Voted enchantment. As a legacy player, this is the card type I'd most like to see pushed (it's largely absent outside of counterbalance, blood moon, and the wonky stuff in the enchantress deck).
Wouldn't mind seeing an aura with split second (not necessarily flash, though).
I played with a friend today to test his new Azusa, Lost But Seeking deck, throwing 3 or 4 of my decks at it, and I got destroyed. I played Kemba, Kha Regent, Teneb, the Harvester as well as an Arcanis deck and a Sisay deck my friend lent me, and I just felt outclassed no matter which deck I ran.
The Azusa ramp the turn she comes into play just put him so far ahead of me that I could never come back, and if he hit something like Horn of Greed, it just got ugly. Even when I removed Azusa, he'd already get the two lands out.
Could anyone provide me with some tips or card strategies they've picked up to combat Azusa and her aggressive ramp?
I'm looking for suggestions on how to fight the espresso stax matchup in grixis colors. Unfortunately, there's no sacred ground in UBr, so I need alternative means to shore this matchup up.
Specifically, I'm concerned with the lists that run 4x Ghost Quarter, 4x Wasteland, and 1x Strip Mine.
With Crucible of Worlds, they aim to lock you out then beat you with lodestone or Karn.
You can also explain to them that most tournaments allow some large number of proxies (if you live in the US, that is). Even in events that allow ten-proxies (which is on the low end these days), decks like MUD (or other forms of Workshop aggro) and Ichorid are fairly cheap to put together.
Further, you can emphasize to them that "buying into" vintage is a relatively safe investment. The price of vintage staples rarely decreases (barring some sort of banning), and even then, the prices are usually held up by their use in Legacy. Moreover, if you build up a core of playable cards, you can change decks with little to no additional cost. In an article by Patrick Chapin (which should become free on Starcity in the next month or so), he suggested a large number of blue-based vintage decks, all of which revolved around a core 43 cards. If your friends try to use this as a knock against the format, you can explain that while the foundation of the decks were similar, they all approached the game differently and provided different play experiences (compare Oath of Druids with BUG fish, for example). If your friends are financially oriented, as mine are, explaining this will probably help you get them involved. When I sat them down and looked at the precipitous fall experienced by most standard staples, they very quickly unloaded that stuff and moved to Vintage and Legacy.
An additional story for you (and I apologize for the novella this post is becoming), which may help you convert your friends, is that one of my friends gets most of his enjoyment out of putting together crazy combos and decks with cards that people have either overlooked or written off as "bad". He switched to vintage and never looked back because the card pool is gigantic and there are so many engines to explore. He may not win every game, but he has a blast.
One final point (sorry!) that you should make is that vintage is a much more community-oriented format. It's rarely supported by WotC and is really held together by the TO's and players. At vintage tournaments, it is my experience that the players are generally very pleasant, patient, and in good spirits. This may be of great importance to your friends because you mentioned they played casually. If their casual approach to the game is due, at least in small part, to their perception of "tournament magic players," Vintage may be a format that allows them to attend tournaments without having to deal with as much negativity.
I had the same problem. I actually just let them play with some decks (BUG fish, at the time) and they were hooked. It's a hard format to evaluate on paper, because there's a totally different "feel" to playing vintage decks.
If you can get them to sit down and play some vintage games, you shouldn't have too much trouble getting them into the format.
Modular and -1/-1 counters have a super strange interaction.
A 3/3 modular meeting a 3/3 wither/infect gets to move its 3 +1/+1 counters on an artifact creature when it dies.
Sorry, but I couldn't find an explanation for why this happens. Could someone enlighten me? Sorry if I missed it when I was scrolling through the earlier pages.
The etched champion might produce mana of some sort, maybe like Su-Chi, but for colored mana. That way he would enable his sunbursted cousin in the original mirrodin.
This is the most elegant solution, in my opinion.
Wouldn't mind seeing an aura with split second (not necessarily flash, though).
I played with a friend today to test his new Azusa, Lost But Seeking deck, throwing 3 or 4 of my decks at it, and I got destroyed. I played Kemba, Kha Regent, Teneb, the Harvester as well as an Arcanis deck and a Sisay deck my friend lent me, and I just felt outclassed no matter which deck I ran.
The Azusa ramp the turn she comes into play just put him so far ahead of me that I could never come back, and if he hit something like Horn of Greed, it just got ugly. Even when I removed Azusa, he'd already get the two lands out.
Could anyone provide me with some tips or card strategies they've picked up to combat Azusa and her aggressive ramp?
Thanks very much for taking the time.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to fight the espresso stax matchup in grixis colors. Unfortunately, there's no sacred ground in UBr, so I need alternative means to shore this matchup up.
Specifically, I'm concerned with the lists that run 4x Ghost Quarter, 4x Wasteland, and 1x Strip Mine.
With Crucible of Worlds, they aim to lock you out then beat you with lodestone or Karn.
Any ideas will be great appreciated.
Colossus - 4
8/8 - 1
Looking forward to this guy in standard with Voltaic Key again. Whee!
Further, you can emphasize to them that "buying into" vintage is a relatively safe investment. The price of vintage staples rarely decreases (barring some sort of banning), and even then, the prices are usually held up by their use in Legacy. Moreover, if you build up a core of playable cards, you can change decks with little to no additional cost. In an article by Patrick Chapin (which should become free on Starcity in the next month or so), he suggested a large number of blue-based vintage decks, all of which revolved around a core 43 cards. If your friends try to use this as a knock against the format, you can explain that while the foundation of the decks were similar, they all approached the game differently and provided different play experiences (compare Oath of Druids with BUG fish, for example). If your friends are financially oriented, as mine are, explaining this will probably help you get them involved. When I sat them down and looked at the precipitous fall experienced by most standard staples, they very quickly unloaded that stuff and moved to Vintage and Legacy.
An additional story for you (and I apologize for the novella this post is becoming), which may help you convert your friends, is that one of my friends gets most of his enjoyment out of putting together crazy combos and decks with cards that people have either overlooked or written off as "bad". He switched to vintage and never looked back because the card pool is gigantic and there are so many engines to explore. He may not win every game, but he has a blast.
One final point (sorry!) that you should make is that vintage is a much more community-oriented format. It's rarely supported by WotC and is really held together by the TO's and players. At vintage tournaments, it is my experience that the players are generally very pleasant, patient, and in good spirits. This may be of great importance to your friends because you mentioned they played casually. If their casual approach to the game is due, at least in small part, to their perception of "tournament magic players," Vintage may be a format that allows them to attend tournaments without having to deal with as much negativity.
I hope this has helped. Good luck!
If you can get them to sit down and play some vintage games, you shouldn't have too much trouble getting them into the format.
Sorry, but I couldn't find an explanation for why this happens. Could someone enlighten me? Sorry if I missed it when I was scrolling through the earlier pages.
Thanks again.
I think the affinity for lands golem cycle was pretty cool, and they were all awesome in limited.