I took the draft 3-0 in a pretty convincing fashion especially winning 2 games on a mull to 5 and only loosing one game because I literally saw all 17 of my lands.
In the RG match street wraith is your most valuable tool. The best way to bait out a relic pop is to fill your bin with as many LD dudes as possible and continue to feed the relic with your most expensive cyclers (perferably with fetches and BW though). It is in this way, incase they draw a second relic, you must only crack your fetches if you absolutely have to. If you have 2 LD guys in the yard and you go for a living end you froce them to pop the relic. Then once that ability is resolved you dump as many dudes into the bin as possible which is why street wraith is your last to cycle card in this MU. If you've done this on the end of their turn you can usually apply enough of a clock and put out enough disruption that they can no longer win.
In games 2&3 things become a little easier as you have access to ingot chewer. It is critical not to play him until they have had their turn 2, as a good RG tron player will try to bait you out using his less valuable artifact first. (with the excpetion of a mulligan into an egg on the play) Be sure to specify sacrifice ability of evoke goes on the stack first and then the artifact destruction one. This way you get to keep chewy in face of a relic. The overall strategy is the same here but you should now have 11+ LD spells (fulminator mage, Beast Within, Avalanche Riders) and 4 chewy making it tonnes easier.
It's a very difficult matchup that revolves around them having/not having the relic.
Thanks for explaining, I really didn't understand that to well, but now I do. Perhaps each pack has a unique identifying seed (pseudo random but not pre-determined, like how it is irl) and the handling of these seeds has become difficult. Plus there were still plenty of crashes in GTC and RTR too. Unless we're sure the client treats every pack the same, in which case I'm totally wrong.
Perhaps it has more to do with increasing complexity of match histories and growing game numbers which very large tournaments would contribute heavily to, especially considering that paper magic has forgone ELO and that MTGO has a much more inbred match history with 3 million or more sanctioned tournaments than on paper. They've black-boxed so much of MTGO it's super difficult to tell what might be the problem.
For things like crypt rat can't you use the option 'always yeild to this ability'? This way your opponent will only waste his clock trying to stuff like that.
Much like the 9999th eager cadet problem I think this problem is linked with the number of unopened packs on MTGO. I have no idea how that code works so bear with me while I make wildly uneducated guesses.
With daily events gone the amount of packs in existance on mtgo will greatly diminish because:
**Assuming a conversion of 1 pack = 4 tix
Constructed consumes 48 tix and produces 12 packs for a net 0 consumption.
Drafts (swiss and 8-4's) consume 24 packs and 16 tix while producing 12 packs, for a net consumption of 16 packs, 17 on 4-3-2-2's.
6 pack Sealed events consume 48 packs and 16 tix while producing 36 packs for a net consumption of 16 packs.
4 pack Sealed events consume 32 packs and 16 tix while producing 18 for a net consumption of 18 packs!
Two ticket tuesdays consume 64 tickets and produce 18 packs for a net creation of 2 packs.
I forget the payout on dailies but they were a net creation of packs.
This means the only way remaining to create packs is two ticket tuesdays and QP 8-4's. I think the MTGO server can't/couldn't handle the amount of packs that were/are in circulation and the creation and assignment of new packs at the compeltion of ques caused bugs server side. The amount of and which packs people had might also explain why some people were able and other un able to connect again easily. I think getting rid of the dailies is a quick solution to this problem until they can fix it a la eager cadet.
In order of difficulty to pilot I would rank decks like this:
Affinity (Yes, harder than meleria pod)
Meleria Pod
Living End
UWR
Scapeshift (Yes, harder than Kiki-Pod)
Kiki-Pod
BG Rock
Jund
Mono-U Tron
GR Tron
GW Hatebears
UR Twin
Merfolk
The reason affinity is so hard to pilot is the difficulty in figuring out how to deal lethal in the face of a trick and knowing all the ins and outs of the synergies of the deck. Here is an above average difficulty of a puzzle affinity must solve to figure out how to deal lethal:
Your oppnent is at 16 life and 1 Infect and you are at 2
The game up to this point:
Last turn you Thoughtseized a Hurkyl's Recall over a vapor snag last turn after he tapped out to cast Master of Waves. On his turn he thinks casts another Master of Waves and gets in for beats leaving you at 2. Lucky you, you've topdecked the plating. Now how do you kill him?
That was a real game state my friend played at a GP, he couldn't figure it out in time and went top 64 instead of 32. All of the decks in modern take some amount of skill to pilot optimally but I feel merfolk offers the least decisions to differentiate good players from great players.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to win but for many players though they want to win a cool and quirky way, that probably looks really bad to you, you shouldn't punish them so harshly for this. By casting armageddon and/or countering spells (like in the situations you described) you get to do your thing and the other players don't get to do theirs. While they may complain about you playing an overpowered deck what they're really complaining about is that they feel like they didn't get a fair chance to win because you prevented them from doing so.
Put yourself in their shoes. This casual's games of magic usually go on for 10+ turns and they enjoy the back and forth of big creatures and the slow assembly of complex combos. You invite him to play magic and he is just starting to get up to speed after you killed some of his accelerants and next turn he is finally going to cast a big hay maker and then you armageddon. You've left yourself with plenty of mana from rocks and are ready to play spells and now he can't do anything until turns after he is dead. In his eyes you just cast a spell that read 3W -Sorcery Win the Game. Of course there are ways to play around it and interact with it but he likely doesn't have access to them or know they even exist. The same is true for fast combo, he is just starting to build and board presence and oops, he's dead. He never even saw it comming, to him nothing about that game was fun, there was no tension. Just oops, you're dead. Taking your counterspell into reanimate effect example. He never got to cast one of his favorite spells and then he is beaten ruthlessly with it. He seems a little sore for this one but it is still understandable.
My advice to try and appeal to a casual magic player while still having a competitive edge is: Build extremely obvious combo decks that players can interact with so players know what is coming turns in advance (like you're trying to build a deathstar). In EDH the rule of thumb is let players have their turn 6. Instead of counterspells use redirect effects or mind control effects; in actuality you'll get more value out of them in casual games anyway (2 for 1's ahoy) and your opponent will actually feel like he did something and there was some interaction. Plus he feels like if he can find a naturalize effect he can get his dude back. Here there is tension and interaction. Plus with the redirect effects there are far more 'holy **** that just happened' and 'that was awesome' moments that counterspell and armageddonnever produce. Avoid mass land destruction like the plague (wasteland, tec edge, and encroaching wastes are okay) and use spot removal sparringly.
Remeber that if you bring to the table a deck that a casual person has no way of interacting with (storm, armageddon, flash-hulk, counterspells.dec, etc) the casual will always complain about losing.
In summary to prevent whining THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is to make sure they felt like they had a fair shake at winning the game by making the game feel close. If they feel like they were unable to do anything they are obviously going to complain.
Has anyone considered Abrupt Decay out of the sideboard? Hits Deathrite, Scooze, Rest in Peace, Relic etc. Pretty much anything that people might bring in to hate on yards. It's not a creature like Ingot Chewer or Shriekmaw, but it's obviously a powerful card. I haven't seen it in any lists, but I'm building this deck right now and I have a couple Decays sitting around just looking for a home.
The problem is you might cascade into it, which is really bad for consistency. If you are looking for that kind of effect max out your beast withins. Otherwise some combination of sudden death, dismember, shriekmaw, or korsan grip will have to do.
I've never had a problem against affinity it seems like it is 60-40 pre board and 70-30 post. In the spots where they were too fast for LE to save the day anger of the gods simply wouldn't have helped either. I practically haven't tested kiki-pod but against meleria pod having a shriekmaw on 2 with disruption on 3 or if I have a faerie macabre with a LE it feels pretty even. To me it seems like anger seems much worse than macabre or shriekmaw, which is what it would replace.
Wouldn't a fourth demonic dread + macabre be better? The whole point of the deck is casting a wrath on 3/4 that also reanimates your guys. I'm also not sure what match up you would actually want these either, even against decks with sac outlets you can already safely cast LE when they don't have an outlet and even when they have it they would just sac their board to anger anyway. The only time I can see this being better than the tools we have already is in a post LE scenario where they clogged the board. Even then casting fatties/shrieknaw seems just as effective. Against ooze drs bob we already wipe them with LE.
It has a curve is very awkward (4drops.dec) it lacks good enablers but with the right draws can aggro out an oppnent.This list is pretty close to magicmerl's but I tried to trim out some of the higher drops and double colors to increase consistency.
The curve is a lot better and you get to run some real power like abhorrent overlord and the asp, you get solid sideboard cards like shredding winds, another sealock monster or aqueous form, march of the returned, and rescue from the underworld (which is gross with overlord and disciple and don't forget to fix your mana when you board). However you may run into mana issues but you have 5 sources of green, 9 blue, and 12 black though so you should be fine.
Given my poor track record with aggro and ability to get the colours I need in limited I would likely register the second list.
I agree with Joel's analysis except on one key point, the deck without lifegain in board, cannot beat burn. I felt everyone at GP antwerp was super under prepared and almost all of my opponents groaned after their thoughtseize's or IOK saw a hand that was filled with LE goodies. You could see it in their eyes and their hopeless demeanor they didn't pack hate.
Moving forward, I think that despite LE's amazing performance it still probably won't make up enough of the meta for people to justify packing a myriad of board hate, I mean we still didn't even break the Day 2 - 5% mark to be classified as Proven.
1 Triton Fortune Hunter
1 Battlewise Hoplite
2 Omen Speaker
2 Nimbus Naiad
2 Thassa's Emissary
1 Hopeful Edion
1 Shipbreaker Kraken
2 Batlewise Valor
1 God's Willing
1 Ordeal of Heliod
1 Heliod's Chosen
1 Sea God's Revenge
1 Divine Verdict
1 Griptide
1 Voyage's End
7 Plains
I took the draft 3-0 in a pretty convincing fashion especially winning 2 games on a mull to 5 and only loosing one game because I literally saw all 17 of my lands.
In games 2&3 things become a little easier as you have access to ingot chewer. It is critical not to play him until they have had their turn 2, as a good RG tron player will try to bait you out using his less valuable artifact first. (with the excpetion of a mulligan into an egg on the play) Be sure to specify sacrifice ability of evoke goes on the stack first and then the artifact destruction one. This way you get to keep chewy in face of a relic. The overall strategy is the same here but you should now have 11+ LD spells (fulminator mage, Beast Within, Avalanche Riders) and 4 chewy making it tonnes easier.
It's a very difficult matchup that revolves around them having/not having the relic.
Perhaps it has more to do with increasing complexity of match histories and growing game numbers which very large tournaments would contribute heavily to, especially considering that paper magic has forgone ELO and that MTGO has a much more inbred match history with 3 million or more sanctioned tournaments than on paper. They've black-boxed so much of MTGO it's super difficult to tell what might be the problem.
With daily events gone the amount of packs in existance on mtgo will greatly diminish because:
**Assuming a conversion of 1 pack = 4 tix
This means the only way remaining to create packs is two ticket tuesdays and QP 8-4's. I think the MTGO server can't/couldn't handle the amount of packs that were/are in circulation and the creation and assignment of new packs at the compeltion of ques caused bugs server side. The amount of and which packs people had might also explain why some people were able and other un able to connect again easily. I think getting rid of the dailies is a quick solution to this problem until they can fix it a la eager cadet.
The reason affinity is so hard to pilot is the difficulty in figuring out how to deal lethal in the face of a trick and knowing all the ins and outs of the synergies of the deck. Here is an above average difficulty of a puzzle affinity must solve to figure out how to deal lethal:
Your oppnent is at 16 life and 1 Infect and you are at 2
Your Hand: Cranial Plating Mox Opal
Your Board:
1 Mox Opal
1 Springleaf Drum
1 Vault Skirge
2 Etched Champion
1 Signal Pest
3 Glimmer Void
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
Your oppnent's board:
11 2/1 Illusion tokens
1 Master of Waves
1 Lord of Atlantis
1 Merfolk Rejery
1 Aether Vial on 3
Untapped Island and Mutavault. He has one card in hand (vapor snag).
The game up to this point:
Last turn you Thoughtseized a Hurkyl's Recall over a vapor snag last turn after he tapped out to cast Master of Waves. On his turn he thinks casts another Master of Waves and gets in for beats leaving you at 2. Lucky you, you've topdecked the plating. Now how do you kill him?
Actually try to figure it out first.
Option two: he Vapor Snags Signal Pest pre-combat and you use Spring Leaf Drum to activate Blinkmoth Nexus then attach Cranial Plating to Inkmoth Nexus
Option three: He Vapor Snag's the Inkmoth nexus before damage and you simply activate Blinkmoth Nexus.
That was a real game state my friend played at a GP, he couldn't figure it out in time and went top 64 instead of 32. All of the decks in modern take some amount of skill to pilot optimally but I feel merfolk offers the least decisions to differentiate good players from great players.
Put yourself in their shoes. This casual's games of magic usually go on for 10+ turns and they enjoy the back and forth of big creatures and the slow assembly of complex combos. You invite him to play magic and he is just starting to get up to speed after you killed some of his accelerants and next turn he is finally going to cast a big hay maker and then you armageddon. You've left yourself with plenty of mana from rocks and are ready to play spells and now he can't do anything until turns after he is dead. In his eyes you just cast a spell that read 3W -Sorcery Win the Game. Of course there are ways to play around it and interact with it but he likely doesn't have access to them or know they even exist. The same is true for fast combo, he is just starting to build and board presence and oops, he's dead. He never even saw it comming, to him nothing about that game was fun, there was no tension. Just oops, you're dead. Taking your counterspell into reanimate effect example. He never got to cast one of his favorite spells and then he is beaten ruthlessly with it. He seems a little sore for this one but it is still understandable.
My advice to try and appeal to a casual magic player while still having a competitive edge is: Build extremely obvious combo decks that players can interact with so players know what is coming turns in advance (like you're trying to build a deathstar). In EDH the rule of thumb is let players have their turn 6. Instead of counterspells use redirect effects or mind control effects; in actuality you'll get more value out of them in casual games anyway (2 for 1's ahoy) and your opponent will actually feel like he did something and there was some interaction. Plus he feels like if he can find a naturalize effect he can get his dude back. Here there is tension and interaction. Plus with the redirect effects there are far more 'holy **** that just happened' and 'that was awesome' moments that counterspell and armageddon never produce. Avoid mass land destruction like the plague (wasteland, tec edge, and encroaching wastes are okay) and use spot removal sparringly.
Remeber that if you bring to the table a deck that a casual person has no way of interacting with (storm, armageddon, flash-hulk, counterspells.dec, etc) the casual will always complain about losing.
In summary to prevent whining THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is to make sure they felt like they had a fair shake at winning the game by making the game feel close. If they feel like they were unable to do anything they are obviously going to complain.
Eric Levine from CFB wrote a really good article on this a while back here:
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/raging-levine-this-is-the-end-of-your-land/
(skip to about 1/3 down)
The problem is you might cascade into it, which is really bad for consistency. If you are looking for that kind of effect max out your beast withins. Otherwise some combination of sudden death, dismember, shriekmaw, or korsan grip will have to do.
1 Soldier of the Pantheon
1 Arena Athlete
1 Yoked Ox
1 Traveling Philosopher
1 Leonin Snarecaster
1 Cavalry Pegasus
1 Wingsteed Rider
1 Ephara's Warden
1 Minotaur Skullcleaver
2 Ill-Tempered Cyclops
1 Borderland Minotaur
1 Anax and Cymede
1 Akronian Hoplite
1 Heliod's Emissary
1 Spearpoint Oread
1 Opaline Unicorn
1 Chosen by Heliod
1 Ordeal of Heliod
1 Feather Feet Sandals
Removal (3)
1 Ray of Dissolution
1 Spear of Heliod
1 Lightning Strike
Land (17)
8 Plains
9 Mountain
1 cc
2 cccccssss
3 cccccss
4 ccccc
5
6 b
7 b
It has a curve is very awkward (4drops.dec) it lacks good enablers but with the right draws can aggro out an oppnent.This list is pretty close to magicmerl's but I tried to trim out some of the higher drops and double colors to increase consistency.
I would also give some thought to:
1 Vaporkin
1 Breaching Hippocamp
1 Sealock Monster
1 Benthic Giant
1 Fleshmad Steed
1 Blood-Toll Harpy
1 Disciple of Phenax
1 Abhorrent Overlord
1 Nessian Asp
1 Horizon Chimera
2 Shipwreck Singer
1 Opaline Unicorn
1 Burnished Hart
1 Akroan Horse
1 Aqueous Form
1 Boon of Erebos
1 Feral invocation
Removal (4)
1 Griptide
1 Lash of the Whip
1 Sip of Hemlock
1 Time to feed
Land (18)
1 Unkown Shores
2 Forest
6 Island
9 Swamp
1 ss
2 cccc
3 cccss
4 ccccs
5 ccs
6 cs
7 c
The curve is a lot better and you get to run some real power like abhorrent overlord and the asp, you get solid sideboard cards like shredding winds, another sealock monster or aqueous form, march of the returned, and rescue from the underworld (which is gross with overlord and disciple and don't forget to fix your mana when you board). However you may run into mana issues but you have 5 sources of green, 9 blue, and 12 black though so you should be fine.
Given my poor track record with aggro and ability to get the colours I need in limited I would likely register the second list.
Moving forward, I think that despite LE's amazing performance it still probably won't make up enough of the meta for people to justify packing a myriad of board hate, I mean we still didn't even break the Day 2 - 5% mark to be classified as Proven.
Because I despise force-memnite piles.