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the real hidden knowledge required to play control at large tournaments- basic mechanics and clock management. it's like playing an rts, you can know all the strats and matchups but if your hands aren't fast and precise enough, you won't win much. also gg timing is actually important, you end up conceding a lot of games for clock considerations.
i play against a ton of players who only "playtest" untimed games who are physically unable to win a any kind of timed match, and it's not for lack of matchup knowledge. shuffling, tapping/untapping, drawing cards, finding sideboard cards and cards to take out; these are all basic things that too many players don't practice enough to play almost any deck, much less control decks with like 1 dedicated win condition.
that said, i probably go to extra turns against random midrange players way more often than against control players at big tournaments for what it's worth
one of our locals played maze's end at scg dallas and his biggest mistake was beating his r1 control opponent instead of offering the draw :<
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interesting... 4c Loam won BoM. mr_tolkein, you should have told us that you helped to organize the event.
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Heh, checked out those 0 tix events today but they all were filled, I'm slow I guess.
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On May 04 2014 05:49 NeonFlare wrote:
Heh, checked out those 0 tix events today but they all were filled, I'm slow I guess.
They were filled within minutes of being opened, I know, I showed up 20 minutes after and they were done. Tons of bots too. What the hell is in Shadowmoor that's worth anything anyway? Just Clique IIRC.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XkNSVdm.png)
Game isn't hard enough yo.
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"TRaong puts a 0/0 noob into play" LOL
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On May 06 2014 09:32 caelym wrote:
"TRaong puts a 0/0 noob into play" LOL
I chuckled at this too
But I still this is why I don't like doing anything on MWS, I'm not sure what people gain from this type of behaviour but it is pretty rampant on there.
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I know why, so maybe that's why I just laugh at it and move on. It's the same kind of players that go 0-2 drop at competitive competitions while blaming it on luck and have this totally delusional self-perception. The same kind of players that go "I don't see how this deck is good" while referring to Caw-Blade. The same type of people that bitch and moan at FMNs about missed triggers. The same type of players who likes to boast about their accomplishments at those same FMNs from 2 months ago.
Plus, most of these kiddies (and they are kids with that kind of attitudes regardless of age) probably just got smashed and are on tilt. Except their tilt is more like a black hole of joy and skill. But hey, it's like comedy hour for me and a chance for me to put on my troll costume to send them to another dimension of tilt 
About Cockatrice vs MWS community, it's honestly about the same for the general servers (when cockatrice had it up) you had a bunch of circlejerkers who thought they knew what they were doing.
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i think Untap.in has the nicest community, though that's probably because it isn't as popular as MWS or Cockatrice
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I have met some pleasant people on MWS and I have met some super difficult like holy shit how do you function as a human being in a social setting.
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Hi guys, how do you go about building a sideboard? How do you choose which cards to put in, and how many?
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On May 07 2014 14:30 slOosh wrote:
Hi guys, how do you go about building a sideboard? How do you choose which cards to put in, and how many?
A.) What format
B.) What event(s)/Daily/Weekly
C.) Decklist (if available)
D.) Metagame (if known)
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It's hard to say. If there are tough matchups for your deck, you can jam some "silver bullets" to improve that matchup (think of graveyard hate or creatures with protection from certain colors). Or if you know a lot of people are playing a certain deck, you can just add some value cards to increase your overall chance of doing well in a tournament (think of cards like Dark Betrayal vs Ultimate Price). And it's always good to have your cards be usable in multiple matchups. For example, my Green/White aggro deck always had 3 Unflinching Courage for random aggro matchups, but it ends up being good versus mono blue also. And my Skylasher and Mistcutter Hydras are specifically for mono blue, but end up going in versus control also.
It's important to keep your sideboard extremely flexible. The last month of Born of the Gods standard, I think I was tweaking my sideboard every week online.
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On May 07 2014 15:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 14:30 slOosh wrote:
Hi guys, how do you go about building a sideboard? How do you choose which cards to put in, and how many? A.) What format B.) What event(s)/Daily/Weekly C.) Decklist (if available) D.) Metagame (if known)
Standard, FNM, Unknown meta
Junk Reanimator
+ Show Spoiler +
3 Ashen Rider
2 Angel of Serenity
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
4 Satyr Wayfinder
4 Lotleth Troll
4 Sylvan Carytid
4 Courser of Kruphix
2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 Vraska, the Unseen
3 Whip of Erebos
4 Obzedat's Aid
4 Grisly Salvage
4 Temple of Silence
3 Temple of Plenty
4 Temple Garden
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
4 Forest
3 Swamp
I guess before sideboard I should figure out if my main board is solid or not? The games play out such that I usually start landing threats around turn 4 or 5 with reasonable consistency due to selection from the Scrys and Courser and Grisly Salvage. Hardcasting happens as often as Reanimation. I've thought about replacing the Lotleths with Abrupt Decays, and Vraska with Elspeth.
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Definitely take out Lotleth Troll. This deck has no interaction early on and Lotleth Troll does nothing for you. Also, I think you want 24 lands minimum.
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What would you cut for more lands? I've never felt a problem with hitting lands due to the 8 digs and 8 scrys.
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Dont take out the trolls or you risk stranding your big dudes in hand. Post Jou I would recommend some kind of dedicated enchantment hate. Eidolon of Blossoms will take over a game and more UWx decks are playing 6-8 dsphere to light effects.
The trolls have the added benefit of drawing out spheres and banishing lights against control. Its a card they do have to answer.
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On May 04 2014 03:09 caelym wrote:
interesting... 4c Loam won BoM. mr_tolkein, you should have told us that you helped to organize the event.
Well I was just handling the coverage :p
I think the most interesting result was GW winning the modern part though. Very strong showing for the deck.
Btw, MtGO is really pushing the new client. Am I the only one that is planning to leave ? I can't play with the new client on my Mac (it lags horribly in a virtual machine), so I guess my only choice is to sell my collection.
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On May 07 2014 16:10 slOosh wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2014 15:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:On May 07 2014 14:30 slOosh wrote:
Hi guys, how do you go about building a sideboard? How do you choose which cards to put in, and how many? A.) What format B.) What event(s)/Daily/Weekly C.) Decklist (if available) D.) Metagame (if known) Standard, FNM, Unknown meta Junk Reanimator + Show Spoiler +
3 Ashen Rider
2 Angel of Serenity
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
4 Satyr Wayfinder
4 Lotleth Troll
4 Sylvan Carytid
4 Courser of Kruphix
2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 Vraska, the Unseen
3 Whip of Erebos
4 Obzedat's Aid
4 Grisly Salvage
4 Temple of Silence
3 Temple of Plenty
4 Temple Garden
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
4 Forest
3 Swamp
I guess before sideboard I should figure out if my main board is solid or not? The games play out such that I usually start landing threats around turn 4 or 5 with reasonable consistency due to selection from the Scrys and Courser and Grisly Salvage. Hardcasting happens as often as Reanimation. I've thought about replacing the Lotleths with Abrupt Decays, and Vraska with Elspeth.
As a reanimator shell the biggest thing you need to be ready for is Scavenging Ooze. If you have difficulties with Scavenging Ooze you need to have a sideboard card against that card. I'm assuming you're not planning on hard casting Ashen Rider and Angel of Serenity--so having a repeatable way of stopping you from doing that will lead to you having a bad time.
The next thing you need to be aware is that since you're in essence a midrange deck--you need outs against control decks that are very good at neutralizing slow beatdown decks such as yourself, so its important to have outs for that (usually its in the form of discard and repeatable card draw). This is because you're unable to truly start applying pressure until turns 5-6 and even that pressure is a little slow not threatening the control deck until turns 8-9 giving them lots of time to draw Sphinxs and Verdicts.
As a slower deck you're going to have more than a few close matches against rush/burn decks that try to overwhelm you with damage. Sure, you could chump block with Satyrs and Centaurs until your big boys pop up--but sometimes having a Baron or two from the sideboard can really help vs Burn (lifelink) and Wx rush decks (pro-white)
So discard (Duress, Thoughtseize) , card draw (I favor the God that turns off life gain over connections, but that's a player preference thing), 2-4 cheap removal spells (Doom Blade and its ilk, although I like Putrefy better to counteract sideboard cards), and some Barons.
That is what I would bring for a reanimator deck that leans heavily on reanimation tricks heading to an FNM with an unknown metagame.
Also--in the discussion about more lands/cut trolls. You're currently a deck without much action until casting a turn 5 aid. The troll will win you a lot of games where it simply blocks and regenerates for 2-4 turns until your cards come online. Don't ever get into the trap of cutting early plays in favor of "powerful" plays. However, you know more than us how your mana base is holding up. But don't be afraid to run 2ish lands in the sideboard for the control matchups. If they weren't ridiculously priced I would almost suggest running 2-3 Mutavaults in the side to apply pressure to control while allowing you to miss even less land drops since I'm pretty sure those games will go long enough that you will hard cast your angels and ashen riders.
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An important part of building a sideboard is "what are my cuts?". Because, especially as a combo-ish deck where you need a certain amount of fatties, a certain amount of discard and a certain amount of reanimation spells, you can't just jam 15 sideboard cards into your deck because you can't cut 15 cards and still have a viable win-condition.
Figure out how many cards you think you can cut from your maindeck against certain matchups, and then put in a corresponding amount of cards to help said matchups. Also understand when to give up on a matchup entirely and just save the board space for winnable ones.
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EPT
