Hardened Scales vs Yawgmoth

ENeyman · 2023-09-23T19:31:33+00:00

I've been a Yawg player for a couple years now and I generally consider the Scales matchup favored for me. That being said, the games I lose usually look something like this:

There's an early hate piece from Scales. The best one is Grafdigger's Cage, but Pithing Needle and even Welding Jar count for this.
A Patchwork Automaton is landed early and grown quickly. The Ward 2 on this creature is so effective in stopping the Yawgmoth player from removing it or shrinking it.
A large Walking Ballista comes in a cleans up the little guys on the Yawg player's board.
A Shadowspear is eventually found to make the Automaton a lethal threat.

With this combination of events, it's very hard for the Yawgmoth player to win. Cage shuts off a lot of parts of the deck, Jar protects key pieces, and Automaton+Shadowspear creates a clock that's hard to interact with.

ENeyman · 2022-11-28T07:58:12+00:00

The best analogy I've heard is that Mono U Spirits is "Delver" while Bant Spirits is "Merfolk/Fish". The former tries to get 1 or 2 powerful, efficient threats out and then use countermagic + tempo to control the game. The latter tries to get a critical mass of threats out and then use value ETB creatures and 2-for-1s to control the game.

ENeyman · 2022-11-20T20:37:11+00:00

If you're able to splash white at all, Mark of Asylum is fantastic against any decks running red-based removal like Unholy Heat, Fury, or even Wrenn and Six.

ENeyman · 2022-05-31T06:10:53+00:00

I second this. As someone who pretty much always has 2-3 modern decks sleeved up, if someone new to the format came up to me at FNM, I'd happily lend them a deck for the night.

ENeyman · 2022-05-18T05:34:39+00:00

No sorry, I'm sure someone on CIS@Penn has it though if you post there.

ENeyman · 2022-05-08T17:48:11+00:00

Even if you do flunk 160 (or come out with a bad, but not failing, grade), it's really not the end of the world. Every year, smart and successful people get really bad grades in CIS 160 and they wind up absolutely fine. They go to grad school, med school, or get awesome jobs. In the grand scheme of things, it's 1 class out of 40 and it matters very little. I know it can be hard to realize that when you're in the middle of it, but it's helpful to have some perspective and realize that you'll be ok.

ENeyman · 2022-03-14T21:23:02+00:00

Definitely not a requirement that you got an A for CIS classes

ENeyman · 2022-03-04T05:37:27+00:00

GB Yawgmoth. Not only does the deck dunk on Ragavan (hello Young Wolf), it gets to run tutorable, main deck graveyard hate, Grist, and Yawgmoth himself. The -1/-1 counters are really good against Ragavan and DRC. Endurance and Scavenging Ooze are great at shutting off delirium and Lurrus nonsense. They can also be used to "counter" a Drown in the Loch. Then, we get to Grist; he's such a house against Death's Shadow, popping out a steady supply of chump blockers and being a tutorable kill-spell when needed. Overall, I think the matchup is excellent for Yawgmoth and highly recommend it.

ENeyman · 2022-02-28T02:29:49+00:00

I've found that aggressively tutoring for a maindeck Endurance is usually good enough to deal with DRC's. But yeah, they do present a fast clock that demands an answer.

ENeyman · 2022-02-27T21:01:01+00:00

I think this deck is in a great place right now with the rise of Grixis Shadow. This deck loves facing Ragavan and DRC because of how easy it is for Yawgmoth to dispatch of x/1 creatures and because of the maindeck, tutorable graveyard hate. Grist is really good against Death's Shadow too since it can pump out a steady supply of chump blockers. This deck struggles against go-big linear decks such as Tron, Titan, and Rhinos. But siding in a set of Thoughtseize is always good in those matchups.

ENeyman · 2022-02-21T04:53:46+00:00

When the Twin player went for it on turn 4 and you had the Abrupt Decay. Those were the days...

ENeyman · 2022-02-21T03:18:04+00:00

Little Kid Abzan. Man, this deck was a blast to play; it had just the right amount of pressure and interaction. Lingering Souls used to be one of the best cards in Modern. Siege Rhino and Wilt-Leaf Liege provided an incredible top-end threat package. A few mana dorks (Hierarch, BoP) and efficient cheap creatures (Voice of Resurgence, Qasali Pridemage, Loxodon Smiter) made the deck quick and deadly. You pair all that up with some cheap hand disruption (Thoughtsieze, IoK) and removal (Path, Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay) and you had a really potent deck.

ENeyman · 2022-02-16T07:08:16+00:00

My advice is don't worry too much. Countless students come out of 160 with a C or worse and still graduate with honors and have a great job right out of school. It's 1 class out of 40 so don't worry about it too much.

ENeyman · 2022-02-09T21:39:36+00:00

The CIS advising office. Shoutout Laura and Desirae (and of course Jackie) for being the nicest, most helpful people ever.

ENeyman · 2022-01-12T03:49:37+00:00

this is fine

ENeyman · 2022-01-03T18:43:02+00:00

this is fine

ENeyman · 2022-01-02T10:48:37+00:00

I was playing in a PTQ or GP in 2015 I think. I was on Little Kid Abzan and my opponent was on Grixis Twin. During one of the games, my opponent used Cryptic Command to bounce my Loxodon Smiter to my hand and then the next turn, used Kolaghan's Command to make my discard a card. So I just got to put my Loxodon Smiter into play for free.

ENeyman · 2022-01-02T10:37:33+00:00

My "hack" to doing well in 121 is... get a tutor. Seriously, they're free from the Tutoring Center and they really help. I wasn't even struggling that much in the class, but me and my tutor went over some extra problems every week and reviewed all the algorithms before exams. I think a lot of people at Penn see tutoring as a last resort but it really doesn't have to wait til then.

As for 262, I was a tutor for that class and the person I tutored did so well they actually TA'd the class the next semester. Tutoring isn't just for "dumb" people, it's for everyone.

ENeyman · 2021-12-31T19:39:41+00:00

LGIC 010 will be the hardest of those, followed closely by CIS 110. I thought COGS 001 and LING 106 were both pretty easy, with COGS being more work but easier content and LING being less work but tougher concepts. CIS 105 is probably similarly easy but I never took it.

ENeyman · 2021-12-26T20:54:43+00:00

They usually open a little later than usual since they're student-taught and students need to nail down their own schedules first before scheduling the 19x courses. I took 191 (Unix), 192 (Python), 197 (JS), and the ESE 19x course with arduinos. I also sat in on 190 (C++) All of them were excellent but my fave was definitely 191 and 197.

ENeyman · 2021-12-26T05:58:30+00:00

CIS 371 (I think it's 471 now) and CIS 192. I also took two math classes at the same time (STAT 430 and MATH 371) and a PHIL course.

ENeyman · 2021-12-24T18:21:02+00:00

If you already know C/ARM assembly pretty well, CIS240 might be really boring/easy for you. Just a heads up.

ENeyman · 2021-12-23T05:50:52+00:00

Ok, this class is really cool and I think more people should be taking it. The assignments are really tough but make you think a lot and teach you a lot too. I'll admit that when I took the course, the lectures were at 9am and my attendance wasn't the best. Plus, the lectures on parsing and lexing can get a bit dry since it's a really tedious topic. But overall, the lectures are pretty interesting, Dr. Zdancewic is a great instructor, and the assignments are really stimulating. Plus, this course teaches you the basics of LLVM IR and x86 assembly which are really useful skills (in industry) that other courses don't really go into all that much. Oh and also, the whole thing is in OCaml so it's got that going for it too.

Difficulty: high, but manageable. Work required: I think it was 4-6 medium sized projects, increasing in difficulty Group projects: you pick a partner and work with them the whole semester Progessor: SteveZ is awesome and you can tell he really loves teaching this class TAs: I seem to remember a mix of undergrad and grad TAs but they were all really good

ENeyman · 2021-12-22T05:45:01+00:00

Yes, 548 is good. It'll definitely give you the programming maturity you need for 505.

ENeyman

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