MTG Salvation

Quote from NoUndies

Yeah man, all that basic arithmetic is pretty taxing. I mean, pattern finding, solving a problem when all of the pieces are in front of you... that's hard stuff.

Or not.

If you're struggling with the maths in a game of magic, I feel bad for you. By your own admission, the hardest part of a game for you is when you have no cards in hand, and the control player is holding answers. This is Bayesian probability; you have to make a decision based on probabilities whose certainties are unknown to you. This is the default game state for a control deck, and is why control vs. control matches are some of the best games you'll ever play or see. Aggro doesn't really care about what a player has in his or her hand. Funny that when they do have to care, the game gets a lot harder. In contrast, a control deck always cares about what a player is holding in hand.

I added the bold for emphasis, because this sentence is blatantly wrong.

Aggro cares just as much as Control cares, it's just that Aggro cannot deal with the answers as well. Thus a good Aggro player also has to predict what the opponent is holding, is likely to draw into, etc. It's exactly the same calculations a Control player goes through. Except Aggro has fewer answers. Aggro has to work toward virtual CA (meaning killing the Control player before he finds enough answers to empty the aggro player's hand and board of threats).

Control vs. Control games may be "interesting" to watch because of all their interactions, but Control vs. Aggro is the hardest match-up in Magic. For the Aggro player. Aggro always cares what's in his opponent's hand. A great Aggro player can usually tell you, at least the percentages of what's likely there, and whether they'll (be able to) play around it or not.

Quote from Myzery78

What deck is that exactly? Gruul? Gruul is the only two color red deck putting up any wins, and it still runs on 40% nonbasic lands. It will hurt Gruul less than it will hurt tri-color decks, but its far from one sided.

Unless you're arguing this is somehow going to make monored tier 1, theres no deck where this card will be one sided.

To be fair, MonoRed was Tier1, but it was a more sligh style aggro build. In that style deck, this card would not be as useful as a Hellrider (except against control strategies that run lots of removal). But things change.

The glory of talking about these new cards -- as always -- is that the meta will change before or because of their release. Talking about this card in today's meta is nonsensical. We can base our guesses and theories off of today, but that is all.

Saying that this won't fit into any tier1 decks is, equally, nonsensical. We cannot know. This doesn't even need to be a mono-color-required deck. If you run 24 lands even in a 12/12 split, other than being subject to a TON of variance, you could theoretically play all basics. If you wanted to. No one likely would, but you could, and thus if it became the correct thing to do, people would.

Anyway, it's all theory, as is any talk of the future.
I do see this card being powerful if the surrounding cards help support a mono- or duo-colored deck. It will be strong against the three+ color decks regardless.

The point is that they completely negate any ETB effects. They occasionally also exile the spell, or mill you a bit, or refund your mana. And they do answer anything, if you pay more than 2 for it. That's the kind of flexibility that needs to be taxed somehow.

I have zero issues with how counters have evolved over the past few years.

How has Master of Cruelties not become more popular in Grixis decks? It's the ultimate deterrent in terms of preventing absurd attacks. When backed with lots of spot removal and/or sweepers, it's amazing. It's guaranteed to kill at least one attacker, and if they only leave one back to block, you can almost guarantee you've got the removal in-hand to kill them the next turn (assuming you've also got 1 point of burn).

It just seems like something that really fits into the style deck you all are building. You make your opponents change the way they're playing, and then you beat them anyway.

It's also possible, especially in a deck with some sort of ramp, that this card ends up being a one-sided wrath (like Bonfire). That it's also an answer for planeswalkers, Detention Spheres, and the like is just gravy. It has grown on me, a bit. It seems to encourage a higher-CMC deck, which is a bit odd, but in BGx not unlikely or uncommon.

I'm not a big fan of that BG build. I've been working on something with more walkers, and it's doing pretty well, but relying on Disciple of Bolas just feels like it's too cutesy.

The curve on this is a bit of a stretch. Looking just at creatures, you're staring at:
CMC1: 3 = 3x Vexing Devil
CMC2: 3 = 3x Zhur-Taa Druid
CMC3: 2 = 2x Varolz, the Scar-Striped
CMC4: 9 = 4x Corpsejack Menace, 3x Ghor-Clan Rampager, 2x Olivia Voldaren
CMC4+ 6 = 3x Primordial Hydra, 3x Savageborn Hydra

Granted, you have quite a bit of 2CMC accelerators, but that's still a realllllllly heavy curve. You're not even running the maximum number of accelerators. Running the fourth Farseek and ZTD would help a lot.

Also, I get that you want 4 counters for R, but I don't know that Vexing Devil really fits into this version of the deck. It's just not doing enough, and it relies on your 2-of Varolz to be average. That's not an optimal usage, I'd say.

Last, I get why you want to include Varolz -- he's a useful producer of more counters. However, as mentioned with the Devil, he's pushing you toward suboptimal cards. He also does absolutely nothing when your hydras are in the graveyard (which is where they'll be a LOT of the time if your opponent plays any removal).

If you took out the 2 Varolzs there and the 3 Devils, you could play other cards that would be stronger... like the fourth Farseek and 4x Lotleth Trolls, which have the trample built in. Then you could re-evaluate the GCRs, which are an awesome combat trick, but they tend to lead to blowouts against removal...

I like the idea, but I think it needs some tuning.

And here I thought that Clones were supposed to, you know, clone the creature. Thus making themselves exactly like it.

I like this new rule, and if it allows them to print more legendaries, then great.

Yeah, that's exactly what they're there for. Three mana usually gets me 5+ damage, and on T3 often it gets more than that.

Late game, when the hands are empty, it refills mine. I'm very fond of Toil//Trouble.

I've gone with a somewhat hybrid creature-and-spell burn deck lately, and it's not awful. The sideboard is, but that's since I've been playing a lot of control lately, which means haste is great.

I was surprised at how many useful tools this deck seems to have gotten from DGM.

I've found that Deadbridge Chant to be fantastic, especially when the deck is heavy with creatures. Combined with scavenge is also really nice. Whether that's attached to Goliaths or off of Varolz, it allows you to thin out the yard while also filtering. Toss in Deathrites to remove lands (or spells you don't want to see again) and it's amazingly powerful.

I've been very unimpressed with Gaze of Granite, too. It's wickedly expensive for a sweeper, costing more than Supreme Verdict to kill (usually) less things. It's definitely not Pernicious Deeds, which was admittedly awesome. There's just not a great black sweeper right now, since Mutilate and even Barter in Blood are Standard-only. I'd kill for a Damnation reprint. Far//Away is the closest we've got.

Wow, just looking at those numbers it's quite easy to see which direction the meta was leaning. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Lots of pros lean heavily toward blue, Patrick Sullivan and Craig Wescoe aside...

Voice is a real card, and I think it's only going to get more prevalent as people start to realize that the hype was justified. Its price has shot up 10 tix online just today.

Because Sphere of Safety and Possibility Storm needs to happen, right?

Yikes.

To be fair, people making statements about what "bad players" like and dislike should really say "I assume" unless they happen to know for a fact, or unless they've somehow gained insight into every bad player's mindset miraculously.

But this is the internet, where "bad player" really just stands for "people who play in ways I dislike", or at least so it seems.

If control is dead, and that's the price we must pay to have the game of Magic that we currently have, then good riddance to it. I've made the argument before that there are decks in the current meta that play exactly like a classical control deck (Jund), but people don't seem to want to hear it.

I think that's the point we've all seen for far too long: people don't want to hear things that seem to contradict their own previously-established beliefs.

These look nothing like Eldrazi. The new slivers are clearly metallic, whereas the Eldrazi are all mana (and thus flesh-like).

Comparisons to Phyrexians are much more apt, but still the Slivers don't have the same art style. I do wonder, though, if Maze Rusher wasn't originally Sliver art.

At least they still have the "all slivers" aspect, even if it is just "you control." That's still a huge difference from both Eldrazi and Phyrexians.