Moochachos,
Just a quick
general topic this time, card borrowing etiquette:
1. Give maximum notice to the person you
want to borrow from.
2. Ask them nicely.
3. Travel to meet them, don't ask them
to break their schedule to give you cards.
4. Give them your phone number. Ask them
for their's
5. Arrange how you will return the cards
to them BEFORE you even borrow the cards.
6. Take a photo of the cards you are
borrowing and message that photo to person you're borrowing from. Alternatively
type a list in your phone and text that list to them. Do this even if they have
their own list. Obviously make note if they are foil/foreign/stamped/slightly
missprinted etc.
7. If you have 4 goyfs in your deck but
only borrowed 2 of them. The 2 best condition goyfs go to the person you
borrowed from. This is good standard practice.
8. Do not borrow cards if you aren't
returning them 1st hand. Neutral parties care less than you do.
9. If it is absolutely necessary to return cards by proxy, stash
a list of the cards with the cards, along with your name, your phone number, the
date you left them and the name of who's cards they are.
10. Thank the person you borrowed from
and tell an anecdote of how good the cards were.
11.If you borrowed some pimp and someone
complements it, tell that person who's cards they are and tell the person you
borrowed from about the compliment.
12.I think it's acceptable to borrow the
same card no more than twice. If you want to borrow that card again you should
buy the card instead. You can always sell it once you stop playing it. If a
card is >$150 I think you can ignore this rule.
13.If you fail at borrowing and return
cards behind schedule, never borrow from that person again.
Did those
rules sound bitter? :P I haven't been too badly stung by borrowers. I lost two
shocks once, well before they were reprinted. Apparently I lost Ian Seet's
Badlands by proxy, I wonder what he's doin. He's a great guy.
Alright,
onto Matty G's deck!
1 Drift of Phantasms | 1 Vedalken Shackles |
1 Baleful Strix | 1 Pithing Needle |
1 Shardless Agent | 1 Sensei's Divining Top |
1 Coiling Oracle | 1 Mox Diamond |
1 Deathrite Shaman | 1 Chrome Mox |
1 Phyrexian Revoker | |
1 Scavenging Ooze | 1 Personal |
1 Thragtusk | 1 Mystical Tutor |
1 Myr Battlesphere | 1 Impulse |
1 Wurmcoil Engine | 1 Ancestral Vision |
1 Inkwell Leviathan | 1 Into the Roil |
1 Disfigure | |
1 Underground Sea | 1 Dimir Charm |
1 Watery Grave | 1 Go for the Throat |
1 Bayou | 1 Repeal |
1 Tropical Island | 1 Telling Time |
1 Breeding Pool | 1 Abrupt Decay |
1 Overgrown Tomb | 1 Putrefy |
2 Swamp | 1 Lim-Dul's Vault |
2 Forest | |
5 Island | 1 Tinker |
1 Flooded Strand | 1 Gitaxian Probe |
1 Polluted Delta | 1 Maelstrom Pulse |
1 Verdant Catacombs | 1 Thoughtseize |
1 Marsh Flats | |
1 Scalding Tarn | 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
1 Mishra's Factory | 1 Garruk Relentless |
1 Wasteland | |
1 Misty Rainforest | |
1 Seat of the Synod | |
1 Vault of Whispers |
I've thought of a few things to say and I'm just gonna
spew them out in no particular order cause it's easier that way.
Matty's a
relatively new highlander player which is a pretty tough gig to be honest. We
play Thursday nights at Glab (which is tonight, yay!) and there are a bunch of
dudes who have been playing the same decks for ages. Refining and tweeking, so
their decks are really good and they are proficient with them. Also, those guys
aren't going to change their decks anytime soon cause they keep having success
with them, so it's up to everyone else to beat them! 2 players that come to
mind are Karl Eyre (featured in my blog 2 weeks ago) and Ben Di Stephano, both
with GWx equipment decks. Another consistent Highlanderer is Wilfy Horig with
UBG Ancestral control, but he hasn't always played that deck.
So Matty G.
One night he decided he wanted to try 60 card highlander so he grabbed his EDH
deck and whittled it down to 60 cards. This process has been done before,
mostly at the old nats events where people would be like "hmmm what're the
side events tomorrow? oh look, highlander, I have Elder Dragon Highlander, how
different can it be?" Very different! as Matty has found. His current
build is far from what his EDH deck was I'm sure.
Anyway,
Matt's taken a few loses and he's mixing up his strategy to try a new angle
(I'm never sure whether to refer directly to the analysee "you" or
indirectly "Matt", which would be better?). I imagine the reason Matt
moved away from counterspells because they aren't his style.
Counterspells
are a good compliment to Tinker because you can protect your artifacts from
getting destroyed, but protecting your artifacts isn't a necessity if you add a
few more to the deck, which Matt has done in his latest iteration. GWx
equipment decks are also pretty big right now and they are good against
counterspells.
Matt wants to play Shardless Agent and I respect that, I love
Shardy, but he does make deck construction quite tough as Matt mentioned. Only
cards he's truly terrible with at the moment are Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond....Ol'Shardy, Shardonay, Smoke-a-shard, Charishard, Shardeeeeeyyyyyyyy!!!!!!
So those
things I was going to mention:
1. Card suggestions:
· Tarmogoyf, the man, get him in their.
· You're playing plenty of tutors for
Tinker, so protect it and win the game. Duress and Inquisition of Kozilek.
· Vendilion Clique is another solid
card which can protect your Tinker by putting their answer on the bottom and
it's also a good beater.
· You can add the 3 remaining on-colour
fetch lands, play them over 1 of each basic. You really want to max out your
fetchlands when you're playing Deathrite Shaman, Sensei's Divining Top,
Brainstorm (will refer to this again soon) and Jace. Plus they make your mana
better and increase your island count for Vedalken Shackles.
· You're playing Chrome Mox and Mox
Diamond because they're good with Tinker. To make the most of the speed boost
and to regain the card disadvantage, you can add more draw spells. Phyrexian
Arena and Thirst for Knowledge are two that come to mind.
So Telling
Time is in this list, I suspect you may have cut it by now, as there are a
bunch of cantrip spells which perform better like:
Brainstorm (also great for putting
your Tinker Targets and late drawn moxes back into your deck)· Preordain, Ponder, Serum Visions etc. All these dig spells are great in
decks which have varying card functions and cards which regain all the tempo
lost whilst digging (e.g. Tinker, Vedalken Shackles, Thragtusk).
Some other sweet artifacts that Matt
could add include:
· Porcelain Legionnaire. Matt's already
walking down the dude path. This guy is a serious wall for zoo decks and if
Matt adds DITS (duress, inquisition, thoughtseize) he can protect it.
· Trinket Mage. The trick with Trinket
Mage is finding enough artifacts that are good by themselves. Too few and late
game you'll draw Trinket Mage with no targets and he'll be shit. One artifact
that doesn't see enough play is Cursed Scroll. When you're playing Shardless
Agent all your cards are pretty proactive so you won't be banking cards in your
hand and making Cursed Scroll shit. He also plays Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond to
drop his hand size.
The only bad
card in this deck is Coiling Oracle. Coiling Oracle is Elvish Visionary more
than 50% of the time and Elvish Visionary is unplayable outside of Elves. Actually it's worse
cause your opponent sees the card. When you do flip a land, you get a rampant
growth and a 1/1. A 1/1 in Matt's deck isn't very useful. Most of the time it'll chump to gain ~4 life. Occasionally a 1/1 will let his planeswalkers
live an extra turn. I know I played Coiling Oracle in Scapeshift. It has since
been cut as it performed badly.
Into the
Roil isn't bad but it can probably go. It's a good card if you have a lot of
card advantage and will win the late game. Matty has a bit of card advantage in
his current build but not compared to Ancestral Recall decks.
Good to see
Matty trying out the new Dimir Charm. Don't know how this will perform. Will
have to get some feedback on that one.
Having done
a couple of these deck analyses, I'm getting conscientious of turning
everyone's decks towards similar cards. With this in mind there is a chance I
will break my '1st deck posted' rule if that deck is very similar to a deck
that I've already analysed.
Think I'll
have a Mango Milkshake and watch the movie 'Trainspotting'. I've heard it referenced a
bunch but know nothing about it. Hope it's good.
Oh, and
congrats to Sam Loy on winning the Adelaide PTQ, about time he got a big
result, man I wanna win the Melbourne PTQ this weekend. Neems, Isaac,
Sam...great travel crew.
Chao yo!