MTG Salvation

I have played Krenko competitively. If you can't board wipe early or counter some of the key combo pieces, the table is probably getting over-ran on turn 5. The deck handles blue quite well, but does not care for board wipes. It is very explosive and like I said, if unchecked, it will win the game by turn 5 most of the time.

Quote from taker324 »

I have played Krenko competitively. If you can't board wipe early or counter some of the key combo pieces, the table is probably getting over-ran on turn 5. The deck handles blue quite well, but does not care for board wipes. It is very explosive and like I said, if unchecked, it will win the game by turn 5 most of the time.

Pretty much this. Thanks to Krenko's innate explosiveness and the large number of redundant combo pieces the deck can reliably threaten to kill by turn 5. Then as the game goes on it continues to be a threat to win out of nowhere at any time thanks to those combos and lots of sources of haste, while also being able to apply significant pressure to opposing life totals simply by swarming with Goblins backed by lords/Purphoros.

In a more competitively leaning games, where others are using plenty of cheap answers and have lots of early action, I think Krenko is absolutely fine. But a lot of games in my area are played at a more casual pace than that, and it is fair to say that combo-Krenko is mostly too "competitive" for those games.

I was just reading Mark Rosewater's latest article on the mothership and this kinda jumped out at me with all the discussion going on with EDH casual vs. competitive



Lesson #5: Don't confuse "interesting" with "fun"

This is a concept we talk about a lot in R&D. It turns out that there are two different kinds of stimulation—intellectual stimulation and emotional stimulation. The first is about stimulating the ways in which you think. ("Hmm, that's very interesting.") The second is about generating an emotional response. ("Ooh, that's fun!") In Magic, looking at a card file is intellectual stimulation. Playing with the cards is more of an emotional stimulation.

I personally am a competitive player and don't really care for casual big timmy games. My play group normal ends games by turn 3-5. Which to me is fun. But I do understand why people like casual as well, what are your thoughts?

I'm a little closer to the casual end of the spectrum than you, I think. I enjoy building rube goldberg machines that are both interesting and fun. Although I find them to be few and far between, there are those of us that "love it when a plan comes together." We're the kind of people that enjoy doing math for fun, so we tend to not reproduce much.

So while I dislike the games where you play one 8-drop per turn until someone draw his Craw-est Wurm, I also am not a fan of games where the decks are focused and/or linear enough to allow 3-5 to be the end game. I prefer a slower more attrition-based game. However that often means a fair amount of stax elements to the chagrin of my timmy-er friends.

So when you take a deck like Legacy's NicFit or Modern's Melira Pod (both of which have many lines of play and paths to victory) you get the combination of "fun" and "interesting" that I enjoy.



One of my latest examples was Deserted Temple/Mistveil Plains/Sunforger/Final Fortune/Angel's Grace for a boros infinite turn loop. That makes for an unusual play that brings a smile to people's faces as they see the monstrosity I have assembled. Everyone loves a 15-mana, 5-card combo, right?

Quote from ProfessorWhen »

One of my latest examples was Deserted Temple/Mistveil Plains/Sunforger/Final Fortune/Angel's Grace for a boros infinite turn loop. That makes for an unusual play that brings a smile to people's faces as they see the monstrosity I have assembled. Everyone loves a 15-mana, 5-card combo, right?

My play group usually ends games around turns 8-10. I guess the term you could use for us nowadays is "Casual Tryhards" However, that combo right there is exactly something I could see many of us trying to pull off. Very wacky, very cool. Thanks for showing me. Never knew it existed

Our play group is pretty flexible. We can decide t odo the turn two to four kill, or just relax. My only aggressive deck right now is "Core Set + Radha", where everything is from a white-bordered core set + Chronicles + Radha (had her white-bordered) but it can get pretty crazy if I get the nut Blood Lust+Giant Growth+Might of Oaks draw though, haha.

I'm building Oyobi, Who Split the Heavens and it will have Mana Crypt and Sol Ring (no Mana Vault or Grim Monolith) because she costs seven and is pretty "meh". It's all Arcane-Spirit based, just got a Thunder Spirit woo!
It has Armageddon (for those competitive tables), Planar Cleansing (fits with splitting the heavens) and so on and a lot of jank.