Personal experience ... GoG is awesome. The ability to select the land is great when you have utility lands. I have also had hits for both creatures and lands about 4 out of 5 times playing it.
i think u missed the greatest news: they broke skeletonize with the latest update and it's crashing whole drafts (not just the game where it gets played)
I agree with you on ethe red powercard but can you think of anything on par with fof as a unc reprint for them to make? Maybe fork? but that probably on the reserve list. i think ftk will sell a lot of digital boxes as its an ipa card and the cas crowd who this set is aimed at will eat it up.
there is the singleton 100 format that does not play really fast.. with the big variance in draws and the setup time required for some decks.
with a proper number of creatures, it is possible to set up into a stronger position if a WGB control or rock deck chooses not to play blue spells. If there isn't any very relevant card to cast on turn 3, why not?I won't call it fact or fiction or anything but it's definitely a decent spell to cast.
Assuming it draws 1 card means you probably have not made your deck consciously knowing that you play it. For every card you play in Singleton or 100 card singleton, you must know how it reacts with the rest of the deck so if you cannot imagine it netting you 2 cards you shouldn't be playing it at all.
Everytime i try to set up a account or log in it says that I have no active internet connection, yet it is still able to update to the current version when I open the program. WHat should I do?
I am glad you enjoyed reading the 1st article I had great fun writing. I agree that it is good for the health of the format that a low budget entry deck such as burn exists. As I mentioned above I am not sure burn will keep pace in classic for much longer. Congratulations on your Top8 and thanks again for reading and posting support.
You had me going for just an instant with the chain lightning picture. (The drain I just filed under pipe-dreams, as you quite rightly pointed out.)
Oh well - back to waiting and hoping. With all due respect to Incinerate, something a bit closer to FoF quality would be appropriate on the red side. And while FtK is undeniably good, it's missing the "or player" that's sometimes so important in that sentence regarding damage.
Your article's unique (in my experience at least) blend of cards, decks, and players making up the classic meta-game is truly interesting reading as well as solid reference material.
Both the chart and decklists here are a much more concise reference source than reading through the published lists. For the lazy among us (which certainly includes me) that's a great help.
Other than that, thanks for the mention. Quite apart from personal pride, it still delights me that a very simple and budget-conscious deck can make it in the "all-the-best-cards-allowed" format in MTGO.
I think that necropotence into lich's mirror is not going to be any good since u have to discard at end of turn, giving you just a good hand in one turn with no permanents in play so unless you can definitely win with a 'starting' 7 card hand there is no reason to do so.
Playing too many cards that try to lose for you in Singleton where you -may not have lich's mirror out with only 1 copy in your deck -may run into artifact hate and really end up losing the game for nothing is not a very good idea.. so because of the lack of consistency in getting it out, I would think that to use it, you would either have to make the deck around it to make it work, or let it work in the most natural way like naturally dying to mana crypt. =x
because it shuffles all your permanents away, you want to be able to bank on that fact by having a deck capable of playing business cards with very little permanents in play which is why I think a 'burn' deck is one of those decks that can naturally make use of the artifact.
This is the first time I've seen Lich's mirror (no, I don't get out much; why do you ask?) The obvious thing to do with this is "you lose the game" effects. Final Fortune springs to mind, but killing yourself with Necro is probably better - the cards are "set aside", and so would still come into your hand at EOT! Because Necro totally needed a way to be stronger!
Thank you! I really enjoyed gathering the information and writing the article. Im already itching to get going on the next article but sadly i have a few weeks to wait :0
Hi Harold of Newcastle, Firstly being from Newcastle, UK Id like to see your two pence rather than two cents:_) Seriously though, thank you for your positive review. I totally agree that the analysis is important and that is one aspect that benefits from a monthly report to allow data a larger dataset to be gathered. Im glad you found the article useful and I hope to raise the bar for the next article :P UTH
You commented that long articles may be a turn off to the reader. I don't think that's necessarily true when the article is well written and structured (like this one), especially with a publishing frequency of one month. (I would feel like poking my eyes with a rusty harpoon if i had to read pages and pages of chaff everyday and that's why i don't read mtg.com very often, because i don't want to poke my eyes with a harpoon.)
As for the article frequency, one month seems a good rate to start from as this will give you sufficient data and time for analysis/write up. I enjoyed the analytical aspect as oppossed to just listing which decks won which tournaments (which is the danger of going faster that once a month).
I am not sure I want to get into requesting changes to the banned/restricted list in this series. Wizards have access to all of the deck data that forms the basis of this artilce and so far I have been very happy with their handling of the Restricted list (at least from a Classic-Only view point). I am delighted that they allowed Necropotence the chance to prove itself. I am not against speculation of the impact of a restriction or unrestriction but I dont want to start crusades in this series for them to happen. Im not saying I would not personal contribute to such discussion, I just dont feel that this is the right forum for such debates.
Hi Whiffy Thank you for the very positive comments. I am a little uncertain of the opitmal frequency at which to release these type of articles. I am still favouring a monthly release, so I will see how the end of November article pans out. If anyone else has any comments on the frequency of the articles then please let me know. I will try and keep the article within a reasonable word limit as I know that too long an article can be a big turn off to the reader. Thanks again Whiffy UTH
That says something about the average card strength in the Affinty deck if it can go all the way through its Extended life (almost there) without picking much up. Even other powerful linears like Faeries gain cards when they enter Extended.
I love the cost breakdown of the Cruel Ultimatum.
Unrelated to your article, I hate the way Wizards costed some of the SoA cards. The "mono black" specter is a perfect example. A lot of shards just got triple color spells for no reason other than flavor. Three colors of mana used to get you Doran or Mishra. Now it's like fashion statement.
Thanks for the props and also thanks for a well written and informative article. It is so awesome to see classic growing. Just an FYI, I think you are right about Mono U Nought.........It starts to grow on you after awhile.
Only thing I disagree with ya is in regards to burn being top 10 best. I would be interested in seeing which matchups they faced. I really think burn is still only viable because of the explosive cost of dual lands atm.
The meta while shaping up to be more "meta" like, is still very random which makes classic difficult to prepare for at times.
I think it's time for Wizards to take a hard look at the restriction of Flash.........hehe
Man what a good read. Seriously that was fantastic and i cant wait till the end of november. In the future since you have a month to compile data can you make it a good 10 pages? lol.
uhm the reason i think im losing to the mirror are 3 fold.
1. the opponents running the mirrors were all very very good players and either they had more practise with storm or necro in general or there intuition is just better then mine.
2. all the matches were pretty much decided by the coin flips.
3. the mana and mulligans prolly has something to do with it along side the fact that i dont know how to sb for the mirror.
Just to provide the information. The event number is 82852 and both the belcher decks have been color coded grey in the table indicating that they both were played in the same event. The source data for this event can be found at http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/events.aspx?x=mtg/daily/decks/mol8...
Personal experience ... GoG is awesome. The ability to select the land is great when you have utility lands. I have also had hits for both creatures and lands about 4 out of 5 times playing it.
i think u missed the greatest news: they broke skeletonize with the latest update and it's crashing whole drafts (not just the game where it gets played)
I agree with you on ethe red powercard but can you think of anything on par with fof as a unc reprint for them to make? Maybe fork? but that probably on the reserve list. i think ftk will sell a lot of digital boxes as its an ipa card and the cas crowd who this set is aimed at will eat it up.
there is the singleton 100 format that does not play really fast.. with the big variance in draws and the setup time required for some decks.
with a proper number of creatures, it is possible to set up into a stronger position if a WGB control or rock deck chooses not to play blue spells. If there isn't any very relevant card to cast on turn 3, why not?I won't call it fact or fiction or anything but it's definitely a decent spell to cast.
Assuming it draws 1 card means you probably have not made your deck consciously knowing that you play it. For every card you play in Singleton or 100 card singleton, you must know how it reacts with the rest of the deck so if you cannot imagine it netting you 2 cards you shouldn't be playing it at all.
Everytime i try to set up a account or log in it says that I have no active internet connection, yet it is still able to update to the current version when I open the program. WHat should I do?
I am glad you enjoyed reading the 1st article I had great fun writing. I agree that it is good for the health of the format that a low budget entry deck such as burn exists. As I mentioned above I am not sure burn will keep pace in classic for much longer. Congratulations on your Top8 and thanks again for reading and posting support.
Gift of the Gangantuan? Seriously? A card that is usually a 2G draw one sorcery? The singleton format must be really underdeveloped.
You had me going for just an instant with the chain lightning picture. (The drain I just filed under pipe-dreams, as you quite rightly pointed out.)
Oh well - back to waiting and hoping. With all due respect to Incinerate, something a bit closer to FoF quality would be appropriate on the red side. And while FtK is undeniably good, it's missing the "or player" that's sometimes so important in that sentence regarding damage.
Your article's unique (in my experience at least) blend of cards, decks, and players making up the classic meta-game is truly interesting reading as well as solid reference material.
Both the chart and decklists here are a much more concise reference source than reading through the published lists. For the lazy among us (which certainly includes me) that's a great help.
Other than that, thanks for the mention. Quite apart from personal pride, it still delights me that a very simple and budget-conscious deck can make it in the "all-the-best-cards-allowed" format in MTGO.
I think that necropotence into lich's mirror is not going to be any good since u have to discard at end of turn, giving you just a good hand in one turn with no permanents in play so unless you can definitely win with a 'starting' 7 card hand there is no reason to do so.
Playing too many cards that try to lose for you in Singleton where you
-may not have lich's mirror out with only 1 copy in your deck
-may run into artifact hate and really end up losing the game for nothing
is not a very good idea..
so because of the lack of consistency in getting it out, I would think that to use it, you would either have to make the deck around it to make it work, or let it work in the most natural way like naturally dying to mana crypt. =x
because it shuffles all your permanents away, you want to be able to bank on that fact by having a deck capable of playing business cards with very little permanents in play which is why I think a 'burn' deck is one of those decks that can naturally make use of the artifact.
This is the first time I've seen Lich's mirror (no, I don't get out much; why do you ask?) The obvious thing to do with this is "you lose the game" effects. Final Fortune springs to mind, but killing yourself with Necro is probably better - the cards are "set aside", and so would still come into your hand at EOT! Because Necro totally needed a way to be stronger!
Thank you! I really enjoyed gathering the information and writing the article. Im already itching to get going on the next article but sadly i have a few weeks to wait :0
Thanks for taking the time.
Hi Harold of Newcastle,
Firstly being from Newcastle, UK Id like to see your two pence rather than two cents:_) Seriously though, thank you for your positive review.
I totally agree that the analysis is important and that is one aspect that benefits from a monthly report to allow data a larger dataset to be gathered.
Im glad you found the article useful and I hope to raise the bar for the next article :P
UTH
The article is both informative and insightful.
You commented that long articles may be a turn off to the reader. I don't think that's necessarily true when the article is well written and structured (like this one), especially with a publishing frequency of one month. (I would feel like poking my eyes with a rusty harpoon if i had to read pages and pages of chaff everyday and that's why i don't read mtg.com very often, because i don't want to poke my eyes with a harpoon.)
As for the article frequency, one month seems a good rate to start from as this will give you sufficient data and time for analysis/write up. I enjoyed the analytical aspect as oppossed to just listing which decks won which tournaments (which is the danger of going faster that once a month).
Just my two cents.
I am not sure I want to get into requesting changes to the banned/restricted list in this series. Wizards have access to all of the deck data that forms the basis of this artilce and so far I have been very happy with their handling of the Restricted list (at least from a Classic-Only view point). I am delighted that they allowed Necropotence the chance to prove itself. I am not against speculation of the impact of a restriction or unrestriction but I dont want to start crusades in this series for them to happen. Im not saying I would not personal contribute to such discussion, I just dont feel that this is the right forum for such debates.
Hi Whiffy
Thank you for the very positive comments. I am a little uncertain of the opitmal frequency at which to release these type of articles. I am still favouring a monthly release, so I will see how the end of November article pans out. If anyone else has any comments on the frequency of the articles then please let me know. I will try and keep the article within a reasonable word limit as I know that too long an article can be a big turn off to the reader. Thanks again Whiffy
UTH
That says something about the average card strength in the Affinty deck if it can go all the way through its Extended life (almost there) without picking much up. Even other powerful linears like Faeries gain cards when they enter Extended.
I love the cost breakdown of the Cruel Ultimatum.
Unrelated to your article, I hate the way Wizards costed some of the SoA cards. The "mono black" specter is a perfect example. A lot of shards just got triple color spells for no reason other than flavor. Three colors of mana used to get you Doran or Mishra. Now it's like fashion statement.
Sorry for causing some confusion, I simply mixed up and thought that the first T8 of Belcher had also been in October, while it actually was on 28th of September (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Events.aspx?x=mtg/daily/decks/mol76742).
I'm looking forward to your review of Naya
Thanks for the props. Who doesn't love a 12/12 happy go lucky trampler.
I hate to admit it, but Mono U nought does grow on ya.
Well written and informative. You next article should be a push to unrestrict Flash, hehe!
Thanks for the props and also thanks for a well written and informative article. It is so awesome to see classic growing. Just an FYI, I think you are right about Mono U Nought.........It starts to grow on you after awhile.
Only thing I disagree with ya is in regards to burn being top 10 best. I would be interested in seeing which matchups they faced. I really think burn is still only viable because of the explosive cost of dual lands atm.
The meta while shaping up to be more "meta" like, is still very random which makes classic difficult to prepare for at times.
I think it's time for Wizards to take a hard look at the restriction of Flash.........hehe
Man what a good read. Seriously that was fantastic and i cant wait till the end of november. In the future since you have a month to compile data can you make it a good 10 pages? lol.
uhm the reason i think im losing to the mirror are 3 fold.
1. the opponents running the mirrors were all very very good players and either they had more practise with storm or necro in general or there intuition is just better then mine.
2. all the matches were pretty much decided by the coin flips.
3. the mana and mulligans prolly has something to do with it along side the fact that i dont know how to sb for the mirror.
Just to provide the information. The event number is 82852 and both the belcher decks have been color coded grey in the table indicating that they both were played in the same event. The source data for this event can be found at http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/events.aspx?x=mtg/daily/decks/mol8...