Quote from megatog201 »Yeah. Sorry man. I don't know your knowledge of the game but shocks are far better than pain lands.
I'm not a pro player by any means... but Chris Vanmeter had this to say in an article after the first week of M15 standard.
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28984_Rats.html
I had initially planned on just swapping the Overgrown Tombs for Llanowar Wastes and callimg it a day, but after playing the deck a bunch (albeit it without any M15 cards) online over the last two weeks while streaming , I realized that was wrong.
I thought that with how often we want to use all of our mana every turn, Llanowar Wastes would do less damage to us in the long run than Overgrown Tomb. Incorrect. Between Scavenging Ooze using a lot of green mana, and our sideboard having a lot of black spells, it appeared that the painland would do more to us than the shock land would.
I did swap a Forest for a Llanowar Wastes because I wanted another black source in the deck to help support all of the black removal spells in the sideboard.
Now, ultimately he tested it and found out you would rather have the Overgrown Tombs, but the general point is that there is actually a question in 3 color decks of which lands to play between Shocks and Pain lands. And CVM actually went into testing assuming Llanowar Wastes would be better.
Exhibits B and C are the Jund Monsters decks from the top 8 of the Pro Tour. 4 Llanowar Wastes, only 2 Overgrown Tombs in both of the decks. One of those Jund Monsters decks plays Nissa, so playing a Pain-land over a shockland that is also a Forest is meaningful.
Magic doesn't change the same way you talk about League of Legends changing. What you are talking about with changes every year is more analogous to Standard rotations every year or Modern bannings.
There are no 6 drops, but certainly there are 5 drops.
Actually, I didn't consider comes into play tapped lands. Because if I have 3 lands and 1 comes into play tapped... I could see dropping the t1 dork, t2 rattleclaw face-up with the tap land, and then you still get to 5 mana on turn 3. Technically you are getting just as much mana turn 3 whether you play the tapped land turn 2 (and face up Rattleclaw) or 3 (and face down Rattleclaw). But playing it face-up lessens the blowout potential of a removal spell.
I don't think Willbender saw play. Exalted Angel saw play and somewhat saw play facedown against some matchups. I believe Exalted Angel was in the RW Astral Slide decks and there was some protection against removal with Slide in play playing it face down.
1. Try to get them to play EDH. Commander 2014 is coming out soon. So it's easy enough to start building a deck. EDH is really good about evening the playing field as long as no one is playing a completely busted deck.
2. There are Dual Decks. It's 2 pre-built decks that I think cost like 50 bux combined and while the power level is nothing like affinity, it's certainly going to be better than your friend's 80 card mill deck.
3. I think someone mentioned alternate rule set sorts of things like Planechase/Archenemy.
4. You could make your own house rules designed to even up the game a little bit. You mentioned your friend getting mana screwed, you could play a game where both players have an Abundance in play the whole game. So upkeep, if they really need that 5th land drop, they can keep going till they hit a land.
If we're talking about Rattleclaw Mystic only (I've been calling it Shaman this whole time for some reason), I don't see how you can say it's closer to 1% than 10%. Now, I'll admit that I haven't played in a major tournament since Khans rotated in, but I know how to look up deck-lists and see that Rattleclaw is played either in Temur beatdown decks or straight RG beatdown and in addition to that just use a little logic. In the lists I'm seeing, Rattleclaw Mystic is played a lot with Elvish Mystic. So that means any hand with Rattleclaw + Elvish Mystic... you are going to want to morph because you get to morph turn 2. And I can imagine specific starting hands that would favor morphing on turn 3: like 3 lands, Rattleclaw, Caryatid, Stormbreath, Lightning Strike or something like that.
I agree. But I dispute the logic that either of them might as well not have morph. Certainly you are going to just play them face up the majority of the time, but to act like there won't be significant percentages (say around 10%) of the time where you want to play them face down.
With Rattleclaw you lose the ability to play your 4 drop on turn 3. But maybe you don't have a 4 drop in your hand. Or maybe you are playing against aggro and you played another 2 CMC card on turn 2... on turn 3 your decision is either play Shaman for 2 or morph it for 3. Obviously against aggro in this scenario being able to block a 1/1 token and survive is relevant (while still leaving open the possibility to unflip it turn 4 and drop something for 6. I could see the majority of times you play him as a morph having more to do with the fact you have the 1 mana open anyway, so might as well play him face down.
With Sagu Mauler playing him face down means he's an easy target to shoot down. So I actually don't you want to be morphing him turn 4 so that turn 5 you can flip him up so that he'd be in play a turn earlier. Seems like it's too risky just to walk into a removal spell when you don't have to. That being said, there are some matchups where that's a safe proposition. And there are some matchups where you just need dudes on the table. If it's turn 5, playing Shaman face up and Sagu Mauler face down is a play you might have to make if you are trying to stem the tide against aggro.
This might all be a moot point because Mauler is looking like it's not making the cut in Temur anyways.
I guess it depends on what cards we're talking about. Because there are rares and uncommons (and commons to a lesser extent) that are currently worth under a dollar that I could see jumping up to be worth more in certain situations (EDH, etc). A lot of the time you can kind of tell if a card has potential. But cards that are mostly limited fodder, especially at common... the risk-reward curve doesn't work in your favor with that one. Uncommons and rares are slightly different because they have a tendency to be more flashy cards which generally get some play in EDH.
And especially if the question is whether or not to throw away junk commons from Khans boosters. Anything you open you would have to wait at least 7 years before you see the supply of said card start to dry up. Treasure Cruise is a common, and it's taking over basically every format in the game, to the point where it's getting serious ban talk... and it's a 50 cent card. Delver of Secrets has been a Legacy and Modern all-star for the past few years. Also a common... and it's a 1 dollar card. And those are cards that dominated formats since their printing. Not cards that didn't see Standard play at all.
I throw away junk cards. The best value you are going to get out of a card like Utopia Sprawl is 1-2 dollars, and it's maybe 1 out of thousands of commons that this happens to. Just seems like the 2 dollars you get to save by not having to buy the card isn't worth all the upkeep having to put up with all the potential commons.
Well, Sagu Mauler's morph potentially lets it come into play a turn earlier (you risk it getting hit by removal). Shaman's morph lets it accelerate an extra mana compared to playing it normally (but this would be on turn 4 you get the extra mana normally).
I believe your Ravager numbers. I'm a little confused as to how you came by the Skullclamp numbers. Clearly I didn't look at every T8 list, but I do remember an article that came up after or just before the ban where in the last tournament it was in all the T8 lists. And things like Elf and Nail became viable decks because they basically just piggy-backed on the strength of Skullclamp.
This is just a guess from me, but I would think that at first the Skullclamp numbers were lower back when the format was Goblins, Affinity and control decks. Then when they figured out how degenerate the card could get you started to see it more. It's also worth mentioning to people that weren't around back then that there wasn't a major tournament every week so the metagame didn't change nearly as quickly as it did now.
In any case we both agree that for a card to get banned in standard, it has to be really damaging. It can't just be in a deck that makes up 40% of the format.
I could see it getting banned in Modern because they are much more aggressive about banning cards. In Standard, they only ban cards if it's just a crazy situation. And even then they'll still wait a couple of months to do so. The only times cards have been banned in Standard since we've switched to the Modern card frame are:
Skullclamp: because it got to the point where Skullclamp was in every deck that T8'd a tournament, even though the format was actually somewhat diverse.
Arcbound Ravager/Disciple of the Vault/Artifact lands: Because the Affinity deck once Ravager had been printed turned into a resilient combo that went off very fast. Format was largely skewed toward affinity.
Stoneforge Mystic/Jace the Mind Sculptor: Again, the format was skewed heavily toward a deck that played both of these cards. Like... over 50% of the field. To the point where JTMS was a 100 dollar card. And it really only saw play in the one deck. The only card that has come close to that money value recently was Bonfire of the Damned at 50 dollars, but it was in multiple decks and it rose and fell out of popularity during it's reign in Standard. It's worth noting that in the case of Stoneforge Mystic and Jace, they waited until the two cards were a few months from rotating out anyway, and they waited until they could see a marked decrease in tournament attendence at GPs and other major tournaments.
So basically that's what it will take for Ascendency to get banned. The card probably needs to represent a vast majority of the field (which it's not looking like it currently), and it needs to get to the point where people aren't going to tournaments anymore.
Well, in an actual draft I don't think it's possible that you would see two cards that are that similar in the same pack. Lets pretend that this is a cube draft where both of those cards are in the format. If that is the case, I'm giving the "more powerful" card the edge just because in an unknown environment you always want to have the highest chance of your answer landing. If you pick shock over lightning strike, and there's a ton of x/3s in the format, then you lose some effectiveness there. But that being said it's a vary slim margin.
However, I'd like to point out that this thought-experiment seems to be a little meaningless. Because if I'm choosing between Lightning Strike and Shock, at the end of the day I'm still getting a quality burn spell so it's hard to complain. I feel like maybe there is a better comparison that might illustrate the point you are trying to make than comparing 1 damage vs 1 extra mana.
A lot of the ideas seemed pretty obvious ideas. The one that I'd like to reiterate is the one where he talks about keeping track of life totals. At a tournament, it should probably be pen and paper. At FNM I actually use my cell phone's life counter App. And the important thing is every time the life total changes it's a good habit to get into to verbalize it and make sure your opponent marks it down as well. I can't even count the number of times at an FNM where both of us are keeping track of life and one of us forgets to mark down a change in life total for one of the players and the other has to correct him eventually. If you were playing against a less than honest player at a more serious event and forgot to note the loss of life of your opponent playing Thoughtsieze, he could potentially notice an "gain 2 life" against you by not recording the change either.
A) Because it's two slow. If you are playing a morph turn 3, you are getting completely outclassed by turn 2 Goblin Rabblemasters that will be able to straight up trade for it while generating multiple Goblin tokens. Even if you are looking to block a 1/2 Prowess (Swiftspear) or 2/2 Prowess (Seeker) creature, there really isn't a good way to profitably block those guys and those creatures cost less.
B) Not explosive enough. A turn 3 2/2 is going to be smaller than basically all other turn 3 or turn 4 plays. So there isn't really a good way to attack into these creatures.
Now, there is potentially a way to use morph as a bluffing tool. Rageclaw Shaman and Sagu Mauler who both have morph. On turn 3 or turn 4 morphing one of those guys could force your opponent to make a decision when it comes to removal, since a turn 5 Sagu Mauler unmorphed is tough to deal with. So if your opponent hits it with a burn spell or removal and it turns out to be the Shaman instead of the Mauler, then you win that exchange because you are forcing them to use removal on your mana dork. And also, if you untap with 5 mana, you could actually attack with a 2/2 Rageclaw Shaman morphed and they probably aren't going to block fearing a Mauler flip.