Dime a Dozen #3: War Ensemble

Posted on August 14, 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

 

  3. joe/August – Good question guys. The opponent requested not to be recorded, so we did what we could to honor his/her wishes. Sorry for the inconvenience. How do you like the rest of the videos?

  4. Hello, just wondering if you would consider suture priest as a sideboard option against the mono black match up?

  5. wyldcat – Hi! I’ve never really considered it. What is your reasoning there?

  6. Enjoyed the first video, will watch the rest later. You probably didn’t need to blur out your opponents life total, you could have just blurred the name as I think if I was to look at a list of avatars I could tell what his or hers was anyway. Also your opponents name is visible for parts of the video in the a white box in the top right, in the chat window at 22:33 and finally right at the end where the results screen is breifly displayed. Props for trying to hide the name though I think that’s a nice thing to do.

  7. Hi Jason! Isn’t Standard Bearer a sideboard option against the storm deck, since they have to target it with every copy of Grapeshot? I’d take out the tapping guys and possibly another hawk for them.

  8. Phil – Hey how’s it going? Unfortunately Standard Bearer doesn’t work that way. I wish it did though!

  9. Yeah, i just read up on the storm ruling – the Grapeshot copies don’t count as “cast”.

  13. Sorry all. I did my best to blur the name out. I know that if you look for it in the right spots at the right times, you can still see it, but after I recognized this, I knew also that someone could just look at the match results at any other point, do some math, and figure it out anyway. Sorry about the life total (never had someone request not to be recorded before), and editing the video was kind of difficult given the constraints of our process. Over the course of the day, I’ll try to change it a little to make the life total visible.

  14. Round 3 Game 1… late in the game when you had the two squadron hawks, cathar and just drew the bonesplitter… i’m not sure why you dont equip the cathar and swing in with it. did you perhaps forget that the cathar has vigilance? equipping it to a 4/2 vigilance either makes him unable to do any more pinging if he chooses to take it down to 1 life, or at the worst you trade w/ one of his guys and get a 2/1 untapped zombie at EOT.

    the key there was to clear his board as much as you could. in hindsight… you needed to stay above two life, and they only way that happens is if you either A) had two blockers, which you weren’t going to, or killed one of his 2/2′s in the wake of it, which you would have if you equipped and attacked with the cathar.

  15. Max M – I appreciate your comment very much.

    deranged_hermit – I did not forget about the vigilance. Perhaps if I considered my turn for a little while longer I would’ve decided to make your play.

  17. Thanks for the vids. it’s a nice build I think. Definitely like having all basic lands, people get way too greedy with the steppes imo. The armorer’s are an interesting innovation and obviously work well in both creature matchups and vs faeries. But I feel like creature decks and faeries are already good matchups for WW (especially with post-board tricks), and it doesn’t do much to help you vs your bad matchups; eg. UR post, storm, infect. He also doesn’t do much vs affinity if you don’t draw it in multiples becuase all of their creatures have 4 attack, so you’re still going to be trading. Idk if a split of doomed travellers and guardian’s would help all that much there, but that at least gives you more 1 drops and a late game answer vs capsize and other shenanigans.

    The sideboard seems to be a little bit cute, the longbow again looks like it’s doing work for you in matches (esp delver) where you’re already favoured. It’s also has a pretty huge mana cost. I feel like an acolyte, either obsidian or crismon or a split of both, would do better – crimson is great at keeping the beats going vs UR post, and obsidian gives you some game vs black removal, including the UB decks that are gaining popularity. Alternatively holy light also gives you some more outs vs empty the warrens, and can also do a mass “longbow” vs stuff like goblins. Also any particular reason to play disenchant not revoke existence? Revoke’s better vs infect, where I think you could side it in to remove both ichorcid myr and rancor. Idk, maybe the exile doesn’t matter or maybe infect’s favourable enough anyway with standard bearers.

  18. I think it was nice of you guys to make an effort to hide the guy’s name. In my opinion he seemed like kind of a jerk and think he was just saying that to continue being a jerk. Takes some class to handle it that well. Anyways, Jason, I enjoy your commentating. You are very thorough. I have tried pauper before and to me it seems like everyone plays the same handfuls of decks, so I stopped. I may try again sometime though.

  19. Nice video, you speak very clearly and also have a strong grasp on the game, more of this please!

  20. I really enjoyed this one as well. Nice contrast to last episode’s control deck.

    I can’t wait to see what comes next!

  21. PB – You are right that creature matchups tend to be WW’s strong suit, but I have to suggest playing the Armorer before writing him off. Notice how he made mince meat out of Round 1 for me, and can protect my guys from certain problematic removal. Sure he doesn’t help much vs. Affinity, but that is just one matchup.

    Yes Longbow sometimes is win-more (vs. Fae for instance), but again try it to see it’s usefulness. It is primarily mirror tech, and the mirror is highly attrition based, you WILL get to points where your mana is free to equip multiple times.

    Holy Light is very handy against Goblins, and vs. Storm it is situational (like all of our answers to Storm). It may be worth including in the sideboard along with Revoke. However, Revoke’s only real advantages are against Rancor and Disciple of the Vault, making Disenchant most likely better. Thank you for your input, I appreciate it!

    Bob – Thanks for your observations. Pauper is certainly worth another shot, the metagame is quite healthy.

    Mental_Magic – There should be more on the way! Any suggestions?

    MMogg – Thank you for watching.

  22. hello Jason,
    My reasoning for sutured priest in mono black is that half of mono blacks hand destruction is in the form of creatures. Your match up with mono black seemed very tight. I believe the life gain / loss could have swung the race in your favor.

  24. What a crowd pleaser! I ask for classic frame basic lands and look what happens. :D

    lol @ the first round opponent. At first I thought he was asking you to make videos of other “top decks.” He’s a major whiner either way. I remember him playing infect a lot and bitching when he couldn’t save his creature from burn spells.

    This is becoming one of my favorite series on here.

  25. wyldcat – I see what you’re saying. It’s probably better just to play some proper MBC hate in the board if their deck is making enough appearances.

    Paulo7 – Thank you very much buddy!

    Rick – To be fair I already owned those (I have quite a few basic Plains to work with). I’m glad you’re enjoying the series, and thanks for the comment!

  28. R3G2 he’s at 1 life (you’re at 4) and has a rager and a specter in play. You draw journey and use it on the specter. If you use it on the rager you then have him dead to a skyfisher (bounce the journey and it re-triggers the rager, killing him). Otherwise your only out is to draw another removal spell and another creature to damage him. It didn’t matter in that game but…