Magic: The Gathering C/D

casting voyage's end in response to monstrous was probably the best play i made all weekend. i wasn't even scrying off it because idk

black/x looks like a weird attrition combo deck that is going to reward the people who build it just right and fail for everyone else

there's a black creature with bestow that allows you to discard a creature to give it +2/+2 that worked really with the whip, i was sort of proud of myself to have caught that when building my pool. black also has a bunch of interesting etb triggers - i was surprised at how powerful the 3BB drain life guy was and being able to reuse him w/the whip was p strong. but i think theres probably a decent r/b aggro deck there too, the 2/3 1R creature that has regen for 2B (?) was really good for me and there are some good ways to trigger heroic in black as well, which is really important for the cheap r guys.

almost none of the creatures at common/uncommon are good enough to take over 1-2 mana removal

I think that's a worthy goal for development, it's not really good for a limited format to have such well-defined first-pick commons (for example Mist Raven and Trusted Forcemage). I liked the various removal options in M14 - every color had some way of dealing with creatures, but outside of one 5-mana sorcery (Liturgy of Blood) everything was conditional. Either it only hit small dudes, or it left the creature in play, or you needed to have something else out to make it work if you wanted to hit something bigger (Quag Sickness, Hunt the Weak)

If I try to monster up my Stoneshock Giant and it gets bounced in response, the Falter effect doesn't happen, right? The monstrous ability will "resolve", but since the creature is no longer in play, there's no second trigger? I always get confused by last known information effects.

Whereas if the monstrous ability is allowed to resolve, the Falter trigger goes on the stack, at which point it can be responded to but not prevented from happening short of a Stifle. I think.

correct, the monstrous trigger is separate from the monstrous activated ability so if the creature isnt in play it can't trigger

really enjoying theros limited so far in my small sample size of 3 events. aura stacking is less of an issue than i thought it would be, since the bestow costs are so high and there are enough good tempo plays to punish it. colors seem reasonably well balanced. i'm happy for now.

also a strategy tip: ive run 18 lands in all my decks so far and been very happy with it even in the aggressive decks, the set has more ways than usual to get more out of your mana late, plus scry to help keep you find late action, so i think it's much more likely to lose from screw than from flood in this format

I lost a game from flood while playing 16 lands tonight. drew 12...

main decked 4 dragon mantle and would do so again

so ftr ars arcanum predicted:

4. I think that blue is the best color in the format, and I’m torn between black and green for the second best color. However, both red and white could be quite surprising, because Heroic is such a difficult mechanic to evaluate. It feels like blue, black, and green are best equipped to deal with the highly variable tempo of the format. The lynchpin commons that I see defining these colors are Nimbus Naiad, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, and Leafcrown Dryad.

which is already lol (I mean not on blue)

explain for the slow kids plz

white-based heroic decks are probably the best archetypes, red aggro is good in all its forms

green/black are fine in the right decks but neither of them is the 2nd...or 3rd best color

i'm all for trying to prove the guy wrong but it seems way too early to try to figure out what the best color is - at this point in RTR season everyone was convinced that Rakdos Unleash aggro trumped all

I just want him to be wrong faster

in any case doing the opposite of what he says seems like a good strategy given his 'data-based' takes on the last few sets

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