I've been playing around a bit online with the Mezzel list, aside from me taking out 1 Ninja and 1 Force Spike for 2x Ponder.
So far I've been running into nothing but MBC lists, and they're winning a lot of games. They just have too much removal vs the low number of creatures, and playing around Daze and Force spike is becoming too easy, leaving a lot of dead cards in my hands. So for that matchup and possibly a few other aggro decks, I thought about adding 3-4x Calcite Snapper to the SB.
None of their creatures can get by him, and shroud shuts down all but 1 of their removal for it. Plus you can get in for 4 when their board is clear. Is there anything that might be better than him in the SB?
Would you guys say cloud of faeries is necessarily a core card? I personally don't run it, and my deck still works wonders.
It's very important as a way to apply pressure while still being able to keep countermagic open. It is very important in certain matchups (Infect, Affinity, Storm) where if you do not leave 2 mana open, you will just loose.
In addition, it serves as another faerie, boosting your Spellstutter Sprite up to the 2 level
On the other hand it is probably one of the weaker cards in the mirror. A countered T2 Cloud of Faeries on the draw will probably cause you to loose the game.
I've been playing around a bit online with the Mezzel list, aside from me taking out 1 Ninja and 1 Force Spike for 2x Ponder.
So far I've been running into nothing but MBC lists, and they're winning a lot of games. They just have too much removal vs the low number of creatures, and playing around Daze and Force spike is becoming too easy, leaving a lot of dead cards in my hands. So for that matchup and possibly a few other aggro decks, I thought about adding 3-4x Calcite Snapper to the SB.
None of their creatures can get by him, and shroud shuts down all but 1 of their removal for it. Plus you can get in for 4 when their board is clear. Is there anything that might be better than him in the SB?
Tips for the MBC matchup. The creatures you need to counter are Crypt Rats, and Liliana's Specter as they are the only cards that can interact with your creatures favorably.
On the other hand, it is fine to let a few creatures slip in. If you can afford to discard Ravenous Rats isn't a big deal, and Chittering Rats can help you flip a delver.
If you are in a bad position, just go hellbent and spew your hand onto the table. Chittering Rats is very good at making your bad position into a worse one. However if you have no cards in hand, it is a lot less effective.
Personally I like Spire Golem. Flying is a world of difference, Calcite Snapper is just a big blocker if you can't get around a 1/1 rat. Spire Golem is vulnerable to Tendril's of Corruption and Victim of the night, the first you should be countering in the first place, and the second not all lists run.
I've reached some conclusions after playing this deck for a few days.
The original list I was playing (Mezzel's from the opening post), turned out to be pretty suboptimal. The lack of large fliers and 5 force spike effects made the deck pretty miserable late-gate. The lack of preordain made it impossible to control how many lands we drew, which led us frequently having too many or too few lands.
It turns out that preordain is your primary filtering mechanism to help you deal with mana flood and mana screw, which was a huge deal previously. It also helps you draw more copies of cloud of faeries/spellstutter sprite, which work better the more you have. I really think you want 4 preordain.
Spire Golem also turned out to be very good. He's a near impassible wall for a lot of decks.
This deck is also pretty difficult to play optimally as there are just so many options and potential ways to counter spells. I'm still learning a lot about how to play each matchup.
Played in a daily today...here's how it went from what I can remember:
Match 1: Against some mono G deck with nothing but hexproof creatures and aura/enchantments. This was actually a big problem for me seeing as if I didn't counter the creature, it was going to be on the board until I could kill it by blocking. He mulled to 5 first game, won easy. Second game he gets out a Sacred Wolf and starts attaching things to it when I have a hand with 1 counter...ended pretty quick. Game three I side in Echoing Truths and use it to bait him into attacking with his solo creature...I bounce the enchantment and block to kill it...he can't recover after.
1-0
Match 2: Mono R Goblins. I thought this should be an easy match with all my SB hate...but MTGO had different plans. Game 1 he starts fast and I just can't draw anything useful at the right times. Game 2 after siding in 4 Hydroblast and 4 Weatherseed Faeries, I keep a sketchy hand with 2 land and 6 counters, figuring I could just counter away threats until I draw something to get on the board. I do just that, countering about 5 creatures and getting a Delver on the board...4 turns later...I have 4 more lands and no flipping. He eventually gets a board and overwhelms me.
1-1
Match 3: Storm. I actually hadn't played against storm yet, but it didn't go well for my first time. Game 1 he goes off turn 3 and gets 22 goblins out. Game 2 he goes off Turn 4 with Grapeshot, couldn't do anything about it. Seems like a pretty terrible matchup unless you have a crazy amount of counters...or maybe there's something I'm missing?
I feel like storm is a pretty good matchup for us. If you want experience on how to play against storm the best way to do it is goldfish the deck a few times on MWS
Primer for the storm (goblin/grapeshot) matchup
General overview.
-After you have a threat (2-3 damage per turn). Always Always Always keep counterspell open. Even if you don't have it
-Counter Draw Power, not mana
-Brainstorm is your friend, great way to hide your hand from Duress and Gixian Probe
Game one is always difficult. There isn't much you can do about a T2 Empty the Warrens. You can try some of the tactics listed below for winning games 2/3. But just remember to keep counterspell open.
Sideboarding
-4 Snap
-2-3 Ninja of Deep Hours
-2-3 Spire Golem
+Piracy Charms (Instant speed discard is utterly broken and unexpected. Note that both Grapeshot and ETW are sorcery speed. Just force them to discard the last card in the hand and laugh as you win)
+Dispel / any counterspells
+3-4 Echoing Truth
(Try not side in hydroblast. The only card it is good against is pyroblast, but if you have the free slots, go for it)
You want to figure out what plan the storm player is going game two. A common strategy for storm players is to side out all Empty the Warrens for protection, and win by grapeshotting twice.
As for double grapeshot, read on.
Every storm player has three important resources they need to keep in mind. Cards, Blue Mana, and Life. The most important resource by far is cards. If you do not have enough card draw you will fizzle. You need to play 10+ cards in order to win, and you can only hold 7 cards in your hand.
Therefore, to defeat the storm matchup you want to reduce their card draw power, while running a decent clock.
Before the storm
-You want to use up your Spellstutter Sprites, Force Spikes, Steelshaper's gift on the baubles and cantrips. If they play a bauble, 95% of the time they are not going off, the other 5% of the time they will try and fizzle. You will effectively cut off their draw power
-You want to set up a good clock. This will pressure the storm player into doing something. In addition, if they wait to long, you can effectively blank their Sign in Blood and Gitaxian Probe. You can probably cast Spellstutter EOT just as a clock.
During the Storm
-Counter the card draw. Blue based draw spells (Idea's Unbound, and Compulsive Research) are the most important cards to counter.
-Attack the mana (sometimes). Typically this is a bad idea, never counter any rituals. The storm player probably has three more in their hand. But the problem for storm isn't the black or red mana, it is the blue mana. The storm player only has three ways to get blue mana, lands (which they will use up fast), baubles (which hopefully you've countered), and manamorphase. The only card you should ever consider countering is manamorphase, but only do this if you have lots of counters to spare. Usually it is a better idea just to counter what they spend the blue mana on.
Thanks for the tips. While he was going off I kept thinking about countering things like manamorph and Sign in Blood, but me in my stupidity forgot that you can't simply counter the first storm spell. Shows how much I knew about the deck =P
But now I think I'll be fine...I feel stupid because I had 2 Golems out and 2 Hydroblast and 1 Counterspell in my hand when he went off =(
The goblin matchup seems kinda meh, but I really think I just had bad draws...if I had 1-2 of my Weatherseed fae earlier it would have made a world of difference.
The problem with defining this format by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
I may have missed someone's post on this, but there are other "Delver Blue" decks that aren't playing the Faeries/Ninja contingent. PaulDenton and co. usually pilot this version, which is more of a Mono Blue Control feel with Delver and Spire Golem as the big fliers. How do people feel about this version of the deck, and what are its matchups like?
Would Rune Snag be an acceptable substitute for Mana Leak?
I actually thought about trying this out in the more controlish version of the deck. I mean, it basically becomes a hard counter against everything but post after 1 is in the GY. Only minor issue would be that you HAVE to play with 4 or else they lose too much power.
(¯`·._.·(¯`·._.· Currently Playing ·._.·´¯)·._.·´¯)
[Modern] WU Second Sunrise
[Modern] UR Pyromancer's Ascension
[Pauper] Anything & everything that fancies me.
This isn't 100% accurate. You can also blast Manamorphouse(sp) which can be a pretty big deal if they're trying to get more blue.
You can also constrict their mana by using it on the red Rituals.
So far I've been playing a lot of Delver and feel the lists I've been working off of are subpar.
Gush seems like the biggest beating ever yet we're only running 2 to 3. Another hard counter would also be nice.
Gush is situational and is really awful in multiples, unless you go super late game, which most lists don't want to do. I do agree it's a great card though.
This isn't 100% accurate. You can also blast Manamorphouse(sp) which can be a pretty big deal if they're trying to get more blue.
You can also constrict their mana by using it on the red Rituals.
The first I can understand, however trying to constrict red mana is a really bad idea. By the time someone is storming, they will have 2-3 different sources of red mana some of which will be lands, and will start drawing more. You run the risk of tapping out to do nothing but increase the storm count by 1
Also, even if you counter their first spell, you are leaving the storm player with a handful of danger, and they will go off the next turn.
Its there another option instead of playing 4 serrated arrows?.
The aggro versions (ninja and faeries) don't play 4 serrated arrows for the most part. Having 2 in the board is pretty nice against decks like infect, but not necessary for the budget player. Curse of Chains and Piracy Charm are decent alternatives.
If you're playing the controlling version with only delver and spire golem for creatures, you really do want to have 3-4 serrated arrows.
I may have missed someone's post on this, but there are other "Delver Blue" decks that aren't playing the Faeries/Ninja contingent. PaulDenton and co. usually pilot this version, which is more of a Mono Blue Control feel with Delver and Spire Golem as the big fliers. How do people feel about this version of the deck, and what are its matchups like?
I watched MikeyK's Decktech on that and i'm in the process of watching the matches now. I'm thinking he's weak to some of the aggro decks with that build but he's got all kinds of action against Storm and other blue decks.
I think the creature version might be better in the mirror though because once stuff hits the table its hard to get rid of.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
Meta reasons. For the most part, the decks that tap out are creature decks; the decks that play noncreatures that are worth countering are Storm and Post decks, which tend to make Spell Pierce useless very fast. For winning counter wars, Dispel and Daze are preferred.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
On average, Magic players are worse at new card evaluation than almost every other skill, except perhaps sideboarding.
It's very mediocre in noncreature match-ups, and just not that good. Importantly, most ninjas only ever get to hit once (Because they have no evasion and being hit by one sucks). Getting to draw a card is just a lot better than bouncing something.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
On average, Magic players are worse at new card evaluation than almost every other skill, except perhaps sideboarding.
If you're indicating bouncing fae in the mirror then that'd be a bad idea lol last thing you want is to bounce back a Spellstutter Sprite for your opponent
due to the increasing number of green stompy and green infect decks on pauper (and both are really competitive is obvious) does any one tried any coast watcher on sideboard ???
People have been putting it in their SB according to the MTGO Dailies, so seems like a legit answer.
Cartoonist, Writer, Storyboard Artist & Graphic Designer!
You can catch some of my work at TOKYOPOP & on the Playboy Channel! Don't miss Celebrity Sex Tales!
I would recommend starting with a successful list from a recent daily (Here along the right), then testing it in the practice room to get used to how it functions and maybe make a few changes. You might see two similar styles of decks popping up. The more popular is the one that this thread highlights, and is the creature heavy mono blue aggro-control deck. There is also a mono blue control list that runs similar cards, but plays extremely differently (they play many more counterspells and many fewer creatures). If the list you find has bears and ninjas, that's the deck that this thread is about.
I don't think you can say that MTGO is in any sense free. You pay to make an account, you pay to buy the cards, and then you pay 6 tickets to enter each event. The best analogy I've heard (I forget where this is from): playing MTGO is just like playing in a games store that happens to be located on the internet. You can find the schedule for daily events online, or in the client under the scheduled events tab.
I have a question for others who have been running this deck. Recently, there's been a rise of a variant of white weenie that has been giving me a lot of trouble. It's essentially tribal soldiers using lords to make their creatures a lot bigger (example list). The main reasons that I've been having trouble are:
1. They run 12 1-drops that target things (deftblade, lawkeeper, javelineers) making phantasmal bear extremely bad.
2. Their ground guys get past 2 toughness extremely quickly, since they have 8 toughness boosting lords at 2 mana, so it's very difficult to make good blocks since you often have to double block to kill a creature. This also makes your ninjas very bad.
Essentially, they pretty much force you to take out the bears and ninjas, and it's difficult to find 8 cards in the board that aren't blank against them. My board play thus far is to bring in more bounce, since a good bounce can cause you to have much better blocks than they anticipated, and to play more spire golems and stitched drakes (I've upped my count to 4 spires, 2 stitched in the main + 2 stitched in the side). Has anyone else played against this deck and have insights on cards that would be useful to have for the matchup?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So far I've been running into nothing but MBC lists, and they're winning a lot of games. They just have too much removal vs the low number of creatures, and playing around Daze and Force spike is becoming too easy, leaving a lot of dead cards in my hands. So for that matchup and possibly a few other aggro decks, I thought about adding 3-4x Calcite Snapper to the SB.
None of their creatures can get by him, and shroud shuts down all but 1 of their removal for it. Plus you can get in for 4 when their board is clear. Is there anything that might be better than him in the SB?
Modern SkRed
Current Decks:
Pauper: UUDelver BlueUU
Because they help out Spellstutter Sprite and its a free creature on turn two so you have have counter mana open to back it up.
It's very important as a way to apply pressure while still being able to keep countermagic open. It is very important in certain matchups (Infect, Affinity, Storm) where if you do not leave 2 mana open, you will just loose.
In addition, it serves as another faerie, boosting your Spellstutter Sprite up to the 2 level
On the other hand it is probably one of the weaker cards in the mirror. A countered T2 Cloud of Faeries on the draw will probably cause you to loose the game.
Tips for the MBC matchup. The creatures you need to counter are Crypt Rats, and Liliana's Specter as they are the only cards that can interact with your creatures favorably.
On the other hand, it is fine to let a few creatures slip in. If you can afford to discard Ravenous Rats isn't a big deal, and Chittering Rats can help you flip a delver.
If you are in a bad position, just go hellbent and spew your hand onto the table. Chittering Rats is very good at making your bad position into a worse one. However if you have no cards in hand, it is a lot less effective.
Personally I like Spire Golem. Flying is a world of difference, Calcite Snapper is just a big blocker if you can't get around a 1/1 rat. Spire Golem is vulnerable to Tendril's of Corruption and Victim of the night, the first you should be countering in the first place, and the second not all lists run.
Trade List
The original list I was playing (Mezzel's from the opening post), turned out to be pretty suboptimal. The lack of large fliers and 5 force spike effects made the deck pretty miserable late-gate. The lack of preordain made it impossible to control how many lands we drew, which led us frequently having too many or too few lands.
It turns out that preordain is your primary filtering mechanism to help you deal with mana flood and mana screw, which was a huge deal previously. It also helps you draw more copies of cloud of faeries/spellstutter sprite, which work better the more you have. I really think you want 4 preordain.
Spire Golem also turned out to be very good. He's a near impassible wall for a lot of decks.
This deck is also pretty difficult to play optimally as there are just so many options and potential ways to counter spells. I'm still learning a lot about how to play each matchup.
I would recommend either of the delver decks in this daily:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/3428060
or Konin's list in the original post.
Match 1: Against some mono G deck with nothing but hexproof creatures and aura/enchantments. This was actually a big problem for me seeing as if I didn't counter the creature, it was going to be on the board until I could kill it by blocking. He mulled to 5 first game, won easy. Second game he gets out a Sacred Wolf and starts attaching things to it when I have a hand with 1 counter...ended pretty quick. Game three I side in Echoing Truths and use it to bait him into attacking with his solo creature...I bounce the enchantment and block to kill it...he can't recover after.
1-0
Match 2: Mono R Goblins. I thought this should be an easy match with all my SB hate...but MTGO had different plans. Game 1 he starts fast and I just can't draw anything useful at the right times. Game 2 after siding in 4 Hydroblast and 4 Weatherseed Faeries, I keep a sketchy hand with 2 land and 6 counters, figuring I could just counter away threats until I draw something to get on the board. I do just that, countering about 5 creatures and getting a Delver on the board...4 turns later...I have 4 more lands and no flipping. He eventually gets a board and overwhelms me.
1-1
Match 3: Storm. I actually hadn't played against storm yet, but it didn't go well for my first time. Game 1 he goes off turn 3 and gets 22 goblins out. Game 2 he goes off Turn 4 with Grapeshot, couldn't do anything about it. Seems like a pretty terrible matchup unless you have a crazy amount of counters...or maybe there's something I'm missing?
1-2
Modern SkRed
Current Decks:
Pauper: UUDelver BlueUU
Primer for the storm (goblin/grapeshot) matchup
General overview.
-After you have a threat (2-3 damage per turn). Always Always Always keep counterspell open. Even if you don't have it
-Counter Draw Power, not mana
-Brainstorm is your friend, great way to hide your hand from Duress and Gixian Probe
Game one is always difficult. There isn't much you can do about a T2 Empty the Warrens. You can try some of the tactics listed below for winning games 2/3. But just remember to keep counterspell open.
Sideboarding
-4 Snap
-2-3 Ninja of Deep Hours
-2-3 Spire Golem
+Piracy Charms (Instant speed discard is utterly broken and unexpected. Note that both Grapeshot and ETW are sorcery speed. Just force them to discard the last card in the hand and laugh as you win)
+Dispel / any counterspells
+3-4 Echoing Truth
(Try not side in hydroblast. The only card it is good against is pyroblast, but if you have the free slots, go for it)
You want to figure out what plan the storm player is going game two. A common strategy for storm players is to side out all Empty the Warrens for protection, and win by grapeshotting twice.
If they are going Empty the Warrens and you have an Echoing Truth, your most important card to counter is Goblin Bushwhacker and Ideas Unbound.
As for double grapeshot, read on.
Every storm player has three important resources they need to keep in mind. Cards, Blue Mana, and Life. The most important resource by far is cards. If you do not have enough card draw you will fizzle. You need to play 10+ cards in order to win, and you can only hold 7 cards in your hand.
Therefore, to defeat the storm matchup you want to reduce their card draw power, while running a decent clock.
Before the storm
-You want to use up your Spellstutter Sprites, Force Spikes, Steelshaper's gift on the baubles and cantrips. If they play a bauble, 95% of the time they are not going off, the other 5% of the time they will try and fizzle. You will effectively cut off their draw power
-You want to set up a good clock. This will pressure the storm player into doing something. In addition, if they wait to long, you can effectively blank their Sign in Blood and Gitaxian Probe. You can probably cast Spellstutter EOT just as a clock.
During the Storm
-Counter the card draw. Blue based draw spells (Idea's Unbound, and Compulsive Research) are the most important cards to counter.
-Attack the mana (sometimes). Typically this is a bad idea, never counter any rituals. The storm player probably has three more in their hand. But the problem for storm isn't the black or red mana, it is the blue mana. The storm player only has three ways to get blue mana, lands (which they will use up fast), baubles (which hopefully you've countered), and manamorphase. The only card you should ever consider countering is manamorphase, but only do this if you have lots of counters to spare. Usually it is a better idea just to counter what they spend the blue mana on.
Trade List
But now I think I'll be fine...I feel stupid because I had 2 Golems out and 2 Hydroblast and 1 Counterspell in my hand when he went off =(
The goblin matchup seems kinda meh, but I really think I just had bad draws...if I had 1-2 of my Weatherseed fae earlier it would have made a world of difference.
Modern SkRed
Current Decks:
Pauper: UUDelver BlueUU
Pauper's Cage Podcast (Classic Pauper)—http://www.mtgcast.com/?cat=232
Cinemalarkey Podcast (Movie Reviews)—http://cinemalarkeycast.libsyn.com/
I actually thought about trying this out in the more controlish version of the deck. I mean, it basically becomes a hard counter against everything but post after 1 is in the GY. Only minor issue would be that you HAVE to play with 4 or else they lose too much power.
Modern SkRed
Current Decks:
Pauper: UUDelver BlueUU
This isn't 100% accurate. You can also blast Manamorphouse(sp) which can be a pretty big deal if they're trying to get more blue.
You can also constrict their mana by using it on the red Rituals.
So far I've been playing a lot of Delver and feel the lists I've been working off of are subpar.
Gush seems like the biggest beating ever yet we're only running 2 to 3. Another hard counter would also be nice.
(¯`·._.·(¯`·._.· Currently Playing ·._.·´¯)·._.·´¯)
[Modern] WU Second Sunrise
[Modern] UR Pyromancer's Ascension
[Pauper] Anything & everything that fancies me.
Gush is situational and is really awful in multiples, unless you go super late game, which most lists don't want to do. I do agree it's a great card though.
The first I can understand, however trying to constrict red mana is a really bad idea. By the time someone is storming, they will have 2-3 different sources of red mana some of which will be lands, and will start drawing more. You run the risk of tapping out to do nothing but increase the storm count by 1
Also, even if you counter their first spell, you are leaving the storm player with a handful of danger, and they will go off the next turn.
Anyways, if you have the extra space, knock yourself out, however hydroblast is no where near as good as Echoing truth, Dispel, Counterspell, and Piracy Charm
I don't know if I would run both. 8-Post is already a hard matchup, and running maindeck blanks against them isn't that great of an idea.
Trade List
The aggro versions (ninja and faeries) don't play 4 serrated arrows for the most part. Having 2 in the board is pretty nice against decks like infect, but not necessary for the budget player. Curse of Chains and Piracy Charm are decent alternatives.
If you're playing the controlling version with only delver and spire golem for creatures, you really do want to have 3-4 serrated arrows.
I watched MikeyK's Decktech on that and i'm in the process of watching the matches now. I'm thinking he's weak to some of the aggro decks with that build but he's got all kinds of action against Storm and other blue decks.
I think the creature version might be better in the mirror though because once stuff hits the table its hard to get rid of.
If you're indicating bouncing fae in the mirror then that'd be a bad idea lol last thing you want is to bounce back a Spellstutter Sprite for your opponent
Deck List:
BMBCB
UBUB Control/TeachingsBU
Ha! My Pauper UG Post Deck Showed!
Classic
BPoxB
Legacy
GB Eva Depths (Primer By Me) BG
Monthly Academy Showcase!
An Introduction to Competitive Pauper! *Updated*
Pauper Meta Analysis & What Wizards Left Out!
Found at MTGO Academy!! Same Great Series, Same Great Content, Great New Home!! (yes that is me shamelessly trolling for more readers :))
Check me out on Twitter & Get a little MTGO Therapy
there are actually versions that run those! errant more so in the 8post MUC though I believe
Deck List:
BMBCB
UBUB Control/TeachingsBU
Ha! My Pauper UG Post Deck Showed!
Classic
BPoxB
Legacy
GB Eva Depths (Primer By Me) BG
Monthly Academy Showcase!
An Introduction to Competitive Pauper! *Updated*
Pauper Meta Analysis & What Wizards Left Out!
Found at MTGO Academy!! Same Great Series, Same Great Content, Great New Home!! (yes that is me shamelessly trolling for more readers :))
Check me out on Twitter & Get a little MTGO Therapy
Good luck! And I'm looking forward to your report, the choices seem pretty interesting.
Trade List
People have been putting it in their SB according to the MTGO Dailies, so seems like a legit answer.
You can catch some of my work at TOKYOPOP & on the Playboy Channel! Don't miss Celebrity Sex Tales!
PolishTamales.com
Graphical Contributor to LegitMTG.com & Comic Contributor to ManaDeprived.com
Any tips on playing and building the deck?
MTGO seems to be the only place to play Pauper, sadly. Its free, right? All I have to do is pay for the cards and I can begin playing in dailies?
I don't think you can say that MTGO is in any sense free. You pay to make an account, you pay to buy the cards, and then you pay 6 tickets to enter each event. The best analogy I've heard (I forget where this is from): playing MTGO is just like playing in a games store that happens to be located on the internet. You can find the schedule for daily events online, or in the client under the scheduled events tab.
I have a question for others who have been running this deck. Recently, there's been a rise of a variant of white weenie that has been giving me a lot of trouble. It's essentially tribal soldiers using lords to make their creatures a lot bigger (example list). The main reasons that I've been having trouble are:
1. They run 12 1-drops that target things (deftblade, lawkeeper, javelineers) making phantasmal bear extremely bad.
2. Their ground guys get past 2 toughness extremely quickly, since they have 8 toughness boosting lords at 2 mana, so it's very difficult to make good blocks since you often have to double block to kill a creature. This also makes your ninjas very bad.
Essentially, they pretty much force you to take out the bears and ninjas, and it's difficult to find 8 cards in the board that aren't blank against them. My board play thus far is to bring in more bounce, since a good bounce can cause you to have much better blocks than they anticipated, and to play more spire golems and stitched drakes (I've upped my count to 4 spires, 2 stitched in the main + 2 stitched in the side). Has anyone else played against this deck and have insights on cards that would be useful to have for the matchup?