TFM vs R29 4C Walkers (no ): I have an iffy hand of Forest, Crag, Mountain, Pilgrimage, Devour, Smasher, and Omnath, but I keep it. Opp is first but just drops land on the first 2 turns (showing all 4 colors in just 2 land drops). I top Impulse and another Forest. Opp plays flip Nissa. I Impulse it and top another Devour. I play Pilgrimage. Opp plays Liliana Last Hope. I top Desert like a boss and Smash Lili. She gets her revenge with an oath on his turn. I top Tracker play it, and drop a land. Opp casts Gift on a land and passes. I crack my clue eot and hit Rhonas. Noice. Then I top Hammer. I drop a land, swing, drop Rhonas and land and pass, leaving up 2 to crack the clue. Opp plays Convergence. I crack clue and see Advocate. I top Impulse, Equip Hammer on Tracker and swing, bouncing my Desert. He chumps Tracker but Rhonas makes him trample. I play the Desert again and pass. Opp passes. Clue gives me land. I Devour his Wurm token and swing for lethal.
Cucho vs R40 Devoid: I keep a hand with 4 land, Tracker, Ob Nix, and Convergence on the play. Opp drops Gargoyle T1. T2 is just land drops and I top Expertise. T3 I top Big Nissa and decide to wait a turn to play Tracker to make sure I get a clue off it (or play it off Expertise is I end up needing to cast it). Opp plays Caravan. T4 I top Languish and play Tracker and get the clue. Opp plays Smasher and smashes me for 5. T5 I top Convergence #2 and crack clue hitting land. Thank goodness! Now I can trade Tracker for Smasher. I play it and pass. Opp pisses on my parade with a Titan showing His Moggyness. I get Smashed to 10, cracking clue at eot for Pilgrimage. I top Vegetation and drop Ob Nix and kill the Smasher. Opp plays Assembler and uses it to crew Caravan. Pretty sure I’m a goner at this point. Lets see if he has the sense to ignore Ob Nix and take me to 5. Nope! He takes out Nix! Hmmm... Top a land and I’m still in bad shape. Option 1 is to play Vegetation and Convergence next turn. But he’ll take me to 1 this turn and roll over me with 2 attackers after playing Convergence. Option 2 is Languish but his Assembler fetched a replacement which will just crew Caravan and fetch the third one. So I play option X and drop Nissa and use her to animate a land to trade with Caravan. Opp doesn’t want to lose a crucial mana source in his quest to Mog me so he flips his Gargoyle and pecks Nissa. K. I top land and play Languish and Pilgrimage. Opp plays Endbringer and uses an Oran Reif to plus it up. I top Retreat and play Convergence. Opp plays Assembler and pluses it. Then he chips Nissa with Endbringer. I top Sage and spend Nissa’s last 3 loyalty to get Nix back, cast him and take out Endbringer and Sage the Caravan (he was at 9 mana). Opp plays Assembler and uses both Orans to make it a formidable 6/6. I top Languish and play Convergence 2. Opp plays TKS and takes my Languish. I top Grasp and attack with Sage. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll block with the 5/5. He does! How did this guy ever make it to R40? I Expertise to take out the 5/5 and freecast Grasp hitting the TKS drawing me a Tutor. At this point the tide has turned and he quits. I play it out and manage to fanagle the damage perfectly to take him to 2 (with Retrest out) and tutor a Desert to do the last point.
bzzt vs R38 Sultai Artistuff: On the draw and I mull 4 Islands, Vortex, Tradewinds, and Devour into Highland Lake, Desert, Shock, Key, Unsub, Kozi’s, and Orrery. I actually have a lovely start, too, hitting lands when I need them and getting Key and Orrery down on curve. But my opp is dropping etb value cards like Pilgrim’s Eye and Visionary, which aren’t a huge problem bc of Kozi’s but will make my bounce spells a double edged sword later on. And then he drops the real problem card. Smasher. I try to chump it with Fumarole so I can Shock it (3 for 1 is fine if I got a good draw engine) but he has a Vial and uses it so I bounce it (after taking one hit from it the turn he played it. He plays Rec Sage and Tezz and nukes my Key. I Kozi’s and blow Shock to zap Tezz down, voiding my hand. I top 2 Devours and 2 land and use one Devour to finish Tezz off. He drops Smasher and then plays Altered Ego x=2 and nails me for 12, taking me to 1. I top land, Devour the 5/5 Smasher and play land. All he has to do is swing with the 7/7 cuz my hand is empty but he Pulses back his Smasher and plays it again just to rub it in. Dickhead.
Nomad vs R33 Salad: On the play, I keep a 5 lander with Gideot and Scatter and flood early. Fortunately my opp is just dropping weak stuff like Narham Renegade, Longtusk, and Rec Sage and Gideot is able to hold out long enough for me to find Jace and bounce his Sage. He takes advantage of my tapping out to drop Crocodile and kills Gideot with it. Wrong choice as Jace draws me an Arrogance. He builds back up with Rec Sage and Advocate while I find Wall and animate an Island with it. I’ve got another Arrogance AND an Outburst in hand, too. But I make a major misplay and miss brainfart when he uses Nature’s Way to kill my Island and I watch it resolve instead of Scattering it. This lets him kill Jace, too. Ugh. I top Initiate and pass, daring him to overcommit. He obliges with another Cub and making a zombie token with that stupid Cradle land. Arrogance leaves him with a token vs my wall and Initiate and breaks his spirit as he concedes immediately.
So after 5 rounds, Nomad’s build maintains its dominance going 4-1 while Cucho and I each save a little face with some sound wins ending up 2-3. bzzt has a rough time and falls into last place at 1-4. BUT... butt? BUTT!! Oh, sorry. *ahem* Seem to have caught a case of the juveniles. Anyway, I have other criteria beyond just scoring the builds’ effectiveness. So here we go:
bzzt's Sunscorched Vortex
Effectiveness: 1/5 This deck clearly had some issues. Vortex is a very slow wincon and the strategy of stalling opponent's threats rather than eliminating them is very hard to pull off, especially with single target bounce spells rather than wide stalls like Fog. I think the deck really need a few backup plans to give it a little more punch. Breakage: 2/5 Tradewinds and Devour were the only spells that really squeezed extra value out of Desert and neither were reusable effects. However, the Orrery engine encouraged churning through the deck, letting you play more Deserts on average than most builds, I guess. This build seemed more like it was trying to break Vortex than the Deserts. Bonus points: 2 I give it one point for coming up with a clear plan to use Vortex as a wincon. That is no easy task! I also give it a point for the extra cool synergy of using instant bounce spells to break the symmetry of Orrery by making sure that opponents almost always have a card in hand at the start of their turn. I love those sorts of details!
Thoughts: Aside from the difficulty of trying to stall with spot cards and a few weak burn spells and the need for a bit more finishing power, my only nitpick was the use of Censor. It seemed like a card that outlived its usefulness very quickly and just became a waste of mana. Any sort of spelltax counter in a build designed to go that long just seems out of place. I'd have liked to see a few walkers like Chandra and Jace that could take advantage of the stall to build up for an ult. And maybe a potent onmibounce like Crush of Tentacles.
Final Score: 5 points!
Nomad's One if by Sand...
Effectiveness: 4/5 I'm not surprised. This one had the spikiest feel to it and def had the tools to deal with a wide array of situations. Which it did. Consistently. Breakage: 2.5/5 So... this is interesting. I have a different idea of "breaking" the card than Nomad does. He literally found a viable way to solely use damage from Desert to kill the opponent and is the only person to do so. So why the low breakage score? Because the mechanism that he used to do it didn't really require Deserts at all and had nothing to do with Desert's (admittedly weak-ass) ability. Awaken could be applied to whatever land. My concept of breakage is more about finding ways to extract extra value from the core ability, which is why I focused on land bounce and landfall (yes, landfall doesn't care which land it applies to, however it fits well with a strategy that involves replaying the same land over and over). Nomad's build did have ways to reuse Desert (Kefnet and Tradewinds) so I'm giving it 2 points plus an extra half point for his interpretation of breaking the Desert by awakening it to allow it to deal significant damage. Bonus Points: 1 I really love the fact that his sweepers ignore his main threats. It never occurred to me that Arrogance would ignore an awoken land. Cool!
Thoughts: I can't really think of anything that I'd change for the contest. I do like the idea of Reflectors in here, but that's going in a different direction from the core concept, I think.
Final Score: 7.5
Cucho's Landslide
Effectiveness: 2/5 I think luck was not on his side when I was playing his build. I would expect in extended texting to win closer to 60% of the games with it. My biggest issue seemed to be that the removal was all -x/-x which is fine for small threats but becomes dead vs midrangy and large threats, which I seemed to encounter a lot of when I was playing it. Breakage: 1/5 Landfall by itself doesn't really add much value to the Deserts. If there were ways to return it to hand and replay it, then you get some real synergy but meh. At least you used Hagra. Its a really fun card, isn't it? Bonus Points: 0
Thoughts: I still don't care for Cut/Ribbons in this build. If there were some EW to help nab a Mountain in a pinch maybe but as is, its a dead card until you hit a Vegetation. I might also prefer Push to Grasp. They both perform the same function of early removal but Push isn't limited by toughness so it might take care of some of the problems that Grasp cant.
Final Score: 3
YrsTruly's Enter Sandman
Effectiveness: 2/5 As with Cucho's build, I think I had a bad run. I did much better when I was turning the deck, actually, so I know it can win more than 40%. But... that's just the way it goes sometimes. Breakage: 4/5 By my interpretation of card breakage, this deck did the best. Slab Hammer is a terrible terrible card and yet it has a home here as an enabler for more landfall and Desert pings. Mina can bounce the Deserts, too, as can Devour. And Embodiment, Tracker, and Omnath provide extra incentive to play those lands again and again. The only way I can think of this card could getting even more broken in our format (as per my own breakage criteria) would be with some goofy/hopeless combo like Displacer, Embodiment, the mana dork that taps for 2 colorless and 2 Retreat to Coralhelm for an arbitrarily large damage loop. But, thankfully, nobody went there. Bonus Points: 100 No reason, really...
Thoughts: .......I got nothing.
Final Score: 6 I was just kidding about the bonus points. I should prolly get one for something but I can't really think what so I'll just leave it as is.
So now I just gots to tally em up. I'll post the final results shortly.
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The greatest blessings in life are the hardest ones to lose. Godspeed little girl. We miss you.
Indeed, a truly REVOLTing choice. It doesn’t exactly feel like a build around card, but it begs to be used in conjunction with such. GW Sram/Call for Unity/Aid from the Cowl/Sigil of the Empty Throne bs deck, here I come!
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The greatest blessings in life are the hardest ones to lose. Godspeed little girl. We miss you.
Joined: Nov 10, 2013 Posts: 17752 Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Flaky, I’m sorry to say Enter Sandman has come to an end. Started with a great 12-0 run but then lost 3 in 4 games right after. Sleephumpers Esper Control and then RDW rank 1 and finally mono black rank 39
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