There are several rationalisations that come to mind in response.
I think the main one is that I wouldn't have fun not building (piles of jank).
So I would be doing homework so that I could have fun later, whilst likely not learning anything in the process.
I’m certainly not gonna tell you how to have fun, but as far as learning goes it’s way harder to learn how to build good decks without studying good decks.
Yeah, probably.
My objective is to have fun whilst hopefully getting better though, rather than vice versa.
Magic has an issue whereby it's difficult to identify the mistakes you've made deckbuilding by playing your deck. Like losing in chess 10 moves after you opened yourself up, the distance between mistake and loss resulting from said mistake makes it real hard.
But as is true of just about any good competitive game, the insight of high level players is a huge boon to improvement. If you don't want to netdeck to get a feel for how functional shells are built (personally I like to netdeck and then screw with those lists to make it my own), then I recommend you find someone who builds or tweaks constructed decks on stream. They'll usually explain their rationale and it'll teach you some of the technique.
There are several rationalisations that come to mind in response.
I think the main one is that I wouldn't have fun not building (piles of jank).
So I would be doing homework so that I could have fun later, whilst likely not learning anything in the process.
I’m certainly not gonna tell you how to have fun, but as far as learning goes it’s way harder to learn how to build good decks without studying good decks.
Yeah, probably.
My objective is to have fun whilst hopefully getting better though, rather than vice versa.
Magic has an issue whereby it's difficult to identify the mistakes you've made deckbuilding by playing your deck. Like losing in chess 10 moves after you opened yourself up, the distance between mistake and loss resulting from said mistake makes it real hard.
But as is true of just about any good competitive game, the insight of high level players is a huge boon to improvement. If you don't want to netdeck to get a feel for how functional shells are built (personally I like to netdeck and then screw with those lists to make it my own), then I recommend you find someone who builds or tweaks constructed decks on stream. They'll usually explain their rationale and it'll teach you some of the technique.
The bolded above is really good insight, but I'd add that MTG's obfuscation is also amplified by the designed randomness in the game. In Chess analysis is even more straightforward, since you have more visible information.
It's too often easy to dismiss a deck's loss as luck of the draw, and attribute a win to good function when numerous factors worked out in your favor.
I did a few drafts this weekend and did pretty good overall. Won 7 games 3 times I think and didn't either 2 or 3 times. Are draft rewards lower than last season? If so, that's a bummer. I still vastly prefer draft to constructed.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I did a few drafts this weekend and did pretty good overall. Won 7 games 3 times I think and didn't either 2 or 3 times. Are draft rewards lower than last season? If so, that's a bummer. I still vastly prefer draft to constructed.
Constructed event rewards dropped a bit but I don't think any of the draft rewards changed.
between the counterspell that mills, the wall that mills and the shield that mills and petitioners it does look like Mill in this draft is completely viable
my local shop is doing quick drafts for FNM this month
I just don't understand how, if you're paying money, this feels like a good idea. I don't always sideboard in draft, but I do play differently game two. Bo1 makes so much sense in a digital format, or at a huge convention(PAX, etc) where another match is SECONDS away, but it feels so wrong in a FLGS.
I'm having a lot of fun playing the Gates deck in play mode. Slamming down critters with a bunch of hasted critters with combined 30+ power on a single round just feels good...
I did a few drafts this weekend and did pretty good overall. Won 7 games 3 times I think and didn't either 2 or 3 times. Are draft rewards lower than last season? If so, that's a bummer. I still vastly prefer draft to constructed.
Constructed event rewards dropped a bit but I don't think any of the draft rewards changed.
Good to know. Maybe my issue is that I thought it was 1500 gems to draft, but I guess it's only 750? I usually pay with gold.
I did a few drafts this weekend and did pretty good overall. Won 7 games 3 times I think and didn't either 2 or 3 times. Are draft rewards lower than last season? If so, that's a bummer. I still vastly prefer draft to constructed.
Constructed event rewards dropped a bit but I don't think any of the draft rewards changed.
Good to know. Maybe my issue is that I thought it was 1500 gems to draft, but I guess it's only 750? I usually pay with gold.
Went to my LGS for some Commander yesterday and decided to sell off (in CDN) my Engineered Explosive($20) and Hydroid Krasis($25). Bought 1 pack of Eternal Masters and pulled Canopy Horizon and sold it ($67) and bought a Masters 25 and Ultimate Masters. Nothing fancy from the M25 but got a foil Back to Basics from the UMA which I then sold($50) and got another Eternal pack and pulled Aether Vial ($37).
By far the best luck I have ever had with packs and now I have a good amount of store credit for some more cards. Tough decision is whether to buy 3-5 higher priced cards that I have proxies of, or buy everything I need for my Zurgo Helmsmasher deck...
Because if you're going to attempt to squeeze that big black monster into your slot you will need to be able to take at least 12 inches or else you're going to have a bad time...
I won against a nexus deck last night by doing nothing
they're spamming their nexus loops and fuckin Hydroid jellyfish fucker oh boy x = 22
when they had 5 cards left in their deck
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Bant is just like... the only color combination I ever want to play again. Limited, constructed -- don't care. Put the Bant in my veins.
With a few wildcards I turned my mediocre Bant Vannifar deck into a very very good Bant Flash deck. And it doesn't play Nexus of Fate so no one will hate it, right???
j/k I know everyone hates playing against counterspells.
IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
edited February 2019
Hahaha holy shit Kibler is playing a wilderness/nexus deck that just time walked three turns in a row with only four land to kill his sarkhan at 3 loyalty with a single thopter.
Like I wasn't even watching long, I tune in and within two minutes that shit happens.
Ilpala on
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Fuck Joe Manchin
Try Esper Midrange deck> Go up against mono red twice in a row>Fine with this>Mulligan to 5 four games in a row because of 1 land or 6 land hands every game> land screwed every game>quit out, breathe calmly for a while.
I want to love this deck but stuff like that makes it way less exciting to play than aggro because it's a lot harder to get mana screwed when the entire deck can run off of two mana really well. Sultai has the explore package too, so a lot easier to get to the lands you need.
I'm playing gruul jank in free play and living the dream. Ult'd big Domri (free from code don't @ me) and bashed big boy creatures against a very game merfolk deck that made great use of hadranas climb.
I ping'ed a millstone control deck to death with a single 1/4 creature with my Butt Fight deck, where the first 4 turns saw 12 damage (Butt Fight, WOO), and the next 8 turns was just me swinging with a stupid owl each turn after he Ixalan's Binding on my High Alert (oh noooooooo). I kept bringing out more powerful creatures, but he kept taking them down with removal and exiles and counters. But the trusty owl kept flying over and pinging.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
the meta is so weird that I'm not crafting much, but I've stolen a LOT of games against Nexus decks by using maximum velocity on drakes, even as a one of.
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
Just got a solid 7-0 with an Azorius fliers deck. I'm starting to think of High Alert less as a build-around-only card and more as just a solid (if narrow) addition to Azorius. Most of the time you're going to take creatures it's good with anyway (Gateway Sneak, Azorius Knight-Arbiter, Concordia Pegasus, Senate Courier, Syndicate Messenger, Spirit of the Spires). And it can shape your picks if you get it early (Vizkopa Vampire not worth it anymore, but Humongulous did WORK). I dunno, you can't just toss it into any deck, but it was more useful with already-good creatures than I thought.
And once in a while your opponent will forget that it basically nullifies Slimebind and Faerie Duelist.
Really tempted to build the Nexus deck just because I feel like I COMPLETELY underestimated wilderness.
play wilderness
don't play nexus
play primal amulet and expansion // explosion and burn them out at instant speed while milling them out
edit: also azorius fliers is a SUPER solid draft strategy with high alert and angelic exaltation as bomb uncommons
i went 7-1 with it in my most recent draft
Lucedes on
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KayWhat we need...Is a little bit of PANIC.Registered Userregular
How do I sideboard against Wilderness Regrowth/Nexus of Fate if i am running a red/black deck?
Duress and Drill Bit are both good, here. Neither red nor black typically get enchantment removal. Black usually gets the 'strip all copies of card X' from the deck, which are USUALLY bad but in the low wincon density decks it can be back breaking, though that's in Dimir this time around.
I'm in a weird spot in constructed right now - I took a two-month break from playing Arena and now that I'm back, all my old decks are bad and I'm not really sure what to invest wildcards in.
My best-performing deck is R/W Convoke, mostly on the back of Venerated Loxodon and Heroic Reinforcements being busted, and History of Benalia just being so damn efficient. It's possible the deck is just a worse version of mono-white, but Heroic Reinforcements and Goblin Instigator specifically are reasons to splash red, along with having reach in the form of Shock and Lightning Strike to steal the occasional game when the opponent stabilizes behind a sweeper. I can still never beat a Wildgrowth Walker on 5 toughness.
I'm trying to figure out if I want to refresh/update this deck or build something totally different. There aren't a lot of tools in GRN/RNA that feel like a good fit - Skewer the Critics and Light up the Stage are maybe the most obvious choices, but this deck wants its cheap interaction at instant speed (I think I'd rather have Shock than Skewer) and really lives and dies by the quality of its nut draws (where it's hard to fit in Light up the Stage). If anyone has deck recommendations that are in a similar vein, I'd like to hear them -- in particular, I'm debating taking the plunge on some flavor of Rakdos go-wide with Judith, the Scourge Diva, but losing access to white cuts off many of the most powerful cards in my current deck.
I still don't get why Nexus also shuffles itself back into the deck. I think that's the part that really twists me up.
With creatures that sort of clause is used so it's impossible (or at least harder) to cheat it into play from the graveyard (Progenitus, eldrazi, Blightsteel etc). That's not usually a concern with instant/sorceries, and usually those just exile themselves to prevent loops (Flood of Recollection, Wildest Dreams, even old stuff like Recall). They started experimenting with putting powerful instants/sorceries back in the library for some reason (I guess it's another way of preventing people from getting them out of the graveyard), but that still created loops with Seasons Past. Putting it on Nexus (and doing it from anywhere, not just when it's cast) just seems like one of many mistakes they made with the card, both in terms of design and distribution.
I still don't get why Nexus also shuffles itself back into the deck. I think that's the part that really twists me up.
With creatures that sort of clause is used so it's impossible (or at least harder) to cheat it into play from the graveyard (Progenitus, eldrazi, Blightsteel etc). That's not usually a concern with instant/sorceries, and usually those just exile themselves to prevent loops (Flood of Recollection, Wildest Dreams, even old stuff like Recall). They started experimenting with putting powerful instants/sorceries back in the library for some reason (I guess it's another way of preventing people from getting them out of the graveyard), but that still created loops with Seasons Past. Putting it on Nexus (and doing it from anywhere, not just when it's cast) just seems like one of many mistakes they made with the card, both in terms of design and distribution.
"Player loses a turn" has been a well-known bad boardgame design concept for at least a decade now. I can't think of another boardgame that employs it.
There's a difference between a player losing a turn and a player taking an extra turn, since most examples of bad "lose a turn" design are in multiplayer games and come at little/no resource cost for the person forcing a lost turn.
Extra turn effects have existed forever and at a high enough mana cost aren't bad for the game or broken. Nexus being an instant and shuffling in made it constructed playable, but it's still not broken except in the arena-isn't-designed-for-this sense.
Like, power level complaints about Nexus have to recognize it's very beatable in Bo3 and less powerful and less prevalent than aggro in Bo1.
milski on
I ate an engineer
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I still don't get why Nexus also shuffles itself back into the deck. I think that's the part that really twists me up.
With creatures that sort of clause is used so it's impossible (or at least harder) to cheat it into play from the graveyard (Progenitus, eldrazi, Blightsteel etc). That's not usually a concern with instant/sorceries, and usually those just exile themselves to prevent loops (Flood of Recollection, Wildest Dreams, even old stuff like Recall). They started experimenting with putting powerful instants/sorceries back in the library for some reason (I guess it's another way of preventing people from getting them out of the graveyard), but that still created loops with Seasons Past. Putting it on Nexus (and doing it from anywhere, not just when it's cast) just seems like one of many mistakes they made with the card, both in terms of design and distribution.
"Player loses a turn" has been a well-known bad boardgame design concept for at least a decade now. I can't think of another boardgame that employs it.
Uno!
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Magic has an issue whereby it's difficult to identify the mistakes you've made deckbuilding by playing your deck. Like losing in chess 10 moves after you opened yourself up, the distance between mistake and loss resulting from said mistake makes it real hard.
But as is true of just about any good competitive game, the insight of high level players is a huge boon to improvement. If you don't want to netdeck to get a feel for how functional shells are built (personally I like to netdeck and then screw with those lists to make it my own), then I recommend you find someone who builds or tweaks constructed decks on stream. They'll usually explain their rationale and it'll teach you some of the technique.
The bolded above is really good insight, but I'd add that MTG's obfuscation is also amplified by the designed randomness in the game. In Chess analysis is even more straightforward, since you have more visible information.
It's too often easy to dismiss a deck's loss as luck of the draw, and attribute a win to good function when numerous factors worked out in your favor.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
My petitioners deck actually does pretty well against control
Constructed event rewards dropped a bit but I don't think any of the draft rewards changed.
I just don't understand how, if you're paying money, this feels like a good idea. I don't always sideboard in draft, but I do play differently game two. Bo1 makes so much sense in a digital format, or at a huge convention(PAX, etc) where another match is SECONDS away, but it feels so wrong in a FLGS.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Good to know. Maybe my issue is that I thought it was 1500 gems to draft, but I guess it's only 750? I usually pay with gold.
1500 is for BO3 draft.
By far the best luck I have ever had with packs and now I have a good amount of store credit for some more cards. Tough decision is whether to buy 3-5 higher priced cards that I have proxies of, or buy everything I need for my Zurgo Helmsmasher deck...
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
they're spamming their nexus loops and fuckin Hydroid jellyfish fucker oh boy x = 22
when they had 5 cards left in their deck
Good job milling yourself, Nexus Deck!
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With a few wildcards I turned my mediocre Bant Vannifar deck into a very very good Bant Flash deck. And it doesn't play Nexus of Fate so no one will hate it, right???
j/k I know everyone hates playing against counterspells.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Sorcerer spyglass against planeswalkers.
Maybe splash blue for thief of sanity.
Ummm. Hmmm. Ehhhhhhh.
More burn?
Oh yeah discard effects for sure. Duress and Kitesail Freebooters.
Like I wasn't even watching long, I tune in and within two minutes that shit happens.
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
I want to love this deck but stuff like that makes it way less exciting to play than aggro because it's a lot harder to get mana screwed when the entire deck can run off of two mana really well. Sultai has the explore package too, so a lot easier to get to the lands you need.
Result:
I will never top this achievement.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Ranked Draft matches primarily based on record instead of rank, so it's not that crazy!
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
And once in a while your opponent will forget that it basically nullifies Slimebind and Faerie Duelist.
play wilderness
don't play nexus
play primal amulet and expansion // explosion and burn them out at instant speed while milling them out
edit: also azorius fliers is a SUPER solid draft strategy with high alert and angelic exaltation as bomb uncommons
i went 7-1 with it in my most recent draft
Duress and Drill Bit are both good, here. Neither red nor black typically get enchantment removal. Black usually gets the 'strip all copies of card X' from the deck, which are USUALLY bad but in the low wincon density decks it can be back breaking, though that's in Dimir this time around.
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
My best-performing deck is R/W Convoke, mostly on the back of Venerated Loxodon and Heroic Reinforcements being busted, and History of Benalia just being so damn efficient. It's possible the deck is just a worse version of mono-white, but Heroic Reinforcements and Goblin Instigator specifically are reasons to splash red, along with having reach in the form of Shock and Lightning Strike to steal the occasional game when the opponent stabilizes behind a sweeper. I can still never beat a Wildgrowth Walker on 5 toughness.
I'm trying to figure out if I want to refresh/update this deck or build something totally different. There aren't a lot of tools in GRN/RNA that feel like a good fit - Skewer the Critics and Light up the Stage are maybe the most obvious choices, but this deck wants its cheap interaction at instant speed (I think I'd rather have Shock than Skewer) and really lives and dies by the quality of its nut draws (where it's hard to fit in Light up the Stage). If anyone has deck recommendations that are in a similar vein, I'd like to hear them -- in particular, I'm debating taking the plunge on some flavor of Rakdos go-wide with Judith, the Scourge Diva, but losing access to white cuts off many of the most powerful cards in my current deck.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
With creatures that sort of clause is used so it's impossible (or at least harder) to cheat it into play from the graveyard (Progenitus, eldrazi, Blightsteel etc). That's not usually a concern with instant/sorceries, and usually those just exile themselves to prevent loops (Flood of Recollection, Wildest Dreams, even old stuff like Recall). They started experimenting with putting powerful instants/sorceries back in the library for some reason (I guess it's another way of preventing people from getting them out of the graveyard), but that still created loops with Seasons Past. Putting it on Nexus (and doing it from anywhere, not just when it's cast) just seems like one of many mistakes they made with the card, both in terms of design and distribution.
"Player loses a turn" has been a well-known bad boardgame design concept for at least a decade now. I can't think of another boardgame that employs it.
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Extra turn effects have existed forever and at a high enough mana cost aren't bad for the game or broken. Nexus being an instant and shuffling in made it constructed playable, but it's still not broken except in the arena-isn't-designed-for-this sense.
Like, power level complaints about Nexus have to recognize it's very beatable in Bo3 and less powerful and less prevalent than aggro in Bo1.
Uno!