Well done, spikeboy! Very informative article on how to beat MUC! There are a couple of points I'd like to make though:
"As the Red deck, you just keep drawing burn until you have more burn than the control player can possibly have counters, and then you one for one once a turn, since you will have eight cards in hand (on your turn) to MUC's seven. Even if MUC flashes back Think Twice, that is mana wasted that can not be used to counter later burn. This is perhaps the most obvious error I see players make when fighting MUC: they simply bait one or two spells at a time, instead of playing for the long game."
This seems counterintuitive as it is exactly what the MUC player wants, in the long game, the control player almost always has the advantage (whether it be card advantage or mana resources, due to the structures of the decks). Remember, the MUC player doesn't necessarily have to counter every burn spell in your hand until he is at his last point of life (as I found out last sat playing against LulThyme =p). By advocating the "long game" against MUC, you negate the only advantage that red decks and that of its ilk has against MUC, and that is mainly, its speed. I simply cannot imagine what chances the burn player might have against the control player with a board full of mana sources to counter your spells. Aren't your chances better playing the tempo game against MUC when it hasn't fully set up its board position?
Please let me know if I have misconstrued what you mean by the "long game".
Yeah I realised that shortly before this was going to go up but forgot to change that.
I'm split on Incinerate v. Lash Out, whichever you run is creature removal 9 times out of 10. Sometimes getting in three with Lash Out or being able to burn them out from three lift with Incinerate is a hard call to make. Think Pithing Needle might be the answer.
Charting week to week changes every week wouldn't show much as we only have 8 decks a week. What I plan on doing is tracking metagame every 4-5 weeks with what was played over those weeks. Expect graphs and stuff. Honestly not sure if it will be ever four or five weeks guess it depends if I do it for next week's article.
Mind Stone was a recommendation I gave in another article as an accelerant and drawer. It still seems good, but for a replacement to Stink I think the Relic beats it. Both come down turn three, and can give 2x mana starting the next main phase, if prepared for properly. Although the benefit to the Stink is that it can chump block in an emergency whereas the Relic... not so much. Games 2+ though, the stinkdrinker will eat removal right off the bat, so that's one downside to running him.
Kind of a tough call I guess. I don't have the Relics yet so I sadly cannot test that interaction.
Good breakdown though! Any chance of getting a percentage increase decrease like Frank Karsten used to do? Like this week had x deck types a n% increase from last week?
Something I like to do to help Stinky out a bit is through some Stalactites in, and give him the Giant type.... Making Thundercloud Shaman's a little more destructive, but more importantly, keeping Stinky around past a Thundercloud....
I ran Giants (Pretty much a close list to the one here) but added Lash Outs yesterday in the PE. Zombies seems to be a pretty awful matchup as I lost two matches to the Korlash powered beatdowns.
I want to see giants Viable, because I like wrath of god.
I didn't test with Relic, honestly I'm not sure which is better. One thing to keep in mind is your opponents don't know to kill Stinkdrinker. They want to save their removal for better cards.
Relic is nice but it adds maximum two mana, Stinkdrinker can "make" 4 mana on turn 4. A turn three Stinkdrinker followed by a turn 4 Brion and Blindspot Giant is pretty sick. I played a giants deck similar to that but with Mind Stone added (better than relic for mana curve, and possibly better overall) this week. Lost to GUB Elementals r1 me and my opponent agreed that its pretty much impossible for giants to win. R2 Giants took down treefolk. R3 My opponent layed down a turn one Fearie Conclave all three games and game three it got there. Thinking about 2x Pithing Needle, stops planeswalkers, manlands, and random other cards.
I've been working on a giant deck for a little while now, and it's very similar to the giants deck listed above. The only thing I'd recommend differently is against the stinkdrinker. If you've got coalition relic's I'd go for those over Stinky. Mainly because if stinky gets killed you're hosed, and you'll end up killing stinky just by playing your cards, so it's not really synergistic with the deck itself.
I didn't hate the Jitte banning in Singleton. I run it in my lists, but it seemed like it was just too swingy. However, SoFi and co. have much the same effect. Kind've random banning... Upheavel is kinda weird too, and Flash is... I guess fine? But it didn't seem super-broken. I'd rather play against a flash-based combo deck than, say, heartbeat combo.
Seriously, I don't know how that card was allowed to remain for this many years. ZOMG I'd have to sac a creature to make it a demonic tutor, how unfair! :rolleyes:
Also, I agree with the Transmutes getting the axe as long as the spirit of the format is 'no tutoring'. Since that seems to be what they want then I agree that they should be banned.
I'm adding a section in the announcements for this new infromation.
Sat. am now,, and the DCI has announced bannings for MTGO.
Transmute cards and Infernal Tutor gone from Prismatic, Upheaval and friends from Singleton.
Here's the list.
Singleton Flash is banned Umezawa's Jitte is banned Upheaval is banned
Prismatic Brainspoil is banned Clutch of the Undercity is banned Diabolic Intent is banned Dimir House Guard is banned Dimir Infiltrator is banned Dimir Machinations is banned Dizzy Spell is banned Drift of Phantasms is banned Ethereal Usher is banned Grozoth is banned Muddle the Mixture is banned Netherborn Phalanx is banned Perplex is banned Shred Memory is banned Tolaria West is banned
I have that same issue where "magic.exe" will keep running in some cases after closing the client. For me it doesn't happen most of the time, but seems more likely to happen if I close the client without logging out. It happens almost every single time if I load the client and close it without ever logging in. I also go and kill it with Task Manager if that happens and everything is fine after that.
I think it actually qualifies as both. It's a hog yes, that's completely true (and V3 will be worse). The problem (as far as I've been able to determine) is that it never gives back memory that it in theory could. Once it loads a card picture it never releases it, even after the game is done. If you've loaded 60 seperate cards in one Prismatic game, they aren't dropped once the game is done. Ditto for Collections and Deck Building and Library searching.
It's code that was designed to make the game display faster, and perhaps when there weren't so many different cards as there are now it may not have been such a big deal. But it's definitely a problem in the code, likely a garbage collection routine that isn't comprehensive enough or even worse: never planned for.
It just sounds like a memory hog. They are obviously paging each and every unique image once it's loaded for faster secdonary load times. Maybe that's poor design but it doesn't sound like a leak. It's why if you visit a Foil bot you can kiss your page file goodbye.
A leak is where a process conitunes to eat up memory on the machine with no purpose.
As for the program staying resident in your memory DWnut, that doesn't seem to be an across the board problem. It doesn't happen to me. Once I close MTGO, the memroy resources are freed up again.
Yea, I've been trying to get my cube list sorted out on MTGO, but it is a real pain in the neck with over 400 different cards just in the decklist screen. I'll have to give no pictures a try.
Well done, spikeboy! Very informative article on how to beat MUC! There are a couple of points I'd like to make though:
"As the Red deck, you just keep drawing burn until you have more burn than the control player can possibly have counters, and then you one for one once a turn, since you will have eight cards in hand (on your turn) to MUC's seven. Even if MUC flashes back Think Twice, that is mana wasted that can not be used to counter later burn. This is perhaps the most obvious error I see players make when fighting MUC: they simply bait one or two spells at a time, instead of playing for the long game."
This seems counterintuitive as it is exactly what the MUC player wants, in the long game, the control player almost always has the advantage (whether it be card advantage or mana resources, due to the structures of the decks). Remember, the MUC player doesn't necessarily have to counter every burn spell in your hand until he is at his last point of life (as I found out last sat playing against LulThyme =p). By advocating the "long game" against MUC, you negate the only advantage that red decks and that of its ilk has against MUC, and that is mainly, its speed. I simply cannot imagine what chances the burn player might have against the control player with a board full of mana sources to counter your spells. Aren't your chances better playing the tempo game against MUC when it hasn't fully set up its board position?
Please let me know if I have misconstrued what you mean by the "long game".
Good article, keep them coming!
Yeah I realised that shortly before this was going to go up but forgot to change that.
I'm split on Incinerate v. Lash Out, whichever you run is creature removal 9 times out of 10. Sometimes getting in three with Lash Out or being able to burn them out from three lift with Incinerate is a hard call to make. Think Pithing Needle might be the answer.
Just wanted to say thanks. I am not missing Online Tech anymore :)
O-Ring won't hit the Faerie Enclave. Non-land... land, etc. Incinerate and Lash out seem fine in that deck as you pointed out.
Charting week to week changes every week wouldn't show much as we only have 8 decks a week. What I plan on doing is tracking metagame every 4-5 weeks with what was played over those weeks. Expect graphs and stuff. Honestly not sure if it will be ever four or five weeks guess it depends if I do it for next week's article.
Short version: it's coming just not every week.
Relic vs Stinkdrinker vs Mind Stone
Mind Stone was a recommendation I gave in another article as an accelerant and drawer. It still seems good, but for a replacement to Stink I think the Relic beats it. Both come down turn three, and can give 2x mana starting the next main phase, if prepared for properly. Although the benefit to the Stink is that it can chump block in an emergency whereas the Relic... not so much. Games 2+ though, the stinkdrinker will eat removal right off the bat, so that's one downside to running him.
Kind of a tough call I guess. I don't have the Relics yet so I sadly cannot test that interaction.
Good breakdown though! Any chance of getting a percentage increase decrease like Frank Karsten used to do? Like this week had x deck types a n% increase from last week?
That'd rock!
If you want to see one, I'll try to get a list for next week.
Something I like to do to help Stinky out a bit is through some Stalactites in, and give him the Giant type.... Making Thundercloud Shaman's a little more destructive, but more importantly, keeping Stinky around past a Thundercloud....
I ran Giants (Pretty much a close list to the one here) but added Lash Outs yesterday in the PE. Zombies seems to be a pretty awful matchup as I lost two matches to the Korlash powered beatdowns.
I want to see giants Viable, because I like wrath of god.
I didn't test with Relic, honestly I'm not sure which is better. One thing to keep in mind is your opponents don't know to kill Stinkdrinker. They want to save their removal for better cards.
Relic is nice but it adds maximum two mana, Stinkdrinker can "make" 4 mana on turn 4. A turn three Stinkdrinker followed by a turn 4 Brion and Blindspot Giant is pretty sick. I played a giants deck similar to that but with Mind Stone added (better than relic for mana curve, and possibly better overall) this week. Lost to GUB Elementals r1 me and my opponent agreed that its pretty much impossible for giants to win. R2 Giants took down treefolk. R3 My opponent layed down a turn one Fearie Conclave all three games and game three it got there. Thinking about 2x Pithing Needle, stops planeswalkers, manlands, and random other cards.
Hooray for giants!
I've been working on a giant deck for a little while now, and it's very similar to the giants deck listed above. The only thing I'd recommend differently is against the stinkdrinker. If you've got coalition relic's I'd go for those over Stinky. Mainly because if stinky gets killed you're hosed, and you'll end up killing stinky just by playing your cards, so it's not really synergistic with the deck itself.
Thank you so much for doing these recaps. I had no interest in the format until you started to write about them, you're doing a great job!
thanks for the update!
i played in that event with my mono blue dakkon control deck but it didn't perform very well.
0-2 against ashling (i wish needle would work on avatars lol) and 1-2 against chronatog.
i guess i just faced my 2 bad matchups.
anyways,ill try again next week.
could you by any chance post an updated chronatog list?
thanks
I didn't hate the Jitte banning in Singleton. I run it in my lists, but it seemed like it was just too swingy. However, SoFi and co. have much the same effect. Kind've random banning... Upheavel is kinda weird too, and Flash is... I guess fine? But it didn't seem super-broken. I'd rather play against a flash-based combo deck than, say, heartbeat combo.
None of the Singleton cards needed banning and there are still plenty of Prismatic tutors with [c]Primal Command[/c] being the clearest mistake.
Good to know! I'll remove it from the list for next week!
~Erik
Diabolic intent: Finally!
Seriously, I don't know how that card was allowed to remain for this many years. ZOMG I'd have to sac a creature to make it a demonic tutor, how unfair! :rolleyes:
Also, I agree with the Transmutes getting the axe as long as the spirit of the format is 'no tutoring'. Since that seems to be what they want then I agree that they should be banned.
I'm adding a section in the announcements for this new infromation.
~Erik
Windbrisk Heights is fixed. I played with it in a draft yesterday, and it worked fine.
Whoops, to early in the morning. Ignore Infernal Tutor - still legal.
Sat. am now,, and the DCI has announced bannings for MTGO.
Transmute cards and Infernal Tutor gone from Prismatic, Upheaval and friends from Singleton.
Here's the list.
Singleton
Flash is banned
Umezawa's Jitte is banned
Upheaval is banned
Prismatic
Brainspoil is banned
Clutch of the Undercity is banned
Diabolic Intent is banned
Dimir House Guard is banned
Dimir Infiltrator is banned
Dimir Machinations is banned
Dizzy Spell is banned
Drift of Phantasms is banned
Ethereal Usher is banned
Grozoth is banned
Muddle the Mixture is banned
Netherborn Phalanx is banned
Perplex is banned
Shred Memory is banned
Tolaria West is banned
I have that same issue where "magic.exe" will keep running in some cases after closing the client. For me it doesn't happen most of the time, but seems more likely to happen if I close the client without logging out. It happens almost every single time if I load the client and close it without ever logging in. I also go and kill it with Task Manager if that happens and everything is fine after that.
I think it actually qualifies as both. It's a hog yes, that's completely true (and V3 will be worse). The problem (as far as I've been able to determine) is that it never gives back memory that it in theory could. Once it loads a card picture it never releases it, even after the game is done. If you've loaded 60 seperate cards in one Prismatic game, they aren't dropped once the game is done. Ditto for Collections and Deck Building and Library searching.
It's code that was designed to make the game display faster, and perhaps when there weren't so many different cards as there are now it may not have been such a big deal. But it's definitely a problem in the code, likely a garbage collection routine that isn't comprehensive enough or even worse: never planned for.
It just sounds like a memory hog. They are obviously paging each and every unique image once it's loaded for faster secdonary load times. Maybe that's poor design but it doesn't sound like a leak. It's why if you visit a Foil bot you can kiss your page file goodbye.
A leak is where a process conitunes to eat up memory on the machine with no purpose.
As for the program staying resident in your memory DWnut, that doesn't seem to be an across the board problem. It doesn't happen to me. Once I close MTGO, the memroy resources are freed up again.
Yea, I've been trying to get my cube list sorted out on MTGO, but it is a real pain in the neck with over 400 different cards just in the decklist screen. I'll have to give no pictures a try.