Way, way more expensive, and abeyance draws you a card. I can't even guess what abeyance will cost but I firmly believe that it will cost many times less than chant.
Abey is run over Chant in many Legacy Desire decks (or at least it was last time I was reading up on them, the format changes pretty fast) due to it being just as easily splashable, and cantrips. Being run over chant and Xanthid Swarm (over swarm since abey can't be hit by swords), and over chant because of the extra card it gives you when you're prepared to 'go off'
Having the choice between the two I'd still probably run abeyance. However, if you have the chants and don't want to buy the abeyances, then running chant would be fine too I imagine.
Desire is really fast as it stands right now, and when we get lotus petal it will gain a lot of consistancy. I'm looking for it to be one of the combo decks to beat once Tempest is online.
This article is elitist and wholly incorrect. Affinity decks, Burn decks, Zoo, Black/White agro, and various mid range decks have won and placed numerous top 8's in both sanctioned Ques and PRE's. Are they viable? Well, yes. Decks that make top 8 more than once is practically the definition of viable.
Often times, "good" players will play the metagame gamble and run something that has an auto loss. Sure, red Deck wins has an impossible game against flash, but that doesn't mean it can't beat up the rest of the field. I think both articles could have emphasized strengths and weaknesses of archetype selection.
He did mention something that bears knowing- if you want to snuff combo, U/x Agro is a logical choice. Classic's best anti-combo artillery comes from those two colors.
I'm guessing Jacs figured green was open with so much being passed to him (2x elves, Treetop Bracers, and a spined wurm). I was also surprised to see the llanowar elves wheel the table. A pretty clear sign that green was being drafted by maybe one other person at the table at the time.
I agree Braids is a really great choice in a Mirri-heavy metagame like the one at that 3x. Mirri lost a lot of popularity after it lost a card in the avatar revision, which I think is strange given that it is still extremely powerful. I played the Mirri-Braids matchup a few times, and always felt like I was THIS CLOSE to pulling it out, but it is really hard for the Mirri player.
Jhoira decks did make t8 a bunch of times. I always thought they were a joke deck until I played Mirri against Mikeman29. All he needed to do was last a few turns and then eventually he topdecked a WoG effect and that was the game.
Are you still going to play Braids decks moving forward?
Yeah, that white deck sounds like a nightmare for me. It isn't a 100% matchup, since you could still get mana screwed/flooded. Put it's probably something like 10-90 in your favor. Good job making a profit, but I think the virtual auto-loss against U/W or Mono Blue is bad now.
Two important points. First, PDC veteran lathspel finished second a tthe most recent TPDC Classic with a deck based on similar concepts as Confessor. This article was written about a week ago, so I do not want people to think that I was not giving credit where credit was due. Second, I totally blanked on Pyroblast as SB against MUC. Silly me.
P4-Riders are def correct pick here. Not set for second color(or perhapse even 1st at this point) and if we go green E. Drain gan be EASILY splashed.
P9-I would take Dross Croc. over I. Priest. No way am I going white now, esp heavy white which is required by the Priest.
P21-I also considered Quicksand over A. Bodyguard, but you really need the warm bodies.
P36-I would take Mind Rot over Spined Wurm. After 1st 5 picks of pack 3 we are clearly R/B, and I am never sad to run the Rot.
P37-I would also consider Shatterstorm here, and probally would take it. U. Anger is a soild combat trick, but let someone else take it and 2 for 1 them with all your instant removal.
All in all good draft, thanks for posting it, agree with most of the picks. Shame you had to run into the big blue second round(at least it wasn't 1st :p ), and I don't think that blue was as underdrafted as you say, as there were very few of blue's elite fliers passed around, and I don't recall seeing 1 sift.
not really that immaginative, but I've been tinkering around with cards and so far the best all around card for changelings has to be Alpha Status.
Gives +2/+2 for all your creatures and all of your opponent's creatures. Drop it on cairn wanderer after you've got something spiffy in the GY to give it an evasion or trample.
Heh, I love people who play that deck. I have a 100% win rate against it, playing snow white with a small splash of blue (Flashfreeze out of the Sideboard.. oh yeah!). 7 Main deck ways of stopping Chandra (3 Pithing Needle, 4 Oblivion Rings), 3 Crovax main is good against Stuffy Doll, and 4 Martyr of Sands often give me unrealisitically high life totals. Main deck Story Circle: Red is pretty good... as the only realistic answer the deck has is a Word of Seizing, and that only works for one turn. By the time Molten Disaster is online against me... I'm usually at above 20 life.
Anyway, here's my list (which won 35 packs of Lorwyn for me in the 8 man constructed queues and financed my online Lorwyn release experience (only a net gain of 25 packs, as I sold LLL for 14 or 15 to finance the tournament entries):
9 3cc -- 2 Mobilization, 3 Story Circle, 4 Oblivion Ring
5 4cc -- 4 Wrath of God, Ajani Goldmane
3 5cc -- Teferi's Moat, 2 Gauntlet of Power
5 6cc -- 3 Crovax, Adarkar Valkyrie, Beacon of Immortality
Sideboard: 2 Disenchant, 3 Dodecapod, 2 Flashfreeze, 2 Imperial Mask, 3 Jester's Scepter, 2 Pull From Eternity, Return to Dust
Match-ups: 100% vs mono-red
100% vs elves
50% vs mono white kithkin (might be higher, but I did lose one of two matches)
90% vs red-green (I lost one match out of 20 against this deck, though I did drop several games)
50% vs blue/black control (2-2 in tournament matches, have a feeling it is more in their favor though)
0% vs white/blue control (they have card drawing AND counterspells... I lose)
0% vs blue/black/green 187
Other archetypes were not played against me in the tournament queues. I saw a lot of decks with red, which made it the perfect meta-game choice. I don't recommend playing this deck is a control orientated meta game. I modified the decklist from a first place states deck (from either Ohio or Illionois). I'd expect this deck to fail against mono-blue, yet dominate the deck listed above. Remember after game two to only play your Matryr of Sands as immediate life gain, as Sulfur Elementals are expected. A 12-15 point life swing usually wins against red.
I dont' mind revealing this, since 8-man construct is no longer profitable (post release), and constructed PE's are down.
Heh, I love people who play that deck. I have a 100% win rate against it, playing snow white with a small splash of blue (Flashfreeze out of the Sideboard.. oh yeah!). 7 Main deck ways of stopping Chandra (3 Pithing Needle, 4 Oblivion Rings), 3 Crovax main is good against Stuffy Doll, and 4 Martyr of Sands often give me unrealisitically high life totals. Main deck Story Circle: Red is pretty good... as the only realistic answer the deck has is a Word of Seizing, and that only works for one turn. By the time Molten Disaster is online against me... I'm usually at above 20 life.
Anyway, here's my list (which won 35 packs of Lorwyn for me in the 8 man constructed queues and financed my online Lorwyn release experience (only a net gain of 25 packs, as I sold LLL for 14 or 15 to finance the tournament entries):
9 3cc -- 2 Mobilization, 3 Story Circle, 4 Oblivion Ring
5 4cc -- 4 Wrath of God, Ajani Goldmane
3 5cc -- Teferi's Moat, 2 Gauntlet of Power
5 6cc -- 3 Crovax, Adarkar Valkyrie, Beacon of Immortality
Sideboard: 2 Disenchant, 3 Dodecapod, 2 Flashfreeze, 2 Imperial Mask, 3 Jester's Scepter, 2 Pull From Eternity, Return to Dust
Match-ups: 100% vs mono-red
100% vs elves
50% vs mono white kithkin (might be higher, but I did lose one of two matches)
90% vs red-green (I lost one match out of 20 against this deck, though I did drop several games)
50% vs blue/black control (2-2 in tournament matches, have a feeling it is more in their favor though)
0% vs white/blue control (they have card drawing AND counterspells... I lose)
0% vs blue/black/green 187
Other archetypes were not played against me in the tournament queues. I saw a lot of decks with red, which made it the perfect meta-game choice. I don't recommend playing this deck is a control orientated meta game. I modified the decklist from a first place states deck (from either Ohio or Illionois). I'd expect this deck to fail against mono-blue, yet dominate the deck listed above. Remember after game two to only play your Matryr of Sands as immediate life gain, as Sulfur Elementals are expected. A 12-15 point life swing usually wins against red.
I dont' mind revealing this, since 8-man construct is no longer profitable (post release), and constructed PE's are down.
I also played this deck at States to a 1-2 finish, losing to GR midrange (when I couldn't deal with Garruk in time) and a random 5 color deck that drew 3 lightning angels.
It was a great read. I really liked how you talked about the different matchups. Who could possibly know for 100% sure how the deck does against each matchup without infinite testing. At least it is a basis for playing Stark Red. I would love to see you do the same with another deck.
By far, my favorite line was "And...detritus? Whatever. Me red mage. Me smash blue mage."
Oni decks should have multiple creatures on the table by the time Braids can even play a spell.
Back when oni was a problem it tried to solve it by going (prefarebel) turn 1 land and then drop a karoo of a Simian Spirit Guide EOT turn 2 akroma memorial t3 Blazing archon. But most of the time I had it tuned Mirri ate Oni alive and since this deck ate Mirri it was pretty easy to win.
Mana control strategies (Heartwood Blink decks) may also be effective, since destroying a karoo sets Braids back over a turn.
The problem with mana control is that you can't use it then Braids got 2 mana open since it invites a bounce land to the rescue (that and the the second is anytime you can play an instant and not like the third (only as a sorcery)) and then it doesn't have that you got the other problem, namely that the braids player has managed to land a threat which meanes that you problery should consider dealing with that instead.
Braids is proberly one of the few decks that got a good matchup vs. the chronatog deck (without running life gain) since that deck got an awfully hard time dealing with Nicol Bolas (its black so no black pact, it got above 4 toughness so no (Soul spike), if it got haste - see the memorial - (Sunscoure) isn't even that efficent).
Btw. the deck is designed to be hard on creatures since if you ain't running creatures the abillities from braids should win the game on its own (well most of the time anyway).
Iam pretty sure that it's only bad matchups were Oni (because they sometimes would have to much gas to handle - match up problery around 60/40 to them - if you get memorial + archon you win (they do not have any outs vs that - archon can be bounced with stingscourer)) and Johira (I never saw a tournement deck around it tho but alot of the spells can kill single creatures which is a problem for a deck that tries to win with 1-2 creatures on the table at a time). Lucky Oni died after Mirri came (and didnt come back then that died since they lost a card) and Johira was never a tournement deck.
This is ofcause my view of the decks but I played in a lot of test games and 2 tournements with the finnished version (The finnished version added alot of power vs ecspecially creatures (board sweepers and so on) - I had to much other things I needed to do the other weeks) - the IPA qualifier and a 3x a couple of weeks before that. The decks I met were very different - Mirri had 6 in t8 (I suspect there must be a good deck somewhere still with that avatar since they were all pretty different and eg. 1 of them had thrown his deck togther ½ an hour before the tournement) in the 3x and the last was chronatog - which I had screwed up vs. in the first rounds. Anyway I won both.
The Mannequin matchup is build dependent. Opponents running lots of Grim Harvests are better against you, but otherwise you really aren't that far behind against them. So you're better against the Top 8 Mannequin decks from Krakow then some versions.
The Rack isn't that bad for you. You have lots of sources of card advantage, like Scrying Sheets and Stalking Yeti. Also, if they get the nuts discard draw, they don't have many other threats. It can be rough, but its a lot better than 30-70.
I haven't tested much against Mono White (I don't think the deck is very good). They really need to draw their Oblivion Rings, or Stuffy Doll, Chandra, and Sulfur Elemental (post board) are bad news for them. I would say its about 40-60, though it's pretty draw dependent.
Can't agree on most of the matchup probability. how can Mannequin.dec be 40-60? More like 20-80. Rack should be 30-70 by default, discard then rack basically = loss for you. Also mono-white life gain kills your deck.
Since you brought up problems with paypal I will share whats happening with mine right now.
Many of my release event purchases I made with paypal on the weekend of the 6th timed out. The money was then put back into my paypal account. This will not show on your statement unless you look in "All Account Activity" duh.
Of course, I didn't notice this until I had more money than I should and had already spent it. I called paypal and did not get a very understandable answer as to what was happening.
Bottom line is WOC is very slow at taking the money from paypal right now. If not taken in 5 days? it goes back to your paypal account. I use my debit card for other things than WOC and its linked into paypal so you can imagine what a mess now I am overdrawn with WOC payments bouncing in and out.
Just a heads up to the paypal users to keep a eye on your balance and activity or you could be overdrawn when the expired charges go through the 2nd time.
That was a fantastic reply, thanks a lot. I'm gonna make those changes and see if I can get some freeform games with the sealed pool tonight. See if you can teach me anything! Great ideas!
I'm not a fan of Springjack Knight, even with Wizened Cenn on the team. Flamekin Bladewhirl gets obsoleted fast, and Flamekin Brawler is just chaff. Wispmare doesn't do enough for the maindeck here but can be an all-star out of the side.
Fire-Belly Changeling gives us a Kithkin back and is pumpable by Smokebraider. Lowland Oaf is a Hill Giant but that's good enough here, and the ability may come up. Quill-Slinger goes well with the Kithkin on the splash. Warren Pilferers is strong enough to splash regardless, but especially here bringing back the likes of Ashling, the Trio, or even Mudbutton and being a Hill Giant besides. Manawise I had Springleaf Drum instead of land #17 and didn't use Vivid Creek, giving me 4 Black sources for 4 Black cards. That's close, but if finding Black is an issue I'd cut Quill-Slinger for Oaken Brawler.
I liked the Weatherlight review.. brought to my attention many other cards other then Null Rod and Abeyance..
Gemstone Mines are Uncommon and Mind Stones are Common.. that should be worth it enough for standard players to pick up some of this set.
Way, way more expensive, and abeyance draws you a card. I can't even guess what abeyance will cost but I firmly believe that it will cost many times less than chant.
Abey is run over Chant in many Legacy Desire decks (or at least it was last time I was reading up on them, the format changes pretty fast) due to it being just as easily splashable, and cantrips. Being run over chant and Xanthid Swarm (over swarm since abey can't be hit by swords), and over chant because of the extra card it gives you when you're prepared to 'go off'
Having the choice between the two I'd still probably run abeyance. However, if you have the chants and don't want to buy the abeyances, then running chant would be fine too I imagine.
Desire is really fast as it stands right now, and when we get lotus petal it will gain a lot of consistancy. I'm looking for it to be one of the combo decks to beat once Tempest is online.
I'd like to point out, if you want to protect your combo Abeyance-style, use Orim's Chant. It costs 1 less mana.
Yes, I know it's expensive.
This article is elitist and wholly incorrect. Affinity decks, Burn decks, Zoo, Black/White agro, and various mid range decks have won and placed numerous top 8's in both sanctioned Ques and PRE's. Are they viable? Well, yes. Decks that make top 8 more than once is practically the definition of viable.
Often times, "good" players will play the metagame gamble and run something that has an auto loss. Sure, red Deck wins has an impossible game against flash, but that doesn't mean it can't beat up the rest of the field. I think both articles could have emphasized strengths and weaknesses of archetype selection.
He did mention something that bears knowing- if you want to snuff combo, U/x Agro is a logical choice. Classic's best anti-combo artillery comes from those two colors.
ty for nice article.
i'd rather like to see the cards of the pack than the pick => this way i could make 1st my pick and then read, what a good drafter did pick.
in addition, it would be nice to know, to what kind of deck did JacsUK loose on round 2...
To comment on the pack 4 pick:
I'm guessing Jacs figured green was open with so much being passed to him (2x elves, Treetop Bracers, and a spined wurm). I was also surprised to see the llanowar elves wheel the table. A pretty clear sign that green was being drafted by maybe one other person at the table at the time.
I agree Braids is a really great choice in a Mirri-heavy metagame like the one at that 3x. Mirri lost a lot of popularity after it lost a card in the avatar revision, which I think is strange given that it is still extremely powerful. I played the Mirri-Braids matchup a few times, and always felt like I was THIS CLOSE to pulling it out, but it is really hard for the Mirri player.
Jhoira decks did make t8 a bunch of times. I always thought they were a joke deck until I played Mirri against Mikeman29. All he needed to do was last a few turns and then eventually he topdecked a WoG effect and that was the game.
Are you still going to play Braids decks moving forward?
Yeah, that white deck sounds like a nightmare for me. It isn't a 100% matchup, since you could still get mana screwed/flooded. Put it's probably something like 10-90 in your favor. Good job making a profit, but I think the virtual auto-loss against U/W or Mono Blue is bad now.
Two important points. First, PDC veteran lathspel finished second a tthe most recent TPDC Classic with a deck based on similar concepts as Confessor. This article was written about a week ago, so I do not want people to think that I was not giving credit where credit was due. Second, I totally blanked on Pyroblast as SB against MUC. Silly me.
-Alex
P4-Riders are def correct pick here. Not set for second color(or perhapse even 1st at this point) and if we go green E. Drain gan be EASILY splashed.
P9-I would take Dross Croc. over I. Priest. No way am I going white now, esp heavy white which is required by the Priest.
P21-I also considered Quicksand over A. Bodyguard, but you really need the warm bodies.
P36-I would take Mind Rot over Spined Wurm. After 1st 5 picks of pack 3 we are clearly R/B, and I am never sad to run the Rot.
P37-I would also consider Shatterstorm here, and probally would take it. U. Anger is a soild combat trick, but let someone else take it and 2 for 1 them with all your instant removal.
All in all good draft, thanks for posting it, agree with most of the picks. Shame you had to run into the big blue second round(at least it wasn't 1st :p ), and I don't think that blue was as underdrafted as you say, as there were very few of blue's elite fliers passed around, and I don't recall seeing 1 sift.
Regards,
Andy
___helper_monkey on MTGO
not really that immaginative, but I've been tinkering around with cards and so far the best all around card for changelings has to be Alpha Status.
Gives +2/+2 for all your creatures and all of your opponent's creatures. Drop it on cairn wanderer after you've got something spiffy in the GY to give it an evasion or trample.
Heh, I love people who play that deck. I have a 100% win rate against it, playing snow white with a small splash of blue (Flashfreeze out of the Sideboard.. oh yeah!). 7 Main deck ways of stopping Chandra (3 Pithing Needle, 4 Oblivion Rings), 3 Crovax main is good against Stuffy Doll, and 4 Martyr of Sands often give me unrealisitically high life totals. Main deck Story Circle: Red is pretty good... as the only realistic answer the deck has is a Word of Seizing, and that only works for one turn. By the time Molten Disaster is online against me... I'm usually at above 20 life.
Anyway, here's my list (which won 35 packs of Lorwyn for me in the 8 man constructed queues and financed my online Lorwyn release experience (only a net gain of 25 packs, as I sold LLL for 14 or 15 to finance the tournament entries):
23 Lands: 4 Scrying Sheets, 4 Boreal Shelf, 4 Mouth of Ronom, 11 Snow Plains
11 1cc -- 3 Piting Needle, 2 Porphyryr Nodes, 2 Condemn, 4 Martyr of Sands
4 2cc -- 4 Coldsteel Hearts
9 3cc -- 2 Mobilization, 3 Story Circle, 4 Oblivion Ring
5 4cc -- 4 Wrath of God, Ajani Goldmane
3 5cc -- Teferi's Moat, 2 Gauntlet of Power
5 6cc -- 3 Crovax, Adarkar Valkyrie, Beacon of Immortality
Sideboard: 2 Disenchant, 3 Dodecapod, 2 Flashfreeze, 2 Imperial Mask, 3 Jester's Scepter, 2 Pull From Eternity, Return to Dust
Match-ups: 100% vs mono-red
100% vs elves
50% vs mono white kithkin (might be higher, but I did lose one of two matches)
90% vs red-green (I lost one match out of 20 against this deck, though I did drop several games)
50% vs blue/black control (2-2 in tournament matches, have a feeling it is more in their favor though)
0% vs white/blue control (they have card drawing AND counterspells... I lose)
0% vs blue/black/green 187
Other archetypes were not played against me in the tournament queues. I saw a lot of decks with red, which made it the perfect meta-game choice. I don't recommend playing this deck is a control orientated meta game. I modified the decklist from a first place states deck (from either Ohio or Illionois). I'd expect this deck to fail against mono-blue, yet dominate the deck listed above. Remember after game two to only play your Matryr of Sands as immediate life gain, as Sulfur Elementals are expected. A 12-15 point life swing usually wins against red.
I dont' mind revealing this, since 8-man construct is no longer profitable (post release), and constructed PE's are down.
Heh, I love people who play that deck. I have a 100% win rate against it, playing snow white with a small splash of blue (Flashfreeze out of the Sideboard.. oh yeah!). 7 Main deck ways of stopping Chandra (3 Pithing Needle, 4 Oblivion Rings), 3 Crovax main is good against Stuffy Doll, and 4 Martyr of Sands often give me unrealisitically high life totals. Main deck Story Circle: Red is pretty good... as the only realistic answer the deck has is a Word of Seizing, and that only works for one turn. By the time Molten Disaster is online against me... I'm usually at above 20 life.
Anyway, here's my list (which won 35 packs of Lorwyn for me in the 8 man constructed queues and financed my online Lorwyn release experience (only a net gain of 25 packs, as I sold LLL for 14 or 15 to finance the tournament entries):
23 Lands: 4 Scrying Sheets, 4 Boreal Shelf, 4 Mouth of Ronom, 11 Snow Plains
11 1cc -- 3 Piting Needle, 2 Porphyryr Nodes, 2 Condemn, 4 Martyr of Sands
4 2cc -- 4 Coldsteel Hearts
9 3cc -- 2 Mobilization, 3 Story Circle, 4 Oblivion Ring
5 4cc -- 4 Wrath of God, Ajani Goldmane
3 5cc -- Teferi's Moat, 2 Gauntlet of Power
5 6cc -- 3 Crovax, Adarkar Valkyrie, Beacon of Immortality
Sideboard: 2 Disenchant, 3 Dodecapod, 2 Flashfreeze, 2 Imperial Mask, 3 Jester's Scepter, 2 Pull From Eternity, Return to Dust
Match-ups: 100% vs mono-red
100% vs elves
50% vs mono white kithkin (might be higher, but I did lose one of two matches)
90% vs red-green (I lost one match out of 20 against this deck, though I did drop several games)
50% vs blue/black control (2-2 in tournament matches, have a feeling it is more in their favor though)
0% vs white/blue control (they have card drawing AND counterspells... I lose)
0% vs blue/black/green 187
Other archetypes were not played against me in the tournament queues. I saw a lot of decks with red, which made it the perfect meta-game choice. I don't recommend playing this deck is a control orientated meta game. I modified the decklist from a first place states deck (from either Ohio or Illionois). I'd expect this deck to fail against mono-blue, yet dominate the deck listed above. Remember after game two to only play your Matryr of Sands as immediate life gain, as Sulfur Elementals are expected. A 12-15 point life swing usually wins against red.
I dont' mind revealing this, since 8-man construct is no longer profitable (post release), and constructed PE's are down.
I also played this deck at States to a 1-2 finish, losing to GR midrange (when I couldn't deal with Garruk in time) and a random 5 color deck that drew 3 lightning angels.
It was a great read. I really liked how you talked about the different matchups. Who could possibly know for 100% sure how the deck does against each matchup without infinite testing. At least it is a basis for playing Stark Red. I would love to see you do the same with another deck.
By far, my favorite line was "And...detritus? Whatever. Me red mage. Me smash blue mage."
Cheers
Oni decks should have multiple creatures on the table by the time Braids can even play a spell.
Back when oni was a problem it tried to solve it by going (prefarebel) turn 1 land and then drop a karoo of a Simian Spirit Guide EOT turn 2 akroma memorial t3 Blazing archon. But most of the time I had it tuned Mirri ate Oni alive and since this deck ate Mirri it was pretty easy to win.
Mana control strategies (Heartwood Blink decks) may also be effective, since destroying a karoo sets Braids back over a turn.
The problem with mana control is that you can't use it then Braids got 2 mana open since it invites a bounce land to the rescue (that and the the second is anytime you can play an instant and not like the third (only as a sorcery)) and then it doesn't have that you got the other problem, namely that the braids player has managed to land a threat which meanes that you problery should consider dealing with that instead.
Braids is proberly one of the few decks that got a good matchup vs. the chronatog deck (without running life gain) since that deck got an awfully hard time dealing with Nicol Bolas (its black so no black pact, it got above 4 toughness so no (Soul spike), if it got haste - see the memorial - (Sunscoure) isn't even that efficent).
Btw. the deck is designed to be hard on creatures since if you ain't running creatures the abillities from braids should win the game on its own (well most of the time anyway).
Iam pretty sure that it's only bad matchups were Oni (because they sometimes would have to much gas to handle - match up problery around 60/40 to them - if you get memorial + archon you win (they do not have any outs vs that - archon can be bounced with stingscourer)) and Johira (I never saw a tournement deck around it tho but alot of the spells can kill single creatures which is a problem for a deck that tries to win with 1-2 creatures on the table at a time). Lucky Oni died after Mirri came (and didnt come back then that died since they lost a card) and Johira was never a tournement deck.
This is ofcause my view of the decks but I played in a lot of test games and 2 tournements with the finnished version (The finnished version added alot of power vs ecspecially creatures (board sweepers and so on) - I had to much other things I needed to do the other weeks) - the IPA qualifier and a 3x a couple of weeks before that. The decks I met were very different - Mirri had 6 in t8 (I suspect there must be a good deck somewhere still with that avatar since they were all pretty different and eg. 1 of them had thrown his deck togther ½ an hour before the tournement) in the 3x and the last was chronatog - which I had screwed up vs. in the first rounds. Anyway I won both.
The Mannequin matchup is build dependent. Opponents running lots of Grim Harvests are better against you, but otherwise you really aren't that far behind against them. So you're better against the Top 8 Mannequin decks from Krakow then some versions.
The Rack isn't that bad for you. You have lots of sources of card advantage, like Scrying Sheets and Stalking Yeti. Also, if they get the nuts discard draw, they don't have many other threats. It can be rough, but its a lot better than 30-70.
I haven't tested much against Mono White (I don't think the deck is very good). They really need to draw their Oblivion Rings, or Stuffy Doll, Chandra, and Sulfur Elemental (post board) are bad news for them. I would say its about 40-60, though it's pretty draw dependent.
Can't agree on most of the matchup probability. how can Mannequin.dec be 40-60? More like 20-80. Rack should be 30-70 by default, discard then rack basically = loss for you. Also mono-white life gain kills your deck.
Ooo, good one. Yes, that seems like a fun way to go. Now if we could only figure out a way to make Contraptions work!
Thanks. You've got a good point and I'll try to make my next article longer.
Flamekin Brawler is in no way chaff. It will almost always trade for a higher-casting cost card. And it is a good sink for late game.
Nice article! go get em tiger!
Since you brought up problems with paypal I will share whats happening with mine right now.
Many of my release event purchases I made with paypal on the weekend of the 6th timed out. The money was then put back into my paypal account. This will not show on your statement unless you look in "All Account Activity" duh.
Of course, I didn't notice this until I had more money than I should and had already spent it. I called paypal and did not get a very understandable answer as to what was happening.
Bottom line is WOC is very slow at taking the money from paypal right now. If not taken in 5 days? it goes back to your paypal account. I use my debit card for other things than WOC and its linked into paypal so you can imagine what a mess now I am overdrawn with WOC payments bouncing in and out.
Just a heads up to the paypal users to keep a eye on your balance and activity or you could be overdrawn when the expired charges go through the 2nd time.
That was a fantastic reply, thanks a lot. I'm gonna make those changes and see if I can get some freeform games with the sealed pool tonight. See if you can teach me anything! Great ideas!
The pool posted had 40 cards, by the way. Here's what I built:
Creatures (16)
1 Adder-Staff Boggart
1 Ashling the Pilgrim
1 Flamekin Spitfire
1 Smokebraider
1 Fire-Belly Changeling
1 Kinsbaile Skirmisher
1 Knight of Meadowgrain
1 Wizened Cenn
2 Avian Changeling
1 Mudbutton Torchrunner
1 Lowland Oaf
1 Quill-Slinger Boggart
1 Thoughtweft Trio
1 Plover Knights
1 Warren Pilferers
Spells (8)
1 Wanderer's Twig
1 Springleaf Drum
1 Surge of Thoughtweft
1 Tarfire
1 Nameless Inversion
1 Eyeblight's Ending
1 Moonglove Extract
1 Consuming Bonfire
Land (16)
7 Plains
7 Mountain
2 Swamp
Differences:
-1 Springjack Knight
-1 Flamekin Bladewhirl
-1 Flamekin Brawler
-1 Wispmare
-2 Plains
-1 Vivid Creek
+1 Fire-Belly Changeling
+1 Lowland Oaf
+1 Quill-Slinger Boggart
+1 Warren Pilferers
+1 Springleaf Drum
+1 Mountain
+1 Swamp
I'm not a fan of Springjack Knight, even with Wizened Cenn on the team. Flamekin Bladewhirl gets obsoleted fast, and Flamekin Brawler is just chaff. Wispmare doesn't do enough for the maindeck here but can be an all-star out of the side.
Fire-Belly Changeling gives us a Kithkin back and is pumpable by Smokebraider. Lowland Oaf is a Hill Giant but that's good enough here, and the ability may come up. Quill-Slinger goes well with the Kithkin on the splash. Warren Pilferers is strong enough to splash regardless, but especially here bringing back the likes of Ashling, the Trio, or even Mudbutton and being a Hill Giant besides. Manawise I had Springleaf Drum instead of land #17 and didn't use Vivid Creek, giving me 4 Black sources for 4 Black cards. That's close, but if finding Black is an issue I'd cut Quill-Slinger for Oaken Brawler.
Thanks for writing!
Yes - all the playing done for this deck was in the casual room.