Official M:TG Thread

lance · Post by **lance** » 2003-11-16 01:37pm

How well did you do against it? If you played black and w ent first, or if your playing blue and have force of wills you might be able to stop them. I seriosly wondering how consistently this deck wins on first.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2003-11-16 05:01pm

lance wrote:How well did you do against it? If you played black and w ent first, or if your playing blue and have force of wills you might be able to stop them. I seriosly wondering how consistently this deck wins on first.

I went second. I have no idea how consistently it can do this. I made a imitation version of it, but doesn't seem to work as well as the one I played against.

gravity · Post by **gravity** » 2003-11-16 08:26pm

Exonerate wrote:
lance wrote:Dark Hellion, you play with a group of powered people right? I was wondering how powerful long.dec is and you are the only one I know to have access to the cards to play it. In case you are wondering what long.dec is, it is a deck that uses storm, Yawg's win, Lion's Eye,lotuses,moxes, and burning wish for a fast kill. A perfect hand for this deck would be black lotus, 4 lions eye dimonds, burning wish and the storm card that is lose life. play the 5 lotuses sack black lotus for RRR, burning wish for Yawg's win, sack lion's in respons for black, play Yawgs win , play your grave yard and win.
I played somebody with a similar deck the other day... It used Tendrils of Agony. One turn kill.

From what I've heard, the best way to beat Long is to drop Chalice of the Void for 0 on turn 1, mulliganing to get it if neccessary. Apparently Chalice pretty much completely hoses Long, not surprisingly given it's reliance on LED for speed.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2003-11-16 11:39pm

Well, I played Gravity using it a few times... Won both. But I'm using a deck built from scrap, so there are bound to be a few minor differences...

I think that it can work consistently, even without Lion's Eye. Chalice is going to block the Lotuses and Moxes, which would be a bitch... Any deck that has counters, plus a few Spheres of Resistance would shut it down quickly.

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2003-11-19 08:43pm

Bump

Anyway, I've made a new deck. Anyone want to play?

Dark Hellion · Post by **Dark Hellion** » 2003-11-19 08:51pm

I play long currently. It wins turn 1 around 50-60% of the time, with Force of will back up about 10% of the time. It wins by turn 3 95% of the games it wins.
It is rather hard to stop other than chalice for 0, and 2. The 2 stops chains of vapour from hitting it and burning wish.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2003-11-19 09:50pm

LadyTevar wrote:Bump

Anyway, I've made a new deck. Anyone want to play?

Sure.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2003-11-20 01:24am

Dark Hellion wrote:I play long currently. It wins turn 1 around 50-60% of the time, with Force of will back up about 10% of the time. It wins by turn 3 95% of the games it wins.
It is rather hard to stop other than chalice for 0, and 2. The 2 stops chains of vapour from hitting it and burning wish.

Or Arcane Laboratory if they can get it out early enough...

Dark Hellion · Post by **Dark Hellion** » 2003-11-20 01:40am

Early meaning turn 1 or two, and then having to worry about the fact that when long gets its chains (which will only take a turn or two with all the search and draw) it kills you that turn.

lance · Post by **lance** » 2003-11-20 08:33pm

What does chains of vapor do? I did a search on wizards for it and it turned up nada.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2003-11-21 12:31am

lance wrote:What does chains of vapor do? I did a search on wizards for it and it turned up nada.

Chain of Vapor. For 1 blue mana, return target non-land permament to its owner's hand, and that person can copy the spell by sacing a land.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2003-11-21 08:41am

lance wrote:What does chains of vapor do? I did a search on wizards for it and it turned up nada.

When looking up Magic cards, the quickest site imaginable, not to mention the most comprehensive, is spoilers.mtgnews.com

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2003-11-21 05:11pm

Last night, I tried out my new deck. It's a variation on the old Hyppy/Millstone discard deck.

Well... White Weenies kill it, even if I'm getting out mana and doing decent damage.

A Blue/Black Control deck kills it dead. (the Mana Screw didn't help, nor did the Ischoron's Scepter Imprinted with Counterspell.

)

But it killed the last deck Dead Dead DEAD!

But I don't know what kind of deck that one was.

About average for a Black and Artifact deck, I'd say.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2003-11-21 09:44pm

My last deck was an untested blue/white donation deck... Idea was to cast Illusions of Grandeur, then donate it. Or Transcendence... I had absolutely no creatures in the deck, the idea was I could heal fast enough to counteract the damage... Unfortunately, it seems like you grinded all my needed cards

Dark Hellion · Post by **Dark Hellion** » 2003-11-24 01:53pm

would anyone like to play against me?
I would really like to play someone, and am free at almost any time.

lance · Post by **lance** » 2003-11-25 12:18am

I'll play you tomarrow, any time from 8-12. What format?

Dark Hellion · Post by **Dark Hellion** » 2003-11-28 07:01pm

Just a little bump, to keep up discussion. It seems that post-mirroden T2 is actually quite interesting. White Control, zombie, and Affinity have all shown to be strong decks, as well as Goblin. I might just want to play this T2 season, if I can get the money that is. Anyone else like T2?

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2003-11-28 08:43pm

Dark Hellion wrote:Just a little bump, to keep up discussion. It seems that post-mirroden T2 is actually quite interesting. White Control, zombie, and Affinity have all shown to be strong decks, as well as Goblin. I might just want to play this T2 season, if I can get the money that is. Anyone else like T2?

I like T2... if I could afford the cards to catch up and be legal

lance · Post by **lance** » 2003-11-29 01:24am

If you kept up with Type 2 since Tempest you could have bought a set of power. That is overpriced.

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2003-11-29 01:31am

lance wrote:If you kept up with Type 2 since Tempest you could have bought a set of power. That is overpriced.

I stopped collecting after the Rath Saga ended.

gravity · Post by **gravity** » 2003-12-02 02:09am

New Type 1 restrictions today (technically effective January 1):

Burning Wish, Lion's Eye Diamond and Chrome Mox are all newly restricted.
That about does it in for Long I guess.

Dark Hellion · Post by **Dark Hellion** » 2003-12-02 02:22am

Yah, Long is dead. Now I might actually have to try and build a new combo deck.
Despite the fact I played long, and enjoyed its speed, it was unbalancing. It was simply too fast. My version had a 60% first turn win against non-counter decks.
But, I am a consumate combo player, and will probably run some form of academy now. Well, alls well that ends well, huh?

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2003-12-03 10:58am

[MCP]Dark Hellion-related discussion has been moved to the Hall of Shame. End of Line.[/MCP]

Dark Hellion · Post by **Dark Hellion** » 2003-12-05 03:02pm

Well now, after my little hotheaded rant has had a bit of time to cool off, I think I will bump this with a new direction for discussion.

Buying a win:
A common misconception in Magic these days is that the deck with the most investment always wins. I would like to dispell this myth. While a large amount of capital is necessary to stay competitive in T2, this does not exist in T1, as the cardbase is already in place, and only adds or subtracts at most 40 cards a year, compared to almost 500 a year of T2. This makes for an enviroment that after an initial investment, allows for a great deal of flexibility without necessity to change enviroment every 3 months. Example: By spending $2000 one can buy an entire set of power, 4 drains, 4 workshops, an abyss, a moat, a set of wishes, a set of dual lands, and the urza block power. With this investment, one can build close to 20 different T1 decks, and can build almost any T1 deck built during the past decade if they wish to play against it. For $250 one can buy 3 boxes (assuming $80 a box) of the newest expansion set. This usually garauntees the ability to get all the cards one needs off of pulls and by using other rares as trade stock. For the large main sets 6 boxes, or $500 worth of product to do the same. For each T2 expansion, one needs to spend at least $1000 to stay competitve. In order to build a deck from the past, $1000 would be required to get the boxes (still assuming $80 a box, low for a set like Saga, High for Masque) to aquire the product. Every two cycles, you would need to spend more than a T1 player in order to stay competitive. While simplistic this example has been true of Magic since 5th edition, T1 costs less in the long run than T2.
Secondly, the amount of investment in money does not relate to the capability of the deck. While most decks can be improved with moxen, one does not need them at all. Almost any old magic player has a story of his/her beating of a "ginzu" deck, fully powered, playing black boardered alpha cards, and actually, a horrible deck. I know I have. I have seen a guy come into the store I worked at with such a deck. It was worth in exess of $4000 and was very pretty to look at. It played like shit. After losing approximately 5 games, the man left, and 3 days later, sold his collection to the store, for an amount I cannot disclose (it was far less than $4000 however).
The generalization that T1 is all about $3000 decks that win first turn is one of the poorest existing in current competitve magic. It is unfortunate that DCI's oversight allowed the enviroment to exist for the few months it has, with the dominance of Long, and before that, GAT. However, often times, very cheap decks have posted amazing results. BBS a deck that could be build for less than $300 (less than most T2 decks of the day) was the most dominate deck for a time, until the restriction of Fact or Fiction. Before that, during the dreaded Urza's block, Combo decks that were almost entirely T2, with only a few old cards (Candelabra of Tawnos [$30], mana crypt [$5-10], and sometimes power artifact [$?<30]) were easily capable of turn 1 kills many times over. Simply put, while the monetary investment in a deck can be important, the time investment is far more important. Mr. Ginzu had obviously never tested his deck, and had never played against anyone that also played competitive T1 (or extended for that matter, as he lost to my brother playing 1.x stompy). The true pros of T1, people like Carl Winter, and Steven Mennen, play for hundreds of hours in preperation for the next tournament, and try more janky tech in a month than most people will put into their decks in a lifetime.
The above, is all from a tournament standpoint, and is designed to be purely technical and competition based.
The site WWW.Themanadrain.com has said much of the same, and is an excellent place to go to dispell many myths about the competitive type 1 animal. It is both the fastest growing aspect of magic play, and arguably one of the funnest, with a very nice community (although a few of Team Parigon are kinda elitist, which says a lot coming from me) and have some of the most relaxed, and layed back tournaments. Oh, and T1 players invented drunken mental magic, for all you boozehounds in the audiance.

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2003-12-08 10:21am

Has anyone heard anything definate about the new expansion? I heard it's out next month...