Magic: The Gathering C/D

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.

i did feel bad for the 20% or so of people at my store who straight up couldn't even play the guild they chose since their packs didn't align with it at all (and yes for GTC Boros crushed all)

well that's just the nature of sealed pools - giving people an 80% chance to play their favorite color rather than the normal 40% chance still seems like a net positive

well it's worse because if you totally whiffed that guild in your normal packs, your chances of building a viable deck go way down.

and in general the decks at those prereleases were much better than yer average sealed. I dunno. maybe it didn't actually happen so often - I just did the two. and the guild packs were a good idea.

hey all, what are your thoughts about playing against BW decks like aristocrats or BW humans? I have a real hard time with these. I find myself making a lot of questionable choices in combat and often don't know what the best removal targets are. I think all the creatures with sacrifice and life gain effects confuse me very easily. What do you recommend, especially if you are running aggro decks like RG?

those BW decks match up well against RG - that is unfortunately a bit of a matchup punt. i might even consider bonfire in the side for them though...

loved this, apparently classic

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/370207/what-i-know-about-magic-the-gathering

yeah that's pretty well known though the theory stuff is way out of date and misleading

i haven't really figured out m14 draft yet, so far i had 1 really good RG deck and everything since has been garbage no matter how decent it looked on paper.

finally got a fun m14 deck

http://i.imgur.com/k4u67LR.jpg

Well, Ars Arcanum is back

http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-rtr-block-limited-overview

Lots of data but little insight. It seems his big revelation is that "DGM is faster than you think":

I’m not entirely sure which card is the best common in DGM, but I think that it is a pretty close fight between Runner’s Bane, Haazda Snare Squad, Kraul Warrior.

^ Now this strikes me as being entirely wrong - I think aggro is amazing in this format when you can get it, but as he mentioned there's a lack of the synergy that GTC had (or even the RTR Rakdos decks) and you really have to get lucky to build something so focused. Runner's Bane feels like a liability much of the time and the other two IMO pale in comparison to the Zhur-Taa Druid or Beetleform Mage (Tithe Drinker is also quite good). It may be that he's valuing being single-colored a lot more than I am, but even then I'd probably rank Punish the Enemy over these. I'm confused.

currently planning to play living end in the mocs

someone kill me please

i've been drafting a lot of M14 and i have mixed signals about it. i had the best M14 deck i've had yet tonight and went 2-2 @ FNM. both my losses were very close, going 1-2 in both and being very close to winning. i also probably played badly at various points. ok first the draft deck because i want to commemorate it some how:

2 x festering newt
2 x sentinel sliver
1 x corpse hauler
2 x auramancer
1 x blood bairn
1 x griffen sentinel
1 x accursed spirit
1 x ajani's chosen
1 x serra angel
1 x vampire warlord
1 x nightmare

1 x liliana of the dark realms

1 x bublling cualdron
1 x corrupt
1 x mark of the vampire
3 x pacifism
2 x quag sickness

this draft aside i've done reasonably well @ M13 but i find it rewards having a specfic plan more than M13 did. like, i can't just sort of 'be in black' i have to have an idea of the specific black deck i want, earlier, than i had to in M13. blue does seem like the best color but it's also overdrafted rn at least in my local meta and online. i've only done 6 drafts online but my record is pretty good, i've ended up red aggro a lot which doesn't feel ideal, i often have to work pretty hard for my wins in fair games. i had this argument w/iatee but the b/r sacrifice deck seems like the best archetype but it's p narrow, and hasn't really shown up in any of the mtgo drafts i've done. in my local meta it hasn't really caught on yet i've gotten two pretty easy 4-0s with various builds. i've ended up liking this format a lot, and i wish i had more time to grind the release queues because i'd like to keep figuring it out

that deck would be better without 2 sentinel slivers