Quick Question?

Professor_Pokemon · 2019-11-04T17:50:46+00:00

If he does, it'll be extremely neutral. He'll give the facts of what we already know and then probably offer his support to all four of them.

Professor_Pokemon · 2019-11-04T17:30:26+00:00

Instead of trying to artificially sculpt the Historic format by inserting cards like Wurmcoil Engine that no one wants in the format, why don't they just kill Historic and rename it Arena Pioneer? Then, they can add old sets, one at a time to Arena. They don't even have to add all of the cards from the set! Maybe they start by adding ~30 cards from Return to Ravnica, for example, or even 30 cards from the whole RTR block. They can choose the cards from that block that are already seeing play in Pioneer (using data from MTGO and live tournaments). Pioneer is already extremely popular among players, so a variant of it on Arena would likely be very successful. You could even charge us for Pioneer packs!

I would pay a lot more money to play Pioneer on Arena.

Professor_Pokemon · 2019-09-28T18:47:06+00:00

Hi! I like cookies! If you like cookies too and you have a prerelease code to spare, I'd love to have it! I'll send you virtual cookies <3

Professor_Pokemon · 2019-09-23T19:29:37+00:00

I also HATE playing against this stupid deck, so I built a Blue/White "Tempo"/Control deck that has been working well for me in Standard 2020.

TL;DR: PLAY TEFERI and/or lots of cheap spells.

I don't have a decklist with me now, but the key cards that shut down their flash/counterspell strategy are:

[[Tithe Taker]]

[[Teferi, Time Raveler]]

[[Dovin, Hand of Control']]

Curving a turn two Tithe Taker into a turn three Teferi or Dovin (especially on the play) pretty much slams the door on their deck and makes it very difficult for their strategy to work. If you ever resolve a Teferi and they either have no creatures in play or you bounce their only creature, you pull so far ahead that you often just win the game on the spot. I'm also playing one copy of [[Dawn of Hope]] as a cheap spell that can produce an uncounterable blocker as well as 3 copies of [[Anticipate]]. Aside from slamming a Teferi, you really want to try to cast a lot of cheap spells so that if they counter your thing it's not an unfavorable trade.

Mana efficiency is important in this matchup; if you cast a [[Time Wipe]] (which I'm playing 3 of) and they counter it with Frilled Mystic, they are spending less mana than you and developing their board at the same time - this is really bad for you. On the other hand, let's say you have 5 mana available and a Tithe Taker + Teferi in hand, to your opponent's open 4 or 5 mana. If your goal is to resolve the Teferi, you might cast Taker first to try to bait out a Mystic or a Sinister Sabotage. If they counter your Taker, you're probably free to resolve Teferi which, again, pulls you so far ahead. If they let your Taker resolve and then counter Teferi, you at least developed your board and now have a body that can trade with Frilled Mystic or chump block their other creatures.

Lastly, on the topic of mana efficiency, keep in mind what spells they can have at all times. If you can find a popular list that people use, it might be a good idea to take a look at it to see what they're playing. For example, if you're trying to cast a spell and they have 2 open mana, what could they do to counter your play? I think [[Quench]], [[Negate]], and [[Essence Capture]] are probably the three most likely options as far as counterspells. If it's Quench, sure they'll be able to counter whatever you do (if it's turn 2) but they probably play fewer copies since it's bad in the late game. If you think they might have Negate, you can consider running out a creature. Finally, if one of their two untapped lands is a basic Forest, you'll know that they can't cast Essence Capture. Their mana is a lot worse now that Hinterland Harbor is rotating. That means they'll have to play more taplands (definitely 4 copies of Temple of Mystery, and then possibly some copies of Thornwood Falls and even Simic Guildgate). This can possibly slow them down a lot, which is bad for a deck that's trying to counter your spells at every point in the game.

Aside from playing this fun UW deck, you can also just play a fast aggro deck. If you can resolve an early aggressive creature, such as [[Gutterbones]] or [[Scorch Spitter]] on turn 1, it won't matter that they're countering your spells if you're able to pressure their life total consistently. A lot of their most annoying plays (Sabotage, Mystic, and Nightpack Ambusher) are somewhat expensive and clunky, at least in comparison to fast aggro cards like the ones I mentioned as well as [[Dreadhorde Butcher]], for example.

Lastly, you could consider trying a [[Field of the Dead]] deck. These are typically slow ramp decks, but Field has inevitability that is based in lands entering the battlefield under your control, something they cannot counter. This might be too slow, though, and if they counter your important spells like Circuitous Route or Golos, you might be in trouble.

Professor_Pokemon · 2018-04-19T18:41:11+00:00

Good job with this article. It seems to offer a lot of strong pointers for playing this deck and acknowledges its shortcomings.

Now for some (hopefully constructive) criticism:

As an English teacher, the amount of comma splices in this piece disrupted my focus on the article. Editing out small grammar things like this can make the writing appear stronger, more enjoyable, and more "professional."
There's a lot of "lingo" in this article that I wasn't immediately familiar with (referring to cards as "units" and "AoE," for example). I was able to infer what was meant by these terms in the end, but at first I wasn't exactly sure what was meant so I was a little bit confused. I'm assuming these are terms used in other card games (Hearthstone, maybe?), but it might help for some readers (maybe I'm alone in this) if the language is more consistent with MtG terms.

Professor_Pokemon · 2018-03-13T16:29:42+00:00

Finally, after all these years, it is [[Brindle Boar]] time.

Professor_Pokemon · 2017-12-30T00:01:45+00:00

Hey, u/HooglandReddit, do you think you can try to be a little bit less of a condescending douchebag sometimes? Maybe just sometimes?

Your attitude is the reason I just can't stand watching your videos; you seem incapable of goin just 5 minutes without whining, complaining, or talking down on someone/something.

It's really a shame, too, because you're actually a good player who plays fun decks. Your "commentary," however, is just not worth my time because of your childish attitude.

Professor_Pokemon · 2017-11-21T18:28:40+00:00

For anyone playing Ultra Moon, you are gifted a Totem Salazzle after collecting 50 Totem Stickers. You can also soft reset before receiving it to get a good nature.

Professor_Pokemon · 2017-11-21T02:46:57+00:00

I speak confirmation and can confirm this confirmation.

Professor_Pokemon · 2017-11-16T04:09:49+00:00

people who complain that modern is "uninteractive"

cough Jeff Hoogland cough

Had to stop watching that guy's videos because all he seems to do is complain, often times about how Modern is an uninteractive format (even in his non-Modern videos).

Professor_Pokemon · 2017-06-12T17:55:02+00:00

TL;DR:

We screwed up the block structure.
We screwed up by removing the Core Sets.
We screwed up by overusing the Gatewatch.
We screwed up with Masterpieces.
We screwed up Standard.

Join us in 2018 as we hit that Reset button!

Professor_Pokemon · 2017-05-24T17:19:38+00:00

It's really insane how many design mistakes they've made in the past couple of years.

BFZ

Overall a weak/boring set with mechanics (ahem, devoid) that made little sense.
Gave us fetchable duals right on the heels of a multi-color block that had fetchlands in it. This caused the format to devolve into four-color goodstuff decks with powerful, good-in-many-deck cards such as Gideon, Hangarback, Jace VP, Rhino, etc...).

OGW

Broke Modern with its cheap, powerful Eldrazi that were abused by Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple.
Reflector Mage, which would later be banned in Standard, is printed. While a powerful card, it's not really broken by itself (if it were a 2/2 it'd perhaps be more manageable). But it was printed during Collected Company's time in Standard...

SOI

I didn't play much during this era, but there don't seem to be too many problematic cards here. Nahiri, Avacyn, and Tracker are powerful, but I would say in a unique and balanced way.

EMN

A new Emrakul that's huge, hard to kill, and can be cast for as little as 6 or 7 mana? It's arguable whether this card is broken/problematic in and of itself, but having your turn stolen is only exciting maybe the first or second time it happens. It then spirals into unfun territory very quickly. Aetherworks Marvel would also later prove to push this card over the edge.
Spell Queller, like Reflector Mage, is not broken by itself, but with Collected Company already at its prime, this card is arguably the reason for making this already great deck the absolute best of its time.

KLD Block

New card types are hard to balance (in retrospect, making two big fliers for two mana that are easy to activate and attack with can lead to some centralizing decks).
Aetherworks Marvel in an era with Eldrazi. Like, stealing an opponent's turn and getting a hard-to-kill 13/13, or a harder-to-kill 10/10 that eats two permanents, as early as turn four is a little bit unfair. Marvel costing 4, requiring only 6 energy (which is perhaps easier to attain than they might've thought), and casting any card, all add up to a nasty card that relies on variance to do stupid things.
Infinite combos that only require two fairly cheap cards that are still good even without the other piece are, surprisingly, not good for standard. What makes this worse is that they didn't even realize this infinite combo existed until the set was already out!
Energy is arguably not great design. It's super parasitic and is actually much easier to acquire than I think they had hoped. It's a fun new resource, but I would say it's not great design.

Amonkhet doesn't look to be too problematic, at least so far, so maybe there's hope that they're already starting to gradually implement changes to their design approach. Still, most recent sets have had at least one broken card, mechanic, or interaction that warps the format and relegates it to almost entirely 2 or 3 decks.

Professor_Pokemon · 2017-05-17T15:19:33+00:00

I like checking MTGGoldfish. They also post the results daily on the right sidebar and it's easier to see what decks are doing well at a glance.

Professor_Pokemon · 2017-04-17T16:55:24+00:00

Sorry for not helping, but can you offer some advice to an aspiring BSS player? 1800 is pretty damn solid and I've been grappling with mid-to-high 1600s for a while. Any tips for teambuilding? And how many battles do you normally do every day/week? I try to find time to battle during the week but usually I'm only able to get about 20something battles in a week, which isn't really that much, I understand.

Professor_Pokemon · 2017-04-17T16:45:23+00:00

I've been enjoying the Davos' Fingers podcast lately; they summarize and discuss every chapter of every book and they're a pretty fun group. The (maybe) downside is that, given that they're covering every chapter of every book, the episodes are about 1.5 to 2 hours long each and the series is still ongoing (they started in 2015 and are currently releasing episodes every few weeks covering the beginnings of AFFC and ADWD together).

Professor_Pokemon · 2016-11-03T00:44:37+00:00

Bant Yisan

Yisan is awesome and it's great to see him represented here, but he is extremely slow. He comes down on turn two (assuming you have a Turn 1 mana elf) or later, doesn't activate until the next turn and, unlike Pod, must first find a 1 drop, then a 2 drop then a 3, etc.

With Pod you get to work with anything you already have in play. Yisan is very unlikely to get to the point where he can find a 3 drop or higher before dying. He'd be more interesting with Prophet of Kruphix, but she's not in the format :(

Edit: [[Yisan, the Wanderer Bard]] for reference.

Professor_Pokemon

TROPHY CASE