Building Blocks: Geist Vengeance

Why not lose the Geist for Delver?
Gain: Better Mana, a Turn1 Play etc.
With 24 non-permanents you will flip him quite often. when geist attacks the first time, a flipped Delver has already done 7-9 damage.

Saw that M1G1 where you missed your opportunity to clear the board, scrolled down to point out the mistake, and saw someone else already did. However, I think Rhizom was being a bit too optimistic, it definitely mattered a lot. You really shouldn’t have missed that, because you easily could have come back from the win. You would have been stabilized: the board would have been cleared and you would have plenty of mana to answer whatever he throws at you next turn.

I feel like people are way too quick to concede in magic in general, but especially mtgo. It’s never a good idea to concede without going over all your possible actions for at least a minute or two. While you probably understand this in the abstract, it seems like you put misplaced value on fast play, evidenced by where you said “at least he understands why I’m taking longer, I don’t like to take longer than my opponents” in the second match.

I understand and respect that you want to be a courteous opponent, since it’s annoying playing against someone that takes twice as long to make plays, but for crucial plays there’s absolutely nothing impolite about poring over your options for a couple minutes. I also feel like there’s some sort of unspoken attitude that taking a long turn is newbish, when on the contrary, it’s pretty much necessary in certain situations to maximize your chance of doing well. Who knows how different things would have gone if you had won your first game (and I think it’s likely you would have)?

M2G2 – You miscounted flashing back Blasphemous Act on turn 6. You hadn’t played your land yet and would have had enough mana if you played the Grotto. Not sure if anything would have changed after that anyway but at least you would have been playing from 12 life instead of up against it with only 4.

@Lee

Thanks for clearing that up, I understand now more where you’re coming from with your annoyance with waiting. Personally, I’m usually fine with waiting so long as it’s a valid reason (which explains why you like to have an ‘excuse’). If it’s a new player, or a particularly convoluted game-state, it’s understandable to be waiting minutes for your turn. The thing that gets me is when it’s clearly someone that is playing two or more games at once. I realize that it’s not against the rules, but it’s still incredibly rude IMO because these people are essentially “maximizing EV” at the cost of their opponents enjoying the game. It also starts a vicious cycle where other players start to feel like they have to start playing multiple games so they have something to do while their opponents are playing another one. I realize we are now straying off-topic but just thought I’d bring it up

@Berb I still think it matters because that opening loss set the tone for the rest of the tournament. Everything from there on out would have gone differently, i.e. the “butterfly effect.” Particularly, if he had gone 2-0 first round he would have had a completely different opponent the next. Clearly, playing the “what-if” game gets fairly arbitrary since there’s no way to know how things would have gone, but in the case of big mistakes that alter the course of fate, I think it’s most productive to imagine that things could have turned out much better if that mistake had been avoided.

Round 3 G2 you devils play the wolf for 3 (He hasn’t got the mana for the activation of the Gavony Township) and do 2 to Garruk, this seems bad when reversed you would have once again cleared his board.

Good evening, ladies. I heard http://www.blockdeconstructed.com mentioned and, well, I just had to drop a line.

Delver of Secrets: The original version had 4, but he eventually was cut. The format is heavy on Geistflame, Devil’s Play, Dead Weight, removal in general, and the Planeswalkers also eat up creatures. He just wasn’t worth the while.

Thanks for the namedrop. And, the deck is by no means easy to play – there’s a lot of math going on with all the burn and Devil’s Play, and you have to know when to push your creatures, and when to sit back and play lands for the burn. The Sideboard is also precise, and if you don’t know the plans, then it’ll still run, but with some kinks in it. ;] On the plus side, as Toasty points out and is generally the case with rogue decks, your opponents were confused and misplayed.

I didn’t watch the videos, but Kyle: Paraselene is part of the Sideboard plan against U/R Stalker. The full Sideboarding details can be found a few pages down at themtgodojo.com – everything is a bit out of date, but it ought to give you the general idea. I’ve mainly been playing BUG the past few weeks, but I think that Watchkeep is still underrated and I think that this style of deck (URx Tempo) will be much more popular with Dark Ascension.