Dies to Removal

Mono Red WAS the best deck of RTR standard. The final three weeks it was the most played and best performing deck on modo.

Bant Control was the winningest deck of the format statistically, wasn't it?

That would be why everyone stopped playing it.

The winningest deck of the format was obviously Boros Flash. Or it would have been had I made it famous.

A true genius is never recognized in his lifetime...

I agree with Z here. If you look at the whole format from its infancy to its current state, mono-red has consistently posted results.

I am in love with Imposing Sovereign.

Conversely, I hate Imposing Sovereign. It's a cool card, and the artwork is gorgeous, but I hate that effect, especially since it screws with the entire haste ability.

I like how it shuts down annoying stuff like splinter twin and goryo's vengeance in modern. And it beats face.

I don't think it hurts us that much in standard. It's just a shock target.

I am in love with Imposing Sovereign.

but but Mr. Spike Jester.

I started wondering why it's so quiet here...then it dawned on me. Have a great 4th of July, guys and girls!

AMURICA

MURICA, FUCK YEAH!

Happy Independence Day to all of my US brethren! A holiday that's celebrated by indulging in good food and drink and then blowing stuff up...could a a red mage as for more?

Drifting away to the dark side for a moment, Lifebane Zombie has me really, really hoping that the Thoughtseize speculation pans out. Effective hand disruption in a Zombie shell--especially with the disruption effects attached to decent bodies and Resto in the format--could be fun to play while the Zombie core from Innistrad block is still in Standard. I have no doubt that Thoughtseize is on its way back given its glaring
absence in MM, and the slot for it is alphabetically still open, but there are questions as to whether black will get another rare based on numbers.

Sorry guys, couldn't hear you over the sound of all this NSA-approved freedom.

Sorry guys, couldn't hear you over the sound of all this NSA-approved freedom.

God Bless The NSA!

Sup, redbros. Forgive my absence over the last few days – it’s been an exhausting 5 days or so. Between the trip to Miami and then the ensuing 10 hour, pre-4th of July preparation at work, I’m at that point of near exhaustion (Curse of Exhaustion, anybody?).

The trip to Miami was one of those “I need a vacation from my vacation” experiences. But, as they say, there’s no rest for the wicked. I jumped right back into work for inventory on Monday, and then the following 2 days consisted of grueling (Gruul-ing?), physical labor and very little sleep. Now it’s a holiday and what am I doing? Catching up on sleep, long neglected chores, and I’m just now beginning to feel right.

Anyway, enough of that. I’ll try to fill you guys in on my Miami trip, albeit a summarized version. This was a trip where so many things went wrong that it actually made the trip memorable.

For example, getting sold a bag of coke within 5 minutes of
our arrival, only to discover we were ripped off and the actual product was….bath salts. Fortunately, nobody turned into a face-eating zombie from trying the stuff.

The GP itself was a bust. I lost my first 3 rounds due to land screw. It was just…pathetic. The decks I faced? Well, Round 1 was a RWU homebrewed aggro deck that consisted of Dryad Militant, Boros Reckoner, Frontline Medic, Geist of St. Traft, Hellrider, Spears, Pillars, Boros Charms, Azorius Charms and Warleader’s Helices. It was a mess, yet I couldn’t draw a 3rd or 4th land in our games to finish him off. The next match was against the worst Naya Midrange deck I’ve ever seen, yet both games ended with me at 3 land while getting my face beat in by a Thundermaw Hellkite. Round 3 was a lost to Hexproof, in which the guy had a T2 Geist both games followed by a Courage in T3. I doubt getting stuck on 2 lands made a difference in that match, but it was frustrating. And just like that, I was out.

I played 3 more matches for fun, winning them
all since now my deck wanted to fire on all cylinders. There was just one problem: I was still facing really bad players with FNM-level decks. It didn’t even feel good to beat them. By the time I made it to my 7th round, I just didn’t care anymore. I found myself against the latest version of RWU Control and I had my opponent at 1 life and we both had no hand. I topdecked 6 Mountain in a row, just begging to draw any one of my 4 Pillars, 4 Spears, 4 Hellriders,or 4 Ash Zealots for game. Instead, my opponent finally drew a Resto and began bashing me with him. When I finally looked down at FOURTEEN Mountains on my end and then proceeded to draw the fifteenth one, I gave up. Literally in every sense of the word. I announced that I was done, scooped, gave my opponent the win, and then dropped. I unsleeved my deck, placed each card in a binder, and went to go smoke a cigarette.

How frustrating.

Some good things happened while I was there. For one, I finally got to meet both of my favorite Magic players:
Craig Wescoe (who is VERY short in person!), and Patrick Sullivan. I totally fanboy’d out on them and I probably creeped them out, but what can I say? I felt like a little kid. I had a kick-ass conversation about Red magic with Psully, which really opened my eyes on a lot of details I was too ignorant to notice. The icing on the cake was getting him to autograph my Red deckbox. My deck is now blessed by the Red Mage himself!

There were also a slew of vendors there too, which allowed me to finally finish up my EDH decks. Jaya and Nin are finally complete. I also picked up quite a few foils. I had actually completed foiling out KDW, minus the Hellkites and Bonfires, but since I took the deck apart, it was all in vain. Fortunately, most of the cards just slot right into the Gruul deck I still have so I now have another project to work on.

All in all, playing in the GP was a bust, but it was a great experience. The most important lesson? I should’ve brought the deck that was killing it in playtesting, not
my pet deck. As good as KDW CAN be, it is not the deck it once was. This was a serious wake-up call for me in that I probably should’ve played the deck that stood the most chance of winning, rather than the one I liked the most. With that said, I do also understand I ran into a big wall of bad luck also, so it’s entirely possible things would’ve turned out differently IF I had hit my land drops. Regardless, I still feel like I walked out of that event a better Magic player and I guess that’s what counts.

My buddies all narrowly missed out Day 2, each finishing up with 6-3 records. With the day over, we left the convention center to find food, a mission that took us to the mainland and completely lost. I swear, the reason why everyone is so skinny in Miami is because they don’t fucking eat. The only food places we could find were either expensive, private owned restaurants or fast food joints. 3 hours later, we settled on a Checkers.

Leading up that, we:

Paid 2 tolls.

Encountered 5 bums.

Were
offered drugs three times.

Walked out of 2 overpriced restaraunts.

Waited a half an hour in a line at Burger King before walking out.

Waited 25 minutes for our food at Checkers.

By the time we were done eating, the final straw before our sanity broke was when a morbidly obese chick with about 200 dollars worth of facial piercings walked up to us. The “conversation” went like this:

*Voice slurred* “Hey guys, I was wondering if you could help me out. I just got out of the hospital and I have a headache and I’m pregnant. I was wondering of you could buy me a hamburger…and 2 small fries….and a drink….and anything else off of the dollar menu…”

To which we all just turned around and walked away while the bitch kept talking. The ride back to the hotel consisted of a half-hour rant about bums. We decided to get drunk. After spending 18 bucks on a 12-pack of Bud Light cans (yep….I shit you not…) for myself, we went back to our room.

Once the booze kicked in, my memory is a bit foggy. There was a
hooker staying 2 rooms down from us that decided she wanted to hang out with us and smoke copious amounts of weed with the crew. When she busted out the coke, I figured we were gonna have a real good time. But after doing the whole bag, she demanded payment for the coke. We paid her but then she flaked out and said she was going to bed. She took off her giant Paris Hilton sunglasses and I saw that she had an ugly, black eye.

I guess somebody had to tell her once….

Anyway, as stoned/drunk/coked up as I was, I didn’t feel like that was a missed opportunity for a good story. She was okay looking, but still, black eyes on a chick are a big turnoff. God knows what she did to deserve that…

We relocated outside to the front of the hotel to people watch and finish our beer. Man, we were so twisted at that point. The urge hit me to take a piss, and since there were so many people in the streets on a Saturday night in Miami Beach, I decided to run upstairs to use a toilet, for once. Problem was, I forgot my
room key. I frantically searched for a reasonable place to take a drunken piss, but in vain. I spied a door that lead to the stairs to the roof and made my way up there, only to find that the door was locked for roof entry. I turned around to go back downstairs, when suddenly, I spied salvation! A bucket filled with kitty litter (???) was sitting by the door back to the main hall so I did what any drunk person would do: I whipped it out and drunkenly pissed in the bucket. May god have mercy on the poor soul that discovers this…

I really don’t remember much after that. We ended up drinking a lot more beer, which helped offset the racing heart from all the coke. We all passed out at around 4 am.

We woke up with only 45 minutes to get our shit together and check out. One of my buddies decided to hop into the shower, so my brother did what any rockstar would do: he opened the window up and pissed out the 3rd floor of a hotel room. We had a good laugh until we heard,” HEY! STOP THAT! YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”

nIt turns out, there were people at the bottom. My brother yelled back,” SORRY! I CAN’T STOP IT ONCE IT STARTS!”

God, I’m still chuckling at that.

We got the hell out of there fast.

The trip back was pretty uneventful. Except that we still couldn’t find a place to get a decent breakfast. We ended up traveling off course for a half-hour to find a Pancake House. After waiting an ungodly amount of time to get sat and get our drinks, we get up to go smoke. The glass door we walked out of locked behind us, so when some overly energetic bus boy began to take away all our shit, we couldn’t do anything but wave and look like a couple of idiots. Needless to say, we were pretty pissed at that point. We came inside and our food was being brought out to the table. Except our table had a giant puddle of water on it from the busser’s towel, no silverware, no drinks – nothing. We sat there staring at our food for probably 10 minutes until we got the table wiped and our drinks and silverware returned.

What a
clusterfuck.

We made it back at around 6 pm, just in time for me to get ready for bed so I could get up for work at 2:30 am. The last few days have literally been work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep. It’s been rough.

And the icing on the cake for the last few days was getting into a huge fight last night with the woman. Which, kinda makes me pretty depressed and I’m questioning a lot of things now at this point. I hate feeling like this. I guess one good thing from that is that I get to be alone on the 4th so I can catch up on some things. And write this for everybody. *sigh*

Anyhoo, moving forward in Standard, I think I’m going to stick with Gruul for the time being. It’s still new to me so therefore, it’s pretty fun. I doubt I’ll switch it up until rotation, but I have been brewing some things up in my head.

Here’s a what looks like a fun brew utilizing the new Chandra:

[deck]
4 Stromkirk Noble
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Chandra’s Phoenix

4 Chandra, Pyromaster

4
Shock
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Searing Spear
3 Flames of the Firebrand
3 Brimstone Volley

4 Mutalvault
16 Mountain

Sideboard
4 “New Manabarbs”
4 Skullcrack
4 Mizzium Mortars
3 Electrickery[/deck]

K, it’s probably anemic compared to Hellrider builds, and maybe Chandra should just be a Hellrider, but this reminds me of an old-school burn deck and dammit, I want it to work.

I actually don’t think Chandra is that bad. Just don’t compare her to Koth and figure out ways to utilize her the best you can. If she doesn’t work, then oh well. For the time being, we still have Hellrider and Thundermaw Helkite in the format as our bombs so it’s all good. And who knows what Thereos will bring…

Welp, that’s a wrap for me. I hope everyone is doing good.

The initial shell I want to test is

[deck]
4 Ash Zealot
4 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Stonewright
4 Young Pyromancer

4 Chandra, Pyromaster

4 Flames of the Firebrand
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Searing Spear
4 [Good Red Spells]

20 Mountain
4 Mutavault
[/deck]

Then work from there. Definitely not perfect, but it's a good place to see what Chandra can really do. Thoughts:
- no bad top decks, which gives you a big game against other aggro decks. All of your cards are 'high quality'
- really good mana sinks (Stonewright and Mutavault)
- card advantage engines (Chandra and Chandra's Phoenix)
- virtual card advantage engines (Young Pyromancer and Stonewright)

Basically ever card but Ash Zealot can generate more than a single card's value, but Ash
Zealot is hyst a really high quality card on attack or defence, so it's a perfect fit anyway. You can grind out other aggro decks with your card advantage engines and card quality advantage; bury control with your threats that are difficult to answer (PWs, Mutavault, Phoenix) or high impact (Pyromancer, Stonewright). Not sure on a midrange matchup, possibly pretty bad? That's why we test.

Pretty close to what I was thinking, dude. How weird is that?

Khaos, I was giving you one more day to post and then I was going to look in the Dade County crime logs to find hooker related murders.

Khaos, I was giving you one more day to post and then I was going to look in the Dade County crime logs to find hooker related murders.

If one strangles a hooker, and there is nobody there to witness it, did it really happen?

What happens in Florida stays in the trunk in Florida.

What happens in Florida stays in the trunk in Florida.

True story!

Even though you didn't fair so well at the GP, at least you made some memories. I'm sure you and your friends will look back at the trip and recall the funny shit that happened. I still think KDW is a reasonable deck until at least M14 drops. I'm probably wrong, but from my limited experience playing the deck, I've always had good luck.

Happy fourth, everyone. Unless you're working all day like I am. In which case, it sucks to be us, huh?

Day 76 of the Ham Challenge. Jesus fucking Christ. I want to rip out someones still beating heart and devour it in front of them. And it really helps that both my kids are expert level cock blockers.

Sug- it was definitely memorable. In fact, my buddies and I are still laughing about our trip. It was fun times.

As for KDW, it's still a good deck. In fact, I really think it is well positioned against a lot of decks since it has a plan for a long game but still has a turn 4 win nut draw. I think it's just time for me to move on. I had a similar situation with Dos Rakis, and while it's a fine deck, my time spent with it is over. Kinda like a relationship - sometimes it's just time to move on and look back on the times fondly.

The winds of change are blowing and I foresee a lot of good things on the horizon as far as Red is concerned. Some decks fall by the wayside as time goes on and metagame shifts, but there are always new things to try and new frontiers to blaze. The beauty about magic is that to change is to improve. For a deck or metagame to remain unchanged is to stagnate, thus becoming boring. In order to
grow, you must change and experience new things. So with that said, I'm actually happy to not feel constrained to one particular deck.

Rambling now. Off to go chow down on some BBQ and play some more magic.

Mono Red WAS the best deck of RTR standard. The final three weeks it was the most played and best performing deck on modo.

Bant Control was the winningest deck of the format statistically, wasn't it?

That would be why everyone stopped playing it.

How many GP wins did RDW have?

I mean no disrespect, as it is my prefered strategy, but I don't think it was the "
best deck" at any point really.

Mono Red WAS the best deck of RTR standard. The final three weeks it was the most played and best performing deck on modo.

Bant Control was the winningest deck of the format statistically, wasn't it?

That would be why everyone
stopped playing it.

How many GP wins did RDW have?

I mean no disrespect, as it is my prefered strategy, but I don't think it was the "best deck" at any point really.

It won plenty of premier events on MODO, which are basically just as valid as a Grand Prix, (maybe more so due to accessibility to more people) so quite a few.

Mono Red WAS the best deck of RTR standard. The final three weeks it was the most played and best
performing deck on modo.

Bant Control was the winningest deck of the format statistically, wasn't it?

That would be why everyone stopped playing it.

How many GP wins did RDW have?

I mean no disrespect, as it is my prefered strategy, but I don't think it was the "best deck" at any point really.

It won plenty of premier events on MODO, which are basically just
as valid as a Grand Prix, (maybe more so due to accessibility to more people) so quite a few.

Dafuq did I just read? GP >>>>> Modo Premiere.

The purpose of the statement is to illustrate that there are vastly more modo premiere events then standard GP's in a season(ergo, depending on your goals as a player, you can make more $ playing modo amongst other things) and the competiton and size is comparable.

You're much more likely to play a significant amount of scrubs early in a gp then early in a premiere event and in the later rounds, the player skill is close enough to be negligible for the point of our discussion.

Sorry, the skill level at GPs is not that high. For various reasons Mono Red continues to be underrepresented at live major events (my guess is because it rarely has pro endorsement) but it was the best deck on MODO which is the toughest competitive environment outside the PTs.

Just went 6-0 in beer pong. Report to follow...

redthirst is alive!

Alive-ish. Verry d-runk.

Happy 4th err'body!

Dafuq did I just read? GP >>>>> Modo Premiere.

Enjoy being wrong, I suppose.

You silly gents. You're supposed to be celebrating Murica, not arguing!

I'm not arguing, I'm being right. JUST LIKE FREEDOM.

FREEDOM IS RIGHT, BUT IT'S NOT FREE!!!

Oh hey redthirst!

Got a hold of two promo Scavenging Oozes. I wonder how low the normal card can get.

GP competition gets tough at around round 7/8 as people are fighting for day two and on the second day, you have people playing for money/top 8 and the pros are about.

I'd say it's about equal between GP day 2, modo premiere events, and the later rounds of PTQs. Basically right before people start drawing into top 8 but after the first 4/5 rounds in the swiss and the top 8.

So my wife has decided that she'd like to learn how to play Magic so that we can spend more time together. What deck would you give a total n00b to teach them the game?

Junk rites is the easiest tier 1 deck to play while at the same time having enough intracacies to teach her the most things possible about magic while still having the deck be simple enough for her to win with if she wants to go to FNM with you or something.