Today I would like to write a little post about something I came across. It will talk about two people Alyssa Bereznak and Jon Finkel. You guys reading my blog probably know one of these names.
I hope Jon Finkel will be fine with me posting this and as for Alyssa I don't care if she cares. I know that this means writing about a personal matter yet once more, but I was horrified with this so much that I just can't let this go unnoticed.
In her article Alyssa Bereznak accused a former Magic: The Gathering World Champion of lying and being a creep. The article is pretty much about the pitfalls of online dating but you will also find out that the author of the article FAILED at both writing the article and the date itself.
Alyssa wrote about her experience on OKCupid - an online dating service. Personally I think that people sign up for something like this for one of the three following reasons: some people might try it as a last resort. Some people might abuse it and some people can try to see what happens if they try it. No matter the reason both of these people signed up for this site and ended up on a date. I personally think that doing a little research about dating sites would be a nice article but something like what Alyssa wrote and published is really unacceptable .
In the first paragraph Alyssa stated that she was drunk when creating her profile on OKCupid. This already was a WTF moment for me. How on a site that seemed serious something like this could be written and posted? Anyway the last sentence of the paragraph says: "Sure, I’d heard horror stories, but what was the worst that could happen?" (talking about online date)
One would expect that what would follow would be really terrible. In my head the word 'rape' appeared. It could be far worse I guess, but even this would be a horror story for me. What followed is something I did not expect at all and the whole point of the story is 'google something?'.
It seems that after receiving tons of very creepy message one, sounding completely normal arrived. Alyssa then gave Jon her name so he could google it but she forgot to do it herself. Now tell me, how can a journalist and a researcher forget to do something like this??! Not to mention this fact - Alyssa for sure was already sober and stayed on OKCupid for two weeks at least. Huh? Why? Was she so desperate looking for someone?
Anyway these two people met and had a dinner together. Here Alyssa found out that Jon managed to be a World Champion in Magic: The Gathering. I personally don't know how I would react but certainly I would not laugh. I guess most people would be curious no matter if they knew what Magic: The Gathering is. It deserves some kind of respect and it is not something that is bad for a relationship. Ok, it might show the fact that certain person dedicated a part of their life to become good at something and achieve to come to the top. But all of us have some hobbies. There are ones that you share with your boyfriend/girlfriend and some that you don't. You need to find a balance there. But only after some time you find the balance and find your preferences.
That's where Alyssa accuses Finkel of lying in the article. She thinks that 'nerdy titles' such as this deserve to be written in the profile and should be mandatory. I highly disagree with that. Isn't online dating about well first talking to the person and in the meantime search some information about that person? I noted that all the people that talked to me via instant messaging services searched information about me and read my posts at certain forums. All of the people admitted this. I consider it normal.
Personally I have some titles myself and good standings at that level in certain games but I won't be typing that anywhere. Google is good enough. Just type my name and you get it. But unfortunately Alyssa forgot to google him and thus was surprised. If she would have found this out earlier what she would do? Never respond to Jon? Or tell him 'sorry, you are active magic player and a nerd, good bye?' Certainly she would not go on a second date with him as she well did.
Hope she was fired for this (seems it happened) and I hope that no poor guy happens to be dating her in the future because for sure he does not deserve someone who can't get over one World Champion title and can't figure out 1 + 1.
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Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Mana Base (theory - how I do it)
At MTG Salvation site I came across one topic in which a certain person wanted to come up with a formula for mana base and that started a series of thoughts in my head. I have a way of determining number of lands and what ratio. But I never asked anybody else about this. How do you do it? Here is a short post about how I do it .
I use a method that is approximative in a way but works fine for me (I was always good with numbers, if I make an extensive table with everything written in it, I can see what the ideal result is. I'm bad at calculating it though...). But on the other hand it probably would be accurate if I would use the right constants for some variables and would actually calculate it. The one variable that actually bothers me the most is a fetch land. I usually count fetchlands as producers of all the colored mana the fetched lands can produce. But that is wrong as it fetches only one part of it either - one or two colors. So that is why I started to include importance of having a certain color on a certain turn (and also started treating fetchlands 'correctly')
Land Count
For each deck type I usually have a given number of lands in my head already. Blitz will play 18-19 lands, aggro deck will do fine with 20-21 lands, aggro-control with higher cmc will do fine with 23-24, control/combo about 26 and heavy control even 27-28. This is something I start with. But if I want some more precise numbers I usually go figure out how many successive land drops I need. For that I need to calculate my average converted mana cost and see. Then check the decklist and see what CMC the crucial spells are and when I need to play them. The percentage of drawing the last land on crucial turn should be somewhere near 75% but anything higher than 70 usually seems fine. This means that if a crucial spell for my control deck is turn 4 when I need to play a wrath effect I need enough land to have 4 consecutive land drops. If I would be playing Zoo I need to lands by t2 because I can operate on that just fine. It is crucial to have the second land though. If you want to calculate the probability of having certain amount of land cards by turn X use hypergeometric distribution for that.
Actual Mana Base
So what do I do to get a mana base done? I count the number of colored mana symbols first then count the number of colored cards and calculate the ratio of colored mana I need for the deck to have a basic idea how the mana base could look like. I assign importance to the cards - there is an ideal turn in which I want to cast the cards. Based on the importance when to play certain spell I write down modifiers for the colored sources. For example I want to be able to cast Kird Ape on turn 1 and Qasali Pridemage on turn 2. Kird Ape requires Red and Pridemage GW. I also change the mana cost of the cards to the one I actually need. Force of Will does cost 3UU but often you cast it for alternative cost not 3UU. Tribal Flames in my Zoo deck requires at least 4 or 5 different basic land types to be efficient. That is the reason why the mana cost in my table is marked as WURBG instead of just 1R. The same can be sad about other alternative costs - for example flashback cost. For example if you play a certain card only for its flashback cost what you count is the colored part of the flashback cost (for example Unburial Rites fetched by Gifts Ungiven) requires W. When doing this I also look at my sideboard because I also want to be able to cast my spells when I need them. Especially when many cards against Burn and RDW are white. This means that I also need to add some more importance to white.
After doing this for all relevant spells I add up the importance modifier (ranging from 1 - not important - to 3 - important) with the colored mana the spell requires and multiply all that by the number of cards. Then I take these values and divide them by the number of respective color cards exponent 0.5 (or square root). This will reveal the ratio of colored sources. From this point on I usually just consider some facts and make a list of lands I want to play. One needs to play with the deck a lot to find the ideal mana base but this is system helps me create a mana base that works pretty well. It's much of a guess work actually but assigning the importance to colors you need and number of lands on specific turn helps to make the mana base efficient. In the table I enter the number of how many times I want to play each land and check if the ratio check or not (divide the ratio so you have numbers similar to 1, you will be getting usually numbers like 10/8/12 for example instead of 31/25/40 - I just took some random numbers).
For example the factors that change the number of lands are - acceleration spells (ramp) like Birds of Paradise or Rampant Growth. Or it can be the number of cantrips in a deck. All these cards lower the number of lands you need to play usually in 4:1 ratio (one land per 4 cantrips).
The same way as I look at the importance of having the colors I need on turn X I also look when I need untapped lands. This is something many of us will subconsciously understand to some extent. Fast aggressive decks should not play CIPT lands since these will just make the deck lose tempo. Control decks though can have a certain amount of CIPT lands but not too many (four Colonnades is nice, but if you have other CIPT lands 4 might not be the right number). Especially if such a land can become win condition. The thing to consider though is this. If I want to play my Supreme Verdict on turn 4 I need White producing lands to come untapped. That is the reason why my Solar Flare wasn't really running too many Seachrome Coast but rather Glacial Fortress. I always needed blue so there wasn't a problem this land would come tapped in play. Seachrome Coast would come tapped always on turn 4. Since this deck also ran Liliana of the Veil and wanted to play it on turn 3 it needed black sources to come untapped (Darkslick Shores). For this same reason aggressive GR decks played 4 Copperline Gorge in addition to few shocklands. This allowed them to have their sources untapped during the crucial turns when they need access to both colors and the mana while saving life.
All this information will change certain type of land count and can shift the land count in general. At this time in Standard we have CIPT lands that are usually manlands and 2 types of land that can come into play untapped or tapped. The ratio between those is also crucial. Playing 8 CIPT lands is too much! But you can afford to play 5-6 for example. As for the actual land count. For example my Esper deck ran Nephalia's Drownyard as a possible win condition that in the end proved to be primary win condition. In order to run 4 of these lands and still be able to play my UU, BB and WW spells I needed to play more land in general - 28. It may have looked extreme but look at this card as a spell and one you need to invest mana each turn as well while still being able to play your other spells. Note that this deck also ran cantrips that also usually lower the land count in a deck (4/1 meaning that for 4 cantrips you can just cut a land)!
If the deck is multicolored I create a table. In it I write down each land in consideration and write down mana it can either fetch or produce. I multiply this number by the number of the land in the deck. I play with the numbers till I find the right numbers (that I got from the above). This part for me is usually more abstract and does not really use math much. But on the other hand everything can be somehow transformed into pure maths. This table makes me see if everything I considered corresponds with the mana base. If it there doesn't seem to be a solution it means there is a problem in deckbuilding and what I want to play is too risky. So I need to go back and revise my spells instead.
After all this I usually try to think a bit and see what problems I can encounter. Either be it Blood Moon entirely killing my dual lands or Wasteland/Strip Mine destroying just one but needed land (in terms of color). That's why I shift the numbers a bit as well. When my table shows that my deck needs only 1 mountain but the red spell is something I really want to play I put two instead of one (I'm talking here about fetchable source of a certain color, just an example). If Blood Moon would really hurt my deck (for example while playing Jund) I consider running basics. I put in the number I need to cast my most important spells. If I need to cast Liliana of the Veil I need two Swamps. I will need Forest as well, but I won't need Mountain since Blood Moon will provide me with many Mountains^_^.
So in short this is how I go about creating mana base for my decks. Mana base is crucial. Without having efficient mana base that allows you to play the spells you need and when you need to play them your deck will be much worse. It will either struggle on having too few land, too much land or lose tempo because of not having the right lands available. Even if you will copy mana base from someone else make sure to make approprite changes according to your deck's important turn, color requirements etc.
EDIT: 11/8/2016
since the link to the original table is broken I will add here an example of BUG Control mana base for current Standard.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Grixis Titans/Control
I got tired of trying to figure out what to do with Tezzeret deck or U/W/x control variants. I wanted something faster and responses that would be instant. Dismember was not enough for me so I tried UR deck, similar to one another player tried to develop online for current standard. As I'm trying to build a deck for a new format the deck lacked cards I would like to play and thus I added a color. The deck is not tested much, I just played against UW cotrol, Tempered Steel and some UW aggro but playing with it was relaxing as this feels more familiar to my earlier decks. So here's the decklist. I'll need to figure out what the deck can't handle and how to kill alternatively certain decks. But anyway I can't say what people will play when Innistrad will be out so I'll have to wait and see.
Grixis
Creatures [11]
2 Consecrated Sphinx
2 Grave Titan
2 Inferno Titan
4 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Wurmcoil Engine
Spells [24]
1 Cancel
4 Despise
3 Divination
3 Doom Blade
4 Incinerate
4 Mana Leak
4 Ponder
1 Stoic Rebuttal
Lands [25]
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Drowned Catacomb
10 Island
6 Mountain
1 Swamp
2 Consecrated Sphinx
2 Grave Titan
2 Inferno Titan
4 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Wurmcoil Engine
Spells [24]
1 Cancel
4 Despise
3 Divination
3 Doom Blade
4 Incinerate
4 Mana Leak
4 Ponder
1 Stoic Rebuttal
Lands [25]
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Drowned Catacomb
10 Island
6 Mountain
1 Swamp
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Modern aka dismember/random thoughts part 2.
Modern
I decided to split the post into two, because the following text does not really relate to Dismember. This card has actually triggered all the following thoughts in my brain but does not really have to do much with it. Except, 'will this card be played in different formats'?
Extended format is relatively dead. The cut to Lorwyn till now turned the format into a big standard and that's where no one wanted Extended to be. CawBlade running rampart, Fae-Blade, tricky Valakut and some other crazy decks like well Jund?!
I was looking forward to Mirrodin+ Extended and when I heard the news about this not happening I was sad. Outraged at first, later sad as I couldn't change a think about it.
Some time ago at Community Wizards network I learned something about Community Cup via one girl's blog. The blog is featured for some reason (I still don't get it) and it lacks a lot of information concerning the game itself. But anyway this is the source from which I found out about Community Cup and Modern 'maybe' becoming a reality. I've ignored all the Modern threads on forums because I thought that this would not happen. But I have to admit that WotC starts to surprise me more and more.
So September 2nd is the date. Are you ready?
The prices of cards went ridiculously up and buying them before the big jump was rather difficult. No matter what our country ran off them quite quickly. So the prices will rise even more when they will be in stock once again.
The banlist is vast, so that should mean that there should be a big variety of decks, hopefully.
Concerning the decks that would see play though...
Zoo is no.1. Wide range of cards it can play and even different styles. Ones with little creatures and additional damage cards (how was the goddamn boost spell called?? and tribal flames) or something like a bant zoo. Dark Confidant version or more disruptive and counterspelling/disrupting version? I went through different versions and settled on Gaddog Teeg, Meddling Mages and Negates and that worked wonders. No matter what I guess people will grab their zoo and play it once again.
And then? Grove of the Brunwillows/Punishing Fire? Guess that counts as zoo as well.
What else I would expect? Faeries, different versions of CawBlade. Different kinds of control decks slowly emerging - UWx, UBx. I personally think that red has what to offer.
Jund as well even though I tried to figure out in what Jund could be better than Zoo and apart from Bloodbraid Elf I couldn't come up with anything (hm Anathemancer actually). I don't see the SOM lands as a big plus and running fetchlands + duals does not seem as a solution either. But maybe I just don't know how to play Jund. I just seem to think that Naya has better cards available and thus would see play. Anyway mana base is something people should consider. I except to see two approaches - SOM lands that are not actually dual lands as they lack the basic land type and fetch lands + dual lands. I prefer the latter and I would expect most decks would run this combination as well. This means loss of life... and that brings us to burn type deck. (That can as well run Grove of the Burnwillows + Punishing fire). This kind of mana base makes Blood Moon flash red in my head. Hopefully there's no wasteland or strip mine.
I would expect people to play Elves and Goblins but those are not decks that I would expect to excel. And I can hardly imagine Merfolk being that good at modern either. But Aether Vial is not banned, am I right? But I think people will come up with something better to use vial for.
I can imagine Tempered Steel being played and I've seen crazy decks already in the past. My not so well UW Steel aggro surprised many 5cc decks and even elves and goblin players were like wtf?
As for combos...I'm not really sure. Thopter/Depths, Valakut/(scapeshift) etc are banned so... When I first thought about it I came up with Breach/Hulk, Pyromancer's Ascension, Splinter/Twin (or Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite). But there are already working decks running Ad Naseum (angel's grace not to die), we've seen Time Sieve combos of all kinds and probably other decks as well. The only new combo deck I can see is Melira/persist combos. My favorite creature for sacrificing creatures was always Carrion Feeder but that card is long gone. Now we have a better card - Viscera Seer. This way sacrificing creatures and getting cards you need is way easier (btw this card and hulk....hm yummy)
I used to play different versions of Persist decks that tried to kill with Red Cap (quillspike combo included) or boosted nantuko shade, later bloodthrone vampire. But well persist has limited use and nothing like Melira was printed until now(ok it's been a while). The deck now finally got what it needed.
Well, I guess there are many decks that can come to mind but which ones will prevail? Which ones will define the new format? We have yet to see. (I skipped different kinds of rock decks on purpose.)
Lately my bf told me about Modern TCGplayer tournament and noted that there was a UW Tron deck he liked. He told me me about the other decks so I had to check them out. There was one decklist that caught my eye. It was a Superfriends deck that placed in top16 and it runs some important cards from standard. A part from Jace, Gideon, Batterskull etc etc it runs Preordain, Dismember and Consecrated Sphinx. When I've seen this for the first time I liked the idea. I already played UWR Superfriends at the last 'big' Extended. It consisted of 3x Jace TMS, 1x Elspeth, 1x Gideon, 3x Ajani Vengeant, few burn spells (lightning helix), PTE and counterspells. The win condition was either Jace TMS or Kitchen Finks. I would never expected a similar deck to show up now at modern. But well this deck has come through a zoo test as a winner so why not?
Anyway it's been already a long time since I played this deck and many new cards were printed. Among them the cards from the deck below - Inferno Titan, Batterskull, Dismember, Consecrated Sphinx, Preordain.
Now follows the Superfriends decklist from the tournament.
Inferno Titan is a card that can deal a seriously hell of a damage. At one funny standard tournament I played Valakut ramp with a lot of burn spells and Inferno Titans in my sideboard. (how a mono green deck with 12 mountains can change into a burn ramp with titans - lol that sounds terrible). To my surprise this plan worked and Kuldotha Red, different types of Tempered Steel and Burn just stared at me like WTF?
Consecrated Sphinx A card I believed would be good. But it never managed to get into my decks because I had my playset of Jaces TMS. Why play this card when you can kill with Jace or your manlands? When Jace was banned this card lurked in somehow and I could see what the card really does from both my point of view as a player piloting deck with the card and a opponent to someone playing Consecrated Sphinx. I've already gone through several EDH matches in which both of us had this card in play and the card draw was insane. In t2 even with limited cards it is still good.
For Dismember comments see above. (note ehm actually the post is below)
Preordain. As for this card...hm. It's not brainstorm for sure. It's not Jace, the Mind Sculptor either. But it still can allow you to see three different cards. Earlier (talking about standard) we had Ponder and fetch lands and that was relatively fine. But the idea of having ponder and no fetch lands makes me sick. So if I would want to choose a card with similar effect I would go for Preordain.
It seems like Jace TMS was first replaced by Sea Gate Oracle (at least in my case), later by Preordain and now he's* replaced by Ponder + Consecrated Sphinx. At least the Sphinx costs more than the rest of the cards^^.
* see? I referenced the card with 'he'. What the hell is going on? Ok, this happens...I mean I've seen many (not so many in fact) people reference cards like this but since the planeswalker type people reference the planeswalker cards by the depicted characters' gender. It's easier in a way but it wasn't happening. The planeswalkers change some people's mind and also many people are crazy about 'walkers. This seems as a really good marketing strategy but I have to tell you that I'm fed up with planeswalkers already. I was fine with Urza and the other eight but hell how many planeswalkers we have now? It was 21 when I attended Magic: The Gathering Quiz. Now we have even more planeswalkers and in Innistrad we are going to have one with 5 ABILITIES! Jace was enough, thanks...
Back to the deck. I seriously have no idea why the person is not playing Hallowed Fountain but otherwise I like it. The deck plays well and is close to what I like. The last card I'm unsure about is Batterskull.
I've played against Batterskull on NPH Prerelease/Release and I have to say that the card annoyed me as hell. In all those six boosters I did not open any artifact removal nor counterspell (that could counter an artifact otherwise I would even play blue). The card seemed overpowered to me at first. 4/4 lifelink, vigilance?! I was like WTF? What the hell should I do with it?
Later when starting to build different kind of decks (t2 again) I realized that any titan can easily block that. Paying 3 for returning the card to hand and play it once again becomes tricky especially when your opponent keeps you under pressure. In the time I would usually need to play Batterskull I usually need to deal with other threats and this way Batterskull ends up on my hand not being played for the rest of the game.
While including this card in Modern Superfriends deck I realized that there is more space for this. Actually the start is pretty crazy but later in the game you have everything you need. It's not like titan after titan and gideon after gideon. I'm still not convinced about this card in any build but still playing it once in a t2 deck feels right.
It seems that I wrote quite a lot about modern and I did not even wanted to write anything about it. It seems that this shows my joy with WotC's decision.
I decided to split the post into two, because the following text does not really relate to Dismember. This card has actually triggered all the following thoughts in my brain but does not really have to do much with it. Except, 'will this card be played in different formats'?
Extended format is relatively dead. The cut to Lorwyn till now turned the format into a big standard and that's where no one wanted Extended to be. CawBlade running rampart, Fae-Blade, tricky Valakut and some other crazy decks like well Jund?!
I was looking forward to Mirrodin+ Extended and when I heard the news about this not happening I was sad. Outraged at first, later sad as I couldn't change a think about it.
Some time ago at Community Wizards network I learned something about Community Cup via one girl's blog. The blog is featured for some reason (I still don't get it) and it lacks a lot of information concerning the game itself. But anyway this is the source from which I found out about Community Cup and Modern 'maybe' becoming a reality. I've ignored all the Modern threads on forums because I thought that this would not happen. But I have to admit that WotC starts to surprise me more and more.
So September 2nd is the date. Are you ready?
The prices of cards went ridiculously up and buying them before the big jump was rather difficult. No matter what our country ran off them quite quickly. So the prices will rise even more when they will be in stock once again.
The banlist is vast, so that should mean that there should be a big variety of decks, hopefully.
Concerning the decks that would see play though...
Zoo is no.1. Wide range of cards it can play and even different styles. Ones with little creatures and additional damage cards (how was the goddamn boost spell called?? and tribal flames) or something like a bant zoo. Dark Confidant version or more disruptive and counterspelling/disrupting version? I went through different versions and settled on Gaddog Teeg, Meddling Mages and Negates and that worked wonders. No matter what I guess people will grab their zoo and play it once again.
And then? Grove of the Brunwillows/Punishing Fire? Guess that counts as zoo as well.
What else I would expect? Faeries, different versions of CawBlade. Different kinds of control decks slowly emerging - UWx, UBx. I personally think that red has what to offer.
Jund as well even though I tried to figure out in what Jund could be better than Zoo and apart from Bloodbraid Elf I couldn't come up with anything (hm Anathemancer actually). I don't see the SOM lands as a big plus and running fetchlands + duals does not seem as a solution either. But maybe I just don't know how to play Jund. I just seem to think that Naya has better cards available and thus would see play. Anyway mana base is something people should consider. I except to see two approaches - SOM lands that are not actually dual lands as they lack the basic land type and fetch lands + dual lands. I prefer the latter and I would expect most decks would run this combination as well. This means loss of life... and that brings us to burn type deck. (That can as well run Grove of the Burnwillows + Punishing fire). This kind of mana base makes Blood Moon flash red in my head. Hopefully there's no wasteland or strip mine.
I would expect people to play Elves and Goblins but those are not decks that I would expect to excel. And I can hardly imagine Merfolk being that good at modern either. But Aether Vial is not banned, am I right? But I think people will come up with something better to use vial for.
I can imagine Tempered Steel being played and I've seen crazy decks already in the past. My not so well UW Steel aggro surprised many 5cc decks and even elves and goblin players were like wtf?
As for combos...I'm not really sure. Thopter/Depths, Valakut/(scapeshift) etc are banned so... When I first thought about it I came up with Breach/Hulk, Pyromancer's Ascension, Splinter/Twin (or Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite). But there are already working decks running Ad Naseum (angel's grace not to die), we've seen Time Sieve combos of all kinds and probably other decks as well. The only new combo deck I can see is Melira/persist combos. My favorite creature for sacrificing creatures was always Carrion Feeder but that card is long gone. Now we have a better card - Viscera Seer. This way sacrificing creatures and getting cards you need is way easier (btw this card and hulk....hm yummy)
I used to play different versions of Persist decks that tried to kill with Red Cap (quillspike combo included) or boosted nantuko shade, later bloodthrone vampire. But well persist has limited use and nothing like Melira was printed until now(ok it's been a while). The deck now finally got what it needed.
Well, I guess there are many decks that can come to mind but which ones will prevail? Which ones will define the new format? We have yet to see. (I skipped different kinds of rock decks on purpose.)
Lately my bf told me about Modern TCGplayer tournament and noted that there was a UW Tron deck he liked. He told me me about the other decks so I had to check them out. There was one decklist that caught my eye. It was a Superfriends deck that placed in top16 and it runs some important cards from standard. A part from Jace, Gideon, Batterskull etc etc it runs Preordain, Dismember and Consecrated Sphinx. When I've seen this for the first time I liked the idea. I already played UWR Superfriends at the last 'big' Extended. It consisted of 3x Jace TMS, 1x Elspeth, 1x Gideon, 3x Ajani Vengeant, few burn spells (lightning helix), PTE and counterspells. The win condition was either Jace TMS or Kitchen Finks. I would never expected a similar deck to show up now at modern. But well this deck has come through a zoo test as a winner so why not?
Anyway it's been already a long time since I played this deck and many new cards were printed. Among them the cards from the deck below - Inferno Titan, Batterskull, Dismember, Consecrated Sphinx, Preordain.
Now follows the Superfriends decklist from the tournament.
Superfriends
Creatures [4]
2 Consecrated Sphinx
2 Inferno Titan
Planeswalkers [8]
3 Ajani Vengeant
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Gideon Jura
3 Jace Beleren
Spells [22]
2 Batterskull
2 Dismember
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
2 Mana Leak
3 Path to Exile
4 Preordain
4 Rune Snag
Lands [26]
4 Arid Mesa
1 Cascade Bluffs
3 Glacial Fortress
2 Island
2 Mountain
1 Mystic Gate
2 Plains
1 Rugged Prairie
3 Sacred Foundry
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Steam Vents
2 Consecrated Sphinx
2 Inferno Titan
Planeswalkers [8]
3 Ajani Vengeant
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Gideon Jura
3 Jace Beleren
Spells [22]
2 Batterskull
2 Dismember
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
2 Mana Leak
3 Path to Exile
4 Preordain
4 Rune Snag
Lands [26]
4 Arid Mesa
1 Cascade Bluffs
3 Glacial Fortress
2 Island
2 Mountain
1 Mystic Gate
2 Plains
1 Rugged Prairie
3 Sacred Foundry
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Steam Vents
Inferno Titan is a card that can deal a seriously hell of a damage. At one funny standard tournament I played Valakut ramp with a lot of burn spells and Inferno Titans in my sideboard. (how a mono green deck with 12 mountains can change into a burn ramp with titans - lol that sounds terrible). To my surprise this plan worked and Kuldotha Red, different types of Tempered Steel and Burn just stared at me like WTF?
Consecrated Sphinx A card I believed would be good. But it never managed to get into my decks because I had my playset of Jaces TMS. Why play this card when you can kill with Jace or your manlands? When Jace was banned this card lurked in somehow and I could see what the card really does from both my point of view as a player piloting deck with the card and a opponent to someone playing Consecrated Sphinx. I've already gone through several EDH matches in which both of us had this card in play and the card draw was insane. In t2 even with limited cards it is still good.
For Dismember comments see above. (note ehm actually the post is below)
Preordain. As for this card...hm. It's not brainstorm for sure. It's not Jace, the Mind Sculptor either. But it still can allow you to see three different cards. Earlier (talking about standard) we had Ponder and fetch lands and that was relatively fine. But the idea of having ponder and no fetch lands makes me sick. So if I would want to choose a card with similar effect I would go for Preordain.
It seems like Jace TMS was first replaced by Sea Gate Oracle (at least in my case), later by Preordain and now he's* replaced by Ponder + Consecrated Sphinx. At least the Sphinx costs more than the rest of the cards^^.
* see? I referenced the card with 'he'. What the hell is going on? Ok, this happens...I mean I've seen many (not so many in fact) people reference cards like this but since the planeswalker type people reference the planeswalker cards by the depicted characters' gender. It's easier in a way but it wasn't happening. The planeswalkers change some people's mind and also many people are crazy about 'walkers. This seems as a really good marketing strategy but I have to tell you that I'm fed up with planeswalkers already. I was fine with Urza and the other eight but hell how many planeswalkers we have now? It was 21 when I attended Magic: The Gathering Quiz. Now we have even more planeswalkers and in Innistrad we are going to have one with 5 ABILITIES! Jace was enough, thanks...
Back to the deck. I seriously have no idea why the person is not playing Hallowed Fountain but otherwise I like it. The deck plays well and is close to what I like. The last card I'm unsure about is Batterskull.
I've played against Batterskull on NPH Prerelease/Release and I have to say that the card annoyed me as hell. In all those six boosters I did not open any artifact removal nor counterspell (that could counter an artifact otherwise I would even play blue). The card seemed overpowered to me at first. 4/4 lifelink, vigilance?! I was like WTF? What the hell should I do with it?
Later when starting to build different kind of decks (t2 again) I realized that any titan can easily block that. Paying 3 for returning the card to hand and play it once again becomes tricky especially when your opponent keeps you under pressure. In the time I would usually need to play Batterskull I usually need to deal with other threats and this way Batterskull ends up on my hand not being played for the rest of the game.
While including this card in Modern Superfriends deck I realized that there is more space for this. Actually the start is pretty crazy but later in the game you have everything you need. It's not like titan after titan and gideon after gideon. I'm still not convinced about this card in any build but still playing it once in a t2 deck feels right.
It seems that I wrote quite a lot about modern and I did not even wanted to write anything about it. It seems that this shows my joy with WotC's decision.
Dismember and some random thoughts
Dismember
Dismember is probably my most favorite card in New Phyrexia. This card gives -5/-5 to target creature until end of turn which easily kills creatures like Phylactery Lich or Baneslayer Angel. But who cares about that? It does not entirely kill Titans but 1/1 creature can do the job and if the creature is bigger than it still stays alive.
But well this is not the reason why it should be the best card of a set.(well might not be in your eyes but for me it is. I wanted to write about this a while ago, but got to it now). Anyway this card is an instant removal for any deck. The card costs 1 mana and 2 black (phyrexian) mana. So you can either pay the black mana or pay some life. 4 might seem a lot but the possibility of playing this spell on turn one or for just one mana when needed is so great. My little Nacatls could be telling you stories about this...You can do the maths yourself (killed Nacatl costing you 4 life or Nacatl staying alive and swinging for three each turn? (till t3)).
I spent some time trying to figure out how to build a UW control deck and this card is one of those that just want to stay in the deck. It is also one of the cards that can destroy Inkmoth Nexus (after tectonic edge rotates out).
Since my beginnings of playing Magic: The Gathering I always had to have an instant response to something either good spot removal or counterspell, many times both. I usually played Blue/Black or Blue/Red or Red/Blue decks that always had access to control and removal/burn. Lately these combinations weren't possible (oh yeah Tezz combo, Vampires with Kalastria/Viscera Seer). Last time I played Grixis Control when Alara was still T2 legal. But even at that time my primary deck was UW Tapout deck. At that time I had hard time figuring out what I wanted to play. Grixis control decks were the type of decks I wanted to play but UW control was simply better. (I kept Grixis for Extended for a while but I gave up on playing Grixis at Standard.) White color is the one being strong and still is. My decks are UW and now there's even more white! But still the decks usually tapped out completely and were dealing with stuff at sorcery speed and that's were Dismember comes in. Dismember adds a good instant speed removal for one mana and that's what counts.
Phyrexian mana also starts to mess up with the color pie even more than cards like Damnation. Well there are many cards that could count for a different color (I know in the case of Planar Chaos it was a real intent but still I couldn't get over it) but now you can ignore the color of the card completely.
Some time ago we played a sealed deck with NPH boosters only and our first match looked like: My opponent played vault skirge, spined thopter, porcelain legionnaire
only to be hit by marrow shards and be overrun by the same creatures I could pay for with phyrexian mana. I actually lost the first game as I messed up my five color manabase because that way I had to pay more life than I could spare. I changed it a bit for the remaining games and it worked much better. The decks were a 5 color phyrexian zoo but it was doing wonders - in the limited format we played.
Dismember is probably my most favorite card in New Phyrexia. This card gives -5/-5 to target creature until end of turn which easily kills creatures like Phylactery Lich or Baneslayer Angel. But who cares about that? It does not entirely kill Titans but 1/1 creature can do the job and if the creature is bigger than it still stays alive.
But well this is not the reason why it should be the best card of a set.(well might not be in your eyes but for me it is. I wanted to write about this a while ago, but got to it now). Anyway this card is an instant removal for any deck. The card costs 1 mana and 2 black (phyrexian) mana. So you can either pay the black mana or pay some life. 4 might seem a lot but the possibility of playing this spell on turn one or for just one mana when needed is so great. My little Nacatls could be telling you stories about this...You can do the maths yourself (killed Nacatl costing you 4 life or Nacatl staying alive and swinging for three each turn? (till t3)).
I spent some time trying to figure out how to build a UW control deck and this card is one of those that just want to stay in the deck. It is also one of the cards that can destroy Inkmoth Nexus (after tectonic edge rotates out).
Since my beginnings of playing Magic: The Gathering I always had to have an instant response to something either good spot removal or counterspell, many times both. I usually played Blue/Black or Blue/Red or Red/Blue decks that always had access to control and removal/burn. Lately these combinations weren't possible (oh yeah Tezz combo, Vampires with Kalastria/Viscera Seer). Last time I played Grixis Control when Alara was still T2 legal. But even at that time my primary deck was UW Tapout deck. At that time I had hard time figuring out what I wanted to play. Grixis control decks were the type of decks I wanted to play but UW control was simply better. (I kept Grixis for Extended for a while but I gave up on playing Grixis at Standard.) White color is the one being strong and still is. My decks are UW and now there's even more white! But still the decks usually tapped out completely and were dealing with stuff at sorcery speed and that's were Dismember comes in. Dismember adds a good instant speed removal for one mana and that's what counts.
Phyrexian mana also starts to mess up with the color pie even more than cards like Damnation. Well there are many cards that could count for a different color (I know in the case of Planar Chaos it was a real intent but still I couldn't get over it) but now you can ignore the color of the card completely.
Some time ago we played a sealed deck with NPH boosters only and our first match looked like: My opponent played vault skirge, spined thopter, porcelain legionnaire
only to be hit by marrow shards and be overrun by the same creatures I could pay for with phyrexian mana. I actually lost the first game as I messed up my five color manabase because that way I had to pay more life than I could spare. I changed it a bit for the remaining games and it worked much better. The decks were a 5 color phyrexian zoo but it was doing wonders - in the limited format we played.
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