Magic: The Gathering C/D

i hope this ends up being a decent sealed format, i actually prefer sealed to draft these days and i thought RTR was a particularly fun sealed set with all the mana fixing. this set looks like it's more synergy based so its a matter of whether there's enough redundancy in the various effects or not (what i said earlier re: hands of binding being the only board control cipher is an example of the lack of this)

i'm always skeptical of these early impressions though, the month after RTR came out everyone thought izzet was close to unplayable in limited, and then the ars arcanum guy ran his numbers and lo and behold it was actually the 2nd best performing guild

exactly - it's not until 2-3 weeks after the prerelease that I feel people are really getting a handle on the format. Dimir definitely looks like the worst guild for Limited but I doubt its anything like AVR black; kinda feel like the 5 guilds in RTR were balanced pretty well and if Dimir were really that weak I'd think they would have tweaked it in Development

dimir's REALLY bad. iatee and i just played a dimir/orzhov match which was positively atrocious. 2 long, arduous and annoying games. i bet there are gonna be lots of timed draws at prerelease.

yeah anyone going dimir at the prerelease is in for some lols

dimir wins are just kinda absurdist

i dunno. wizards r&d is hardly infallible even though we like to think they are. dimir is different from izzet and similar to avr black in that it relies on an extremely specific and janky strategy. i can definitely see it being as bad as it seems.

neovoidwielder, aetherize, a few other strong control cards, you just can't count on getting enough as they're uncommon

the avr black comparison doesn't scare me at all since i did really well with black decks in avr

i can totally see Dimir sucking in sealed but in draft I can see one guy doing some kind of super mill strategy and getting all the stuff no one wants and one guy doing some kind of three color Orzhov or Simic splash and doing alright with that. until then though I'll take your word for it, this guild desperately needs a Fog Bank-type card at common

already have multiple hour+ dimir games under my belt

corpse blockade is decent for that xp

iatee ground down my weak boros deck with endless mill. I think I got battalion off one time in 3 games.

now to build an insane gruul deck...

here we go: http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-gatecrash-prerelease-primer

he seems to be ranking the guilds
orzhov > simic > dimir > boros > gruul

which is wonderfully counterintuitive to current public opinion

I can buy that ranking if you move dimir to the bottom

a so-so gruul deck is nothing special for sure but its decent creatures and combat tricks

a so-so dimir deck has a decent amount of removal but really crap creatures for the most part

a strong boros deck is def not as good as a strong rakdos deck but has a lot of game winning rares

basically his point w/ gruul is that the common creatures are not efficient enough as creatures, and bloodrush often gives up too much long-game value to get an attack through early (i.e. if you keep using bloodrush to get your 2/2 through, you still end up with just a 2/2 but without any more guys to play)

maybe I read it incorrectly, but I'd think you could flip 3 and 4 there (does he actually say Dimir is better than Boros?). otherwise I think his opinion's as good as any. keep in mind that the prerelease hasn't happened yet. I remember a lot of people saying that Izzet was unplayable and that Unleash was a terrible mechanic

that's true but a deck w/ 17 playable creatures is still gonna win some games...I don't think it's great, no doubt, but bad dimir decks basically have to luck into a win

bad izzet decks are the same way! i should know :(

no he doesn't actually say dimir is better than boros, he lists all the problems with dimir and then basically says 'i think this could still be strong but will require very nuanced decisions for it to work'

or whatever

i'm still running gruul at the prerelease i guess, but this has been super helpful in thinking about the bloodrush guys

I've been winning games w/ dimir fwiw they just feel janky as hell and always take forever. maybe it's not all luck and that's how the deck's supposed to play.

i think zhur-taa swine is still very good, as are the uncommons, but i can see the 3/2 not playing as strong as it looks, and the 2/1 and 2/4 are obviously filler

I will play anyone tonite btw come at me bro

i think zhur-taa swine is still very good, as are the uncommons, but i can see the 3/2 not playing as strong as it looks, and the 2/1 and 2/4 are obviously filler

I always considered Golgari Longlegs to be a bit underrated in general so I think this card is good too. The bloodrush on that one seems more useful for shooting your opponent for 5 than as a combat trick. he's got a point about Gruul, but lets keep in mind that Azorious basically got shut down by Trestle Troll or Towering Indrik and it still does fine. having difficulty powering through 1/4 walls isn't necessarily a showstopper.

yeah if they're tapped out it's basically explosive impact, if they're not it's golgari longlegs

golgari longlegs was mostly good in RTR because it was a 4/4 or bigger in a format of 3/3s. this format doesn't have anything that trades with a fire elemental profitably at common though (or did i miss something?) so i'd expect swine to be similarly solid.

ok yeah the only commons that reasonably trade up with it are scorchwalker (yuck, you're never playing this if you plan on blocking) and a twice-evolved shambleshark

multicolor gate-trick deck gonna be a possible fringe deck maybe?

greenside watcher + gateway shade + hold the gates + crackling perimeter

yes i will be going into every draft attempting to get the crackling perimeter deck

you could even draft an enchantress-style deck where you stack verdant havens on a gate and then use greenside watcher to generate vast amounts of mana

prob is all the big dudes are rare

except for ruination wurm, which is cheap

im sure you can find a guildmage or something to convert all that extra mana into advantage

i'm reading the tracks poll and realizing that i've enjoyed magic more than music this year :|

lol truth bomb

can't believe i missed the jessie ware album all year though. other than that i'm like zzzz

anyways i was trying to figure out voidwalk combos. it can be quite strong and very underdrafted! wondering if voidwalk is the key to successful dimir.

uses:

dinrova horror (the one card i would play dimir for)
that angel generating 4WW d00d (limited esper control!!)
leyline phantom & other evolve triggermen
balustrade spy
sage's row denizen

not to mention bouncing undesirable auras, counters, tokens, etc

wanna try a voidwalk control deck out.

yeah it resets your opponent's evolve creatures and such too

damn. this jessie ware album is so nice. i'm pretty sure i initially avoided it cuz i mixed her up with jessie j. loool

yes im posting music stuff in here, the big ilx threads are scary

its really hard to get a handle on how good/bad Cipher is. at best it's like an artifact that you can tap to activate the effect, which you can use twice the first turn (making every single one really good). at worst, they're just really overcosted spells. i wonder if they'd be costed any differently had Invisible Stalker not been printed...

most of them are costed such that you get your mana's worth as long as you get the guy through once, which seems reasonable to me. the draw one could have been 2U by this metric though

well I think in most cases you play it when you know you can get a guy through unblocked, so you get it twice on turn one. so after that it's kind of a freeroll.

based on my limited experience playing w/ it that seems about right

so what do we think about the guildmages, charms, keyrunes?

in Limited? well - as for charms, it doesn't look like there's anything unplayable like the Rakdos one was. Boros is obviously very good. Dimir is small removal which is always good. Gruul seems like it can get stuck in your hand at times but it can kill flyers and if they don't have flyers than it makes your dudes unblockable which is also good. Orzhov - again, removal. Simic may actually be the best in Limited because all three abilities are things you really would like to have at certain times.

Guildmages - not too impressed with any of them the way I way with Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, but they all seem like solid, high picks. Zamec (the Simic one) is the one I'm most curious about, I have no idea how it'll actually play but both abilities are cheap and feel like they can add to a major advantage over time.

Keyrunes - the Dimir one is probably the best, but they all seem decent. Simic's is a little weak.

there really aren't that many flyers in this set, so I'm wondering how often someone would maindeck gruul charm

guildmages are def all playable cause there are so few decent two drops regardless

keyrunes seem kinda crap to me, boros maybe unplayable