They have Islands? Yeah you can outrace. If you're really worried pack more Vapor Snag or Dismember even. Let their guys through at first, don't let a flipped Delver stick around, and then outrace.
The Asheroth Chronicles are live. Started out with my FNM/drunken weekend stories from this thread. I'm going to put some work stories in later tonight.
@Sidneyious: You just sound like all the other legacy fanboys that think every other format is trash. If you actually read the OP, you'll see that he wants a Modern deck that is a relatively close port to Legacy. He's not asking for a breakdown of the Legacy meta or anything. He got good answers based around MODERN (hence why he posted it in this forum) so I don't see why you have to derail a perfectly good thread by hating on the format. If you want to hate on Modern, go back to the legacy boards.
@Nate and Aja: +1. I think MaRo's contributions outweigh my annoyances with him but I definitely am more of a reactive player and I agree with most of what you've said.
Disgruntled Downriver Dimirican
Also, any modern players here? I want some input on some things.
Ok I'm really bored so I'm going to write up my most recent FNM experience. Warning, wall of text ahead.
I don't really like keeping up with Standard as I'd rather spend my money going out and drinking on the weekends. I prefer Modern since it doesn't rotate and isn't hugely expensive to get into. My friend, however convinced me to do Standard this night so I finished up my Jund Varolz deck and went with him. As usual, we did a round-robin tourney. This LGS is pretty laid back so we just went with however many rounds people still wanted to play and ranked the winners based on highest #wins-#losses, only counting people with 4+ rounds played and giving tiebreakers to the player(s) with more games played.
We have a pretty consistent group of people that show up to this shop so a lot of us know each other and can talk pretty easily but it's still very clearly separated into a few groups. My group consists of me, Bill, the store owners son John, and on a rare occasion a random assortment of Bill's friends from college. John's dad has a personal collection I drool over. He collects a playset of every card from every set so John can literally play any deck he wants at any time. You'd think this would make him hard to gameplan against but he's not really smart enough to strategize so he just plays the most recent MTGO daily winners deck. Bill always has some crazy homebrew that comes out of left field but still can win a lot. Then there's this crazy hot girl named Sarah. Sarah's the local girl-next-door that every guy's in love with. She's insanely hot, she knows it, and she sure as hell uses it to her advantage. She usually shows up by herself but always has a crowd around her. Sarah and I are decent enough friends as far as friends who only see each other once a week go since I'm the only one who doesn't creep on her. The next group is about 6-7 really nerdy guys with poor hygiene. They almost always play similar decks only branching out a color or two so it's pretty easy to gameplan against half the meta. This group also looks at Sarah as some sort of goddess and it's pretty sad. The last group is a bunch of skater/punk rock dudes that are generally really nice. The same 2 guys always show up and bring a few new friends each week it seems. Some of these guys are mean and try to cheat but overall they're good dudes. Other than that we get a pretty decent showing of randoms that overall keep to themselves. Every now and then one tries to hit on Sarah and fails miserably and it's absolutely hilarious to watch.
So background out of the way, let's get into the games. As I said above I ran a really explosive Jund Varolz list that can still function late game. I started out testing Naya Blitz but scrapped it because it felt fragile and too all in to me.
Round 1 vs Bill:
He plays some weird deck that was part White Weenie/Humans and part Conjurer's Closet.dec. The deck could smash out an amazing early game and then generate huge amounts of advantage late game, but lacked all semblance of a mid game.
G1- I curved out near perfectly. T1 Vexing Devil. T2 Lotleth Troll discarding Gravecrawler. T3 Varolz. T4 Vexing Devil + scavenge = dead.
G2- Kept a hand of Dreadbore, Dreadbore, Lotleth Troll, Domri, Landx3. Killed his Champion, dropped Troll, killed his Mentor, dropped Domri and just destroyed him in the mid game.
1-0
Round 2 vs Skater:
This wasn't one of the regular skater dudes. I tried to make small talk but he just stared at me. He played reanimator.
G1- He got an early start with 2 Avacyn's Pilgrim but couldn't find much else after that and I killed him before he could do anything worthwhile.
G2- Longer game than I usually have. He killed some of my early dudes so I was struggling a bit. Late game I was able to scavenge onto Vamp Nighthawk safely and win from there.
2-0
Round 3 vs Sarah:
This girl is dirty! She will try everything she can think of to distract you. She shows up with low cut shirts, flirts with you, compliments you, bats her eyelashes, the whole shebang. Well it may work wonders on everyone else, but none of it works on me and it drives her NUTS. In the last few weeks we actually started talking outside of FNM's and hung out a few times. I know it makes all the nerdy guys jealous so I flirt with her and do all sorts of little things (putting my hand down on her back when I walk up, get up and hug her when she comes in, buy her drinks, etc), I've asked her if it was creepy but she says she likes it. I also call her on her crap all the time, even if I'm 4 tables away I'll yell it out. Lately she's been helping me out distracting my opponents for me (see round 4), it may not be the best game etiquette but it sure is fun. So anyway, she was playing a Junk token-y deck. As usual she had a few people following her around
G1- She played a few cute creatures that just got trampled over by a huge Lotleth Troll. After this game she started sideboarding while I just left my deck sitting, leaned back and just smirked at her a bit. One of the guys watching asked why I wasn't sideboarding and I just said that I didn't need to. A couple of the guys laughed but Sarah kicked me under the table.
G2- Both of our decks grinded against each other to a stalemate around turn 6, she had 4 small creatures and I had one Gravecrawler with 2 +1/+1 counters. I top decked a Domri and thought I had it won but she revealed a land. Sarah top decked a Gavony Township and it was over from there. After this game she went digging through her board while I just sat there again bringing on a few comments like, "Still think you don't need to sideboard." Sarah gave me a little smile and asked, "If I flash you will you give me game 3?" I told her I didn't need to drop games to get her naked. A few of the nerdy guys giggled like school girls, Bill just shook his head at me, and Sarah started laughing a lot and shrugged her shoulders at me.
G3- I won this easily, not much else to say. She pretended to be mad at me but gave me a hug.
3-0
Round 4 vs Nerd:
This kid was watching the last game and is notorious for texting and calling Sarah all the time. Before the game he looked around then leaned towards me and asked if Sarah and I were dating. I just smiled a bit and gave a small shrug. He was playing Naya Blitz. I may not have won this game if Sarah hadn't been standing behind me with her arm kind of around me the whole time, the guy made so many misplays and bad decisions because he was staring at her all game.
G1- He kept a poor hand. No T1 play for him into a T2 Burning-Tree Emissary that didn't lead to anything else basically spelled game over for him.
G2- He curved almost perfectly T1 Champion, T2 BTE into Mayor, T3 Frontline Medic. I was able to hold off with a Dreadbore and Lili OTV for a while. Midway through this game Sarah moved my arm and sat down on my lap so I just put my arms around her and kept playing. I almost cracked up seeing how much this distracted the guy. I asked her after the night was over and she said she did it because she knew I was in trouble there and wanted to try and help out. Eventually I didn't draw enough creatures and he pulled out the win.
G3- This was a complete race, we both hit curve but Experiment One into a BTE to a non-buffed Flinthoof Boar wasn't as impressive as his G2 draw and I was able to grind out a win behind a 6/7 Vamp Nighthawk. After this last game Sarah kissed me on the cheek and got up and walked away. I jumped up, ran after her, grabbed her and kissed her. I think a couple of the geeky guys clapped but I wasn't paying attention. NBD but we're going out now ;).
4-0
The store owner kept making jokes about how we aren't allowed to play as a couple anymore because it's too unfair. A couple of the skater dudes seemed a little sad that she was taken but I don't care sucks for them!
Round 5 vs Skater#2:
This guy tried to stare me down but I was way too happy and kept talking to him. He eventually started laughing and said he couldn't keep a straight face for that long. He was really nice and we exchanged numbers after so he'd let me know when he was going to FNM. He played Aristocrats.
G1- This was an Aristocrat vs Nighthawk game that I eventually won after I cast Domri and -2'ed, forcing him to sac his last creature so I could Dreadbore on his turn.
G2- Boarded in Lili OTV and rode her to victory.
5-0
At this point I wanted to call it quits but everyone was in for a few more rounds and I didn't want to risk someone going 6-1 and beating me so I kept going.
Round 6 vs Nerd#2:
B.O. almost won this game. He smelled so badly I didn't even want to be near him so I played a little too fast. He played Junk aggro.
G1- I dropped a Troll and a Varolz consecutively without guarding against removal and lost them both to a Tragic Slip and an Abrupt Decay. This game went way downhill after he dropped a Voice and was over when he dropped Sorin.
G2- I was far more prepared for his removal but I didn't need it, he had mulled to 4 and could never recover from being in top deck mode after turn 3.
G3- 2 Gravecrawlers into a Troll put on a lot of pressure early. Once Domri dropped he was done.
6-0
After here I was the only undefeated player with only one player remotely close. Sarah had gone 5-1 so everyone else called it quits but they begged us for a rematch that could potentially force a tie.
Round 7 vs Sarah:
To say that this was the main event of the night would be a huge understatement. The owner of the store offered 5 packs of Modern Masters to the winner. I jokingly made a big deal about how either way I couldn't lose so we should split if we tied overall but I was having fun so I didn't care.
G1- Lingering Souls and Township kept me at bay without a Lotleth Troll out but my 2 Gravecrawlers + Nighthawk were too much to handle for her and I hit for lethal while I was at 5 life.
G2- This one wasn't even close. I blew her out with T1 Devil, T2 Spike Jester, T3 Troll + Crawler, T4 Varolz, T5 Scavenge Devil and Jester.
7-0
I felt bad so I gave her 2 of the MM packs which she promptly gave back to me when she opened a Goyf and wouldn't be able enough to keep it in good conscience. I also opened an Aether Vial, Figure of Destiny, and the all-powerful Squee. Overall it was one of the best nights of my life.
Really long post I know but if you don't want to read all that, just read the Round 3&4 recaps, those are the most interesting parts. Seriously one of the most fun nights of my life though! Went 7-0, got a girlfriend, and opened a Goyf.
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Pepperidge Farms remembers.
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What's Magic? I thought it was just called EDH.
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CLOSE ENOUGH!
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@Nate and Aja: +1. I think MaRo's contributions outweigh my annoyances with him but I definitely am more of a reactive player and I agree with most of what you've said.
Also, any modern players here? I want some input on some things.
Ok I'm really bored so I'm going to write up my most recent FNM experience. Warning, wall of text ahead.
I don't really like keeping up with Standard as I'd rather spend my money going out and drinking on the weekends. I prefer Modern since it doesn't rotate and isn't hugely expensive to get into. My friend, however convinced me to do Standard this night so I finished up my Jund Varolz deck and went with him. As usual, we did a round-robin tourney. This LGS is pretty laid back so we just went with however many rounds people still wanted to play and ranked the winners based on highest #wins-#losses, only counting people with 4+ rounds played and giving tiebreakers to the player(s) with more games played.
We have a pretty consistent group of people that show up to this shop so a lot of us know each other and can talk pretty easily but it's still very clearly separated into a few groups. My group consists of me, Bill, the store owners son John, and on a rare occasion a random assortment of Bill's friends from college. John's dad has a personal collection I drool over. He collects a playset of every card from every set so John can literally play any deck he wants at any time. You'd think this would make him hard to gameplan against but he's not really smart enough to strategize so he just plays the most recent MTGO daily winners deck. Bill always has some crazy homebrew that comes out of left field but still can win a lot. Then there's this crazy hot girl named Sarah. Sarah's the local girl-next-door that every guy's in love with. She's insanely hot, she knows it, and she sure as hell uses it to her advantage. She usually shows up by herself but always has a crowd around her. Sarah and I are decent enough friends as far as friends who only see each other once a week go since I'm the only one who doesn't creep on her. The next group is about 6-7 really nerdy guys with poor hygiene. They almost always play similar decks only branching out a color or two so it's pretty easy to gameplan against half the meta. This group also looks at Sarah as some sort of goddess and it's pretty sad. The last group is a bunch of skater/punk rock dudes that are generally really nice. The same 2 guys always show up and bring a few new friends each week it seems. Some of these guys are mean and try to cheat but overall they're good dudes. Other than that we get a pretty decent showing of randoms that overall keep to themselves. Every now and then one tries to hit on Sarah and fails miserably and it's absolutely hilarious to watch.
So background out of the way, let's get into the games. As I said above I ran a really explosive Jund Varolz list that can still function late game. I started out testing Naya Blitz but scrapped it because it felt fragile and too all in to me.
Round 1 vs Bill:
He plays some weird deck that was part White Weenie/Humans and part Conjurer's Closet.dec. The deck could smash out an amazing early game and then generate huge amounts of advantage late game, but lacked all semblance of a mid game.
G1- I curved out near perfectly. T1 Vexing Devil. T2 Lotleth Troll discarding Gravecrawler. T3 Varolz. T4 Vexing Devil + scavenge = dead.
G2- Kept a hand of Dreadbore, Dreadbore, Lotleth Troll, Domri, Landx3. Killed his Champion, dropped Troll, killed his Mentor, dropped Domri and just destroyed him in the mid game.
1-0
Round 2 vs Skater:
This wasn't one of the regular skater dudes. I tried to make small talk but he just stared at me. He played reanimator.
G1- He got an early start with 2 Avacyn's Pilgrim but couldn't find much else after that and I killed him before he could do anything worthwhile.
G2- Longer game than I usually have. He killed some of my early dudes so I was struggling a bit. Late game I was able to scavenge onto Vamp Nighthawk safely and win from there.
2-0
Round 3 vs Sarah:
This girl is dirty! She will try everything she can think of to distract you. She shows up with low cut shirts, flirts with you, compliments you, bats her eyelashes, the whole shebang. Well it may work wonders on everyone else, but none of it works on me and it drives her NUTS. In the last few weeks we actually started talking outside of FNM's and hung out a few times. I know it makes all the nerdy guys jealous so I flirt with her and do all sorts of little things (putting my hand down on her back when I walk up, get up and hug her when she comes in, buy her drinks, etc), I've asked her if it was creepy but she says she likes it. I also call her on her crap all the time, even if I'm 4 tables away I'll yell it out. Lately she's been helping me out distracting my opponents for me (see round 4), it may not be the best game etiquette but it sure is fun. So anyway, she was playing a Junk token-y deck. As usual she had a few people following her around
G1- She played a few cute creatures that just got trampled over by a huge Lotleth Troll. After this game she started sideboarding while I just left my deck sitting, leaned back and just smirked at her a bit. One of the guys watching asked why I wasn't sideboarding and I just said that I didn't need to. A couple of the guys laughed but Sarah kicked me under the table.
G2- Both of our decks grinded against each other to a stalemate around turn 6, she had 4 small creatures and I had one Gravecrawler with 2 +1/+1 counters. I top decked a Domri and thought I had it won but she revealed a land. Sarah top decked a Gavony Township and it was over from there. After this game she went digging through her board while I just sat there again bringing on a few comments like, "Still think you don't need to sideboard." Sarah gave me a little smile and asked, "If I flash you will you give me game 3?" I told her I didn't need to drop games to get her naked. A few of the nerdy guys giggled like school girls, Bill just shook his head at me, and Sarah started laughing a lot and shrugged her shoulders at me.
G3- I won this easily, not much else to say. She pretended to be mad at me but gave me a hug.
3-0
Round 4 vs Nerd:
This kid was watching the last game and is notorious for texting and calling Sarah all the time. Before the game he looked around then leaned towards me and asked if Sarah and I were dating. I just smiled a bit and gave a small shrug. He was playing Naya Blitz. I may not have won this game if Sarah hadn't been standing behind me with her arm kind of around me the whole time, the guy made so many misplays and bad decisions because he was staring at her all game.
G1- He kept a poor hand. No T1 play for him into a T2 Burning-Tree Emissary that didn't lead to anything else basically spelled game over for him.
G2- He curved almost perfectly T1 Champion, T2 BTE into Mayor, T3 Frontline Medic. I was able to hold off with a Dreadbore and Lili OTV for a while. Midway through this game Sarah moved my arm and sat down on my lap so I just put my arms around her and kept playing. I almost cracked up seeing how much this distracted the guy. I asked her after the night was over and she said she did it because she knew I was in trouble there and wanted to try and help out. Eventually I didn't draw enough creatures and he pulled out the win.
G3- This was a complete race, we both hit curve but Experiment One into a BTE to a non-buffed Flinthoof Boar wasn't as impressive as his G2 draw and I was able to grind out a win behind a 6/7 Vamp Nighthawk. After this last game Sarah kissed me on the cheek and got up and walked away. I jumped up, ran after her, grabbed her and kissed her. I think a couple of the geeky guys clapped but I wasn't paying attention. NBD but we're going out now ;).
4-0
The store owner kept making jokes about how we aren't allowed to play as a couple anymore because it's too unfair. A couple of the skater dudes seemed a little sad that she was taken but I don't care sucks for them!
Round 5 vs Skater#2:
This guy tried to stare me down but I was way too happy and kept talking to him. He eventually started laughing and said he couldn't keep a straight face for that long. He was really nice and we exchanged numbers after so he'd let me know when he was going to FNM. He played Aristocrats.
G1- This was an Aristocrat vs Nighthawk game that I eventually won after I cast Domri and -2'ed, forcing him to sac his last creature so I could Dreadbore on his turn.
G2- Boarded in Lili OTV and rode her to victory.
5-0
At this point I wanted to call it quits but everyone was in for a few more rounds and I didn't want to risk someone going 6-1 and beating me so I kept going.
Round 6 vs Nerd#2:
B.O. almost won this game. He smelled so badly I didn't even want to be near him so I played a little too fast. He played Junk aggro.
G1- I dropped a Troll and a Varolz consecutively without guarding against removal and lost them both to a Tragic Slip and an Abrupt Decay. This game went way downhill after he dropped a Voice and was over when he dropped Sorin.
G2- I was far more prepared for his removal but I didn't need it, he had mulled to 4 and could never recover from being in top deck mode after turn 3.
G3- 2 Gravecrawlers into a Troll put on a lot of pressure early. Once Domri dropped he was done.
6-0
After here I was the only undefeated player with only one player remotely close. Sarah had gone 5-1 so everyone else called it quits but they begged us for a rematch that could potentially force a tie.
Round 7 vs Sarah:
To say that this was the main event of the night would be a huge understatement. The owner of the store offered 5 packs of Modern Masters to the winner. I jokingly made a big deal about how either way I couldn't lose so we should split if we tied overall but I was having fun so I didn't care.
G1- Lingering Souls and Township kept me at bay without a Lotleth Troll out but my 2 Gravecrawlers + Nighthawk were too much to handle for her and I hit for lethal while I was at 5 life.
G2- This one wasn't even close. I blew her out with T1 Devil, T2 Spike Jester, T3 Troll + Crawler, T4 Varolz, T5 Scavenge Devil and Jester.
7-0
I felt bad so I gave her 2 of the MM packs which she promptly gave back to me when she opened a Goyf and wouldn't be able enough to keep it in good conscience. I also opened an Aether Vial, Figure of Destiny, and the all-powerful Squee. Overall it was one of the best nights of my life.