I played in my first modern event. A local modern night with 16 or so people. My list was pretty standard (though 3x Mogg Fanatic and 1x Devastating Summons as I don't have any Goblin Guides yet). I went 2-2, which I thought was pretty good.
Match 1 vs Burn (2-1): Won a game with the usual curve out of goblins. Lost a game to a slightly slower hand and the end of turn boros charm, untap lava spike, bolt for 10. Third game I actually had my dragon claw come out and it made a huge difference. I lucked out Devastating Summons came up twice during the match. It was like "we're both at around 8-10 life, so kill me before I can swing with the two 4/4s." I think it might belong in the side board rather than the main as it would have been terrible to draw against Jund or Twin. It probably shouldn't be in the 75 at all, but it is fun and stole a game and match for me.
Match 2 vs Tron (1-2): First game was natural tron into Wurmcoil Engine. I only had one land destruction spell in my side board. I didn't think to bring in my Smash to Smithereens because I didn't see any artifacts. 2nd game I won only because I started with the Molten Rain and three mountains. I just forgot to go put in my Smash to Smithereens for the third. Then I missed a Mogg Fanatic trigger when he cast pyroclasm. I got him down to one and then looked in my graveyard and saw the little goblin. Wurmcoil followed by Karn.
Match 3 vs Jund (2-0): He mulled to 5 and then second game got flooded. Goblins can really take advantage of stumbles.
Match 4 vs Twin (0-2): Got him down to 4 before Twin combo happened. Sided in 3 Rending Volley and 2 Dismember. Never saw any. Got him down to 6 before he comboed off.
The store only had one last Molten Rain. I hope 2 is enough in the side. Not enough sideboard slots
I think most goblin hate will be more of a matter of goblins being innocent bystanders while hate is directed towards other more common decks. I'm new to modern, but I'm not new to showing up to events with uncommon/rogue decks and having people have to figure out how to make a sideboard work against my decks. Sometimes the meta is with me and pulls people's sideboards away from directly answering my deck and other times it's really, really bad. It's part of the gamble of playing a fringe deck in any format.
We really only have two angles of attack with goblins. There will be some games where you go wide and pump and the person sideboards in all their anti-tokens stuff and other games where you finish someone off with a grenade and a bolt and they bring in their anti-burn stuff. I'm starting to think that I need to spend more of my sideboard slot on being able to play against the perceived type. To be more transformational than being about answers.
It took me a while to read this thread. Great stuff though!
If you have a local store that does a lot of drafting, you can probably get such sets there. Competitive draft players tend to leave behind all their commons and most of their uncommons and the stores can just take them, build the 4x sets and sell them.
I'm going to try your Bull Whip deck. It's very close to what I've been running, so maybe I'm wasting my time with 24 lands and should just try 22.
It's funny how people don't get how dangerous Kragma Warcallers can be. Especially when there's a whip on the table already and a couple other minotaurs. They'll get hit by it, kill it and then it gets whipped back and it's like 6 extra lifelink damage for no card spent.
Mardu ruins my day all the time as well. I'm not sure what to do. I've sided in goblin and warrior token hate and that's alright, but it's just the endless removal against the minotaurs that keeps me on the back foot every single game. Games where I get the whip down are usually me just slowly falling behind as I take more damage than I get back every turn until I finally lose.
So I'm loving 4x whip of erebos & twin flame in this deck. It's a thing of beauty to whip back a kragma warcaller and then twin flame it in the same turn late in the game. I run 24 lands and find games go a bit longer than some of the minotaur aggro builds.
I've been play minotaurs the last couple of days. I ended up going with a list very similar to Xanthic-Golem's but with 4 whips main deck. I'm finding turning on life link on turn 4 to be pretty amazing against Mardu. And whipping back things like the Warcaller is pretty cool. I've also been hitting tons of Jeskai combo decks, so my side board has loads of discard and hand disruption.
It's not as good as the UW Heroic I've been playing since PTKTK, but it's really, really fun.
I ended up getting a Rakdos minotaurs whip deck. It was 13 tix on tapped out, but I got it from the MTGO Bazaar bots for 5 tix. So now I have two appropriate decks for budget standard.
I'm in for this. I've been playing budget UW Heroic (basically no fetches or temples) for the last month or so and am enjoying it. I'm starting to get the brewer's itch (no, not a yeast infection ) and the 25 ticket limit sounds perfect.
My MTGO userid: nathaniw
As for 6-9pm on Wednesday, what time zone? I'm central time. Also, is there a place we need to check in or something or do I just add people to my buddy list on MTGO and send challenges?
I thought Boil and spells like it were pretty ridiculous in that they essentially tell the opponent not to play the game, but to sit it out. I dislike lockout strategies in general, but colour specific mass land destruction in just too much.
I play quite a bit of commander and there's always this back and forth where you're trying to figure out what is good to play, but doesn't piss people off. I've become suspect of the game design of a lot of older cards and my group tends to prefer cards made from original Ravnica block to today. I consider the colour specific mass land destruction a vote of no confidence in the set and it makes me wary, so I was wondering if there was an easy cut off point where I could worry about not accidentally introducing something so lopsided into a game.
So there are cards out there that destroy a lot of land. Or destroy land cheaply. Whether it is Boil or Armageddon. Around 8th edition the converted mana cost for single land destruction goes up by 1 to 3. Since then it's gone higher. There's a 10th edition land destruction card that 3 CMC. I don't think anything like Boil has been printed in a long time though.
Anyone know the exact release when they decided "no more of this" and stopped with the land destruction as anything other than an expensive corner case? In RtR block, for example, all the single land destruction is 5 CMC and is a far cry from the 4 CMC "Destroy all islands" type cards of the past.
I guess one of the problems with forums on the internet is that people who are casual about things often aren't interested in posting regularly
A new store just opened up and they are doing casual oriented days, so I'll probably go check that out. I also recently got into some non-casual magic, so I'm going to be spending some Fridays and Saturdays at standard events.
The key to this deck in the current standard meta is to concentrate on those abilities that prevent creatures from blocking. I've definitely seen this deck played and Polukranos just stood there unable to block. And when things finally do stabilize against the red player, it should be all about the stoke the flames or harness by force/act of treason getting the last bit in.
People often think that you need to maximize early damage as much as possible with Boss Sligh, but if you have Hammerhand and they have no blocker, just hit them, watch them put down their rhino and then get in again using the Hammerhand you held. I've also noticed that people will always prefer the Monastery Swiftspear in a given turn over the Frenzied Goblin, when the better play is often setting up the shutting down of blocking and playing the swiftspear next turn.
Match 1 vs Burn (2-1): Won a game with the usual curve out of goblins. Lost a game to a slightly slower hand and the end of turn boros charm, untap lava spike, bolt for 10. Third game I actually had my dragon claw come out and it made a huge difference. I lucked out Devastating Summons came up twice during the match. It was like "we're both at around 8-10 life, so kill me before I can swing with the two 4/4s." I think it might belong in the side board rather than the main as it would have been terrible to draw against Jund or Twin. It probably shouldn't be in the 75 at all, but it is fun and stole a game and match for me.
Match 2 vs Tron (1-2): First game was natural tron into Wurmcoil Engine. I only had one land destruction spell in my side board. I didn't think to bring in my Smash to Smithereens because I didn't see any artifacts. 2nd game I won only because I started with the Molten Rain and three mountains. I just forgot to go put in my Smash to Smithereens for the third. Then I missed a Mogg Fanatic trigger when he cast pyroclasm. I got him down to one and then looked in my graveyard and saw the little goblin. Wurmcoil followed by Karn.
Match 3 vs Jund (2-0): He mulled to 5 and then second game got flooded. Goblins can really take advantage of stumbles.
Match 4 vs Twin (0-2): Got him down to 4 before Twin combo happened. Sided in 3 Rending Volley and 2 Dismember. Never saw any. Got him down to 6 before he comboed off.
The store only had one last Molten Rain. I hope 2 is enough in the side. Not enough sideboard slots
We really only have two angles of attack with goblins. There will be some games where you go wide and pump and the person sideboards in all their anti-tokens stuff and other games where you finish someone off with a grenade and a bolt and they bring in their anti-burn stuff. I'm starting to think that I need to spend more of my sideboard slot on being able to play against the perceived type. To be more transformational than being about answers.
It took me a while to read this thread. Great stuff though!
It's funny how people don't get how dangerous Kragma Warcallers can be. Especially when there's a whip on the table already and a couple other minotaurs. They'll get hit by it, kill it and then it gets whipped back and it's like 6 extra lifelink damage for no card spent.
Mardu ruins my day all the time as well. I'm not sure what to do. I've sided in goblin and warrior token hate and that's alright, but it's just the endless removal against the minotaurs that keeps me on the back foot every single game. Games where I get the whip down are usually me just slowly falling behind as I take more damage than I get back every turn until I finally lose.
It's not as good as the UW Heroic I've been playing since PTKTK, but it's really, really fun.
I got some games in with my Minotaurs against some random people, but nothing related to this.
My MTGO userid: nathaniw
As for 6-9pm on Wednesday, what time zone? I'm central time. Also, is there a place we need to check in or something or do I just add people to my buddy list on MTGO and send challenges?
I play quite a bit of commander and there's always this back and forth where you're trying to figure out what is good to play, but doesn't piss people off. I've become suspect of the game design of a lot of older cards and my group tends to prefer cards made from original Ravnica block to today. I consider the colour specific mass land destruction a vote of no confidence in the set and it makes me wary, so I was wondering if there was an easy cut off point where I could worry about not accidentally introducing something so lopsided into a game.
Anyone know the exact release when they decided "no more of this" and stopped with the land destruction as anything other than an expensive corner case? In RtR block, for example, all the single land destruction is 5 CMC and is a far cry from the 4 CMC "Destroy all islands" type cards of the past.
So when did the shift happen?
A new store just opened up and they are doing casual oriented days, so I'll probably go check that out. I also recently got into some non-casual magic, so I'm going to be spending some Fridays and Saturdays at standard events.
People often think that you need to maximize early damage as much as possible with Boss Sligh, but if you have Hammerhand and they have no blocker, just hit them, watch them put down their rhino and then get in again using the Hammerhand you held. I've also noticed that people will always prefer the Monastery Swiftspear in a given turn over the Frenzied Goblin, when the better play is often setting up the shutting down of blocking and playing the swiftspear next turn.
So M15 and Theros block will be in standard until the fall set of 2015 gets released. It will most like be September 25, 2015.