....... Meddling Mage turn 2. ..... Never would have thought of that.



To be blunt, there are quite a few decks I think can possibly do better.

Well, you only land Mage Turn 2 against the decks that probably aren't landing a threat turn 1. There might be a Channex-Lotus-Threat, but probably only one. The real problem is that you are giving up matches to Manlands and maybe Foil if people run that. I'm also going to assume Razor will run Swamp-Cackler-Rack again, and Mage just 1-4s that deck.

I am nothing if not consistent

also the Moroii format got me thinking about Cabal Pit/death's shadow/Shrieking Affliction which is cute.

You really want to 2-2 at best with Wasteland decks?

I didn't say I was running it. I just said it was cute.

@demento, I thought about running swamp, cackler, rack.

I didn't like the matchup vs channex path on top of the manlands and foil ones. Pitching the rack leaves you with a pathable creature, while pitching the cackler leaves you with....... a mise deck.

So you 2-2 Chancellor-Path, beat Chancellor-Waste, beat Foil, and I think you race manlands?

I don't expect a lot of people to play Foil to be honest. It ties both channex decks 2-2, and it loses to inkmoth nexus. It also loses to swamp + double threat (as we are discussing). Thus, overall, it's not in a good place right now and you are going to tie or lose a lot.

If you take that into consideration, swamp + double threat isn't going to win as much as one would think. In addition, i don't think it races all inkmoth variants? Granted, we would have to have some nonstandard ones, but I'm sure that that is possible given what else we are going to end up having here. A simple one that it couldn't race is inkmoth + cathedral + ith.

We are also making the poor assumption that channex is only going to play wasteland or path variants. What's to stop me from playing channex + inkmoth + cathedral? Or channex + lotus + threat?





This all also ignores that rishadan port is also a thing. And sometimes, it's better for metagaming than wasteland. In the case of cackler and affliction, you can't cast them before the mana empties from your pool if i tap it in your upkeep.

I'm not making that assumption, the weakness of any lotus deck in this format is Channex.

The other Vanilla rounds made me pause, but this round keeps having me run in circles. Foil is an obvious contender, that becomes less of a contender the more people who play it.

Channex is an obvious Foil counter and a strong deck all around.

Wasteland is strong IF people aren't playing manlands (which it doesn't do much against) or no lands, otherwise it's just extra mana against Channex. I think Desert or Maze is much stronger in this meta though.

Then we have the double threat decks which aim to lose the first threat and win with the second. If they go against Foil, they need two threats. If they go against Channex and Wasteland, they need two Lotus. If they don't think Wasteland is a big deal, they can do either.

And finally we have the "You can't counter me." decks which run along similar lines as the double threat decks.

So for me it was trying to figure out which archetype would have the strongest participation and snagging as many 6's from them as I could while being competitive against the rest.

This is one of the comparisons this round that make my head hurt.

For Channex, Inkmoth, Cathedral: It loses to Channex, Wasteland, Forge, which loses to 2x Inkmoth, Cathedral, which loses to Wasteland, Lotus, threat, which loses to Foil, which loses to the original...

For Channex, Lotus, Threat...as much as Channex is mentioned here...you lose to all Channex decks and its not very competitive against other variations, it doesn't even seem like a viable consideration.

Or we can just have the classic Wasteland + Forge + Gut Shot and screw whatever else happens lol .

lol, my deck ended up being "I'm done with this, screw whatever happens" so I might as well have

I don't think I'll do particularly well...I really think I picked the wrong archetype to ignore. (although it was partially based on not wanting to play something that's been played before and if I ignored a different archetype I'd have no excuse to play it.)

I picked a "safe" thing I think is going to do horribly. I don't really care though. I already got to **** up the meta, so Jack is happy.

I'm playing something that hasn't been mentioned here at all, and that makes me happy.

Nobody mentioned Gibbering Descent or Greater Gargadon in the meta discussion leading up to last round either. And both appeared in triplicate or more, and the latter swallowed the former as though it was an obvious play we walked right into.

Plus it has the added benefit of not caring about life total if the other deck has life gain.

Hollow Trees/Hollow Trees/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Do it!

Now why would we do that over Draco?

Draco loses to Chanex and Foil. Emrakul doesn't.