neither of those builds are playing nearly enough changlings to support elvish handservant. if you want to play the handservant go with woodland changling over sinew sliver, or better yet cut the handservant and the sliver for goyfs and maybe imperious perfect.
the thing is, all of these answers set you back far more than the guy who payed 2 mana for his super efficient beatstick/wall. in a slower deck 'goyf plays the same moat like roll that psycatog has traditionally played, even going so far as to replace tog as the premier control finisher in extended.
If it weren't limited to soldiers, it would likely be the most broken 3 drop in magic history...
a 3 mana dude that puts other dudes into play the turn after he comes down is in no way the most broken 3 drop in magic. even if we just talk creatures, i believe Psychatog would like a word with you.
i could not see damnation ever replacing wrath and i really could not see them in the same core set either. damnation doesn't really kill the way black wants it to flavorfully. i could see mutilate, infest, or barter in blood in a core set, but not damnation. all of those cards kill a lot more cruelly than wrath does, and thus fits more into black's flavor.
anyhow, has anyone had any experiences with the rock'n nail build that showed up at the pt? it was in one of the deck tech videos. it used urborg and cabal coffers to ramp up from 6 to 9, while playing a rock style control game up untill then.
i wish people would stop comparing Jace to arena. he's nothing like arena, he gives your opponents cards to answer him and is far more vulnerable than arena in the first place. and most importantly, arena is black. black wants an extra card per turn at the cost of tapping out on turn 3 way more than blue does.
my list would be like this: Lilianna Vess- play with her and you'll understand how good she is. you tend to start out by fetching damnation with her tutor ability if you don't already have one. then suddenly your opponent is forced to do one of two things: play guys into damnation or hold cards in hand and get them discarded by her ability. usually you'll never get her to her -8 ability, but that's fine, you just get the exact card you want every few turns and win the game via card advantage and card quality. Garruk Wildspeaker- yeah, he's less of a planeswalker and more of a very versatile hill giant but i'll take a hill giant that can accelerate me and/or overrun my board and/or make more hill giants. Jace Beleren- even though i still say he's horridly overrated he does actually fill a niche in blue based pickles/stasis.
the other two are pretty abysmal. well, not exactly abysmal, but they just have nowhere to go. no red deck really wants chandra and no white deck really wants ajani.
i've been testing a build of affinity with 4 drums and 4 stars and it's been working out pretty well. it uses the extra fixing from the drums to play a rather color heavy build with dark confidant, shrap and atog, along with the obligatory thoughtcast. the deck wins by turn 4 pretty much every game, alot of times drum upping things to turn 3.
this concept is one i've been experimenting with. the red seems almost utterly inferior to playing black though. black gives you nameless inversion(the best of the changeling spells) along with thoughtsieze for disruption and doran the siege tower as really efficient beats.
Post Affinity ban, for a short period of time, MUC was the only deck that was consistently beating TNN and it was very playable. Mainly due to Vedalken Shackles but Shackles are blue, right?
true, but that was years ago. so my argument still stands. and anyhow, i was just sating that these "this set sucks" threads always go into how counter-control isn't fun to play against, which it's not. but playing against black or white based control with an aggro deck is really fun, at least for me.
gotta love how everyone always equates "control" to mono blue draw go. there hasn't been a playable counter-control deck in years. seriously, teachings is black control not blue. before that we've had gifts which was green control, and slide which was white control.
anyhow, to all the lorwyn haters, i actually agree to some extent. lorwyn is a really lackluster set for constructed. i think too much effort was put into the art and the flavor of the set and it wasn't designed as well as it could be for competitive magic. type 2 is still gonna live off the back of goyf and damnation, along with all the support cards from time spiral. the aggro decks may gain one or two decent guys, but nothing really to offset the loss of a consistent mana base with rav. and control gained next to nothing strong barring maybe the planeswalkers and the commands, which once again don't offset rav and 9th leaving and taking cards like remand and persecute and arena with them.
eyes is good, but is really no comparison to gibbons. gibbons costs 1, it slips under all but the most dedicated counter wall and will likely kill them before they can stop it or keep them from using their main game plan.
does anyone really see counter-control even making enough of an appearance to warrant this card in sideboards? u/b control in tsp block was black based as opposed to blue based and i don't really see that changing as the only really good counterspell in lorwyn is the command and it's triple blue and 4 mana.
Tarmogoyf
seriously, that card on it's own keeps most non-green aggro strategies down because they simply cannot compete with 'goyf's efficiency.
a 3 mana dude that puts other dudes into play the turn after he comes down is in no way the most broken 3 drop in magic. even if we just talk creatures, i believe Psychatog would like a word with you.
quoted for emphasis on reading cards.
anyhow, has anyone had any experiences with the rock'n nail build that showed up at the pt? it was in one of the deck tech videos. it used urborg and cabal coffers to ramp up from 6 to 9, while playing a rock style control game up untill then.
my list would be like this:
Lilianna Vess- play with her and you'll understand how good she is. you tend to start out by fetching damnation with her tutor ability if you don't already have one. then suddenly your opponent is forced to do one of two things: play guys into damnation or hold cards in hand and get them discarded by her ability. usually you'll never get her to her -8 ability, but that's fine, you just get the exact card you want every few turns and win the game via card advantage and card quality.
Garruk Wildspeaker- yeah, he's less of a planeswalker and more of a very versatile hill giant but i'll take a hill giant that can accelerate me and/or overrun my board and/or make more hill giants.
Jace Beleren- even though i still say he's horridly overrated he does actually fill a niche in blue based pickles/stasis.
the other two are pretty abysmal. well, not exactly abysmal, but they just have nowhere to go. no red deck really wants chandra and no white deck really wants ajani.
true, but that was years ago. so my argument still stands. and anyhow, i was just sating that these "this set sucks" threads always go into how counter-control isn't fun to play against, which it's not. but playing against black or white based control with an aggro deck is really fun, at least for me.
mirrodin muc was not playable. the only playable deck in that format was affinity. prove me wrong.
anyhow, to all the lorwyn haters, i actually agree to some extent. lorwyn is a really lackluster set for constructed. i think too much effort was put into the art and the flavor of the set and it wasn't designed as well as it could be for competitive magic. type 2 is still gonna live off the back of goyf and damnation, along with all the support cards from time spiral. the aggro decks may gain one or two decent guys, but nothing really to offset the loss of a consistent mana base with rav. and control gained next to nothing strong barring maybe the planeswalkers and the commands, which once again don't offset rav and 9th leaving and taking cards like remand and persecute and arena with them.
their eggs, moxes, chromatic stars, and lotus blooms don't come into play tapped normally.