- Fiddlyr
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Member for 8 years, 9 months, and 5 days
Last active Sat, Oct, 7 2017 12:43:27
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Oct 15, 2015Fiddlyr posted a message on The Magic Market Index for October 14, 2015these posts are greatPosted in: Articles
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Oct 11, 2015Fiddlyr posted a message on The Magic Market Index for October 7, 2015Thanks for doing these.Posted in: Articles
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Oct 7, 2015Fiddlyr posted a message on Archive Trap: The World of Zendikar Part IIGreat article. I have never paid the slightest attention to Magic lore, but this was a fun read.Posted in: Articles
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Unless, you use its manaless next ability once you fulfill the condition and convert it to a U tapping land.
If you choose that second benefit, than at any time in the future you can choose to forego tapping for U to pay for an overcosted Impulse effect.
The investment for these abilities is U1.
Field of Ruin is also admittedly expensive color fixing. Its a weird 3 mana fetchland for any basic in your deck that also converts the best non-basic on the other side to a basic of their choice. Obviously its better with other effects that also give them basic lands dependent on how much of the metagame are decks that could plausibly be run out of basics.
There are Tier 1 decks now though running 0-2 non-basics. This plus Path, Ghost Quarter and Spreading Seas seem plausible in the current environment if you have room for 4+ basics in your manabase yourself.
I don't know that it is great, but its worth paying attention to I think.
The first instant speed cantrip used in the opponent's turn by definition increases the chance to flip miracles. Opt is particularly good at it since you get two shots at finding it. Maybe you need to think about it a little more carefully?
Ramunap Ruins reduces the deck building costs of the Assault Loam package significantly, though at the cost of the activations becoming much more expensive.
One issue I've always had is the Assault-Vortex + Loam engine takes a fair number of spell slots and makes the deck very vulnerable to graveyard hate. Also, you have so many chances for redundant Assaults because the enchantment tutors are all terrible in Modern. And if you want to get out of the package to dodge hate you need a ton of SB cards to bring in.
With Ramunap Ruins, you could get by with a minimalist package as small as: 1 Ruins, some Life From the Loam and maybe some Traverse the Ulvenwald or Knight of the Reliquary. Maybe you play 1-2 Seismic Assault or Molten Vortex. With this setup, the Loams are your LD package probably and a slight inevitability boost. The land burn isn't at all Plan A, its Plan B or C, but all it costs you is the slots for Loam itself and some sub-optimal lands. You still have room for 30 spells doing something else if you were going to play some number of Traverses or Knights regardless.
The answer is Thoughtseize is not an answer, it is resource destruction. It is preemptively used to remove the opponent's best card against you. Is Stone Rain a threat, an answer or something else? Unless the Stone Rain is used on a manland, it is something else.
You can play Thoughtseize as a preemptive answer, you can also play it to remove the opponent's answers, and to determine the contents of their hand. All for the low, low price of one mana of tempo loss and 2 life.
It may surprise you to learn not everyone reads the articles you write within hours of them being posted.
Having read your article now, you did a good job fleshing out the points many people have been making in this thread.
If Deathshadow becomes any more dominant that it is, I believe the most likely (and best) thing Wizards could do for the format to help color diversity and tone down Deathshadow would be to ban Thoughtseize.
If Deathshadow becomes less dominant we'd have to see what the new metagame looks like.
If we have the status quo, I still think banning Thoughtseize achieves more of Wizards' goals less painfully and more elegantly than the risk associated with SFM or JTMS unbanning.
Thoughtseize is not an answer card. Thoughtseize is a preemptive destruction of potential resources. It is B, pay 2 life, review your hand and discard whichever non-land resource I can't answer. Thoughtseize is why you can run fewer answers.
Thoughseize is clearly the best sorcery or instant in the format right? Really nothing else comes close, and Inquisition isn't too far down the list. That doesn't mean it should be banned, but when we can't have good mana disruption or counterspells better than Mana Leak, having all of the best disruption be hand destruction at least begs the question. And really I am thinking about what Wizards said about color diversity. It is definitely fighting uphill to be deckbuilding in Modern and be doing something other than being very linear/fast or playing hand destruction.
It used to be, decks played hand destruction Duress to clear the path through counter walls, it was there to fight blue. Now our hand destruction is so good, it obviates the need for blue entirely. We just Thoughtseize and proceed with our gameplan rather than hold up mana with counterspells. It is a lot less interesting gameplay than manuevering the game to resolve key spells used to be.
Of course there are risks. Thoughtseize is used in bigger formats to address combo, but combo in Modern is already held under pretty tight wraps. I don't think we need Thoughtseize for combo.
An alternative would be to make card filtering/selection better (Preordain unban) which many here advocate for, and while I agree Preordain wouldn't break the format, I suspect banning Thoughtseize at the end of the day would be more interesting and make a better format.
A different interpretation of his quote could be some colors are too good. Would anyone be completely shocked to see Thoughtseize banned? I wouldn't.
Pretty high level analysis, but it has a decklist to consider.
What I am saying is Izzet's criteria for whether a card will see play or not may be different than the criteria used by others.
My criteria is, should I keep track of new cards for deck building purposes going forward. Izzet's is quite a bit different than that.
I look at new sets through the lens of "what do I need to remember now exists in the format going forward" rather than "will it be in top decks within the next three months" which are a lot different standards.
With only one Ghost Quarter and no Zombie Infestation, Raven's Crime or Molten Vortex/Seismic Assault, are the cycling lands enough payoff for bothering with Life from the Loam in the first place?
The deck as presented seems too durdley to me, you draw a ton of cards and fill your graveyard fast, but the net gain seems to mostly be large Countryside Crushers, which is nice, but there are a lot of answers to Crusher.