MTG Salvation

figured i'd recount my experience since i was in santa clara recently and wandered over to channel fireball. initially i was psyched about the thought of buying a handful of beta/alpha lands, but to my disappointment they only carry standard stuff in the store. however, there were plenty of old packs for sale.

so i started off with:
1 legends @ 180
5 alliances @ 20
10 mm2015 @ 10

legends had chain lightning
alliances had fow
mm2015 had chrome mox, bitterblossom, eldrazi temp, foil twin... and some other junk

sold it all back to the store + $20 for their last legends pack.

teleport--- thee end. was a lot of fun though =]

two 3-0 in the 8-4 draft

wb weenies


basic plan is to get delirium asap. i'm now a fan of the shard of broken glass. everything becomes a beater. mid game i can usually lock them down w/ the constables.


UB tempo

i was giving the black vessel a try... so shh. it just ended up getting sided out every game for gisas bidding (wish i had both main deck!). the ghostly wings are what made this deck viable. giving me an outlet for madness on their turn... bouncing a guy + stealing another or making 2 zombies was huge. jace showed up a few times to help out, but not as much as i'd like.

4-0 in a 9 man pod.
p1p1: serendib
p2p1: animate dead
p3p1: fact or fiction

by the middle of pack 1 i had 3 ragers. i was excited thinking i was going to get atleast three more, but i didn't see my forth rager until middle of pack 3. i wasn't too happy about the screeching skaab, but i needed the two drop. i would have preferred another tortoise.

most games played like so:
t2: memory lapse
t3: rager
t4: silent departure + rager
t5: flashback silent departure

my toughest opponent was GB elves who pulled a mana crypt. game 1 he drew it turn 3...then started spewing out two elves a turn. just too much too fast. game 2, once again he had it early (turn 2 or 3). the game was close as he died to his mana crypt with me at 4 life (and potentially one more turn if he didn't have removal). game 3 he drew into a land clump early and i just bounced/memory lapsed everything he tried to do.

just went 4-0 in a 9 man draft w/ black/blue tempo. my list looked something like this:

4 phyrexian ragers
2 memory lapse
1 counterspell
2 bounce spells (the flashback one)
1 manowar
1 gravedigger
1 uprising
1 serendib/phantom monster/3/1 black flyer

the only deck i had trouble w/ was elves (but, he had a mana crypt). went 2-1 against him, and 2-0 everyone else. the memory lapse is key.

your best two drop is memory lapse if you're on the draw. then turn three you drop a rager. turn 4 you bounce whatever they drop, then drop a 3cc guy. turn 5... flashback bounce.


i want to emphasize how good Counterspell is in this format due to the power level of the cards being quite high. I recall when drafting a lot of 7th edition on modo how bad counterspell was..... because all that was worth countering were some bomb rares. (although remove soul was good.)

against red there's three cards you need to consider.

1: uncaged fury
calculate the power of their highest guy + uncaged fury... if it puts you to 3 or less, play as if they have it

2: Voldaren Duelist
he seems to show up at the worst times. if you've seen him game 1, play as if they have him the following games.

3: dance of the devils
easiest to play around because it's usually obvious when they're packing it. i will still attack into it by offering only one guy for them to kill (usually the lone attacker)

Quote from Schutzwald »

Yeah when I first see the card.
Also if someone is taking a long time to puzzle out a play in an edh game, we will take turns reading flavor texts to them in an attempt to bother them
clearly that was the intended purpose of flavor text

real life lols

I personally don't unless the other person is taking forever....

how about you?

3-0 (2-1,2-0,2-0) in mtgo 8-4

p1p1: sinister concoction
p1p2: relentless dead
p2p1: to the slaughter
p2p2: under the floorboards
p3p1: dead weight

round 1 wolves gave me a little trouble. got me down to 2 in the final game by stealing my necropod and swinging w/ the disposable 4/5 artifact and firebreathing wolf.... was at 14 w/ a downyard to block and he had one red untapped. made the proper block.

round 2 black/white w/ some madness... just overwhelmed him w/ the necropods and removal

round 3 .... g/w had the mythic 4/5 flying chick... no match for the pods and grotesque mutations.

Quote from Lithl »

As soon as Player A does something like fetching a different basic Island from the one fetched by Player C the deck orders will be different between the two games, but with this method we would know with 100% certainty that any differences are entirely due to choices made by the players.

Heck, let's make it 4 pads with 2 sequences of random bits, so Player A's shuffles don't affect the results of Player B's shuffles.

yea this was my initial idea... but i'd be cooler executed in person.

Quote from pierrebai »

The shuffling problem can be solved by having a non-player do the card searches and not shuffling afterward. (This only works if the format doesn't have cards like brainstorm or sensei's divining top, which use shuffling to see more cards, obviously.)

PS: before the obvious objection, this search would be done out of players view and would not necessarily pick the first instance of the searched card rom the top. A hidden dice might be used to select which copy to select.

that's a good idea. no shuffling needed if they're not looking at their deck.

Quote from clod5 »

This hand on the draw doesn't beat this hand on the play. Mull to 6.

EDIT: I'd watch. I don't think anything about it, because I have no idea how it would go or if I would get anything out of it, but I like Magic, so sure.

well yea... but i just figured i'd be interesting to see two different play styles pilot the same deck... perhaps one would see something the other doesn't.... but of course as hagalaz has pointed out, that would depend on how the opponent is piloting the deck... perhaps the first few turns could be forced by the order of the cards, allowing only one play per turn until say turn 5, where multiple options exist.

Quote from LGTreturned »

Why are people photographing sleeved cards?

because outside of sleeves it's dead obvious which are sharpee jobs... but given that most cards are seen inside sleeves, it doesn't matter how they look outside of them.

Here's the setup:

-4 players
-2 separate copies of two different decks (4 decks total)
-arrange decks so the shuffle order is identical to it's copy
-begin 2 separate matches using the identical decks, in identical order

film the results, analyze the different decisions made by the players.

what do you guys think?

Quote from Annorax »

Upper left is Beta, the other three are sharpie jobs.

both on the left are beta..

right are sharpee

two unlimited w/ sharpee treatment vs two beta

thanks for the encouragement. that's what i like to hear. i've stumbled across on player/writer who's done a similar test. but as i've tested he only simulated colorless spells over generic lands.

my first dilemma is how to approach checking lands (specifically duals) for proper mana to cast nth spell. i'm leaning towards having all colored permutations of mana available for that land state stored persistently .... or checking for available mana on the fly given nth spell's casting cost.

eh i'll figure it out as i dive in. more fun.