Deck : Shota Yasooka's Unearth Combo

[deck title=Unearth Combo][lands]4 Crypt of Agadeem 2 Drowned Catacomb 3 Island 2 Misty Rainforest 1 Mountain 4 Scalding Tarn 3 Swamp 3 Verdant Catacombs[/lands]

[creatures] 4 Architects of Will 4 Extractor Demon 2 Fatestitcher 4 Hedron Crab 3 Monstrous Carabid 4 Rotting Rats 4 Sedraxis Specter 4 Viscera Dragger[/creatures] [other spells] 4 Grim Discovery 1 Ponder 4 Tome Scour[/other spells][/deck]

I know it's a little late. But I still love this deck.

This is in particular was played by Michael Jacob at Worlds 2009. Some lists have [card]Kederekt Leviathan[/card], [card]Corpse Connoisseur[/card] or even [card]Consume Spirit[/card]. This is just one of the many variations of the deck with tweaks either made to suit the player or the metagame.

I've always been fond of graveyard based decks, despite the constant hate cards and other things being printed against it. This deck is basically aiming to abuse [card]Crypt of Agadeem[/card] and the new milling powerhouse found in [card]Hedron Crab[/card] + fetchlands.

You mill yourself using [card]Hedron Crab[/card] and [card]Tome Scour[/card], and cycling [card]Architects of Will[/card] and [card]Monstrous Carabid[/card] to provide more fuel for [card]Crypt of Agadeem[/card]. Once your graveyard is filled with enough copies of [card]Extractor Demon[/card], [card]Sedraxis Specter[/card] and [card]Viscera Dragger[/card], you Unearth the whole lot and swing for your opponent's entire life count.

The deck is obviously weak to graveyard hate and a lot of faster decks, but it goes off surprisingly consistently with Grim Discovery to pull back any [card]Crypt of Agadeem[/card] you happen to lose to your (sometimes) overzealous self-milling.

An important note is to not be afraid of hard-casting [card]Sedraxis Specter[/card]. That card is still worth its three mana cost if you can afford it.

Identifying Dead Cards

I myself have never been great at identifying dead cards. Is [card]Doom Blade[/card] better than [card]Hideous End[/card]? Is [card]Disfigure[/card] better than both or them? What about old faithful [card]Terror[/card] and [card]Dark Banishing[/card]? A lot of these questions have different answers depending on the metagame of the play group you happen to be in.

How useful is [card]Grim Discovery[/card], really? [card]Grim Discovery[/card] + fetchland is awesome – not to mention the creature you’d get to play again. But I always go back and think: how often do I really want to draw [card]Grim Discovery[/card]? It’s a great way to recur my [card]Terramorphic Expanse[/card], [card]Marsh Flats[/card] or [card]Verdant Catacombs[/card], but really, do I need to? Then there’s the creature I recover – if it died earlier, would it help me now? More often than not, all I can pull back with [card]Grim Discovery[/card] is stuff you don’t really need back anyway.

But there are times when it shines. If I happened to get hit by a [card]Mind Shatter[/card], something like that would be lovely. I get my beloved land back! I also get my (put big creature you like very much) back! It’s not always a dead card – but it’s not as good as I’d like it to be. Why? It’s because we’re used to the idea of losing something permanently in Magic. It’s very easy to lose something and we don’t expect to get it back. Instead, we do what we should be doing – instead of mulling over the past, we play more stuff that attracts even more removal. If our plan works, by the time our best, most annoying creature shows up – your opponent has no more answers.

However, if you think about [card]Grim Discovery[/card], if you use it at the optimal time – it gives you some card advantage. A fetchland back from the grave is two landfall triggers (and an extra land as bonus!) and a good creature back from the grave is awesome.

Of course, in a deck without fetchlands or creatures, [card]Grim Discovery[/card] is most certainly dead. So I guess it really depends on your deck – and your opponent’s deck.

This brings us back to statistics. How often does your deck come into the situation on its own where the card is useful? (Ignore the opponent for now.) Can you create the situation if it doesn’t happen? How good is the card in that situation? How good is the card if you aren’t in that situation? For example, let’s look at [card]Needlebite Trap[/card] and [card]Archive Trap[/card].

[card]Needlebite Trap[/card]: Never. [card]Grove of the Burnwillows[/card]. Pretty good. Really expensive.

[card]Archive Trap[/card]      : Always. [card]Path to Exile[/card]. Pretty good. Still playable.

Traps are good examples because they are good in a very well defined situation, but they can be bad – or even terrible in others. [card]Needlebite Trap[/card]s are great to buy one turn off a [card]Baneslayer Angel[/card], but if your opponent never gains life, it’s pretty awful.

Some cards are almost always good. [card]Lightning Helix[/card] is a good example. There are very few situations where you don’t want to gain life while dealing damage at the same time. It’s cheap enough that should be able to play it eventually (even if you are colour-screwed). Yet at the same time, you need to be careful. Cards like [card]Rampant Growth[/card] are also almost always playable – but you don’t really need it if your deck doesn’t have cards needing more than 4 mana.

Then, you have to consider – your opponent’s deck. A card like [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] seems weak when you happen to be goldfishing, but it’s a real monster when you have an opponent. You yourself might not be playing as many card types as needed to make it big – but together with your opponent, you probably are. [card]Harms Way[/card] is useless without an opponent – but it’s almost always useful with one. It’s like a counter spell – it’s a dead card to you by itself, but in response to your opponent, it’s a great card.

Whether a card is dead depends heavily on the decks in play. [card]One With Nothing[/card] seems useless – but combined with graveyard strategies and Rakdos-themed cards, it’s really quite the powerhouse. Even [card]Path to Exile[/card] is no good if there aren’t any creatures – or the only creatures around have shroud. Yikes.

Let’s go back to my example of [card]Doom Blade[/card], [card]Hideous End[/card], [card]Disfigure[/card], [card]Terror[/card] and [card]Dark Banishing[/card].

[card]Doom Blade[/card] and [card]Hideous End[/card] are really about the same, just that [card]Hideous End[/card] gives you the additional effect of taking away 2 life from your opponent. [card]Dark Banishing[/card] is similar – but for 1 extra generic mana, it takes away the possibility of regeneration!

To be fair, we’re comparing [card]Doom Blade[/card] to [card]Terror[/card]. If you are facing a lot of regeneration, [card]Terror[/card] is awesome. If you aren’t, then [card]Doom Blade[/card] hits more things and is even more awesome than [card]Terror[/card]. It even makes [card]Dark Banishing[/card] look obsolete if you don’t see much regeneration. If you see regeneration, then [card]Doom Blade[/card] is looking pretty dead. I’ve talked about a strange card – [card]Disfigure[/card]. How does it fit in? It’s better than all the other cards in the sense that I can hit everything – even stuff that’s black. The problem? It can’t hit anything bigger then 2 toughness. If everybody is playing small fry that’s annoying – it’s great. If everyone is playing huge things – it’s terrible.

If you notice that some of my cards are missing their apostrophes, that's deliberate. I don't have time to go through the mouseover plugin to fix them. Yet.

Quick Glance at Worldwake

I think at first glance, my favourite card is easily [card]Abyssal Persecutor[/card].

4 to cast 6/6 flying trample - with a drawback black can easily deal with. I'm not so sure about its viability in tournaments, but it's certainly a chase mythic (unfortunately).

First, let's take a short glance at white. White hasn't really gotten much of a boost, and the only thing that interests me now (because it's Extended season, if I'm not mistaken) is a timeshifted version of [card]Kird Ape[/card] too. It's called [card]Loam Lion[/card].

Other notable white cards are [card]Rest for the Weary[/card] and [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card].

They printed a counterspell for instants - which isn't too bad, considering the number of good instants in the current metagame ([card]Lightning Bolt[/card] and [card]Path to Exile[/card] come to mind.)

I don't know what to think about [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card]. It's still an awesome card with plenty of power, but as I've learned with planeswalkers - the one time a turn thing can really bum you out sometimes.

Other notable blue cards are [card]Mysteries of the Deep[/card]. [card]Selective Memory[/card], [card]Thada Adel, Acquisitor[/card] and perhaps, [card]Treasure Hunt[/card].

Besides [card]Abyssal Persecutor[/card], I think [card]Death's Shadow[/card] and the reprinting of [card]Smother[/card] is interesting.

As for red, [card]Bazaar Trader[/card] is interesting, being a [card]Donate[/card] that ignores enchantments (and planeswalkers). Although, I think my favourite red card is:

In green, there's [card]Canopy Cover[/card], although I'd imagine the all green version of [card]Woolly Thoctar[/card] (I know it's not exactly the same - but the idea is the same.) is the most interesting green card to me.

[card]Everflowing Chalice[/card] is useful in many of my decks, although in many cases I would play [card]Gilded Lotus[/card] instead. [card]Basilisk Collar[/card] is also interesting, and although I'm not sure how good it is, I'd sure like 4 copies of it.

Among the five new dual colored manlands, [card]Celestial Colonnade[/card], [card]Creeping Tar Pit[/card], [card]Lavaclaw Reaches[/card], [card]Raging Ravine[/card] and [card]Stirring Wildwood[/card], I like [card]Celestial Colonnade[/card] the best.

And that concludes my quick look at Worldwake. I'll post more once I've actually played with the cards. No time to go to the prereleases yet again, sadly.

We're In 2010!

Let's take a look at my goals for 2009 :-

1. Get my photography up to scratch – I still suck at taking photos, be it visualizing photos, or even just getting shots with my ultrasharp 50mm prime.

2. Learn how to solve a megaminx – I’m quite sure this won’t be too big a problem, but hey, you’d never know.

3. Get a job – Now that I’ve graduated and have decided to not study any more for a while, it’s time to enter the working world and find a job. The economic downturn won’t make this easy, but I certainly hope I’ll be employed before the latter half of 2009.

4. Learn how to solve the 5×5x5 cube without a formula sheet – LOL.

5. Get my 3×3x3 solving skill into the sub-40 second range. (I’m now in sub-60.)

6. Put way more stories on Pressyo.

7. Study smarter! Work harder! Sleep more! (LOL)

Here's the results as of 31st December 2009: 1. My photography is a little better, but it's still pretty awful overall. I have little skill in using a lot of my gear, and looks like I'll still be learning my gear more in 2010 than improving actual photography skill. I have gained a new piece of gear of 2009 - a Nikon SB800 - which opens up a whole new world of possibilities. (for lighting)

2. I can now solve a megaminx - so goal accomplished!

3. I do have a job - but I wasn't employed until the latter half of 2009 - and it's not actuarial, sadly - but 2010 is a new year, and I have hope. :D

4. I could solve my 5x5x5 without a formula sheet for about a month - now I've forgotten how to solve it again though.

5. My 3x3x3 solve is surprisingly now sub-30 seconds. I'm impressed it got that fast considering all I did was focus on making myself faster, not learning anything new.

6. I put a lot of stories on Pressyo - but eventually I got tired of it, and stopped since we're now going into a redevelopment stage again.

7. My study skills have gotten better - I'm now way better at deciding what I need to focus on - no more tending towards what I like to do - which was an awful habit.

In my opinion, I got about half of the goals - and surprisingly, some programming on a Hecatomb card game program went through.

I haven't really thought much about goals for this year, but here's a few:

1. I think I probably just really want to find a better job (at least a more interesting one).

2. Blog more - already got a backlog of stuff to post - just haven't prepared them for posting on the site - I think once a week is realistic, but I'd rather have a post up twice a week. Considering I'm now working, three times a week doesn't work any more. Twittering every day might just work though.

3. Pass more exams. I screwed up one exam last year pretty badly, and I'm not keen on failing any more.

That's it. Seems pretty boring - but I think the 3 goals I've set are massive ones.

The Difference between a DSLR and a Compact

Some people wonder why some of us bother to carry (and buy) larger, bulkier DSLRs over compact digital cameras. I thought I'd make a post about it so I don't forget why. 1.  Size - Nobody really wants a larger camera unless they bought it to get noticed. If I could get a good optical TTL viewfinder camera (sorry, I hate those LCD viewfinders) at the size of a compact, I probably would. A compact is small, light - and is now no longer limited by the size of the film - but by the size of its electronics - a DSLR is generally still big because of the prism/mirror construct and the size of its sensor.

2. Video -  Until recently, most DSLRs couldn't record video. I generally don't take much video except perhaps at night when the camera fails completely at taking photos. Although I've have a Nikon D90, I haven't used the video besides for testing or demonstration purposes. :P

3. Speed - Even the cheapest DSLR is usually faster than the most expensive compact. Everything from boot-up time, to autofocus speed, zoom speed (because it's manual), picture processing speed, card writing speed, picture viewing and thumbnailing speed -  bla bla bla.

4. Metering - A lot of smaller cameras (usually the cheaper ones) aren't very consistent when deciding on exposure. This is despite having actual data from the sensor during autofocus. Somehow I think this is more of a crippling thing rather than actually difficulty of getting a camera to meter correctly.

5. Buttons - DSLRs have a lot of buttons. I see this as a good thing - buttons have always been faster and more reliable than touch screens - which seem to be becoming more prevalent among people who think it's the in thing. I've lost plenty of photo opportunities fiddling with the touch screen on a nearly buttonless camera - and am not happy.

6. Ease-of-use - A lot of people have the perception that DSLRs are more difficult to use than compacts - this is incorrect. It's the other way round. DSLRs are awesome point-and-shoot cameras. You can literally point the camera, focus, take the photo - and there it is, a technically good photo (artistically it's a complete other matter). With a compact, the ISO could be too high, the flash might decided not to fire in a really dark room, the metering could be off my several stops, the AF took 1 second to get a lock, despite the blinding red light your subjects just saw. Not to mention, if you happen to need to change the ISO, aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation, or flash mode - it's gonna take you a lot more than a few seconds. And you might argue, why in the world would you want to change those settings?

On a DSLR, ISO 3200 can look better than a compact's ISO 200 or 400 - so you don't have to go off and adjust the ISO all that often. Why would you need to adjust shutter speed? Most compacts don't have a setting for a minimum shutter speed (or maximum for how long the shutter stays open) - this can result in the camera wanting to take a 2 second exposure of that photo your group is posing for. On a DSLR, you generally set things once and forget it - and if you need to change it - it's a button press + dial turn away. On a compact, you have to reset every thing AGAIN when things get tricky - and if you need to change things, it's MANY button presses away even on an XMB style menu.

A compact isn't easier to use because you have to adapt to the quirks of your camera - I don't trust strangers to get it right with my compact - but I can be pretty confident they won't screw up with my DSLR - except maybe focus - since a DSLR does indeed usually have a significantly more narrow depth of field compact to compacts - but in my experience of handing cameras to strangers to help us, none of them have failed using either type of camera. (Of course, in my experience, a lot of people forget how important it is to make sure your camera is focused before taking a photo. In the days of film, when I was working on the school magazine, the random security guard actually proved to be more skilful (since he was more careful) than some of our bidding photographers - who have had the camera for at least a year.) I used to used a cheapskate Sony digital camera which practically had no settings whatsoever (this was very normal during the age I bought my camera - don't go off saying Canon would've done it better, their same camera in the same price range was actually worse - not to mention, it was less responsive and took longer to cycle its flash) I had to do strange things to get the camera to take photos properly at night.

7. Battery life - DSLRs have always been better - but you tend to take more photos with them, and the batteries are significantly larger and heavier. A compact could give you 300 photos, when a DSLR will easily double or even triple that. (Consider this - because the DSLR boots so quickly - you don't have to keep it on waiting for the shot, you can actually switch it off while waiting for people to get into position - more power savings! This isn't even considering that a DSLR's LCD screen is usually off - while a compact camera's LCD screen is almost always on.

8. Ability to attach nonsense - DSLRs are famed from their ability to attach to nonsense - this isn't necessarily a good thing - because it means the camera is generally bigger because of all these extra ports, connectors and other things. Not to mention, you usually attach super large items like flashes (which can easily be as large as the camera), monopods, tripods, battery grips and other things that make you even more noticeable.

9.  Low light - No explanation needed here. If you're in a dark place with digital cameras and no flash, be prepared for a lotta noise. A DSLR happens to be better because the sensor is larger. You don't have to be a genius to understand that more light on the sensor = better performance in low light situations.

10. Price - Hah. DSLRs are generally WAAAAY more expensive than their compact counterparts. What's worse is that to get a 10X zoom on your DSLR will cost you maybe three times a 10X zoom compact would cost - and that's just the lens! The camera itself might cost you 1.5 times a compact - which means to get a 10x zoom DSLR would easily cost you more than 4 times a compact camera with the same zoom capability would cost you - so really this is the biggest difference - and why you buy what you need, not what you want. No reason to fork out loads of cash for a DSLR.