Magic: The Gathering C/D

note that he avoids mentioning that all his predictions were wrong

there really aren't many good two-drop commons in this format are there? the 2/2 1G reach bestow guy maybe, Vaporkin...what else?

voyaging satyr, returned phalanx, baleful eidolon, leonin snarecaster, omenspeaker are all good though nothing's an auto-include really other than maybe leafcrown dryad

is arena athlete an uncommon? i really like that guy

yeah thats unc

really surprised at the winrate chart since many people seem to think that UR is the weakest blue deck and even the weakest pair overall

haha early on i was trying to convince iatee that u/r spells was the best archetype in theros. i am currently 22-5 drafting theros on mtgo and i was playing a lot of u/r. i think his point that it was just reasonably open compared to other stuff feels true, i was getting really solid red cards 8-10th. i often played 16 lands 10 creature decks in u/r stuff like form on the adept, lots of good twos to target with ordeals, great tempo.

u/r is great so long as you get enough creatures

you dont need that many creatures if your spells are good

well. the way I see it having a bunch of bounce and low-level creature kill (stuff that kills small dudes but not fatties) will definitely help prolong the game but you still need your own dudes, particularly ones that don't die to most common removal. if you don't have that you just wind up waiting for your opponent to play the threat you can't kill.

never thought i'd be caught dead playing mono-black in standard, but had some success with it in testing last night and chaining gray merchants in constructed is pretty fun

I've been toying with this too, but I can't quite bring myself to ditching my green and red spells. My deck right now is more black devotion lite.

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/205992

^ cool standard deck imo

Surprised they didn't find a way to include Chained to the Rock in there

i tested that white weenie deck, its definitely my style but is a bit rough vs the devotion decks that can flood the board pretty fast

here's a good (& pretty cheap) RDW deck i've been playing:

4 rakdos cackler
4 burning-tree emissary
4 firefist striker
4 ash zealot
4 chandra's phoenix
4 boros reckoner
4 fanatic of mogis

4 lightning strike
4 magma jet
3 shock

21 mountain

sideboard:
1 hammer of purphoros
2 skullcrack
2 chandra, pyromaster
3 mizzium mortars
4 frostburn weird
3 ratchet bomb

i have no idea what's good in standard but that looks pretty solid, makes me glad that CoP: Red has been out of standard for a long time

cider i saw you 4-0'd with that - what do you think of the (pricier) chandra red deck?

What kind of prize support do your local shops have for events?

Had a FB complaint about the prize support for Theros Game Day on Saturday, turns out my manager didn't give out anything but a Theros game pad and some foil packs and thinks that was fine. So I'm going to have to set up a prize system for Friday Night Magic and game days, I guess, but I don't know shit about Magic.

for a traditional 8 man draft, mine does 6-4-3-3 packs for 1/2/3/4, the hipster wburg one I go to once in a blue moon does 8-4-2-2. those are both probably 'fair' and mirror the online draft payout, though the second one is less egalitarian and not necessarily good for morale for new players. I wish mine did store credit.

milo for a constructed tournament like game day the players should only be getting prizes if they're paying to enter the tournament. the only official prize support from wizards for game day are the promo cards and the play mat. there are a bunch of ways to organize prize structure for small shop tournaments like fnm and game day most of which involve some trade-offs, i think mostly a store just needs to have a clear, consistent policy. if your shop has a bunch of regulars for stuff like fnm i would talk to them and see sort of prize structure they're interested in

fwiw the game day i played in was $5 to enter. all that money went into the prize pool, everyone that plays gets a promo cards, top 8 got another foil promo card. the winner got a playmat. the prize money was split btw the top 8 players not actually sure how the breakdown worked % wise but i got ~30% of the pool for splitting the finals

the store i play at has a pretty basic setup for FNM that works well for everyone as far as i know:

standard constructed - $5 entry fee, a fixed 4 swiss rounds of play regardless of attendance, pay out store credit prizes by record to everyone with a 3-1 record or better, in a way such that you pay out most of the entry money

booster draft - $15 entry fee, form 8-man pods, draft and play 3 rounds swiss, pay out store credit $25 to 1st place and $15 to 2nd place in each draft pod

for larger events with a top 8 cut to elimination rounds like Game Day you have to improvise a bit more with the payouts but its still $5 entry per player for constructed and the prize pool is still about $5 per player

cider i saw you 4-0'd with that - what do you think of the (pricier) chandra red deck?

― Lamp, Tuesday, October 22, 2013 1:46 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2 Boros Guildgate
13 Mountain
2 Mutavault
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Triumph
25 lands

4 Ash Zealot
4 Boros Reckoner
4 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Stormbreath Dragon
16 creatures

2 Chained to the Rocks
3 Chandra, Pyromaster
3 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
2 Mizzium Mortars
3 Shock
2 Warleader's Helix
19 other spells

Sideboard
3 Anger of the Gods
1 Assemble the Legion
2 Chained to the Rocks
1 Hammer of Purphoros
1 Mizzium Mortars
2 Pithing Needle
2 Ratchet Bomb
1 Shock
2 Wear // Tear
15 sideboard cards

ive seen versions that cut the ash zealots for even more burn which seems p good. i've been thinking about red because of all the monoblack decks that ive been playing against and i have all the cards for this except the dragons

ok yeah i've seen that one floating around and i think ash zealot is probably bad there

i would rather play reynad's naya deck if i'm going to play a red control deck, i think it looks better than this one. either way i think you want more than 1 assemble the legion in the 75 since black can't interact with that at all

Theros prices seem pretty deflated on MTGO now, any idea what to pick up? Chained to the Rock at one ticket apiece seems like a good deal...

steam augury at 11 cents seems like a freeroll to me

yeah I saw that too - I mean it's not FoF but it compares well enough that I think it'll find a home someday. actually MTGOTraders has it at 6 cents...even better

other potential good values:
Anger of the Gods = $1.36 - could be a t2 staple?
Chained to the Rocks - only $.70 now
Firedrinker Satyr - $.27 ...could Modern use this?
Fleecemane Lion - $.81
Nighthowler - $.05 - seems like it's really well costed, I always thought it was the best of the Bestow dudes

also reaper of the wilds is a good card thats already seen some standard play but suffers from missing its dual land still

i don't remember slagstorm ever being more than a couple tix so i don't know how much room anger of the gods has to grow. chained to the rocks is good but the most comparable card, detention sphere, has been <1 ticket for a long time.

firedrinker satyr is not very good but maybe should be worth more just from being a 1-drop for rdw. def not modern playable if the superior rakdos cackler doesn't cut it there. i'm not that high on lion.

oh also prophet of kruphix is awesome and should be worth something eventually even if it doesn't stick in a standard deck

i would rather play reynad's naya deck if i'm going to play a red control deck, i think it looks better than this one

idk he has approximately 34 planeswalker cards in there for some reason none of which seem to compliment each other and the mana looks pretty terrible. fwiw i am completely willing to be wrong abt this and loxodon smiter seems like kind of a sweet card to be playing but i prefer the boros lists. there have been a couple of cleaner 4-0 lists in the last couple of days that added elspeth and i think its a deck to watch

i bought swan songs on mtgo on the chance that its an important sideboard card in eternal match-ups and its like ten cents or something. thats my speculation

yeah thinking about it more i think its probably right to just play RW buti still don't like ash zealot unless you're running purphoros and/or nykthos

i also wish there was 1 more way to go deeper into your deck other than chandra + magma jet

haha me too. wish there was something of value to do w/wild guess other than run the not very good rn pyromancer

purphomancer decks w/assemble just fold to like, everything though rn but man that feels sweet

do any of you MTG nerds play on OCTGN?

nope

cockatrice is the current standard for free MTG-ing, as far as i know. dont know anyone who still uses OCTGN

whoa

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/10212013/vintagemasters

essentially power 9 cards are coming, but they're basically as rare as foil mythics, and the set itself is gonna be double MSRP. dunno how this is going to be much different than Masters Edition

here's what i'm working on for standard now:

4 elvish mystic
4 experiment one
4 burning-tree emissary
4 kalonian tusker
2 scavenging ooze
4 boon satyr
4 reverent hunter
4 ghor-clan rampager
3 nylea, god of the hunt
1 polukranos, world eater

3 domri rade

4 stomping ground
4 temple of abandon
2 mountain
12 forest
1 nykthos, shrine to nyx

sideboard:
4 mistcutter hydra
3 nylea's disciple
1 polukranos, world eater
2 flesh//blood
2 time to feed
2 garruk, caller of beasts
1 bow of nylea

basically trying to build the best ghor-clan rampager deck since that card is way underplayed right now. blood is also awesome and should maybe just be maindeck, it's only bad vs supreme verdict decks.

looks like it would be fun to play. is there no room for savageborn hydra?

i like arbor colossus a lot in those r/g lists

this deck's too aggro for either of those, its not the ramp deck where you're generating a ton of mana

idk if you cant play a 6/6 for 5 in yr elvish mystic deck than

also if if you're playing 3 nyleas it seems good? i am terrible w/ r/g decks though, i could not find any success w/domri decks last season

yeah i might try it but i want to be more compact i think. mana efficiency seems to be the key to beating the sea of mono-black attrition decks

yeah monoblack is everywhere online despite it not being that good in the meta. i dont really like that deck and have been playing both u/w control decks w/prognostic sphinx and variations on r/w control to some success. i really, really like the u/w list but its not a deck that i enjoy playing esp because of the uptick in control mirrors over the last week. the r/w list is more fun but kinda loose.

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/silvestri-says-stats/

yeah i saw that - biggest takeaway i can find so far is that sea god's revenge is incredibly overvalued, several 'bad' commons are outperforming it in this sample

or maybe not, i misinterpreted how the scoring works here, but it still seems like its worse than the good commons and good cheaper uncommons