Card/Deck Start your Engines: A Temur Card Advantage Deck

sigh

sigh

my CT has I think all the changes I was hoping to make for this draft of the cube change? Well, most of 'em are there in any case.

Played against the Seasons Past control deck today during FNM. Drew out 1-1-1 with it, using my own abzan value version of the deck, but the card is very strong. Not too strong, unless you are wombo comboing it with Dark Petition, but usually about 4 cards back on a slow day. Firm reminder to self not to put straight up tutors into cube if SP is also there....
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Did a few test drafts, it felt like a healthy exercise. Actual control wasn't happening, and I ended up going into grindy value decks.

First, the obligatory criticisms:

1. Caustic Caterpillar?
2. The Eldrazi cards seemed very difficult to get the colorless sources to justify.
3. Fixing seemed to be a consistent issue

Some more constructive observations:

This pack is kind of an example of what I mean by balancing blue:

SS2.png


There is that punishing fire we want people to be getting into, but there are literally only two cards in this pack: DTT and TC. If those two cards weren't there, the correct pick would almost certainly be kitchen finks. While its unrealistic to expect someone to first pick punishing fire ever, the blue cards are just amazing, and due to the color's natural strengths its easy for it to accidentally gain a disproportionate % of first or second picks. Prior to you swaping out ponder for mystic speculation (and speculation is prob bit lower on the power score than this cube wants to go) the pick order here would have been TC->DTT->Ponder/finks->ponder/finks.

More on topic, I think its important that we consider if vortex is a pick here?

SS1.png


Here we are on the wheel, in a kind of odd R/G/W pool with a bunch of value cards. I took vortex here as it was the pick for the experiment, but is it correct for the deck?
 
sigh

sigh

Lol @ that pack. It was like a million-o-clock, and I told myself "sigh, you've gotta take out the delve draw" but instead I fell asleep.

I think it'll be hard to want to call the deck a true control one, because of green's healthy appreciation of creatures. I'm happy so far just hearing the word "grindy" :)

1, 2, 3. All good points. I've been told my fixing is bunk, but haven't experienced that IRL. I think my draft bots are greedy little SOB's when it comes to lands. Thanks, self. If fixing were to be upped, it'd be to combat both 2, 3 in the form of filters.

I might not have picked vortex there, probably the very powerful Vorapede, which is a beater, but one of the most defensive beaters there is. Could probably wheel it again lol. I'm just as ok having vortex completely passed by. That is a valid outcome for the testing. In the RGw deck you ended up in you have Lightning Axe and Tormenting voice for benefitting off of the extra cards from Nissa and her pilgrimage, and the Grim Lavamancer to grind out in the later game.. Even that is in spirit and form what I am looking for! :D
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
NON-CONSTRUCTIVE CONSTRUCTED CRITICISM:


Ramp doesn't need to be boring, but it often is. Look at this deck from the most recent Pro Tour Gauntlet:


Gr Eldrazi Ramp









This deck is shamelessly, offensively boring. It's not even good enough to make you appreciate its ruthless efficiency and put you out of your misery quickly. No games of Magic are more interesting or fun when this deck is involved. There are no thought-provoking decisions or cool interactions. I hope Standard never gets to the point where playing this deck is a smart choice.

Let's look at some other examples:

Wolf Run Ramp











This deck is as interesting as Turn 4 Titans are interesting: not very. The burn gave this deck some interaction and the question of how much to commit with Wolf Run was often a challenging one (though usually in games where you were solidly favoured and you were just trying to make your 75% chance into an 80% chance). Huntmaster subgames were kinda cool too.

Gr Devotion











Devotion is a lot more appealing than the traditional ramp strategy but harder to recreate in Limited. You can manage the ramp here by keeping their board under control, a lot of the cards offer ways to spend your mana so you have important sequencing decisions, and there's randomness via manifest and Genesis Hydra to keep things entertaining. That said, you would just run them over with an early Xenagos/Polukranos/Atarka a lot of the time.

Valakut








dear God no

RGu Destructive Force











RGw Destructive Force











Now these decks are actually pretty sweet! The blue one in particular looks a lot like the RUG decks I enjoyed playing in Cube a while ago (the RUG deck from Zen-Scars Standard was great too). Unfortunately it contains some rather overpowered planeswalkers like Garruk Wildspeaker (jk but not really, it's somehow more obnoxious than Jace TMS in my experience).

Snow Ramp











The much-maligned Harmonize makes an appearance! This one wasn't very good or compelling and doesn't offer many lessons.

Contrast all of that with the Goggles deck, which I'll post again with a few MD-SB changes to highlight some things:












This deck isn't a mindless ramp strategy, it's a system with lots of moving parts:

- Fiery Impulse, Magmatic Insight, and Traverse mean you can reliably surge Fall of the Titans for close to full value
- Tormenting Voice can bin Kozilek's Return for a later World Breaker, and set up Spell Mastery on Turn 2 for Nissa's Pilgrimage
- Goblin Dark-Dwellers lets Nissa's Pilgrimage jump you from 3->5->7 with lands to spare, and gives you a 'free' Traverse in the late-game
- Drownyard Temple lets you Insight/Voice for value while not having to play any subpar ramp cards, and can infinitely recur World Breaker
- Chandra lets you cash in excess Forests and Temples/World Breakers that you can get back later

- You can put Traverse or Fiery Impulse on the stack and respond by Surging Fall of the Titans to get another card type

It's so much more fun to play with and against than typical ramp decks, and should be the model for Ramp in a RL-style Cube; the Legacy Cube ramp decks, full of mana elves, planeswalkers, and finishers like Woodfall Primus/Hornet Queen is primitive by comparison. It requires a decently large commitment, but luckily for me it involves cards that I mostly want to include anyway.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Note that the cool ramp decks have a plan less one dimensional than "hit X mana, play OP creature/planeswalker, hope its enough." They actually have spell based ramp targets (destructive force, fall of the titans, destructive force) which can act like control "many for ones."

RUG tron decks in pauper are always more entertaining to play against when they aren't about shuffling out progressions of auroch herd or ulamog's crushers to go over the top, and are more focused on using their huge mana generation to chain mulldrifters together while building up to a big rolling thunder, as a sort of ramp/control hybrid.
 
Aoret

Aoret

Developer
Did some drafts, streamed 3/4 of them. 2/3 of those streams are crappy because the audio levels were all wrong. I got one solid stream out of it though!
https://www.twitch.tv/aoret/v/63876672

I'll include the links in case anyone wants to watch them muted or REALLY wants to bump some jazzy hip hop while trying to listen to me talk about drafting. Bad audio streams:
first bad one
https://www.twitch.tv/aoret/v/63876946

second bad one
https://www.twitch.tv/aoret/v/63877172
Overall, haven't managed to make anything that looks like jundy control happen. I got one cool deck (in one of the bad streams) that I'd describe as a grindy GR deck, but it's still basically just an "attack with creatures" deck (albeit an interesting one, with decisions!). Not in a good mental space to draw many conclusions from this atm, maybe it'll be more obvious to Sigh after looking at all of the data we're generating?
 
Aston

Aston

I once played my cube with a guy who built a green black deck which seemed to be built around casting Harmonize. He'd cast it, Eternal Witness it back and cast it again, then use Genesis to recur the Eternal Witness so he could keep casting it. I'm pretty sure he discarded to handsize more than once.

I don't think I've ever loved anything as much as this guy loved Harmonize.
 
Suicufnoc

Suicufnoc

Added a bunch of this crap to my cube, hopefully I can get a draft in soon and see what happens.
2 Gifts ungiven
2 Wildfire
1 Super Geistblast (custom)
1 Super Recoup (custom)
1 Start Your Engines! (custom)
and then some less significant stuff
 
ColonelSanders

ColonelSanders

So this got built from a sealed pool in my cube yesterday:

http://i.imgur.com/cBRfX9e.jpg

If this similar to what you all have been trying to construct? Ramp and fatties, but with graveyard/land recursion to provide inevitability and card advantage. (also, the 4 evolving wilds are a bit of a statistical anomaly; there are only 4 in the cube)
 
Suicufnoc

Suicufnoc

Aoret said:
Did some drafts, streamed 3/4 of them. 2/3 of those streams are crappy because the audio levels were all wrong. I got one solid stream out of it though!
https://www.twitch.tv/aoret/v/63876672

I'll include the links in case anyone wants to watch them muted or REALLY wants to bump some jazzy hip hop while trying to listen to me talk about drafting. Bad audio streams:
first bad one
https://www.twitch.tv/aoret/v/63876946

second bad one
https://www.twitch.tv/aoret/v/63877172
Overall, haven't managed to make anything that looks like jundy control happen. I got one cool deck (in one of the bad streams) that I'd describe as a grindy GR deck, but it's still basically just an "attack with creatures" deck (albeit an interesting one, with decisions!). Not in a good mental space to draw many conclusions from this atm, maybe it'll be more obvious to Sigh after looking at all of the data we're generating?
Click to expand...


I think you overvalue brainstorm quite a bit. While seeing a late brainstorm does signal that blue is open, as any blue deck will play it, I'm probably never going into blue for a brainstorm, unless I'm playing prowess/spells, or have lots of fetches already. Maybe I'm wrong. Good stuff, though. Watched all 3.
 
sigh

sigh

ColonelSanders said:
So this got built from a sealed pool in my cube yesterday:

http://i.imgur.com/cBRfX9e.jpg

If this similar to what you all have been trying to construct? Ramp and fatties, but with graveyard/land recursion to provide inevitability and card advantage. (also, the 4 evolving wilds are a bit of a statistical anomaly; there are only 4 in the cube)
Click to expand...
I think it's hard to exactly quantify what the deck "is". I know I'd be super happy seeing a deck like that pop up :). I think in general the goal is to create a new axis for GR to operate on, that focuses on card advantage and inevitability over raw mana superiority and power of fire. There definitely are aspects of that in the deck youve shown. Super sweet deck, whatever the case may be!

One all star example of this is, I think, reach of branches. It benefits from mana superiority, but promotes stabilizing for the long game, provides card advantage both thru recursion and thru surviving damage-based sweepers, and can finish. (It's definitely on my to-test list)
 
Aoret

Aoret

Developer
Suicufnoc said:
I think you overvalue brainstorm quite a bit. While seeing a late brainstorm does signal that blue is open, as any blue deck will play it, I'm probably never going into blue for a brainstorm, unless I'm playing prowess/spells, or have lots of fetches already. Maybe I'm wrong. Good stuff, though. Watched all 3.
Click to expand...

Not 100% on which draft we're talking about, but I think in one of them I cracked a joke about splashing brainstorm at the beginning of pack two or three? That said, I *do* overvalue brainstorm, which is sort of why I made the joke. Not actually funny unless you're one of the folks I draft with irl I guess :p

Anyhow I'm glad you found the other two to be watchable. I definitely wasn't happy with the audio levels or the drafts in those first two, but hopefully both will be better moving forward!
 
xyz

xyz

Yes, yes, yes!
Genesis is exactly the card I want here. When I was talking to jahpan about how Nostalgic Dreams (in the single card spotlight thread) doesn't do enough in the average case, Genesis is the exactly the card I was thinking of as a more generically playable graveyard reward. It's worst to average case is reasonable, and then late in the game it gives you a pretty powerful mana sink.

Have you guys had experiences with or considered Zendikar Resurgent as a top end grindy value/ramp target? It doesn't close out the game like a Craterhoof Behemoth... but it still provides a lot of inevitability. It doesn't have the immediate board impact of a Primeval Titan... but it's more resilient. Over here it's been a high pick for sheer fun value.
 
ColonelSanders

ColonelSanders

Dom Harvey said:
>abbreviates card as 'ZR'
>names another card with those initials in same post
Click to expand...

I got tripped up on this too.

Also, zendikar resurgent feels hella slow. However, enchantments that pump out dudes (as alternatives) are a bit tricky. There's a very fine line between unplayable jank and unkillable token spam (what we all hate about planeswalkers?)
 
xyz

xyz

We have not found it too slow, even played outside of a pure ramp strategy. Green decks with a bunch of creatures tend to be good at dragging the game out.

We have not found it to be really win more or durdle more. It plays better than it reads...like a Sphinx's Revelation style finisher... it draws a bunch of cards and provides you the resources to deploy those cards, whch are very often enough to break open dragged out games. Ari Lax(?) called it "suspend 1: win the game" in OGW draft. A bit of an exaggeration and a different format, but I agree that it plays a lot better than it reads. To be fair, I was already a huge fan of it in OGW draft and my sample size in cube drafts is small.

Is it better than Zendikar's Roil? Yes, I think so. Primeval Bounty? Not sure; I haven't tried that one. They both provide you value on top of what you already have. One comes out a little sooner, works with more cards, and is more consistent. The other provides a lot of mana (more mana even after casting a 7 mana spell is still great), can potentially give you a lot more resources up front, and gives you the resources from your deck (yay playing more cards you drafted) instead of generic resources.

For me, the sticking point for Zendikar Resurgent is the fun value. The folks over here enjoy the combo feel to it and are willing to high pick it and build around/towards it. And that's a good sign for an engine card.

(Note that my cube has no planeswalkers as self contained value engines.)
 
sigh

sigh

I like the talk about Zendikar Resurgent and co! Its an angle that I didn't really think much on until now, tbh. I think the way to make the effect feel a little less durdly is to attach a body. The two options that are really attracting me so far:

You can create a really interesting dynamic with the Sage by having a higher count of non-creature ramp, thus stuffing it in a deck with lots of ramp = stuffing it in a deck with less synergy with itself, therefor making it better with the non-ramp green creatures, ie promoting the strategy being built up in this thread, but still good stuff? Did I do it? Or is that just BS?

Bonus:
 
Tzenmoroth

Tzenmoroth



Lower power level alternative that can at least theoretically block, carry swords and utilize creature types rather than be a missed land drop. Also, holy shit the art and flavor text on this one.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
this is now the 'post (sweet) cards that are tenuously related to the theme of the OP' thread



Grillo mentioned that decks like this run the risk of durdling too much while falling behind on board; this can soak up a lot of damage en route to casting your haymakers

or if you're feeling misanthropic:


 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Tzenmoroth said:


Lower power level alternative that can at least theoretically block, carry swords and utilize creature types rather than be a missed land drop. Also, holy shit the art and flavor text on this one.
Click to expand...

Has anyone actually played this card successfully in a rare cube or otherwise? I also love the artwork and I'm very fond of cards that reference iconic cards from Magic's history (without being stupidly broken like the original).
 
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