So what's the best prerelease guild from a value perspective?
I think Dimir will get me the most cards I need if I want to continue playing standard control decks, but Golgari might have the most raw card value because of Trophy and Vraska.
Thoughts?
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Monday, 24 September 2018 04:05 (five years ago) link
they all seem roughly even to me. but yeah golgari if you want to fish for the overpriced card and then rip off some kid in a trade if you hit on it
― ciderpress, Monday, 24 September 2018 04:20 (five years ago) link
Lol, ok, wasn't looking to rip off any kids
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Monday, 24 September 2018 04:21 (five years ago) link
like all ravnica sets once people actually start playing the dual lands will become the most valuable cards other than a couple mythics that are hard to predict
― ciderpress, Monday, 24 September 2018 13:18 (five years ago) link
True, that's also been a consideration of mine as I imagine some guild pacts would have shocks. I have playsets of Temple Garden and Sacred Foundry, but need the other 3, especially Watery Grave.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Monday, 24 September 2018 13:21 (five years ago) link
mtg arena open beta starts today, with the final account wipe
I'll probably mess around a bit but save all my resources for a future standard deck
― ciderpress, Thursday, 27 September 2018 17:51 (five years ago) link
Teferi getting oracled, still busted.
I'm strongly thinking I need a 4th copy despite the absurd price. Still waffling over whether I should jump on Nexus.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Friday, 28 September 2018 16:33 (five years ago) link
well the errata makes it (ever so slightly) better
― frogbs, Friday, 28 September 2018 16:36 (five years ago) link
Yeah, being forced to untap lands was a pain, it makes sense.
I just find it funny that was the part they felt they needed to fix.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Friday, 28 September 2018 16:53 (five years ago) link
4-0'd my prerelease with disinformation campaign. card feels really busted for an uncommon, like the raw advantage it gives you once you've got an engine going is planeswalker-esque
― iatee, Monday, 1 October 2018 19:33 (five years ago) link
Nightveil Sprite + Disinformation Campaign was pretty busted for me.
Dipping my toes back into Arena now that the new set is there and everything's been wiped. Might see what GRN sealed is like on there.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Monday, 1 October 2018 19:57 (five years ago) link
i went 3-1 with golgari, it was solid but super boring compared to the first 2 ravnica iterations, they replaced the shoveling stuff into your graveyard with incremental trading and sacrificing, doesn't really feel any different than a generic core set GB strategy. pretty disappointing. there's also no raise dead effect at common in the golgari set which is ???
meanwhile dimir has like 50 surveil cards and lots of payoffs for it
more interested in standard than limited for this one
― ciderpress, Monday, 1 October 2018 21:10 (five years ago) link
It would be cool if standard turbo surveil works as a deck.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Tuesday, 2 October 2018 05:52 (five years ago) link
hard for it to be turbo when it's 1 or 2 on most cards, past standard dredge decks needed to put 3-4 cards in the gy per enabler spell to work properly
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 12:16 (five years ago) link
imo surveil, at least how it has been implemented in this set, is too strong and dimir is the clear strongest guild as a result. mostly i think the problem is that it doesn't have a cost - it's put on cards that could easily be, or that we've actually seen recently, at the same rate without it.
― Roberto Spiralli, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 12:32 (five years ago) link
that's fair though...Dimir was super weak in Gatecrash, which was kinda nice since everyone knew it was weak so it was always open
― frogbs, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 12:43 (five years ago) link
I didn't even feel like 'dimir is always open' got you much, since the best dimir deck was at par with an okay boros deck
but yeah, surveil as an ability is just 'you get way better card selection' which is already pure upside, you don't have to do anything to make that good. but then they loaded a bunch of bonuses on top of that (and this creature gets bigger!)
so far the dimir decks I've played have weirdly felt like blue decks in legacy. half the deck is card selection so you never draw another land when you don't want to, and you have a massive amount of virtual card advantage (plus actual card advantage with that 2/3 common, disinformation campaign etc.) I haven't figured out whether that means you can cheat on lands and go down to 16 sometimes, since you can generally burn through your deck to find lands when you need to. but at the same time dimir removal is expensive and maybe you just want to ensure you hit your early land drops, and surveil is your flood insurance, so maybe you play even more lands. or maybe these things cancel out and you play 17 lands.
― iatee, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 14:18 (five years ago) link
yep, plus I think they have a high percentage of cards that surveil or get bonuses. seems like every Dimir deck will be a Surveil deck and will want the build-arounds, whereas Golgari can go Undergrowth or not, Izzet doesn't want every Jump-start card, etc. Dimir seems like the clear best guild, but I've also played this set zero times so far so my opinion is totally unqualified
― Vinnie, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 14:40 (five years ago) link
yeah that's what i was getting at with my previous post, dimir is the only guild in this set where this iteration of it is more exciting than its versions in the previous 2 ravnicas and it feels like they've seriously overcompensated for gatecrash
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 17:06 (five years ago) link
like even just looking through the card file before playing anything gave the impression that this is The Dimir Set, their mechanic shows up way more than the 10-12ish cards guild mechanics usually get
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 17:09 (five years ago) link
just to back up my point, # of cards with mechanic word on them in large rav sets:
RAVconvoke - 15radiance - 10dredge - 12transmute - 12
RTRpopulate - 11overload - 12detain - 9scavenge - 10unleash - 11
GTCbattalion - 11cipher - 11bloodrush - 11extort - 11evolve - 11
GRNconvoke - 14jump-start - 10undergrowth - 12mentor - 13surveil - 28
real curious what their internal justification was for this big of a break with the rav formula for a single guild
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 17:33 (five years ago) link
Could be they see it as a replacement for cycling in standard, a plentiful way to smooth out draws, and reduce the luck factor a bit.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Tuesday, 2 October 2018 18:30 (five years ago) link
yeah I don't think it's fair to compare surveil - which is really just scry - to stuff like populate and cipher
the problem isn't that it's everywhere, the problem is that the payoffs seem a little too good and the cards are undercosted. you don't need a payoff for scrying.
― iatee, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 18:36 (five years ago) link
yeah i think if there was one payoff card at each rarity it'd be fine but there's like 5 uncommon ones which is insane
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 18:41 (five years ago) link
just have the spybug and the enchantment that +2s your surveils, that's enough
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 2 October 2018 18:42 (five years ago) link
convoke - 14jump-start - 10undergrowth - 12mentor - 13surveil - 28
Jeez, this is nuts
― Vinnie, Wednesday, 3 October 2018 01:17 (five years ago) link
And I know that they intend for Izzet and Golgari decks to use Surveil cards too, but still that's so out of balance
― Vinnie, Wednesday, 3 October 2018 01:18 (five years ago) link
can't believe they printed a red tarmogoyf this rules so much
― ciderpress, Wednesday, 10 October 2018 14:08 (five years ago) link
Feeling really smart right now. I've been playing Deafening Clarion in all my standard decks since rotation and only just realized I can choose both modes.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Thursday, 18 October 2018 23:45 (five years ago) link
Not really your fault, it's a very unintuitive card. Seems like one of those cards Maro would use as an example of poor card design
I only figured out Soul-Scar Mage allows you to kill Hazoret and Rhonas AFTER the PT, long after I had dismissed the card for being underpowered
― Vinnie, Friday, 19 October 2018 01:32 (five years ago) link
There have been literally dozens of times when I've cast it lamented not be able to use both modes, especially with my jeskai drakes deck.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Friday, 19 October 2018 02:19 (five years ago) link
So Revitalize is essentially Cryptic Command printed at common for 1W, huh?
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Tuesday, 30 October 2018 18:30 (five years ago) link
it's no runeboggle
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 30 October 2018 18:34 (five years ago) link
I don't know 3 mana for force spike/draw seems pretty steep, lol
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Tuesday, 30 October 2018 18:37 (five years ago) link
they're making some major organized play announcement tied in with the game awards tonight which i assume means a mtg arena based pro circuit
― ciderpress, Thursday, 6 December 2018 14:24 (five years ago) link
Intriguing, I've been playing a huge amount of arena, it's been a real game changer for me. I don't really play other video games, but I'm planning to get a cheap graphics card just to give it a bit of a boost. If there ends up being real competitive play on there, I may well need to step it up.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Thursday, 6 December 2018 14:32 (five years ago) link
yeah pro-level arena tournaments seems inevitable, the question is how hard they're willing to go both in terms of $ and in terms of replacing the pro tour / gps as a focus point for the game.
― iatee, Thursday, 6 December 2018 15:27 (five years ago) link
it would honestly be good for spectators, the twitch overlay for arena that pops up all the card images seems like a big deal for getting the game watchable for lapsed or less invested players
― ciderpress, Thursday, 6 December 2018 15:33 (five years ago) link
Arena has been a boon for magic streamers, I think people will absolutely tune into high level Arena competitions.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Thursday, 6 December 2018 15:40 (five years ago) link
Wow, shit ton of changes. I was gonna joke that MTGA tournaments will eventually spell the end of the PT as we know it, but they went way beyond what I thought they would, almost completely changing the pro structure. And back to 4 PTs, lol
― Vinnie, Friday, 7 December 2018 15:12 (five years ago) link
how's MTGO been lately? should I think about selling out?
― frogbs, Friday, 7 December 2018 15:12 (five years ago) link
It has to be pretty jarring for pros the way they constantly go back and forth on these decisions.
― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Friday, 7 December 2018 15:30 (five years ago) link
xp yeah seems like the value of cards is dropping a lot, queues not firing, etc. I haven't been on it much, just reading what players are saying
― Vinnie, Friday, 7 December 2018 16:01 (five years ago) link
wait does this undo the new 6 PT system they just made earlier this year?
― ciderpress, Friday, 7 December 2018 17:26 (five years ago) link
that's some whiplash
― ciderpress, Friday, 7 December 2018 17:27 (five years ago) link
just peeped some MTGO prices and wow
my account has a bunch of playpoints in it, what do you do with those? just sell the account and someone takes over? how could I do such a thing?
― frogbs, Friday, 7 December 2018 17:36 (five years ago) link
you could just enter a bunch of sealed leagues or drafts and convert the play points into cards & then sell. idk how much of a market there is for accounts
― (° . ° )― (Lamp), Friday, 7 December 2018 18:41 (five years ago) link
I have like 7000 of them, this might take a long time :)
― frogbs, Friday, 7 December 2018 18:48 (five years ago) link
Cardhoarder has apparently even stopped buying tickets or singles for cash (temporarily), so I don't know if you would get a lot for your acct
I've got like 100 tix left, and I'll probably try to just play a bunch of cube from here on out. If everyone's going to Arena for the new sets, they won't be able to justify keeping MTGO online for more than a year longer, I think. Not enough money flowing into the system
― Vinnie, Saturday, 8 December 2018 01:52 (five years ago) link
there's probably a nonzero chance they'll "buy out" old MTGO accounts if they really do intend on shutting it down
― frogbs, Saturday, 8 December 2018 01:55 (five years ago) link