Thanks again everyone for reading and commenting. I know I make 1-2 pissy remarks a week, usually involving how I keep a 3-4 land hand and draw nothing but land in game one, then a 2 lander and see no lands until turn 8 of game two in a draft. We all do it at SOME point; it's the flaw in playing an anonymous game of luck that in almost all other aspectics is wonderful. Sometimes you just have a bad game and are mad. I'm not condoning this kind've behavior, rather, I hope people understand how it sounds when they say those kind of things, so they can cut down on it (myself included). As for CK's deck, seems like a solid build. Keep an ear out for cuts from Part Two.
I know this conversation gets old but you really can't blame someone for being a sore loser on MTGO. Compared to a real life game where even if you lose you get to chat it up and build a relationship with your opponent so even if you draw into nothing but land you can still have fun... as opposed to MTGO where when you draw land you get owned and it ends there.
Obviously I won't condone poor attitudes but it is a legitimate and almost instinctual response. I've seen some of the nicest people I have ever known lose their temper by playing MTGO.
Anyway about the article I think you did an excellent job walkerdog It was very insightful. It almost makes me wanna open my wallet and buy a Classic deck..... almost.. lol
your absolutely right. ideal is almost no-where to be found. next level blue and gobos greatly outnumber ideal decks. like josh said i was drawing alot of knowledge on my local meta. im just starting to put 8 hrs. a day on mtgo playing drafting and watching replays. as such i believe i owe it to you guys to produce more accurate stuff.
I really enjoy your articles Walkerdog. I am a true Classic fan & love reading about all the top decks & how to counter them. I am looking forward to your next episode on "Doubtless Apples". I will also take Conrad Kolos deck for a spin & see how it rides.
gotta say i was a little surprised that fob is lsv i have been playing him in the tp room and he is a bit of a sore loser. mana screw happens . deal w/ it or mulligan instead of grouching out your opponent for saying "gg". also why does no one remember that my deck is 4c thresh? i def played stps against fob and conrad during the swiss and top 8. any ways nice article and speedy too. get some sleep man!
The "ban Clamp" talk felt like it was slightly knee-jerkish, espcially after I took a good look at the deck that ran it. It was a solid deck built around 'Clamp and good-stuff. The CB line was mostly joking, but I should've clarified that I was musing those musings based on the fact that it's being shoe-horned into virtually every U/x Deck, that's how good it is. I didn't mean it that seriously though, just an off-hand remark. Thanks for your feedback, and glad you liked the rest of the article!
"(Should we start talking about Counterbalance bannings? Probably not yet, but...)"
If you want to be serious about Classic you really have to stop this stuff everytime a 'card' wins a single PE. First Skullclamp, now Counterbalance. Next up Lightning Bolt ?! :>
The article itself was solid though and very nice that you were able to finish it in such a short time.
The other decklist would have been interesting and maybe more in-depth questions for Conrad, like why no Academy Ruins + Explosives/Artifacts and what is up with that single Chrome Mox ?
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'll address some of your points one at a time -- and ignore the rest. :)
Playtesting: I agree more playtesting is in order -- check back soon for version two!
Honing the deck: All your points are good. The decks in this series aren't supposed to be supercompetitive, but winning is usually more fun than losing, so I want to make the deck better as much as the next guy.
Deck list: The missing cards are Swamps. Not sure how those got left out. Feel free to blame the editor. :)
Card choices: Utopia Sprawl is not Stadard legal. Fertile Ground and Overgrowth are the only land-enchanting acceleration in Standard. As for fixing, I never found myself needing to tap Llanowar Wastes for colored mana, so someone could do without them pretty easily. Rather than provide an exhaustive discussion in the comments, I'll provide some more depth in #2.
Anyway, thanks again for caring enough to respond. Honestly, I wasn't sure there'd be much interest in some janky combo decks and I was hoping my delightfully charming writing style would paper over any problems with the actual content. But in retrospect I should have followed the advice Sister Virginia Lee tried so hard to instill back in elementary school -- anything worth doing is worth doing well. Of course it was hard to take her too seriously since every day she asked a schoolfull of children to pray that an old lady would die so we could get her land and expand the playground (tactfully stated as "Please remember to pray for the property.")
The Deck only has 56 cards listed. I would guess that the rest was land(as only 16 are listed). Also with only 4 games played and two of those fell to mana screw there is not much analysis. A third game was played with only 2 suspends.
I really don't think that that is a decent analysis for the deck. Most anything loeses to mana screw, and can beat a horribly mana screwed oponnent. Also if a deck only plaly 2 spells(and one an accelerant) I would hope you can win.
I am sure you are recieving some sort of compensation for this article, even if it is just a platform for future submissions. In that event I expect a little more. I like articles that attempt to make bad/underused rares good, but with poor editing, playtesting and analysis I expect and have seen much better here.
Playtesting:
Give me at least 5 RELAVANT games. Still a small sampling, but at least you can see how the deck runs unhindered. If you lose to mana screw, how about letting us know the hands you kept, and how you expedcted those hands to play out.
Also how about some card evaluation post playtesting. I know you cannot go into much with the sample size here. most people realize Garruk=good. Turn 3 Garruk due to acceleration = more gooder. How did Magus work out? Was he worth the slot? How about the benefits of Search over something like Utopia Sprawl? Or Sprawl vs. Overgrowth to help smooth the fixing for those who do not have the relavent pain lands? What is the turn you can expect the deck to go off(this is a combo deck right?)
When you lose relavant games what cards were an issue? what could you do to make the deck work around Tef. Moat? or such. Do you just hope to combo out before the problems arrive?
In short I appreciate the time it takes to design/test and write up these type of articles, and I hope that this does not discourage you from doing more in the future, but please make them worth the time you put into them.
Don't take it bad, but it's not really a good sign to read an article and the writer define the tier 1 deck so wrongly.
I played a lot of extended, and I would say the tier 1 decks are Dredge, Next level blue, RDW, gobs, affinity, and doran (the 3 last ones being less played than the 1st three). Of course it can vary sometimes, but it's mostly this.
So focusing your article about a meta of ideal (really, really not much played) dredge and rock doesn't looks like a great idea...
i really like the article. in the next one could u include how you would choose your lands foryour mana-base? i believe alot of players get mana screwed in games they couldve won had they picked the correct number of the right basics.....
sidenote- i nver sit across from matt pearce in a limited game and feel like im going to win!
you may be right. enduring ideal is becoming a fad of this meta. perhaps cutting the ronom and kami from the board to add a pair of jittes is a better choice. but without the vindicates main i thought the enchantment killers would add a little bit of utility to the sideboard.
I got 3rd place in the PTQ in Atlanta this past weekend with the very same deck, and I lost to IDEAL in the semi-finals. :(:(
My list is a little bit different: I played 2 terminate in the MD. The SB was 2 JItte, 2 Terminate, 1 Teeg, 2 Hierarch, 3 Grudge, 2 Extirpate, and 3 Sulfuric Vortex.
I'm going to the PTQ in Charollete in a few weekends, probably playing the same deck, but my SB will probably contain Ronam Unicorn!
Nice article, and building zoo on a budget is a nice idea.
However, I think your list really needs jittes, they are an incredibly powerful addiction to this deck, almost winning games by themselves (they win games by themselves even if you have a deck made just by them, troll scetic and 50 lands).
Also, i would prepare my deck and SB more against rock/countertop/nextlevelblu/dredge than against ideal. Ideal is just a weak deck played because it went famous, but it needs orim's chant to have some hopes (and we all know what is orim's chant's price) and even then it can (maybe) win against control, but certainy not against fast aggro decks like zoo that burn them out in 4 turns and then keep them at bay with gaddock and/or light removal like ronom unicorn. Removing a counterbalance, a vedalken shakles or 10 hasted 3/3 zombies are much more difficult than winning against ideal (that NEEDS pernicious too, no way it could win against rock, zoo or countertop without clearing the board, given the fact that solitary will be burned in seconds)
The "attack left" bug is pretty major in FFA abd Elder Dragon Highlander games, because it isn't even dependent on any one specific card. Just seems to hit any old game that goes on long enough to run into that bit of bad luck.
Be nice to see that one on the buglist here too. Great job by the way, keep up the reports! I look forward to reading them every week.
Well I'd like to clarify that I didn't write the article trying to help mtgo to sell - I just use them as a pricing source because they are pretty reasonable. What you said is perfectly true. There are decks out there that are very reasonably costed and can compete with the rest. Big Pizza itself only costs about $125 and rips through a lot of decks.
Some of what makes "Tier 1" decks tier 1 is the fact that they are winning a lot of games. Part of this is becuase they are famous, but it is a feedback loop. People play decks because famous players play them, famous players play decks because they are good.
I also agree that decks can oftnen go without Tarmo in them, but most of the decks at the top tables every PE are with Tarmo and not without, so I used a list which included them. Elves without Tarmos is much cheaper, only abou $160. I still doubt that you can get a viable standard deck for less than $100, it might be a good challenge for me eventually.
It just seems odd to me that, according to those deviations the card was graded at the highest of the other 2 judges' deviations, yet nearly the lowest of yours (41, 24, 43). I can understand if you didn't find the card particularly powerful (balance?), but even on a curve I fail to see how the card comes up so short in Originality and Appeal.
Nevertheless I don't want this to turn into a sour grapes type thing. The contest was fun and I will definitely be entering a couple more. Also thanks to the judges for their work in doing all of the scoring and commenting as well as Evu for writing the wrap-up article!
I liked the read. I would maybe like to see more details, but I understand how the blur of the tourney can make things. And what's with the Pokemon comments? Weird.
Traitorous Confidant - I did my mechanic checking in MTGO, so I didn't catch that this card had been printed in Portal.
Fledgling Phoenix - I hadn't thought of adding a counter to denote the flying. It would have made the templating a little more readable, too, I think. I guess no one noticed that the name of the mage in the flavor text is an anagram of Jaya Ballard? When in doubt, use an anagram! I also agree that 2/2 is probably too good for red; 2/1 would make more sense.
Fearfeeder - Regarding Evu's comment that this costs quite a bit for being so easy to kill: I thought this as well, but decided the effect was powerful enough, especially combined with any Blink effects, to warrant the cost at common. I originally costed this at 3B, but didn't want to go the 2BB route. I agree it would be a little more useful with a reversed P/T, but black doesn't normally get creatures with significantly higher toughness than power. As a sidenote, this is a "commonized" version of a rare I designed for a set I'm making; it has the same mechanic, but comes into play with four counters, costs 2BB, and is 6/6.
It just occurred to me that Sleeper Agent might actually be the card I've been looking for to form some sort of useful combo with Aurification. Thanks for the inspiration!
Has anybody seen this - www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_AP_79JVw
Thanks again everyone for reading and commenting. I know I make 1-2 pissy remarks a week, usually involving how I keep a 3-4 land hand and draw nothing but land in game one, then a 2 lander and see no lands until turn 8 of game two in a draft. We all do it at SOME point; it's the flaw in playing an anonymous game of luck that in almost all other aspectics is wonderful. Sometimes you just have a bad game and are mad. I'm not condoning this kind've behavior, rather, I hope people understand how it sounds when they say those kind of things, so they can cut down on it (myself included). As for CK's deck, seems like a solid build. Keep an ear out for cuts from Part Two.
I know this conversation gets old but you really can't blame someone for being a sore loser on MTGO. Compared to a real life game where even if you lose you get to chat it up and build a relationship with your opponent so even if you draw into nothing but land you can still have fun... as opposed to MTGO where when you draw land you get owned and it ends there.
Obviously I won't condone poor attitudes but it is a legitimate and almost instinctual response. I've seen some of the nicest people I have ever known lose their temper by playing MTGO.
Anyway about the article I think you did an excellent job walkerdog It was very insightful. It almost makes me wanna open my wallet and buy a Classic deck..... almost.. lol
your absolutely right. ideal is almost no-where to be found. next level blue and gobos greatly outnumber ideal decks. like josh said i was drawing alot of knowledge on my local meta. im just starting to put 8 hrs. a day on mtgo playing drafting and watching replays. as such i believe i owe it to you guys to produce more accurate stuff.
I really enjoy your articles Walkerdog. I am a true Classic fan & love reading about all the top decks & how to counter them. I am looking forward to your next episode on "Doubtless Apples". I will also take Conrad Kolos deck for a spin & see how it rides.
gotta say i was a little surprised that fob is lsv i have been playing him in the tp room and he is a bit of a sore loser. mana screw happens . deal w/ it or mulligan instead of grouching out your opponent for saying "gg". also why does no one remember that my deck is 4c thresh? i def played stps against fob and conrad during the swiss and top 8. any ways nice article and speedy too. get some sleep man!
The "ban Clamp" talk felt like it was slightly knee-jerkish, espcially after I took a good look at the deck that ran it. It was a solid deck built around 'Clamp and good-stuff. The CB line was mostly joking, but I should've clarified that I was musing those musings based on the fact that it's being shoe-horned into virtually every U/x Deck, that's how good it is. I didn't mean it that seriously though, just an off-hand remark. Thanks for your feedback, and glad you liked the rest of the article!
"(Should we start talking about Counterbalance bannings? Probably not yet, but...)"
If you want to be serious about Classic you really have to stop this stuff everytime a 'card' wins a single PE. First Skullclamp, now Counterbalance. Next up Lightning Bolt ?! :>
The article itself was solid though and very nice that you were able to finish it in such a short time.
The other decklist would have been interesting and maybe more in-depth questions for Conrad, like why no Academy Ruins + Explosives/Artifacts and what is up with that single Chrome Mox ?
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'll address some of your points one at a time -- and ignore the rest. :)
Playtesting: I agree more playtesting is in order -- check back soon for version two!
Honing the deck: All your points are good. The decks in this series aren't supposed to be supercompetitive, but winning is usually more fun than losing, so I want to make the deck better as much as the next guy.
Deck list: The missing cards are Swamps. Not sure how those got left out. Feel free to blame the editor. :)
Card choices: Utopia Sprawl is not Stadard legal. Fertile Ground and Overgrowth are the only land-enchanting acceleration in Standard. As for fixing, I never found myself needing to tap Llanowar Wastes for colored mana, so someone could do without them pretty easily. Rather than provide an exhaustive discussion in the comments, I'll provide some more depth in #2.
Anyway, thanks again for caring enough to respond. Honestly, I wasn't sure there'd be much interest in some janky combo decks and I was hoping my delightfully charming writing style would paper over any problems with the actual content. But in retrospect I should have followed the advice Sister Virginia Lee tried so hard to instill back in elementary school -- anything worth doing is worth doing well. Of course it was hard to take her too seriously since every day she asked a schoolfull of children to pray that an old lady would die so we could get her land and expand the playground (tactfully stated as "Please remember to pray for the property.")
Hey,
Thanks for the article, but....
The Deck only has 56 cards listed. I would guess that the rest was land(as only 16 are listed). Also with only 4 games played and two of those fell to mana screw there is not much analysis. A third game was played with only 2 suspends.
I really don't think that that is a decent analysis for the deck. Most anything loeses to mana screw, and can beat a horribly mana screwed oponnent. Also if a deck only plaly 2 spells(and one an accelerant) I would hope you can win.
I am sure you are recieving some sort of compensation for this article, even if it is just a platform for future submissions. In that event I expect a little more. I like articles that attempt to make bad/underused rares good, but with poor editing, playtesting and analysis I expect and have seen much better here.
Playtesting:
Give me at least 5 RELAVANT games. Still a small sampling, but at least you can see how the deck runs unhindered. If you lose to mana screw, how about letting us know the hands you kept, and how you expedcted those hands to play out.
Also how about some card evaluation post playtesting. I know you cannot go into much with the sample size here. most people realize Garruk=good. Turn 3 Garruk due to acceleration = more gooder. How did Magus work out? Was he worth the slot? How about the benefits of Search over something like Utopia Sprawl? Or Sprawl vs. Overgrowth to help smooth the fixing for those who do not have the relavent pain lands? What is the turn you can expect the deck to go off(this is a combo deck right?)
When you lose relavant games what cards were an issue? what could you do to make the deck work around Tef. Moat? or such. Do you just hope to combo out before the problems arrive?
In short I appreciate the time it takes to design/test and write up these type of articles, and I hope that this does not discourage you from doing more in the future, but please make them worth the time you put into them.
regards,
___helper_monkey on MTGO
I think nick was using his local metagame as a standard, He's really new to MTGO. Like I think he got his account before the NAC was closed down!
Don't take it bad, but it's not really a good sign to read an article and the writer define the tier 1 deck so wrongly.
I played a lot of extended, and I would say the tier 1 decks are Dredge, Next level blue, RDW, gobs, affinity, and doran (the 3 last ones being less played than the 1st three). Of course it can vary sometimes, but it's mostly this.
So focusing your article about a meta of ideal (really, really not much played) dredge and rock doesn't looks like a great idea...
TuSaisPas
Have a Swell-icious evening playing Ancient Diciple against Grokkenstein. Nail the wall to the flor
i really like the article. in the next one could u include how you would choose your lands foryour mana-base? i believe alot of players get mana screwed in games they couldve won had they picked the correct number of the right basics.....
sidenote- i nver sit across from matt pearce in a limited game and feel like im going to win!
you may be right. enduring ideal is becoming a fad of this meta. perhaps cutting the ronom and kami from the board to add a pair of jittes is a better choice. but without the vindicates main i thought the enchantment killers would add a little bit of utility to the sideboard.
I got 3rd place in the PTQ in Atlanta this past weekend with the very same deck, and I lost to IDEAL in the semi-finals. :(:(
My list is a little bit different: I played 2 terminate in the MD. The SB was 2 JItte, 2 Terminate, 1 Teeg, 2 Hierarch, 3 Grudge, 2 Extirpate, and 3 Sulfuric Vortex.
I'm going to the PTQ in Charollete in a few weekends, probably playing the same deck, but my SB will probably contain Ronam Unicorn!
Nice article, and building zoo on a budget is a nice idea.
However, I think your list really needs jittes, they are an incredibly powerful addiction to this deck, almost winning games by themselves (they win games by themselves even if you have a deck made just by them, troll scetic and 50 lands).
Also, i would prepare my deck and SB more against rock/countertop/nextlevelblu/dredge than against ideal. Ideal is just a weak deck played because it went famous, but it needs orim's chant to have some hopes (and we all know what is orim's chant's price) and even then it can (maybe) win against control, but certainy not against fast aggro decks like zoo that burn them out in 4 turns and then keep them at bay with gaddock and/or light removal like ronom unicorn. Removing a counterbalance, a vedalken shakles or 10 hasted 3/3 zombies are much more difficult than winning against ideal (that NEEDS pernicious too, no way it could win against rock, zoo or countertop without clearing the board, given the fact that solitary will be burned in seconds)
The "attack left" bug is pretty major in FFA abd Elder Dragon Highlander games, because it isn't even dependent on any one specific card. Just seems to hit any old game that goes on long enough to run into that bit of bad luck.
Be nice to see that one on the buglist here too. Great job by the way, keep up the reports! I look forward to reading them every week.
Well I'd like to clarify that I didn't write the article trying to help mtgo to sell - I just use them as a pricing source because they are pretty reasonable. What you said is perfectly true. There are decks out there that are very reasonably costed and can compete with the rest. Big Pizza itself only costs about $125 and rips through a lot of decks.
Some of what makes "Tier 1" decks tier 1 is the fact that they are winning a lot of games. Part of this is becuase they are famous, but it is a feedback loop. People play decks because famous players play them, famous players play decks because they are good.
I also agree that decks can oftnen go without Tarmo in them, but most of the decks at the top tables every PE are with Tarmo and not without, so I used a list which included them. Elves without Tarmos is much cheaper, only abou $160. I still doubt that you can get a viable standard deck for less than $100, it might be a good challenge for me eventually.
Evu: 36 +/- 5
Pyrosin: 30 +/- 8
DiesIrae: 40 +/- 3
It just seems odd to me that, according to those deviations the card was graded at the highest of the other 2 judges' deviations, yet nearly the lowest of yours (41, 24, 43). I can understand if you didn't find the card particularly powerful (balance?), but even on a curve I fail to see how the card comes up so short in Originality and Appeal.
Nevertheless I don't want this to turn into a sour grapes type thing. The contest was fun and I will definitely be entering a couple more. Also thanks to the judges for their work in doing all of the scoring and commenting as well as Evu for writing the wrap-up article!
I liked the read. I would maybe like to see more details, but I understand how the blur of the tourney can make things. And what's with the Pokemon comments? Weird.
Traitorous Confidant - I did my mechanic checking in MTGO, so I didn't catch that this card had been printed in Portal.
Fledgling Phoenix - I hadn't thought of adding a counter to denote the flying. It would have made the templating a little more readable, too, I think. I guess no one noticed that the name of the mage in the flavor text is an anagram of Jaya Ballard? When in doubt, use an anagram! I also agree that 2/2 is probably too good for red; 2/1 would make more sense.
Fearfeeder - Regarding Evu's comment that this costs quite a bit for being so easy to kill: I thought this as well, but decided the effect was powerful enough, especially combined with any Blink effects, to warrant the cost at common. I originally costed this at 3B, but didn't want to go the 2BB route. I agree it would be a little more useful with a reversed P/T, but black doesn't normally get creatures with significantly higher toughness than power. As a sidenote, this is a "commonized" version of a rare I designed for a set I'm making; it has the same mechanic, but comes into play with four counters, costs 2BB, and is 6/6.
Yeah, the file you uploaded for the Granite layout is corrupted. Purple looks fine.
Winrar is not letting me extract the .bat files for some reason.
It just occurred to me that Sleeper Agent might actually be the card I've been looking for to form some sort of useful combo with Aurification. Thanks for the inspiration!