TheManaDrain.com
October 20, 2025, 08:15:03 pm *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News:
 
  Home Help Search Calendar Login Register  
  Show Posts
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 10
1  Eternal Formats / Creative / Re: [New Card Discussion] Vesuva on: September 21, 2006, 01:28:32 am
I didn't notice the CIPT thing. Damn, they really screw up good ideas with that bad mechanic.
2  Eternal Formats / Creative / [Single Card Discussion] Vesuva on: September 20, 2006, 02:18:21 pm
Vesuva Land    R
As Vesuva comes into play, you may choose a land in play. If you do, this comes into play tapped as a copy of the chosen land.
#281/301

A neat idea, but perhaps a bit situational. There are a few lands you might want to copy, but you can anyway run 4 of everything useful except strip mine already. Academy can't be copied and besides, there's not much point, since it's powerful enough on it's own. Library of Alexandria is too slow.

However, as a "wild card" land, this isn't all that bad. You get to keep it in hand until you have played out other mana producing lands, and at that point, decide what would be most beneficial to copy. I can also be crop rotationed for. Still, I'd hate to get these in my opening hand, and land bases are pretty streamlined already without putting more fluff in the deck (what with fetches, etc.)

Probably has more type 2 applications.
3  Eternal Formats / Creative / Re: [New Card Discussion] Chronatog Totem on: September 15, 2006, 07:41:08 pm
Well, it's certainly a solid card, but in Vintage there are so many better options. THe mana acceleration isn't good, might as well have...Darksteel Ingot and be indestructable. The thing as a win condition is terrible, might as well have a Juggernaut. If Control Slaver gets a hold of this thing...whoops double time walk. Skipping a turn gives your opponent more time fo find a win condition and/or answer. If you are so ahead in board position that GIVING YOUR OPPONENT A FREE TIME WALK is more helpful than detrimental, you're probably winning anyway.

True, I forgot to add those few items to the list, since it slipped my mind. Something like this is a liability versus Mindslaver, and yes, in the situation where you might want to pass the turn, it's one of those ever-loved "win more" situations.

Anyway, the card warranted starting a thread simply on the merit that someone, at some point, would consider it as a functional analogy to Time Vault and therefore we might as well hash out right now why it isn't a valid addition to, at least, the current prison decks.
4  Eternal Formats / Creative / Re: [Single Card Discussion] Truth or Tale on: September 15, 2006, 08:05:22 am
The card is strictly worse than Impulse.

QFT
5  Eternal Formats / Creative / [New Card Discussion] Chronatog Totem on: September 15, 2006, 08:03:30 am
Chronatog Totem 3
Artifact    U
{T}: Add {U} to your mana pool.
1{U}: Chronatog Totem becomes a 1/2 blue Atog artifact creature until end of turn.
0: Chronatog Totem gets +3/+3 until end of turn. You skip your next turn. Play this ability only once each turn and only if Chronatog Totem is a creature.
Illus. Christopher Rush
#252/301

Okay, so a first look, this seemed like a possibility in a Stax-type deck.

Pros:
- it's castable with shop mana
- unaffected by 3sphere
- taps for blue (never bad)
- doesn't come into play tapped (big plus)
- another permanent for the board
- it's own mana can be used to activate it (meaning only having to find a single non-shop colorless)
- can "force" an additional turn out of the opponent to seal a stack/wire lock

Cons:
- cutting something for this would be hard
- situational lock use (e.g. the time vault effect) even though it doubles as mana
- changed from original chronatog in that you can only pump it once per turn (meaning only forcing one additional turn out of the opponent)

Although this is a multi-use mana producer/lock piece, it's situational usage added to the fact that it's hard to fit into the deck deems this as a card that doesn't quite make the cut.

Discuss.
6  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: Article -- The Interactivity War (Forcing Interaction with Flores) on: June 02, 2005, 02:46:03 am
This was a really well written, thought-provoking article, as was Steven's which was up on the front page today as well. I thoroughly enjoyed reading them both and thinking about this complicated issue. Some of the best minds in Magic are talking heatedly about interactivity right now and this shows that our understanding of M:tg at a theoretical level is continuing to move forward. Well done and keep up the good work!
7  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: Are we missing something on: June 02, 2005, 02:42:10 am
I have two questions now for the community:

1) Are we missing something?  has our "knowledge" of the format in fact interfered with the creative process in important ways?

2) While our intentions are often good, does the fact that we come down hard on some ideas lead us to miss out on oppertunities to develop the format further?  In other words has our desire to not waste time on "bad" ideas interfered with the creative process in important ways?

Hale

Although I haven't been here for a while and missed the brainstorm discussion that ultimately led to this, I have seen instances of similar behaviour in the past, so I have a picture of the scenario in my head. I think that "conventional wisdom" on this format often interferes with creativity. The problem might not be so much that good, optimized, but new decklists are passed by, but more that a general idea that has somehow been illustrated with a sub-optimal decklist will get passed by. It might also be something to do with the personality of the poster who submitted it. I think people who have been around here for a long enough time can think of examples of new deck ideas that were presented in an extremely bad way, but ended up becoming decent once others put some time into thinking about them. Of course, there have also been the ABMs as well, and it creates a stigma on this site that collaborating on "bad" deck ideas will turn you back to n00b status (especially when the threads have a tendency to turn into flame wars).

When it comes to conventional thinking about certain cards like Brainstorm, there does seem to be some closed-mindedness. I remember, for one, suggesting not running Brainstorms in Chalice Keeper quite a long time ago given that, at that time, often the optimal setting for Chalice would be X=1, since there were plenty of RectorTrix decks and other decks abusing 1 mana spells such as Brainstorm. Naturally, the situation with Chalice of the Void is not an easy one anyway, since you're always going to be shutting off some of your spells when you play the card, but the theory was working in my testing. Of course, things have moved on since then, but the simple "If you play blue and fetchlands, play brainstorm" thing is perhaps a little too prevalent. Look at Extended, for example, where the format is thoroughly explored by plenty of very good players. You see a huge variety of viable decks which do not follow a set pattern (think about how many viable decks in Type 1 run fetch+brainstorm right now). Breaking out of this conventional thinking is something that might be very healthy for our format in the long run, but it's going to take strong personalities and good deckbuilders to put this question to the established experts.

One problem is that there has been a general lack of discussion on new deck ideas here since the team thing got popular, leaving only newcomers and less frequent players to start such discussions. Naturally, since these people do not have teams to support large scale development, discussion and testing of those ideas, the lists are most likely going to be sub-optimal. To be honest, the rate at which one could churn out new ideas is probably always going to be faster than even a very dedicated team has time to work on. This can only lead to things getting overlooked. The people in teams are already probably pretty tied up in developing their own decks and don't have time to post on these public discussions and if an untuned but similar decklist appears on a public discussion it's natural that a team member is not going to want to push that deck in a more optimal direction until they've debuted their own deck at a profitable tournament. This only then leaves the know-it-alls who are not working on similar ideas to critique decks somewhat blindly, to the dissatisfaction and eventual demoralization of the original poster.

I know that with the high-profile events in North America bringing focus to this more closed-development, secretive development, we're not going to see a reversal back to the days of more collaborative deck building amongst the more experienced players. This is life. I, myself, am not in Type 1 for profit - I hardly participate in tournaments and those that I do participate in have very low payoffs anyway. Instead, I'm here for the simple interest of trying to constantly break the format with new decks. This kind of research is very interesting, especially when there are enough participants. If someone came up with a truly novel new idea for a deck that had potential, obviously the more minds working on the idea and testing the deck, the quicker it gets optimized and also the more likely spin-off ideas will be developed. This sort of thing would be very good for Type 1, in my mind.

Perhaps what we really need is some area in these forums just for brainstorming new ideas. The rules of that area would be different such that finished decklists and card choice explanations are not needed - just random ideas that might eventually spawn decklists. I, for one, have plenty of unfinished ideas, but without a tuned decklist and testing, would never dream of posting them. This area could also house discussion of new cards before they become format-legal. Those who want to collaborate would be able to chat about developing those ideas in a more pleasant atmosphere and perhaps something good would get accomplished this way. Thoughts?
8  Eternal Formats / Creative / Re: [Discussion] Blue Fork -- will it see play? on: May 26, 2005, 03:45:46 am
I believe this card has a lot of potential:

1) Considering the fact that a large percentage of today's decks are control or at least drain-based, this serves a purpose as at least a counterspell.

2) I consider the mental effect of this card to be something that it has going for it in a huge way - in a similar way that Misdirection had a few years ago. The threat of Twincast could be enough to offbalance players into an overly cautious mode, for one. Remember that this has a huge amount more targets than something like Misdirection, as well.

3) Consider also that even decks like Stax, which have a relatively low number of instants and sorceries, still cast an appreciable number of fork-worthy spells over the course of a game. Remember that against decks which don't have many targets (like FCG), you can always duplicate your own spells.

4) The arguement that the room Twincast takes up would be better served with more draw spells seems a tad unfounded considering that you would use those additional draw spells to draw into more counters or card draw - this doubles as both against most of today's decks anyway. If you really think about it, Twincast is a spell of noteably higher quality than a good deal of commonly used card draw spells in use today.

5) The effect of doubling something like your own Demonic Tutor, Ancestral Recall or Time Walk is extremely game-swinging on most occasions (as it was back when Fork was unrestricted and used in decks). This is not just a win-more scenario given the points made above.

I'd expect it to see use as long as the meta continues it's current trends.
9  Eternal Formats / Creative / Re: Single Card Discussion: Ideas Unbound on: May 24, 2005, 01:46:41 am
In a High Tide or Academy-reliant combo deck, this might not be too bad, since it has a cheaper casting cost and easier drawback than, say, Meditate and it doesn't have the mirror-match drawback of AK. It can also support Disrupting Shoal wrt countering Mana Drains, etc. should the deck run a higher complement of counter magic. I could envision some U-heavy contol-combo deck perhaps making use of these as fuel for eventually going off.
10  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / Re: Team Short Bus adds a new member on: April 27, 2005, 04:23:00 am
Congratulations on the baby! My girlfriend would like one, especially since her best friend just recently got pregnant...

What's drunk dialing exactly? A friend of mine here has a phone russian roulette game that he's mentioned to me that you play at 4am when very drunk with group of friends which involves randomly calling a stored number on someone else's cell phone. Is it something like that or more just the phenomenon of needing to call someone when you've had enough booze?

11  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Re: Let's Talk about Trinisphere on: March 02, 2005, 05:56:59 am
Quote from: Windfall

Why did WotC restrict Trinisphere?  This issue is important, because if it's not a good reason, it might be something we can use to get Wizards to unrestrict it in the future.


While I was also waiting for Friday's article from Forsythe for explanations on this restriction, I am somewhat expecting what has already been stated here: some short paragraph containing a normal DCI catchphrase. For one, it's obvious that most of the article will be dedicated to explaining in detail the 8 bannings in standard. Also, since we know that WotC does not test type 1 for the most part, their explanation cannot really address any concrete data of theirs, so it's likely to be mere handwaving.

I supppose that if I had to guess why the restriction happened, it's because of WotC's general stance on mana-denial strategies - they would rather not have them be too viable. On the whole, mana denial strategies cause more general unhappiness in the Magic playing population than other lock strategies (such as Mono-U). This was probably done because enough people whined publically about it.

Ultimately, though, I think it will be a good example to the "restrict Workshop" people, since it's easily the best spell one can cast with a turn one Workshop.

Quote from: Windfall

Is Trinisphere a card that enables or prevents player interaction?  Hell, what is player interaction?  I think this question can be argued both ways.


I think the point about it forcing mana screw is quite valid; decks in type 1 _must_ run multiple colours in order to run enough broken spells to be competitive against the other decks' brokenness. What Trinisphere decks did was essentially further increase the gambling factor down to the deck choice decision; some decks autolose to Trinisphere and even some hands lose to it.

Is a game under Trinisphere interactive? If you can get to 3 mana, yes it is.  If you run wastelands, it might be. Getting to that 3 mana is almost always the problem, since it often takes more than the first 3 turns. Having been of both sides of the thing, I'd have to lean towards the fact that, yes, it was an interactive game on the whole, if you were playing the right deck. The number of times that I got completely locked out of playing due to a Smokestack or Crucible/Strip Mine following the Trinisphere were very few as I recall.

Quote from: Windfall

And, of course, How do you feel about Trinisphere being restricted?  This point is where the juicy conversations begin.  I think there is a lot to be said for both sides - some people like Trinisphere, others hate it to no end, and then there are a few that just don't care about it.


To be honest, I'm currently on the fence about the whole thing. The card hasn't seriously bothered me enough to where I wanted to see it go. The fact that it was suppressing some of the decks I really dislike was a good thing, but the fact that it also suppressed decks I'd like to play was a bad thing. If fish, tog or gat return to the metagame, I'll be unhappy, but if more interesting combo decks become viable, I'll be delighted. To be honest I haven't been that bothered about playing recently - not because of Trinisphere, but because of general boredom of the format and not feeling like gambling on a deck choice for my metagame.
12  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / Standard Nuked; Trinisphere Restricted; Portal Legal 10/1 on: March 02, 2005, 02:28:37 am
The type 2 nuking was actually more interesting to me from both an M:tg historical viewpoint and a benficial viewpoint. On the first point, it's interesting to see when they make such a massive design mistake - especially when you can then go back in history and look at the most degerate decks out there. Sure Affinity was no Academy, but it might be, as far as I recall, the first time an aggro/combo deck has distorted any format enough to warrant that many bans.

On the second point, a couple of us have been working on a type 2 draw7.dec which lost to Affinity and KCI, since they were too fast, but has an okay game versus almost anything else. With type 2 turning into TnN, Ponza, WW and Mono-U, the deck might be viable. We're going to test it thoroughly and try to qualify for nationals with it on surprise value if it seems viable (since it's also dirt cheap to build) Wink
13  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / New B&R List on: March 01, 2005, 03:56:18 am
Could Suicide Virus now be playable? Did Mike Long have the clairvoyance to see this happening? Ravager and artifact lands move from Type 2 to Type 1 Smile
14  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / SCG Coverage Feedback on: February 28, 2005, 03:04:43 am
I was impressed with the coverage. It contained a lot more articles than previous tournaments, for one. It would have been nice to see a few more "deck tech" articles, like, for instance, the bird shit deck and the Meddling Mage control deck. It was also nice to see feature matches on the few attending "pros" as opposed to just coverage of the usual Vintage celebrities. I think that might even give a boost to the attendance of PT players out there who dabble in Type 1, especially since they seemed to be doing quite well. If the coverage of these events keeps to this high quality level or gets even better, I feel the Premium membership was money well spent.
15  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / BAD WEATHER AND SYRACUSE!! on: February 25, 2005, 04:57:18 pm
WTF with the general inability to deal with snow and ice over there. I'm guessing it snows there every winter for a period of time, right? Don't people have winter tyres for their cars? If it is a recurring yearly phenomenon, how come the public services and local population can't properly adjust?
16  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / French invasion in Netherlands on: February 25, 2005, 04:47:27 pm
Wot no type 1 action? Come on, at least represent properly and show those fake-card slingers over the pond what the real things look like Wink I'll let you off, though, since the pictures of the drinking at the end made up for it Smile
17  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / How many cards will get Restricted on: February 25, 2005, 04:38:52 pm
There _have_ been a lot of B/R discussions started recently and a lot of non-B/R threads have degenerated into B/R arguements. I agree that there have been many valid points raised and there has been some good discussion recently (unlike the 1 year ago crying about Workshop when sui players couldn't get over it), but it's pretty obvious that people are going to stick to their opinions no matter how good an arguement is made by someone else. This then gets boring since you can predict what will be in certain posts before even reading them. It's also pretty scary to me to even imagine the DCI reading some ot these threads, since they could make very uninformed decisions based on a certain group being more vocal in the thread they happen to read (the vocal majority can vary from thread to thread).

The quarterly whining buildup to the B/R announcement day is starting to make even pre-Christmas hype look small. I mean seriously, these things seem to be starting earlier and earlier every time - it won't be long before we're starting to talk about the one-after-next B/R announcement, since 3 months isn't long enough to hash everything out.

I think the forum for B/R issues is not a bad idea at all. At the very least, if people want to keep a running dialog on restriction topics and data, it would be a convenient place to do it. It could also be used for dicsussions on testing of decks based on the unrestriction of cards (like what was once done for the design of decks based on a theoretical unrestriction of Channel).
18  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / My Euro-Trip during the Summer - Need places to stay. on: February 25, 2005, 04:17:48 pm
Quote from: CF
Quote from: rozetta
Depending on when you're around, if you decide to pop over to Scandinavia (not that it's on your current roster), you'd be welcome to kip over at our place in Helsinki

*hrmpf*

Helsinki is in Finland. Finland is not a part of Scandinavia. There is tons of confusion about this subject around, but it's a little surprising to see it coming from a "Finn". Scandinavia consists of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Nothing more. The term comes from "The Scandinavian peninsula" which is Norway+Sweden.

Finland is one of the Nordic countries (which is Scandinavia, Finland and Iceland) and also a part of the extended "Fenno-Scandinavia", although this collective term is rarely/never used and little known.

Thus ends this geography lesson. More information can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia

Have a nice trip, KandyKid!

--
Chris


Actually, not being from here, I have made that mistake and been corrected once before, if I remember right. However, I phrased the sentence a bit wrong in my previous post, since what I was trying to insinuate was that when someone visits Europe, if they do venture north of the continent, they usually go to Sweden (I guess they think there's porn there?). Hence, if one happened to be inclined to go that far north, the idea was that it's pretty cheap to get to Helsinki from Stockholm (via the standard overnight booze cruise). I never assumed for a minute that anyone would, in their right mind, go out of their way to visit Finland Wink
19  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / Re: Who has Mob -err.. DCI connections?? on: February 24, 2005, 03:56:42 am
Quote from: Royal Ass.

Lastly, and this is a separate issue, but I was wondering what people would think about TMD making a collective official quarterly statement to Wizards on what we think would be the ideal restriction decisions for our formant, since the DCI is largely out of touch with what we do.  This might be an overly ambitious idea considering the current disagreement within our own site as to what the best restriction list should be, but it could be something to look into.  I’m not even sure how it would be done, but it seems there has got to be a better way then what is happening now.


This sounds like a good idea on paper, but I fear it would not be as simple in reality. There are a few things that would hinder it:
- the fact that there doesn't ever seem to be a general consensus amongst members of this site on the B/R list
- the DCI seems to be this completely closed, faceless establishment. I'm sure that it would be nigh impossible to arrange such a quarterly statement system with them.
- WotC officially "doesn't really give a shit" about Vintage

However, I think the idea, on paper, is excellent and it would be nice to see such a thing.
20  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / How many cards will get Restricted on: February 24, 2005, 03:47:00 am
Quote from: Godot
I think the wisest move right now is not to restrict anything, and considering their recent track record of actually making good decisions Im confident thats what they'll do.
21  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / Poll- Do you want to see a change in the B&R? on: February 19, 2005, 08:55:34 am
I still personally believe that Wasteland is also part of a problem in Vintage. However, like a few other cards, its overlooked as simply being part of the untouchable format-defining cards available. For starters, if Wasteland were restricted, this whole hubub about Crucible would have been nonexistant. Also, how many times have you all lost games to an opponent's 3 wasteland start (Crucible or no)? I bet a lot.

The fact is that even though nowadays mana bases contain basic lands, you still need to run nonbasics if you're playing more than one colour and on occasions, you will draw non-wastelandproof lands in your opening hand. How many of you have drawn an opening hand containing non-fetch nonbasic lands and wondered if you should keep it?

Does not the fact that people are forced into using many (around 5) basics indicate a distortion because of wasteland? Even at the times when Back to Basics and Blood Moon were popular, decks did not run more than one or two basic lands. I'm not saying it should be restricted, but consider that Crucible would probably not see as much, if not any play if it weren't for the ability for a deck to run 5 strips. Crucible without 5 strips would just be a neat way of recurring fetches or a sideboard option versus LD strategies.

The potency of that first turn Trinisphere would be much less of a problem if it couldn't be easily followed with multiple strips or easily crucible-strip.
22  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / Do you enjoy playing T1? on: February 18, 2005, 05:09:42 am
I love Type 1 and could not honestly see myself really playing any other format right now.

My hunch is that interest generally does wane a little when a new set comes out that really offers nothing new for the format - I think people are feeling that it would be boring to still have the same metagame for the next 3 or 4 months with nothing remarkably new popping up. All magic players are creative and want something to work with every time a new set comes out. So when a set comes out that really doesn't provide at least a few possibly playable cards, it's a real buzz kill. I seem to remember things feeling similar when Legions came out, too.
23  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / [Discussion-Strategy Issues] UN-Restrictions? on: February 18, 2005, 05:02:57 am
Definitely Voltaic Key and MOM could be unrestricted from that list without anyone batting an eyelid. Mox Diamond would be an interesting one to unrestrict with an eye towards people having something new to innovate with. However, with all that being said, I must reiterate my sadistic opinion once again:

Unrestrict Black Vise Smile
24  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / Big B/R changes coming 3/1 for type II (does anyone care?) on: February 17, 2005, 08:49:38 am
They could have reprinted Null Rod and killed two birds with one stone...
25  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / Poll- Do you want to see a change in the B&R? on: February 17, 2005, 07:28:46 am
I think they could still take a bunch more cards off the B/R list; I voted yes.
26  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / My Euro-Trip during the Summer - Need places to stay. on: February 01, 2005, 05:52:49 am
Depending on when you're around, if you decide to pop over to Scandinavia (not that it's on your current roster), you'd be welcome to kip over at our place in Helsinki for a few days (we could also go to Estonia for a day). I say this mostly because of your "drinks are on me" thing and yes, I intend to keep up Wink
27  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / [Article] Meandeck Tendrils Primer, Part One on: February 01, 2005, 04:44:41 am
I signed up for the premium, but alas I forgot that I hadn't updated my address on SCG's site since I moved house. Hence the Paypal payment went through but the confirmation failed. I emailed them, but I have to wait for action from them before I can read the premium articles. I'll take a look at that hand as soon as I get in Smile

I reckon it's worth paying for SCG premium, since there are also often great articles up there from people like Flores. Additionally, the live coverage of the SCG power 9 will be premium, so that already makes it a "must have" (although I hope they do a more thorough job of it now that we're paying for it - e.g. like sideboard coverage). It couldn't have been introduced at a better time - what with Betrayers having very little to offer Type 1, I don't have to shell out for a lot of new cards and can put the money over to those guys.
28  Vintage Community Discussion / General Community Discussion / Should the Star City Game series be ten proxy? on: January 27, 2005, 03:22:37 am
One thing to note is that the SCG series of tournaments has actually been getting some interest from WotC - they occasionally send some of their guys out for it. Perhaps one factor is that, with the 5 proxy rule, they're being as diplomatic as possible between the players and WotC. When the SCG Power 9 series gets interest from WotC, their store also gets publicity. Increasing the number of allowed proxies might be something SCG doesn't want to try yet, since it doesn't want to overstep those boundaries.

One suggestion for attaining an increase in number of proxies while keeping this diplomacy might be to, for example, charge $30 or $35 for people who want to proxy, allowing up to 10 proxies, but $10 or $15 for people who use absolutely 0 proxies. This binary system would be easier to enforce at the deck check level, would reward people who have put effort into collections and appease those who need some rarer cards to complete their decks.

Since it's apparent that the number of people who do not use proxies is quite low, SCG would not see a fall in profits, especially since attendance may increase on the back of the new 10 proxy system. For this reason, the entry fee difference between proxy and no proxy should be substantial enough as to be seen to encourage people to obtain real cards in the long run - the savings coming from not using proxies will add up to a more expensive card over a period of a few tournaments or even encourage those people who already have most of their deck to buy the few remaining cheaper cards so as to be proxy-free.

This system appeases WotC in that SCG is promoting the idea that people should obtain complete decks of real cards and it appeases those who can't possibly get their own power in that they have more decks to choose from. Perhaps everyone wins in this scenario?
29  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / [Deck] Meandeck Tendrils on: January 26, 2005, 11:05:41 am
One more question concerning cards you tried while developing this deck:

I know the deck runs a lot of four-ofs, but did you ever try Tainted Pact in the Night's Whisper slot? The reasoning behind my asking is that you're using Night's Whisper to dig into a little more fuel (most probably rituals) and you're only going to go 2 cards deep for a huge (for this deck) investment of two mana (in addition to giving yourselves the possibility of seeing 2 less cards with Spoils). With Tainted Pact at the same mana cost, you could, even with the deck's redundancy, go a little further (3 or 4 cards) looking for the next ritual, etc.

Night's Whisper seems like one of the weakest cards in the deck to me, but replacing it with something marginally better in blue means increasing the blue requirement to an unnacceptable level. However, if any card looks like it could replace Night's Whisper, I would guess it would be Tainted Pact. I know this adds yet another "playing the odds" decision in an already complicated deck, which might end up being too stressful in a tournament situation, but I thought I'd suggest it in case if was overlooked.
30  Eternal Formats / Miscellaneous / [Deck] Meandeck Tendrils on: January 26, 2005, 09:45:54 am
Just to clear things up: you don't have to remove a card from your graveyard with Conjurer's Bauble - it says "up to one" so it's application would be purely cantrip and threshold building if it were in use. I'm assuming the Meandeck guys knew this already, though - it was just bothering me that there have been enough assumptions about cards on this thread where people thing the action is a "should" and not a "may" action (the other being the Land Grant thing).

@ Darkwater Egg: yes it's a damn shame there aren't other "draw now" Chromatic Sphere style cards. I remember some people used Barbed Sextants in Belcher for a while, but those don't draw you a card until the next turn so in that way, Pentad Prism would be even better. Pentad Prism is not good for the reason that it needs a 2 coloured mana input to be useful enough in addition to not cantripping. This logically points to the next best thing being the Odyssey eggs, since the deck needs only U or B.

I have noticed the same thing that blue-heavy starting hands look bad when you consider how much blue this deck can make by default, but Sleight of Hand seems to be one of the key factors in making this deck work the way it should (and hence it's not using, e.g. Serum Visions). Having tried myself to build decks of this ilk, I can imagine they went through a lot of cantrip effects to get to  the current list. (Out of interest, regarding digging as deep as possible while attaining threshold, did you try Careful Study or even Mental Note? The only reason I ask is that the deck is so redundant that you probably don't really care what goes into the grave as long as you churn along and make mana)
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 10
Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
Page created in 0.083 seconds with 19 queries.