Can't you just double to the power of persecutor golems-1?
Well, you could. Berserk for instance would do wonders for making them very, very deadly.
I'm more interested in what the upper bound is for a possible combo, though. It's like a puzzle. The practical benefits are slim, but I'm wondering how many you can generate. Is it the largest non-infinite combo currently possible? (Or, in the geeky nature I tend to think about such things, are we in the realm of having more golems than there are atoms in the universe?)
Precursor, Doubling, Rite. Then add Mirrorweave. (Cast Through Time makes it a bit easier, but isn't necessary.)
If you start with the doubling, then the initial golem will generate 4 tokens.
Cast Mirrorweave on the golem, and you've got five of them. Hit it with a kicked Rite.
My math might be a bit off here, but even just like that, you should end up with over 11 million tokens and over 300,000 golems.
With or without another Mirrorweave, a second Rite makes the calculation prohibitively difficult such that I can't do it in my head. Someone who's good with math can probably develop a formula.
First guy I faced was in his first tournament ever. He must have had a 60 card deck that was running UB, but it wasn't very well tweaked. I went over him 2-0, looked at his cards, and suggested he switch to GR.
Second round I faced a guy who was mostly green with some white and black backup. First game I got mana screwed, he steamrolled me mostly on the back of a Cudgel Troll. Second game he got manascrewed, and my deck worked as planned. Third game I got mana flooded and the Troll rolled me again.
Third round I faced off against a nice girl who was mostly playing a mirror of mine, without the black, but my ability to keep the recursion going gave me a definite advantage, so i won 2-0 again.
My Green might have been playable. Mitotic Slime, Yav Wurm, Cultivate, Spined Wurm, Giant Spider, Sacred Wolf, Bear, and Acidic Slime. Also a Prized Unicorn for a potential finisher and (if I wanted) two Nature's Spiral, a fog, and a Giant Growth. Also in black I had five vampires, including Captivating. However, that seemed a really thin chance to work out right, even with the clone.
The last rare I got was Dragonskull Summit (besides DoJ, Jace, Clone, Slime, and Vamp). However, my red pool was terrible.
In the packs I won I got an Inferno Titan and a Magma Phoenix.
Jason Chan was the artist present, and he altered the art on a Nighthawk to turn it into a peeping tom. I asked for something silly.
I also played a game against the gunslinger (Conan... something. Didn't catch his last name.) I lost, but it was a fun game while we joked and chatted about stuff.
We definately need a strong red PW to balance out the fact that the other colours have much more power.
I for one support the idea of a Jaya Ballard PW card, using the same 3 abilites as her legendary creature card. But with - and + loyalties instead mana. Something like +2 +1 -12
Umm... Jaya Ballard, if you take her abilities straight, would be worse than Chandra Nalaar. Potentially significantly worse, since her + ability requires the opponent to have blue. (Depending on the meta, she could be grand, since she could kill Jace and make herself stronger, but even so, she'd be very side-boardy.)
I'm of the opinion that when Wizards decided to start doing P-walkers, they really wanted to make a Jaya Ballard card, but realizing that it might cause confusion since she's also a creature, especially one from the previous block, that it wouldn't be a good idea to do so.
For all intents and purposes, Chandra Nalaar IS Jaya Ballard. Her P-Walker abilities on the base card are a reasonable variation. She's red, wears goggles, and I assume has the same witty humor (but not having kept up on the story, I can't say for sure.)
I think the only real screw-up was the mechanic break. A number of things (landfall, allies, multi-kicker) were interesting bits in Zen/WW, but with RoE, we've got a whole new set of interesting abilities (levelling, etc.). I would have liked to see a full block of both. As it stands, both feel stunted and separate for no real good reason.
I went 1-3 running UR Runeflare trap, which was easily the odd deck out at the gameday. I didn't have any time to prep for the meta, so I was going in blind. Still, had fun, and I won a game in every single round, so I think with a bit of tweaking, the deck could probably do quite well for me.
I lose game one when I'm a turn away from going off and winning. I was at 15, had it calculated that I could stand him getting a Goblin Bushwacker and I'd take 14, as long as he didn't have a fetch, but he also had an Elite Vanguard to drop.
Game 2 was smooth as pudding, as I managed to get things rolling, pulled off three straight Time Warps on turn 5 and then hit him very hard in the face with the combo.
Game 3 I mull down to 5, get stuck on 2 mana, and die rather horribly.
0-1, 1-2
Round 2 vs. UW Control
Not sure if it's got a specific name, but it ran new Jace, Colonades, and other controlly bits. Since I don't have any creatures, much of his control is blanked, and I manage to keep things in hand and win game 1.
In game 2, he sides in Kor Firewalker, which is one of the cards I was wondering how I'd deal with. As it turns out, I pretty much didn't care about the life gain, or the two damage he pinged me with, and managed to get the combo to work rather nicely.
1-1, 3-2
Round 3 vs. White Weenie.
I'm not entirely sure which was which in the first two rounds, but we split them, with one where I ended up about a turn away from pulling it together, and the other where it worked out rather well.
Game 3 almost went to time, but even though I got to the point of pulling off the triple Time Warp at the end, but I didn't have enough mana to pull off the combo to kill him after that, due to being stuck on a single Mine. Sad, because I'd controlled the early game rather well.
Ultimately, besides a bit of bad luck, I lost this round due to Brave the Elements. One game I lost due it it completely stopping a Chain Reaction.
1-2, 4-4
Round 4 vs. Jund
My opponent had gotten paired down and was at 2-1. He was playing for a top 8 spot, while I was playing for a Highborn foil.
I can't remember which of game 1 or 2 I won, but I managed to keep things in control in one of them, with a great Spell Pierce of a Garruk that rather shut him down. He did get a Blightning on me, and wondered why I discarded a Bolt when there was a creature on the board to kill. I told him I wanted the other cards in my hand.
In game 3, I mulled down to 5 again. First hand had a Trap, Twincast, and 5 lands. Second hand had no lands. I settled on a single mountain hand, spent three or four turns waiting for another land, and really did nothing.
1-3, 5-6.
Ultimate result was a bit unhappy, but I felt that things were close enough in those games that I could have seen going 3-1 instead of 1-3. I really was playing blind to the meta, so I had no idea what my sideboard should be, and hadn't had much chance to test anything either. As it stands, it looked like the rest of the field was playing UW Control, Jund, Vampires, or WW. there might have been some Naya in there, but I didn't notice. I'm pretty sure I was the most roguey there.
Having played it, I know I definitely need the 4th Time Warp. And the Halimar Depths didn't do anything for me. I might drop a Twincast, too.
The sideboard needs to be overhauled. Flashfreeze is good, but Swerve seems too situational. Pithing Needle, as well, doesn't seem quite necessary because it's basically there to hit 'Walkers. And I'm really not sure about Chain Reaction. I'm not quite sure what I should be shifting towards instead, though. Possibly Negate or maybe even Essence Scatter to take care of stuff my spot removal can't really handle. A better board clear would be nice, too.
I've been considering a token-light variant. Essentially using a cheap creature and the numerous deck stacking capabilities in blue to set up the polymorph just right. This isn't tweaked, though.
I want to pull out some of the unsure stuff for 2 more Fonts and a Time Warp, but I'm not sure about the right set of counters and bounce spells. How strong are Ponder and Calcite Snapper?
I'm also unsure about the sideboard. I've got four Swerves, and I'm looking at Flashfreeze, but I'm not sure beyond that.
Wow. =) So if I produce any color mana (say R), it will be stored there forever, even if I use it? Or at least until Omnath is in play.
No, any non-green mana will empty from your pool as normal (i.e. at the end of any phase.) Note that green mana floating in the pool will remain until it is spent.
For instance, you've got six forests in play, and you tap all of them for GGGGGG. You use GGG to cast Omnath, leaving GGG so he enters play as a 4/4. You have that three green floating.
On your opponent's turn, she casts Terminate, targeting Omnath.
In response, you spend G from the pool to cast Vines of Vastwood, which prevents the Terminate. You have GG floating, so Omnath is now a 3/3.
Note that you could spend GG to cast and kick the Vines, which would make Omnath 6/6 until end of turn, but a 2/2 afterward (because you'd have just one green mana floating.)
The big problem with the mechanics was that they were designed too specifically.
Splice is a great mechanic. Arcane is a difficult to use limitation that shouldn't have been used. It was an attempt at flavor in the mechanics that got in the way of the fun. If Wizards had been so worried about people splicing willy-nilly, they could have increased the cost of splice...
Soulshift, likewise, is a really cool mechanic. The problem is that they just tried to tie it into the kami flavor for the block too much. Take out the spirit limitation, and it becomes rather cool. If they're worried about it being overpowered, they can reduce the strength of the creatures that have it somewhat.
Although in the game I built it, I played 2 Walking Atlases instead of the Sky Ruin Drake and the Banisher. I could also see dropping the Nemesis Trap in favor of a Grim Discovery.
I didn't have a spectacular pre-release, but it was fun. After opening my packs to nothing overwhelming, I decided to run a 4 color ally deck, mostly because I had 2 join the ranks.
It didn't work out. I lost the first two rounds and then got a bye. In the final round, I lost the first game and decided to resleeve back to the initial uB deck I had considered. It won me two straight (and got me a single pack as a prize for finishing 2-2), so in retrospect I should have gone with that. I might have finished with 3-1 or something.
A friend of mine did finish 3-1, and managed to pull a foil Abyssal Persecutor in his pool. For myself, I got two dude ranches.
Well, you could. Berserk for instance would do wonders for making them very, very deadly.
I'm more interested in what the upper bound is for a possible combo, though. It's like a puzzle. The practical benefits are slim, but I'm wondering how many you can generate. Is it the largest non-infinite combo currently possible? (Or, in the geeky nature I tend to think about such things, are we in the realm of having more golems than there are atoms in the universe?)
Precursor, Doubling, Rite. Then add Mirrorweave. (Cast Through Time makes it a bit easier, but isn't necessary.)
If you start with the doubling, then the initial golem will generate 4 tokens.
Cast Mirrorweave on the golem, and you've got five of them. Hit it with a kicked Rite.
My math might be a bit off here, but even just like that, you should end up with over 11 million tokens and over 300,000 golems.
With or without another Mirrorweave, a second Rite makes the calculation prohibitively difficult such that I can't do it in my head. Someone who's good with math can probably develop a formula.
Went 2-1-1 in four rounds, winning two packs.
First guy I faced was in his first tournament ever. He must have had a 60 card deck that was running UB, but it wasn't very well tweaked. I went over him 2-0, looked at his cards, and suggested he switch to GR.
Second round I faced a guy who was mostly green with some white and black backup. First game I got mana screwed, he steamrolled me mostly on the back of a Cudgel Troll. Second game he got manascrewed, and my deck worked as planned. Third game I got mana flooded and the Troll rolled me again.
Third round I faced off against a nice girl who was mostly playing a mirror of mine, without the black, but my ability to keep the recursion going gave me a definite advantage, so i won 2-0 again.
My Green might have been playable. Mitotic Slime, Yav Wurm, Cultivate, Spined Wurm, Giant Spider, Sacred Wolf, Bear, and Acidic Slime. Also a Prized Unicorn for a potential finisher and (if I wanted) two Nature's Spiral, a fog, and a Giant Growth. Also in black I had five vampires, including Captivating. However, that seemed a really thin chance to work out right, even with the clone.
The last rare I got was Dragonskull Summit (besides DoJ, Jace, Clone, Slime, and Vamp). However, my red pool was terrible.
In the packs I won I got an Inferno Titan and a Magma Phoenix.
Jason Chan was the artist present, and he altered the art on a Nighthawk to turn it into a peeping tom. I asked for something silly.
I also played a game against the gunslinger (Conan... something. Didn't catch his last name.) I lost, but it was a fun game while we joked and chatted about stuff.
Then it was off to Claim Jumper for dinner.
Umm... Jaya Ballard, if you take her abilities straight, would be worse than Chandra Nalaar. Potentially significantly worse, since her + ability requires the opponent to have blue. (Depending on the meta, she could be grand, since she could kill Jace and make herself stronger, but even so, she'd be very side-boardy.)
I'm of the opinion that when Wizards decided to start doing P-walkers, they really wanted to make a Jaya Ballard card, but realizing that it might cause confusion since she's also a creature, especially one from the previous block, that it wouldn't be a good idea to do so.
For all intents and purposes, Chandra Nalaar IS Jaya Ballard. Her P-Walker abilities on the base card are a reasonable variation. She's red, wears goggles, and I assume has the same witty humor (but not having kept up on the story, I can't say for sure.)
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Marsh Flats
6 Island
7 Plains
2 Swamp
4 Caravan Escort
4 Kabira Vindicator
2 Hedron-Field Purists
2 Student of Warfare
2 Knights of Cliffhaven
4 Venerated Teacher
3 Hada Sky Patrol
2 Skywatcher Adept
2 Enclave Crytologist
3 Guul Draz Assassin
2 Nirkana Cutthroat
3 Training Grounds
3 Time of Heroes
I'm wondering if I should drop the black entirely. I like the control it adds, but it does slow the deck down a bit.
3 Halimar Depths
4 Scalding Tarn
7 Mountain
9 Island
Artifact
4 Font of Mythos
4 Howling Mine
Others
4 Runeflare Trap
4 Twincast
4 Spell Pierce
4 Ponder
3 Time Warp
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Burst Lightning
1 Trapmaker's Snare
1 Into the Roil
4 Swerve
4 Flashfreeze
3 Calcite Snapper
3 Pithing Needle
1 Chain Reaction
Round 1 vs. Boros Bushwacker
I lose game one when I'm a turn away from going off and winning. I was at 15, had it calculated that I could stand him getting a Goblin Bushwacker and I'd take 14, as long as he didn't have a fetch, but he also had an Elite Vanguard to drop.
Game 2 was smooth as pudding, as I managed to get things rolling, pulled off three straight Time Warps on turn 5 and then hit him very hard in the face with the combo.
Game 3 I mull down to 5, get stuck on 2 mana, and die rather horribly.
0-1, 1-2
Round 2 vs. UW Control
Not sure if it's got a specific name, but it ran new Jace, Colonades, and other controlly bits. Since I don't have any creatures, much of his control is blanked, and I manage to keep things in hand and win game 1.
In game 2, he sides in Kor Firewalker, which is one of the cards I was wondering how I'd deal with. As it turns out, I pretty much didn't care about the life gain, or the two damage he pinged me with, and managed to get the combo to work rather nicely.
1-1, 3-2
Round 3 vs. White Weenie.
I'm not entirely sure which was which in the first two rounds, but we split them, with one where I ended up about a turn away from pulling it together, and the other where it worked out rather well.
Game 3 almost went to time, but even though I got to the point of pulling off the triple Time Warp at the end, but I didn't have enough mana to pull off the combo to kill him after that, due to being stuck on a single Mine. Sad, because I'd controlled the early game rather well.
Ultimately, besides a bit of bad luck, I lost this round due to Brave the Elements. One game I lost due it it completely stopping a Chain Reaction.
1-2, 4-4
Round 4 vs. Jund
My opponent had gotten paired down and was at 2-1. He was playing for a top 8 spot, while I was playing for a Highborn foil.
I can't remember which of game 1 or 2 I won, but I managed to keep things in control in one of them, with a great Spell Pierce of a Garruk that rather shut him down. He did get a Blightning on me, and wondered why I discarded a Bolt when there was a creature on the board to kill. I told him I wanted the other cards in my hand.
In game 3, I mulled down to 5 again. First hand had a Trap, Twincast, and 5 lands. Second hand had no lands. I settled on a single mountain hand, spent three or four turns waiting for another land, and really did nothing.
1-3, 5-6.
Ultimate result was a bit unhappy, but I felt that things were close enough in those games that I could have seen going 3-1 instead of 1-3. I really was playing blind to the meta, so I had no idea what my sideboard should be, and hadn't had much chance to test anything either. As it stands, it looked like the rest of the field was playing UW Control, Jund, Vampires, or WW. there might have been some Naya in there, but I didn't notice. I'm pretty sure I was the most roguey there.
Having played it, I know I definitely need the 4th Time Warp. And the Halimar Depths didn't do anything for me. I might drop a Twincast, too.
The sideboard needs to be overhauled. Flashfreeze is good, but Swerve seems too situational. Pithing Needle, as well, doesn't seem quite necessary because it's basically there to hit 'Walkers. And I'm really not sure about Chain Reaction. I'm not quite sure what I should be shifting towards instead, though. Possibly Negate or maybe even Essence Scatter to take care of stuff my spot removal can't really handle. A better board clear would be nice, too.
4 Celestial Colonade
4 Halimar Depths
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Sejiri Refuge
4 Plains
4 Island
4 Sage Owl
4 Iona, Shield of Emeria
Other
4 Ponder
4 Polymorph
4 Spell Pierce
4 Path to Exile
4 Silence
4 Wind Zendikon
4 Hindering Light
I like the Zendikon, because it won't stop the 'morph flipping, but can provide a creature to target.
My current list:
12 Island
8 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
Important Stuff
2 Font of Mythos
4 Howling Mine
4 Runeflare Trap
4 Twincast
3 Time Warp
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Trapmaker's Snare
4 Whiplash Trap
4 Burst Lightning
3 Into the Roil
I want to pull out some of the unsure stuff for 2 more Fonts and a Time Warp, but I'm not sure about the right set of counters and bounce spells. How strong are Ponder and Calcite Snapper?
I'm also unsure about the sideboard. I've got four Swerves, and I'm looking at Flashfreeze, but I'm not sure beyond that.
Suggestions?
No, any non-green mana will empty from your pool as normal (i.e. at the end of any phase.) Note that green mana floating in the pool will remain until it is spent.
For instance, you've got six forests in play, and you tap all of them for GGGGGG. You use GGG to cast Omnath, leaving GGG so he enters play as a 4/4. You have that three green floating.
On your opponent's turn, she casts Terminate, targeting Omnath.
In response, you spend G from the pool to cast Vines of Vastwood, which prevents the Terminate. You have GG floating, so Omnath is now a 3/3.
Note that you could spend GG to cast and kick the Vines, which would make Omnath 6/6 until end of turn, but a 2/2 afterward (because you'd have just one green mana floating.)
Splice is a great mechanic. Arcane is a difficult to use limitation that shouldn't have been used. It was an attempt at flavor in the mechanics that got in the way of the fun. If Wizards had been so worried about people splicing willy-nilly, they could have increased the cost of splice...
Soulshift, likewise, is a really cool mechanic. The problem is that they just tried to tie it into the kami flavor for the block too much. Take out the spirit limitation, and it becomes rather cool. If they're worried about it being overpowered, they can reduce the strength of the creatures that have it somewhat.
1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
1 Blood Seeker
2 Pulse Tracker
1 Bloodhusk Ritualist
1 Anowon, the Ruin Sage
1 Jagwasp Swarm
1 Bog Tatters
1 Hagra Crocodile
1 Living Tsunami
2 Horizon Drake
1 Sky Ruin Drake
1 Surrakar Banisher
1 Disfigure
1 Dead Reckoning
1 Nemesis Trap
1 Smother
1 Into the Roil
2 Treasure Hunt
1 Wind Zendikon
11 Swamp
7 Island
Although in the game I built it, I played 2 Walking Atlases instead of the Sky Ruin Drake and the Banisher. I could also see dropping the Nemesis Trap in favor of a Grim Discovery.
C'est la vie.
3-0-1 7 Packs
3-1-0 3 packs
2-0-2 3 packs
2-1-1 2 packs
2-2-0 1 pack
This was static regardless of the number of people in the flight. We had 14 in ours, but I believe the earlier one had considerably more.
It didn't work out. I lost the first two rounds and then got a bye. In the final round, I lost the first game and decided to resleeve back to the initial uB deck I had considered. It won me two straight (and got me a single pack as a prize for finishing 2-2), so in retrospect I should have gone with that. I might have finished with 3-1 or something.
A friend of mine did finish 3-1, and managed to pull a foil Abyssal Persecutor in his pool. For myself, I got two dude ranches.