[Off-Topic] Community Chat Thread

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ISBPathfinder
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

I remember seeing a few lists back in the day that were essentially just a decklist and the owners were calling them primers. The hope was that we could improve information for readers and give highlight to those who went through the work to prop up their work and ensure it was highly informative.
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bobthefunny
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Post by bobthefunny » 4 years ago

ISBPathfinder wrote:
4 years ago
I remember seeing a few lists back in the day that were essentially just a decklist and the owners were calling them primers. The hope was that we could improve information for readers and give highlight to those who went through the work to prop up their work and ensure it was highly informative.
I still remember talking to you and Viper back when you two got the whole thing started.

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SocorroTortoise
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Post by SocorroTortoise » 4 years ago

Yeah, we cleaned up a ton of bad primers when kicking off that rework. It also meant that there was incentive to maintain a library of them, rather than just searching or browsing until you found what you were after.

It has had the effect of consolidating some of the discussion about a given general, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Giving the discussion a home is beneficial for a lot of the same reasons that it is in other formats, but I do feel that it homogenizes decks a little. This format is almost certainly the best for doing unique things, so it's a little disappointing when people clone an existing deck instead of building from scratch (no matter how flattering it is or how much inspiration I also draw from existing lists and resources).
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Post by Hermes_ » 4 years ago

I thought about submitting my Rat deck for primer status back over at sally,but i'm lazy and even now,i'm not sure if i could just copy it over as is and submit with the template. https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the ... ta-tat-tat
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Post by lyonhaert » 4 years ago

At the same time (replying to ST), cloning is often where people start. It's were I started with Chainer, cloning from jmdt's old primer that has almost 40 pages in the thread. But now I've gone down my own path with it and part of that path was inspired by tstorm823's Zedruu, actually.

I don't consider it a "bad" thing, per se, when a person builds somebody else's list exactly. As the popularity of this format grew, there's was going to be folks that either don't know how to build well enough to create their own from scratch, simply aren't creative enough and need a template to follow, or just don't have as much time on their hands for building from scratch. Shortcuts get taken, but I don't think primers are the cause of that - kindof like how some cards can be used in infinite combos, but the cards don't cause players to build infinite combos into their deck.
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SocorroTortoise
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Post by SocorroTortoise » 4 years ago

For sure. Don't get me wrong, I have no problems with people copying from other lists, whether that's a card for card clone, interesting interactions, themes, whatever. I do that more or less constantly. I'm more curious whether we would see a wider variety of decks for any given general with less centralized discussion. If you browse around forums or social media, you'll see lots of discussion about how such-and-such general is an X deck, or how they always run whatever specific card and that really feels like it's selling the potential of the format short. Primers are definitely not the root cause of that (I don't think they're even one of the strong causes, outside of maybe cEDH where the expectation is different) and I think they're an overall positive influence on the community. I still like seeing the unique ideas more than the clones.
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Post by lyonhaert » 4 years ago

Maybe the centralized discussion ends up hiding the variants in some cases. For example, the MTGS Zada Arcane Storm thread was centralized discussion for the commander, but not everybody was running the arcane package and a number of folks had some different spins on their build. So sprinkled throughout the thread were decklist posts from other players of whatever their take on it happened to be at the time.
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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person mad enough to jam 18 wincons into one EDH deck, but if I do get Primer status and other people post their variants up, honestly I'll consider that a win.

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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

As second gen (or was it third?) of the primer Committee that was part of helping to really make it something official, I always took it as a point of pride that other sites began copying our formatting and style. Even to this day I see elements of it when Sheldon does his general builds for SCG, among other sites.

Even though I have only been loosely a part of the primer team for many years now, I am really proud of everyone that was and is involved for all the hard work they have done in making our primers the best around.
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Post by tstorm823 » 4 years ago

cryogen wrote:
4 years ago
making our primers the best around.
Nothin's ever gonna keep em down!
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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

So, what's everyone's current thoughts for the next deck they're building? I'm tweaking Golos a fair bit at the moment, and I've got finishing touches to make to a Noyan Dar deck before I throw the decklist up, so I'm feeling a little starved of just chucking big dudes at the table and turning them sideways. Luckily, I was reminded that Tanhgarth, First Mate got printed today, and as the only one of the legends out of the recent precons that made me sit up I'd quite like to build him next I think.

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Post by lyonhaert » 4 years ago

Well, Chainer needs a lot of testing and probably more rounds of swaps following the testing. Ayula needs some tweaks for adding a couple more tribal cards I finally got (such as Door of Destinies. Then probably the next couple are a severe rebuild of Marchesa, the Black Rose and Samut, Voice of Dissent - not sure which will be first, though.
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Post by vandertroll » 4 years ago

Dragonlover wrote:
4 years ago
So, what's everyone's current thoughts for the next deck they're building? I'm tweaking Golos a fair bit at the moment, and I've got finishing touches to make to a Noyan Dar deck before I throw the decklist up, so I'm feeling a little starved of just chucking big dudes at the table and turning them sideways. Luckily, I was reminded that Tanhgarth, First Mate got printed today, and as the only one of the legends out of the recent precons that made me sit up I'd quite like to build him next I think.

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I decided to make 5 monocolored decks. I will aim to try and sort of ''break'' the weakness of each color.
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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

I still have my Muldrotha deck I need to tweak, but I also want to build a Chulane deck when it the new set comes out. I haven't even looked at the full spoiler let alone online vendors to see how expensive it's gonna be getting singles, but I'm not looking forward to buying cards from the Brawl decks.
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Post by Rumpy5897 » 4 years ago

Arcane Signet is an arm and a leg. I'm hoping it comes down with the promised second print run of brawl decks and once people start ripping collector boosters, but this is turning out about as bad as I feared it would. Add in WotC now deciding that it's too expensive to reprint and we've got a trainwreck on our hands.
 
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Post by Sanity_Eclipse » 4 years ago

Dragonlover wrote:
4 years ago
So, what's everyone's current thoughts for the next deck they're building? I'm tweaking Golos a fair bit at the moment, and I've got finishing touches to make to a Noyan Dar deck before I throw the decklist up, so I'm feeling a little starved of just chucking big dudes at the table and turning them sideways. Luckily, I was reminded that Tanhgarth, First Mate got printed today, and as the only one of the legends out of the recent precons that made me sit up I'd quite like to build him next I think.

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I'm rather Lands-focused at the moment. I've picked up a couple more Crucibles, and built Chandra with some Lands sorta stuff. Am building Liliana with some of the same, and a bit of Pox-ness too. Craving a GUR Lands.dec general, Lands.dec seems fun.

If we're gonna have to wait the better part of a decade and a dozen reprints for Commander Signet to be affordable the way Sol Ring is, well, then, that's not ideal.
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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

I've got a whole lot of Selesnya staples burning a hole in my folder and I'm not sure what to do with them. Stuff like Safari, Lark, Karmic, Norn, Chord, Fauna Shaman, a few other cool bits. I haven't seen anything that really screams for me to build with them. They all cane out of a Ghave deck a little while ago.

I'd do for shards or wedges too, I've never built Bant or Naya. So that's my next build, make something...somehow....of that stuff.
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Post by Hermes_ » 4 years ago

I currently don't have any ideas for another deck..
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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

Rumpy5897 wrote:
4 years ago
Arcane Signet is an arm and a leg. I'm hoping it comes down with the promised second print run of brawl decks and once people start ripping collector boosters, but this is turning out about as bad as I feared it would. Add in WotC now deciding that it's too expensive to reprint and we've got a trainwreck on our hands.
Well for my part I'm pleading to the powers that be to put it in the precons instead of Sol Ring next year.
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Post by TheGildedGoose » 4 years ago

In my never ending quest to build a blue-based control deck I'm satisfied with, I've dived head first into my Nicol Bolas list and have been goldfishing/testing it incessantly for a couple of weeks or so. I'm thinking of assembling it in paper with a bunch of proxies soon to playtest it in the wild before I make any purchases. My next project after that is updating and tweaking my Daretti list; I played it Saturday and found out that Karn's Bastion plus an opponent's Awakening and no one attacking my planeswalker is a good way to win the game.
cryogen wrote:
4 years ago
Well for my part I'm pleading to the powers that be to put it in the precons instead of Sol Ring next year.
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Post by Toshi » 4 years ago

cryogen wrote:
4 years ago
Well for my part I'm pleading to the powers that be to put it in the precons instead of Sol Ring next year.
Yes, please!
Cutting Sol Ring for Arcane Signet would be exactly my kind of tweak to the Precons.
Dragonlover wrote:
4 years ago
So, what's everyone's current thoughts for the next deck they're building?
For the last 2-3 months i wasn't able to play as much EDH, as i'd wish i had. I still have a few cards for Lazav, the Multifarious and others that need deck slots to open up and didn't even pick up most M20 cards... i hate making cuts to well tuned decks!

As long as i haven't finished Archangel Avacyn // Avacyn, the Purifier, Kambal, Consul of Allocation and Slimefoot, the Stowaway i will not be looking at entirely new decks.

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Post by Yatsufusa » 4 years ago

Dragonlover wrote:
4 years ago
So, what's everyone's current thoughts for the next deck they're building?
I did a "reboot" of my suite of decks to divide my utility resources more evenly across my decks. This is usually the major time for a potential "upset" to happen (meaning a new commander convinces me to re-balance my color distribution), but ultimately nothing changed (I couldn't give up Ryusei for Pramikon, and Yarok seemed only nice on paper, I figured I could make Field of the Dead work in Kethis anyway). So only Karador ceded the Commander position to Kethis, but my Color compositions remained the same.

A "reboot" sounds overkill, but sometimes I need it otherwise I'd never be able to streamline focus on some decks that need it, and the last iteration didn't focus on utility cards as hard as it should have, resulting in some decks with too many and others too little. The Kethis usurpation also did upset the reanimation balance between Karador/Alesha, so that needed some intervention I preferred building from the start again.
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Post by Airi » 4 years ago

I did something kind of similar, where I cleaned out a lot of my more established decks to fix gaps I had in colors and strategies. I'd still like to add one more deck, but I haven't found the right general for it. Hopefully, I get something out of Return to Theros, because I love the aesthetic of that plane.

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Post by toctheyounger » 4 years ago

I've done similar recently. Rebalancing is a good thing in general in that it encourages you to reassess if and when you actually play the decks you have built. In my case Zedruu fell apart with this assessment, and Edgar Markov may do so shortly, too.

It does mean I'm now left with a folder of stuff that really ought to be played, so it's a somewhat redundant exercise in that respect. Waiting for the right commander, I guess. I've been side eyeing Kethis, but I'm not sure if it would end up being something unique or just legendary combo.dec.
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Post by unicornturtle2000 » 4 years ago

Sup bois!
First time on this thread looks super interesting nice to find something that isn't MTG related (no hate to MTG luv it)

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