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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: [Article] Lorwyn Goblins
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on: November 19, 2007, 07:48:55 pm
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I notice in this crusher build you're using vault of whispers. What do you think about this versus the former use of blinkmoth nexus to avoid counters. (plating a nexus, and swigning, or even clamping for more cards, was huge once upon a time)
I haven't tested in ages, and your build is very low on land, so going back to nexuses may not have merit, but it seems like it may be worth testing. -Virtual
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Vintage Community Discussion / Casual Forum / Re: 4CB Tournament #1 Results and Discussion/4CB Tournament #2 Opening
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on: September 06, 2006, 07:23:33 pm
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I have a few corrections to submit for my pairing (I'm #13)
13v2: Should be 6/0 not 0/6 2 First: 2 15 Droplet 19 20 Choker 20 20 Barbed Wire 20 20 -2 -1 20 17 -3 -1 +1 17 17 -4 -1 18 12 -5 -1 +1 13 12 -6 -1 (chasm) 14 5 -7 -1 +1 7 5 -8 -1 ( -> -2) 8 3 -9 -1 +1 -1 3
2 First: 2 15 Droplet 19 20 Choker 20 20 -1 +1 20 20 -2 20 18 -3 +1 18 18 -4 19 14 -5 +1 15 14 -6 (chasm) 15 8 -7 +1 9 8 -8 (-> -2) 10 6 -9 +1 2 6 -10 (->-4) 3 2 -11 +1 -7 2
I don't see how I get 0 points here... even if he drops the barbed wire later, it doesn't help, and pulling parallax's trick (Active/inactive) on the stack, I can get away with a free turn as well which I'm not even using.
13v4 3/3 instead of 0/6 Going first, I win (chalice at 0). Him going first, he wins (Blood Moon)
13v8 6/0 instead of 3/3 Going first, I win (chalice at 0).
He Must flip erayo if he's going to get his attack out. I will let chalice be coutnered, then play idol. Using parallax's trick I win the race.
Him Me Dude 20 20 Chalice,choker 20 20 Attack 19 14 Chasm 19 12 -3 16 12 -4 (-> -2) 16 10 -5 11 10 -6 (-> -4) 11 6 -7 4 6 -8 (-> -0 Parallax trick) 4 6 -9 -5 6
13v9 should be 6/0 instead of 3/3 If I go first I win (chalice at 0)
If he goes first, he drops 8 power of guys. Him Me Dudes 20 20 Choker 20 20 Attack,-1 19 12 Chasm,-2 19 10 -3 16 10 -4 (-> -2) 16 8 -5 11 8 -6 (-> -4) 11 4 -7 4 4 -8 (-> -0 Parallax trick) 4 4 -9 -5 4
Which should give me 15 more points if I'm not mistaken.
-Virtual
Edit: Wow, I just went back and saw that parallax caught all of mine already. Unbelievable & awesome.
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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: [Deck] Thirst For Knowledge in 'Tog'
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on: February 06, 2006, 08:37:26 pm
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Buehler did well with it in WA, but that's pretty much the only one I can think of.
In general, I think that difference in mana from 3-4 makes a huge impact on the game, and the decks reliance on drawing acceleration. But thats merely theoretical as I haven't tested the in's and out's of each of them as thouroughly as others.
-Virtual
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Vintage Community Discussion / Rules Q&A / Re: Several Rulings from Tourney...
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on: January 29, 2006, 07:36:35 pm
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I'm not a judge, but I would think that shuffling the darksteel colossus into the library would be fine, as long as there haven't been any deck manipulation things that would let either player know the top cards of a library... (Brainstorm, tutor, etc)
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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: TT Confident (a.k.a. The Perfect Pile)
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on: December 09, 2005, 03:03:37 am
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I've been testing confidant in a TPS-esque deck. It's been fantastic. You've taken it a step further, so I'll try it out.
Confidant is ridiculously good. Replacing the duresses is the right call, they're similar, except confidant draws cards if it resolves.
-Virtual
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Eternal Formats / Global Vintage Tournament Reports and Results / Re: [Report] Team Ogre vs Springfield (ICON) 9-10-05
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on: September 21, 2005, 06:09:26 pm
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Does anyone has any testing to prove which is the better variation? That'd rock. I work too much to test the differences Yes. Team White Lotus has been tuning a 5c version since after vroman's first appearance with his 2c version. The deck plays a LOT differently when you go for the 5c mana base. Because of consistency issues the # of wastelands probably shouldn't be as high. Also, the solemns have to go, and you become even more dependant on your artifact mana, so null rod isn't as appealing. My current list is as follows: TWL Scuba Mask (5cUba Mask) 2 wasteland 1 strip mine 3 city of brass 4 gemstone mine 4 workshop 1 tolarian academy 4 bazaar 1 mox emerald 1 mox pearl 1 mox ruby 1 mox jet 1 mox sapphire 1 sol ring 1 black lotus 1 mana crypt 1 mana vault 1 lotus petal 1 duplicant 1 karn silver golem 1 triskelion 1 sundering titan 1 platinum angel 4 goblin welder 2 gorilla shaman 1 ancestral recall 1 tinker 1 demonic tutor 1 vampiric tutor 1 balance 2 crucible 2 chalice 4 uba mask 4 smokestack 1 memory jar 1 candelabra of tawnos 1 trinisphere In general, moving to a 5c version just makes the deck different. The mono-red version has a better game vs other shop decks, and gets to play null rod (which is huge). The 5c one gets bombs like balance/tinker/sundering titan/etc. and just is suited for a different environment. We can start another thread on this if this derails too much. -Virtual
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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: Why I Won't be Playing Mono Blue This Year at Gencon
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on: August 13, 2005, 09:52:06 pm
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My prediction is that r/g beats comes back R/G beatz gets to "come back"? I wasn't even aware it when it was here. Anyways, I think a good build of oath could have a shot. People have stopped packing their hate. Oath has easy access to ground seal, which is fantastic welder hate, and good gifts hate. Kinda wish I was goin now, ah well. -Virtual
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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: [Premium Article] Fine, Just Ban it Already
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on: July 19, 2005, 03:03:36 am
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I would hate to see Will go. Topdecking will kind of embodies everything that Vintage is, all of the good, and all of the bad.
Type 1 has been about abusing Will for even longer than written in your article. "Keeper" pretty much just stalled until it "won" the game with it.
I agree with your sentiment, but is there any other way? A lot of resistance will be around to banning anything, and possibilities like increasing the minimum # of cards, etc might actually be just as/more healthy for vintage.
(40 card min is in the rulebook, so 60 seems just about as arbitrary as anything else)
-Virtual
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Eternal Formats / Creative / Re: Oath Discussion: Questions on Oath's Innovation
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on: July 04, 2005, 03:04:07 pm
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I am actually curious to TWL's thoughts on furnace/chalice builds. I have basically stopped efforts on Oath in favor of the ever resilient tog. In general, when testing the furnace/Chalice builds, we found a few things. #1, it was better than most of the other builds that we had tested. #2, it flat out rolled to a resolved chalice for 2 #3, it didn't have any significant upside to the TWL build... the worst matchups didn't improve significantly (UW fish), CS was slightly improved by the chalices, but the variations in the winning matchups didn't change significantly enough to matter. Oath is a solid win condition. It used to have 2 drawbacks: #1 they had to have a creature, #2 it takes >1 turn to kill. Now it only has 1 draw back. People can come up with any slew of good->bad builds and given the inherit strength of 4x oath of druids, enough power, and forces, you can steal games, and power wins through others. The interesting thing about oath is that it's fairly difficult to really innovate further with it. As you shift your build to use the graveyard more, graveyard hate becomes another thing that you don't want to see/that can kill you. The goal of oath pretty naturally falls into the agressive role. 4 of your lands hurt worse than a city of brass if you don't win the turn after you use them. I've had my fun with oath for now. Pretty much, now I just get frustrated at the games that it can steal turn 1. I write those off, and I consider if I have enough to stall it out while I win before it. I don't think I'll be turning TWL oath much further until we see a dramatic metagame shift. I'm not afraid to dust it off and bring it to tournaments if I feel its the right choice, but at least with beatdown creatures, and running duress, I think the TWL build is about as tight of a list as you can find. -Virtual
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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: [Premium Article] Meandeck Gifts
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on: June 28, 2005, 02:55:10 pm
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So I have to say that I think this is possibly the best Meandeck Incarnation yet, from my minimal testing.
I would have to say this deck plays like TPS to me. It is slightly more controllish. The ability to go scroll->Force of Will is really nice, if you want to play control. I think scroll->ancestral on turn 1 is a bit silly unless you have serious counter backup. Resolving an early ancestral though does seem like a reality that is doable, and after that this can either play like "Kesler's Keeper" where having developed that card advantage you can't lose, or it can just combo out ridiculously fast.
Enough artifact hate can be harmful, so this isn't the end-all-be-all of type 1, but it certainly is a powerhouse. I think that a few notes might be able to come from TPS lists in order to diversify the deck a bit more, and maybe even make it faster. Not sure yet though because it might destroy your ability to fall back on the control role.
Gifts for mana is great. Gifts for draw is great. Gifts for protection is great. Also, as a note, if you yawg, and can't timewalk (or can't timewalk twice), a fist full of pitch counters is just as good as a timewalk in a lot of ways.
-Virtual
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Eternal Formats / Creative / Re: Strawberry Crush
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on: June 26, 2005, 10:35:23 pm
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So I think from the responses to this thread (and as I've thought for a while), this deck is about as good as it can get without changing into something entirely different.
As it stands, bring it out vs the correct meta, and you should be able to do well, but it isn't something that you should blindly bring in vs an unknown field because there's a few big weaknesses that can just take the deck down. (Fast Combo, null rod, control slaver). Those will NOT be present in every meta, and the ravager/trisk/welder/skullclamp in this deck can make it a very fast, and momentous aggro deck.
I stopped working on this a while ago because of that fact. It's about as good as it can get without changing significantly (losing a color, or adding 1-4, and switching roles). The attempt behind this deck really turns into abusing Modular as much as possible. It does a good job at that, and can steamroll people, but I think there are better choices for the current Meta. But if you wanna play some rogue/jank, this does a pretty good job @ that.
-Virtual
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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: [SCG Free Article] TWL Oath of Druids 2005
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on: June 24, 2005, 04:29:51 am
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First off, thanks for publishing your tech! We've been working on it quite a bit for a while now. Figured we'd unveil it. Glad you like it =) 1) I swapped the Annuls for Mana Leak. You know the argument for and against so I won't waste any more time. However, I am cutting down to 3 Mana Leak to fit in another Draw/Tutor spot.
2) I switched Fact MD and moved a Scrying to the SB b/c. it is lets you dig deeper for the same mana cost and doesn't require cards in the yard. When I wish for card its usually early mid game and I then have enough stuff for Scrying.
3) - 1 Cunning Wish + 1 Mystical Tutor #1. We've been over this... suit yourself. #2. That sounds reasonable. I like to play the deck faster than gettin to 4 mana (no sol ring, and who walks into a drain these days) Even scrying for 2 can break the game early. Fact is blue though, and I've been known for being accused of not liking FoF as much as the next guy. #3. As I said, whenver I play this (4-5 times over the past 6 months) I play with this same change. My questions:
I'm trying to open more room in the SB and I thought Vampiric Tutor MD could be good. Oath always felt more like combo to me than control. However, I worry about to much card disadvantage. Also, the shortage of real card draw against control makes me want to go with 3 Scrying 1 Fact MD. What do you think?
Vs control it really comes down to being able to resolve a bigger draw spell than them. All of yours comes EOT, and well timed annuls let you get away with that 1 extra card from scrying. (had to throw that in there) If you can find the room for it, great add Vamp, but what do you cut... You could try to be super-crazy and go with no wishes at all... probably a bad idea though, they are pretty useful if the game goes that long. Are you still sold on Akroma/SotN as the ideal MD creature set? We toyed with lots of other stuff. Darksteel Akroma. Dual Akroma. Tried a trisk. You can't get away with trisk or hydra because we don't have blessing. Akroma is hands down the one you want to see. If you expect a lot of the mirror, you might consider Rorix so the legends rule doesn't own you. With fish and it's fliers, consider that carefully.  If you do end up wanting to get a little faster, and you don't see a lot of welders, you could go akroma/darksteel and add the tinker instead of wish. (Tinker->Lotus can also setup a bigger will) It's an interesting option pre-board depending on how welders are around you. The sideboard is so tight, have you come across any gems lately? I've thought about drooping a Waste for Volcanic to access RnR, Firestorm, REB. I really don't have much experience with this particular build so I would appreciate any advice. Well, the sideboard is pretty good. But, like all sideboards it depends on your meta. You can probably get away without Arcane Labs... doesn't seem to be too much Combo running around. Firestorm is good, but bailing on all of those cards hurts. REBs are alright. I'd worry the most about beating fish these days. WTF probably isn't bad, but stuff like Waterfront bounders or mages can ruin your day. If UW fish runs around, consider Massacre. The mana base is pretty tight, and the wastes make those first turn oaths just deadly, so I wouldn't touch that to add red. Might be able to squeeze in 1 red SB card but I think that the 5 strips will help better than the red you dilute for. (We tried recoup maindeck if you oath, but the deck's too fast for that) Actually, you might not be able to cut the Labs. Last I saw a ton of people play TPS in WA. When I was there, most that I saw couldn't play it well, but looks like its sprouted up more since then so who knows. Hope that helps. Good luck w/ the deck. -Virtual
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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: [SCG Free Article] TWL Oath of Druids 2005
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on: June 24, 2005, 02:45:04 am
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Hijacking a solid thread with... unrefined... lists is bad...
Spend 15 minutes, write your list, why you chose the nonstandard choices you did, add some thoughtful commentary, and kick off a new thread in the Newbie forum. If you don't have time, then don't just spam crap. (I don't care what you want to watch on TV)
It was evident from the posts/commentary that the first poster of lists here didn't read the article. The second list is at least similar, but really seems way off base as well.
If anyone said anything worthwhile since my last post, I would respond. But if you can't add to a good conversation, don't fuck it up.
Sorry guys, the truth is cruel, but this sort of thread hijacking is horrible... I mean, if you're gunna hijack a thread, at least do it with a deck that isn't shitty. This forum is for innovation, not ejaculation.
-Virtual
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Eternal Formats / Creative / Re: Strawberry Crush
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on: June 21, 2005, 06:39:58 pm
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So, I think I was the one that added red to this when working on it w/ Cory... but anyways
Playing Versus CS, if they slave you, life is not fun. I won't argue that.
However, you do play 4 trisks, and 4 welders of your own. Resolving either of those makes their welders a lot less dangerous, and they need to ramp up to 10 mana to hard-activate slaver against you.
This deck does stupid stuff with retriver/clamp. Recurring mana, recurring retrivers, etc. In that respect, if you have anything out, that is clamped, and they balance, life is still not bad. More likely than not you draw into more threats which can be clamped etc, and your draw engine works out better than theirs. If they keep your clamps off the board, and your welders off the board, AND they balance before you've gotten them low enough to recover after a balance, well, you have to lose some games.
When I was working on the deck, the greaves weren't in, and there were 3 maindeck Jester's caps. Versus Oath, gifts, TPS, deathlong, and countless other decks, activating cap wins. That shored up your bad matchups in a very surprising fashion.
Triskelion + ravager is absolutely disgusting. Pentavus is an interesting idea. The one issue is that this deck doesn't have a good way to dump creatures from its hand into the graveyard. Usually it uses a metalworker to get it out. This deck very quickly gets inevitability behind it.
Null rod is bad news for it, but that's the case with most affinity decks. The crushers and welders help to keep this weakness to a low, and null rod is falling out of fashion.
-Virtual Team White Lotus
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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: [SCG Free Article] TWL Oath of Druids 2005
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on: June 10, 2005, 01:04:34 am
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I wanted to chip in with some commentary here. As mentioned in the article, I play this build with a slight variation. (-1 cunning wish, +1 mystical) With this change, the sideboard becomes a bit less useful, but the timewalk/will become much more findable. Yawgmoth's will is Not a win more card. If the game comes down to a control mirror fighting over resources, topdecking yawg is golden. If you oath, and timewalk is in the graveyard, Yawg is golden.  If you don't oath, but timewalk is in the grave, yawg can let you resolve a huge scrying and take control of the game. The # of games that are won because of yawgmoth's will, versus the number of games that are lost from cutting blessing, are ridiculously in the favor of playing YWill. First, while Yawgmoth's Will is certainly an amazing card, most of the time you guys have been casting it AFTER you have activated Oath of Druids. If you are able to do this, and don't deck yourself (like by playing Gaea's Blessing, for example), you should already be winning the game. Activating oath once doesn't mean you win... Other more controlling builds might find it so (when you cast oath with a fist full of counters and want to just sit back and play Mono-U with a good win condition.) But this deck is optimized to go for the throat. (if the opportunity presents itself by playing the maximum sustainable amount of moxes while maintaining a decent mana base.) We tried to fit the last mox in, but you just end up sacrificing too much. Also, in this deck, since a turn 1 orchard/mox/oath backed up with a pitch counter is kinda the ideal hand, you don't want to go to 61 cards for the acceleration. You never want to see it early, and if you've already got an Oath on the table, it's irrelevant, because you're probably going to win anyway, or at least want to protect the Oath (in which case the slot would be better used as another counterspell of some sort) Seeing Yawg early isn't horrible. If all it is used for is as a huge tempo gain, or to draw a force, then it wasn't a dead card.  The synergy with scrying isn't ideal, but yawg is just too good of a card to not play in a deck whose mana base and # of broken cards can support it. Second, I like Annul just as much as the next guy, especially when Workshops and Standstills are running around, but they are useless in a match against something good like Psychatog or Gifts.dec Gifts.dec and Tog specifically rely on their rapid mana production to be so broken. Tog wants to drain a spell into intuition/AK, play the acceleration/deeps/other ak, into more acceleration. Countering an on-color mox, or a big source (lotus/sol ring) is huge, and can really destroy plans. Also of note, early game yawgs w/ lotus can be slammed for their tempo by hitting the lotus (when the yawg couldn't be countered).  Gifts.dec whole game plan is to ramp up to enough mana to EOTGUgIW.  Annuls really can get in the way of this. Unfortunately you can't have cards that are perfect in every matchup.  I'd say that gifts is a decent matchup with this deck anyways because of it's speed and their general inability to answer a resolved oath.  Vs shops, standstills, and Null rod, I prefer annul, and it doesn't cause me to have to run less power.  Annul is certainly a spot that I play with whenever I attempt to tweak the build. It looks weak. However time, and time again, we came back to them.  Even in a post-trinisphere meta where we tried cutting them with thoughts that stifle, more duresses, etc might be better, we came back to them, and still found them golden. If you aren't using duress to remove a counterspell from their hand, annul effectively does the same job, but with blue mana. I would rather have Mana Leak as well, especially if you are running 4 Moxes and a Lotus Petal. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like Mana Leak. If you reach the late game, leak seems worse than annul, and if you have 2 mana, hopefully it's UU so you can drain. Turn 1, only the Jet, emerald, and pearl, won't give that to you. It's also not worth altering the mana base for, basically, DTutor and Duress. Scrying is horrible when facing the mirror that is running Intuition/AK. What? Scrying is fantastic, for 5 mana I'll draw 4 cards, where you'll draw 3. Really though, scryings shine in their ability to scry for X. They cycle, and the life loss is negligible. With Intuition AK, you pretty much only want to draw your intuition. If you draw your AK, you want to hold it until you draw your intuition, otherwise you're making a large sacrifice. So, for 7 cards in your deck, you want to draw 3. That's great if your goal is to buff up your graveyard, but that isn't oath's plan. With scryings, you still have those 3 cards that you want to draw, and the other 4 slots become something that helps you win. Also, Intuition sucks if you get slaved. Horribly. Scrying is exceptional, the life loss is almost meaningless in control mirrors which black was designed to play against.  Scrying is so fantastic it is ridiculous. A few other comments to add: When playing against an opponent, because you don't have blessing, you should be careful not to oath twice blindly. A lot of times, you don't need to win in that extra turn because winning is inevitable. As I stated above however, it isn't every game that that is the case, so if you need to win quickly oath away. Further on this issue, if you opponent hasn't dealt damage to himself, consider waiting a single turn for the 2nd oath. You'll still kill them in 3 turns total, but you cut the likelihood in half of dying to your own oath activation. (20-6: 14... 14-12: 2, you die because your spirit was 2nd to last card, Vs: 20-6: 14, 14-6: 8, 8-12: -4, you win with 0 cards in your library) Also, think carefully about keeping an orchard,brainstorm,mox opening hand. This might be obvious to some other familiar oath players, but if you're unlucky and aren't able to activate your oath, that token can come back to haunt you. If you have big balls, cut the Krosan for the sideboard. It'll let you do some cute tricks, but the few games you lose are worth the ones you win with that extra sideboard slot. The other change I play (cutting a wish) goes hand in hand with this. They're much stronger when made together. With 3 wishes, your odds of having krosan those rare cases that you need it, are improved significantly. Finally, consider -1 cunning wish (or annul for all of you heathens), for a mystical tutor. Finding time-walk or will is the win, and I really do mean it.
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Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: [SCG Free Article] TWL Oath of Druids 2005
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on: June 08, 2005, 01:49:19 pm
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Under Duress - TWL's Oath of Druids 2005 I'm not sure this title is Apt.? ?Annul Oath may be more accurate, but not sure if it was chosen by Tim or SCG... As a side note, when I run this deck, I have ended up cutting Krosan entirely (with 0 blessings still). It takes some balls, and you have to be careful, but in my experience you can get away with it.
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Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / Re: Serious Discussion: Is Magic Dying?
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on: June 08, 2005, 04:57:15 am
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I personally would be the most worried about Magic if Type 1 was in a poor state. That being said, I think the format is extremely healthy right now, with lots of archetypes being viable, and the game coming down to meta-game preditions and skill (as well as the luck that always exists in a game of chance).
As long as type 1 hasn't been broken to the point of 1 true deck with no other options, (or nearly so) ((refraining from obligatory Trinisphere commentary, though what i'd say might not be obvious)), I think magic as a whole will be around. As with anything things will gain and lose popularity. If wizards keeps printing cards, and they can keep getting the younger generation involved, then I see no end in sight (and in fact just with a growing player base... I dunno about you, but I'd still like to make the play: underground sea, mox sapphire, pass the turn, mana drain that spell, when I'm 90, just like I did 11 years ago (or whenever it was that legends came out) )
-Virtual
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