The more I read the happier I am with my choice. Thopters looks to be a great deck for this event

Fun indeed sir!

I'm not surprised to see people with decks that will have trouble suddenly flying the sideboard flag. Setting up a reason why they MIGHT lose.

Thopters would be unplayable if there were sideboards.

I was making a risky meta call that people were going to play spot removal instead of sweepers given the power of Ramp and Gruul Monsters. We'll see how it goes. Should be fun.

All true. But I disagree that thopters side boards badly. You can side into a UR counter burn deck from that shell very easily. Dispel sides in (if they run any instants), so do some of the big red burn spells, so do some hard counters, and you basically beat ramps stupidly slow gameplan into the ground. What are they going to do? Pray for Ulamog. Even mono red can handle ramp in the side, by switching to a thopter game plan, with ample burn - that's assuming your main deck isn't already a million times too fast for ramp in the first place, which it should be.

Oops was that a bit too much? ;-)

Red can't side vs lifegain.

My point is that other decks can side vs thopters WAY better than thopters can side vs other decks. So it's a suboptimal deck choice if sides exist.

...now I want a side salad.

sure it can

atarka's command

What do you mean? Of course it can. 1 they won't always get their life gain cards, 2 you just prioritize killing them, 3 trample and reach. Offshoot is cute and all, so is the retreat card, but if red runs a deck that can kill by t4/5 and has multiple paths with which to do so, life gain buys them very little time. They have to sweep, and if the red deck is built properly, your next turn is just as nasty. Getting to their big plays takes a long, long time, and you have no removal for their big plays, so you should prioritize taking out cards like offshoot, and go for the throat. I'm not saying it's auto win, not by a million miles, but greedy decks can and do get punished by fast ones.

I dunno man, I don't think I could play mono-red decks any faster than the lightning-fast builds I was playing... especially that the other guy is going to put in MOAR lifegain and early game solutions.

Actually, 5 color was a last minute switch bc I got tired of all the other decks I was testing being inconsistent besides Rakdos (which I wish I'd of played now). I was just scrolling through my decks and went past that list and was like, "Ya know.. this thing always ran pretty well for me." So I took it out for a few spins and it reminded me why I liked it. I put in Moss at the end bc I figured I'd be up against it and could use the additional fixing.. and I like that it hits man lands in control matchups. I'm worried about not having the tools needed for the ramp matchup though.

No your not...lol. Funny thing is, I had 6 sweepers in that deck, had the mana to play any of them the turn before I lost, and didn't find any of them in the top 20 cards. Stuff happens.

I just remembered it was you I was playing when it happened (you were playing Azban Elves according to my notes).

The things I would do with the this card. It would fit perfect in the duels meta just like it does in Standard.

There is actually a fair amount of sweepers in the tourney.

Matter of fact, 12 decks use at least 1 sweeper, the average is a little over 3 between them...not counting cards like Hixus and Rolling Thunder, which would push the average to almost 4 per deck that is packing them. Which is 75% of the field.

5 of those decks can recur the sweepers as well, 3 of them several times.

That is why I don't consider the beatdown plan a winning one in this tourney. Too many sweepers, IMO.

On the other side of the equation, the are 9 decks with lifegain, although the majority of them are limited to 2 cards, and some of those are quite incidental (Vampiric Rites), and I'd say half are Nissa's Renewal. Only 3 Jaddi Offshoot and 1 Shadows of the Past.

The decks packing Rolling Thunder are looking pretty good indeed.

Dieverse and I are gonna get started shortly. http://www.twitch.tv/ubrmensch

Good luck to both of you!

Now I have to leave work to get home and watch it!

Blink and you missed it. Dieverse 2-0

Yeah, he came out like a bandit and stole those games from you.

Luck of the draw.

GGs.

I build diverse his deck and actually played steely Dano with it on ladder and I would say diverse has the advantage

Holy crap, did Dieverse had a God hand twice? Because if that deck is that consistent, I just roll over and die! :-o

He didn't achieve or upload to YouTube? I missed it...

EDIT: Oh nvm..

He should consistently have 2 power on t2. Maybe more. He made some, to me, questionable decisions on the deck, but yeah, it's going to be fast.