It could be a case where the card or art was supposed to do something different when it was commissioned? I mean there was the whole Voice of Resurgence/Emmara fiasco.
My impression was that delver decks tended to be bad on MODO because they're bad vs aggro decks that can jam the board before they go into their "hit you with delver and counter your threat mode"? But that in paper they can be quite good when the format is full of midrange and control (as it has been recently in some places with lots of Junk and Esper).
Anyway, I haven't seen that many Delver decks myself on Modo.
There's a reasonable Bant delver deck but as @jaykec says there was an article on SCG a day or two ago suggesting that you make it a lot more hard-hitting by replacing the cloudfin raptors and delvers with voice of resurgence and advent of the wurm once DGM comes in.
It's very true that a good player can take naya blitz and get awful hands and do badly, and also that a bad player can get god hands repeatedly and win. More likely though is that you get a mixture of good hands and okay hands, which can top 8 in the hands of a good player or do mediocrely with a poor pilot.
exactly. even then many sb choices are also creatures - ie nearheath pilgrim/boros reckoner vs aggro, fiend hunter, zealous conscripts for the heavier builds, etc.
Well, his list is only 4 cards different from the stock lists. Also, in a lot of matchups you don't need Searing Spears - you much prefer to run people over with lots and lots of creatures.
There are a couple of really problematic creatures - Olivia, Huntmaster, etc - but if you can dodge them I can see how an all-creature build might do ok.
I think Legion's Initiative is a great aggro card, would be much better in a R/x or even R/x/x shell though.
Voice of resurgence is good, but I think would be better in a naya or bant shell of some sort. There's a pretty cool non-human Naya aggro list I saw on mtgo-stats the other day - cacklers and expts at 1, bte, boar at 2, smiter at 3 etc. just the biggest dudes at each cmc. Problem is that the mana becomes even shakier without caverns...
Also don't forget Voice of resurgence is also good for midrange vs aggro as it makes 2 blockers. I just feel that DGM is pushing more midrange than aggro...
Made 2nd in my WMCQ of 44 players with Naya Blitz, it was a good choice as the meta was lots of Junk Rites and controlly decks.
My build was the stock list with -2 Expt One -1 Boros Elite +2 Wolfbitten Captive +1 Ghor-Clan Rampager.
I beat 2 Junk Rites decks (same guy in Round 1 and Q-Finals), and another similar build in the semis, 1 Humanimator, 1 RWB control, 1 Turbofog, and lost to Jund in the finals.
The humanimator match seemed pretty easy, he pulled off a t4 win game 1 when he was on the play but I get the impression that we get way more t4 wins than they do.
Junk rites I think we are also slightly favoured but as always this deck needs a bit of luck (and it helped a lot that I was top of the swiss so got to play first in my top8 matches).
Turbofog is definitely winnable - you do need lots of practice though to gauge the right amount of pressure to keep them using up their fogs or verdicts without overextending.
I don't think Jund is a particularly bad matchup either but it's harder because they have Huntmaster Bonfire Olivia Thragtusk et al. Still I had some close games - one game I keep a risky hand of Temple Garden Champion Boros Elite Expt One 2x Burning-Tree and Thalia, and I get him down to 4 life or so and get stuck on 3 G/W lands with a Lightning Mauler and Searing Spear in my hand before he stabilizes with Olivia.
I think the harder matchups are Bant Midrange/Control with Smiters Restos and Thragtusks as well as Red-based aggro because they side in lots and lots of pillars flames of the firebrand etc.
Anyway, Dragon's Maze is coming in to shift the metagame. Personally, I don't think Naya Blitz gets anything good in particular What do you guys think?
In the last week I have experienced 3 more crashes - for #1 I was reimbursed, for #2 I got prizes but reported it anyway, for #3 I ran into the same refusal to reimburse.
An excerpt - "The Magic Online client has technical problems from time to time but you are experiencing far more than the "standard" amount of issues we receive. Unfortunately, after reviewing your recent requests it has been determined that the problems you are experiencing are originating locally with your computer, software, network, or internet connection. We have reimbursed you as a courtesy several times already, but we are paying closer attention now. Ultimately we want to help make your play experience better so in addition to the FAQ linked above, I am attaching an advanced troubleshooting document that should help to solve or explain most technical problems one can encounter with Magic Online. The troubleshooting aspect of this is on you to handle and we recommend that you also consult a hardware or network professional that can assist you with troubleshooting some of these issues."
I'm not sure what "issues" I'm supposed to troubleshoot. My computer has 4GB of RAM and the internet connection is good enough to stream TV or play Diablo III, so I'm not sure what I can do here?
@cardboardcrack: i did submit my request (with screenshot) and it got denied.
@geleroff: they have been really helpful in the past, i don't know why they suddenly denied me this particular reimbursement.
maybe rickster_ is right regarding their 'quota' system (which seems really stupid, i mean, some people play 10 events a year, some people 1000 events a year, you can't expect them to run into the same number of issues).
Edit: uploaded screenshot. Also, here's the relevant bit of the reply from Wizards:
"Thank you very much for your patience while we looked into this for you. I've reviewed this situation, and have looked at your screen shot, and I hope to shed some light on the subject.
The issue you are experiencing is caused by a disconnection from the server. What this means essentially is that you are playing on X server, and for any of a few reasons the server drops you. There are several reasons that I will list:
1. Your internet connection goes out or experiences and intermittent, brief "hiccup" that causes a disconnection from the net
Note: This disconnection may be very brief - only a few seconds, to as long as some hours/days.
2. The internet between your server/ISP and ours has an outage or a problem that causes the connection to lag or fail.
3. Your hardware fails or experiences a "hiccup". This can happen due to a power surge, a router problem, or a wireless connection dropping (which they do quite frequently at times and is a common issue).
4. The game server you are playing on goes down and drops all players on that server out of the events that are being run on that server.
#1, #2, and #3 are beyond our control and we are not responsible for reimbursing for those scenarios. #4 is something we reimburse for because we are quite aware when a game server goes down (trust me on that, it makes a huge mess).
That is why your reimbursement request was denied in our original response, because we could not see anything here on our side that would have caused your disconnection from the game (such as a server crashing).
Due to this, we will be unable to offer reimbursement for this event. We have reimbursed you as a courtesy several times already, but we are paying closer attention now. Ultimately we want to help make your play experience better so I am attaching an advanced troubleshooting document that should help to solve or explain most technical problems one can encounter with Magic Online. The troubleshooting aspect of this is on you to handle and we recommend that you also consult a hardware or network professional that can assist you with troubleshooting some of these issues."
Hi guys, I've been playing MTGO on and off for a few years now, and have been playing it a bit more often in the past few weeks. Every now and again (maybe once every few days or w/e) I'll get some sort of client freeze-up/crash, etc. Usually I manage to log in again after a while, but with a loss of several minutes on the game clock/no opportunity to sideboard (which is particularly important in constructed!)/ once I was even dropped from an event.
Previously when these things happened I just filled in a reimbursement form and I was good to go, however the last couple of times I've been denied reimbursement. I was told that the reimbursement policy only covers server crashes on Wizards' end, and that the problem must be with my computer's configuration, hiccups in my internet connection, etc. What do you guys think? Do you often encounter crashes like this? (I even have a screenshot with one of those boxes saying "Magic Online has encountered an error and must close etc".)
I've been having a rough time with this deck online - I think it might be my mulligan decisions. I read this article - http://blog.mtgmadness.com/index.php/food-for-thought-mulligans/ - and based on that I often keep sketchy one-landers, especially on the draw. That's worked out reasonably okay.
However, my problem is when I get hands like:
4 Land, 2 2-drops, 1 Frontline Medic
Do I mull that? What if the 2-drops are burning-tree into Mayor?
Or even
3 Land 4 creatures
with no one-drops or burning-trees. on the draw, this means that we won't be hitting face until 1 turn before verdict mana or something horrible like that.
Anyway, I haven't seen that many Delver decks myself on Modo.
There's a reasonable Bant delver deck but as @jaykec says there was an article on SCG a day or two ago suggesting that you make it a lot more hard-hitting by replacing the cloudfin raptors and delvers with voice of resurgence and advent of the wurm once DGM comes in.
Also, what about Garruk Relentless/Domri Rade maybe in the side? Or Act of Treason-style effects?
In your testing, how often does the BTE chain into something else?
In this article - http://blog.mtgmadness.com/index.php/standard-ptq-season/ - a pro who made top8 of GP Verona explains the sideboarding strats and repeatedly emphasizes that you need to keep a high creature density.
There are a couple of really problematic creatures - Olivia, Huntmaster, etc - but if you can dodge them I can see how an all-creature build might do ok.
Voice of resurgence is good, but I think would be better in a naya or bant shell of some sort. There's a pretty cool non-human Naya aggro list I saw on mtgo-stats the other day - cacklers and expts at 1, bte, boar at 2, smiter at 3 etc. just the biggest dudes at each cmc. Problem is that the mana becomes even shakier without caverns...
Also don't forget Voice of resurgence is also good for midrange vs aggro as it makes 2 blockers. I just feel that DGM is pushing more midrange than aggro...
My build was the stock list with -2 Expt One -1 Boros Elite +2 Wolfbitten Captive +1 Ghor-Clan Rampager.
I beat 2 Junk Rites decks (same guy in Round 1 and Q-Finals), and another similar build in the semis, 1 Humanimator, 1 RWB control, 1 Turbofog, and lost to Jund in the finals.
The humanimator match seemed pretty easy, he pulled off a t4 win game 1 when he was on the play but I get the impression that we get way more t4 wins than they do.
Junk rites I think we are also slightly favoured but as always this deck needs a bit of luck (and it helped a lot that I was top of the swiss so got to play first in my top8 matches).
Turbofog is definitely winnable - you do need lots of practice though to gauge the right amount of pressure to keep them using up their fogs or verdicts without overextending.
I don't think Jund is a particularly bad matchup either but it's harder because they have Huntmaster Bonfire Olivia Thragtusk et al. Still I had some close games - one game I keep a risky hand of Temple Garden Champion Boros Elite Expt One 2x Burning-Tree and Thalia, and I get him down to 4 life or so and get stuck on 3 G/W lands with a Lightning Mauler and Searing Spear in my hand before he stabilizes with Olivia.
I think the harder matchups are Bant Midrange/Control with Smiters Restos and Thragtusks as well as Red-based aggro because they side in lots and lots of pillars flames of the firebrand etc.
Anyway, Dragon's Maze is coming in to shift the metagame. Personally, I don't think Naya Blitz gets anything good in particular
An excerpt - "The Magic Online client has technical problems from time to time but you are experiencing far more than the "standard" amount of issues we receive. Unfortunately, after reviewing your recent requests it has been determined that the problems you are experiencing are originating locally with your computer, software, network, or internet connection. We have reimbursed you as a courtesy several times already, but we are paying closer attention now. Ultimately we want to help make your play experience better so in addition to the FAQ linked above, I am attaching an advanced troubleshooting document that should help to solve or explain most technical problems one can encounter with Magic Online. The troubleshooting aspect of this is on you to handle and we recommend that you also consult a hardware or network professional that can assist you with troubleshooting some of these issues."
I'm not sure what "issues" I'm supposed to troubleshoot. My computer has 4GB of RAM and the internet connection is good enough to stream TV or play Diablo III, so I'm not sure what I can do here?
@geleroff: they have been really helpful in the past, i don't know why they suddenly denied me this particular reimbursement.
maybe rickster_ is right regarding their 'quota' system (which seems really stupid, i mean, some people play 10 events a year, some people 1000 events a year, you can't expect them to run into the same number of issues).
Edit: uploaded screenshot. Also, here's the relevant bit of the reply from Wizards:
"Thank you very much for your patience while we looked into this for you. I've reviewed this situation, and have looked at your screen shot, and I hope to shed some light on the subject.
The issue you are experiencing is caused by a disconnection from the server. What this means essentially is that you are playing on X server, and for any of a few reasons the server drops you. There are several reasons that I will list:
1. Your internet connection goes out or experiences and intermittent, brief "hiccup" that causes a disconnection from the net
Note: This disconnection may be very brief - only a few seconds, to as long as some hours/days.
2. The internet between your server/ISP and ours has an outage or a problem that causes the connection to lag or fail.
3. Your hardware fails or experiences a "hiccup". This can happen due to a power surge, a router problem, or a wireless connection dropping (which they do quite frequently at times and is a common issue).
4. The game server you are playing on goes down and drops all players on that server out of the events that are being run on that server.
#1, #2, and #3 are beyond our control and we are not responsible for reimbursing for those scenarios. #4 is something we reimburse for because we are quite aware when a game server goes down (trust me on that, it makes a huge mess).
That is why your reimbursement request was denied in our original response, because we could not see anything here on our side that would have caused your disconnection from the game (such as a server crashing).
Due to this, we will be unable to offer reimbursement for this event. We have reimbursed you as a courtesy several times already, but we are paying closer attention now. Ultimately we want to help make your play experience better so I am attaching an advanced troubleshooting document that should help to solve or explain most technical problems one can encounter with Magic Online. The troubleshooting aspect of this is on you to handle and we recommend that you also consult a hardware or network professional that can assist you with troubleshooting some of these issues."
Previously when these things happened I just filled in a reimbursement form and I was good to go, however the last couple of times I've been denied reimbursement. I was told that the reimbursement policy only covers server crashes on Wizards' end, and that the problem must be with my computer's configuration, hiccups in my internet connection, etc. What do you guys think? Do you often encounter crashes like this? (I even have a screenshot with one of those boxes saying "Magic Online has encountered an error and must close etc".)
However, my problem is when I get hands like:
4 Land, 2 2-drops, 1 Frontline Medic
Do I mull that? What if the 2-drops are burning-tree into Mayor?
Or even
3 Land 4 creatures
with no one-drops or burning-trees. on the draw, this means that we won't be hitting face until 1 turn before verdict mana or something horrible like that.