My guess (made without any directly applicable experience, so take with salt) is that 16.04 repos have wxWidgets version 3.0 or higher, while 14.04 had 2.8. maybe there's a way to tell apt you want the old version?
So I went back and spent a few days over the holidays trying to get MSE working on Mac/Linux (again).
Linux was easy to get working: a little build-system cleanup, some small fixes for now-illegal implicit conversions to booleans, and everything seems to work nicely.
Then I tried OS X. Clang spits out a few hundred more compile errors than gcc did, but those are fixable; it was only after that that I found out how bad wxWidgets' support for OS X really is -- I mean, most basic blitting modes aren't even supported! Duct-taping over those (who needs nice-looking symbols anyways?) lets it run and not crash immediately, but even then it's a mess: region sizes are way off, scrolling card notes generates exceptions, trying to load a set crashes the program...
[edit] After further investigation, I'm dumb and most of the errors are related to the version of wxWidgets: MSE (and my linux box) both use 2.8, while the Mac versions I have found/built are 3.0. And it's apparently near-impossible to build 2.8 on recent version of OS X. So that's no help (but is good to know).
In short, between the MSE code being pretty janky and wxWidgets being terrible on Mac OS, you are probably not ever going to get a build of MSE for Mac.
In that meta and for 20$... try out Breakfast at Urza's . You know, it's a very very fun deck.
Otherwise, if you have the staples for it, I think hatebears (Death&Taxes) is a pretty solid option as well.
Sorry, I think I may not have been clear -- I meant that my spending limit was $20 for a single card, not the whole deck (that's awfully limiting!). I won't be buying Goyfs at the moment.
I have many of the cards for Hatebears: missing Mindcensors, Vials, and Hierarchs, the latter two of which don't show up in every list. Probably the bigger one is Horizon Canopy. It's an interesting deck, though the near-complete lack of disruption worries me (Path, and... nothing?). Thanks for the input!
I have a guess as to what will be recommended, but might as well ask...
Favorite Playstyle (Aggro, Midrange, Control, Combo): Midrange, Control, Combo
How Competitive (For Fun, Local Tournament, MTGO, PTQ/GP): Local tournament
Favorite Cards/Colors: In order, B G W U R.
Budget: eh. I'd prefer not to spend over $20 for a card if possible.
Staples Owned: numerous. Important cards I don't have: Goyf, Cryptic, Hierarch, or any UR lands.
In general, I love long, grindy games with lots of interactions - I've been playing a lot of 4c Gifts and Assault Loam (along with some terrible-but-hilarious jank, like BUG Zur's Weirding and Esper Shared Fate, but that doesn't really count).
My local meta is currently very heavy on UR Delver (because it's the hot new thing), Burn (because it's cheap and good), and UWR Control (because when you foil out your UWR Control you're pretty heavily committed to it). Since basically all my favorite nonsense is quite weak against Burn and Delver, it's been less and less fun playing lately, to the point that I'm willing to give up and play a real deck for once.
So, what sort of decks would you recommend playing in that sort of meta?
Also how does Bridge From Below and Smallpox work? If I used Smallpox as a discard outlet for Bridge would Bridge trigger off of the other effects that result because of Smallpox?
If you discard Bridge to Smallpox, it's in the graveyard by the time you sacrifice a creature, so it'll see that creature die and make a token. If your opponent sacs a creature, it'll see that too and exile itself.
General comment: I think you're going too deep in search of devotion cards. Not everything you play has to be 100% black mana symbols -- doing so actually can make things incredibly awkward, when you get stuck with a bunch of BBB cards, two Swamps, and a Nykthos. You also end up playing some seriously sub-par cards (looking at you, Restless Apparition). If it doesn't recur or do anything besides sit there and attack sometimes, don't play it! Yes, mono-green devotion runs Wistful Selkie, but in addition to its devotion it gives an effect they badly need (card draw).
In particular, I'd recommend Phyrexian Arena. Double-black is good and always castable, it survives Death Cloud, and it helps you rebuild really quickly post-Cloud.
I've been playing this deck (specifically, 4-color Pyromancer) for a couple of weeks now and I'm loving it. It's really interactive, can make some insane plays, and feels like it has answers to most things.
The problem I've been having is, oddly, UWR. I know that this should be a good matchup -- Loam + Raven's Crime + Ghost Quarter is, to say the least, problematic for them -- but it seems like every time I play against UWR, they topdeck something I can't deal with (Ajani Vengeant and Keranos, God of Storms have been my particular boogeymen).
Like I said, I'm new to the deck, so it's totally possible I'm playing things wrong. Is aggressively attacking their hand, then lands, the right tack? Am I just getting unlucky, that they seem to get that trump card every game*? Or is this a problem others have had as well?
* I do mean every game. I've had maybe a dozen games against UWR control, and won exactly one of them. It has become frustrating.
So I've been trying to get MSE to build from source on my box. Since that means I'm building on Mac OS with clang (rather than GCC/VS) this has been a bit exciting... but I just managed to get it linking. Whee!
Unfortunately it doesn't actually work just yet, due to some issues with finding and/or opening and/or parsing the config and locale files. The least-error-ful outcome I've managed is some sort of infinite loop where it gets directory information for en.mse-locale/, eventually either running out of memory or file descriptors; I'm not sure what's going on there. Grrr.
I have been trying to make a fairly stagnant Modern format more interesting by playing decks built around weird, obscure cards, so of course I was bound to hit Zur's Weirding eventually. Glad to see there is already a thread for this!
Courser has been awesome to me -- he blocks like a champ, gains life, and can get me card advantage even through a Weirding -- I've won a game or two because he got me a Creeping Tar Pit off the top after I dropped Weirding. Scooze is another obviously-good card that get big, win the game, and incidentally gain us precious life ("pay 2 life to make you discard that creature, eat it with Scooze and gain 1 life" feels good).
It feels a little weird to play blue without Mana Leak, but there's just not enough room for it. Cutting this list down to 60 cards was really, really hard.
My guess (made without any directly applicable experience, so take with salt) is that 16.04 repos have wxWidgets version 3.0 or higher, while 14.04 had 2.8. maybe there's a way to tell apt you want the old version?
Linux was easy to get working: a little build-system cleanup, some small fixes for now-illegal implicit conversions to booleans, and everything seems to work nicely.
Then I tried OS X. Clang spits out a few hundred more compile errors than gcc did, but those are fixable; it was only after that that I found out how bad wxWidgets' support for OS X really is -- I mean, most basic blitting modes aren't even supported! Duct-taping over those (who needs nice-looking symbols anyways?) lets it run and not crash immediately, but even then it's a mess: region sizes are way off, scrolling card notes generates exceptions, trying to load a set crashes the program...
[edit] After further investigation, I'm dumb and most of the errors are related to the version of wxWidgets: MSE (and my linux box) both use 2.8, while the Mac versions I have found/built are 3.0. And it's apparently near-impossible to build 2.8 on recent version of OS X. So that's no help (but is good to know).
In short, between the MSE code being pretty janky and wxWidgets being terrible on Mac OS, you are probably not ever going to get a build of MSE for Mac.
Your options for Mac support are:
Veteran Armorer?
Sorry, I think I may not have been clear -- I meant that my spending limit was $20 for a single card, not the whole deck (that's awfully limiting!). I won't be buying Goyfs at the moment.
I have many of the cards for Hatebears: missing Mindcensors, Vials, and Hierarchs, the latter two of which don't show up in every list. Probably the bigger one is Horizon Canopy. It's an interesting deck, though the near-complete lack of disruption worries me (Path, and... nothing?). Thanks for the input!
Favorite Playstyle (Aggro, Midrange, Control, Combo): Midrange, Control, Combo
How Competitive (For Fun, Local Tournament, MTGO, PTQ/GP): Local tournament
Favorite Cards/Colors: In order, B G W U R.
Budget: eh. I'd prefer not to spend over $20 for a card if possible.
Staples Owned: numerous. Important cards I don't have: Goyf, Cryptic, Hierarch, or any UR lands.
In general, I love long, grindy games with lots of interactions - I've been playing a lot of 4c Gifts and Assault Loam (along with some terrible-but-hilarious jank, like BUG Zur's Weirding and Esper Shared Fate, but that doesn't really count).
My local meta is currently very heavy on UR Delver (because it's the hot new thing), Burn (because it's cheap and good), and UWR Control (because when you foil out your UWR Control you're pretty heavily committed to it). Since basically all my favorite nonsense is quite weak against Burn and Delver, it's been less and less fun playing lately, to the point that I'm willing to give up and play a real deck for once.
So, what sort of decks would you recommend playing in that sort of meta?
Thanks!
If you discard Bridge to Smallpox, it's in the graveyard by the time you sacrifice a creature, so it'll see that creature die and make a token. If your opponent sacs a creature, it'll see that too and exile itself.
General comment: I think you're going too deep in search of devotion cards. Not everything you play has to be 100% black mana symbols -- doing so actually can make things incredibly awkward, when you get stuck with a bunch of BBB cards, two Swamps, and a Nykthos. You also end up playing some seriously sub-par cards (looking at you, Restless Apparition). If it doesn't recur or do anything besides sit there and attack sometimes, don't play it! Yes, mono-green devotion runs Wistful Selkie, but in addition to its devotion it gives an effect they badly need (card draw).
In particular, I'd recommend Phyrexian Arena. Double-black is good and always castable, it survives Death Cloud, and it helps you rebuild really quickly post-Cloud.
I've been playing this deck (specifically, 4-color Pyromancer) for a couple of weeks now and I'm loving it. It's really interactive, can make some insane plays, and feels like it has answers to most things.
The problem I've been having is, oddly, UWR. I know that this should be a good matchup -- Loam + Raven's Crime + Ghost Quarter is, to say the least, problematic for them -- but it seems like every time I play against UWR, they topdeck something I can't deal with (Ajani Vengeant and Keranos, God of Storms have been my particular boogeymen).
Like I said, I'm new to the deck, so it's totally possible I'm playing things wrong. Is aggressively attacking their hand, then lands, the right tack? Am I just getting unlucky, that they seem to get that trump card every game*? Or is this a problem others have had as well?
* I do mean every game. I've had maybe a dozen games against UWR control, and won exactly one of them. It has become frustrating.
Unfortunately it doesn't actually work just yet, due to some issues with finding and/or opening and/or parsing the config and locale files. The least-error-ful outcome I've managed is some sort of infinite loop where it gets directory information for en.mse-locale/, eventually either running out of memory or file descriptors; I'm not sure what's going on there. Grrr.
But hey! It built! That's good, right?
My thoughts on recurring sources of lifegain:
I ended up going with Golgari Brownscale and Syphon Life in a BUG shell; that's the style of deck I'm most comfortable with, plus it gives me an excuse to play my two favorite cards (Life from the Loam and Gifts Ungiven).
3 Zur's Weirding
1 Syphon Life
1 Golgari Brownscale
Hand disruption
4 Liliana of the Veil
3 Thoughtseize
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
Board control
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Dismember
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Slaughter Pact
2 Gifts Ungiven
2 Forbidden Alchemy
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Life from the Loam
1 Raven's Crime
Creatures
3 Scavenging Ooze
2 Courser of Kruphix
Lands
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Overgrown Tomb
2 Breeding Pool
1 Watery Grave
3 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Treetop Village
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Dakmor Salvage
2 Swamp
2 Forest
1 Island
Courser has been awesome to me -- he blocks like a champ, gains life, and can get me card advantage even through a Weirding -- I've won a game or two because he got me a Creeping Tar Pit off the top after I dropped Weirding. Scooze is another obviously-good card that get big, win the game, and incidentally gain us precious life ("pay 2 life to make you discard that creature, eat it with Scooze and gain 1 life" feels good).
It feels a little weird to play blue without Mana Leak, but there's just not enough room for it. Cutting this list down to 60 cards was really, really hard.