I know how Mycosynth Lattice works with regards to Workshop, but at what point does a "colorless spell on the stack" become an "artifact enchantment"? Will it trigger Come into Play abilities that trigger on artifacts?

For example, my opponent casts an enchantment with Lattice and a Arcbound Crusher in play. Will the crusher get a counter for the enchantment? And could you please point to the rule that will clarify this sort of question?

Oracle Text:
Mycosynth Lattice

Artifact
All permanents are artifacts in addition to their other types.
All cards that aren't in play, spells, and permanents are colorless.
Players may spend mana as though it were mana of any color.

Thanks in advance.

So I've been talking with my friend Patch (Soupboy) and he and I came up with a really fun casual deck.

He's a huge proponent of the 250 format and he was telling me that the Black Bringer is banned in that format b/c of it's inherent brokenness. So why not do a deck in Type I that does the same.

So here's the premise for why it was banned in 250. You drop a Black Bringer. Next turn Tutor for Time Walk. Following turn, grab regrowth (for Time Walk), then say Relearn (for Time Walk), then a slew of Eternal Witnesses (all for Time Walk). There are enough recursion spells that getting your Time Walk back every turn is simple.

So now to convert that philosophy to type I. The best recursion spell is obviously: Yawg Will. Will can then be coupled with Burning Wish. One more recursion spell would be nice, so we'll add Regrowth for now.

Now the problem with bringing him to play. He's a 5 alt-cc casting cost, which will be extremely difficult to get.  So here's a fragile mana base to start with:

4x City of Brass
4x Gemstone Mine
4x Forbidden Orchard
4x Underground Sea
6x LotusMoxen
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mox Diamond
4x Pentad Prism

That's 28 mana sources, and is extremely susceptible to non-basic hate and null rod. The only alternative to this would be to do something like trying to achieve the necessary mana through Mana Drain mana. Not likely to happen, so for now, let's stick with this mana base.

Due to the necessity of having a Black Bringer in your first 8 cards (2nd turn bringer), playing 4 is a requirement. I'm also toying with playing 1 blue bringer, since a mini-ancestral isn't bad. So we'll start with those 5 creatures.

So the deck currently looks like this:

// Mana - 28
4x City of Brass
4x Gemstone Mine
4x Forbidden Orchard
4x Underground Sea
6x LotusMoxen
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mox Diamond
4x Pentad Prism

// Creatures - 5
4x Bringer of the Black Dawn
1x Bringer of the Blue Dawn

// "Combo" - also known as "good cards" - 4
1x Time Walk
1x Yawg Will
1x Regrowth
1x Burning Wish

37 cards so far. Let's add some draw and control:

// Draw - 8
4x Brainstorm (bad due to lack of pre-bringer shuffle effects)
1x Ancestral
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Impulse

// Control - 13
4x Force of Will
4x Mana Leak (or Mana Drain, but there is a significant lack of mana sinks)
3x Duress
2x Misdirection

That leaves 2 spots open. I'm thinking some sort of removal

// Removal - 2
2x Chain of Vapor (anyone got anything better for this spot?)

The Bringers seem like a good choice for a deck due to the lack of non-artifact-fat removal. There's Swords and Edict and not much else is seeing play right now.

So I'm looking for help with a few things.
First, the mana base. I'm aiming for all 5 colors. That right there says I'm going to have trouble regardless. Is there anything I can do to improve the mana base I'm using?

Second, I do a lot of damage to myself right now, and the Spirits from the Orchard contribute to this. But another 5 color land was needed.

Third, Bringer count. Should I add another Blue and cut a black? Or would it be wise just to add a 6th Bringer?

Lastly, removal. This isn't a combo deck, per se. It's more like aggro-control. So if something hits, I'm going to have trouble.

Any comments and insights would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

At the Darksteel pre-release, I was in a flight, and saw a player mis-use Chromatic Sphere + Darksteel Pendant (he filtered the mana, then used the pendant, then drew his card off the Sphere).  I didn't interfere, but still called a judge over. The judge told everyone in the area that for future reference, if you see illegal plays and neither player catches it (as in play moves on - don't jump on them), to politely ask them to stop their gameplay and to call a judge over.

I assume that this "polite asking" doesn't qualify as interfering, correct?

So adding one more crucible makes it a not-so-cute lock?

As for Thirst vs. Meditate, the key thing is (as mentioned above) the ability to cast Thirst independent of what the board position looks like. If you have no lock, casting Meditate hurts. Whereas Thirst gives you immediate targets for welding.

I think you're playing the deck with too many kill conditions. I usually run 3, and have run 2-3 for almost 11 months. My standard is Karn, Trisk and Sundering Titan.


Platinum Angel isn't that good as everyone and their sister is running artifact kill. And if Fish (with their Lavamancers and multiple fairies) or FCG (the version around here runs MD Vandals and Rack and Ruin) can't answer your Platinum Angel, you're playing in an underdeveloped meta. The same thing for Tendrils Combo. They all play Chain of Vapors, Hurkyl's Recall, or some other bounce effect. Angel just doesn't pull her weight.

Razormane doesn't seem to fit the theme of the deck. He doesn't destroy multiple permanents a turn, he doesn't stop the creatures you should be worrying about (such as Sundering Titan or Psychatog).  If he hits the table versus fish, it's no better than dropping other lock components and is worse than most of the lock pieces in your deck. I'd rather see Smokestack or Tanglewire than Razormane when playing Stax. All this, and I still haven't mentioned his drawback. You only need one or two welding targets. More than that, and you're just going to be discarding for the heck of it.

I play in my local T1 tourney every week and I don't think I swing for the win more than once or twice a night. Usually, my opponent scoops as I clear the board with Smokestack and in late game get a Crucible/Strip lock with a 3sphere on the board.

My suggestion would be:

-1 Razormane
+1 Sundering Titan (one of the top 3 Tinker targets, fits well with the Mana Denial aspect of the deck)

-1 Platinum Angel
+1 Thirst for Knowledge

As for your mana base, I'm toying with the idea of adding a third Crucible and trying out Mox Diamond and City of Traitors.

Those are my thoughts. Hope they help.

Michael

From Crystalkeep and a search for Eradicate:

A face down creature has no name, so you search for cards that also have no name. Since all cards in the graveyard, hand, and library have names, this is an unmeetable condition and the spell won't do anything other than remove the targeted creature from the game. [D'Angelo 2002/10/15]

EDIT: Also, Eradicate doesn't do anything to other creatures that are already in play. It only targets the one creature and then searches the hand, graveyard, and library.

I've been running Karn as a one-of in my slavery build for about 2 months. Recurring a slaver ad infinitum isn't always the most feasible possiblity. I will often slave once or twice and if things look good (which they usually do), I can then swinging with the Slaver and a Lotus for the win.


A second turn Karn is an excellent choice since by that point you likely can't activate a slaver or drop a Titan,  but you can drop a karn and eat a mox or two. Karn is more expensive than a mox monkey, but functions beyond a mana muncher, too.

In the mirror, he also blocks Sundering Titans, much better than anything else in the standard slaver builds (sans pentavites).

EDIT: The above line is irrelevant since I let my train of thought go towards the line about slavery. Sorry for the mismatch. Still, the point is valid since Karn can block Titans just fine.

So using the search function, I took a look at some of the other threads relating to the Salvagers deck and noticed that several suggestions never got incorporated or even responded to.

 Most notably would be get rid of the Trinket Mages, play Transmute Artifact instead. A lot of hate in this thread is aimed at the rather useless Trinket Mage. Transmute Artifact is a solid replacement. It's a solid tutor, costs one less and you've got the standard compliment of mana artifacts and the spellbomb to sac to it.

Also, why no Tinker? For the same reason as mentioned above.

Try
-3 Trinket Mages
+2 Transmute Artifact
+1 Tinker

Sorry if that was confusing. I was thinking that a Standstill in hand could be pitched to FoW. Whereas the breaking of a Standstill at eot (what is often the game plan against the card) would allow me to discard an artifact (if over 7 cards in hand).

I have problems including a decklist since I think that the inclusion of standstill would change the contents of the deck drastically. I'm simply trying to illustrate what (if any) synergies exist with welders and standstill. For example, I go Workshop, Mox, Mox, Smokestack, Welder (a strong yet reasonably common opening).  Following turn, I drop a Standstill. Or to make it more reasonable, drop the Welder and the standstill on the same turn during some point in the game. I can then use Moxen to recur whatever may be in my yard, allowing me to recur threats while the opponent works around the standstill.  Another example would be to slave and then drop a standstill. It's a 2cc Ancestral in that example. (albeit that example is much weaker given that an active slaver is a solid step towards game over).


I'm a huge fan of the slaver and stacker builds (been playing them since I got my first workshop last August). Neither goes for a quick finish, usually planning on a 5 to 6 turn game, minimum. Personally - in my meta - I need to plan for a long game and deal with Swords to Plowshares and Fire/Ice mainly, Gob Sharpshooters and red fishies occasionally. I rarely see either of the black cards mentioned.

Alright, so I'm re-tooling my workshop deck. After 9 months and only 3 serious changes, it's time to re-evaluate my choices. In light of this, I bring a question forth to see if anyone else has tried any of these card options.

I'm trying to find a way to better protect my welders, since right now I pack the 4 FoW and that's about their only protection. So I was looking at three cards to further strengthen my chances of keeping them around. The three cards would be Standstill, Sword of Fire and Ice, and Lightning Greaves.

The Greaves I've used before in a U/r stacker deck and it worked fairly well. It let me do stuff like jar into a welder, play it, equip it, weld the jar back in and keep going. And the untargetability was also pretty nice. This has been tried and true for me and I realize it's strengths as a welder target itself, as well as being able to be cast off a workshop, etc.

Sword of Fire/Ice I looked at briefly and while it looks strong, I've previously relegated it to the SB. It was 5 mana to make it immediately useful, as opposed to 2 for the other choices for this slot. Also, it still lets my creature to die to Swords (very prevelant in my meta). It has the benefit of being a welder target itself, as well as card draw, but I only see this as being really strong against fish. It has started showing up in random decks though so I wanted to see what other people have been experiencing with this card.

As I was looking through my collection, though, I saw Standstill and the respect it's been garnering in recent tourneys. I was thinking that Welder -> Standstill may not be bad. It's blue so it can be pitched to Force; I don't care if a person tries to break it at my eot to force me to discard since I'd most likely be discarding a welding target. At that point they can fire the welder, but presumably, I'd be able to bring back whatever I discarded before it died, or hopefully have drawn/been holding a FoW to stop their killing of the welder. Also, in a lock deck, forcing the opponent to  delay some of their spells may not be a terrible addition. Not as strong as a Tanglewire or 3sphere, perhaps, but not terrible. NOTE: I'm not necessarily focussing on a lock archetype right now, I'm just throwing out possible uses.

So my question to the community on the whole is: does anyone else have experiences or thoughts on any of the listed cards? I appreciate your thoughts and opinions. I'm done with my testing of Greaves (still finding it to be strong) and I'm working on tweaking the deck to try and incorporate Standstill better and will be trying that out over the next week or so. I'm just trying to fill out my test results with what others may have come across.

(EDIT: Correcting some minor typos)

The answer is yes, your opponent will take damage.

All Basic Lands now have the supertype of "Basic Land - Mountain (or whatever)". Blood Moon doesn't add the supertype, it only changes their type to mountain.

Blood Moon creates a bunch of non-basic Mountains.

It depends on what else you have in play.

In the situation where you only have the Ultimus, it only shares types with itself, so only one mana is added.

This isn't entirely relevant, but it's close. This was a thread I started a while ago about a U/R lattice prison deck.

You'll find that Null Rod + Lattice means that you need to have a creature on the board or you'll simply lock the board position with only 2 win conditions in your deck. I would up the count of Myr Enforcers by 2 and drop the Sundering Titans.

Also, without blue, your draw is so minimal that you'll have trouble getting your Lattice and getting it to resolve. The deck allows the opponent too much time to develop and get situated.  If they drop a welder first, you're going to be pretty hosed as you don't have any removal for them except for the cores and firestorm (and firestorm hurts you more with your already minimal draw) . You need something for earlier in the game.

Just a couple of thoughts. Hope it helps.

I'm surprised so many people are unaware of this effect.

If it would help try thinking of this. If on my upkeep, I have a smokestack and a Tanglewire in play, they both trigger simultaneously, and they go on the stack in the order I choose. Why would the EOT triggers act differently than the upkeep triggers?

I independently developed a slaver deck about a month after Mirrodin was out (about the time I got my first workshop). Sure that decklist is terrible now (to be-labor an already dead and beaten horse, note the use of a couple Brainstorms in a slaver build back in December, not March). but ever since then, it's been almost a stubborn stupid pride issue for not changing my deck to the more conventional slaver builds. Stubborn pride is bad, admittedly, but in light of Origins, I've added the FoW and Fire/Ice, and I maindecked some artifact mutations. The Colossus will remain though, in honor of Kowal's memory.

I pulled the Jester's Caps - those were meta-specific. I expected there to be a lot more Hulk and 4cc control and was sure that the Caps would function well. They did, but I faced a low number of those decks and realized they were mostly useless against my worst matchups (mainly Fish and Madness). So I added the Fire/Ices for Fish and the mirror and FoW for every matchup. With the addition of Fire/Ice, I feel the blue count is much better for FoW.

As for the judging, I'm very surprised that nothing has shown up on the judge's listserv about Origins. I personally e-mailed Andy Heckt about the judging and asked for the name of the TO and if Andy had the info, who was there judging for which tournaments. I don't know if anything will come of it, but I feel better about it.

The problem with asking a competent player was that there were people who looked competent and were at higher tables and they were shouting out the wrong answers. I think the number of people trying to answer the questions frustrated the judges.

As for the judges themselves, they were the standard judges that you see at all the PES events (most recently at GP: Columbus). There were only a handful of bad ones. Lee McBlain (sp?) and his crew did wonderfully, but they were doing the larger events such as trials, PTQs, amateur championships, etc.

I really can't and won't defend the lack of the oracle text, though. It was corrected by day 2, at least.

Both those cards were mentioned during the disagreement, and it was brought up that their wording both says "Target Player."

A comparison to Brainstorm vs. some targetted draw card was also brought up, though I don't think the judge heard that one.

Yup. They most definitely were.

On the second day, one of the judges (the level 3 I got into an argument with) brought his laptop from home and so they had the oracle and the comprehensive rules. I believe that it was a problem with the computer day 1 that prevented the oracle from being available.

I was there when Soupboy (I think it was him) had it ruled against him that Time Walk was targetted. At that moment, about 4 or 5 other people all shouted out answers that supported both sides of the ruling. On top of that, there wasn't a copy of the Oracle text for the cards available. =(

Same thing when I got it ruled against me for the chalices and CMC. 4 or 5 different players crowded around myself, my opponent, and the judge and all started talking over one another about what they "knew" to be the rule. I followed the level 3 up to the head judge, then the TO, and then back into the back room to read the comprehensive rules with him. The TO did brush us off so at least he didn't make a ruling about it (I heard rumors the TO was a level 4).

All in all, the players were great, the judges left a bit to be desired.

As for losing to Kowal, I went 2-3 that night. Far too tired after working 8 hours, driving the 7 hours to get there, sleeping for 5, and then hanging at the center all day before the tourney started at 7. Once I got some sleep, I took 8th in the following day's tourney. I was at table 1, and died 2 games in a row to my mana crypt (both games coming down to the final flip - if I won the flip, I won the game). Then I dropped to table 3 and had to face fish, to which I died horribly. So 8th place it was.

I'll warn you all in advance that this thread really has no valuable information in it. After the next paragraph, I'll mostly just be insulting Kowal and making fun of his inability to deal with a first turn 11/11 trampling indestructable creature. I mean, come on, who can't deal with that?!?

Also, major slops to the judges. In addition to what was mentioned in other threads, I got into a 10 minute argument with a level 3 judge about what the converted mana cost of a spell with X in the cost on the stack was. I had exhausted my appeals before I got the right answer from someone. I was very close to having it ruled that my first turn Chalice for 0 counters all my future chalices. And slops to other players for yelling out their thoughts on the situation. That was very unhelpful.

So I decided to play in Thursday night's type 1 at Origins.  I played a bizarre screwed up fun deck. Take a U/R workshop slaver deck with no force of wills and only three slavers, add 2 Jester's Caps, a Karn, a Mind's Eye and a Darksteel Colossus. That was my deck. Not much in the way of secret tech. But by all the gods, I made sure I capped every opponent's ass to make sure that I had every deck list out there. I'm not a fan of team secrecy.

The other thing about the deck was that in every match I played, I won at least one game because of Darksteel Colossus.

My first round opponent was a kid playing Ankh Sligh.
I roll over Ankh Sligh, 2-0 (Chalice for 1 both games - duh!)

Second Round: Some guy playing Living Death Reanimator.
I roll over Reanimator, 2-0 (Jester's Cap for Living Deaths, no other animate spells, wtf?)


Round 3: This match was against Kowal playing some bad deck or another.

Kowal was one of my favorite opponents. We trade a few personal insults, cut the decks and I proceed to commence with the subject of this post.

Game 1: I obliterate him. Nothing to be done for it. I have Darksteel Colossus, and his power is inescapable. He rolls over Kowal something fierce.
Game 2: He does the same to me, but without the finely-tuned machine that is the Colossus.
Game 3: the first of many mistakes for the remainder of the night. I'm playing first. I go: Workshop, Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Trisk. I set my hand down so I can dig some counters out for the trisk. He asks if I'm done, and I say sure. I pick up my hand and proceed to swear as I realize I forgot to play my chalice for 0. He goes Land, Lotus, Ruby, Rack and Ruin hitting Sol Ring and Trisk and then plays something annoying like Gorilla Shaman or something. I keel over and die something quickly. I hate myself sometimes.

But the important thing is to remember that Kowal died to Darksteel Colossus. Let us all cherish the moment.

Round 4: Smennen with hulk.
Game 1: I play some stuff followed by a first turn chalice for 0, which he forces. I respond with another Chalice for 0. He curses a bit and it resolves. He plays a land and second turn, I top deck a chalice, which I drop for 2. I then proceed to own him by playing Jester's Cap (grabbing some good cards, can't remember what). Followed by a Mindslaver. I slave him and do the following: I cast a Duress, followed by a mana drain (chalice for 2 gets triggered), and I then force his Duress with the last card in his hand. I then proceed to top deck 6 lands in a row while he slowly recovers with Hulk's amazing draw engine (read that as Ancestral). My 7th top deck was a Time Walk (stupid chalice for 2). And he killed me the turn after. I think my deck hates me.

Game 2: I think it was second turn, I resolved a tinker for Darksteel Colossus.

Game 3: Close, but he outplayed me. I don't remember the details, but I was mana light and never saw a single Lotus (Gilded or Black).

But the important thing is to remember that Kowal died to Darksteel Colossus. Let us all cherish the moment again.

Also of note is that Kowal can't play Draw 7. He can, however, annoy the hell out of Soup by picking up one of his decks and proceeding to throw every card onto our game as if it were a Falling Star. You could see Soup's freshly shaven scalp slowly turn red as he got really freaking annoyed by it.

Props:
Hi-Val's girlfriend for cookies
The guy who traded me a mint-ish beta sinkhole for 5 foil commons from Mirrodin and 8th and $6 worth of type 2 rares.
Kowal, Samite Healer, and Hi-Val for being cool (along with the dozen other TMDers I met)

Slops:
The 50 year old, 250 pound woman for thinking she could still fit into the belly dancer outfit she wore when she was slim and 20-something.
Kowal for losing to Darksteel Colussus
The bastard on I-77 who followed me with his brights on for about 10 miles.

In conclusion, I'd like to remind everyone that Kowal died to Darksteel Colossus. Let us all cherish the moment. Let us savor the look on the Jesus-clone's face as he realizes that the target of my tinker isn't Memnarch or Memory Jar, but is instead his impending doom.

While I agree that those are benefits, you also have to think of the downside of teams. As you pick up on one another's play styles, you also tend to start thinking in similar ways. It may not necessarily be exactly the same, but enough so that your vision concerining card picks, play choices, etc. will be narrowed significantly.



If more minds are better than one, why limit yourself to a team? Join the larger community and share your ideas! I have friends in half a dozen cities that I talk to regularly about magic and bounce ideas off. And they will come to me for the same reason. I test those ideas in my regular tourney setting as well as in fun pick up games, or in day-long testing workshops.

While the idea of a testing group is similar to a team, it's not as close-minded. The sharing of tech  is what furthers innovation. I posted a while back about a Lattice Prison deck and the ideas generated there plus the contribution of ill_dawg has helped to spawn what is a fairly competitive deck. With a bit more work, I may take it to Origins.

And a quick point about team secrecy (since it is an issue in this thread), how often has the tech that was hidden at one tourney been relative in the next tourney that you go to? The answer I've always gotten is not usually. The meta shifts and evolves and is constantly forcing people to keep their tech fresh. I personally think that hiding your tech hurts yourself more because then you can't keep yourself a step ahead of the meta (as was mentioned earlier).

A while back, I posted a null rod + Lattice prison deck. Most of the flaws and ideas that were discussed there have been mentioned here already.  One that bears mentioning is to try using Myr Enforcer as a kill. He comes down really quickly and hits for 4 a turn.

Here's a link to the old thread so you can see some more discussion. I know there are a couple decklists in there, including one from ill_Dawg.

I hope it helps. I really enjoy playing Lattice decks.

Summary first.
Tinker shouldn't be unrestricted (at the current time) b/c it's casting cost isn't prohibitive and it's secondary cost will rarely factor in.

Dream Halls is potent, but I've not been exposed to much play against it so I can't say anything about it.

Fact or Fiction is probably safe to come off the B/R list though. It's cc is high, and it won't really be a 4-of in any current deck.


Breakdown of my thoughts.
Fact or Fiction:
Pros: feeds Togs and Welders, builds your Yawg Will, allows you to dig according to need, is an instant speed draw.
Cons: costs 3U, can screw you if your opponent has any solid amount of playskill.

The casting cost would be rather prohibitive for a lot of decks out there. It might start showing up as a 2-of but I don't see this as being a 4-of in any currently competitve deck.

Tinker:
Pros: finds anything, reasonably expect to cast first turn.
Cons: You have to sac something (typically something less important than what you're fetching).

I play one copy of Darksteel Colossus in my slaver home-brew. Whenever I get a first turn tinker, that's typically my target, and it will typically win me the game against any non-combo deck. As a random aside, I can see a Colussus deck with 4 Berserks and 4 tinkers going for consistent turn 2 and 3 kills.

Kowal's first post negates this point also, though it was never explicitly mentioned. I felt it worth bringing up. The Dragon player can Necromancy on your turn and then the Active Player Non-Active player effect stacking will allow him/her to effectively stack your Planar Void triggers an arbitrarily large number of times, never having to resolve them.

First, I've always loved the idea of Brain Freeze and keep trying decks based around it since it came out.

The problems I see with your list are this:
First, you have no Force of Wills or Mana Drains. This means that it'll be difficult to stop other combo decks from going off faster than yours. Also, it'll be difficult to stop a player from disrupting you.

Second, small brain freezes potentially fuel any deck wtih Welder, reanimation spells, or Yawg Will. My answer to that problem was to play Planar Void. It worked well, and stopped several other decks from going off quite as quickly.

Third, Panoptic Mirror is not a good card. It has been discussed many times, and the verdict is always the same.

Fourth, The only way to create a really big storm count is to recycle the My Retrievers. There's only 3 of them with minimal methods to do the recycling.

Fifth, you'll have problems with Gaea's Blessings. A lot of decks already use it against Dragon.

My suggestion is that if you wish to play this style of deck, to make it more of a control oriented deck in B/U. I used Isochron Scepters for the Brain Freezes  and at one point had actually used Raven Guild Masters also. In my casual deck, the Brain Freezes came out entirely and I played the Guild Masters with Fireshriekers.

The end conclusion that you'll find is the deck isn't powerful enough to compete in most of the powered metas that you'll find.

Hope it helps and good luck with the deck.

My first incarnation of a RU Stacker deck with Mindslavers in it also had Metalworkers. This worked b/c there were only 6 blue spells and 4 red spells, while the rest was mostly artifacts (and about 15 lands). So out of a 60 card deck, there were 35 artifacts in it.

In my current slaver homebrew build, there are around 23-26 artifacts due to the surge of blue draw/search/control that's been added to it. That makes it pretty difficult to make the metalworker as effective as he once was.

Combine the immediate lack of change in board position with the reduced effectiveness and they became the first thing I cut (once I realized that metalworkers no longer were producing the 8 to 12 mana they used to).

I tried a BU deck a while back that was mostly control based using Isochron Scepter + Brain Freeze and Planar Void. You're going to run into a lot of the same troubles that I had.

Without Planar Void, a lot of decks don't care about having stuff put into the graveyard. Your point of

is really bad against say Dragon, GAT, Hulk, Slaver variants, and pretty much any deck that uses Welders, Psychatogs and/or Yawg Will.

All it takes is for them to have one Welder, Tog, or Will in hand to make your mini-freeze more harmful to you then them.

Just another thought to add to those mentioned above.

Under your friend's definition, cards like Chalice and Duress aren't a meta consideration. They're not reactive, they're proactive, but the count for each will vary depending on where you're at and what type of decks you expect to show up. A higher concentration of combo decks could mean more duresses showing up.

When people talk about a meta-game, they're talking about the types of decks that show up in a given locale at a given time. Following that, when people talk about a deck that's been meta-gamed, they're talking about a deck that has had cards added/subtracted/changed to it to make the deck stronger in that particular locale (at that time).

As such, I would go on to define "meta" as not a particular card, but rather the role you envision the cards taking when you put them in your deck. When you meta-game a deck, you're effectively trying to add/subtract cards to make it stronger versus the whole field of opponents' game plans, whether proactive or reactive.

As a curiosity, would your friend define a card that is "solely proactive" as a meta card? Cards such as Duress, Meddling Mage (ignoring his 2/2 beating body) and Chalice?

I'd like to add Meddling Mage and Angel to Smennen's list of creatures it's good against. EBA was a hard matchup for me (what with Damping Matrix and Mage) and I think this will definitely help even the board a bit.



I can't say for other areas, but the people I've played against will drop a tog ASAP because it forces you as the opponent to play more aggressively and try to find a direct answer for tog. It screws with the opposing player's game plan, making them play differently. That's just my take on it, though.

So you're saying Dragon and Slaver are both horrible?

Perhaps "three-card combos that don't do anything on their own are horrible"?

But then again, Dragon doesn't fall in that category either.