Dime a Dozen #5: Seeing Red

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Jason Moore





You can find Jason
co-hosting the Pauper’s Cage podcast
on MTGO as BambooRush
on Twitter @dimecollectorsc
and on Youtube at youtube.com/dimecollectorsc

 

  1. nice vids!

    in G1R1 if you won’t pay echo for the marshall, why not sac it into raider or sledder to give one of your tiny bold critters some +1/+1 kick in the ass?

    thanks for the content and keep it up!

  3. ger-man – I appreciate that. Good call on the Sledder activation, that definitely makes sense.

    ownage77 – Thanks for watching as always!

  4. Good games. I’m really liking this series. =)

    Was just thinking about a Goblins deck in Pauper this morning at work. Weird that I come home and find this video. Love the deck, so keep up the good work.

  5. Undersol – Good to hear that you’re liking the videos. Looks like you weren’t the only one thinking about Goblins lately!

  6. funny, I saw the other side of match 1 on sroush77′s youtube. I wondered if you were recording the match :)

  7. PB – Oh wow, I didn’t realize I was facing him. That’s his MTGO ID? That’s pretty cool!

  8. Good videos. I played Goblins in the past, this makes me want to pick them up again. I wouldn’t mind facing MBC twice in a daily, I feel like that deck is a bye for more than half the field. In the storm match you displayed nice discipline mulling into a hand with a sideboard card. I would have held the Pyroblast in game 3, because I feel like I’ve lost a lot of the games where I tapped out for the increased clock, but it was good to see the aggressive stance pay off. Your opponent is a moron. I’d say you are allowed to topdeck a creature in a 31 creature deck all day if he’s playing storm.

    I don’t think I’ve come across an Infect video yet. Despite the hate for the deck, I’d like to see that one day.

  10. Rick – Good stuff with the observations, though I think MBC has gotten a lot better over time. Not sure about my plays vs. Storm either…I’ll consider doing infect at some point.

  12. M2G1 was winnable.

    When he plays terramorphic into island you can put him on the following decks:

    UR Post
    UB Post
    UB Control (rat teachings or trinket mage)
    Esper Storm
    UR Storm

    He then drops a mountain. When the mountain comes down the list is down to UR Post and UR Storm. Neither of these decks have targets for a bolt other than his dome so you should be using chain lightning to the face (leaving you with lightning bolt in hand).

    His next turn he uses lava dart which confirms that he’s storm and not post. Play sledder instead of matron and attack for 4 holding up bolt. The bushwhacker you got from the matron was totally unnecessary for winning the game anyway – he’s at 7 after the attack and you’ve got another creature in hand and a burn spell – that alone is lethal and it has the benefit of hiding that it’s lethal. He’s dead unless he empties and if he does empty the bushwhacker doesn’t win the game either. In addition, this constrains his use of probes – probe you twice and you can bolt him to the face for the win (he was a 3 when the game ended). Did it matter? Hard to say. Assuming he stays at 5 life by probing one time he might or might not have drawn the bushwhacker off of the 2nd probe. Even if he did draw it off the 2nd probe you were dead anyway if you don’t draw burn or a martyr (your attackers aren’t getting through). Of course, he might have drawn the empty off of the 2nd probe because he knew you had lethal and had to try to win / survive. If that’s the case then you win the game.

  13. Hey Jason,

    First off, I just wanted to say thanks for doing these videos. You have quickly become one of my favourite players on MTGO and I greatly enjoy watching your videos, and you commentate very well, breaking down your decisions and explaining what is going on.

    I’m relatively new to Pauper, in fact you’re one of the first people I have ever seen play it, and I was wondering if you had any recommendations on where to start? What is a good “starter” deck for regular Constructed players, but perhaps ones who have not broken into the format yet.

    Cheers,
    Josh

  14. newplan – Good job with the analysis, that’s pretty cool! Don’t think you can fault me for not going that in-depth with my thought process, but hopefully I can get to that level in the future. I’ve seen how fast you play, so if that’s really how you think in-game that’s impressive.

    Joshua – Hey man, I appreciate the kind words. There are a lot of really good primers for the format online that offer up a number of established decks to look into. It’s very hard for me to recommend a deck to someone without knowing their goals or their playstyle. Feel free to contact me via PM or on MTGO if you’d like to talk more.

  15. Good video, but I have to take issue with one thing you said. At about 9 minutes in the Round 4 video, you have to make a decision about getting a Death Spark back. You decide to get it back, then draw a Goblin Matron, and say “It turns out that was the right decision.” That may be a simple off-the cuff remark, but it’s the wrong way to approach the decision and how you evaluate it.

    Let’s look into this a bit deeper. You are forced to make a decision (getting Death Spark) and the result depends on unknown information (the card that you draw.) Theoretically, if you had infinite time, you can analyze the probabilities and arrive at the decision that will give you the best odds of success. You obviously can’t do that in the match, but that’s not important, the important thing is that one choice is objectively better than the other. The thing is, the correct choice is always the same, REGARDLESS OF THE ULTIMATE RESULT. You can make the wrong choice and still win, or you can make the correct choice and still lose, because Magic has an element of randomness to it. The important thing is to evaluate if you made the correct choice based on the information you had at the time, rather than just assume you did because it happened to work out for you. Here is a link to a great article about this topic, that I recommend everyone read: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/chasing-victory-being-results-oriented/

  16. Konstantin – Good point, and I am already familiar with the concept you wrote about.

    Unfortunately I tend to misspeak while in the midst of a game, as multiple+multiple thoughts are being processed in my head while trying to both play and communicate to the viewers. I should have said something along the lines of “it turns out the decision worked for me this time.”

    You are welcome to take issue with things I say, but be warned that you’ll use up a lot of time if you do it on a regular basis (since I’m not always going to say exactly what I mean during the games). Thanks for sharing. Hope you keep checking out the videos!