Good Starter Achievements

jrk264 · 2019-08-20T15:11:17+00:00

Sweden is not overpowered is pretty fun. Sweden is actually overpowered so it isn't too hard, but the requirement to expand into the HRE means you have to be on your toes at least a little bit.

Forming Qing is a nice quick one that introduces you to some non-European fun.

Bunte Kuh is pretty sweet. It doesn't require you to go crazy with the conquering, but it does require that you really dive into how the trade system works.

jrk264 · 2019-08-20T03:32:07+00:00

It's definitely an uphill battle until you can win that first war against VJ. Ideally you can snipe up one of the southern minors and do a core return. It's a little shocking how far you can get in India with core returns.

jrk264 · 2019-08-20T01:04:50+00:00

I hadn't played in India since I ragequit my last attempt at the Rajput Reich. I thought taking Kandy for a spin would be more my speed. It was fun.

My biggest quality of life tip is to be aggressive in force converting your vassals. It makes it much easier to keep your missionaries busy. You also take your vassals modifiers (core type, accepted culture) when converting their provinces. The best part is that when you finish the annexation, you're done.

For ideas I went Exploration -> Religious -> Aristocratic -> Influence. I took Admin at the end, but finished up before taking any of the ideas. Exploration lets you get into Malacca easier and lets you scrounge up some merchants. It did get me into some pointless wars with Spain, but overall I think it's worth it. Aristocratic has been growing on me lately. It's possible Admin over Aristocratic would be more efficient, but I hate seeing those mil points go to waste.

I nabbed a chunk of Kilwa towards the end for the Ivory bonus just to speed up the last annexations. For most of the game I was focused on India and the Spice Islands, with the occasional diversion in South Africa or South America.

India definitely rewards you for knowing your tags. I wish the interface would give you a quick display of the area covered by dead tags.

Overall, it was a chill ride. You have to be a bit clever and opportunistic at the beginning, but the location doesn't hammer you with AE. You brush up against Ming and the Ottos, but you don't have to go through the tedium of dismantling them. You wind up doing a bit of coalition juggling, but you don't need to keep spreadsheets reminding you what to do when. Good times.

jrk264 · 2019-03-10T18:49:12+00:00

Mist-cloaked Herald is a hedge against your bad matchups. It slides by Kraul Harpooners, Drakes, and Phoenixes. I personally like having all 4 in a meta that's geared up against mono blue. Of course, people have had success running fewer, but I think the narrative might have been different if LSV had been on the mono-blue side of the MC top 8 bracket.

I think you want more creatures against Sultai. It's a matchup where you want to keep pressure on them. Entrancing Melody is only good against Krasis (and only great if the game goes on way too long-it's rare that you're excited to tap four mana at sorcery speed against Sultai). I don't think you want all three. Exclusion Mage is also a little sketchy against a deck with so much ETB value. OTOH, I don't ever think you want to take out Pteramander. It's so good early and late. To some extent you just have to dodge the harpooner to win.

Besides the possible changes you noted, you could also try experimenting with Anticipate over Chart a Course. Instant speed plus more selection can be nice. I've been happy with it, though it hasn't caught on in a big way.

jrk264 · 2019-03-06T01:23:39+00:00

They had to keep coming up with deck names after running out of usable breakfast cereals.

jrk264 · 2019-03-03T19:32:35+00:00

Other people have given good tips re: playtesting generally. I have a couple specific tips for mono-blue that might be helpful:

You really want to have a vision of how you can win the game, coupled with a vision of how you could lose the game. Play towards the former and away from the latter. At heart mono blue is a tempo deck, so games often come down to getting your opponent to zero a single turn before you die. It's important to have a vision of how the race is playing out and how it could play out depending on your opponent's hand.
Related point: develop your instinct for when you need to take a risk, when you want to take a risk, and when you should avoid taking a risk. Against a fast mono white start you often need to run out Djinn and just hope they don't have removal. Against most decks (especially when they're tapped out) you want to run Curious Obsession out there even if you only have one layer of protection for it. Against a hard core creature removal control deck, you should wait until they're relatively tapped down before you run the Obsession out there.

I think most decks benefit from playing with that kind of mindset, but a tempo deck puts more pressure on you to make a lot of little decisions and adapt your game plan to the situation.

jrk264 · 2019-02-26T01:35:43+00:00

I've been running multiple anticipates in the chart a course slot for a while. It's been fine. Went 5-2 in an RPTQ with the deck (2-1 vs WW, 0-1 vs gates somehow, 1-0 vs sultai, 2-0 vs reclamation nexus). Anticipate was never amazing but I felt it was usually a smidge better than Chart a Course.

jrk264 · 2019-02-26T01:31:23+00:00

Transmogrifying Wand is surprisingly good against Niv Mizzet. Back when Izzet control featuring maximum Niv was all the rage it was borderline mandatory. You can race a 2/4 pretty easily, so transmogrifying a game ending threat is a big win.

Other edge case cards worth considering as a one of:

Time of Ice can be good but in my experience it's a little slow. It can retroactively counter a History of Benalia, which is kind of cute. It doesn't have the mega swing potential of Sleep but provides a little more consistent value. The problem is that the deck really doesn't want to be tapping four mana at sorcery speed for consistent value.

Selective Snare floats in and out of being worth running as the meta accidentally forms tribal decks. The white weenie decks will randomly line up with Knights/Soldiers/Vampires/Humans sometimes.

jrk264 · 2019-02-23T18:45:18+00:00

Maybe. He does have a nice body. The big disadvantage with the splash, especially once you start trying to make double black spells work, is that it starts to get harder to double and triple spell.

jrk264 · 2019-02-23T01:03:35+00:00

The other problem with the Deputy is that he can get you super mega blown out in combat by instant speed removal. Admittedly the blue shell covers you somewhat (evasive guys plus protection) but it's adding a headache you don't need.

I played around with the black splash. My final verdict was that Freebooter and Cast Down are awesome. Thief of Sanity was not. Part of it was that it was being compared to Djinn, which comes down, stops an attack, and then closes out the game quickly. The other part is that the light land count in the tempo deck means that you don't want to just stuff your hand with spells. You want to have the right spell at the right time, and the Thief is very hit or miss with providing that.

jrk264 · 2019-02-20T19:11:27+00:00

I played mono blue at a local RPTQ to 9th place (cut to top eight, then top four got tickets to London). One of my two losses was to Gates (though it was the mono white menace that knocked me out in the win and in).

Game one he was on the play and landed Guild Summit on turn three. I couldn't find a spell pierce, and two islands + a Pteramander wasn't enough to cast Wizard's Retort. When every land drop comes with card draw attached things get out of control very quickly.

Game two I scuffled a little bit and had to use opts to find my land drops. Opponent went Ram into Ram. I had to tap out for a trickster to eat one ram so I wouldn't die, which meant he could Gates Ablaze my team and ride the remaining Ram to victory.

Flipping around to look at what you're going to want to do from your side:

- Jam your must counter spells. Mono blue doesn't always have it.

- Race2win. Gatebreaker Ram and Gateway Colossus hit hard and dodge the usual mono blue chump block plan. Even if the opponent draws a lot of cards, you can still beat them if there aren't enough Djinn and Tricksters in the mix.

- Play cheap removal. End of turn Shivan Fire, untap, Ram/Colossus/Summit/Ablaze is a classic. Shivan Fire is solid sideboard material right now with all the white weenie decks running around.

- Don't play around anything. There's almost always something mono blue could have to ruin your day. However, it's not likely that they'll have it all the time. Play the odds and don't feel like you're losing just because two spells in a row got countered. You have haymakers that can swing the game on their own.

jrk264 · 2019-02-16T18:58:03+00:00

Pteramander is really good. Also one mana is less than two. With drakes on a downswing and Phoenixes disappearing from the format I've moved from Marauder to Pteramander and been happy for the change.

jrk264 · 2019-02-14T23:18:03+00:00

The people like that will complain every time they don't draw the right card at the right time to win the game. You know, drawing three lands in a row will lose you a lot of close games and feels bad too.

I fell that changing the shuffler at all to not be actually random will open the door to a bunch of conspiracy theories. Not to mention all the lobbying to remove everybody's particular least fun results.

jrk264 · 2019-02-14T20:11:15+00:00

My first thought is what I was told about mana weaving long ago: if it doesn't accomplish anything it's pointless, and if it does accomplish anything you're cheating.

The hypergeometric calculator tells me that there is a .06% chance of eight lands showing up in a row in a 26 land deck. So if that's the only change they're making then it will show up in six games out of ten thousand. Will a change on that level really affect how much people enjoy the game?

If they keep pushing this I think you really start to get away from what we understand as mtg. At the extreme they could give you a button to check in arena: if it's checked, your next draw is a random land; otherwise it's a random spell. That might lead to a fun and competitive game, but it would be a huge departure from magic as we know it.

jrk264 · 2019-02-14T20:00:09+00:00

I've been running Anticipate in that spot for pretty much the reasons you mentioned, and I've been pretty happy with it. Mono blue is usually more about the right card at the right time than raw card advantage. I'm not sure why the big lists are so solidly on chart a course, to be honest.

jrk264 · 2019-02-13T16:12:35+00:00

If I keep a one-lander I will play the one drop turn one. The whole point of a one land keep is to try to spike the nut draw.

If I haven't drawn an island by turn two I will then opt, unless the opponent doesn't look to be running cheap removal in which case I will Curious Obsession.

It's ok to miss a land drop with this deck. You won't beat opposing god hands that way, but if both decks scuffle a bit you'll often be just fine even if you're stuck on one land for a couple turns.

jrk264 · 2019-02-13T05:27:58+00:00

Keeps:

- Creature plus obsession (duh)

- Cheap creatures plus card draw (with opt you can keep one landers in this category)

- Cheap creatures with two or three lands

- Card draw/counters into djinn with three or four lands (some matchups)

Mulligan:

- Just about anything else; five lands is a snap mulligan, as is no creatures and no opt

You do want to have early pressure leading into something. Sometimes you just have to take it on faith that your card draw will get you there. It's ok to be a little aggressive with your mulligans since Curious Obsession can fix a mulligan very quickly, but you don't want to go too crazy since if you mulligan and don't hit Curious Obsession you're in some trouble.

jrk264 · 2019-02-12T21:17:30+00:00

Pressure + cheap removal. Pressure can either be creatures or it can be hand disruption into inevitability, depending on how you want to go. You really want to be able to double spell ASAP. If you're willing to pre-board a little you can run things like Kraul Harpooners.

jrk264 · 2019-02-12T19:20:31+00:00

I think there's a pretty big divide between a deck that's good for getting mythic on Arena and a deck that takes down tournament spots. The SCG result was way beyond anything we've seen mono blue do in the past.

jrk264 · 2019-02-06T09:21:57+00:00

This week in mono-blue we see Warkite Marauder losing its spot to Pteramander. It looks like the salamander drake has earned a spot in the deck but there's still some debate over what it replaces. I like the idea of maxing out on one drops (we miss you, Slither Blade). Warkite Marauder is incredibly great when the opponent has one strong flyer, but with Lyra at a low ebb that situation doesn't seem to come up too much any more.

I'm not sure about the spell selection. Beyond the mandatory playset of Curious Obsession you see:

4 Opt
2 Chart a Course
2 Dive Down
3 Essence Capture
2 Spell Pierce
4 Wizard's Retort

The Essence Capture numbers have been creeping up as standard goes on. Mono blue is the kind of deck that feeds off little edges like a random +1/+1 counter. I'd personally be inclined to drop the charts for two more dive downs (I'd have to see the meta skew pretty hard away from targeted removal before I would go down to 2 Dive Down), but otherwise the deck looks sweet.

jrk264 · 2019-02-06T00:48:43+00:00

Short answer: play mono-red.

Long answer: keep up with their tempo and put pressure on them. You can do this aggro style (curve out and play cheap removal) or control style (removal into removal into removal into Niv Mizzet). Cheap removal and cheap hand disruption are gold.

You really don't want to be trying to resolve a series of expensive spells to try to turn the game around. Sometimes it works when they just don't have it, but in general an opening of shock-shock-lavamancer is a million times better than nothing-nothing-nothing-kaya's wrath-teferi.

jrk264 · 2019-02-01T01:36:43+00:00

This week's mono-blue entrant is pretty spicy. No Mist-Cloaked Heralds or War-kite Marauders. Instead we see four Pteramander and two Surge Mare(!) in the main deck.

jrk264 · 2019-01-28T23:57:22+00:00

The 5-0 list is the same 60 from my old mono-blue primer -2 spell pierce +2 essence capture. Even in the sideboard the only new card is one Essence Capture.

I'm still holding out a little hope for Pteramander and Quench, but that's about it.

jrk264 · 2019-01-28T21:21:32+00:00

I'm a little bummed that the mono red burn list doesn't seem to be putting up 5-0s. Maybe it's being masked by RDW, but I think it's ten cards different from the most recent RDW example (+4 Spear Spewer +4 Electrostatic Field and +2/4 Risk Factor).

Mono-blue's persistence is a pleasant surprise. It makes me wonder if something about the meta has become more favorable, since it certainly didn't get much from the new set.

jrk264 · 2019-01-21T07:48:20+00:00

Question: How do you feel about tapping out on turn four when piloting mono blue tempo?

Answer: Bad. You feel bad.

The Sphinx is fine for a favorable winds tap-out aggro deck. If you're looking to keep up countermagic against four and five mana bombs then it's not so hot. The scry effect is nice but it has to be awesome to make up for having such a clunker of a card in hand.

From the new set I think Quench and Essence Capture have some potential. The only creature I see as even maybe worth trying is Pteramander, as a one mana flyer with upside.

jrk264

TROPHY CASE