Magic: The Gathering C/D

Don't worry, he'll be proven wrong soon enough, but I agree with frogbs that before a format hits MTGO it's basically impossible to tell how things will shake out

his M14 article was good! but yeah it definitely seemed like he drew some pretty dodgy conclusions about the last block, as I recall he named perennial 10th-pick Runner's Bane as one of DGR's best commons

runner's bane was pretty good in my experience but yeah not a premium removal

i think the colors are pretty balanced in theros, white has the lion's share of nut draw decks though which tend to perform best early in the format before people realize they need to actually interact before turn 4

see also people thinking rakdos was best early on

and gw aggro in innistrad

black and green have terrible options for the first 4 turns. aggro black doesn't even get its vanilla bear to be a vanilla bear.

I feel like the 3/3 for 1GW that draws a card if you have any +1/+1 counters on anything is gonna be nuts

green has reach bear and mana guy which are both fine, and the scorpion if you're planning to go long. agree that black is lacking in early game though the 1/1 deathtouch is reasonable in this set, and pharika's cure is actually pretty important there i think

1GW guy not particularly nuts from what i've seen so far. its fine though

yeah small deathtouch dudes are always good, especially if the set revolves around building up your dudes. I remember the 1/1 deathtouch for B in Innistrad being really underdrafted.

xp well it seems like both colors have a lot of things to add counters so the trigger should almost always go off, plus a 3/3 for 3 seems solid here

1/1 deathtouch is pretty good value when you can bestow him, but that still doesn't help you early game. cure is good.

1gw is a good card in a weak color pairing

the white heroic deck is also kind of shallow at common, theres only so many wingsteed riders in a draft pod whcih will cap its effectiveness a bit since everyone wants those

yep and if you flame out w/ heroic and don't get the triggers your deck is pretty shallow and can't deal w/ a 4/5 on turn 5. but when someone has all the pieces it's almost as fast as gtc-boros.

like one drops are highly relevant in this set

yeah i was surprised at how reasonable the 1/1 lifelink bestow guy is

set feels a lot like innistrad in how curving out well is a huge advantage

yeah the bestow guy seems always playable, the 1/1 token maker and the 1/2 white dude are all easy maindeck choices. the black 2/1 gravecrawler and satyr are both also easy includes if you get them.

already bragged to lamp about this but opened xenagos *and* elspeth in last night's draft

had a funky 'play lots of walls and bounce and the trojan horse card until you draw elspeth' deck

sending the trojan horse on a rescue mission to the underworld is fun since when it comes back your opponent gets it back and is stuck with it

I'm a big fan of the card even tho it's bad in most decks

seems really good to me in any deck that wants to go long

well it discourages you from attacking on the ground so a lot of green monstrous decks, despite wanting to go long, aren't gonna be getting much value from trojan horse into asp. but it's really good in basically any base blue deck - stalling til you get your bounce cards / smashing w/ vaporkins etc.

it seems pretty terrible, you skip your 4 drop in order to instead give your opponent a blocker that will, by turn 7, have produced three 1/1 creatures. play it any later than that and it gets even worse. plus it stops you from attacking with any ground creature bigger than a 3/3. at least there aren't a lot of sac effects.

that said, my Zedruu EDH deck loves it :)

first two winning THS draft decks:
http://i.imgur.com/xPLaaXd.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/d54LrkP.jpg

Do people just not read the card Time to Feed? Because I'm getting them 11th pick, not only is it a Prey Upon w/ upside (for 2G), but it also triggers Heroic

theres a pretty big difference between G and 2G, which 3 life and heroic triggers doesn't really make up. its still a fine card and can be straight up good if you have a bunch of the green heroic guys but not every green deck needs the effect

for a fight effect (which doesn't get played early anyway) the extra 2 mana doesn't seem to matter much. I dunno - I drafted 4 in my prerelease deck online and they've done a lot of work.

this set is playing really well so far. Scry is such a great limited mechanic.

here's another 3-0 draft deck
http://i.imgur.com/F6JzkmT.jpg

been doing well with these BUG decks so far, this one's not abusing the graveyard really but it's possible to do some fun stuff with that in these colors

actual lol @ those draft decks

they are pretty loose yes if that;s what you're loling about

this last one was actually good though i think

haha thats the one i like the least. but it was mostly that you got triple searing spear. i've had triple searing spear once in this format, idk why people keep passing it, it is the best.

i went 2-1 twice today with so so decks. i have been forcing u/r tempo decks because lightning w/e and voyage's end have been consistently amazing for me in paper drafts and i cannot seem to pass either of those cards or the uncommon chimera. iatee keep trying to convince me that u/w is a way better tempo deck but im not having it.

i like UR tempo too but haven't won out with it yet. its better than white if you get 3 searing spears though!

I feel like a lot of red creatures are bad in the ur build. but yeah searing spear is insane in this format.

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/limited/analysis/draft/theros-theros-theros
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/limited/cards/draft/theros-theros-theros

color ranking fits my views on the format but the fact that these numbers are all within 1% of each other - and even the strongest performing deck, boros, is only at 54% - does suggest that this format is very balanced

i'm a bit surprised at how low UW is in the color pairs since that seems to be the thing i most consistently lose to, but the margins are so small that it's probably not significant yet

yeah UW heroic with a zillion combat tricks and lots of scry seems nearly impossible to beat sometimes

3 color seems really doable in this format

yesterday I had a rad 4c 2 polis crusher, 2 chained to the rocks, 2 horizon chimera deck w/ tons of fixing

also my last 4 drafts have involved opening: 2 elspeths, xenagos, thoughtseize

I didn't open a single voice despite playing dgm all the time so this makes up for it

i have been killing theros limited. currently @ an 81% win rate across paper and mtgo. i have no specific strategy except never drafting green and its def working

omg you were trying to convince me green was better than white like less than two weeks ago

green seems like it should be really good! it just somehow is terrible in practice. also i don't really like white that much either but partly because i feel like whites somewhat overdrafted

green being good or not seems to depend on whether you can get one or more asps

like time and time again I run up against a green deck and the asp is pretty much the only relevant card they play but it is quite relevant. if the rest of green were better it might even be overpowered for a common, instead it just anchors an otherwise bad deck.

i feel like green just doesn't have enough ways to generate tempo in theros? the cards themselves are good and like r/g seems like it should just be amazing in this format but i am never happy to have a bunch of dumb green creatures, even the asp doesn't really do what i want cards in my draft deck to do, which is to generate tempo

i've been pretty bad with it...winrate around 50%, winding up with a lot of heavy blue decks that have a lot of bounce and scry but no solid creature base. so basically my games have been me getting to turn 12, running out of stuff, and losing because I have no creature base - Sea God's Revenge doesn't do much when all you have are Omenspeakers on the board. Believe it or not green with its 9th pick Nissan Couriers and Time to Feeds is the only way I've had any success here.

that said I really dig the draft format. the decision to move clean, efficient removal out of common (and uncommon, come to think of it!) really makes a big difference. you can spend 12 mana total on a monster snake and know there are only a few cards at common and uncommon that will take care of it. the only unconditional kill spell at common costs 6! (and is very playable, too!) There doesn't seem to be any consensus first picks here - Lightning Strike seems like maybe the best common, but the other common removal is nowhere near as good, even Lash of the Whip (2nd best common removal spell?) is 5 mana. Wingsteed Rider is quite good. Griptide too.

yeah best commons are strike, voyages end, griptide, rider, asp, nimbus. that's roughly the order I'd first pick them.

i dont think green's that bad, if it's the weakest color it's only by a tiny bit. i had a good one earlier but it had polukranos, boon satyr, and arbor colossus so yeah not the most representative of the color maybe

Lamp have you played any standard yet? i'm struggling to find a deck i enjoy that doesn't get crushed by red aggro or the Thassa deck which seem to be the main things you have to beat right now