UW tempo isn't too terrible, but the worst part is that we already attached a name to it, I told them what the name was, and they failed to transcribe it correctly. Oh well, I guess I've seen worse like when I tell my students the answer to their homework and somehow they still screw it up.Originally Posted by Sevryn
There's this card from the new set:
Originally Posted by Salvation
Stoneforge Mystic 1W
Creature - Kor Artificer (rare)
When Stoneforge Mystic Enters the Battlefield, you may search your library for an equipment card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If you do, shuffle your library.
1W, tap: Put an Equipment card from your hand onto the battlefield.
1/2
Obviously it costs 1W more to get a Jitte out on the table (1W to cast this, then 4 for the Jiquip), but I might pay 1W to get a free 1/2.
Also with Vial, the extra cost is basically meaningless, and he does provide some flexibility in that you can leave 2 untapped all the way to your opponent's endstep and then still be able to Jiquip with counter protection or with fewer than 4 land. Obviously they see the Jiquip coming so they can prepare, but I think this is worth me testing.
I think you should not weaken your creaturebase with another 1/2 little-one..
Turoring jitte is nice, vialing it in and equip jitte at once a turn later is a nice trick offcourse.. but I dont think its good enough.. He has to tap to throw the equipment in play too.. suxy imo..
Ive tested Jace Beleren in a few games now (tested alot last 2 weeks with the deck) and she is awesome!
Fathom seer wins you topdeck-war's.. but she does it even better..
3 mana is not to much of a big deal and she generates such a CA..
Im playing 3 seer / 1 jace now, might go 2/2..
Anyone tried her in the list yet?
Jace is a guy.
Jace doesn't carry a Jitte, doesn't aid Knight of the White Orchid or Wayfarer, or randomly "counter" a Wasteland.
I'll leave the full analysis to Forbiddian and pi4meterftw, but I would call it a no-go.
Tusk up.
Hm, I would hate my parents if they would have named me Jace lol..
But ok, guy then
Ive read in this threat that they didnt test it that much because it was to expensive on that moment..?
In the planeswalker build we also didn't play jace. It's much worse than fathom seer. With seer you're guaranteed 2 cards and a creature in play. With jace, you're only guaranteed 1 card, and that's only if you hedge your bets and pretty much doom yourself against any aggro deck to only get one card out of it. The free 1/3 of fathom seer relative to jace isn't just a +1 card. It's also immensely more tempo-oriented, or I should say much less tempo-costing.
Imagine your opponent has even just a kird ape, or heck a dark confidant. Or if he's aggro, that he just has one more creature than you do.
If you play fathom seer, you draw 2 cards and you neutralize the board position. You may also get an additional +1 if he tries to remove it, but everybody knows about this deck now so I don't suspect that this will continue to happen.
If you play jace you either:
Draw a card, it dies. 1UU for 2-3 life, 1:1 on cards.
Both players draw a card, it sticks around but to what benefit?
Against most decks, nogoyf is trying to trade down. This renders jace's first ability is not merely neutral, but actually actively terrible. We're the ones who have the capability of drawing an extra wasteland every turn with wayfarer, playing the fathom seer and flipping it, KOTWO etc.
Also, another important point is jace is almost an entire +1 average on tarmogoyf. Right now we keep him from 2/3-4/5, 3/4ish on average. That's where: they can't attack into grunt at 3/4, at 2/3 they probably shouldn't even attack into vial, and at 4/5 we can take it like 2-3 times and it's okay.
I mean it's a continuum effect, but I'm just pointing out the differences at each level:
At 2/3, tarmogoyf stays home
At 3/4, it attacks, but grunt eats it
At 4/5, we take it until we find swords/mom/jitte/grunt, and with grunt we need to take it again, or else we double block.
Imagine being 1 category higher every time.
EDIT: By the way, we'll call the deck Land Hax from now on. Might take some getting used to, though. Thanks to IBA.
The 1W guy is looking okay. He might make the list, but he's a small thing from being an obvious inclusion. If he were blue, got +0/+1, or +1/+0 we'd play him. Maybe if equipment starts to get rampant, we could play 1x manriki gusari or something.
Last edited by pi4meterftw; 01-22-2010 at 11:37 AM.
Everyone knows jitte is the best equipment ever printed. This is probably the only "best of" you can say in magic where nobody will argue.
Uh, ok... nobody said it wasn't the best (and only you bothered to point out that it was the best).
But anyway, there might be other stuff being run now that there's an efficient equipment tutor.
So is this thread getting renamed to Land Hax, or what?
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
You mean the old Jace? A bit slow for the deck and hard to defend...
Skullclamp.
Skullclamp isn't equipment, its a banned combo draw engine :)
That card makes Jitte uncounterable and untouchable against cards like FoW and Spell Snare. So that 2nd ability is an obvious "I like." I like it's also a two drop as well. Works within the mana constriction of the deck. You could also run cards like SoFI or SoLS as well at this point.
ICBE - We're totally the coolest Anti-Thesis ever.
"The Citrus-God just had a Citrus-Supernova... in your mouth."
Yeah, I'm not certain it will go in NoGoyf, but I already preordered some. My gut is telling me the price is going to go way up on these guys.
It might not, and I might not play them in NoGoyf at all, but they're selling for like $5-$10 a playset, and Stoneforge Mystic looks a hell of a lot better than a $2 rare to me, so I don't want to get stuck shelling out $20 a playset if this proves to be really good.
I doubt it will see much increase in value, seeing as not that many decks rely heavily on equipment to win, but this is definitely a good card to playtest in one of the flexible slots. The only problem that I see is that it might not help the poor matchups enough to warrant its inclusion.
But we're not looking to improve poor matchups. Let's say anything below 60% is a poor matchup. It is true that matchups below 60% tend to experience greater improvements given changes that help those matchups, because there are more situations in which they can help. However, we're just as happy to take a 1% increase in our match win percentage from beating goblins 10% more of the time as we are to beat zoo 10% more of the time. (assuming they are about equally distributed.)
In fact, given roughly equal match win expected value increases, we'd much rather widely vary our win distribution across individual decks. This is because it increases the variance in our deck's performance. As good as this deck is, it's not expected value 1st place at every tournament. Therefore, we're looking to "get lucky," so to speak. To end up on the right side of the distribution. We want the variance to increase so that this coveted point on the distribution is only a few fractions of a deviation out.
In layman speak, these ideas are approximated by:
we'd rather have 100% vs 70% of the meta, 0% vs 30% than 70% against the meta.
It is impossible to increase percentages in one matchup without sacrificing percentages in another. This is where interpreting a metagame helps in making card-choices for a particular deck. For example, if one is not expecting any Dredge decks (Loam included), then running graveyard-hate in the sideboard would be wasting slots. It would definitely be nice if there were normally-distributed metagames, but there unfortunately are not any. There has to be a cutoff point where the increase in matchup percentages are unprofitable compared to the decreases incurred from making these changes (roughly diminishing returns).
I totally understand the argument; having a 100% matchup percentage against 50% of the field (and 0% against the other half) compared to a 50% matchup percentage against 100% of the field. Yet, it feels as if there is definitely a cutoff, which makes its present felt in all sideboards. Why run hate for a combo deck (if combo is that deck's bad matchup), if instead that person can just run eight Wrath of God (to combat further a presumed good aggro matchup)? Although, maybe there is something to that argument: people are focusing too much on shoring up poor matchups when there would be more value in just reinforcing good matchups. It would be an interesting thought to explore in some depth.
Have you guys considered Kor sky fisher? It let's you enable more wayfarer shenanagins if your ahead on land, or replay a knight of the white orchard, or save a grunt who has gotten too heafty of an upkeep cost. In addition, it allows for some combat tricks with vial to save anything targeted with removal. I, however, have no idea as to what you would remove.
It looks like Skyfisher would compete with Serra Avenger for deck space, which it doesn't do effectively. While it looks to have its applications, Skyfisher is borderline "danger of cool things."
Tusk up.
I won 2 tournaments this weekend using this deck :) !!
Played against all the major archetypes except zoo and fish. Only match loss was to ANT.
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