Mana drain is 10x more powerful then force would ever imagine. There is a reason they gave us force and not mana drain nor will we ever get mana drain.
I'm the editor to this site. I accept the responsibilities of this article being posted and not being up to par. Sadly, when I edit, I edit in bunches. I get articles in, I edit them, and then post when the new day starts. If anyone recalls last week, the site was done, taken offline, whatever, and the editing that had been done to this article was lost.
However, I was unaware of that fact. The system we use marks when an article is edited with an * and considering this one article (along with every other one that I had edited) had this mark, I incorrectly assumed that the work had still be finished.
For that I do apologize. My writers work very hard to do what they do (and I do think Whiffy does a great job in his Classic Analysis.) and for me to drop the ball on him like this is inexcusable.
This will not be happening again anytime in the near or far future. No excuses, I'm sorry.
There's no question in my mind that Goblin Bombarment and Rolling Thunder are up there as either the #1 or #2 (depending on how you rank them, but they are both in the top 2) in ranking.
As for utilizing the buyback mechanic in combination with Goblin Bombarment... I feel that's a big overkill (considering the mana investment needed to buyback and recast a creature), but still a pretty cool idea.
Imagine if we had Goblin Bombarment in Alara with the unearth mechanic. haha~!
I completely agree with both the coiled tinviper and the lowland Giant. Had I taken those, the decision between the creature and Kindle might have been a lot closer. As it stood, my draft creature wise wasn't that great, and I was forced to pass on that removal spell.
Thanks for your comments! I'll continue to write these things seeing as people seem to really enjoy it!
Along the same lines, I realize that Magic is an international game with authors of its articles spanning the entire globe (except for maybe Mongolia). I don't know Iceage's background, or whiffy's. Maybe English isn't a native language to them both, I don't know.
It would just be nice to see these articles screened for professionalism/grammar prior to going live on the site. If that's not fully possible, then so be it. It's not going to make me think less of anyone and we're all going to enjoy Magic still. I just felt a responsibility as a Magic-lover and Magic-article-lover to pop my head in here and let someone know that these articles could be better presented to the public.
I would have gone Goblin Bombardment myself, especially considering the graveyard buyback that you could have picked up and playing mostly in black. But then again, my record isn't so great, so my advice might be worth its weight in air :P.
I know there was an editor for the site but I'm not sure if that's fallen by the wayside. I try be as correct as I can be in my writing and even still, typos and poor sentence structure finds its way through.
I spend a bit of extra time self-editing my articles because it really does make a large difference in readbability when typos get through. :(
Much like you, Odindusk, I have a hard time reading something that has errors in it. I don't know how common we are though. ;) If writing coherently was easy everyone would being doing it!
There's a lot of good stuff in the article, but it's sadly over-shadowed by the grammar and punctuation issues. :(
But don't let this discourage you Whiffy! Practice really does help (just like Magic, I guess). :D
"This match up is slightly in your favor if both piolets have a good aptidude with there deck."
Three typos in one sentence. I don't know if authors get paid on this website (I'm guessing no), but I don't find it too much of a stretch to insist that authors use a simple spell check in their* articles, and perhaps a read by a knowledgeable editor to check for other misc. errors. Be professional as you can, people. Some of you will not agree and perheps get all defensive, but an article full of errors is makes it hard to be taken seriously by some audiences. Whether or not you care about that, well that's your call to make.
Personally, I enjoyed the article immensely and thought it was well-thought out. So please don't tag me as some sort of troll who has nothing better to do than play grammar police on the internet. I wouldn't have taken the time to type all of this if I didn't care about the integrity of this website.
Overall, I enjoyed the article and videos. I think you did a pretty good job in your draft. Red/Black is a strong deck for Tempest Draft.
The first pick, I think it's really close between Rolling Thunder and Goblin Bombardment. Personally, I've had huge success with the Bombardment, but the Thunder is always solid to spectacular, so I can't fault you for taking it. Looking at the cards you saw, the Thunder probably fit better into your deck. If you had seen more pingers or more useful creatures, the Bombardment might have been right.
Definitely correct to take the Dark Banishing over Shadowstorm. Though you played a shadow-heavy deck, it's still a limited removal spell.
I would without a doubt take the Lowland Giant over the Telekopter, but hindsight is 20/20. Also, I think you should have gone with the Coiled Tinviper instead of cutting the B/G land. It would have helped with your curve and the creature problem.
Though I agree with your thinking about taking one of the creatures in the pack with the Kindle, I think I personally would have taken the removal. I might be wrong, but it's usually spectacular when you can land one.
The pick where you take a Stalker, I think I might have gone with the 3-drop shadow guy, he has a better chance to push through damage and also would help with your curve.
Other than those few picks, I think you did really well and I enjoyed the look at your draft. Congrats on the Finals and the great article!
A good point! That 760 tickets number was more of an interesting tidbit than a statement of necessity. I've actually seen people wonder what a 4x Common set would cost... and now I know. :)
I'd say that building up a tournament worthy Classic Pauper collection is actually way less than that, probably a small percentage of that price actually. Something closer to 10% (aka 76 tickets) would probably get you the cards to build almost any deck in the format. In fact, 76 tix might even be a bit more than necessary as well. I may have to do some number crunching when the decklists from events start to flow into the homepage, just to get a feel for what it would cost to build every deck in a top 8. :D
I would say that for the vast majority of common cards it is unneccessary to plan your purchasing. Almost all commons are always in stock 24 hours a day at the large bot chains for 2 or 3 hundredths of a tix, so I generally only buy a card at the moment when I need it for a particular deck. I don't even always buy a playset since I might never need them.
The only times when I might vary this are for the money cards (say Armadillo Cloak) when I will search out the best deal possible on mtgo, ebay, the www or wherever. I also might buy a playset of the current set if I judge that it is generally made up of playables: I bought a playset of Alara, but only in the 3rd week after release when the price had dropped to something reasonable.
A nice overview of whats about in the way of PRE's.
I have to comment on the relative costs that you put up for the PDC 4-off common sets. Whilst I'm sure your data is 100% correct I felt it was a bit missleading. For block, at 22.8T, you would probably be advised to get a full playset of everything anyway. Other than the collectors out there I can never see getting a Classic playset of everything, at 760.04T. Sure Classic is a bit more expensive but I'm sure that you could build four or even five of the Tier 1 decks for under 100T.
I guess it depends on the individual. If you love deck building then spend your 22T on all the cards in block and create away. If you are happy net decking and just playing spend your 22T on the best classic deck in the style of your choice. Either format is just as easy to get into in a competative way.
I just didn't want the 760T price tag on Classic to put people off.
Great article hammy like always and just like hammy said bring your friends to the PREs or people you run into chat. but becareful because some players don't like certain members because they belong in a certain clan and if they see you advertise for a event, that person is hosting they will bad mouth you or talk trash to you. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from advertising but just advising, i dont want anyone advertising then all of a sudden being insulted. But as someone who tries to play in as many PDC, Free for All, and 2-HG events i encourage all to come out and try the event out a couple of times.
Good point on Infest, but it's the weakest of the three (not an instant, only does "2").
WW has a fairly high power level. You said it yourself, you're playing with a lot of the strongest cards. Sure, going 2-3 colors might be wise, but for now, I like this build. If I were to splash for anything, it would be Ajani.
The bear status vs. Sorcerer is pretty much a wash. Might lean towards sorc, but you DO block the various 1/1s and 2/2s that people attack with still, so blocking is actually relevant.
Plus, the extra point of toughness + a Relic of Distinction with 2 counters evades the sweepers people run, demanding more spot removal.
blade, ill agree that it is a work in progress. I am by no means a profesional writer as i have never aspired to the higer learnig of college, and if you look back at my previous articles you should notice an improvement(just like in every avenue of life practise makes perfect) also the article system has a weird way of deleting everything before the curssor when you try to back track to fix up a miscapitilation. i will consede that there are prolly a bunch of errors but i have been being more active in pre-editing and will continue to try better.
as for the way i presented each component of the deck im working on it and trying to do something fresh so by all means tell me how it could be better/cooler if you have any suggestions.
and yes i was referring to mana drain and i can see the reasoning behind 1a and 1b but for my money mana drain will always be the better card because of the applications it brings to te game. stopping a spell for free is all good and dandy but when you can make a down payment of 2 on a spell and get back a bunch of mana on your turn thats just ace's for me.
How is this article only getting a 3-star rating? (my vote is 5) It may have a few technical errors that are out of the author's hands (the timing), but don't criticize the article for it. WotC obviously didn't get how Necro/Consultation deserved banning so any public education on the matter is a worthy cause. I lost to it 2-1 in the finals yesterday with my zoo deck loaded with hate (and probably would have won if I had won the die roll). It is a beast.
My suggestion for the next one is to publish some ten game sets with a few of the matchups to show how, say, burn is the worst matchup, this other matchup is an auto-win, the true result of belcher shoudl be X, etc.
Sounds like an interesting classic deck idea.
i have notified Mitchy of the lack of forums. Not sure when that is gonna be looked at.
JXC
Mana drain is 10x more powerful then force would ever imagine. There is a reason they gave us force and not mana drain nor will we ever get mana drain.
By the way, is it just me, or have the forums been down for over a week on this site?
I'm the editor to this site. I accept the responsibilities of this article being posted and not being up to par. Sadly, when I edit, I edit in bunches. I get articles in, I edit them, and then post when the new day starts. If anyone recalls last week, the site was done, taken offline, whatever, and the editing that had been done to this article was lost.
However, I was unaware of that fact. The system we use marks when an article is edited with an * and considering this one article (along with every other one that I had edited) had this mark, I incorrectly assumed that the work had still be finished.
For that I do apologize. My writers work very hard to do what they do (and I do think Whiffy does a great job in his Classic Analysis.) and for me to drop the ball on him like this is inexcusable.
This will not be happening again anytime in the near or far future. No excuses, I'm sorry.
There's no question in my mind that Goblin Bombarment and Rolling Thunder are up there as either the #1 or #2 (depending on how you rank them, but they are both in the top 2) in ranking.
As for utilizing the buyback mechanic in combination with Goblin Bombarment... I feel that's a big overkill (considering the mana investment needed to buyback and recast a creature), but still a pretty cool idea.
Imagine if we had Goblin Bombarment in Alara with the unearth mechanic. haha~!
I completely agree with both the coiled tinviper and the lowland Giant. Had I taken those, the decision between the creature and Kindle might have been a lot closer. As it stood, my draft creature wise wasn't that great, and I was forced to pass on that removal spell.
Thanks for your comments! I'll continue to write these things seeing as people seem to really enjoy it!
Ham,
Along the same lines, I realize that Magic is an international game with authors of its articles spanning the entire globe (except for maybe Mongolia). I don't know Iceage's background, or whiffy's. Maybe English isn't a native language to them both, I don't know.
It would just be nice to see these articles screened for professionalism/grammar prior to going live on the site. If that's not fully possible, then so be it. It's not going to make me think less of anyone and we're all going to enjoy Magic still. I just felt a responsibility as a Magic-lover and Magic-article-lover to pop my head in here and let someone know that these articles could be better presented to the public.
I would have gone Goblin Bombardment myself, especially considering the graveyard buyback that you could have picked up and playing mostly in black. But then again, my record isn't so great, so my advice might be worth its weight in air :P.
I know there was an editor for the site but I'm not sure if that's fallen by the wayside. I try be as correct as I can be in my writing and even still, typos and poor sentence structure finds its way through.
I spend a bit of extra time self-editing my articles because it really does make a large difference in readbability when typos get through. :(
Much like you, Odindusk, I have a hard time reading something that has errors in it. I don't know how common we are though. ;) If writing coherently was easy everyone would being doing it!
There's a lot of good stuff in the article, but it's sadly over-shadowed by the grammar and punctuation issues. :(
But don't let this discourage you Whiffy! Practice really does help (just like Magic, I guess). :D
And look, I spelled "perhaps" incorrectly. The world is a funny place, isn't it? =P
"This match up is slightly in your favor if both piolets have a good aptidude with there deck."
Three typos in one sentence. I don't know if authors get paid on this website (I'm guessing no), but I don't find it too much of a stretch to insist that authors use a simple spell check in their* articles, and perhaps a read by a knowledgeable editor to check for other misc. errors. Be professional as you can, people. Some of you will not agree and perheps get all defensive, but an article full of errors is makes it hard to be taken seriously by some audiences. Whether or not you care about that, well that's your call to make.
Personally, I enjoyed the article immensely and thought it was well-thought out. So please don't tag me as some sort of troll who has nothing better to do than play grammar police on the internet. I wouldn't have taken the time to type all of this if I didn't care about the integrity of this website.
Great video, this is my favorite column on this website!
Overall, I enjoyed the article and videos. I think you did a pretty good job in your draft. Red/Black is a strong deck for Tempest Draft.
The first pick, I think it's really close between Rolling Thunder and Goblin Bombardment. Personally, I've had huge success with the Bombardment, but the Thunder is always solid to spectacular, so I can't fault you for taking it. Looking at the cards you saw, the Thunder probably fit better into your deck. If you had seen more pingers or more useful creatures, the Bombardment might have been right.
Definitely correct to take the Dark Banishing over Shadowstorm. Though you played a shadow-heavy deck, it's still a limited removal spell.
I would without a doubt take the Lowland Giant over the Telekopter, but hindsight is 20/20. Also, I think you should have gone with the Coiled Tinviper instead of cutting the B/G land. It would have helped with your curve and the creature problem.
Though I agree with your thinking about taking one of the creatures in the pack with the Kindle, I think I personally would have taken the removal. I might be wrong, but it's usually spectacular when you can land one.
The pick where you take a Stalker, I think I might have gone with the 3-drop shadow guy, he has a better chance to push through damage and also would help with your curve.
Other than those few picks, I think you did really well and I enjoyed the look at your draft. Congrats on the Finals and the great article!
A good point! That 760 tickets number was more of an interesting tidbit than a statement of necessity. I've actually seen people wonder what a 4x Common set would cost... and now I know. :)
I'd say that building up a tournament worthy Classic Pauper collection is actually way less than that, probably a small percentage of that price actually. Something closer to 10% (aka 76 tickets) would probably get you the cards to build almost any deck in the format. In fact, 76 tix might even be a bit more than necessary as well. I may have to do some number crunching when the decklists from events start to flow into the homepage, just to get a feel for what it would cost to build every deck in a top 8. :D
I would say that for the vast majority of common cards it is unneccessary to plan your purchasing. Almost all commons are always in stock 24 hours a day at the large bot chains for 2 or 3 hundredths of a tix, so I generally only buy a card at the moment when I need it for a particular deck. I don't even always buy a playset since I might never need them.
The only times when I might vary this are for the money cards (say Armadillo Cloak) when I will search out the best deal possible on mtgo, ebay, the www or wherever. I also might buy a playset of the current set if I judge that it is generally made up of playables: I bought a playset of Alara, but only in the 3rd week after release when the price had dropped to something reasonable.
A nice overview of whats about in the way of PRE's.
I have to comment on the relative costs that you put up for the PDC 4-off common sets. Whilst I'm sure your data is 100% correct I felt it was a bit missleading. For block, at 22.8T, you would probably be advised to get a full playset of everything anyway. Other than the collectors out there I can never see getting a Classic playset of everything, at 760.04T. Sure Classic is a bit more expensive but I'm sure that you could build four or even five of the Tier 1 decks for under 100T.
I guess it depends on the individual. If you love deck building then spend your 22T on all the cards in block and create away. If you are happy net decking and just playing spend your 22T on the best classic deck in the style of your choice. Either format is just as easy to get into in a competative way.
I just didn't want the 760T price tag on Classic to put people off.
That's correct, my mistake. The duals have dropped some, but if you enjoy the gameplay, then it is still a pretty decent deal.
there are 80 rares in med 2, not 50, so chances of hitting a dual are less than 1 in 3 drafts, nearer 1 in 5
Great article hammy like always and just like hammy said bring your friends to the PREs or people you run into chat. but becareful because some players don't like certain members because they belong in a certain clan and if they see you advertise for a event, that person is hosting they will bad mouth you or talk trash to you. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from advertising but just advising, i dont want anyone advertising then all of a sudden being insulted. But as someone who tries to play in as many PDC, Free for All, and 2-HG events i encourage all to come out and try the event out a couple of times.
Nice article, very informative.
Good point on Infest, but it's the weakest of the three (not an instant, only does "2").
WW has a fairly high power level. You said it yourself, you're playing with a lot of the strongest cards. Sure, going 2-3 colors might be wise, but for now, I like this build. If I were to splash for anything, it would be Ajani.
The bear status vs. Sorcerer is pretty much a wash. Might lean towards sorc, but you DO block the various 1/1s and 2/2s that people attack with still, so blocking is actually relevant.
Plus, the extra point of toughness + a Relic of Distinction with 2 counters evades the sweepers people run, demanding more spot removal.
blade, ill agree that it is a work in progress. I am by no means a profesional writer as i have never aspired to the higer learnig of college, and if you look back at my previous articles you should notice an improvement(just like in every avenue of life practise makes perfect) also the article system has a weird way of deleting everything before the curssor when you try to back track to fix up a miscapitilation. i will consede that there are prolly a bunch of errors but i have been being more active in pre-editing and will continue to try better.
as for the way i presented each component of the deck im working on it and trying to do something fresh so by all means tell me how it could be better/cooler if you have any suggestions.
and yes i was referring to mana drain and i can see the reasoning behind 1a and 1b but for my money mana drain will always be the better card because of the applications it brings to te game. stopping a spell for free is all good and dandy but when you can make a down payment of 2 on a spell and get back a bunch of mana on your turn thats just ace's for me.
probably because that guy gave it a 1.
How is this article only getting a 3-star rating? (my vote is 5) It may have a few technical errors that are out of the author's hands (the timing), but don't criticize the article for it. WotC obviously didn't get how Necro/Consultation deserved banning so any public education on the matter is a worthy cause. I lost to it 2-1 in the finals yesterday with my zoo deck loaded with hate (and probably would have won if I had won the die roll). It is a beast.
My suggestion for the next one is to publish some ten game sets with a few of the matchups to show how, say, burn is the worst matchup, this other matchup is an auto-win, the true result of belcher shoudl be X, etc.