FNM: Is this happening to you?

[Lhurgyof]

Okay, so I've recently decided to get into playing FNM. It was changed from Legacy or whatever to type 2 recently, and I bought up some type 2 cards (the store owner told me the archenemy decks were type 2, so I wasted over 40 bucks buying those...), but when I get into the first type 2 tournament I got smoked sooooo hard.
Why? Because the people that are winning spend $300 every time a new set comes out on booster boxes... Just so they can make one of the three "optimal" decks for the set... Now, this is pretty damn stupid, when half of the tournament is comprised of people with the SAME black deck. My poor little deck that involved an interesting idea (using dark tutelage/crystal ball, reassembling skeleton and necrotic plague) can't stand up to a "Turn 3 win deck"... It really sucks, so much that I will never play FNM again unless it's legacy or a draft. (And even if it's legacy, these people probably have power 9/turn 1 win decks....).

Now, GitP, I must ask, does this happen to any of you?

[Freylorn]

Sorry your first FNM went so badly - and incidentally, for the really expensive stuff like U/W Control, the price tag is MUCH higher than $300.

That does not, however, mean you'll always do badly. Might I suggest checking out the Building on a Budget archive?

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Archive.aspx?tag=buildingonabudget&description=Building%20on%20a%20Budget

You can find some really good ideas here, and the decks are designed (obviously) to be built on a limited budget.

In terms of being told Archenemy was type 2 though... :smalleek:

EDIT: Could you elaborate on the 3rd-turn-win black deck you keep facing? That doesn't seem to have hit the meta here yet - we're still seeing a lot of U/W Control and Polymorph Emrakul.

[Eldariel]

Legacy doesn't contain Power 9; tho turn 1 wins are possible, they are by no means optimal and the format is frankly quite healthy with controlling tools dominating the broken factors. But yeah, T2 is pretty dumb as a moneysink; you can generally build a somewhat competitive mono-colored decks tho and do alright. Not well, but well enough to win games.

[Lhurgyof]

Freylorn- That guy was actually playing a red/white turn 3/4 win deck, everyone else was playing black.
And I've played FNM before, it's just these people whom I've never really known have started coming and (for lack of a better word) raping everything in their path. These are people who pay 70 bucks for a "big Jace" and have 4 pre-release foils of Emrakul... If I'm shelling out 70 bucks on a card, might as well be cool like Shahrazad or awesome like Orb of Chaos.

That's just it, I don't want to build someone else's deck idea, it just seems cheesy when there's a chance that everyone's deck will be doing the same thing. Even if building on a budget, I don't want "one of the 4 good decks you can build in this set".

I mean, I do myself have a turn 1-4 win deck (Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, KCI, Disciple otV, Myr retrievers), but that doesn't usually see play unless some kids get really cocky about themselves.

Yeah, I've learned not to listen to store owners... I was so happy when I thought reanimate was type 2.

And Eldariel-
I tried to build a semi-competitive mono-black deck, here's what it's got:

4x Phylactery Lich
1x Royal Assassian
4x Reassembling Skeleton
4x Ornithopter
2x Cadaver Imp
2x Child of the Night
3x Crystal Ball
2x Sorcerer's Strongbox
4x Demon's Horn
4x Necrotic Plague
2x Dark Tutelage
2x Unholy Strength
4x Sadistic Sacrement
1x Corrupt
1x Inquisition of Kozilek

1x Mystifying Maze
22x Swamp

[Silentlee]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/boab/104



smack someone in the head with it...

[Freylorn]

Actually, Silentlee, it's worth noting that I'm going this FNM with that precise deck :smallbiggrin:

Anyways, I didn't mean for you to take the decks from the list wholesale, lhurgyof - just that you may want to have a look over them for some ideas, then tweak them to fit your own style.

If the guy running the FNM is so clueless as to what's type 2 and what isn't, you may want to make sure that the cards everyone else is using are legitimate type 2 cards as well. That strikes me as a major concern.

[Shas aia Toriia]

Sorry, but might this not be better in the actual Magic thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156863)?

Anyways, if you're concerned about getting smoked, just get a bunch of friends together and play casually. That way you can modify decks so that they're all on a similar power level, not to mention you don't have to offload a bunch of money everytime a new set comes out.

[Dashwood]

Best way to get better is to get owned. I spent a summer working on a camp staff, wehre the staff's primary form of recreation was Magic. I'm a much better player because of that. You see decks and strategies you can use to your own purposes. One of my friend's decks only uses land and 4 spells to win, no creatures of anything!

I've got over 500 something cards, and I've only spent about $100 total. Most of them I recieved as gifts. You can do well without wasting lots of money. Trade around with friends. You can get something good they can't use and get rid of sonething good you can't use.

[Lhurgyof]

I'm back all, and I'm sorry, I've never posted in the Gaming (Other) thread, so I didn't quite know to put it there.

I quite like the idea of green stompy, but I think I'm going to wait for Shards of Mirrodin to come out and do the booster draft, Mirrodin was one of my favorite sets.

Sha's- I do play with my friends casually, a lot. I just thought it'd be fun to play FNM with my friends, and for the most part it used to be pretty calm, until it changed to type 2 and these new guys started showing up with their decks they sunk hundreds of bucks into. I'm not going to pay to lose money playing magic. THAT takes all the fun out of it for me.

Dashwood- I know, I've been playing a LONG time. I just don't have the type 2 cards to make a "competitive type 2 deck" as one of the guys puts it. I have been trading around a lot, but apparently a type 2 black deck is worth half a **** unless I have 4 copies of Nantuko Shade in it.

[Eldariel]

It's not...that simple. Nantuko Shade is good aggressively but if you go control, different choices open up. While mono-black is not optimal, it can beat established archetypes occasionally and should be sufficiently strong for an FNM. It does, though, require cutting cards like Demon's Horn & Crystal Ball and focus more on efficient trading, getting some extra cards the black way (trading life for cards) and then wiping the opponent out with a kill con of your choice (Corrupts are good). Basically, strive to trade up in value and cards constantly and win, if you want control. Or disrupt and beat in aggro but that'll be harder to do.

[Malacode]

I don't know about your meta, but in mine, it's possible to win with a cheap deck. Sure, the majority of players are running U/W control with a playset of Jace 2.0, or G/R Valakut Ramp with 4x Primeval Titan, or *insert expensive archetype here*, but I've come third out of 48 players with a six dollar deck. You're always goin to get owned the first time, probably the second and maybe the third, but by then you have an idea of how the popular decks work and how to shut down or outrace their machine.
Building on a budget is a great place to start, but don't just copy the decks verbatim... Think about what you can change to suit the deck to your meta, or just use it to get an idea for cool card interactions that you can take advantage of.

Oh, and by the way, I'd be more than happy to give you a heap of type two cards for some of your older stuff. Saaay, a playset of ponder for a playset of brainstorm? :p

Edit: Oh, and talk to your opponents after ech match! Ask them what they hate facing, the weaknesses they have and what you could have done to perform better. Get deckbuilding advice too. Most people are suprisingly willing to make it easier for you to win, if you ask nicely.

[Lhurgyof]

I don't know about your meta, but in mine, it's possible to win with a cheap deck. Sure, the majority of players are running U/W control with a playset of Jace 2.0, or G/R Valakut Ramp with 4x Primeval Titan, or *insert expensive archetype here*, but I've come third out of 48 players with a six dollar deck. You're always goin to get owned the first time, probably the second and maybe the third, but by then you have an idea of how the popular decks work and how to shut down or outrace their machine.
Building on a budget is a great place to start, but don't just copy the decks verbatim... Think about what you can change to suit the deck to your meta, or just use it to get an idea for cool card interactions that you can take advantage of.

Oh, and by the way, I'd be more than happy to give you a heap of type two cards for some of your older stuff. Saaay, a playset of ponder for a playset of brainstorm? :p

Edit: Oh, and talk to your opponents after ech match! Ask them what they hate facing, the weaknesses they have and what you could have done to perform better. Get deckbuilding advice too. Most people are suprisingly willing to make it easier for you to win, if you ask nicely.

Well, I'd like to thank you, as well as everyone else who replied for their advise. I don't think I'll be playing type 2 unfortunately, and just work more on my other decks (as well as build my "Make players wish they never started playing magic" shahrazad deck, and my Indestructable Chaos Orb BS deck), then buy up a nice T2 deck, especially considering type 2 is changing soon. Additionally, school's starting back up, so that'll cut into my play time.

As I said, I'm not going to pay money to play magic, especially with a restrictive list of cards to choose from, I was just wondering if anyone else had noticed this pattern. I don't want a 1 in 10 chance of earning my money back and a pack... Especially when people pull out one of the expensive decks of the series. xD

And I'm willing to trade a lot of my old stuff, but I really just need Vision Charms to cheat a dreadnought into play, or the BS that is Wall of Denial.

[Maeglin_Dubh]

I had the same aversion to net-decks when I played tournament Versus.

What I wound up doing was looking at net-decks that used themes I liked, and trying to find a replacement for all the rare cards in it. My best tournament deck came out this way, being a cheap copy of a tournament-level location-based control deck. Mine also had the added bonus of being able to go aggro in a pinch, which actually won me a few games when my opponent predicted control after my turn 2 drop, and eased off on their play, figuring they could take their time and set up to kill me on later turns, only to get chump-killed on turn 5.