I hope they ban Temple instead of Eye, because Eye has other applications. I also hope they ban Mox Opal because that still keeps Affinity playable, but it takes away their most busted draws.
About Leagues, it's good that they provide no waiting time and are playable at will but their prize structure is pretty bad (both constructed and sealed). Sealed Leagues are a bit worse than Sealed DEs, but not by much. Where they are worse is that they pay in untradable crap. Release events had one great thing: they were actually pretty good value and they were playable by people who don't or rarely play Sealed DEs, because they were good value. By eliminating them and having only the leagues, I certainly won't play sealed events anymore. And what needs to be removed is the pre release events because those are pretty bad and we already waited 2 weeks to get the set online, we don't need to wait one more weekent to get decent events.
Wow 13.xx for Sudden demise...and then I looked at its set. Only in cmdr 2013. So someone cornered the market for some reason, thinking everyone will want them for legacy? Crazy.
I typically use a set of red sweepers in my mostly-monogreen decks (see my green Elementals, for instance). My choice of sweeper used to be Sudden Demise, which is currently very expensive to acquire, though.
In the case of these Treefolk, though, it'd need a very different build. As it is, there's not really a red splash in there, just the chance that I MIGHT be able to cast the singleton Xenagos should it unfortunately end up in my hand at some point. Treefolk Harbingers aren't there to fetch Taiga; if they are forced to do that, it hurts my battleplan. They are meant as a 1-drop to set my play for turn 2 (Bosk Banneret) or turn-3 (either Dungrove Elder or Dauntless Dourbark if I had the Banneret already). With Bonfire in the deck, I would need to use a turn-1 Harbinger for Taiga, or else I would keep miracle-drawing Bonfire without the red mana available to cast it (and to make room for it, I would probably have to take Sylvan Library out, since it's the less consequential card).
Also, it's not a good strategy for the deck to sweep the opponent's board at all, since it's a Defense of the Heart deck; I *want* them to have creatures! In fact, I've multiple ways to give them some. Plus, it's a Pure deck, I know I won't have to worry about combo Elves, and I can easily block Human-based linear aggro, at least long enough to trample them to death. Where I fail is against explosive linear like Ally, which are likely too beefy already when my Bonfire is online, since I don't really ramp, I just accelerate into other Treefolk and then beef them up.
Hey, Oliver, I did mention that wave of bannings in my teaser text, but overlooked it completely in my intro. It is very important to put the deck's shortcomings into context, so thanks for bringing it up.
Very interesting article. I didn't know there were so many Jeskai Ascendancy builds out there. I played the deck a while back for a Becoming A Modern Man article. The deck is fun and powerful but I found it quite inconsistent.
The key thing I will note that your history of the deck is missing is that what really caused the downfall of the deck was the banning of Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. Ascendancy was a proper Tier 1 deck for a time, including at the 2014 World Championships and GP Milan 2014 (to name a few of the results I can find). It was the banning of Cruise and Dig that really neutered the deck and made it fall off the radar.
Also, the decklist I used Life from the Loam but not for any Flame Jab combo but as a spell you could always get back with Ascendancy's loot ability and then could cast to fill your hand to better take advantage of the loot effect. It's a solid way to avoid fizzling (provided you don't accidentally mill yourself).
This comment is rather late, but I'm about 99% sure 4x Bonfire of the Damned would be an upgrade for the Treefolk deck. It's a good card on its own, but with permanent-based library manipulation and ramp and a preexisting red splash, it should be a home run as a one-sided Wrath that covers up a deck weakness (insufficient removal).
So, apparently I'm back on schedule a week early--thanks editor! Of course, now the question is whether it's worth it or not to write a full Ninth Edition article for next week. There still aren't going to be videos (since if I play MTGO it'll be sealed leagues, especially since I have a sealed PPTQ I want to go to next week), but cranking out an article for Ninth Edition shouldn't be too hard (and I have some stories I want to tell--Ninth Edition constructed on the V3 beta was my real introduction to Magic). I also don't know where that leaves me as far as multi-part articles versus extremely long articles--will people read a 4k+ word article on Time Spiral?
Congratulations on your first article and welcome to the site.
I think your article is a little oversimplified though at best. Painter's Servant isn't game over for Eldrazi it just slows them down by turning off Eye of Ugin and meaning Temple makes 1 mana and not 2 - you make out it means they can't cast spells and will scoop in the early turns. It could spell game over if your deck was fast enough to punish them but it isn't. Your actual win condition is Koth or potentially Chandra, both of which are very slow. You are really relying on your opponent just conceding ignorantly.
I am not convinced Ensnaring Bridge would be great in this deck. You need to empty your hand quickly and with so many 3 and 4 drops in the deck I imagine it is hard to empty your hand quickly, even with the ritual effects in the deck. Bridge is also your only real defence to the bigger Eldrazi once they've hit the board so you are leaning heavily on it.
Blood Moon is the card to me that really stops Eldrazi doing their thing so that seems the best early play. Getting it down very early is a nice strategy but you can't always be doing that.
I also think the deck would struggle hard against anything other than Eldrazi. Painter's Servant is completely dead against anything other than Eldrazi. Also, the deck has lots of dead cards against non-Eldrazi decks. The sideboard Storm plan is interesting but I am a bit concerned about the lack of draw spells to keep things going. Also, the transformative sideboard means some answers are missing. I have no idea how this deck beats Affinity for instance - which can get past an Ensnaring Bridge and can still cast spells past a Blood Moon.
Also, your suggestion that this deck is cheap doesn't really ring true. It doesn't need fetchlands sure but Blood Moon is about 30 tix each, Ensnaring Bridge is currently about 47 tix each and Painter's Servants are 15 tix each. None of these cards are cheap at the moment because they are known hate cards for Eldrazi.
Becoming blocked can happen more than once. Check out Rampage and Bushido for what I mean. They happen simultaneously, but first these abilities check for triggers on every instance of "whenever becomes blocked", where as when something gets lifelink (or gives it in the case of Alms Beast) on being blocked, that only happens once. Hope that helps.
I acknowledge that this is what Pete is saying the reasoning is.
what i'm not understanding is how this reasoning is obtained from the wording of the cards. i don't see what the specific words are that make this distinction. I happen to be in part a linguist in non-MTGO life, and "becomes blocked" and "becomes blocked by a creature" are exactly the same kind of phrase.
compare these phrase:
"when the baby stops crying"
"when the baby stops crying because you gave it a pacifier"
each of them is on/off. adding a second pacifier does not make the baby stop crying again. "because you gave it a pacifier" does not modify "stops crying"--it is a further qualification of the original phrase, where the original phrase applies to any condition. the baby can't stop crying if it isn't already crying. the creature can't become blocked (by anything) if it is already blocked. we could diagram this in formal logic and the point would be the same, and I'll be happy to if it would illuminate anything.
as far as the *wording of the cards* goes, I don't see what tells us to use these two different interpretations. is there something in the rules that tells us this?
Either Ulamog is up there. Indestructibility plus on-cast permanent removal, coupled with annihilator or library exile respectively. If mana cost is no object, that's a lot of bang for buck.
Hey guys, if you could run only one, what's the best tribal creature regardless of mana cost not subject to the various tribal ban lists (including restrictions to in-tribe only, such as would eliminate Emrakul, Iona, and Progenitus)? If you run Force of Will, probably Griselbrand?! But even that seems chancey. Kozilek the Great Distortion is a candidate. Any other preferred candidates?
Well since no one else wants to comment I will. It was fun doing this cast and the one prior. I hope those who listen to these casts that I share with AJ get something good out of them.
I feel the same way, it sucks that it's single elim but that's all that's out there. It's hard to get a feel for a format when you lose the first round and can't play any more. But I suppose they're there for those who played those formats already?
I didn't want lands without the Forest type, because 8 key creatures live off them, and other 4 make them indestructible. Xenagos is to be fetched via Defense, Sylvan Library is there to prevent me from drawing into him; Cultivate is more punch than ramp in the deck.
I hope they ban Temple instead of Eye, because Eye has other applications. I also hope they ban Mox Opal because that still keeps Affinity playable, but it takes away their most busted draws.
About Leagues, it's good that they provide no waiting time and are playable at will but their prize structure is pretty bad (both constructed and sealed). Sealed Leagues are a bit worse than Sealed DEs, but not by much. Where they are worse is that they pay in untradable crap. Release events had one great thing: they were actually pretty good value and they were playable by people who don't or rarely play Sealed DEs, because they were good value. By eliminating them and having only the leagues, I certainly won't play sealed events anymore. And what needs to be removed is the pre release events because those are pretty bad and we already waited 2 weeks to get the set online, we don't need to wait one more weekent to get decent events.
I'm not sure if there's a way to exclude out of stock promos, not Liliana otV is not available for 70 tickets and definitely not for 60.12
Thanks for doing the judge questions. Highly appreciated!
There seems to be a small typo in the price for Liliana of the Veil this week.
Business has to carry out matters like this. It has something to do with users concerns. - Fred Wehba
It is nice to keep track of it. As everybody else wants to take it seriously. - Bobby Price
There are so many things that this site can offer. That would be a serious matter. - Bobby Price
Wow 13.xx for Sudden demise...and then I looked at its set. Only in cmdr 2013. So someone cornered the market for some reason, thinking everyone will want them for legacy? Crazy.
I typically use a set of red sweepers in my mostly-monogreen decks (see my green Elementals, for instance). My choice of sweeper used to be Sudden Demise, which is currently very expensive to acquire, though.
In the case of these Treefolk, though, it'd need a very different build. As it is, there's not really a red splash in there, just the chance that I MIGHT be able to cast the singleton Xenagos should it unfortunately end up in my hand at some point. Treefolk Harbingers aren't there to fetch Taiga; if they are forced to do that, it hurts my battleplan. They are meant as a 1-drop to set my play for turn 2 (Bosk Banneret) or turn-3 (either Dungrove Elder or Dauntless Dourbark if I had the Banneret already). With Bonfire in the deck, I would need to use a turn-1 Harbinger for Taiga, or else I would keep miracle-drawing Bonfire without the red mana available to cast it (and to make room for it, I would probably have to take Sylvan Library out, since it's the less consequential card).
Also, it's not a good strategy for the deck to sweep the opponent's board at all, since it's a Defense of the Heart deck; I *want* them to have creatures! In fact, I've multiple ways to give them some. Plus, it's a Pure deck, I know I won't have to worry about combo Elves, and I can easily block Human-based linear aggro, at least long enough to trample them to death. Where I fail is against explosive linear like Ally, which are likely too beefy already when my Bonfire is online, since I don't really ramp, I just accelerate into other Treefolk and then beef them up.
Finally, fire in a tree deck? :)
Hey, Oliver, I did mention that wave of bannings in my teaser text, but overlooked it completely in my intro. It is very important to put the deck's shortcomings into context, so thanks for bringing it up.
Very interesting article. I didn't know there were so many Jeskai Ascendancy builds out there. I played the deck a while back for a Becoming A Modern Man article. The deck is fun and powerful but I found it quite inconsistent.
The key thing I will note that your history of the deck is missing is that what really caused the downfall of the deck was the banning of Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. Ascendancy was a proper Tier 1 deck for a time, including at the 2014 World Championships and GP Milan 2014 (to name a few of the results I can find). It was the banning of Cruise and Dig that really neutered the deck and made it fall off the radar.
Also, the decklist I used Life from the Loam but not for any Flame Jab combo but as a spell you could always get back with Ascendancy's loot ability and then could cast to fill your hand to better take advantage of the loot effect. It's a solid way to avoid fizzling (provided you don't accidentally mill yourself).
This comment is rather late, but I'm about 99% sure 4x Bonfire of the Damned would be an upgrade for the Treefolk deck. It's a good card on its own, but with permanent-based library manipulation and ramp and a preexisting red splash, it should be a home run as a one-sided Wrath that covers up a deck weakness (insufficient removal).
So, apparently I'm back on schedule a week early--thanks editor! Of course, now the question is whether it's worth it or not to write a full Ninth Edition article for next week. There still aren't going to be videos (since if I play MTGO it'll be sealed leagues, especially since I have a sealed PPTQ I want to go to next week), but cranking out an article for Ninth Edition shouldn't be too hard (and I have some stories I want to tell--Ninth Edition constructed on the V3 beta was my real introduction to Magic). I also don't know where that leaves me as far as multi-part articles versus extremely long articles--will people read a 4k+ word article on Time Spiral?
Blue/White pillow-fort could be an option.
The Oaths look really interesting with Vensor planeswalker.
By a creature is the key. Each creature counts as a trigger.
Congratulations on your first article and welcome to the site.
I think your article is a little oversimplified though at best. Painter's Servant isn't game over for Eldrazi it just slows them down by turning off Eye of Ugin and meaning Temple makes 1 mana and not 2 - you make out it means they can't cast spells and will scoop in the early turns. It could spell game over if your deck was fast enough to punish them but it isn't. Your actual win condition is Koth or potentially Chandra, both of which are very slow. You are really relying on your opponent just conceding ignorantly.
I am not convinced Ensnaring Bridge would be great in this deck. You need to empty your hand quickly and with so many 3 and 4 drops in the deck I imagine it is hard to empty your hand quickly, even with the ritual effects in the deck. Bridge is also your only real defence to the bigger Eldrazi once they've hit the board so you are leaning heavily on it.
Blood Moon is the card to me that really stops Eldrazi doing their thing so that seems the best early play. Getting it down very early is a nice strategy but you can't always be doing that.
I also think the deck would struggle hard against anything other than Eldrazi. Painter's Servant is completely dead against anything other than Eldrazi. Also, the deck has lots of dead cards against non-Eldrazi decks. The sideboard Storm plan is interesting but I am a bit concerned about the lack of draw spells to keep things going. Also, the transformative sideboard means some answers are missing. I have no idea how this deck beats Affinity for instance - which can get past an Ensnaring Bridge and can still cast spells past a Blood Moon.
Also, your suggestion that this deck is cheap doesn't really ring true. It doesn't need fetchlands sure but Blood Moon is about 30 tix each, Ensnaring Bridge is currently about 47 tix each and Painter's Servants are 15 tix each. None of these cards are cheap at the moment because they are known hate cards for Eldrazi.
Becoming blocked can happen more than once. Check out Rampage and Bushido for what I mean. They happen simultaneously, but first these abilities check for triggers on every instance of "whenever becomes blocked", where as when something gets lifelink (or gives it in the case of Alms Beast) on being blocked, that only happens once. Hope that helps.
I acknowledge that this is what Pete is saying the reasoning is.
what i'm not understanding is how this reasoning is obtained from the wording of the cards. i don't see what the specific words are that make this distinction. I happen to be in part a linguist in non-MTGO life, and "becomes blocked" and "becomes blocked by a creature" are exactly the same kind of phrase.
compare these phrase:
"when the baby stops crying"
"when the baby stops crying because you gave it a pacifier"
each of them is on/off. adding a second pacifier does not make the baby stop crying again. "because you gave it a pacifier" does not modify "stops crying"--it is a further qualification of the original phrase, where the original phrase applies to any condition. the baby can't stop crying if it isn't already crying. the creature can't become blocked (by anything) if it is already blocked. we could diagram this in formal logic and the point would be the same, and I'll be happy to if it would illuminate anything.
as far as the *wording of the cards* goes, I don't see what tells us to use these two different interpretations. is there something in the rules that tells us this?
Primeval Titan, nothing else can search for as many varied effects as that guy, and he can be searched out more easily than the other heavy hitters.
Yep, decent call.
Either Ulamog is up there. Indestructibility plus on-cast permanent removal, coupled with annihilator or library exile respectively. If mana cost is no object, that's a lot of bang for buck.
Hey guys, if you could run only one, what's the best tribal creature regardless of mana cost not subject to the various tribal ban lists (including restrictions to in-tribe only, such as would eliminate Emrakul, Iona, and Progenitus)? If you run Force of Will, probably Griselbrand?! But even that seems chancey. Kozilek the Great Distortion is a candidate. Any other preferred candidates?
Well since no one else wants to comment I will. It was fun doing this cast and the one prior. I hope those who listen to these casts that I share with AJ get something good out of them.
I feel the same way, it sucks that it's single elim but that's all that's out there. It's hard to get a feel for a format when you lose the first round and can't play any more. But I suppose they're there for those who played those formats already?
I got mine because I wanted to play Death and Taxes... less than 24 hours before EMA was announced...
I didn't want lands without the Forest type, because 8 key creatures live off them, and other 4 make them indestructible. Xenagos is to be fetched via Defense, Sylvan Library is there to prevent me from drawing into him; Cultivate is more punch than ramp in the deck.