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General Introduction to the Format So we have two whole blocks and two core sets, several of which you might have never even played with before. Fear not, I'm here to give some pointers about what's available. It's actually quite diverse at the moment and no one has found an overruling deck type yet. Lands      The mana fixing is insane. We have a complete cycle of dual lands, three cycles of allied colors, and tainted lands, which give you access to what they do if you have a swamp. We also have nothing akin to wasteland, so you're free to get greedy with mana. Two colors is easy, three colors is still doable, four colors is probably alright too if you're in black.     In addition to fantasy mana fixing, there are a variety of lands for other uses. Since we're in Torment, you're still getting rewarded for going black. Take your pick of strategy, there's probably a land to support it, whether it's aggro, control, or combo. Major Mechanics:       Six main mechanics going on:
The Restricted Cards:        Since we're playing by Vintage rules, that means that some cards are restricted to one per deck. I believe I have all of the available restricted cards above. They're all quite powerful and more than capable of rocking a game if used right. Wishes:      Your primary tutors (and the only ones you'll be getting outside of black) are the wish cards. These allow you to grab something out of your sideboard and help to enable a variety of combos, including Battle of Wits. Where do I begin? Revised is probably a good place to start for looking for cards. Go ahead, have a look for yourself. It contains a variety of Vintage staples as well as other generally awesome cards. If you're thinking of an aggressive deck, Scars of Mirrodin block has a lot going on to enable fast strategies. It (as you might expect from Mirrodin) has a lot of artifact nonsense going on too. Graveyard based decks should probably start in Odyssey block, there's also a considerable amount of useful tools in there for making a graveyard work. As always, discussing with other people in the topic is never a bad idea. The meta for this grouping is surprisingly diverse due to the sheer number of ways to approach the game. Ramos fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Sep 10, 2014 |
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Sep 10, 2014 06:46
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L0cke17 posted:You left out the single best land to come out of odyssey block! Invite your friends to join you in the pit! I was considering listing some powerful cards, but they're all over the place. I'd never get around to finishing that list. Though personally, I've been trying to bust Stasis open.
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Sep 10, 2014 07:04
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L0cke17 posted:There aren't any good twiddle effects though, unless I missed something, which will make that harder to lock your opponent out. 
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Sep 10, 2014 16:54
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L0cke17 posted:I meant to tap down your opponent's lands consistently, so that they can never have more than 1 mana on their turn. Well, the general idea isn't to completely seal the other person out of the game but to keep things moving slow enough that you have no competition for getting Venser and whatever other super buddies to ultimate. code:
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Sep 10, 2014 19:49
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The Lord of Hats posted:I've been working with this, and while I admittedly haven't tried Stasis, I think I prefer Standstill backed by the control suite that's available (Counterspell, Swords, Wrath), particularly because Venser can lift the standstill on your turns. Somehow that interaction completely escaped me even though I ran Standstill before switching to Stasis. I doubt there's enough room to run both though there's a lot of overlap between them. That said, I think there is a place for aggro, but you have to be very fast with it. Battle Screech is definitely going to be at the losing point for aggro. On the flipside, Armageddon can probably wreck a control player if timed right.
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Sep 10, 2014 20:27
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Infect is probably a good way to go with aggro. Only have to count to 10 and we have things like Giant Growth, Unstable Mutation, and Mutagenic Growth. My first draft of it has been doing decently.
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Sep 10, 2014 21:09
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Silver2195 posted:Huh. My U/G version also uses Muscle Burst, but I hadn't thought to include Rancor or Diligent Farmhand. I'm also running blue green. Rancor is amazing, don't leave home without it. I didn't think about Muscle Burst, but I'm not sure if Farmhand would be a good idea, he's kind of slow and not helping with making the person dead NOW. Definitely going to try Muscle Burst though.
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Sep 11, 2014 02:49
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Found one. Probably something else to add to the OP.
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Sep 12, 2014 01:08
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Deck: Phoenix Eggs   //Blue 4 Careful Study 1 Gitaxian Probe  4 Riddlesmith  //Red 3 Burning Wish 2 Kuldotha Phoenix  4 Red Elemental Blast 3 Scrapyard Salvo //Colorless 4 Darkwater Egg 1 Mana Vault 4 Mossfire Egg 4 Mox Opal  4 Shadowblood Egg 4 Skycloud Egg 1 Sol Ring 4 Sungrass Egg //Lands 1 Cephalid Coliseum 1 Mountain 4 Plateau 3 Tundra 4 Volcanic Island //Sideboard 4 Burn the Impure 4 Tormod's Crypt 4 Whipflare 1 Balance  1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Scrapyard Salvo  Display deck statisticsOkay, so people have been asking about my Eggs deck, so I figured I'd do a primer about it. This is mostly here because I'm rather discontent with the deck. While it's certainly cool and unique, it's hard to get it measuring up to what I need exactly, but more about that in the primer proper. So what does it do? It plays a variety of one to two cost spells in order to dig through your library as fast as possible while being relatively immune to the typical control tools. Counter an egg? Oh dear me. I'll just play these two others in my hand. This is all to grab you two particular cards in this deck: Scrapyard Salvo and Kuldotha Phoenix. The former is a low cost, high impact spell to hit the other person for lethal amounts of damage. Getting to twenty is not uncommon. The latter is an uncounterable, hasty creature that you can easily recur and has really only one commonly used answer to. How do I play it? You unload your hand as fast as possible and start drawing again. This means playing a bunch of one cost eggs, cracking them for two mana, and likely playing down two more eggs once you're done drawing. The most critical part of the game is the opening hand as you'll notice, this deck only has thirteen lands. While the Mox Opals alleviate this problem a bit, you're only going to hit your third and fourth land drop off of egg comboing. You'll find after you hit the fourth land, you're going to end up pitching the rest to various looting tools you have at your disposal since too many clog up the nice draw you got going on. From there, you two main cards that help you start and continue the combo: Riddlesmith and Careful Study. Even in the late game, you'll likely start pitching Careful Study too. Either way, if you can, play those as soon as you can and start digging even faster. It's not essential to play every egg, just that you get enough artifacts in your graveyard. From there, every Salvo becomes lethal, every Phoenix becomes easily playable. Do note though, it's alright to fire off a Salvo for 9 or something. Having 11 artifacts in the graveyard and two more Salvos in the deck isn't exactly unlikely and may often be a good idea against aggressive decks where you don't have leisure time. Oh god, there's someone else on the other side of the table! The main board of this deck is made to handle control players. As you'll notice, I have Red Elemental Blasts. You'll typically want to hold onto one or two of these when you go to fling a Salvo at the opponent. With proper patience, you can often find a critical moment where all you need is one spell while their guard is down. The Phoenix serves as an alternate path to victory and a way of softening them up. Okay, my opponent doesn't play blue though. Welcome to the second game, sideboard out those Red Elemental Blasts. As you'll notice, I already have a sideboard. Keep all of the singletons in, you'll get those with Burning Wish anyway. Tormod's Crypt screws over Reanimator while also being Salvo fuel, Whipeflare kills a large number of aggressive strategies, and Burn the Impure shortens the clock and staves off infect. Balance is typically wished for to be a cheap way to wipe creatures while Wheel of Fortune is there to refresh your hand against control players. The Salvo is just redundancy. What you don't have to worry about ever is monoblack since you draw at your leisure, making most discard effects shrug worthy at best and you don't have enough creatures to care about kill spells either. So what's the glaring weakness?   These guys. While balance deals with them to an extent, they can effectively out race you by dumb beatings and get around 99% of your removal. So what do you play to stop them? That's a good question, I haven't a clue, the deck is already tight on resources. Where are there changes to be made? The Red Elemental Blast is arguably not the best tool in its spot. The other critical card is Overmaster, which not only cantrips, but forces it to be answered instead of the Salvo. With Power Sink in the meta, this is questionable though. Slagstorm can also work in place of some of my answer cards, but as you'll notice, the Phyrexian Crusader still gets through and puts you on a tight clock. The Embersmith is arguably a powerful card that can put into the deck for constant pings to both troublesome creatures and the opponent. With twenty one mana eggs, it's easy to get him rolling. Still doesn't deal with the Phyrexian Crusader. What doesn't work? Furnace Celebration. The egg is long gone by the time you get the mana to pay for the two damage. Trust me, I've tried working around the rule timing and then cried about it. So would I want to play it? You like to actively race. You enjoy general Izzet draw and discard sort of strategies. You like having big, boomy win conditions. You like counting to twenty. You might also enjoy number crunching because if this deck is to be good, you're probably going to want to be able to count cards while also counting mana. It runs off a lot of percentages as far as what you'll draw into. It's a thrilling deck to play, to say the least. Ramos fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Sep 15, 2014 |
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Sep 15, 2014 00:40
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Starts tomorrow, so I'll just sign up. Deck sent by PM.
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Sep 20, 2014 20:08
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Went 2-0 against Babylon Astronaut.
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Sep 24, 2014 21:59
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You want to win? Play this deck. I just beat Hats handily with it (in an unofficial match) and with cards to spare. It has a positive match up against the majority of the meta. You have one hour to get it registered with Jonked, go go go! Deck: Glistening RUG  //Lands 2 Forest 4 Inkmoth Nexus 2 Island 4 Taiga 4 Tropical Island 4 Volcanic Island //Spells 4 Giant Growth 4 Gitaxian Probe 4 Mental Misstep 4 Mutagenic Growth  4 Rancor 4 Reckless Charge 4 Unstable Mutation //Creatures 4 Blighted Agent 4 Glistener Elf 4 Ichorclaw Myr //Sideboard 4 Corrupted Resolve 4 Negate 4 Surgical Extraction  3 Apostle's Blessing  Display deck statistics
Ramos fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 03:55
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Yes! The dream lives on. Just hop on IRC and poke me if you need any help with it. There's also a bunch of people playing games on there right now.
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Sep 25, 2014 04:50
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It was a scary match to watch despite the fact that it was 2-0. Seriously sweating over here.
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Sep 25, 2014 20:47
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2-1 against Jonked.
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Sep 26, 2014 03:27
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Beat Null1fy 2-0 in a way equally amazing and dumb.
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Sep 26, 2014 05:40
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I'm really not sure what Revised would have to offer then besides the endless pool of blue control spells and more Swords to Plowshares. I'd sooner prefer to see that rotated out. Also, I'd personally like to see Scars stay in but that's just because infect is AWESOME.
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Sep 28, 2014 19:26
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2-0 in my favor against Asymm.
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Sep 28, 2014 21:10
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Doghouse posted:This sounds awesome. Is there going to be a second round? I haven't played magic in close to ten years, and I'm not sure I'd have time for this, but it makes me so nostalgic for the days of staying up late preparing for PTQs. Cockatrice can be found here. Anyway, this round is going to end in about a week, I believe. At that point, the next round will start. In the meantime, feel free to join us at the IRC channel (server is irc.synirc.net and the room is #PastPastLeague) to chat right now.
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Sep 29, 2014 03:10
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New Format General Introduction So, it's that time of month for the second time. While competitive games are still going, that shouldn't stop you from brewing. After all, that's the entire point of this league. Returning Lands Thanks to Odyssey and M13 sticking around, we still have a lot of mana fixing. We have allied check lands that check for if you have a basic of either type, tainted lands that require a swamp to work, and filter lands that take one mana of any variety and make it into two other kinds. We also have Cabal Coffers, which is mildly insane for reasons you'll see if you follow me down a few inches. New Lands       Mana fixing is still insane. Just not ridiculous levels like before. With Alara, we have trilands. Thanks to M15, we have enemy paired lands. This means that five color decks are probably still quite doable in this meta, believe it or not. More over, we have Urborg, which makes every land you have a swamp. Yes, people are already comboing this with Cabal Coffers. Returning Mechanics  
New Mechanics Okay, let's be honest here. Alara has a boatload of mechanics and then some. At least it's not Ravnica.        
Restricted cards? None this time.  Wishes Wishes once again return as your primary way to be tutoring all sorts of great things from your sideboard. Triple Ajani    We also have three different Ajanis. Just sayin'. Where do I start? code:Honestly, I have no idea, these sets offer a lot more in terms of what they can do. Ramos fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 00:37
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Pre-rotation, beat 2SiBi 2-1.
Ramos fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 02:49
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VibeBox posted:grixis might need some card draw in there somewhere. sign in blood, concentrate, or jace's ingenuity. Sure thing. Deck: Answers //Lands 4 Evolving Wilds 1 Forest 4 Glacial Fortress 4 Island 1 Mountain 3 Plains 1 Reliquary Tower 3 Seaside Citadel //Spells 2 Celestial Purge 3 Compulsion 4 Cunning Wish 1 Elixir of Immortality 4 Essence Scatter 3 Jace's Ingenuity  4 Negate 4 Path to Exile 4 Traumatic Visions 4 Ęther Burst 4 Ętherspouts //Creatures 2 Thragtusk  //Sideboard 3 Swerve 2 Celestial Purge 4 Erase 4 Filigree Fracture 2 Double Negative Display deck statisticsYou heard it here first, folks. Celestial Purge mainboard for all of those really good Jund creatures running around.
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Oct 7, 2014 10:09
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Deck: Rough'n'Tumble Elves //Lands 8 Forest 4 Jungle Shrine 2 Mossfire Valley 4 Mountain 4 Rootbound Crag //Spells 4 Lightning Strike 2 Obelisk of Urd  4 Violent Outburst //Creatures 4 Arbor Elf 4 Bloodbraid Elf 4 Cylian Sunsinger 4 Elvish Archdruid 4 Elvish Mystic 4 Elvish Visionary 4 Shaman of Spring Display deck statisticsSo Elves isn't the fastest aggressive deck ever, but it has two cantripping elves, a third that replaces itself, and a lord. Also a lord rock. This makes it so that the deck can survive into the middle of the game as needed while still closing things out pretty fast if unhindered. Also, Bloodbraid Elf into Violent Outburst is one of the nicest feelings ever. Violent Outburst also works well with goblin tribal, by the way. Better even with all of the tokens.
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Oct 8, 2014 08:42
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Serperoth posted:Wait when does rotation happen? I kinda lost track of this thread cause I had exams, I haven't missed it right? We hit our first rotation so we're now playing with Alara block, Odyssey block, M13, and M15. Rotations seem to be happening once a month at the end of each month.
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Oct 8, 2014 13:15
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For the record, Aetherspouts is as powerful as you might expect in a full on control deck against this sort of thing. Now if only I could draw them on command. Here, have a combo deck: Deck: Hiding in the Bunker  //White 1 Solitary Confinement //Blue 4 Augur of Bolas 4 Breakthrough  4 Careful Study 4 Index //Black 2 Ad Nauseam 1 Sickening Dreams //Green 4 Diligent Farmhand 4 Krosan Wayfarer //Colorless 4 Ornithopter //Lands 4 Cabal Coffers 3 Drowned Catacomb 2 Evolving Wilds 6 Forest 4 Island 1 Plains 3 Sunpetal Grove 2 Swamp 3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth //Sideboard 4 Negate 1 Banefire 2 Mountain 4 Rootbound Crag 4 Overmaster Display deck statisticsDig for Ad Nauseam, let it loose, get Solitary Confinement and Sickening Dreams, win. It can be improved. Basically what cards are there are used for digging and ramp into what you need. If it need be, it can switch over to mana ramp with Banefire in the other games. But yeah, it's more a proof of concept at this point. Ramos fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 22:56
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Powered Cube Draft So people on the IRC channel have been thinking about drafting a cube. In an attempt to get something together for a bit of fun, I'm arranging a cube draft for Saturday, 10/18/14 at 7PM EST. We'll be using this cube minus whatever Conspiracy draft only cards are in there. We need eight people, so sign up if you're interested. Players: 1. Ramos 2. Ranpire 3. Asymmetrikon 4. Namagem 5. 6. 7. 8. Ramos fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2014 21:55
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suicidesteve posted:Is there any way to actually use the Wishes on Cockatrice? Right click the blue space, go to view sideboard, viola.
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Oct 13, 2014 10:13
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Deck: Eggs Redux //Lands 3 Cabal Coffers 4 Evolving Wilds 3 Forest 5 Island 1 Mountain 1 Plains 3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth //Spells 1 Banefire 4 Careful Study 4 Darkwater Egg 4 Faith's Reward 2 Living Wish 4 Mossfire Egg 1 Rewind 4 Shadowblood Egg 4 Skycloud Egg 4 Sungrass Egg //Creatures 4 Hapless Researcher 4 Krosan Wayfarer //Sideboard 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 1 Cabal Coffers Display deck statisticsWhat is this deck about? Time for another eggs primer. So I've been working on eggs again and this is the current list I'm sitting upon. This isn't going to be the winning deck as it stands, but if anyone wants to take a shot at making it better, go for it. The primary idea behind the deck is to combo off with your eggs and eat through your deck until you can pull together 20+ damage with Banefire. The combos The deck is centered around Faith's Reward. By using your eggs, Hapless Research, Krosan Wayfarer, and Evolving Wilds, you can eat through your deck that much faster and keep that much better supplied. Thus, the idea is to get four lands as soon as possible and just do your best to eat entire chunks of your deck. You can reach the magical point of four mana faster using Krosan Wayfarer. Using your wish, you can often times grab the land that you need to start profiting with your mana. Towards the end, after you've taken ten minutes setting your opponent to sleep during your turn, you can play any one mana spell and counter it with Rewind. This will untap four lands (read: three to four Cabal Coffers), which in turn gives you enough mana to probably kill your opponent at that point. The weaknesses Jund is in the format as are some very competent control decks. Duress can instantly neuter you, creatures are really fast, there's counterspells, and discard spells everywhere. Okay, how do we deal with that? As the deck is configured, it's decent at dealing with Jund, though not great. Your sacrifice creatures can block, be sacrificed, and still do their intended effect. Even Faith's Reward is an instant, so you can potentially do everything you could ever want on your opponent's turn. Counterspells? Whelp, let's move to the next part. What other cards can this use? Overmaster is a good place to start. It replaces itself and makes your Faith's Reward unstoppable, at the hefty price of one extra mana. Do note, you can play this and then keep on playing eggs in an attempt to dig for a Faith's Reward. Etherium Sculptor is the obvious card. It makes your eggs cantrip for free and can draw a lot of cards right off on its own. However, due to your low number of removal targets, this is prime for being hit by a lightning strike every time before you can even play your first egg. It also doesn't cantrip, so it can often be a dead draw. Glaze Fiend is potentially a far faster clock as it can rip through life totals in straight up seconds. It also has the same issue as Etherium Sculptor, it's a lightning rod for removal. It can be blocked in the air too. Illusory Angel is incredibly easy to cast with eggs, even more so with Etherium Sculptor. Glassdust Hulk does everything Glaze Fiend, albeit much slower and can't be blocked. Often times too slow. Reckless Charge is probably going to find its way into your creature based strategy somehow. Waiting a turn to completely destroy your opponent is just not acceptable. Where do I even start? Good question. Just goldfish and hopefully something works.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:27
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Still want a deck? Here's another: Deck: Nuclear Lich //Lands 4 Cabal Coffers 1 Caves of Koilos 3 Evolving Wilds 1 Plains 8 Swamp 3 Tainted Field 4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth //Spells 4 Diabolic Tutor 4 Life Burst 4 Murder 4 Mutilate 4 Nefarious Lich 2 Sickening Dreams 4 Sign in Blood 4 Solitary Confinement //Creatures 4 Vampire Nighthawk 2 Wall of Essence Display deck statisticsHow does this deck work? You are a control deck with a combo finisher. The goal is to play Nefarious Lich and reap the benefits of that. From there, Life Burst becomes "Draw 4/8/12/16 cards" and enough to get you your combo together. What's the combo? You play Solitary Confinement and then play Sickening Dreams, discarding about, oh say, twenty cards that you drew off of your Life Bursts. The mana for this can be generated off of one or two Cabal Coffers and an Urborg, which, if you're lucky, you opponent may already be playing for you. How can I make this suck less? Yeah, I just threw this together as a proof of concept. The first thing is probably getting Reliquary Tower to fit into that manabase so you play that and not lose your entire hand if you fail to get everything together somehow. After that, I'd recommend a blue splash for counterspells, solely to stop enchantment removal, which literally kills you, and other counterspells, which stop you in your tracks. They can probably also help you survive longer in a regular match anyway.
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Oct 19, 2014 07:29
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lardnar posted:If you're comboing with Lich + Dreams, you don't need the solitary confinement, right? Discarding cards to Dreams gives you food to exile with the Lich so you don't die. You might want a confinement anyway to protect you before you go off vs. other decks in the field, or if your opponent exiles your graveyard while you go off, but you don't need it to protect yourself against your own dreams, I think. Yeah, the deck technically functions without Solitary Confinement, but when you're playing a lich card, it never hurts to be a little more safe. In particular, with Banefire sitting in the format alongside Cabal Coffers, having a main deck solution to it is never a bad idea.
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Oct 19, 2014 19:03
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 19:23 |
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lardnar posted:That's fair, I've hardly looked at the meta, but I just looooove a good combo deck. It doesn't need blue, if you want counterspells, lapse of certainty is in the format. I'd also want to run death wish over sign in blood, you can keep a bunch of silver bullets in the sideboard then as well. Right, I keep forgetting about Lapse of Certainty and Death Wish would likely be a good addition too. Either way, deck lists are due in less than six hours, so if you're in the mood for it, just get that updated however you like and PM Jonked.
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Oct 19, 2014 23:21
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