I think before i abandon boros i'm going to try a 24 or 25 land 'Brighthammer' build and see if i can make it more consistent...I do have two copies of Aurelia's Fury sitting around doing nothing...
For clarification, i wasn't saying Gruul took no skill, i was saying this player was really, really bad. Like, I swing with two 1/1 stromkirk nobles into a 3/3 flinthoof boar while tapped out and she doesn't block for a free kill (i was trying to just get ONE stromkirk going here, hopefully topdecking a volcanic strength or something to have stromkirk run away with the game).
You know what I mean though. I think Gruul is probably tier 1.5 - 2. Boros isn't even a part of the meta game according to deckstats.net.
I feel like the consistency just isn't there. RDW or Dos Rakis last season were not as hit or miss for me. They worked the same almost all the time, and when I lost, I could pin point what went wrong (usually when I got home after reading over my notes / in the car).
When boros was good to me, I was winning 2 tournaments a week (including the biggest event I've ever won). When I went through a streak of bad luck, I'd lose completely embarrassing match ups and scrub out. My play skill has increased a lot since I got back into standard, because I've been playing in 1-3 events a week, but I'm starting to feel like the inconsistencies of the deck are the limiting factor.
I think (like you identified) it's mostly the lack of mana dumps which means that we are tempted to run less land to avoid flooding. We avoid flooding, but we screw ourselves as well. The deck was at it's best when we could run 23-24 land with enough mana dumps that if we flooded it was ok. Now with the printing of Boros Reckoner, we have to choose between our mana dumps and our best 3cc creature option. If we don't run reckoner, we are really underpowered vs the decks that do, in my opinion. For some reason the magic combination we had last season just isn't there.
Then there is the Aristocrats. The deck plays all my favourite cards from my last three seasons of standard (Barely Boros, Dos Rakis, BW Tokens - during Avacyn Restored standard). I can't say no, even if the deck fades. I just like the cards and the interactions so much.
Lately I've been thinking that Aristocrats is basically a better version of boros. It just plays more powerful cards and has a similar (and more flexible) plan than us.
1. The movie wasn't as good as the book - granted - but it was still great, and
2. Have you read Heinlein's later works? His early stuff is pretty good, but his later stuff is all polygamy and parent-child incest... bleh.
I've read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Past Through Tomorrow (think that's the title, it's a bunch of short stories), Puppet Masters, Revolt in 2100, Glory Road, Methuselah's Children, and the one about how Africans take over the world 'cause of the nuclear holocaust or something, don't remember the title.
I haven't read any of the weirder ones like that, though, but i've heard of them.
Unfortunately, Reckoner means you can't go crazy with Hellion Crucible like we used to, which makes the higher land counts suffer from variance a lot more than they used to ~ so Reckoner makes your "good" draws more powerful, but your "bad" draws much worse. I have definitely had the same sort of consistency issues that you guys are mentioning.
I've even cut slayers' stronghold from my boros builds, since not being able to cast reckoner on turn 3 is really bad, and gg vs. some decks (burning tree emissary decks). The stronghold is amazing when it gets online but it can make otherwise keepable hands/good draws bad.
I've really been trying to fix this issue in consistency and it's been kicking my ass, quite frankly
I know I'm late to the book discussion but I'm a huge Robert Heinlein fan. Starship Troopers is probably my favorite (don't confuse it with the movie. please. the movie is worse than vexing devil)
I'm not much into Ayn Rand, I much prefer Nietzsche for my philosophy. A Red philosopher if there ever was one
i scrubbed out harder than I ever have, my god. I lost to mono red, the WORST gruul aggro player I've ever seen (she just dropped dudes and attacked, never gave anything a second thought), and america control. Got a bye last round too.... was pretty soul crushing.
I run 23 lands for Zealous Conscripts but it seemed like i drew too much land quite a bit. I don't really want to run conscripts with anything less than 23 land though, seems like i'll never get to play her.
It's only page one and people are debating whether being retarded is bad or not lmao.
On topic, where exactly do you draw the line on what's 'offensive'? What groups of people are 'protected' and why? Is it everyone? If not, wouldn't that marginalize the group(s) of people that aren't protected?
If some sort of R/w sledgehammer build becomes good i could see truefire paladin being a contender for the two drop slot. Until then, like Deftmunky said, the mana for the current sorts of builds doesn't work out.
I think it hasn't been optimized yet, but I think we're getting close. Some of us are putting up good numbers in dailies, FNMs, GPT's etc. We're still waiting for the meta to settle down a bit. Then we'll be able to react a little more effectively.
Posted from MTGsalvation.com App for Android
Good point, I've found deciding on the 15 is harder than the 60.
I dunno, I'm going to try some sledgehammer esque builds before I give up but I'm not too hopeful.
For clarification, i wasn't saying Gruul took no skill, i was saying this player was really, really bad. Like, I swing with two 1/1 stromkirk nobles into a 3/3 flinthoof boar while tapped out and she doesn't block for a free kill (i was trying to just get ONE stromkirk going here, hopefully topdecking a volcanic strength or something to have stromkirk run away with the game).
Lately I've been thinking that Aristocrats is basically a better version of boros. It just plays more powerful cards and has a similar (and more flexible) plan than us.
I've read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Past Through Tomorrow (think that's the title, it's a bunch of short stories), Puppet Masters, Revolt in 2100, Glory Road, Methuselah's Children, and the one about how Africans take over the world 'cause of the nuclear holocaust or something, don't remember the title.
I haven't read any of the weirder ones like that, though, but i've heard of them.
I've even cut slayers' stronghold from my boros builds, since not being able to cast reckoner on turn 3 is really bad, and gg vs. some decks (burning tree emissary decks). The stronghold is amazing when it gets online but it can make otherwise keepable hands/good draws bad.
I've really been trying to fix this issue in consistency and it's been kicking my ass, quite frankly
I'm not much into Ayn Rand, I much prefer Nietzsche for my philosophy. A Red philosopher if there ever was one
I run 23 lands for Zealous Conscripts but it seemed like i drew too much land quite a bit. I don't really want to run conscripts with anything less than 23 land though, seems like i'll never get to play her.
On topic, where exactly do you draw the line on what's 'offensive'? What groups of people are 'protected' and why? Is it everyone? If not, wouldn't that marginalize the group(s) of people that aren't protected?
Ham would totally fit as the FoS's prettyboy
Good point, I've found deciding on the 15 is harder than the 60.
http://i.imgur.com/jeJxpJR.jpg
I'm far from doing that. I was simply wondering if the meta was hostile to it or if we just haven't found a build that's really clicked yet.