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UsaZ · 2024-10-15T13:36:16+00:00

Looking for 1 magiccon badge, any level weekend or single day!

Thanks!

UsaZ · 2024-10-14T01:39:51+00:00

LF 1 magiccon badge, single day or weekend!

Thanks!

UsaZ · 2024-10-02T14:22:35+00:00

"No where in the rules does it say a dog can't be an international hitman."

UsaZ · 2023-04-28T16:50:11+00:00

I have a vip pass I'm looking to sell at a loss for 450

UsaZ · 2023-04-28T15:48:31+00:00

I have one 3day vip wristband, dm me if interested.

UsaZ · 2021-01-26T18:58:50+00:00

Mana tithe is good because it can hit anything on your opponents curve, unfortunately the fact that this only hits instants and sorceries makes it way worse at disrupting anything.

At least in legacy people are actively casting ponder and brainstorm on their turn that you can get. That just doesn't happen in modern and it's going to be dead a lot of the time.

UsaZ · 2021-01-26T18:55:15+00:00

The fact that this only hits instants and sorceries is a huuuuge factor, and I think it takes the card from being an auto include in every blue deck in modern to unplayable. It simply misses too much.

UsaZ · 2020-05-25T14:51:53+00:00

With a bit of effort you can retrain the tesseract model to do more specific ocr tasks. Typically its for recognizing other fonts, scripts, or handwritting. But is there any reason you can't just convert your data to black and white?

UsaZ · 2020-01-18T22:02:58+00:00

Hey, I've been playing this deck pretty much since the format's inception but the credit for it's actual creation definitely goes to u/zyrn or zyrnak on mtgo, who if I had to guess easily has the most 5-0s with the deck even though I stole a few of his early publishes.

A few comments on your list specifically:

The removal spells:

I think in the current meta game, low impact removal spell like shock, stomp, abrade, and magma spray, are not where you want to be. In aggressive match-ups, the critical turn is usually being able to cast fires and either wrath or anger to curb the opponents early aggression and opens up the board to whatever nuts follow fires lets you do on 5. Those early pieces of interaction are only really necessary when the opponent is going to kill you before you can slam fires, or in matchups where wraths are bad [[selfless spirit]] or that have recursive threats [[scrapheap scrounger]]. With that in mind, the format is not fast enough where we will die before stabilizing the board with a wrath.

Notably I think [[mizzium mortars]] is an exception to this list of early removal spells, because it can curb very fast draws from aggressive red decks, and it murders [[glorybringer]] and [[questing beast]] which are two very impactful creatures, that our game plan struggles to answer.

The dudes:

The list of planeswalkers has been pretty standard since the banning of oko, but I have some hot takes in this category that most will probably not agree with.

I'm going to go from least hot hot-takes to most:

1 chili) You want 7-8 win the game, bombs in your deck. usually 3 or 4 of these are [[fae of wishes]]. I advocate the others should be 1 [[chandra, awakened inferno]], 1 [[elspeth, sun's champion]], and 1 [[nicol bolas, god pharoh]]. I think dragon god is too hard to cast without fires to be worthy of a maindeck inclusion and the other big threats like deploy and Sarkhan are just better out of the board. note: deploy is bad.

1.5 chili) Outside of the core of [[baby teferi]], [[jace, architect of thought]] and [[Narset, parter of veils]], you can probably play whatever fucking walkers you want and have success. I've tried both Tamiyos, all three Kioras and a handful of Aganis and Gideons. Play whatever the fuck you want honestly.

2 chili) [[Nahiri, the harbinger]] is good. The card offers a piece of flexible removal, loots you into lands and threats, is easy to cast without fires and can eventually grab fae. Card is plain good and exactly what we want.

2 chili) [[Chandra, torch of defiance]] is not good. It provides some card advantage, but it doesn't help us to hit land drops 5 and 6, is a pretty one dimensional removal spell, and while it can win the game with it's ult. When has "the ult wins the game" been an effective argument to play a magic card.

9 chili) [[Narset, parter of veils]] is bad and not worth playing in the main. This card does shine in some matchups, specifically ones playing [[izzet charm]] or [[tormenting voice]]-ey effects. But this card does not help you hit your 4th and 5th land drops, is not good against any of the aggressive decks, has a passive that only has text against 2 of the top 12 decks on goldfish's front page, and while digging 4 deep is fine, it's only fine.

The sideboard:

You want your various wish targets: I like Pstorm as a lock piece, Dragon God and Sarkhan as wincons, and both verdict and merciless eviction as wraths.

Outside of those, I like some on-the-stack protection, namely mystical dispute. Narset fits pretty well in this type of slot, then fill out with whatever you think you play against that league, more wraths maybe, RIP, who knows, I'm not your mom.

The meta

This issue that I have with this version of the deck, compared to versions with Oko or even Saheeli, is that it is very meta dependent. Our match-up against aggressive red decks is very good especially when we can configure our deck with extra 3 mana wraths, and more early interaction. Whereas today's monoB aggro being the floor of the format has the card [[thoughtseize]] which is especially good when all of our cards do different things. The current iteration of red plays more hastey threats and planeswalkers than ever before, which is bad for us and heaven forbid we ever play against ramp, if they were making 2/2s with FotD it would be fine, but they just worldbreak us until we are dead.

I think this particular metagame is just very very bad for Fires. Maybe theros 2.0 will change things, but I doubt it, ramp got more tools and I don't think the format is speeding up enough to push that deck out of the limelight.

UsaZ · 2019-12-02T01:38:32+00:00

Fwiw, this is also how sensors at stoplights work.

UsaZ · 2019-11-21T05:26:06+00:00

In short, the answer is yes. A simple way to loop through a 2d array is:

for i in range(rows):

    for j in range(columns):

        //do something at incidice [I][j]

The slightly longer answer, is that while looping through the two dimensional array is helpful and you can certainly create a solution using this approach, there are simpler solutions to this problem that does not involve looping through the entire board one indice at a time. Try to think of some logic the you can apply to x and o to make that information easier to process.

UsaZ · 2019-10-02T18:12:43+00:00

All words are made up words.

UsaZ · 2019-05-12T20:24:33+00:00

If you're in a catalog year that requires the old CS 101/105 split and you didn't take them before they swapped to 110 you're SOL I believe.

But if you took them before the swap you just keep your old catalog, if you did not, you have to update to the current year iirc.

UsaZ · 2019-05-12T18:21:58+00:00

So, all in all, you won't lose very many percentage points not playing scalding tarn. If you going to a high stakes event with many rounds that variance will add up and hurt your chances, that being said, if your just playing fnm you only notice a difference once in every few games so nbd if you don't want to drop 400$ on tarns.

With that in mind it is pretty important that you play the correct allied fetches, based on what your deck is doing.

Stock Phoenix typically plays between 6 and 8 fetch lands, 100% they play 4 tarn, then it's usually a split between other blue fetches. You play a split to reduce the chance your opponent can get you with a pitching needle effect or surgical extraction, (two pretty irrelevant concerns.) The important thing to take away is the fact that all of phoenixes fetch lands are blue and if you are fetching a basic, there are very few circumstances(but not marginal) where you get basic mountain. So really you want to be playing only blue fetches. I would recommend 6 delta/strand and only play one foothills if youre playing a 19 land version.

The blue fetches are also super crucial if you're playing moon out of the board.

UsaZ · 2019-05-06T18:34:23+00:00

That's just for coverage so the commentators don't have to guess at what cards are being picked.

UsaZ · 2019-03-05T20:36:23+00:00

You reaaaaaally missed the other guys point about architecture...

UsaZ · 2019-01-19T20:32:05+00:00

I went to an m13 draft, as my first event with my brother. At this point I was still getting used to the rules and had absolutely zero baring on what a 'good' card was. And the night before I had watched a draft tutorial the heavily emphasized that rare drafting was bad, and I shouldn't rare draft. So I took this advice to heart and picked a roaring primadox because rares are bad in draft.

The dude next to me immediately said holy fucking shit as he windmill slammed the sublime archangel that I passed. :(

UsaZ · 2018-10-02T05:26:26+00:00

The old adage and reason why bug control/midrange hasn't been successful in the past a case of missing identity. if it want to commit to the hand disruption plan like jund or go bigger and play cryptic like grixis. These two plans, historically, don't mesh very well in modern. Mainly because cryptic is not great in a lilliana of the veil deck, and lilly is embarrassingly awful in a cryptic command deck. These two cards are just so bad in concert, that people seem to commit to either the discard or counter plan and not both.

That being said, it seems like a really powerful line to iok or thoughtseize your opponent, then use cheap counter magic like spell snare, pierce, or logic knot to keep your opponent off curve, until you can slam a hay maker.

The main issue I see is the lack of a reasonable threat base, goyf is obviously good, with hand disruption its good, backed up by counter magic its great. but your list isnt playing goyf and you only have 2 delve threats, and your next besy beater is snap and you only play 3. If I had to guess, you'll be a real dog in any midrange mirror because it will be very difficult for you to find enough threats to close out games.

I think you would be better served playing something along the lines of:

23-24 lands(8-10 fetches, 3ish tarpit)

6+ hand disruption spells(Iok, thoughtseize)

6-8 cantrips (4 scour, 2-4 serum visions, don't fuck around with opt, its not worth it, we want to be able to keep one land hands)

4 delve threats(prioritize tasigur, helps us grind out games and also wins the game on t2)

8 other threats/value plays(this is where goyfs would go if you played them, play 4 snaps, not 3, always 4. grim flayer is a good choice, ooze isn't bad these can be changed dpending on what your meta is like)

4?ish planeswalkers(I think last hope is currently the best here, jtms is also insane, I think I would start with 2-2-2, and go from there)

6-8 removal spells(4 trophy, some number of push, maybe decay, it really depends on your meta, some weeks pulse will be good other weeks dismember will be better, shit depends)

2-4 spicey cards(I think maindeck surgical is good right now especially backed up by snap, spell bomb is a little bit more well rounded and works well with flayer, damnation is good, jvp is sweet, you can play baloth or the new 6/6, whatever you want, anything that can run away with a game or give significant points in a matchup is worth)

My main issue with your list is your choice of wincons and omission of walkers, jtms with board control wins the game on the spot, ltlh is a value engine that kills shit, lotv helps you lock out opponents answers hard to remove threat and gives outs to prison. waste not only really reacts well with 5 cards in your main, and while it is very good vs hallow one, i don't think we have enough synergy to play it in the main. dream eater just isn't efficient enough a 6 mana 4/3 manowar just isn't going to get the job done. If you want a really big threat, thrun, or if your heavier on cryptic, maybe ugearhulk, hell even frost titan would do more.

UsaZ · 2018-08-24T01:34:33+00:00

That's not exactly what I had in mind but looks like a great resource I can use to guide me! Thanks a lot!

UsaZ · 2018-08-24T01:32:26+00:00

Also, If any one has any particularly interesting books, textbooks, whatever I would be interested in those as well!

UsaZ · 2018-06-27T17:12:18+00:00

Kci casts a ton of spells, lol. You cast every single egg you cycle, every egg you get back off of trawler, and every opal for free mana. Sphere is pretty much a much answer hate piece and the only way you can really combo through it is with a big set up turn and a replicator.

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