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precision posted:I 100% agree except about Rampant Growth - I run them instead of Khalni Heart Expedition, because Khalni is a dead draw outside of the first few turns. Ramp and Stamp always does something - either thins out my deck, or lets me shuffle if I don't like what's on top (which I can see because of Oracle). That's a pretty good deal to me. The way you'll win most matches is dropping fatties on turn 4 and 5 and hope they can't beat them through racing or removal. Khalni sets that up way better than rampant growth, especially in combination with Explore. Most of the decks are super aggressive, often curving out at 4, and if you don't drop a Titan, Avenger or Pelaka Wurm early, you die. Khalni is by far the best early accelerant in a deck all about accelerating out fatties. Don't cut it. You've basically got no interactive spells so anything that cuts down on your goldfish time is awesome. It really isn't a competitive deck though, with the amount of removal and bounce a lot of the aggressive decks are rocking. It really suffers from the fact that it's not running 1 drop mana dorks or card selection cards. A lot of the time your hands will either have enough mana and not enough fatties, or vice versa.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:33
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Cynic Jester posted:The way you'll win most matches is dropping fatties on turn 4 and 5 and hope they can't beat them through racing or removal. Khalni sets that up way better than rampant growth, especially in combination with Explore. Most of the decks are super aggressive, often curving out at 4, and if you don't drop a Titan, Avenger or Pelaka Wurm early, you die. Khalni is by far the best early accelerant in a deck all about accelerating out fatties. Don't cut it. You've basically got no interactive spells so anything that cuts down on your goldfish time is awesome. It really isn't a competitive deck though, with the amount of removal and bounce a lot of the aggressive decks are rocking. It really suffers from the fact that it's not running 1 drop mana dorks or card selection cards. A lot of the time your hands will either have enough mana and not enough fatties, or vice versa. I've tried both - running Khalni and not running it - and I am having much more luck without them. I totally disagree with the notion that it's not competitive. It is swingy as hell and can come drat close to losing before you pull ahead, but it's more reliable than Dracomancer for me. There really isn't that much removal in the meta. The most relevant removal (Path to Exile) helps you out, too.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:40
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precision posted:I totally disagree with the notion that it's not competitive. It is swingy as hell and can come drat close to losing before you pull ahead, but it's more reliable than Dracomancer for me. Well, Dracomancer isn't really competitive either since it's probably the worst deck in the game.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:24
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Andrast posted:Well, Dracomancer isn't really competitive either since it's probably the worst deck in the game. I love playing it in 4-player free for all mode though. If the brood card can last long enough to keep spitting out fliers every upkeep, and if you have the card (cant remember the name) that keeps spitting out 1/1 insects whenever people cast a spell, you can fuel your devour pretty easily. I realize that's a bunch of ifs, but I have had some really fun times with it. What are some good 2HG teams people have had a lot of luck with? It's the mode I play majority of the time, as I don't single player very much. I wish planeschase was still in this year, it was my favorite mode because it took a lot of the competitive edge off; you couldn't take losing personally at all in that mode.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:38
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Andrast posted:Well, Dracomancer isn't really competitive either since it's probably the worst deck in the game. I think it's a bit early to be "calling" the meta, honestly. I've had luck with all the decks. Dracomancer is possibly the "worst", but I don't think there are any bad decks this year.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:45
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blackteapot posted:I love playing it in 4-player free for all mode though. If the brood card can last long enough to keep spitting out fliers every upkeep, and if you have the card (cant remember the name) that keeps spitting out 1/1 insects whenever people cast a spell, you can fuel your devour pretty easily. I realize that's a bunch of ifs, but I have had some really fun times with it. Avacyn and Cloud Mind or whatever, is unreal my girlfriend and I are about 50-2 since release with them. Leave in Avacyn for the occasional longer day.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:47
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precision posted:I've tried both - running Khalni and not running it - and I am having much more luck without them. Path does not help you. It removes one of your very limited number of threats in exchange for a land. If there's one deck I'm perfectly okay with giving an extra land, it's Chant. Going from 7 to any number of lands is pretty much irrelevant. You don't have any card draw, so you'll be playing one spell a turn for the rest of the game in any case. Once Chant starts playing from the top of the deck, 3 quarters of the cards in it are dead. They don't do anything. The only thing you want to draw are fatties, and you usually play 10 or so of those. On turn 6, when you'll usually have dumped your hand and dropped 10 lands, you're still looking at a 35-40 card pile where the vast majority of draws don't do anything to impact the board. Going from 10 to 11 lands does nothing. You just timewalked yourself by playing a land or ramp spell. I'm not saying ramp decks are inherently bad, because they aren't, but Chant is a very, very bad ramp deck. The U/G version of 2013 was much better because it had card draw and threats like Simic Skyswallower along with better high end cards(Granted, most were blue, but hey, most good cards are, eyooooo).
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Jul 3, 2013 19:56
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Malachite posted:http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=10898 Would this work in editing sealed deck? I want one deck to have all cards available for gimmick shenanigans. If I could edit my other sealed deck to reset to blank that'd be neat as well.
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Jul 3, 2013 20:10
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Cynic Jester posted:Path does not help you. I just meant that it has some benefit to you (thinning your deck), as in, "It's not Murder". v  vAs far as whether the deck is "Good" or not, I'm having success with it. Sorry you aren't. I've tweaked it a bunch and here's my build, try it out and maybe it'll work, if not, that's cool too! 23 Forest 1 x Eye of Ugin If I couldn't fetch it with Primeval Titan, I wouldn't include it, but it can get me an early All Is Dust or Eldrazi Conscription. 1 x Green Sun's Zenith Obviously. 1 x Khalni Heart Expedition 2 x Tangle Such a great card. 4 x Explore 4 x Rampant Growth 3 x Grazing Gladeheart Massive lifegain can help a lot. 2 x Farhaven Elf 1 x Fierce Empath 3 x Oracle of Mul Daya 1 x Sporemound Tons of chump blockers are good. 1 x Plow Under Because gently caress you, that's why. 2 x Primeval Titan 1 x Vigor I'll Zenith for Vigor early if I have Titan in hand for sure. 2 x Pelakka Wurm 1 x Tooth and Nail I used to run Summoning Trap, but Tooth and Nail is more or less the same thing only better until we get more Counterspells in the meta. 2 x All is Dust 1 x Terastodon No need for both since I can tutor it. 2 x Eldrazi Conscription Usually a game winning swing. 2 x Artisan of Kozilek Seriously the only Eldrazi worth even considering, full stop.
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Jul 3, 2013 20:21
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Cynic Jester posted:Path does not help you. It removes one of your very limited number of threats in exchange for a land. If there's one deck I'm perfectly okay with giving an extra land, it's Chant. Going from 7 to any number of lands is pretty much irrelevant. You don't have any card draw, so you'll be playing one spell a turn for the rest of the game in any case. Once Chant starts playing from the top of the deck, 3 quarters of the cards in it are dead. They don't do anything. The only thing you want to draw are fatties, and you usually play 10 or so of those. On turn 6, when you'll usually have dumped your hand and dropped 10 lands, you're still looking at a 35-40 card pile where the vast majority of draws don't do anything to impact the board. Going from 10 to 11 lands does nothing. You just timewalked yourself by playing a land or ramp spell. I'm not disagreeing that chant is bad, but my inner Timmy loves playing it. I do leave in most of the Eldrazi for card advantage reasons though; between green sun's zenith and fierce empath you have 4 shots at a Primeval Titan, and once your titan drops you can always tutor Eye of Ugin, which means at the worst you'll be able to pull another eldrazi out easily. It really helps keep you from having to rely on top-decks in games that go long.
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Jul 3, 2013 20:40
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Oh man, Hunt The Weak is the best "gently caress you" answer to Phantasmal Dragon. I get a +1/+1 counter AND you sac that piece of poo poo? Booyah. EDIT: I switched my U/W deck to W/G and I think its better overall. My green pool has a 4 set of those 1/1 slivers that give +1/+1 for each sliver, so if I draw 2 or 3 of those, I'm in a great position, and then some actual removal from white and some good combat tricks.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:32
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OBi posted:I'm not disagreeing that chant is bad, but my inner Timmy loves playing it. I do leave in most of the Eldrazi for card advantage reasons though; between green sun's zenith and fierce empath you have 4 shots at a Primeval Titan, and once your titan drops you can always tutor Eye of Ugin, which means at the worst you'll be able to pull another eldrazi out easily. It really helps keep you from having to rely on top-decks in games that go long. My problem with the deck is consistency. If it played 4 titans, 4 green sun and 2-3 avengers along with Eye and some other utility lands I wouldn't be so down on it. But it doesn't. Other decks have a bunch of interchangeable parts that do roughly the same things(removal, weenies, card draw, etc) whereas this deck only has 2 titans, an avenger and 1 green sun. The other fatties are so much worse, and even the titans are a mere shell of what they should be because it's mono forests all day, every day. I like playing the deck, but it is 2nd least consistent deck. It just doesn't win fast enough to justify being unable to interact with your opponent. It's a combo deck with no combo win. Like a combo deck, it is easily disrupted, but unlike a combo deck it has no way to go off. It just drops big dudes on turn 4+, which is too fair a thing to be doing when there's a white deck swinging for 16 on T4, slivers swinging for 18 on T4 and so forth. You might say those are extreme examples, and they are, but the deck has no starts that come close to that and no way of preventing opposing decks from having those starts. I want it to be good, because I like playing big spells, but the inconsistency and lack of interaction just makes it so boring. It has so few meaningful decision points and most of them are made regardless of what your opponent does.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:37
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The Zombie Guy posted:Because WotC has struck me as the kind of Microsoft-ish company that wouldn't give away something that they can charge for. (Like more then 2 slots in the DotPW sealed campaign.) It's one thing to give away one booster per player or something like that, but giving anybody who shows up a ton of cards to play with seems weird to me. It's the 20th anniversary of Magic. I was wondering what they'd do that was special.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:44
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As a distant second to Dracomancer (a deck which would love to poo poo its own pants if only it were functioning enough to put them on in the first place), I would also rate Guardians of Light as being generally worse than Chant of the Eldrazi. If you have any kill spells at all Guardians of Light is a pile of random bad cards, and even if you can't get rid of the Spiritmancers and Enchantresses it's still dreadfully slow to get going.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:07
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I've played a couple of times with some friends before, but have never actually owned any cards myself before After a somewhat rocky start I'm having quite a bit of fun (and even some success) with sealed decks For the first deck slot I looked carefully at all the cards I received and put together a white/blue deck with lots of flying creatures, including that blue sphinx that lets you draw a card every time a flyer attacks But somehow it never seemed to work when playing against other humans I then opened the second slot, didn't find anything that seemed fun to play, so I threw together the cheapest black and green cards I could find, and somehow it works! Basically my strategy is to constantly launch pinprick attacks with small nasty critters my opponent can't, or won't want to, block, and use instants to kill off whatever monsters he puts on the table Is there a way to print out my deck from the game that doesn't involve lots of alt-tab and manual typing?
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Jul 3, 2013 23:02
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Fornadan posted:Is there a way to print out my deck from the game that doesn't involve lots of alt-tab and manual typing? I'm a huge fan of the app Decked. I use it a lot more for paper Magic than I do Duels, but it's a really good deck manager nonetheless.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:41
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Played against guys who used Deadwalkers & Chant every game while we used random decks. They won every game by It That Betrays / All Is Dust combo. So boring to play against.
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Jul 4, 2013 00:34
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I don't like the encounter focus in the single player campaign. Last year it was one, maybe, maybe two between an actual duel, this time, it's three in a row, and they're just so loving dull to play against. Give me some unpredictibility! And the third is always just a slog until you get the right set of draws. EDIT: gently caress you, survive the volcano. Cranking out 5/4's and 4/4's with all the removal you'd need is just goddamn cheating. Ugly In The Morning fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 01:52
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I actually like the encounters, but in fairness I absolutely hate the initial pool of starter decks, so anything to not see more of them is a blessing.
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Jul 4, 2013 02:09
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I don't like the encounter focus in the single player campaign. Last year it was one, maybe, maybe two between an actual duel, this time, it's three in a row, and they're just so loving dull to play against. Give me some unpredictibility! And the third is always just a slog until you get the right set of draws. Eh, the only encounters I really have any problems with are the very last pair (Simic Clones and Oh My God Exponential Rats). I was able to beat all the rest easily with Mul Daya, let alone the actual aggressive decks with removal. For the record, both of those are actually beatable with the base, unaltered Mul Daya, but it relies on perfect draws and All Is Dust.
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Jul 4, 2013 02:37
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I must have gotten lucky because none of the encounters were hard at all. A few of them were over before I even figured out what their gimmick was.
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Jul 4, 2013 02:38
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precision posted:I must have gotten lucky because none of the encounters were hard at all. A few of them were over before I even figured out what their gimmick was. I had to intentionally sandbag to find the gimmick for Rumble in the Jungle (the thallid deck). Eventually, turn 12 or so, it puts out a Devour 2 viashino. That's its win condition. After that card, it literally draws nothing but ~40 mountains in a row. If you have any removal, any bounce, or any renewable source of chump blockers, it's an auto-win.
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Jul 4, 2013 02:40
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Speaking of gimmicks it's really easy to get the Mulligan persona against the Cultist encounter with Mind Maze. If you get an unsummon before they get the Demon out you're golden. The AI won't cast the demon from their hand, only more apostles, and I'm not even sure there's a second demon in the deck.
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Jul 4, 2013 02:46
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The cultist encounter can't cast the demon from its hand. It only has 4 lands in the entire deck. The deck is 4 swamps, 1 Demon, and 55 Cultists.
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Jul 4, 2013 03:02
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Read the OP but not the whole thread, is there any chance that the android version will get online matchmaking instead of just local? I miss playing magic but want to play other people.
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Jul 4, 2013 03:03
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Cirofren posted:Speaking of gimmicks it's really easy to get the Mulligan persona against the Cultist encounter with Mind Maze. If you get an unsummon before they get the Demon out you're golden. The AI won't cast the demon from their hand, only more apostles, and I'm not even sure there's a second demon in the deck. I got that against the Weather the Storm encounter. The AI doesn't play any creatures and relies on enchanting your lands to tick you down, so you can just mull to 1 and then pass the next 6+ turns and keep drawing and discarding until you feel like you have an unbeatable hand. Once you start playing you have a 5 or 6 turn window to win, which shouldn't be a problem with decks like Avacyn.
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Jul 4, 2013 03:21
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Zurai posted:The deck is 4 swamps, 1 Demon, and 55 Cultists. The pre-programmed draws on the AI bum me out. I would happily replay the campaign if I knew it wasn't going to be the same hands over and over.
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Jul 4, 2013 03:52
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Cirofren posted:The pre-programmed draws on the AI bum me out. I would happily replay the campaign if I knew it wasn't going to be the same hands over and over. That's what the Revenge campaign is for. The encounters (mostly) serve a useful purpose in checking your deck against specific circumstances. As an example, the 1/1 flier every turn encounter makes sure your deck can handle a flood of small but evasive creatures, while the exponential rats encounter makes sure your deck can short-circuit exponential growth strategies. The 2014 encounters do falter a little in this regard as you're never going to see a cultist deck like that, and Rumble in the Jungle almost cannot win; it's basically just a "can you win against virtually no opposition or draw a removal card before turn 12" check.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:13
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I tried unlocking some cards for the Dimir deck tonight. I think over about a dozen games, every single starting hand had at least 2 Dimir Guildmages in it. Every. Single. One.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:11
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Cirofren posted:The pre-programmed draws on the AI bum me out. I would happily replay the campaign if I knew it wasn't going to be the same hands over and over. That's a lot of my problems. There's decks like the volcano one I've bitched about that feel like brick walls, but the worst part is just facing the same poo poo, over and over and over again. That's not enjoyable. I want variety dammit.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:12
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Is the online play for casual magic players better on, say, PS3 over XBox? Since I'm planning on swapping over from Microsoft to PS for next-gen, I'm starting to consider getting trophies instead of achievements, but I want to know if that'd trap me in a dead online area. And yes, I realize this is a really stupid and dumb question, but I'm asking it anyway. 
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Jul 4, 2013 06:18
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Mo0 posted:Is the online play for casual magic players better on, say, PS3 over XBox? Since I'm planning on swapping over from Microsoft to PS for next-gen, I'm starting to consider getting trophies instead of achievements, but I want to know if that'd trap me in a dead online area. Past years seemed to have the most se rious players on Steam.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:26
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Man, Deadwalkers is gonna be tough to cut. Between the great mid-curve creatures and the absurd amount of removal, it's hard to decide what to keep. What's everyone running with that?
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Jul 4, 2013 06:28
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Steam having the hardcore people is fine, I'm not looking for anybody to clean my clock. I'm just trying to make sure if I get the PS3 one that I'll never ever ever be able to find a match, is all. That seems to be an issue with other PS3 stuff I've tried.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:28
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I just started unlocking cards for the Eldrazi deck, wow does it seem like the stinker of all of the premades. Yea... with the right hand I can have 10 lands by turn 5, but good luck having one of the Eldrazi cards stick around long enough with all of the removal in a lot of the decks. I can barely beat the challenges and I had no problem with any of the other decks. Edit: And so far I have zero answers if another deck has flying creatures except for that 7 mana card that wipes the board.
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Jul 4, 2013 07:01
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katkillad2 posted:I just started unlocking cards for the Eldrazi deck, wow does it seem like the stinker of all of the premades. Yea... with the right hand I can have 10 lands by turn 5, but good luck having one of the Eldrazi cards stick around long enough with all of the removal in a lot of the decks. I admit I bought the deck keys for that one and Dracomancer, I don't mind unlocking cards but it's such a slow and painful process with those two that I just wasn't strong enough.
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Jul 4, 2013 12:38
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legoman727 posted:Man, Deadwalkers is gonna be tough to cut. Between the great mid-curve creatures and the absurd amount of removal, it's hard to decide what to keep. I've had the most success with this deck so far. I've loaded my deck down with all of the cheap zombies while sideboarding most of the expensive spells that I either never got a chance to play or didn't impact the game as much as I hoped. 3x Gravecrawler - These guys are my bread and butter. Cheap and quick damage that is almost impossible to get rid of. 2x Diregraf Ghoul 1x Bloodghast - Gravecrawler 2.0; I would actually prefer another Gravecrawler over this, but it works. 2x Butcher Ghoul - Undying is a pretty cool mechanic, and getting a blocker for 2 turns is great. 3x Black Cat - 2x Lord of the Undead - 2x Geralf's Messenger - I had somebody kill themselves in one game by destroying one of these guys, so I put another one in. 1x Death Baron - 1x Liliana's Reaver 2x Undead Warchief 1x Grave Titan 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed 2x Nightmare 1x Quest for the Gravelord 2x Endless Ranks of the Dead - I'm still on the fence about this card. The most I've gotten out of it so far was an extra 2 zombies in one game. 1x Grave Pact 1x Mutilate 1x Consuming Vapors 1x Grim Return 3x Doom Blade 1x Exhume 2x Sign in Blood 1x Vampiric Tutor 1x Reanimate 22x Swamps
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Jul 4, 2013 13:19
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legoman727 posted:Man, Deadwalkers is gonna be tough to cut. Between the great mid-curve creatures and the absurd amount of removal, it's hard to decide what to keep.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:24
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I'm a noob at this game so I spent about 2,5 hours yesterday trying to beat the Avacyn deck revenge AI after beating the regular campaign. I just couldn't get anywhere. Any modestly powerful creature I played would be exiled immediately because apparently he has at least 6 cards that can exile. Then his creatures would multiply like rabbits or he would play Increasing Devotion that just spams 5 creatures at once. On top of that he would play Angelic Overseer, which is indestructible, pretty much guaranteeing my demise within a few turns. I did beat him in the end by following some Youtube commentors using a green deck that only has creatures and just spamming those before he could get anything done. But surely this isn't how the game is meant to be played? It seems like a rock/paper/scissors kind of thing where you have to be prepared for a certain kind of deck. Or is it possible to assemble decks that can handle all kinds of scenario's? Also, gently caress that Sporemound card. It instantly produced 13 creatures ready to rape me.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:58
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MrData posted:I'm a noob at this game so I spent about 2,5 hours yesterday trying to beat the Avacyn deck revenge AI after beating the regular campaign. I just couldn't get anywhere. Any modestly powerful creature I played would be exiled immediately because apparently he has at least 6 cards that can exile. Then his creatures would multiply like rabbits or he would play Increasing Devotion that just spams 5 creatures at once. On top of that he would play Angelic Overseer, which is indestructible, pretty much guaranteeing my demise within a few turns. Champion of the Parish is insanely strong for a 1 drop and I usually have to scoop if the computer plays the perfect hand. That said, I beat him with a modified Eldrazi deck with some luck. Vigor allowed me to pull through just in time. Ironically, it seems like the best way to play Eldrazi deck is by cutting most of the Eldrazi and using the strong green creatures.
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