It seems that green has /very/ strong cards. There are really efficiently bodies for low mana cost in green, plus its Cartouche is decent removal.
I always worry about aggro decks and not being able to durdle.
So, help me to plan out some drafting strategies if I want to durdle in blue and black (and other colours to mix in), in this format that seems to be a little bit aggro-favouring.
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Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
Pick up as many Wasteland Scorpion as you can. After they're done trading, reclaim them with Wander in Death. Green has very few ways to deal with a mere grounded deathtoucher. Then you have all the spot removal available for what your scorpions can't deal with. I think gumming the board will be easy for UB. Finding ways to close the game is the tricky part.
Without another creature to soak up the -1/-1 counters, all of green's creatures seem pretty mediocre. For the rest of their well positioned creatures, there's always essence scatter.
Bounce spells also seem pretty strong against green's gameplan. Not only does bouncing stall effectively but a lot of their good aggro creatures have negative ETB effects and having to recast them can seriously eat away at their board state.
Most aggro decks want to be turning their creatures sideways every turn and most exert effects don't give 2 attacks worth of damage. So unless you have ways to untap your creatures, exert doesn't seem all that powerful. And in the case of untappers, bounce spells still work well (fizzling the untap spell) and kill spells can be a nasty 2-for-1.
Exert's strength isn't the sheer amount of damage it does, it's the ability to make a creature relevant for significantly longer than it would be otherwise. Say you play Gust Walker turn 2 and your opponent responds with a 1/3. If your gust walker was just a bear, the board would be stalled. Since it has exert, your walker can now force through 3 damage, and your opponent is now losing because their 1/3 can't race you if you play another guy. It doesn't matter that your gust walker is "only" getting in 1.5 damage a turn: you're now a good deal ahead on board because your opponent can't block the walker from getting through, and doesn't have any profitable attacks.
This makes low power defensive creatures significantly worse, since they can't race exert creatures at all, and this should warp the format to be significantly more aggressive than it would be otherwise. When your Ancient Crab can't profitably block common 2 drop exert creatures, trying to build a defensive deck just doesn't sound appealing at all.
Dune Beetle goes a long way. I wouldn't try to use Luxa River Shrine against a blisteringly fast deck. You'll be spending your mana to gain a tiny bit of life. They'll be spending it smashing your face for more damage than you'll be able to gain back. I'd say Renewed Faith is a safer option by far, though it's uncommon.
He was definitely kidding about the shrine and I assume renewed faith is usually bad.
It's got cycling, don't underestimate it. I think the cycling Fog is probably better than Renewed Faith in most matchups except vs go wide when you can eat a chump attacker and negate their big turn. And even then, the amount of damage the white overrun effects add is probably still more than 6.
Either way, there will be matchups where you want them in your sideboard because when it's good, negating an alpha strike is brutal and cycling makes the usual liability of playing these kinds of effects much less.
Imagine a green deck that has a decent board state but is behind in the race getting alpha'd by an exert strike. You blank their attack, crack back, they don't untap, and you crack in again. This is definitely the dream scenario, but cycling makes trying for it in the relevant match up much less risky.
A note on Exert: calculating the damage on these if you're exerting them every turn is not 1/2. It's more than one half because when you kill your opponent, the lack of untap doesn't matter. Also, the baseline is that you're getting to do more than 0 damage because the creature would have otherwise been blocked and just done nothing.
I always worry about aggro decks and not being able to durdle.
So, help me to plan out some drafting strategies if I want to durdle in blue and black (and other colours to mix in), in this format that seems to be a little bit aggro-favouring.
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
Bounce spells also seem pretty strong against green's gameplan. Not only does bouncing stall effectively but a lot of their good aggro creatures have negative ETB effects and having to recast them can seriously eat away at their board state.
Most aggro decks want to be turning their creatures sideways every turn and most exert effects don't give 2 attacks worth of damage. So unless you have ways to untap your creatures, exert doesn't seem all that powerful. And in the case of untappers, bounce spells still work well (fizzling the untap spell) and kill spells can be a nasty 2-for-1.
That... uh... may or may not turn out well.
- Rabid Wombat
This makes low power defensive creatures significantly worse, since they can't race exert creatures at all, and this should warp the format to be significantly more aggressive than it would be otherwise. When your Ancient Crab can't profitably block common 2 drop exert creatures, trying to build a defensive deck just doesn't sound appealing at all.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Either way, there will be matchups where you want them in your sideboard because when it's good, negating an alpha strike is brutal and cycling makes the usual liability of playing these kinds of effects much less.
Imagine a green deck that has a decent board state but is behind in the race getting alpha'd by an exert strike. You blank their attack, crack back, they don't untap, and you crack in again. This is definitely the dream scenario, but cycling makes trying for it in the relevant match up much less risky.
A note on Exert: calculating the damage on these if you're exerting them every turn is not 1/2. It's more than one half because when you kill your opponent, the lack of untap doesn't matter. Also, the baseline is that you're getting to do more than 0 damage because the creature would have otherwise been blocked and just done nothing.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article