The thing about Propaganda is that it's a trick. It's a fairly good trick, but a trick nonetheless. Anyone can attack into it if they want to (although it does stop Twin), but the point is that it lowers their willingness to attack you even a slight bit.
I've been trying to play control in ~75% for ages now, and it can be tough. Classic draw-go doesn't work as you can't one-for-one the table and people will hit you in the face. The two ways I've found that work is:
a) Be completely non-treatening the whole game, and ideally spend your resources subtly getting more resources. Don't play cards that make your opponents attack you, and hope to stay alive until the lategame where you can do something to just end the game, ideally by beating down with a non-threatening commander. DirkGently's Pheldagriff deck is a good example of this, and it's how I built my Gisela. I run eight sweepers and some recurrence to reuse them, but that might be 1-2 sweepers too many.
b) Control the table for a while and then attempt to either combo off or play strong cards that are a tad too expensive mana-wise for normal games. You don't need to spend as much resources here on gaining more resources, just spend your resources to make sure no one wins before then, eventually comboing off yourself or start playing threats (ideally comboing off). This might cause you to become archenemy in further games though, so be a bit careful. Even here it's important to not be a threat, as if you're a threat people will just archenemy you until you're dead.
I mean ok if you count Jund, Death & Taxes and Merfolk as aggro sure then aggro is perfectly viable
I'm not saying aggro isn't viable (I do think it is), but I don't think mtgtop8 is good at classifying decks. It's certainly not "science and facts" that stuff like Jund and D&T are aggro decks, it's an opinion, and in my opinion a wrong one
I don't think combo decks are a problem, if you play vs a combo deck you can usually adjust your playstyle in order to stop them from going off
Or playing combo in control shells to finish the game that is completely fine since you can't really win with snapcaster beats here
What is a problem is non-combo decks that run one or two infinite combos that randomly win games out of nowhere sometimes I either go full combo or no combo
At the spot where Cataracts rests, it's often acceptable to "pay" the extra 1 (6::5) since it is fixing any mana, including lumps of colourless mana, into any combination of mana you desire. Though if we were speaking of, say, Crystal Quarry, I'd agree with that being a more rigid combination of mana.
I meant that the problem is that I have to spend my mana in iterations of 5+ for it to do anything.
Re: Cavern. If you need to resolve your commander every game, then you need to play Cavern. Full stop. Regardless if the commander is integral or not to the strategy.
Yes, I agree. None of my current decks fit that criteria. A lot of decks do, but I personally don't build those kind of decks. If I build one, I'll get a cavern but right now none of my decks need to resolve their commanders (Wanderer might get one eventually, but it's far from a priority pickup).
Re: Basics count. Settle the Wreckage existing is a major reason for my increased count, but it really has to do with Tainted Pact (one of each basic, one of each snow basic) and keeping the maximum resistance to Wasteland effects while still making Pact good.
Ah, that's fair enough. I'm low on basics in my Tasigur deck for the same reason. If you run into Settle the Wreckage a lot I can definitely see why you're up to 6-7 basics.
Re: Tangos. If you don't have a spell on t1 you can safely fetch it on the person to your right's end step. If you don't, you can fetch it later. Sometimes it even comes in untapped anyway. It's pretty safe with a low opportunity provided you know how to fetch, though given not everyone has access to my mana I concede.
To me running tango's have a pretty low upside, as I can already fetch a shock, and if I have the budget, an ABU in the same colours. Being able to fetch a third land in the same color combination just doesn't feel necessary. The downside, while not happening often, can be very bad. If you're stuck with a hand where it's a tapland and because of that your signet is delayed a turn, or you can't keep a counterspell up and lose to a combo deck while you sit there with a tapped land and nothing to do. The second has lost me the game and the first has been tempo losses that might've lost me games as well, just not as obvious. I don't think the mild upside that a tango land comes in untapped late or that you have a third fetchable dual in a color combination has ever won me a game. That being said, all taplands aren't awful, I do run some cycling lands, but either in decks that have nothing to do turn 1 95% of the time or really wants the ability to turn the occasional land into a draw late. Keep in mind that for most of these lands I'm not trying to say that they're bad lands, just that they're not autoincludes.
Re: Strip Mine. Colourless mana can be bad, but you're gonna use that to dissuade you from the best denial lands? That's a bit of a fallacy, though if you're that concerned you should still play at least Ancient Tomb. Or just run those lands through Arcum's Astrolabe to get your colours (which every deck should be playing due to it's ease of use and QoL upgrade). Hell if you're that worried about colourless, don't forget you have Cascading Cataracts to help with that issue.
Yes, it goes into most decks so it's kind of a stupid point, I can concede to that. I've run it in everything I've made that I've had an opportunity to pick up one for, except very few decks where colorless mana just isn't that great, mana denial isn't that useful and glacial chasm not that relevant, which equates to some fast combo decks. But yes, most decks do want it. My only deck that doesn't want it (Jeleva) doesn't want Exotic Orchard either as it runs like 28 lands and I might drop that down to ~25 or so now with the london mulligan around the corner.
I'd much rather run a proper manabase than something like Cascading Cataracts that also is colorless and requires me to spend 5 (effectively 6) mana at the same time to be useful. I'll definitely be adding Arcum's Astrolabe to stuff, but again, not an autoinclude
Fetch x10 (9 + Vista)
Abu x3
Shock x3
Filter x3
Cmd Twr
City
Confluence
Agreed, all these should go into all 3c decks assuming you can afford them, except if you're splashing in which case you can go lighter on the filters.
Bicycle x1-2 (pending shard or wedge)
Tango x1-2 (pending shard or wedge)
ETB tapped is such a major downside though, even if they can be fetched. I'll run bicycle lands in slow decks, but I'm not into running tango lands that doesn't come into play untapped early on in the game, I'd rather run fastlands even if they're unfetchable.
R. Pool
I don't like this card. Not helping me get access to all my colors is a major downside. Orchard has been a lot more consistent for me.
Cavern
This doesn't go in every 3c deck, you only have enough room for colorless lands and unless you actively care for it's effect I'm not really interested. Yea, a lot of decks do care, but as I shy away from decks that are reliant on their commander, I'm personally not into it.
Strip Mine
Wasteland
Yes, goes into most decks, but colorless can be such a feelbad, and if you're on a color-greedy fast deck that doesn't care about Maze of Ith et al or can Vindicate things without much hassle, I'd skip them.
Basic x6 - 7 (2x each + Wastes)
I like doing 4 basics, no wastes, when I'm doing full-on greedy manabase. Is it for path redundancy (as you said above) that you like doing 6-7?
Rather than that Orchard, you'd likely add a couple of utility lands - Maze of Ith, Thawing Glaciers, Myriad Landscape, Volrath's Stronghold, Blast Zone, Scavenging Grounds, Academy Ruins, Heliod's Hall, Cradle, High Market/Phyrexian Tower, Tower of the Magistrate........... and that's not even all of them.
There's also a few other cycles of lands such as Painlands, Battlebonds, Checklands, Canopy lands, and a few other odds and ends.
Yes, but I don't tend to run a lot of them. They also don't compete directly with orchard. I don't like checklands (having to play a tapland in the first 3 turns of the game is awful).
That being said, now with canopylands, another fetch and london mulligan for even more greed, I might not add Orchard everywhere in 3c. As stated, YMMV but to me Orchard is a rainbowland very, very often. Even when it isn't, it's almost always at least blue. If I was completely budgetless (if I owned ABU) I might start dropping it from lists but the card has been great for me.
Yuriko is kind of a special case in that it doesn't really want to cast big mana spells most of the time, but I'm not really sure about that. I would need to see a no-budget decklist but my gut instinct is that their color demands are going to be high enough that lots of colorless sources are not a great choice - and many Yuriko decks could benefit from reanimate, dread return, that kinda stuff.
I've played Yuriko a bunch, and Tower isn't good there. The deck is super reliant on colored mana to the point where I'd just run a basic over an effect like this, and (Bl)inkmoth nexus & Ancient Tomb gets priority over Tower and so does other, better utility lands like Strip Mine & Scavenger Grounds. I've never had handsize come up in Yuriko except T2 and then you can't really have tower in play anyways because you need UB (ok, you can have a signet technically)
Yuriko also does not want Dread Return or Reanimate, and Yuriko also ideally play falsely high mana costs like Dig Through Time and not stuff like Desolation Twin (hence you don't want Dread Return)
Exotic Orchard
This has become a staple 3+ color card for me. YMMV but there's so many rainbowlands or pseudorainbowlands in the format that this almost always taps for whatever I want it to, or at least 2+ of my colors. I don't need it to manafix in 2C so it's not worth the mild risk but I never not run it in 3+C anymore. I'm not sure what better alternatives you are reffering to. Fetches+Shocks? True rainbowlands? The new battlebond stuff? Horizon lands? Sure, but you'll run out of those eventually
I honestly haven't run it in forever. If I discard cards to handsize, I generally don't miss the cards I'm discarding too much. I don't discard cards to handsize that often either. I'd run it in decks that care about handsize, but not anywhere else.
What I can safely say is that if you are willing to go to 5 strictly to find Sol Ring or Mana Crypt, the "First-Free London" mulligan rule is more likely to find them (44.6%) than the old First-Free mulligan (40.8%), Partial Paris (33.2%), or even First-Free Partial Paris (44.3%). And now, your resulting 5-card hand also has a good chance of being decent in its own right since you basically get a 0-mana Faithless Looting tacked on.
Aren't you basing these numbers of a wrong assumption? Maybe other people are different but I've never mulliganed for Sol Ring. I mulligan for a solid hand that does things vs the table. "More likely to find card X when aggressively mulling for it" doesn't seem that descriptive of the quality of a mulliganing system.
Well part of the problem is that the goalposts for such discussions tend to shift. When Partial Paris was relatively new, first the main point of contention was that you could more easily piece together 2-card combos (true, but impractical). Then it was that certain “problematic” cards would show up more often because you didn’t shuffle between hands (not true). Then it was that hands already containing those certain cards would be higher quality (sometimes true).
The subject is too deep and the rulesets too numerous to calculate everything, and so I started with specific complaints/truth claims that were circulating on the forums at the time. I hope you understand.
But either way, I expect more Sol Ring games to happen organically, even if we aren’t consciously digging for it:
- The presence of Sol Ring has a strong correlation with a hand’s “keepability”
- Mulligans are more likely to occur now that they are more forgiving
- Given that a player mulligans, they will see more cards than than in other systems
I don’t feel strongly about it either way, I just find the subject interesting, and I do what I can to help us all understand it better.
The context makes a lot of sense, thanks!
I agree that we'll see more Sol Rings since hands with Sol Ring simply are more keepable.
What I can safely say is that if you are willing to go to 5 strictly to find Sol Ring or Mana Crypt, the "First-Free London" mulligan rule is more likely to find them (44.6%) than the old First-Free mulligan (40.8%), Partial Paris (33.2%), or even First-Free Partial Paris (44.3%). And now, your resulting 5-card hand also has a good chance of being decent in its own right since you basically get a 0-mana Faithless Looting tacked on.
Aren't you basing these numbers of a wrong assumption? Maybe other people are different but I've never mulliganed for Sol Ring. I mulligan for a solid hand that does things vs the table. "More likely to find card X when aggressively mulling for it" doesn't seem that descriptive of the quality of a mulliganing system.
Especially in 'casual' formats like EDH, easing decisions like mulligans (which are not the fun part of the game) should be emphasised. Complexity and difficult decisions should be done in the fun part of the game (i.e. after the first player's untap step).
I like mullganing :c It's fun trying to predict how useful a 7-card hand will be against a somewhat known table.
The London mulligan seems both fair and good for eliminating non-games, but it's extremely not ergonomic. Imagine a mulligan to 5. You shuffle your deck and consider whether the hand is keepable like any other system. If it isn't, you shuffle all over again, and then have to deliberate on whether any of the 7 possible 6-card hands are keepable. If they aren't, you shuffle completely a third time so that you can deliberate on whether any of the 21 possible 5-card hands are keepable. And now that you've finally found one you like, you decide which order to put the other two cards on the bottom of your library. And then the final step is conceding and going home because your hands and brain are worn out from 3 full randomizations and 30 micro-decisions and you no longer feel like playing a high effort game like magic and would rather just watch Netflix for 4 hours straight until you pass out on the couch.
Most people I've played with use that rule. I use it myself whenever I play.
Also most of those decisions are non-decisions. If anything I've felt it's easier & faster to choose whether to mulligan with London than Vancouver when you have to make decisions. Deciding what 2 cards I'll ship out of four relevant one's is easier than deciding whether or not to keep a shaky 6-card hand or go down to five. I also think the slightly more added mulligan time in the long run (assuming it's longer, I haven't experienced it being longer) won't be longer to the time spent playing non-games with vancouver mulligan.
Love it. Loveitloveitloveitloveit. It decreases the number of non-games due to mulliganing. That has always been my least favorite part of the game. Especially in casual, getting stuck with an unplayable hand while watching others play the game just feels bad. Please let us have it? ^^
I don't get why everyone is excited about the talismans when we have the signets.
Yeah prismatic vista is awesome, but right is almost as pricey as a fetch, so why would i take it?
Same for the horizon lands, they are so expensive... are they really worth the high price?
Because redundancy is awesome, especially in 2-color enemy decks.
They kind of are, kind of not. It's not a priority pick-up, but if you like me swap cards between decks so you can run expensive cards everywhere, then yes, they're an awesome pick-up as they go in a lot of decks
If nothing else I support it since it gives you a real reason to run of those vanilla legends from legends as your commander ^^
You can also go the cheap route of running no creatures at all But that dodges the challenge a bit. I think the best way is to do some kind of ramp/card draw deck combined with some type of effect that cares about you having a bunch of creature. Some kind of GR deck that plays Gigantosaurus et al to beat face and later flings them at people's faces.
I've been trying to play control in ~75% for ages now, and it can be tough. Classic draw-go doesn't work as you can't one-for-one the table and people will hit you in the face. The two ways I've found that work is:
a) Be completely non-treatening the whole game, and ideally spend your resources subtly getting more resources. Don't play cards that make your opponents attack you, and hope to stay alive until the lategame where you can do something to just end the game, ideally by beating down with a non-threatening commander. DirkGently's Pheldagriff deck is a good example of this, and it's how I built my Gisela. I run eight sweepers and some recurrence to reuse them, but that might be 1-2 sweepers too many.
b) Control the table for a while and then attempt to either combo off or play strong cards that are a tad too expensive mana-wise for normal games. You don't need to spend as much resources here on gaining more resources, just spend your resources to make sure no one wins before then, eventually comboing off yourself or start playing threats (ideally comboing off). This might cause you to become archenemy in further games though, so be a bit careful. Even here it's important to not be a threat, as if you're a threat people will just archenemy you until you're dead.
I'm not saying aggro isn't viable (I do think it is), but I don't think mtgtop8 is good at classifying decks. It's certainly not "science and facts" that stuff like Jund and D&T are aggro decks, it's an opinion, and in my opinion a wrong one
Or playing combo in control shells to finish the game that is completely fine since you can't really win with snapcaster beats here
What is a problem is non-combo decks that run one or two infinite combos that randomly win games out of nowhere sometimes I either go full combo or no combo
Best:
Ramp & mana fixing: Mana Crypt
Removal: Toxic Deluge
Tutors: Demonic Tutor
Card draw: Ad Nauseam
Graveyard hate: Ashiok, Dream Render
Recursion: Regrowth
Favorites:
Ramp & mana fixing: Chrome Mox
Removal: Chain of Vapor
Tutors: Intuition
Card draw: Mystic Remora
Graveyard hate: Leyline of the Void
Recursion: Noxious Revival
I meant that the problem is that I have to spend my mana in iterations of 5+ for it to do anything.
Yes, I agree. None of my current decks fit that criteria. A lot of decks do, but I personally don't build those kind of decks. If I build one, I'll get a cavern but right now none of my decks need to resolve their commanders (Wanderer might get one eventually, but it's far from a priority pickup).
Ah, that's fair enough. I'm low on basics in my Tasigur deck for the same reason. If you run into Settle the Wreckage a lot I can definitely see why you're up to 6-7 basics.
To me running tango's have a pretty low upside, as I can already fetch a shock, and if I have the budget, an ABU in the same colours. Being able to fetch a third land in the same color combination just doesn't feel necessary. The downside, while not happening often, can be very bad. If you're stuck with a hand where it's a tapland and because of that your signet is delayed a turn, or you can't keep a counterspell up and lose to a combo deck while you sit there with a tapped land and nothing to do. The second has lost me the game and the first has been tempo losses that might've lost me games as well, just not as obvious. I don't think the mild upside that a tango land comes in untapped late or that you have a third fetchable dual in a color combination has ever won me a game. That being said, all taplands aren't awful, I do run some cycling lands, but either in decks that have nothing to do turn 1 95% of the time or really wants the ability to turn the occasional land into a draw late. Keep in mind that for most of these lands I'm not trying to say that they're bad lands, just that they're not autoincludes.
Yes, it goes into most decks so it's kind of a stupid point, I can concede to that. I've run it in everything I've made that I've had an opportunity to pick up one for, except very few decks where colorless mana just isn't that great, mana denial isn't that useful and glacial chasm not that relevant, which equates to some fast combo decks. But yes, most decks do want it. My only deck that doesn't want it (Jeleva) doesn't want Exotic Orchard either as it runs like 28 lands and I might drop that down to ~25 or so now with the london mulligan around the corner.
I'd much rather run a proper manabase than something like Cascading Cataracts that also is colorless and requires me to spend 5 (effectively 6) mana at the same time to be useful. I'll definitely be adding Arcum's Astrolabe to stuff, but again, not an autoinclude
Agreed, all these should go into all 3c decks assuming you can afford them, except if you're splashing in which case you can go lighter on the filters.
ETB tapped is such a major downside though, even if they can be fetched. I'll run bicycle lands in slow decks, but I'm not into running tango lands that doesn't come into play untapped early on in the game, I'd rather run fastlands even if they're unfetchable.
I don't like this card. Not helping me get access to all my colors is a major downside. Orchard has been a lot more consistent for me.
This doesn't go in every 3c deck, you only have enough room for colorless lands and unless you actively care for it's effect I'm not really interested. Yea, a lot of decks do care, but as I shy away from decks that are reliant on their commander, I'm personally not into it.
Yes, goes into most decks, but colorless can be such a feelbad, and if you're on a color-greedy fast deck that doesn't care about Maze of Ith et al or can Vindicate things without much hassle, I'd skip them.
I like doing 4 basics, no wastes, when I'm doing full-on greedy manabase. Is it for path redundancy (as you said above) that you like doing 6-7?
Rather than that Orchard, you'd likely add a couple of utility lands - Maze of Ith, Thawing Glaciers, Myriad Landscape, Volrath's Stronghold, Blast Zone, Scavenging Grounds, Academy Ruins, Heliod's Hall, Cradle, High Market/Phyrexian Tower, Tower of the Magistrate........... and that's not even all of them.
There's also a few other cycles of lands such as Painlands, Battlebonds, Checklands, Canopy lands, and a few other odds and ends.
Yes, but I don't tend to run a lot of them. They also don't compete directly with orchard. I don't like checklands (having to play a tapland in the first 3 turns of the game is awful).
That being said, now with canopylands, another fetch and london mulligan for even more greed, I might not add Orchard everywhere in 3c. As stated, YMMV but to me Orchard is a rainbowland very, very often. Even when it isn't, it's almost always at least blue. If I was completely budgetless (if I owned ABU) I might start dropping it from lists but the card has been great for me.
I've played Yuriko a bunch, and Tower isn't good there. The deck is super reliant on colored mana to the point where I'd just run a basic over an effect like this, and (Bl)inkmoth nexus & Ancient Tomb gets priority over Tower and so does other, better utility lands like Strip Mine & Scavenger Grounds. I've never had handsize come up in Yuriko except T2 and then you can't really have tower in play anyways because you need UB (ok, you can have a signet technically)
Yuriko also does not want Dread Return or Reanimate, and Yuriko also ideally play falsely high mana costs like Dig Through Time and not stuff like Desolation Twin (hence you don't want Dread Return)
This has become a staple 3+ color card for me. YMMV but there's so many rainbowlands or pseudorainbowlands in the format that this almost always taps for whatever I want it to, or at least 2+ of my colors. I don't need it to manafix in 2C so it's not worth the mild risk but I never not run it in 3+C anymore. I'm not sure what better alternatives you are reffering to. Fetches+Shocks? True rainbowlands? The new battlebond stuff? Horizon lands? Sure, but you'll run out of those eventually
The context makes a lot of sense, thanks!
I agree that we'll see more Sol Rings since hands with Sol Ring simply are more keepable.
Aren't you basing these numbers of a wrong assumption? Maybe other people are different but I've never mulliganed for Sol Ring. I mulligan for a solid hand that does things vs the table. "More likely to find card X when aggressively mulling for it" doesn't seem that descriptive of the quality of a mulliganing system.
I like mullganing :c It's fun trying to predict how useful a 7-card hand will be against a somewhat known table.
Most people I've played with use that rule. I use it myself whenever I play.
Also most of those decisions are non-decisions. If anything I've felt it's easier & faster to choose whether to mulligan with London than Vancouver when you have to make decisions. Deciding what 2 cards I'll ship out of four relevant one's is easier than deciding whether or not to keep a shaky 6-card hand or go down to five. I also think the slightly more added mulligan time in the long run (assuming it's longer, I haven't experienced it being longer) won't be longer to the time spent playing non-games with vancouver mulligan.
Because redundancy is awesome, especially in 2-color enemy decks.
They kind of are, kind of not. It's not a priority pick-up, but if you like me swap cards between decks so you can run expensive cards everywhere, then yes, they're an awesome pick-up as they go in a lot of decks
You can also go the cheap route of running no creatures at all
https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?page=0&action=advanced&type= [%22Creature%22]&text=+![a]+![e]+![i]+![o]+![u]
List of vanilla creatures, green seems to be the best option in creature quality, no surprise here