Magic: The Gathering,GO TEAM MS!

[Shanba]

Is there any dirtier feeling than dropping COP: Red against a burn deck?


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[InflatablePie]

I'm dicking around with a Pulse of Murasa Sultai Delve deck in Pauper. Needs the entire sb worked on to stand a chance against aggressive decks, but I feel real bad when I get to recur Anglers for days against UB Teachings. They only have so many counterspells- combine it with Mnemonic Wall and...

But yes as a Burn and UR Blitz player I despise you. Actually picked up a second Flaring Pain for both SBs. Fuck CoP.

[bv310]

I've picked up Gurmag Delver recently for Pauper. THAT feels dirty. Brainstorm, Counterspell, and Delver in Pauper feel phenomenal.

[InflatablePie]

So this is the list I'm fiddling around with currently. Still tweaking the manabase and sideboard.

The aim is to bash peoples' faces in with Mandrills and Anglers. Pulse recurs the threats and the cheap cantrips/removal provide enough fodder to at least stall until they can be hardcast in the more grindy matchups.

Agony Warps are decent removal, testing one Doom Blade because I want a maindeck answer to any giant threats (and I can Ponder/Brainstorm + Corpse Churn/Mental Note/Thought Scour it away versus like, MBC). Devour Flesh doubles as both a 4th Edict and a combo piece with Pulse if necessary (useful in getting Mnemonic Walls in the GY against creatures that I can't chump). Corpse Churn is okay, only running one because it's way better early-game. I like it more over a third Pulse because it's cheaper and provides Delve fuel, as much as I love Pulse. 2/1 split seems fine. Ghostly Flicker may just be cute, but I really like it. Works well with Wall, and can even just use it to block-flicker or counter removal.

As I said, SB needs work, mostly against aggressive decks (although I've added the Warps and DBlade to the main since my above post). Two Dispel/Negate/Duress mostly for Control, and it's possible I don't need that many since the Control matchups already have trouble dealing with the overwhelming recursion. Brindle Boar recursion is just game against Burn and similar decks, Disfigure for aggro decks, an extra Doom Blade if I need it, two Shrivel because the deck folds super-hard to Elves (and I guess Goblins) without it. And finally, trying a Marauder in the SB for Affinity. Might be too slow, though.

It can at least hold its own in most matchups, but I've only tested maybe two dozen games in the tourney practice room, so it still needs work.

Also, debating taking out one Ponder for another Mental Note. Speeds up the deck, and with Brainstorm I really don't

need

all four Ponder... but I'll do more testing before I drop 3.5 tix on another card that's basically only great in Angler Delver <_< Still like Ponder in the deck though, but I could even see going down to 2.

[DeathNote]

Thoughts on this deck? I wanted to play something with the flicker and abzan blue seems to have the most value with it. I have trouble with fliers and my mana base is a little wonky at times.

4 Abzan Charm
2 Canopy Vista
3 Caves of Koilos
4 Eldrazi Displacer
1 Linvala, the Preserver
3 Forest
2 Transgress the Mind
1 Murderous Cut
2 Stubborn Denial
3 Sylvan Advocate
1 Flooded Strand
1 Crumbling Vestige
3 Llanowar Wastes
1 Plains
1 Polluted Delta
1 prairie stream
3 Reflector Mage
2 Eldrazi Skyspawner
2 Sandsteppe Citadel
1 Sunken Hollow
2 Silkwrap
3 Windswept Heath
1 Swamp
1 Island
2 Shambling Vent
4 Siege Rhino
1 Utter End
3 Thought-Knot Seer
2 Wingmate Roc

sideboard
1 Dragonlord Silumgar
2 Infinite Obliteration
3 Surge of Righteousness
2 Duress
2 Hallowed Moonlight
3 Arashin Cleric
2 Flaying Tendrils

[DeathNote]

I was testing it with oath of nissa for a while at 25 lands but I wanted a little more tech so I dropped the nissa for an extra lands and found a way to put in the counters. Not hard to get the stubborn online.

Advocate has been really awesome and i had recently put those in in place of visionary. I don't really ever draw my wingmates when I need them which annoys me. I either have them when I don't have the creature base to support or I never pull them when my opponent has loads of fliers out.

[DeathNote]

Made it to day 2 for my first ever gp!

[Shanba]

I've been watching the archives of Randy Buehler's Gauntlet of Greatness series, particularly the No Banlist Modern. Holy crap that actually looks like a super fun format, if you ban a couple of obviously degenerate things. It's also left me totally convinced (not that I wasn't already) that half the modern banlist is total nonsense.

[PeregrineV]

Made it to day 2 for my first ever gp!

[Klazam]

I'm right on the line for buying into eldrazi for modern, and possibly conversion to legacy... should i?

[Shinobi]

Eldrazi are all but guaranteed to eat some kind of ban soonish - if not in April, then at the end of the year.
I'm not sure how it's going to work out in legacy but it won't last for long in modern.

[bv310]

Don't buy Eldrazi unless you like shelling out a bunch of money for a deck that's going to lose a key card in three weeks

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

Shea is playing Kiki-Chord (I think) and thus makes poor life choices.

[InflatablePie]

more pauper stuff

still tweaking my Sultai Delve list, but it's possible I should just be playing Angler Delver at this point. seems to be doing alright against Tron, MBC is favored Game 1 imo but Wrench Mind hurts a lot. the last big deck apparently is Mono U Delver, which in theory should be alright with early removal (running 4 Chainer's and 2 Agony Warp for the moment), but if the deck takes off with a Ninja connect and constant countermagic, I'm pretty boned.

so I've been tweaking a UW Cawblade list (which I can post if anyone's interested), but I've also fallen in love with this deck:

4x Freed From The Real
4x Fertile Ground
3x Sheltered Aerie
4x Wind Zendikon
4x Lifespark Spellbomb

4x Drift of Phantasms
2x Valakut Invoker

4x Ponder
4x Preordain
4x Impulse
1x [Anticipate/Brainstorm/???]
4x Gigadrowse

8x Island, 2x Forest, 4x Thornwood Falls, 2x Simic Guildgate, 2x Simic Growth Chamber

SB:
4x Dispel
4x Fog
1x Spore Frog
4x Turn Aside
2x Relic of Progenitus

stolen from here

Combo works as such: get to five mana with a Spellbomb on the field or Zendikon in hand. Have a land that taps for UU via Fertile Ground/Sheltered Aerie. Then you need a Freed From The Real and a Drift of Phantasms or Valakut Invoker. One mana to pop the Spellbomb or cast Zendikon and animate the enchanted land. Enchant the creature-land with Freed From The Real. Use your last mana to untap the land. Tap the land for two, repeat. Get infinite mana, Transmute for and/or cast your Invoker, dome them for infinite.

Despite it being a four-card combo, it's surprisingly easy to get all of those cards, especially considering that Drift of Phantasms can fetch any combo piece minus the land animation spells (considering running a Crusher Zendikon over one Wind, but it doesn't seem super necessary considering the downside). Playsets of Impulse/Ponder/Preordain let you go through the deck quickly and Gigadrowse is a house against permission-based decks (and can be a Fog in a pinch). Only card I'm not sure about is the 60th - Brainstorm isn't great without Evolving Wilds, Anticipate digs for three but costs two mana which is a noticeable downside... maybe something like Gitaxian Probe for scouting, or Serum Visions as a sorta shitty 5th Preordain. Could just run one Train of Thought too but meh.

Sideboarding is easy. 4 Dispels against permission (cut [60th card] and some number of Zendikon/Preordain), Fogs n Frog against creature decks (cut Gigadrowses and [60th card]). The other 6 slots are up in the air, as the author of the article was running 3 Gigadrowse main/1 side and said he really only sided in those nine and the Gigadrowse (in this match it looks like he just threw some Plains in the board lol). Not sure if Relic is necessary, but Turn Aside seems good against sorcery-speed land destruction.

My only complaint is that this deck seems way easier to play in Paper than online. Sheltered Aerie is fine, but Fertile Ground is really annoying to go off with in MTGO's interface. It takes a few minutes if your opponent makes you play it out.

(note in case anyone picks up the deck for mtgo - at 20 life, you need 59 mana with Invoker in hand, 62 if transmuting. have fun clicking.)

[hasdgfas]

Played this list at Standard tonight. It was a lot of fun, and I got to loop Dark-Dwellers with Kolaghan's Command a few times, which felt disgusting.

[DeathNote]

Sweet deck indeed. It will maintain but be shifted around with the next set. R/B is a strong color combo with innistrad I think.

[theelkspeaks]

Holy crap

Epiphany at the Drownyard!!!!

I have never been so excited about a card!

[Shanba]

It's a cool card. I'm not sure how strong it is, though. I have a few problems with it that make me wonder if it's as good as you might expect - but with an effect like that, it's very tough to evaluate without playing it, so it could be good!

For anyone who thinks about the pro scene, and particularly if you saw any of the controversy about Eric Froehlich's article where he complained that someone didn't scoop him into the top 8, here is a wonderful article by Ross Merriam addressing some of those issues:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/32 ... -Game.html

[hasdgfas]

I'm not a big fan of Epiphany at the Drownyard. It's too similar to Steam Augury, which was quite bad. It's possible that it being more flexible will help it, but when you choose the piles and your opponent gives you one of their choice...

[Sudo_Nym]

Fact or Fiction was good because you could get the best card out of the top 5, whereas with this you're getting the second best card.

[Klazam]

Working on a R/W list for postrotation, anyone interested?

[theelkspeaks]

I'm not a big fan of Epiphany at the Drownyard. It's too similar to Steam Augury, which was quite bad. It's possible that it being more flexible will help it, but when you choose the piles and your opponent gives you one of their choice...

I'm more excited about this in an EDH context than a standard context (though I think it might be good in Standard also, that's yet to be seen) - I can just imagine playing this to get huge card advantage at some point in a drawn out game, and it's the thing I'm dying to see when I'm sitting there on 12 lands and like 2 cards in hand.

[Shanba]

I love spoiler season. I love fruitlessly trying to judge whether or not a card will be good in a format I don't even know how it will look until both the spoilers have been done and the real deckbuilders have put their collective weights behind discovering the best decks in the format. It my be pointless but it is fun.

The new rare lands. They're almost guaranteed to see play - duals that can etb untapped are basically a standard staple - but it's weird how clunky their interaction with the Battle for Zendikar lands. The Zendikar lands turn on the clause that allow these guys to etb untapped, but these guys don't allow the Zendikar lands to come in untapped themselves, since they check for basics. Which means that if you have a mana base heavy on both, you're going to have lands enter tapped, probably quite a lot of the time. This to me strongly suggests you'll want to limit the number of colours in your deck to some degree. IMO this might be the worst total fixing package since I started playing magic - first you had check/shocks in Inn/Rav, which was great. Then it was Rav/Ths - Shocks and Temples, which were great. That was probably the next worst though, and with the devotion incentives to play mono colour too there was a powerful pull away from the multi coloured monstrosities to come. Ths/Khans had a lot of taplands, but they forced you into tri-colour, since if you were playing gainlands anyway why not play the trilands and cast powerful three mana spells. Now we're in Khans/Zendikar, and we know the outrageous levels the fixing are at. Post rotation fixing looks good enough to comfortably play 2 colour decks but punishing if you try to play more than that.

Sin Prodder. I think this guy is pretty mediocre. He's a boggart brute with upside, but the upside is a punisher mechanic. It's fair to say that boggart brute is a fine limited card but not even close to constructed playable in any format I can think of (maybe standard pauper, and I'm not even going to guarantee that.) So the upside has to do some serious work to justify playing the guy. Punisher mechanics are the converse of charm mechanics - charms are as good as their best option at any given time, while punishers are as bad as their worst option. This means that the best punisher cards are the ones where both sides of the card are equally good for you. That already limits the options for Sin Prodder, since it means that you cannot play this guy in a deck unless that deck is pressuring your opponents life total in other ways - otherwise, they can simply deny you the card draw and not worry about the life loss. The more aggressively slanted your deck is, the better this guy becomes, because the less your opponent can afford to deny you draws off him - you want him to become as close to "At the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card" as possible.

The issue is that I'm not sure he's a great finisher for an aggro deck. Aggro deck play patterns, when they are winning games, tend to be something like - you force your opponent to deal with your guys inefficiently (because they are cheaper than his removal) allowing you to push points of damage. So they deal with your 1 drop on turn 2, one of your 1 drops on turn 3, you get in some damage, etc. And then since you are forcing them to tap out every turn, you hit em with a hellrider or a stormbreath dragon or a thundermaw hellkite and end the game on the spot. This guy, that play pattern looks bad - you force em to tap out, and then you say - well, here is a 3/2, it doesn't have haste so you can untap, can you deal with it or do I get to gain some incremental card advantage? That's not really a great look imo. Plus, if your curve is too low, it becomes easy again for the other deck to nuke the cards as you draw them even if you are aggressive. Taking 1 to deny you a lightening bolt is obviously fine, and if this guy says "at the beginning of your upkeep, deal 0-3 damage to the opponent", he's a bit mediocre. So there's a kind of fundamental tension in needing to play stuff that is expensive enough to threaten significant damage to your opponent, and being aggressively slanted enough to make the life loss meaningful. So I don't really like him very much, I just don't see how it all comes together into a coherent, powerful card.

Engulf the Shore seems to have made a bit of a splash in the spoiler threads, but perhaps it is because I haven't been playing the game very long but I've yet to see a mass bounce spell really hit the spot in standard. Cyclonic Rift was the closest, and that was a 1 or 2 of in a deck that really lacked good removal options (rapid hybridization!), and it worked as a kind of disperse if need be. This, on the other hand, is always a 4 mana card. That hurts. Plus it doesn't even necessarily bounce what you want it to - it only hits creatures, and in order to hit big creatures imposes a deckbuilding restriction on you (have to have enough islands). I think this card is going to be good in limited but not a constructed card.

Ulvenwald Mysteries is a typical limited build around me card. I doubt it's powerful enough for constructed, since the card advantage it offers is painfully slow. But it is possible.

Tireless Tracker seems kind of similar, but better, and more likely to make the cut. A 3/2 for 3 with Landfall: Draw a card would be a dead cert to see play in a slow format. This isn't quite that card, but it's kinda close. It's the best non-land card spoiled today, but that's not saying much. It's on that threshold line for me, where you can't say it's good enough to see play, but neither can you dismiss it out of hand - you have to playtest it a bit to get a feel for what's going on before you can really say yes or no to a guy like this.

Call the bloodlines is an intriguing card - I inherently like obvious synergy push cards like this, so my perspective is a bit biased - but enablers like this can often see a surprising amount of play relative to the inherent power level of the card (which is low - this card sucks without madness/delirium synergies, as a 1/1 lifelink is worth neither a mana nor a card.) I'm a bit skeptical of this particular one - isn't Jace just a better madness enabler? - but it's cheap and synergistic enough that I don't feel comfortable dismissing it out of hand.

[InflatablePie]

[Gammagooey]

Innistrad's the bestttttttttt

I really, really like the clue mechanic giving some mid/late-game card draw to colors that normally would never have any, which'll give more choices and much more interesting choices to late games that would normally turn into *hope i draw a not-land*

Vampire/werewolf tribal is awesome (other tribal stuff like zombies is fine too, just less interesting than madness+flip cards, and playing one of red/green or red/black is pretty much my jam and they both look like they'll be pretty damn good draft decks)

No eldrazi (wastes as a concept was really cool but made drafting kind of wonky with trying to fit a few colorless mana into what would normally be a two-color deck for random eldrazi bonuses)

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