Hi Everyone!
So, Ulamog is back! He exiles two permanents and doesn't have annihilator, but he does exile cards from libraries. Maybe R and D decided that their grandiose Eldrazi were a little too grandiose. There's a mechanic that lets us do things using exiled cards, it's pretty bazaar and seems way, way underpowered (one card let us take two cards from an opponents exile and put them in their graveyard for 3 1/1 tokens, wow, what an overwhelming power).
The other notable announcement is that Zendikar fetches will be in the set as foil, full art and as rare as foil mythics, there will be 40 of these "Expedition" cards.
There's also a new cycle of dual lands for the allied colors. They have basic land types and come into play tapped unless you control two or more basic lands.
So there are some cool things going on but the absence of annihilator makes me sad. I think the mechanic was very powerful and essentially unbeatable. Wizards probably wanted the Eldrazi to have less of an impact on the board at least. The new Ulamog is only a 10/10 that's indestructible that mills 20 cards when it attacks. The mill will kill you, but it won't hinder you from winning in the mean time.
The Expedition lands....they seem neat but are a pure cash grab from Wizards. They are foil mythic rarity cards (15 of 20) aren't even standard legal. They are trying to get players who don't play standard to buy packs of cards. They will be available online but not redeemable so I'm not expecting them to be expensive on Magic Online.
So yeah, Battle for Zendikar isn't looking so bad anymore, but Wizards is being transparent in their desire to do things to make players buy more packs without doing anything to make the game better.
Hi Everyone!
This week I finally fixed all my problems with Windows 10 and by virtualization software (virtualbox).
Let me first clarify the problem. The problem was that I upgraded my host operating system and it would auto-update and restart. The restart would bring the computer to the login screen and wait for me to enter a password. So my computer would sit there not running my virtual machine until I re-opened it.
It was an easy fix. All I did was change windows Update settings from "automatically install" to ask for a time to install and restart.
Simple enough, but annoying because my computer wasn't set to automatically install updates before I upgraded to Windows 10.
Who sends out an upgrade that overwrites some of your settings? Microsoft, that's who.
This week we take on one of the most successful aggro decks in the Modern format but one thing is very different from most other aggro matchups. The strength of Affinity is one of the main reasons we maindeck Pyroclasms in the first place and this is an aggro deck that is seriously affected by all our countermeasures (almost). Still, it is a very powerful deck that can easily kill us if we stumble.
Is this a bad matchup for RG Tron? This is close to a 50/50 matchup for Tron. We have a very good chance of surviving the initial onslaught of Affinity and Pyroclasm is just devastating.
Things to consider when playing RG Tron vs Affinity The matchup is not about you getting to Tron. It is about you surviving the initial charge of Robots. Don't think too hard about Tron. It is perfectly acceptable to keep a hand that can cast Pyroclasm. Cranial Plating must not stay on the table. It is the #1 target for Nature's Claim, except perhaps their man-lands (see below) Remember that Oblivion Stone does not hit man-lands. This means that their biggest threat is Inkmoth Nexus and its more normal cousin Blinkmoth Nexus. Arcbound Ravager is a very powerful card on their side and avoids most of your main deck removal, surviving Pyroclasm and putting his counters on the man-lands. Ghost Quarter truly shines in this matchup. You only need the Wurmcoil Engines to win. They are - again - both your best defensive cards and your road to victory.
Useful and less useful sideboard cards I have been very against fililng your sideboard with cards that are useful in only one matchup. That would leave me with Nature's Claim (on my own artifacts) and Wurmcoil Engine to gain life. If Affinity is heavy in your meta you can bring in more specific sideboard cards but I am reluctant to do that. Still, I will mention them here. Ancient Grudge: Instant speed and double removal is very powerful. Can deal with man-lands. Feed the clan Gaining five (or ten!) life is quite useful against Affinity too. TThe problem is that Affinity - if it gets rolling - has no problem dealing 30 or even 40 damage. Firespout: Pyroclasm 5-8 would be very useful here.
Nature's Claim: Our catch-all answer comes in here as well and truly shines. We can destroy any one of their cards for 1 mana. That is super important and if you don't pack 4 Nature's Claim in your sideboard you are probably doing something wrong. Pithing Needle: Many players recommend it for this matchup. I have no experience playing the card versus Affinity. Shatterstorm/Vandalblast: It is tempting but these are generally considered too slow for this matchup. That goes for Creeping Corrosion as well.
Spellskite: Spellskite blocks some of their creatures and make Arcbound Ravager very hard to use efficiently. If someone actually uses an Arcbound Ravager it is pretty much game over but most Affinity players will not make this mistake. Wurmcoil Engine:This is the way you win this match like so many others. The Coil has a lot of problems with the flyers but being able to hit for 6 and gain 6 is often enough. Less useful main deck cards Emrakul: The big girl does nothing in this matchup. She is just a dead draw. Take her out if you are still maindecking her. Eye of Ugin: In theory you can chain Wurmcoil Engines with this card or even get a crucial Spellskite. I am reluctant to take it out but it is sloooow.
Karn Liberated: The threats are multiple and fast. Karn does not do enough in this matchup but he is still Karn. I can see sideboarding out one or two Karns if you need the space. Oblivion Stone: Oblivion Stone fails to hit the man-lands but they still do kill most of Affinity's threats.
Relic of Progenitus: Relic does not do anything here. Sundering Titan: This is not the matchup that Titan shines in. Sideboard him out. Sylvan Scrying: This is the slowest of your engine cards. I would not fault you for taking out one or two to fit in more SB cards, but try to avoid it. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: If Karn is too slow, Ugin is ever worse. To the sideboard with him. This is one of his worst matchups. Ulamog, the Infnite Gyre: You are better off if this is your maindeck Eldrazi but it is hard to keep him in after boarding. He is just too slow. The fact that he hits man-lands really helps in the first duel. As you are not as focused on getting to your Tron this is one of the few matchups where you can consider taking out a single compy of Chromatic Sphere or Sylvan Scrying. Try to avoid it, though, if at all possible.
What do they bring in? Artifact Destruction: We are vulnerable to this but I feel that it dillutes their deck too much and it does nothing to save them from Pyroclasm. Blood Moon is something you will see but as you are already boarding the full playset of Nature's Claims means that you come well prepared for the Moon. Also your focus on finding your removal instead of finding Tron saves you here. Beware losing all your Green mana to the Blood Moon. Keep a sphere or a star around. Molten Rain/Stone Rain: I think it is a mistake by the Affinity player to try to 1-for-1 your lands. This will dillute their deck. They should just go for the kill instead. Thoughtseize: This will be useful as they can remove your removal. They only need one more turn to win. Possibly their strongest sideboard card against us.
Sample video In this video I take on Affinity with one of my RG Tron builds.
A few hours ago the PAX Prime Battle for Zendikar took place and some spectacular facts were revealed about BFZ. Wizards introduced Zendikar Expeditions which are 25 premium foil full-art lands randomly packaged in Battle for Zendikar boosters. Approximately as rare as opening a foil mythic, meaning your chance is 1:432. Five of them are the new dual lands from Battle for Zendikar (take a look at photo on the right). The other 20 are two ten-card cycles: the fetch lands and the shock lands. Twenty more Zendikar Expeditions promos will be in boosters of the second set of this block ("Sweat"). They are all numbered as part of the same, 45-card set. These cards will be legal to play in draft and sealed if you open them, but not in Standard unless they also have a normal printing in a Standard-legal set.
The build was big and required 12 hours of downtime instead of the usual 4. At the end of the downtime Wizards had several problems affecting many functionalities of Magic Online, including trades and events. Trades and Events have been disabled for 2 hours. In general MTGO was not stable after the downtime and was pretty slow.
The issues seem to be resolved now, and Magic Online is again fully operative.
No bot update is required. If you experienced problems with your MTGO (disconnections, low trades, random withdraws) this was ok.
If you follow my Standard Pauper career you know that I am in love with all decks featuring Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Treasure Cruise. Those decks were earlier called Gary's Cruise but with the introduction of the Exploit mechanic the decks turned even better - and changed name.
Here is a video of me playing the latest iteration of my list.
The master of these decks is rrmedio1. He won MPDC 30.03 with a new take on Blue Black, featuring Grave Titan Jr. = Grave Servant.
Sideboard 2 Reave Soul 2 Sidisi's Faithful 1 Vulturous Aven 1 Mnemonic Wall 3 Festergloom 3 Disciple of Phenax 3 Negate Here is the final results of the tournament and all the decks mentioned below: http://pdcmagic.com/gatherling/eventreport.php?event=MPDC+30.03
Roberto kindly offered to explain his deck and these are his words:
"Well, the main idea was to have a black deck that would abuse Nantuko Husk, specially for the interaction with Dutiful Attendant and for keeping my creatures from being exiled. Added blue because I love Grumag Drowner and because Peel From Reality is usually great with black creatures. Also, I would be able to play Treasure Cruise, which is maybe a good card, not sure.
The original list had Artificer's Epiphany for ditching creatures in the graveyard, but in the last minute I replaced it with Sign in Blood because the deck doesn't have that many card draw and I was afraid of running out of gas.
The list is not very polished, specially the sideboard, which probably lacks Duress, Disdainful Stroke, and probably some other cards. Black Cat is not great as it used to be because it basically only works against heroic. Undead Servant floats between MVP and useless very easily, since the deck is not designed around it. I was very lucky not to face green decks, since I had no Deathtouch creatures.
The matches
I was late but gwyned was nice enough to allow me to join the tournament with a bye.
First match (2nd round) was against an interesting UB Control by Erwiddan deck which was controlling me very effectively. First game he did not give me much air to breath and he was almost stabilized in the second game, when his time ran out. I guess he was into really awful lag.
Second match was against SFlaren's Izzet Control, with main deck Hexproof creatures, and game 1 let me hopeless after being crushed so easily. But the deck worked very well after siding in the Disciples and Negates. In both games 2 and 3 it looked like he would win with early Hexproof fatties, but all the recursion was too much for him to keep 1 for 1'ing me. I have to say that this was an awesome and crazy match.
Top 4 was against Malum's Boros Tokens which also crushed me in game 1 with Magmatic Chasm. He almost got me in game two but a timely Festergloom saved the day. In game 3 he didn't got the aggressive start and we traded creatures until the card advantage gave me upper hand. Despite many mistakes and misclicks, I ended up winning.
The finals were against JogandoPelado, aka PlayingNaked, and his Mono Black deck. It was very similar to my deck (but no Cruises for him), also based on the Nankuto-Attendant engine. In the first game he got 3 Garies very soon, I dragged the game a bit recasting my single Gary a few times until he finally killed me. Game 2 was a bit odd: I slowed him down with the Disciples of Phenax but he was attacking me in the air. Then Gary landed and I won out of nowhere attacking back when some of his creatures were tapped. In game 3 he had some mana problems and it was my time to draw early Garies, who finished the game when he was starting to develop his board.
Sideboard
Reave Soul was good against the tokens deck and not bad against the Mono Black deck.
Sidisi's Faithful was also good against the tokens deck
Aven was good in all matches
Wall was never cast (sided it in against the Izzet deck, I think, then sided it out again)
Festergloom won me a game against tokens
Disciple was the better card in the finals and also good against Izzet. The UB Control deck never let it be resolved
Negate was great in all matches, not counting the finals, where I did not use it."
Thank you, Roberto!
BTW, if you are at all interested in Standard Pauper check out the free touranments with real prizes runing at pdcmagic.com. They are the best.
Hi Everyone!
I get asked why I'm so disappointed with Magic right now a lot lately. I constantly badmouth Wizards grab for cash with the changes to standard, the weak Origins set that isn't anything that even appropriately closes the 20 plus years of core sets. It's just another set focusing on the planeswalkers, probably because "the focus groups really like planeswalkers". The big one lately is the BFZ spoilers.
Everyone gets all excited about full art lands and whatever else but let's look at what they've shown us. They have shown us weak spoilers that I think don't compare to the cards from the original Zendikar.
Therein lies the problem. The problem being that Battle for Zendikar is not Zendikar. Look at Mirrodin. There were some problems with Mirrodin and players didn't like the "ravager" deck. There were some power level problems. So when it came time to come back around to Mirrodin they went in a different direction.
Ravnica was a well loved set, yet still, the return was "different" than the original. Now that we're back to Zendikar they are again "doing something different". The problem here is that Zendikar is really loved. Zendikar was what players wanted sets to be. Using the name "Zendikar" to do something different will usually result in there being some dissatisfaction because the benchmark was the original Zendikar and the return needs to be as good or better to satisfy players. I just don't think it's even close to as good as the orginal.
Hi Everyone!
