This is what I plan to rock on Game Day next week unless this weekends PT shows something different.
Infinite Obliteration in the main seems super sketch. I understand that you will always have a target, but having this against something like WW is going to be rough. For 3 mana and 2 slots, you could do a heck of a lot of things.
Is there a reason you are not running Silumgar's Scorn? That card (and FTI) is probably the reason to be running any more than 2 Dragonlord Silumgar. It lets you play your win conditions fairly aggressively and it can just buy you that critical turn 2 and 3 a lot of the times. If I am being completely honest - having 2 Scatter to the Wind can sometimes suck. 4 Void Shatter is going to come back to haunt you, I am almost certain of it.
If you do not have new Jace, run more Ob, or pick up new Jace... he is like $11 a pop which is a pretty good price imo.
Fortunately, I have two on the way - they just hadn't arrived by the time I played. I think I'm going to keep the landsas they are. I need to run some more games to get a better feel for why they are how they are. Alhammaret is going to the side, and at least one more Magosi is going main. Next standard will be next week, as the LGS only drafts this FNM.
I cut Alhammaret and just stuck with my 4 DLS. Card was sometimes super awkward with only 26 mana, even thought it was clutch some of the time. DLS has never really let me down.
Without splashing white for Angelic Purge as a guaranteed way out, I would not run Demonic Pact. This meta is looking like it is starting to favor the controly over the top decks more and more - and I don't advise getting caught up in that without a sure fire way to get Pact out of the way, or actually kill your opponent with it before it kills you.
So if you do something to help others, get screwed during that process, and seek compensation for getting screwed, that's not "acting like an adult" or "holding themselves accountable"?
This lawsuit would not exist if it happened to a person 1 or 2 times. Acting like an adult means walking away from situations where you are being taken advantage of, not hanging onto it like a failing high school relationship, and holding yourself accountable when you are putting yourself in a position to continually be taken advantage of.
I actually heard this exact point in a different debate this week. In that one, he was saying that a girl should have taken responsibility for her attire when she was sexually assaulted.
In the world of debate, we call this "victim blaming". So the party at fault here is the ones who prevented the judges from being able to take breaks or get food, not the judges for allowing this happen to themselves.
There is a difference between sexual assault and being taken advantage of for doing something that was completely voluntary. The control of the situation, in this instance, is entirely in the hands of the individual volunteering their time to the organization taking advantage of them. In an assault situation, that is very much not the case.
I am sorry, but you are wrong and a great example of why everyone in this country is so eager to use a lawsuit as a means of not holding themselves accountable for making poor choices in life.
On that I guess we are going to have to disagree.
The person above comparing the judges to volunteer lifeguards at profit gyms is spot on. They may be volunteers, but they are given the hours, responsibilities, and liabilities that an employee has. Therefore, they deserve many of the rights that employees have as well. No one is asking for job security, just the lunch breaks, rest breaks, and overtime that everyday employees receive.
As far the lawsuit goes, litigation is expensive, especially against a large entity. I highly doubt this was their first course of action.
I have to say, all you're doing is blaming people for getting screwed over by people who should know better. The fact you direct your ire at the judges ("Maybe they should get real jobs") shows a real lack of empathy.
Look man, we had issues with this and the Judge rewards program and it negatively impacted Judges who were responsible and grown up enough to hold themselves accountable.
This is nothing but round 2 of a few people not able to keep their ***** together and be accountable adults.
You clearly have never done any sort of work on a volunteer basis to any scale that is remotely close to a GP.
You can lead a fool to wisdom, but your can't make them think and that is the moral of this story - and it is sad as ****.
The lands are really not going to make or break the deck. If you are skimming on DLS, then skip Havens if you want. They are just utility and will change depending on your list. For my 4 DLS finisher set up, this is what I have been using effectively. For people trying Sphinxes out, they might find that none of them are optimal.
Here's the issue that you seem to miss: volunteers deserve to be treated fairly too. You not getting a break or a meal at the soup kitchen is every bit as bullcrap as the judges not getting rest. Federal law mandates breaks and lunches for employees working more than six hours, and breaks for working under that (based on four hour increments). Why should the volunteers be treated different considering they are the ones helping put money in the company's pocket?
Not sure where you seem to think I disagree that volunteers should be treated fairly.
I do expect judges t be adults, and act like it. These Judges are not, they are being petty. It is a sad day when MTG judges cannot hold themselves accountable for making bad choices.
So if you do something to help others, get screwed during that process, and seek compensation for getting screwed, that's not "acting like an adult" or "holding themselves accountable"?
This lawsuit would not exist if it happened to a person 1 or 2 times. Acting like an adult means walking away from situations where you are being taken advantage of, not hanging onto it like a failing high school relationship, and holding yourself accountable when you are putting yourself in a position to continually be taken advantage of.
I actually heard this exact point in a different debate this week. In that one, he was saying that a girl should have taken responsibility for her attire when she was sexually assaulted.
In the world of debate, we call this "victim blaming". So the party at fault here is the ones who prevented the judges from being able to take breaks or get food, not the judges for allowing this happen to themselves.
There is a difference between sexual assault and being taken advantage of for doing something that was completely voluntary. The control of the situation, in this instance, is entirely in the hands of the individual volunteering their time to the organization taking advantage of them. In an assault situation, that is very much not the case.
I am sorry, but you are wrong and a great example of why everyone in this country is so eager to use a lawsuit as a means of not holding themselves accountable for making poor choices in life.
If every judge took this route, there would be no judges, no events, and basically no sanctioned game. Is that what you want?
I don't know, I just sort of hold the opinion that judges are people too, and more importantly deserve to be compensated for working as employees.
Look, I do volunteer work and last Thanksgiving I did not get a lunch break in my 7 hour shift of helping at a kitchen. I am required to wear a shirt that bears the name of the organization that I volunteer with. At the end of the day, I am volunteering my time doing something that I love and something I think is worth my time and if I do not get a lunch and it bothers me that much - I stop making plans to volunteer at large events like that.
Plain and simple.
In fact, it is not even just holidays I do not get lunch. There have been a number of local animal rescue events I have volunteered for and have not had time to get a lunch in.
Judges are volunteers, nobody is putting a gun to their head or holding the rent bill over them. They are volunteering their time and went into it knowing that they are doing so. You kind of throw your other priorities out of the way when you do something like that.
Glad you help people out. Good for you.
Here's the issue that you seem to miss: volunteers deserve to be treated fairly too. You not getting a break or a meal at the soup kitchen is every bit as bullcrap as the judges not getting rest. Federal law mandates breaks and lunches for employees working more than six hours, and breaks for working under that (based on four hour increments). Why should the volunteers be treated different considering they are the ones helping put money in the company's pocket?
Not sure where you seem to think I disagree that volunteers should be treated fairly.
I do expect judges t be adults, and act like it. These Judges are not, they are being petty. It is a sad day when MTG judges cannot hold themselves accountable for making bad choices.
So if you do something to help others, get screwed during that process, and seek compensation for getting screwed, that's not "acting like an adult" or "holding themselves accountable"?
This lawsuit would not exist if it happened to a person 1 or 2 times. Acting like an adult means walking away from situations where you are being taken advantage of, not hanging onto it like a failing high school relationship, and holding yourself accountable when you are putting yourself in a position to continually be taken advantage of.
Interesting that you would ask for my mana, get a response with the mana base and a message saying:
Can be tweaked, without a doubt. I am still messing with things.
Then start being critical of the mana base... Just seems odd is all. I left the mana out of my post for a reason - because it is wonky in a deck that has a ridiculous amount of possible varieties when it comes to the mana base. That all being said, here is a bit about the mana base if you really want to know.
Haven of the Spirit Dragon is what gets me through Blighted Fen and other removal, it gives you the option to pitch extra dragons in your hand if you need to discard, and it can let you leave certain variations of U and B up when casting Dragonlord Silumgar.
Mage-Ring Network was a residual piece of the Eldrazi titan package I was testing. The problem was not having to activate the lands to get to casting range - it was the Eldrazi themselves. Ultimately, the land gave me a lot of late game playability, especially in control mirrors or against WB Eldrazi / Control when you wanting to use 3 counters to cast a walker and leaving excessive mana up for cheap counters and removal or a well placed Silumgar's Command. The lands give you a lot of playability in the late game in any match that is slow, and you hardly ever sacrifice your mana in the early game if you are sequencing your land drops correctly. The card has been worth the 2 slots, is it absolutely necessary? Probably not. Better than a wide array of other lands I can think of at the moment however.
Evolving Wilds. If you have ever opened game 1 of a match and stared at Island, Swamp, Silumgar's Scorn, and Grasp of Darkness - you would not really need to know why you should appreciate Evolving Wilds in a 2 color deck. It lets you get in a mana drop while figuring out what you are up against to help you make the most of your early turns. It is also good for giving me references on deck content if I ever want to take a mental snapshot during a complex game state.
Blighted Cataract, because I do not want to be using Blighted Fen in a format where boards are going wide and I have more than enough ways to deal with whatever Blighted Fen would deal with anyways.
Yeah, how horrible those judges are, wanting things like the ability to go eat during a 12-hour entirely unpaid shift. They deserve to be a disposable resource that a multi-million dollar corporation can use and discard.
It should only take 1 event for you to gain the expectation that that will not happen - thus you simply cut your losses.
Grow up.
If every judge took this route, there would be no judges, no events, and basically no sanctioned game. Is that what you want?
I don't know, I just sort of hold the opinion that judges are people too, and more importantly deserve to be compensated for working as employees.
Look, I do volunteer work and last Thanksgiving I did not get a lunch break in my 7 hour shift of helping at a kitchen. I am required to wear a shirt that bears the name of the organization that I volunteer with. At the end of the day, I am volunteering my time doing something that I love and something I think is worth my time and if I do not get a lunch and it bothers me that much - I stop making plans to volunteer at large events like that.
Plain and simple.
In fact, it is not even just holidays I do not get lunch. There have been a number of local animal rescue events I have volunteered for and have not had time to get a lunch in.
Judges are volunteers, nobody is putting a gun to their head or holding the rent bill over them. They are volunteering their time and went into it knowing that they are doing so. You kind of throw your other priorities out of the way when you do something like that.
Glad you help people out. Good for you.
Here's the issue that you seem to miss: volunteers deserve to be treated fairly too. You not getting a break or a meal at the soup kitchen is every bit as bullcrap as the judges not getting rest. Federal law mandates breaks and lunches for employees working more than six hours, and breaks for working under that (based on four hour increments). Why should the volunteers be treated different considering they are the ones helping put money in the company's pocket?
Not sure where you seem to think I disagree that volunteers should be treated fairly.
I do expect judges t be adults, and act like it. These Judges are not, they are being petty. It is a sad day when MTG judges cannot hold themselves accountable for making bad choices.
Yeah, how horrible those judges are, wanting things like the ability to go eat during a 12-hour entirely unpaid shift. They deserve to be a disposable resource that a multi-million dollar corporation can use and discard.
It should only take 1 event for you to gain the expectation that that will not happen - thus you simply cut your losses.
Grow up.
If every judge took this route, there would be no judges, no events, and basically no sanctioned game. Is that what you want?
I don't know, I just sort of hold the opinion that judges are people too, and more importantly deserve to be compensated for working as employees.
Look, I do volunteer work and last Thanksgiving I did not get a lunch break in my 7 hour shift of helping at a kitchen. I am required to wear a shirt that bears the name of the organization that I volunteer with. At the end of the day, I am volunteering my time doing something that I love and something I think is worth my time and if I do not get a lunch and it bothers me that much - I stop making plans to volunteer at large events like that.
Plain and simple.
In fact, it is not even just holidays I do not get lunch. There have been a number of local animal rescue events I have volunteered for and have not had time to get a lunch in.
Judges are volunteers, nobody is putting a gun to their head or holding the rent bill over them. They are volunteering their time and went into it knowing that they are doing so. You kind of throw your other priorities out of the way when you do something like that.
Yeah, how horrible those judges are, wanting things like the ability to go eat during a 12-hour entirely unpaid shift. They deserve to be a disposable resource that a multi-million dollar corporation can use and discard.
It should only take 1 event for you to gain the expectation that that will not happen - thus you simply cut your losses.
I have settled on my main 60 for States this coming weekend.
Out of curiosity is the lack of 2-mana Jace budgetary? I'm fairly new to this deck as this Standard.
I took a break before Oath came out.
I picked up my foil Jace, Vryn's Prodigy set at $40 each when people were telling me the card was horrible and I had to explain that a turn 4 flip into Languish was actually nuts.
His lack of inclusion is not a budgetary concern.
The fact is that removal right now, is the best we have seen for Standard in a long time - and when you aggro decks are running removal, your cards like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Thing in the Ice lose a lot of stock value. Sure, you had red decks running Wild Slash, but those decks were designed to do 20 damage to you, and not 24 damage to you, meaning those Slashes usually had to go to the dome and were not really dedicated removal like Declaration in Stone is, another card I picked up a foil set on for cheap while it was called garbage in the Esper thread.
While he is nuts when you get a flip out on him, it not even remotely as easy to flip and hardly worth the effort protecting it like it previously was.
Thank you so much for the thorough write-up and response to my comment, I was just asking because I want to make this (or try it) on MTGO, and I was just looking into what I should pick up!
If it's not a problem, may I ask what your lands look like?
4 Choked Estuary
4 Sunken Hollow
2 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
2 Blighted Cataract
2 Mage Ring Network
2 Evolving Wilds
5 Island
5 Swamp
Can be tweaked, without a doubt. I am still messing with things.
Makes sense.
I really really want confirm suspicions to be good, but paying five to counter and then more to draw the cards is too slow most of the time. Your deck looks like it wants to tap out on five and six fairly often too.
Good luck at States!
I rarely ever tap out for a walker on turn 4, or turn 6. They are usually dropped when the board is clear - whenever that may be. Or when I have enough mana to protect them in the same turn. Just because I have 5 drops that are played at sorcery speed, does not mean I have to tap out for them. They are a win condition by themselves, Control never just tosses win cons out there like that, regardless of the deck.
EDIT: I ask because I'm thinking of taking this deck, with a slight alteration, to FNM this week and am pulling together what I have and determining what I need to pick up
2 Negate
1 Dispel
3 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Duress
1 Transgress the Mind
3 Flaying Tendrils
1 Ultimate Price
2 Mizzium Meddler
Likely to change a bit. Duresses will likely be Negate + Dispel and the Price/Meddlers may end up being To the Slaughter/Grasp of Darkness or even just all 3 Meddlers.
Infinite Obliteration in the main seems super sketch. I understand that you will always have a target, but having this against something like WW is going to be rough. For 3 mana and 2 slots, you could do a heck of a lot of things.
Is there a reason you are not running Silumgar's Scorn? That card (and FTI) is probably the reason to be running any more than 2 Dragonlord Silumgar. It lets you play your win conditions fairly aggressively and it can just buy you that critical turn 2 and 3 a lot of the times. If I am being completely honest - having 2 Scatter to the Wind can sometimes suck. 4 Void Shatter is going to come back to haunt you, I am almost certain of it.
I cut Alhammaret and just stuck with my 4 DLS. Card was sometimes super awkward with only 26 mana, even thought it was clutch some of the time. DLS has never really let me down.
Look man, we had issues with this and the Judge rewards program and it negatively impacted Judges who were responsible and grown up enough to hold themselves accountable.
This is nothing but round 2 of a few people not able to keep their ***** together and be accountable adults.
You clearly have never done any sort of work on a volunteer basis to any scale that is remotely close to a GP.
You can lead a fool to wisdom, but your can't make them think and that is the moral of this story - and it is sad as ****.
There is a difference between sexual assault and being taken advantage of for doing something that was completely voluntary. The control of the situation, in this instance, is entirely in the hands of the individual volunteering their time to the organization taking advantage of them. In an assault situation, that is very much not the case.
I am sorry, but you are wrong and a great example of why everyone in this country is so eager to use a lawsuit as a means of not holding themselves accountable for making poor choices in life.
This lawsuit would not exist if it happened to a person 1 or 2 times. Acting like an adult means walking away from situations where you are being taken advantage of, not hanging onto it like a failing high school relationship, and holding yourself accountable when you are putting yourself in a position to continually be taken advantage of.
Then start being critical of the mana base... Just seems odd is all. I left the mana out of my post for a reason - because it is wonky in a deck that has a ridiculous amount of possible varieties when it comes to the mana base. That all being said, here is a bit about the mana base if you really want to know.
Haven of the Spirit Dragon is what gets me through Blighted Fen and other removal, it gives you the option to pitch extra dragons in your hand if you need to discard, and it can let you leave certain variations of U and B up when casting Dragonlord Silumgar.
Mage-Ring Network was a residual piece of the Eldrazi titan package I was testing. The problem was not having to activate the lands to get to casting range - it was the Eldrazi themselves. Ultimately, the land gave me a lot of late game playability, especially in control mirrors or against WB Eldrazi / Control when you wanting to use 3 counters to cast a walker and leaving excessive mana up for cheap counters and removal or a well placed Silumgar's Command. The lands give you a lot of playability in the late game in any match that is slow, and you hardly ever sacrifice your mana in the early game if you are sequencing your land drops correctly. The card has been worth the 2 slots, is it absolutely necessary? Probably not. Better than a wide array of other lands I can think of at the moment however.
Evolving Wilds. If you have ever opened game 1 of a match and stared at Island, Swamp, Silumgar's Scorn, and Grasp of Darkness - you would not really need to know why you should appreciate Evolving Wilds in a 2 color deck. It lets you get in a mana drop while figuring out what you are up against to help you make the most of your early turns. It is also good for giving me references on deck content if I ever want to take a mental snapshot during a complex game state.
Blighted Cataract, because I do not want to be using Blighted Fen in a format where boards are going wide and I have more than enough ways to deal with whatever Blighted Fen would deal with anyways.
Ton of wasted time and effort. That is high school *****.
Not sure where you seem to think I disagree that volunteers should be treated fairly.
I do expect judges t be adults, and act like it. These Judges are not, they are being petty. It is a sad day when MTG judges cannot hold themselves accountable for making bad choices.
Look, I do volunteer work and last Thanksgiving I did not get a lunch break in my 7 hour shift of helping at a kitchen. I am required to wear a shirt that bears the name of the organization that I volunteer with. At the end of the day, I am volunteering my time doing something that I love and something I think is worth my time and if I do not get a lunch and it bothers me that much - I stop making plans to volunteer at large events like that.
Plain and simple.
In fact, it is not even just holidays I do not get lunch. There have been a number of local animal rescue events I have volunteered for and have not had time to get a lunch in.
Judges are volunteers, nobody is putting a gun to their head or holding the rent bill over them. They are volunteering their time and went into it knowing that they are doing so. You kind of throw your other priorities out of the way when you do something like that.
It should only take 1 event for you to gain the expectation that that will not happen - thus you simply cut your losses.
Grow up.
4 Choked Estuary
4 Sunken Hollow
2 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
2 Blighted Cataract
2 Mage Ring Network
2 Evolving Wilds
5 Island
5 Swamp
Can be tweaked, without a doubt. I am still messing with things.
I rarely ever tap out for a walker on turn 4, or turn 6. They are usually dropped when the board is clear - whenever that may be. Or when I have enough mana to protect them in the same turn. Just because I have 5 drops that are played at sorcery speed, does not mean I have to tap out for them. They are a win condition by themselves, Control never just tosses win cons out there like that, regardless of the deck.
2 Negate
1 Dispel
3 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Duress
1 Transgress the Mind
3 Flaying Tendrils
1 Ultimate Price
2 Mizzium Meddler
Likely to change a bit. Duresses will likely be Negate + Dispel and the Price/Meddlers may end up being To the Slaughter/Grasp of Darkness or even just all 3 Meddlers.