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Alright, my precon came in, so I've started building up Locust God. This is what I've managed to scrape together: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/CVhFirt97kex6mQY2jV47g Apart from the stuff that came from the precon itself, this is all stuff I already had lying around, so that's why it's terrible. I'm looking for help and suggestions on both straight additions to fill out the list and replacements for my more... bad choices. My budget is about $100, so I'd prefer not spending 10+ on a single card.
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Jun 28, 2020 04:58
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serefin99 posted:Alright, my precon came in, so I've started building up Locust God. This is what I've managed to scrape together: Here's a quick and dirty look. Skullclamp. Unless you're keeping the power level down, Skullclamp should absolutely be in this deck, no question. I have opinions on draw spells. First, I normally don't like Ponder or Preordain in most EDH decks. In this instance they are less bad but Brainstorm is likely better than at least one of them. You might have enough fliers to try Winged Words rather than Divination, but consider that Divination is already not a card you normally see in EDH. Other draw cards to look at: Secrets of the Golden City is another 3-mana comparison, which might be better upside, but if you're behind it's bad. VIsions of Beyond might synergize well with your self-wheeling situation, but also has low upside if it's not online. Two rock solid cards with no variance would be Careful Study and Frantic Search; they should probably find a spot if you can get them. Beyond that, maaaybe breakthrough? I've always wanted to try that one. A cycling subtheme might be cool: Boon of the Wish Giver or Hieroglyphic Illumination might help smooth things out since you can dump them early. Reliquary Tower is not a good card, especially since lots of your draw is not very profitable (gaining cards), which is fine because you're gaining advantage off of the action not the card. If you want to indulge yourself for this deck, fine I guess. I'd replace it with Buried Ruin in case you mill an artifact you want. I always tried Mercurial Chemister in my Intet deck and he never, ever lived up to my expectations. He's just too slow. Nin, the Pain Artist might be a fun supporting player in his stead, which would cost more mana but you can just zap some useless token and draw a lot. Arcane Denial might be okay in that deck. I think it's overplayed in EDH, but hard counters are nice and if you get tokens off it, that's cool too. Add Vandalblast. That card is just good and you're light on removal. Lightning bolt isn't amazing in EDH. Attunement would be a fun addition, but you might want more graveyard synergy for that. I might find room for Improbable Alliance for another source of tokens in case the God gets handled in some way or is too expensive, or just because it's pretty decent. Same with some of the other multi-draw payoffs. e: Also, Thrill of Possibility is essentially strictly better than Tormeting Voice (instant v sorcery, so unless they are running Dispel instead of Envelope or something) Magnetic North fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Jun 28, 2020 |
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Jun 28, 2020 12:11
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serefin99 posted:Alright, my precon came in, so I've started building up Locust God. This is what I've managed to scrape together: Locust God wants to draw a lot of cards and make a lot of mana. Unfortunately, WotC sucks rear end real hard at reprints, so almost all your big payoffs are $20+. That said, the cheapest payoffs you can get are: Ashnod's Altar Thermopod Skullclamp Impact Tremors Sage of the Falls Laboratory Maniac/Thassa's Oracle Shared Animosity (Not awful, I guess, but you are paying $4 for a card 1/10th as good as a $10-20 card, so v0v) Basically cut anything over 2 mana, replace with more draw, and add some finishers (Niv's fine, I guess, and honestly the deck would be better as Niv with the budget constraints). Cheap good draw: Brainstorm Frantic Search Faithless Looting Chart a Course Cathartic Reunion Thrill of Possibility Thirst for Knowledge Other good stuff: Tribute Mage Trophy Mage Goblin Electromancer Izzet Charm Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion Mystic Remora (this is good in every deck with blue and will only go up in price since they show no signs of reprinting it since 1995). Maybe other Niv then you can slap in the Curiosity variants Jushi Apprentice (probably not good, but can be fun) Champion of Wits Midnight Clock???
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Jun 28, 2020 12:13
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Good Cheap cards: Whirlpool rider Whirlpool Drake Whirlpool Warrior Throne of the god pharoah Glass of the guildpact Outpost siege (Dragons) Opposition Gravitational shift Distant Melody(im pretty sure this is a win more card, cut it a while ago) Expensive cards that make the deck much stronger: Purphoros Sneak attack Dack Fayden Jank: Consecrated sphinx Mindmoil Arjun the shifting flame Niv Mizzet trilogy Mindwrack liege I tried verity circle for a bit, turned out its garbage. Will probably have to find a copy of thermapod.
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Jun 28, 2020 13:09
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Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! I'll look into them and see how far I can squeeze my budget!
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Jun 28, 2020 23:58
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More budget stuff for Locust God: Jace's Archivist Nivix Guildmage Teferi's Puzzle Box Brallin, Skyshark Rider (which should already be in the precon) Narset, Parter of Veils (which gets better the more Wheels you run)
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Jun 29, 2020 00:17
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What is everyone’s personal line between casual and “not casual”? $$$ of deck? Specific cards? Infinite combos? Playing with people online has just helped hammer home the fact no one knows what to agree on for the very subjective existing deck power scale rankings.
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Jun 29, 2020 00:22
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Balon posted:What is everyone’s personal line between casual and “not casual”? But to give my 2 cents, casual is anything that people don't whine about. People whine about land destruction, and stax, and stealing their stuff, and countermagic, and extra turns, and discard, and tutors, and infinite combos, and planeswalkers. People whine about turn 1 Sol Rings, even if they are running Sol Ring, and people whine about mana doublers. Even when those things aren't especially effective, they'll whine. My personal line? My casual decks don't have 0-cost mana rocks, and my casual decks don't win off infinite/game-ending combos that include the commander. They also don't win with Dramatic Scepter, Labman effects, or one-card combos like Doomdsay. Other than that, I don't really care if people whine about Armageddon or stax or control effects. I know what I'm doing, and I'm not building decks that lock the game down but have no way to win. The only things that get me tilted are chaos decks and group hug decks. It's an absolute waste of my time to sit and play a game of magic where nothing matters because someone is spending all his resources loving around instead of trying to win.
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Jun 29, 2020 01:02
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I was actually thinking it would be useful to just rank every card in the game on a scale of 1-10. Maybe every card defaults to a 1. Obviously it would be subjective, and change over time, but if someone's deck is between 800-900 pts that tells you a lot more than "EDH" or "casual". Almost no-one agrees across groups what those terms mean.
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Jun 29, 2020 02:18
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I think the old saw of “how quickly does your deck win” is pretty decent, but I don’t know where you’d really draw the line there.
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Jun 29, 2020 02:31
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:I think the old saw of “how quickly does your deck win” is pretty decent, but I don’t know where you’d really draw the line there. Since everyone seems to have different ideas of what constitutes feelbads in terms of individual cards and interactions, I like speed and budget as lines between cEDH and casual. cEDH decks tend to go off on, what, turns 2 through 5? I never play cEDH, so I'm working mostly from what I have inferred from folks ITT and elsewhere, but turn 5 seems like an ok place to draw that line. None of my casual decks will go off before turn five, but will go off on turns 5 through 8. That's just me and the folks I usually play with, though. Some Filthy Casuals build battlecruiser poo poo that doesn't have a plan to go off in a predictable time frame, if ever. I can't account for those people. I can't account for people not playing to win in a card game that is inherently competitive. But if we simply ignore that poo poo, it seems like Casual = cEDH + 3 turns. I also like budget as a good line, although that's kind of a moving target. Two years ago I would have said anything above $100 was, if not cEDH, "tuned" casual. But prices continue to go up and a ton of my decks are touching $200 by appreciation alone. So maybe $200 is the line now? I dunno. It just seems like it would be impossible to build a cEDH deck, with the mana base and expensive ramp required to compete in that meta, for less than $200. The mana base alone for most cEDH decks probably run over $200. 
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Jun 29, 2020 03:09
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Underground Sea and Mox Diamond are like $300 each, so yeah... That's a trifling amount for a cEDH manabases budget. It's also why proxies are great.
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Jun 29, 2020 03:17
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Aranan posted:Underground Sea and Mox Diamond are like $300 each, so yeah... That's a trifling amount for a cEDH manabases budget. Yeah my decks would I think all be minimum 3 or 4k if any of my cards were real cardboard as opposed to fake cardboard.
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Jun 29, 2020 03:23
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Aranan posted:Underground Sea and Mox Diamond are like $300 each, so yeah... That's a trifling amount for a cEDH manabases budget. I'm assuming manabases short of ABUR Duals, but if people are running those then you're talking $1000+ for sure. I was thinking of things like Fetches, Shocks, and pricey stuff like Cavern of Souls. Edit: If you're going to proxy, sure go hog wild. None of my poo poo is expensive enough to require proxies quite like that, so the few I use are just dupes of things I already have in other decks. Railing Kill fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 03:24
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A 3-color full-power mana base is going to be over $2000 if it includes blue, and a 5-color one is $3500+. Just Mox Diamond and Mana Crypt are about $500 together. Price is kinda bad because you can spend $2000 on just lands that smooth out your draws and don't speed you up at all. Putting 3 ABUR duals, 5 fetches, and 3 shocks into a precon isn't going to appreciably increase the power level, it just prevents mana screw. Prices are so high right now that you could easily have $1000 casual decks. My casual mono-black deck is $750 according to Moxfield, and it's battlecruiser garbage.
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Jun 29, 2020 03:50
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Non-artifact ramp: What are the traps to avoid? Is Cultivate worth running? Explosive vegetation? Mana dorks in every green deck or just the ones that care about creatures? Birds of Paradise sets a baseline of 1cmc to one of any colour. Is anything worse than this to be avoided (paradise druid etc)? Same with Farhaven elf and the like. Just in creature decks and ones that care about ETBs? Should I be running any mana rocks (other than Sol Ring) in green decks?
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Jun 29, 2020 05:57
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The problem, largely, is that Sheldon, and later WotC have consistently marketed this product (EDH) in a way that doesn't line up with modern sensibilities. Magic's audience is always aging, and life is busier, with smaller chunks of availability. The notion of an 8-player, 6-hour game is less and less in line with what their customers want or even what they see on-line. But, they keep hawking this poo poo like that's the norm. 4-player pods of 60-90 minute games are great, and audiences know it. If you get shut out by bad draws, or get eliminated early, you haven't wasted your whole day. Look at all the EDH content on Twitch and YouTube. It's almost all 4-player pods and very rarely does even the most casual game go past 2 hours. Why is this important? Because it ties into how the format gets pushed, officially. Even casual players have started moving away from the stuff that only scales at big games or only works if your table is complicit (looking at you, right here, Join Forces). Even more casual content creators are pushing people away from true jank. And the real non-starter is manabases. Hell, manabases had a whole panel into itself at the big Commander Shindig, where the crowd (and Benny, bless his heart) rubbed Sheldon and Gavin's noses in their pile of poo poo precon manabases repeatedly. But WotC is still the sole supplier. If you want the new cards you can only get them from the source (even if there are intermediate steps), so people keep buying crap with 3-5cmc rocks and a poo poo ton of CipT lands, and WotC Pat's themselves on the back for massive sales. It's disgusting. Sure, moxen and Mana Crypts are pricing people out of certain power levels, but you can't convince me that people can't be happy and "casual" with Talismans and Signets. That's bullshit. The customer base deserves to be treated better and they should be telling anyone who will listen that they deserve games that end in reasonable time frames and that all players have an opportunity to participate meaningfully in and the first step to that is to stop printing poo poo manabases. The second is obviously to start reprinting staples they've been holding out on. Come on now, it's not just multi-format all-stars, and UMA didn't do poo poo to the big dogs. Scroll rack, Cabal Coffers, and Tainted Pact should all be format all-stars, but many players are just priced out of them, not to mention stuff like Phyrexian Altar, Food Chain, and Mana Echoes, where there really is no replacement for entire archetypes. Int the end, the "casual/competitive" divide is basically entirely of WotC's own making, through their crap precons, awful PR, and lovely reprint choices. And you should definitely let them know, because they certainly aren't getting that message from Gavin, Sheldon, or their sales team.
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Jun 29, 2020 06:39
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PS: I had this about 80% typed before I went out to dinner 5 hours ago and have seen none of the replies to OP.
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Jun 29, 2020 06:40
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Tarnop posted:Non-artifact ramp: This is honestly pretty meta dependent. If you have a medium-high casual group with lots of sweepers then mana dorks are bad value and terrible investments. Three Mana ramps like cultivate are actually pretty slow these days, you should try to fully exhaust your 2-drop ramps before you consider your 3-drop ones. If you are a medium-high casual player, Explosive Veggis//Migration Path is fine. RE DECK POWER: Budget is a bad power level indicator because you can spend $2000 on a mana base for your Naya Cats deck if you really wanted to. Consistent speed of threatening to win has been my metric. I have 2 cEDH decks that threaten a 2-5 win, and then Momir and K’rrik and Daretti who threaten at 5-7, and then my midrange and Aggro decks which need 9 turns or so to actually mop everyone up.
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Jun 29, 2020 06:51
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Tarnop posted:Non-artifact ramp: Everything is relative and there are no easy answers (other than ramp that costs more than 2 mana is usually bad). Even if you want land ramp, why run Cultivate over Farseek, Nature's Lore, Into the North, Rampant Growth, or a proxy of Three Visits? Are you so certain that you'll hit 3 naturally and need that extra land in hand? Or is the consistency of ramping on Turn 2 better? For 1cmc dorks, not only do you have all the flavors of elf (Llanowar, Fyndhorn, Mystic, Deep Shadow, Boreal), BoP, Avacyn's Pilgrim, DRS, Noble Hierarch, but at 2cmc, you also have Bloom Tender, Devoted Druid, Ilysian Caryatid, Incubation Druid, Radha, Rattleclaw, all doing more work than being a 2cmc BoP. Farhaven elf is usually a bad Wood Elves/STE/Yavimaya Dryad, and is only worth running in narrow circumstances. The balance of artifact/sorcery/dork ramp is going to be entirely dictated by what your deck needs and what it does (does it have wraths? does it need bodies to carry equipment? Does it sweep nonlands? Do you need to bridge 1->3 mana? 2->4?), but the general rule of thumb is: Cheaper is better. The more consistently you can hit your ramp on-curve, the better off you are.
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Jun 29, 2020 06:58
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Cool, thanks both. Sorry if I'm sometimes asking for rules of thumb where they don't exist. My goal here is to get to the point where I can ask for advice on specific decks without having fallen at obvious hurdles like bad mana base. I appreciate you being patient with me
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Jun 29, 2020 07:06
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I have some videos about mana curves, lands, and artifact ramp on my channel. Toshimo and I share a lot of the same sensibilities.
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Jun 29, 2020 11:59
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I play mostly casual but this is how I see it: Casual: Playing more to have fun and not be an dick/pubstomping, F/E gimmicky decks that maybe sacrifice a bit of power for flavor; decks with budget options for the real big cards, and just lower cost decks in general. Stax and grouphug happen here but don't lock down everything. Annoying people Casual: Playing stuff like MLD and Stax without a way to close out the game and just slow down everything and basically make people rebuild and slow and waste their time. Non Casual: Being an absolute dick to eachother, everything is a GO; as long as you can actually finish off the opponent/combo after it. I hate playing with the middle group, least when somebody pubstomps with the last group I'm done in like 10 minutes. Zedd fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 14:36
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Balon posted:I have some videos about mana curves, lands, and artifact ramp on my channel. Toshimo and I share a lot of the same sensibilities. Link please!
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Jun 29, 2020 14:57
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Infinite Karma posted:A 3-color full-power mana base is going to be over $2000 if it includes blue, and a 5-color one is $3500+. Just Mox Diamond and Mana Crypt are about $500 together. My mono-green snake tribal deck is $490 and is very much not good.
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Jun 29, 2020 15:03
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Doubling Season has been printed 5 times, is still $50, and is the apex casual Durdle. Price and competitiveness are often completely divorced from each other.
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Jun 29, 2020 17:04
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See also Ugin or Oracle of Mul Daya or Rings of Brighthearth, these cards have limited competitive application but are always pricey. In fact I’ve been listening to a lot of MTG finance stuff specifically involving or in regards to commander and one thing that is a universal constant among every store owner is that the biggest whales in the MTG community are not modern players or even legacy players. it is in fact the battlecruiser commander player who has just gotten his butt kicked by his best friend’s awesome new Consecrated Sphinx and so in order to retaliate he will now go to the store and spent $100 on sweet bomb Mythics to crush his friends and this arms race constantly escalates forever. As long as friends stay together and play commander and their decks keep powercreeping to beat each other than stores are happy.
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Jun 29, 2020 17:09
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Tarnop posted:Link please! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgGK2pABZG9CLxZdslJUm0w I do tech tune-ups, talk core commander philosophy, and have recently launched a podcast with guest content creators where we do live deckbuilding. The first episode with Play to Win premiered last week, and I've got upcoming episodes with some of the bigger names in Commander content creation. Note: I don't go all Toshimo on decklists. I try to keep things within the parameters the viewers who submitted them have requested.
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Jun 29, 2020 18:51
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So I want feedback on a deck I have. It's probably way more casual/budget than most of yall here but so is my playgroup.  Using tappedout to split categories more clearly for my specific questions. https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/fish-final The stuff in the deck is what I want to keep/want feedback on. The "Maybe" list is actually in the deck right now; but I want to cut it for either better cards or better (Big Fishies) Flavor The "Checkout Aquireboard" are the cards I'm already planning to get. What would you change/add/remove in this deck to both up the flavor and also the strength of the deck. Like I know blue Sun's Zenith+Infinite mana+Jace/Labman is strong but It's too big a flavor break for me so I'm taking it out. My manabase is gonna get rid of most non basics non utility lands and rebalanced ofc. Zedd fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 20:07
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Zedd posted:So I want feedback on a deck I have. What do you want the deck to do?
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Jun 29, 2020 20:32
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Balon posted:What do you want the deck to do? In 1vs1 I tend to win with commander damage, in MP I tend to give poo poo trample/big stats/etc and just beat them down with big fishes.
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Jun 29, 2020 20:37
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Zedd posted:In 1vs1 I tend to win with commander damage, in MP I tend to give poo poo trample/big stats/etc and just beat them down with big fishes. If you’re concerned with swinging then make sure your attackers are efficient and well supported. Be mindful of your weaknesses and patch those holes. Do you want to cast/attack with big creatures or do you want to make smaller creatures big? Do you want to play themed cards regardless or how “good” they are, or do would you rather play efficient creatures regardless of theme? Anyone can give you generic advice to make a deck better, but the goal should be to make sure the deck is YOURS while making it better.
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Jun 29, 2020 21:11
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Zedd posted:So I want feedback on a deck I have. Freeing up those slots, stick in more and better countermagic and removal, something like 10 pieces. And then throw in some repeatable control effects, to take advantage of the big mana subtheme (because they usually cost a lot of mana). And make sure you're doing something before turn 4. You only have a tiny handful of ramp effects and mana rocks, and no mana dorks. If you're going for dragging the game into the turns where you can drop 12/12 after 12/12, you need something to keep you in it for that long. If you don't want stax, what do you want to do to protect yourself and your fatties?
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Jun 29, 2020 21:24
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Balon posted:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgGK2pABZG9CLxZdslJUm0w One thing I'd note, here: You like to get expressive with your hands and that's good, but it's really distracting that half the time, your hands are whirling around behind the shaded area and the card images. Right now, you're using about 45% of your camera frame for the shaded card image, and that's a lot.  I'd try and cut that down to ~35% and just fully black it out and center yourself in the remaining 2/3rds of the frame. It'll look less lopsided and you'll be able to do your expressive movements without it being distracting.
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Jun 29, 2020 21:53
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Toshimo posted:One thing I'd note, here: You like to get expressive with your hands and that's good, but it's really distracting that half the time, your hands are whirling around behind the shaded area and the card images. Awesome notes, thanks a lot. As I constantly improve my setup I’ll keep framing in mind. Not a lot of space in my office/studio haha
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Jun 29, 2020 22:00
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I bought my first collector booster and pulled a foil grim tutor, the rarest extended art tefouri, and a foil extended alt art sad robot. Feeling pretty great about it, but the thought of pulling a 25€ dud pack is dulling my interest in buying any more of these.
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Jul 1, 2020 17:29
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junan_paalla posted:I bought my first collector booster and pulled a foil grim tutor, the rarest extended art tefouri, and a foil extended alt art sad robot. Feeling pretty great about it, but the thought of pulling a 25€ dud pack is dulling my interest in buying any more of these. Be content.
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Jul 1, 2020 18:16
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you can be content with your purchase or you can be content for the thread
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Jul 1, 2020 19:31
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Made Swan song token. 
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Jul 2, 2020 19:41
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Oh YEAH! My dream would be to get one that is double sided, with a 3/3 flying drake on the other side, since Gilded Drake comes up a lot in our games.
Bust Rodd fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jul 2, 2020 |
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Jul 2, 2020 21:52
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