Magic: The Gathering C/D

I mean that's still only worth it if the cards in that curve are worth playing

I guess we'll see

obviously we need to see the commons/uncommons but at the very least i'm comfortable predicting this to be a tempo-based format like innistrad. doesn't necessarily mean it will be fast in terms of turns per game, just that the gameplay will reward being proactive (m14 is a good example of the opposite, it rewards patience).

it rewards being patient enough to be in a draft where you got blue or green or the r/b sac deck

well i'm talking about how the games play out, not the composition of decks.

yeah I know I was joking

Monstrosity feels a bit more like Kicker to me? Like I would think the early drops with it won't be particularly useful on their own. Heroic seems like it'll have an attacking focus but there will be some assembly required. Something like "all creatures you control get +1/+1" requires you to have some sort of army + something to target your own guy in order to really be effective

Yeah I agree with frog; Heroic feels more like a combo mechanic rather than an aggro one, and if Bestow creatures are what we expect to target these guys, I can't imagine many of them costing less than 4 mana. Also Anthousa is very much a late game card - you can't target it and still have lands to attack with until late in the game. Monstrosity is basically level up. Bestow creatures can be played as creatures but I think players will be annoyed if you aren't able to Bestow them at least half of the time. I dunno, everything I see points to an environment where you play early drops but it's mostly in service of making huge creatures later on, like ROE. But I agree that we won't know until we see more commons/uncommons.

Part of what made ROE such a slow set was an abundance of defensive creatures and removal for smaller threats. If all the Monstrosity creatures are like 3/1s, the set could be very aggressive. I don't see it happening because it means many of the set's mechanics won't be useful.

came here to see if anyone had posted thasa - card seems really good y/n? also makes the chroma rework a really cool flavor mechanic imo

i dont think you can really judge the speed of the format by either the intro pack rares or the mechanics imo

It seems insanely overpowered right now (then again, I said that about Temporal Mastery when that was spoiled...) - the indestructibility makes it nearly impossible for most colors to deal with it, outside of killing the permanents that give Devotion themselves. Also the Red and Green ones are gonna be ridiculous with BTE out there. Then again you have to know they're going to make these playable and I kinda suspected they wouldn't big splashy 8CC Myojin-like dudes.

also worth mentioning that Devotion is worded in such a way that it can by affected by things other than the mana symbols. so something like "your devotion to blue is increased by 3" is definitely possible

this makes me want to cast nightveil spectre on turn 5 p badly

Haha I spent a minute trying to figure out how Brave the Elements would make the Red and Green gods ridiculous.

other sets that people thought would be ROE-type slow during previews include RTR (turned out to be moderate speed) and AVR (turned out to be very fast). it's just really hard to tell this early and 8cmc monstrous costs are not necessarily unusable in a fast format anyway. innistrad was considered a fast format and you still got to flashback your Grasp of Phantoms in enough games for it to be a much stronger card than Time Ebb.

anyway, in case anyone was wondering, these new Phantom events - I worked out the following:

Match Win Rate : Phantom Points earned
40% - 5.056
50% - 5.5
55% - 7.2655
60% - 8.064
65% - 8.898
70% - 9.772
75% - 10.6875

In other words - your win rate needs to hold around 72-73% in order to "go infinite" on these. It should be easier to do here than on the 8-4's since I would imagine a lot of newer/inexperienced players are running these. Of course if sealed is the only available phantom event then your win % will probably go down since you're at the mercy of your pool. That said, even at 60% you're only losing about 1.2 tix per event, meaning these things should be excellent for grinding out QP's, given you're willing to "buy in" the initial investment (as Phantom Points 1-9 are useless in your account)

72% is a pretty high winrate, sealed is my best format and i don't think i win at that rate still.

72+% winrate is insane - the best player on mtgo last year managed 68% and that was playing mostly constructed. during my best month ever on mtgo i managed a 67% winrate in limited and i ran really hot that month and that was about as comfortable w/a format as i've ever been

It seems particularly difficult in Sealed. maybe I just suck at it but I've had several pools where there just wasn't a decent deck possible because all the good stuff was so spread out. I never really tracked my winrate and I really wish I had.

anyway - if indeed the God card is real (and if it's on MTGSalvation's spoiler, there's a real good chance), then I would think Reckoner is about to spike again, especially since there aren't many being opened right now. I'm probably gonna pick up a few sets online and pray.

it might be the thing to convince me that playing burning-tree and ash zealot in the same deck isn't such a bad thing after all

from maro:

seabutcher asked: Monstrosity seems somewhat reminiscent of Level Up. In fact, between Monstrosity and Bestow... is Theros limited going to be more Battlecruiser Magic?

Theros limited is nowhere near that slow.

I knew it all along you are maro

well, I guess that settles that :)

y'know, I wonder if Nightveil Specter is gonna be worth something after all this? I'm suddenly glad I drafted so damn many of them...

Nah, I'm sure maro is just lying. ROE 4ever <3

gonna look at picking up 60 virtual Mana Blooms for 3 tix - a one-mana enchantment that bounces itself every turn may be a commodity

yeah good luck with that

I'm officially becoming an edh player sorry guys :(

recommend stuff for my teferi deck

hey, 3 tix is like, 80% of a M13 pack. not a huge loss if indeed it remains worthless

not being able to play mystical teachings in a teferi edh deck is pretty dumb

i now have 37 QPs on the season. i don't at all recommend playing enough mtgo to do this.

ha, weird i have 37 too!

oh no, i have 2. miscounted.

so i know you get bigger #s of QPs for bigger events. what is the most you can get, and did you mostly win a bunch of bigger ones or were you grinding smaller ones too/instead? the 'qualification' is at 15 and 35 right? i don't think i actually know what that means, altho i don't figure i ought to worry about it, my highest season total has been 6.

anyway, v well done

the most you can get from a single event is 6, for winning a premier event. i get most of mine from playing the 4-round scheduled events, where you get 3 points for a 4-0 and 1 point for a 3-1. i got lucky enough to go 4-0 quite a lot this month, otherwise i wouldn't have bothered trying for 35.

here's my current modern deck
http://i.imgur.com/7ZO7OWj.jpg

it's really good, i play like crap and still stumble into wins most of the time

yeah i'm gonna need to look up most of those cards

yeah don't worry too much about it haha. the combo works like this:

-Melira, Sylvok Outcast says that your creatures can't have -1/-1 counters put on them
-Kitchen Finks and Murderous Redcap have the Persist mechanic which says that if they die without a -1/-1 counter on them, they return to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on them.
-So if you have Melira out, your Finks and Redcaps are essentially unkillable, they'll keep coming back.
-And if you have a sacrifice outlet (Viscera Seer, Cartel Aristocrat, or Blasting Station) you can just sacrifice them indefinitely to either gain infinite life with Finks or deal infinite damage with Redcap

the rest of the cards in the deck are cards that search up creatures out of your deck (Birthing Pod, Chord of Calling) and other creatures that disrupt your opponent or prevent them from disrupting you

the reason the deck is a top modern deck despite being a 3-part combo is that all the cards involved other than Melira are good cards on their own, and you win a lot of games just by beating your opponent up with creatures that are hard to kill

in other news, i'm really liking all the theros preview cards so far, and i suspect this will be my favorite limited format since innistrad at the least

i love finding out about decks like that, the levels of interaction ppl figure out. but i am pretty glad that is not the kind of thing i encounter too much, it would drive me crazy.

yeah it's a really difficult deck to play, but i love these sorts of 'puzzle box' decks, where you have a bunch of restricted search abilities and have to figure out the optimal sequence of things to search up

wow, this is very cool

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=145090&d=1378005085

did really well at a paper modern event w/ gifts+loam, not sure that it really slots into mtgo's modern meta that well but i really enjoy the game. also i now officially have a playset of tarmogofys :D

i am really, really happy about thoughtseize. dont care much for elspeth but both the hound and the reanimation spell leave me hopeful i might still be able to play a deck based around the graveyard in standard

i now have 37 QPs on the season. i don't at all recommend playing enough mtgo to do this.

haha you should've waited until next month

'next month' is 4 weeks of no theros, i'm basically only going to be playing modern and hopefully 3x innistrad if that wins that vote thing for the retro format

so i'll be lucky to get to 15

also this card is great
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BTG_rWaCcAADytJ.jpg

pretty much every card I've seen so far from this set has been amazing

lol
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=145143&d=1378094606

hecatonchires! i am enjoying what they are doing with this set so far

i really like how different the set looks play-wise than any block they've done before. RTR block didn't really excite me that much because they've done 3 multicolor blocks before it and i'd already played with all of them and they don't all feel that different from each other in the end. innistrad succeeded by playing way differently than its closest precedent (odyssey), and this set doesn't seem to have much precedent at all.