Magic: The Gathering C/D

so final thoughts on dgm limited?

1. existence of a handful of overpowered guilded commons made it super easy to read signals
2. basically every 3 color combination seemed to work fine if you had the right cards? esper seemed weaker than it did in gtc, where you had all the dimir cards + tons of extort, but it's not like it wasn't playable.
3. going 2c was usually okay if you forced it early and got a little lucky. weakest 2c combos: izzet, azorius, selesnya, orzhov cause they aren't fast enough to benefit from winning the opening, and you couldn't draft a dedicated populate/detain/extort deck.
4. better than expected: alive/well, armored wolf rider, give/take, the 7 drops, haazda snare squad, maze glider, hired torturer, kraul warrior
5. wkrse than expected: deputy of acquittals, viashino firstblade, bronzebeak moa, korozda gorgon

I didn't get to draft it as much as I wanted to, but it was about what I expected. Lots of freedom, 2c and 3c were both possible, great format overall. Biggest knock I have against it is that even if you were reading signals right, sometimes there just weren't good cards for you. That's a problem in almost every format, but it seemed moreso here because most of the best cards were gold and thus harder to splash.

i'll still be drafting it some on modo since m14 looks kind of bland and isn't even up for another couple weeks anyway

i basically just did what i felt like doing in DGR drafts and rarely got screwed for not following signals, in fact i found the signals were often misleading and it was better to just develop a plan early and stick to it. i really like draft formats in which this is a workable approach, so i enjoyed the format.

3x ROE retro drafts going up tomorrow, which i'm excited about since i didn't really get to draft it the first time around, and it's a lot of people's favorite format.

1. Definitely true

2. I also think this is true. It's better than the first Rav block in this sense because there were certain combinations that you really couldn't build well because of the way the guilds were distributed. I have yet to do a 3-color combo where I wound up thinking "ok this just doesn't work out" - none of the guilds are linear enough to not play well with others (it's cards like Rootborn Defenses that take a hit here)

3. 2c is best if you're playing a fast guild like Gruul, Boros, or Rakdos, because if you can drop bears or 3-power 2-drops and your opponent is dicking around with gates and Cluestones (or waiting on their 3rd color) then you can just aggro them out while their hand is full. Izzet is definitely pretty terrible 2-color. Azorious is okay if you get lucky and pick up lots of Metropolis Sprites/Syndics/Keymaster Rogue/Daring Skyjek types in GTC. Anything that requires you to build things up (like Simic) is generally terrible because if the game goes long an opponent playing 3 colors is just going to have better cards than you. Orzhov is also like this though it can *kinda* work if you get a ton of removal.

4. I disagree on Give/Take - I never found a use for it outside of a bad Urban Evolution, though I suppose getting 3 counters could make things scary in a hurry. Big drops are definitely good because the format is slower and sometimes the decks that just drop big dudes 3 turns in a row beat out anything fancy. Wolf-Rider is definitely very good - everyone underrates vanilla dudes. Snare Squad is excellent in certain decks (those that attack a lot - Boros or Azorious especially). Hired Torturer I haven't really played much but it just seems like ok deck filler to me.

5. Moa probably isn't a 1st pick but it's definitely very good. 5/5's are hard to deal with and there are lots of cards in those colors that can pump out two creatures at once. Others I agree with.

Here are some of my picks -

Worse:
Steeple Roc - like every expensive 1-toughness creature it never stays on the field
Runner's Bane - seems like there are a lot of ways to pump or bounce creatures to make it fall off
the Gatekeepers - you probably want 5 gates to run these and that seems real hard to secure
Ascended Lawmage - just gets blocked
Drown in Filth
Gruul War Chant
Warped Physique - still good, but not the 1st-2nd pick that I always seem to think it is

Better: Wear/Tear - always a SB card but with so many cluestones and great creature enchantments running around it can really hurt certain decks
Maze Abomination
Mending Touch
Thrashing Mossdog - he looks real close to the subpar Kurodza Monitor but believe me he's a real pain in the ass for many decks
Boros Battleshaper - just immediately takes over the game
Haunter of Nightveil - very hard for your opponent to win with this guy out there
Maw of the Obzedat - makes combat really difficult for your opponent
Scab-Clan Giant
Turn/Burn - I knew this was one of the set's best uncommons but I've 2-for-1'd so many times with this that it's almost always my MVP when I've got it

Ok...that's it!

also, hard removal like Angelic Edit seems way better now because there are so many cards that'll just take over the game due to the slowness of the format

I found it really easy to play around moa. gruul war chant, notsomuch. edict also better because you are not dead t5 like you were in gtc.

i think snare squad is the card that most surprised me, and deputy of acquittals was most disappointing, my start-of-format evals were pretty good otherwise

yeah its toughness was super relevant. the m14 card that does the same thing is also good but is generally gonna get traded for. getting rid of snare squad usually meant wasting a decent spell or double blocking.

anyone have recs on sleeves that don't get all mucked up

weakest 2c combos: izzet, azorius, selesnya, orzhov cause they aren't fast enough to benefit from winning the opening, and you couldn't draft a dedicated populate/detain/extort deck

azorius is probably my favorite guild to be in simply because i think the format is weak to fliers generally. i really like wind drake and have picked it very highly. mono colored izzet decks can combo win really fast too, i've seen a few turn 5 wins with nivix cyclops. aggro selesnya just doesn't have enough three power two-drops to really work, iirc the only one is call and it's both uncommon and in rtr. unflinching courage is amazing but it also goes in about half the decks in the format so it doesn't really count. orzhov would def take my vote as weakest two-color guild.

unlike cider i spent a lot of time on mtgo trying to counterdraft - there was a small window where people were taking cluestones/gates/durdles too high and you wanted to force aggro but i think the pro tour kind of scuttled that, i remember people at my local drafts being like 'no aggro is amazing' the friday the pro tour started. but then after the pro tour every idiot was like 'no you have to force a gtc guild so you set yourself up in pack two' and took zhur ta druid over everything and i just kept looking to find an open seeming rtr guild (azorius and golgari being my faves) and punish them. people finally stopped taking tithe drinkers over unflinching courage and no draft strategy seemed dominant for a bit and then i think people got bored, comfortable or ambitious and lately i've seen a disproportionate # of 4-5 color decks looking to do 'sweet' things so i am looking for consistent, efficient decks with lots of evasion e.g wind drakes again. i think i'm the idiot that overrates being two colors, i have probably missed out on some powerful cluestone-style or bomb-y decks because i think i am going to lose to mana screw, not having two-drops &c &c. i think the format will probably not evolve much past this because the # of players will drop off but i will probably continue to draft it a few times a week since a) i have 0 voice of resurgences b) M14 isn't that fun seeming and c) have plenty of packs still and they're aren't worth anything otherwise

best common (d/g/r): beetleform mage/basilica screecher/stab wound
best uncommon: haunter of nightveil/gruul guildmage (maybe? this one is really hard)/sel charm

most surprising common: wind drake. most disappointing: yeah, probably deputy. not sure if tithe drinker was a bust or not but i really didn't draft them, i only have 1 on mtgo.

recs on sleeves that don't get all mucked up

i've been using the same set of dragonshields for almost exactly a year now for drafting and they're still in decent shape.

I found it really easy to play around moa. gruul war chant, notsomuch. edict also better because you are not dead t5 like you were in gtc.

war chant would be awesome in a fast, creature-dense deck. I just never really seemed to be on the offense when I played it. Moa is also useless on defense but Selesnya has a lot of creatures or ways to make more so I've always been able to put a lot of pressure on with it. I dunno - War Chant is obviously very playable but it wasn't as powerful as it seemed on first glance.

xp re: sleeves

i use KMC Matte sleeves (package looks like this) for everything, they're pretty good. dragonshields are the most durable but they don't shuffle as smoothly as KMCs. ultra pro are cheaper but not very durable at all.

I've won t5 w/ nivix cyclops but my cyclops decks always splashed

commons: beetleform, syndic or mugging, stab wound
uncommon: far/away turn/burn (tie) / ghor-clan / bloodfray/skymark (tie)

for best common/uncommons, I'd say this:

C: Zhur-Taa Druid / Grisly Spectacle / Stab Wound
U: Turn/Burn / Dinrova Horror / Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage

I tried 5-color for a while. Posted about it a few times but the gist was that you'd lose to 2-color aggro decks but generally beat the 3-color more durdlier ones because your avg. card quality was generally better. Sucks to draft this and not get any bombs though, because it's those cards that demand answers right away that make the deck tick.

In general I aim to draft Grixis - there are a lot of real great uncommons in DGM (Turn/Burn, Far/Away, Fluxcharger, Haunter of Nightveil, Warped Physique, Woodlot...) and Dimir seems way underdrafted in general. Having access to all the format's best removal is awesome.

BTW I did once pull off the Fencing Ace/Phytoburst/Slaughterhorn 18 damage on turn 3 start....then struggled mightily to deal the other two damage. The Nivix Cyclops/Inaction Injuction decks are a lot more fun.

oh yeah I forgot about vitu-ghazi. I guess that's clearly the best uncommon in straight rtr tho I'd pick skymark ahead of it if I were in bant and doing dgm.

I've won t5 w/ nivix cyclops but my cyclops decks always splashed

last draft of the format yesterday night...pure red/blue izzet cyclops deck. (unless you count dimir guildgate + far/away)

I was actually hesitant about putting that guildgate in (aggro deck w/ 3 maakas, was hoping to curve out) but it won me a game.

very nice - I think Izzet got helped a lot by full block draft, but I still would hesitate to do it 2-color

i once 3-0'd with straight Dimir no splash - first three picks were Mirko Vosk, Far/Away, and Warped Physique. I think I got a 13th or 14th pick Pilfered Plans. In GTC I got Lazav and Nightveil as picks 1 and 2. It's so much fun when everything goes your way :)

this seems useful for anyone who wants to hit the ROE retro queues this week
http://www.mtgoacademy.com/rise-of-the-eldrazi-a-draft-primer/

I'm prob not gonna play it but I'm tempted, seems like such a cool format

my first roe draft: http://i.imgur.com/L6GQAWI.jpg

highlight was forcing an opponent to double-chump-block my bramblesnap with 2 pelakka wurms

did you win? level up cards all seem insane

lost the finals to a lord of shatterskull pass since i had no removal

Getting misty-eyed for ROE just looking at your deck

yeah that really was the best draft format wasn't it

i think the most exciting draft formats are the ones that really mess with traditional card evaluation concepts, and ROE is sort of the extreme of that, with Innistrad being a slightly more modest example.

'really mess with traditional card evaluation concepts... lost... since i had not removal'

well obviously removal is still good, just not so much the ones that only kill x/2s which is all i saw in that draft

just giving you a hard time :D

i watched sam black do a rise draft and he was b/g as well, the drones seemed p legit. he made ok use out of stuff like last kiss but it seemed p marginal. i've stopped doing the throwback drafts because i never know what i'm doing and end up just losing a bunch but ROE is p tempting.

The other reason I love ROE is that it's the closest you get to the epicness of EDH in a tournament format. I've had a game where I got attacked twice by a Kozilek and won with three permanents left on the board - it's almost like a movie.

lol

no bump for the comiccon announcements?

to recap

1) Theros is indeed an "enchantment matters" block
2) Jace, The Mind Sculptor is in FTV:20
3) There will be a new frame (only for "God" cards?)
4) New Elspeth
5) New "Hero" card type which I think is a pre-release only thing
6) anything else?

theros looks pretty nice

mechanical theme is enchantments to little surprise after all the suspicious m14 cards

the art looks a lot more appealing to me than the last few blocks

no actual card spoilers other than names unless i missed something

i just bought a playset of serra's sanctums a few days ago in a rare-for-me speculation-fueled purchase, hope it pays off at some point. i'd probably play GW enchantress in legacy anyway if i ever felt like getting all the cards for it

i used to have an enchantress deck. it just wasn't fast enough.. ultimately worked them into my ernham-geddon g/w deck. love g/w.

i found my magic decks deep in the closet last weekend. after years of seearching.

wow Jace just tanked hard on MTGO

mtgo prices react a lot faster because there aren't really collectors so card use is mostly utilitarian. plus buying/selling is much faster and has smaller margins

Theros looking nice! Definitely cheers me up after feeling less than enthusiastic about m14.

Minotaurs and gorgons make for an interesting tie back to rtr block. Is Reckoner going to end up being even more powerful?

what is m14???

the current core set that was just released

ROE is fun. drafted a ramp deck that lost in r2 to a kiln fiend deck.

my old american aurelia build for block is doing well. 4-0d a daily with it last week and have a couple 3-1s to go with it. i've won packs more often than not with it - it's pretty versatile especially after the SB.

stocking up on DGM packs for when they go up past 3 tix after m14 siphons all the DGM prize packs out of the system. i have upwards of 100 of the things now. looking forward to the cash-in in a month.

for reference, if you open a pack of DGM you will get an average of 2.25 worth of tix from the pack alone. bots can theoretically be opening the packs they're buying for 2 tix each for a profit. i don't see any way that each pack you buy for 2 tix isn't basically a free tix in a month.

i enjoy these set indices that show the average value of cards in the set. the site in general is quite helpful for me.

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/card/DGM

yeah i had to liquidate my dgm packs unfortunately because i had 100 of them from prizes but was out of tickets to actually play the game with which is the important bit. average card value of 2.25 per pack seems really high though, i'm not sure i believe that. there's only 5 cards in the set that sell for more than 2.25 and they're all mythic rares, so that's a 5/121 chance of making a profit by opening a pack.

am hoping that they'll do something about this new phenomenon of pack prices crashing hard every set, it's good for casual drafters but miserable for ringers who are trying to recycle their winnings into more events

i'm just running some quick estimates now and getting under 1 ticket for the average value of the rare slot in DGM

oops actually it should be 80 not 121 for the denominator so it's over 1 ticket but well under 2 still

yeah 2.25 seems really optimistic - only Advent and Aetherling are the only non-mythics that sell over 2 right now. and about half the mythics are nearly worthless.

also they clarified that those hero cards they previewed aren't actually used in the theros prerelease, they're just things you collect for fighting the special hydra deck at gameday. there will be playable prerelease promos again though like with RTR and GTC, which i guess ended up being less of a big deal than people made it out to be last time so whatever.

i think the only problem with the guild packs was in gatecrash when making boros more consistent probably tilted things too much in that guild's favor. as long as the colors in theros are balanced i think it makes things more fun for the average player.