Dies to Removal

MDU, I haven't been playing 8 mans lately, quick question about Assemble.

Do you consider it good because Bg is way less popular than monoB or because you still think it auto wins vs. Bg with Golgari Charm?

EDIT: I'm going to be sad when rotation rolls around, I've become attached to this deck.

Its because Bg is less popular, vs Bg I tend to YOLO keeping the MD mainly intact (I don't bother with BL) its been working so I'll keep with it.

No there are definitely tempo decks. He was only saying that your definition of tempo wasn't exactly correct. You defined what a tempo deck wants to do, but not what the definition of tempo is.

Ah, I actually thought his question was the former which is why I went that route.

By our powers combined...!

....We're still a bunch of animals chewing on the furniture.

Its because Bg is less popular

Alright, that's interesting. I'm fairly sure Bg is more popular on paper and I consider it better. I would have guessed it'd be even more popular online based on Burn's popularity.

I'm undoing Youtube's fix on my videos. Removing the letter box removed the HD option. I think I'm going back to just making the final video in HD again and suck up the huge file size.

It's kind of annoying that the original file is crystal clear but the final copy is the less clear version that you see. It's not youtube doing it either.

"Tempo decks" are one of the worst travesties that have polluted the vocabularies of magic players for years. Mostly because that moniker doesn't mean anything. It implies that a decks game plan is to win via tempo advantage, but all decks are fighting for tempo. In fact, I'd say the initial struggle in any game of magic is to gain the initiative where you have control of the game(whatever that means to your deck) and you leave your opponent trying to react to you.

As for the definition of tempo itself, the way I'd describe it is having a time advantage. Usually this means getting a positive mana exchange such as doom blading a stormbreath dragon(+3), or cyclonic rifting a polukrano's attempting to go monstrous(+5-9 if they litterally just played Polyk 1 turn, then monstrous it the next). These are both potentially back breaking tempo plays that occur on opposite ends of the format. Even simply playing a 1
drop while your opponent lays a scryland leaves you up in tempo.

What people tend to think of as "tempo decks" are really hybrid control decks. They're primarily concerned with making sure nothing happens for a while, then they hijack the time of a game and threaten to kill you until your dead. Basically the way faeries and Twin play out. If you played when faeries was in standard, the way the games tended to play out is they'd play an ancestral or thoughtseize turn one, a blossom on two, do nothing but slow the game down, then they'd lock you out with cryptics and mistbind cliques and kill you with that or flash in a scion of oona and start alphaing you. Twin in modern is similar. Serum visions here, a bolt/remand/spreading seas/electrolyze there, then there's a combo piece in play and suddenly you can't execute your game plan because they're presenting lethal every turn.

Of course, I'm a superior theorist and this is probably way over ya'll niggas' heads but that's ok, I'm a
man of the people.

I've been a great help.

LP, you forgot to add the part about you being a bad man. And being pretty.

Just had a guy quit on turn 3 of the second game of the last round of an 8 man after throwing around a lot of noob and scrub in the chat box because of playing burn. I had mulled to five as well. I laughed to myself and considered it a win against Naya Planeswalkers with the Ghitu bird token fella and Voice, which isn't necessarily a walk in the park.

I think I played against the same exact person (same deck and tons of rage). He started
raging, so I trolled him a little, but he ended it with "I hope you die, karma baby, when it happens think of me." Here is the screenshot:

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Anyways, has anyone been testing m15 cards? I'm going to start with doing -2 Helix, -1 Mortars from the mainboard to test 3 Stoke the Flames (convoke burn). The number is likely to go down, but I want to draw it often to see how it performs.

Wow, I read chat first but then reading the game history afterwards made it twice as funny.

>Thinks he understands the deck
>"Auto loses" to it because noobs

forgot to mention that I said nice play after he overloaded mizzium mortars on two boros reckoners.

"Tempo decks" are one of the worst travesties that have polluted the vocabularies of magic players for years. Mostly because that moniker doesn't mean anything.

This. So many people struggle with the concept just because the term has been thrown around so loosely.

No it was ANDfirefighter who I played against, he wasn't that chatty but I didn't give him a response. His deck is here: http://mtgo-stats.com/decks/114925

I was playing around with the SB and against that deck I'm just try to kill him before he comes online so I sided Eidolon in against him and despite mulling to five game two I played Eidolon turn 3 (after 2 COPT lands) and he conceded with a similar rant to your guy Whole. Game one I won pretty quick because I kept a fist full of burn and dropped a Phoenix turn four and killed his Polykronos and Domri. He accused me of top decking but I happen to be holding 12 points of burn in hand. I don't usually respond to the jerks I think that's what they want. They can cry all they want, it gives me something to laugh about.

LP - this was my suspicion. MTG theory is really poorly developed -- or at least poorly understood.

Got my Stoke the Flames today, I'm ready to turn some Tokens sideways.

Managed to crack 2 boros painlands as well as nab my stokes... stoked for next week

Great posts about tempo guys, a great read!

Tho this mocs season is over for me too and I'll be taking a break, I have become somewhat unsure about certain board states vs Bx devotion. I hope I can ask your opinions on this:

One of my most dreaded ways and pretty much the only way that bx wins vs me is with t1 thoughtseize, take away the only removal, t2 packrat and I have a yp in hand, untap into my t2. Do you play the yp to buy 1 turn of time to find something for the rat or do you go a different route?

Second is an awkward yp opening on 4 into open mana of opponent. He doesn't remove it on our turn and untaps, he does something, or doesn't, but goes to eot with mana open for removal with yp still on the board. Now I usually assume a devour flesh is in his hand and would untap without casting a spell. Say his board is clear, he has 4 mana open with a mutavault. What do you do with, say a Boros charm and a
skullcrack in hand? How does your sequencing change if you have a jet instead of a Boros charm? Let's assume the first turn we were thoughtseized, he took away a charm and doesn't know about our skullcrack or magma jet, but knows about the second Boros charm.
It's these situations that sometimes get me when I think I can play the odds and read what his hand is and then I'm stone cold wrong, missing out on YP or mutavault value or being too aggressive, thinking I'm going to get hit by demons soon and scrying for an answer.

Third one is more assumptions over conservative play. G2 or G3 you are thoughtseized and on the play t1. He takes away one of 2 skullcracks or chains. You know most likely another discard is coming on t2 to take away the next or maybe even more. Do you assume he has a discard and merchant/demon heavy hand, hence light on removal and slam yp t2? Upsides being either a delayed discard because of removal and an opening to get in with Phoenix? Assuming you have one. Or do you stick to
conservative sequencing and play Phoenix and yp on t3 and t4 (no shocks post board) and let him cast his discards?

For the third scenario, I think if he doesn't take YP$ then he's banking on another card to take care of it. That could be a removal spell or more discard. If he takes the skullcrack then he might not have removal for it and have runner-runner gray metchants.

For the first scenario I think I would slam YP$. It's certainly not what we want to do, but I think it's what we have to do in order to have a reasonable chance of winning that game. If you slam the YP$ and he doesn't kill it then you can start spitting out tokens and trying to race. If he does answer it then we have another turn to find removal for it. If we do nothing or throw a burn spell at his face, then...we're planning on racing pack rat with no way to mitigate its immense damage? So I think I would slam the pyromancer.

For the second scenario, if he knows about the Boros Charm then I think it's unsafe to put him on Devour Flesh. He could have a removal spell and be waiting until we've use the Boros Charm to use it. If you have a magma jet, I think you can swing safely with the YP$ since you can take out the mutavault and still hold up Boros Charm; he might even think you're playing right into his hands
and expect you to play Charm so he can get a 2-for-1.

Tho this mocs season is over for me too and I'll be taking a break

Any magic related plans? This is going too be a really hard period to stay motivated for standard MTGO since M15 is already out on paper and its gonna take a long time until the next season starts (on the 30th).

P.S. I agree with BSH comments about slamming YP in scenario 1 and his comment about scenario 3 (even if he used duress over TS I still wouldn't risk it), with scenario 2 I guess it would depend on whatever spell he played earlier.

@BSH thanks for the insight mate! Helps me to refocus a lot!

@MDU no real magic plans so far since I'm going to use the time to finish two papers and prep for my last round of exams (hopefully). How about you? Going to play some modern now?

Tempo isn't really an archetype; I use it and shouldn't, it's a reference to aggro/control shells (ill elaborate on this in a moment).

The concept of tempo is exactly as LP described; generating initiative by exploiting mana efficiency with the intention of eventually converting that temporal edge into real card advantage.

Card advantage has three elements: cards quantity, card quality and time.

Divination is ca because it draws more cards. Flames of the Firebrand is card advantage where it kills a creature and damages the opponent (small edge as you traded cards with some value) or kills two creatures (big edge as you are up a card and probably mana too).

Virtual card advantage is generated when time is relevant; eg: flipping delver into counters where every delver hit generates a card.

Triple one drop openings that take multiple turns to answer are the same; often you exploit the tempo advantage by burning
your opponent out; you're so far up on virtual cards you can cash in your real ones.

Midrange decks (and combo decks like burn in eternal) generate ca by blanking cards in the opponents deck, whereas all you cards do something.

Aggro decks generate ca by being more threat dense than control, so that they can draw more action in a given number of cards.

Turning back to aggro control decks; they're just control control decks that are trying to deploy a finisher earlier and generate ca that way; all of their are cards increase in value then since they're protecting a value generator; vapor snag or a counter with a delver in play are much more powerful than without because they're not trading 1-for-1; they're doing way more than that.

Do YP$ tokens tap for R? Little rusty on convoke...

No, they don't have R in their casting cost.

Poo.

Thanks for the quick response

Actually, it can. The Elemental tokens are red, so they can reduce Convoke spells' casting costs by [mana]r[/mana].

Convoke (Your creatures can help cast this spell. Each creature you tap while casting this spell pays for or one mana of that creature's color.)

So YP$ tokens do tap for R?

Yes they are red creatures.

Oh man I should read before I post. Sorry!

Here's my current 75 going into a GPT this weekend:

[deck]Boros Burn by the living embodiment of Grim Lavamancer[/deck]
Creatures
4 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Young Pyromancer

Spells
4 Boros Charm
4 Chained to the Rocks
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
1 Mizzium Mortars
4 Shock
4 Skullcrack
4 Warleader's Helix

Lands
2 Battlefield Forge
8 Mountain
3 Mutavault
4 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple of Malice
1 Temple of Silence
4 Temple of Triumph

Sideboard
2 Assemble the Legion
2 Banishing Light
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
3 Mizzium Mortars
3 Prophetic Flamespeaker
2 Reprisal
1 Wear // Tear
[/deck]

Designed to beat an expected field of straight MBC, Esper (it's Melbourne) and Mono U. I firmly believe that Monsters lines up poorly against that expected meta so I'm not hedged against it.

If you really, really don't
care about Monsters, try -1 Reprisal, +1 Mutavault in the sideboard.

No interest in stoke the flames at all?

I guess not.

Fair enough! I wish these were coming out on mtgo sooner so I could get some real testing in ahead of time.

HK1997 is famous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMaT6in ... Pk&index=5

HK is also featured in:

Sam Pardee game (also on Ux Devo, in which after the game Sam provides some rather dodgy advice and tells HK that he doesn't understand the MU at all D:)

Correction: it was dauntless268

CVM game (I think) or someone else who name start with C and is featured in one of the major sites

Plus three of my videos

My current main deck is the same as zem's, except for: -1 chained + 1 flames of the firebrand -1 mortars +1 chandra -1 temple of malice +1 boros guildgate
I have 4th chain and all 4 mortars in side, mainly because i don't want too many dead cards against control. The guildgate is because i value the 12th white source more than the 6th scryland.

HK1997 is famous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMaT6in ... Pk&index=5

Well done!

HK1997 is famous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMaT6in ... Pk&index=5

That game was painful for Reid, drawing 5 lands in a row (scrying 2 away with Thassa...)

Yeah I have a couple of online appearances of me getting my ass kicked apparantly

That game vs Reid was cool, altho only g1 was interesting. As you can see from his perspective he had it easy g2, and almost impossible to win with like 5 land draws in a row g3, felt sad that we didnt get a proper third game. He comments that I was scrying a bit weird, going top/top and one of those being a scry land. I dont know if that was a brain fart or not, but I was under a pretty tight clock g1 (one more untap from him and I'd be dead) and I didnt see myself winning, if I stayed on 4 lands and wouldnt be able to cast helix or two spells in one turn vs a judge's famliliar. So I took the land and was happy to be able to scry off it as well. Might have played out differently if I had bottomed it, but as you can see one the last step before the kill, I
have to use the 5th mana to bring through my Helix vs a fresh familiar.

If I had known he would side out all his counters, I would have gone YOLO on his butt even more in g3! Damnit I thought both his lands in hand were negate or dissolve all game long

Thanks for the kudos!

HK is also featured in:

Sam Pardee game (also on Ux Devo, in which after the game Sam provides some rather dodgy advice and tells HK that he doesn't understand the MU at all D:)

Was that the guy who said something about not understanding why he pulled out charm/crack for creature removal?

I have no clue elricity, I can't remember that one. Don't even know where to see that video. But I'm assuming he beat me if I got a lecture...
Solution: win more

No, I think that guy lost actually too. He had the same thought as Reid that if you focus all your burn on killing his creatures, you somehow can't win with...all your recurring damage? I'm kind of confused, the deck's win condition against creatures is kind of obvious but it seems like they have a hard time seeing it.