Magic: The Gathering C/D

has hate bears ever done particularly well in a large modern tournament?

Possibly not but lack of proven success with a deck has rarely stopped Kibler before

I like the idea of hatebears, and it almost seems like wizards prints cards specifically because it wants it to be a deck, but a strategy that's so dependent on what your opponent is playing gets worse and worse as the # of opponents you'll face increases

Still not sure why Noble Hierarch didn't get a MM reprint.

it really should've been in M13, instead it got a judge foil

hatebears seems like a terrible deck, just in general

yeah it's like a control deck where any relevant deck-hoser you have can be bolted

mother of runes is on the reserved list, right? that would be a pretty good addition

hmm apparently not on the list

I played against hatebears one round at the GP, and in game 2 my opponent played 3 Qasali Pridemage and still lost, haha. It's kind of a flawed deck concept. Half of the bears do nothing in a given matchup, and the other half hurt but aren't crippling. Leonin Arbiter and Thalia can delay your opponent, but for the same cost, you could have a Goyf. You slow them down but can't capitalize because your creature is so much worse than it could be. Why not just play a Goyf?? And game 1 you have no idea what cards are worth keeping. Pod's gameplan of finding the right hoser when you need it seems like the right way to implement the deck

That said, I wish the deck did work because I think it's fun

uncommons cant be on the reserved list

turns out my turning down going to gps has been a real boon to my friends gp results

ha did you know the winner again??

wait is it even over

i miss dominaria

doing some super flashback urza/mishra type set would probably be huge

i do think they will reboot dominaria at some point but they might save it until the next time they have a bad year or 2 and need a bounceback

i hope there's a more traditional swords&sorcery fantasy set in the pipeline though since they've been skirting around that for so long now that i think it'd be refreshing again. the core sets are kind of supposed to be that but they feel super generic these days and lack any sort of the world-building effort that goes into block sets.

i think i hate born of the gods. when i do btt draft i just hate that first booster. i hardly ever come out of it with a good bunch of cards or any idea of what i'll get passed in pack 3.

yeah born limited is just worse theros w/ terrible chase rares and lots of unplayable commons

and theros wasn't particularly exciting to begin w/

I tend to do fairly well with Born, though I do like Theros draft more than you guys it seems. Lots of great and fun uncommons and I feel a lot of the core Theros archetypes don't get messed with a whole lot since most of the important commons have analogues in Born. That said i'm not too sold on Inspired (if you do triple Born it's cool, but it doesn't mesh as well as you'd think with the Theros cards), and also I wish they'd have slotted in more stuff to help the G/B graveyard recursion deck with Nemesis of Mortals - Satyr Wayfinder is nice but I wish we'd gotten a good "graveyard matters" type card.

Graverobber Spider? I don't have much experience with it, but it seems very build-around

Second sets are usually a little disappointing to me, so BOTG isn't a big letdown as much as a usual letdown. Plays fine, but it's a weaker set than Theros and doesn't have much of its own identity. I was initially excited by tribute, but it has turned out to be just like every other punisher mechanic, an easy choice 90% of the time so ultimately not that interesting. Inspired is fun, but yeah, doesn't mesh as well with Theros as I'd like.

yeah this format is a bit light on the 'challenge cards' for limited, like pyroconvergence, burning vengeance, thrill of the hunt, intangible virtue, etc. those types of cards help the replay value of a format a bit by seeding decks that are only available in like 1 in 20 drafts. spellheart chimera counts, i guess, but not sure what else there is outside of rare that isn't already just playable as a normal card.

err not thrill of the hunt, i meant whatever the 1GU enchantment in dragons maze was called. bred for the hunt? idk

never wound up with much of the Graverobber but yeah I suppose that counts. I dunno, I still feel like they were going for some kind of G/B grave theme but there doesn't seem to be the card that cider is alluding to, something that would be great in that deck but mediocre in anything else. Graverobber and Nemesis of Mortals are decent in any green deck.

that said I do think Tribute mostly plays well. yes it is often an easy choice though I'm often stumped on how to handle the Phaganx Giant.

presumably they're slowrolling some of the GB dredgey stuff for the last set to go alongside the GB god

Interesting, I hadn't thought much about the idea of challenge cards extending the life of the format, but now that I think about it, my favorite draft formats (ROE, Innistrad) have a lot of those that I can remember. Floodtide Serpent, Graverobber Spider, Ragemonger are the only cards at common/uncommon I see fitting that category in BOTG.

btt is really boring idk if its because there arent any gimmick cards at uncommmon or because of the very low power level or how unbalanced the colors are but it hasnt been interesting to draft. its also not actively bad to draft either

one thing that is interesting about theros and now btt is that i tend to have really lopsided #s of commons and uncommons and certain cards i just never, ever cast. its the first set since avacyn restored that i can remember not having any of some uncommons despite drafting it a tonne. i think M13 was the best set in recent memory for allowing every card to be at least niche playable

my issue with it is that there are a bunch of commons that are really similar to theros cards (the small versions of wingsteed & stauch-hearted, the U and B bestows both still give 2 power for 5, red gets more 3 damage removal, etc) so it feels closer to the triple-large format than any other small-large-large i can remember.

i was excited about the inspired mechanic but there just aren't enough cards with it and the ones that do exist aren't quite impactful enough. i wish the blue flier was a 4 mana 2/1 or something. there are just so many good cards at 5 in the format that you can never actually justify playing that guy. same deal with the black 3/3 that gives intimidate.

yeah those two are almost unplayable ime

i think i was 40 theros drafts deep before i got my first copy of decorated griffin, and i still haven't actually cast it

I dunno if I have ever included it in a deck but it's been okay against me in a few games

the card itself is not even bad, it's just the good white decks are all too fast to want it. so it's a good card for bad decks.

whats the best inspired creature - just the sun chaser? i guess its actually the prerelease promo but i have yet to get to play with it. i've also never played the 2/2 since i'd always rather have the 3/4 and that option is pretty much always available. i do like the black 1/3 regen more than most people seem to since it always goes so late but its certainly mediocre.

ok i checked gatherer and the best inspired creature is the kiki-jiki minotaur i had forgotten about him. and about the cycle of make a token uncommons which i dont like at all but am probably underrating.

the red 2/3 that becomes 4/3 is the non-rare inspired creature i've liked the most

the 1ub 2/1 and the one that poops out wind drakes are the best, tho taking the 2/1 1st pick is harder

and yeah kiki jiki @ rare but tbh would rather have wind drake mama a lot of the time

I think the issue is that there's not a whole lot of ways to untap dudes. Crypsis does it but there Heroic and Inspired begin to seem a lot alike. Kiora's Follower is obviously the one you want, but it's two-color. And most of the enchantments that grant tap abilities aren't too great either.

my issue with it is that there are a bunch of commons that are really similar to theros cards (the small versions of wingsteed & stauch-hearted, the U and B bestows both still give 2 power for 5, red gets more 3 damage removal, etc) so it feels closer to the triple-large format than any other small-large-large i can remember.

I noticed this too, it really does not play all that different. The main difference I can discern is that green devotion gets somewhat of a boost (the GG 3/2 and 1GG Oathsworn definitely encourage heavy green), and that G/R feels a lot more viable...in Theros x3 I would only draft GR if I got a Polis Crusher or Xenagos. Also it feels like 1-damage effects like Vipers Kiss and Spark Jolt are more playable, though I wouldn't necessarily want to maindeck either.

gr, gw and to a lesser extent ur and br are still the color combos I prefer to avoid.

i actually like the token maker cycle a lot since they're among the few cards that do things you couldn't do in triple theros

UR is definitely the one I try not to wind up with - I play a lot of blue in this format but generally I find it's best as the secondary color, and Red doesn't make such a great main color either (except in some Boros-type decks). It seems like they intended there to be an instant Scry-based deck with Flamespeaker Adept and Spellheart Chimera but I've just never had success with that, the cards just aren't strong enough to compete. Frustrating because Izzet was nerfed in RTR as well.

BR certainly took a hit with Born - the Minotaurs are generally bad there, the best is another 2/3 for 3. Red seems to get the most out of White now.

yeah having a good minotaur deck depended on having +1 uncommon minotaur lords and getting them like 13th pick cause nobody else wanted that deck. and there are now fewer of them.

I think roughly 100% of the time I have lost to a minotaur deck they had two of them out. anything less and you just kill the 1st one and are sitting across from 2/3s.

that guy's still my favorite card in the format

minotaurs are rad

breaking the reserve list, just once, for didgeridoo would have been a great idea

fallen empires is such a dope magic set, all i want is a return to sarpadia w/ a real draft format

i realize that didgeridoo was homelands but i had to double check that homelands is in fact on the reserve list (its all the way up to masques! for some reason i thought it was like '93 special) and then i saw that autumn willow is on the reserve list and it got me thinking

yeah fallen empires and homeland had such great flavor and characters, that's why it was painful how much they sucked

i think a little bit of homelands's aesthetic got rolled up into innistrad

ice age is my favorite old set flavor-wise but fallen empires is up there too yeah

i was really bummed to find out that coldsnap was an almost-objectively-poor set gameplay-wise, its still my favorite modern-era set aesthetically just because it's an ice age sequel.

haha i point out the an-hava township/gavony township thing to people all the time now. innistrad def feels like it was the closest to 'return to homelands' we're ever gonna get and its not like i am holding out hope for sarpadian chronicles vol. next but i think its pretty fertile ground, esp for limited. like there are a lot of really good ideas in fallen empires they just got pushed into unplayablility for some reason. i esp like all the different land cycles