.
Game 3 – I draw: 1 Fetch, 1 Petal, 2 Dark Ritual, 1 Cabal Ritual, 1 LED, 1 Tombstalker and mull. This was dumb since turn 1 Tombstalker is likely very good, assuming it survives FoW. Even so, I now draw: 2 Shrine, 2 Stalker, 1 DC, and Serum Powder. I mull via Powder for 1 Swamp, 2 DC, 1 LED, 1 Thoughtseize, and 1 Powder. This is keepable since I can disrupt via Thoughtseize and possibly a Needle via Consultation. However, I thought I could do better and mulled, mistakenly not with Powder, and drew 5: Leyline, Swamp, Duress, Petal, Infernal. Pretty good. First turn Duress sees FoW, Ponder, Dark Ritual, Zombie Infestation, Soul Spike, and lands. I take Ponder, denying her a turn one play, FoW fodder, and any active play. I draw LED and play Infernal Tutor for Necro, popping the Diamond with three mana available, but apparently I had sideboarded it out (curses!), so I settle for Pithing Needle on Necro. With zero gas in the tank I quickly lose to Zombie Infestation. Bad play on my part!!!
Round 3 – Whiffy Penguin, playing HelmLine
Mirror, lucky to win.
Round 4 – mK1, playing Elves
Game 1 – I play first and draw: 1 Shrine, 1 Swamp, 2 Dark Rituals, 2 DC, and 1 Infernal Tutor. No combo pieces, but plenty of mana, acceleration, and tutors. On the draw vs. Elves, I would have been more likely to try my luck on a mull. At EOT, I Consult for Leyline. I draw a Cabal Ritual, and play the Leyline with Shrine and a Dark Ritual. At least this stops any Eternal Witness shenanigans. On turn 3, I draw a useless Tombstalker. His board is 1 Forest and three elves with a likely combo next turn. With 2 Swamps and Leyline in play and DC, Infernal, Dark Ritual, and Cabal Ritual in hand, can you spot the win? It took me about 5 minutes, since I don’t have enough mana to tutor for and activate Helm. My solution was to Consult for LED, play it, play Dark and Cabal, and then Infernal Tutor (popping LED along the way) for the magical threshold of 5 mana, which equals activating a Helm that turn.
Game 2 – I foolishly keep Helm, Leyline, Consultation, Serum Powder, Tombstalker, Explosives, Infernal. Drawing one Swamp wins almost instantly, but I never manage that feat in four turns as I get beatdown quickly.
Game 3 – I draw 1 Fetch, 1 Petal, 1 Ritual, 2 LED, and 1 Infernal Tutor. I keep, put the Leyline in play, play all accelerants, crack LEDs while Infernal is on the stack, to fetch Helm for the turn 1 win.
Round 5 – petkos, playing Toolbox Zoo
Game 1 – Replay lost. I won the die roll. I remember having a good hand with a probable turn 2-3 kill, and keep. I Duressed him on the 2nd turn seeing Goyf, Helix, Bolt, and Enlightened Tutor. He didn’t have any white mana sources at this point, but I was taking no chances that Tutor represented Pithing Needle so I buried it. My clock looked like 4 turns, but I got some other good draws and beat him with at least one turn 2 spare, maybe 2.
Game 2 – On the draw, I get: 1 Consultation, 1 CoP: Red, 1 Duress, 1 Crypt, 1 Petal, 1 Vindicate, and 1 Powder. There is some decent hate here, but no stable mana, no acceleration, and pieces. I use Powder to mull into: 1 Fetch, 1 Shrine, 1 LED, 1 DC, 1 Ritual, 1 Tombstalker, 1 Leyline. He plays a Savannah and passes, representing a turn 1 Enlightened Tutor. On my first turn, with Leyline in play, I draw another fetchland and go for: LED, Ritual, Consult, popping LED for 5 mana, allowing me to activate Helm on the turn for another first turn kill.
Quarterfinals – GimliColby, playing StifleNought
Game 1 – I play first and draw: 2 Tombstalker, 1 Swamp, 1 Petal, 1 Seal, 1 Leyline, 1 Serum Powder. I kept it, which is just unexcusably bad. Three unusable spells in the hand, and Seal can’t get anything relevant. It wouldn’t have mattered as a Duress in a couple of turns revealed he had a double FoW draw with plenty of protection. I lose to Mishra beats very easily.
Game 2 – On the play, I keep Shrine, 2x Petal, Dark Ritual, Vamp Tutor, Defense Grid, Powder. Turn 1 Defense Grid seems too sexy to pass up, but I never really draw into anything juicy afterwards. I even tutor for and play a second Defense grid with no obvious win in sight (he only needs to get to three mana to turn on his FoW again), but he Wastelands my shrine, and has a turn 4 Dreadnought to disillusion me. 0-2 vs. a tough matchup, at least given the current configuration.
It's a report that reads like a story - sign of good writing. You have a great message to share, some key tangental insights, have a logical flow, and keep it light. Nice job!
nice to see youre still whoppin a$$ shake
Yes but Esper doesn't have R in order to play Dark Temper so I guess thats why he left it out.
Hey thanks for your comments. I completely agree that I made some ridiculous errors in this draft, errors I intend to fix as I work on my drafting. Your comments are definitely appreciated.
That said, I still feel the domain cards have a scalable power level that makes them some of the best cards in conflux.
Very good, More plz
Very good, More plz
I'll try to bring one this week.
Great! I'm waiting for AAC drafts reports.
That could of easily happended in std, ext, pauper, name your flavor. He had nine points from their tiebreakers choose who went, I am sure that has never happended in std (sarcasm incase you dont understand) Dont bash a fomat if your unwilling to put up your name. Feel free to come play a classic tourney and show how easy it is, I am sure you can top 8 with little trouble being that you think its so easy.
very interesting article whiffy, congrat!
I really enjoyed your analyzis.
My feeling about classic meta is that classic decks are seperated in 2 families (as doctors are) : generalist & specialist. I mean specialist decks could be extremly powerful or totaly irrelevant in a specific meta, instead generalist decks are good in average in all kind of meta.
For example : 2 land Belcher (a "combo specialist" deck) is extremly powerful in a rdw meta instead it could win no matches in a heavy blue control meta ... and Landstill (generalist deck) is as good (not excellent but good) in rdw environment as it is in heavy blue environement.
And i think FoW, like some other high prices card like Pernicious Deed or E.Explosives for example, allowed to players to build performant generalist decks = these cards could be remedee to a lot of illness. However, there is no deck stricly better than every other : you can win a PE with Elves!, with Painter, with Pox or Thresh ....
If you are running a specialist deck, you do a bet : if the meta is synergical with your deck, you will have a meta advantage and lot of chance to win. If not, it would harder for you, it would be really difficult to reach the top8... If you are running a generalist deck, it would be difficult to win, but your chances to reach Top8 are almost similar everytime.
Players are often searching a "safe" situation and that is why FoW and allstars cards are considered as "you dont have it, dont play classic". But as you very well mentionned, it does not mean victory.
That's only my opinion. Take care, and i wainting the next article.
PS : i hope my weak english does not malke this comment unreadable... sorry for that if it is the case...
for those who would like to learn more about PPS, we have a growing community at :
http://www.atfreeforum.com/pps
This is a very deep article and i like that you are showing people the possibilities of playing the format, you are one of the reasons i got into Classic. Hope you can convince others as well.
I saw Classic as a $400+ benchmark. Bringing us this cheap perspective is great. Granted I think I'd enjoy the format a bit more if I were running the duals of old, I think I'll pick up something mono color for now to break into the format. Maybe when the money is flowing later I can pick up some duals (though I expect they'll only go up in price.. doh!)
Its the kind of argument when I talk about Druid. If the accelerations is not vital for the deck to suceed(like if the curve is really heavy) then I would prefer the 18th land to the obelisk
Thats fair I can accept your argument with Viscera and Obelisks are dead sometimes especially in decks not focused towards ramping (as many of mine are).
Great article man!
I love the Bye, Loss, Loss...Top 8. Further engrains in me how "easy" classic is.
I'll have to disagree on a few issues. Druid of the Anyma is not worth picking over the viscera. I prefer a land to an accelerator for the same principle I would prefer an 18th land to a 23rd filler. The Druid doenst actually fix you up while the dragger smooths your draws and pumps the devour guys besides being a solid Hill Giant. Obelisks IMO are not overrated but I would only play them if needed like in this deck since in general they're just bad draws.
p1p4 - jund panorama over thrash - thrash comes late and isn't very good imo, where as mana fixing often is a premium and should be taken as such
p1p6 - druid of anema over viscera dragger - at the end of the day dragger is a nice utility card where as druid not only fixes your colors but accelerates a color filled with expensive bombs
p1p7 - knight of skyward eye over bant panorama - if anyhting i don't want my oppenents having access to this guy and you could still end up in naya at this point
p2p2 - rockslide over zombie - as noted before zombie comes so late and rockslide is extremely good especially in jund where devour and sacrifice effects are abundant
p2p3 - branching bolt over hellkite - removal is very important to this deck and you will almost always have plenty of game-ending fatties that taking one of clutch removal is typically unnecessary
p2p9 - obelisks are very undderated in my opinion
p3p1 - no definite answer to this one, i prefer carbonize however in the type of deck that you've drafted necrogenisis is going to be very good so taking it over a 5cc removal is probably alright
p3p3 - bone splinters over tar fiend - not close in my opinion you really need the removal here and tar fiend isn't enough of a "bomb" to make it worth taking it over bone splinters
p3p4 - cavern thoctar over resounding roar - i guess since you were removal light you may just need the roar to fill that role however i still think thoctar is just a much better card, i may be very biased but i think i'd also take the jund obelisk here over the roar as well consider the high amount of expensive cards your deck is playing
I do prefer Jund over Naya and that obviously influences my decisions. I dont think It was worth the 4c drafting and I felt Like I come up with a pretty solid deck.
I guess you could have lumped me into one of those people who though Classic was format rules by wallets and bank accounts.
I've recently started collected cards for the format that cost at or under $1, and I was surprised how many I got (19 different play sets, and 2 I left to get later). It's really boosted a lot of my casual decks. Reading this article makes me want to play some of these events, though. I've paid over $100 for a casual deck, and trimming a little fat on a few of these decks can get it under that. Once I get the money, I'd love to give this a try.
I'm looking forward to the next article.
XixSpidErxiX
:)
Free pack for me!
I think the draft was fine. The thing with drafting esper in shards is that it is the weakest shard, so your deck is usually going to be worse than an average naya deck (see round 2). The curve was definitely too high (3 steelclad serpents is too much) but i thought you were in the right colors and there wasnt a lot of other quality cards.
Tezzeret vs. Oring: Oring is definitely the right pick. 5 mana for summoning a tower gargoyle is not a bomb card. Oring is the best removal in the set as it deals with almost everything (case and point vein drinker in round 1 that you would have lost to without oring). The untapping of artifacts is ok, but tezz is a really slow planeswalker that really doesn't affect the board as much as his brethren. And the final ability is not a bomb as if you have enough artifacts to make it worth it, you are probably going to win that game anyway. Also im pretty sure tezz is only worth like 2 tix, i could be wrong though.
Punish Ignorance: Counterspells are generally bad in limited, especially ones with very restrictive mana costs.