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I haven't thought on that. Recalling from my memory, if I'm not mistaken, only once. It was in game two (with SB) vs. URW.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
I recall, I drew a Mox before he stifled my upside down wish turn later.
Anyway, it's going to be my next agenda. Maybe tonight or tomorrow.
cutting a Chrome Mox for a fetch.
I'll let you know.
My mate and me tested this already successfully. It may requires a bit more oversight about already burned IMS' for T1/2 Ad Nauseams. This change is primary for metas with a lot of mana denial and taxingQuote:
Originally Posted by paeng4983
Maybe it was my bad luck, but when I tested the switch (-1 Chrome Mox, +1 Fetch) my Ad Nauseams were way more risky. Ad Nauseam @ <14 killed me far more often than the opponent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Took 2nd place today ... Lost with a lethal Army of goblins to a topdecked Lightning Bolt flipping a Delver with me at 5 life x(
Cool, tourney report coming? Test any changes esp to the maindeck?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Ok guys, confession time: I've never been to a legacy event.
There, i said it. Im taking TES (Played many many games with it for many months now) to a GPT this weekend and wondered if there were any general tips to give for either piloting this deck or things to watch for in a tournament setting?
Been to the first post in this thread?
Make sure to document well both players' life totals and all of your mana.Quote:
Originally Posted by JPoJohnson
Write down the whole spells' chain, it's far more easy to recover game state than just from the storm commas. Also, you may analyze your play later, and I have an impresion that my opponents were impressed that contrary to the dudes who just count the spells, I'm pretty good with Storm, because I write down the whole spells' chain so that I may analyze my play later.Quote:
Originally Posted by Star|Scream
It also looks pretty funny.
"RoF (Daze! - DRit!), Mox (BS), Ponder, DRit, LED, AdN (LED: BBB)..."
You know.
As others have said, be sure to be thorough with counting storm and mana. I recommend dice, even different colored ones for your type of mana floating (black, red, etc)!Quote:
Originally Posted by JPoJohnson
Ugh, dice are awkward as hell, especially if you start playing with them. Writing everything down and the spells cast ensures 0 confusion and you can always run back through the chain should there be a discrepancy and a judge gets called.Quote:
Originally Posted by davelin
If you ever want to be good in anything at life, you have to be healthy. Your mind and body should both be in good shape, remember to sleep, relax, don't stress too much, eat and so on. I can promise you, the worst time you'll ever have playing Magic the Gathering is when you're mind, body or both are sick. I've tried playing while having only two hours of sleep before a tournament (0-5, perfect record!) or stressing about your life in general. Remember to eat and especially drink, or you'll find yourself way too exhausted at some point to make good decisions when you have to make one.
Other than that, don't be afraid to fail or lose. Sometimes you just have to lose your head and go for their throat if you believe they don't have it.
I had my birthday two days ago and wanted to make a small project. Last year I signed up to the secret santa thingy and got one lotus petal and _opened_ innistrad booster with a shitty rare. This time I wanted to make something a little bit more special for Christmas. If you want to, send me your post address and I'll send you a card for TES as a birthday/christmas present, with a poor alteration by me. (Notice, the cards will be cheap as dirt shit - goblin tokens and maybe duresses.) I'm poor so I have to roll by sending cheap shit. Hit me up if you're interested in bad cards altered very badly as a present.
I used the dice and was very unsatisfied with them. It takes too much time to find the correct number, you must switch pen and dice, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by davelin
Also, don't use the papers with too many print on them, like 95 % of what you'll get in a usual lgs. You don't need their logo, all the nonsense like "opponents name" and vertical lines, etc. It will distract you and you'll have not enough space for really important notes like cards seen in Duress, etc. Take enough A5 papers and use one paper per game no matter what. It's better to waste a nigh clean paper then to miscount storm or misread a Therapy note.
I have twenty sided dice as well as 10 sided dice of each mana color. I know TES fairly well, just not in a tournament setting. I've played against many other decks of the format (UW Deathblade, Merfolk, Belcher, Mirror, Goblins, UW Miracles, Dredge) so i know how to play the format. The other suggestions though are exactly the type im looking for. Thanks (:
Edit: I've liked the dice for mana, disliked the dice for storm count. Ill just keep track of it by writing down.
Another question: I read in a tournament report that opponents are allowed to ask to look at your notes? (A judge at the SCG tournament made him show his opponent). I guess I'll write down in a way i understand and they don't.
Yes I believe life totals and notes written down can be viewed so don't write down your opening hands at least not without coding it! I also haven't played competitively in awhile, I assume you can look at your sideboard anytime during the match, not just when you are casting a Wish spell?Quote:
Originally Posted by JPoJohnson
Making excessive notes is time consuming in your turn. The mana-colored-dice-System I presented a few pages back works wonders. Without trying to be a douche, but didn't you announce to sell your ANT/TNT after going 0-X in 2 tournaments in a row with storm? I would have loved to see those excessive notes to analyze what wet wrong...Quote:
Originally Posted by Bed Decks Palyer
Let's say there were 3 hilarious games:Quote:
Originally Posted by davelin
1) against UWR Delver I managed to resolve 18 Goblins through Wasteland, double Daze, double Pierce, FoW and Stifle (not all in a single turn, obviously)
2) opend on the draw with 2 LED, 3 Petal, Gemstone, EtW. Draw mox, play out the hand right into Flusterstorm while he's laughing. I just remind him about the LED's, break both and pay for an Army which kills him in 2 swings XD
3) against a friend playing OmniTell, I was able to Therapy 3 Omniscience in game 2 and in game 3 he kept 3(!!) FoW in Order to prevent 2 Wishes (I played to bait counters) and my actual combo move x(. We are both in topdeck mode then and he S&T's Omniscience into play, but doesn't find a way to kill me after blowing Release the Ants against a Xantid. I resolve a second Bug and win with Ad Nauseam into PIF with him having 3 counterspells in hand, disabled by Xantid
There's no full report coming because I was late and had to finish my R1 opponent (Meerfolk) therefore in a rush. I made one of 2 critical mistakes that day in game 2 because of the time pressure ... still got my 2-0. The other misplay, I was able to negate with Jedi mind tricks.
It was the -1 Mox, +1 Fetch list with Pyroclasm in the SB, which saved my ass against Dark Maverick. The Land was crucial to battle the Delvers flurry of manadenial and did not hurt the 2 Ad Nauseam cast that day. EtW was MVP as usual
Use 8 dices: 4 D20 for life, Token, Gemstone counters, etc. 1 Crazy colored D10 for storm, and one D10 each in the colors red, blue and black (for flooded mana). I posted a picture of those a few pages back.Quote:
Originally Posted by JPoJohnson
Sadly, it's a cruel fact that you need to learn this deck under tournament conditions to control your body Language and facial expression in Order to Jedi mind trick your opponents with certain gestures (laying your hand facedown on the table and pompously pick them up 1-2 turns later, rearrange your spells and lands to play out counter-baits to make that crap look important, etc.).
This is a Poker players deck. There's no success if your opponent can read you or if you are shaking nervous and make hasty, bad plays and miscount all day.
My personal advice: don't mull too much. Greedy mulligans because the hand is a bit slow or sketchy result in the most losses, you'll have with the deck. A good mulligan rate is anything below 20% of your hands. If your number Tops those 20% by far, reevaluate your mulligans and/or practice shuffling ;)
I have tried dice but find it difficult to manage when multiple values change at once.
I now write down notes using a simple scheme. An example from my last storm match looks like this.
S 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
B 3 2 5 3
U 1 0
R 2 3
Write down the latest values as they change. Don't cross out or erase them. Sometimes, like casting a couple petals when the coast is clear, I will skip over intermediate results. Storm could jump from 3 to 5, say.
I like this much better than fumbling with dice. Changing over smoothed out my mechanical game while playing.
Posting in support of using multiple dice to count storm and mana. There's enough spindowns around nowadays that it's easy to trade people to get one for each color (or just spend .50), and it makes things pretty easy for both you and your opponent.
That being said, your mileage may vary, and some people prefer to write things down, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Adjusting dices is Yoga. It calms you down and is a visual help ... you'll make less mistakes than using pen&paper. Disadvantage of switching between P&P and dices during a match for notes (Probe, Discard, starting hands).
Edit: all those talk about keeping track of mana/life/storm isn't really helpful if you never played with this deck in a real tournament Environment and make mistakes being nervous and such
Hi what was your side in in side out game 2 ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
-3 Duress, -1 Infernal, -1 EtW, + 3 Xantid Swarms, +2 CoVQuote:
Originally Posted by Jaycounet
Hum i've surelly miss somehtingQuote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
how many dures / therapy are your running ?
Yes, but JPoJohnson asked about some tips (and clearly didn't need help with "keep priority after playing IT" kind of things), but rather with these not-so-obvious and kinda-outside-the-game things.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
You still need to switch pen and dice. Then swotch back dice and pen. Then switch pen and dice. And then... you know. Also, even if you use the 1-20 spindown dice instead of the random ones, you still need to manipulate them. I find it distracting, annoying and time consuming. Add tokens, Therapy notes, etc. and you may get lost in the process. But to each his own.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Notes are gone, I use them when I write reports and then they end in waste. Also, it's not like I do excessive notes.. (I find it strange that you thougt andasked about it, after all, you also must do some notes unless your reports are written from memory.) I basically never write anything unimportant, and then I write down the spells chain and such to have a written testimony of what happened in case argument arises, then I got the life points (and next to them I write what happened, if it's important; this way you may easily associate the game factors like life lost so far, number of Duresses played, the cca number of turns, etc.)
19 19 Ponder
18 19 Dur (Daze, FoW, FoW, Plains, fetch, Mystic) -> FoW
17 18 CoF
17 18 Mystic (BSK)
17 18 eot BSK; eot LDV (FoW)
13 22
11 21 GP, CT (FoW!)
DRit, CoF, CRit, LED, IT (LED: RRR) -> PiF; PiF, Drit, Dur, Crit, IT, GP, ToA
9 21
37 0
And imagine a "U:", "B:" and "R:" columns somewhere on that paper.
LEDs are already gone, so are the two of three USeas. Also, the reason why I'm selling the deck are not the two losses. I'm not that silly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JPoJohnson
Get some sleep. Stay hydrated. If you are thirsty it is already too late. Try to act the same all the time. Don't let them read you. Hide your goblin tokens. Try to figure out your next play/turn (order of spells) in your head so you won't make an error. Write down stack if you plan to cast PiF / IGG / DReturns. Some opponents can try to tell judge that you didn't cast some spells and your storm count is 8/9. Print SB advices if you don't remember / understand them by heart. Think. Be confident. Be humble. You are not Bryant Cook.
Good luck!
@BDP
I have the advantage of untimed rounds in the events I wrote these reports and use partly stenography, otherwise it would be impossible to catch all the details.
Lem,
What are you taking out to make room for the Pyroclasm in the board?
Ill-Gotten Gains or as of the new list in the starting post Tropical Island.Quote:
Originally Posted by davelin
I found the 50 minutes enough, also I don't write everything. It takes very little time to write these things down, and you may use the opponents' time when they're fetching, kiblering and such. You can't do much stuff during your combo turn, but well, there's hardly anything else necessary enough than to write down the spells chain and you're doing it so or so to have that written testimony of things that happened. I can't stenograph, but I don't think that it takes that much more time to use the usual shortcuts then to stenotype:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
19 19 BS
18 19 Dur (FoW!)
18 18 CB
17 17 SDT
16 17 Decay
14 17 GP, CT, DRit, blargh, blargh, blargh...
With the additional land already in my MB over the 3rd mox, I have Bryants SB Tropical slot open for a meta-slot like ClasmQuote:
Originally Posted by davelin
For the SCG open this weekend, I am thinking of running the same SB as you but possibly without the MB change (-1 Mox +1 Fetch). Think that's a mistake? Is the extra land against mana denial worth the explosiveness versus other decks?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
you wish the therapy ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaycounet
Let me set the question here into another perspective: how good is having Chrome Mox in your starting grip (not to talk about mulligans) or drawn in average? Is it better than a land in non T1-AN/EtW hands? Is it better than a land versus discard? Is it better to play around taxing effects (permaments and spells aka thalia and softcounter)?Quote:
Originally Posted by davelin
These are the questions I asked myself as my meta shifted away from Combo and Aggro, towards an undefined mass of Flusterstorm/Thoughtseize/Daze/Pierce/FoW/Therapy/Stifle/Wasteland ... Heck, I barely face anything that isn't Delver in various Colors or a flavor or Show&Tell!
I am overall unwilling to go all-in on turn 1/2 in this metagame as you might imagine and therefore I like to operate on a more stable manabase to Dismember my opponents and win out of the blue after doing so. A lot of those matches turn into attrition wars and I like creating cardadvantage with Wish->Therapy, rather than 2-1 myself early.
It's a metagame choice. Nothing more
To answer this and the question before: i have 3 Duress Main, 2 Therapy Side. I boarded out all discard in Game 2 and wished for the Therapy because he didn't drop a leyline so I was able to strip his 3 Omniscience (knew 2 off a T1 Therapy)Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaycounet
I've used dice to tally everything since I picked up the decks at the beginning of this year so it's not an issue, I enjoy using the dice. I've never written anything down, but I have in mind a coding way to keep tallies of everything without them understanding what I'm writing. I would love to come back with a clear concise tournament report, but I guess we'll see how my notes turn up haha.
I'm confident enough in my abilities to use the deck and manipulate it in a way that is effective, whether optimal or not on certain plays is another thing, so I'm fine with that. Perhaps in certain situations I may get nervous as I'm playing, but the game is for fun regardless of whether you win... right? I'm just excited to finally be able to put it to good use beyond the three different playgroups I've bounced around in (And like I posted prior, there are some quite competitive decks in them. I was surprised how powerful the deck was against Merfolk (My other deck). It was a great feeling looking at my hand and realizing what spells I could play to bait out their counter spells since they feel important, but are really throw away. I hope to get better at reading my opponent and playing the deck based on the opponent's deck.
Ok it was not clear
(omniclash game still a quite hard to manage is quite quick and without xantid quite dangerous to go all in)
I really like your idea of having that style for counting the mana and storm. It looks very helpful in tracing things back. I will def. be trying that style the next time I storm. I normally use a full new sheet of paper in a little 6 x 9 inch memo book from Staples. Life totals on the top left and Storm stuff on the right. I use the top right half as space for cards revealed (off Probe, Therapy, etc.), and the bottom half for Mana and Storm count. I use tally marks in the traditional slash the 5th mark, start a new set at 6.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoblinSettler
I have not been a fan of dice, I do have a colored set of d12 for each color of mana as well as a neutral color for the storm count. This made me slow down as I found the right number (no spin down). I switched over to pen and paper, and I like it better because it seems more fluid when you need more time to think through a line of play. You can spend brainpower figuring a sequence, instead of looking for 4 on your red die.
On taking notes: I constantly make notes during a match. If an opponent played some land weird, or something in an odd order that makes me question it, I normally write it down in my notes area with the revealed cards. Whenever a revealed card is played, I cross it out. Once that list gets down to a card or to I either circle the remainder or cross it out and rewrite it in a cleaner space.
During AdN, when I am losing a bunch of life I normally start before the starting life total, and count it down out loud as I reveal. If I ever get to a point where I want to think about the cards left and the life total while AN is resolving, I write the current life total down and circle it really big. I normally mention I am at X life, and I am going to think a little before I keep going. This way my opponent has a chance to comment on the life totals, as well as make me pause to think through what they are playing and how to win. Example: playing against RUG, I knew something was in their hand by the lines they took, but I couldn't resolve Silence. I paused at 5 life knowing they had a Volcanic untapped which could potentially be something like Bolt for 3 to the dome to win.
@Bed Decks Palyer: I really like your way of annotating spells to help record lines of play. I may try that at a local GPT coming up.
Any concerns the loss of the third mox has on a resolved Ad Nauseum?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Only if I already burned 3+ mana artifacts, have already made my landdrop and Ad Nauseam without mana floatingQuote:
Originally Posted by davelin
Odd thought, but considering Abrupty Decay and Xantid Swarm are green and we're playing a Tropical Island in the SB, is there any merrit in replacing Silence with Autumn's Veil? Obviously Autumn's Veil is strictly worse vs Vendillion Clique, combo, discard and hatebear based decks than Silence, but it does have the merrit of being a more color efficient protection spell for the combo post-board.
Probably an unsound idea, but I thought I'd bring it up. Maybe it's a viable way of playing Silence 5+ post-board for counter/removal heavy match ups where Xantid Swarm is otherwise unplayable or further diversifying MD disruption i.e. 3 Silence, 1 Autumn's Veil, 2 Duress, 1 Cabal Therapy etc.?
Concern yes but, I've gone to two and not once had had issues after resolving..Quote:
Originally Posted by davelin
You can't time walk with autumns veil.Quote:
Originally Posted by Final Fortune