This was a very neat project (ML's draft and your follow up).
I like the different takes on the draft process itself. The only slight issue is that by going into different colors in pack one, the whole pack two changes.
However, it was indeed interesting to see it approached from two different view points.
Lastly, I think once ML gets more used to the format he can begin to immediately ignore some cards. But as an article for helping others learn the format it seems appropriate to look at all the cards, as that's what a new drafter would have to do.
I had a great time at ES, the format is fast but it's still pretty open for a lot of deck types.
The things you'll need if you want to win matches as a control deck are: combo disruption (Challice) and Aggro disruption (Wrath/Damnation). Although, as I found out, if you want to beat aggro you need at least 8 board sweepers as the aggro decks are very fast and resilient to wrath.
I would have had a much better chance if I would have made better card choices originally. (Seriously, I'm not sure why I expected Mind Sludge to be of any use... same with keening banshee... yikes.).
But that's what this article was aboutl learning the format, and getting a feel for the pitfalls.
Eternal Struggle is a fun event and classic has some good powerful decks. I hope to make it to as many of these events as I can!
A very good article which is very encouraging for players who are not familiar with the format(like me!). I enjoyed reading it a lot. It's not like "this is the deck and I won all" style but it explains each and every step of deck choice, card selection steps and analyzing the games afterwards. And yes, I remember how destructive a first turn hyppie was! Good job.
I liked the article a lot. Not only because of Pete's superior skills in writing but also because I personally enjoy reading about drafts very much. And this is the format of a draft article I would like to see(Lance do you hear me?!). Instead of seeing all the cards in a pack, I prefer seeing the useful ones and the rest as text reminder. This way I won't get lost in pictures and pictures and more pictures, but I can concentrate on the author's choices and notes about his/her pick. Well done!
While I must confess, card drawing is one of the more powerful mechanics available, I've always seen it to be slightly inferior to discard, especially cards like distress that not only let you see what your opponent is rolling with, you get to pick one and make him/her trash it. There are many cards available to capitalize on an opponent's lack of cards in hand, Nezumi Shortfang, Pauper's Cage, and the Rack to name a few. Not to mention many cards/combos available to make sure your opponent does not get any more cards after you've emptied his/her hand. Of course, "the blue instant" mentioned in the article is a train wreck if they still have the mana to pull off the combo after casting it.... maybe I should get off my lazy butt and type up a discard article, maybe it'd be worth reading.
Lance's articles are getting better with each new one. Not only the way he writes, also the way he drafts as well. Writing about "draft lessons to learn" can be trickier and might also backfire in case you, the writer, don't learn anything from your own lessons. But personally I see how he advances. If he continues like this, we will have a 1900+ rating drafter writing for puremtgo soon! A tiny piece of criticism; the release of 10th edition is drawing near. Maybe you should start exploring TSP block and write about it. Many players do not draft 999 anymore because the new set(s) are more appealing. This way your articles would be up to date as well. Just a thought.
For all those reading this article and scratching their heads, this is not the article that matches the title. There was a problem somewhere along the line. I'll try and get the original back up asap.
Thank you all for the comments. I defenitely agree with all of them. I'll defenitely take the comments into account for my next article. There are defenitely some changes I would make to the deck based on the current standard game if I had the money. Damnation would be one for sure against aggro decks. Also the deck really doesn't have a great win condition if the combo gets broken, but it hasn't really been too big of a problem in casual games for me simple because nobody that I've played really expects this combo which makes it great for the casual room.
I like it, though I tried breaking spellshift and I found a way with the eye, using simply diabolic and the eye I can play every instant and sorcery in my deck, including tendrils. The other combo working off of the eye is with spellshift targeting one of your instants or sorceries, you get infinite playing of all sorceries and instants in deck as well, both come out to the same effect. You also have a chance with tendrils to win though slim should your eye be defeated. This deck is awesome in ffa. I have a version up and an updated one on this sight.
I really like what you're doing here, nice casual deck idea. What could really make this article better in my opinion (and I'm not trying to rag on you) would be some game recaps versus a couple decks. It could give a bit more insight about the deck and would be fun to read. Overall, nice article, keep it up.
Nice article, it explains card drawing very well and points out why exactly it is so useful. A lot of people just accept it and don't look beneath the surface and I thought this was a really cool article! Props to you sir, and I'll be waiting for your next article.
This deck obviously has a great problem vs counters.
Luckily , not many of those decks excist in the casual room, cause most casual players dont want to play against them. Therefore , most casual players build decks without them so people dont quit on them all the time, Hence, combo decks like this can work.
Like he says, this deck doesnt do well vs real tourney decks,
but hey, it's casual
I never had a deck based on Eye of the Storm so I'm the last person who can comment about it. But after seeing the decklist I thought one thing and I wanted to ask that to you. If somehow your Eye of the Storm gets Extirpate-d or Hide/Seek-ed or Jester's Cap-ed or even get Cancel-ed, you have no other win condition in your deck. I understand that this is a deck build around that card, but I think that a secondary win condition, just in case that something goes wrong, would be fine. Even a Confiscate or Enslave would do. Also as I said, counterspells must be a problem. You say that you played around 200 games with the deck and I'm sure you played against such decks. Can you please tell a little bit about those games? Because I think that they will cause some major troubles to you. Also I think that Damnation would be a nice addition to the deck, most probably replacing the Pyroclasms. And one final thing is that for a deck that relies on two cards with casting costs like 5UU and 4BB, 20 lands is a little bit less even though you have signets in deck. But as you say, you are the one who played 200 games with this deck, not me, so you'd probably know it much better than me. These were just some thoughts I wanted to share. Thanks.:)
An ok first article, it was fairly well written. However, my major complain would be the length. I appreciate you went over card choices, but I wish you would have shown us at least one example of the deck in action (or at least a screen shot showing the deck in action). This versus a grand total of 22! blue mana symbols, and a
Also in regards to your mana base, I think your lands are a bit off. You run 11 red sources (6 mountains and 2 rakdos signets, and 3 izzet signets), but only ten red symbols (IE if you add up the # of occurances of the red mana in all your cards, it only adds up to 10). Compare this to 16 black mana sources. More on the mana base would be the fact that you claim in regards to Watery Graves "I wouldn’t run more than 2 of each since it will just slow you down too much or cost you too much life." I would personally recommend that you run like a couple of mountains and fill up the rest with shock lands (if money isn't an issue).
Wow, a very deep philosophy about drawing a card which is done by many players even without thinking, as a reflex. But you do have a point here. As I said many times; I don't believe that without card advantage any game can be won. Even the Mono Green Aggro uses Harmonize to draw cards! Card drawing(or tutoring) is one of the most important parts of a successful deck and most of the time this is ignored by players. And just because it is so important, this kind of cards have always very high prices like Phyrexian Arena, Dark Confidant, Harmonize, Vampiric Tutor or even Brainstorm.
Every article should strive for three things: Crisp writting, clean presentation and useful information. Three for three, my friend: Gold star for you....
Hamtastic, this article is much-needed; thank you for writing and updating it.
It should be especially useful since it seems like there are a lot of minor features that are new or changed since V2. No telling how long it would have taken me to discover all of those on my own.
Rune: certainly, feel free to copy any of the code.
BW: interesting idea to use Sudden Spoiling. Could help make up for the loss of Faith's Fetters. Might be worth including in the "Pyroffliction" deck too.
People playing Sprouting Phytohydra and Pyrohemia in the same deck: don't say I didn't warn you!
This was a very neat project (ML's draft and your follow up).
I like the different takes on the draft process itself. The only slight issue is that by going into different colors in pack one, the whole pack two changes.
However, it was indeed interesting to see it approached from two different view points.
Lastly, I think once ML gets more used to the format he can begin to immediately ignore some cards. But as an article for helping others learn the format it seems appropriate to look at all the cards, as that's what a new drafter would have to do.
Just my thoughts. :)
Also, if I mis-classified any of the decks I played against, my apologies. I'm new here. :)
I had a great time at ES, the format is fast but it's still pretty open for a lot of deck types.
The things you'll need if you want to win matches as a control deck are: combo disruption (Challice) and Aggro disruption (Wrath/Damnation). Although, as I found out, if you want to beat aggro you need at least 8 board sweepers as the aggro decks are very fast and resilient to wrath.
I would have had a much better chance if I would have made better card choices originally. (Seriously, I'm not sure why I expected Mind Sludge to be of any use... same with keening banshee... yikes.).
But that's what this article was aboutl learning the format, and getting a feel for the pitfalls.
Eternal Struggle is a fun event and classic has some good powerful decks. I hope to make it to as many of these events as I can!
-Erik
A very good article which is very encouraging for players who are not familiar with the format(like me!). I enjoyed reading it a lot. It's not like "this is the deck and I won all" style but it explains each and every step of deck choice, card selection steps and analyzing the games afterwards. And yes, I remember how destructive a first turn hyppie was! Good job.
I liked the article a lot. Not only because of Pete's superior skills in writing but also because I personally enjoy reading about drafts very much. And this is the format of a draft article I would like to see(Lance do you hear me?!). Instead of seeing all the cards in a pack, I prefer seeing the useful ones and the rest as text reminder. This way I won't get lost in pictures and pictures and more pictures, but I can concentrate on the author's choices and notes about his/her pick. Well done!
Another quality article Pete way to go.
While I must confess, card drawing is one of the more powerful mechanics available, I've always seen it to be slightly inferior to discard, especially cards like distress that not only let you see what your opponent is rolling with, you get to pick one and make him/her trash it. There are many cards available to capitalize on an opponent's lack of cards in hand, Nezumi Shortfang, Pauper's Cage, and the Rack to name a few. Not to mention many cards/combos available to make sure your opponent does not get any more cards after you've emptied his/her hand. Of course, "the blue instant" mentioned in the article is a train wreck if they still have the mana to pull off the combo after casting it.... maybe I should get off my lazy butt and type up a discard article, maybe it'd be worth reading.
Lance's articles are getting better with each new one. Not only the way he writes, also the way he drafts as well. Writing about "draft lessons to learn" can be trickier and might also backfire in case you, the writer, don't learn anything from your own lessons. But personally I see how he advances. If he continues like this, we will have a 1900+ rating drafter writing for puremtgo soon! A tiny piece of criticism; the release of 10th edition is drawing near. Maybe you should start exploring TSP block and write about it. Many players do not draft 999 anymore because the new set(s) are more appealing. This way your articles would be up to date as well. Just a thought.
For all those reading this article and scratching their heads, this is not the article that matches the title. There was a problem somewhere along the line. I'll try and get the original back up asap.
Spike
Nice artile just browsed through it but I dont know if you had the obvious pyrohemia stuffy doll
Thank you all for the comments. I defenitely agree with all of them. I'll defenitely take the comments into account for my next article. There are defenitely some changes I would make to the deck based on the current standard game if I had the money. Damnation would be one for sure against aggro decks. Also the deck really doesn't have a great win condition if the combo gets broken, but it hasn't really been too big of a problem in casual games for me simple because nobody that I've played really expects this combo which makes it great for the casual room.
I like it, though I tried breaking spellshift and I found a way with the eye, using simply diabolic and the eye I can play every instant and sorcery in my deck, including tendrils. The other combo working off of the eye is with spellshift targeting one of your instants or sorceries, you get infinite playing of all sorceries and instants in deck as well, both come out to the same effect. You also have a chance with tendrils to win though slim should your eye be defeated. This deck is awesome in ffa. I have a version up and an updated one on this sight.
Updated how to export decks as CSV's and where they're saved (now that it's working).
I really like what you're doing here, nice casual deck idea. What could really make this article better in my opinion (and I'm not trying to rag on you) would be some game recaps versus a couple decks. It could give a bit more insight about the deck and would be fun to read. Overall, nice article, keep it up.
Nice article, it explains card drawing very well and points out why exactly it is so useful. A lot of people just accept it and don't look beneath the surface and I thought this was a really cool article! Props to you sir, and I'll be waiting for your next article.
This deck obviously has a great problem vs counters.
Luckily , not many of those decks excist in the casual room, cause most casual players dont want to play against them. Therefore , most casual players build decks without them so people dont quit on them all the time, Hence, combo decks like this can work.
Like he says, this deck doesnt do well vs real tourney decks,
but hey, it's casual
I never had a deck based on Eye of the Storm so I'm the last person who can comment about it. But after seeing the decklist I thought one thing and I wanted to ask that to you. If somehow your Eye of the Storm gets Extirpate-d or Hide/Seek-ed or Jester's Cap-ed or even get Cancel-ed, you have no other win condition in your deck. I understand that this is a deck build around that card, but I think that a secondary win condition, just in case that something goes wrong, would be fine. Even a Confiscate or Enslave would do. Also as I said, counterspells must be a problem. You say that you played around 200 games with the deck and I'm sure you played against such decks. Can you please tell a little bit about those games? Because I think that they will cause some major troubles to you. Also I think that Damnation would be a nice addition to the deck, most probably replacing the Pyroclasms. And one final thing is that for a deck that relies on two cards with casting costs like 5UU and 4BB, 20 lands is a little bit less even though you have signets in deck. But as you say, you are the one who played 200 games with this deck, not me, so you'd probably know it much better than me. These were just some thoughts I wanted to share. Thanks.:)
An ok first article, it was fairly well written. However, my major complain would be the length. I appreciate you went over card choices, but I wish you would have shown us at least one example of the deck in action (or at least a screen shot showing the deck in action). This versus a grand total of 22! blue mana symbols, and a
Also in regards to your mana base, I think your lands are a bit off. You run 11 red sources (6 mountains and 2 rakdos signets, and 3 izzet signets), but only ten red symbols (IE if you add up the # of occurances of the red mana in all your cards, it only adds up to 10). Compare this to 16 black mana sources. More on the mana base would be the fact that you claim in regards to Watery Graves "I wouldn’t run more than 2 of each since it will just slow you down too much or cost you too much life." I would personally recommend that you run like a couple of mountains and fill up the rest with shock lands (if money isn't an issue).
Just a few thoughts anyway, good article overall.
Wow, a very deep philosophy about drawing a card which is done by many players even without thinking, as a reflex. But you do have a point here. As I said many times; I don't believe that without card advantage any game can be won. Even the Mono Green Aggro uses Harmonize to draw cards! Card drawing(or tutoring) is one of the most important parts of a successful deck and most of the time this is ignored by players. And just because it is so important, this kind of cards have always very high prices like Phyrexian Arena, Dark Confidant, Harmonize, Vampiric Tutor or even Brainstorm.
Every article should strive for three things: Crisp writting, clean presentation and useful information. Three for three, my friend: Gold star for you....
I read the comment on the swamp - didn't think anyone would, did ya!
Hamtastic, this article is much-needed; thank you for writing and updating it.
It should be especially useful since it seems like there are a lot of minor features that are new or changed since V2. No telling how long it would have taken me to discover all of those on my own.
Update: I just added a new feature I was informed about. "Disconnect Timer"
Thanks for all the great comments, guys!
Rune: certainly, feel free to copy any of the code.
BW: interesting idea to use Sudden Spoiling. Could help make up for the loss of Faith's Fetters. Might be worth including in the "Pyroffliction" deck too.
People playing Sprouting Phytohydra and Pyrohemia in the same deck: don't say I didn't warn you!
Yes the article is legal. The NDA was lifted a few hours ago.