If you want to be aggressive, you're almost always going to be much better off using Species to reset Frost Lynx (which is an incredibly powerful play) than just slamming Species ...
Yea I didn't really mean it that way, I meant that any Green deck is probably drafting Species highly because it's a decent card. You can't really exploit Limited synergies unless they elevate a card from bad (i.e. able to draft late) to good. Synergy between a couple of reasonably high pick commons is nice, but hard to build around because other decks in similar colors will take those cards from you.
However, Turn 3 Frost Lynx, Turn 4 Invasive Species, Turn 5 Frost Lynx doesn't seem particularly aggressive to me. What are you beating down with in the mean time, Runeclaw Bear? You're probably waiting until Turn 6 to play both and then you need to curve into 6 lands, plus have a 4-drop at least to keep the pressure going. That's asking a lot from your aggro opening hand. Compared to just playing a 3/3 on Turn 3 and then tapping something down with Lynx on Turn 4 so you can beat with your 3/3 for a couple of turns at least.
I think that M15 is rapidly becoming my least favorite draft format. Either I draft a Triplicate Spirits deck or get blown out by it. My deck yesterday had 3 spiders, a Plummet and a Hornet Queen on top of ramp and Ajani and still could not reliably interact with T1 Soulmender/Cathar, T2 Raise the Alarm/Pegasus, T3 Spirits, T4 Spirits, T5 Sanctified Charge. Almost everyone at the shop I draft at agrees that this common is more backbreaking and warping than Gray Merchant was.
Is there any way to beat a resolved Soul of Theros in this format? It's completely insane and there's no removal that stops activated abilities or exiles outside of W. Losing to a soul is extremely annoying, because your opponent opening a bomb mythic is not indicative of your own skill at drafting.
Is there any way to beat a resolved Soul of Theros in this format? It's completely insane and there's no removal that stops activated abilities or exiles outside of W. Losing to a soul is extremely annoying, because your opponent opening a bomb mythic is not indicative of your own skill at drafting.
Soul of Theros is definitely the most "un-fun" card in the set. Not sure what they were thinking with that one. At least the rest of the Souls force you to choose between offense or defense. Soul of Theros is like offense plus multi-faceted defense considering it gains large amounts of life AND has vigilance. (Either one of those abilities would be good enough to qualify as offense + defense, so it's even better than that.)
Is there any way to beat a resolved Soul of Theros in this format? It's completely insane and there's no removal that stops activated abilities or exiles outside of W. Losing to a soul is extremely annoying, because your opponent opening a bomb mythic is not indicative of your own skill at drafting.
Encrust is common and stops activated abilities. There's obviously Phyrexian Revoker but rares are hard to come by.
I guess you can also use regular removal but then you risk getting blown out by the GY ability if the opponent's board is still big enough to alpha strike FTW, but that's still better than them getting a 6/6. You can also Cone of Flame their other creatures to remove a lot of the sting.
I rather agree with Phyrre's point about Species and Lynx. (I won't talk about the aggressiveness of the starts.)
It's very similar to Sinew Sliver from TSP. (Also the green equivalent in the Core reset of Slivers.) You couldn't rely on Sinew Sliver if you wanted to draft Slivers because it was a bear and thus highly drafted. This is even more true of the green 'only my slivers' version as it had no downside to playing it as a bear by itself.
Phyrre is entirely correct that to 'draft a deck' as a coherent deck in Limited requires cards that are not highly valued by other decks. Perhaps the best example I can think of is Dampen Thought from Kamigawa. No only was the eponymous kill card wanted by no one else, there were a lot of Arcane cards that weren't all that desired by other decks. The Prevent Damage and Fog cards in White are a semi-example. Most importantly, you didn't generally pair Dampen Thought with Red because Glacial Ray was good enough to be in decks that weren't Dampen Thoughts.
(This is, of course, assumes you didn't cut the Rays in your first pack and then were handed the pieces of Dampen Thoughts later, as could often occur.)
*shrug* You and I must have played in very different environments, which is quite possible.
Thank you, though, for focusing on a small detail in my post. I will endeavor in the future to use examples that are only from tournament-level play and vetted with conventional wisdom.
Then my example is incorrect. Oh well; it's happened before.
It doesn't change the fact that you are not addressing my argument (to be clear, that the concept of a 'deck archetype' rather than 'GoodStuff' requires cards that are much better in that deck archetype than they are in others) in favor of tearing apart (justifiably or not) an example I gave of that argument.
Nowhere have you addressed the actual point of the argument.
Not venting about a loss, but an annoying opponent who nearly got under my skin. He was playing some bizarre mono Black discard concoction, including both Waste Not and Necromancer's Stockpile in addition to at least one Eternal Thirst. Somehow he made the Finals. He took Game 1 because he got Indulgent Tormentor with Thirst for lifegain and I didn't draw removal. Game 2 he durdled around with discard spells that didn't really hurt me, and I eventually overwhelmed him with my RU tempo deck. Game 3 he got stuck on 2 lands.
He started with the classic opening:
"My deck is better"
It was objectively not better but I wrote back "Yea sorry about the mana screw." He replied:
"All 3 games screwed by the shuffler. 2 games of flood, now screw." (Note: he's complaining about flood in a game he won with a broken rare!)
Again, these are plainly inaccurate claims. He wasn't flooded in either of our first 2 games, he was playing bad cards that gave him card disadvantage. But he wouldn't let up. When I didn't reply, he wrote something like "Glad you can sympathize and be encouraging to me..." Again silent. He kept refusing to concede, mid combat with me attacking for lethal. He also kept using those annoying faces like ^_^, very clearly just antagonizing me. His English was not the best, so I assume not his first language, but trust me the language barrier was not the issue here. Finally after a few more lines about how great his deck was, and how he got screwed, and how my silence showed I had poor social skills, he asked:
"What country you from?"
I wrote back USA. To which he replied "I figured. You act like USA. Taking credit for luck. Thinking your bad deck is good. Not sympathizing with opponent, being a jerk." He topped off this offensive rant with "I hope your next draws are like mine today. Clearly luck is the only reason you win."
I reported him for trolling. I realize nothing will happen, but I was very offended by his comments about my country. I wish WotC would take a stronger stance on this kind of behavior. I won a draft queue and I'm left feeling angry.
I wonder if this sort of thing is why they made chat so much more of a pain to participate in... I think it's unfortunate, as I like chatting with opps, and like defeating and then reporting this kind of crap.
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My helpy helpdesk of helpfulness.
My Decks: EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn Modern: Polytokes IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Using the packs I won from the free pre-release seals, I drafted twice in the 8-4 queue. In the last draft, I got passed 3 ajani's pridemate so I went for teh aggro white with life gain (soulmender, selfless cathar, that +2/+1 first strike global white instant and even (my only real top end) that angel that resets your life total). In the 3rd game of teh semi-final, my lands didn't cooperate and said so when my opp won... well he went on a tirade about how he deserved to win and my dedck being a one-trick poney. His deck? Double-souls + the new oblivion stone and another good red rare I don't remember. Wow. He gets passed the good in the draft and dumps on me *while winning*?
I didn't plan to pay to draft M15, and that certainly didn't improve my chances of ever doing so.
Soul of Theros is definitely the most "un-fun" card in the set. Not sure what they were thinking with that one. At least the rest of the Souls force you to choose between offense or defense. Soul of Theros is like offense plus multi-faceted defense considering it gains large amounts of life AND has vigilance. (Either one of those abilities would be good enough to qualify as offense + defense, so it's even better than that.)
I highly beg to differ. Stormtide Leviathan is the most unfun card in the set. Look, expensive cards *should* win you the game. What they should not do is completely lock your opponent out of doing anything at all about it. There isn't much removal at all that can deal with it, particularly outside of White or Black (Blue's bounce might buy you some time, but that's about it). I've lost more than a few game to Ramp, ramp, stall, stall, Leviathan. And there aren't actually a ton of flyers in the set as well. Green and Red both have no real means of interacting with it aside from outracing it (Not impossible or improbably, but not necessary a guarantee). It has the ability to just lock out the game. The fact that it shuts down two whole colors, and leaves Black nearly stranded much of the time due to a lack of removal, is just piss-poor planning. Everything needs an answer of some sort, even costy 8-drops.
I'm not saying the card is broken; it's expensive as hell after all. It's just miserable to play against someone competent who can make it a worthwhile strategy (as blue has more than enough ways to lock you out to that point; put in green for the ramp and it's a deck). God forbid somebody gets two. I despise non-interactive card designs (Such as Hexproof), no matter how fair they are costed. They are just miserable to play against, particularly in limited.
That said, Soul of Theros is up there. At least it's a Mythic, meaning that it shows up far less commonly. It's also not *completely* unbeatable, even if it makes your opponent's life difficult.
They're both anti-fun, but at least Stormtide Leviathan costs 8 mana, which is generally 4-5 turns slower than Soul of Theros. You have to build your deck around Leviathan to be able to play it. Soul doesn't ask that. And they die to the same removal spells.
8/8 First Strike, Lifelink, Vigilance locks you out of the game just as badly as Creatures without flying or islandwalk can't attack. Leviathan just feels more annoying because your creatures become powerless. Soul of Theros at least offers the illusion of the game continuing (but really it's over).
You can flesh to dust leviathan and be fine. Whereas the Soul will often beat you anyway. Plus it's hard to feel that bad about an 8-drop. If your opponent manages to cast one then yeah, they should usually win.
Key word there is should. The problem with Leviathan, as stated, is that it removes any form of interaction aside from the very meager removal that exists. Couple this with it being a 2-3 turn clock on its own, and providing little to means means to actually race it after it hits the board, and it's just annoying card design. The only means of fighting through it realistically after it hits the board is removal, which is pretty scarce in the set.
As I said, cards at that cost *should* win you the game usually. Leviathan will win you the game almost every time, and leave the opponent no means of stopping you from doing it.
The only reason I rate it more annoying and unfun than Soul of Theros is because soul of Theros is several times less likely to appear in a given draft. Yes, it's absolutely miserable to play against and have one dropped against you, but it's far less likely to happen. Granted, Leviathan is a rare, and shouldn't be assumed for any given draft, but it is also at least somewhat common enough to ruin your day.
And more to the point, I despise non-interactive card designs, which Leviathan kind of takes the cake. It's not that you shouldn't usually win after casting something that costs 8, it's that you practically can't lose almost every time after casting Leviathan. And no card alone should just completely lock opponents out, regardless of cost. Soul of Theros is on that side of the spectrum, obviously, but it's also not exactly something that will come up very often at all. This sort of card is further frustrating just because there is so little removal in the set that can *do* anything about it. There is one removal spell in Black that I can think of, two in white (One is uncommon), and one uncommon in Red. The rest of the removal is highly conditional and likely not capable of doing anything about it.
also Encrust, Turn to Frog, Tyrant's Machine, Dauntless River Marshal, Chronostutter. It is still incredibly bomby though, and there are plenty of decks that just scoop to it.
While I think M15 is a much more balanced Draft set than M14, certain cards are head-scratchers. Like Scuttling Doom Engine. It's like they made a concerted effort to ensure that certain rares ruin games. Like, not just win the game but win it like a griefer.
Last game my opponent cast a Stormtide Leviathian I still outraced him with flyers. It actually helped me more than it helped him since it neutered all his other late game ground beaters.
Four drafts into M15, all Swiss mind you, and my sterling match record is 1-9 with 2 byes. It has been the most horrendous string of match losses I have ever experienced. I have lost every way it is possible to lose, with decks I thought were fine, great, even insane.
My last draft, just now, had 3x Triplicate Spirits and all good cards. It was one of the sweetest U/W decks I've ever drafted. 0-2 bye. Every match I lose is 1-2 with the game I win usually me curb-stomping him, and the 2 I lose usually nail biters losing to flood, perfect top-decks, bombs and/or, the clock. This format is kicking my a** so hard.
Release Sealed Record was barely better. In 4 events I went 9-7 overall (2-2, 3-1, 1-3, 3-1).
I've also opened one card worth more than a single ticket (excepting painlands, I suppose) - the new Ajani.
Remind me why I play this stupid game again? At times like these I can't remember.
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Ambush Krotiq makes me laugh so much. I keep rereading the card and it keeps not having Flash. In what sense is this an ambush again? I just have visions of this huge Krotiq poorly concealed in some bushes, feeling slightly sad that his carefully planned ambushes never seem to work.
Some people are so damn lucky at this game it is disgusting.
One guy almost always goes three colors and in the 7 matches I have personally watched, never been mana screwed, despite splashing double color casting cards. And he wins through dumb luck. This is not me being salty, because I am referring to games I was watching and had no dog in the race.
The other guy is dumb lucky. To date, he has not had a draft yet where he has not pulled less than 10. And he wins through dumb luck. If I do not get mana screwed, I crush his deck every time. Same with everyone of his opponents who are not newbies. He cannot win against good players unless they get mana screwed, which tends to happen a lot against him.
Some people are so damn lucky at this game it is disgusting.
Have you observed their shuffling? Prolonged luck like this at a paper event points to mana weaving or worse.
The first guy does not mana weave. I watch him build his deck and shuffle. He is just obscenely lucky.
The other guy, his opponents are just unlucky. I watch a game where his opponent top decked around 7 lands in a row in a game.
I open a Grindclock, a Jalira, and an In Garruk's Wake as my rares in the swiss draft I am currently doing. Could I please open something of value to my deck just once.....
My deck, decent RW with 2 raise the alarms, one white paragon, one trip spirits and a bunch of lifegain to go with my ajani's pridemate.
Match two game one I have to mull and I get stuck with two pillars in my hand while opponent floods the board with small dudes, never get to use them and draw a bunch of lands.
Game two opponents plays Soul of Theros! Holy crap I think, good thing I have two pillars, lets try and draw one! Do everything I can to stall for draws, never see one and concede when my opponent cone of flames the rest of my board. Then he proceeds to type in chat how he also had avacyn with a splashed nightfire giant. Thanks bro!
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Yea I didn't really mean it that way, I meant that any Green deck is probably drafting Species highly because it's a decent card. You can't really exploit Limited synergies unless they elevate a card from bad (i.e. able to draft late) to good. Synergy between a couple of reasonably high pick commons is nice, but hard to build around because other decks in similar colors will take those cards from you.
However, Turn 3 Frost Lynx, Turn 4 Invasive Species, Turn 5 Frost Lynx doesn't seem particularly aggressive to me. What are you beating down with in the mean time, Runeclaw Bear? You're probably waiting until Turn 6 to play both and then you need to curve into 6 lands, plus have a 4-drop at least to keep the pressure going. That's asking a lot from your aggro opening hand. Compared to just playing a 3/3 on Turn 3 and then tapping something down with Lynx on Turn 4 so you can beat with your 3/3 for a couple of turns at least.
Mogis, God of Slaughter
Daxos of Meletis
I've won against it. You need flesh to dust and untapped lands to immediately destroy it on their turn. Then remove it with rotfeaster maggot. I also did see someone use a Constricting Sliver followed by a Spectral Ward.
Encrust is common and stops activated abilities. There's obviously Phyrexian Revoker but rares are hard to come by.
Other solutions include Void Snare, Pillar of Light, attack into it and Devouring Light, Constricting Sliver, Peel from Reality, In Garruk's Wake, Chronostutter, Into the Void, Polymorphist's Jest, Might Makes Right with a bigger creature, and several mythics (which I won't bother listing since you probably won't get any).
I guess you can also use regular removal but then you risk getting blown out by the GY ability if the opponent's board is still big enough to alpha strike FTW, but that's still better than them getting a 6/6. You can also Cone of Flame their other creatures to remove a lot of the sting.
It's very similar to Sinew Sliver from TSP. (Also the green equivalent in the Core reset of Slivers.) You couldn't rely on Sinew Sliver if you wanted to draft Slivers because it was a bear and thus highly drafted. This is even more true of the green 'only my slivers' version as it had no downside to playing it as a bear by itself.
Phyrre is entirely correct that to 'draft a deck' as a coherent deck in Limited requires cards that are not highly valued by other decks. Perhaps the best example I can think of is Dampen Thought from Kamigawa. No only was the eponymous kill card wanted by no one else, there were a lot of Arcane cards that weren't all that desired by other decks. The Prevent Damage and Fog cards in White are a semi-example. Most importantly, you didn't generally pair Dampen Thought with Red because Glacial Ray was good enough to be in decks that weren't Dampen Thoughts.
(This is, of course, assumes you didn't cut the Rays in your first pack and then were handed the pieces of Dampen Thoughts later, as could often occur.)
Thank you, though, for focusing on a small detail in my post. I will endeavor in the future to use examples that are only from tournament-level play and vetted with conventional wisdom.
It doesn't change the fact that you are not addressing my argument (to be clear, that the concept of a 'deck archetype' rather than 'GoodStuff' requires cards that are much better in that deck archetype than they are in others) in favor of tearing apart (justifiably or not) an example I gave of that argument.
Nowhere have you addressed the actual point of the argument.
He started with the classic opening:
"My deck is better"
It was objectively not better but I wrote back "Yea sorry about the mana screw." He replied:
"All 3 games screwed by the shuffler. 2 games of flood, now screw." (Note: he's complaining about flood in a game he won with a broken rare!)
Again, these are plainly inaccurate claims. He wasn't flooded in either of our first 2 games, he was playing bad cards that gave him card disadvantage. But he wouldn't let up. When I didn't reply, he wrote something like "Glad you can sympathize and be encouraging to me..." Again silent. He kept refusing to concede, mid combat with me attacking for lethal. He also kept using those annoying faces like ^_^, very clearly just antagonizing me. His English was not the best, so I assume not his first language, but trust me the language barrier was not the issue here. Finally after a few more lines about how great his deck was, and how he got screwed, and how my silence showed I had poor social skills, he asked:
"What country you from?"
I wrote back USA. To which he replied "I figured. You act like USA. Taking credit for luck. Thinking your bad deck is good. Not sympathizing with opponent, being a jerk." He topped off this offensive rant with "I hope your next draws are like mine today. Clearly luck is the only reason you win."
I reported him for trolling. I realize nothing will happen, but I was very offended by his comments about my country. I wish WotC would take a stronger stance on this kind of behavior. I won a draft queue and I'm left feeling angry.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
Using the packs I won from the free pre-release seals, I drafted twice in the 8-4 queue. In the last draft, I got passed 3 ajani's pridemate so I went for teh aggro white with life gain (soulmender, selfless cathar, that +2/+1 first strike global white instant and even (my only real top end) that angel that resets your life total). In the 3rd game of teh semi-final, my lands didn't cooperate and said so when my opp won... well he went on a tirade about how he deserved to win and my dedck being a one-trick poney. His deck? Double-souls + the new oblivion stone and another good red rare I don't remember. Wow. He gets passed the good in the draft and dumps on me *while winning*?
I didn't plan to pay to draft M15, and that certainly didn't improve my chances of ever doing so.
I highly beg to differ. Stormtide Leviathan is the most unfun card in the set. Look, expensive cards *should* win you the game. What they should not do is completely lock your opponent out of doing anything at all about it. There isn't much removal at all that can deal with it, particularly outside of White or Black (Blue's bounce might buy you some time, but that's about it). I've lost more than a few game to Ramp, ramp, stall, stall, Leviathan. And there aren't actually a ton of flyers in the set as well. Green and Red both have no real means of interacting with it aside from outracing it (Not impossible or improbably, but not necessary a guarantee). It has the ability to just lock out the game. The fact that it shuts down two whole colors, and leaves Black nearly stranded much of the time due to a lack of removal, is just piss-poor planning. Everything needs an answer of some sort, even costy 8-drops.
I'm not saying the card is broken; it's expensive as hell after all. It's just miserable to play against someone competent who can make it a worthwhile strategy (as blue has more than enough ways to lock you out to that point; put in green for the ramp and it's a deck). God forbid somebody gets two. I despise non-interactive card designs (Such as Hexproof), no matter how fair they are costed. They are just miserable to play against, particularly in limited.
That said, Soul of Theros is up there. At least it's a Mythic, meaning that it shows up far less commonly. It's also not *completely* unbeatable, even if it makes your opponent's life difficult.
8/8 First Strike, Lifelink, Vigilance locks you out of the game just as badly as Creatures without flying or islandwalk can't attack. Leviathan just feels more annoying because your creatures become powerless. Soul of Theros at least offers the illusion of the game continuing (but really it's over).
Key word there is should. The problem with Leviathan, as stated, is that it removes any form of interaction aside from the very meager removal that exists. Couple this with it being a 2-3 turn clock on its own, and providing little to means means to actually race it after it hits the board, and it's just annoying card design. The only means of fighting through it realistically after it hits the board is removal, which is pretty scarce in the set.
As I said, cards at that cost *should* win you the game usually. Leviathan will win you the game almost every time, and leave the opponent no means of stopping you from doing it.
The only reason I rate it more annoying and unfun than Soul of Theros is because soul of Theros is several times less likely to appear in a given draft. Yes, it's absolutely miserable to play against and have one dropped against you, but it's far less likely to happen. Granted, Leviathan is a rare, and shouldn't be assumed for any given draft, but it is also at least somewhat common enough to ruin your day.
And more to the point, I despise non-interactive card designs, which Leviathan kind of takes the cake. It's not that you shouldn't usually win after casting something that costs 8, it's that you practically can't lose almost every time after casting Leviathan. And no card alone should just completely lock opponents out, regardless of cost. Soul of Theros is on that side of the spectrum, obviously, but it's also not exactly something that will come up very often at all. This sort of card is further frustrating just because there is so little removal in the set that can *do* anything about it. There is one removal spell in Black that I can think of, two in white (One is uncommon), and one uncommon in Red. The rest of the removal is highly conditional and likely not capable of doing anything about it.
Game 1
Turn 4: Juggernaut
Turn 5: Burning Anger
Game 2
Turn 4: Juggernaut
Turn 5: Burning Anger
Turn 6: Scuttling Doom Engine
While I think M15 is a much more balanced Draft set than M14, certain cards are head-scratchers. Like Scuttling Doom Engine. It's like they made a concerted effort to ensure that certain rares ruin games. Like, not just win the game but win it like a griefer.
R Norin the Wary: I've Got a Bad Feeling About This
UG Thrasios & Kydele: Knowledge is Power
RG Borborygmos Enraged: The Breaking of the World
BG The Gitrog Monster: All Glory to the Hypnotoad
WUR Zedruu the Greathearted: Endless Possibilities, One Outcome
WBG Karador, Ghost Chieftain: What's Dead May Never Die
Turn your junk into something great with PucaTrade!
My last draft, just now, had 3x Triplicate Spirits and all good cards. It was one of the sweetest U/W decks I've ever drafted. 0-2 bye. Every match I lose is 1-2 with the game I win usually me curb-stomping him, and the 2 I lose usually nail biters losing to flood, perfect top-decks, bombs and/or, the clock. This format is kicking my a** so hard.
Release Sealed Record was barely better. In 4 events I went 9-7 overall (2-2, 3-1, 1-3, 3-1).
I've also opened one card worth more than a single ticket (excepting painlands, I suppose) - the new Ajani.
Remind me why I play this stupid game again? At times like these I can't remember.
One guy almost always goes three colors and in the 7 matches I have personally watched, never been mana screwed, despite splashing double color casting cards. And he wins through dumb luck. This is not me being salty, because I am referring to games I was watching and had no dog in the race.
The other guy is dumb lucky. To date, he has not had a draft yet where he has not pulled less than 10. And he wins through dumb luck. If I do not get mana screwed, I crush his deck every time. Same with everyone of his opponents who are not newbies. He cannot win against good players unless they get mana screwed, which tends to happen a lot against him.
It is better to be lucky than good.
Have you observed their shuffling? Prolonged luck like this at a paper event points to mana weaving or worse.
The first guy does not mana weave. I watch him build his deck and shuffle. He is just obscenely lucky.
The other guy, his opponents are just unlucky. I watch a game where his opponent top decked around 7 lands in a row in a game.
Match two game one I have to mull and I get stuck with two pillars in my hand while opponent floods the board with small dudes, never get to use them and draw a bunch of lands.
Game two opponents plays Soul of Theros! Holy crap I think, good thing I have two pillars, lets try and draw one! Do everything I can to stall for draws, never see one and concede when my opponent cone of flames the rest of my board. Then he proceeds to type in chat how he also had avacyn with a splashed nightfire giant. Thanks bro!