Well thank god I'm not adding DKA! I'm happy to stick with straight ISD. Only thing that sounds like a cut so far is Garruk. Might cut Garruk and add another Spider Spawning to keep the colors even.
I could afford 2 more FoWs but what do they open up? Seems like I'm still stuck in the same place where I need lots of money cards to even think about a winning deck.
I own a very random chunk of paper Legacy cards from playing EDH, a collection of old cards, etc. I've played Shardless BUG and TES on MTGO and liked them both, but paper legacy is so much more expensive to get into it's a bit of a show-stopper. I don't feel like I fall into a single archetype, which is part of the problem. I love grindy card advantage matches that Shardless has, I love thinking through lines and winning out of nowhere with TES, I think I'd love pushing through damage with an aggro/tempo deck if I owned one too.
I basically own all of TES in paper, minus the LEDs, but LEDs (and probably also 2x Volcanic Islands) seem like a hefty investment in decks that don't seem to win events. I think I'm mostly looking for someone to talk me down from spending $500 on 4 LEDs that won't really help me build toward other decks and won't win much.
I've got 2x USeas, 1x Tundra, 1x Bayou, 1x Scrubland, 1x Gaea's Cradle, 2x FoW, 4x Cabal Therapy, all the combo rocks for storm, 4x of almost every fetch, a bunch of Reanimator stuff.
Basically I'm a mess. I'd like to buy toward something in Legacy but not sure what.
Another question on land-base: I own the 2xUnderground Sea, Scrub, Tundra, 4xMarsh Flats and ONE Polluted Delta. Does it make sense to temporarily replace the other three Deltas with three not-Delta blue fetches (I've got plenty of those lying around) or is there a better option?
So, I recently started playing a ton of MTGO. I primarily play Modern (occasionally Limited) and I tend to play in sustained bursts. I've noticed that in 2-mans it's pretty easy to run-back opponents you've beaten in the past because generally it's the same, relatively small, pool of people playing at any one time. I shy away from trying to run-back against anyone, win or lose, because it leaves a bit of a sour taste. But I'm starting to wonder if I'm not being naive. If I think I have a huge edge against someone who keeps jumping back into the 2-man pool why shouldn't I go after them again? What's the consensus? Fair play or bad etiquette?
Anyone feel like Infect doesn't have a great overall match-up in the current meta? I feel like T1 I see either Arid Mesa or Scalding Tarn virtually every time and either one essentially means game over. If you can Lightning Bolt/Path/whatever on T1 or Helix/Electrolyze/any of a million other popular things you can get off T2, I'm in really bad shape. Too much direct damage/removal in every color that sees regular play at this point. Plus the occasional Remand is a real punch in the sack.
Did 3-1 in a daily yesterday. Destroyed Scapeshift and RG Tron and played a tight game with Jund but snuck the poison past a Goyf with a rebounding Distortion Strike. Last round was a Melira pod deck that put Melira on the board turn 2 in every game and I didn't draw a single Dismember over 3 rounds. Disappointing to lose against a deck I could've beaten with one lucky draw, but the other matches were such cake-walks it's hard to complain.
I'm mostly glad I didn't have to see UWR Geist. Even when I resolve Crusader I seem to have a lot of trouble beating that deck.
Faerie saves me in more and more surprising ways. Guy countered my Fulminator Mage and went for a Surgical Extraction on the Fulminator, Faerie Macabre'd the Mage and saved the two Fulminators in my hand.
Living End seems to be doing really well on MTGO right now. Any concerns Gifts is going to get sideways nerfed when people start throwing in more graveyard hate for Living End?
And just like that I won 5 in a row. Living End definitely takes a different perspective. It's the most powerful card in the deck, but sooner or later it becomes meaningless. My experience is that it's crucial to understand exactly when the game stops being about Living End and starts being about casting dudes. If you don't time your cascades well and stop relying on Living End the second it's not a good choice you're going to be unhappy every game.
Yeesh, I'm a terrible Living End pilot. Seems like you need to be playing the other hand much more than with a control deck. I lost about 5 games in a row in 2-mans before I finally snuck in a win versus RG Tron. In game 3 I Living End'ed a Fulminator Mage for the third time on his Tron pieces and he said "DECK FOR NOOBS" and rage-quit. Was satisfying, and it got me thinking how entirely wrong he was. I feel like you're always trying to read their hands for counterspells, or trying to win on the back of really inefficient hard-cast beats, or trying to time multiple Living Ends to get value. All in all, a lot more work than staring at a hand full of counters or a stack of Tron lands.
Death and Taxes runs Leonin Arbiter and Aven Mindcensor in combination with Ghost Quarter. Arbiter + GQ Strip Mines if you can't pay 2, and Mindcensor + GQ has a pretty high probability to Strip Mine. LD also doesn't work quite as well against D&T, as it runs Aether Vial.
Yup, that's what I was getting at Lectrys. It's really hard to resolve a cascade when you're constantly hamstrung on mana and LD is especially weak against them because the deck is made to win in low mana shoot-outs. They play nothing but strong one and two drops.
Death and Taxes seems like a tough match-up. Early Thalia and/or a Judge's Familiar mean you don't have much of a chance at resolving a cascade until they've already got Leonin or Mindcensor down and they can start Ghost Quartering us down. Hard-casting our guys is really slow.
Been playing a pretty stock version on MTGO with the Squelch/Seas/Spell Pierce sideboard shoktroopa goes over earlier in the thread. The deck seems to have a lot of options, but I feel like I mulligan a lot more often than other decks do. Any advice for keeping opening hands?
The somewhat realistic openers I pray for are either: two pieces of Tron and a goal (either an Expedition Map/a bomb/strong control) or just a plain old stack of counter magic. But when the other deck is unknown I'm leaning more and more toward only keeping with the counter magic hand. I feel like the majority of the games I win are long-haul affairs where an early Wurmcoil is generally just tossing one of my win-cons into the trash.
I basically own all of TES in paper, minus the LEDs, but LEDs (and probably also 2x Volcanic Islands) seem like a hefty investment in decks that don't seem to win events. I think I'm mostly looking for someone to talk me down from spending $500 on 4 LEDs that won't really help me build toward other decks and won't win much.
I've got 2x USeas, 1x Tundra, 1x Bayou, 1x Scrubland, 1x Gaea's Cradle, 2x FoW, 4x Cabal Therapy, all the combo rocks for storm, 4x of almost every fetch, a bunch of Reanimator stuff.
Basically I'm a mess. I'd like to buy toward something in Legacy but not sure what.
I'm mostly glad I didn't have to see UWR Geist. Even when I resolve Crusader I seem to have a lot of trouble beating that deck.
Yup, that's what I was getting at Lectrys. It's really hard to resolve a cascade when you're constantly hamstrung on mana and LD is especially weak against them because the deck is made to win in low mana shoot-outs. They play nothing but strong one and two drops.
The somewhat realistic openers I pray for are either: two pieces of Tron and a goal (either an Expedition Map/a bomb/strong control) or just a plain old stack of counter magic. But when the other deck is unknown I'm leaning more and more toward only keeping with the counter magic hand. I feel like the majority of the games I win are long-haul affairs where an early Wurmcoil is generally just tossing one of my win-cons into the trash.