Wolf Run Pod is my latest project. I thought embedding would work but obviously not lol.

This grammar is killing me. Literally, a piece of my soul withered away while reading this.

Good ;)

I type this and don't re-read just to aggravate the masses MUAHAHAHAHA

4 is the magic number.

sorry that actually has nothing to do with the article. I'll look at the article later.

I agree with zandl. If you're going to be a writer, and you want people to read what you write, Cableguy, it is worthwhile to a) take some time to clean up the grammar before posting and b) learn to take criticism gracefully.

As for the content: 4-of is a card I want to see in my opening hand, or a card that is central to my deck's combo or plan A interaction -- there's 2 different reasons to run 4x a card. Stromkirk Noble or Llanowar Elves may be basically a dead card late game, but hitting one in your opening 7 makes a deck great. On the other hand, run 4x Primeval Titan because he's the win-con in ramp decks -- this way, if they deal with him once or twice, you still have backups.

3-of is a card I want to see once during a game; Inferno Titan in ramp decks, Mortarpod in zombies. 3x means that you'll see an average of 1 per 20 cards, or about once per game, if you don't have lots of tutoring or drawing.

2-of are utility spells that you can tutor for, expensive game-winners, plan B enablers, or cards that mimic a 4-of. Examples: Acidic Slime or Thrun, the Last Troll in pod or ramp decks, Cruel Ultimatum in Jund, Sorin, Lord of Innistrad in tokens, or Doom Blade in U/B control where you're already running 4-6 other removal spells.

1-ofs for toolbox decks or control decks that have lots of card draw, looting, or tutoring; or they're fringe utility cards with more copies in the sideboard. these are usually silver bullets -- specific solutions to specific problems, like Ratchet Bomb, Sword of Feast and Famine, Sever the Bloodline, or Celestial Purge.

I write on her so I can help people not as a profession lol. I literally type all my articles at work and send them off and normally dont even have the time to reread them, so meh.

As per your content its basically reiterating what I said but from a different pov which is fine. As I said not all decks are built the same 3x primeval titan has been the right number lately and not 4 in wolf run ramp. If your doing birthing pod than your obviously not going to plan your deck like you would without it and so on.

I thought he took the criticism rather well. He didn't get upset, and just joked about it. I don't see anything wrong with that.

I'm just pointing out that if you want more people to read your articles, you could do with adding a bit of high school-level grammar. I can't stand reading something that looks like it just got copied & pasted off AIM, or whatever it is the kids talk on nowadays. What's wrong with grammar? In the very least, it makes you look like you know your shit.

Also in case anyone is in Richmond tonight I will be doing FNM somewhere there instead of Roanoke.

I hate to sound like the snooty one here but if you can't stand the way something is written: don't read it. Venting about how something is put down on paper is about as productive as pissing into the wind. It's a waste of time and makes you look like a jackass.

This man is taking the time out of his life to share with you his views on Magic. I don't care if you agree or disagree with what he thinks, nor is it important that you like how he has written it. The important issue is that another person used his time for you. If you don't think this is important, then replace the word 'you' with the words 'the community.'

Just because this article was not publish-perfect does not mean that the points aren't relevant. My articles are usually polished when I write them but that's because I have a solid foundation as a writer. Written communication is often more challenging than many believe...

I will finish off by telling you the same thing I tell anyone who complains about structure and formatting in a free publication: You write one. Instead of just aimlessly complaining how about you contribute too?

I never said I disagree with what he's saying. In fact, I appreciate that he took the time to write this. What I find hilarious about your point, jkarnes, is that you just said, in essence, "Grammar and proper English don't matter as long as you can understand what they're saying." Oh really?

http://static.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/1329536683249_5521957.png

And would it really hurt anybody if he took a bit of extra time to just run through and put in correct punctuation and the correct spellings of certain words? No. So why does it bother you?

"Written communication is often more challenging than many believe..."

What's that supposed to mean? I'm not asking for the type of grammar you'd find in a Yale graduate thesis, but any schmuck who's graduated high school can write with enough grammar to make me not cringe.

My only point is that if you write an article for the entire website and anybody who visits to see, it should probably contain a higher level of grammar and understanding of the language. If I had never been to this site and that was the first thing I saw, I'd assume the site was run by a bunch of kids who hadn't even had high school English yet. And that's not exactly the kind of scene I associate myself with. Do you get my drift?

I'm not bashing anybody, by any means. I'm just in favor of establishing some standards for how articles are written to keep T/O's appearances up. I apologize if anything I said was misconstrued as flames or personal attacks.

+1 Zillion to what Jkarnes said.

Writing takes a lot of work. It may not seem like it, because my writing is not great online. But I have been a newspaper reporter, editor, at the highschool, college level, and have done amateur freelance articles. For me to be a good writer, I have to spend time at it, and have to constantly edit what I write. That takes a LOT of WORK, TIME.

When I write a amateur, semi professional, published story, article. It's written a Hell lot better then how I write normally, offline,online. That's because when I write normally offline, online, I don't put in the time,work, effort, to make sure what I write, is written well.

Call it lazyness, sloppiness, whatever you want, but usually, I either don't have the time, or am not willing to take the time to make sure my writing is good, offline,online, when I write normally.

Now when I plan a writing project, and am motivated, and when I have time, then my writing is a hell lot better, then it is normally when I write offline,online.

Like Jkarnes, metalmagic, cableguy, and others said, cableguy, is taking the time out of his busy schedule, to write these articles for the community. He doesn't always have the time, to make sure they are written well.

Also people who complain, focus on the writing miss the content. It's the CONTENT, that's more important, then the writing quality.

Cableguy knows a lot of stuff, about magic. And he passes that knowledge to the rest of us, thru his articles. When I read cableguy's articles, I learn more thyings about magic, that I find very useful.

And that's what matters to me. I don't care how badly its written, as long as me and others learn from what he writes.

And cableguy sacrifices his time to do these articles for us. Rather then complain his writing, people should thanks him.

Also like Jkarne said, try writing a article yourself, and contribute to the community yourself. Me and others have written articles(and I plan to write 1 to 3 more) for the community. Its not easy.

To Cableguy, thank you for taking the time to write these articles.

Mike

"Rather then complain his writing, people should thanks him."

lol

Anyways, I'm not taking away from what Cableguy does for the community here. I commend him for that. But thus far, no one has given me a reason for the bad grammar other than "It's doesn't matter because his points are valid!"

So if an illiterate man had the best ideas in the world, you would elect him President of the United States? Because that's what I'm getting from all of your backlashes.

And perhaps I will write an article for T/O, seeing as how my viewpoints on Magic are generally accepted and I even know how to incorporate grammar into everything I say on this website, with or without "proper time," or whatever that means.

I'm not trying to steal anyone's thunder, people. I'm just pointing out that if you're going to start writing articles for this website, perhaps employ of bit of professionalism and use English how it was meant to be used. My point, still, is that an outsider would feel as though this website had more professionalism if he/she was reading an article with proper punctuation, rather than something along the lines of, "if ur favorite card isnt a playset who cares it doesnt haf to be".

Grammar, spelling Nazi's.

They just don't understand, that in online written communication, that sometimes, people MISTYPE, by accidentally hitting the wrong keyboard keys. And that sometimes people accidentally add a s to the end of a word, accidentally making it plural, when they intended it to be singular. And that sometimes people accidentally leave 1 word out, or add 1 word, or misspell 1 word. And that sometimes people either don't have time to edit, fix their mistakes, or accidentally overlook miss some mistakes when they edit.

At newspapers even with whole teams of proofreaders, editors,etc, mistakes are still missed, accidentally published, and with corrections published later.

But despite that Grammar, spelling Nazi's, demand, expect that people will,must,should have perfect written communication, even though not even newspapers achieve that with their professionals, even though their professionals, are better at it, then the people that the Grammar, spelling Nazi's expect to write perfectly.

Also the Grammar,spelling Nazi's, don't get that whether in chat, on on online message forum boards, people use time saving shortcuts, like tho, thru, lol, etc.

No the Grammar, spelling Nazi's don't get any of that. They just enjoy reading to try to find even the smallest of mistakes, so that they can then point out that mistake, and or make jokes, make fun of that mistake, and laugh at that mistake,etc.

The Grammar, spelling Nazi's do that, because it makes them seem, feel more knowledgeable then other people.

Grammar, Spelling Nazi's, don't get that ALL that is why almost NOBODY LIKES GRAMMAR SPELLING NAZI's.

I really don't appreciate you calling me a Nazi. I'm not obsessing over every little typo. What I am talking about is a blatant disregard for grammar and the English language's functionality.

But clearly you just want to flame me with false accusations and call me a Nazi, which shows that you have no conceivable idea of the level of insult that is. Show some respect, kid, or you'll find yourself looking for it.

And for the record, for the third time, my point remains that proper grammar and spelling should be a necessary thing on this website. Argue with what you will, but when all is said and done, how far do you think you'd get in a professional company without knowing the difference between "its/it's" or if you randomly throw apostrophes in front of every final "s" in a word?

I never once point out anything specific about this article. I'm, by no means, pointing these things out to "feel more knowledgeable" or anything of that sort. I have one point to make and it's not even a controversial point. What's everyone's problem with that? It's grammar; it's not abortion.

So let it rest, mikedh1, before you tell me again your extensive writing history and make yourself out to be a walking-talking contradiction with your poorly formed sentences and downright atrocious spelling. Hell, I can't understand some of your sentences.

End of discussion, dude. Period.

Whatever. 1. I didn't call you a Grammar,spelling Nazi. I just explained that nobody likes them. 2. Respect is a 2 way street. 3. IF IF the shoe fits wear it. 4. I usually show respect, until someone loses the right to that respect. 5. your the one who is behaving like a kid. Kids shouldn't call other adults kids, or accuse them of acting like a kid. 6. I did not make any false accusations. 7. I did not flame you. 8. You need to not flame others 9.what you are saying in your comments lately, has lost any value, to me and maybe even others.

So because of all that:

WHATEVER

YAWN.

Fine. Believe what you want to. I could go on and present evidence from this very topic that disproves all of your points, but I don't care that much. People like you just say "Screw him" and never open their minds again to anything people like me have to say.

YAWN

This is still going on, Honestly? How about from now on I just send the articles I write to you, so you can edit them? No? Okay, so now I am wasting your time and energy for no apparent benefit? Sounds familiar.

I write articles not to display my perfection as a literary genius but rather to help people get better at MTG. If I wanted to go over every little sentence I write so that one person could be happy with the grammar, I wouldn't. I am not getting money for my time spent on these articles, so why bother editing them to a professional level?

My level of of writing comes high school and college level photo journalism (not journalism), and screen plays. This means I take a picture and write something short about it. With screen plays I write a lot less and speak how normal people would speak, which is COMPLETELY different than how we write.

Anyone at all that has a little content can submit an article and have it posted. Perhaps I should have a few ten year old's and have them write an article about how much they win against careless MTG players?

I type all of my articles on an old POS computer that lacks the capability of running even MS Word 95, so yeah, the whole spell check thing is flawed a bit to my dismay.

Bottom line, if you don't like my articles than don't read them. You can see my name on it before you click it and think, "Nah he doesn't give a __," and that would save us all from having to read your comments. I will type all of my articles on my laptop from now on because it does make it easier on me, but don't expect Shakespearean works of art.

Oh my god.

I like your articles. But why do you not find the need to use grammar? At worst, it'll make more people read your articles! That's all! I'm not bashing you or taking anything away from your article. I'm just trying to prove a point that everyone likes to read good grammar, but not everyone likes to read bad grammar. And how can you possibly argue with that?

You're making me out to be the enemy here and I don't appreciate it. I just want you to see that using grammar and proofreading your big articles can only work to your benefit. And I mean that in the least negative way I can convey. That's it, man.

Well said Cableguy, exactly +1 Zillion.

YAWN

You counted all 1 Zillion?

lol, just what we need, is some humor, to change, lighten the mood, tone in here. lol

lol No I didn't count out all 1 zillion. I think I stopped at 3, lol, since I can only count as high as 3 lol.

You just lost brownie points, just saying.

First of all: Damn. I didn't know that I would have caused this much of a disturbance in the force with what I said.

I misunderstood a little bit of what zandl was saying, but before I could respond and clarify a few things shit just got WAY out of hand really fast.

Was I a tad bit harsh and perhaps a little quick to tongue? Yes. Does it change my point? Moderately.

What I originally thought zandl said was along the lines of, "This article has no merit because it was not grammatically excellent," when in fact he meant something closer to, "This article has merit but would be of better benefit to the community if it had better grammar." Not at all the same subjects.

I get your drift and support your argument but perhaps it would have been more fruitful (and avoided a lot of brouhaha) if an alternative would have been offered along with the observation. Just sayin' (notice that short form apostrophe. Yeah.).

Per your critique on what I said regarding "the efforts of written communication:"

Its been a long day and I just don't have the energy to publicly defend what I said earlier about written communication being harder than most give credit for in a long and well thought out position, so this is going to have to do:

Speaking, is for most, easier than writing (in English). Simply stated, words as they sound to us do not suffer from the punctuation problem. Grammar is sometimes butchered... but such is the price of coming up with complex lingual ideas on the fly. I bet you don't properly use "good" versus "well" every time, do you? I didn't think so.

Hey, not to change the topic from Grammar, but I like the article on numbers; don't think the grammar was a problem because it was quite clear. I've been trying to get a working elf deck together. My deck is a bit hit and miss. I was wondering if my curve and card choices were holding it back or if Elves really don't work right now. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/elf-aggro-9/. I would really appreciate any comments. Thanks!

It might be dumb to beat a dead horse, but I just saw these comments and wanted to add my two cents.

1. Nice article in content. A lot of players do not understand the reasoning for not including 4 of everything you have in your deck. Perhaps this article will help them understand the reasoning behind it.
2. I agree with zandl to an extent. I too do not understand why people do not at least glance over their stuff before they post them. It's really not that hard to do. In a normal post I personally do not find it to be that important; however, when submitting an article, I feel that it should be as close to grammatically correct as you can make it. The reason I say that is this: An article on a website shows visitors how competent the website is as a whole. Even if the merit of what is said is extraordinary, most literate people will not give it much credence or even read it if the article is saturated with misspellings and grammatical errors. That is really how it is whether you like it or not. As members of this community, I think that we need to strive to draw people in, not drive them away. In my opinion, if you don't have time to proofread the article, you should not submit it until you get the time to do so.
3. Sometimes the formatting does not work well. If you have never submitted an article, you might not realize that you have to submit it to Squire1. He then uploads the article and sometimes the formatting is not quite the same as you intended it to be. I believe that my ( ' ) all turned into something weird, and the layout changed a good bit. Keep that in mind when critiquing peoples work.
4. With that said, everyone makes small mistakes sometimes. Perhaps you use the wrong spelling of a word and the spell checker does not catch it. Maybe you mistakenly add an S to the end of a word that wasn't intended to receive one. These things happen no matter how many times you proofread something and you just do not notice it. For proof of this, read a novel. I promise that you will probably find a few errors in the book somewhere, and that is a professional publication. Small mistakes should not be held against someone... they just happen.

Splendid article brotha, ive been waiting for some insight on your numbering theory.

I found the article interesting and the comments below even more so. I love to see people get bent out of shape; Especially over the most insignificant of things. -sorry if my grammar wasn't perfect!!

I am actually going to shift this article back to its main focus: numbers.

I like the fact that someone else actually thinks about the game in context of mathematics. Since I started the game I have always tried to keep the mathematics a big part of my deckbuilding. Sometimes I hit the numbers just right and it works out in my favor. Other times, I do not and get punished SEVERELY. :) Over the years, I have found no fool-proof method for these figures to work consistently, however I have found a few trends to be more efficient:

1). NEVER use less than 20 mana:

I don't care if one opts to use 4x Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves or any other "cheap" mana producers. The bottom line is, you need the mana to even get them out. If you are running an 18- mana deck, good luck getting that on turn one. On the converse, be cautious of TOO MUCH mana. If you get that number above 25, have a pretty darn good reason for it. :)

2). STAY BALANCED

It goes without saying that there are certain things that one will want to accomplish with a deck. Try not to overwhelm the deck with too much of a good thing (like humungous cast creatures that have a strong body) or too little. The same holds true for sorcery and artifacts.

3). STICK TO CONSISTENCY

Here is where I get to the point of this article. The one-ofs and three-ofs should somehow be eliminated. This is for consistency. My logic is "if you only have one, why not two?" The point is that if you put the odd-number in of a card, you are kind of robbing yourself of the consistency needed in your deck. I will agree and admit there are EXTREMELY extenuating circumstances for why one would want the three or one ofs, but short of price and availability, you want that consistency.

4). KNOW YOUR DECK

It is fun to get some input from others about the direction of your deck and some cards to throw in, but there should be some individual idea that you have arrived to for you to make the deck. DO NOT stray from it. If something sounds a bit off, just keep the deck as is for the time being and keep running it. If the deck is not running well, recognize WHICH CARDS, not THE NUMBER OF THEM, are causing the problem. A good case in point is if anyone has seen the posts I have made for some of my decks. I have probably given deck:spirit-cleaner and deck:jaces-spirit more face lifts than Joan Rivers has ever had in her lifetime. :) But seriously, the point being is that sometimes, the number really isn't the matter, it's the card itself.

I hope I do not sound like a naive fool here, but I feel this ideology has never steered me wrong in my playing experience. If this discussion sounds dull, mundane, or obvious, I will say that yes, it may, but then again, going back to basics is also dull, mundane, and obvious.

If you took the time to read this, thank you and have a nice day. :)

You bring up some good points but I do have to disagree with a number of them.

1. I can not agree with you more about the mana issue... I have told so many people that they need to run more mana and they claim that because they are running 4 Birds of Paradise and 4 elves that they only need 18 or 17 lands... I try but they don't listen and they wonder why they lose to my 4th turn Day of Judgment resulting in a mana screw every time we play.
2. you state that you should stay balanced. In some deck builds I will agree with you on that; however, decks like Frites and Wolf Run Ramp run a fairly large amount of fatties and either accelerate into them or cheat them out. In those situations, you do not need many if any small and medium threats. Another example is a Draw Go style deck. They are notorious for having an average of 3 threats in the entire deck because they can get away with it by countering/bouncing everything else while drawing when they are not countering and allowing their powerhouse to get in there for the win.
3. While I do agree with the consistency, sometimes it's worth running a 1 of, a 2 of, or a 3 of in your deck. 2 of's tend to be cards that are somewhat situation but really shine in a problem match-up. Singletons are usually silver bullets that can either be tutored or filtered to get to. A good example of this is the Trinket Mage package or a deck that relies on copious amounts of card draw/filter (Faithless Looting, Desperate Ravings, Forbidden Alchemy, Ponder anyone?) to get to the silver bullets of a certain match-up. Those cards might not be amazing against everything but may potentially shut down one of the biggest decks in the meta at the time. Running a 1 of doesn't really hurt the deck's consistency very much and gives you access to a powerful tool by being in the deck. A 3 of is usually run if it's a solid card but you really do not want to top it late game but you do want it early game... sometimes 3 is the right number.

@Mpz5 Yeah that squire1 guy screws everything up :).

i agree with everything Mpz5 said actually. I format articles, I do not proof read them for grammar, mostly because that i like having a four year old check your homework. My grammar/spelling are horrible in most cases. I expect that to be done by the author.

Formatting is all me in most cases. most people send articles in Word. Most have no markup of any kind. T/O uses HTML for articles, so I translate. If you know HTML already and want to submit an article, that is best in a txt. You could even look at the css and use that.

That and...well i screw up sometimes too:P

As I said, these things happen.

The thing is to at least make an effort to do something right if you are going to do it. It shouldn't be Squire1's job to edit grammar. You should take pride in what you submit. If you do that I'm willing to wager that most people will not say a word about a misspelled word or subject verb agreement every once in a while, just so long as the article is not saturated with them.

And squire1 , I was not intending to throw you under the bus either. I was just saying that the formatting is not always the same and I assumed that it was because of a word/html problem.

Cant we all just have a big group hug? :D

As for the land comment. I agree...for standard. You can get away with running less land in legacy simply because you get access to better cheaper cards and a lot more fetches.

In my opinion, not too much less in most decks. My matra has recently become, when in doubt, add more mana.

I did not take it that way at all.

I agree with the land comment as well. Even when my deck with a solid mana curve peaking at 3, I still was having a bit of trouble rolling with 16 land an 4 creatures that produce mana.

18 sounds perfect for the least. Good point brotha Mpz5 for pointing that out. Thank you Cableguy for fixin my manabase mate!

Honestly, I can understand why one would want to put one-of and three-ofs in a deck. I guess what I was missing in the comment I had above is that this is the way I approach it. I go by a very strict "averages" approach, if you will. I know that there is a tremendous overtone of "luck of the draw" over "concise deck building." Even if the deck appears to be concrete in statistical figures, there is still this feeling of "holy crap, I hope I get what I need here," but I find that the way I go about deck building typically works out for me. But I feel that there is a lotta self-fulfilling prophecy in deck building too. That is why I added 4) in the original comment: if you know your deck, it really doesn't matter what the number of copies is; just focus mostly on the design, remove weaknesses, and you should be fine. The numbers for me are only for statistical draw. :)

Also, with the mana, I will stand firm on my belief that if there is a specific range for mana in ANY deck, that number would be 22-24. NEVER, under ANY circumstances go below 20, but 22 is the best low-end chance you have. I don't care what mana fetch or how many mana producers the deck has; you cannot play the cards if there is no mana available.

So, in this crazy post (sorry, I am tired, so it probably sounds a little rambly), I have just stated this in a number-freak perspective. I will do whatever I can to eliminate 1 or 3-ofs just for the sake of draw statistics. But again, to each his own. There are millions of different means to the same end. :) Thank you.

I agree with Zandi. Grammar is important and neuters your arguments. Bad grammar/bad writing means that I don't think you're smart enough to really give me advice. It's probably not the case, but it is the effect.