New extended/double standard is online, and I'm playing Magic again. No points for guessing with what deck.
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
4 Joraga Treespeaker
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Arbor Elf
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Elvish Archdruid
4 Ranger of Eos
3 Regal Force
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Primal Command
9 Forest
4 Horizon Canopy
4 Brushland
1 Plains
1 Pendelhaven
Sideboard:
3 Acidic Slime
3 Vengevine
3 Tajuru Preserver
2 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Dauntless Escort
1 Oversoul of Dusk
1 Scattershot Archer
Obviously, it's much closer to the old Standard deck than the Extended deck that I played with. The biggest change from the Standard version is Summoner's Pact, which is still crazy good. Currently not many people have the deck on their radar, which, by one of the primary rules of all good combo decks, means it's a great metagame choice. The only decks that people play that pose a real threat are URG and UW Reveillark; neither is a horrid matchup, but they have lots of removal. Mono-red is much tougher than it was last season, just because this deck is a turn slower and that one hasn't lost hardly any speed. Faeries is being kept down by that deck, fortunately. Everything else people play is pretty easy.
Sideboard is still pretty up in the air. I've only started to grind Magic Online again recently; 3-1'd my first DE in the format last night.
Oh, and follow me on twitter.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
loud casual gamers
I went to hang out with a friend at the local college here. I was told there were some magic players in a corner. They could be heard yelling halfway down the hallway. They were playing some board game. They were dressed almost exclusively in black. One of them had wrap-around sunglasses, despite it being overcast and dreary outside.
Don't be those players, please.
Don't be those players, please.
holistic game update analysis
That title makes this look academic as fuck. Let me ponder this whilst stroking my beard.
This is another post inspired by Starcraft 2; specifically, this unbelievably nerdragey post on the TeamLiquid forums.
For those not versed in competitive Starcraft, a bit of background: the engine for the game had a lot of bugs and quirks to it, and similar to how speedruns and tool-assisted videos for old video games are a nearly incomprehensible barrage of bug abuses and engine tricks, high-level Starcraft play involves the abuse of the way that movement and attack animations in the game work as a fundamental part of it. It's essentially a shitload of arcane busywork that almost no one could figure out on their own that allows certain units to operate at around twice their intended effectiveness. Obviously, the fact that these bugs aren't present in Starcraft 2 sends Brood War players into a tizzy. This isn't a unique phenomenon.
In any game, whenever something is updated, certain hardcore players immediately focus on what cannot be done any more, such as the removal of damage on the stack. Removing anything that could previously be done (usually backed up by an example of a cool play the old system allowed) is immediately thought of as BAD, and therefore the new update/new game as BAD. Instead, players should look at both games in their entirety, rather than thinking of the older system as the norm and the new one as a deviation from it.
Similarly, the loss of something skill-testing is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, yes, it's incredibly special that it took you four years to perfect Mutalisk micro or how batch effects worked, but that difficulty doesn't make it a good system. Quite the opposite, in fact; chances are, there's absolutely no reason for such a high learning curve to be needed. No one wants to have to multiply random sequences of ten-digit numbers in their head before declaring an attack on turn three of a Limited game, despite how skill-testing it would be. It's just busywork.
New game systems, even if they're simpler, can still be good.
This has been part two of my series of strategy-less articles while I'm too broke to play tournament Magic.
This is another post inspired by Starcraft 2; specifically, this unbelievably nerdragey post on the TeamLiquid forums.
For those not versed in competitive Starcraft, a bit of background: the engine for the game had a lot of bugs and quirks to it, and similar to how speedruns and tool-assisted videos for old video games are a nearly incomprehensible barrage of bug abuses and engine tricks, high-level Starcraft play involves the abuse of the way that movement and attack animations in the game work as a fundamental part of it. It's essentially a shitload of arcane busywork that almost no one could figure out on their own that allows certain units to operate at around twice their intended effectiveness. Obviously, the fact that these bugs aren't present in Starcraft 2 sends Brood War players into a tizzy. This isn't a unique phenomenon.
In any game, whenever something is updated, certain hardcore players immediately focus on what cannot be done any more, such as the removal of damage on the stack. Removing anything that could previously be done (usually backed up by an example of a cool play the old system allowed) is immediately thought of as BAD, and therefore the new update/new game as BAD. Instead, players should look at both games in their entirety, rather than thinking of the older system as the norm and the new one as a deviation from it.
Similarly, the loss of something skill-testing is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, yes, it's incredibly special that it took you four years to perfect Mutalisk micro or how batch effects worked, but that difficulty doesn't make it a good system. Quite the opposite, in fact; chances are, there's absolutely no reason for such a high learning curve to be needed. No one wants to have to multiply random sequences of ten-digit numbers in their head before declaring an attack on turn three of a Limited game, despite how skill-testing it would be. It's just busywork.
New game systems, even if they're simpler, can still be good.
This has been part two of my series of strategy-less articles while I'm too broke to play tournament Magic.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
your set review sucks
Almost all set reviews are terrible.
People read articles about anything for a few reasons. Usually, it comes down either to be entertained, or to learn something new. When writing a set review, hopefully you should be doing both of these, but very few of them do. They're usually rather dry, with some terrible attempts to nickname cards thrown in if you're Evan Erwin or somewhere approaching as dumb as he is. But more importantly, they don't tell people jack shit, despite how absurdly common they are.
Everyone has kneejerk reactions. That's why they're kneejerk reactions; you don't need to do any research or put any work into anything to have them. People (with the exception of the truly soulless, such as market researchers) don't care what others' kneejerk reactions are- they have theirs already, what do they need more for?
If you're considering writing a set review, please do the world a favor and think in advance about what you're giving the world by writing it. Do you have some unique insight into a format that gives you more authority than most, and thus better-than-average kneejerk reactions? If no, have you done the slightest bit of work to determine whether your hypotheses were accurate at all? It would be a hundred times more useful if, instead of mashing your keyboard to tell us which cards seem good in some vague archetype that will probably never see the light of day, put that time into researching one card in one archetype, and report back on the results.
For example, the new card All Is Dust looks pretty cool. Some people think it might see play. Will it? I haven't the slightest idea. I haven't cast it or seen it cast, personally, so you tell me. However, I've thrown together a GW deck and played against the world's worst players on mwsplay, and can confidently report back that Vengevine is as good as people think it is. See how much cooler that is? I confirmed my hypothesis! Holy shit!
Conclusion: stop writing set reviews unless you have something to say.
People read articles about anything for a few reasons. Usually, it comes down either to be entertained, or to learn something new. When writing a set review, hopefully you should be doing both of these, but very few of them do. They're usually rather dry, with some terrible attempts to nickname cards thrown in if you're Evan Erwin or somewhere approaching as dumb as he is. But more importantly, they don't tell people jack shit, despite how absurdly common they are.
Everyone has kneejerk reactions. That's why they're kneejerk reactions; you don't need to do any research or put any work into anything to have them. People (with the exception of the truly soulless, such as market researchers) don't care what others' kneejerk reactions are- they have theirs already, what do they need more for?
If you're considering writing a set review, please do the world a favor and think in advance about what you're giving the world by writing it. Do you have some unique insight into a format that gives you more authority than most, and thus better-than-average kneejerk reactions? If no, have you done the slightest bit of work to determine whether your hypotheses were accurate at all? It would be a hundred times more useful if, instead of mashing your keyboard to tell us which cards seem good in some vague archetype that will probably never see the light of day, put that time into researching one card in one archetype, and report back on the results.
For example, the new card All Is Dust looks pretty cool. Some people think it might see play. Will it? I haven't the slightest idea. I haven't cast it or seen it cast, personally, so you tell me. However, I've thrown together a GW deck and played against the world's worst players on mwsplay, and can confidently report back that Vengevine is as good as people think it is. See how much cooler that is? I confirmed my hypothesis! Holy shit!
Conclusion: stop writing set reviews unless you have something to say.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
starcraft 2 and magic
Well, here's your standard apology-blogpost for not updating. I moved across the country and haven't been playing much Magic- there are a few guys here that are interested in learning, so we'll see what that brings. I'm hopeful.
Before I moved, I was playing the Starcraft 2 beta. Obviously amazing. I've been watching a bunch of videos about high-level strategy and play in it, and it's really fascinating to see all the perspectives and ideas on an entirely different competitive game, with its own jargon, metagame shifts, and general ideas.
What's really interesting to me is the lack of theory there is about the game- in video games, it's just not needed. You don't need to come up with elaborate concepts; things happen in real time, units take X time and Y resources, which are harvested at Z rate. If a player kills someone else, you can watch the replay and see exactly why. Pretty straightforward. There is one broad concept that's interesting to me for its application to Magic, though: the idea of a "timing push" ('push' basically just means an attack). The idea is to do your attacks at a timing that is either very convenient for you- such as when you're throwing down an expansion, or a key upgrade just finished as you're waltzing across the map- or extremely inconvenient for your opponent, such as when they're teching to something incredibly powerful, but either don't have it yet, or don't have them in any significant number, or when they just finished an expansion and haven't broken even on it yet.
How does this apply to Magic? When you're thinking about how matchups work, especially sideboard cards, don't just think of what your cards are doing, but when. Okay, that card is a fantastic hoser for your opponent's entire strategy... but it comes out when you're two thirds of the way to dead. Instead, you should try to fill in the gaps in your own tempo, and look for points where your opponent isn't doing that much that's very powerful, or they have to do a bunch of awkward things and can't react to what you're doing. This means you want to look for cards that come right at the moment when your opponent has to tap out for some spell that's usually safe to cast, and you want to play three-drops against decks with Cryptic Command or Thirst for Knowledge (so that they have to decide between countering it and drawing cards). Say you're playing an aggressive deck or Elf combo against scapeshift. Their two most important "timings" are turn three for Firespout (post-board, sometimes pre) and Cryptic, and usually winning on turn five. This means that you'll want to cast small guys (hopefully disruptive ones) after their turn three to put them in a maximally awkward position, and they can't stop your entire turn with Cryptic.
This is drifting toward very traditional theory, but I'll write more as I think more.
Before I moved, I was playing the Starcraft 2 beta. Obviously amazing. I've been watching a bunch of videos about high-level strategy and play in it, and it's really fascinating to see all the perspectives and ideas on an entirely different competitive game, with its own jargon, metagame shifts, and general ideas.
What's really interesting to me is the lack of theory there is about the game- in video games, it's just not needed. You don't need to come up with elaborate concepts; things happen in real time, units take X time and Y resources, which are harvested at Z rate. If a player kills someone else, you can watch the replay and see exactly why. Pretty straightforward. There is one broad concept that's interesting to me for its application to Magic, though: the idea of a "timing push" ('push' basically just means an attack). The idea is to do your attacks at a timing that is either very convenient for you- such as when you're throwing down an expansion, or a key upgrade just finished as you're waltzing across the map- or extremely inconvenient for your opponent, such as when they're teching to something incredibly powerful, but either don't have it yet, or don't have them in any significant number, or when they just finished an expansion and haven't broken even on it yet.
How does this apply to Magic? When you're thinking about how matchups work, especially sideboard cards, don't just think of what your cards are doing, but when. Okay, that card is a fantastic hoser for your opponent's entire strategy... but it comes out when you're two thirds of the way to dead. Instead, you should try to fill in the gaps in your own tempo, and look for points where your opponent isn't doing that much that's very powerful, or they have to do a bunch of awkward things and can't react to what you're doing. This means you want to look for cards that come right at the moment when your opponent has to tap out for some spell that's usually safe to cast, and you want to play three-drops against decks with Cryptic Command or Thirst for Knowledge (so that they have to decide between countering it and drawing cards). Say you're playing an aggressive deck or Elf combo against scapeshift. Their two most important "timings" are turn three for Firespout (post-board, sometimes pre) and Cryptic, and usually winning on turn five. This means that you'll want to cast small guys (hopefully disruptive ones) after their turn three to put them in a maximally awkward position, and they can't stop your entire turn with Cryptic.
This is drifting toward very traditional theory, but I'll write more as I think more.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
the 95% rule
Quick thought on general combo deck construction.
When building or tuning any combo deck, especially engine-based ones where you draw your entire library, all you need to do is make sure that when you fully combo off, whether it's with Mind's Desire, Ad Nauseam, Glimpse of Nature, or anything else, you have a 95% chance of winning the game against a random opponent. This means that you shouldn't play otherwise useless cards that get your 95% to 99% or 100% in an effort to be super sure.
Last season, GerryT wrote an article on that incarnation of Elves that included one Mirror Entity as the kill, with two Thoughtseize main, and nothing such as Grapeshot, Eternal Witness, or the like. The reasoning is that if all your creatures came into play that turn so you can't kill them with Mirror Entity, or they killed it earlier or something, you can just put your deck on the table and Thoughtseize them a couple times to get rid of any way of them possibly killing you. Sure, it's theoretically possible that they have the perfect combination of cards to kill you when you have 50 power on the table after losing the two best cards in their hand, but it's incredibly unlikely, and you'll lose more games to playing do-nothings like Grapeshot.
Sometimes, this'll lead you to realizing that you don't even need the combo at all. When people first started playing Reveillark, it was with an infinite combo that did a bunch of crazy stuff with Body Double and Mirror Entity. When the deck started getting more popular, they realized that they would get that 95% win just by having good cards in play, not through an infinite combo. It was superfluous, so it got cut.
The same applies to this season's version: some people insisted on Grapeshot just to be super-duper-sure their opponent actually died when you combo'd, instead of playing a card with relevant text outside the combo, like Primal Command. This is bad. Don't do it.
By throwing in bad one-ofs to try to go from a 95% chance of killing to 100%, you're giving in to The Fear. You'll lose more to drawing dead cards than to whatever crazy situation you think of.
When building or tuning any combo deck, especially engine-based ones where you draw your entire library, all you need to do is make sure that when you fully combo off, whether it's with Mind's Desire, Ad Nauseam, Glimpse of Nature, or anything else, you have a 95% chance of winning the game against a random opponent. This means that you shouldn't play otherwise useless cards that get your 95% to 99% or 100% in an effort to be super sure.
Last season, GerryT wrote an article on that incarnation of Elves that included one Mirror Entity as the kill, with two Thoughtseize main, and nothing such as Grapeshot, Eternal Witness, or the like. The reasoning is that if all your creatures came into play that turn so you can't kill them with Mirror Entity, or they killed it earlier or something, you can just put your deck on the table and Thoughtseize them a couple times to get rid of any way of them possibly killing you. Sure, it's theoretically possible that they have the perfect combination of cards to kill you when you have 50 power on the table after losing the two best cards in their hand, but it's incredibly unlikely, and you'll lose more games to playing do-nothings like Grapeshot.
Sometimes, this'll lead you to realizing that you don't even need the combo at all. When people first started playing Reveillark, it was with an infinite combo that did a bunch of crazy stuff with Body Double and Mirror Entity. When the deck started getting more popular, they realized that they would get that 95% win just by having good cards in play, not through an infinite combo. It was superfluous, so it got cut.
The same applies to this season's version: some people insisted on Grapeshot just to be super-duper-sure their opponent actually died when you combo'd, instead of playing a card with relevant text outside the combo, like Primal Command. This is bad. Don't do it.
By throwing in bad one-ofs to try to go from a 95% chance of killing to 100%, you're giving in to The Fear. You'll lose more to drawing dead cards than to whatever crazy situation you think of.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
extended banned list
Current Extended banned list consists of:
Sensei's Divining Top
Skullclamp
Aether Vial
Disciple of the Vault
SDT and Skullclamp obviously need to remain banned; the former simply for time reasons, the latter because have you read the card seriously just look at it. The latter two, though, seem like they don't need to be banned any more. First, let's look at the reasons for banning them in the first place:
"Last season's Extended metagame was pretty amazing. There were lots and lots of decks—all of them very powerful and very fast. Of course, with the format rotating in October, we lose a lot of that diversity.
The fact that nothing approximating a normal control deck was viable in the format was not a huge problem considering the wide range of options. But with half the decks rotating out, we had to take a serious look at starting the “new” format off in a place more conducive to a traditional “rock-paper-scissors” metagame.
What we didn't want to do was take good decks and blow them to smithereens like we did with Affinity in Standard three months ago. Instead we opted for the “surgical strike” option on some of the more resilient aggressive decks.
Aether Vial is a pretty ridiculous card. It costs but one mana, and it makes all of your creatures essentially uncounterable free instants. It messes up permission, combat, you name it. Basically it's like a super Dark Ritual that gives you 17 free mana over the course of a game. Somehow it has survived getting the axe in other formats, but knowing how much of a head start it gives Goblins and Affinity in this format—and how much it cripples control—we can't justify leaving it around.
Disciple of the Vault was a less obvious candidate, but in general we really dislike the “Oops, I win” draws that Ravager Affinity is capable of, especially since there isn't much anyone can do to stop them once they start going for the Disciple combo-kill. We certainly don't have a policy of banning cards preemptively—Disciple has proven itself again and again. Affinity took the crown at the last Extended Pro Tour using a card pool that was significantly bigger than what will be available in LA this fall; it probably won't even need Disciple to remain competitive.
Will there still be a good Goblin deck? Absolutely. Affinity deck? Yes, hopefully with some new twists. Pro Tour LA should be very interesting—and it needs to be. It has large shoes to fill based on the popularity of the last Extended season."
Goblins obviously isn't a concern since Onslaught rotated out, so let's just talk about Affinity. First, if you look at Affinity in Legacy, where both Disciple and Vial are legal, in an environment with a lot of countermagic (making Vial a lot better), absolutely no one plays Aether Vial. No one. In fact, it lists the top twenty cards most often played in it, and Vial doesn't even make that list, while Relic of Progenitus does. This says to me, rather clearly, that if it were unbanned, Affinity wouldn't even want it. To be blunt, Springleaf Drum is just a better card at doing the same thing, since you don't have to wait a turn. Zoo, same thing: the Legacy versions play about 90% Extended-legal spells, and they don't play Vial either, ever, so it's pretty easy to assume they wouldn't want it. Who would? Well, the most common deck that uses it in Legacy is Merfolk... a deck known for how it gets crushed by the format's Zoo. I'm also unsure how synergystic blue men could possibly compete with indestructible 20/20s on turn two... Unsummon, I guess? Doesn't seem like a solid plan. Even if it does enable a Merfolk deck or some better version of White Weenie, is anyone really not okay with this? Aggro decks that aren't Zoo have a very tough time in the format currently, and Vial would make them better, but not absurd, especially since almost no one plays real countermagic (one of the main reasons Vial is a useful card in Legacy).
Now on to Disciple of the Vault. To put it simply: Affinity sucks in Extended right now. It's not like last season where you needed some Kataki or Ancient Grudge to beat it; no, it just loses to most decks even with zero dedicated hate cards. Again, synergistic creatures have a pretty hard time dealing with 20/20s, turn one 3/3s, or turn three kills. Disciple, at its best, gives your Ravager the additional ability of making them lose one life; this would make the deck better, but certainly not great, in the format.
Affinity: "turn one Frogmite, turn two Ravager and Disciple! Oh what now!!! You thought it was banned BUT IT ISN'T"
Dark Depths/Elves/Hypergenesis/Living End: "oh I remember that card. Cool. Kill you."
Affinity: "oh. Too bad my deck still plays no relevant disruption and does nothing other than play undercosted or free creatures."
Worst-case, if I'm wrong about how good it is, it'll be another deck and people will have to go back to actually sideboarding against the deck. Doesn't seem like a bad result.
Sensei's Divining Top
Skullclamp
Aether Vial
Disciple of the Vault
SDT and Skullclamp obviously need to remain banned; the former simply for time reasons, the latter because have you read the card seriously just look at it. The latter two, though, seem like they don't need to be banned any more. First, let's look at the reasons for banning them in the first place:
"Last season's Extended metagame was pretty amazing. There were lots and lots of decks—all of them very powerful and very fast. Of course, with the format rotating in October, we lose a lot of that diversity.
The fact that nothing approximating a normal control deck was viable in the format was not a huge problem considering the wide range of options. But with half the decks rotating out, we had to take a serious look at starting the “new” format off in a place more conducive to a traditional “rock-paper-scissors” metagame.
What we didn't want to do was take good decks and blow them to smithereens like we did with Affinity in Standard three months ago. Instead we opted for the “surgical strike” option on some of the more resilient aggressive decks.
Aether Vial is a pretty ridiculous card. It costs but one mana, and it makes all of your creatures essentially uncounterable free instants. It messes up permission, combat, you name it. Basically it's like a super Dark Ritual that gives you 17 free mana over the course of a game. Somehow it has survived getting the axe in other formats, but knowing how much of a head start it gives Goblins and Affinity in this format—and how much it cripples control—we can't justify leaving it around.
Disciple of the Vault was a less obvious candidate, but in general we really dislike the “Oops, I win” draws that Ravager Affinity is capable of, especially since there isn't much anyone can do to stop them once they start going for the Disciple combo-kill. We certainly don't have a policy of banning cards preemptively—Disciple has proven itself again and again. Affinity took the crown at the last Extended Pro Tour using a card pool that was significantly bigger than what will be available in LA this fall; it probably won't even need Disciple to remain competitive.
Will there still be a good Goblin deck? Absolutely. Affinity deck? Yes, hopefully with some new twists. Pro Tour LA should be very interesting—and it needs to be. It has large shoes to fill based on the popularity of the last Extended season."
Goblins obviously isn't a concern since Onslaught rotated out, so let's just talk about Affinity. First, if you look at Affinity in Legacy, where both Disciple and Vial are legal, in an environment with a lot of countermagic (making Vial a lot better), absolutely no one plays Aether Vial. No one. In fact, it lists the top twenty cards most often played in it, and Vial doesn't even make that list, while Relic of Progenitus does. This says to me, rather clearly, that if it were unbanned, Affinity wouldn't even want it. To be blunt, Springleaf Drum is just a better card at doing the same thing, since you don't have to wait a turn. Zoo, same thing: the Legacy versions play about 90% Extended-legal spells, and they don't play Vial either, ever, so it's pretty easy to assume they wouldn't want it. Who would? Well, the most common deck that uses it in Legacy is Merfolk... a deck known for how it gets crushed by the format's Zoo. I'm also unsure how synergystic blue men could possibly compete with indestructible 20/20s on turn two... Unsummon, I guess? Doesn't seem like a solid plan. Even if it does enable a Merfolk deck or some better version of White Weenie, is anyone really not okay with this? Aggro decks that aren't Zoo have a very tough time in the format currently, and Vial would make them better, but not absurd, especially since almost no one plays real countermagic (one of the main reasons Vial is a useful card in Legacy).
Now on to Disciple of the Vault. To put it simply: Affinity sucks in Extended right now. It's not like last season where you needed some Kataki or Ancient Grudge to beat it; no, it just loses to most decks even with zero dedicated hate cards. Again, synergistic creatures have a pretty hard time dealing with 20/20s, turn one 3/3s, or turn three kills. Disciple, at its best, gives your Ravager the additional ability of making them lose one life; this would make the deck better, but certainly not great, in the format.
Affinity: "turn one Frogmite, turn two Ravager and Disciple! Oh what now!!! You thought it was banned BUT IT ISN'T"
Dark Depths/Elves/Hypergenesis/Living End: "oh I remember that card. Cool. Kill you."
Affinity: "oh. Too bad my deck still plays no relevant disruption and does nothing other than play undercosted or free creatures."
Worst-case, if I'm wrong about how good it is, it'll be another deck and people will have to go back to actually sideboarding against the deck. Doesn't seem like a bad result.
Monday, March 1, 2010
one game
In the spirit of one of the all-time best Magic articles, One Game by Richard Feldman, I'm going to post a fairly detailed walkthrough of a single game with my latest version of the Elves deck in the third game of the third round of a Magic Online daily event. My opponent is playing a fairly interesting UW Thopter list, deviating most noticeably from most Thopter lists in playing Tron backed up by various signets and talismans. Talismen? Notable cards seen before include Path to Exile, Repeal, Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, Hallowed Burial (?!), Mindslaver, Engineered Explosives, Academy Ruins, and Chalice of the Void. I did not see what his actual win condition was, since I scooped to Mindslaver recursion in the first game. In the second, the game went long, so I had to actually recur Primal Commands for once to keep him off Wrath mana, leaving me fairly little time for the third game. Worse yet, losing the first game means I'm on the draw for the decider... never a good thing for this deck; it shifts almost every matchup to be much worse than when on the play. For sideboarding, I brought all three Shamans- two Viridan, one Loaming- as well as a single Ranger of Eos, removing Cloudstone Curios and a Boreal Druid. The thinking here is that Academy Ruins recursion plus shitloads of mana is something that I just can't beat, so a 2G 3/2 that shuffles their library is pretty good. I'm unsure whether or not I want the third Ranger of Eos (I cut down to two sideboard, one main), but decide against it, since with two Primal Command and Regal Force in the deck, it could lead to some clunky draws.
Opening seven:
Five land, ouch. Glimpse plus Nettle is certainly tempting, but an easy way to think of lands past the third in a hand is that they're mulligans already, making this hand a "double-mulligan" and a toss. Yes, it has your two most critical cards (Nettle for early pressure and Glimpse to combo if they tap out), but the supporting cast isn't there.
Well hello there. Pact, when backed up with Elves in the opening hand, is only slightly worse than having Glimpse. Fist-pump keep.
More fist-pumping occurs. The only decision here is whether to lead with the Forest or the fetch, and whether to get a basic or a Temple Garden. Since his only spot removal seems to be Path and Repeal, there's not much advantage to try anything fancy with tricking him at the expense of life, so I just go with the Forest, in case I draw one of the two Rangers eventually.
Well that's not what I wanted to see, but it's not a huge deal. I have the Archdruid, and can Pact up Shaman when it's necessary to do so. I decide to fetch up a basic again, since the odds of drawing a Ranger before another white source are rather low; however, life total barely matters at all here, so it was a misplay. I should have gone for the Garden.
Boo land. Pacting for Shaman is briefly tempting, but it's possible he's slow-rolling the second white source (or that he'll draw it) in order to Wrath me for an easy game win. Instead, I begin bringing beats. He takes the four and Thirsts at end of turn, ditching another Chalice, then completes the Tron, plays a signet, and Repeals Archdruid. This isn't looking good.
Two lines of play here: either Shaman his Chalice and lay the Nettle, threatening eight damage with the Archdruid I play next turn, or play Archdruid this turn and intend to go crazy on the next. The latter seems much better, since he can just get blindsided by losing his chalice and seeing my board explode out of nowhere, not letting him untap with the knowledge that I've dealt with Chalice.
Speaking of exploding out of nowhere, he plays Triskelion (?!?!?!) and the turn I was setting up disappears. Thankfully, I've practiced enough with the deck to draw another Archdruid.
If I don't commit in a major way to the board, Triskelion recursion with the new Foundry is going to knock me out of the game in a hurry. For that reason, it seems best to play out everything I can and hope to overwhelm him.
I play Heritage Druid as the second elf rather than Nettle Sentinel, since I'd rather he Path the 1/1 than the 2/2 Nettle. Interestingly, he opts to Path Viridian Shaman rather than Heritage Druid, I assume for a similar reason. Here is where I've started rushing my decisions due to the limited time on my clock, so I can't fully calculate what he'll do with Triskelion turn after turn. I don't even think I saw the Foundry-Ruins interaction here that allows him to do that at all; I was overly focused on my side of the board, and it cost me.
Pacting up Shaman doesn't do anything here, especially with Chalice in the graveyard ready to go on top of his library. I could get Loaming Shaman to stop that from happening, but that eats up two turns and doesn't do anything about the Triskelion. The best way out of this seems to be to Ranger up Warcaller to potentially get enough guys outside of Triskelion range so that I can kill him soon, after Pacting for Shaman to deal with the Chalice he'll play.
As expected, there's the xx, and much like the band, it's pissing me off a bit, but can get tuned out temporarily before it gets brought back up. The first Pact obviously has to get VShaman, then I can play out my hand... but what does the second get? I reason that Archdruid is the best call, but this is wrong. If I had ended this turn by fetching up Loaming Shaman instead, I can stop his crazy Triskelion recursion and make him have one of a very small number of removal spells either as the last card in his hand or on top of the deck to win the game. If he does, he wins on the spot, but it still seems superior. I should have realized that, by playing Archdruid, he can just kill it with Trisk, so if I attack with Nettle Sentinel into his four untapped Thopters, then I can only tap three Elves plus four land and lose. Fortunately...
Well, that's a relief.
I attack with everyone, and make a huge mistake by holding on to the Llanowar in my hand until next turn for... some reason.
Note his five life, my four power worth of unblocked creatures, and summoning-sick Llanowar.
The deck attempts to apologize by handing me a win in the form of Visionary into Pact, but again I politely refuse, this time by searching for Archdruid. Trying to play too fast was getting to me.
...and I lose and drop from the tournament.
Short version: "he had turn two Chalice, obviously drew the Urzatron and Academy with no tutoring, and started recurring Triskelion, and I don't get a single Glimpse the entire game, so obviously I lose. Nothing I could do about that."
Next time I do this, it'll be a game I played well.
Opening seven:
Five land, ouch. Glimpse plus Nettle is certainly tempting, but an easy way to think of lands past the third in a hand is that they're mulligans already, making this hand a "double-mulligan" and a toss. Yes, it has your two most critical cards (Nettle for early pressure and Glimpse to combo if they tap out), but the supporting cast isn't there.
Well hello there. Pact, when backed up with Elves in the opening hand, is only slightly worse than having Glimpse. Fist-pump keep.
More fist-pumping occurs. The only decision here is whether to lead with the Forest or the fetch, and whether to get a basic or a Temple Garden. Since his only spot removal seems to be Path and Repeal, there's not much advantage to try anything fancy with tricking him at the expense of life, so I just go with the Forest, in case I draw one of the two Rangers eventually.
Well that's not what I wanted to see, but it's not a huge deal. I have the Archdruid, and can Pact up Shaman when it's necessary to do so. I decide to fetch up a basic again, since the odds of drawing a Ranger before another white source are rather low; however, life total barely matters at all here, so it was a misplay. I should have gone for the Garden.
Boo land. Pacting for Shaman is briefly tempting, but it's possible he's slow-rolling the second white source (or that he'll draw it) in order to Wrath me for an easy game win. Instead, I begin bringing beats. He takes the four and Thirsts at end of turn, ditching another Chalice, then completes the Tron, plays a signet, and Repeals Archdruid. This isn't looking good.
Two lines of play here: either Shaman his Chalice and lay the Nettle, threatening eight damage with the Archdruid I play next turn, or play Archdruid this turn and intend to go crazy on the next. The latter seems much better, since he can just get blindsided by losing his chalice and seeing my board explode out of nowhere, not letting him untap with the knowledge that I've dealt with Chalice.
Speaking of exploding out of nowhere, he plays Triskelion (?!?!?!) and the turn I was setting up disappears. Thankfully, I've practiced enough with the deck to draw another Archdruid.
If I don't commit in a major way to the board, Triskelion recursion with the new Foundry is going to knock me out of the game in a hurry. For that reason, it seems best to play out everything I can and hope to overwhelm him.
I play Heritage Druid as the second elf rather than Nettle Sentinel, since I'd rather he Path the 1/1 than the 2/2 Nettle. Interestingly, he opts to Path Viridian Shaman rather than Heritage Druid, I assume for a similar reason. Here is where I've started rushing my decisions due to the limited time on my clock, so I can't fully calculate what he'll do with Triskelion turn after turn. I don't even think I saw the Foundry-Ruins interaction here that allows him to do that at all; I was overly focused on my side of the board, and it cost me.
Pacting up Shaman doesn't do anything here, especially with Chalice in the graveyard ready to go on top of his library. I could get Loaming Shaman to stop that from happening, but that eats up two turns and doesn't do anything about the Triskelion. The best way out of this seems to be to Ranger up Warcaller to potentially get enough guys outside of Triskelion range so that I can kill him soon, after Pacting for Shaman to deal with the Chalice he'll play.
As expected, there's the xx, and much like the band, it's pissing me off a bit, but can get tuned out temporarily before it gets brought back up. The first Pact obviously has to get VShaman, then I can play out my hand... but what does the second get? I reason that Archdruid is the best call, but this is wrong. If I had ended this turn by fetching up Loaming Shaman instead, I can stop his crazy Triskelion recursion and make him have one of a very small number of removal spells either as the last card in his hand or on top of the deck to win the game. If he does, he wins on the spot, but it still seems superior. I should have realized that, by playing Archdruid, he can just kill it with Trisk, so if I attack with Nettle Sentinel into his four untapped Thopters, then I can only tap three Elves plus four land and lose. Fortunately...
Well, that's a relief.
I attack with everyone, and make a huge mistake by holding on to the Llanowar in my hand until next turn for... some reason.
Note his five life, my four power worth of unblocked creatures, and summoning-sick Llanowar.
The deck attempts to apologize by handing me a win in the form of Visionary into Pact, but again I politely refuse, this time by searching for Archdruid. Trying to play too fast was getting to me.
...and I lose and drop from the tournament.
Short version: "he had turn two Chalice, obviously drew the Urzatron and Academy with no tutoring, and started recurring Triskelion, and I don't get a single Glimpse the entire game, so obviously I lose. Nothing I could do about that."
Next time I do this, it'll be a game I played well.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
ptq post-mortem
Short version: 0-2 drop, to Brozek Boros both times.
Slightly longer version: I played the 75 in the last post, except I thought that Burrenton Forge-Tender would be better than Loaming Shaman.
Round one game one, he gets going with one, then two, then three goblin guides, but doesn't have the removal to stop me from comboing on turn four. I sideboard:
+4 Jitte
+3 Ranger
+1 Warcaller
+1 Viridian Shaman
+1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
-3 Cloudstone Curio
-1 Viridian Zealot
-1 Boreal Druid
-1 Arbor Elf
-1 Elvish Visionary
-1 Elvish Archdruid
-1 Summoner's Pact
-1 Primal Command
Pretty messy what I took out. Games two and three, he mulls to five and still beats me. Mostly I blame Jitte for this; I thought it would be crazy against a deck of almost nothing but X/1s, but what I didn't realize is that in this matchup, Jitte does not have the text printed on it. Instead, it is errata'd to have the following ability instead:
2, sacrifice an untapped creature: target player discards an instant.
...which is obviously a pretty terrible card. There's absolutely no way I should have cut elves at random to put in that thing; it's just way too slow and expensive for a deck that can just go "kill you." The fact that he beat me on mulls to five shows that. Yes, sure, I can blame it on him having every removal spell he possibly could, but that's just what his deck does. I misunderstood the matchup (it's the only deck I haven't played against extensively on MODO) and got crushed, as well I should have.
Second round was about the same; he deals me fifteen on the third turn the first game, putting me at one, and I can't combo next turn. Game two he has nothing and I have turn one Forge-Tender (which he attacks with Guide into) so I slowly, slowly, slowly beat him down. Game three I don't do much and he has a bunch of removal.
I'm going to try sideboarding Refraction Trap and see how that does.
Slightly longer version: I played the 75 in the last post, except I thought that Burrenton Forge-Tender would be better than Loaming Shaman.
Round one game one, he gets going with one, then two, then three goblin guides, but doesn't have the removal to stop me from comboing on turn four. I sideboard:
+4 Jitte
+3 Ranger
+1 Warcaller
+1 Viridian Shaman
+1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
-3 Cloudstone Curio
-1 Viridian Zealot
-1 Boreal Druid
-1 Arbor Elf
-1 Elvish Visionary
-1 Elvish Archdruid
-1 Summoner's Pact
-1 Primal Command
Pretty messy what I took out. Games two and three, he mulls to five and still beats me. Mostly I blame Jitte for this; I thought it would be crazy against a deck of almost nothing but X/1s, but what I didn't realize is that in this matchup, Jitte does not have the text printed on it. Instead, it is errata'd to have the following ability instead:
2, sacrifice an untapped creature: target player discards an instant.
...which is obviously a pretty terrible card. There's absolutely no way I should have cut elves at random to put in that thing; it's just way too slow and expensive for a deck that can just go "kill you." The fact that he beat me on mulls to five shows that. Yes, sure, I can blame it on him having every removal spell he possibly could, but that's just what his deck does. I misunderstood the matchup (it's the only deck I haven't played against extensively on MODO) and got crushed, as well I should have.
Second round was about the same; he deals me fifteen on the third turn the first game, putting me at one, and I can't combo next turn. Game two he has nothing and I have turn one Forge-Tender (which he attacks with Guide into) so I slowly, slowly, slowly beat him down. Game three I don't do much and he has a bunch of removal.
I'm going to try sideboarding Refraction Trap and see how that does.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
selfish elf report
Selfish Elf sucks.
Current spergelves decklist:
2 Arbor Elf
4 Heritage Druid
3 Boreal Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Viridian Zealot
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Elvish Archdruid
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Regal Force
2 Primal Command
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Cloudstone Curio
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Temple Garden
1 Pendelhaven
5 Forest
3 Horizon Canopy
Sideboard
3 Ranger of Eos
4 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Loaming Shaman
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Joraga Warcaller
2 Viridian Shaman
Only major change is two Warcaller between main and side. It's the best card to tutor up with Ranger of Eos against basically any scary cards when the game goes a bit long; you just play one with all your mana and if they don't kill it, you probably win. If they do, play another one. Just ran a two-man against Zoo to try it out, and the game went long (read: turn five) and he had a Meddling Mage and Steppe Lynx on Heritage Druid against my board of a couple elves, so I Primal Commanded to gain seven and search up Ranger Of Eos. Next turn, Ranger for two Warcallers and block Steppe Lynx. Next turn, Warcaller meets Path to Exile. Next turn, Warcaller wins the game. Surprisingly, slow-seeming strategies like this are actually really good against Zoo as long as each card you play trades with at least one of theirs. Warcaller is a great card at drawing a removal spell kicked once, great at giving you a solid team kicked twice, and wins the game unless they kill it kicked three times... plus, it's another one-mana guy, so unlike most sideboard cards, it doesn't fuck up your Glimpse plan.
Current spergelves decklist:
2 Arbor Elf
4 Heritage Druid
3 Boreal Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
1 Joraga Warcaller
1 Viridian Zealot
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Elvish Archdruid
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Regal Force
2 Primal Command
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Cloudstone Curio
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Temple Garden
1 Pendelhaven
5 Forest
3 Horizon Canopy
Sideboard
3 Ranger of Eos
4 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Loaming Shaman
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Joraga Warcaller
2 Viridian Shaman
Only major change is two Warcaller between main and side. It's the best card to tutor up with Ranger of Eos against basically any scary cards when the game goes a bit long; you just play one with all your mana and if they don't kill it, you probably win. If they do, play another one. Just ran a two-man against Zoo to try it out, and the game went long (read: turn five) and he had a Meddling Mage and Steppe Lynx on Heritage Druid against my board of a couple elves, so I Primal Commanded to gain seven and search up Ranger Of Eos. Next turn, Ranger for two Warcallers and block Steppe Lynx. Next turn, Warcaller meets Path to Exile. Next turn, Warcaller wins the game. Surprisingly, slow-seeming strategies like this are actually really good against Zoo as long as each card you play trades with at least one of theirs. Warcaller is a great card at drawing a removal spell kicked once, great at giving you a solid team kicked twice, and wins the game unless they kill it kicked three times... plus, it's another one-mana guy, so unlike most sideboard cards, it doesn't fuck up your Glimpse plan.