It has been a long, long time since I posted here (hey to Steve, Andy, Keith and everyone else) but I was wondering what I could do as a seller to help ease the fears of a potential buyer.  I don't have an ebay account with any feedback to speak of, so I'll probably use my mother's, who has been selling off items from my childhood over the years and -does- have a decent feedback rating.  I haven't priced magic cards in ages, but I'm assuming it's probably worth getting my P9 certified through PSA or using a high-res scanner on them.  Certification can get pricey, so I'm hoping I don't have to go through that for the "nice, but not uber" cards, like the FBB duals.

I don't mind taking the time and the steps to do this right, it's not imperative I sell, but I know I'll get the most value for my collection if I present it in a reassuring way--for you, what would that entail?

-Andrew (formerly of Concord, Hartford, and Pittsburgh)

Very similar deck--Baxter played that version at the '96 Nationals.  It also included a lone Deadly Insect, which interacted very well with Icy Manipulators since tapped blockers didn't deal combat damage back then.

Many thanks!

Hey all,

I'm tentatively getting back into the game and one of the things I've always enjoyed about Magic is its history and development.  I'm in the process of throwing together some casual mono-colored decks based on [booming voice]Great Decks in Magic History[/booming voice].  Each deck ends up being "legal" by the standard of the day.  I'm trying hard to avoid putting together either a white weenie or Humility deck for the white slot--neither appeal to me in terms of playstyle.  I did, however, spend all of the "Black Summer" playing prison decks in NH, which meant I spent a lot of time at Hammer's Comics in Manchester.  I know he and Baxter brought a mono-white prison deck to PT Dallas in 1996 (Baxter T8'd, Hammer blames his losses on getting Balance Hymned away all day) but either my Google-fu skills are weak or there isn't a decklist out there.  Does anyone happen to have one?  I figured there are enough old-time players here that someone must remember those decks.

Man, I'm mulling over getting back into the game and they distort the format with restrictions and now I can't make a tournament due to a work conflict--I'm beginning to think someone's trying to tell me something...

The first hit I get is a link to the article "The dubious genius of Andrew Marshall."  I had a clipping from a William Safire oped on my office door that began, "Andrew Marshall is the most progressive thinker in Washington today..."  Too bad he's a neocon.

Every game I've lost to Fish with my Keeper deck, I've lost because of Null Rod (and generally unmorphable Angels).  This isn't to say that's the end-all-be-all of Null Rod analysis, but I think it's still a solid card in the right deck.  As some of the prior posts note, Null Rod can be a huge tempo boost in the right deck.  Null Rod is weaker in decks that can't devote at least some resource to protecting it.  When TPS is ready to go off, it's not a big deal to tutor up a Rebuild vs. a deck like Suicide or Oshawa.  It's a different story vs. Fish since that deck can protect the Null Rod and diminish combo's chances.  What I think most of the bad experiences with Null Rod not doing its job point to is not a drop off in its utility, but rather that non-blue aggro/aggro-control is at the bottom of the barrel right now.

That sounds terrible.  I have not-so-fond memories of stopping in YMG when I was living in Davis and having store owners/employees give me dirty looks because I wasn't playing Type 2 and therefore must be scouting their tech.  Which, even with various rooms from which to choose, they discussed in the main public room.  And the prices are insane.




This doesn't make a lot of sense.  No format has ever had 550 playable cards in it (insert joke about Urza's block).  Type 1 has lots more playable cards at any given time than any other format does at any given time--that's the strength of the format.  You're spot on that nobody will play with weak cards, but there's no shortage of powerful cards to choose from in Type 1.

Well, at the risk of admitting to being out of the loop, I don't have any invites.  Hook a brother up.    

EDIT: Thanks Jacob.

I'm no dragon expert, but the most common solution to P. Angel is to mill their library, animate a Welder and switch it out for something else.

A situation came up today when I was playing Hyperion, I'm pretty sure of the answer after some thought, but I just wanted to be 100% sure.

You cast Yawgmoth's Will and have a Force of Will (but no other blue cards) in-hand.  Will resolves.  As you begin to play stuff from your graveyard, your opponent casts something.  Can you pitch a blue card in your graveyard to the Force of Will or is it still in a separate zone?

As I understand it, you can splice as many spells as you want into a single arcane spell, but you have to announce them all at once so you can't use a single splice spell more than once.  If you have RR2 open, you can play D. Rit, splice a second D. Rit into it (leaving you with RRRRRR).  You can then play the D. Rit that remains in your hand for a grand total of RRRRRRR.

You cannot, however, use the mana generated by casting the first D. Ritual to pay the splice cost of the second, since you don't get the mana until it resolves and at that point it's too late to announce splice.

Again, just about anyone else has a better understanding of the rules, but that's how I read it.

Fewer top-tier decks reflects a tighter metagame, both in terms of available cardpool and player skill.  Formats like block often boil down to 1 or 2 decks and a sea of hate decks because the best players will discover the top decks then, over the course of a season, there is a certain amount of tweaking.  The mono-green and r/g LD decks in standard right now work because of Affinity.

Type 1 is a different story in a number of regards.  First, I think it's fair to say that the level of playskill, although much higher than it was 2 or 3 years ago, still lags behind the Pro Tour.  There is innovation in the format, but I imagine if Robert Dougherty sat down and focused on Type 1 something new and amazing would result.  

Second, since the cardpool is so massive, whatever hot new deck is developed will have a foil available for the next tournament.  Affinity is hot in Type 2 because there's no Null Rod or Energy Flux to hose it.  Whatever deck becomes hot in Type 1 can expect a hoser at the next tournament (see: Goblin Welder and Lava Dart).  This creates a much more protean metagame than other, more narrow, formats.  

Finally, and I include myself in this category to a certain extent, because of the history of Type 1 and the legacy of certain decks, nostalgia plays a bigger role in deck selection for a lot of people.  In Type 2 you can't play a deck like White Trash because you miss it; in Type 1 you can pick up a deck like Hatred and play it because you miss it.  It might not be the best deck for the current metagame, but there always seem to be people at Type 1 tournaments who base their deck selection on "remember when..." rather than "Based on Phil's articles, I've decided to play..."  This keeps the field broader than it would be if you based your metagame assumptions solely on stuff from TMD.

Browsing the forums at mtgnews.com, I came across a post by Cok_spoiler, who seems to be a trusted source over there.  Some cool cards for my Samurai deck, but in terms of Type 1, this looked the most interesting:

Desperate Ritual -  1R
Instant - Arcane
Add  RRR to your mana pool.
Splice onto Arcane:  1R.

The entire arcane/splice into arcane synergy here looks interesting.

CHK looks like it's going to generate a few theme decks for me, one of which is going to be a R/W Samurai deck.  I'm looking for older cards that fit that theme, which I intend to keep fairly tight.  Goblin War Drums is nice with Bushido, but is terrible thematically, so it doesn't make the cut.  Cards I'm currently considering:

False Orders (just for the old-school factor, also military theme)
Reinforcements
Blaze of Glory
Archery Training (thematic removal is tough to come by)
Tithe (Samurai are high caste after all)
Outmaneuver
High Ground
Various obvious choices from CHK

Any other cards out there that would fit a military/tactical deck?  In particular, I'm looking for cool lands.

Different standards apply only in the sense that proxies are allowed.  I always cut my opponent's deck unless I'm playing a friend at the local coffee shop.  If I feel they didn't shuffle their deck adaquately, I'll shuffle it too (although not riffle shuffle, that's just mean).

Sorry to double post, but the first post was an answer and the second one is a question:

Will CHK indeed be legal?  If so, does anyone know where I might be able to scan some proxies?

Ha!

I lived in Frankfurt a.M. for a year or so and you see some pretty weird shit on German television, but this takes the cake.

There's a difference between making incorrect metagame calls and just getting bad match-ups.  If Slaver makes up 30% of the field, then you'd be nuts not to take that into account.  But you still run the risk of just not seeing any Slaver decks until later rounds and by then it may be too late.  A few years ago I brought TnT to a control-heavy environment and faced AoS and mono-blue Trix in the first 2 rounds--there's only so much you can control in these kinds of situations.

Sorry to hear about your problems at Waterbury, Steve.  To what extent do you feel that slow decks like 4CC and possibly mono-U hurt their pilot insofar as they eat so much time that you may end up with draws in games that you would have won if they were being played in an untimed setting?  I found myself in a similar situation in a small tournament recently vs. a x4 Mana Drain/Misdirection/Force of Will deck--we had spent so much time in counterwars and exhausting the other person's resources, no one had time to win.

I wouldn't jump on the duals too soon.  Assuming your going to play 2-3 colors, acceleration is more important than getting a dual in a lot of cases.  If you run green, it would be worth picking Birds, but green is pretty weak in this format.  But, since you get to keep the cards you draft, grabbing blue duals can't hurt.  Tundra and Volcanic Island would be my top choices since blue will give you access to decent fliers like Phantom Monster and red and white will give you decent removal.

I've been a fan of L5R, so I'm going to have to make a Rat/Nezumi deck once this set comes out.  This is actually a pretty solid card in slower formats--it'll be nice if something other than Vial/Affinity takes off in Type 2.

Looks like I'll be able to make, which should mean Hyperion is good to go as well.

Sometimes I wonder if the coder of the "rolleyes" smiley will become the next Alfred Nobel.  He invented something great, but it gets misused and causes more problems than he anticipated.

I haven't seen an Italian Zoo decklist, but it seems like an answer to a Stax-heavy metagame.  How does this Zoo deck vs. TPS or heavy control?  If they've devoted the bulk of their sideboard to Stax, those match-ups might prove difficult.  That's one of the nice things about playing in proxy tournaments: you have to take lots of different possibilities into account.  

I'm not convinced that Workshop/Trinisphere is an answer to every problem--I don't think I've ever claim that.  I've argues on other threads that there are answers to that opening.  I guess I'd continue that train of thought and mention that if you expect that next Saturday, you need to make sure your deck can handle it, one way or another.  My earlier reply to your example was to point out that the example, while possible, isn't going to happen too often; my thanks to Gabethebabe for providing some numbers.  I'm not going to crunch the numbers, but the chances of getting at least 2 Workshops, 1 Crucible and 1 Metalworker in your opening 8 cards looks like it's below 4%.  I can live with a deck busting out something like that 1 in 25 games.  Besides, I play with Force of Will  :lol:



I wish I could agree, I really do.  Magic is a game and is fun and I try not to take things like trading too seriously.  If I've got some sweet cards I know I'll never use, I'll trade them undervalued to kids because it makes them happy and the game is more fun for everyone involved.

However, there is a lot of math involved in deckbuilding.  The reason your deck is 60 cards is math.  To an extent, when I cast Brainstorm with the hopes of seeing a Force of Will, that's math or at the very least, my chances are better for having a 60-card deck.  When I'm trying to determine paths to victory in a given match, that's all about probability.

Fair enough.  I disagree about the proxy thing, but I can understand why Stax looks more attractive in a lower-powered environment.  If there was a drop-off in proxy tournaments around here and aggro became more popular I would probably play Stax or combo.  If no one is there to dump a handful of Moxen on turn 1, your Tangle Wire looks a whole lot better.

I assume English isn't your first language--no big deal but I'm not 100% clear on some of your points.  Would I be correct to say characterize this statemate as, "Ok, that's true in your metagame in which there aren't any new archetypes other than the standard assortment?"

Power always helps, against new types of decks and old.  Yes, a Fish deck did manage to get into the T8 at Worlds, and that's fantastic.  I'm pretty sure that deck would have benefited by the inclusion of an Ancestral though.



You can do this, but it won't guarantee you any success.  Chains has seen some play in decks recently and I think it a pretty decent card in Type 1 for the simple fact that everyone ends up drawing more cards than they should.  However, by your logic Waterbury would be full of decks running hate.  I'll grant you that Fish contains a certain degree of hate, but aside from that hate decks have not done well at Waterbury in general--even hate decks with proxied power, which I imagine would be better at hating out the other powered decks.



I agree, if you don't have power you need to develop different decks/strategies.  Control becomes almost dead in a non-powered environment with the possible exception of Parfait.  I've lost to Goblins with my fully-powered Keeper before, but it's not a match I'm terribly concerned about.  I have broken acceleration, cards like Balance, and Exalted Angel.  The very things I rely upon to win this matchup is the fact that I have power and the Goblin player does not (see: Zherbus' breakdown of proxy vs. non-proxy rounds).  Moreover, how is the Goblin player going to fare in a field that may include decks like TPS and Dragon?



So some players should be at an advantage just because of where they live?  If I'm the only powered player in my region and I'm a nasty SOB, I'll beg TO's for sanctioned tournaments because they favor me.  If evey tournament is un/limited proxy, then things like matchups, playskill, and luck will determine the winner, which sounds a lot like other formats.

I'm not crazy about Type 1 becoming another Type 2 either, but it has a lot of things going for it that Type 2 doesn't.  First, sets never rotate out so the cardpool in always growing.  In Type 2, once the best block deck is established PTQs become a contest to see who can break the mirror.  Looking at the top 8 at World's, I see a pretty diverse, healthy metagame.  Keep in mind that a 4CC and some Dragon decks just missed the cut as well.  New cards will bring new innovation with them.  Yes, there are some tried and true archetypes in Type 1 but that doesn't mean things are becoming vanilla.

@Gaea:  It's pretty easy to post how decks will win with God-hands.  I suppose someday I'll draw Dark Ritual x2, LED, Burning Wish, Tendrils of Agony, Mox Jet, Lotus and my opponent won't have a Force of Will handy.  But that doesn't really mean much of anything.

Hell, I like the cover--you can almost imagine she was at the same blacklight party Zherbus' avatar came from.

The irony isn't intentional, but Crucible is pretty important in this matchup.  The key here, as it always has been, is dealing with your opponent's manabase.  Running 2 Shaman works really well since they can wipe out tempting Welder targets.  Crucible is important here for two reasons.  First, and most important, it nullifies your opponent's Crucible and both these archetypes will run somewhere between 2 and 4.  Second, it maintains the pressure on your opponent's capacity to cast spells under Trinisphere.

Cunning Wish is really important in this matchup since it can fetch Rack and Ruin and/or Disenchant.  Having access to Cunning Wish makes me much more comfortable with a Trinisphere on the board.

Workshop decks mulligan fairly often, if they do you may want to consider doing the same if you don't think you'll be able to deal with an explosive opening.

The problem with that being that Fish runs pitch counters and maybe Annul, none of which benefit from the colorless mana provided by Busieju.  Alright, you can hard-cast Force or Daze, but that's not really the plan...

I'm sure many of you have already read some of these, but in case you wanted to know the truth about

Evolution

Rock Music

Dungeons and Dragons

How to convert Muslims without any real effort

I guess I do need to wear my glasses more often.