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- dwchang
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Member for 12 years, 7 months, and 24 days
Last active Fri, Nov, 26 2021 20:18:43
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Nov 30, 20183
Kman posted a message on Ultimate Masters & Box Topper Promos + PSA regarding sealed Box Topper BoostersIs this pissing match still going on..........amazingPosted in: The Rumor Mill -
Jul 14, 2018
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greyhoundsrule posted a message on [[Official]] Legacy Ban List Discussion Thread (Read OP before Posting)Posted in: Legacy (Type 1.5)Quote from drmarkb »No, it was broken, that is why they have taken action. They don't ban cards now that are not the highest quality now, and they do not ban lightly. It was stupidly good and meant that every delver deck was grixis, and meant 4c control was always the same.
There will not be another pile... A 4c deck that runs blood moon in a wasteland format? No chance. It will be 3col at best and wasteland/crucible will work again, Reanimator will get better game ones. UR delver is very different, it is burn with fow. Rug is Rug delver, it plays very differently to grixis and the ban will mean a variety of delver decks, not just grixis.
I am curious to know what you think Legacy's issues are.
I dont see why you care about what I think about legacy lol. Format is not very relevant in competitive play now a days and most people dont give a crap about the format being balanced. Its always going to be a Force of Will/Brainstorm with lots of combo and death/taxes variants format. Banning deahtrite does absolutely nothing to change the kind of format Legacy is. I dont see either how you think 4c was such a big deal. It was just a 4c midrange / control deck, why would that need any banning?
Legacy doesnt need to be like modern in that the format needs diversity via the ban list. Cards shouldnt be banned to shake up a metagame. Deathrite wasnt overpowered. Very good yes, but not much stronger than many other legacy cards.
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Jul 2, 2018
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Teia Rabishu posted a message on [[Official]] Legacy Ban List Discussion Thread (Read OP before Posting)This is some real reactionary, Modern-tier banning philosophy right here.Posted in: Legacy (Type 1.5)
It's also why I hate the idea of "sacred cow" cards like Brainstorm that should be banned by literally every metric other than "players like it too much to ban it" existing alongside cards that, it seems, inevitably get banned simply to shake up the format.
Oh and dumb crap like Mind Twist is still on the list. What a gong show. -
Feb 12, 2018
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Kman posted a message on Banned and restricted announcement Feb 12 JtMS unbannedHoly Moly what a load of crybabies.....the sky is falling.Posted in: The Rumor Mill
He wont warp the format and you shouldve gotten one over the last few months when it was a reasonable cost if it was so important instead of whining about being priced out of a card. Everyone has been burned and everyone has had a windfall somewhere along the line.
Just deal people, calm down, we will survive
Boxes still at $190.......
Where are more leaks.......gotta get a whiff of a couple cards -
Apr 25, 20175
Wildfire393 posted a message on [[Official]] Legacy Ban List Discussion Thread (Read OP before Posting)Posted in: Legacy (Type 1.5)Quote from Seymour_TUBES »
Gah. It's beginning to seem like maybe the collateral damage from this ban might outweigh the benefits. I wonder how many decks will adjust and how many will just wither and die.
I hope the meta doesn't go to *****.
I agree that this ban seems shortsighted. The meta was healthy, all things considered. Miracles was the best deck in the format, but only made up 15% of the format, so it wasn't like it was overwhelmingly the best deck. Meanwhile there was an absolutely huge number of decks with 2-7% of the meta - 4c/Grixis Delver, Death and Taxes, Eldrazi, UR Delver, Infect, Dragon Stompy, Shardless BUG, Leovold Control, Aggro Loam, Stoneblade, Show and Tell, Storm, Reanimator, Elves, Food Chain, Turbo Depths, and Aluren. Many of these came into being or gained prominence recently, showing that the meta was capable of evolving despite being overall stable. The meta was close to 33/33/33 split between Aggro/Tempo, Midrange/Control, and Combo. Blazing-fast combo decks were basically non-existent, as all of the top combo decks compromised speed for the reliability of being able to go toe-to-toe with Miracles in a longer game, leading to the average game-length for the format being something like 5.5 turns.
So why throw this away? Miracles' meta percentage over the past few months (15%) has been within 1 percentage point of its entire 2016 presence (14%), w which was only 2% up from its entire 2015 presence (12%). So the format hasn't gotten appreciably more centralized around Miracles. Recent major events have seen as many as 3 Miracles in the top 8 (EE17), but as few as 0 (EW16), so it's not like it's been consistently hogging the spotlight. Sure, there's the "Miracles Players Tend to Go to Time" issue, but that's been a known issue for literally the existence of Top. Why is it suddenly now a problem? (Also, I would posit that the solution to this problem is to be more aggressive in handing down slow play warnings to players who end up going to time in 2 or more matches in a tournament. I've played dozens of rounds of Miracles at tournaments and have literally never gone to time, it's not hard unless you're *trying* to stall.) -
Apr 25, 20173
drmarkb posted a message on [[Official]] Legacy Ban List Discussion Thread (Read OP before Posting)To people who felt Top should go......why not CB and/or Terminus?Posted in: Legacy (Type 1.5)
Does anyone really have an issue with Nic Fit, Painter, Mono B pox etc. Rare decks that are the underdogs in the format, the whole point of Miracles getting the ban is to increase diversity, not to nerf lower tier decks that increase it.
To those celebrating like a teenager who has just got a first date, saying 'now I can play Legacy again.....' you probably are not the sort of player your local Legacy scene needs, try EDH or Modern, if you have not already quit because someone Lanterned you.
And yes, I have fir a long time favoured a ban, just not Top.
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May 20, 20164
Ebonclaw posted a message on Better at Legacy then Modern/Standard? What does it mean!?Posted in: Magic GeneralQuote from IronPlushy »This is even more proof that eternal players don't have more skill. You'll show up at a standard tournament with a tier 1 bant company deck and think you won't be annihilated with a 1 turn combo kill.
Ummmmm.....pretty sure that's arguing I should have to fear T1 combo kills in standard. I mean, otherwise if you meant that sarcastically, you're making a water is wet argument.
Quote from IronPlushy »
Only bad players blame luck when we all know pros that are consistently successful at limited which is suppose to be the most luck intensive format.
While there's been minimal discussion about Limited in this thread, I'm having trouble figuring out where I addressed skill in limited, other than to illustrate a point that different formats take different types of skill into account, which really, agreed with your statement and elaborated on it more than anything else. Just because I argued against the rest of your post doesn't mean I'm arguing with all of it. The only part of my response to your comment on limited that might have been slightly disagreeing with it, was that I argued that it's important to recognize the impact that luck DOES have in the game, and how good players need to recognize the difference between bad luck and bad plays, and not to alter their playstyle or question their decision making when they run into bad LUCK.
I'm not hiding behind a "wall of text." If you bothered to spend the <2 minutes it takes to actually read my response instead of just calling me a liar, you'd realize that. If I misread or you mistyped something and as a result there's been some sort of miscommunication, then point it out so the discussion can move forward as opposed to just calling me a liar.
The "wall of text" is not "lying out my nose." It's called making an argument with reasoning to back it up, without resorting to five sentence responses, one of which is a false accusation, two of which have minimal relevancy and are at best the result of miscommunication/misreading on one of our parts and at worst lies of your own (but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to one of us misreading/writing), and the last two of which are just attacks, with NONE of them being backed up.
I'm sorry that making an argument involves, ya know, words. If they're too difficult for you to read and formulate a response other than "liar, liar pants on fire" it's no wonder you don't play Legacy. Some of those old templated cards can be quite wordy and have more than 4 lines of text without any reminders on them. The only thing worthless in this thread are your petty jabs and comments that have no factual basis to them.
Before you get up in arms and think that my responses are barbed at you for whatever reason and I'm just making up lies to make an argument because I disagree with it, please note:
1) You started this with statements I disagreed with. I'm ok with this so far and all it's going to lead to is us having a discussion on why we feel the way we do. That's a normal, healthy debate. I didn't agree with everything Ashley25746 said either, but I took some time to acknowledge (presumably her) post because it actually had some basis to it, and addressed the points I felt differently on, explained why I felt differently on them, and we're both totally cool.
2) You got a snarkier response because if you're going to dish out blanket statements like:
Quote from IronPlushy »Legacy players think they're special little snowflakes and tapping a turn 1 land wrong loses the match but they can't come down to modern or standard and perform with any kind of skill.
All the formats take skill and operate very differently, it's just eternal players need to feel special and justify their thousands of dollars spent to themselves.
You should expect that provocative statements will receive a response. If this is the tone you're going to take, don't be so offended when you receive the same tone in response. Seems like a case of someone willing to dish it out, but then not be able to take it. Be glad that I'd rather address it with you than the mod staff because I'd rather provide a reasoned response instead of crying to them with the report button.
Let me know when you're ready to put some thought into your inflammatory statements and back them up with some reasoning other than "liar liar" -
May 19, 2016
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Teia Rabishu posted a message on Better at Legacy then Modern/Standard? What does it mean!?Posted in: Magic GeneralQuote from Ebonclaw »See, I don't play Legacy to justify the expenditure of my deck, I don't need to.
And on the subject of deck expenditures, well, I'm someone who has a pretty solid number of duals, other expensive staples (Lilianas, LEDs, etc), and random crap that spiked unreasonably since I bought it (e.g. Chains) and I just don't see the need to buy into Standard repeatedly. I just kind of pick an affordable deck that'll do decently at FNM and ride it until rotation. My Modern play is just whatever I can scrape together out of my Legacy collection. I certainly could do better at Standard if I bothered to buy the overpriced rares and mythics that won't be worth anything in a couple of years, and to that end I probably appear to be worse in that format than I really am, but at the end of the day, well, I can just pick up one of the several Legacy decks I built several years ago and rock that if I want to play the format. I can also choose the playstyle and level of interaction I want at a given event simply by varying what deck I play.
Buying into the same competitive level of Standard that I have in Legacy is just a poor decision, and that distorts perception as well.
Quote from ashley25746 »3) Legacy's consistency makes it easier to play in my mind. It seems like delver can always brainstorm/ponder into FOW/daze, flip the delver and go. It can run on 2 mana if it has to. Modern has no brainstorm to grab what you need every time and it has no FOW to act as a free panic button.
Legacy might certainly look easy if you aren't considering the thought that goes into all those plays. Sure, you can run some decks off two mana, but that doesn't make it autopilot. The number of times I've run rings around bad Delver players would probably surprise you, because I know what a newbie's first instincts are and I can nudge them into suboptimal lines of play. And that's to say nothing of players who mess up their cantrip orders (for instance, I've seen people Ponder before Brainstorm without having another shuffle effect in hand and wind up not getting another shuffle effect), put the wrong cards back off Brainstorm, Force the wrong spells, and generally act like having more powerful cards means you don't have to put as much thought into things.
Another example, this one from personal experience, is Burn vs Miracles. Miracles assembled the Countertop combo and figured that'd be enough to beat me unconditionally, especially since I didn't have a Shusher out. The end result was me playing all kinds of silly stack tricks with the inexperienced Miracles player and forcing through enough spells to kill him (I also managed to slip a Red Blast onto his Counterbalance at one point in a play that one of his friends watching the match berated him after the match for walking into). A more experienced and skillful player would've beaten me in that scenario, but I was able to prey on my opponent's inexperience to eke out a win I surely wouldn't have against a better opponent. It wasn't that his deck failed him. He failed his deck.
The thing you should never forget is that while your cards may be powerful, your opponent also has powerful cards.
Quote from IronPlushy »No combo in Standard? Well someone should have told me to stop winning with Brain on the Shore...
That's highly disingenuous. The sheer number and variety of combo decks in Legacy dwarfs anything available in Standard. In Standard, you have a few low-tier combos like Brain in a Jar, Eldrazi Displacer/Brood Monitor, etc. In Legacy, combo runs all across the tier spectrum and encompasses many fundamentally different approaches to the game. I'd suggest playing a few matches with Legacy combo decks to see the difference firsthand.
If you show up to a local legacy or modern tournament you're going to face the same exact decks week to week because the format is cost prohibitive.
If you had any experience at all with Legacy events, you'd know that many players who are invested into the format have a wide variety of decks they can bring. As it is, your comments are ignorant to the point that they're the Legacy equivalent of the "just buy the most expensive cards and you can easily faceroll a PTQ without playtesting" canard with Standard.
Personally, for instance, if you sat down across from me, you could be facing down Jund, Burn, Dredge, ANT, D&T, Infect, Pox, Loam, or a few other decks, and that's just what I can play no-proxy. I personally know quite a few players with even broader options. -
May 19, 2016
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Ebonclaw posted a message on Better at Legacy then Modern/Standard? What does it mean!?Posted in: Magic GeneralQuote from IronPlushy »Never said all pros were good at limited, I'm saying there are high level players consistently good at limited while high level constructed players often falter in limited.
No combo in Standard? Well someone should have told me to stop winning with Brain on the Shore...This is even more proof that eternal players don't have more skill. You'll show up at a standard tournament with a tier 1 bant company deck and think you won't be annihilated with a 1 turn combo kill.
The thing with standard is you can't be good with just one deck like in modern and legacy, to be a top tier standard player you need to be familiar with all the decks, and play the right one well at a given tournament. Playing the metagame is an important part of standard. If you show up to a local legacy or modern tournament you're going to face the same exact decks week to week because the format is cost prohibitive. If you go to a bigger event the lack of support means the last big legacy tournament might have been months ago with no idea what metagame you'll fight. Standard the metagame changes week to week and if you want to succeed at the highest levels you have to capitalize on it instead of playing the same deck every week.
No, I'm pretty sure I can enter a standard event with any deck I damn well please and fully expect to not die to a T1 combo deck, because there's no such thing in standard. It's not a worry, or something I have to contend with or even consider when I'm building a deck.
The thing about standard is you're at best trying to juggle the meta of what, 4 or 5 truly competitive decks when the format is healthy, and 2, maybe 3 when it's not? Maybe you end up playing against someone that's playing some weird brew they found to be fun on SCG or MTGS, but otherwise the meta in standard is like, 5 decks and variations on those decks. In Legacy or Modern, you have to know how to fight at least double or triple that.
Smaller events not being diverse? If your Legacy event has even 6 players, they're probably all playing 6 different decks instead of the same variations of whatever's popular in standard and maybe someone's trashy homebrew. Larger events being too diverse that you can't prepare for the meta? Isn't that kind of the exact opposite of a format being easy? You can't argue that legacy is an easier, less skill intensive format because the meta is too small and closed, and then turn around and argue that it's too easy because there is no meta due to the large events being too big.
As a standard player the number of decks you have to take seriously is a pretty small pool. Maybe your deck even has a good matchup against two or three of them. So your sideboard is dedicated to fight your bad matchups for what, 2, 3 decks?
Legacy and modern require the deck and pilot to be capable of dealing with a much wider array of threats, and even a tier 1.5 deck will kill you dead if you can't interact with it. And standard is the skill intensive format? I mean, for crying out loud, most websites will practically spell out the current professional standard meta for you, and it's monitored and discussed weekly. Honestly, if you don't know what kind of meta standard is at the given moment, you have zero business playing it and expecting to win. Playing the metagame in standard is just a fact of life. A boring fact that doesn't involve any skill other than reading a tournament report for 30 minutes and going "gee, there sure are a lot of Siege Rhinos running around" or "man, that Stoneforge Mystic chick is pretty popular" or "gee, another week of Bloodbraid Elf/Blightning" or "hey look, it's a deck with 4x Bitterblossom. Again." or "man, nothing has beaten Dark Ritual/Necropotence in three months...." I mean, it's not exactly rocket science. As far as your local meta goes, all you have to do is pay attention to what everyone's playing. Because odds are that while they might change the board out here and there, or tweak the list as new sets come out, unless the deck is just trash, most of them are going to bring something similar next week. If you played during Khan's standard, it was almost a given you were going to be playing against a whole lot of Siege Rhinos. Seriously, the gameplan for half the field was:
"Siege Rhino, you dead yet? No? Siege Rhino, you dead yet?" No? Siege Rhino....."
Seriously, your decision tree for half the meta was:
"Do I have the mana for Siege Rhino?"
Yes?----> Cast Siege Rhino
No?----> Do I have an Anafenza?
Yes?----> Cast Anafenza.
No?----> Wait till I can cast Siege Rhino.
Yeah, real skill intensive. This is definitely on par with Storm Combo, or High Tide, or Tin Fins. Maybe Legacy players could learn a thing or two about mad skillz if they'd start reanimating Siege Rhinos instead of Griselbrand.
A few people have the resources to build a few Tier 1 standard lists at any given time, but I don't see that as not being cost prohibitive for most people. If you can build multiple tier 1 decks throughout a year of standard, you could have bought some of the Legacy decks out there. For the most part you're going to be facing the same decks down every week give or take a few cards until rotation and then it's rinse, wash, repeat. Really, your argument that standard is more skill intensive boils down to "you have to study the meta because it changes?" No kidding. Oooooh, now Nahiri control added in Dragonlord Atarka and so that Nahiri has something to do if she gets to 8!
Go to a large legacy event and be forced to play and adapt to 10 different decks in 10 different rounds, some of which you might have never seen before and then come back and tell me how easy it is. Try and figure out how to configure the sideboard to address the archetypes your deck is soft to, because you don't get the luxury of tailoring your board to hate out specific decks unless the matchup is just that bad. Being good with 1 deck in Legacy or Modern doesn't get you anywhere because if you want to stand a semblance of a chance, you need to be good with several decks, not to play them, but to know how to fight them. To know what to name with Phyrexian Revoker on T2 if you're a D&T pilot. To know what to name on T1 with Cabal Therapy if you're piloting Reanimator. To know the odds of being hit by Force of Will if you're playing Storm combo. To know what decks will kill you dead if you drop to a certain life total with Ad Nauseum. To know that casting an Empty the Warrens for 14 goblins is a bad plan on T1 when Gitaxian Probe shows you a crop rotation. To know how to be able to time your combo so the LED in your hand won't get hit by the Aburpt Decay in theirs before you can use it. What do you need to know in standard? The general shell of 4 or 5 different decks and to play you CITP lands first, with no worries of Wasteland or Stifle? To know that when you pull your three card combo off there's no such thing as a Force of Will that can break your gameplan? Have you ever cast a Duress off of an Underground Sea and then lost the game in response before your duress resolved because your opponent was playing Solidarity and you just spent your Spell Pierce mana and you shoulda seen that coming?
Being a top tier standard player by your definition is:
Familiarity with all the decks (all 5 of them)
Be able to bring the right deck. (This information is basically spoon fed to you if you play regularly at the LGS, or read up on the scene if attending a larger event for 30 minutes)
Being a top tier Legacy player involves:
Familiarity with all the decks (Including but not limited to: Burn, Elves, Goblins, TES, ANT, High Tide, Death and Taxes, Enchantress, MUD, Miracles, The Gate, Pox, Sneak and Show, Tron, Lands, Delver and its 3 or 4 variants, Shardless Sultai, Nic Fit, Reanimator, Tin Fins, Belcher, Oops All Spells, Imperial Painter, Dredge (and LED Dredge), Affinity, and Fish. These are the ones I can come up with off the top of my head, did I miss anyone? If you are not familiar with these decks and their sideboard cards, whether or not they play wasteland, force, or stifle, you are going to miss your Cabal Therapies, name the wrong thing with your Pithing Needles and Revokers, tap out at the wrong time and just DIE, or make any number of other mistakes that will just kill you.
Being able to pilot your deck to win against anything you might face down and sideboard correctly on the fly against a deck you've never faced before. (See above)
I've played a helluva lot of standard and done pretty well at it, I've enjoyed it off and on, sometimes some standards have actually been fun, and it's the format I like to play when I just want to play magic and not think too hard. I challenge you to try and recreate the same results in Legacy you have with Brain on the Shore in standard and then come back and tell me the skill levels are equal.
Oh I forgot, you don't need to play Legacy to make sweeping assumptions on the skill level of the format and its players, "special snowflakes" we may be. But don't make the claim that Legacy players don't have more skill or that Legacy players can't "step up" to other formats. You could at least try the format before bashing its players. -
May 18, 2016
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Teia Rabishu posted a message on Better at Legacy then Modern/Standard? What does it mean!?Posted in: Magic GeneralQuote from ashley25746 »or they are people borrowing a deck from a friend, or they're new to their deck and therefore otherwise not skilled.
This cannot be overstated. Legacy rewards deck fluency much more than Modern or Standard do. You can't just slap together a tier 1 deck, playtest it for a bit, then take it to a big event and hope to do well, because outside of matchups hugely lopsided in your favour, you're likely to get rolled by someone who's been playing the same deck for literally years and knows its every intricacy and line of play in excruciating detail. The smaller the card pool and the less diverse the options, the more you get rewarded for other factors. There's a reason that it's good advice for someone who wants to go to a Legacy event but isn't familiar with the format is "put together a linear combo deck like Belcher, goldfish with it until you're comfortable, and pray variance is on your side."
I've taken a solidly tier 2 Legacy deck (Jund, because I like my decks to be a value grind) to multiple top 8s at large events, but have had relatively minimal success in other formats, and that's because of the peculiarities of how Legacy works as a format. With formats like Standard, tiers mean much more because a high tier deck can have a solid game against most if not all of the field (as well as being able to sideboard against a higher proportion of your bad matchups), but in Legacy, a tier 2 or even 3 deck can just come out of nowhere and spike an event more easily than in narrower formats.
The best comparison I can think of is that if formats were RPGs, then Legacy would be Dark Souls—not the most difficult per se, but having a fairly demanding learning curve right from the get-go and a low tolerance for foolish mistakes. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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https://www.hasbrotoyshop.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/en/htsusa/Special-Offers/featured-htsus-specialoffers-featured/-exclusives/-c54940000
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I wouldn't be that concerned. Elves as a deck is fundamentally still the same deck. You'll replace the DRS with some other mana dork to help you accelerate or things like Birchlore Rangers. You keep black for Abrupt Decay since Chalice on 1 is game over and there are also other things you need to kill like Jitte. I wouldn't be too worried. Elves will live on.
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Jund was already pretty terrible in the meta after the SDT ban. I only played it because it's my petdeck and I have enough experience with it that I can still do alright. There is no obvious replacement card and the only other reason to play the shell is Punishing Fire/Grove. You can just play that same interaction in a better deck like Lands, Maverick, or 4C Loam. There's really no reason to play Jund as the grindy outvalue them deck because there are better choices and frankly they were around before the ban.
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This is what I am most afraid of. Yes, just like the SDT ban there are decks that are casualties that did nothing wrong (Jund, Elves, Food Chain, Aluren, Manaless Dredge, etc.), but it's the fact these seem reactionary. I liked it A LOT more when Wizards left us alone to police ourselves. Yes it took time, but it was organic and natural. We're less than a year from the SDT ban and frankly, the Grixis Delver meta was because they banned SDT.
It might not be a popular opinion, but I actually preferred the Miracles meta since it was the "top" deck that rewarded a skilled pilot and understanding the format. Grixis Delver any grinder could just pick up and do well. Yeah, it was a problem, but in my opinion, all of this nonsense started once Wizards got too involved in Legacy's banlist. I liked it a lot more when they stayed out.
I wouldn't be surprised in 6 or 12 months when social media is crying for something else to be banned because it's not fun or for the sake of "diversity." Then again, my pet deck (Jund) is pretty much dead now so I could be biased.
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Your main deck seems fine, but I don't think you have enough game against combo in your sideboard. I'd consider adding more discard or other things in place of things like 3 REB/Pyro, Faerie Macs, and Diabolic Edict.
The REB/Pyros are usually not that great. You already have a ton of removal for Delver decks and I find sitting on them against Show and Tell isn't a great idea since I'd rather be proactive and destroy their hand instead of waiting on them to cast Show anD tell.
Definitely run at least 3 pieces of GY hate, but I've never been a big fan of Faerie. I like Grafdigger's Cage and Surgical more because they work in a lot of other match-ups too.
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I wouldn't worry about this now. I would be more worried that our best match-up is now gone and combo will start to come back. The meta was relatively even in terms of diversity, but now combo will not be as scared, which is bad for Jund. I for one am considering rebuilding either Storm or Sneak and Show.
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I have not. Good luck though. Seattle has a great Magic community.
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With that said, I've been to Mox Boarding House, Uncle Games (Redmond), and Games and Gizmos and don't have anything negative to say about any of them. I'd say Uncle Games and Games and Gizmos felt a bit more casual, but that's because Mox Boarding House is really Card Kingdom and has a relatively healthy following and great Legacy/Modern events that they stream. However, I have never done a prerelease there. Just Legacy Thursdays, which weren't like super competitive either.
Long story short, you can't lose with any of those three options although I did open two Planeswalkers (one foil) in my sealed pool at Games and Gizmos :P. Good luck!
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I feel we are pretty favored against Infect. They have only 12 creatures we care about (4 Glistener Elf, 4 Blighted Agent, and 4 Inkmoth Nexus) and Punishing Fire and Abrupt Decay kill all of those. Wastelands you should save for Inkmoth Nexus. Basically recurrable removal is ridiculous against them. I've noticed some are now running 2 Spellskite in the SB to counter us a bit, but even then you can kill it pretty easily and go back to killing their dudes. Again, they have very few threats. Also be sure to kill during your turn so they have to waste protection spells rather than use then during their combat where they get the bonus pumps.
That seems fine. I've been playing that main deck for over 5 years now. I think *maybe* I added the 2nd Sylvan somewhere between then and now, but that's it. The rest has been stable for years now and I've been very happy with it. I know I could run Bolts, but I'd rather run 4 Abrupt Decay, 4 Punishing Fire, and more Hymn to Tourach. Those are usually what get lowered for bolts. I might start running 2 bolts if DnT starts becoming a problem with its Prelates on 2, but right now the Toxic Deluges in the SB seem to be enough.
The Scavenging Ooze is for GY-based decks, but also decks that will side in RIP against us. Goyf becomes a 0/1, but Ooze will always be at least a 2/2 (i.e. a slow clock). Basically Ooze is dual purpose since it helps with GY decks, but also against Miracles, which will side in RIP. It also destroys Elves after you kill all their dudes and provide a little life gain against Burn (which we are unfavored against).
That's fine too. I know folks run 3 with 2 swamps and no Mountain, but that basic Mountain has gotten me out of trouble a ton of times. Without it you can get wasted out of Red sources. Groves are a priority for them to remove (any good player saves their Wastelands for our Groves) and once they see how little Red you have, they will attack your Badlands too. With a basic Mountain you're protected against all that.