"Turbo-Fog? Okay… What would make you think that this is the right time for Turbo-Fog? What card got printed that pushed it over the top? Font of Mythos? Seriously? To be fair, a Turbo-Fog player did qualify in our Regionals, so perhaps I need to keep an open mind, but I know that, historically, people have made Turbo-Fog decks many times, and it never stands up to even the most cursory of glances. It is best used as a metagame tactic when people don’t expect it. I vote no, but I know the type of people that would play Turbo-Fog are generally the type of people who don’t care what anyone else has to say on the matter."
-Pat Chapin, in his article today
The answer to this question is Mistvein Borderpost. Such innocous Borderposts. Why so important? They turn on Tezzerator for a deck sorely needing it:
These decks dominate this metagame. Why? No counterspells. No non-creature win conditions. In this format, the only deck with counterspells is so slow at winning it can never hope to compete (5cc).
Tezzeret accomplishes two key things for this deck.
#1 Creates an efficient win condition allowing you to play within time and use decking as a secondary condition (tap your team, activate, attack for 30 with borderposts).
#2 Brings you up to 14 (in this list) or 16 howling mine equivalents maindeck, garunteeing you reach the critical mass neccessary to fog every turn for the rest of the game.
This isn't the only recent successful Turbofog decklist. Calling it now- this is THE deck to play for this weekends PTQ, in metagames everywhere.
Remember, the reason the judge made the clarifications that he did was not for my benefit, but rather because of the controversy surrounding your earlier rounds and the possibility of a "miscommunication."
The judge was not telling him he could not joke around so much as he needed to watch that he was not crossing into unsportsmanlike conduct. During our match in the finals, my opponent insulted me, made fun of me being mana screwed, then made a personal insult towards me, all while playing sloppy. This starts to cause problems when he draws cards from Elvish Visionary immediately, despite a Disrupting Shoal being played and when he makes a smart comment that causes him to accidentally say "your Clique resolves" and then take it back, claiming that it was a miscommunication.
You probably know that I have no issue with banter during a match, and I would assume most Judges feel the same. The issue comes when a player is crossing into unsportsmanlike conduct (why personal insults?) and when this unsportsmanlike conduct leads to sloppy game play that causes miscommunications.
Now, I believe that my opponent, here, had his heart in the right place and perhaps had just never been in a situation like this before. I don't know what all lead to our match playing out as it did, but I think the guy is a good kid and I look forward to playing him at the Pro Tour. I hope this experience encourages him to tighten up a little and if he wants to talk trash, he needs to read up on the difference between trash talk and unsportsmanlike conduct, as it is a fine line. The main thing is, if you are going to play that way, you better not complain when you face someone who holds you to the Clique trigger "resolving," etc.
Anyway, I just wanted to clarify and make sure it was understood that the judging staff handled themselves very professionally.
The plot thickens! cmon I need precise information I wasn't there, momma jokes? Namecalling? Incidentally, I always ask my opponent if its ok if I draw or search, because its something you can't take back, just for strange scenarios like this. So his side of the story on the Clique is that he was still resolving chord while he made the comment clique resolves, skipping a hivemaster trigger?... I wonder if the lack of priority prevents him from misclicking his hivemaster token, hahaha.
Sassing, here is an example of it he is tapped out, no mana, and I'm waiting because he might have a response to my Chord of Calling for 3. So I asked him if he had Mind's Desire to pitch to the Shoal or a Daze in hand (yes I know its not Ext legal), and if not that I could go ahead a search for my dude. Once game one ended, the head judge said he had to talk to me in a stern voice and told Chapin that he would have his oppenent back to him very shortly. The judged walked me over and talked to me, which was a bit strange, and I got the impression it wasn't exactly what I was saying, but that I should just lay off a bit. Which I was fine with. Then I went back over to my table, SB, and played the second game. The finals was a bit odd. It started off with the head judge telling me that Chapin likes it when players announce everything they are doing, play slow, and give him time for responses. Whatever, okay, but was that really necessary to tell me? I wish the judge could have told him how I like to play this game. Oh well.
lol that's pretty rough I'm going to try to convince my opponents the finals are my homecourt too from now on, like please announce everything and enunciate clearly, keep your legs off of my side of the table and make sure all your perms are tapped to the right at a 90 degree angle or I'll make the judge stop giving me a back rub and cuff you in the face
They are your forums, and your choice to respect freedom of speech is completely upon you, and you alone. Of course, it is a reflection on your personality and strength of character when you opt to utilize your ability to squelch freedom of speech.
Don't get me wrong... forums need moderation. There are some serious troll issues on the internet. People come here and spam and ridicule others, and make virtually no attempt to communicate with intelligence...
Unfortunately, the moderation strategy of locking a thread the way that it's been used ENCOURAGES troll-like behavior as a method for shutting down a thread that one disagrees with. All it takes is two people willing to be argumentative and rude, and the thread they were arguing AGAINST gets locked.
It is the ultimate loss of a debate to conclude the debate via force... though here your voice may be loud and powerful, the impact of locking a thread that you "don't like the content of" resounds with a weakness of attitude indicative of self-doubt.
I routinely participate in similar discussions to the ones here on other forums (including the MTG Wizards forum) and never once have I been met with such heavy-handed moderation. Feel free to use the excuse that the mods are too busy, but, the reality of the situation is that the mods are more mature (I'm not pointing a finger at all mods here, just the ones that are in fact shutting down threads left and right because they disagree with the content).
A reason to keep those threads open? People were using them to have a discussion. I don't care if 3 guys came in calling people names because they liked to entertain the idea of banning and restricted cards. I don't care if you think it's a stupid idea or something that you hate as an idea. If that's the case, you need to post a rule that said topic is not open for discussion, to save people some time. You don't lock a thread because of people coming in and "flaming" the OP. Locking the OP's thread is just another, heavier flame.
And Xanth, thank you. I was growing afraid that there were non of logical predisposition on these forums as a whole, and was prepared to get the hell out of Dodge. Your post made me edit my "goodbye" out of this post, and stick around as an observer for a while.
And yes, it was a personal attack to label my proposal a "complaint". And a redoubling of that personal attack to have it "quoted" in the very next post and congratulated for being correct by Surging Chaos. I said it many times in the actual thread... if you do not like the content of a thread ... don't read it... if you disagree with what is said, and can dispute it properly, then go for it... but to beg moderators to lock a thread because you're tired of it? Just read other threads and leave it alone!
Why don't you answer Emperor Norton's logical and reasonable questions? Now its your word against Annorax's, or I have to read some locked thread to figure this stupid drama out. way to go trollface >_< no wonder all your crap gets locked
But it does nothing by itself, it doesn't help board position, it sucks against anyone winning, its a horrid in about every situation except the ones your stable in. I'd prefer answers or more threats, not something that is only useful if the opponent is already low on options.
It's a misconception that it does nothing by itself - it does damage by itself. Every game that isn't a blowout both players eventually get low on cards or empty their hand completely. The Rack does decent damage in this late game situation. Turns out, we have an entire 56 card decklist dedicated to reducing our opponents hand and then killing them before they recover. This takes the marginal unplayable Rack and turns it into an option-limiting all star. discard is useless if they have time to recover, and The Rack takes it away very effectively(difficult to remove, non-combat damage) for 1 mana.
For the record, I have never played the card in any other deck and literally questioned it in the standard version of goyfrack the same way you are here, and was convinced of its effectiveness then (through testing and discussion) the same way I am now every time it kills someone in testing.
What about splash white for Castigate and Path to Exile or red for Fall and/or Blightning.
Both seem better than Stupor, I'd almost run Wrench Mind over it, though there seems to be a good enough amount of artifacts in the format that it might be strictly worse than stupor.
3-4x Chrome Mox wouldnt be too bad, the accel would definitely help, and you can discard extra one to Small Pox
With 4 mutavault and 4 treetop that manabase can be rough. The only card worth adding (over stupor) would be 3 blightning and I'm not sure the single blood crypt would be worth it, mostly because this deck heavily uses its life total as a resource. What else is in red that could tempt me to wreck the mana of a monoblack -splash goyf village putrefy deck?
Because I like having the better aggro matchup, bant saw a ton of play along with affinity at the ptq.
Well, Like I said I believe The Rack is the strongest card for the slot no matter the meta, but especially against non-affinity aggro, where they could easily start at 14 from their lands and have no cards in hand as early as turn 3. I prefer Affinity being the bad matchup for this deck due to its spotty matchups and inconsistency. Its one thing to have an auto-win hand, but with so much devastating hate out there for affinity, everything else could be an auto lose hand. Also, Bant is carrying Kataki's for affinity, so if you say both were in large numbers, affinity will be hated out after round 4. Bant also has a horrible matchup against this deck regardless of what is in the rack slot, so I don't think that I would ever make card choice concessions to that archetype, no matter how prevalent it is.
I agree chain of smog sucks, I was ponting out that that is the next best discard spell to just show the narrow options.
However the argument for the rack is the arguement I have against the rack. A creature is a more versitile source of damage and effective stablilizer than the rack or just more removal to help stabilize against aggro. The rack only works when the opponent has no cards in hand anyway and thus most of the time I find it lacking when compared to any other threat.
sb against zoo- add board sweepers (depending on the zoo deck engineered explosive and/or damanation) and the 4th jitte. Lose the late game discard effects for the most part. The best card against that deck besides jitte is probaly smallpox and between the two pox is the strongest turn 2 play.
oO If that's your argument, why did you put in slaughter Pacts for Rack? Like I said, you should be playing some combination of Tombstalker and Call of the Herd in that slot if you think its better, I believe The Rack is a better choice for that slot.
Zoo SB is -4 thoughtsieze -4 Dark Confidant +4 putrefy +2 Damnation +1 explosives +1 jitte
The rack is a massive, unlimited source of non-combat damage for 1 mana. I don't know what else you want in a threat/finisher. Chain of smog sucks because they pitch your win-conditions after you pitch their cards. Also, in matchups where the rack is less effective(when they have card draw), you typically board The Rack out for bitterblossom and the last jitte. It doesn't make sense to replace The Rack with Slaughter Pact, because the rack does damage and slaughter pact kills creatures. Discard(disruption) is only as valuable as the pressure you apply afterwards. Bitterblossom main really hurts a strong aggro matchup, and the quality of threats in the format for this deck as I see them is...
Goyf
Nyxathid
The Rack
Tombstalker
Bitterblossom
Call of the Herd
So if you want to replace them with some tombstalkers and calls it would be fine. Except for the instant bob deaths and lack of win conditions on a stalled board. But to each his own.
Hehe, Goblins - always there to vex you. I played a goblin deck (no war marshal) a couple weeks ago and took first place undefeated with it against, loam, loam faeries, affinity and elves. It's funny how powerful mogg fanatic and chrome mox is in the current meta. turn 2 Earwig's and secret tech Sensation Gorger also helped out when just doing damage with piledrivers and sgc's was not enough. But Goblins is tough fight against Zoo and Storm, since we interact a lot less. The gobbo control cards are poor versus Zoo and Storm pretty much just goes off unmolested when they get the cards.
Anyway, I was wondering about the sb. 4 Extirpate just because we generate so many targets for it in this deck, or for specific archetypes? I was thinking its real important to nail loam, but what else? Also, when do you bring in Bitterblossom? Seems like removal would be better than forcefield effect. Does it just come in with jitte to help win the jitte counter attrition war? 2 Damnation for? Seems like 2 too little for elves/goblins. Brought in still, but also for affinity?
I am torn by wanting to fiddle with it and how much I like the curve. Any chance this deck would survive if we dropped the green altogether to be swamp tight? Makes the Affinity matchup bad? And we lose Goyf but we could add a Nyx and some Tombstalker? Hmmm. Must resist the urge to loam/rock this deck.
Is it possible it's already as good as it gets? Seal of Primordium in SB somehwere does sound good...
Goyf and Treetop village are core pieces to the deck.
4 extirpates are for Loam decks of any kind. There's easily enough Loam decks in the format to warrant their inclusion. You bring in bitterblossom for faeries. I don't know another viable control deck(mono white? bring it in against that too.). You bring in putrefies and the last jitte against any deck you want to win a jitte war against(fae, zoo). The 2 Damnation/1 explosives split is for aggro decks, and elves. The split is due to mana cost. I don't think I would ever want too many damnations, and have considered just playing 3x explosives, but Damnation is just stronger in many more situations (affinity).
I honestly have not been able to find a way to improve this list. I can't think of anything I would want to skip my draw step to kill with -1-1, and the maindeck list is very tight in terms of curve and syngery.
Seal of primordium is the card that sounds most appealing to add, but I'm not sure what you would remove. Try to remember that your primary method of removing troublesome cards like Sulfuric Vortex is through discard. Adding reactive cards to the deck can be counterproductive when sometimes you should just be racing with goyf, nyxathid, rack, and manlands.
Thats quite a statement for a deck that loses to the most played deck in the format.
so by "loses to " do you mean " go even with" or do you just not test
Gyuzen64: Yeah Nyxathid is a beast in itself, doesn't shrink your goyfs, and doesn't 8 you. I started with Tombstalker and changed them to Nyxathid. Definitely turned it over with bob during a PTQ. oO
Chrome Mox is in there because its disgusting with many hands, sick openings. But if you draw two, you're literally %$#@ed, because its such a tight attrition deck. Umezawa's Jitte is pretty neccesary, difficult to play without it. Only source of life gain.
I like this Tarmorack win. Where's the damn extended Tarmorack thread?!?!?!
8)
The top 8 is on deckcheck btw.
I'd make one but it doesn't qualify under the "competitive deck" bullcrap yet. I don't feel like explaining why its tier 1 and how it has few if any -EV matchups right now. If you aren't playing this deck, you probably should be.
-Pat Chapin, in his article today
The answer to this question is Mistvein Borderpost. Such innocous Borderposts. Why so important? They turn on Tezzerator for a deck sorely needing it:
TX Regionals
Instants (21)
3 Batwing Brume
4 Cryptic Command
4 Holy Day
4 Negate
2 Path to Exile
4 Pollen Lullaby
1 Wrath of God
4 Fieldmist Borderpost
4 Font of Mythos
4 Howling Mine
4 Mistvein Borderpost
4 Jace Beleren
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
5 Plains
2 Reliquary Tower
2 Runed Halo
2 Path to Exile
4 Hoofprints of the Stag
2 Oona, Queen of the Fae
3 Glen Elendra Archmage
2 Pithing Needle
These decks dominate this metagame. Why? No counterspells. No non-creature win conditions. In this format, the only deck with counterspells is so slow at winning it can never hope to compete (5cc).
Tezzeret accomplishes two key things for this deck.
#1 Creates an efficient win condition allowing you to play within time and use decking as a secondary condition (tap your team, activate, attack for 30 with borderposts).
#2 Brings you up to 14 (in this list) or 16 howling mine equivalents maindeck, garunteeing you reach the critical mass neccessary to fog every turn for the rest of the game.
This isn't the only recent successful Turbofog decklist. Calling it now- this is THE deck to play for this weekends PTQ, in metagames everywhere.
The plot thickens! cmon I need precise information I wasn't there, momma jokes? Namecalling? Incidentally, I always ask my opponent if its ok if I draw or search, because its something you can't take back, just for strange scenarios like this. So his side of the story on the Clique is that he was still resolving chord while he made the comment clique resolves, skipping a hivemaster trigger?... I wonder if the lack of priority prevents him from misclicking his hivemaster token, hahaha.
lol that's pretty rough I'm going to try to convince my opponents the finals are my homecourt too from now on, like please announce everything and enunciate clearly, keep your legs off of my side of the table and make sure all your perms are tapped to the right at a 90 degree angle or I'll make the judge stop giving me a back rub and cuff you in the face
Why don't you answer Emperor Norton's logical and reasonable questions? Now its your word against Annorax's, or I have to read some locked thread to figure this stupid drama out. way to go trollface >_< no wonder all your crap gets locked
It's a misconception that it does nothing by itself - it does damage by itself. Every game that isn't a blowout both players eventually get low on cards or empty their hand completely. The Rack does decent damage in this late game situation. Turns out, we have an entire 56 card decklist dedicated to reducing our opponents hand and then killing them before they recover. This takes the marginal unplayable Rack and turns it into an option-limiting all star. discard is useless if they have time to recover, and The Rack takes it away very effectively(difficult to remove, non-combat damage) for 1 mana.
For the record, I have never played the card in any other deck and literally questioned it in the standard version of goyfrack the same way you are here, and was convinced of its effectiveness then (through testing and discussion) the same way I am now every time it kills someone in testing.
With 4 mutavault and 4 treetop that manabase can be rough. The only card worth adding (over stupor) would be 3 blightning and I'm not sure the single blood crypt would be worth it, mostly because this deck heavily uses its life total as a resource. What else is in red that could tempt me to wreck the mana of a monoblack -splash goyf village putrefy deck?
Well, Like I said I believe The Rack is the strongest card for the slot no matter the meta, but especially against non-affinity aggro, where they could easily start at 14 from their lands and have no cards in hand as early as turn 3. I prefer Affinity being the bad matchup for this deck due to its spotty matchups and inconsistency. Its one thing to have an auto-win hand, but with so much devastating hate out there for affinity, everything else could be an auto lose hand. Also, Bant is carrying Kataki's for affinity, so if you say both were in large numbers, affinity will be hated out after round 4. Bant also has a horrible matchup against this deck regardless of what is in the rack slot, so I don't think that I would ever make card choice concessions to that archetype, no matter how prevalent it is.
oO If that's your argument, why did you put in slaughter Pacts for Rack? Like I said, you should be playing some combination of Tombstalker and Call of the Herd in that slot if you think its better, I believe The Rack is a better choice for that slot.
Zoo SB is -4 thoughtsieze -4 Dark Confidant +4 putrefy +2 Damnation +1 explosives +1 jitte
what he said
Goyf
Nyxathid
The Rack
Tombstalker
Bitterblossom
Call of the Herd
So if you want to replace them with some tombstalkers and calls it would be fine. Except for the instant bob deaths and lack of win conditions on a stalled board. But to each his own.
Goyf and Treetop village are core pieces to the deck.
4 extirpates are for Loam decks of any kind. There's easily enough Loam decks in the format to warrant their inclusion. You bring in bitterblossom for faeries. I don't know another viable control deck(mono white? bring it in against that too.). You bring in putrefies and the last jitte against any deck you want to win a jitte war against(fae, zoo). The 2 Damnation/1 explosives split is for aggro decks, and elves. The split is due to mana cost. I don't think I would ever want too many damnations, and have considered just playing 3x explosives, but Damnation is just stronger in many more situations (affinity).
I honestly have not been able to find a way to improve this list. I can't think of anything I would want to skip my draw step to kill with -1-1, and the maindeck list is very tight in terms of curve and syngery.
Seal of primordium is the card that sounds most appealing to add, but I'm not sure what you would remove. Try to remember that your primary method of removing troublesome cards like Sulfuric Vortex is through discard. Adding reactive cards to the deck can be counterproductive when sometimes you should just be racing with goyf, nyxathid, rack, and manlands.
so by "loses to " do you mean " go even with" or do you just not test
Gyuzen64: Yeah Nyxathid is a beast in itself, doesn't shrink your goyfs, and doesn't 8 you. I started with Tombstalker and changed them to Nyxathid. Definitely turned it over with bob during a PTQ. oO
I'd make one but it doesn't qualify under the "competitive deck" bullcrap yet. I don't feel like explaining why its tier 1 and how it has few if any -EV matchups right now. If you aren't playing this deck, you probably should be.
Zoo is easy, Bant is easy. Affinity is hard. Burn is half half.