The issue is both Armageddon and Cataclysm are 4cmc, and Cataclysm just does more. Armageddon kills all lands, which is only a good thing if you are already ahead. If you are behind it is pointless, and if you are at parity it is a gamble.
Cataclysm, on the other hand, brings the board back to parity, or at least near parity, no matter what the state. It has a better potential for saving you when you are behind, and can edge the game in your favor when you are in parity. It does less for you when you are already winning, but if you're winning anyway you can just leave it in the sideboard.
Armageddon is playable, but cataclysm does more at the same CMC, and is useful in more situations. As such, IMO Cata is just a better card.
Further, you don't need 4 of a legendary permanant, so 2 or 3 spears is fine.
I also wouldn't run 4 rootborn defenses.
Cards that would help the deck are Porphoros, Assemble the Legion, Chained to the rocks, Ajani Steadfast, Mutavault, Dynacharge, Eidolon of Countless Battles, Hammer of Porphoros, some others I can't think of.
You might like dratft and EDH a lot. No rotations, lots of room for creativity, and the combo/LD/permision strategies tend to be less devistating than in the eternal formats.
YMMV on that last bit.
Honestly, it sounds like you enjoy casual non-competitive magic. Which is fine. Just play casual. If someone looks down at you for it, screw em, it's a card game. Play it how you like to play it, end of story.
Blue can bounce, that is its answer to enchantments. Why does it need to destroy them? If an enchantment hits the field that screws up the blue deck's whole gameplan hits the field, it is not necessarily game over. It is not necessarily game over for mono-white or mono-green either. It is not necessarily game over for any color if a creature or artifact hits the field (although it is pretty bad news for black, which probably is probably also a problem.) So why does it have to be game over if you're playing mono-black or mono-red against an enchantment? How is that balanced?
Actually I'm starting to really enjoy limited (by which I mean draft. Sealed feels too much like a lottery, TBH)
I never used to really enjoy it, but there's actually a ton of skill involved. Sure, if you pull the right mythic you can still luck yourself into a win, but building good decks consistently actually requires a ton of skill.
I'm not that great of a drafter yet (I can't often tell what colors my neighbors are in) but I've definitely seen myself improve with each draft, and I'm having a ton of fun with it.
The only down side to drafting is having to buy into it, so honestly I'd say a well-designed cube is the absolute best format.
If you're talking constructed, I like legacy the best, though I do enjoy modern. It's hard to say about standard, it honestly depends on the year. But that's fine, because standard being "ever-changing" makes it pretty fun as well.
EDH is ok, but I don't really care for it. Decks in EDH are either too good or too bad and there doesn't seem to be much in between. Also, games can go on for well over an hour, and that is just too long.
alright, lets take the Leyline approach: assuming no opening hand, Red just kills you before you can cast it, or if you do manage to cast it, or its that big of a threat to you in the meta, why don't you splash green for enchantment removal? After all, how hard is that? Why should every color deal with everything?
The point isn't how hard it is to splash another color. The point is that white, blue, and green can deal with every permanent type, and red and black cannot. I mean, why shouldn't every color be able to deal with every major permanent type? (creature, artifact, enchantment)? Or, more specifically, why should some be allowed to, but not others?
just because you can justify something flavor wise, doesn't make it a good idea. After all, I can justify a Red Counterspell by making the flavor you threatening them not to cast it. that doesn't mean that red should get counterspells, because Red just doesn't think like that. Why should Red, the color of freedom, restrict the opponent? Red wants to burn and kill. Red can get artifacts, because those are tangible things that red can FEEL. but, Enchantments cannot be felt, physically, and Red, even though it feels like it COULD learn to deal with them, decides "screw it. kill 'em more."
Red can copy spells, as well as redirecting, and applying chaos to the stack. In these parameters, red can already essentially counter spells in a way that is completely in line with it's flavor.
Again, chaos warp exists already and is perfectly in line with how red deals with intangible things. Also, I already specified I was arguing mechanics, so what is this?
Green wants a contest of strength, if anything, so Green isn't going to counter things, either, because that is a contest of wills. But, Green also abhors anything unnatural, and wants a contest of strength unfettered by such, so it will destroy such things, it doesn't necessarily understand enchantments and artifacts, but it understands either the thing being enchanted or the materials that are in the artifact, and can return them to their natural state.
I mean, your argument at this point pretty much just sounds made up. I mean, read your own quote about justifying things flavor-wise, that's all your doing here, there's no real arguments?
A note on Green not getting flying as much: Green's domain is nature, more specifically, the forest. the dominion of the sky (clouds, wind, and such) belongs to Blue. People often forget that Blue is also the color of wind as well as water.
a good (sort of) comparison would be between Zeus and Artemis. while Artemis is the Goddess of the Wild, Zeus is the God of Storms and the Sky. so, while Artemis DOES technically have dominion over the birds, they more appropriately fall under Zeus's domain, because of where they spend most of their time.
part of Green's hatred of Flying might come from the fact that it feels like it SHOULD control them, they ARE natural, and Green will destroy them because they don't follow the "natural" order and follow Green.
This part of your post is in reply to someone else's discussion, so I'll leave it be.
The real problem I have with the color pie is simply that white, blue, and green have a way to deal with every card type, while black and red do not.
Green used to have a simlar problem with removal until the fight mechanic was invented. I wish they would find a similar solution for red and black.
For red maybe something similar to capricious efreet. Or just make chaos warp modern legal, the random effect makes the flavor inherently red.
For black... I'm honestly not sure why they can't destroy enchantments? What is the flavor reason behind this exactly?
This is actually kind of an issue, because if every color cannot deal with artifacts and enchantments in some way, then artifacts and enchantments cannot be as good as they would otherwise be, or it would be unfair to the colors that cannot deal with them.
Since those are major card types, and not just niche effects, I find that a little troubling.
Edit: I suppose white and green cannot actually deal with planeswalkers, while black and red can. However, planeswalkers are a much rarer card type than say, enchantments, and every color can at least just kill planeswalkers with creatures so it's not as big of an issue in my mind.
A few things
Blue cannot deal with anything permanently except with their counterspells. They only have bounce to deal with stuff that hit the board.
Black cannot deal with artifacts and enchantments since they use death magic and you cannot kill something that is not living.
Red can deal with artifacts because they can smash them them but enchantments are not something physical and therefore can't be touched by red.
The issue that you mention is not an issue at all actually. There are balanced by that.
Red is the fastest color. They can kill you or before those enchantments or artifacts of yours matter.
Black is already the all-round color. They are the best at killing creatures, they have card draw, the exclusively have discard which can take any card out of your hand. Give them removal for artifacts and enchantments too and you basically have a color that can do anything. It's slice of the color pie would be way to big compared to the other colors.
First off, I'm sure you can find a flavorful way for black and red to deal with their weaknesses. Chaos warp is actually a great example of this, as mentioned. I am arguing from a purely mechanical perspective. So your saying that balance is found for flavor reasons rings pretty hollow.
So I'll argue pure mechanics.
Blue's bounce mechanic can deal with every permanent type. It doesn't matter if it doesn't solve them forever, it solves them at all.
As for red being the fastest color... so? Does this justify red just folding to certain enchantments (such as leyline of sanctity) just because they have no answers?
I don't understand your argument for black. Mono-Blue can already deal with anything, and mono-white can deal with everything. Outside of the low card pool of standard how exactly is mono-black, which has a lot of trouble against just about any good artifact or enchantment, way too good in comparison?
The real problem I have with the color pie is simply that white, blue, and green have a way to deal with every card type, while black and red do not.
Green used to have a simlar problem with removal until the fight mechanic was invented. I wish they would find a similar solution for red and black.
For red maybe something similar to capricious efreet. Or just make chaos warp modern legal, the random effect makes the flavor inherently red.
For black... I'm honestly not sure why they can't destroy enchantments? What is the flavor reason behind this exactly?
This is actually kind of an issue, because if every color cannot deal with artifacts and enchantments in some way, then artifacts and enchantments cannot be as good as they would otherwise be, or it would be unfair to the colors that cannot deal with them.
Since those are major card types, and not just niche effects, I find that a little troubling.
Edit: I suppose white and green cannot actually deal with planeswalkers, while black and red can. However, planeswalkers are a much rarer card type than say, enchantments, and every color can at least just kill planeswalkers with creatures so it's not as big of an issue in my mind.
Without knowing the actual ratios the best we can do is guess.
"Draft simulator" cubes get the best results when they make uncommons twice as common as rares, and commons twice as common as uncommons, so we'll go with that. That means that there are 25 possible 15th card choices. Of these, 8 are rare, 8 are uncommon, and 9 are common. So we count each rare once, each common 4 times, and each uncommon twice. This leads us to 60 possible options.
So the odds of picking a specific rare are 1/60 (1.5%), a specific uncommon is 2/60 (3%), and a specific common is 4/60 (7%)
However, the odds of picking up *ANY* rare are 8/60 (13%), the odds of ANY uncommon are 16/60 (27%), the odds of ANY common are 36/60 (60%)
That means the odds of NOT seeing a rare are about 87%. Compound probability says we just need to multiply that percentage for however many packs are in the draft.
So 8 people means 24 packs. That means the odds of not seeing a rare are 87%^24. Or 3.5%. That means the odds of seeing a 15 slot rare is 96.5% for the whole playgroup.
Using similar math, the odds of seeing a specific rare (such as Lore Seeker) is about 48% for the entire playgroup.
So, based on the odds that I just kind've guessed at, you have about a 6% chance of seeing the conspiracy rare you want in your three booster packs, and the entire pod has a 48% chance of seeing a specific rare. Meanwhile, you are almost certain to see at least ONE rare, and it seems about 1/8 packs should have a rare, so seeing anywhere from 3-5 rare 15-slot cards is standard.
I reiterate! This math is based on formulas of rarity that may not be correct, but I'm confident it's a decent ballpark.
I've been running this deck for a while with an actual large amount of success.
This deck has a lot of tools to be a successful aggro deck, but its main problem is simply that it has trouble against MonoBlack, which is actually a pretty huge issue.
Cataclysm, on the other hand, brings the board back to parity, or at least near parity, no matter what the state. It has a better potential for saving you when you are behind, and can edge the game in your favor when you are in parity. It does less for you when you are already winning, but if you're winning anyway you can just leave it in the sideboard.
Armageddon is playable, but cataclysm does more at the same CMC, and is useful in more situations. As such, IMO Cata is just a better card.
Otherwise I see a lot of your big swings getting chumped, although I do like the altar/mill option also.
Buy the new art, the old art versions will be double the price, if we use what happened with shocklands as a metric.
4/15/2013 If you are instructed to cast a spell with overload “without paying its mana cost,” you can't choose to pay its overload cost instead.
So no, you do not have the option to use overload.
2: Yes, the legendary rule only applies to cards that are in play, not on the stack, so this will work like you expect.
Meditation Puzzle
Sundering Growth
Oppressive Rays
Further, you don't need 4 of a legendary permanant, so 2 or 3 spears is fine.
I also wouldn't run 4 rootborn defenses.
Cards that would help the deck are Porphoros, Assemble the Legion, Chained to the rocks, Ajani Steadfast, Mutavault, Dynacharge, Eidolon of Countless Battles, Hammer of Porphoros, some others I can't think of.
With some tweaking this can be good.
YMMV on that last bit.
Honestly, it sounds like you enjoy casual non-competitive magic. Which is fine. Just play casual. If someone looks down at you for it, screw em, it's a card game. Play it how you like to play it, end of story.
Why is this ok? You never answered that question.
Blue can bounce, that is its answer to enchantments. Why does it need to destroy them? If an enchantment hits the field that screws up the blue deck's whole gameplan hits the field, it is not necessarily game over. It is not necessarily game over for mono-white or mono-green either. It is not necessarily game over for any color if a creature or artifact hits the field (although it is pretty bad news for black, which probably is probably also a problem.) So why does it have to be game over if you're playing mono-black or mono-red against an enchantment? How is that balanced?
I never used to really enjoy it, but there's actually a ton of skill involved. Sure, if you pull the right mythic you can still luck yourself into a win, but building good decks consistently actually requires a ton of skill.
I'm not that great of a drafter yet (I can't often tell what colors my neighbors are in) but I've definitely seen myself improve with each draft, and I'm having a ton of fun with it.
The only down side to drafting is having to buy into it, so honestly I'd say a well-designed cube is the absolute best format.
If you're talking constructed, I like legacy the best, though I do enjoy modern. It's hard to say about standard, it honestly depends on the year. But that's fine, because standard being "ever-changing" makes it pretty fun as well.
EDH is ok, but I don't really care for it. Decks in EDH are either too good or too bad and there doesn't seem to be much in between. Also, games can go on for well over an hour, and that is just too long.
The point isn't how hard it is to splash another color. The point is that white, blue, and green can deal with every permanent type, and red and black cannot. I mean, why shouldn't every color be able to deal with every major permanent type? (creature, artifact, enchantment)? Or, more specifically, why should some be allowed to, but not others?
Red can copy spells, as well as redirecting, and applying chaos to the stack. In these parameters, red can already essentially counter spells in a way that is completely in line with it's flavor.
Again, chaos warp exists already and is perfectly in line with how red deals with intangible things. Also, I already specified I was arguing mechanics, so what is this?
I mean, your argument at this point pretty much just sounds made up. I mean, read your own quote about justifying things flavor-wise, that's all your doing here, there's no real arguments?
This part of your post is in reply to someone else's discussion, so I'll leave it be.
First off, I'm sure you can find a flavorful way for black and red to deal with their weaknesses. Chaos warp is actually a great example of this, as mentioned. I am arguing from a purely mechanical perspective. So your saying that balance is found for flavor reasons rings pretty hollow.
So I'll argue pure mechanics.
Blue's bounce mechanic can deal with every permanent type. It doesn't matter if it doesn't solve them forever, it solves them at all.
As for red being the fastest color... so? Does this justify red just folding to certain enchantments (such as leyline of sanctity) just because they have no answers?
I don't understand your argument for black. Mono-Blue can already deal with anything, and mono-white can deal with everything. Outside of the low card pool of standard how exactly is mono-black, which has a lot of trouble against just about any good artifact or enchantment, way too good in comparison?
Green used to have a simlar problem with removal until the fight mechanic was invented. I wish they would find a similar solution for red and black.
For red maybe something similar to capricious efreet. Or just make chaos warp modern legal, the random effect makes the flavor inherently red.
For black... I'm honestly not sure why they can't destroy enchantments? What is the flavor reason behind this exactly?
This is actually kind of an issue, because if every color cannot deal with artifacts and enchantments in some way, then artifacts and enchantments cannot be as good as they would otherwise be, or it would be unfair to the colors that cannot deal with them.
Since those are major card types, and not just niche effects, I find that a little troubling.
Edit: I suppose white and green cannot actually deal with planeswalkers, while black and red can. However, planeswalkers are a much rarer card type than say, enchantments, and every color can at least just kill planeswalkers with creatures so it's not as big of an issue in my mind.
Guess it's not dead.
/thread
"Draft simulator" cubes get the best results when they make uncommons twice as common as rares, and commons twice as common as uncommons, so we'll go with that. That means that there are 25 possible 15th card choices. Of these, 8 are rare, 8 are uncommon, and 9 are common. So we count each rare once, each common 4 times, and each uncommon twice. This leads us to 60 possible options.
So the odds of picking a specific rare are 1/60 (1.5%), a specific uncommon is 2/60 (3%), and a specific common is 4/60 (7%)
However, the odds of picking up *ANY* rare are 8/60 (13%), the odds of ANY uncommon are 16/60 (27%), the odds of ANY common are 36/60 (60%)
That means the odds of NOT seeing a rare are about 87%. Compound probability says we just need to multiply that percentage for however many packs are in the draft.
So 8 people means 24 packs. That means the odds of not seeing a rare are 87%^24. Or 3.5%. That means the odds of seeing a 15 slot rare is 96.5% for the whole playgroup.
Using similar math, the odds of seeing a specific rare (such as Lore Seeker) is about 48% for the entire playgroup.
So, based on the odds that I just kind've guessed at, you have about a 6% chance of seeing the conspiracy rare you want in your three booster packs, and the entire pod has a 48% chance of seeing a specific rare. Meanwhile, you are almost certain to see at least ONE rare, and it seems about 1/8 packs should have a rare, so seeing anywhere from 3-5 rare 15-slot cards is standard.
I reiterate! This math is based on formulas of rarity that may not be correct, but I'm confident it's a decent ballpark.
Hope you have fun OP! I certainly enjoy the set!
Unbreathing Horde
Soulless One
Vengeful Dead
Zombie Trailblazer
Shepherd of Rot
This deck has a lot of tools to be a successful aggro deck, but its main problem is simply that it has trouble against MonoBlack, which is actually a pretty huge issue.
Creatures(23):
4xgnarled scarlhide
4xHopeful Eidolon
2xSoldier of the Pantheon
4xHero of Iroas
3xBrain Maggot
3xHerald of Torment
3xEidolon of Countless Battles
Non-creature enchantments(6):
2xGift of Orzhova
4xEthereal Armor
Instant/Sorcery(7):
4xGods Willing
3xOrzhov Charm
Lands(23):
4xGodless Shrine
3xTemple of Silence
9xPlains
7xSwamp