I'm suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper happy to see someone win with a far better optimized version of the Approach of the Superfriends deck I tried to make last month!!!
Yeah, Magic's community isn't that bad. It's definitely not "the worst."
A close friend shared a story with me recently,
he told me that after he beat another player at an FNM, the guy said to him.
"Ya now. If you would have played that right. I would have won."
I'm not going to minimize how your friend felt after that, but you're definitely overinflating its severity. Magic by and large has an incredibly positive community that by and large works to stop harassment and toxic behavior before it can become normalized. Players who cheat, bully, or abuse others are generally given warnings or banned from sanctioned play. "Brash" personalities (like you see in some sports and e-sports) are generally frowned upon and treated as unsavory. There was a guy at the store I go to that had repeated complaints about bullying, sexist statements, and other such issues. He basically acted like the stereotypical meathead "alpha male" while at the store. He got banned for six months for it. Just recently a pro player was caught purposefully misplaying a card and was banned for a year for a repeat infraction. The whole Jeremy Hambly (I think that was his name) online bullying controversy got him banned for life.The same can't be said for a lot of other communities.
Online gaming communities (League of Legends, console online communities, etc) are far and away worse. I've heard horror stories of Yugioh being incredibly toxic. I've been cussed out by players because I want to play for fun on casual games and I don't minmax characters. I'm a boxing coach and homophobic, transphobic, and sexist jokes are made all the time and applauded. Drug abuse runs rampant in the sport and in some circles are highly encouraged. Sports fans in general are absolutely awful to each other in the name of team solidarity.
Go to sites like 4chan or r/thedonald and tell me Magic's community is bad in comparison. 4chan's own Magic community throws absolute fits about the state of the game because of female and ethnic representation and say absolutely awful things about women and minorities in general in regards to the game.
I'm by no means trying to say Magic's community is perfect. It's not. But, for me, it's one of the best and most accepting communities I've been a part of.
And I can relate to the financial pressures. This is not a cheap game to play. The Seal Aways and Raffs are uncommon so you should be able to find them for $1. Not everyone runs 4 Settles, but if you don't then move the Fumigate from the SB to the main. That card also only costs a couple of bucks so you could always consider going 3/3.
Also, if you got Lyra, Karn and Tef in your box then you did very well. Hopefully you got some other stuff you can trade for some of the pieces you still need.
I nearly crapped a brick. I got a foil Karn, Lyra, Teferi, and Jaya in the box.
I've already bought the last two Seal Aways and I have an extra Settle somewhere. The only things I don't have or can't get are the extra Planeswalkers and two more The.
I think I'm going to try the Hieroglyphics because the cycling seems like it would help more in the deck since it NEEDS the mana efficiency in competitive. I think I have enough lying around somewhere.
So, I see what you mean, by "it's not optimised." ;-)
I do have some initial thoughts for you.
1) You need more focus. You have a bunch of really odd quantities for your cards and in many ways UW is very forgiving of that, but the reality is that you will struggle for consistency. For example: You are better off running another Cast Out in the Invoke slot. Cast out hits artifacts/enchantments, but is more versatile. The lifegain is not relevant. What are you going to use it against? Bromat Courier? Ballista? Yeah, that's not going to do much for you. Heart is certainly a live target for you as is Harvester, but Cast Out is legit here and you should be running more Seal Aways for that anyway.
2) I'm not going to fuss about your counter suite. Counters are counters and as long as they are getting the job done, that's all that matters. I would run more Disallows over Unwind though, and prolly bump up Essence Scatter over Negate -- at least in the MD.
3) Your removal is a mess. In this format, you should have 4 Settles. Things are already looking very, very aggro. I already mentioned Seal Away. Run 4. You need to interact with aggro decks as soon as you can.
4) Helm of the Host: I get what you are trying to do here, and it's...cute. This card costs four to cast and 5 to equip. Is it amazing if you can make it happen? Sure. But IMHO this is a stunt best left in your EDH deck.
5) Zhalfirin Void: If you are going to run lands that don't produce coloured mana then they are either Field of Ruin, Scavenger Grounds or Arch of Orazca. Nothing else gets a slot. And you should probably not run more than 4 of these in any combination. You want UU of T3 for Disallow and WW on T4 for Settle. That doesn't leave a lot of room for lands that don't help you out with your colours.
6) Wincons: If you are going to win with dorks, then you are going to need some more of them. Lyra +1, Raff +2 and Gearhulk + 2. The reason the creature-based UW control deck is winning right now is because it does everything on it's oppo's turn and sits back on counters and removal for everything else. Your current list wants to survive for awhile and then cast a big, vulnerable dork.
7) Transitional Superfriends Board: There is absolutely nothng wrng with playing control G1 and then switching into Approach for G2. Most of us are doing this the other way round, so you might run into people who think you are playing approach and SB for that anyway (just because they didn't see it, doesn't mean they can ignore it) which will hurt you. The PWs are okay, but again, you need more consistency. Personally, I am a big fan of Dovin Baan. I played him in 4C cntrol last year and really liked him. He's not in my deck now only because Teferi and Gideon are much, much better and because 4 mana is an awkward CC in the current meta. So...more Teferi. Also...unless you are planning to do something with the energy...consider replacing the Glimmers with Hieroglyphic Illumination. Depends on how much you value the scry over the flexiblity of cycling if you are mana screwed.
Last thought: lands -- you need more W sources. Remember what I said about needing ww on T4 for Settle.
I hope this is helpful.
/M
</blockquote>
Super helpful! Thanks! I have a bad habit of wanting to force things I like rather than things that work, so getting a more experienced player to correct that is always super helpful. A major reason right now I only have one or two of the bigger cards (Teferi, Gearhulks, Lyra, Seal Away, etc) is I don't have the money to buy more singles of them and I pretty much cracked them all out of a single box, but I definitely get what you're saying about getting rid of some things (invoke, helm) on place of others. I'll take a look through my stuff and post a revised list when I get the chance. If I do that I'll probably switch back over to Approach game 1 and midrange game 2.
As for the Glimmers, I really like the fact that they help filter answers and I value that over the cycling of Hieroglyphic, but I'm no means a pro player and if HI is objectively the more efficient choice I'll have to give that a try.
Wastes an opponent's turn, stalls their aggro game, stalls Sagas/planeswalkers, removes growing hatebears, can draws a card in mid/late game. I'm thinking of removing two essence scatters and putting two Blinks in there.
I'm running a UW Approach of the Superfriends deck that gets really bothersome when at least two of them (Karn, Gideon, Teferi, and Dovin Baan) resolve. I haven't tested it in a competitive format, but it looks promising. Though what I've done is run the original sideboard (a midrange deck that wins with Helm'd Regals, Lyra, or Nezahal) as the mainboard, then sideboarded into Approach of the Superfriends. I'm going to go to FNM some time soon and test it out. If anyone's interested I'll post the decklist here.
yes. We are interested. Post it.
And where the heck has Xman been?
It's not optimized and I want to change some things in it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Wastes an opponent's turn, stalls their aggro game, stalls Sagas/planeswalkers, removes growing hatebears, can draws a card in mid/late game. I'm thinking of removing two essence scatters and putting two Blinks in there.
I'm running a UW Approach of the Superfriends deck that gets really bothersome when at least two of them (Karn, Gideon, Teferi, and Dovin Baan) resolve. I haven't tested it in a competitive format, but it looks promising. Though what I've done is run the original sideboard (a midrange deck that wins with Helm'd Regals, Lyra, or Nezahal) as the mainboard, then sideboarded into Approach of the Superfriends. I'm going to go to FNM some time soon and test it out. If anyone's interested I'll post the decklist here.
Hey guys, went back to a more traditional Approach deck (WU) following Pumpmonkey's template, but came into the possession of a Scarab God, so I decided to have some fun and sideboard him in. I added 4 Drowned Catacombs to take advantage of it. Right now the black splash doesn't have any interaction with spells like Fatal Push or Vraska's Contempt because they're too expensive, but I plan on adding some once I can afford them and I'm thinking of adding a couple of Fetid Pools to help smooth out the mana a bit.
I'm thinking of making these changes to my Sideboard, because right now I think it's too messy:
Swap out the Ixalan's Binding and Jace's Defeat for 2 more Negates
Swap out the Azor for another Scarab God (ebay find)
I figure that the Mastermind's Acquisition can fetch an Approach from the Sideboard. The rest of the Sideboard turns the deck into Esper Midrange.
Hey, I love the deck idea and I've been looking for a way to make Metallurgic Summonings a win con in a deck.
I went ahead and made it, then played a few kitchen table and MTGO games. Couple of things:
The Commit/Memory feels really useless. I don't think it does anything better than an Ixalan's Binding or a Cast Out, and whenever I've draw it I feel like it's a fairly useless card that Farm/Market and Cast Out/Ixalan's Binding feel like far more useful cards. Though in all honesty it could just be that my limited playtest just didn't have a chance to really take advantage of it.
I also had a hard time getting Metallurgic to fire. The one time I did it was GLORIOUS (against a vampire mill deck), but that was out of about 10 games. Any tips or suggestions to make this fun deck work more smoothly?
Went 1-2-1, though the tie should have been a win.
First game played against an anointed tokens deck. Beat them on the first try, but lost the second and third games because they got out of control before I could find any answers.
Beat a jank black green pirates deck no problem.
Lost the first game to a bg counters deck, won the second one, but tied the third one because the player was so slow that we ended up going to time and he turn 5 tied. I would have won on the next turn =/
Lost to a RG energy deck, couldn't find answers quick enough.
The complete switch threw everyone off. I took out the fleet swallower-fraying sanity combo, added another GFG, took out two refurbished, and added more regals/champion of wits. I'll post the revised deck list when I get a chance but I like how it works. The look on the tournament grinders' face when he lost legacy'd approach and I dropped gfg game two was priceless.
Started playing Magic back in September and after a lot of messing around with jank, budget decks, and general silliness I found that I really liked WU Approach and just recently discovered WU God-Pharaoh's Gift. Looking at how I was side-boarding WU Approach, I wondered if I could start with one and sideboard out to the other to really mess with people. I'm not trying to make a super-competitive deck (nowhere near good enough as a player to do that), but I found out last night at FNM that my sideboarded Approach really messes with people if I can get it to fire. I'm curious what you guys think since I still feel like I'm fumbling around and just getting the hang of this game. So without further ado here it is:
Sideboard out
2 Angel of Invention
2 Minister of Inquiries
3 God-Pharaoh’s Gift
4 Refurbish
2 Fleet Swallower
1 Fraying Sanity
1 Angel of Invention
Sideboard In
2 Negate
2 Essence Scatter
1 Settle the Wreckage
2 Regal Caracal
1 Fumigate
1 Solemnity
1 Forsake the Worldly
1 Torrential Gearhulk
1 Metallurgic Summonings
2 Approach of the Second Sun
While there's more discard than I would want, I think the shell of counterspells keeps both versions alive long enough to fire off.
Criticisms, comments, and advice would be greatly appreciated!
Also, if I put this in the wrong forum, I apologize and would appreciate if mods moved it to the right place!
How do you deal with early aggro? Aren't 3 searches a bit much?
1 - Dauntless Bodyguard/Llanowar Elves
2 - Metallic Mimic
3 - Resplendent Angel
4 - Shalai
5 - Lyra
WALUE
I'm not going to minimize how your friend felt after that, but you're definitely overinflating its severity. Magic by and large has an incredibly positive community that by and large works to stop harassment and toxic behavior before it can become normalized. Players who cheat, bully, or abuse others are generally given warnings or banned from sanctioned play. "Brash" personalities (like you see in some sports and e-sports) are generally frowned upon and treated as unsavory. There was a guy at the store I go to that had repeated complaints about bullying, sexist statements, and other such issues. He basically acted like the stereotypical meathead "alpha male" while at the store. He got banned for six months for it. Just recently a pro player was caught purposefully misplaying a card and was banned for a year for a repeat infraction. The whole Jeremy Hambly (I think that was his name) online bullying controversy got him banned for life.The same can't be said for a lot of other communities.
Online gaming communities (League of Legends, console online communities, etc) are far and away worse. I've heard horror stories of Yugioh being incredibly toxic. I've been cussed out by players because I want to play for fun on casual games and I don't minmax characters. I'm a boxing coach and homophobic, transphobic, and sexist jokes are made all the time and applauded. Drug abuse runs rampant in the sport and in some circles are highly encouraged. Sports fans in general are absolutely awful to each other in the name of team solidarity.
Go to sites like 4chan or r/thedonald and tell me Magic's community is bad in comparison. 4chan's own Magic community throws absolute fits about the state of the game because of female and ethnic representation and say absolutely awful things about women and minorities in general in regards to the game.
I'm by no means trying to say Magic's community is perfect. It's not. But, for me, it's one of the best and most accepting communities I've been a part of.
I nearly crapped a brick. I got a foil Karn, Lyra, Teferi, and Jaya in the box.
I've already bought the last two Seal Aways and I have an extra Settle somewhere. The only things I don't have or can't get are the extra Planeswalkers and two more The.
I think I'm going to try the Hieroglyphics because the cycling seems like it would help more in the deck since it NEEDS the mana efficiency in competitive. I think I have enough lying around somewhere.
Thanks again for the help!
Super helpful! Thanks! I have a bad habit of wanting to force things I like rather than things that work, so getting a more experienced player to correct that is always super helpful. A major reason right now I only have one or two of the bigger cards (Teferi, Gearhulks, Lyra, Seal Away, etc) is I don't have the money to buy more singles of them and I pretty much cracked them all out of a single box, but I definitely get what you're saying about getting rid of some things (invoke, helm) on place of others. I'll take a look through my stuff and post a revised list when I get the chance. If I do that I'll probably switch back over to Approach game 1 and midrange game 2.
As for the Glimmers, I really like the fact that they help filter answers and I value that over the cycling of Hieroglyphic, but I'm no means a pro player and if HI is objectively the more efficient choice I'll have to give that a try.
It's not optimized and I want to change some things in it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
2x Field of Ruin
2x Scavenger Grounds
1x Zhalfirin Void
4x Irrigated Farmland
4x Glacial Fortress
4x Plains
8x Island
Enchantments
2x Authority of the Consuls
2x Ixalan's Binding
1x Cast Out
2x Seal Away
1x Gideon's Intervention
Spells
1x Fumigate
3x Settle the Wreckage
1x Farm // Market
4x Negate
2x Essence Scatter
2x Supreme Will
2x Disallow
1x Invoke the Divine
2x Unwind
2x Syncopate
1x Helm of the Host
Creatures
3x Regal Caracal
1x Lyra Dawnbringer
1x Azor, the Lawbringer
1x Nezahal, Primal Tide
Planeswalkers
2x Gideon of the Trials
1x Karn, Scion of Urza
1x Dovin Baan
1x Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
2x Search for Azcanta
2x Glimmer of Genius
1x Fumigate
2x Torrential Gearhulk
3x Approach of the Second Sun
Wastes an opponent's turn, stalls their aggro game, stalls Sagas/planeswalkers, removes growing hatebears, can draws a card in mid/late game. I'm thinking of removing two essence scatters and putting two Blinks in there.
I'm running a UW Approach of the Superfriends deck that gets really bothersome when at least two of them (Karn, Gideon, Teferi, and Dovin Baan) resolve. I haven't tested it in a competitive format, but it looks promising. Though what I've done is run the original sideboard (a midrange deck that wins with Helm'd Regals, Lyra, or Nezahal) as the mainboard, then sideboarded into Approach of the Superfriends. I'm going to go to FNM some time soon and test it out. If anyone's interested I'll post the decklist here.
3 Approach of the Second Sun
2 Torrential Gearhulk
1 Gideon of the Trials
1 Metallurgic Summonings
Draw
3 Glimmer of Genius
Counter
3 Censor
3 Essence Scatter
3 Disallow
3 Supreme Will
1 Spell Swindle
Removal
2 Cast Out
1 Ixalan's Binding
1 Gideon's Intervention
1 Farm // Market
3 Settle the Wreckage
3 Fumigate
2 Search for Azcanta
Lands
1 Arch of Orazca
1 Scavenger Grounds
1 Field of Ruin
4 Glacial Fortress
1 Ipnu Rivulet
3 Irrigated Farmland
5 Plains
5 Island
4 Drowned Catacomb
2 Authority of the Consuls
1 Gideon of the Trials
1 Ixalan's Binding
2 Negate
1 Jace's Defeat
1 Dovin Baan
1 Mastermind's Acquisition
3 Regal Caracal
1 The Scarab God
1 Nezahal, Primal Tide
1 Azor, The Lawbringer
Hey guys, went back to a more traditional Approach deck (WU) following Pumpmonkey's template, but came into the possession of a Scarab God, so I decided to have some fun and sideboard him in. I added 4 Drowned Catacombs to take advantage of it. Right now the black splash doesn't have any interaction with spells like Fatal Push or Vraska's Contempt because they're too expensive, but I plan on adding some once I can afford them and I'm thinking of adding a couple of Fetid Pools to help smooth out the mana a bit.
I'm thinking of making these changes to my Sideboard, because right now I think it's too messy:
Swap out the Ixalan's Binding and Jace's Defeat for 2 more Negates
Swap out the Azor for another Scarab God (ebay find)
I figure that the Mastermind's Acquisition can fetch an Approach from the Sideboard. The rest of the Sideboard turns the deck into Esper Midrange.
I went ahead and made it, then played a few kitchen table and MTGO games. Couple of things:
The Commit/Memory feels really useless. I don't think it does anything better than an Ixalan's Binding or a Cast Out, and whenever I've draw it I feel like it's a fairly useless card that Farm/Market and Cast Out/Ixalan's Binding feel like far more useful cards. Though in all honesty it could just be that my limited playtest just didn't have a chance to really take advantage of it.
I also had a hard time getting Metallurgic to fire. The one time I did it was GLORIOUS (against a vampire mill deck), but that was out of about 10 games. Any tips or suggestions to make this fun deck work more smoothly?
Went 1-2-1, though the tie should have been a win.
First game played against an anointed tokens deck. Beat them on the first try, but lost the second and third games because they got out of control before I could find any answers.
Beat a jank black green pirates deck no problem.
Lost the first game to a bg counters deck, won the second one, but tied the third one because the player was so slow that we ended up going to time and he turn 5 tied. I would have won on the next turn =/
Lost to a RG energy deck, couldn't find answers quick enough.
The complete switch threw everyone off. I took out the fleet swallower-fraying sanity combo, added another GFG, took out two refurbished, and added more regals/champion of wits. I'll post the revised deck list when I get a chance but I like how it works. The look on the tournament grinders' face when he lost legacy'd approach and I dropped gfg game two was priceless.
Started playing Magic back in September and after a lot of messing around with jank, budget decks, and general silliness I found that I really liked WU Approach and just recently discovered WU God-Pharaoh's Gift. Looking at how I was side-boarding WU Approach, I wondered if I could start with one and sideboard out to the other to really mess with people. I'm not trying to make a super-competitive deck (nowhere near good enough as a player to do that), but I found out last night at FNM that my sideboarded Approach really messes with people if I can get it to fire. I'm curious what you guys think since I still feel like I'm fumbling around and just getting the hang of this game. So without further ado here it is:
4 Glacial Fortress
2 Irrigated Farmland
2 Scavenger Grounds
1 Ipnu Rivulet
6 Plains
9 Island
Creatures
2 Minister of Inquiries
2 Adorned Pouncer
2 Aerial Responder
2 Angel of Invention
2 Fleet Swallower
4 Strategic Planning
4 Chart a Course
4 Refurbish
1 Fumigate
Instants
1 Spell Pierce
2 Supreme Will
2 Essence Scatter
1 Settle the Wreckage
Enchantment
1 Cast Out
1 Fraying Sanity
Artifact
4 God-Pharaoh's Gift
2 Negate
2 Essence Scatter
1 Settle the Wreckage
2 Regal Caracal
1 Fumigate
1 Solemnity
1 Forsake the Worldly
1 Torrential Gearhulk
1 Metallurgic Summonings
2 Approach of the Second Sun
Sideboard out
2 Angel of Invention
2 Minister of Inquiries
3 God-Pharaoh’s Gift
4 Refurbish
2 Fleet Swallower
1 Fraying Sanity
1 Angel of Invention
Sideboard In
2 Negate
2 Essence Scatter
1 Settle the Wreckage
2 Regal Caracal
1 Fumigate
1 Solemnity
1 Forsake the Worldly
1 Torrential Gearhulk
1 Metallurgic Summonings
2 Approach of the Second Sun
While there's more discard than I would want, I think the shell of counterspells keeps both versions alive long enough to fire off.
Criticisms, comments, and advice would be greatly appreciated!
Also, if I put this in the wrong forum, I apologize and would appreciate if mods moved it to the right place!