Just got to say, you've definitely earned distinction as an MTGS hero
Quote from Stardust »
Because he's the hero MTGS deserves, and the one it needs right now. So we'll global him. Because he can take it. Because he's not just our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. An expired rascal.
Quote from LuckNorris »
ExpiredRascals you sir are a god-like hero.
Quote from Lanxal »
ER is a masterful god who cannot be beaten in any endeavour.
Just got to say, you've definitely earned distinction as an MTGS hero
Quote from Stardust »
Because he's the hero MTGS deserves, and the one it needs right now. So we'll global him. Because he can take it. Because he's not just our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. An expired rascal.
Quote from LuckNorris »
ExpiredRascals you sir are a god-like hero.
Quote from Lanxal »
ER is a masterful god who cannot be beaten in any endeavour.
So, now what? I don't know how to actually use these tools...
Tom1's Big Build
Creatures (11)
1's: Goblin Welder
2's: --
3's: Metalworker, Call of the Herd, Fire Imp
4's: Flame-tongue Kavu, Avalanche Riders, Solemn Simulacrum
5's: Indrik Stomphowler
6's: Rith the Awakener, Triskelion
7's: Roar of the Wurm
With 5 manafacts 15 lands is about right.
Hopefully the deck is winning through a combination of ramp and mana denial, so I wouldn't run all 4 burn spells. We have also have creature burn in fire imp and FTK. To some extent the burn spells are sort of a filler to what the deck really wants to do. I'd for sure cut one burn for greater gargadon, probably cut the helix just cause it is W.
I think boom/bust needs to be in this deck too. Don't know what I'd cut for it exactly, probably another burn spell, maybe regrowth, maybe metalworker??
I could see an argument for cutting all the burn spells (except fireblast) or cutting some other thing. I'd add Zozu, scroll rack, vandals, drop of honey in that order (after the gargadon and bust).
I really don't see much risk in running ker keep, I'd cut a forest for it.
Could have a pretty decent RDW after sideboard. It'd be slow by most cube standards but we weren't really drafting for aggro.
Yes to Gargadon. That was an unintentional omission.
Burn isn't just filler: the idea is that we need to keep the board clear as we lock them out. They'll still have some mana, just not a lot, and we need to be able to deal with a hand with two or three 2drops. For that reason, I actually think fireblast is the most expendable of the burn we have. Two mountains won't be available consistently, and 4 damage will be overkill most of the time. For the same reason, Brimstone Volley should go before chain lightning, even though it's a great card.
That said, cutting the helix is an easy fix that lets us go down to two white sources.
I don't like cutting forests when we want to play plow under on t4, but I like cutting the other lands even less. But if helix is out, we can cut a plains for the Keep or the Academy. If we bring scroll rack in, do we then go with the ruins?
Fireblast is our most cuttable burn spell, and should go for Gargadon.
Vandals should be in. There are a ton of mana rocks in this cube, in addition to swords and whatnot, and our land destruction/Orb game plan is ruined by a Sol Ring or even a signet. Indrik Stomphowler might just come down too late. Cuts are really hard, though...
Is Goblin Welder just too cute? We have no discard (other than Blast from the Past, which we are not maindecking), and while it can do some awesome tricks with Solemn, Triskelion, and Winter Orb, how likely are they to come up, and how likely is he to survive to actually do them if they do come up?
Likewise, Roar of the Wurm is marginal without a discard outlet. It would be great to have another Wildfire-surviving creature, though.
Arg, this is such an odd deck. Not at all easy to build.
Let's cut fireblast, helix and a plains. Gargadon is in. I'm against bust, but I'm also outvoted. So that leaves a land slot, which is either a mountain, the keep or the academy.
I'm not sure how we cut the roar. Rith is harder to cast. It has evasion, but Roar makes twice the bodies. With the dynamo, we want both, I think. We're a ramp deck, after all--we need fat.
Vandals are awkward with winter orb, plus we don't really want to target our own artifacts with it, welder or no welder, which means it will be stuck in our hands some percentage of the time. I'm happy to side it in at the first sign of artifacts.
But if you guys both think the vandals are in, I'd cut the welder for him.
This version dispenses with some of the "cool things" and the burn, putting a lot of stress on the remaining removal (2 FTKs+bolt+DoH). That said, Kher Keep and Drop of Honey are awesome, and the big-picture trade-off is for a lot of redundancy in the disruption. Nearly all our creatures are 2for1s, giving us a lot of bang for our mana. And while cards like zozu and petravark are crummy on their own, our entire deck is nothing but cards like that, putting more pressure on the opponent's removal than the "big build" I submitted earlier.
The previous version had a ramp subtheme going on that let it go over the top of the opponent. This deck stays small, but more reliably shuts down the opponent. Our high-power creatures, plus a sword or gargadon, constitute our win conditions.
Of course, ramping up to a huge monster puts a clock on our opponent, which may be better than more mana denial. ::shrug::
I think this is as good as the RDW deck gets. Unfortunately, it can't quite get enough playables to cut green. It's not particularly aggressive, but it punishes slow draws and has great reach.
Is Drop of Honey awesome for us? I can't tell... If we really have them locked down, it could be very counterproductive. I'd rather get Rith or Roar (or both!) back in and drop the Drop, personally.
EDIT: I'm also worried about our land count, given the amount of symmetrical LD we are running. I'd be much more comfortable with 16 lands, and dropping Vandals.
Wow, awesome! So, to summarize, you've taken Tom1's Mana Denial Build, but with Rith and a land instead of vandals and drop of honey.
I did do a bunch of sample hands. My first thought is that we are too susceptible in the early game with this update. Vandals is a good defender, and drop of honey disrupts our opponents curve (they'll wait until the drop eats it before they play another creature). Both help get us to t5 with our life total intact. Too many hands in this version have no early interaction.
I like the extra land. It makes us less susceptible to mulligans (one land and X rocks is not a keeper). My sense, though is that it should be a mountain.
Rith seems too hard to cast. Is the power level so much higher than Roar that we want to splash for it? Also, the Dynamo and Metalworker make it easier to cast than Rith under some circumstances. T3 Metalworker into t4 Roar of the Wurm is pretty easy to put together.
Every hand with metalworker was awesome. It makes me want to bring in...
Scrollrack! You guys were right the whole time. So many sample hands have all the right cards, but in the wrong order. Scroll rack lets us sequence our hands, smooth out our otherwise ugly curve, and get our combos going faster. There were so many sample hands that would have been made if we had scrollrack.
How can we fit it in? Since we cut our burn, we rarely have much of a graveyard. How about we cut Regrowth?
I tried a bunch of hands, too, and generally agree with you. Rith was a dead card in my hand far too often; it should be Roar instead. I also feel it should be a mountain and not a forest.
I figure Regrowth is as likely to rebuy a painful control card like Burning of Xinye or Plow Under as it is a simple burn spell. I'd be tempted to try and keep it.
Scroll Rack is a tough one. It doesn't really help our early game much, and we have only one shuffle effect (Solemn). I'm not sure the Metalworker is good enough reason to run it.
As to our weakness to the early game: want to play Vandals over Stomphowler?
I've just made the following changes to tappedout, to try: Rith --> Roar; Stomphowler --> Vandals; Petravark --> Drop of Honey; Forest --> Mountain. Let's see how it plays out.
The RDW is useful as a template for sideboarding. I agree it shouldn't be our first priority.
EDIT: with Drop of Honey, we need that Forest early. I've switched it back...
FYI, I need to test to see if Cockatrice still works for me, so I'm going to play this against a friend online tonight. He's drafted a couple of decks using cubetutor with this cube... I'll let you know how it goes.
Some of these hands are things of beauty. T2 rock, T3 Dynamo + Sword, T4 Avalanche Rider's w/ Sword. Or any hand with the Metalworker.
Regrowth also works well with echo+ETB. I'm back in love with it.
Drop of Honey and Kher Keep is an easy lock. They can't cast commit a second creature, and they can't attack into our Kobold if it's our only creature. Also, drop of honey gives the opponent plenty of rope to hang themselves. Most players don't know how to play around it.
Glad the 'Vark is out. Good as a 4drop in a deck that loves 4drops, but bad with Drop and terrible with Xinye.
I miss the Indrik. It's big for this cube, right?
EDIT: I am getting too many hands with Vandals and artifacts. Vandals out, Stompy in? The honey and bolt are enough for G1.
So, I just played a bunch of matches against my friend to test out Cockatrice. He drafted using cubetutor, which uses really suboptimal bots, and his decks seemed very strong. Still, we went 1-8 or so in games--I only won a single game. Many were close, but still--we struggled. Even when we got some good disruption going, we didn't have enough quality creatures to put any pressure on. A couple of 2/2s or a single 4/4 or something just didn't get there fast enough.
Here's my suggestions after playing this a bunch. I'd cut Drop of Honey. It seemed to kill a single creature at best, and often they could play some little guy to sacrifice to keep their big guy out. In its place, Brimstone Volley, which can double as reach. Second, cut Moss Diamond for Blistering Firecat. We can easily play 3RR once we get our ramp on, and it's a ton of damage. The Diamond is a hard cut, but it's our worst mana rock, and doesn't fix. Small changes, but hopefully enough added pressure to make our deck work.
What do you think?
EDIT: To be clear, perhaps half the games hinged on a single play--counterspelling our Roar of the Wurm or (in two games) having an Aether Vial out when I was able to keep them off their land. I think the deck is very close to being quite good, but have little confidence in it.
FTK was good, Metalworker was a total bomb. Fire Imp was just okay, but good enough. Zo-Zu died a lot, understandably. Call of the Herd was absolutely key, given how few creatures we have. I never got the chance to equip our Sword to anything (although it was on the board a few times), but I still think it represents one of our few real scary threats. I used both sides of Boom and Bust. Not as good as Burning of Xinye, but very strong in our deck.
I was pretty consistently in need of reach, and of creatures. I would lock their mana down with LD or Orb, but with only a couple of 2/2s out they could rebuild and stabilize in time. When a 6/6 and a 4/4 with no evasion represent the top end of your threats, it's not hard to stabilize. I'd stall out when they were mid-single digits a lot. (Alternately, we could splash more white and bring in the dragon and the Helix...)
I ramped quite effectively, but didn't have much to do with the mana.
Vandal would have been amazing against one of the decks (I was facing down Ghost Council of Orzhov with Jitte and Sword of Body and Mind both equipped at one point, with an Aether Vial in play for good measure), but I figure it'll be a sideboard card.
To give an example of how the Drop played out: I have no creatures on board. He plays Phantom Centaur, which totally wrecks us. I play Drop, and no creature (which I would have lost to Drop). He has a full turn to attack with his creature before the Drop does anything, and I would then still not be able to play any creature on my side of the board. But no! He plays Rofellos, and the Centaur lives another day (and I still am waiting to play Metalworker). Next turn, he plays a mana elf. Sure, it took out a couple of creatures, but he had control of the situation. I'd prefer the flexibility of instant-speed burn.
Thought I had posted something earlier... It was to the effect of, Thanks for putting in the work to let us fishbowl; you are the one actually playing the games so change what you want; and a few thoughts from fishbowling that I don't remember exactly.
I am interested in hearing summaries though. Any contact with the other team?
Woo! Finally played, and went an easy 2-0 against a midrange Jund deck.
Game 1: I had a nuts hand, with Metalworker, a Talisman, Triskelion, Fire Imp, Avalanche Riders, Regrowth and two lands. He had a blazing and scary start, with T1 Birds of Paradise, T2 Lotus Cobra and Wall of Blossoms. I played the Talisman and Fire Imped the Cobra, but he then (eek!) played Recurring Nightmare and got it back, and started swapping the Wall and a mana creature to draw cards. I got Metalworker out, and drew our Sword of Fire and Ice. He got Arrogant Wurm (a vanilla 4/4), and kept abusing Recurring Nightmare. I kept on trying to keep him off black mana by shooting BoP and the Cobra with Triskelion and Avalanche Ridering a Swamp, but was never able to shut it down. His 4/4 Wurm and 0/4 Wall kept coming back and chump blocking whatever held the sword. He wasn't able to mount much of an offense, and I was able to get in for a bit of damage here and there. Finally I was able to play a Blistering Firecat, equip and swing, bringing him down to 3, then get a Regrowthed Triskelion into play (Metalworker, woo!) and ping for lethal. It was a fun game; we had to have a very good hand to get through the Nightmare, but drew very well.
Game 2: I had a slower start, with a Talisman, Avalanche Riders, Inrik Stomphowler and lands. He played Cursed Scroll, Sylvan Library, and then Tangle Wire, so it was a very slow beginning. Luckily, he only had a Basking Rootwalla and Jaya Ballard down when the Tangle Wire starting messing things up, and I Chain Lightning'ed Ballard. Once the Wire wore off, I Stomphowled Sylvan Library, and basically just kept beating with a 4/4. Dan said that his creatures basically topped out at Arrogant Wurm (4/4 vanilla), so Stompy was quite an effective threat. He got Burning-Tree Shaman, but I Flametongue Kavu'ed it. He burned FTK, but the Stomphowler kept stomping. I drew into a ton of land and stalled out, but eventually, with three land in hand decided to take the risk and sac six lands to get a suspended Greater Gargadon into play. He chumped for a turn or two, but eventually couldn't answer it.
Our deck seemed to actually work! Triskelion was the key card both games--it killed four creatures, attacked for damage, and pinged for lethal.
Go trike! And it sounds like our removal (FTKs, etc) was a bigger factor than our disruption. Should we streamline even further, pulling in blast from the past over boom/bust? Not that we can extrapolate too much from one match, but it sounds like our games run too long to count on our mana-disruption subtheme to shut games down. Obviously, superstars like wildfire and winter orb stay in.
You sound so surprised our deck worked!
The truth is the power level of our cards is incredibly high, owing in part to us having the best pieces of several sub-themes. So even when the themes don't pull together, we still have an efficient pile of good stuff.
Yeah, after going 1-9 in testing, I was a bit skeptical of our deck.
I'm right on the fence about cutting Boom/Bust for more burn (or artifact removal). Anyway, since I figure we've "submitted the decklist", it'll be a sideboard choice at this point, so I'll plan to keep it only against 3 color decks and the like.
1 Winter Orb
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Lightning Helix
1 Brimstone Volley
1 Jackal Pup
1 Metalworker
1 Blast from the Past
1 Plow Under
1 Keldon Vandals
1 Roar of the Wurm
1 Call of the Herd
1 Ashmouth Hound
1 Goblin Wardriver
1 Drop of Honey
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Talisman of Unity
1 Boros Signet
1 Goblin Welder
1 Greater Gargadon
1 Stomping Ground
1 Talisman of Impulse
1 Regrowth
1 Chain Lightning
1 Rith, the Awakener
1 Avalanche Riders
1 Moss Diamond
1 Zo-Zu the Punisher
1 Petravark
1 Keldon Champion
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Triskelion
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Scroll Rack
1 Indrik Stomphowler
1 Burning of Xinye
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Boom // Bust
1 Fireblast
1 Pyroclasm
1 Stalking Stones
1 Fire Imp
1 Kher Keep
1 Blistering Firecat
1 Anger
Body Count: GRRRUUUUUUUUUUU
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Please feel free to use this thread for deck construction.
Body Count: GRRRUUUUUUUUUUU
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Level 1 Judge
My Cube for use with 6th ed. Rules
Tom1's Big Build
Creatures (11)
1's: Goblin Welder
2's: --
3's: Metalworker, Call of the Herd, Fire Imp
4's: Flame-tongue Kavu, Avalanche Riders, Solemn Simulacrum
5's: Indrik Stomphowler
6's: Rith the Awakener, Triskelion
7's: Roar of the Wurm
Burn (4)
Chain Lightning, Lightning Helix, Brimstone Volley, Fireblast
Ramp (5)
Boros Signet, Talisman of Unity, Talisman of Impulse, Moss Diamond, Thran Dynamo
Disruption (3)
Winter Orb, Plow Under, Burning of Xinye
Misc (2)
Sword of Fire and Ice, Regrowth
Lands (15)
Stomping Ground
8 mountains
5 forests
1 plains
Mana Base: 11 R, 9 G, 3 W
Honorary Mentions
Kodama's Reach
Blast from the Past
Tolarian Academy
Scrollrack
Drop of Honey
Disrupting creatures (Zozu, Vandals, Petravark)
With 5 manafacts 15 lands is about right.
Hopefully the deck is winning through a combination of ramp and mana denial, so I wouldn't run all 4 burn spells. We have also have creature burn in fire imp and FTK. To some extent the burn spells are sort of a filler to what the deck really wants to do. I'd for sure cut one burn for greater gargadon, probably cut the helix just cause it is W.
I think boom/bust needs to be in this deck too. Don't know what I'd cut for it exactly, probably another burn spell, maybe regrowth, maybe metalworker??
I could see an argument for cutting all the burn spells (except fireblast) or cutting some other thing. I'd add Zozu, scroll rack, vandals, drop of honey in that order (after the gargadon and bust).
I really don't see much risk in running ker keep, I'd cut a forest for it.
Could have a pretty decent RDW after sideboard. It'd be slow by most cube standards but we weren't really drafting for aggro.
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Burn isn't just filler: the idea is that we need to keep the board clear as we lock them out. They'll still have some mana, just not a lot, and we need to be able to deal with a hand with two or three 2drops. For that reason, I actually think fireblast is the most expendable of the burn we have. Two mountains won't be available consistently, and 4 damage will be overkill most of the time. For the same reason, Brimstone Volley should go before chain lightning, even though it's a great card.
That said, cutting the helix is an easy fix that lets us go down to two white sources.
I don't like cutting forests when we want to play plow under on t4, but I like cutting the other lands even less. But if helix is out, we can cut a plains for the Keep or the Academy. If we bring scroll rack in, do we then go with the ruins?
Fireblast is our most cuttable burn spell, and should go for Gargadon.
Vandals should be in. There are a ton of mana rocks in this cube, in addition to swords and whatnot, and our land destruction/Orb game plan is ruined by a Sol Ring or even a signet. Indrik Stomphowler might just come down too late. Cuts are really hard, though...
Is Goblin Welder just too cute? We have no discard (other than Blast from the Past, which we are not maindecking), and while it can do some awesome tricks with Solemn, Triskelion, and Winter Orb, how likely are they to come up, and how likely is he to survive to actually do them if they do come up?
Likewise, Roar of the Wurm is marginal without a discard outlet. It would be great to have another Wildfire-surviving creature, though.
Arg, this is such an odd deck. Not at all easy to build.
Boom/Bust needs to be in. Again, cuts are hard.
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I'm not sure how we cut the roar. Rith is harder to cast. It has evasion, but Roar makes twice the bodies. With the dynamo, we want both, I think. We're a ramp deck, after all--we need fat.
Vandals are awkward with winter orb, plus we don't really want to target our own artifacts with it, welder or no welder, which means it will be stuck in our hands some percentage of the time. I'm happy to side it in at the first sign of artifacts.
But if you guys both think the vandals are in, I'd cut the welder for him.
Creatures (11)
1's: --
2's: --
3's: Metalworker, Call of the Herd, Fire Imp, ZoZu the Punisher, Keldon Vandals
4's: Flame-tongue Kavu, Avalanche Riders, Solemn Simulacrum, Petravark
5's: Indrik Stomphowler
6's: Triskelion
Removal(2)
Chain Lightning, Drop of Honey
Ramp (5)
Boros Signet, Talisman of Unity, Talisman of Impulse, Moss Diamond, Thran Dynamo
Disruption (4)
Winter Orb, Plow Under, Burning of Xinye, Boom/Bust
Misc (3)
Sword of Fire and Ice, Regrowth, Gargadon
Lands (15)
Stomping Ground
8 mountains
5 forests
1 Kher Keep
Mana Base: 11 R, 9 G, 2 W
This version dispenses with some of the "cool things" and the burn, putting a lot of stress on the remaining removal (2 FTKs+bolt+DoH). That said, Kher Keep and Drop of Honey are awesome, and the big-picture trade-off is for a lot of redundancy in the disruption. Nearly all our creatures are 2for1s, giving us a lot of bang for our mana. And while cards like zozu and petravark are crummy on their own, our entire deck is nothing but cards like that, putting more pressure on the opponent's removal than the "big build" I submitted earlier.
The previous version had a ramp subtheme going on that let it go over the top of the opponent. This deck stays small, but more reliably shuts down the opponent. Our high-power creatures, plus a sword or gargadon, constitute our win conditions.
Of course, ramping up to a huge monster puts a clock on our opponent, which may be better than more mana denial. ::shrug::
Creatures (14)
1's: Goblin Welder, Jackal Pup
2's: Ashmouth Hound
3's: Call of the Herd, Fire Imp, Blistering Firecat, ZoZu the Punisher, Keldon Vandals
4's: Flame-tongue Kavu, Avalanche Riders, Solemn Simulacrum, Keldon Champion
5's: Indrik Stomphowler
6's: Triskelion
Burn (5)
Chain Lightning, Lightning Helix, Blast from the Past, Brimstone Volley, Fireblast
Ramp (1)
Talisman of Unity
Disruption (1)
Winter Orb
Misc (3)
Sword of Fire and Ice, Regrowth, Gargadon
Lands (16)
Stomping Ground
9 mountains
4 forests
2 plains
Mana Base: 10 R, 6 G, 3 W
I think this is as good as the RDW deck gets. Unfortunately, it can't quite get enough playables to cut green. It's not particularly aggressive, but it punishes slow draws and has great reach.
EDIT: I'm also worried about our land count, given the amount of symmetrical LD we are running. I'd be much more comfortable with 16 lands, and dropping Vandals.
EDIT x 2: I've uploaded a goldfishable version to tappedout here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/draft-test-25-02-14-1/ I included Rith and cut Vandals, cut Drop of Honey and added a basic land.
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I did do a bunch of sample hands. My first thought is that we are too susceptible in the early game with this update. Vandals is a good defender, and drop of honey disrupts our opponents curve (they'll wait until the drop eats it before they play another creature). Both help get us to t5 with our life total intact. Too many hands in this version have no early interaction.
I like the extra land. It makes us less susceptible to mulligans (one land and X rocks is not a keeper). My sense, though is that it should be a mountain.
Rith seems too hard to cast. Is the power level so much higher than Roar that we want to splash for it? Also, the Dynamo and Metalworker make it easier to cast than Rith under some circumstances. T3 Metalworker into t4 Roar of the Wurm is pretty easy to put together.
Every hand with metalworker was awesome. It makes me want to bring in...
Scrollrack! You guys were right the whole time. So many sample hands have all the right cards, but in the wrong order. Scroll rack lets us sequence our hands, smooth out our otherwise ugly curve, and get our combos going faster. There were so many sample hands that would have been made if we had scrollrack.
How can we fit it in? Since we cut our burn, we rarely have much of a graveyard. How about we cut Regrowth?
I figure Regrowth is as likely to rebuy a painful control card like Burning of Xinye or Plow Under as it is a simple burn spell. I'd be tempted to try and keep it.
Scroll Rack is a tough one. It doesn't really help our early game much, and we have only one shuffle effect (Solemn). I'm not sure the Metalworker is good enough reason to run it.
As to our weakness to the early game: want to play Vandals over Stomphowler?
I've just made the following changes to tappedout, to try: Rith --> Roar; Stomphowler --> Vandals; Petravark --> Drop of Honey; Forest --> Mountain. Let's see how it plays out.
The RDW is useful as a template for sideboarding. I agree it shouldn't be our first priority.
EDIT: with Drop of Honey, we need that Forest early. I've switched it back...
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Regrowth also works well with echo+ETB. I'm back in love with it.
Drop of Honey and Kher Keep is an easy lock. They can't cast commit a second creature, and they can't attack into our Kobold if it's our only creature. Also, drop of honey gives the opponent plenty of rope to hang themselves. Most players don't know how to play around it.
Glad the 'Vark is out. Good as a 4drop in a deck that loves 4drops, but bad with Drop and terrible with Xinye.
I miss the Indrik. It's big for this cube, right?
EDIT: I am getting too many hands with Vandals and artifacts. Vandals out, Stompy in? The honey and bolt are enough for G1.
Edits made in tappedout...
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Here's my suggestions after playing this a bunch. I'd cut Drop of Honey. It seemed to kill a single creature at best, and often they could play some little guy to sacrifice to keep their big guy out. In its place, Brimstone Volley, which can double as reach. Second, cut Moss Diamond for Blistering Firecat. We can easily play 3RR once we get our ramp on, and it's a ton of damage. The Diamond is a hard cut, but it's our worst mana rock, and doesn't fix. Small changes, but hopefully enough added pressure to make our deck work.
What do you think?
EDIT: To be clear, perhaps half the games hinged on a single play--counterspelling our Roar of the Wurm or (in two games) having an Aether Vial out when I was able to keep them off their land. I think the deck is very close to being quite good, but have little confidence in it.
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I'm confused-- if he's playing creatures into the drop, he's throwing them away. What exactly was the problem? Was he racing it?
How were the FTKs? Metalworker?
The Vandals are just better than the Firecat, right? Or were you consistently in need of the reach?
I was pretty consistently in need of reach, and of creatures. I would lock their mana down with LD or Orb, but with only a couple of 2/2s out they could rebuild and stabilize in time. When a 6/6 and a 4/4 with no evasion represent the top end of your threats, it's not hard to stabilize. I'd stall out when they were mid-single digits a lot. (Alternately, we could splash more white and bring in the dragon and the Helix...)
I ramped quite effectively, but didn't have much to do with the mana.
Vandal would have been amazing against one of the decks (I was facing down Ghost Council of Orzhov with Jitte and Sword of Body and Mind both equipped at one point, with an Aether Vial in play for good measure), but I figure it'll be a sideboard card.
To give an example of how the Drop played out: I have no creatures on board. He plays Phantom Centaur, which totally wrecks us. I play Drop, and no creature (which I would have lost to Drop). He has a full turn to attack with his creature before the Drop does anything, and I would then still not be able to play any creature on my side of the board. But no! He plays Rofellos, and the Centaur lives another day (and I still am waiting to play Metalworker). Next turn, he plays a mana elf. Sure, it took out a couple of creatures, but he had control of the situation. I'd prefer the flexibility of instant-speed burn.
Sorry for the fragmented post--in a rush a bit.
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I am interested in hearing summaries though. Any contact with the other team?
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Game 1: I had a nuts hand, with Metalworker, a Talisman, Triskelion, Fire Imp, Avalanche Riders, Regrowth and two lands. He had a blazing and scary start, with T1 Birds of Paradise, T2 Lotus Cobra and Wall of Blossoms. I played the Talisman and Fire Imped the Cobra, but he then (eek!) played Recurring Nightmare and got it back, and started swapping the Wall and a mana creature to draw cards. I got Metalworker out, and drew our Sword of Fire and Ice. He got Arrogant Wurm (a vanilla 4/4), and kept abusing Recurring Nightmare. I kept on trying to keep him off black mana by shooting BoP and the Cobra with Triskelion and Avalanche Ridering a Swamp, but was never able to shut it down. His 4/4 Wurm and 0/4 Wall kept coming back and chump blocking whatever held the sword. He wasn't able to mount much of an offense, and I was able to get in for a bit of damage here and there. Finally I was able to play a Blistering Firecat, equip and swing, bringing him down to 3, then get a Regrowthed Triskelion into play (Metalworker, woo!) and ping for lethal. It was a fun game; we had to have a very good hand to get through the Nightmare, but drew very well.
Game 2: I had a slower start, with a Talisman, Avalanche Riders, Inrik Stomphowler and lands. He played Cursed Scroll, Sylvan Library, and then Tangle Wire, so it was a very slow beginning. Luckily, he only had a Basking Rootwalla and Jaya Ballard down when the Tangle Wire starting messing things up, and I Chain Lightning'ed Ballard. Once the Wire wore off, I Stomphowled Sylvan Library, and basically just kept beating with a 4/4. Dan said that his creatures basically topped out at Arrogant Wurm (4/4 vanilla), so Stompy was quite an effective threat. He got Burning-Tree Shaman, but I Flametongue Kavu'ed it. He burned FTK, but the Stomphowler kept stomping. I drew into a ton of land and stalled out, but eventually, with three land in hand decided to take the risk and sac six lands to get a suspended Greater Gargadon into play. He chumped for a turn or two, but eventually couldn't answer it.
Our deck seemed to actually work! Triskelion was the key card both games--it killed four creatures, attacked for damage, and pinged for lethal.
My $40 MTGO cube
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You sound so surprised our deck worked!
The truth is the power level of our cards is incredibly high, owing in part to us having the best pieces of several sub-themes. So even when the themes don't pull together, we still have an efficient pile of good stuff.
How was our mana?
I'm right on the fence about cutting Boom/Bust for more burn (or artifact removal). Anyway, since I figure we've "submitted the decklist", it'll be a sideboard choice at this point, so I'll plan to keep it only against 3 color decks and the like.
My $40 MTGO cube
Draft my cube at Cubetutor!