You can't play them in aggro decks as they're too slow. You don't want them against aggro decks since they're too slow.
They're pretty underwhelming in control decks. You don't really want to tap out to play them as they do nothing that turn. They can be fine threats against control decks since there isn't that much instant speed removal. Though you'll need to be doing more than 3 damage a turn to put pressure on a control deck.
That leaves mid range decks. These decks are probably the least punished taking a turn off. There are some decent 5 drops you can play, vraska, assemble the legion, and obzedat. There's a successful junk deck that plays 3 key runes, no 4 drops, and has 4 vraskas and obzedats. Keyrunes aren't particularly good or bad against mid range decks.
I think the problems with keyrunes are 3 fold:
1) The format has aggro decks that can kill you on turns 4/5. Taking a turn off against them is usually bad.
2) They aren't really needed for fixing since the lands in this format are pretty good at fixing.
3) There aren't any good spells to play off 1 mana when you cast them on turn 3. There's no spell snare or path to exile.
So to me it seems like keyrunes are only good in mid range decks when they're playing against control. Which seems like you wouldn't want to main deck them as this match up won't come up as often to make main decking them worth it.
I just built the successful Junk deck that plays 3 keyrunes, so i will see if it sways my opinion on keyrunes. Keyrunes have been just awful for me in control decks.
In my experience I've never been happy about playing keyrunes. At first I saw them as a necessary evil but, as you already mentioned, I rarely benefit from the mana fixing aspect.
The only deck I tried where I liked keyrunes is the rakdos deck where they come in against control. Even then, they weren't that great. Definitely a lackluster turn 3 play.
I actually put the said junk deck together today. My experience with it so far is just a 2-2 daily and some playtesting with a friend. I am strongly considering moving all 3 copies of the selesnya keyrune to the side board, but I figured I'd wait a bit and not judge the deck after so little testing.
I played one game agains UW control, where they were actually pretty good. Since you don't/can't try to force the victory turn 4 a la the 19 land RDW, having more threats that's hard to remove seems pretty good. And it could potentially land obzedat a turn earlier.
That being said, I still lost the match and I still have not quite figured out how to play the deck.
I'd be interested to hear your opinion after testing.
Edit: I just noticed the thread about the deck under competitive. I'll join the discussion when I've got more matches under my belt, but so far I really agree with your analysis of the deck.
I played keyrunes when the format was just RTR and they were fine. Even azorious keyrune was playable in control decks. Now the format is way too fast for them and the fixing aspect is no longer needed since we have the full set of shocks and guild gates.
I've been copying the decklists that do well to see if there is a best deck (and figuring out which type of deck i want to play). Some of these decklists have keyrunes. Every time I draw a keyrune I want punch my monitor.
Yeah the 3 power key runes seem fine vs control decks. Everywhere else they seem awful. Sadly the keyrunes don't come stapled to obzedat or junk would be really good.
I liked Simic Keyrune for a while because of it's hexproof. I've written about that like 5 times though so I'll spare you.
Outside of that my experiences have been so-so. They're always OK and I feel like there's something better waiting. They're just utility cards, and if you don't need their utilities they won't be that good.
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Some facts of magic:
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
You can't play them in aggro decks as they're too slow. You don't want them against aggro decks since they're too slow.
They're pretty underwhelming in control decks. You don't really want to tap out to play them as they do nothing that turn. They can be fine threats against control decks since there isn't that much instant speed removal. Though you'll need to be doing more than 3 damage a turn to put pressure on a control deck.
That leaves mid range decks. These decks are probably the least punished taking a turn off. There are some decent 5 drops you can play, vraska, assemble the legion, and obzedat. There's a successful junk deck that plays 3 key runes, no 4 drops, and has 4 vraskas and obzedats. Keyrunes aren't particularly good or bad against mid range decks.
I think the problems with keyrunes are 3 fold:
1) The format has aggro decks that can kill you on turns 4/5. Taking a turn off against them is usually bad.
2) They aren't really needed for fixing since the lands in this format are pretty good at fixing.
3) There aren't any good spells to play off 1 mana when you cast them on turn 3. There's no spell snare or path to exile.
So to me it seems like keyrunes are only good in mid range decks when they're playing against control. Which seems like you wouldn't want to main deck them as this match up won't come up as often to make main decking them worth it.
I just built the successful Junk deck that plays 3 keyrunes, so i will see if it sways my opinion on keyrunes. Keyrunes have been just awful for me in control decks.
I enjoyed this post. I am trying to update the Jund deck from single set block. I haven't played it in a few months, and so far the only update has been the Gruul lands. I suppose I need to take it to the tournament practice room again. I'm 2-4 in two Daily Events, with three of the losses coming to Mono Red. Moving Keyrunes to the sideboard or out completely is something I haven't thought of yet, but perhaps that is something I will play with.
Glad I could help you out. It's a shame this block section is very inactive. There's very few people to bounce ideas off of. Maybe I should start writing for a website so I get compensated for my time.
the format seems pretty quiet online, at least in my time zone (aust). The dailies that do fire are usually 16 people and there's a few that aren't firing at all. There's maybe 2 or 3 games in the tournament practice room most of the time.
Idk if block is always like this, especially so soon into the season, but I seem to remember DKA and AVR block being a lot more active (until the latter degenerated into stale jund once it got figured out).
Me too. I haven't seen a block this inactive for a while and I don't know why. It could be because many of the top decks require 4 of a 25 dollar mythic. Just a guess.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some facts of magic:
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
my (limited) testing also seems to confirm the general suspicion that nothing outside of the UW deck is able to beat RDW, and RDW mirrors are depressingly boring/random. There really doesn't seem to be much room for creativity, because the slightest stumble in your mana and board development means you're flat dead. Firefist striker is just the most brutal card, cheap removal is basically non-existent and the deck really is amazingly fast for a 2-set deck.
I think selesnya could beat RDW with centaur healers and trostanis. That deck is bad against control though. But I did lose a game on the draw where he went call of the conclave into guild mage into rootborn defenses on my supreme verdict.
I haven't played naya, but that's somehow winning and beating the red decks.
I like playing against the aggro decks as bant, i'm about 75% against them. Although the control mirrors are pretty bad, it's draw go and there's no drownyard to activate. There are very few end step things to do.
appreciate the optimism :). I tried playing selesnya pre-GTC, I gave it up because it always felt like you were playing a strictly worse version of bant. I mean, yeah, they're different decks but it's like bant could do everything you could do except it could also cast sphinx's revelation. I agree it can beat RDW though (hopefully), but that's basically for the same reason that bant can (and I should have included bant in my list of decks that can beat RDW - I meant revelation decks in general, not just straight UW).
I don't really see naya putting up good numbers, beyond an initial splash while people were still experimenting. I'm actually playing butakov's list (or something like it) in the practice room atm and obviously running into a lot of RDWs. The matchup is not good, not even close. Your mana base stumbles frequently and if your mana stumbles, you're dead. If your mana base isn't stumbling, you're often losing 2 life to stop 2-3 damage which isn't hugely profitable, and multiple one drops (which trade up with dynacharge) + BTE + firefist means that it's very difficult to keep up a creature-based defence. DOmri's too slow in the matchup, and mizzium for 6 would be nice if hitting RRR isn't so difficult with the mana bases available. Idk, i'm not confident that that archetype can beat RDW simply because of how sketchy the mana is and because it doesn't have a 4-mana sweeper like UW, so it can't recover as well from a slow start.
In short, I'm seeing two legitimate deck archetypes in the meta - sphinx's revelation and RDW. I could be wrong.
The only other midrange deck i've played is the junk one. It's awful. I want to try the BWr deck, i'm slowly getting the cards for it. In fact I just lost to it going for 4-0. Probably sideboarded incorrectly both games. I cut out some of my low drops figuring he'd do the same, but I guess not.
Yeah that's what it's looking like red/x aggro vs uw/x control. The only way to make a mid range deck to work is to have life gain and rakdos's return.
Royal says he thinks his deck is really good. And he is now playing 5 keyrunes in his Black Boros deck. Orzhov keyrune doesn't seem like the worst against aggro. He also wants to go up to 3 aurelia's furys. His deck choices seem weird but he keeps doing well with them some how.
Andrew Cuneo was playing block on his stream. He tried a dimir deck. Then he went for grixis to play more removal. He wanted to build a deck no one was playing so no sphinx's revelations for him. He's thinking about playing thrull parasite (in the board) since he has enough black sources to play it on turn 1. But he is aware that sphinx's revelation decks might just be better.
I gave up on Jund for now, and bought the cards for the BGW midrange deck. I like it better than Jund so far, but I have not played a Daily. rickster_, what don't you like about it? I'd like to try the WRB deck as well, but the ticket and pack reserves are starting to empty. Is combining the decks into a green based GWBR deck just awful?
I just built this deck and have been playing it in the practice room. It seems incredibly underwhelming. It has no nut draws, and only 1 powerful card in obzedat. Vraska is comically bad especially compared to jace and even domri. The problem with vraska is that she takes 3 turns for you to kill 2 cards, where as jace can get you 2 cards the turn you play him. Plus based on how her loyalty numbers are, it's much harder for you to kill your vraska and play another one in your hand. Deathrite is also pretty bad in this deck. You can't use any of his abilities till turn 3. You spend your turn 2 casting a removal spell then on turn 3 you can use his ability. Though to be fair deathrite is bad in block when compared to other formats. Also this deck is prone to flooding. It has a few mana sinks in the grove land, but that's it. Since it's playing 4 gatecreeper vines it makes me wonder if splashing red for rakdos's return might be viable. It also plays the 3 keyrunes, which I think are bad to main deck, and this deck doesn't have ways to use all that mana, the curve stops at 5.
It has very few powerful cards. It has little card advantage. It has no powerful synergies.
Yeah the card prices of these cards have gone up. You really should start buying cards 1-2 weeks after the set comes online. Prices are depressed then since people are dumping their assets to play the release queues. You lose value on some of the rares, like the shock lands (they're down like a ticket since I bought them). But i've been playing block for a month now and doing well in dailies, so it doesn't matter that they've lost value since I bought them. And you don't lose much value on mythics if you wait 1-2 weeks after release since the price of the bad ones drop pretty fast, and you probably won't be playing the bad ones anyways.
I thought about splashing for red in the junk decks to play rakdos's return and maybe slaughter games. Though I never liked the junk deck enough to test it out. I played against someone in a daily who tried it, beat him handily since he had mana issues. I think you'd have to play more than just 4 gatecreeper vines and the various guild gates to make it work, probably artifact mana like chromatic lantern.
That's interesting... because when you think about it. Against aggro the deck has something else to do on turn 3 than drop a keyrune and you don't need that obzedat on turn 4 anyway.
Against control, turn 4 Slaughter Games sounds better than trying to rush an Obzedat too. I'm curious to know what he replaced the keyrunes with though... and I have no idea what the deck's matchup against RDW is.
You can't play them in aggro decks as they're too slow. You don't want them against aggro decks since they're too slow.
They're pretty underwhelming in control decks. You don't really want to tap out to play them as they do nothing that turn. They can be fine threats against control decks since there isn't that much instant speed removal. Though you'll need to be doing more than 3 damage a turn to put pressure on a control deck.
That leaves mid range decks. These decks are probably the least punished taking a turn off. There are some decent 5 drops you can play, vraska, assemble the legion, and obzedat. There's a successful junk deck that plays 3 key runes, no 4 drops, and has 4 vraskas and obzedats. Keyrunes aren't particularly good or bad against mid range decks.
I think the problems with keyrunes are 3 fold:
1) The format has aggro decks that can kill you on turns 4/5. Taking a turn off against them is usually bad.
2) They aren't really needed for fixing since the lands in this format are pretty good at fixing.
3) There aren't any good spells to play off 1 mana when you cast them on turn 3. There's no spell snare or path to exile.
So to me it seems like keyrunes are only good in mid range decks when they're playing against control. Which seems like you wouldn't want to main deck them as this match up won't come up as often to make main decking them worth it.
I just built the successful Junk deck that plays 3 keyrunes, so i will see if it sways my opinion on keyrunes. Keyrunes have been just awful for me in control decks.
I played keyrunes when the format was just RTR and they were fine. Even azorious keyrune was playable in control decks. Now the format is way too fast for them and the fixing aspect is no longer needed since we have the full set of shocks and guild gates.
I've been copying the decklists that do well to see if there is a best deck (and figuring out which type of deck i want to play). Some of these decklists have keyrunes. Every time I draw a keyrune I want punch my monitor.
Yeah the 3 power key runes seem fine vs control decks. Everywhere else they seem awful. Sadly the keyrunes don't come stapled to obzedat or junk would be really good.
Outside of that my experiences have been so-so. They're always OK and I feel like there's something better waiting. They're just utility cards, and if you don't need their utilities they won't be that good.
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
More facts of magic
It prevents 3+ damage and occasionally trades for a ghor clan rampager.
Is that worth it?
I guess that might be playable in UW, but not in 3 color control decks.
I enjoyed this post. I am trying to update the Jund deck from single set block. I haven't played it in a few months, and so far the only update has been the Gruul lands. I suppose I need to take it to the tournament practice room again. I'm 2-4 in two Daily Events, with three of the losses coming to Mono Red. Moving Keyrunes to the sideboard or out completely is something I haven't thought of yet, but perhaps that is something I will play with.
Idk if block is always like this, especially so soon into the season, but I seem to remember DKA and AVR block being a lot more active (until the latter degenerated into stale jund once it got figured out).
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
More facts of magic
I haven't played naya, but that's somehow winning and beating the red decks.
I like playing against the aggro decks as bant, i'm about 75% against them. Although the control mirrors are pretty bad, it's draw go and there's no drownyard to activate. There are very few end step things to do.
I don't really see naya putting up good numbers, beyond an initial splash while people were still experimenting. I'm actually playing butakov's list (or something like it) in the practice room atm and obviously running into a lot of RDWs. The matchup is not good, not even close. Your mana base stumbles frequently and if your mana stumbles, you're dead. If your mana base isn't stumbling, you're often losing 2 life to stop 2-3 damage which isn't hugely profitable, and multiple one drops (which trade up with dynacharge) + BTE + firefist means that it's very difficult to keep up a creature-based defence. DOmri's too slow in the matchup, and mizzium for 6 would be nice if hitting RRR isn't so difficult with the mana bases available. Idk, i'm not confident that that archetype can beat RDW simply because of how sketchy the mana is and because it doesn't have a 4-mana sweeper like UW, so it can't recover as well from a slow start.
In short, I'm seeing two legitimate deck archetypes in the meta - sphinx's revelation and RDW. I could be wrong.
The only other midrange deck i've played is the junk one. It's awful. I want to try the BWr deck, i'm slowly getting the cards for it. In fact I just lost to it going for 4-0. Probably sideboarded incorrectly both games. I cut out some of my low drops figuring he'd do the same, but I guess not.
Royal says he thinks his deck is really good. And he is now playing 5 keyrunes in his Black Boros deck. Orzhov keyrune doesn't seem like the worst against aggro. He also wants to go up to 3 aurelia's furys. His deck choices seem weird but he keeps doing well with them some how.
http://www.twitch.tv/royalmtgo
Andrew Cuneo was playing block on his stream. He tried a dimir deck. Then he went for grixis to play more removal. He wanted to build a deck no one was playing so no sphinx's revelations for him. He's thinking about playing thrull parasite (in the board) since he has enough black sources to play it on turn 1. But he is aware that sphinx's revelation decks might just be better.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=493477
Yeah the card prices of these cards have gone up. You really should start buying cards 1-2 weeks after the set comes online. Prices are depressed then since people are dumping their assets to play the release queues. You lose value on some of the rares, like the shock lands (they're down like a ticket since I bought them). But i've been playing block for a month now and doing well in dailies, so it doesn't matter that they've lost value since I bought them. And you don't lose much value on mythics if you wait 1-2 weeks after release since the price of the bad ones drop pretty fast, and you probably won't be playing the bad ones anyways.
I thought about splashing for red in the junk decks to play rakdos's return and maybe slaughter games. Though I never liked the junk deck enough to test it out. I played against someone in a daily who tried it, beat him handily since he had mana issues. I think you'd have to play more than just 4 gatecreeper vines and the various guild gates to make it work, probably artifact mana like chromatic lantern.
Against control, turn 4 Slaughter Games sounds better than trying to rush an Obzedat too. I'm curious to know what he replaced the keyrunes with though... and I have no idea what the deck's matchup against RDW is.
the last decklist is what i believe he's currently playing:
http://pastebin.com/Tz9vY4TV
apparition over the 1 keyrune
Mostly I needed slots to fill for my deck that runs things like
Demonic Rising and its support cards.
Well aware but providing example.
But for something that is more useful in the block would be just combining them all together in one deck. Sounds crazy but it works.