Seems to me that if you are expecting alot of graveyard centric decks - i.e. welder stax, CS, Gifts, Dragon, Tog - sideboarding this as a 4 of is not a terrible idea (especially if you are playing black, and even more so if the effect is one sided). Your odds of getting one in the opener if you aggresively mulligan for it are quite good (not going to go into the math right now, its been done before).

The effect certainly rapes Dragon, and I imagine it makes things rather hard for any welder deck, Tog, and Gifts. Not sure whether dragon, tog, and welder stax are prevalent enough anymore to merit sideboarding this guy, but it seems reasonable to me depending on the metagame you play in.

You do realize that you cant animate colossus, since it will never hit the graveyard, right?

I hear fetchlands+root maze sucks.

I'd consider dropping red for that alone.
That or using Karplusan forests over fetches

Congrats, John.

I like this deck a lot.

-Avi

A 3 color deck is hard to support wastes and manlands without some other kind of mana smoothing. For URW Fish I would reccomend Aether Vial.

Preliminary List

// Engine Stuff - 8+
4 Aether Vial
4 Standstill
X Curiosity
X Brainstorm

// Men - 12+
4 Meddling Mage
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Spikestail Hatchling
X Voidmage Prodigy
X Gorilla Shaman

// Permission/Broken 4-6+
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall (If you can)
1 Time Walk (If you can)
X Daze
X Misdirection

// Meta Calls
X Fire/Ice
X STP
X Seal of Cleansing
X Rack and Ruin

// Mana - 18+
4 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
4 Mishra's Factory
5 Waste
1 Mox Sapphire (If you can)
X Island
X Blue Fetch

Make calls on X labeled cards as you see fit.

Null Rod is worthless to fish at this point because the killer match-up is 5/3. Null rod does nothing to Juggernaut or Workshop. Aether Vial really ties the mana base together, allows for cool synergies with Spiketail, Gorilla Shaman, Voidmage, and Meddling Mage (can counter madness, and you can anticipate what an upcoming spell is by what was just played). With Vial tying the mana together, you can shore up problem matches by using your new access to new colors, and broadening the SB.

So you played against a t2 deck, monored goblins, GW aggro, a little kid, and more randomness in 3 small tournaments?

I don't see how this counts as relevant testing of this deck, let alone my feelings about the list.

That much I agree with.

However, Jacob, your particular experience may have a little to do with the Brandeis domain. I know that some of the stuff I have on Princeton domain has almost no external links, but is listed on the first/second page of a search for my name. I think that I am simply coopting the clout of the domain of my school. So it seems as if it would require only minimal external linking to boost those pages because they already benefit from the "quality" of the host. Steve, it seems, does not have this luxury at the moment.

Steve, I'm fairly certain that google rankings do not work in the way you have implied with your request. Google (I believe, having interviewed with them.) maintains a "graph" of the known internet in which vertices are web pages and edges are links between those web pages. To really oversimplify the algorithm, google records some sort of measure of the "quality" of each site based on a number of criteria,  and then measures the relative importance of each page returned from a search based on the number and importance of external links to that page (or incoming edges incident on that vertex, in the graph representation).

I find it unlikely, therefore, that your personal page will be made higher in google page rankings than links on SCG (which is a much more "important" site in the sense that it has far more external linking). To be sure, Google records the number of times that a people click on a link to a site from within their site, but as far as i know, that is a minimal criterion for determining a page's rank.

A good way to increase the rank of your personal site would be to ask people to link to it from other sites, or to include a link to it in your signature at the end of the articles. This technique, however, would likely not raise your personal page above those on SCG, due to the fact that SCG is an extremely established site with many external links pointing to it.

Also, I am fairly certain that making tons of posts on this forum that link to your page is not a solution either (I doubt it would be allowed anyway, but as an academic exercise...). There are several reasons for this.
1) Many message boards (this one not included), use the "no-index" meta-tag in their pages to tell google and similar engines not to index their pages.
2) These page's url's contain ?'s in them, which is a standard web way of indicating that they take dynamic input and are generated based on that input. (This standard can be easily circumvented by running servlets or similar programs over your server software.) Many search engines do not index pages with the ? character in the URL because they cannot reliably predict what the page will look like. This is why you will probably not find links directly to TMD posts on google, even if you search real hard.
In some circumstances, search engines will list pages with the ? character (google does). However, in order for these links to have importance, there would have to be external links to the pages that they are on. You see the cyclical nature of it, right?
3) It seems unlikely that TMD or similar boards would want to be indexed, so they will likely continue to use the ? and possibly add the "no-index" tag if they do not already have it.

I'm actually somewhat worried about Crop Rotation with Gaea's Cradle, since it seems running 4 Cradles leads to consistency problems, but a
2-3 Cradle
2-3 Rotation
1 Academy
configuration in an Affinity deck is a little scary (only a little). Most of the bullets that hurt affinity are artifacts, so Oxidize + Crop + Cradle main seems like it could solve alot of problems.

Enlightened has already been mentioned as too good. I concur on this point.

Vise I think would only lead to a larger mass of prisony artifacts in the format. I'm not convinced that this is a good thing, given what Trinisphere and Crucible have done. Not too mention how sweet it would be in affinity.

Search doesn't scare me at all.

Let's not forget that SCG has clear monetary interest in posting these lists as it does. Older decks may be left on in order to plug cards that would otherwise not sell. Budget decks are left on to convince people to buy cards even if they would not buy power.

I do agree that naming Oath and Doomsday "Meandeck" is not particularly useful. However, I think the other innacuracies are predicated by business interest. Really, the page would be more aptly titled "Decks to Buy."

I know this is a rather cynical perspective and that SCG does support T1 heavily, but they try (and deserve) to make some dime off that support. I for one think that the business interest (at least in part) legitimates most of the innacuracies.

What people seem to be implicitly ignoring is that you can remove whatever you want with Cranial Extraction. It is not quite as situational as mind twist (or as sucky against active welders), but significantly less powerful in the general case.

Certainly it is somewhat weak against stax and aggro (though not dead), but against Control Slaver, General Combo, Tog, 4CC, Mono U, GAT... CE is fairly powerful.

I see Cranial Extraction in a OSE or rOSE style deck, not as a choice between it and mind-twist, but in a configuration that runs a twist and multiple CE's by default.

Random comment

In UBG has anyone considered Cranial Extraction in the board for post Kamigawa? It seems a nice way to negate opposing REB's and ruin control decks.

-Avi

Maybe this is will bring down the prices on Bazaars, Drains and Shops a little. That'd be nice.

Cranial Extraction seems like it is uber-extract, which was seeing moderate play during the era of Rector Trix/Tendrils. I could see removing welders, mana drains, WGDs, tendrils, angels, togs, etc.

Seems like it might be an interesting card to replace Mind Twist with in 4CC.

<minor complaints>
Some of the 1.5 bans seem not to take into account that STP and FoW are in that format. Oath is really not that great with plow so prevalent since youre sorta forced to oath for Morphling. Hermit Druid is much weaker in a format with StP and Force also.

W/ bazaar gone, banning dragon seems pointless, especially while leaving belcher in the format and unrestricting Chrome, Petal, LED, and E. Tutor.

I sorta agree with the recruiter banning, but only sorta. Everything else seems fine, but I wish Voltaic Key had come of the Vintage list.
</minor complaints>

Oh, and they split the lists. Sweeeet.

@ Methuselahn
Memnarch has very little secondary utility.
Sliver Queen pitches to Force and beats down.
Caller of the Claw avoids Damping Matrix and Root Maze issues (used to be more relevant in the Oshowa era), and is legitimately hard-castable.
Laquatas 2 is hardcastable and pitches to force like Laquatas 1.
Memnarch does not avoid Root Maze or Damping Matrix, pitch to FoW, and doesn't beat down like the Sliver Queen. Memnarch may also  give you even more Null Rod issues than you already have (this wont happen often, but why not play something equivalent that avoids rod).

@ Hi-Val
I agree completely. Dragon, though a slower combo deck, has an immense decision tree and can be somewhat difficult to play against hate. I've seen many people lose games with dragon that they could have won if they had played more carefully and remembered these mini-combos of which you speak.

@ Kerz



I don't know that I agree entirely. Plow is definitely on an upswing, and Cunning Wish is ever present. Additionally, there is the splash damage on all these Null Rods running around and, if I'm not mistaken, I've definitely seen an upswing in Ground Seal and BeB for Welder decks recently. Post board, nearly everyone has cards that can hurt dragon immensely.

That said, Xantid is the shit, and I think more people should be playing Dragon.

-Avi

Great to see an article like this getting such a public berth. I notice you skirted the issue of proxies entirely. Without 5 proxies, even fish is mad expensive, so it made the argument seem a lot weaker.

Was the non-mention of proxies at WoTC's request ? (I assume it was for either monetary or legal reasons)

Also, while I really like that your trying to expose the format to the public, I definitely felt that the article seemed rushed. You were blazing through alot of information with minimal explanation in a number of places.

Did they impose length restrictions on you, or simply offer no guarantee of being able to write a follow up?

Again, really impresive article.

-Avi

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/ce13

Do these arguments remind anyone else of the type 1 to 1.5 disparity we all know so well?

-Avi

I know that for Mac there is a program called Yade that does this. I do not know if there is a windows version of it.

-Avi

Any chance youll be bringing one of these to the NY/NJ area? I can't go to VA or Chi. during the school year.

-Avi

EDIT: Agreed, SCG rocks.

@ Purple Hat

Have you had trouble running SoTF with that few creatures? It seems like Chains came in and the fat left.

-Avi

Stole Jacob's border and did some color correction on the text to make it slightly more legible.

Also, here is the ~card size one. I will make it accurate when i get home from work, but from memory, the width of an mtg card w/ it's border is 2.45 inches.

@Purple Hat,

I think that the choice is not between Survival and CoW, but CoW and Chains. It does not seem to me that TnT can support a 3rd color *and* wastes + CoW. I think that Crucible is really strong currently, possibly stronger than Chains, so im gonna go with that for the time being.

For reference, here is the TnT + CoW list that I'm trying out at the moment.

TnT

Disruption - 11
4 Trinisphere
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

Engine - 10
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Goblin Welder
1 Anger
1 Squee

Beats - 14
4 Juggernaut
4 Su-Chi
2 Triskellion
2 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Sundering Titan
1 Duplicant

Open Slots - 2(forgot to mention these)
2 XXXXX

Mana 23 (+ 4 Strips = 27)
1 Crypt
1 Vault
7 SoLoMoxen
4 Wooded Foothils
4 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Mishra's Workshop

SB (Not too sure of this) - 15
1 Goblin Replica
1 Elf Replica
3 Rack and Ruin
3 Tormod's Crypt
4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Chalice of the Void

The one real issue I've had with this list is mana flooding, 27 is likely too much, but im not sure what to cut.

-Avi

http://www.princeton.edu/~flamholz/pics

I can host them for the next 3 years if need be, so grab them whenever.

-Avi

EDIT: I think Jacob started with a much clearer picture of a beta lotus than I (I pulled mine of google image search). Jacob, you mind if I steal the border and work on it in photoshop?

Oh, and Zherbus, would you like one that prints out exactly the size of a card?

-Avi

My school focused on teaching for standardized tests and not much else really. For instance, my physics class in 11th grade just did AP and SATII problems all period every day. I did well on them, but I don't know that I learned anything really.

SATs
1560 (780M 780V)

SAT IIs
Math2C: 770
Physics: 790
Chem: 790
Writing: 720

APs
Physics B: 5
Calc BC: 5
US History: 5
English Lit: 4
English Writing: 4

Given that i was applying everywhere as an engineer I don't really know why I took history or english APs since there was no prospect of getting any credit.

My personal gripe with 4cC (admittedly a small one), is that I sometimes find myself without blue cards to pitch/blue cards I feel safe pitching. This can lead to some difficult scenarios. Because of this I have started playing a single Deep Analysis in the place of 3rd Scrying.

While there are some downsides to the Deep (REB, Misdirection, Sorcery Speed, and CC), it is blue and difficult to counter in the control mirror. It is a great drain sink, and has really made me feel more secure with the blue card count. I think that Deep Anal. is the closest blue analog of scrying, and while it is not *quite* as good in terms of speed and resilience to major threats in the format, I find that it is a good replacement in general.

2 Scrying is still a reasonable amount, and Deep is a great card in its own right.

-Avi

These are either August or Sept. FNM Promos.

New border foily Accumulated Knowledge.

Picture

-Avi

I think that a better solution would be to find room for 3 main deck cabal therapy and 2 maindeck oxidize (or something on those lines). That package would at least leave you with outs available when Null Rod hits.

-Avi

I understand that Vegeta, but you dont need 4 of a 4 mana goblin in  straight aggro deck in that scenario. If it is purely a manual combo card, then it just needs to be there to chain w/ recruiter. I'm sorry if I offended. My experience w/ FCG is minimal, but it seems to me that 4 mana is alot for a goblin deck, and without recruiter your really only fishing for more goblins randomly.

Sorry if im not seeing something here, but i dont see what was wrong with my suggestion to cut 1 ringleader.

Without food chain, is ringleader really that strong? I only suggested running 1 fewer of matron and ringleader to ease the mana curve. The poster already suggested cutting food chain itself. Additionally, my suggestion was predicated by the posters apparent desire to cut green. With belcher as the combo card, ringleader is not needed to combo out. I dont see how cutting one can be as foolish as you make it to be.

Please react to the entirety of my initial post. don't go taking it out of context Klep.