about myself

like an oracle update i would like to do to myself. my name is weng rongcan. close friends from NS calls me affectionately as weng. close friends from my workplace calls me alex. close friends from my secondary school calls me rongcan pronounced as rong chan. close friends from my poly and uni calls me rongcan pronounced as rongcan. LOL

I am an avid Magic player and have been in the game since primary school days. I started out as a black player but eventually i fell in love with blue. probably because i like to think too much. blue cards are always about thinking. brainstorm, ponder, think twice etc. last time i was a noob and wasnt so familiar with the rules and with the things that blue could do. blue was just so powerful that it could do everything to the point that people suggested island should be banned.

i started with playing a mono black control deck with hynoptic specter and vampires like sengir vampire and krovikan vampire. a 1st turn dark ritual into hypnotic specter is so damn shiok! then came urza's saga in my secondary school days and OMG all the powerful black cards!!! duress, corrupt, darkest hour, yawgmoth's will, yawgmoth's bargain... but it didnt last long as yawgmoth's bargain and necropotence was banned :(. my friend's capsize deck couldnt even beat me. hahahaz.

i then stopped for a while because that woman threw away my deck when i quarrelled with her. and also due to me not hanging out with my secondary school players anymore. it was until i went to work at mac then i got my paycheck back and met my longtime playtest partner wenjun. i built the rebel deck and went to my first friday night magic (FNM) at serene center. i lost badly but i saw a lot of decks there. i could still remember my first match up against enchantress which i didnt even know how to beat! my second match up was against a UW control with weathered wayfarer. it had rewind and decree of justice. i immediately fell in love. that deck could say go and then think of what to do at the opponent's end of turn. therefore i built it and played it all the way till the first extended GP singapore. i bought flooded strands that time was S$10ea.

i needed an extended deck for gp singapore but i couldnt finish my psychatog deck in time so i borrowed pieces from my friends to build slide deck. i traded away my flooded strands for windswept heath at no top up:(. i scrubbed and decided to drop and go meet my gf. qs told me he was at that tourney too but i didnt see him. lol. then after this tourney my friends suddenly decide to take a break from magic and i took too. but i didnt desert the game. i did complete my 'tog deck but his mortal enemy was printed. sad.

fast forward to my army days. it was a twist of fate that I should meet qs who reignited the Magic player in me. Our conversation ever since then never fails to bring up the game but this is the story for this post. i played roughly all the blue decks in extended because i couldnt afford a set of tarmogoyfs. i sold away the windswept heaths and bought back flooded strands for S$12ea. eventually i top S$2 to turn those flooded strands into "溢れかえる岸辺". i also bought polluted delta at $28ea. i even bought another set for 1 of my friend who said he wanted it. he didnt buy from me in the end :)

in army days i played izzet tron with original antiquities 12 different tron artworks and usually got my tron pieces vindicated and extirpated by qs who's playing a zoo deck. after that i had a little success playing reveillark deck. then we moved on to extended where we had the most fun. we went to bishan's asia card shop as it was still called. my bobs which were borrowed from james never helped me to win games and often lost me the games...but won me games in tourneys... a theme which continued to this day. cwwwww didnt have to top to use counterbalance and i always topped to 3 lands. i couldnt afford goyfs that time so i played something that could eat goyfs alive... jotun grunts. that deck stayed with me all the time until i sold most of the bulk away. that was another turning point of my life. i loved those jap onslaught fetchlands and jap counterbalance so much.

so we played until we ord. then we took a break from compettive but still invested in a bit and got all the zendikar fetchlands for S$140.

i broke up with my girlfriend and in a folly 看不开 and sold all my prized possessions. even those goyfs i bought for S$50 when i helped qs to clear. all except my whole set of zendikar fetchlands and here i am now. upgraded and my life turned for the better. i improved in every aspect of my life, even in the aspect of struggling. ive gotten myself a wonderful girlfriend. i got a job which allowed me to get what i am playing now. i thank God.

then extended officially died and modern came along. but i only have fetchlands and i found out that my fetchlands have quadrupled in price! hahaz. during one of the reservists at the request of qs i brought in 2 of my decks to play and one of my section mates asked me this famous quotes..."weng, why got proxies ar? no money buy ar?" at this point my mind snapped. it triggered something in me. i went out to prove to him that is not i dont have the money to buy but i needed to test before buying the cards. anyway thanks birdman :) and the rest is history

• i topped up $8ea to upgrade my ur, ug and gb fetchlands to jap
• i bought jap shocks at S$10ea when people were still playing innistrad cards.
• i bought jap deathrite shaman for S$8ea when they were not popular in modern yet.
• i bought english tarmogoyfs at S$100 and people said im crazy. furthermore i paid S$45ea to upgrade all of them to jap goyfs. so how is it? still laughing at me?
• i bought jap dark confidants at S$75ea and people also laughed at me.
• i bought jap liliana of the veil at S$50ea and people still laughed at me.
• i bought jap lorwyn thoughtseize at S$50 after averaging out the price for the first 3. go ahead and laugh but we'll see when it rotates ><

most of it were thanks to hareruya. after the last thoughtseize it was to the point of no return. eventually my whole deck was japanese. to me fun cannot be monetized. to pay for hours and hours of fun is acceptable to me. being able to particpate in tourneys and win stuffs is a bonus. being able to cash out and recoup everything after having fun with the cards is something i cannot even imagine. being able to cash AND make a profit is wow...just WOW! but i just cannot believe some people see all this as just $$$. i purposelu left that part of my magic career out just so that i can rant on an entire post just on that outcast of a disciple i wish i didnt have.

Dies to removal

Jason: U willing to spend how much on goyf?
Player x:At most $200ea
Player x: But I kinda feel reluctant to pay so much for a card that gets pathed lol.
Me: Then play bogle lo
(Bonus) player x: haha then I can cont buying FS boosters. Since daybreak coronet also from there.

To the above player x. I would say. Just quit playing magic la. You can go open whatever packs you want with your abnn friend but I don’t care la. Just don’t drag my friend into opening packs with you just so that when he open good stuffs you can buy it for “friendship price” from him. Or I can sell you my path to exile for 200.01sgd, since path kills goyf so path should be more expensive here right? Knnbccb your money eye will never see the true value of the cards la.

/rant

What is dies to removal? Why do so many people use this argument all the time? Why sometimes dies to removal is a good thing? Why does tarmogoyf and some other creatures still cost so much more money than some of the best removal spells in the format?

All decks except combo decks play removals. However combo decks like tron, twins, pod play “wipes” or try to incorporate tempo elements and play “pinpoint” removals. So what are wipes and pinpoint
removals? Why play them? Why play one over the other?

Seasoned players can skip the next few paragraphs 
/*****************************************************
Removals are separated into wipes and pinpoint.
Wipes are also known as sweeps, resets and “wrath”. They do things to each and/or all stuffs. They cost a bit more, they clear a bunch of things at the cost of 1 card. Sometimes they deal damage across the board. Sometimes they do -X/-X across to everyone, sometimes they just outright destroy stuffs.

Pinpoint are removals that “target”. Things like do this to target stuffs. They tend to be cheaper but they are often clear 1 thing at the cost of 1 card, unless... sometimes they do damage to target creature or player; sometimes they just outright destroy/remove the creature.
*****************************************************/

For some reasons I decided to not talk about edicts as they do require some kind of setups in order to function ideally.

Dies to removals means it goes into the graveyard. Anything and everything can go into the graveyard. Creatures with backside <3? burn. Creatures with backside >3? Destroy effects. Shroud/hexproof? Wipes. Indestructible? Remove/exile them, edict them or bounce(return to their hand) them.

Most people use “dies to removal” just to offset their own thoughts that that creature is lousy, useless and ineffective. I have casted hundreds of snapcaster mages and they usually died anyways. Even dark confidant sometimes takes a bolt for the team. And when he don’t, he wins the game for me… but he sometimes also loses it for me. So does dark confidant deserve his price tag?

There’s this class of creatures so powerful that they CANNOT be allowed to stick for even a turn. This class of creatures either comes with insanely strong abilities that take you so far ahead than the opponent, or have a godly come-into-play/enter-the-battlefield ability or merely undercosted. They must die once you see them. Dark confidant, deathrite shaman are some things that exist in this class. They generate so much advantage that it’s hard to get back on. This class of creatures at the very least helps take a removal that is intended for something else. This is when they dies to removals is actually a +point.

eg.1 i have a dark confidant and a tarmogoyf. i know you got 1x abrupt decay so if i play dark confidant first then you will use your abrupt decay on it then i can play tarmogoyf safely.
eg.2 if you spent 2 mana to kill a 1cc creature then I am ahead. I can then spend my 1 mana to do something else.

But what if your opponent play something that puts 2 permanents into play? For example your opponent spent 4 mana to play huntmaster of the fells. You play lightning bolt on the huntmaster of the fells itself but you still have got to take care of the wolf token! Although you have spent lesser mana but In this case you would be a card down. wouldn’t it be better if you played a pyroclasm or a electrolyze and get a card back?

Whenever you play a removal spell, try to get an advantage here and there so it adds up and hopefully it will take you ahead enough for you to win the game. try not to get 2for1 in the huntmaster of the fells example above.

So does a creature still seems bad even if it “dies to removal”? I don’t think so.

jund jund jund.

this time we have a guest writer to just got top 8 the first tourney of the year 2014! jason chen! without much ado... lets enjoy the first of this 3 part gem!

Jund, the King of Midrange. Part 1 of 3
As the title suggests, this will be an unabashed overview of my favourite deck in the Modern format. Having played this deck intensively for almost 3 months, I would like to share some of my insights with my friends and team mates and should they choose to pilot it or play against it in the future, to understand its intricacies. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my long-time playtest partner Alex Weng for creating this wonderful sharing platform. It is the beginning of many more personal anecdotes, tips, tricks and strategies of Magic: The Gathering.

Before I delve deeper into the subject proper, allow me to give an introduction of myself and my Magic history. Friends who have known me long enough or in NS call me Qs. I am an avid Magic player and have been in the game since secondary school days. I started out as a green player, literally and figuratively. Literally because Green was and still is one of my favourite colours in Magic. Having cards with real life parallels made Green a colour I could identify with. I had many fond memories of my Green Stompy deck, not much by today’s standards, but it was immensely satisfying to swing across the battlefield with an oversized fatty. Figuratively, I was considered a greenhorn because I would occupy myself with trivial details such as the flavour text and artist rather than how the card actually interacted with other cards in my deck. I guess this was another reason why I was attracted to green. It allowed me to put together a deck with little to no synergy, and still win me games. I wasn’t much of a Constructed player back then, though I did play in the 2007 Grand Prix Singapore piloting a Blue Green Madness deck (discarding Wonder to Wild Mongrel to give it flying was considered cool). After that, I tinkered a bit with a Temporary Solution deck (a toolbox of sorts held together by the search engine Enlightened Tutor) before I decided to stop playing Magic for good. Magic is a game where you need an active group of friends around you to keep it alive. It just wasn’t that popular among my friends back then.

Fast forward to my NS days, it was a twist of fate that I should meet Weng who reignited the Magic player in me. Our conversation ever since then never fails to bring up the game but this is a story for another post. To cut the story short, I played almost every standard deck that was good during those days. It was the Ravnica-Time Spiral block and I had access to some of the most powerful spells in Magic that are still causing problems today. We eventually ventured into the Extended format, which I will leave it to Weng to share our exploits and fun filled games. After NS, I took a hiatus from Magic again and it wasn’t until last reservist that my love for the game was once again reignited. I guess you can call me a fanatic at heart. You can take away my cards but you cannot take away my accumulated knowledge of the trivial details. Weng can attest to that. Having experimented with numerous Modern decks, I finally settled on a black-green-red midrange deck from a shard of Alara. This deck is notorious in the format for good reasons, and this leads me to my article, Jund, the King of Midrange.

In the first of a three part series, I will begin by explaining to you why Jund is so strong a deck. Rather than reiterate what experts have already commented about the deck, this article aims to provide personal insights while playing the deck and dare I say add on to the immense literature that the deck currently has. In part two, I will share my list here and explain my card choices. In the final instalment, I will provide an overview of how Jund fares against the rest and some advice on piloting as well as going against Jund. I hope you will enjoy reading these articles as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

Jund is at its core a midrange deck. What this means is that it does not seek to win by turn 4 (Modern is a 4 turn format) nor does it benefit if the game drags on infinitely (though Jund can certainly hold its own in these games). In my opinion, it does 3 simple things extremely well, brutal if I may even call it. They are removing opponent’s creatures, disrupting your opponent’s game plan and landing its own game winner. As to which cards serve these purposes will be covered in Part 2. I will now attempt to go through the strengths of Jund based on these 3 facets of the deck.

Strength

• Removing opposing creatures does not warrant a big hooha from any critic but the very fact that Jund does this extremely well and is able to capitalise from it deserves a mention. With so many removals packed in the deck, opposing creatures are not expected to stick around for long (read Bob and DRS). With the path clear, Jund’s very own beatstick will make short work of the opponent in no time.
  
• Being able to disrupt your opponent’s game plan is perhaps one of the most powerful things you can do in Magic. Imagine keeping a hand with a key card that you prayed very hard that you could cast only for it to be stripped away by a certain 1 mana sorcery. Imagine this feeling amplified throughout that game as Jund continues to find ways to strip your hand of key cards. Good game. The fact that Jund is able to disrupt opponent’s game plan makes it favourable in almost every matchup. But other decks could run the same suite of disruption you say. Well, as with the previous point, Jund is able to capitalise profitably after said removal and/or disruption. Not many decks can do that effortlessly.
  
• Landing game winners is usually the stuff control decks are made of. Hold the fort until you can land a Baneslayer Angel or the sorts to seal your opponent’s fate. Well, sorry to disappoint but Jund could do that on the second turn with a Tarmogoyf. When left unanswered, several of Jund’s cards will threaten to take over the game. Again, I dare say that not many decks in Modern have the capability of boasting several game winners in their list of 75.
  

Having covered the 3 main pillars of Jund, I would now like to go into advantages that perhaps we might have overlooked or have taken granted for playing such a powerful deck

• Jund has several 1 drops that are absolutely devastating in their own ways. Lead with a DRS and you are ahead. Lead with pinpoint discard and you have information and most likely have disrupted your opponent’s game plan. If all else fails, putting a tapped manland is not bad at all. You know the manland will cause some trouble come turn 3 onwards. Being able to land 1 drops consistently is a powerful thing to do. You are raising the tempo of the game rather than sit back and “draw-go”. It brings the fight to your opponent’s door step.
  
• The quality of Jund’s 2 drops is unquestionable. Magic has been referred to as the game of 2 drops. You are applying pressure early in the game with either goyf or the “must-kill” Bob. Either way, your opponent will feel uneasy if any sticks. While other 2 drops fade away or become obsolete as the game progresses, Jund’s 2 drops “strangely” gets better over the course of the game. I wonder why [Symbol]
  
• Planeswalkers are a pain in the butt. They often force the opponent to deal with it or risk having the planeswalker take over the game entirely. Jund is blessed with Modern’s most powerful planeswalker, Liliana of the Veil.
  
• Jack of all trades, master of none. Jund does everything well yet does not shine in a single department. No deck has more removals than a UWR control with Snapcaster shenanigans thrown in. No deck has more creatures than Pod, whose creatures double as midrange attackers by day and combo wannabes by night. No deck is more disruptive than Mono black discard/8 rack. Jund cannot and does not claim to be better than these decks in a specific department. Yet it can win against these decks simply because it can do a strong follow up after a “specific action”. Burn and swing, disrupt and land a winner etc etc.
  
• Unlike many other decks, Jund does not have a linear strategy. It seeks to sin through “fair” play by removing, disrupting and good old creature interactions in the red zone. While this means that Jund cannot outrightly (though it can at times) win against other decks, it also means that it does not fold to a specific hate strategy. You can make life difficult for Jund, but you cannot shut it out entirely. Decks like Affinity, Storm, Combo variants are examples of decks that can be hated out.
  Though there are many many more points, I simply cannot write everything. I would like to end off the strengths of Jund with what I believe is its greatest quality, depth. It is resilient against board sweeps (manlands, planeswalkers), aggro rush (tons of removal), fatties (cheap removals), control decks (early pressure with Tarmogoyf), graveyard based strategies (DRS and Ooze). Anything else there is always pinpoint discard. It is a deck with so much raw power that the player is often spoilt for choice as to how to dismantle the opponent’s strategy. In the next part of this series, I will share with you my deck list and do a breakdown of the individual cards in the list. In such a powerful deck, cards need to justify their place just like a Real Madrid team.
  

Till then.
Qs [Symbol]

report sgcard 1/1/2014

its the new year day. qs and me from my team went to sgcards as medic jio-ed us. ask us to ask for permission say its his bday or what but then he himself never go. end up both of went to do battle. i even brought the cards that terence want to borrow from me. straight to the games. i try to keep it short. i played this list

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25854_Jamming-Modern.html

scroll down to the uwr geist list 2nd at protour qualifier except for the following changes.

mb
-2x sphinx revelation +2x remand (i like remand, it won me lots of games i should be losing)
sb
2x negate
1x izzet charm
3x leyline of sanctity
1x path to exile
1x tectonic edge
2x supreme verdict
2x engineered explosives
1x lightning helix
2x wear/tear

(wrath of god can be countered, nobody plays thrun anymore... i have seen affinity fighting through stony silence wtih etched champion so its not a "i win" card. we have a good matchup against tron anyways, so sowing salt and stony silence are not needed. wear/tear fights affinity and bogles and twins and spellskites. not bad. izzet charm is a spell pierce with burn for DRS and sometimes you can catch a scavenging ooze with its pants down)

round 1 tokens he's new but his friend the ns guy playing jund keep giving him advice. i told him to shut up. i said sorry to him after that anyways.

game 1 tidehollow sculler keep taking my path to exile. he then played intangible virtue and attacked me with tidehollow sculler, i should have blocked with GST#1 end up i block the 3/3 vor token. i swing back with GST#2 and vcliques and colonnade(13dmg!) when i see his hand has nothing to push through damage. he left 1. he top deck intangible virtue...

game 2 i side in sweeps, negate and wear/tear. turn 1 ee for 0. counter and burn any thing that try to stick. thats that

game 3 he starts with vor, then vor, then vor. i burn, supreme verdict and then stabilise at 1 life. i had a bolt for the last vor and ee for 0. but i cant crack fetch for R. so thats that.

1-2, 0-0-1

round 2 rg aggro. some one from ahjianz team

game 1 i had a starting hand of 2x tectonic edge, 1x island, 1x mountain and no bolt and cryptics. hes got no gguide. made a mistake to electolyze AFTER he declare attacker so he ghorclan rampager bloodrushed 1x burning-tree emissary. eventually he got there.
game 2 i side in life gain, cheap removals and ee i thought i stabilised... then he topdeck..... flinthoof boar. anything that deals 3 dmg would get him there anyway so...

0-2, 0-0-2

round 3 bye

2-0 , 1-0-2

round 4 jund qs my playtest partner. gave him the win so he can go top 8. i cant play top 8 anyway
game 1 usual kill whatever that tries to stick. and tiago cryptics got me there
game 2 side in all point removals. usual kill whatever that tries to stick. goyf slips through and got him there
game 3 usual kill whatever that tries to stick. and tiago cryptic chains got me there.

0-2, 1-0-3

round 5 mill. friendly mode already
game 1 turn 2 glimpse the unthinkable me. i turn 3 GST. he turn 3 thoughtseize me and scoops
game 2 side in leyine of sanctity and counters. he archive trap me and surgical extract my leyline, tiago and cryptics. jace, memory adept got him there
game 3 same as game 2. i thought i stablised but he topdeck..... jace, memory adept and got there.

1-2, 1-0-4

got 2 packs. qs paid the entry for me so i returned him 10.5 instead of 15 for a pack. as for him...

qs played
round 1 ahjianz seismic loam
round 2 some black deck with blasting station and gravecrawler
round 3 jund mirror
round 4 me
round 5 id
quarters grixis

play of the day
qs had 2 lands and a treetop village in play. he had a blackcleave cliffs in his hand . he then swinged with treetop village on turn 4. it got destroyed and second main phase he played the blackcleave cliffs UNTAPPED. good play.

to end it off. this is a start to log our team's adventure. this place is also to share some tips and tricks and decklists and strategies and metagames and probably organise some team activities. please asking whether is it time to buy "insert card here" or anybody selling or "insert card here" price ok or not is strongly discouraged~ political stuffs still ok~