Magic: The Gathering C/D

see the prob is the actively want commons are *all* gonna be split save sage's row denizen

nobody's taking simic's shambleshark, kinpin's pet, the 3/1 batallion off-guild off guild, but dimir doesn't really 'get anything to itself' great at the common level.

death's approach is that card imo

i guess orzhov people can take it but it won't be nearly as good for them unless they max out on balustrade spies

ah I overlooked that. but it's not even an A+ card - it's conditional and terrible in your hand early game, which mostly negates the advantage of it being so cheap.

upthread I had 100% the same problem w/ golgari. needed an A+ common that it didn't have to split.

like make dinrova horror a common and I don't think you have suddenly made dimir broken

i don't think dimir is necessarily the strongest guild (orzhov is imo) but it's within a few % of the other guilds in power level while being drafted as if it's half as good, which makes it really strong.

I think dimir being bad is part of why orzhov is as good as it is - dimir's often undrafted so the black is open (and the blue available for splash) - and you have almost 0 overlap w/ boros in terms of white cards you want. it's also naturally good at dealing w/ aggro. I think a boros or simic deck that can regularly curve out are still better than a strong orz deck but as a drafting strategy orz is pretty smart because there's so much to go around and it fits the meta well.

in general this format reminds me a bit of innistrad in that it's an aggressive format with a lot of cards and mechanics that reward really tight play and deck construction while severely punishing the opposite. the difference is that playing from behind in this format feels a lot more doable, whereas innistrad had a few key tempo tricks with flashback at common that just put you too many turns behind to catch back up.

yeah I feel like my decks don't necessarily put themselves together the same way they did w/ rtr. the archetypes were pretty clear cut w/ rtr and you just built towards one w/ easy decisions, whereas anyone building a non-boros deck in this format is going to have to make much more difficult choices about what to include.

ah I overlooked that. but it's not even an A+ card - it's conditional and terrible in your hand early game, which mostly negates the advantage of it being so cheap.

in Dimir you can really make it an A+ card. it goes with Devour Flesh and even stuff like Psychic Strike - you Strike their 3-drop and mill another creature, suddenly this card is like Dead Weight or better. works really well with the Spy too. and Orzhov doesn't really want it (I'd take Executioner's Strike over it, for example) so you can get something like 2-3 of them every draft.

the Screecher is also really really great in this deck. but I'm sure everyone knows that already. As it turns out, there are really a lot of key uncommons - not just the Horror (quickly becoming my favorite 1st pick uncommon), but also Dimir Charm, Killing Wind (remember every removal spell powers up Death's Approach), the 2/5 Drake, Informer, Wight of Precinct Six (another awesome card in this deck that nobody else should draft), Aetherize, Rapid Hybridilization, and Call of the Nightwing (not to toot my own horn here but I think I was actually right about this one, it's really great)

as for Last Thoughts, I try to pick one up every time (easy because it's a 12-14th pick type card), maybe even two, because a lot of times I'm just 1-for-1ing their dudes and sometimes you end up in a situation where both players are just trying to topdeck, and this is where you really need to abuse Cipher. The cool thing about Cipher is that you can put it on a small flyer and it'll have the side effect of drawing out any removal your opponent has instead of them hitting the creature they really wanted to kill. you already get the effect at least once so it's not like you're exactly getting 2-for-1'ed. in fact for me it's kinda rare to not get those spells at least twice. If you can trigger a Cipher spell twice and draw out an Angelic Edict or Massive Raid, that's a major win. Haven't tried Shadow Slice yet though it looks like it's at least a better Lava Axe, and maybe useful since Dimir can't deal a lot of damage at once.

A+ cards don't need other cards to be good!

clearly you've never heard of Druid's Familiar then :(

shambleshark and wojek halberdiers aren't really A+ cards either though so it's all moot

I think wojek, skyjek, shamble and raptor are all As

wight @ common might have also worked

mist raven is the most recent A+ common based on what i think of as an "A+ common"

well it was less the "A+" and more "A, also nobody off-guild is taking this, so you get passed it later than you should"

like making wojek 1R instead of WR would make it an even better card - it'd also make boros a slightly worse guild

this is inspirational https://twitter.com/tommartell/status/304089310859243520/photo/1

speaking of, what's your opinion on thrull parasite? the more extort dudes the better, or deceiving because you can't extort early and you're left w/ a 1/1 by the time you can extort?

it's alright

ars arcanum is up http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-gatecrash-draft-overview

guild winrate chart looks about how i expected

wight @ common might have also worked

definitely agreed though it's kind of an odd card for Dimir since big ground creatures really arent its thing. I'm okay with R&D underpowering guilds like Izzet and Dimir with the knowledge that less people will probably draft them and also because I think a strategy like what those guilds are trying to do being too powerful would likely hurt the format.

speaking of, what's your opinion on thrull parasite? the more extort dudes the better, or deceiving because you can't extort early and you're left w/ a 1/1 by the time you can extort?

I'm leaning towards the former, I take Kingpin/Screecher/Syndic over it obviously but I like it better than say, Knight of Obligation because not only do cheap Extort dudes allow you to Extort more earlier but Orzhov also wants cheap spells for other Exorters in general.

I think his analysis is flawed because people are more likely to play 'bad' boros decks and less likely to play 'bad' dimir decks. I'd be more interested in seeing what % of 3-0 decks are what guild and I highly suspect dimir would be #5 on that.

(even if you adjusted it for playrates)

i think gruul would be #5 on that, dimir 3 or 4

yeah maybe

but still I think that's the metric that matters. pure winrate is very deceiving.

dimir is the weakest guild, even if its a lot more playable than people initially gave it credit for. i've gone 6-0 with dimir but that's because the only times i've gone dimir it was a) ridiculously open and b) i opened/been passed multiple bombs. i have yet to play dimir in sealed and have only lost to to dimir in sealed a handful of times.

theres an interesting macro effect w/ dimir - and simic weirdly - where the more people avoid drafting it the better it is to draft but i agree w/ cider that it cant last. even cards that should be amazing in orzhov like grisly spectacle go way later than they should. but people will start having success w/dimir and more importantly start losing to dimir and then they'll be willing to move in on a fourth pick horror and dimir will go back to being really terrible because theres rarely two strong dimir decks at the table.

like clearly you *can* win with dimir but best deck, even considering the meta, is just straight up not the case. it's not great because nobody plays it, it looks great because people only play it when it's great. xp

how do you feel about Smog Elemental? Is this guy even playable at 6 cmc?

that's actually p stupid - obviously any guild is going to be better to draft the more open it is my point was more that i don't trust the ars arcanum guys data to be that useful as people adjust their drafting strats. also that dimir disproportionately benefits from being open in a way that boros wouldnt.

nah smog sucks, might be cool if azorius were still around but it's pretty much a 3/3 for 6

oh he mentions 'win rate by popularity' later in the article which i assume is what you're talking about here and apparently orzhov wins that

well I'd rather see 3-0 rate adjusted by popularity than pure winrate

this is exactly what happened with Black in AVR - I used to do really well with it because you'd get like 9th pick Bone Splinters and 11th pick Butcher Ghouls

AVR black was a lot harder to draft/build/play well than GTC dimir though imo

oh he mentions 'win rate by popularity' later in the article which i assume is what you're talking about here and apparently orzhov wins that

thats interesting but it's not what i really mean - it's more that given dimir is routinely underdrafted do dimir decks disproportionately benefit from having fewer drafters because the pool of playable commons is lower. also that dimir is getting a knock-on effect from the underdrafting of simic, so that it's current win rate or even win rate by popularity over represents its 'natural' win rate

something that gerry t said in mondays gamestate episode was that he was going to 'just take the best card from the first three packs' and then look to see what was open. i've really liked this strategy so far in gtc because i think drafting strategies are really, really terrible rn. i think - and i may have just been bad at rtr - but because rtr rewarded patience/forcing a lot more people have been over committing to guilds in gtc way too early and there is routinely one guild - almost always simic or dimir - thats really open. so all you have to do is wait for that fifth pick zameck guidmage or fourth pick grisly spectacle and move in.

in the big picture other guild %s suffer from all the people running terrible decks in guilds that weren't at all open, and *nobody* is running dimir when it's not open.

yeah when simic is open it's embarrassingly open

i agree that those winrates are obviously super-skewed by public perception still, but i feel like if everyone had perfect information then the results would be reasonably balanced. i don't think dimir is more than a couple percentage points worse than any other guild on card power level.

also the gold cards in this format tend to make for really strong signals, and it's super important to be in the right guild for your seat, so i wouldn't ever force a guild.

I don't agree that Ruination Wurm sucks. Gruul can get it out turn 5 and only Grisly Spectacle and Angelic Edict take care of it. I think one of the goals in Gruul is to just have the biggest dudes out in the late game and Ruination Wurm is a big honker for 6 mana. Smog Elemental is pretty bad though I would definitely side him in vs. Dimir. Him saying that an 8-drop that says "win the game" wouldn't make his deck sounds really inaccurate. Of course I would play that!

anyway I do agree with a lot of his conclusions as they match up what I've been seeing so far but he is missing the whole part about how when people start drafting Dimir, it'll get a whole lot worse. the fact that Boros really is the best guild in Sealed is pretty telling.

AVR black was a lot harder to draft/build/play well than GTC dimir though imo

I never really felt this way - most of it was just abusing Butcher Ghoul and winning off the back of a Taskmaster or Homicidal Seclusion. I think its weaker than Dimir but it also would become quite clear when nobody was playing it and I would frequently wind up with decks that were nearly mono-black and were almost unbeatable.

cider i think dimirs natural win rate is a decent amount lower than the other guilds because the pool of available commons is lower and theres less redundancy at common compared to the other four guilds. its not about power level. i do think its not so much lower that it makes sense to completely shun the guild and also taking the most open guild is always a better strategy than avoiding/forcing some guilds so it also doesnt actually matter. but i've decided to be super pedantic about this point

anyway i missed the daily last night cuz i decided to actually go out but i put some gloom surgeons in my board and won two 8-mans last night so thanks everyone for that suggestion

sweet, are you using the same maindeck you posted above?

i think so - i may have added a negate for a dispel

4 dimir charm seemed weird to me, its a pretty narrow removal that has some of the same limitations as abrupt decay and devour flesh (not hitting bigger things). how often do you end up using the non-removal modes on it? 3rd mode seems potentially more powerful than it looks but i haven't used it yet.

still not convinced this deck can ever beat a resolved thragtusk but i'll keep messing with it

i think 3 may be correct but i really like all three modes - the last mode is actually a really useful effect in conjunction w/duskmatle seer. i used it to get the last 4 points of damage against someone playing jund last night but it also can help dig for threats while giving shaman fodder. the counter is probably the least useful although mortars is seeing more play now and i like having it as an answer to pillar.

my plan is typically to keep the board pretty clear so that my devour fleshs are live to hit stuff like tusk and olivia. obv would kill to have dismember or go for the throat in this deck but i found utlimate price to be too underwhelming. tragic slip may actually be pretty good and it's something i've put in the sideboard.

yeah i have ultimate price and tragic slip in my board but i don't really want them maindeck. i'm pretty sure i want a counterspell that can hit creatures maindeck though, either syncopate or essence scatter

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/deck/1174

Among the most powerful cards in Gatecrash is Burning-Tree Emissary. It has played a powerful supporting role in a variety of strategies. Inspired by smh's deck that went 4–0 in a Daily Event, we built and tested our own updated version of Naya Super-Fast Humans, largely adapted by Zvi Mowshowitz.