BLACK Carnophage -> Dread Wanderer Consuming Vapors -> Never // Return
I don't get the excitement for the new Liliana at all. It's a worse Rise from the Grave, or five mana for a Zombie token and maybe a speed bump. No way I'd put that in over Ob Nixilis or the two better 3 CMC Lilianas.
The only other card I'm seriously considering right now is Plague Belcher. I'm just not sure where it fits, or whether it's going to turn out to be any good.
My friends and I participate in a lunchtime Magic league every time a set is released. Lately we've been investigating what sort of scoring system would work best, and I'm here looking for suggestions.
We tend to have about a dozen players in each league, sometimes more, sometimes less. There are no prizes on the line, just pride. Some participants are very active, and some only get to play a few matches. This is the main source of our problem: not every match will get played. We don't want to turn away those who can only play a little, but we also want to reward those who participate a lot.
For a while we had a simple system where a match win netted +1 point for the winner and -1 point for the loser, but this caused several issues. The main ones were that weaker players would get tired of seeing heavily negative scores every league, and players who were in the lead would refrain from playing tougher opponents (or playing at all) in order to not risk losing points. We've now switched to a system where you get +1 point for each win with no penalty for losing. This has turned the league into a participation contest more than anything. Last time, the third-place finisher lost more matches than he won, but because he played a lot, he wound up with a respectable score.
Can someone suggest a better system, which provides an incentive to play as much as possible, but still produces an accurate picture of who has the best performance? Thanks.
Supposing I wanted one of each shard, what are the other serious contenders? Isn't the issue that some shards lack anything top-end, and thus you end up cramming so-so cards in to even them out?
This is exactly what I do, keep one card slot for each tricolor combination. My list:
Bant - Rafiq of the Many
Esper - Sphinx of the Steel Wind
Grixis - Nicol Bolas PW
Jund - Broodmate Dragon
Naya - Meglonoth
Abzan - Siege Rhino
Jeskai - Mantis Rider
Mardu - Butcher of the Horde
Sultai - Damia, Sage of Stone
Temur - Maelstrom Wanderer
While these cards don't get selected highly, they show up in decks more often than you'd think. The two I'm least happy with are Meglonoth (which had been Woolly Thoctar, but that wasn't impactful enough) and Damia (which I am considering switching to Sidisi).
I don't yet know whether I'll pull MW for Sarkhan. He seems solid, and more decks will probably want him than MW. But MW produces such awesome stories that I don't know if I want to pull him back out.
And now it's time for me to be the Debbie Downer of the group.
I don't think he's as great in the G/R monsters builds as people seem to think. The deck's problems isn't hit big and fast; the deck already does that in spades. The deck's problem is consistency. You get an opening hand, spit it out and pray your big stuff survives. If you don't get Domri or Garruk, you're left with topdecking which is not where you want to be then. Given that your creatures generally don't have trample (Unless you have Nylea, which is exactly going to happen all the time), you're left with a big flashy creature that gets Chumped out. So basically, it's not a card the deck really wants as it seems to do something the deck is already fully capable of.
Now, it's a strong ability certainly. It could easily find a home. But the current lists are probably not that. You've already dumped your hand in spades by that point, and if you drew well you already have an unwinnable board state for your opponent. This is pretty much either a win-more or a do nothing card in most situations.
That said I like it alot. Just pointing something out.
Pray your big stuff survives? You only need to have one creature left behind in your hand. After they're forced to cast Supreme Verdict to answer your early stuff, your leftover midrange creature is probably swinging for half their original life total the next turn. It doesn't need trample if they just boardwiped anyway.
Mogis was bad for control decks. This is fatal for them.
Maybe so... on the other hand, my table opened a Purphoros, two Erebos, and a Thassa. And there were gods scattered throughout the rest of the room too.
I'm playing Kiki-Jiki against a Kiku, Night's Flower deck. He's got board control early, with his commander in play, a couple of other creatures, and an Oblivion Stone. I don't have a bust for it, I've been trying to buy time while I use Journeyer's Kite and Rings of Brighthearth to fill up on basic lands and hopefully figure a way out. Meanwhile, he's putting fate counters on his permanents, which means the O-Stone in my hand isn't going to do me much good.
Or is it?
Play O-Stone, activate its sacrifice ability... copy it with Rings of Brighthearth.
Proceed to rebuild and win. The look on his face was priceless.
Well... your post seems to reflect that you either don't understand what's going on or are in denial about what's going on.
If you are playing decks that have shown a propensity for winning, ESPECIALLY ones that pull huge plays and combo out, they're not attacking you without provocation. You're provoking them. It's working.
There are a few ways you can try to cut down on the threat they are perceiving. The most obvious, of course, is to stop winning for a while. But that's not really very fun. The other most obvious way is to do the exact opposite, as some people suggested, and just build up even better and try to reach the point where you are winning all the time no matter how many people gang up on you. This is both hard to do and unrewarding if you succeed; the only way to achieve this is if you're playing with people who are either unable or unwilling to match your combination of card availability, deckbuilding skill, and play skill. If people are doing their absolute best as a group to bring you down and you still win... they'll eventually get tired of playing with you and go find someone else to take on. Especially if there's no prize on the line, just casual play for fun.
Let's assume you don't want to lose, and you don't want to drive everyone away. What can you do? You can change the type of strategy you pursue to the point where people don't feel the need to preemptively take you out. This may take time, and will depend on how much they trust you and your word, but it can be done.
My suggestions:
1. No unbounded combos. Period. And tell everyone "I'm not building decks with unbounded combos any more, but I still have this one over here, so if one of you starts bringing combo-laden decks I'll bust it out and we can see who gets there first." Unbounded combos suck the fun out of the game. Few things are worse than a hard-fought battle that ends with "oooh, topdecked/tutored for the right card, now here's how I win even when I was losing before". Unbounded combos force people to toss out any deck that doesn't have countermagic. They force people to hit you because of what they think you might be about to do, not because of what you're presenting to them on the board. They make people play fast and angry, knowing that the strategy they have built up over half an hour might disappear in an instant with very little they can do about it. Just stop using them when you're playing casually, and try to convince your buddies to do the same.
2. No prison decks. A hard lock on your opponents draws pretty much the same reaction as an unbounded combo, but maybe worse, since you're taking longer to end things. So forget the repeated Mindslaver lock or that Stasis/Kismet thing you tutor up in your Grand Arbiter deck. This isn't to say you can't play good prison-like cards (say, Yosei), but when you're pursuing it as a wholesale strategy, you will be hated for it.
3. No land sweepers unless you are ending the game with it. Similar to #2. Don't leave people hanging by trying to incrementally win with land sweepers. If you want to play Jhoira and suspend an Ulamog and an Apocalypse, fine. That'll be fun a few times, but for the most part, you should avoid land sweepers and repeatable land destruction that scales. Everyone needs some landblast for your opponents' Cabal Coffers and Academy Ruins and such, but if your strategy is to deny them all their lands, you will be hated for it.
Now, those three things should be more than enough to scale you back down on the threat meter, but it may still take time. And you can still make big huge splashy plays... this is EDH! Go ahead, Mind Twist away their whole hand, or kill someone's Primeval Titan, slap it on your Mimic Vat, and copy the token you make. It's fine. You'll still draw some hate, as you should, because you'll be a threat. But if an opponent doesn't think you're trying to combo out or lock him down completely, he'll probably be more tolerant of you. The difference is whether your opponent is being allowed to pursue the strategy he had in mind for the deck. You want to allow that, but render it unsuccessful; NOT deny it completely.
Thada still falls on the hate side because she is blue and theft-/counter-based. You can't help that. Stealing stuff is inevitable in EDH, but stealing LOTS of stuff, and backing it with counters, approaches the prison/denial strategy in #2. You may need to set that one aside for a bit until your opponents have forgotten how dangerous it is. Ghave, however, can be salvaged, if you pull the combos out and just play it as a really good deck. Still, at first you will want to bring a different option to the table; the sight of Ghave will spawn bad memories for them for a while. Something as simple as using Karador instead might be enough.
Being the best at your table consistently AND not drawing undue hate is a tough line to walk, but it can be done. I've been walking that line for years and years now. Just remember: your opponents want to win, but they also want to enjoy what they have created. If they get to play their game and feel like they saw the deck "in action", they will have at least somewhat of a positive experience, even if they lose. If they get locked out or hated out or comboed out before they can enjoy their creation, they will resent you for it, more and more with every wasted game.
WHITE
Containment Priest -> Glory-Bound Initiate
Thalia's Lieutenant -> Gideon of the Trials
Angelic Destiny -> Angel of Sanctions (torn on this one, could replace Archangel of Thune instead)
BLUE
Wharf Infiltrator -> Kefnet the Mindful (I am not convinced Kefnet will stick around long, but she's worth a shot)
Scatter to the Winds -> Commit // Memory
Master of Waves -> Vizier of Many Faces
Docent of Perfection -> Glyph Keeper
BLACK
Carnophage -> Dread Wanderer
Consuming Vapors -> Never // Return
I don't get the excitement for the new Liliana at all. It's a worse Rise from the Grave, or five mana for a Zombie token and maybe a speed bump. No way I'd put that in over Ob Nixilis or the two better 3 CMC Lilianas.
RED
Reckless Waif -> Soul-Scar Mage
Anger of the Gods -> Sweltering Suns
Shaman of the Great Hunt -> Hazoret the Fervent
Combustible Gearhulk -> Glorybringer
Really tempted to test Bloodlust Inciter.
GREEN
Obstinate Baloth -> Channeler Initiate
Woodland Wanderer -> Rhonas the Indomitable
Decimator of the Provinces -> Vizier of the Menagerie
GRUUL
Ulrich of the Krallenhorde -> Samut, Voice of Dissent
IZZET
Dack's Duplicate -> Enigma Drake
SIMIC
Kiora, Master of the Depths -> Nissa, Steward of Elements
BOROS
Figure of Destiny -> Honored Crop-Captain
The only other card I'm seriously considering right now is Plague Belcher. I'm just not sure where it fits, or whether it's going to turn out to be any good.
We tend to have about a dozen players in each league, sometimes more, sometimes less. There are no prizes on the line, just pride. Some participants are very active, and some only get to play a few matches. This is the main source of our problem: not every match will get played. We don't want to turn away those who can only play a little, but we also want to reward those who participate a lot.
For a while we had a simple system where a match win netted +1 point for the winner and -1 point for the loser, but this caused several issues. The main ones were that weaker players would get tired of seeing heavily negative scores every league, and players who were in the lead would refrain from playing tougher opponents (or playing at all) in order to not risk losing points. We've now switched to a system where you get +1 point for each win with no penalty for losing. This has turned the league into a participation contest more than anything. Last time, the third-place finisher lost more matches than he won, but because he played a lot, he wound up with a respectable score.
Can someone suggest a better system, which provides an incentive to play as much as possible, but still produces an accurate picture of who has the best performance? Thanks.
This is exactly what I do, keep one card slot for each tricolor combination. My list:
Bant - Rafiq of the Many
Esper - Sphinx of the Steel Wind
Grixis - Nicol Bolas PW
Jund - Broodmate Dragon
Naya - Meglonoth
Abzan - Siege Rhino
Jeskai - Mantis Rider
Mardu - Butcher of the Horde
Sultai - Damia, Sage of Stone
Temur - Maelstrom Wanderer
While these cards don't get selected highly, they show up in decks more often than you'd think. The two I'm least happy with are Meglonoth (which had been Woolly Thoctar, but that wasn't impactful enough) and Damia (which I am considering switching to Sidisi).
I don't yet know whether I'll pull MW for Sarkhan. He seems solid, and more decks will probably want him than MW. But MW produces such awesome stories that I don't know if I want to pull him back out.
Pray your big stuff survives? You only need to have one creature left behind in your hand. After they're forced to cast Supreme Verdict to answer your early stuff, your leftover midrange creature is probably swinging for half their original life total the next turn. It doesn't need trample if they just boardwiped anyway.
Mogis was bad for control decks. This is fatal for them.
/anecdote
Or is it?
Play O-Stone, activate its sacrifice ability... copy it with Rings of Brighthearth.
Proceed to rebuild and win. The look on his face was priceless.
If you are playing decks that have shown a propensity for winning, ESPECIALLY ones that pull huge plays and combo out, they're not attacking you without provocation. You're provoking them. It's working.
There are a few ways you can try to cut down on the threat they are perceiving. The most obvious, of course, is to stop winning for a while. But that's not really very fun. The other most obvious way is to do the exact opposite, as some people suggested, and just build up even better and try to reach the point where you are winning all the time no matter how many people gang up on you. This is both hard to do and unrewarding if you succeed; the only way to achieve this is if you're playing with people who are either unable or unwilling to match your combination of card availability, deckbuilding skill, and play skill. If people are doing their absolute best as a group to bring you down and you still win... they'll eventually get tired of playing with you and go find someone else to take on. Especially if there's no prize on the line, just casual play for fun.
Let's assume you don't want to lose, and you don't want to drive everyone away. What can you do? You can change the type of strategy you pursue to the point where people don't feel the need to preemptively take you out. This may take time, and will depend on how much they trust you and your word, but it can be done.
My suggestions:
1. No unbounded combos. Period. And tell everyone "I'm not building decks with unbounded combos any more, but I still have this one over here, so if one of you starts bringing combo-laden decks I'll bust it out and we can see who gets there first." Unbounded combos suck the fun out of the game. Few things are worse than a hard-fought battle that ends with "oooh, topdecked/tutored for the right card, now here's how I win even when I was losing before". Unbounded combos force people to toss out any deck that doesn't have countermagic. They force people to hit you because of what they think you might be about to do, not because of what you're presenting to them on the board. They make people play fast and angry, knowing that the strategy they have built up over half an hour might disappear in an instant with very little they can do about it. Just stop using them when you're playing casually, and try to convince your buddies to do the same.
2. No prison decks. A hard lock on your opponents draws pretty much the same reaction as an unbounded combo, but maybe worse, since you're taking longer to end things. So forget the repeated Mindslaver lock or that Stasis/Kismet thing you tutor up in your Grand Arbiter deck. This isn't to say you can't play good prison-like cards (say, Yosei), but when you're pursuing it as a wholesale strategy, you will be hated for it.
3. No land sweepers unless you are ending the game with it. Similar to #2. Don't leave people hanging by trying to incrementally win with land sweepers. If you want to play Jhoira and suspend an Ulamog and an Apocalypse, fine. That'll be fun a few times, but for the most part, you should avoid land sweepers and repeatable land destruction that scales. Everyone needs some landblast for your opponents' Cabal Coffers and Academy Ruins and such, but if your strategy is to deny them all their lands, you will be hated for it.
Now, those three things should be more than enough to scale you back down on the threat meter, but it may still take time. And you can still make big huge splashy plays... this is EDH! Go ahead, Mind Twist away their whole hand, or kill someone's Primeval Titan, slap it on your Mimic Vat, and copy the token you make. It's fine. You'll still draw some hate, as you should, because you'll be a threat. But if an opponent doesn't think you're trying to combo out or lock him down completely, he'll probably be more tolerant of you. The difference is whether your opponent is being allowed to pursue the strategy he had in mind for the deck. You want to allow that, but render it unsuccessful; NOT deny it completely.
Thada still falls on the hate side because she is blue and theft-/counter-based. You can't help that. Stealing stuff is inevitable in EDH, but stealing LOTS of stuff, and backing it with counters, approaches the prison/denial strategy in #2. You may need to set that one aside for a bit until your opponents have forgotten how dangerous it is. Ghave, however, can be salvaged, if you pull the combos out and just play it as a really good deck. Still, at first you will want to bring a different option to the table; the sight of Ghave will spawn bad memories for them for a while. Something as simple as using Karador instead might be enough.
Being the best at your table consistently AND not drawing undue hate is a tough line to walk, but it can be done. I've been walking that line for years and years now. Just remember: your opponents want to win, but they also want to enjoy what they have created. If they get to play their game and feel like they saw the deck "in action", they will have at least somewhat of a positive experience, even if they lose. If they get locked out or hated out or comboed out before they can enjoy their creation, they will resent you for it, more and more with every wasted game.