I really wanted to hold off on this column until I had a chance to play in a PDC tourney, but the evil RL (real life) is seriously interfering with both my MTGO and World of Warcraft time this week.
I'm really comfortable with my Blue/Red Faeries deck in PDC at the moment. I'm set on about 56-58 cards at any given time. The biggest questions I have, pre-tourney revolve around the Mudbutton Torchrunners. I've been running four, but I've been siding them out as much as any card between games in a match. Usually, I'll side out two for the last two Lash Out(s) or sometimes all four for a combination of Lash Outs and Remove Souls. I also realized I'm somehow short one Unsummon -- so I have to make sure I pick one up from the MTGO Traders card bot the next time I can remember. I'm glad they credited the account from earlier, it's let me pick up a few commons I missed before.
Anyway, I'm currently trying to find a good Standard PDC format tourney to play in this week. I'm not sure how much is going on over the upcoming holiday weekend -- but it's a four-day holiday for me. However, I also have to coordinate with the wife and kids -- and I'm sure they have dreams about things like sunshine, the beach, movies ... Indiana Jones does come out this weekend -- and that's a "Must See" in my household. But, as soon as I can get a good tourney under my belt -- I'll be back to tell you all about it.
Until then, I've learned a few things in playing PDC in MTGO.
The first thing is how few people read the game descriptions in the casual room. I'll advertise my games as "PDC Decks Please" or "PDC" or even "PDC DECKS (ALL COMMONS) ONLY" ... and 2/3rds of the time -- I still see other random standard decks. It's not so bad when the person honestly didn't realize what they were clicking -- but when a person busts out a Llanowar Wastes, BoP first turn, and Doran on the second ... I just think they're looking for an easy win to boost their ego. Especially when they try to drop the Thoughtsieze on the next turn.
Ehh, it happens -- and I've actually beat a couple of those decks once or twice -- with a few mysterious disconnects when I have fatal damage on the stack. That makes me chuckle.
I've also noticed a lot of folks playing pseudo-PDC decks with the Vivid lands. Some players didn't realize they''re uncommon -- others thought you can play PDC with up to 5 uncommons, and others gave various rationalizations. The Vivid lands don't bug me in the least for the format, and they usually wind up being less effective than using Expanses in the same decks, at least in my opinion. I love the Vivid lands for my 5-color budget decks, but even if they were PDC-legal, I have yet to see a deck that really was worth their come-into-play-tapped clause worth it.
As far as any sort of scouting report, I'd say I saw a lot of mono-white Kithkin decks, and a number of R/G warrior decks as well. Both seem pretty solid, but I'd be interested in playing them in a tourney since I think I've handled them well in casual match play. I've seen a few sliver decks, and a few mono-blue control decks as well. One of the better games I played this week involved a mono-blue deck where I had a pair of Pestermites go all the way past a couple of counter wars involving his Errant Ephemerons and my Looter il-Kors. The last turn involved him countering a third Pestermite at the end of his turn, keeping his Errant from being tapped -- only to have me top deck another Pestermite.
Another thing I noticed was that some PDC decks aren't cheap -- even in standard. The above mentioned mono-blue deck ran all Snow-Covered Islands and all four copies of Rune Snag, and the best R/U deck I saw featured Snow-Covered mountains along with their Island counterparts -- and I don't think anything in this format can survive a 12-point Skred. I'm just thankful they can't point that at the dome -- or the format would be seriously doinked!
Okay, let me transition back to what I'm planning for this week. There's a SPDC event hosted by MTGO Traders scheduled for Thursday night at 8:30 p.m. EST -- at least according to the calendar. I hope to be there and play if it goes off -- and if not, I'll bust my humps to put together a future extended deck for the regularly scheduled Sunday event run by the PCDMagic.com folks.
In building a deck for future extended, I'm leaning towards either running my current standard deck almost as is except for a few sideboard options -- or building a White-Blue control deck. I do loves me some Oblivion Ring ... and I've really learned that a protected Errant Ephemeron can be pretty annoying. I fear for swarms of Elves and such though, so I might have to make it an All-American R/U/W deck much along the same designs. I'll have to see what's available to me at this point though, since all the cards I've picked up along the way have been standard.
Okay, as for the poll to the right this week. I've noticed about half the decks in the casual room right now are strictly tribal based. I've also noticed a fair amount of hate for Faeries and Kithkin and Merfolk decks from folks in the room. I don't really mind, and I normally love to play a tribal deck -- but since the last few blocks have kind of force fed that concept to us -- are these decks really casual any more?
Anyway, let me know what your LEAST favorite tribal deck is right now -- and I'll make sure to avoid it in my cheap decks lists coming up after another couple of PDC posts.
As always -- thanks for reading!
Later,
Don!
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9 comments:
Don,
Are you also hanging around in "/join PDC"? While it is possible to find a PDC game out in the frontier of the casual rooms, I often find it easier to use that area to really shrink the chances of getting a non-Pauper game.
-Alex
Don,
There is a format called Peasant, played in paper magic, which allows 5 uncs and then all commons.
That's the confusion. Similar thing happens with prismatic and 5-color (paper)
Alex -- Yeah, I'm in the PDC room a bit. Usually there's been about 5-10 folks in there and asking for a challenge is 99% successful in getting a proper PDC game. I also hang out in the Casual Room as well, just because there's a lot more traffic. Sometimes everyone in the PDC room is playing extended -- or block -- or future extended -- or classic, and I just haven't got there yet.
That's actually one of the best things about PDC, the level of support across the different formats is probably better than the support for the 'official' game in some respects!
----------------------------
Tom -- Yeah, I'm familiar with Peasant from my paper Magic playing days. I think that there's a lot of folks in the casual room who mix up the two, and up until a few weeks ago, that may have been me as well. ;-)
My guess is that the majority of those folks are actually budget players, because I haven't seen the official support for Peasant as I have for Pauper. Maybe that's a niche for one of the sponsors to take up. It would be interesting to see.
Later,
Don!
Don,
You´re doing a great work on your blog and it´s very nice to see you exploring the PDC world. As you are looking for a standard PDC event I´d like to invite you to play SPDC this week (you can find more info about it in its gleemax thread here).
link not working...
(http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1033789)
It´ll be nice to see you there!
icarodx
Just to be completely confusing, you'll find a clan named Peasant Prismatic Singleton, who are very active in the casual room, who predate the PDC nomenclature, and only play with commons.
Tomorrow night for SPDC is looking good ...
Of course, looking at the poll from the front page -- I feel like poop for playing Faeries.
Of course, if I win -- I'd feel better about it! Although, I think that's a pretty slim chance.
Later,
Don!
I got pwned!
Pwned!
But it was fun, I should have a new column out tomorrow -- I just need to think of a lede (journalistic word for starting sentence) that makes a 1-2 record sound better than it was ...
Later,
Don!
Agreed, rune snag and a full set of snow lands can be expensive, but I have chosen not to invest in them and I replace the skred with shock in the U/R deck (Storm Control I'm guessing) and leave the rune snags out you mention and it works just about as well.
And any problems you have with findign a PDC game is solved by putting something in your comment, then asking people if they are commons only when they sit on your table, you usually get 1 or 2 people who aren't pauper just leave straight away.
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