Friday, April 6, 2012

Delver is not the new Jace/Stoneforge #2 (by: Ryan Clark)



Hey guys, It's Ryan.  I was going to wait until Sunday to post an article talking about the change of seasons (magic seasons not weather), but with all the talk on twitter and by other people I know saying Delver of Secrets should be banned, I thought I should clarify on some things.
                                                                                                        THE NUMBERS
This is where most of the controversy begins. Five of the top eight decks at last week’s GP Salt Lake City played four copies of the card. Seems high, but obviously there are other decks that made it so it’s not that bad. Plus, if you watched the coverage all weekend, you would notice that a lot of other decks were played such as BU control, humans of all colors, RG Ramp, RG agro (which most delver players would say is their worst match-up) and many other decks.  Right now, if you even wanted to play mono red, you would still have a playable deck that wouldn’t get destroyed.  However, some people have started to make the comparison to the CawBlade deck of the past year… Really guys? Do you not remember how bad CawBlade was, and how delver looks so tiny in comparison? Remember GP Dallas last year, and all 32 copies of Jace TMS in the top eight? Yeah, everyone who made top eight had four in the main deck… Or GP Singapore that had seven of the top eight decks playing Stoneforge Mystic... Doesn’t that sound fun playing against the same cards every round?


Brewing is possible
       Here’s a little story for you.  As new phyrexia came out, one card in particular caught my eye.  Phyrexian Obliterator. Sure it was BBBB for the mana cost but I felt like there were enough cards in black to almost make mono black and then splash with the dual lands for blue. However, after a few games of testing, I realized why Cawblade is so good.  Turn two, I played Stoneforge and got the sword of feast and famine (protection from my deck basically). Turn three, Hawk and go find the rest. Turn four, Jace and fait seal so I never find my obliterators or if you’re lucky you play your obliterator turn 4 after he taps out to play Jace. And then they -1 Jace to return him to your hand so they can mana leak it this time. This situation doesn’t just apply to Pyrexian Obliterator. Any bomb in standard had to meet the “Jace test”. How does it handle Jace? Would I rather play it over Jace? When the answer to the first question was “badly” and to the second one more often then not,“no”, they would go back to the tried and true method of just playing them and trying to out-play everyone else in the 30 mirror match-ups you would have against it.  In the current standard, we haven’t seen a ton of Delver until this past weekend, since Conley won GP Orlando with his GBR ramp deck. Saying one card is hurting the game after a strong performance for one week after 2 ½ months of being on the back burner is, at least, a jump to conclusions.

Are We Having Fun Yet?
       Wizards of the Coast have even come straight out and said the reason they banned Jace and Stoneforge was because people weren’t having fun, and were playing less magic as a side effect.  With each of the new sets, that doesn’t seem to be the case right now. I don’t know about you, but I’m having the most fun ever playing magic (saying most of my magic career until now was during Cawblade). There are so many angles of decks to make, and ways to draft that even the pros make dramatic changes on what they play from week to week. If you’re the kind of person who wants to make rouge decks, you’re fine, you want to play delver, you’re fine, if you want to play control, you’re fine, and even the mono red player has a spot in this meta game.  So please stop trying to get cards banned in standard as quickly as possible. The banning of Jace and Stoneforge was needed, but should not be repeated for every good card that leads the pack in standard. Until next time this is Ryan, and may you never get mana screwed.
MTGO- RedVelvet
Cockatrice- RedVelvet
Twitter- @RedVelvetMTG



21 comments:

  1. Great post my friend, have a god weekend!

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    1. Yep yep! Have a nice weekend!

      PS I miss JACEEEE

      http://memedoctor.blogspot.com/
      https://twitter.com/#!/MemeDoctor

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  2. always loved the art work on magic cards good post as well

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  3. Great article Ryan, I totally agree that people are jumping to conclusions.

    http://tryingsomethingnu.blogspot.com/

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  4. Damn this is in depth! Followed!

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  5. hello mr wizard abookjourney.blogspot.com

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  6. good, Jace was so broken it was ridiculous

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  7. I might not know how to play this but I really like the art

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  8. Hey man, you think you could do a Segment on "BLACK ONLY" decks? preferrably on building a (Current standard, Tourney capable) deck? for very cheap? :)

    Good reads btw! love MTG

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    1. Yeah, there are some pretty good mono-black in standard and its definitely a contender in some big tournaments. Very cheap is kind of relative though. Mono blacks have been known to be cheaper (no need for dual lands) But yeah I can do that either today or tomorrow.

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  9. i really need to get back to this game. you tease me man :D

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  10. I would love a blog post about tips for beginners.

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  11. seems quite interesting to me...will follow

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  12. At last! I was waiting for a new post

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  13. i used to play a lot, brings back memories. keep up the good work!

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  14. RG rampg and RG agro man this stuff seams really confusing the more I read about it. I would like to do more research about playing this game but if you guys put up more info on starting up and general play I would do most research here. So what does GP mean i see salt lake Dallas and Singapore are these teams or where the tournaments are held? So with there being tournaments there are pro players but I am curious if you would know if there are a lot of pro players or only a few? I can remember being in middle school and hearing about this game and that was many years ago so I was just curious if a lot of people stilled played.

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    1. GP means Grand Prix. It's just a large tournament that last a couple days that TONS of people go to. So GP Des Moines was a week ago and it was held in Des Moines Iowa. There are a lot of pro players about haha. Since magic is always changing there are always new people winning tournaments ect. I'm thinking doing some basics/general play and starting out posts would be cool so I will definitely do that either this week or early next week. Right now Magic the Gathering is doing better in sales then ever before! My suggestion would be buy a starter deck at target or walmart and find someone you know who plays who will teach you. The little instructions and key words in the starter deck are invaluable. you can also use things like Cockatrice(free online magic) and someone there will help you out, and eventually once you feel confident enough you can go to a Friday Night Magic at a local store and play. You might not win at first but it is a great learning experience and gets you into more competitive play. If you have any more questions just ask and i or the other writers would be happy to help.

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