In other words, if Shocks, Fetches, Painlands, Taplnds, Filerlands and all those were reprinted as commons and uncommons would MTG be better off?
Personally I believe so. I think rare lands are an expensive and unnecessary entry barrier for players wishing to play competitively and I see no reason Misty Rainforest or Godless Shrine couldn't be uncommons and Caves of Koilos couldn't be a common.
Abundant mana fixing would hopefully improve sanctioned constructed events' deck variety as well as player variety and make standard and modern MUCH more accessible and give casual players a lot more to work with.
Green as a color is the icon of commander because it's the only format where if your deck doesn't have green in it then it's underpowered. Not saying non-green decks aren't playable, it's just that having green in your deck is such a disgusting advantage in this format it can be rather hard to keep up.
watching floch play was fantastic, I never would've thought that Draw-Go would ever win a standard tournament. It also made me chuckle a bit every time he cast Divination just to hit a land drop, and I never saw the Quicken tech before, that's awesome.
Can anyone think of a way to win the game with Jalira, Master Polymorphist if there's only one non-legendary creature in your deck to morph into? I was thinking of Mono-U legends the deck, but I have no idea what my one polymorph target would be.
So My playgroup uses a point system that penalizes infinite loops and mass LD, but I'd like to play Selvala and have a way to win the game that doesn't involve attacking, are there any other ways to kill people or end the game in G/W outside of Combo/Stax/Swinging? The closest thing I can think of is something like life gain + Hurricane
I don't want half-hearted guidelines and suggestions, I want a definitive CONCRETE set of riles to play by because I'm done with people being whiny little crybabies over my deck choices.
You don't like playing vs a fast combo deck? Fine, but y'know what? The reason I play fast combo is because I don't like your annoyingly slow-rolly control durdle-tron.dec that could randomly decide to drop terastodon or ashen rider and start bounce/reanimating it to F me out of my landbase, so boo fricking hoo learn to deal with it. I'm sick of other people getting angry and threatening excommunication every time I combo out and I'm sick of getting pissed off about losing with a subpar deck i built just to appease my playgroup.
I'm DONE. From now on I'll play what the hell I like and if you can't handle it, suck it up and sit there quietly and I'll afford you the same treatment when I'm the one losing.
i think i run sol rings in most of my decks (but i dont own so many of 'em), and i dont think the t1 sol ring comes up all that often. i mean honestly, really not often at all. its 1 card of 100, meaning around a 12.5% chance i'll actually get it. that and pulling the t1 sol ring really means hate my way, innit?
ps - i think surely burgeoning should be more broken than exploration? t1 burgeoning means all 3-4 lands in hand in play by the time its my 2nd turn, right?
I see Sol Ring a lot (not T1 though because of our league points) and occasionally Ancient Tomb. I also revised that list because I'be been misplaying the card. I thought you could play a land EACH turn, like a Burgeoning which didn't require your opponent playing a land. Guess I should rethink it in my deck.
exploration is still quite disgusting, it simply requires more build-around and more play-around, but going t1 land explo land into turn 2 land, kodamas reach land is quite degenerate.
So I play at two stores, one that can be super competitive, and one that is basically not competitive at all.
Now I put a lot of effort into my cardpool, I went out of my way to acquire one of every dual, shock and fetch, one of each of all the best cards in the format, but there's really no challenge in using that cardpool at the less competitive store. People make decks that have zero removal, zero answers in general, and I usually win the game just because no one bothers me outside of trying to whack down the redwood tree that is my 40 starting life
In order to challenge myself, and stop people from telling me the only reason I win games is because I have expensive OP cards, I figured I'd build a deck made of nothing but commons/uncommons (Except the general) and see just how much damage one can do to the meta with such a deck.
The question is, what do you guys think is the prime strategy for running a deck of all commons/uncommons. Running someone voltron-y or toolbox-y like Olivia Voldaren seems sort of counterproductive because then the deck just kills you with the general and the other cards are irrelevant. I was thinking of Athreos synergy/combo, because I still get access to cards like Martyr's Cause which could be used to infinite combo, although I think most of the best enablers are rare or higher.
I don't see it as very unreasonable. Their logic behind it is that, if they offered refunds after someone has already finished the game, then someone could buy the game, play it through, and demand a refund. I'm not sure many game companies would offer a refund at all after you've bought and opened/played the game. I understand why you aren't happy about it, but I'm not seeing the injustice here.
Diablo 3 isn't a game you "finish" and the very idea of that is completely counter to what an ARPG is. If you've never played Diablo 2 you may not understand, but I played literally hundreds of hours, perhaps a thousand of Diablo 2 because the combat was fun, risky, the builds were unique and interesting and the amount of creativity you were afforded was near limitless. Diablo 3 has none of these features, the very first reply was a suggestion that I continue to play their adventure mode and max out my characters, which is COMPLETELY CONTRARY TO THEIR ARGUMENT THAT I "FINISHED" DIABLO 3. Finished in my mind means the contents of the game has been fully explored and exhausted. I've never "Finished" Skyrim, I've never "Finished" Starcraft BroodWars, I've never "Finished" Diablo 2, because that generally doesn't happen with games like that.
I am unhappy with the severely lackluster grindfest that is Diablo 3 and would like a refund in blizzard store credit or an exchange in either Hearthstone packs or for Starcraft 2.
Greetings,
Sorry to hear that you are not enjoying Diablo 3. When it comes to refunding Diablo, you are within the time frame but it looks like you have already beaten the entire game, including Act 5 by killing Malthael so we aren't able to offer you a refund. I know that may not be the answer that you were hoping for but you may get a lot more enjoyment out of the game once you are at max level doing rifts and bounties. I hope that you have a great week.
Beating the game does not mean i have even touched the entirety of the content, my ONE high level character is level 52, isn't maxed. hasnt got any paragon whatevers and I have absolutely no intention of getting there, the game is a grind. It's not as though I've beaten the game with every class and maxed them all out. I'm sorry but your reasoning is unacceptable, "you've beaten the game once therefore you can't return it" doesn't make any sense when Diablo 3 is a game that was never MEANT to be beaten just once, Diablo 2 is a testament to that, and the reason the game was successful for 20 years was due entirely to the fact that it was FUN TO REPLAY. Diablo 3 is NOT. And by the way, NO OTHER COMPANY I HAVE EVER HEARD OF HAS EVER BLOCKED A REFUND BASED ON GAME COMPLETION! In fact few companies would even track that, and I do not accept that as a reasonable determination of whether or not I am allowed a refund.
If you can't provide me with even the baseline level of acceptable customer service, what reason do I have to continue buying or using any blizzard product?
Now on the assumption that perhaps blizzard is a bit more reasonable, understand that I initially only wanted an exchange, I don't understand the issue, when I've already given you 60$, why can't I simply exchange it for another blizzard product or for store credit if I'm unhappy, this did not need to be a big production..
I understand you are unhappy with our refund policies, and I wish there was more I could do for you here, but customer support will not be able to provide a refund in this situation. Keep in mind that any refund would be an exception, and there are limits to what we can make exceptions for.
Regards,
Random Customer Service Dude #2
Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment
WOW, so not only can I not return D3 within the time limit provided, but you openly admit to spying on my game progress and using it as an excuse to deny a refund? screw you blizzard...
are proxies allowed? if so get as many people as you can to carbon copy the dudes deck and see how he likes it. Otherwise running cards that get rid of cards from deck like Extract or Praetor's Grasp is an option. Talking to the TO and either swapping the format to multiplayer (where emmy is banned and politics matter) or house banning emmy is probably your best bet.
Are your only demons Harvester of Souls and Rune-scarred Demon? That seems like too few. I mean, it's great to sac the team to grab Harvester, recur with Shirei, then sac again to draw 6 cards and tutor any card, but after that you run out of things to tutor for. Another 2-3 Demons can let you keep up this incremental advantage loop for longer.
You also might want some things to protect Shirei with, like Darksteel Plate. One of the biggest disadvantages Shirei decks have is that board wipes tend to be devastating for the deck, as they take out Shirei as well and then you can't recur your guys.
The deck is actually pretty much supposed to win the game when the apostles go off with Shirei on board, if it doesn't, my game is basically over, it's a one-shot combo deck. The reason there are no other demons is because actually having demons isn;t important, Harvester is just a tutorable engine, and runescarred is just a tutorable tutor for a wincon, if there are any other demons that can replicate these effects I would gladly add them, but generally the advantage they generate has to be immediate and game-winning. I was originally running Abhorrent Overlord to combo out with Deathmantle, Phyrexian Altar and Blasting Station, but Gray Merchant proved to be far better at endng games when you have 42+ devotion on the table Also, Shirei actually isn't essential to the game plan, she just makes things easier if she sticks.
What exactly is your desired combo here?
The deck is the combo. You can win either by chaining sacrifices with Blood Artist or Bitter Ordeal and recycling your deck over and over or just plopping all of your apostles on the field in one go and casting Gray Merchant. I'm starting to realize that the list doesn't actually look like much, you only really see how crazy it is when it plays.
here's my last fishbowl:
turn 1 apostle
turn 2 two apostles
turn 3 pawn of ulamog
turn 4 2 apostles nim deathmantle
turn 5 vamp tutor for apostle
turn 6 play apostle, sac em for runescarred demon who gets thrumming stone, get 6 eldrazi spawn
Turn 7 sac 6 spawn, play thrumming stone, then apostle (topdeck go), hit 2 apostles off ripple, ripple 2 more times, repeat until deck empty of apostles, 3 black mana available, sac 6 apostles to go find harvester of souls
get 6 spawn
sac 18 dudes, fail to find 3 demons, draw 18 cards
get 18 more spawn
sac off all my spawn for 24 colorless
cast blasting station
sac runescarred demon, catch on deathmantle, tutor for Phyrexian Altar and cast it, 14 colorless floating, draw a card, sac 12 apostles, draw 12 cards and get 12 black mana, cast rise of the dark realms, 42 apostles all ETB all triggering blasting station, untap on each trigger to deal 42 damage to someone, draw out my deck down to 1 card, cast living death, bring back all the apostles, cast Bitter Ordeal and Gray Merchant of Asphodel for good measure
and that's basically the deck, that was a pretty slow start but not bad
Extractor Demon is a Demon that's also a win condition when tons of Apostles start to die.
Also, Dark Prophecy seems risky since the effect isn't optional.
As for your decklist, you need to type a number in front of the cards that aren't displaying. Cards without numbers in front of them don't appear in the deckbox.
And since green is the color of creature tutoring, you can still run Shirei in it. Redundancy never hurts.
---
Just my two cents.
The original general was going to be Damia, Sage of Stone so I could work in Bloodbond March, the blue for Sphinx of Chimes and run Fecundity over Dark Prophecy, but mono black is what was most convenient for my card pool. Prophecy is risky but there are ways to mitigate it. I thought Sadistic Hypnotist and Kozy would be enough, but I think i might swap Sad Hippy for Mindslicer since i can just dump my whole hand at once if need be. Extractor Demon might be worth including although I think I'd be using it on myself more often than my opponents.
Are your only demons Harvester of Souls and Rune-scarred Demon? That seems like too few. I mean, it's great to sac the team to grab Harvester, recur with Shirei, then sac again to draw 6 cards and tutor any card, but after that you run out of things to tutor for. Another 2-3 Demons can let you keep up this incremental advantage loop for longer.
You also might want some things to protect Shirei with, like Darksteel Plate. One of the biggest disadvantages Shirei decks have is that board wipes tend to be devastating for the deck, as they take out Shirei as well and then you can't recur your guys.
The deck is actually pretty much supposed to win the game when the apostles go off with Shirei on board, if it doesn't, my game is basically over, it's a one-shot combo deck. The reason there are no other demons is because actually having demons isn;t important, Harvester is just a tutorable engine, and runescarred is just a tutorable tutor for a wincon, if there are any other demons that can replicate these effects I would gladly add them, but generally the advantage they generate has to be immediate and game-winning. I was originally running Abhorrent Overlord to combo out with Deathmantle, Phyrexian Altar and Blasting Station, but Gray Merchant proved to be far better at endng games when you have 42+ devotion on the table Also, Shirei actually isn't essential to the game plan, she just makes things easier if she sticks.
Why is this called Mono-Black Azusa when Shirei is your general?
Because the base concept is more or less the same, although the cards are very different. Azusa wants to vomit her entire landbase onto the table and windmill slam a giant horde of beats to kill you all at once. Shirei replaces lands with Shadowborn Apostle, and vomits out as many as she can as quickly as possible in order to combo out the table using Gray Merchant of Asphodel loops, Exile their library with Bitter Ordeal or Blood Artist for infinite damage.
Note that I play in a competitive meta a lot of the time, which is why the deck is marked competitive because that's what I'm up against. I honestly don't find this to be remotely competitive but it is rather hilarious.
The deck isn't totally optimized yet, there are a few card choices that are a bit iffy like Skullclamp since it might actually be too slow for the deck to actually get good use out of. I also need a better reanimation engine than Nim Deathmantle but it works for now at least, I just need something I can use to repeatedly sac loop creatures with. The deck is probably a bit fragile for my meta at the moment but it was mostly intended to be a fun BS silly combo deck.
How the Deck Works
The simplest and slowest line of play in this deck is to get out Shirei and 6 Apostles, sac the Apostles to get Harvester of Souls, they come back on end step, then on the next turn you sac them again and get Rune-Scarred Demon, tutor for Thrumming Stone, cast Thrumming Stone and another Apostle to dump your deck full of apostles onto the table, get as close as you can to stacking your deck without actually doing so, sac 6 apostles, grab 6 cards, one of which is hopefully Phyrexian Altar or Nykthos, go mana crazy and chain through your deck to win the game.
EDIT: for some reason my dividers have disappeared in the deck box, if you quote my post you'll notice I had everything sorted by type and numbered, not sure why it isn't showing...
In other words, if Shocks, Fetches, Painlands, Taplnds, Filerlands and all those were reprinted as commons and uncommons would MTG be better off?
Personally I believe so. I think rare lands are an expensive and unnecessary entry barrier for players wishing to play competitively and I see no reason Misty Rainforest or Godless Shrine couldn't be uncommons and Caves of Koilos couldn't be a common.
Abundant mana fixing would hopefully improve sanctioned constructed events' deck variety as well as player variety and make standard and modern MUCH more accessible and give casual players a lot more to work with.
What do you guys think?
Can anyone think of a way to win the game with Jalira, Master Polymorphist if there's only one non-legendary creature in your deck to morph into? I was thinking of Mono-U legends the deck, but I have no idea what my one polymorph target would be.
So My playgroup uses a point system that penalizes infinite loops and mass LD, but I'd like to play Selvala and have a way to win the game that doesn't involve attacking, are there any other ways to kill people or end the game in G/W outside of Combo/Stax/Swinging? The closest thing I can think of is something like life gain + Hurricane
That's fairly unorthodox for me
You don't like playing vs a fast combo deck? Fine, but y'know what? The reason I play fast combo is because I don't like your annoyingly slow-rolly control durdle-tron.dec that could randomly decide to drop terastodon or ashen rider and start bounce/reanimating it to F me out of my landbase, so boo fricking hoo learn to deal with it. I'm sick of other people getting angry and threatening excommunication every time I combo out and I'm sick of getting pissed off about losing with a subpar deck i built just to appease my playgroup.
I'm DONE. From now on I'll play what the hell I like and if you can't handle it, suck it up and sit there quietly and I'll afford you the same treatment when I'm the one losing.
exploration is still quite disgusting, it simply requires more build-around and more play-around, but going t1 land explo land into turn 2 land, kodamas reach land is quite degenerate.
So I play at two stores, one that can be super competitive, and one that is basically not competitive at all.
Now I put a lot of effort into my cardpool, I went out of my way to acquire one of every dual, shock and fetch, one of each of all the best cards in the format, but there's really no challenge in using that cardpool at the less competitive store. People make decks that have zero removal, zero answers in general, and I usually win the game just because no one bothers me outside of trying to whack down the redwood tree that is my 40 starting life
In order to challenge myself, and stop people from telling me the only reason I win games is because I have expensive OP cards, I figured I'd build a deck made of nothing but commons/uncommons (Except the general) and see just how much damage one can do to the meta with such a deck.
The question is, what do you guys think is the prime strategy for running a deck of all commons/uncommons. Running someone voltron-y or toolbox-y like Olivia Voldaren seems sort of counterproductive because then the deck just kills you with the general and the other cards are irrelevant. I was thinking of Athreos synergy/combo, because I still get access to cards like Martyr's Cause which could be used to infinite combo, although I think most of the best enablers are rare or higher.
Any suggestions?
Diablo 3 isn't a game you "finish" and the very idea of that is completely counter to what an ARPG is. If you've never played Diablo 2 you may not understand, but I played literally hundreds of hours, perhaps a thousand of Diablo 2 because the combat was fun, risky, the builds were unique and interesting and the amount of creativity you were afforded was near limitless. Diablo 3 has none of these features, the very first reply was a suggestion that I continue to play their adventure mode and max out my characters, which is COMPLETELY CONTRARY TO THEIR ARGUMENT THAT I "FINISHED" DIABLO 3. Finished in my mind means the contents of the game has been fully explored and exhausted. I've never "Finished" Skyrim, I've never "Finished" Starcraft BroodWars, I've never "Finished" Diablo 2, because that generally doesn't happen with games like that.
WOW, so not only can I not return D3 within the time limit provided, but you openly admit to spying on my game progress and using it as an excuse to deny a refund? screw you blizzard...
The deck is the combo. You can win either by chaining sacrifices with Blood Artist or Bitter Ordeal and recycling your deck over and over or just plopping all of your apostles on the field in one go and casting Gray Merchant. I'm starting to realize that the list doesn't actually look like much, you only really see how crazy it is when it plays.
here's my last fishbowl:
turn 1 apostle
turn 2 two apostles
turn 3 pawn of ulamog
turn 4 2 apostles nim deathmantle
turn 5 vamp tutor for apostle
turn 6 play apostle, sac em for runescarred demon who gets thrumming stone, get 6 eldrazi spawn
Turn 7 sac 6 spawn, play thrumming stone, then apostle (topdeck go), hit 2 apostles off ripple, ripple 2 more times, repeat until deck empty of apostles, 3 black mana available, sac 6 apostles to go find harvester of souls
get 6 spawn
sac 18 dudes, fail to find 3 demons, draw 18 cards
get 18 more spawn
sac off all my spawn for 24 colorless
cast blasting station
sac runescarred demon, catch on deathmantle, tutor for Phyrexian Altar and cast it, 14 colorless floating, draw a card, sac 12 apostles, draw 12 cards and get 12 black mana, cast rise of the dark realms, 42 apostles all ETB all triggering blasting station, untap on each trigger to deal 42 damage to someone, draw out my deck down to 1 card, cast living death, bring back all the apostles, cast Bitter Ordeal and Gray Merchant of Asphodel for good measure
and that's basically the deck, that was a pretty slow start but not bad
The original general was going to be Damia, Sage of Stone so I could work in Bloodbond March, the blue for Sphinx of Chimes and run Fecundity over Dark Prophecy, but mono black is what was most convenient for my card pool. Prophecy is risky but there are ways to mitigate it. I thought Sadistic Hypnotist and Kozy would be enough, but I think i might swap Sad Hippy for Mindslicer since i can just dump my whole hand at once if need be. Extractor Demon might be worth including although I think I'd be using it on myself more often than my opponents.
The deck is actually pretty much supposed to win the game when the apostles go off with Shirei on board, if it doesn't, my game is basically over, it's a one-shot combo deck. The reason there are no other demons is because actually having demons isn;t important, Harvester is just a tutorable engine, and runescarred is just a tutorable tutor for a wincon, if there are any other demons that can replicate these effects I would gladly add them, but generally the advantage they generate has to be immediate and game-winning. I was originally running Abhorrent Overlord to combo out with Deathmantle, Phyrexian Altar and Blasting Station, but Gray Merchant proved to be far better at endng games when you have 42+ devotion on the table Also, Shirei actually isn't essential to the game plan, she just makes things easier if she sticks.
Because the base concept is more or less the same, although the cards are very different. Azusa wants to vomit her entire landbase onto the table and windmill slam a giant horde of beats to kill you all at once. Shirei replaces lands with Shadowborn Apostle, and vomits out as many as she can as quickly as possible in order to combo out the table using Gray Merchant of Asphodel loops, Exile their library with Bitter Ordeal or Blood Artist for infinite damage.
Note that I play in a competitive meta a lot of the time, which is why the deck is marked competitive because that's what I'm up against. I honestly don't find this to be remotely competitive but it is rather hilarious.
01 Polluted Delta
01 Verdant Catacombs
01 Marsh Flats
01 Bloodstained Mire
01 Terramorphic Expanse
01 Evolving Wilds
01 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
01 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
01 Cabal Coffers
01 Bojuka Bog
01 Deserted Temple
01 Phyrexian Tower
01 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
01 Cavern of Souls
01 Thespian Stage
01 Thawing Glaciers
01 Reliquary Tower
17 Swamp
01 Thoughtpicker Witch
01 Viscera Seer
01 Blood Artist
01 Cadaverous Imp
01 Pawn of Ulamog
01 Sadistic Hypnotist
01 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
01 Harvester of Souls
01 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
01 Rune-Scarred Demon
01 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
01 Dark Prophecy
01 Vampiric Tutor
01 Demonic Tutor
01 Bitter Ordeal
01 Living Death
01 Rise of the Dark Realms
The deck isn't totally optimized yet, there are a few card choices that are a bit iffy like Skullclamp since it might actually be too slow for the deck to actually get good use out of. I also need a better reanimation engine than Nim Deathmantle but it works for now at least, I just need something I can use to repeatedly sac loop creatures with. The deck is probably a bit fragile for my meta at the moment but it was mostly intended to be a fun BS silly combo deck.
How the Deck Works
The simplest and slowest line of play in this deck is to get out Shirei and 6 Apostles, sac the Apostles to get Harvester of Souls, they come back on end step, then on the next turn you sac them again and get Rune-Scarred Demon, tutor for Thrumming Stone, cast Thrumming Stone and another Apostle to dump your deck full of apostles onto the table, get as close as you can to stacking your deck without actually doing so, sac 6 apostles, grab 6 cards, one of which is hopefully Phyrexian Altar or Nykthos, go mana crazy and chain through your deck to win the game.
EDIT: for some reason my dividers have disappeared in the deck box, if you quote my post you'll notice I had everything sorted by type and numbered, not sure why it isn't showing...