I tried to edit it to make it cleaner using this stable looking base but I ended up having the same problem as I did before so I couldn't change it (even though I said I wouldn't yet). To the readers: Sorry. =(
I'm quite suprised it came out like this (the original was a very very sad case). A very big thank you to the editor for putting it up. =) I had some technical difficulties getting it up past the white weenie section even with the bare minimal text for some reason I could not figure out. My real post was a link to somewhere else where I put the article. My guess is that the editor went there to put the text from there up here and also because I made the article here, the tables and proper visual help did not translate properly over there (where it was a forum type of post) which brought back to over here would be as you see it now. I assure you that it looks like this but worse. I apologise for the looks of it but there isn't much I can do at the moment especially when the timing of it is more crucial.
My priority now is to get up part b asap which I hope can turn up properly so I won't be fixing this until that is done.
Which list did I spoil? Other than my own lists, I took already publically available ones from the previous PE and the mtg.com forum shared by Chriskool.
Maybe a bit more work with the deck lists (you know like more than one column) and some general formatting could have reduced this wall of text. Don't get me wrong, you are definitely full of knowledge and your writing is great but readability should not come last.
Sorry to jack this thread but for some reason I can't post on the main one you link to in your article.
Obviously I can only speak for myself but I couldn't find anyone considering the following reasoning in the lack of 100 players.
OK, I like playing competative Magic however I can't afford to play 'real' magic in any of the formats. Because of this the 100 queue became appealing. Roughly 1/4 of the cost of real magic. It was still expensive but I could afford to scrape together a single deck. Then along comes Pauper. My single deck for 100 is sold and replaced by all the cards necessary for me to build six (counte em.... six!) Tier 1 pauper decks and have quite a few tix left over to enter the queues. I can now play competative magic where I can take the deck I feel will work best against the current meta into the queue. With 100 I took my only deck, simple as that. I now have a format where I can work on my decklists, making changes and altering the sideboard for a few cents a try. In 100 I had no sideboard and most rares were too expensive for me to gamble on them being a good alteration. Heck I could go 10 games and never see the new card I was trying to test. I appreciate that my view of the MTGO world is just that. A personal perspective. However that is why I gave up 100.
Now don't blame Pauper because without it I would have probably given up MTGO at the same time. In a world where money is getting tight and bills need to be paid I personally can't justify the $30 or whatever for a single chase rare. MTG is a great game and I can only play online because of lack of real life people who play it. (I don't live in the US) I can also only play Pauper because of personal financial constraints. I guess 100 was never a format of choice but it was previously the only game in town if you needed to try and keep costs down. I might be unique in my perspective but I just wanted to get it out there as a possible cause.
Good content, maybe a little more info about the different matchups would have been nice. But what is up with all the line breaks ? There is more white space in this article than in a coke factory. ;)
One of my favorite decks of all time has been the burn deck. Why? It was the first deck I learned to pilot efficiantly to win a friday night game (What FNM was before FNM). I still have the original deck constructed. I ove this version and to be honest, there really isn't much difference from this one and my original except of course the rares, and I only have a few.
Now if they would only reprint Ball Lightning as a common.
The mirror is tough because, unlike most mirrors, you can't just add an additional part to the engine to break symmetry. The Cloaks are good against the mirror and I don't see many sliver decks actually play them (or at least they don't hit the draw). The mirror is another reason to play Temporal Isolation. It's a turn faster than O-Ring and most sliver decks don't really pack Enchantment removal. The "traditional" method is to add Quick Slivers. But again that helps both teams.
If the deck remains prevalent, we might have to develop additional cards to supplant some sideboard material. Perhaps O-Rings to give us slower Isolations 4-8 or Sigil Blessings to create positive attacks.
V3 is better stability-wise, but v2 was soooo much better in aesthetics and interface. Take a look at this random video I found of a v2 replay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkgl6v6Tqcc
Notice the nice, wide play area. Notice how when there's a couple cards out they don't get *huge* like in v3 which is just unnappealing. Notice the text box at the *bottom* which is normal and good and makes me happy to see again. Also notice the general soft, appealing feel to the interface. No ugly black/gold stuff, no white text on an ugly black background. And imagine how much more quickly and satisfying you could navigate and play the game. V3 is never going to be as good as V2, and I seriously doubt they're ever gonna mke a V4.
"I knew I had better creatures in hand, so before playing it, I sacrificed the enchanted creature to the Curse ability. You can do that, and state-based effects kill the Curse before the player can activate the return ability."
Actually it is even worse then that. You can just sacrifice the creature in response to them playing the abillity (you do not need to do it before) and it will be dead before it can return to their hand (and it is a new object in the graveyard so it won't return from there).
Btw. I prefer to draft UB too (or RU if I get the really powerful cards).
Alright this is the last comment I'll be leaving. If this comes off as too pretentious/I'm a jerk, sorry about that but I'm not really sure how else to word it. First off: I sell my list to people for tiks, so I don't want to post it on public domain :p
Here's my central question for you: Is this article for casual play (ie. multiplayer) or competitive tournament play? If you're soley in the realm of casual play, then most of what I said is a completely moot point, and if I were playing in multiplayer I'd use a totally different deck. By the same token, was your testing done casually or in real games? Depending on which answer is chosenthe answers are consistently different.
In regards to specific points you raised I have not addressed:
" However, from your post I can infer that you run a deck that is much more focused on winning fast. My build was tested with a slightly slower meta in mind and performed well in that scenario."
Since pauper is classic legal, that translates to fairly good and brutal decks being played (that amongst other things do their best to win as fast as possible). Hence I think this statement can be paraphrased as "casual or competitve play." An aggro deck which does not have a fast clock might as well not be played in legacy/modo classic. I'm also a bit confused about your metagame comment. I assumed this was for online magic classic (since you don't run kird apes, which would be legal irl but not online and are without question an autoinclude), so if that's the case how have we been such dissparate metagames? As far as I know there are 3 metas online: bad people in the casual roomyou should not lose to, people in tournament practice serious (better), and people in 4mans (best quality players). I could go on about this further, but the statement "you're wrong-what you said doesn't apply, I play in a different metagame" just doesn't make any sense to me.
"I hate Bonesplitter in aggressive decks." Quick points.
1) It has amazing synergy with river boa. 2) It gives me another 1 drop. 3) Bone splitter is by far the best pump spell available in the format. 4) I run more burn than you (which is the only thing you absolutely need to topdeck late game), so a lot of the water for the topdecking argument doesn't hold. 5) It's fairly good with granger guildmages white ability (although I can understand why this is a weird thing most people not notice). 6) Red green plays smaller faster guys then a lot of other decks, so as a result it needs an equalizer to let them win later on (ie. bonesplitter). 7) I play exactly 3 and not 4, partiall because they're redunant if you draw too many. 8) It is often doubles as a 2/2 haste which counts for a lot in this format. 9) It lets you overwhelm spire golem (and myr enforcer).
"I find the turn one play tbe very important and I do no feel the benefit of running Expanse and Plains is neccessary or even worth the potential for bad." 1) You do not run 4 rootwallas. 2) You have 3 comes into play tapped lands and 23 lands total, whereas I run 3 terras and a plains and 23 lands. That's basically the exact same mana base in terms of ability to play 1 drops, minus the fact that I have more. 3) [this comes from most likely having played a lot more matches than you] Red green does get color screwed since it doesn't have duals, and will often have to mulligan for better mana. Given the risk you have of running into that problem, it's almost absolutely necessary to run duals (especially since to break 1800 on modo you have to have over an 80% win ratio, which means you can't afford to throw games to color screw ever). Your mana base runs 1 dual total, which is useless for your initial 1 and 2 drops. 4) Being able to make the nactal's a 3/3 is often a huge deal that wins a lot of matches on it's own. 5) So I have to say I really can't agree with your argument since a) the "better for 1 drops" argument is false, b) your mana base neglects a much more important problem and c) there's an actual large tangible benefit to doing this. If pain lands or something were legal, I'd run them and cut white out in a heart beat,but terra is by far the best dual available.
Also I forgot to add this, but why on earth are you running scab clan mauler (with a deck that isn't trying to be "super fast"), especially without rift bolts in the list?
As far as stone rain goes against combo > If the player is mana screwed, and waits an extra turn to go off, you may be able to get a timewalk with stone rain. In thosesituations you will win; but generally with a fast clock you win anyways. Almost all the time however, storm can combo out with or without a final land, since half the deck is non land mana sources (case in point 2R is not a good counter/answer to lotus petal). You have to make the assumption that storm will either not draw the spells it needs (possibly with pyroblast disruption) long enough for you to kill them or they will make 20 goblins and have you have to gg them with matyr. The stone rain strategy might work in 10% of your matches, but it's extremely suboptimal, and sideboard space on the deck is way too tight to be wasting and spaces on junk as it is.
Is red green the best deck in the format? I have no idea-mono black might be better; I've just been playing that archtype and succeeding with it since odysessy block and ported it into classic since most of the cards were legal (and I have a penchant for only playing decks I like; rather than the absolute best tier 1 at any time). I've played about 200 matches in the format now, continuously alterned my deck (namely to address what I was losing to), and I'm fairly familiar with most of the real decks that are played. I have a fairly good constructed record online and offline (and nearly always play rouge decks I built myself), so you can either take what I say seriously or keep on playing a sub optimal list. I wrote most of this because I owe it to rg but now the deed is done.
Overall, I agree with the statement about blue, that's why I don't find it necessary to include.
All the reasons you mentioned in the paragraph regarding Temporal vs. O-Ring are the reasons I choose Temporal over the Ring. O-Ring is just as susceptible to enchantment removal; Ninjas and Blink have been almost no shows in my experience lately. Further, Ninja/Blink/Bounce in response to an Isolation is all at a major cost of tempo. This deck usually requires under five or six turns to win. Spending a turn on saving/bouncing one creature or adding the ninja who can't block on the next turn loses crucial time for the opponent. Innocent Blood and recursion falls prey to the same loss of tempo. If those strategies were hugely prevalent, I might agree with you, but the rise of Storm has taken slower blue strats away recently and, frankly, the Innocent Blood + recursion decks are too slow to deal with slivers. O-Ring is obviously good, but it's not really needed in the deck.
I understand what you mean about adding Quick Slivers, but I really never find myself short on creatures, so the 1/1 for two is never really missed.
I think, though, that it shows the strength of the deck that various different cards can go in and not affect the raw power of the backbone.
You don't need blue for permission in pauper. The white works really well; in fact it's one of the reasons for the deck's success. Prismatic Strands counters Corrupt, Martyr of Ashes, Evincar's Justice, and Crypt Rats (sort of), which are the primary threats to the deck. You can throw in all other sorts of white control as well, such as COP: Red, various protection effects, etc. If I were to run blue, it would be almost entirely to get more slivers. So far I've not found that to be necessary.
I don't agree with Temporal Isolation in the current pauper environment. Yes, the price and ability to counter crypt rats at instant speed are good, but so many more decks run ways around this card than do Oblivion Ring. In addition to enchantment removal isolation is vulnerable to ninjas, blink, bounce, even innocent blood + recursion. The Ring does not suffer these vulnerabilities, and hits cloaks and bonesplitters besides. If I were to replace it, I would use Gelid Shackles as a first choice, with Sunlance as a second.
I also think you are running to few slivers maindeck. Yes, I just said that running half the deck as slivers is too few. Your main synergy is clogging the board with slivers, yet you have no card drawing. Therefore you have to rely on having a great many of them in the deck. At a minimum I would switch out holy light for quick slivers between main and side, since storm has been less prevalent of late.
In all I enjoyed the article, and I'm glad you are having success with the deck!
I tried to edit it to make it cleaner using this stable looking base but I ended up having the same problem as I did before so I couldn't change it (even though I said I wouldn't yet).
To the readers: Sorry. =(
I'm quite suprised it came out like this (the original was a very very sad case). A very big thank you to the editor for putting it up. =)
I had some technical difficulties getting it up past the white weenie section even with the bare minimal text for some reason I could not figure out. My real post was a link to somewhere else where I put the article. My guess is that the editor went there to put the text from there up here and also because I made the article here, the tables and proper visual help did not translate properly over there (where it was a forum type of post) which brought back to over here would be as you see it now. I assure you that it looks like this but worse.
I apologise for the looks of it but there isn't much I can do at the moment especially when the timing of it is more crucial.
My priority now is to get up part b asap which I hope can turn up properly so I won't be fixing this until that is done.
Which list did I spoil? Other than my own lists, I took already publically available ones from the previous PE and the mtg.com forum shared by Chriskool.
Nice article at the right time!
Maybe a bit more work with the deck lists (you know like more than one column) and some general formatting could have reduced this wall of text. Don't get me wrong, you are definitely full of knowledge and your writing is great but readability should not come last.
Oh yeah and thanks for spoiling my list. :(
Sorry to jack this thread but for some reason I can't post on the main one you link to in your article.
Obviously I can only speak for myself but I couldn't find anyone considering the following reasoning in the lack of 100 players.
OK, I like playing competative Magic however I can't afford to play 'real' magic in any of the formats. Because of this the 100 queue became appealing. Roughly 1/4 of the cost of real magic. It was still expensive but I could afford to scrape together a single deck. Then along comes Pauper. My single deck for 100 is sold and replaced by all the cards necessary for me to build six (counte em.... six!) Tier 1 pauper decks and have quite a few tix left over to enter the queues. I can now play competative magic where I can take the deck I feel will work best against the current meta into the queue. With 100 I took my only deck, simple as that. I now have a format where I can work on my decklists, making changes and altering the sideboard for a few cents a try. In 100 I had no sideboard and most rares were too expensive for me to gamble on them being a good alteration. Heck I could go 10 games and never see the new card I was trying to test. I appreciate that my view of the MTGO world is just that. A personal perspective. However that is why I gave up 100.
Now don't blame Pauper because without it I would have probably given up MTGO at the same time. In a world where money is getting tight and bills need to be paid I personally can't justify the $30 or whatever for a single chase rare. MTG is a great game and I can only play online because of lack of real life people who play it. (I don't live in the US) I can also only play Pauper because of personal financial constraints. I guess 100 was never a format of choice but it was previously the only game in town if you needed to try and keep costs down. I might be unique in my perspective but I just wanted to get it out there as a possible cause.
Thanks for listening and have a great 2009 all.
Hey in regards to the ravagers and masters, I'm sorry if I didn't articulate the fact they're not in the meta correctly.
What I meant was that because they don't exist in the Affinity deck, the affinity loses a lot of its explosiveness.
Thanks for your comments
True that.
There's way too many linebreaks. I blame the editing software! I'll be sure to check on why that is next time.
The deck is great. On turn three of game one, you should have cycled the forgotten cave before combat on the chance the you would draw Lava Elemental.
Congrats on the great weekend!
Great article. I agree that a follow-up article would be great; detailing anaylsis of dealing with the major decks in the Pauper meta.
(By the way, both Arcbound Ravager and Master of Etherium are rares, so they won't be in the meta...)
you should have waited a day and written one for the tourney on the 4th. :)
Good content, maybe a little more info about the different matchups would have been nice.
But what is up with all the line breaks ? There is more white space in this article than in a coke factory. ;)
One of my favorite decks of all time has been the burn deck. Why? It was the first deck I learned to pilot efficiantly to win a friday night game (What FNM was before FNM). I still have the original deck constructed. I ove this version and to be honest, there really isn't much difference from this one and my original except of course the rares, and I only have a few.
Now if they would only reprint Ball Lightning as a common.
Fantastic. i thouroully enjoyed that. your list is much better then mine though. gj on top 4 and a quick 3rd place in the poy race.
The mirror is tough because, unlike most mirrors, you can't just add an additional part to the engine to break symmetry. The Cloaks are good against the mirror and I don't see many sliver decks actually play them (or at least they don't hit the draw). The mirror is another reason to play Temporal Isolation. It's a turn faster than O-Ring and most sliver decks don't really pack Enchantment removal. The "traditional" method is to add Quick Slivers. But again that helps both teams.
If the deck remains prevalent, we might have to develop additional cards to supplant some sideboard material. Perhaps O-Rings to give us slower Isolations 4-8 or Sigil Blessings to create positive attacks.
Couldn't agree more.
V3 is better stability-wise, but v2 was soooo much better in aesthetics and interface. Take a look at this random video I found of a v2 replay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkgl6v6Tqcc
Notice the nice, wide play area. Notice how when there's a couple cards out they don't get *huge* like in v3 which is just unnappealing. Notice the text box at the *bottom* which is normal and good and makes me happy to see again. Also notice the general soft, appealing feel to the interface. No ugly black/gold stuff, no white text on an ugly black background. And imagine how much more quickly and satisfying you could navigate and play the game. V3 is never going to be as good as V2, and I seriously doubt they're ever gonna mke a V4.
Any suggestions for the Mirror match up?
Night of soul's betrayal also affects white weenie / exalted decks.
"I knew I had better creatures in hand, so before playing it, I sacrificed the enchanted creature to the Curse ability. You can do that, and state-based effects kill the Curse before the player can activate the return ability."
Actually it is even worse then that. You can just sacrifice the creature in response to them playing the abillity (you do not need to do it before) and it will be dead before it can return to their hand (and it is a new object in the graveyard so it won't return from there).
Btw. I prefer to draft UB too (or RU if I get the really powerful cards).
Alright this is the last comment I'll be leaving.
If this comes off as too pretentious/I'm a jerk, sorry about that but I'm not really sure how else to word it.
First off:
I sell my list to people for tiks, so I don't want to post it on public domain :p
Here's my central question for you:
Is this article for casual play (ie. multiplayer) or competitive tournament play?
If you're soley in the realm of casual play, then most of what I said is a completely moot point, and if I were playing in multiplayer I'd use a totally different deck.
By the same token, was your testing done casually or in real games? Depending on which answer is chosenthe answers are consistently different.
In regards to specific points you raised I have not addressed:
" However, from your post I can infer that you run a deck that is much more focused on winning fast. My build was tested with a slightly slower meta in mind and performed well in that scenario."
Since pauper is classic legal, that translates to fairly good and brutal decks being played (that amongst other things do their best to win as fast as possible). Hence I think this statement can be paraphrased as "casual or competitve play." An aggro deck which does not have a fast clock might as well not be played in legacy/modo classic. I'm also a bit confused about your metagame comment. I assumed this was for online magic classic (since you don't run kird apes, which would be legal irl but not online and are without question an autoinclude), so if that's the case how have we been such dissparate metagames? As far as I know there are 3 metas online: bad people in the casual roomyou should not lose to, people in tournament practice serious (better), and people in 4mans (best quality players). I could go on about this further, but the statement "you're wrong-what you said doesn't apply, I play in a different metagame" just doesn't make any sense to me.
"I hate Bonesplitter in aggressive decks."
Quick points.
1) It has amazing synergy with river boa.
2) It gives me another 1 drop.
3) Bone splitter is by far the best pump spell available in the format.
4) I run more burn than you (which is the only thing you absolutely need to topdeck late game), so a lot of the water for the topdecking argument doesn't hold.
5) It's fairly good with granger guildmages white ability (although I can understand why this is a weird thing most people not notice).
6) Red green plays smaller faster guys then a lot of other decks, so as a result it needs an equalizer to let them win later on (ie. bonesplitter).
7) I play exactly 3 and not 4, partiall because they're redunant if you draw too many.
8) It is often doubles as a 2/2 haste which counts for a lot in this format.
9) It lets you overwhelm spire golem (and myr enforcer).
"I find the turn one play tbe very important and I do no feel the benefit of running Expanse and Plains is neccessary or even worth the potential for bad."
1) You do not run 4 rootwallas.
2) You have 3 comes into play tapped lands and 23 lands total, whereas I run 3 terras and a plains and 23 lands. That's basically the exact same mana base in terms of ability to play 1 drops, minus the fact that I have more.
3) [this comes from most likely having played a lot more matches than you] Red green does get color screwed since it doesn't have duals, and will often have to mulligan for better mana. Given the risk you have of running into that problem, it's almost absolutely necessary to run duals (especially since to break 1800 on modo you have to have over an 80% win ratio, which means you can't afford to throw games to color screw ever). Your mana base runs 1 dual total, which is useless for your initial 1 and 2 drops.
4) Being able to make the nactal's a 3/3 is often a huge deal that wins a lot of matches on it's own.
5) So I have to say I really can't agree with your argument since a) the "better for 1 drops" argument is false, b) your mana base neglects a much more important problem and c) there's an actual large tangible benefit to doing this. If pain lands or something were legal, I'd run them and cut white out in a heart beat,but terra is by far the best dual available.
Also I forgot to add this, but why on earth are you running scab clan mauler (with a deck that isn't trying to be "super fast"), especially without rift bolts in the list?
As far as stone rain goes against combo >
If the player is mana screwed, and waits an extra turn to go off, you may be able to get a timewalk with stone rain. In thosesituations you will win; but generally with a fast clock you win anyways.
Almost all the time however, storm can combo out with or without a final land, since half the deck is non land mana sources (case in point 2R is not a good counter/answer to lotus petal). You have to make the assumption that storm will either not draw the spells it needs (possibly with pyroblast disruption) long enough for you to kill them or they will make 20 goblins and have you have to gg them with matyr. The stone rain strategy might work in 10% of your matches, but it's extremely suboptimal, and sideboard space on the deck is way too tight to be wasting and spaces on junk as it is.
Is red green the best deck in the format? I have no idea-mono black might be better; I've just been playing that archtype and succeeding with it since odysessy block and ported it into classic since most of the cards were legal (and I have a penchant for only playing decks I like; rather than the absolute best tier 1 at any time). I've played about 200 matches in the format now, continuously alterned my deck (namely to address what I was losing to), and I'm fairly familiar with most of the real decks that are played. I have a fairly good constructed record online and offline (and nearly always play rouge decks I built myself), so you can either take what I say seriously or keep on playing a sub optimal list. I wrote most of this because I owe it to rg but now the deed is done.
The other enchanment to use is...Licids....
With the Matriarch, steal their critter and beat them with it till it is dead, then go steal another.....
"I think, though, that it shows the strength of the deck that various different cards can go in and not affect the raw power of the backbone."
Agreed. The cake is awesome; all that's left to argue about is the flavor of icing.
Overall, I agree with the statement about blue, that's why I don't find it necessary to include.
All the reasons you mentioned in the paragraph regarding Temporal vs. O-Ring are the reasons I choose Temporal over the Ring. O-Ring is just as susceptible to enchantment removal; Ninjas and Blink have been almost no shows in my experience lately. Further, Ninja/Blink/Bounce in response to an Isolation is all at a major cost of tempo. This deck usually requires under five or six turns to win. Spending a turn on saving/bouncing one creature or adding the ninja who can't block on the next turn loses crucial time for the opponent. Innocent Blood and recursion falls prey to the same loss of tempo. If those strategies were hugely prevalent, I might agree with you, but the rise of Storm has taken slower blue strats away recently and, frankly, the Innocent Blood + recursion decks are too slow to deal with slivers. O-Ring is obviously good, but it's not really needed in the deck.
I understand what you mean about adding Quick Slivers, but I really never find myself short on creatures, so the 1/1 for two is never really missed.
I think, though, that it shows the strength of the deck that various different cards can go in and not affect the raw power of the backbone.
You don't need blue for permission in pauper. The white works really well; in fact it's one of the reasons for the deck's success. Prismatic Strands counters Corrupt, Martyr of Ashes, Evincar's Justice, and Crypt Rats (sort of), which are the primary threats to the deck. You can throw in all other sorts of white control as well, such as COP: Red, various protection effects, etc. If I were to run blue, it would be almost entirely to get more slivers. So far I've not found that to be necessary.
I don't agree with Temporal Isolation in the current pauper environment. Yes, the price and ability to counter crypt rats at instant speed are good, but so many more decks run ways around this card than do Oblivion Ring. In addition to enchantment removal isolation is vulnerable to ninjas, blink, bounce, even innocent blood + recursion. The Ring does not suffer these vulnerabilities, and hits cloaks and bonesplitters besides. If I were to replace it, I would use Gelid Shackles as a first choice, with Sunlance as a second.
I also think you are running to few slivers maindeck. Yes, I just said that running half the deck as slivers is too few. Your main synergy is clogging the board with slivers, yet you have no card drawing. Therefore you have to rely on having a great many of them in the deck. At a minimum I would switch out holy light for quick slivers between main and side, since storm has been less prevalent of late.
In all I enjoyed the article, and I'm glad you are having success with the deck!
@blandestk
Thunderbolt is good against MUC in pauper as it kills spire golem (or errant ephemeron if they run it), and can still burn for 3 to the face.