Let’s Play Magic Online: Classic DE with Two Rogue Builds

I’ve just looked superficially at ChrisKool’s games, but man! – Im so looking forward to watch all this content later when I get off from work. You are even both using creative decklists. Thanks for the great content guys!

/MOBZ

Great videos guys and good to see some different stuff up. First of all, I get tired of seeing people saying “your line of play was wrong” or “your plays weren’t thought out or well played.” Well, I’m not expert like some of these commentators, but Magic is a game where you don’t know what might happen next, so one line of play is not always right. I agree that letting the metalworker resolve and waiting for a big threat to counter seems like a good idea. Anyways, I just always wonder what makes these guys the authority.
Also, I am not a constructed player, so I have a stupid question to ask, what is the difference between classic and legacy?

I’m not an expert on Classic, but some of your lines in the first series seem a little questionable:

-M1G1, for example, you have a strix and a frost titan out, and are at 4 life, he has a workshop, a factory, a golem and a sphere and you use your tezzeret to get sol ring. Why, what does it do? You already have a counterspell for anything he might cast. As it is, you are 50% dead to a land that taps for mana, if you tezzeret for another strix, you are dead to almost nothing. Getting sol ring seems, to be honest, a horrible line.

M1G2: you seem to forget what chalice does in the beginning. You cannot cast manavault with chalice at 1, as far as I am aware. Which makes the whole tinker/demonic tutor discard incident even more comedic, as tinker does not do anything without the vault yet and demonic tutor for energy flux/titan/wurmcoil engine is your best route to victory, it would seem. Later on, admittedly, you drew some artifacts that you could tinker away, but forcing the second tangle wire and just getting something big and win with it would have been the best course of action, I think.

M2: Not to many comments here. I think forcing the metalworker G1 is what you want to be doing here, though hindsight is 20/20 and I guess hoping he only has one thing you have to force is I guess a line you could take, though how realistic it is I do not know. I feel like it will work out badly a high percentage of the time, but more knowledge of classic would be needed to know for sure. G2 you did not do much wrong, he had a god draw and drew very well of the top and you were on the wrong side of it. Watching you sideboard in full blown panic is not what makes good videos, I’m afraid ;-), although you did end up with what i would have gone for, which does not necessarily mean it is correct.

M3G1: The game state: your opponent just cast show and tell, you forced, you have vampiric tutor, jace in hand, your opponent has 2 cards in hand. I think you should at least consider upkeep tutoring for something (manadrain?) since you know your opponent has one big thing(Emrakul/Griselbrand I’m guessing) and one other card. You draw, which I guess is fine since v-tutor answeres an oath, though it would be pretty bad versus another show and tell or something like a jace. Then you draw a trinket mage and cast it for a crypt. At that point you are somewhat vulnerable to a show and tell (jace helps against emrakul though not against something with shrou/hexproof or a really powerful etb ability) or an oath+ counterspell. He turns out to have only oath and you win( without playing around spell pierce for no reason) but honestly, your opponent had nothing, he died to a single force + v-tutor, it might have been better playing around more and not banking on him having nothing, those games you should be winning. I do appreciate that getting the crypt meant that if he just passes the turn you could do something proactive, like casting a jace, but playing around something/anything when you can is probably something you should do.
M3G2: no complaints, you played fine, but his draw was better. Don’t think mulling to 5 would have been productive.
Sideboarding: wait, what? You consider siding out gravediggers cage? That cannot be right, it stops his main plan. Sure, it gets hit by removal but he still needs to kill it to win with oath. Even considering it seems awful.
M3G3: I could find no great faults in your play, but the keep was terrible. The first hand has no disruption, which is bad, but at least is goes somewhere. The second hand is just not keepable. You need to draw a blue source, and then a few more manasources for the hand to do anything. Thoughtseize might slow him down, but even if it does, jace, tezzeret, wurmcoil cantrip you cannot cast is not likely to do anything and he will have all the time he needs to do whatever he needs uninterupted. You sacced out and drew a land immediately and then some more, but the likelyhood of that happening with your deck is really low.

Skimmed through m4, only comment I have is that you had the win for absolutely certain a lot earlier. If you had just recalled on the first turn you could, you would hit him down to 2, disabling his tombs, with only city in play and only a revoker, a bird, a retriever and a crypt in hand. You would also have double force up. I mean, he is dead, there, really really, really dead.

In general, your play leaves some to be desired, but magic is a hard game and that goes for almost everyone.
The deck: seems pretty sweet. The spellbomb hurt you a lot, but then you drew it a lot and I guess it is good against dredge and ok against artifact recursion. I hate the trinket mages, just as much as I hate them in legacy decks (i watch). I have yet to see a trinket mage be the perfect draw, nor something you want in your initial hand. Three mana just seems like to much in such a busted format. It does seem better in classic then in legacy as you can get crypts and sol rings which both help cast the mages and can be found by them, but it still seems clunky.
Library of alexandria: seems meh. It is good if you get it going, but it punishes mulligans, is too slow to grind out the artifact recursion decks and is not so good if you are forced to interact a lot soon with discards and/or counters.

Oh, and I do not listen to 15 minutes intro. If LSV can explain a deck in 2 minutes, you should not need more then 5…

M1G1: Should have sac’ed your crypt to the smokestack instead of your land. You didn’t really net any mana since you couldn’t use your fetch land (being at 4 not wanting to risk going to 3) It was the only thing that had a decent chance of killing you. Then you’re worried/forget about the mishra’s factory but you get a soul ring instead of another strix with Tez. Finally, when going deep for the snapcaster you brainstorm first……should have thirsted then brainstormed it let’s you see more cards. Even though I don’t think you had the mana to cast a spell after both so irrelevant.

Sure, PW, you’ll get some comments.
M1G1: yeah, platinum angel seems pretty bad. They cannot win with it on the board, but it does little otherwise, feels like they will remove it and win quite often. Elesh norn or sheoldred or even something like vindicate-angel will do more on quite a few board states.
M1G2: pretty easy against a mull to 5.
M1G3: despite not being to familiar with his deck you make some glaring mistakes. Your decks hurts you, a lot, and you have no way of winning without killing the solifuge, just taking it a couple of times basically lost you the game and just by the simple reasoning: “I cannot win without killing it if he just keeps attacking with it or keeps it back to block” you could have come to the conclusion you needed to block: the first time around. Now you have effectively locked him out of winning with his combo between thorn, the revoker and soon the golemn and you just die to random beats, which is pretty bad. Miscounting the mana you need for things when you are the one playing thorn and stuff is obviously not the mark of good magic, but everyone makes mistakes.
M2G1: PLAY FASTER. Seriously. Your play was ok, you needed to worry about your life a bit earlier, I feel, but playing faster is both better for your clock as well as your viewers.
M2G2: yeah, his hands were better
M2G3: null rod blows you out, nothing you can do about it though, I think.

M3: play faster. Your deck is complicated, but not THAT complicated, especially if you have played it a couple of times. Game 1 was surely winnable but in the pile that is 20 minutes of your clock against 5 of his, it is difficult to find the exact lines where you went wrong.

M4: does not exist.

General comments: play faster. Learn your deck, make the different types of artefact and mana math internal. You should be able to see in 5 seconds that playing a seat of the synod lets you do the same things as a ancient tomb turn 1 and then make the decision in 10, yet you took 3 minutes. On mtgo the clock can win matches just as much as finding the perfect play. Sometimes it isn’t about the perfect play in the least amount of time but a decent play in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you cannot always find the perfect play anyways, or the different plays are weak to different things . When you are in game 1 with 10 minutes on the clock, you are in the decent plays in decent times zone.
Also: 42 minute matches are too long.

The content in general is pretty enjoyable, as long as one is willing to skim through parts of it and doesn’t mind non-perfect play (and perfect play is HARD) in exchange for novel content on an interesting format.