Rerepete: Tutor and Sower are definintley solid. I had Tutor in my Uw, but cut it due to card-disadvantage at the time (and the fact that I was trying to win on the strength of individual cards), but it's very strong in the deck. Sower is the same thing. I don't run so many counters as to feel like I can protect it very well, but it's fine to have it in there. Strong card.
Gimmie: The format is more cutthroat due to it becoming a competitve format (4mans and whatnot). I try to pick up games in the TP room, but if there's 2-3 games in Cas, I'll head in there. I don't try to pick on people (and I understand people who scoop when they see "Goyf, Hinder, Gifts" played), but people go where the games are.
I will say, the Casual 100C decks are 2-3X better than the casual decks in any other format. People build solid decks, even if they're slightly underpowered. There are a TON of good cards in the format.
The match reports were better than good. :) Don't worry about it.
I always thought of Phage as having "super deathtouch". Like how Rhox has "super trample". Which reminds me. In game 4, couldn't you have won by equipping Phage with the hammer? Trample damage will trigger the super deathtouch.
Eater of Days - wait for Illusionary Mask to appear in MEDVII. Then get a couple Dreadnoughts, some Mana Crypts.... nevermind. Forget the Eater of Days and play the other three. (Someday we'll be playing Legacy online.)
Endless Whispers is such a bad news card. Watching it hit the table (or screen) is like watching Counterbalance resolve. Facing it you know you have two choices: play nothing and get run over by a lone Korlash, or play something and hope that your opponent doesn't have more removal that you. And plan B is a sucker's bet.
Great read overall so I hope I don't sound too nitpicky....
You spread yourself out between the 3 colors way too much without valuing the fixers high enough. I think you either need to pass more playables for those fixers or stick closer to 2 colors.
Going into pack 3, you were most concentrated in blue, with a few early drops in green. However, you went heavy on white and white/green for all of pack 3 without taking any fixers. You ended up almost evely spread between the 3 colors, and this resulted in an extremely shaky mana base (as we saw in some of your opening draws). You could have avoided with a few of your picks:
p1p2 - take the mana elf here, even if you don't end up splashing red, fixer for two of your colors + acceleration is great in this format. Much better than the marginally playable battlemage, or any of the other options at this point so early in the draft.
p1p5 - I'd consider visionary or mostodon here, a third tricolour card so early is asking for mana trouble if you dont find the fixers
p1p8 - you've taken enough blue cards taht its clear it will be tough to cast this guy on t2. Take the panorama or the obelisk. With the obelisk and the mana elf from p2, you can almost support a "free" red splash if anything splashworthy comes your way.
p2p5- that panorama had your name all over it, especially since the battlemage loses alot of value without the black.
p2p7 - I know pingers are a concern in this format, but maybe lookout is the more suitable 2-drop for your mana right now.
p3p1 - at this point pretty much all your best spells are blue and you have some early drops that are green. Especially without fixers, oblivion ring is far easier on your mana base than scourglass. They are close enough power wise that i think o-ring is the clear pick.
p3p4 - especially since you haven't taken the fixing earlier in the draft this bant panorama should only be passed for an absolute bomb.
The rest of the way, you keep getting deeper and deeper into both green and white and end up almsot equally into blue white and green. I think if you didn't take the fixing, at least you had to chose either green or white, and make the picks accordingly even if you lost some power.
In the final build you could also have compensated a bit by cutting the blue battlemage and naturalize for an extra plains (i think you absolutely needed 18 lands with these mana requirements) and the green cycler (to try to smooth things out a bit more). I possibly would have cut a couple more blue cards and an island, which is tough because these are your best cards, its jst that I don't see any way of leaving green or white out of your main colors the way your picks ended up going.
Nice article and quirky deck. There's always a ton of information in your articles. The format of one part strategy/card eval, one part deck building/game logs, and one part budgetizing works really well. Keep it up.
Hey, the article was really good.. Specially as I am a bit new to magic.. Mitch has been teaching me some. Anyways I had an idea when you were talking about needing more creature removal and that was Bone Splinters. A new card from Alara. You can use it to sacrifice Bombshell or Phage with Endless Whispers out to kill a creature of theirs, or a fairy from bitterblossom if you really need to. Also you can just kill two of your creatures to give them either Phage or Bombshell when your ready for it.. Just an idea..
I can't BELIEVE I forgot Magus of the Coffers... Could there be any more obvious replacement? Also good call on the Gauntlet of Power. Oh well, it was a long list - I knew I was bound to miss a few!
I'd like to add a couple of cards you seemed to overlook though:
A budget replacement for Nantuko Shade is Genju of the Fens. He is surprisingly powerful.
There are a couple of replacements for Cabal Coffers. You can go with the risky Magus of the Coffers, or the Gauntlet of Power, or the Imprint artifact that doubles mana production (sorry, forgot the name). All of which work at about the same speed as the coffers(Gauntlet and Magus both put you at -1 possible mana turn 5 but +2 possible mana turn 6, assuming all land drops and cards drawn etc, etc, etc,).
Also, if you're talking about Mon-Black, a card you'll often want is Night's Whisper. I love that card for card drawing in color. Sweetness.
Like I said though, those are minor quibbles, this was a superb article.
You have Snow-Covered Plains listed twice. Is that correct? Should it be 5 Snow-Covered Plains, or 3 of one land and 2 of another? It also kind of surprised me that there isn't Vesuva in the land list. It would be nice to have 2 Tundras out there or even use it to remove a Legendary Land.
As for Hamtastic's mono-red deck, Since all but one land is a basic land, what is the reason that Blood Moon is not in the spell list? If it hits the board, it'd really mess up a lot of other decks... I see it as worst case a 1 for 1 card trade if it gets countered/removed with a lot more possible benefits if it doesn't. Doesn't that make it worth the risk?
I liked the article. I think you are off by two cards that are in almost every Blue based control deck. Mystical Tutor and Sower of Temptation. Seeing as the blue based control decks account for about 50% of the decks I play against lately, I can pretty safely say those two cards are most often somewhere to be found.
The second thing I wanted to comment on is the fact that I am sad that the format has turned into being so cutthroat. I used to be able to play casual, fun, or quirky decks and at least get to have fun playing them. People playing the blue based control decks should move to the tournament practice room just like all the other formats. In general, mass counterspells, discard, and land destruction are frowned upon in the casual room and it is my belief that 100 Singleton should be no different.
I don't have a problem with forcing Bant, because I love that shard in draft. However I disagree with quite a few of your picks!
P1 P2: this is the pick I most strongly disagree with. You ALWAYS take the Squire over the extremely subpar Bant Battlemage. That battlemage is like 6 tiers below all the others and I pump the fist when I see my opponent drop that card into play. Besides, it will table. I promise. Squire is an amazing 1-drop.
P2 P5: Bant Panorama over Esper Battlemage. I don't think this guy does a whole lot for your deck without black mana. You're about halfway through the draft. Time to start fixing that mana or you will pay for it later.
P2 P6: It's funny to me that you don't even mention taking the Squire here, yet you consider the unblockable guy and the Courier's Capsule, where I would slam the Squire over both of those. It's a close pick, but I think you vastly underestimate this 1-drop, especially in a Bant deck.
P3 P1: Would take the O-ring over the Scourglass. Just preference. A single white mana being part of the reason. I would prefer spot removal over board removal.
P3 P4: You have to consider the Bant Panorama here, but I can't fault you for taking the 3-drop defender. It's a great card.
What would I want to counter at the cost of losing a turn in lands? Necropotence, Flash, Counterbalance. Able to tap out for turn 4 lightning angel and counter opponent's mystic enforcer, or especially turn 2 meddling mage, and counter their counterbalance, then untap and play another 2-drop. There's a LOT of stuff necessary to counter turn 1/2/3, and those are the turns when you least want to be holding up force spike mana.
Or, turn 1 top, turn 2 counterbalance, daze their counter.
Im not hating on gush as it is a really powerful card just not one i did jumping jacks for. Daze however is redic and its so much more then a force spike. Take a look at modern legacy decklists and you will see that every deck running more then 10 blue cards will have 4x daze ..... EVERY deck. it its a two cc card so it plays really well with counterbalance making it counterspell tarmogoyf, and other such nonsence when you have your counter/balance soft lock down. Classic is very close to legacy in terms of speed and power and daze is a crucile card for control to derail combo and agro long enough to set up its controlling elements. It also is stellar at protecting your early agressive guys from spot removal and sweepers or blockers. and the last point ill make is that with a little finesse you can dodge the upcoming wasteland with this card. an all around 5star card in my opinion.
Gush is a fantastic card no doubt but we are missing the crucial cards to make it "brokan", and will continue to until wotc decides to print moxen, fastbond, land grant. these supporting mana cards help you to break gush for more then a eot +2 new cards and +1 land in hand -1 land on board.
all that said i have 2 different lists im trying to incorporate gush into that look promising. I have at the very least 5 decks that i know to be good that want daze
For anyone wondering what the heck this is all aboot, it's the introduction to a rather strange endeavor. This first short story in particular is going to tie a few different things together. MTG Flavor, MTG decks, MTG events, etc in a way that really doesn't actually exist at all.
good work on making another deck where mana symbols matter, i made a deck using your twin milling deck as a base and it works out hilariously (the fear it instills is so powerful that my friends run academy ruins and darksteel colossus to thwart my attempts in a few decks now). though im not as into fatty creatures as i am tricksy decks. but the idea and good and you have all your bases covered, good post.
I understand where the classic people are coming from.. daze is indeed a v strong card esp in decks that have no choice but to become tapped out early. I tried a legacy deck with 4x daze in it and it did pretty decently in a tournament some time ago. It's really very close to force of will in terms of power level depending on how important the early game is in the format.
However, i do think that gush should not be too underestimated. gush will definitely grow in power level as more cards come online (like yawgmoth's will or fastbond) and i think the reason why people don't seem to like it is that there is no current deck build that can simply chuck gush in. (means they have to build from scratch) Many decks tried to abuse it in vintage and i'm quite certain, because of its raw power, that gush can bleed into classic, in the not too distant future at the very least. I'm not a classic player so I'll let the classic pple decide for themselves what is gd n what isn't.
in any case, i'm definitely getting one copy of the duel decks for:
-alternate art cards to decorate my decks -"new" cards to kick ass
I too agree with Whiffy Penguin. At least for the foreseable future Daze is going to be relevant to the classic format than Gush. That being said I dont think Daze will have as big an impact as Whiffy implies. Classic is very diverse at the moment and Daze will not even suit all decks that run islands not to mention all of the diverse non-isand run decks that make up the majority of the current metagame.
I'll disagree. I don't know that any of the current Classic decks will want to mess up their mana development that much. Remember - it is force spike, so it is only really good turns 1-3, or if they forget to play around it later.
Practical question - turn to, playing a Trinket Mage deck on the draw. You laid a fetch last turn. Your opponent casts something - what cards would you be willing to delay Trinket Mage until turn four to stop?
I agree that Daze is insane in certain builds, but I played a ton of blue contol back in Masques block PTQs, in Standard and in Extended while legal. I didn't find Daze all that useful. It is in the same class as Dismiss - a great card in environments that are highly mana constrained. I don't see that being the case in classic - certainly not once Wasteland appears (which should force people to up their land counts.
That said, I'm certainly not saying that Daze is a bad card - but Daze was never that broken in either Legacy or Vintage. Guch was/is.
I agree with Whiffy - Daze is going to be the card to look for, not Gush.
Unfortunately (IMO) these cards are also legal in Classic PDC, where Gush actually may get played (Fathom Seer is), and Daze has a high likelihood to become a staple of (I'm not sure, but it will probably be used a lot)
Actually, I'm writing a V3 report card for an upcoming SotP, and obviously, it's not going to be a glowing review. There are a few good things to cover, but by-and-large, it's a rough review. Because V3 IS still very rough.
Just something to look for in the next week or two!
im sorry i had to respond as soon as i read your comments on gush and daze. Gush is NOT the reason to buy this, Daze IS gush is a card without a home atm in classic but daze is probbaly the second best card in classic right after fow. If any body is on the fence about this product its daze that should push you over. Expect daze to ba a 5 dollar card out of the gates rising to 10 after a few classic pes where you will se about 6-of 8 top 8 decks running 4 of this stellar card.
Haven't seen some of these cards in ages!
Good stuff bringing them back.
Rerepete: Tutor and Sower are definintley solid. I had Tutor in my Uw, but cut it due to card-disadvantage at the time (and the fact that I was trying to win on the strength of individual cards), but it's very strong in the deck. Sower is the same thing. I don't run so many counters as to feel like I can protect it very well, but it's fine to have it in there. Strong card.
Gimmie: The format is more cutthroat due to it becoming a competitve format (4mans and whatnot). I try to pick up games in the TP room, but if there's 2-3 games in Cas, I'll head in there. I don't try to pick on people (and I understand people who scoop when they see "Goyf, Hinder, Gifts" played), but people go where the games are.
I will say, the Casual 100C decks are 2-3X better than the casual decks in any other format. People build solid decks, even if they're slightly underpowered. There are a TON of good cards in the format.
The match reports were better than good. :) Don't worry about it.
I always thought of Phage as having "super deathtouch". Like how Rhox has "super trample". Which reminds me. In game 4, couldn't you have won by equipping Phage with the hammer? Trample damage will trigger the super deathtouch.
Eater of Days - wait for Illusionary Mask to appear in MEDVII. Then get a couple Dreadnoughts, some Mana Crypts.... nevermind. Forget the Eater of Days and play the other three. (Someday we'll be playing Legacy online.)
Endless Whispers is such a bad news card. Watching it hit the table (or screen) is like watching Counterbalance resolve. Facing it you know you have two choices: play nothing and get run over by a lone Korlash, or play something and hope that your opponent doesn't have more removal that you. And plan B is a sucker's bet.
Great read overall so I hope I don't sound too nitpicky....
You spread yourself out between the 3 colors way too much without valuing the fixers high enough. I think you either need to pass more playables for those fixers or stick closer to 2 colors.
Going into pack 3, you were most concentrated in blue, with a few early drops in green. However, you went heavy on white and white/green for all of pack 3 without taking any fixers. You ended up almost evely spread between the 3 colors, and this resulted in an extremely shaky mana base (as we saw in some of your opening draws). You could have avoided with a few of your picks:
p1p2 - take the mana elf here, even if you don't end up splashing red, fixer for two of your colors + acceleration is great in this format. Much better than the marginally playable battlemage, or any of the other options at this point so early in the draft.
p1p5 - I'd consider visionary or mostodon here, a third tricolour card so early is asking for mana trouble if you dont find the fixers
p1p8 - you've taken enough blue cards taht its clear it will be tough to cast this guy on t2. Take the panorama or the obelisk. With the obelisk and the mana elf from p2, you can almost support a "free" red splash if anything splashworthy comes your way.
p2p5- that panorama had your name all over it, especially since the battlemage loses alot of value without the black.
p2p7 - I know pingers are a concern in this format, but maybe lookout is the more suitable 2-drop for your mana right now.
p3p1 - at this point pretty much all your best spells are blue and you have some early drops that are green. Especially without fixers, oblivion ring is far easier on your mana base than scourglass. They are close enough power wise that i think o-ring is the clear pick.
p3p4 - especially since you haven't taken the fixing earlier in the draft this bant panorama should only be passed for an absolute bomb.
The rest of the way, you keep getting deeper and deeper into both green and white and end up almsot equally into blue white and green. I think if you didn't take the fixing, at least you had to chose either green or white, and make the picks accordingly even if you lost some power.
In the final build you could also have compensated a bit by cutting the blue battlemage and naturalize for an extra plains (i think you absolutely needed 18 lands with these mana requirements) and the green cycler (to try to smooth things out a bit more). I possibly would have cut a couple more blue cards and an island, which is tough because these are your best cards, its jst that I don't see any way of leaving green or white out of your main colors the way your picks ended up going.
Nice article and quirky deck. There's always a ton of information in your articles. The format of one part strategy/card eval, one part deck building/game logs, and one part budgetizing works really well. Keep it up.
Hey, the article was really good.. Specially as I am a bit new to magic.. Mitch has been teaching me some. Anyways I had an idea when you were talking about needing more creature removal and that was Bone Splinters. A new card from Alara. You can use it to sacrifice Bombshell or Phage with Endless Whispers out to kill a creature of theirs, or a fairy from bitterblossom if you really need to. Also you can just kill two of your creatures to give them either Phage or Bombshell when your ready for it.. Just an idea..
I can't BELIEVE I forgot Magus of the Coffers... Could there be any more obvious replacement? Also good call on the Gauntlet of Power. Oh well, it was a long list - I knew I was bound to miss a few!
As an MBC lover this was fantastic!
I'd like to add a couple of cards you seemed to overlook though:
A budget replacement for Nantuko Shade is Genju of the Fens. He is surprisingly powerful.
There are a couple of replacements for Cabal Coffers. You can go with the risky Magus of the Coffers, or the Gauntlet of Power, or the Imprint artifact that doubles mana production (sorry, forgot the name). All of which work at about the same speed as the coffers(Gauntlet and Magus both put you at -1 possible mana turn 5 but +2 possible mana turn 6, assuming all land drops and cards drawn etc, etc, etc,).
Also, if you're talking about Mon-Black, a card you'll often want is Night's Whisper. I love that card for card drawing in color. Sweetness.
Like I said though, those are minor quibbles, this was a superb article.
You have Snow-Covered Plains listed twice. Is that correct? Should it be 5 Snow-Covered Plains, or 3 of one land and 2 of another? It also kind of surprised me that there isn't Vesuva in the land list. It would be nice to have 2 Tundras out there or even use it to remove a Legendary Land.
As for Hamtastic's mono-red deck, Since all but one land is a basic land, what is the reason that Blood Moon is not in the spell list? If it hits the board, it'd really mess up a lot of other decks... I see it as worst case a 1 for 1 card trade if it gets countered/removed with a lot more possible benefits if it doesn't. Doesn't that make it worth the risk?
I liked the article. I think you are off by two cards that are in almost every Blue based control deck. Mystical Tutor and Sower of Temptation. Seeing as the blue based control decks account for about 50% of the decks I play against lately, I can pretty safely say those two cards are most often somewhere to be found.
The second thing I wanted to comment on is the fact that I am sad that the format has turned into being so cutthroat. I used to be able to play casual, fun, or quirky decks and at least get to have fun playing them. People playing the blue based control decks should move to the tournament practice room just like all the other formats. In general, mass counterspells, discard, and land destruction are frowned upon in the casual room and it is my belief that 100 Singleton should be no different.
I don't have a problem with forcing Bant, because I love that shard in draft. However I disagree with quite a few of your picks!
P1 P2: this is the pick I most strongly disagree with. You ALWAYS take the Squire over the extremely subpar Bant Battlemage. That battlemage is like 6 tiers below all the others and I pump the fist when I see my opponent drop that card into play. Besides, it will table. I promise. Squire is an amazing 1-drop.
P2 P5: Bant Panorama over Esper Battlemage. I don't think this guy does a whole lot for your deck without black mana. You're about halfway through the draft. Time to start fixing that mana or you will pay for it later.
P2 P6: It's funny to me that you don't even mention taking the Squire here, yet you consider the unblockable guy and the Courier's Capsule, where I would slam the Squire over both of those. It's a close pick, but I think you vastly underestimate this 1-drop, especially in a Bant deck.
P3 P1: Would take the O-ring over the Scourglass. Just preference. A single white mana being part of the reason. I would prefer spot removal over board removal.
P3 P4: You have to consider the Bant Panorama here, but I can't fault you for taking the 3-drop defender. It's a great card.
Thanks again for another walkthrough!
is this type 1 or 2
What would I want to counter at the cost of losing a turn in lands? Necropotence, Flash, Counterbalance. Able to tap out for turn 4 lightning angel and counter opponent's mystic enforcer, or especially turn 2 meddling mage, and counter their counterbalance, then untap and play another 2-drop. There's a LOT of stuff necessary to counter turn 1/2/3, and those are the turns when you least want to be holding up force spike mana.
Or, turn 1 top, turn 2 counterbalance, daze their counter.
Im not hating on gush as it is a really powerful card just not one i did jumping jacks for. Daze however is redic and its so much more then a force spike. Take a look at modern legacy decklists and you will see that every deck running more then 10 blue cards will have 4x daze ..... EVERY deck. it its a two cc card so it plays really well with counterbalance making it counterspell tarmogoyf, and other such nonsence when you have your counter/balance soft lock down. Classic is very close to legacy in terms of speed and power and daze is a crucile card for control to derail combo and agro long enough to set up its controlling elements. It also is stellar at protecting your early agressive guys from spot removal and sweepers or blockers. and the last point ill make is that with a little finesse you can dodge the upcoming wasteland with this card. an all around 5star card in my opinion.
Gush is a fantastic card no doubt but we are missing the crucial cards to make it "brokan", and will continue to until wotc decides to print moxen, fastbond, land grant. these supporting mana cards help you to break gush for more then a eot +2 new cards and +1 land in hand -1 land on board.
all that said i have 2 different lists im trying to incorporate gush into that look promising. I have at the very least 5 decks that i know to be good that want daze
For anyone wondering what the heck this is all aboot, it's the introduction to a rather strange endeavor. This first short story in particular is going to tie a few different things together. MTG Flavor, MTG decks, MTG events, etc in a way that really doesn't actually exist at all.
Hang in there, Episode Two gets disturbing. ;)
good work on making another deck where mana symbols matter, i made a deck using your twin milling deck as a base and it works out hilariously (the fear it instills is so powerful that my friends run academy ruins and darksteel colossus to thwart my attempts in a few decks now). though im not as into fatty creatures as i am tricksy decks. but the idea and good and you have all your bases covered, good post.
I understand where the classic people are coming from.. daze is indeed a v strong card esp in decks that have no choice but to become tapped out early. I tried a legacy deck with 4x daze in it and it did pretty decently in a tournament some time ago. It's really very close to force of will in terms of power level depending on how important the early game is in the format.
However, i do think that gush should not be too underestimated. gush will definitely grow in power level as more cards come online (like yawgmoth's will or fastbond) and i think the reason why people don't seem to like it is that there is no current deck build that can simply chuck gush in. (means they have to build from scratch) Many decks tried to abuse it in vintage and i'm quite certain, because of its raw power, that gush can bleed into classic, in the not too distant future at the very least. I'm not a classic player so I'll let the classic pple decide for themselves what is gd n what isn't.
in any case, i'm definitely getting one copy of the duel decks for:
-alternate art cards to decorate my decks
-"new" cards to kick ass
I too agree with Whiffy Penguin. At least for the foreseable future Daze is going to be relevant to the classic format than Gush. That being said I dont think Daze will have as big an impact as Whiffy implies. Classic is very diverse at the moment and Daze will not even suit all decks that run islands not to mention all of the diverse non-isand run decks that make up the majority of the current metagame.
I'll disagree. I don't know that any of the current Classic decks will want to mess up their mana development that much. Remember - it is force spike, so it is only really good turns 1-3, or if they forget to play around it later.
Practical question - turn to, playing a Trinket Mage deck on the draw. You laid a fetch last turn. Your opponent casts something - what cards would you be willing to delay Trinket Mage until turn four to stop?
I agree that Daze is insane in certain builds, but I played a ton of blue contol back in Masques block PTQs, in Standard and in Extended while legal. I didn't find Daze all that useful. It is in the same class as Dismiss - a great card in environments that are highly mana constrained. I don't see that being the case in classic - certainly not once Wasteland appears (which should force people to up their land counts.
That said, I'm certainly not saying that Daze is a bad card - but Daze was never that broken in either Legacy or Vintage. Guch was/is.
In any case, time will tell.
I agree with Whiffy - Daze is going to be the card to look for, not Gush.
Unfortunately (IMO) these cards are also legal in Classic PDC, where Gush actually may get played (Fathom Seer is), and Daze has a high likelihood to become a staple of (I'm not sure, but it will probably be used a lot)
Ivo.
Nobody plays classic. :P
I was wondering when we'd hear from you! :D
Actually, I'm writing a V3 report card for an upcoming SotP, and obviously, it's not going to be a glowing review. There are a few good things to cover, but by-and-large, it's a rough review. Because V3 IS still very rough.
Just something to look for in the next week or two!
I expect one or both to be restricted 12/1.
im sorry i had to respond as soon as i read your comments on gush and daze. Gush is NOT the reason to buy this, Daze IS gush is a card without a home atm in classic but daze is probbaly the second best card in classic right after fow. If any body is on the fence about this product its daze that should push you over. Expect daze to ba a 5 dollar card out of the gates rising to 10 after a few classic pes where you will se about 6-of 8 top 8 decks running 4 of this stellar card.