Ranting about Standard Magic

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JonSetanta
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Post by JonSetanta »

Interactivity is what the game was designed for.

A turn 6-7 win should be the goal.

I'm not saying a turn 4 win isn't, but something's wrong when EVERYONE is doing it.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

One one hand, I was fond of playing a deck whose answer for anything was "I kill you before you can do that", but on the other hand I dropped out around the time I lost track of all the different ways to win before your first turn.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

JonSetanta wrote:Interactivity is what the game was designed for.

A turn 6-7 win should be the goal.

I'm not saying a turn 4 win isn't, but something's wrong when EVERYONE is doing it.
What makes turn 6-7 a more interactive turn number outside of the duh-obvious "more turns = more playtime" idea?
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Post by Username17 »

Saheeli Twin can be disrupted at instant speed for one mana with a red Shock or one black mana with Fatal Push if you can trigger revolt on your opponent's turn. The red implement is actually enough to interdict Saheeli Twin because Saheeli has 1 counter once the second felidar is on the stack but before it resolves. Eggs is 100% a combo deck that is looking to go off on Pia's Revolution and can do it fast. But it's going to be running a lot of cards that interact with and disrupt other combo decks. Cards that can disrupt Saheeli Twin at instant speed are likely to be 20 percent of the deck before sideboarding.

I don't know what percentage of games will be literally or effectively over on turn 4. But it looks like the format will be fast enough that if your magical Christmas land draw doesn't get you a turn 4 win your deck won't be able to keep up.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

FrankTrollman wrote:So.... Standard bans.
I'm almost certainly looking in the wrong place, but on the 'Magic the Gathering website under 'Banned and Restricted Cards' it says:

STANDARD:
There are no cards banned in Standard tournaments.

Is this something that is going into effect with the next release on the 20th?
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

Yup, it's effective as of today on MTGO and will go into effect in the paper world on the 20th.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... 2017-01-09
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Post by Prak »

Christ, the prerelease is going to be fucking insane, isn't it? I mean, the fun kind of insanity, but still insane.

Can someone please use small words and links/card images to explain to me why Smuggler Copter needed to be banned?
Nevermind, I saw their explanations, looked at Smuggler's Copter again, and realized "ok, yes, this is perhaps a bit too much."

Nothing compared to FUCKING EMRAKUL, but, a bit much, sure.
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Post by Eikre »

Okay so a deck that is interesting me this evening is Aetherflux Storm, otherwise known as the newest incarnation of Cheerios. Storm is a keyword-come-archetype that makes it useful to play as many spells in a single turn as you can. In Kaladesh, the Storm card is pretty interesting, because it works on an exponential schedule and keeps you from dying:

Image

"Cheerios" is a subclass of Storm decks where your specific method of playing lots of spells is using permanents that cost 0 mana (the "cheerio"), plus something to scoop them all and let you do it over again.

ImageImageImageImageImage

Note how Crush of Tentacles is also a sweeper. Sweepers are important for the health and stability of any deck that plans on a late-game win, but where most sweeps are reset effects that you exploit by using against a boardstate in your opponent's favor, Crush of Tentacles puts all our swept cards exactly where we want them. It means we don't need to feel bad about playing our cheerios prematurely if it happens to be necessary to sustain our life-total. Furthermore, the Surge effect, being a sort of one-off Storm ability, is particularly easy for us to trigger. Crush of Tentacles only deserves one or two slots in your deck, but it makes the most out of them.

Sigarda's Aid is nice for being cheap and letting us actually use the cheerios that we'd otherwise never spend the Equip cost on, but its actual purpose is exploiting the relationship between spellcasting events and trigger resolution: Your Storm count is incremented the moment you play a card, but Aetherflux Reservoir's trigger waits patiently in the stack before checking that number. If you happen to play a bunch of extra spells while that lifegain trigger is still suspended, then it will return life equal to your final storm number, not whatever increment it was up to when the trigger originally happened. You can only do this with instants, however, which is what Sigarda's Aid turns our equipment into.
And, yeah, obviously just those four cards are not really enough for a deck. The other slots get filled cantrips.

ImageImageImageImageImage

The thing I'm excited about is the fucking gasoline in Aether Revolt:

ImageImageImageImage

Ornithopter is makes twelve 0CMC cheerios total. Sram is like a Puresteel Paladin, who singlehandedly holds the deck together in Modern. Using our cheerios as mana-rocks for card draw speaks for itself.

I have other considerations to make, like the two 3CMC dudes who make artifacts cost 1 less. They fit the curve, but one of them is Red. Red, however, has a bunch of Improvise cards... White does not. Shift out of White into Red? Go three color and make use of lots of fixing? There are several lands that can give you mana of any color but only do it once; this might actually be enough for the splash colors.
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Post by Username17 »

I have other considerations to make, like the two 3CMC dudes who make artifacts cost 1 less. They fit the curve, but one of them is Red.
Wait, what? What dude is that? I'd fucking love a Red 3 mana dude that reduces Artifact costs. That's exactly the kind of effect B/R Eggs is looking for.

Anyway, as I see it you have three choices with Aetherstorm. The first is to go all-in on Cheerios, and the second is to go all-in on instants. The first version is Blue/White, the second version is Blue/Red. The Blue/White version uses effects like Paradoxical Outcome and Baral's Expertise to recast its shit for a large storm count, and the Blue/Red version uses Baral and Voracious Readers as cost reducers and then multicasts cheap spells to clear enemy creatures and draw more cards with Harness the Storm.

I don't know which one is better. Certainly the Blue/White version is more explosive. Cast a Paradoxical outcome with the hilarious-in-Polish Sram in play and you draw like 8 cards when you pick up and put down a couple Bone Saws and Cathar's Shields. That really ought to be game right fucking there. But on the other hand the Blue White deck is playing a lot of really bad cards. Cathar's Shields in a deck where the only creatures are Glint Nest Cranes, Foundry Inspectors, and Sram are really bad. Like really bad. The Red/Blue deck isn't nearly as explosive because even when you are double casting Take Inventory with Baral in play and drawing 5 cards and looting twice off one card in your hand - you're still only getting 2 cast triggers for 2 mana. But the advantage is that the only "do nothing" cards in the whole deck are the Reservoire and the Storm Harness. The rest of the deck is made out of decent cards and a lot of it is removal.

Did I say three? Yeah, the third option is to be a Green/Black energy combo deck and just randomly jam Greenbelt Rampagers in so that you can turn all your spare green mana into cast triggers every turn. Throw in a Paradox Engine to go infinite if you like.

Speaking of dumb Green Decks, I kinda want to do the Green/Blue deck that in magical christmas land ultimates Kiora on turn 4. Turn 2 Mana Dork; Turn 3 Kiora, untap dork, play Skyship Plunderer; Turn 4 play Maulfist Revolutionary (counter on Kiora), play Prey Upon (Maulfist dies, put counter on Kiora), jam with Pirate (put counter on Kiora), Ultimate Kiora and put three 8/8 Octopuses into play. It requires 3 lands and 5 spells by turn 4, but I think I would actually jizz in my pants if I did that in a real game.

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Post by Username17 »

The Lesson of Aether Revolt is that a combo that hits for 21 damage is not actually different from a combo that hits for infinity damage. The fastest kill in magical Christmas land is Turn 3 with B/R Eggs.

You need:
  • 3 Lands. At least one Red Source, at least one Black source. Those can both be the same land if it comes into play untapped on turn 2.
    • Image Image Image (can be replaced with any zero cost artifacts)
      Image (can be replaced by any 1 cost artifact in the deck)
      Image
      Image
      Image
You have 11 cards to get there and 10 of them need to be specific things. Sacrifice all four non-Key artifacts to the Intruder (Atog power 9), get 4 Servos. Sacrifice all four servos (Atog power 17). Tap Key to the City and discard whatever the fuck you drew off the Egg sacrifice to make the Intruder unblockable. Sac the Key, get a Servo (Atog power 19, unblockable). Sacrifice the final Servo (Atog power 21), swing and game.

This is not going to happen and I don't actually think that running many zero cost artifacts is actually worth it when the 1 cost artifacts give you a card when they die. About all the zero costers are there for is additional value off the Scrap Trawler which is like Turn 5 or 6 win shenanigans. But that is technically the fastest combo kill in Standard and it's not easier to disrupt than Copy Cat, which can't land until turn 4.

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Post by Prak »

Hey Frank, can we get some more analysis of Standard, now that there have been a couple of bannings and a new set or two since OP? I'm learning to analyze this stuff better myself, but part of that is reading others' analysis.
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Post by maglag »

Gotta love how Wotc this month went from "nothing is being banned on standard, move along citizens" to "Emergency ban just as the big tournaments are starting! Enjoy all your wasted effort and money preparing those combo decks, suckers, and good luck spending more effort and money building up another competitive deck fast enough!"
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Post by Username17 »

OK, the underlying issue of massive herding of the metagame is not actually going to change. People blamed Copycat for there being only 3 main decks in the last meta, but there were only 3 main decks in the meta before that and the meta before that. The simple reality is that so long as they report winning decks but don't report archetype win rates they are going to find that popular decks get copies into the top eight of major tournaments frequently and thereby become more popular in subsequent tournaments. You could ban cards from all the top decks (as they did at the beginning of Aether Revolt) and you'll still find that there is a rapid collapse into only a few tier one decks seeing much play.

Which is not the same as there actually only being 2-4 decks that are playable at tier 1 tables. But with almost the entire community working on improving just a few decks, it becomes very easy to net deck a well-tuned version of one of those few decks while other potentially tier 1 decks languish in clunky beta states. The versions of Copy Cat and Mardu Vehicles that people were taking to tournaments a few weeks ago were very advanced and filled with quite counter intuitive card choices - the most aggressive deck in the format carried a 5 mana wrath in the sideboard and a deck based around a 3 color, 7 mana combo based on bouncing permanents played 19 lands and had a 4th color for its sorceries. That's some shit you won't figure out in week 1 or even week 3 of testing if you're working on your own.

The emergency ban of Felidar Guardian is pure chucklefuckery. They should have banned the card when they were making regular announcements and not a couple days later after they saw Amonkhet card prices tank on Magic Online (due to the set giving very little to 4c Copy Cat or Mardu Vehicles, or B/G Snek). Also they should have done what they did last time and ban cards from other top decks - probably Heart of Kiran. But of course the underlying issue that the format is going to converge extremely rapidly isn't going to change because they are still putting out the same comprehensive yet limited information that forces that to happen.

So here are some decks that would be top tier if people randomly decide to start working on them:
  • Blue Red Spells You pack a bunch of counterspells, bounce, card-draw, and burn, running a lot of instants and sorceries. Then you play a couple of the Blue/Red spells matter cards as an engine to turn your deck full of 1-for-1s and card draw into incremental advantage. Sometimes this deck is super fast (Thermo Alchemist plus Fevered Visions to go under), sometimes it's super grindy (Dynavolt Towers to burn your opponent out after you've burned everything else to the ground), or with a midrangey creature package now that there's Cryptic Serpent and Enigma Drake to supplement Bedlam Revelers. Sometimes this deck packs a third color, which can be Green for additional energy and color fixing, or White or Black for extra high quality removal effects ("Temur Tower" is a subset deck of Blue Red Spells that happens to have some green mana sources so that it can play Attune With Aether and a lower land count).
  • Torrential Gearhulk Control Often called Jeskai Control or Grixis Control or whatever the fuck. The reality is that Blue based control decks using Torrential Gearhulks as a finisher is super good. You have high quality counterspells and a special 5/6 Snapcaster mage. The finals of Pro Tour Kaladesh was literally just a Torrential Gearhulk Control mirror. It's a skill intensive deck that has never been a huge part of the meta no matter how good it is.
  • Temurge Red, Green, Blue, play cheap sacrifice fodder and then sacrifice it to play huge Emerge Eldrazi. Strip bonus points if you can get Kozilek's Return into the yard and then board wipe your opponent while you tap all their lands while playing an Elder Deep Fiend on your opponent's Upkeep. Slightly weaker now that there is some actual graveyard hate, but there's also some great sacrifice fodder that they've made and people are rarely ready for 5 damage to all creatures plus a 5/6 coming into play at instant speed.
  • Green White Tokens News Flash: Gideon and Nissa are still good. So is Avacyn and Ishkanah. In fact, with the Combo Queen out of the picture it's a lot easier to stall the board with spider tokens and G/W Tokens looks better than ever with some of the white Tokens Matter cards from Amonkhet. There are also a lot of high quality token makers like Hanweir Militia Captain that were underplayed and could be brought back at any point, and Westvale Abby never stopped being an amazing finisher.
  • Grixis Graveyard Mill yourself, discard your hand, play zombies from the graveyard. With Haunted Dead, Prized Amalgam, and Cathartic Reunion, this deck was already ridiculously explosive - when it worked. Now you got Drake Havens, cyclers, embalmable creatures, and extra simple recurrables in the form of Dread Wanderer and Scrapheap Scrounger - the deck has tools to play a longer game and a more consistent game.
  • Black White Control Play cards that are ridiculously effective at removing enemy threats and back it up with the most powerful planeswalkers in the format. People joke about being able to play "Gideon and Liliana Tribal" but that's not far off.
  • Blue White Flash Avacyn matched up poorly to the way people were fighting in the last format, but she didn't suddenly stop being a completely ridiculous card. Now that people are going to be playing and exerting Glorybringers, the ability to flash in Avacyn in response to block the bonus damage and eat the dragon is amazing. This deck obvously got a lot slower with the banning of Reflector Mage and Smuggler's Copter, but it's not like they stopped printing ridiculous tempo cards for Blue/White. Censor and Commit to Memory are pretty nuts, and if your new top end is Torrential Gearhulk, that is a thing.
  • Temur Marvel The one terrible thing about putting Ulamog into a Marvel deck is that sometimes you end up having Ulamog in your hand. Now that there's Champion of Rhonas, that is no longer a problem. Remember that while the Cat is banned, Saheeli is not, so the old Saheeli Marvel decks can pretty much just do their thing as copying an Aetherwind Basker is not dissimilar to going infinite.
  • Jeskai Tokens Speaking of decks which run Saheeli and only used Copy Cat as an afterthought "Ooops, I win" button, there are more ways to get huge numbers of Thopters or Servos into play and that was the primary route to victory of a lot of copy cat decks. It's not as good when you aren't spooking your opponent into holding up removal in case you go infinite on any particular turn, but on the other hand no one is going to be playing Authority of the Consuls against you either.
  • Mono Black Aggro Black has more constructed quality aggressive 2-drops than it can actually play in a deck. You don't need Red, you don't need anything. You can run a servos package and you can run a vampires package and you can run a +1/+1 counters subtheme. There are a lot of high quality cards like Drana that support more than one.
  • Red Deck Wins Just as Black doesn't need Red, Red also doesn't need Black. Hazoret's Monument is fucking insane with vampires because Madness creatures trigger all three parts of the card. There are now 2 different 1 drops with Menace and Hazoret's Monument finally gives a home to Incorrigible youths. Play a deck with no more than 2 four drops! Play Stromkirk Ocultist as a 1 mana cantrip! Punch your opponent in the face!
  • Black/Red Aggro While Black and Red have enough face punching to stand on their own and managing two colors of mana in an aggro deck is still bogus and sad, the Red/Black gold cards never stopped being fucking insane. Unlicensed Disintegration, Olivia, and Bloodhall Priest are all very powerful.
  • Red/White Humans Thalia's Lieutenant is still a powerful incentive to play Humans, and Annointed Procession makes Hanweir Garrison and Hanweird Militia Captain "go crazy." Some of the new Humans are quite good and fit well into an aggressive deck. The Crop Mate brings back Thalia's Lieutenant, for example. This basic deck can swap out the human package for the Zada package for less early beatdown in exchange for going off completely later on, but I don't think that's worth it (amusing as it is to attack for 40+ on turn 7).
  • Green Black Delirium With the lack of Emrakul as a top end and Copy Cat having an unbeatable late game, Green Black Delirium largely sat out Aether Revolt. But it's still extremely powerful and now that there are Instant/Sorceries that you can play from your graveyard the plan of playing Mindwrack Demon into Ishkanah is better than ever.
  • Colossus The Metalwork Colossus deck was poorly positioned against Emrakul and poorly positioned against Copy Cat, but playing a pair of unblockable 10/10s on turn 4 is still good.
  • Reservoir Standard Storm is a weird deck. But you have Sram and a bunch of 0 cost bullshit, so getting a stupidly titanic amount of life in a turn is well possible and Paradoxical Outcome is still insane. The fact that no one is going to be attacking for infinity at top tables this deck is probably better positioned.
  • Mardu Reanimator Refurbishing Cathartic Gearhulks never stopped being awesome and the deck has incredible game against Control. If people play more Control, Mardu Reanimator is where you want to be. Now with added Liliana value.
  • Atarka Energy The Red Green energy deck is extremely explosive and swings for ridiculous amounts of damage when it works. Now with added Fling value and the big Green god that gives Trample and a starting power boost to your Pummelers.
Actually New Decks in Amonkhet or decks that could have been tier 1 in Aether Revolt but never took off for no particular reason:
  • Always Exerting Always Watching makes all your dudes have Vigilance and then you can exert them every turn. White/Red, White/Green or Mono White. Attacking with a 5/5 Lifelink on turn 3 is "good." An untapping 5/5 Glorybringer that brings the glory every turn is also hard to play against.
  • Standard Eggs Atog is in Standard along with 4 different 1 cost Eggs and two different damage multipliers. Also fucking Fling is in standard now, so that's a thing.
  • Improvise The Improvise deck is quite good, and you can turbo out Harold quickly and hard.
  • Cycling Nonsense So step one is that you play a Drake Haven deck with a lot of cyclers and card draw. Step 2 is that you play New Perspectives and go off. When you can cycle Viziers and Shefet Monitors for negative mana costs and then bring all your cyclers back to your hand you can basically draw your whole deck once you get to 6 mana. Don't know what the actual endgame is here, possibly just flinging a Horror of the Broken Lands at your opponent for 30 damage. But the key is that you run enough card draw that you can defend yourself with Kefnet and enough cycling nonsense that you can fill up the board with Drakes so if your ultimate combo doesn't go off you can still beat down with flyers.
  • Jund Wither The -1/-1 counters deck hits hard. We're talking about attacking on turn 3 with a 7/7 kind of hard. You can play it with or without the Nest of Scarabs plan, and with or without Kari Zev's expertise, but the basic plan of cheating the placement of -1/-1 counters while making ridiculously oversized creatures in the early game is the same either way.
  • Green/Blue Ramp There's a bunch of weird Ramp cards in Green/Blue. From Bounty of the Luxa to Kiora, it's all really powerful, but Ramp wasn't good in a world of combo fighting aggro. I think the thing you are ramping to is big butted Eldrazi. There's a lot to be said for dropping World Breakers on turn 5.
But we're actually starting with these:
  • Mardu Vehicles The best deck to face Copy Cat had zero of its cards banned. Of the two decks with the highest winrate last month, it's the only one you're allowed to play next month. It's the deck to beat, which puts us back directly to the Aether Revolt Pro Tour.
  • Green/Black Snake The week after Pro Tour Aether Revolt, Green/Black Snake was fucking everywhere. People "know" that the various Snek variants (energy, +1/+1, or hybrid) have good game against Mardu Vehicles, and Mardu Vehicles is the deck to beat.
I'm probably missing a couple of viable decks, but not nearly as many as the standard environment is going to be missing in the week after the pro tour.

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Post by ...You Lost Me »

I'll be impressed if GB snek does well considering its weakness to -1/-1 counters. Soul-Scar Mage seems like a good card, as does Grasping Dunes if your manabase isn't super greedy.

Red and Green look like the colors to be in if you want to ruin life for someone on Mardu Vehicles, thanks to Manglehorn and By Force. R/G also got 2 other artifact-destruction cards with cycling (Dissenter's Deliverance, Violent Impact), and Magma Spray for Scrapheap Scrounger. Harsh Mentor also punishes Crew effects and the Walking Ballista activations.

I'm personally interested in UR spells / cycling. Filling a graveyard up with cycled instants and sorceries into cheap Bedlam Revelers and Cryptic Serpents. Curator of Mysteries and Sweltering Suns are both looking good.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and Censor. Even if it's garbage as a play, it can be cycled away for 1 mana.
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Post by Username17 »

As far as G/B Snek goes, it dies hard to Jund Wither, but there are not a lot of other decks that put -1/-1 counters on things. And by not a lot, I mean almost none. Soulscour Mage is going to be a sideboard card in Blue Red Spells I think. And when the all-in New Perspectives deck goes off with Archfiend of Ifnir, -1/-1 counters rain from the sky - but you've basically already lost at that point and counters don't show up before then. It's not like Mardu Vehicles or Jeskai Control is going to put a -1/-1 counter on you, and neither is Temurge or G/W Tokens. Basically Jund Wither is going to be a hard counter to G/B Snek, and because of that I expect that it's going to be pretty popular in the next couple of weeks.
YLM wrote:I'm personally interested in UR spells / cycling.
I don't think Blue Red Spells is going to be interested in any Cycling cards except maybe Censor. Cycling is basically just shitting on yourself unless you are getting something for the cycle. Having Bedlam Revelers, Cryptic Serpents, and Enigma Drakes that straight up count spells in the yard is something, but I think it's pretty clear you'd rather fill the yard with Shocks or Take Inventory than cycled cards. Even if you're just casting a spell to draw a card, you're getting a spell trigger on your Thermo Alchemist or Prowess creatures or whatever.

Where you start wanting Cyclers is when you have the cards that actually straight up give you triggers for Cycling. And the best of those are Drake Haven, New Perspectives, and Shadow of the Grave.
ImageImageImage
So the first level of Cycling Nonsense runs just Drake Haven. You run a regular Grixis Graveyard or Sultai Madness strategy, and you have Drake Havens to make a big army of 2/2 flyers sometimes.

The All-In Cycling Nonsense deck uses New Perspectives and Shadow of the Grave to basically draw its entire deck and then launch whatever fucking combo you feel like using once you can draw and play your whole deck. Which might honestly just be to make a 24/26 Shadowstorm Vizier and then Fling her at your opponent.

In either case though we're talking about being kind of slow. Both the Drakes-Only and All-In version involve playing do-nothing enchantments and then passing the turn. For Drakes-Only, you're passing on turn 3, and All-In wants you to get to 6 mana unless you're doing something really weird like Aetherworks Marvel.

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Post by Prak »

See, I'm kind of interested in a G/B deck that runs Hapatra and Nest of Scarabs to just fill the board with 1/1s, which sometimes explode into more 1/1s because I put multiple -1/-1s on one of my tokens which triggers Nest. The obvious wincon is just turning a bunch of tokens sideways. A cycling side-tool with the Archfiend helps put out the -1/-1s, but it also involves cycling, which, after reading your last post, Frank, I realize is probably more a draft tool than a constructed tool.

I suppose if I actual wanted to use cycling I could go Sultai and add in Drake Haven so that when I cycle, I get a 2/2 flyer, put a -1/-1 on an opponent's creature, get a 1/1 death touch and a 1/1 vanilla. But that's probably going wider on tools than I really want.
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Post by Username17 »

Cycling is mostly a Modern thing. In Standard you don't normally get enough for having stuff in the yard to want to do it and in Legacy things are too fast for you to care. The big Cycling deck that Cycles just because it actually wants to put a creature in the yard and draw a card is Living End - a deck that reanimates everything and therefore wants to get 5+ midrange creatures into the yard quickly but can't risk using a Wheel effect.

There are two cards that give -/-1 Counters for Discarding or Cycling: Ruthless Sniper and Archfiend of Ifnir. Those are certainly interesting, because they can both potentially throw down a lot of wither counters because Cycling and Madness are card neutral effects. But I don't see how you'd fit such things into the Wither deck, because this is Constructed and you might seriously have just 9-10 different nonland cards in your deck. Yes, the combo of playing an Archfiend (on turn 5) after playing a Scarab Nest (on turn 3), and then Cycling 2 cards (on turn 6) in order to reduce your opponent's board to nothing and get 2 Scarabs per victim is pretty sweet. But it's not as sweet as killing your own Soulstinger to an Exemplar of Strength on Turn 5 to kill one dude, make a 4/4, and put 10 Scarabs into play. And I don't think you even want to use Soul Stinger because that is too slow.

The big question is whether you want to put Red into Wither. Consuming Fervor, Soul Scar Mage, Radiant Flames, and Magma Spray are all very compelling mainboard options for a deck that intends to do much of its work with a 3 mana 5/4 Menace creature. And of course, By Force or Release the Gremlins are amazing tech against Mardu Vehicles. But the core of the deck is still Black and Green creatures and you don't strictly speaking need a third color. Turn 4 laying down 7 Scarabs, 3 Snakes, a Mana Dork, and a 4/4 is completely within your capabilities with just Swamps and Forests.

Edit: Another thing I wanted to note about Cycling is that a lot of Cycling cards are big expensive things that you can cycle if you can't cast them yet. This is actually pretty bad, because constructed formats are usually pretty fast and spending your early turns cycling your cards is a lot like spending your early turns doing nothing. The really interesting Cycling cards are the ones with early game utility that you can cycle in the late game if you don't need them anymore. Censor and the Cycle Lands mostly. But of course, really only Ramp and Control decks are interested in those.

-Username17
Last edited by Username17 on Mon May 01, 2017 10:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

So, Frank, how's this look for Jund Wither?
3 Cinder Barrens
4 Forest
3 Foul Orchard
3 Mountain
4 Swamp
3 Timber Gorge
4 Blazing Volley
2 Blood Mist
3 Cartouche of Ambition
4 Channeler Initiate
4 Consuming Fervor
2 Cryptolith Rite
4 Decimator Beetle
2 Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons
1 Liliana, Death Wielder
3 Naga Vitalist
4 Nest of Scarabs
3 Plague Belcher
2 Radiant Flames
2 Soul-Scar Mage
I kind of figure the practical difference between BiCycle lands and common duo-color lands is academic if you're not running a Cycling theme or a card that fetches lands based on subtype rather than super type. Also, not sure what to have as a sideboard, though Behind the Scenes is tempting. I'm hoping to play at game day this weekend, and this would be a reasonably cheap deck for me to get the handful of cards I don't own for.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

You're super land light, even considering your pieces of ramp. At least check out evolving wilds so you have some more budget mana fixing?

Also, blood mist & Lili just don't seem good. You're gonna need removal so you don't get immediately run over by Heart and Ulamog.

Speaking of Ulamog, I can't wait until BFZ is out of standard.

ed: I think there's a 4-mana instant speed exile effect for Ulamog if you're desperate. Also, By Force in red.
Last edited by ...You Lost Me on Fri May 19, 2017 2:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

If you're going in on the Soulscar Mage plan you need to go all in. That means it's four or nothing. Blazing Volley is just a bad card if you don't have a Soul Scar Mage in play and it's only actually good if you have Soulscar and Hapatra or Nest. Radiant Flames is just a great card, and you'd pack it whether or not you had Soul Scar. Regardless, the better (than Blazing Volley) sources of non-combat damage are Glory Bringer and Harnessed Lightning. A three color deck wants to be running Attune with Aether anyway, and once you're doing that Harnessed Lightning is a great instant speed kill spell. And the fact that it will kill Gideon when Soulscar Mage is in play is a nifty bonus.

Secondly it is simply wrong to not run Channeler and Exemplar of Strength. Those cards are decent if you don't get anything for placing -1/-1 counters. If you have a Nest in play, every one of those fuckers comes with a bonus Hordeling Outburst. Every Naga Vitalist should be a Channeler Initiate.

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Post by Prak »

Ok, let's say one went to three stores and couldn't find more than one harnessed lightning and two radiant flames. And wants to play tomorrow's Game Day, so there's limited time to trade. What would be good replacements?

Edit: Here's the decklist I'm looking at right now-
2 Canyon Slough
3 Evolving Wilds
4 Forest
2 Foul Orchard
3 Mountain
4 Swamp
2 Timber Gorge
4 Attune with Aether
4 Channeler Initiate
4 Consuming Fervor
3 Decimator Beetle
4 Exemplar of Strength
1 Glorybringer
2 Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons
3 Harnessed Lightning
2 Heaven // Earth
4 Nest of Scarabs
3 Plague Belcher
2 Radiant Flames
4 Soul-Scar Mage
Also, how does Harnessed Lightning take out Gideon? When he becomes a creature, all damage that would be dealt to him that turn is prevented, which so far as I know, would include the damage dealth by Harnessed Lightning in the form of -1/-1s through Soul-Scar.
Last edited by Prak on Sat May 20, 2017 6:54 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Having received damage equal to or in excess of toughness is treated as a state which causes a creature to be destroyed. Indestructible prevents creatures from being destroyed, but doesn't prevent damage from piling up in the first place. Indestructible things can still be placed in a graveyard, which is what happens when something gets sacrificed or a creature has its toughness attribute reduced to zero.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Sat May 20, 2017 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Prak »

Yeah, I understand that.
Gideon of the Trials, but they all have an ability that is almost verbatim this wrote:0: Until end of turn, Gideon of the Trials becomes a 4/4 Human Soldier creature with indestructible that's still a planeswalker. Prevent all damage that would be dealt to him this turn.
Gideons

It's that bolded part that I'm asking about.
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FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Leress »

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Post by Prak »

Ok, that doesn't change the text Gideon.

Disregard, I suck cocks. I kept thinking that SSM made your sources deal damage in the form of -1/-1s, but it replaces the damage with -1/-1s.

I mean, it still doesn't kill Gideon because his controller gets to choose the order prevention and replacement effects get applied, but I see how it's supposed to work.
Last edited by Prak on Sat May 20, 2017 9:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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