Class-Wars Results! - by Cashew

[Streetz]

This thread is reserved for the dicussion of the following article:

http://www.magicdeckvortex.com/mdvarticle0344.htm

Please read it, enjoy it and discuss it here.

What did you like about the article? Was it inspiring, informational, ingenius? Was it inappropriate? Was there anything you really liked or didn't like about it?

Let the author know here!

Thanks!

**NOTE: This thread is posted before the article goes live. If the article isn't up yet, please check back later.

[Ryuzaki]

Ah, here we go. Seriously still indeed. Lets see lets see, who is #1.

Maleficent's deck I played awhile ago, so so annoying...samite nonsense.

Very nice, this was a fun contest, Shadow of the Colossus for the win! Go theme.

[Maleficent]

Bwahahaha!! The Clerics aren't as bad as you might think. 3 shadow per turn will end the game fairly quickly, and if the Oriss lock gets online you may as well concede (and the staples weren't included because it was more combo-y than anything). Anyhoo, congrats to all fellow winners (and go Order!! )

[DazBoot]

Great contest, It's always fun to see something that makes people twist their ideas to fit slightly different rules... I'm bummed I didn't have time to come up with a deck

[shaitan666]

I think Cashew was really fair, my deck really did need card drawing...
I'm glad I came up 5th ^^
and kudos to Shakadelic (even though I hate elves...)

[Cashew]

Ah you did La Sombra? That was my favorite deck name - and on the first day I scored your deck very highly - like 2nd - behind Mystic Orb which matches my playstyle. Then I started looking at it with my experiences with similar decks and looked for the holes that I always had to fill and realized that in the end with so few creatures it just didn't work without lots of draw and recursion. At least you had the warhammer there which is almost a must wiht the amount of punishment you will be taking playing shadow.

[Drake]

How'd mine do? Human Wizards(Wiz-Kids)

[Azrael Subucni]

Something you said about my deck in the blog seemed strange to me. You said Mind Spring and Braingeyser would have been superior choices to Stroke of Genius, because they were cheaper. But they were also sorceries. With Stroke, you can go off at the end of your opponent's turn, and use the cards before having to discard down to 7. And Mind Spring wouldn't have actually worked in the deck at all, because it can't target an opponent, to make them draw their whole deck with the combo.

I understood your other disagreements with my card choices, but I couldn't figure that one out.

[Cashew]

I guess I really ignored the Pemmin's Aura + Orochi Leafcaller + Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro + Stroke of Genius combo. I thought it was kinda of a far stretched to get the 4 cards in play especially with Pemmin's being a 2 shotter. The chances of it coming off are so slim, the much stronger and consistent feature was the sheer power of Sosuke's Summons and Chamelon.

Drake - yours has been in the blog - several days now: http://www.magicdeckvortex.com/blog/?p=89

[Azrael Subucni]

Originally Posted by Cashew

I guess I really ignored the Pemmin's Aura + Orochi Leafcaller + Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro + Stroke of Genius combo. I thought it was kinda of a far stretched to get the 4 cards in play especially with Pemmin's being a 2 shotter. The chances of it coming off are so slim, the much stronger and consistent feature was the sheer power of Sosuke's Summons and Chamelon.[/url]

You really think so? In my tests on apprentice, I actually got the combo off more often than I acquired a lethal swarm. Usually I had all the cards after a 9+ card Stroke at the end of my opponent's turn, between drawing, impulses, and what I already had in play.

[Cashew]

Mine was the opposite. I got Summons all the time, saw Pemmin's a single time and didn't have Sachi in play for it to matter. In my playtest, Sachi and Collossus rarely survived with no other targets that made sense too. The STE is great, but draws no control, same with other snakes.

[Streetz]

Cashew - did you playtest every deck??? !!!

[Cashew]

No.
Some decks I looked at and evaluated from the standpoint that no amount of playtesting would reveal anything that I couldn't tell from a quick glance. Granted they got 3 glances over the days, but for those in this category they stood little chance of being a top deck even with 1000 fresh eyes.

The following decks, I didn't playtest at all because I play or have played a version of them in the past and knew exactly why they didn't or did work:
- Wizards Above the Coast (Bird is just too slow without mass counters/board wipes)
- Assassin's Tower (Again, I've played it tribal, and knew the limitations all too well)
- Cat Solider (Again, a style of soldier I tried to play that just didn't work)
- Rushing Rogues (I had piloted and wrote a deck vastly similar to it in the blogs)
- Mystical Fun (Threshold abuse with Mesmeric Orb - yeah I did it a year ago)
- Sacrifice Children (How I hate you!)
- Bramblewood Beatdown (Again a deck similiar to one I had just wote about in the blogs)
- La Sombra (another deck I was somewhat familliar with running shadow aggro)

Decks that got playtested b/c I had to know how it really played out:
- Clever Fish People (it worked almost everytime infinite or not)
- Shadow of the Colossus (as I thought a little weaker than it appears on paper)
- Dude Where's My Car
- Snakes on the Brain
- Wiz Kid (as expected the control / mill was too unfocused to work)

They weren't full massive playouts, but I did run probabilities on several decks that were "suspect" to me for problems and tried to see how opening hands and a few draws would play out. Ones I thought were vulnerable to lack of recoverability had the basic "so if I wog on turn 4 - how does your deck recover" test, etc.

[Niv-Mizzet_Rulez!]

Sweet. My deck got an award. Yayz! *Goes on a killing rampage to celebrate.*

Now that i think about it. I probably should have put some enchantment tutor in the deck. But who care, Clever Fish People got an award.

[Azrael Subucni]

Ooh.... sounds like you did more complex testing than I did. I mostly just goldfished it. Okay, well that answered my question. Thanks.

I'm pretty satisfied with how I did, considering I'm a strictly casual player. A lot of the decks that beat me out looked really good/fun/sadistic.