ugh.. this bites. placing in a challenge has eluded me again..

any ideas on what i should improve on?

Your BUG Challenge deck was scored very highly by me in creativity and theme adhesion, but it just couldn't get over the effectiveness hump. It was tied for 11th with a couple other decks. I frequently found that your devouring creatures would die to a well-placed Terminate or something, and then the deck wouldn't have much gas left.

Along the same lines, Life and Limb got you wrecked by Volcanic Fallout and Wrath of God -style effects on more than one playtest. The Cauldron of Souls didn't get out often enough to help you avoid those kill spells too much.

Just keep at it. You build solid decks, and this was a hard top 10 to get into. I think generally what happens is that your decks typically lack for answers, but have overwhelming numbers of threats. Usually it's good to have a bit of both, but it really depends on the deck. I really liked that BUG Challenge deck, but yeah, it didn't have any answers for opposing creatures or for removal, usually.

But that's good. You don't want to spread your deck too thin by having an answer for everything. You just press forward with your deck's own idea and make it beat your opponent's idea. You do an excellent job of that, and I think if you just keep building decks, the placements will come.

Thanks a lot- let's hope so!

Awesome i was the ubg deck to get in sweet!!!!!

great challenge great fun thanks KC

Whooo 3rd! Slowly getting better....

Shouldn't Marcus316 be somewhere on that leaderboard? I think he deserves my spot on there at the very least.

aww... i wanted to see my name up there? at least could i get a critique so i can improve.

Ace, your deck had a difficult time building up a win condition. While the idea was coherent and your execution was focused, you just couldn't get real threats going.

Your basic idea as I understood it is to use repeated landfall to make your landfall creatures scary good. A few problems after retesting this deck a few times-

1- Too few creatures! 16 usually doesn't cut it in a deck where creatures are the win condition. There are exceptions, but this isn't one. 16 creatures means you can expect to draw a creature about once every four cards. A fairly average deck often has about the same number of answers, whether that be counters or removal. It was really hard for your deck to develop pressure. True, your counter suite did stall the enemy, but you couldn't get your own plan going because your creatures just wouldn't live.

2- The creatures you did have were not enough of a long-game threat. The only creature that is truly threatening to an opponent is Ob Nixilis, and you can only have four of him. Gladeheart is decent, but certainly won't kill anyone. Hedron Crab and Nibblers are ok, but having them along WITH Ob is a classic problem- mixing too much kill with too much mill. Generally it's usually a better idea to commit to either kill or mill and stick to it. Plus, crab and rats will only really be good if you cast Scapeshift. Scapeshift is your kill card, and to a lesser extent, Harrow , but they don't do much if you don't have enough creatures.

3- The artifacts didn't make too much sense to me. Crucible provides you with the very minor benefit of playing lands you've discarded to Syphon Life or sac'd with Harrow. That IS a benefit, but a very tiny one compared to the advantage you'd get by putting in some more really deadly landfall creatures. Given all the control, something way over the top and late-game would have been appropriate- maybe Avenger of Zendikar , Rampaging Baloths , or Roil Elemental .

In sum, my thought is that you need to demand more of the cards you put in your deck. Same with Amulet of Vigor; its only function is to ensure that the 9 vivid lands you have in your deck come in untapped (along with any Scapeshifted lands), which is a very minor point indeed; you usually don't want to draw Amulet of Vigor.

Take all this with the knowledge that it's not a bad deck, and you're not a bad deckbuilder. The hardest thing to do is to think of a cool idea and make your deck conform to your vision, and you're doing that. Just need to expand your card "dictionary" and practice.

(Card "dictionary" = Every player has an internal database of cards that are useful for a particular purpose, much like people have internal databases of words that mean certain things. A person might have a perfectly good idea but not be able to express it because of a lack of vocabulary, and a good deckbuilder might not be able to express his or her idea because he/she doesn't know the right cards).

i wanted to thank you for your input, and explain the use of one card that i have discovered, Amulet of Vigor since the text says, "Whenever a permanent enters the battlefield tapped and under your control, untap it." the word to notice is "whenever" this gives you the ability to untap a permanent once for each artifact you have out, allowing for playing of large creatures very early in the game (ex: ob on third turn) and crucible was for extra land fall when possible.

Wow! That was a nice surprise. I'm glad I took the time to tune the deck before submitting, especially since I got sick the week after (really nasty sickness, and my son was sick, too) and couldn't finish my other Negashard decks.

Time to take a look at squire1 's interim challenge. Congrats to all Top 10 finishers. Everyone seems to have such interesting ideas. :)

I've been wondering how the grading score process works and how these decks are tested against eachother...?

Also i was wondering if there could be a list of the rest of the people, like a top twenty with only the top 10 getting feedback. (I wanna know how i did because i didnt place in the top 10)

Ace- True, you can get a bunch of free mana with amulet of vigor. But in most cases, you didn't really need it. Might have been a more symbiont idea if you had more big dudes.

Halogod989- Your storm deck was one of the ones tied for third. It had a few problems with getting enough spells stormed up; could have used some suspend spells like Rift Bolt or what have you, but that was a very popular standard deck back in the day and might have hit you on creativity points.

As to my testing process, I first score the decks on creativity and theme adhesion. Ideas that strike me as especially clever or original score high on creativity (For instance, Marcus316's use of Lyzolda with Bloodghast is something I haven't yet seen and I gave a good bit of points for that). Decks that fit in well with the "flavor" of the challenge are scored high in theme adhesion. (For instance, Samhein's honorable mention deck scored zero here, because that was the joke- it was just an affinity deck that happened to have negashard colors; conversely, actually making your deck feel like it came from a specially-designed shard scored you high in this category).

Then I judge effectiveness. I use a program, or in some cases, proxied cards to test the decks, first against a few archetypical decks I have for the purpose, then against some popular current decks which tend to be known quantities, and then against each other for close calls or tiebreakers.

-C

Ace - I found your deck interesting, but it seemed a big jumble. For instance, there are 68 cards in the deck, but only 24 lands, and only 16 creatures.

It's hard to make a deck consistent even with 60 cards. More added cards makes the deck less consistent. I'll comment on specific changes on the deck page itself.

hey kaley can you explain what happened in the match i lost to get 7th i dont mind im glad i placed in my first contest i just want to know how it went.

I don't remember exactly how the games went now, but I do recall that in both of them Zanven's deck just kept drawing all the answers. Every time you'd try a Shielding Plax, he'd have a Bolt. Momir was able to keep his hand full of creatures while still having a deck full of answers, and he'd just eventually have more creatures than you. His Voidslime was particularly effective.

-C