Saturday, December 8, 2012

Grand Prix: Toronto Streaming Live

Wizards of the Coast's event coverage of GP Toronto (Modern format) will be live at http://www.twitch.tv/magicprotour December 8-9.

Enjoy!

Apologies to Rogue Deckbuilder

My apologies to Rogue Deckbuilder if you are reading this.  I did not mean to imply that your deck was trash... It was my version of the Burning Vengeance deck that was total trash.  Apologies on the confusion.  Haven't done much work on it lately.  I will work on it this weekend.

Why I bought Microsoft Windows 8

Yes... This is no typo.  My laptop made its way across the blue, memory dump beyond so I decided to take the opportunity to build a new desktop.  The plan was pretty simple... Grab some acceptable parts, throw together a rig that will give me some good upgrading options as demands on hardware increase, and install a copy of windows 7.  One little caveat, however... OEM licenses don't transfer between computers!!!!!!!!!!!  So I have to actually pay for an operating system.

Enter a unique license option for those who purchase an OEM copy of Windows 8.  If you choose the Personal Use License, you CAN transfer the license to other computers, so long as it is removed from the original computer.  It can also be transferred to the second owner of a machine with the license on it a long as you forfeit all copies of the windows 8 media that came in the package and that were made (along with the product key, proof of purchase, and perhaps sometheing else I can't remember). I'd read up on the license and on windows 8 before making any hasty decisions, however.  There is more to it than what I have said, but those are the basics.

This means if the rig just completely dies or a meteor falls on it, I can still make use of my $100 purchase.  The price point was the other factor for me.  A full fledged copy of Windows 7 would run me $179 on newegg.com.  Thats a tad too rich for my blood.

The nail in the coffin that almost made me begrudgingly place Windows 7 in my checkout cart was the lack of a start button in Windows 8's desktop environment.  Thankfully there is a wonderful, simple solution.  And it doesn't involve regedit, which no longer works as a solution since the beta anyway, or at least that's my understanding. The solution to this is Classic Shell.  It is s brilliant little open source project that re-adds the functionality of the start button.  It can be found at classicshell.sourceforge.net,  and it doubles as a way to help deal with the worthless metro environment (well... At least it is for me as of right now).

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Burning Vengeance control

I have to thank a guy on YouTube for the original idea: Rogue Deckbuilder.  His deck served as an excellent starting point for me.

Here's my list... At least for now with no testing:

(my version of this deck was trash.  After goldfishing a few hands, it became clear that the deck was a piece of garbage. I will toy around a bit to try and work out something better without just running the list he uses).




Let's start with the (seemingly) obvious 4-of's.  Burning Vengeance, Snapcaster Mage, and Pillar of Flame.  Why the last one?  The main reason is that BR aggro is the flavor of the month.  I'd be much happier using a harder hitting burn spell or some extra card draw, but dying to Gravecrawlers and Geralf's Messengers (and Falkenrath Aristocrats, oh my!) is very little fun.  Countering their Falkenrath Aristocrats can really help out your burn spells since BR aggro will no longer have a sac outlet to prevent their Gravecrawlers and Geralf's Messengers from biting the dust permanently.   Geralf's Messengers a little less of a concern because we have more reach than they do generally speaking.

I suspect decks that rely pretty heavily on the graveyard like this one aren't popular because of Tormod's Crypt being in standard... But there were a grand total of 2 in all of the sideboards of the top 16 decks at GP San Antonio.  At the moment, there is no reason whatsoever for this deck to fear graveyard hate since Tormod's Crypt is not a hard counter to the deck.  There is plenty of reach to not have to rely on Burning Vengeance triggers.

The popularity of aggro affects the build a lot, as already mentioned.  It would be a whole lot of fun to build toward a massive Epic Experiment endgame, but aggro makes those early burn spells and random Bears with Benefits extremely relevant.