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- Kathal
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Member for 10 years, 3 months, and 2 days
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Feb 14, 20155
Celestial_Crusader posted a message on [[Official]] Modern Metagame Discussion Thread (Updated 6/12/2016)Repost from the Pro Tour thread.Posted in: Modern Archives
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Jan 26, 20156
DTG posted a message on Tasigur, the Golden FangI feel like in fair match-ups he will really shine; maybe even more-so than Goyf. Being able to dodge Decay, Inquisition, block opposing Goyfs/Rhonos (and Tasigurs) and grind value in the GBx mirror just seems very good to me. Needless to say, I think this card is bananas.Posted in: Modern
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Jan 21, 2015
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3geek14 posted a message on Modern Four HorsemenI'll explain in more detail why these lists (and the original Four Horsemen list) doesn't work in tournaments.Posted in: Deck Creation (Modern)
First of all, the deck isn't illegal to play. However, the combo relies on you doing something which constitutes the Tournament Error of Slow Play. Unlike Game Play Errors, Tournament Errors get upgraded penalties the second time in a day you commit them rather than the third time. That means that, if you play this deck at a competitive REL tournament, you will get a Warning the first time you execute the combo, and a Game Loss the second time you execute the combo. At regular REL tournaments, the IPG doesn't apply, and you could likely get away with playing Four Horsemen. My local game store has a legacy tournament once a month (or maybe more?) at regular REL (such as FNM), so now I want to play this deck there. I would advice checking with your local judge before trying this, as I bet that the answer varies greatly by judge. The general philosophy of regular REL is good customer service, so judges are often encouraged to deviate from policy if they believe it will provide a better experience for the players.
Second, I want to warn people about the possibility of a disqualification for playing Four Horsemen. In the MIPG, a Tournament Error is defined as
Quote from MIPG »Tournament errors are violations of the Magic Tournament Rules. If the judge believes that the error was intentional, he or she should consider Unsporting Conduct - Cheating.
If you play this deck and execute the combo, a judge should explain to you why this is a Tournament Error (as I'll do below). If you execute the combo a second time, it is completely safe to assume that you are intentionally committing Slow Play, and the judge should then consider the possibility of Cheating. At that point, it is up to them to decide if they think this counts as cheating. I do not believe that it is cheating, but I also disagree with policy as I believe the deck should be allowed.
Now for why this is Slow Play. According to the MIPG, Slow Play is defined as
Quote from MIPG »A player takes longer than is reasonably required to complete game actions. If a judge believes a player is intentionally playing slowly to take advantage of a time limit, the infraction is Unsporting Conduct - Stalling.
It is also slow play if a player continues to execute a loop without being able to provide an exact number of iterations and the expected resulting game state.
In the Four Horsemen deck (and in these variants which are legal in Modern), the combo works by milling yourself infinitely, occasionally shuffling your graveyard into your library when Emrakul (or in this case Gaea's Blessing) is milled. While milling yourself, you'll occasionally get a Narcomoeba onto the battlefield, which will let you untap Blasting Station and then activate it to put Narcomoeba back into your graveyard (and later library) and to deal one damage to your opponent.
The expected resulting game state you want is your opponent with zero life. However, it is possible (however unlikely) that, once you start the loop, the top card of your library will be Emrakul, you'll shuffle, the top card is again Emrakul, and this will continue forever. The fact that shuffling is supposed to randomize the cards in your library means that this is possible. That means that it is impossible to provide an exact number of iteration required to get your opponent to zero life. It is possible to compute an expected number of iterations it will take to get your opponent to zero life, but that is different from an exact number.† If you had a way to change the combo to be able to guarantee finishing within a certain number of iterations, this deck would work.
I will now suggest ways to make the deck "legal", regardless of format (legacy or modern).
If you have a way to sort your deck, you're good. Each time you shuffle, just sort your deck so that Emrakul is at the bottom, and mill everything. You know that, with N cards in your library, you'll mill N times, get 3 Narcomoebas, sacrifice them to deal 3 damage, and then the last mill of those N will shuffle your library. Then you can repeat, starting with sorting Emrakul to the bottom. Every N times you mill 1, you deal 3 damage. You know those numbers, so you can say how many iterations of the loop it will take.
The easiest way to sort your deck is by scrying. If you can generate a loop that lets you scry 1, that lets you scry each card in your deck to the bottom to learn the order, and to then keep going until you scry a certain card to the bottom. This takes N scrys to learn the order of your library, and then some specific number of scrys to get Emrakul on the bottom. In essence, you can take a shortcut by looking through your library and cutting wherever you want. Mystic Speculation lets you spend 3 mana to scry 3 on your turn (if it's in your hand). Scrying 3 can work the same as scrying 1, if you put what was the top on the bottom and the other two on top in the same order (or you can speed up the process, but whatever). Stormcaller of Keranos also lets you scry 1 at the cost of mana. If you're using the Grand Architect build, you mill yourself 1,000,000 times to get 1,000,000 mana. Then you spend some to cut Emrakul to the bottom. Then you mill to get Blasting Station into play. Then you mill to shuffle Emrakul back in. Then you spend some mana to cut Emrakul to the bottom, then you mill to deal 3 damage, and you repeat this and the previous step. This deck is weaker (because it requires more pieces in order to combo), but no longer causes Slow Play.
† Another example of a similar thing is how long it takes sorting algorithms to finish. A commonly-used algorithm is called quicksort. It is used because it's expected runtime is about c*n*log(n), where c is a constant (which depends on processor speed, among other things) and n is the number of things to sort. However, it's worst case runtime is c*n^2, which is considered too slow for large lists. Another algorithm is mergesort, which has a worst case and an expected runtime of c*n*log(n). People often use quicksort instead, because it's expected runtime has a smaller constant, so the algorithm is expected to take a bit less time, even though it is possible for it to take much more time. The Four Horsemen deck is more similar to something called bogosort, which is a silly algorithm. It can be described as shuffling the list of things until the list is in order. The expected runtime is c*n!, where n!=n*(n-1)*(n-2)*...*3*2*1. However, its worst case runtime is infinite, because you can't guarantee that it will finish within any specific amount of time. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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However, thanks for the update!
Greetings,
Kathal
2
Looks like, that you never played with Shattering Spree
The Replicate cannot be countered by Chalice, since those are copies are do not get cast. That is also a reason, why Chalice is useless vs a Storm spell (cause you cannot counter the Storm copies with it).
Greetings,
Kathal
1
Interacting != fun to watch.
Yes, I like those grindy games too, I like seeing Control grinding through thread after thread and than land the game winning spell. I also like to see Nacatl into Goyf into Smiter draws. However, the amount of mirrors we had last year (I think, we had 8 Mirrors on coverage) is way beyond of what we have now. Yes, the matches are fast and kinda boring (cause it is basically gold fishing) but at least we have some VARIETY between the games (and yes, I know that it is overall only 7 decks on average, but it is still better than the 5 from last year (Junk, Little Kid Junk, Infect, Affinity and Twin)).
Greetings,
Kathal
3
IMO the last year PT was even more boring, cause Mirror all the day... . At least we have some form of innovation in this PT, so it is something.
Greetings,
Kathal
1
But otherwise, see above for inspiration (Remand, Logic Knot, Cryptic, Spell Snare/Pierce and co are always among the top contenders).
Greetings,
Kathal
1
Just ban Snapcaster than
Greetings,
Kathal
2
a) Twin ban is crap, since wizard just opened the Box of Pandora with no "real" positive net
b) Control gets even worse (due to the uptick in high aggro strats (Affinity, Burn, Infect, CoCo Zoo,...) AND big mana decks (Tron, Eldrazie)).
c) BGx will suffer under this (cause uptick in big mana decks)
This will result into:
1) either screwing up modern and more bans will follow (since a policing deck is gone)
2) or, a new police deck emerges, which can keep both aggro, big mana decks AND combo in check (or at least, has good match-ups vs them).
For the sake of Modern, I hope, case 2 will happen.
Edit says: though, now they can safely unban Ancestrial Vision.
Greetings,
Kathal
1
Greetings,
Kathal
1
This is getting tiresome
The Kiki Chord match-up is one of the best the deck has (along Tron and co) and in the Semifinals he would have been able to TTB Worlspine Wurm next turn, which would have been lethal either way (opponent had no out vs it).
Edit says: However, there is no reason at all on why Griselbanned should be Tier 2 now. Its metagame share is just to low for this.
Greetings,
Kathal
1
Classic Dredge (something like Legacy Dredge) still won't be playable, since you are missing the good recursion creatures (Gravecrawler and Bloodghast are just not that great vs Goyf and co) AND the great enablers (Breakthrough, LED and co). Only Dredgevine would gain a little boost, but than again, that deck is only Tier 3 at best atm.
Greetings,
Kathal