MTG Salvation

Quote from Aether7 »

Quote from silph »

is it just me, or do people who lost more matches than they won tend to not post in this thread? or, are people who read mtgsalvation just better than the average LGS player?

Yeah it's a brag thread but it is useful for confirming how strong white is as was suspected by many.

The same story is repeating, drafted X Topan Freeblade and won heaps of games. I think Wizards has an unbalanced common here and it's going to be a draft first pick.

I'd say that the people who spend the time reading/writings posts on MTGS would be a bit more invested than the average player at a prerelease, so yeah, a better track record is expected.

Anyway, here's my brag post about how I went 4-1 with the help of Topan Freeblades!



Topan Freeblade -> Knight of the Pilgrim's Road -> War Oracle is no joke. I don't think I've ever had such a consistent sealed deck. It was a bit shaky with so many double mana spells in both colours, but I only had two losses due to missing a colour, so lucky there. Red was a tempting splash with some great removal, but I'm glad I decided against it.

Since it's a case where every card in the cube is owned by you, I'd tell them, "Tough. Deal with it." Not necessarily in so many words, but make sure the message comes across. Your cards, your rules. Ask them if they'd be comfortable loaning their constructed decks to an opponent who's eating or drinking. Or worse, leaving their decks sitting around in the club so other people -- potentially complete strangers -- could play with them. Because essentially that's what they're asking you to do. Most people will be fine with this, and understand they only get to play with these cards out of your goodwill. There may be a few who don't like it, like the guy in your first example, but so long as the worst they do is groan and complain and otherwise act childish, don't worry about it.

Short answer: Yes, you should definitely run Zedruu as a control/pillowfort general, instead of group hug. I've updated my decklist for you to browse, but keep in mind the restrictions stated there (budget, casual, variant rules, etc.).

My deck was made with the same philosophy Galspanic has -- instead of including combos that only work with Zedruu, include answers that Zedruu can take advantage of (important that the deck works without Zedruu, as eventually people wise up to how many cards you're drawing off her). Mostly, this means using Pacifism-style spot remove instead of Swords-style spot removal. This will be meta-dependant; I mostly play 1 vs. 1, but if you play multiplayer with a lot of board wipes, you might want to try something different.

(Yes, I do have a few combos in my deck, such as a few "donate-only" cards. But this section has been shrinking over time. It's been a while since I've touched my decks, but if I were to "de-casual-ize" and "de-budget-ize" them, I would probably remove the section and add more good-stuff.)

As for pillowfort, I've found it useful, obviously in multiplayer but even in 1 vs. 1. I set myself up as a difficult target, use Zedruu to draw cards off my already played answers, and eventually draw one of my many high-cost wincons.

Hope this helps. Zedruu might not be my most powerful deck, but I think it's the most fun.

EDIT: Psathus mentions donating lands. Obviously, avoid doing so if there are better options, but there's been a couple times I've saved myself by doing so. If you're stuck at 4-5 lands and don't have anything to give away, giving up a land can, counter-intuitively, get you more in the long run as you double your draw. Your other donations are often targeted by the recipient, but lands seldom are. This will be dependent on your Zedruu build; I only do it because I know I have to reach 8-10 lands to win. Also, only do it if you know your opponent's deck well. The last thing you want to do is give lands to someone with Exsanguinate in hand.

Well, someone who's read the series should respond.

What's tough about this request is how the flavour and mechanics of Magic don't mesh up. Personality-wise, Mat is straight-up red. You could maybe argue that he's splashing black at the beginning of the series, and splashing white at the end. But it's a stretch.

Mechanics-wise, though? Mat's very much defined by his received memories. In Magic terms, learning information is represented by card draw, primarily a blue ability. It's a shame that Ancestral Recall is banned, because otherwise I'd tell you to play blue and make a proxy for the flavour alone. But otherwise, blue's a bad colour for Mat.

There's also his medallion, but hexproof and shroud don't really appear in red. The closest I could find was Tetsuo Umezawa, a Grixis-coloured card from Legends. But this is okay, there's always Lightning Greaves and similar cards.

Anyway, thoughts on a general. If you don't mind mono-white, Odric, Master Tactician is probably the best flavour match-up. But if you want to keep red, and I think you should, run Tajic, Blade of the Legion. I couldn't find much else for generals except a couple mono-red horsemanship generals from Three Kingdoms.

My big suggestion is that you include a gambling theme. //gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[coin">"]Here's a list of every Magic card that involves coins. Use cards like Krark's Thumb and Chance Encounter as an alternate win. There's also Goblin Game, and who knows how many others like it.

Good luck with the deck. Hope you can make it competitive -- I've never made a Vorthos deck, but I know from others that it's difficult to balance flavour and competitiveness.

Ah, sorry. Should have read Nevermore more carefully (somehow was thinking it read "When Nevermore..." rather than "As Nevermore...").

Hello all,

Say I cast Nevermore with Strionic Resonator. It hits the battlefield, the triggered ability goes on the stack, and I copy it.

- Am I able to name a different card? Strionic Resonator says I can choose new targets, but naming something isn't a target (side question: what about all those abilities that let you choose something without targeting it?). Does this count as a modal ability (one with thousands and thousands of modes)?

- If I can choose a different name, does Nevermore prevent both cards from being cast, or just the last named card (like the way Duplicant works now)?

Thanks for any help. I get the feeling that there will be a lot of Strionic Resonator questions in the months ahead.

Thanks for the advice everyone, even (especially!) for seemingly obvious advice like "wait until it rotates out". I don't play Standard, so it wasn't something that crossed my mind. I suppose it's yet another reason for me to hold off on buying the Ravnica duals.

How do you spend your hard-earned cash on your cube? Spend it all on one fantastic card that will rarely appear in your drafts? Spread it out on less expensive cards that are only marginally better than your existing ones?

I'm in the process of downsizing my collection, pulling out all the rares that I no longer use in decks. I'm thinking of trading them in and using the in-store credit to upgrade my wimpy budget cube. I figure I have enough to pick up the full cycle of Ravnica dual lands. But then I look at pages like this and wonder if I'm better off buying 50 $2 cards instead of 10 $10 cards.

Experienced cubers: what's your approach to pumping money into your cube? Which types of additions lead to the biggest increases in enjoyment?

Ooh, thanks, e-mail notification. Well, I had a long post, but then server error. So...

tl;dr version: I haven't updated the decklist here in half a year, and haven't played EDH in a couple months because Real Life is busy and other stuff. But thanks for the suggestions! Once I do get back into EDH, I'll be sure to consider them.

(quadruple post)

After returning from a casual RtR sealed tournament, I decided to add half a dozen cards to my cube. Soon, I caught myself doing a full revamp of my cube. Using this thread as a guide, I dropped my odd cards with others in my collection that were more popular with other cubes. The spoiler contains all my drops, followed by all my additions:


(If you're interested, these are some other cards I was considering adding: )


The reason I'm making a new post (and not just silently editing in my changes as I have been for the last little while) is that I'd love some feedback from the cubing community. This has been a very "bottom-up" update, focused only on individual card power, and I wonder if I'm over- or under-representing certain deck archetypes. Specifically removal and counterspells: I know too little or too much can really hurt a limited environment.

I've made some ad-hoc statistics about the number of card types in the cube right now (probably errors, 'cause I'm tired):

WHITE:
- 7 removal spells
- 1 flicker spell, and 2 creatures that provide flickering
- 3 mass removal spells, and 2 creatures that provide mass removal
- 9 fliers

BLUE:
- 12 counterspells (!)
- 4 card draw spells, and 4 creatures that help with card drawing
- 5 fliers

BLACK:
- 8 removal spells, and 7 creatures that do removal
- 3 discard spells, and 3 creatures that help with discard
- 6 reanimate spells
- 3 mass removal spells
- 4 fliers

RED:
- 10 burn spells (though some only hit creatures or players), plus a couple creatures
- 2 mass burn spells, plus one creature
- 2 artifact destruction, plus two creatures
- 3 fliers

GREEN:
- 3 artifact/ench. destruction, plus three creatures
- 4 mana gen/ramp/search, plus seven creatures
- 2 instant pump spells
- 3 creature removal

(Of course, multicolour cards and artifacts also add to this.)

While I'd greatly enjoy anyone critiquing my individual drops and adds, I'd appreciate anyone with 360 experience to lean over and say "Too many counterspells!" or "Too little ramp!"

Thanks for any help!

EDIT:
Welp, I guess I'll just do a minor cut on mass removal and counterspells, and see what playtesting turns up. Next thing I have my eye on is dropping lands and artifacts by five each, to add another multicolour card for each guild.

EDIT Dec 3: Oh, I forgot I had a Verdeloth.

Fangren Pathcutter -> Verdeloth the Ancient

WEANING THE CUBE:

This is a huge change, so some explanation is in order. Heck, I should probably re-introduce myself, since it's been a while.

I'm part of a group of four, and we play EDH almost exclusively. I'd love to get into cubing, though. A friend of mine has an M10 commons/uncommons cube, and we play Stack with it occasionally to kill time. Done Sealed once, but that's it. As you can imagine, I'd like to play in a slightly more powerful environment. So a few months back, I built the first iteration of this cube. Playtested it once, it seemed to play fine, but unfortunately this coincided with a lull in our group's availability for Magic.

Magic has been picking up lately, though, and I'd like to try evangelizing the Cube again. In the interim, I had taken the cube apart to feed my voracious EDH decks. I had also bought some new cards that didn't end up working in said decks. And assembling the cube from six different EDH decks defeats the purpose of a quick Stack game. So, over this Reading Week, I've been working on the latest update: Weaning the Cube! This cube is now 100% independent from my EDH decks (or soon will be, once I make my next card order). And I'd really love to get some advice on the current state of things from the people here.

A couple caveats, though:

First, this cube is gonna be pretty weak compared to most of the ones on this forum, especially so since most of the good cards have been taken out and put into my EDH decks. I'm fine with this; I don't need the Power Nine to enjoy a game of Magic. If its power level is on par with that of a really good Core Set, I'm happy.

Second, I don't plan on buying any cards for this cube, at least not in the near future. Remember, I don't know if this cube will end up being played at all. There's at least one person in my group who thinks "Why draft when we can play EDH and/or 2HG?" And I can see that; my intention is to provide the group with an alternate way of playing Magic, not supplant our primary way. Yes, I know there are a lot of fantastic commons out there that could really improve this cube. But my intention, for now, is to potentially get some use out of cards already collecting dust, not to add to that pile. Thanks anyway!


I have two primary concerns with the cube as it stands right now. First, is there balance between the colours? Does one colour have all the good cards, or does another have a glaring weakness? Put it this way: if you were doing a Rotisserie Draft with this cube, what colour(s) and archetype would you go for?

My second concern is with balance within each colour. For instance, is there too much black reanimation, or spot removal? Enough blue draw? Is there suitable amounts of red burn, or green ramp? I already know that certain types of cards are lacking (Wrath effects, for one), but is it enough to affect player enjoyment as you try to play a colour?


Thank you for putting up with my early morning ramblings, and thanks a lot for any advice that you might have.

EDIT:
EDIT (2012-05-22): Etherium Sculptor -> Mindshrieker. Also, new cards are in, EDH decks have been altered, and the Cube is now ready to go!

Deathtouch should still work with Prey Upon. The source of the damage is the creature, not the spell. Much the same way as Thornbite Staff works with deathtouch.

Looking forward to facing Damia.

Update:

I played a few games of two-headed giant, and made a bunch of changes based on my experiences. I was mana short for most of my Zedruu games. Possibly due to bad luck, but I knew this deck had a bad mana base going in. Anyway, most of my additions are mana fixing cards I was planning on adding anyway. Instead of waiting for my next card order, I just stole a lot of the cards from other decks that I'm not playing at the moment.

The other changes are increasing early game draw and lowering the average CMC. I found this deck really needs to be able to survive without Zedruu out.

EDIT:

EDIT (2013-08-09): Updated the list, don't have a changelog handy for the numerous updates between my last one and now. PM me if you really want one generated.

The big difference is that Figure of Destiny can level up at instant speed.

Eh, I like level-up creatures, though they aren't the most powerful around. The comparison to echo is a good one; to some degree, you can also compare the mechanic to kicker, or cycle, or modal spells. If you play an echo creature and never pay the echo cost, it sucks -- there are better options out there. If you play an echo creature and always pay the echo cost, it sucks -- there are better options out there. But the flexibility is the important bit.

Still, I don't there are that many that are relevant to EDH. The ones I use are the ones which are useful after just one level-up, and outperform 'equivalent' cards. You've got Enclave Cryptologist, which is effectively a hasty Merfolk Looter whenever you don't have a two-drop. Joraga Treespeaker is a turn one Greenweaver Druid (that doesn't even mess up your two-drop in mono-green decks!). I put Lord of Shatterskull Pass into my Kresh deck, but haven't playtested with it yet.

Indeed, Coalition Relic is better, and Blood Moon (and other nasty cards like Pyromancer's Swath) would be cool in this deck. Unfortunately, they are too pricey for my liking, so I'll have to pass. I do own one copy of Coalition Relic, but it's currently residing in my five colour Allies deck, which needs it a lot more.

As for me running a lot of basics, that's mostly because the deck still needs some tuning. I plan on adding the Lorwyn vivids and the Onslaught cycle-lands. Probably Terrain Generator as well for when Zed starts drawing cards. I've though about running cards like Ruination before, but I probably run more non-basics than anyone else in my group. It might be worth it for this deck, though.