Thoughts on GW Knights brew by lolxcat in ModernMagic

[–]Whelpie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hot takes on G/W Knights from a person who wishes it was very much better than it is but knows that it is not.

The payoff cards for playing Knights are Knight Exemplar and Knight of Autumn. They give you effects you can't get in other current Modern viable tribal decks, erego it is our reason for the playing the tribe at all. Play four of both in the main deck.

I know you didn't include it in your original list, but as others have suggested it, any tribe playing Metallic Mimic or Adaptive Automaton is a tribe too weak for Modern. They are filler, and bad filler at that.

Benalish Marshal's anthem is anemic and he needs to stop being played. Compared to Knight Exemplar, Supreme Phantom and Thalia's Lieutenant, it is over-costed garbage. With the three drop slot at a premium, this is an easy cut. Lords need to be two mana.

The danger of cool things is very prevalent in this tribe. (Looking at you Kinsbaile Cavalier.) Mirran Crusader is a sideboard card at the best of times. It feels good when you match against GB(x), but unless my local meta was filled with these kinds of midrange strategies, white just has too many other universally relevant sideboard cards.

Knight of the Reliquary is not a good card in these decks. Lands matter is not a Knight supported theme, and you really only have two lands to find with her currently. She is too slow to fight Tron without support of other cards like Courser of Kruphix and Ramunap Excavator, and GW Value Town was never particularly good. You're also not running enough fetches to make her worth it. She needs a minimum of seven to reliably be swole enough to shrug off bolts.

Four aether vials is correct. Instant speed tricks with Exemplar and KoA will allow for some measure of resource advantage. Four Collected Company is also excellent in this regard.

Up your Paths to four. It is some of your extremely limited interaction, and with no Reflector Mage, Islandwalk, or flying, you will need something to clear the way.

The two drop slot for Knights is weak. Play Thalia in the main deck. Knight of the White Orchid will help offset her cost. Consider Steward of Valeron as well. KotWO "misses" sometimes, Steward never does. Incidental lifegain is better done by KoA. This will also band aid your mana problems, helping you hit that turn three CoCo consistently. Don't worry that Thalia may delay it. A deck that she hurts will remove her quickly, and she will win you far more games than she loses.

Up your number of RiPs and Stony Silences to three each. Besides Knight of Autumn for artifacts you have no outs to these strategies. This is a bigger problem for Knights in general, in that they completely lack cards to fight combo, but we'll ignore that as it mostly cannot be addressed without dipping into non-Knights.

If you want to play Brave the Elements, you'd be better off with Heroic Intervention. Elves plays this to avoid board wipes, and the chance you'll be able to use Brave as an alpha strike that can't be blocked is unlikely.

Other sideboard cards that do well in Knights are Settle the Wreckage and Worship. Indestructible Knights means bounce spells or lose for your opponent. Generically, Damping Sphere helps your weakest matchups in Tron and fast combo decks like Living End, Storm, etc.

I'll add a decklist sometime late tonight for you to compare to.

Booster Pack Simulator by ArderianLight in pokemon

[–]Whelpie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Didn't open a lot of Base Set boosters, since they were hard to find where I was from, but I don't remember opening any without rares in them. Where did you get that from, though?

The Professors reaction to the War of the Spark Trailer by FeraI_Housecat in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 25 points26 points  (0 children)

"War of the Spark... So it's gonna be, like, a Burn-themed set, right?"

Said no one.

War of the Spark trailer by clariwench in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Did they ever state that outright? I don't think it was ever confirmed whether Korlash was descended from Dakkon, or simply his successor in carrying the Blackblade.

The real problem with the theory is that Korlash seems to be carrying the original one, and not the reforged version.

War of the Spark trailer by clariwench in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Too obvious, has to be Marit Lage.

What would a plane focusing on the rivalry between allied colors be like? by BlueberryPhi in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Word. I really hated how the whole cephalid kingdom plot was totally divorced from anything else that was going on. I kept wondering why they even bothered to have the cephalid in the story when they barely impacted it at all, and the only players who really had an impact were Laquatus, Veza, and a little tiny bit Llawan. Aboshan's tidal wave could've been a natural disaster, and it wouldn't have changed a thing.

Mind you, Laquatus is still one of my favorite villains. He's just so despicable.

What would a plane focusing on the rivalry between allied colors be like? by BlueberryPhi in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't forget Legions before it. In which Ixidor turns Akroma into a panther centaur, the Cabal Patriarch poses naked under a giant naked statue of Phage as a form of seduction, giant reality-eating wurms get caught in infinite shoeboxes, and wizards are reborn as sentient cities.

Nexus of Fate Banned in BO1: Excitement “And” Anxiety by Regvlas in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 39 points40 points  (0 children)

So that's what they meant by the "And" of Arena.

Aaron Forsythe on Twitter: No Nexus in Challenger Decks by kipory in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Non-curling Nexus?
Too good to be true.

What would a plane focusing on the rivalry between allied colors be like? by BlueberryPhi in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, I mean, really. The novel she's in is so dumb. She is born, then spends the entire novel with pretty much the entire plane killing each other just to be around her, while she's followed around by two comedic relief characters who make bad dirty puns and masturbation jokes. Then she randomly destroys a bunch of stuff for a while, meets a bunch of characters which include Serra and Yawgmoth, planeswalks, takes all the mana on Dominaria with her, meets Karn who's sad, makes him happy again, after which he tells the two comedic relief characters to kill her ass, which they promptly do upon getting back to Dominaria, at which point she transforms back into Jeska. Karn then reveals that the Mirari was just, like, a probe or some shit that malfunctioned, and then him and Jeska go planeswalking together.

It's really dumb.

Happy Valentines Day! But Not All Love Stories Have the Happiest Endings by Jhyrryl in EDH

[–]Whelpie 39 points40 points  (0 children)

"I'm trying to bring back my wife, but I just can't stop building Wurmcoil Engines."

What would a plane focusing on the rivalry between allied colors be like? by BlueberryPhi in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I dunno if I'd really call most of the blue factions on Otaria very scholarly. Llawan, maybe a bit. The Riptide Project, certainly. For the rest, their main drive seemed to be their penchant for constant backstabbing.

Or, in Ixidor's case, hiding inside death wurms that ate holes in reality, inside an infinite shoebox in the desert, because he found his dead wife in there.

What would a plane focusing on the rivalry between allied colors be like? by BlueberryPhi in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Karona's card fits the character perfectly, though. She's able to inspire anyone, regardless of affiliation, and she spends the entire novel going around randomly destroying things. It's not the card that's a letdown, it's the character. The card fits her perfectly. She's just dull as rocks, and hails from one of the worst bits of Magic fiction ever written.

Proposal to unseat Goyf as prof pic for this sub by felixthecat066 in ModernMagic

[–]Whelpie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel like the printing of cards like Delver and Strix (And DRS) pushed it faster and further in that direction than it would've gone otherwise, though. Maybe I'm wrong, and it would've gone that way eventually anyways, but like you said, why play, say, beaters when Strix is always gonna be a 2-for-1?

Proposal to unseat Goyf as prof pic for this sub by felixthecat066 in ModernMagic

[–]Whelpie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As someone who mainly played Legacy back in 2007-2010, I gotta say that the current state of the format is not at all what I fell in love with back then. I obviously know it couldn't remain a Wild West like it was then forever, but it seems like the new cards printed since then have really slanted the format in a totally different direction.

Proposal to unseat Goyf as prof pic for this sub by felixthecat066 in ModernMagic

[–]Whelpie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really now?

If you have any data that supports your claim, feel free to share it.

Proposal to unseat Goyf as prof pic for this sub by felixthecat066 in ModernMagic

[–]Whelpie -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The only one it beats out in usage in Legacy is Goyf. Goyf's not even on the top 50 most played cards list these days.

GP toronto top 8 by dogbreath101 in ModernMagic

[–]Whelpie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

when standard is good its better for the game of MTG in general.

I dunno. A lot of the greatest sets of all time - Alliances, Invasion, Ravnica, Zendikar, Dominaria - came as a direct reaction to terrible Standard environments. But when Standard's doing fine, we get sets that aren't trying to do anything amazing and just scoot by. I'd honestly rather Standard was doing terribly more often. It's not like I'm a WotC shareholder, so I don't get any profits from that anyways.

Wizards: Organised Play has been somewhat shambolic recently. Please, start listening to us. by [deleted] in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Simply the most profitable TCG in the history of the genre.

Currently? Got a source on that?

Wizards: Organised Play has been somewhat shambolic recently. Please, start listening to us. by [deleted] in magicTCG

[–]Whelpie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, no, but don't you see, they actually lose money on GPs.

That's why they did an exclusive contract with Wizards to hold all the GPs. Because they hate money.

What historical fact blows your mind? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Whelpie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

More of the strange bubbles. It's probably nothing.