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3 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2010 - 4:49PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jun 24, 2008
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This thread is for discussion of this week's Building on a Budget, which goes live Wednesday morning on magicthegathering.com.
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3 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2010 - 9:08PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Jan 17, 2010
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Grixis would be insane if they reprinted Damnation.
On the article: pretty standard budget Grixis list. Nothing terribly exciting, but I agree relic can be used as some sweet SB tech right now. Not to sure how well it works out MB.
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3 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2010 - 9:44PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Jan 10, 2010
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As I see it, the problem cards (thrinax, BBE, Vengevine) were designed to bust the Card Advantage of control decks. The relic and double negative are merely trying to compensate, but are too situational to solve the problem: they are too resilient to spot removal (Sprouting Thrinax and Vengevine, at least; Bloodbraid elf is a whole other story). This is why (imo) Mythic is doing so well: it plays better creatures than them, which is a stronger solution.
As an aside, is there such a thing as Mythic with BBE, or is that just Naya?
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3 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2010 - 10:08PM
#4
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I am sorry, but I simply hate this list. As the previous poster said, Vengevine is an answer to control, so trying to answer it with situational cards in a control shell seems illogical to me when other cards are better at answering it and better in the abstract as well. Journey to Nowhere, Path to Exile, and Oblivion Ring seem so much better.
Other than that, it seems to be a very standard Grixis list. I don't think it is competitive. Consume the Meek and Consuming Vapors are the entire reason to go black, and then it is a choice of either Grixis and Earthquake or Esper and Day of Judgement. All of these are rares and trying to build a competitive Grixis control deck on a budget is futile. It isn't competitive and it isn't original. I liked some of your others lists a lot better.
The problem with this list is that there are too many things that are basically cantrips but in a lot of matches do nothing. Spreading Seas is great in some matches, but let's be frank, sometimes it's basically just a cantrip. Relic helps versus Vengevine specifically, but also is most often merely a cantrip. Prophetic Prism helps run a budget mana base, but wouldn't be necessary if your mana wasn't so bad, and again is a cantrip. And Divination is basically nothing more than a cantrip. It is terrible. There are so many cards in the list that do nothing to the board. Beyond that, how to you expect to win in this format with a control list that lacks mass removal? So when you are spending 2-3 mana to cantrip your opponent is beating your face with Blightnings, Sprouting Thrinax, Putrid Leech etc. Terrible.
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3 years ago ::
Jun 09, 2010 - 5:48AM
#5
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Date Joined:
Feb 24, 2010
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Echoing another poster, there are alot of cards which essentially works as cantrips when you are behind:
4 Spreading Seas
3 Prophetic Prism
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 into the roil
and 3 divination
The effect of this is that you are almost playing a 46-card deck. In that context, I think 26 land might be too much (equivalent to 34 land with no card draw or cantrips). It means that your cantrips and card draw barely work as card advantage (or even card parity) when you are under any pressure; two thirds of the cards you draw are land or cantrips, and do nothing immediate to affect the board or hand. Only 10 cards affect the board at all, and 3 of those cost 6 mana.
By contrast, a UW control deck will generally have 26-28 and 8 cantrips (4 wall of omens and 4 spreading seas), which works out as equivalent to 30-32 lands. They also have the advantage that four of those cantrips help you if you are behind and very often generate card advantage.
That wouldn't be so bad if all the action cards you did draw were powerful mana-intensive X-for-1s, but most of them are one for one spells, with the notable exceptions of cruel ultimatum and mind shatter. I think more powerful card advantage generating spells like that might be the way to go (earthquake for example, which I don't think is beyond the budget of the column?). Again, the contrast with UW is hugely unfavourable (their action cards are card advantage generators like the planeswalkers, day of judgment, martial coup and mind spring).
I understand that the column is building on a budget and UW is a very powerful and very expensive deck, but I think removal counts are low enough right now that an approach based on card advantage generators like sedraxis specter, siege-gang commander, gatekeeper of malakir, earthquake and sea gate oracle would have just been a better, if more expensive, deck. It would still easily have been budget for standard right now, thus meeting your own criterion for 'budget'. Essentially a budgetised (read: jaceless and perhaps rare-land-less) version of the grixis decks currently running around tier 1.5/tier 2, like mike flores in mentioned a few weeks back in his column. As it is, your list looks somehat similar to those, but with gas stripped out for cantrips.
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3 years ago ::
Jun 09, 2010 - 6:26AM
#6
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I love this column, but this one had a big flaw. The article talks about beating vengevine, but the matchups don't show a situation featuring vengevine. It looks like the relics belong in the sideboard. Relic seems a lot better than bojuka bog as someone tweeted about...
Also, if the situation where you knew the opponent had blightning happens a lot, then don't you want swerve?
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3 years ago ::
Jun 09, 2010 - 6:29AM
#7
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it isn't original.
I agree. What is wrong w/ Jacob not coming up with an original deck every week using cards that are cheaper than one copy of Jace 2.0 and still beat all the best decks refined over months by the best players in the world? Who does he think he is not delivering something original every single week.
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3 years ago ::
Jun 09, 2010 - 8:20AM
#8
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I agree. What is wrong w/ Jacob not coming up with an original deck every week using cards that are cheaper than one copy of Jace 2.0 and still beat all the best decks refined over months by the best players in the world? Who does he think he is not delivering something original every single week.
I think the bug of it is if the article going to feature decks you can find on the standard deck help forum then do you really need to have someone writing the article? I didn't have a problem with it, but I know lack of innovation/using common decklists has been brought up for his articles before, so I can fully understand people getting frustrated with seeing it.
As for the article itself, sad to see so little testing against vengevine with the build up at the top and the echo at the end that he wanted more relics to stop vengevine decks :/
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3 years ago ::
Jun 09, 2010 - 8:49AM
#9
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I agree. What is wrong w/ Jacob not coming up with an original deck every week using cards that are cheaper than one copy of Jace 2.0 and still beat all the best decks refined over months by the best players in the world? Who does he think he is not delivering something original every single week.
I think the bug of it is if the article going to feature decks you can find on the standard deck help forum then do you really need to have someone writing the article? I didn't have a problem with it, but I know lack of innovation/using common decklists has been brought up for his articles before, so I can fully understand people getting frustrated with seeing it.
As for the article itself, sad to see so little testing against vengevine with the build up at the top and the echo at the end that he wanted more relics to stop vengevine decks :/
How many people in those forums are as good at Magic as Jacob? Probably the same number that are as good at Magic as Jacob writing for this website-zero. I've seen tons of people want to talk shop with pro players at big events, yet here one does every week and it gets tons of complaints about originality. They have from the lab for that. Do people really need two columns a week of "Hey guys, here's an original deck that went 3-7 in the casual room on modo. Yay!"?
A great player explains how to play the game at high levels each week and people are upset someone's used cruel ultimatum before? The guy is good, but he can't make the banewasp afflictions of the game suddenly competitive.
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3 years ago ::
Jun 09, 2010 - 9:01AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Apr 25, 2008
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Looking at the game logs, Divination sticks out like a sore thumb. The fact that it's sorcery speed and so many of your answers are instants means that many times (particularly during the Jund game), you're deciding between drawing yourself some cards and being able to contain your opponent, which leads to situations where you're under early pressure because you're playing Divinations on your early turns, and you don't have the wrath effects to take advantage of that. It might be worth trying Courier's Capsules instead. Tapping out on turn two instead of turn three is nice, and you can cash in for the cards whenever you want.
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