Deck's dead. There's that free remove-graveyard trap
which only works as hate against this one deck and is thus unlikely to see much play as a sideboard card if the deck tanks in popularity.
I think that at the moment the deck is in afterlife twilight zone mode like dragonstorm immediately after the rotation of Ravnica block with Lorwyn. It has a similar ability to randomly come out of nowhere for a win, but I don't think that the deck will be able to retain its role as reigning combo deck king of type 2 as warp world gains a good deal more from zendikar and loses less.
This deck needs Eldazari Monument for the "okay, I win" play.
Vampire nocturnus when it is "night" already is a gg midgame if you run him and the life swing from bloodwitch also can gg. We don't need eldrazi monument.
if you are to trust the people over in its threads it is...it loses cryptic, pollen lullaby, and elsewhere flask...which of course a ton, in exchange for a metagame with next to no counterspells.
I think that it will continue to be played at first, but I think in the long run it might simply be eclipsed by warp world as the combo deck to beat since Warp World did see some play pre rotation with some decent results (ptq win or 2) given the very low number of people playing the deck right at the end of the season. Warp World gains very good acceleration and more solid win conditions from zendikar as well as not having to worry about counters like time sieve. Time sieve also has to worry about the anti-graveyard trap which is a definite threat to the deck if it ever surged in popularity.
To make a long story short, time sieve is still playable (alara decks all slower now, no counters), but doesn't gain as much as some other decks have in comparison to what it loses.
warp world
time sieve
baneslayer U/W
5cc control in 4 and 5 color flavors
B/G/W Landfall ramp with Ob
jund
naya zoo
esper aggro
grixis control
bant aggro
blightning
vampires
archive trap mill
ww soldiers
I've not really considered doing testing with goblins? What do other people think of the deck's competitive chances?
child of night and vampire aristocrat have no place in a competitive deck. With mono black vampires it is much better to run all swamps and the leech marsh pinging land than fetches. Only run fetch lands if you are running the B/R build imho. Blade of the bloodchief doesn't do much in this deck.
At some point it has to be removed from the core set, not because it is broken (it isn't at all), but because it makes almost any control finishers that they could print unplayable unless they are very narrow to a specific deck(ie. something that mills for an absurd amount instead of doing damage).
I agree with everyone saying that bloodchief ascension and brave the elements will see play.
So will Piranha Marsh. In anything monoblack, control or aggro this allows to have swamps that ping your opponent if topdecked lategame and that are unlikely to actually mess with your curve unless you draw into multiples of them. Control doesn't care about the cipt, aggro likes the ping and can always drop something 1 mana cheaper in its curve or play removal or discard.
I did forget about Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang
I still don't think that just because something has a slightly Asian influence that it is from Kamigawa. What about the cards from Portal the Three Kingdoms where are they from?
P3K does not exist at all in the magic universe...the cards come from the Ancient Chinese "Romance of the Three Kingdoms".
Originally the Arabian Nights cards were in a similar boat as they were taken largely from the 1001 Arabian Nights. However they were retconed into continuity with the creation of the plane of Rabiah. This cannot be done with P3K because of the set's large number of legendary creatures that are characters in a specific real world literary work.
Heroes 3 Complete is a solid game, both online and offline, but you should probably have friends with you that play, since it's hard to find a place to play online.
Such a sweet game! I love playing that multiplayer on lan if everyone is patient enough (the pace is more like a board game so it pisses off adrenaline addicted Dota and Halo players).
Heroes 4 sucked so hard:mad::mad::mad:
Another really old strategy game that is super sweet is Myth: The Fallen Lords and its sequel Myth 2:Soulblighter...basically the games feature the best storyline I have ever encountered in a game, the best narration I have ever heard in a game, great graphics for the time (better than many games that came out years down the road in the rts genre), super varied and deep single player campaigns, multiplayer that is still played online 10+years down the line and years since Bungie dropped support for the games, a soundtrack that I actually can listen to when not playing the game, and overall one of the most immersive fantasy experiences short of reading the entire lord of the rings series anew.
Seriously google search "Myth journals" and listen to a few of the pre-level journal entries and tell me the game doesn't seem cool. Or watch the opening cinematic to myth on youtube.
I complete agree with HeroHammer but if it takes a bolt, then thats one less bolt to my face.
good point, I'd side it out against monowhite or something like vampires that have lots of non-burn creature removal. It also dies to fallout.
BTW-This thread should probably be moved to developing competitive in the type 2 forums and renamed something like "Archive Mill"...it hurts me that people are posting wretched haunting echoes combo decks over there when the deck that is being discussed here is much more reliable, fast, and simply better.
I would say that given the importance of the disruptive spells to this deck, and the fact that there are not ton of slots for them in the deck means that part of this deck will always be somewhat meta specific, particularly early on like this.
The way I see it, this deck has the advantage over time sieve combo that it can have a really explosive win with luck with the downside of being more prone to not quite making it all the way there after milling a big chunk of the opponent's library.
I was wondering what people are thinking about Hedron Crab. It is a good source of repeatable mill, but as the only creature in some builds, doesn't it just eat a removal spell immediately? it reminds me of the Glassdust Hulk among the time sieve players awhile ago.
The only way this would spell the end of magic you insane doomsayers is if they made all of the pack ins type 2 legal and you needed 4 of Black Lotus in order to compete along with 4x each mox instead of lands.
I think it is a decent promo, totally unneeded with the fetches in the set, and it will invariably damage the reputation of the following several sets, but not the end of the world.
I was talking about the supposed lack of T1 use for these cards. 10 Vintage playables is a very large number for a new set.
this set does not have 10 vintage playable cards...unless you are playing weird/rogue stuff.
Overall i am fine with Zendikar's power level, however, then again, there are very few set's whose power level has genuinely disappointed me. Those being Homelands and prophecy. Mercadian Masques, Fallen Empires, Nemesis, and the entire Kamigawa block take way too much flack for being "weak" when none of those sets was any weaker in it's time than say, Zendikar or Shards of Alara.
BTW-If they had stuck Alara block right after Mirrodin block and waited to ban raffinity until after Conflux was out, everyone would remember it as a horrible block instead of Kamigawa.
I think that at the moment the deck is in afterlife twilight zone mode like dragonstorm immediately after the rotation of Ravnica block with Lorwyn. It has a similar ability to randomly come out of nowhere for a win, but I don't think that the deck will be able to retain its role as reigning combo deck king of type 2 as warp world gains a good deal more from zendikar and loses less.
Vampire nocturnus when it is "night" already is a gg midgame if you run him and the life swing from bloodwitch also can gg. We don't need eldrazi monument.
if you are to trust the people over in its threads it is...it loses cryptic, pollen lullaby, and elsewhere flask...which of course a ton, in exchange for a metagame with next to no counterspells.
I think that it will continue to be played at first, but I think in the long run it might simply be eclipsed by warp world as the combo deck to beat since Warp World did see some play pre rotation with some decent results (ptq win or 2) given the very low number of people playing the deck right at the end of the season. Warp World gains very good acceleration and more solid win conditions from zendikar as well as not having to worry about counters like time sieve. Time sieve also has to worry about the anti-graveyard trap which is a definite threat to the deck if it ever surged in popularity.
To make a long story short, time sieve is still playable (alara decks all slower now, no counters), but doesn't gain as much as some other decks have in comparison to what it loses.
time sieve
baneslayer U/W
5cc control in 4 and 5 color flavors
B/G/W Landfall ramp with Ob
jund
naya zoo
esper aggro
grixis control
bant aggro
blightning
vampires
archive trap mill
ww soldiers
I've not really considered doing testing with goblins? What do other people think of the deck's competitive chances?
At some point it has to be removed from the core set, not because it is broken (it isn't at all), but because it makes almost any control finishers that they could print unplayable unless they are very narrow to a specific deck(ie. something that mills for an absurd amount instead of doing damage).
So will Piranha Marsh. In anything monoblack, control or aggro this allows to have swamps that ping your opponent if topdecked lategame and that are unlikely to actually mess with your curve unless you draw into multiples of them. Control doesn't care about the cipt, aggro likes the ping and can always drop something 1 mana cheaper in its curve or play removal or discard.
Originally the Arabian Nights cards were in a similar boat as they were taken largely from the 1001 Arabian Nights. However they were retconed into continuity with the creation of the plane of Rabiah. This cannot be done with P3K because of the set's large number of legendary creatures that are characters in a specific real world literary work.
Heroes 4 sucked so hard:mad::mad::mad:
Another really old strategy game that is super sweet is Myth: The Fallen Lords and its sequel Myth 2:Soulblighter...basically the games feature the best storyline I have ever encountered in a game, the best narration I have ever heard in a game, great graphics for the time (better than many games that came out years down the road in the rts genre), super varied and deep single player campaigns, multiplayer that is still played online 10+years down the line and years since Bungie dropped support for the games, a soundtrack that I actually can listen to when not playing the game, and overall one of the most immersive fantasy experiences short of reading the entire lord of the rings series anew.
Seriously google search "Myth journals" and listen to a few of the pre-level journal entries and tell me the game doesn't seem cool. Or watch the opening cinematic to myth on youtube.
BTW-This thread should probably be moved to developing competitive in the type 2 forums and renamed something like "Archive Mill"...it hurts me that people are posting wretched haunting echoes combo decks over there when the deck that is being discussed here is much more reliable, fast, and simply better.
The way I see it, this deck has the advantage over time sieve combo that it can have a really explosive win with luck with the downside of being more prone to not quite making it all the way there after milling a big chunk of the opponent's library.
I was wondering what people are thinking about Hedron Crab. It is a good source of repeatable mill, but as the only creature in some builds, doesn't it just eat a removal spell immediately? it reminds me of the Glassdust Hulk among the time sieve players awhile ago.
I think it is a decent promo, totally unneeded with the fetches in the set, and it will invariably damage the reputation of the following several sets, but not the end of the world.
this set does not have 10 vintage playable cards...unless you are playing weird/rogue stuff.
Overall i am fine with Zendikar's power level, however, then again, there are very few set's whose power level has genuinely disappointed me. Those being Homelands and prophecy. Mercadian Masques, Fallen Empires, Nemesis, and the entire Kamigawa block take way too much flack for being "weak" when none of those sets was any weaker in it's time than say, Zendikar or Shards of Alara.
BTW-If they had stuck Alara block right after Mirrodin block and waited to ban raffinity until after Conflux was out, everyone would remember it as a horrible block instead of Kamigawa.