Doesn't From the Ashes overlap a little too much with Magus? I think I'd want an actual reset button that leaves them with 0-1 land.
Most people blindly suggest new cards for decks. True contributors also suggest what to remove. It's not about what's good, but rather what's better than the current selections.
Yeah except a big portion of fair decks tend to be Delver and the mirror, where Cataclysm is awful. I'm not sure I'd want it against Deathblade or Jund, and maybe Shardless. Gideon is something you can side in against a wide variety of match-ups, though perhaps there are better universal options for grinding. Magus of the Moon, for example, is probably the best lockdown card in my deck to handle Czech Pile and other 3-color delver decks.Originally Posted by Stevestamopz
The mountains are still nonbasic, which helps destroy them. Unfortunately it lets them grab basics, but presumably there won't be many to grab.
Cataclysm/Armageddon became less attractive sideboard options when miracles started to play more mentors. It was always a tricky card to pull off correctly anyway, because top allowed them to come back faster than we could and set up terminus about as easy as before. Now with top gone and a greater chunk of control based around grixis, Cataclysm seems much better again. I wouldn't play Armageddon, because you really want the function to insta-kill any Jace or Liliana lying around.
Two potential problems I can see is that more people are splashing now, which makes it impossible to play Flagstones and renders Cataclysm more painful, in particular as there is a lot of artifact destruction going around for our vials. Second, Conspiracy 2 has lead to an increased number of 3-drops being played, which makes the deck more mana hungry and thus blowing up your own lands is extra painful. With this in mind, the card seems positioned excellently for a mono white build with flagstones and a reduced 3-drop count (7-8, rather than 10+).
I'm running a list with Cataclysm through a league and thus far it's been stellar. In games that Gideon would have lost its traded for their entire land base + a Jace and a creature. I'm just replacing Gideon in my board. That being said, is going to an EW trail on Sunday and I don't have Flagstones in paper. Is it still worth running without Flagstones?
New article! This one is by Chris Cunningham, and focuses on the math of splash manabases.
Could you try to keep some notes and collect some data on it? I'm interested in whether Cata or 'Geddon would be better.
You *can* run it on paper without Flagstones, you just have to accept that it's going to be 10% worse or whatever.
Played this list in the league today with the following modifications: -1 Plateau +1 Plains and Prelate as the flex creature. SB: -1 Manic vandal - 1 Cunning Sparkmage -1 Ethersworn canonist -1 containment priest +1 Magus of the Moon +1 Path to Exile +1 Rest in Peace +1 Kanbal, Consul of Allocation and went 4-1. I beat UW Stoneblade, some sort of weird prison deck, UWr Stoneblade and BU Reanimator. I lost vs 4 color Standstill. The mana base was seldom a problem, the prison deck tried to moon me but jokes on him, and Pontiff was a house versus TNN/Snapcaster boards. Sadly, I did not run into any Grixis and was not able to try out SoLaS, I boarded it in vs UW but I found SoIaF to be more effective in that MU and never fetched it. I also never got to try out Kanbal :(.
Overall the deck felt strong, although it was only 5 games and was pretty lucky as some of my opponent made decisive missplays that cost them games. My thoughts are that Magus is really strong in matchups where he matters but the rest of the creatures (esp. Pontiff) give you the flexibility to get the answers when he does not matter.
How are people feeling about various Stoneblade decks these days?
I typically feel pretty favored against them. I took down UWR today. What I lose to is TNN+batterskull or Jitte, but when they're stuck being an awkward control deck it feels pretty much like easy miracles. I got to resolve a Cataclysm against them and it set them back so far that I was able to dig out of being low on pressure before they got lands.
Since I've been playing Cataclysm it's won me a number of games that Geddon and Gideon would have lost. I've brought it in against Aluren and Goblins, where it was able to function as a board reset and wrath, where my one creature was better than the one they were left with. Against Mentor Control it was able to destroy Jaces and slow down Mentors. It's been winning me games that Gideon loses, where they've got a better board and you need to catch up. The only times I've wished I had a Geddon was when I was stuck on one White source.
What's the optimal number of Flagstones to run? I was initially thinking 4, but Flagstones hasn't been as free as it looks. I'm thinking of sticking with 3.
The problem with Cataclysm (aside from casting it through potential counterspells) for me is that the board state has to align in your favor. If you're behind, this card is not necessarily good (e.g Jitte and TNN on the field). Even if you did run the card, the probability that you happen to have one of 3 Flagstones on the field and Cataclysm resolved is extremely low, bordering on win-more mentality, and isn't even necessarily a game mattering combo.
The reason Cataclysm mattered against Miracles was because that deck needed a ton of mana to finish the game and could not stop your Cataclysm from resolving (e.g hard with counterbalance lock and low number of counterspells). In some ways Cataclysm is better and worse against the new Miracles but overall, I don't think it's a reliable sideboard card. Even for things like Aluren, it's not going to be reliable on the draw.
Note I'm not saying Gideon would necessarily be better in these cases.
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here. Cataclysm doesn't beat the combination of cards that you need a very narrow set of cards to beat. Sure it can be countered. The same can be said of any card that would be occupying that slot. I'm also not sure how we get from "Bad Balance" to win-more. The effect typically is looking to equalize the board, but you're better able to leverage keeping artifacts or bigger creatures.
I'm simply saying running 3 legendary land in the hopes of having one on the field when cataclysm resolves is an improbable magic christmas scenario. On top of this, having one land above your opponent is win-more, especially if you resolved cataclysm in a favorable scenario.
And you are over simplifying my argument. Unlike 4c control and miracles, traditional midrange/tempo/ control blue decks have a way higher counterspell density and this is (one reason) why you could rely on cataclysm resolving against old miracles. You are saying any sideboard card can be countered (obviously) but a cluncky 4 mana spell is hell of a lot harder to resolve when you take into many factors (daze, snapcaster, having opponent tapped out, having mana available, thalia tax, etc.) so whatever 4 mana spell we play, it should be nearly guaranteed to win us the game.
A quick opinion poll:
How do D&T players feel the average MTGO player stacks up to the real world? And across the various play options: Daily, general match making etc.?
I finally conceded to not having enough access to paper players and I bought into MTGO and have been play testing quite a bit.
I've found my success rate against the new U/W miracles, grixis and 4 color is much higher than i think my play skill warrants.
I'd love to see some math to back up that statement.
What I quoted above would apply to most cards. If you're already ahead, pretty much any additional spell will make your position even stronger. On the contrary, my understanding of "win-more" is a card that is ONLY viable when you're ahead, and that does not apply to Cataclysm.
The key is that Cat can dig you out of a hole, or break a stalemate in your favor. To be clear, Cat depends not on existing board state but on post-resolution board state. If your best 2-3 permanents beat those of the opponent, you're golden. I get that this is obvious, but what you're writing seems to imply some other interpretation of the card's role. TNN+Jitte is not the only way in which you can be behind, and in some cases (Revoker on Jitte with air force or SoFI) you can even attack profitably.
tl;dr I'm confused why Cat and "win-more" are even being talked about in the same sentence.
Most people blindly suggest new cards for decks. True contributors also suggest what to remove. It's not about what's good, but rather what's better than the current selections.
I'm making a very simple argument. Running 3 lands that make you more susceptible to blood moon and legendary rule for the sake of playing a card that (a) you may not even draw into (b) does not even matter if resolved in your favor and (c) would be unlikely to be on the field anyhow etc. Again I can construct more arguments than this and they add up to suggest it is not worth running flagstones at all (for the sake of getting an extra win-more land from a resolved Cata).
The calculation is not worth doing but to give you a (simple generalized) idea, to have one copy of flagstones in your hand is 28% and 31.5% to have one or more (not a scenario you want). We can say we want one of two cataclysm at least in the first 7 turns and that is 39%. I don't want to review my probability theory but combine these two with other constraints and you are probably looking at sub 10% of a flagstone making a reasonable difference with a resolved Cata.
Now when evaluating Cata, my argument is also pretty simple. There is a lot of 'if' in making this card work. If our permanents are superior to their, if we reach the 4 mana in time, if the spell resolves, etc. For a sideboard card, you want a lot less 'ifs' imo. Every card has an 'if' constraint attached to it but the key idea is they differ in the number and probability of 'ifs'.
Ok, I see now that you meant win-more with the question of whether to run Flagstones. I think we still disagree on the overall potential of Cataclysm but that's another matter.
Most people blindly suggest new cards for decks. True contributors also suggest what to remove. It's not about what's good, but rather what's better than the current selections.
Success rate depends on the number of samples you have against these decks. If we are talking 30+ games where you come out on top against each of these archetypes maybe you are just good. Overall, I don't have mtgo but just from seeing clips online I find players to be better decision makers. You will find more players who are more knowledgable about the format whereas paper players don't really review a wide variety of decks that go beyond their local meta. Sure they might do some last minute research for a big tournament but people I know don't study a match-up until they face it personally. Also, some decks are harder/easier to play online and that also affects decision making skills.
The Legend rule is not exactly a problem for Flagstones. As for Blood Moon, my builds still run 6-7 basics. The cost of running it is incredibly low, and it allows for Cata into have Port online for their only land, or simply being slightly closer to casting spells again.
All those "Ifs" seem to be assuming that you bring in Cataclysm against random decks. You pick when to bring it in. You pick when you cast it. Against the decks that you want it, your creatures are almost always superior. Very few decks are running the same number of powerful artifacts, and typically the worst case scenario involves them keeping a Library or Dread of Night. The card takes Big Blue style decks that are typically more resistant to mana denial because they run more lands. You sort of force a game reset, where you play out the early game again. You are able to apply pressure and force them to cantrip into answers while choked on mana, and strand the expensive cards that Taxes typically has difficulty beating.
@Water, what's your Flagstones manabase look like?
Most people blindly suggest new cards for decks. True contributors also suggest what to remove. It's not about what's good, but rather what's better than the current selections.
The general free to play tournament practice room has many pretty terrible players. It's a ton of people learning their decks and the MTGO client. Spend some time here when you first start out so you don't lose games to stupid stuff (and my god, does that happen in those first few games...), but then move on to paid events. People scoop too early, drop before playing sideboard games, etc. If you want experience against fringe decks though, this is a good place to find that.
The average MTGO Legacy player in a league is likely better than the average Joe who shows up to your Legacy night in town or maybe on par with people who go to play in Opens. They might not always be dedicated experts of the decks or anything, but play level is usually competent to good.
The great MTGO players (e.g. Legacy specialists like Bryant Cook) are wonderful to play against and likely better than most or all of the people you will play against locally. These players will be on par with what you see towards the end of an Open or GP in terms of skill.
edit: You also should be able to go infinite pretty easily on MTGO if you're a good player. I haven't put any money into the system other than what I paid for the deck. A 3-2 finish lets you enter another for free with about $2 profit to boot, and a 4-1 or better finish puts you pretty far ahead in terms of value with all the treasure chests you get.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote