What this says is that in August 2013, the most likely land cycle for the fall set was fetchlands. The only other land cycle that they could reprint that allows you to pay life are the shocklands, which were just printed. Painlands do not have you pay life, they do damage. There is no other complete cycle to reprint- Boseiju and Horizon Canopy etc don't have a full set and the quote clearly calls it a reprint.
They could've easily changed their mind at some point. I'm convinced that if fetchlands aren't in Khans of Tarkir they will never be in a standard set. They'll be in Modern Masters 2 or some other supplementary product, whenever that happens. Fetchlands are not great in standard and I'd much rather have painlands because shuffling sucks.
Regarding rotation sell off: I keep cards on me for the PTQ season. I (and many many others) will sell off my cards when PTQ season ends. Unlike every other year, there is no summer standard PTQ season to keep prices high. March 9th is when the season ends and cards will start to drop before then. I'd get rid of RTR standard cards before the end of February.
The deck is bad in an open meta like the one on MTGO. It's not going to be a good deck for a local tournament, though it's certainly viable. For the tournament, though, Brad Nelson was able to make decisions in order to position himself well against a few key decks and it paid off.
I think that Brad Nelson was aiming squarely at monoblack devotion and monoblue devotion in playing this list. Both of those matchups seem terrific and they definitely would have had a large presence at the SCG invitational meta. He likely got a lot of free wins playing against those decks. He may have to fight hard for his other wins, though.
So it's more of a meta call.
I guess I would stick with All-in variant then, since it's GBx is not as easily seen around here.
That's what I was experiencing with Storm deck, shame that it won't be much different with All-in twin
The UWR matchup has been extraordinarily easy for me with all-in twin, and I think it's one of the easiest matchups for anything. You just don't do anything till around turn seven, assemble a hand of multiple exarch/mites/etc and some swan song and just cast them all at their end step after they've done something during the turn. They don't have good ways to pressure your life total and their interaction is expensive and awkward.
I'm planning on jumping onto U/R Twin from a Storm deck.
The list that I'm using is Robert Berni's GP Kansas All-In Variant, but since I couldn't find a copy of Vendillon Clique, I replaced it with a spell pierce.
The thing is, I don't see much of all-in variant in recent MTGO placings, and I was wondering if I should try to grab some Snapcasters as well as Cliques to build Tempo variant instead.
Why is All-In variant not seen as often as Tempo does?
Generally, the decks that are seen most are the ones that people play most. I think the all-in version is much much better, but way more skill testing. If you're not adept at making mulligan decisions, you won't be able to do well with the all-in list. Cards like Snapcaster make a bunch more hands keepable, even though they don't contribute to the primary gameplan.
I don't buy that the tempo deck has better matchups.
valid points. but in my experience, the game 1 skite is super rare (unless we're playing the mirror) and the g1 linvala (pod lists) should be too slow. we should be winning against aggro anyways, and for their creatures, i'm running bolts. dismember is for the rare x/4+ creature that also manages to screw us over. i guess its up to preference (though the daily lists all seem to like flame slash), and my configuration hasn't failed me yet. so we'll see.
Why would you ever want bolts? Flame Slash is almost always as good and very often better, so I'd just run four of them before I ran any bolts. You lose lots of games by drawing Bolt instead of Slash- it's just not worth it.
"Stall until combo pieces are found" -> The role of cantrips and mana leaks. You don't even run that many things you play with him on board that make tokens and these aren't even useful. If you're having problem with aggro decks run more removal like flame slash. They also make you tremendously inconsistent.
Pyromancer fits in tempo decks and even there...
I definitely don't like Pyromancer, because I don't like cards that don't contribute towards the plan of playing and protecting the combo.
You find more combo pieces via mulligans and just putting enough copies in your deck than you do by using cantrips
here's my current sketch after looking at this thread and forum:
combination - theme (some potential examples- not all of which will make the cube)
wu - blink (ninjitsu, venser stuff)
wb - lifegain / lifeloss (divinity of the pride)
wr - tokens (convoke, populate, conspire, phantom general, battle cry)
wg - enchantments matter (some heroic, some double strike, wild growth, enchantresses)
ub - artifacts matter (tezzeret, baleful strix, sphinx summoner)
ur - spells matter (spellheart chimera, cantrips, young pyromancer, storm)
ug - lands matter (retrace, recover, landfall, loam, moonfolk, ramp)
br - sacrifice (devour, dark prophecy, act of treason)
bg - self-mill (worm harvest, dredge, spider spawning)
rg - fires (ramp into guys that like haste, hammer of purporos, sarkhan vol)
I believe all of these are reasonable "archetypes" that I can offer incentives to be in that don't require a bunch of cards that won't be played anywhere else. I'm trying to avoid things like tribal because of how insular they can be. As such, many of the archetypes revolve around basic card types. I like cards like Commune with the Gods- it should be a reasonable card for any green deck, but the BG deck will be able to take extra advantage of it.
I don't intend to directly support an archetype like monored aggro in my cube. However, since I'm trying to stick to cards that have as many possible interactions and benefit as many of the above decks as possible, it might be possible to construct a deck. I would expect it to be weaker than something that fits into a supported archetype.
My Scapeshift deck closely emulates Exarch Twin, with 4 Remand, 4 protection spells (2 Izzet Charm, 1 Bound // Determined, 1 Dissolve), 4 removal spells (2 Izzet Charm, 2 Bolt--Remand is a pretty good ersatz protection spell in Scapeshift, though, since basically no one plays Deprive and Cryptic is honking expensive), and...more than 8 cantrips. Well, at least the protection and removal suites emulate Exarch Twin. Heck, I play only 23 lands in my current Scapeshift deck--fewer than in my Exarch Twin deck!
Thus, I consider my testing results with my Scapeshift build to be applicable enough for my Exarch Twin build. My Scapeshift build tends to combo off only slightly more slowly than my Exarch Twin build (as opposed to the substantially slower CrypticShift builds that are more popular).
I don't think your testing is remotely useful given this description. I would suggest restricting talk of Scapeshift to other threads relevant to that deck. Your description of matchups and card choices is extremely questionable, and I believe that your method of testing is fundamentally faulty. I suggest that you, as I have, play a large number of actual games against real players to determine whether cards and matchups are good or bad.
Swan Song is a very good card in all-in Splinter Twin, which is a deck in discussion in this thread. This deck will play Swan Song before it plays Dispel.
I expected a lot more out of Swan Song in the anti-hate testing bout. I expected to win at least most of the games where I resolved Swan Song countering hate--heck, I wouldn't have been surprised if I won all of them. I concluded that I got mixed results in Swan Song's favour because Swan Song couldn't save me from dying in around half my testing games, which is a rather bad loss rate, IMO.
I countered removal on Spellskite with Dispel in at least one of the testing games. If the Dispel were Swan Song, I might have lost that game.
The testing results against Turn 1 targeted discard also soured my opinion on Swan Song. In Scapeshift, it competes with Negate and Counterflux as very versatile anti-hate. Swan Song's 100% loss rate against fast targeted discard made me switch to Dissolve in my Scapeshift list (I previously liked Counterflux in my Scapeshift list, but the red mana was starting to get annoying, the Scry 1 probably matters, and still countering Vendilion Clique and Liliana of the Veil is awesome).
I tried Swan Song against Scapeshift and Boomerang Twin (pre-board). It started behaving bizarrely. Against the mirror, it countered Flame Slash on Spellskite or protected my combo way more often than it countered opposing Splinter Twins. Against Scapeshift, it ended up protecting my combo more often than it got involved in anti-Scapeshift counter wars (and I tended to lose those counter wars). I didn't keep track of my win rate, so I'm not sure how good Swan Song is against combo (although its success rate against Flame Slash is probably something in its favour).
I should try Swan Song more against Mono-U Tron and UWR Control (two decks where not being Dispel hurts).
I want Swan Song to both not lose me more games when it acts as Dispel and win me a lot of games when it's not acting as Dispel. After my testing, the most I will go up to is 2 Swan Song (and I think I'll be perfectly happy with 1).
Playing it in Scapeshift is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. They are entirely different decks. In all in twin, specifically, it is a good card and likely a four of. That may not be true for whatever other deck.
I'm definitely leaning toward a more all-in type build, with more catch all cards for game 1 (swan song, izzet charm, snapcaster) I think swan song is good enough to at least give a long hard look at against my meta. There's not a ton of discard, but being able to hit sorceries I think is relevant enough with the varied decks in my area (everything from UW tron, jund, grixis, living end, scapeshift, BW tokens/soul sisters etc) I don't know if Into the Roil is the card I want there, I think I will probably end up last minute changing it to a spreading seas or potentially a spell pierce.
Very excited to put the deck to the test in a non-testing type situation. I'm still new to the archetype, but obviously it does very powerful things
You have no answers to Linvala and few outs to Spellskite. Play Flame Sash, not Lightning Bolt.
Remand and Snapcaster Mage are bad in all-in twin.
It's a decision. It's usually not correct to counter Thoughtseize on turn one, but it sometimes is. I've won games because I've countered a Thoughtseize on turn one.
I'm not sure how Lectrys' results are mixed. You turned a set of games that would be 0-10 without Swan Song into one that is 6-4 with it. That sounds like high praise and a reason to want the card.
Given the descriptions here, Swan Song sounds like a better Dispel rather than a worse one. It might not be correct to run four, but I've yet to wish that my Swan Song was a Dispel.
Dispel serves the role of Swan Song 5+, not the other way around.
I'm trying to build a cube. Mine is somewhat deliberately underpowered. I don't want something like Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I want a cube that has a power level similar to normal limited, with no true "bombs" in the sense that some cards are. I'm fine with Archon of the Triumvirate, but not with Aetherling.
Are there any cubes here that do that? I'm looking for ideas on archetypes and cards from those cubes.
I specifically do not want to look at common/uncommon/budget cubes.
I'm trying to build my cube in the style of something like modern masters. I want an archetype for each color. I want the archetype to be unique and interesting, but not insular. I don't quite like storm, because rituals aren't played by any other deck. I'm fine playing Worm Harvest and Spider Spawning, because you can make the enablers things like Grisly Salvage, which serve a purpose when people aren't trying to mill themselves. I'm fine playing multiple copies of a card, so I can do that if it's necessary to support an archetype.
I guess the starting point is getting a full list of archetypes for each color combination.
I tried Turn 1 Swan Song on the play vs. Turn 1 targeted discard taking out my only combo piece in hand. Only 5 games total so far (3 as All-In No Boomerang Twin, 2 as Pretty Much All-In Scapeshift), but I've LOST every game so far. The 2/2 flying token matters that much (I love it when Jund has 4 power on Turn 2). I once had to trade away a spare Pestermite with the token.
I proceeded to start pretending that Swan Song was named Dispel after those testing games, and I started winning again (notably, I won my next game as Twin despite getting my lone Exarch IoK'd on Turn 1 on the play because Swan Song fended off spot removal on my next Exarch).
I should try Swan Song against hate and other combo, though, but it can't fend off targeted discard or you lose to increased beats.
It's unlikely that you want to cast Swan Song on turn one most of the time.
A more important question: when you were pretending that Swan Song was Dispel, was the 2/2 relevant? We never really cast Dispel on turn one. It's usually used for protecting the combo on turn four or five. There's a good chance that the 2/2 bird doesn't really matter in the scenario where you're protecting the second Exarch. My experience is that it's been much closer to a Dispel with upside than anything.
The fact that you can counter Thoughtseize is going to be relevant, even if it's not what you want to do against Jund on turn one (it sometimes is, but that's rare). Countering a turn 2+ Thoughtseize should come up often enough.
It's really hard to determine how good this card is, because the card has a real downside. Whenever you can counter something you have to evaluate the tradeoff. There wasn't that kind of decision with Dispel or Spell Pierce or whatever.
I'm currently running it as a 4-of with no Dispel for testing purposes. I've been very impressed. I think I'll likely end up with a split of the two.
They could've easily changed their mind at some point. I'm convinced that if fetchlands aren't in Khans of Tarkir they will never be in a standard set. They'll be in Modern Masters 2 or some other supplementary product, whenever that happens. Fetchlands are not great in standard and I'd much rather have painlands because shuffling sucks.
I think that Brad Nelson was aiming squarely at monoblack devotion and monoblue devotion in playing this list. Both of those matchups seem terrific and they definitely would have had a large presence at the SCG invitational meta. He likely got a lot of free wins playing against those decks. He may have to fight hard for his other wins, though.
The UWR matchup has been extraordinarily easy for me with all-in twin, and I think it's one of the easiest matchups for anything. You just don't do anything till around turn seven, assemble a hand of multiple exarch/mites/etc and some swan song and just cast them all at their end step after they've done something during the turn. They don't have good ways to pressure your life total and their interaction is expensive and awkward.
Generally, the decks that are seen most are the ones that people play most. I think the all-in version is much much better, but way more skill testing. If you're not adept at making mulligan decisions, you won't be able to do well with the all-in list. Cards like Snapcaster make a bunch more hands keepable, even though they don't contribute to the primary gameplan.
I don't buy that the tempo deck has better matchups.
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
Interaction
4 Swan Song
1 Flame Slash
1 Dead // Gone
3 Spellskite
1 Izzet Charm
Combo
4 Deceiver Exarch
4 Pestermite
2 Breaching Hippocamp
4 Splinter Twin
4 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Arid Mesa
4 Steam Vents
3 Halimar Depths
2 Sulfur Falls
4 Island
2 Mountain
2 Dispel
2 Mizzium Skin
2 Flame Slash
2 Vandalblast
1 Shattering Spree
2 Boomerang
1 Echoing Truth
3 Blood Moon
Why would you ever want bolts? Flame Slash is almost always as good and very often better, so I'd just run four of them before I ran any bolts. You lose lots of games by drawing Bolt instead of Slash- it's just not worth it.
I definitely don't like Pyromancer, because I don't like cards that don't contribute towards the plan of playing and protecting the combo.
You find more combo pieces via mulligans and just putting enough copies in your deck than you do by using cantrips
combination - theme (some potential examples- not all of which will make the cube)
wu - blink (ninjitsu, venser stuff)
wb - lifegain / lifeloss (divinity of the pride)
wr - tokens (convoke, populate, conspire, phantom general, battle cry)
wg - enchantments matter (some heroic, some double strike, wild growth, enchantresses)
ub - artifacts matter (tezzeret, baleful strix, sphinx summoner)
ur - spells matter (spellheart chimera, cantrips, young pyromancer, storm)
ug - lands matter (retrace, recover, landfall, loam, moonfolk, ramp)
br - sacrifice (devour, dark prophecy, act of treason)
bg - self-mill (worm harvest, dredge, spider spawning)
rg - fires (ramp into guys that like haste, hammer of purporos, sarkhan vol)
I believe all of these are reasonable "archetypes" that I can offer incentives to be in that don't require a bunch of cards that won't be played anywhere else. I'm trying to avoid things like tribal because of how insular they can be. As such, many of the archetypes revolve around basic card types. I like cards like Commune with the Gods- it should be a reasonable card for any green deck, but the BG deck will be able to take extra advantage of it.
I don't intend to directly support an archetype like monored aggro in my cube. However, since I'm trying to stick to cards that have as many possible interactions and benefit as many of the above decks as possible, it might be possible to construct a deck. I would expect it to be weaker than something that fits into a supported archetype.
Thoughts on the current sketch?
I don't think your testing is remotely useful given this description. I would suggest restricting talk of Scapeshift to other threads relevant to that deck. Your description of matchups and card choices is extremely questionable, and I believe that your method of testing is fundamentally faulty. I suggest that you, as I have, play a large number of actual games against real players to determine whether cards and matchups are good or bad.
Swan Song is a very good card in all-in Splinter Twin, which is a deck in discussion in this thread. This deck will play Swan Song before it plays Dispel.
Playing it in Scapeshift is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. They are entirely different decks. In all in twin, specifically, it is a good card and likely a four of. That may not be true for whatever other deck.
You have no answers to Linvala and few outs to Spellskite. Play Flame Sash, not Lightning Bolt.
Remand and Snapcaster Mage are bad in all-in twin.
I'm not sure how Lectrys' results are mixed. You turned a set of games that would be 0-10 without Swan Song into one that is 6-4 with it. That sounds like high praise and a reason to want the card.
Given the descriptions here, Swan Song sounds like a better Dispel rather than a worse one. It might not be correct to run four, but I've yet to wish that my Swan Song was a Dispel.
Dispel serves the role of Swan Song 5+, not the other way around.
Are there any cubes here that do that? I'm looking for ideas on archetypes and cards from those cubes.
I specifically do not want to look at common/uncommon/budget cubes.
I'm trying to build my cube in the style of something like modern masters. I want an archetype for each color. I want the archetype to be unique and interesting, but not insular. I don't quite like storm, because rituals aren't played by any other deck. I'm fine playing Worm Harvest and Spider Spawning, because you can make the enablers things like Grisly Salvage, which serve a purpose when people aren't trying to mill themselves. I'm fine playing multiple copies of a card, so I can do that if it's necessary to support an archetype.
I guess the starting point is getting a full list of archetypes for each color combination.
It's unlikely that you want to cast Swan Song on turn one most of the time.
A more important question: when you were pretending that Swan Song was Dispel, was the 2/2 relevant? We never really cast Dispel on turn one. It's usually used for protecting the combo on turn four or five. There's a good chance that the 2/2 bird doesn't really matter in the scenario where you're protecting the second Exarch. My experience is that it's been much closer to a Dispel with upside than anything.
The fact that you can counter Thoughtseize is going to be relevant, even if it's not what you want to do against Jund on turn one (it sometimes is, but that's rare). Countering a turn 2+ Thoughtseize should come up often enough.
It's really hard to determine how good this card is, because the card has a real downside. Whenever you can counter something you have to evaluate the tradeoff. There wasn't that kind of decision with Dispel or Spell Pierce or whatever.
I'm currently running it as a 4-of with no Dispel for testing purposes. I've been very impressed. I think I'll likely end up with a split of the two.