Puschkin

Yeah, that comment wasn't directed at you, Jessie.
I do the same - it is a great feeling of you can call them out :)

You just have to make sure of the deck search and stop paying attention to the "hot" page. Just because a deck has made it to the "Hot" page doesn't mean it'll win the next tournament. If you really want to build a competitive deck for any specific format, MTGVault is probably not the site for you, although I am sure there are pretty good deck builders here including those that attend tourneys as well. You just have to put more effort into finding them. And into helping out others first before getting help yourself.

This is more of a network type of site. If you want straight and tournament worthy deck help, you'd be better off googling the type of deck you want to play and read tournament reports anyway. Going competitive actually means a lot of netdecking and numbercrunching and hundreds of slight variants of the same one or two dozens of deck types. Which is excatly the opposite of what casual is about. Unless you want to play a rogue deck that you created yourself - but that's always hard and you are mostly on your own.

And basically it boils down to something else anyway: You upload your decks and no matter how well made they are, you get only very few or even no reponses. Then you check the "hot" page and see decks getting shittons of attention but you fail to see why. I went through this myself. People flock to the hot page for many different reasons and all of them suck. But the key is: There is nothing you can do about it.
So, keep it low and humble, try to help others and make friends doing so and after some time you have your own small but loyal club of buddies that will check your newest creation when you ask them to. That's what I did. That's what Northy did. That's what Jessie did. That's what Hokey did. Some of us get lucky and the attention of the masses and when that happens, it gets hyped so you'll get proportionally more atention then deserved, but that's how the masses work. Northy made it, Jessie made it, I failed. But if I really need help on a deck I know I can drop a line and people like Jessie, Hokey or George will check it out.

Of course I agree.
All I can add is:
Competitive and Casual players have different approaches to the game and problems arise when they clash without being able to understand the other side. And it doesn't help that there are:

* Casual players that are by heart competitive players but just not good enough, so they declare their shitty decks "casual" even though winning and competing is as important to them as for tournament players.
* Competitive players that are by heart casual players but got suck into the tournament scene because of the constant dick comparisons going on in the Magic community.
* Players that are actually part of both worlds but unable to switch back and forth, so their casual decks are too straight forward and their tournament decks too playful

Anyway, if these different types clash, then of course will be misunderstandings and flamewars. What *I* don't understand: MTGVault allows to add tags to your deck. If deckbuilders would always add either a "Casual" or "Tournament" tag and if people would actually check these tags, then there would be no need to fight - competitive players would read the "casual" tag and could stop reading immediately.

Now made the Death Watch deck:
http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/occ-watching-you-in-the-dark/

It's probably one of the weakest of this series, though, because it needs a lot of cards working together. Only recommended for slower play, less experienced opponnets and/or more relaxed environments.

I don't care :)

FNM has always been iffy to me - it tries to organize casual. It's like a kitchen table tournament - an oxymoron. It's nice to have a place to gather for casual play where you can meet new players. Back in the golden days you met in F/SF stores and played in the backroom, basement or any dark corner where you found some place. But as soon as you have to register and shell out prizes, you aren't playing casual anymore, sorry. Casual puts the actual play and creativity over winning. And that's hard to accomplish when prizes, fame and rankings are at stake.

So, again, I don't think FNM is bad or anything, it's a nice thing for anybody that wants a taste of copmtitive play without being thrown into the shark tank, some kind of middleground between casual and competitive. But that's nothing I am interested in.

Made the Aku Djinn deck, enjoy!

http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/occ-the-djinn-counts-on-you/

Yeah, that's not multiplayer, it's 1-on-1 ;)

The Krenko deck is very straight-forward (and Krenko itself ridiculous - I grew up with Goblin Warrens ...) but to my experience that's how most decks are built these days. Just that you know your stuff and don't built odd mana curves and so on.

And that Isochron deck might be tame for a deck with Iso Scepter but it's still annoying and you can't blame anyone going for the guy with an Iso out. Also, that deck isn't a MP deck in my eyes. It's way too fast. It HAS to play offensive and they only way to keep up with other, slower decks is to either kill fast or to get very annoying and controllish with it. It doesn't matter that you picked Runesnag instead of Counterspell (or Mana Drain for that matter), counter on a Iso is counter on a Iso. I haven't checked all of your decks but if they are similar like this one, I can understand part of the hatred and a basic urge to see you out first.

Anyway, your stories are a prime example because I really, really despise any multiplayer games with free-for-all win conditions (3 players being the exception). Next time someone asks me why, I'll just post a link to your posts here. Maybe the situation could have been remedied for you and them if you had played other formats like 2HG, Emperor or Pentagram.

Let them play with your decks sometimes and they will be forced to shupt up. Especially if they do poorly because it still needs playing skills to pilot good decks as well as politics. Similarily, offer to play their decks and offer help to improve their decks (within their card pool). That (hopefully) teaches them a lesson or two.
If that doesn't work, maybe search for less idiotic players.

Yeah, okay, there are a few banned cards of course (Sharazad is similar) but in Karns case I see no problem to just apply it to you and the 2 poor people left and right to you.

Also had a Death Watch deck once but it was too cumbersome. Maybe it's time to look into that again since some thousand cards have been released since.

Emblems also work with a range of two. Anyway, I wouldn't participate in any kind of multiplayer with more than 6 players anyway because the turns take so damn long. Back then it was quite easy because players had Mahamoti Djinns and Shivan Dragons (all with the same art), now if the 4 other players in your range have a combined 50 non-land permanents out you will most likely have to read half of them and none of them would be as easy to remember as Juggernauts or Hypnotic Specters.

I absolutely need those Savants. I'd rather cut the Evershrieks since I am afraid that I won't have any auras left in my hand by the time it's about Shriek-time.
Then again, for just one mana (but also 13 dollars ...) more I could include Replenish instead which is about a dozen times better.
Yes, Daybreak Coronet is amazing, but for that I would not need Arcanum Wings :P It's a solid suggestion, but following it would slowly morph the deck into something it doesn't want to be.

BTW, you aren't german by chance? Your username suggests so. "Mau-Mau" is the name of a card game similar to UNO (in fact it's the original game that UNO bases on) which is popular in germany.

Just use Magus of the Mirror on him.

Ha, I actually have an Aku Djinn deck IRL, I just have to post it :)
Will do so somewhere this weekend.

Yeah, for the Wash Out alone ;)

Grand Melee:

Nobody play that anymore because people stopped playing at conventions :P
In Grand Melee you can have any number of players. You sit in a circle. You can only attack to the left. Global spells and effects like Wrath of God aren't global, they affect yourself, the 2 players left of you and the 2 players right of you. If you have a targetted effect or spell you can target yourself/permanent of yours or one to the left or right normally and you can target 2 seats away if you pay two life.
For every complete set of 5 players there will be 1 player taking turns simulatenously (pass around a box or something), to speed up things. It gets problematic when players are liminated because at some point, you have to remove a box and one player will get robbed off a turn (at no point two players that are in the area of influence of each other should take turns at the same time). The player losing the turn untaps his stuff and draws a card.

Winner is last man standing. However, this was usually played at conventions, players payed a small participation fee and you were granted a booster pack for each kill you made. So, theoretically, you could make more boosters than the actual winner if you killed enough players. This should prevent 20+ players all playing completely defensive decks.

Good old times :)

Probably unplayable with modern cards and combos, though.

3 players: Free-for-all. It's the only setup where FFA makes sense.
4 players: 2HG or regular team games.
5 players: Pentagram or French Emperor*
6 players: Emperor
7+ players: Grand Melee

Politics are still involved in Pentagram, that's why I called it the king of multiplayer formats*. Also, obviously, Necrumlsice doesn't enjoy politics.

Besides, what you call politics oftentimes just means "ganging up on player X". If you are lucky, because then, at least, games are over quickly. But if everybody knows what he is doing, it'll take 30 minutes until you can take your next turn and in the end, it doesn't matter at all what kind of deck you play. In fact, in those "political" games, the winner is usuall the worst deck. Or the winner is decided at random after hours of exhausting debates, when everybody ran out of cards and options, whoever topdecks the right card wins. Especially in EDH. I can fully understand why people don't like that and my advice to play thementioned formats is therefore suitable for everybody that has problems with this.

*French Emperor also involves Politics and bluffing assuming you play a variant where the emperor knows who the traitor is

No, just stop playing free-for-all games. Those are stupid for so many reasons. Stick to formats where everyone has a clear win condition other than "last man standing": Two-Headed Giant, Emperor, French Emperor or the king of multiplayer formats: Pentagram.

Hm. You are aware that this deck isn't legal in any format because you packed Fastbond 4 times? There are alternatives to Fastbond that woul make this deck at least legal ...

Apart from that, why do you run only basic lands? This is again a landfall deck that doesn't run fetchlands ... doesn't have to be the expensive ones, there are very cheap ones in Mirage and you could always run lands like Terramorphic Expanse! This not only triggers landfall two times, it also places lands into the graveyard for Crucible.

The exclusion of Harrow is even more puzzeling than the lack of fetchies in a deck that bases both on landfall AND Crucible ...

Finally, your mana curve. Only 4 spells for turn one and none that cost 2 mana SIXTEEN that cost 3! Okay, if you got that Fastbond in your openning hand, you are fine. But what if you don't?
All you need is a mana producing 1-drop. Could be Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise of anything like that. This would make the deck a lot smoother and less dependant on having Fast Bond in your opening hand because a first turn BoP or Manaelf means you can play a cc3 spell on turn 2.


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Please check out this little project I have running:
http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/obscure-card-challenge-occ/