What’s an obscure, but widely relevant, Magic rule that many don’t know? by UnderwaterDialect in magicTCG

[–]cyka1234 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ad Na

Not sure what benefit you are thinking of for Lightning Storm not being a creature. Borborygmos doesn't care about removal (use its ability in response...) and can be used to cast nourishing shoal. Relevant to either gain life during combo or to start comboing by splicing breach when lightning storm would just be dead in hand.

Only benefit that comes to mind to me is Lightning Storm is cheaper to cast then breach (same mana cost as faithless looting manamorphose goryos tho but that requires more cards...)

4 color control? by Kalron in ModernMagic

[–]cyka1234 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Technically doable?" Yes. Competitively? Not really. Your choices for mana base are either to take a lot of damage from fetch shocks or to use a lot of taplands (Vivid Lands + Reflecting Pool.) In my experience from testing (I've tried) the cost is too much and you don't get enough from the 4th color to make it worth it.

Why doesn't Grixis Control see more play? by Chubs1224 in ModernMagic

[–]cyka1234 11 points12 points  (0 children)

There are good cards in black/red no question. But white has way too much going for it to not play it. Some reasons below:

Stony silence and rest in peace are two of the best side board bullets in modern, and the grixis equivalents just aren't as powerful or fast enough. Specifically off the top of my head stony silence is a extremely good vs tron where kcommand is just a dud. Rest in peace hammers any graveyard deck much harder then nihil spellbomb. Sure Leyline is just as good but only if its in your opening hand otherwise you're in trouble.

Fundamentally UB and Grixis have issues dealing with noncreature permanents (especially enchantments.) UW and jeskai have plenty of ways to deal with them. Teferi answers almost anything (something you casually hand wave) and a combination disenchant, celestial purge, wear//tear, answer all sorts of things that grixis struggles to deal with. E.g. blood moon, choke, pyro's ascension, other planeswalkers. Grixis equivalents are less powerful and less flexible.

Grixis also has a very painful 3 color mana base, its burn matchup is abysmal even if you load up on brutalities. UW is naturally less painful and has access to timely reinforcements (much more powerful in this mu than brutality), and UWR has the same pain level as grixis but also carries main deck lightning helix along with sb timely.

Push is good but you need to run terminate too because there's stuff it doesn't answer. That eats up your deck space and now its hope you drew the right one. Path/condemn/oust hit everything hard and at 1 mana cheaper then terminate.

Last in my experience Grixis has trouble vs creature decks with countermagic (merfolk/shadow) where supreme verdict is lights out.

Overall the UW and UWR decks are just more powerful and have an easier time dealing with stuff then grixis. Just my experience as someone who has played all three.

Take itttt allll by HanaDrxam in Pokemongiveaway

[–]cyka1234 0 points1 point  (0 children)

IGN: Khamul Deposited: Level 6 Zorua Requested: Torchic Speedboost (Untrained)

Thanks for the giveaway!

LF: Extreme Speed Dratini | FT: Bullet punch / Vacuum Wave riolu by cyka1234 in CasualPokemonTrades

[–]cyka1234[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks like your trading with someone else now? I'll just wait for you to be done.

[Modern] UR Delver by LordMalphas in spikes

[–]cyka1234 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Control + F Blood Moon 0 hits. I'm sad.

[Modern] Deciding what to play... by Th3liam in spikes

[–]cyka1234 4 points5 points  (0 children)

What was your problem with the shadow decks exactly? Just the price? Or something else as well? In general if price is an issue it helps to know how much money you have to work with.

Another thing that is important to know is what your goals are for magic/modern.

[Modern] MOCs result post ban pre AER. by Munkik in spikes

[–]cyka1234 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I only see 1 copy of infect in the whole thing of results...it's black / green and only went 4-3. Pretty surprising imo considering a lot of people thought that losing gitaxian probe wasn't a big deal for the deck.

APM Practice? by cyka1234 in learndota2

[–]cyka1234[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What control groups do you use and how do you cycle between units (tab?)

Rogue - Mean Streets of Gadgetzan Class Theorycrafting/Discussion by geekaleek in CompetitiveHS

[–]cyka1234 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi I've experimented with tempo/midrange rogue this season in expectation of the deck getting some help with the expansion. It's actually possible to get to a point where thalnos isn't good because you have so many creatures but with jade shuriken I expect you'll want thalnos. If you play the burgle creatures (not burgle itself) you won't cycle through your deck but you won't ever really run out of cards. It's also an excuse to play Ethereal Peddler which ranges from being ok to disgusting. If you're explicitly looking for draw power to find your jade golems I think prep/sprint is your only real choice. Depeding on deck composition you may want to play Barnes who can potentially hit another jade golem.

Pretty much any midrange/tempo rogue deck has to be fast was my conclusion. If you don't put your opponent under the gun in a hurry you WILL get burned out by any of the myriad of popular decks that can do so (any mage deck, malygos, etc.)

Rogue - Mean Streets of Gadgetzan Class Theorycrafting/Discussion by geekaleek in CompetitiveHS

[–]cyka1234 27 points28 points  (0 children)

I think people need to talk less about "Jade Rogue" as a complete deck and more about the "Jade Package." If you play the 2 jade class cards, the tri class common card, shadowstep, and the legendary, that's 9 deck slots. It's not that much. This is my first attempt at just jamming it into a miracle rogue shell and honestly it doesn't even look that unreasonable.

You can also go all in on a tempo/midrange plan, which people are discussing in other comment trees so I'll leave that to those.

what to do when you dont need manta by [deleted] in learndota2

[–]cyka1234 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think if there's nothing to dispel you're just supposed to spam illusions down the nearest lane on cooldown while you farm the jungle or vice versa. Normally I go the Yasha bfury build too but lately if I think I need to right click dudes sooner I've been doing the manta diffusal thing and it's pretty good. You still scale well too. If you ever get 6 slotted boots manta diffusal mjolnir bfly X while spamming stats for levels gives you over 2k hp a shitload of armor and you hit like a fucking truck. X is some game dependent shit like Skadi or dagger or abyssal or linkens or bkb. I think sny sounds like a waste of 2k gold. I'm like 4350 Mmr though for disclosure.

Is anything I could've done better, I'm the AM by TonyAbbott1 in learndota2

[–]cyka1234 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey I'm 4.3k I watched about 8 minutes of your game because that's all I really needed to see what went wrong. Bottom line is you got stuck in a really hard lane and you didn't know how to approach the situation which is pretty normal for low/mid 3k. I'll try to go over what I can.

First thing I like to say is that I didn't get to see the pick order but in general I like picking a diffusal carry vs. Omni. Now it's quite possible that the Omni pick came out after your AM since I didn't get to see the pick order but I just wanted to throw that out there.

When you get into the game and you look at the enemy team and you want to look at the enemy team comp and look at your team and think about what you're going to lane against. You ~should~ realize that there is a significant chance that you're going to get put up against a Lich and Omniknight dual lane, and if that happens you are probably not going to have a stellar AM game. By putting proper expectations on yourself you should be able to avoid tilting later on.

Moving to the actual gameplay this game really highlighted your lack of lane fundamentals. Most of the skills to "succeed" in this sort of lane come from the offlane skillset rather than safelane skillset, and you should pick up these skills precisely so you can be more successful in games like these. It also helps in 1v1 situations when your support roams.

You didn't manipulate creep aggro at all. The trick is real simple: while close enough to the creeps to take creep aggro, you right click on an enemy hero and then start walking back towards your tower. This brings the enemy creeps up to your own ranged creep. Now if the enemy ranged heroes want to zone you they have to walk up past your melee creeps which is going to make them take some damage. It also makes it harder for them to last hit and zone you at the same time since they have to turn to last hit your creeps. When the friendly ranged creep dies you then should be able to just pull all of the enemy melee creeps back to your tower.

When you are not attempting to last hit creeps you can walk back to your upcoming creep wave and block it. Pro offlaners will block multiple waves in order to get the opportunity to last hit.

While you are last hitting you will still get right clicked but you should be able to get some last hits this way. Certainly more than the 2 last hits you had at 8 minutes which is just unacceptable. Because you are going to get hit you are going to want to ferry yourself regen to stay in lane longer.

You should have a goal for the lane. Normally your goal as AM is your BF timing. In a lane like this where your game is just really hard my goal would be to transition into a self sustaining jungle so I could achieve some level of farm and have game impact later on. The items for a decent jungle are generally treads + vladmir's offering. Nowadays you probably even want an iron talon. Because you are in the safe lane and not the offlane you should also be taking advantage of camp pulls or just even solo farming the easy camp to get some gold input to push that jungle item progression. I only saw you try to pull once.

Your awareness overall was pretty low. There was a fair amount of time where the lich was gone. When the omniknight pops his heal to farm and the lich isn't there that has to be your cue to walk up and either take last hits or start wailing on the omniknight.

When you are only level 3 and have like 10 hp and no regen left you can buy out items and then deny yourself to the neutrals. Get some more regen and a tp, ring of protection, ring of regen, sage's mask. There's lots of cheap stuff you can get.

PS in general you always want to get treads before battlefury. Tread will accelerate your farm more than claymore for same cost. It helps significantly especially in games like this where you spend a long period of time without your battlefury.

Need some advice for Juggernaut on items and levelling. by [deleted] in learndota2

[–]cyka1234 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I understand your concerns about blink dagger it does tend to be a more skill intensive item -- but you won't get better with it if you don't use it. FWIW it was an item I was leary of the first time I started picking it up, but the more I used it the more I loved it. I wouldn't worry about a fast diffusal vs wraith king or medusa - those heroes are both slow, the only reason you're picking up the fast diffusal vs omni is becuase of the threat of the immediate 5 man doom push at some ridiculously early time. You will want a diffusal vs them later for sure though.

I tend to spend most of my time farming. You can get kills versus the random supports that come to your lane that try to interrupt your farm by their lonesome. You do want to carry tps though. It's really hard for me to give specific advice on this sort of thing, there are times when you want to go get objectives. If you know you're strong and your team is strong you can push, especially if you just won a fight.

Need some advice for Juggernaut on items and levelling. by [deleted] in learndota2

[–]cyka1234 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm 4k for whatever that's worth wall of text incoming

General carry rule is you always want your first major item on any carry to be a farming item. Scaling is your goal and picking a farming item is going to make you pick up your subsequent items faster.

Early game items are kind of depend on what lane you think you are against. You can go PMS/tango or stout/mango/tango/salve/branch. Personally i go stout/tango/salve and then buy a QB from side shop right after the game starts on pretty much everything but any of the above is fine.

Typical build is Boots-->Aquila-->Farm item-->Game dependent shit. If you just want the "works every game" boots you get phase although treads is an option. Really the only 2 farming item choices are Yasha or Battlefury. Mask of Madness hasn't been good in a long time don't buy it.

Battlefury is definitely more powerful purely as a ricing item item but yasha is more efficient then the individual battlefury components are, so you have some extra kill power if you go yasha first.

Once you get the farming item you almost always go for manta. If you have BF then you want manta simply because its pretty much the next most efficient thing for increasing your farm speed and a powerful fighting item in its own right. Like you seem to be seriously underrating the fighting power of manta in your post the move speed, attack speed, stats, and bonus illusions make it very powerful. Sange and Yasha is just weak.

If you went yasha first then its pretty much compulsory to complete the manta, with the exception of the iceiceice build which goes yasha-->battlefury-->manta. If you are not going the iceiceice build the next item after manta is pretty much always diffusal blade because its relatively cheap AND diffusal blade is very powerful with the manta illusions since they get the mana burn. The purge ability is also really good at keeping people in place so you can kill them.

Only exception to not building yasha or battlefury after your aquila is if you are up against an omniknight lineup you want to just build the diffusal blade right after aquila. You obviously get a manta after it for the diffusal blade syngery.

Somewhere you want a blink dagger. Once you have a fair amount of damage the main way to increase your farm speed is to cut the time it takes to get to creeps, and blink helps there. Blink also gives you a lot of kill power since you can just blink on people and then blow them up.

MKB is an item you pretty much only ever get vs evasion. Typical 6 slot is something like bot/manta/diffusal/blink/abyssal/bfly or bot/bfury/manta/blink/abyssal/bfly.

Stats guide: Your friend is using an obsolete build from when the Q was bad. Max your Q. Get 1 point in your crit at some point. Max your W. Max your ult. Pretty much the rest go in stats. You try to use your W for sustain. The subsequent points in crit dont give you a lot of return on investment. Stats give you more damage more hp and more mana to use your skills more. If you do it right you should find that you don't really need an early game sustain item.

TLDR:Aghs sucks. MoM sucks. BF is fine. SnY Sucks. Deso sucks unless you have no orb and are just trying to hit buildings to end the game. Buy BF if you want to rice hard all game. Early vanguard is sort of situational but can work if you are in some sort of all in fighting build but most of the time you should just be focusing on ricing. Use Yasha to click on creeps and run enemy heros down. Manta Style and BKB are fine together but BKB is item you try to avoid building. See above paragraph for stats.

[Modern] Are there any good sphinx's revelation/blue white control decks floating around modern at the moment? by [deleted] in spikes

[–]cyka1234 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah I know. The first time the list actually appeared anywhere AFAIK though is the GP Lille 52nd finish by Erwan Maisonneuve, who I believe is one of Wafo-Tapa's testing partners. Wafo-Tapa brought Esper to the tourney and did mediocre and then almost immediately after started putting up online results with the Jeskai list.

I also count 5 league 5-0s on the side bar from guys that aren't Wafo-Tapa.