This is super brilliant because, if you think about it, the team next to you hate-drafting wouldn't change your strategy at all. Hate drafting is not the same as having the same strategy and competing for the same cards. If they take slivers you wanted, you can still take great cards they would have otherwise picked from their pass and just get slivers from the packs you open. Meanwhile, the slivers they hate draft aren't building on their own strategy, but the all-around good cards they passed to you do help you. Let me know if I'm on the right train of thought. Is this how it worked out for you guys?
First tournament i ever played i ran a 4 or 5 color sliver deck from Rath cycle with zero mana fixers because i had no idea what i was doing. Almost beat the local legend running a Stasis deck. He and his group gave me their phone numbers and invited me into their group. We played regularly for years. Good memories.
lol. back when I played w/ some friends, we had a specific friend we'd literally call, any time there was an argument about how a card's text should work
My older brother got me into magic. Shortly after teaching me the gamr he brought me to an event (not an official licensed tournament, some youth clubs own tournament weekend, with a bit of drafting and modern). On the first night they set up two headed giant star game. So 10 players. A fair bit into the game one player combo'ed off and gained infinite life. No other team at the table had an alternative win con. Except the annoying younger brother of one of the players. So my turn comes. Already had a double strike sliver, dropped a Virulent sliver, swung in for 10poison, gg. My team didn't win, but mister infinite life sure didnt either.
reminds me of a 10 player casual game and one guy that kept dropping congregrate..until I happened to have false cure in hand 'so I gain 400 life (thanks token generators) '..what do you mean?'
@@HungryOnPlane your first video made me sub, keep it up! I've been playing for most of the events/occurances you've covered so far and it's a nice blast from the past :)
Empirical yes, but also anecdotal. You lose a match to a lucky pool of a strategy that's not going to work, and it's annoying they wasted your time. If it happens a second time, then you know it's trouble.
Idk but I love it. It's just so strangely silly, thoughtful and brazen and they sent it every draft and won 😅 I didn't even have time to get into all of the rounds after Day 1 that others were starting to play Slivers too.
@@noniuuk Nah, you presume sheer dumb luck, presume it's not consistent enough and... oh wait. All you need do is look at the card list and you can run probabilities... Most people are BAD at statistics. People love to think of themselves as logical, but more often than not they are emotionally driven. And that brings us to: Not arrogance, but wilful ignorance. And wilful ignorance, is far worse-especially in leadership of companies, and of countries: Which is why when you look at the trends in national debts, and so on it's absolutely astounding that people keep voting the people in that they do.
No one wants to draft individual slivers card if you're not going for a sliver deck... You either go all in one slivers and hope no one else is or pass most if not all the slivers... No one actually wants to weaken their draft by hate picking slivers.
I remember way back in the day Jacob van Lunen ran the weekly 'building on a budget' articles for daily MTG for years, the deck lists were awesome showed heaps of creativity.
Lantern Control is my favorite example of the pro tour being truly "broken" by a certain strategy. It completely warped what winning a game of Magic even means. Imagine sitting down to play some Splinter Twin. Hardcore, cut-throat, no-holds-barred, kick your teeth in, Twin. And the dude who sits across from you goes Lantern turn-1, Codex Shredder turn-2, and another Shredder turn-3 with a Ghoulcaller's Bell. You look at them in utter confusion and disbelief when they then ask if you want to concede. Concede? All they have are some janky artifacts. And you're playing fucking Splinter Twin... All you need is one good draw and the game ends. So you keep playing, but your confidence slowly crumbles as you begin to realize that the draw you were hoping for isn't coming -- no, *they* aren't going to let it come. In fact, the only thing they are going to let you do for the rest of the game is draw and play more lands. You consider concession, but your in too deep and there's no way this jank pile across the table can keep this up, so you push on. Turn after turn. Land - go. Land - go. Land - go. And now here you are, with 17 lands on board, 5 more in your hand, and a Splinter Twin deck sitting in your graveyard, it's turn 26 before you finally mill out. Afterwards you just sit there in disbelief and anger, wishing you had conceded on turn 3. Just think of the absolute whiplash this must have given everyone at that OKC-GP. Crazy stuff.
The PTQ they won, Lachman was supposed to be my buddies 2HG partner, and van Lunen and I would team up with whoever else was there. The night before, Lachman and van Lunen went to a wedding, and my buddy Ryan Spring and I decided not to go because of the drive to CT from northern Mass because i didnt want to make the drive at 6am.
The PTQ was Time Spiral Block sealed 2HG sealed. 12 packs (i believe it was 6 and 6), build 2 decks from the combined card pool. PTQs were top 4, I believe it was draft but don't remember. There were quite a few 2HG GPs as well. Bomb pools had multiple volcanic awakenings, which was the best thing you could do essentially.
Probably the only time someone broke a limited-format in such a way. Met Van Lunen at Pro Tour Valencia, really nice guy! That pro tour was also something, but not due to someone breaking the format, but the weather broke the pro tour.
Someone I was walking back to my hotel with at night couldn’t see all that well due to the rain. There is a small park right next to the venue on our way back, with a series of canals and bridges. Well.. they didn’t know about the canals and walked directly into the chest-high water.
@@Ebinsugewa Ouch. The park going through the city leading up to the venue became a river. Also the entire city blacked out for a moment. We took shelter at a random bar and drunk whiskey half the night. I overslept the next day... what would have been day 1... luckly for me it was the first time (and only?) the pro tour was postponed.
@michaelmckenna7405 This would've been PT Valencia '07 (or '08...I can't recall). Format was Extended (OLD Extended...still the best format I believe MTG has ever had) and a 16-yr old Remi Fortier would win the event w/ CounterTopGoyf.
Knowing and following strong strategies is valuable. I do find that it can also lead to people not knowing how to play against more obscure cards. I had a red/blue Stax deck back in the early days of the game. Rather than deny resources, it punished using them. Black Vice, Manabarbs, stuff like that. I played against a Juzam deck back when that was the elite deck. Opponent gets the nuts hand, drops a Juzam Djinn on turn 1. I play an island, cast Backfire on the Djinn. He's holding a Fork and a Berserk, and can't win without dying. So, instead of taking the draw, he holds back hoping to draw into a Disenchant or something. Next turn I play a Mountain, and cast Psychic Venom on his City of Brass. Game went on for a few more turns. I got out a Black Vice and he folded, and we never saw him at that game store again. His deck was no doubt stronger than mine, but he'd never seen anything like that, and didn't know what to do. Point is, play weird stuff.
Oh I also forgot to mention that they later changed the poison rule in 2HG to have you lose at 15 counters not 10 💀 It was quite a bit later than this PT but I'm sure whenever they came to revise it they thought of this event and went "yeah let's just fix that real quick."
Great video, but I did feel the final table portion was too briefly told, I didn't really get a sense of how they ended up overcoming the odds being so stacked against them. Overall, I'm somehow not surprised that their overwhelming results were predicated on slivers, because even as a kid when slivers first came out, I always felt they were extremely powerful in how quickly they could snowball into a death machine.
It seems I found your channel just as you stated doing these pro tour retrospectives. I'm glad you're continuing them - we certainly don't need yet more commander content.
So I just watched that top 4 draft, and that pack 1 only had a life gain Sliver, and they didn't want to hate draft that. Plus you don't want to hate draft THAT early. The Sliver Kids didn't also pass any good Slivers with the intent to wheel them out of their first pack either. So 8 cards are gone before the hate drafters get their first sign that they Sliver Kids are drafting Slivers. That said, there were no Slivers for the Sliver Kids to take for pack 1 picks 5 and 6. Though there was a Two-Headed AND a Shadow Sliver for picks 7 and 8... No Slivers from one pack could mean that the guys to their right could have been taking Slivers, maybe throwing them off the scent? Then two Slivers in the next pack could just mean that Slivers just weren't in the previous pack...Again though, it was just picks 5 and 6 when the would-be hate drafters saw the Two-Headed and Shadow Slivers, likely too early in the pack to hate draft. In pack 3 they did hate a Sliver with their 7-8th pick, obviously reading the signs. They also hated a Virulent Sliver 7-8th pick in pack 5. So I feel like they did what they could when they could when they could. The packs just weren't such that they could really do much hate-drafting without severely crippling their own decks in the process.
I just got this channel recommended and how could I not recognize Pastry's voice. I loved your storytelling and writing in the Replay files, god I miss that content and this is everything I needed.
I was sure the video was looping. Then I realized you're just repeating your script periodically. Weird. You said the same thing already four times. Five seems excessive...
This is the ultimate Johnny fantasy. I always look to exploit underutilized cards and strategies in draft formats, there's just something so satisfying about winning with the cards everyone else thinks are trash. Most recently, that's been blue strategies (oddly enough) in the last few sets. Blue is generally considered bad in recent sets, but the best blue cards are much better than the mid cards of other colors. So when you're tabling premium cards in your colors because of the meta, all of a sudden it's the best strategy. Many players have capitalized on this to have impressive win rates and rankings with the "worst" archetype on Arena, but getting to do that at the Pro Tour? Chef's kiss.
The thing I hate about slivers is that their strength was also supposed to be their weakness. If you gave all slivers flying, you were amping your opponent's sliver deck as well. Today, that's no longer a downside because they're all "all of *your* slivers" abilities. That took away some of the uniqueness of sliver decks, as they're now no longer different from any other tribal deck that gives everything +x/+x, trample, double-strike, haste, etc.
The increase in power level of the other cards makes it difficult to balance them, no matter how powerful we feel like slivers are, the power level of the rest of the game really did leave them behind until they started the second type of slivers
12 годин тому
Slivers are very all or nothing and considering that they have a legacy of "leave us alone and you die" they do get hated out of games. I also miss the old sliver text too, it's more fun when the effect is symmetrical and it boils down to mind games and good play.
I'd argue memory jar is more of a poster child, but other than that, great video. I have always wanted some piece of content about the sliver kids, it's great to finally have it
Yeah I was surprised that it hadn't been covered but I knew it was a perfect opportunity to showcase something sweet from the past. Fair about Jar, I think a decent number of cards pass or exceed the bar. Also Jar 100% will get its own video one day.
@@HungryOnPlane oh, for sure, tolarian academy's extended deck is my favorite deck of all time, I'd just put jar above it since jar caused the first emergency banning. But you're also right about many cards of that time being impactful enough to be the poster child. That was a crazy period in magic
Very awesome content. It is beyond me how you are sitting at only ~5k subs. But this type of documentary style content is golden. Would love to see more.
Nothing has ever gone wrong with poison counters. So fantastic that WotC still puts that in. They should actually have creatures who deal poison counters according to their power.
The Bo1 format was chosen bc 2HG usually lead to more controlling decks on each side so the fear was that control decks on all sides could run into time issues. well when peopel didnt draft Volcanic Awakening. bc the metagame was thought of as control dominated people drafted even slower as a metagame adjustement. and then the slivers attacked.
Magic is a game with hundreds of rules where each card bends them a little bit here and there and some well completely break them. That’s how I always defined “broken”
I loved that kind of metagming approach when I played more competitively. Breaking metas with homebrew decks was an obsession and I'm loving these stories you find from the Pro Tour.
Good video, but yeesh dude why did you feel the need to hint at what the format was for 6 minutes? Just say what it is. Also a breakdown of the last match, instead of 5 minutes of vague build up would have been better. You built up this great finals match, and then when we get to it you just brush over it saying it lasted 9 turns. Wish you could have told us what occurred in those 9 turns.
as a diehard sliver player, i love them so much. they are the essence of what a tribal deck is supposed to be. HOWEVER people see you play slivers and target you. Playing slivers is a global taunt. like playing teemo in lol.
This might just actually be my favorite Pro Tour and I wasn't even really interested in the format before the event. I still remember it fondly and cheered the "Sliver Guys" on over the whole event. :)
You are currently speedrunning to the spot of my favorit youtube channel. Keep up the great work and your subscriber count is going to explode eventually!
It's 2:30 AM - get recommended a random but interesting MTG video - start listening to it - recognizes voice - "Is this fuckin' PastryTime?" - sees linktree - "Let's fuckin' go it is PastryTime." I guess I have a new backlog of videos to go through. Much love dude
God this content is so good. Commenting so you can get more views on this. Love League stars branching out, and you know just the right beats to hit to keep this story tight without over bloating it or cutting anything important.
This video was actually pure perfection for me. I was looking for this type of content for mtg. This reminds me of the opening segments of the "History of Yugioh" series that Cimoooooo does. I absolutely loved this as well as you last Video and the other one in this style.
This was awesome. Had two people just run this same strategy in 2HG commander last year. Used Virulent Sliver to wipe everyone out really early (thanks to an abundance of tutors).
Really enjoying these mini docs. It’s clear you care for what you’re writing about, unlike the content farms that flood UA-cam. Could the video be shorter? Sure, you can always edit yourself, trim time, and lose pieces that aren’t important to the plot, but ignore the TikTok brained people who have lost their attention spans and think you should rush through and get to a condensed, watered down 3 minutes.
I remember back in 03 buying the Legions Sliver Shivers preconstructed deck from my local card shop. Non of my friends wanted to play that deck. Slivers have come along way since then.
Yeah, and making it interesting '17+' minutes of content.... Is content! I love to hear these backstories, in depth analysis and context of what happend. Otherwise i'd be a quick 3 minutes: 'so there were these guys, they drafted slivers and no one else did and they won a protour. Cool, huh?'. While that is theoretically true, it doesnt do justice to the accomplishment the sliver kids made :)
As someone who loves poison decks in the Pokemon TCG and is trying to learn more about MTG, it feels great to see such a wild strategy do so well, if even just for one event.
Great video, love the pacing. I would look into methods to prevent mic popping, it was a bit distracting as a listening experience when it happened. Keep at it though, you got this.
Worth pointing out, I believe posion has been errata'd to now require 15 counters in Two-headed Giant. I think it's been that way since 2011, so the strategy probably wouldn't have been as effective today.
Correct! It was changed a few years after this event but the fact that it was changed at all is pretty hilarious given that this event almost assuredly had an impact on that rule change xD
Crushed a block PTQ with this very type of strategy, just in constructed. Even had a back up mill strategy. And the presence of summoners pact just made it so consistent. Pact was often just effectively free as you could just insure a game end on it if you already had a virulent sliver, and pacted a 2nd or 3rd one down. Throw in Telekentic Sliver to control the board until you assemble the finish, tap blockers at etb before untapping to swing, or just mess with their mana base on their upkeeps. The slivers in that block were incredible.
Hey, I recognize that voice from LCS! I've seen you tweet about Magic a couple times, but I didn't realize you'd made a YT channel for Magic videos. This is like that time I stumbled across Marshall Sutcliffe making watch repair videos.
11:36 - I feel that you gloss over this very important fact. This was the backbone of the best "Flash Hulk" decks - not complicated Revelark lines - but the fact that you could just drop 4x Virulent Slivers + 1 Heart Sliver to give haste and you have 5 creatures with Poison 4 and only have to connect with 3 to win [12 of the needed 10 damage]. While this video isn't about that Flash Hulk deck, the fact that the normal non-sliver lists hated drawing the combo creatures, the Sliver build would keep hands with the Slivers and just "win the good old fashioned way" by casting them and swinging for lethal. The free green Summoner's Pact allowed you to consistently search up a critical 3rd/4th sliver to win with.
I'll be honest I'd actually forgotten about this version of the Hulk kill when I made this video! It's wild how many different lines you can make with Hulk though even back in the day. Card is so busted we might have to make a video on it in the future...
@@HungryOnPlane - That would be great. Yes, Virulent Sliver is not a "favorite" card of mine, but it is an honorable mention kind of a card. Such simple and elegant design. Not over powered alone, but game winning in 3 or more copies. It is a fun creature to imprint onto Soul Foundry in Commander. Each turn, for 1 mana, and faster with untap effects, you just start playing Virulent slivers and can threaten the table.
Interesting video. That said, I think this left on the floor some of the more significant reasons why 2HG never returned, or that 2HG got a new set of rules. 2HG had existed before, but it'd usually been played with separate players each who faced off against one opponent and had separate turns - that's how MTGO implemented it and how most casuals played it. The new competitive 2HG rules allowed for one single turn and joint combat / blocking. More importantly, Storm was a mechanic in Time Spiral block. Basically the reason why constructed 2HG wouldn't be viable is because Storm gets insanely broken by shared turns - you get twice as many spells as you "should" and resolve a lethal Empty the Warrens or Dragonstorm backed by your partner's countermagic or the like. Limited was an attempt to keep the broken in-line, but Empty the Warrens was still a Common, so... yeah. 2HG wasn't a bad idea, but Time Spiral was probably the worst possible block to debut it in, at least with the shared turn rules.
Yeah I'm sad the format didn't continue to be played at high level events. I still love to play 2HG at pre-releases or at side events on GPs when that was still a thing.
Wasn't at the pro level, but just before Time Spiral rotated out of Standard, during the Morningtide block, I ran a Time Spiral block Sliver deck in Standard constructed. So out of a pool of 8 or 9 sets, I was playing as though I only had access to 3. I swept every round of that tournament 2-0 until the finals, which I won 2-1. My only dropped game was to aggro Goblins. Just further proof that Slivers live up to the lore when their victims are caught by surprise.
The problem I see for their opponents is that even if they hate draft slivers they are potentially still benefiting their opponent. They can't play the sliver when it comes up, because it will buff all slivers. So it's a card that you are hate drafting and then can't use at all when you play against that opponent. So maybe it's best not to draft that sliver. You can still draft your good cards, and maybe someone else will hate draft the sliver before it gets back to them. Basically it puts them in a situation where they can destroy the sliver players in drafting, but it also eliminates them from beating the players that aren't hate drafting slivers. I think the evidence of this is that three other players were doing better than them when they went into the top 4. Those were probably players that focused on winning the game rather than focused on trying to make sure their opponents lost. If it was only 2 teams then it would maybe make more sense to focus on making your opponent lose when you are drafting, but with 4 teams drafting you are making choices that make one opponent weaker but could make yourself weaker while also making the other two opponents stronger. It would be a tough balance to strike especially when you don't know what your opponent is taking. Do you even know for sure that they are taking slivers? What if they got unlucky and already have a terrible sliver deck and it doesn't matter what you pass to them? What if they already got super lucky and got great slivers when they first opened the packs and you already can't stop them from winning, do you risk giving up second place and falling to fourth place?
Currently having a lot of fun running a Sliver deck in Modern. Cloudshredder Sliver, Leeching Sliver and many more strong ones. Top it off with a Spiteful Sliver and Blasphemous Act to instantly win the game in 99% of cases.
I expect nothing less than a strategy so refined and perfected that all opponents just get stomped by it - even though they know the strategy - from a guy wearing a Germany shirt
Yeah the templating changed a little while ago which I kind of alluded to but I had no idea it was specifically because of 2HG? That's wild if true but also very understandable.
Hey! That was me and my buddy Chris! Let me know if you wanna talk about it. Great piece.
Boosting this
I remember watching this live. You two were an inspiration to all the Timmy's who wanted to win their own way.
Glad draft stategy leakage and hate drafting didn't steal your well-deserved win. A game where the meta cannot be disrupted is a stale one at best.
Miss playing with you at tabletop!
This is super brilliant because, if you think about it, the team next to you hate-drafting wouldn't change your strategy at all. Hate drafting is not the same as having the same strategy and competing for the same cards. If they take slivers you wanted, you can still take great cards they would have otherwise picked from their pass and just get slivers from the packs you open. Meanwhile, the slivers they hate draft aren't building on their own strategy, but the all-around good cards they passed to you do help you. Let me know if I'm on the right train of thought. Is this how it worked out for you guys?
If your opponent has forced you into seriously thinking about counter picking virulent sliver, they already beat you.
First tournament i ever played i ran a 4 or 5 color sliver deck from Rath cycle with zero mana fixers because i had no idea what i was doing. Almost beat the local legend running a Stasis deck. He and his group gave me their phone numbers and invited me into their group. We played regularly for years. Good memories.
Q) How many Magic players does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) I don't know. They're all still arguing about whether or not it's broken.
lol. back when I played w/ some friends, we had a specific friend we'd literally call, any time there was an argument about how a card's text should work
My older brother got me into magic. Shortly after teaching me the gamr he brought me to an event (not an official licensed tournament, some youth clubs own tournament weekend, with a bit of drafting and modern).
On the first night they set up two headed giant star game. So 10 players.
A fair bit into the game one player combo'ed off and gained infinite life. No other team at the table had an alternative win con. Except the annoying younger brother of one of the players.
So my turn comes. Already had a double strike sliver, dropped a Virulent sliver, swung in for 10poison, gg.
My team didn't win, but mister infinite life sure didnt either.
reminds me of a 10 player casual game and one guy that kept dropping congregrate..until I happened to have false cure in hand 'so I gain 400 life (thanks token generators) '..what do you mean?'
magic desperately needs more of this kind of video, hope you keep doing these
Oh I certainly will, currently looking to significantly reduce downtime between releases!
@@HungryOnPlane last 4 videos made me sub, keep it up 🙂
if i just found the summoning salt of mtg, i will be back
This is what made magic great for so many decades!
All we can do to survive "the commander years" is to reminisce with magics histories.
Ty❤
@@HungryOnPlane your first video made me sub, keep it up!
I've been playing for most of the events/occurances you've covered so far and it's a nice blast from the past :)
> Have empirical evidence that a strategy is strong by losing to it
> Conclude that it won't work
What the hell were those guys on?
Arrogance probably. If you lose it's because your opponents strategy is so stupid you didn't prepare for it, no fault of your own.
Empirical yes, but also anecdotal. You lose a match to a lucky pool of a strategy that's not going to work, and it's annoying they wasted your time. If it happens a second time, then you know it's trouble.
Idk but I love it. It's just so strangely silly, thoughtful and brazen and they sent it every draft and won 😅
I didn't even have time to get into all of the rounds after Day 1 that others were starting to play Slivers too.
@@noniuuk Nah, you presume sheer dumb luck, presume it's not consistent enough and... oh wait. All you need do is look at the card list and you can run probabilities...
Most people are BAD at statistics. People love to think of themselves as logical, but more often than not they are emotionally driven.
And that brings us to: Not arrogance, but wilful ignorance. And wilful ignorance, is far worse-especially in leadership of companies, and of countries: Which is why when you look at the trends in national debts, and so on it's absolutely astounding that people keep voting the people in that they do.
No one wants to draft individual slivers card if you're not going for a sliver deck... You either go all in one slivers and hope no one else is or pass most if not all the slivers... No one actually wants to weaken their draft by hate picking slivers.
I remember way back in the day Jacob van Lunen ran the weekly 'building on a budget' articles for daily MTG for years, the deck lists were awesome showed heaps of creativity.
I loved those articles!
Thanks!
Honestly, this made my day
@@JacobVanlunen I used to use those as a broke kid lol
"once the sliver is out of the proverbial booster pack-" good one.
Lantern Control is my favorite example of the pro tour being truly "broken" by a certain strategy. It completely warped what winning a game of Magic even means. Imagine sitting down to play some Splinter Twin. Hardcore, cut-throat, no-holds-barred, kick your teeth in, Twin. And the dude who sits across from you goes Lantern turn-1, Codex Shredder turn-2, and another Shredder turn-3 with a Ghoulcaller's Bell. You look at them in utter confusion and disbelief when they then ask if you want to concede. Concede? All they have are some janky artifacts. And you're playing fucking Splinter Twin... All you need is one good draw and the game ends. So you keep playing, but your confidence slowly crumbles as you begin to realize that the draw you were hoping for isn't coming -- no, *they* aren't going to let it come. In fact, the only thing they are going to let you do for the rest of the game is draw and play more lands. You consider concession, but your in too deep and there's no way this jank pile across the table can keep this up, so you push on. Turn after turn. Land - go. Land - go. Land - go. And now here you are, with 17 lands on board, 5 more in your hand, and a Splinter Twin deck sitting in your graveyard, it's turn 26 before you finally mill out. Afterwards you just sit there in disbelief and anger, wishing you had conceded on turn 3. Just think of the absolute whiplash this must have given everyone at that OKC-GP. Crazy stuff.
The PTQ they won, Lachman was supposed to be my buddies 2HG partner, and van Lunen and I would team up with whoever else was there.
The night before, Lachman and van Lunen went to a wedding, and my buddy Ryan Spring and I decided not to go because of the drive to CT from northern Mass because i didnt want to make the drive at 6am.
Thank you for your sacrifice to Magic History.
Holy smokes that's incredible!
Was the format the same for the PTQ as well? I wonder how long they were peddling the little aliens in 2HG draft for.
The PTQ was Time Spiral Block sealed 2HG sealed. 12 packs (i believe it was 6 and 6), build 2 decks from the combined card pool. PTQs were top 4, I believe it was draft but don't remember.
There were quite a few 2HG GPs as well. Bomb pools had multiple volcanic awakenings, which was the best thing you could do essentially.
We talking like Fitchburg or like Haverhill or like Adams
These last few videos where you've been calling back to old Pro Tours and talking about the storylines of those events is excellent, please make more!
Probably the only time someone broke a limited-format in such a way.
Met Van Lunen at Pro Tour Valencia, really nice guy! That pro tour was also something, but not due to someone breaking the format, but the weather broke the pro tour.
Someone I was walking back to my hotel with at night couldn’t see all that well due to the rain. There is a small park right next to the venue on our way back, with a series of canals and bridges. Well.. they didn’t know about the canals and walked directly into the chest-high water.
@@Ebinsugewa Ouch.
The park going through the city leading up to the venue became a river. Also the entire city blacked out for a moment. We took shelter at a random bar and drunk whiskey half the night. I overslept the next day... what would have been day 1... luckly for me it was the first time (and only?) the pro tour was postponed.
slither blade in amonkhet?
@michaelmckenna7405 This would've been PT Valencia '07 (or '08...I can't recall).
Format was Extended (OLD Extended...still the best format I believe MTG has ever had) and a 16-yr old Remi Fortier would win the event w/ CounterTopGoyf.
3:04 ahh the unsleeved duals
I should put an unsleeved duals shot in every vid tbh it gets the people going
They were like 40 dollars back then. Expensive, but not insane.
There was a point in time when sleeves arent allowed in a tournament settings.
Knowing and following strong strategies is valuable. I do find that it can also lead to people not knowing how to play against more obscure cards.
I had a red/blue Stax deck back in the early days of the game. Rather than deny resources, it punished using them. Black Vice, Manabarbs, stuff like that.
I played against a Juzam deck back when that was the elite deck. Opponent gets the nuts hand, drops a Juzam Djinn on turn 1. I play an island, cast Backfire on the Djinn. He's holding a Fork and a Berserk, and can't win without dying. So, instead of taking the draw, he holds back hoping to draw into a Disenchant or something. Next turn I play a Mountain, and cast Psychic Venom on his City of Brass. Game went on for a few more turns. I got out a Black Vice and he folded, and we never saw him at that game store again.
His deck was no doubt stronger than mine, but he'd never seen anything like that, and didn't know what to do. Point is, play weird stuff.
Oh I also forgot to mention that they later changed the poison rule in 2HG to have you lose at 15 counters not 10 💀
It was quite a bit later than this PT but I'm sure whenever they came to revise it they thought of this event and went "yeah let's just fix that real quick."
Yet in edh it's still 10 despite having 40 starting life total.
@@kindrogue5586 youre agaisnt 3 people and quickly become targeted down if you get even halfway there
"Let's fix it in post.", I guess.
Great video, but I did feel the final table portion was too briefly told, I didn't really get a sense of how they ended up overcoming the odds being so stacked against them. Overall, I'm somehow not surprised that their overwhelming results were predicated on slivers, because even as a kid when slivers first came out, I always felt they were extremely powerful in how quickly they could snowball into a death machine.
It seems I found your channel just as you stated doing these pro tour retrospectives. I'm glad you're continuing them - we certainly don't need yet more commander content.
So I just watched that top 4 draft, and that pack 1 only had a life gain Sliver, and they didn't want to hate draft that. Plus you don't want to hate draft THAT early. The Sliver Kids didn't also pass any good Slivers with the intent to wheel them out of their first pack either. So 8 cards are gone before the hate drafters get their first sign that they Sliver Kids are drafting Slivers. That said, there were no Slivers for the Sliver Kids to take for pack 1 picks 5 and 6. Though there was a Two-Headed AND a Shadow Sliver for picks 7 and 8...
No Slivers from one pack could mean that the guys to their right could have been taking Slivers, maybe throwing them off the scent? Then two Slivers in the next pack could just mean that Slivers just weren't in the previous pack...Again though, it was just picks 5 and 6 when the would-be hate drafters saw the Two-Headed and Shadow Slivers, likely too early in the pack to hate draft. In pack 3 they did hate a Sliver with their 7-8th pick, obviously reading the signs. They also hated a Virulent Sliver 7-8th pick in pack 5. So I feel like they did what they could when they could when they could. The packs just weren't such that they could really do much hate-drafting without severely crippling their own decks in the process.
TLDW: They used poisonous sliver.
I watched it
I just got this channel recommended and how could I not recognize Pastry's voice. I loved your storytelling and writing in the Replay files, god I miss that content and this is everything I needed.
I was sure the video was looping. Then I realized you're just repeating your script periodically. Weird. You said the same thing already four times. Five seems excessive...
?
thank you so much Julian for making these, it's appreciated
This is the ultimate Johnny fantasy. I always look to exploit underutilized cards and strategies in draft formats, there's just something so satisfying about winning with the cards everyone else thinks are trash. Most recently, that's been blue strategies (oddly enough) in the last few sets. Blue is generally considered bad in recent sets, but the best blue cards are much better than the mid cards of other colors. So when you're tabling premium cards in your colors because of the meta, all of a sudden it's the best strategy. Many players have capitalized on this to have impressive win rates and rankings with the "worst" archetype on Arena, but getting to do that at the Pro Tour? Chef's kiss.
The thing I hate about slivers is that their strength was also supposed to be their weakness. If you gave all slivers flying, you were amping your opponent's sliver deck as well. Today, that's no longer a downside because they're all "all of *your* slivers" abilities. That took away some of the uniqueness of sliver decks, as they're now no longer different from any other tribal deck that gives everything +x/+x, trample, double-strike, haste, etc.
The increase in power level of the other cards makes it difficult to balance them, no matter how powerful we feel like slivers are, the power level of the rest of the game really did leave them behind until they started the second type of slivers
Slivers are very all or nothing and considering that they have a legacy of "leave us alone and you die" they do get hated out of games.
I also miss the old sliver text too, it's more fun when the effect is symmetrical and it boils down to mind games and good play.
I'd argue memory jar is more of a poster child, but other than that, great video. I have always wanted some piece of content about the sliver kids, it's great to finally have it
Yeah I was surprised that it hadn't been covered but I knew it was a perfect opportunity to showcase something sweet from the past.
Fair about Jar, I think a decent number of cards pass or exceed the bar. Also Jar 100% will get its own video one day.
@@HungryOnPlane oh, for sure, tolarian academy's extended deck is my favorite deck of all time, I'd just put jar above it since jar caused the first emergency banning. But you're also right about many cards of that time being impactful enough to be the poster child. That was a crazy period in magic
Very awesome content. It is beyond me how you are sitting at only ~5k subs.
But this type of documentary style content is golden. Would love to see more.
Nothing has ever gone wrong with poison counters. So fantastic that WotC still puts that in. They should actually have creatures who deal poison counters according to their power.
The Bo1 format was chosen bc 2HG usually lead to more controlling decks on each side so the fear was that control decks on all sides could run into time issues. well when peopel didnt draft Volcanic Awakening.
bc the metagame was thought of as control dominated people drafted even slower as a metagame adjustement. and then the slivers attacked.
Magic is a game with hundreds of rules where each card bends them a little bit here and there and some well completely break them. That’s how I always defined “broken”
This is outstanding content, proud to become a relatively early subscriber so I can see what will clearly be a tremendous glow up for you!
I loved that kind of metagming approach when I played more competitively. Breaking metas with homebrew decks was an obsession and I'm loving these stories you find from the Pro Tour.
Good video, but yeesh dude why did you feel the need to hint at what the format was for 6 minutes? Just say what it is.
Also a breakdown of the last match, instead of 5 minutes of vague build up would have been better. You built up this great finals match, and then when we get to it you just brush over it saying it lasted 9 turns. Wish you could have told us what occurred in those 9 turns.
Two headed giant draft pro tour sounds absolutely insane
Narrator: it was.
Slivers are deceptively good even today in modern. It can hold its own in TP and league and is one of my all time favorite decks to roll around with.
as a diehard sliver player, i love them so much. they are the essence of what a tribal deck is supposed to be. HOWEVER people see you play slivers and target you. Playing slivers is a global taunt. like playing teemo in lol.
This might just actually be my favorite Pro Tour and I wasn't even really interested in the format before the event. I still remember it fondly and cheered the "Sliver Guys" on over the whole event. :)
6:52 - When they fist introduced the 2HG it was 40 life!
Wild to me that back in the day they made players play without sleeves because the cameras couldn’t see through the reflection.
17 minute video to explain why slivers and poison was good.... wow.
That was a wild setup that warped a pro tour.
Now, if you want just straight up broken, you could look into Flash Hulk or even Grimjar.
Shh don't leak the future video ideas!
You are currently speedrunning to the spot of my favorit youtube channel. Keep up the great work and your subscriber count is going to explode eventually!
It's 2:30 AM - get recommended a random but interesting MTG video - start listening to it - recognizes voice - "Is this fuckin' PastryTime?" - sees linktree - "Let's fuckin' go it is PastryTime."
I guess I have a new backlog of videos to go through. Much love dude
Another great video. These really take me back to watching them as they happened.
Great video, man! Love the energy. Truly an amazing game! 👌🍻
Enjoyed that. Nice work
God this content is so good. Commenting so you can get more views on this. Love League stars branching out, and you know just the right beats to hit to keep this story tight without over bloating it or cutting anything important.
As a sliver main, this brings a tear to my eye 🥲
Great video. I love learning about pro tour history.
I really enjoy this style of story telling. Entertaining and well told!
This video was actually pure perfection for me.
I was looking for this type of content for mtg. This reminds me of the opening segments of the "History of Yugioh" series that Cimoooooo does. I absolutely loved this as well as you last Video and the other one in this style.
The craziest part is just how obvious it is. It's wild that nobody else caught on at that table
This was awesome.
Had two people just run this same strategy in 2HG commander last year. Used Virulent Sliver to wipe everyone out really early (thanks to an abundance of tutors).
Really enjoying these mini docs. It’s clear you care for what you’re writing about, unlike the content farms that flood UA-cam. Could the video be shorter? Sure, you can always edit yourself, trim time, and lose pieces that aren’t important to the plot, but ignore the TikTok brained people who have lost their attention spans and think you should rush through and get to a condensed, watered down 3 minutes.
I remember back in 03 buying the Legions Sliver Shivers preconstructed deck from my local card shop. Non of my friends wanted to play that deck. Slivers have come along way since then.
Amazing video. This is the content I need! I feel like this is every magic players dream when they thought about joining the Pro Tour.
This is one of the best MTG channels out there!
soo much talking, so much repetition, its an interesting topic, but this video tries to make out of 8 minutes of content 17+
Could probably get it down to 3 minutes honestly.
I thought it was perfect, I came here for all the talking.
Yeah, and making it interesting '17+' minutes of content.... Is content! I love to hear these backstories, in depth analysis and context of what happend. Otherwise i'd be a quick 3 minutes: 'so there were these guys, they drafted slivers and no one else did and they won a protour. Cool, huh?'. While that is theoretically true, it doesnt do justice to the accomplishment the sliver kids made :)
Do you have examples of repetition or…?
@@Rabidconscience The dude says “it’s a format the pro tour only did once” like 5 times.
As someone who loves poison decks in the Pokemon TCG and is trying to learn more about MTG, it feels great to see such a wild strategy do so well, if even just for one event.
My first ever precon magic deck was a tricolor Sliver deck, so this makes me happy
This is so good, I shared this with my good friend who introduced me to MTG.
Video starts at 10 min
@@hogarthheathan good reminder to make timestamps tbh I'll get on that
@@HungryOnPlane i think its more a good reminder to cut unnecessary parts
Context is extremely important to any story and I greatly enjoyed those 10 minutes.
@@sidneysimons2738 Its not necessarily to repeat the context 3 times though
Great video, love the pacing. I would look into methods to prevent mic popping, it was a bit distracting as a listening experience when it happened. Keep at it though, you got this.
Worth pointing out, I believe posion has been errata'd to now require 15 counters in Two-headed Giant. I think it's been that way since 2011, so the strategy probably wouldn't have been as effective today.
Correct! It was changed a few years after this event but the fact that it was changed at all is pretty hilarious given that this event almost assuredly had an impact on that rule change xD
Four players. Two opponents. One “you”.
it absolutely ridiculous that MtG leaked this startegy on their YT channel back in the days.
Crushed a block PTQ with this very type of strategy, just in constructed. Even had a back up mill strategy. And the presence of summoners pact just made it so consistent. Pact was often just effectively free as you could just insure a game end on it if you already had a virulent sliver, and pacted a 2nd or 3rd one down. Throw in Telekentic Sliver to control the board until you assemble the finish, tap blockers at etb before untapping to swing, or just mess with their mana base on their upkeeps. The slivers in that block were incredible.
this just cements my reasoning that my first every commander deck is slivers
really loving this kind of video!
17 minute video constantly saying how quick the last game was. 0 seconds footage of that game.
imagine being self entitled enough to cry about free content being to long. just get lost. And no map tokens either for you.
@@dizzlegrizzle1919 It's literally a video about that one thing... that isn't shown at all.
Incredible story!
love the orb of creation soundtrack here
honestly, I'm not trying to troll here, but in fact, in 2007 EVERY person at that tournament was a nobody.
No way we're doing Jon Finkel and Dave Humpherys at MINIMUM dirty like that.
What an interesting video! Love stuff like this.
Hey, I recognize that voice from LCS! I've seen you tweet about Magic a couple times, but I didn't realize you'd made a YT channel for Magic videos. This is like that time I stumbled across Marshall Sutcliffe making watch repair videos.
11:36 - I feel that you gloss over this very important fact. This was the backbone of the best "Flash Hulk" decks - not complicated Revelark lines - but the fact that you could just drop 4x Virulent Slivers + 1 Heart Sliver to give haste and you have 5 creatures with Poison 4 and only have to connect with 3 to win [12 of the needed 10 damage].
While this video isn't about that Flash Hulk deck, the fact that the normal non-sliver lists hated drawing the combo creatures, the Sliver build would keep hands with the Slivers and just "win the good old fashioned way" by casting them and swinging for lethal. The free green Summoner's Pact allowed you to consistently search up a critical 3rd/4th sliver to win with.
I'll be honest I'd actually forgotten about this version of the Hulk kill when I made this video!
It's wild how many different lines you can make with Hulk though even back in the day. Card is so busted we might have to make a video on it in the future...
@@HungryOnPlane - That would be great. Yes, Virulent Sliver is not a "favorite" card of mine, but it is an honorable mention kind of a card. Such simple and elegant design. Not over powered alone, but game winning in 3 or more copies. It is a fun creature to imprint onto Soul Foundry in Commander. Each turn, for 1 mana, and faster with untap effects, you just start playing Virulent slivers and can threaten the table.
Interesting video. That said, I think this left on the floor some of the more significant reasons why 2HG never returned, or that 2HG got a new set of rules. 2HG had existed before, but it'd usually been played with separate players each who faced off against one opponent and had separate turns - that's how MTGO implemented it and how most casuals played it. The new competitive 2HG rules allowed for one single turn and joint combat / blocking. More importantly, Storm was a mechanic in Time Spiral block. Basically the reason why constructed 2HG wouldn't be viable is because Storm gets insanely broken by shared turns - you get twice as many spells as you "should" and resolve a lethal Empty the Warrens or Dragonstorm backed by your partner's countermagic or the like. Limited was an attempt to keep the broken in-line, but Empty the Warrens was still a Common, so... yeah. 2HG wasn't a bad idea, but Time Spiral was probably the worst possible block to debut it in, at least with the shared turn rules.
Yeah I'm sad the format didn't continue to be played at high level events. I still love to play 2HG at pre-releases or at side events on GPs when that was still a thing.
These are all great points! I sadly didn't have nearly enough time to cover more of the 2HG specific stuff in the video.
Harvey looks like a young version of the alien from resident alien. Wouldnt be surprised seeing Harry playing magic. :'D
Dissonance is alive and well in Magic, even today. Any time you make a claim outside of mainstream, true or not, people get extremely angry at you.
Wasn't at the pro level, but just before Time Spiral rotated out of Standard, during the Morningtide block, I ran a Time Spiral block Sliver deck in Standard constructed. So out of a pool of 8 or 9 sets, I was playing as though I only had access to 3. I swept every round of that tournament 2-0 until the finals, which I won 2-1. My only dropped game was to aggro Goblins.
Just further proof that Slivers live up to the lore when their victims are caught by surprise.
I played against JVL at a prerelease back in the day, I think for it was for Shadowmoor or something like that. Dude was so chill.
Cool video, but you gotta cut down on the repetition. They only did this format once? Okay, you only need to tell us that ONCE. Jfc lol.
Yeah. Did you hear him say that slivers affect all slivers? Don't worry, if you missed it the first time you'll hear it the 100th time 🙄
I have literally no idea why there are comments complaining about the length lmao. Great video!
16:11 OOF, that bend is *rough*
drafting double sliver synergy in 2HG seems like a common sense nowadays, but crazy back then
Kids at my lgs who only play cuckmander : Whats a Sliver?
Here, I'll show you, and you will never forget after this.
The problem I see for their opponents is that even if they hate draft slivers they are potentially still benefiting their opponent. They can't play the sliver when it comes up, because it will buff all slivers. So it's a card that you are hate drafting and then can't use at all when you play against that opponent. So maybe it's best not to draft that sliver. You can still draft your good cards, and maybe someone else will hate draft the sliver before it gets back to them.
Basically it puts them in a situation where they can destroy the sliver players in drafting, but it also eliminates them from beating the players that aren't hate drafting slivers. I think the evidence of this is that three other players were doing better than them when they went into the top 4. Those were probably players that focused on winning the game rather than focused on trying to make sure their opponents lost. If it was only 2 teams then it would maybe make more sense to focus on making your opponent lose when you are drafting, but with 4 teams drafting you are making choices that make one opponent weaker but could make yourself weaker while also making the other two opponents stronger. It would be a tough balance to strike especially when you don't know what your opponent is taking. Do you even know for sure that they are taking slivers? What if they got unlucky and already have a terrible sliver deck and it doesn't matter what you pass to them? What if they already got super lucky and got great slivers when they first opened the packs and you already can't stop them from winning, do you risk giving up second place and falling to fourth place?
Really awesome video. Surprised to see it has so little views.
Currently having a lot of fun running a Sliver deck in Modern. Cloudshredder Sliver, Leeching Sliver and many more strong ones. Top it off with a Spiteful Sliver and Blasphemous Act to instantly win the game in 99% of cases.
Great video!
3:04 those unsleeved duals though...
I didn't know Eminem played MTG. That's awesome!
Great story, great video. Thanks!
I expect nothing less than a strategy so refined and perfected that all opponents just get stomped by it - even though they know the strategy - from a guy wearing a Germany shirt
Really fun video. I hope to see more like it
ORB OF CREATION MENTIONED
Orb is life
One of the first Flash/Hulk combos used this sneaky bugger. Heart Sliver, four Virulent, lol get wrecked
OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THIS
What an absolute banger of a Hulk pile that was.
Yes this is my favorite story
My bro, you need a better mic, and slow your voice down a little
MY deck wrecks all Sliver decks and outpaces them via Priest of Possibility and Odric Lunarch Marshal.
Thay also made WOTC to change slivers’ effect so they only effect slivers you control.
Yeah the templating changed a little while ago which I kind of alluded to but I had no idea it was specifically because of 2HG? That's wild if true but also very understandable.