Magic: The Gathering C/D

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also i'm glad you've come around on Knightly Valor, that card legitimately wins games. Pursuit of Flight is really good too and people are just starting to pick up on it now.

Chemister's Trick is a card that has played a lot better for me than the 12th pick i get it at every draft and I'd like to try it out more to see exactly how often it's good.

Well I think Selesnya Charm is 2nd best, but IMO the Izzet one plays much better. The "counter target noncreature spell" ability is exactly the sort of ability that will save your ass from time to time that you'd never play on its own. Plus I'd argue that cheap removal is key for Izzet. Selesnya and Golgari are ones that I'll always play but I'm not super happy to take them early. Selesnya's third ability (exile power 5 or greater) almost never seems to come into play. That's a very small subset of creautres. The 2/2 token is nice if you have early populaters I guess. Golgari is one that *can* be very powerful in certain situations. I've had it bail me out a couple of times. The problem is that it oftentimes just sits in your hand.

One thing I'm noticing about populate is that it seems to come into play less than I thought it would. I kind of thought that G/W's whole gameplan would be focused on abusing Rootborn Defenses and Eyes in the Skies to just blow up incoming attacks. But it seldom seems to wind up working that way. In a populate deck I love the Herald, but without 3+ populate spells I'd pick a Gatecreeper Vine over it. Towering Indrik also has a case. That card can be very hard to get through.

as for Chemister's Trick - this card is insane vs. Azorious. Especially since they rarely have creatures with power above two and a lot of their creatures don't want to attack anyway. Against other decks it's more of a glorified Fog. But man does it wreck U/W. On a similar note I'm finding Downsize surprisingly playable.

the ars arcanum data is p interesting, i was arguing with some other players abt draft archetypes last week that izzet splash black was the best underdrafted archetype because it allowed you to make better use of black's removal and izzets tempo cards

ive struggled a fair bit w/this format tho the only decks i seem to win w/outside of lucking into a nuts populate deck or pack rat are the blue-based tempo decks. i have more inaction injunctions, stealer of secrets and runewings than like any green common. im really p high on blustersquall and mizzium skin because of this - ive found blanking removal to be an outsized benefit and the squall is way more effective for me than sleep was in M13, maybe because the format is slower and more prone to gross broad stalls. also essence backlash is p much terrible maindeck but cancel/dispel are really good well 'really' is a stretch but theyre typically p useful - i'll take syncopate p high if i think im going tempo as well.

for me the non-rares im happiest to see are one of the guildmages, one of the removal suite (price/wound/spree/fire), one of the populate staples (herald, healer, charm, call, ooze) or a staple izzet card (lobber crew, guttersnipe, electromancer, frostburn weird). kinda dont care about the bomb u/w creatures like the roc or the knight.

Eyes in the Skies - early on I predicted this to be one of the best commons in the set. Turns out the 1/1 flyers are usually never relevant, so the only way this card really gets good is if you have a Centaur or big Ooze out already.

idk i think its still up there w/the best g/w cards just cuz its instant

Yeah, I'm actually the opposite on Eyes in the Skies - I originally thought of it as a really bad Midnight Haunting with marginal upside, and now see it as a fairly strong card that doesn't require other tokens to be pretty good.

Also disagree strongly with frogbs on Izzet vs Selesnya Charm. Selesnya Charm just does more of what that deck wants to be doing than what Izzet Charm does in the izzet deck (which, I've found, is mostly a worse Shock - still good though, don't get me wrong!). Pump spells just so often absolutely wreck people in RTR (especially when they grant trample; see frogbs's comments about Chorus of Might), and having a token maker (essential for the Selesnya deck) AND a very efficient removal spell tacked on to that is just insane.

Agree on Perilous Shadow though. I quite like the midrangey Rakdos strategies, and in that deck the Shadow's a lot like Lobber Crew in that it's exactly what I want to be doing on turn 4-6 after playing some unleashed dudes to make it more difficult for them to race me, and then after the board stalls out it provides some great reach.

I'm really glad that I'm still not entirely sure what's going on in this format after 10+ drafts; I was worried that in attempting to follow up both Ravnica and Innistrad, R&D would either play it safe and end up with a bland format, or go in some crazy direction and give us AVR 2.0. I'm still figuring stuff out and having fun, and I can already see how some card evaluations may change in full-block drafting (the mill cards suddenly becoming valuable for the Dimir deck, which I'm guessing will be quite dominant in limited; the 1-drops like Bellows Lizard which some people are already starting to catch on to being exactly what Boros wants to be doing).

hmmph. i thought it was +2/+2 and vigilance. still I'm big on Izzet Cham because first of all, two mana shocks are fine, and secondly, the counter ability comes into play a lot more often than you'd think. as for Selesnya Charm's removal ability, that really hits almost nothing you'll encounter in limited outside of Cobblebrute. Even at uncommon the only real playables w/ 5 power are Risen Sanctuary and the 4/3 unleash trample giant. Either way I guess maybe I am underrating it. Like Izzet Charm it's mostly card for a card, but Izzet tends to give you the benefit right away. The Knight's instant speed is obviously a good thing.

Eyes in the Skies - I dunno, it can take out Daggerdromes, but outside of that the 1/1s just don't matter. Concordant Pegasus is a 2-drop that eats them. Azorius and Izzet should both have better flyers down early. Rakdos is not exactly worried about 1/1 flyers on turn 4. Golgari has Tresle Troll which more or less blanks it. Midnight Haunting is a card I like a lot (in general, any card that gives you multiple fliers is worth playing) but Eyes is just not good by itself. I'm learning the same about playing Singer of Songbirds in Azorius. Both are good in Selesnya because Eyes has populate and Songbirds gives you something to populate, but by themselves it's usually underwhelming.

Perilous Shadow I actually like more in Golgari. Blocks early and turns into a monster late. But yes midrange Rakdos with clearly defined attackers/blockers is nice. I just tend to usually make those into 3 color decks. I'm really liking late-pick Grisly Savages especially with late-pick Treasured Finds.

im really p high on blustersquall and mizzium skin because of this - ive found blanking removal to be an outsized benefit and the squall is way more effective for me than sleep was in M13, maybe because the format is slower and more prone to gross broad stalls. also essence backlash is p much terrible maindeck but cancel/dispel are really good well 'really' is a stretch but theyre typically p useful - i'll take syncopate p high if i think im going tempo as well.

Blustersquall type effects are always great but this isn't as good as Sleep, Sleep gave you one extra turn to kill them

I'm not big on Dispel at all, nearly everything it counters is removal and for that effect I'd much rather have Mizzium Skin, which feels like deck filler already (that said, I've had good results with it)

as far as best commons, I can't stress enough how great Frostburn Weird is vs. everything. honestly I think even Doorkeeper is playable since there are so many 3/x's that come down fast but this one can swing for up to 4 and it trades up easily. also like many Izzet creatures it's great with Persuit of Flight. one more thing - don't sleep on Hover Barrier, it's basically Fog Bank but harder to kill.

Played in the Philly Grand Prix this weekend, which was a blast, though tiring. It was pretty disappointing to start 6-0 and then lose three straight rounds, but my round 9 loss was definitely because of misplays and not bad luck, and I think my opponent probably deserved the win.

I've been liking Eyes in the Skies more and more - I too thought it was a bad Midnight Haunting at first. It's never great unless you're populating something large, but it does a lot of different things. It can give you two chump blockers (this is what I use it for the most in Azorius), it lets you play a threat while holding up countermagic, it can dissuade your opponent from attacking with 1 or 2 toughness dudes. It reminds me of a weak Charm, and I love the versatility. Haha speaking of which, I've been unimpressed by Golgari Charm and don't understand why people take it as high as they do.

Oh and I should mention that Pack Rat is one of the stupidest limited cards they've printed, a big reason why I was able to start 6-0. I won a game this weekend by playing turn 2 Pack Rat and then NO OTHER CARDS.

yeah pack rat is a broken card in limited - there's been some talk about this on the various article websites, but people calculated the expected win rate of pack rat + 39 lands and it's about the same as the very best non pack rat decks.

Well I'd gladly trade a 1- or 2-toughness dude for a 4-mana spell. also you don't want to be playing too many counterspells. that said I have liked the recent wave of 5-mana counters with upside because they work well as a top-of-the-curve spell that can counter key late-game stuff. for example Fall of the Gavel is really not the 14th pick I've often seen it as. that card just kills Izzet. but back to Eyes in the Skies. I don't really know why this card is better than say, Runewing (itself kind of a marginal card) unless you can abuse the populate. In Innistrad there were decks that just can't deal with flyers; in RTR the only real "flying-lite" deck is the Rakdos one, which just blows through tiny creatures.

Golgari Charm - I can give or take this card, but the -1/-1 ability can be nasty vs. Azorius, regen all a generally useful trick, and you can blow up Stab Wound, which is also the main reason Keening Appiration is playable

eyes is good because a) its both a token producer and a populate card and b) its instant speed. i mean its not a good card on its own but its just a really necessary card in that deck imo and a v high pick once youve settled on that as your startegy. its kinda like a dual land in that it just smooths out your draws by making a higher # of your cards live/more valuable while also opening up more lines of play

right. what I'm arguing is that it's not good on its own. instant speed 3/3's are a world of difference.

to be fair though I haven't been drafting much Selesnya - it seems like everything good gets gobbled up early (hence why I probably underrate the Charm) while good Izzet stuff remains. I've actually been having a fair amount of success with Golgari with a white or red splash; I think it's in the "everyone realizes to stay away, hence it's way underdrafted" stage

it seems like a drafting selesnya has the highest risk because if you end up splitting the good stuff w/ a lot of people you don't have much flexibility

but once you've hit a certain # of selesnya bombs you're guaranteed a fairly strong deck

i think rakdos has that same risk but amplified since the 2-drops and 3-drops are critical to the unleash deck working. selesnya has more depth and has 2 fleshed out strategies (aggro with lots of pump spells vs midrange populate) with a fair amount of overlap so that if you're not getting the cards for one, a slide into the other still produces a fine deck. but rakdos's slow deck is not nearly as powerful as the fast one and it wants a more disjoint set of cards from the fast deck.

that's a good point

yeah i actually think g/w tends to be the most consistent archetype because as ciderpress says it has the deepest pool of playable cards. whereas the nut deck (barring pr obv) is probably the very fast rakdos deck w/great removal but thats just so much harder to find even when rakdos is open

ive also found u/w to be p swingy too or maybe i just dont like the slow version of that deck enough so im trying too hard to force the fast/tempo build.

but yeah izzet is starting to get drafted the 'right' amount again at least in my last couple of drafts and now golgari cards tend to wheel quite a bit - not sure that theres really a 'good' golgari deck but i mean ill take all the dreg manglers you want to pass me i guess

I feel like including a handful more cheap 'pretty good' scavenge dudes would have balanced things a lot

like how many 'good' golgari decks really play like some scavenge machine? there just aren't enough playables

or just make dreg mangler common. if frostburn and centaur healer are justifiable commons, why not.

yeah in theory the slow defender ramp deck should be p good at both stalling out the early game with cheap X/4s and then overwhelming the other decks late w/superior threats and card advantage from scavenge creatures but i mean mostly i just end up losing to tempo plays or my walls are too expensive or ineffective. and the fast golgari deck seems p reliant on uncommons to happen all that often? idk

I think the prob is that the B removal gets scooped up by rakdos decks too

like lets say stab wound was GB - not that that's particularly more logical color-wise - but it shifts the card into golgari stall decks

golgari does get better use out of launch party already, i think the real problem is that axebane isnt an 0/4 and that there arent enough good golgari uncommons compared to the other guilds.

or just make dreg mangler common. if frostburn and centaur healer are justifiable commons, why not.

mangler is better than either of those honestly. but outside of that the Guildmage is really the only premium uncommon. anyway the way I get Golgari to really work is this - pick up Axebane Guardians, which produce extra mana with Gatecrepper Vines and Trestle Troll. once you get enough mana you can play Terrus Wurm (which nobody ever picks) or Scavenge it on say, a Kurozda Monitor or Daggerdrome Imp. And so on. Grisly Savage is the engine that really makes this all work. Basically the deck has to really be defense first and it's a good candidate to get Blustersquall'd out of the game but I've seen it work. For all the talk about the best and worst guilds, I actually find this format to be fairly balanced. I've lost with good Selesnya and won with okay Golgari decks. I think every guild has the tools to beat every other guild.

my advice for Azorius is to take Insperia's Skywatch. I know he looks godawful next to Lyev Skynight but the +2 to toughness is better than you think. first of all games are going to go longer with Azorius no matter what you do. so many of their cards stall things and your "kill cards" are usually 2/x's so you can't win fast. so you'll get to 6 mana. as I mentioned above, 3/3 is almost always going to be the biggest flyer and Detain is an ability that tends to become more important later on in the game (especially since your opponent shouldn't have too many things to block flyers). Also you probably don't need to be told this but Archon of the Triumvariate is a ridiculous card in Limited. Never landed one and lost.

welp, finally got to ride the Pack Rat express. This is one of the most bonkers limited cards I've ever played with. I mean I've played with Bonfire, Entreat, and several ridiculous Planeswalkers but those are mythics. I mean there were ridiculous combos in the past like Invisible Stalker + Butcher's Cleaver but this is basically a one-card combo that gives you exactly one turn to stop it.

I can't believe Pack Rat didn't cost 2B and force you to create new tokens only as a sorcery. Those two changes would have gone a long way to making it a lot less frustrating in limited while still being an exciting bomb, and it has the benefit of being flavourful. The only explanation to why the card is not like this I can come up with is that Development pushed it hoping to make it constructed playable?

yep. I actually drafted one of the best draft decks I've ever gotten - it was G/W/B super with 6 populate cards, Armada Wurm, Centaurs, Knights, five removal spells, 2 Grisly Savages, four gates, and 2 of the landsearch Vines - it became ALL about playing Pack Rat and just going to town. Eyes in the Skies populating Pack Rat token is awesome too because it gives you a chump blocker for flying. Wound up losing a game to overloaded Cylconic Rift though :(

Well, the silly thing is I don't think it is constructed playable. It's too slow, and with sweepers and Detention Sphere around, it's not very hard to deal with. It might have been an 11th hour addition to the set that they didn't have time to cost properly (which is how Jace the Mind Sculptor happened). Think it would be fine if the activation cost was bumped up to 4 or 5.

I survived a turn 2 Pack Rat! I feel like I deserve a T-shirt.

Granted, I went first (lost to turn 2 Pack Rat in game 2). Played Vine, Axebane Guadian, Jailbreaker (which still gives you mana with Axebane, Gate or no), Smile Molding for 7, then Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage and populated the hell out of it. So it took a nuts draw but still.

If Pack Rat were uncommon this format would be absolutely ruined. I can only think of a handful of cards that dominated Limited like this. Jitte in particular was stupidly powerful (and ruined Constructed for a while as a bonus). Bonfire and Entreat from AVR were instant "win target game" as well. But you couldn't get them in your opener nor draw them early, plus they were Mythic. Maybe Gideon? Again, Mythic Rare. I wonder how much R&D tested this thing.

Jitte is the strongest limited card of all time, it completely invalidates creature combat for your opponent as a way to stabilize or win the game, which means 99% of limited decks are drawing dead against it.

Gideon in ROE is probably #2 since there were so few answers to him, fewer than answers to Pack Rat in RTR I think. Same reasons as Jitte here, cards that invalidate your opponent's combat step are disgusting in limited (This is also why I was scared of Vault of the Archangel when it got spoiled but it turned out to play fair due to the tempo loss of activating it).

Pack Rat could certainly be top 5 though I'm sure there's a few I'm forgetting. Bonfire/Entreat are not close.

also note that Gideon was a lot less overpowered in M12 so context is pretty important here too

The Rat stands apart from most bombs in that you would almost always keep 6 lands + Rat as your starting hand. Gideon + 6 lands in ROE is a bit harder decision, though I guess keepable depending on the matchup; in M12, definitely a mulligan. (And Entreat the Angels + 6 lands is your deck giving you the finger.) Most bombs need at least some minor support to win, but the Rat wins on its own. That said, I agree Jitte was a more broken card in its block. It was kind of the perfect storm for it - slow underpowered format that had lots of stalls, not much artifact removal. Much harder to answer than Rat.

Masticore probably in the top 5 based on stories, but I wasn't playing at that time.

Exactly! I've heard stories of how, if you get TWO Pack Rats, you can play 38 Swamps and just mull until you find one, and STILL win most of the time even if you're going to 3-4 cards. I can't think of ANY other card like that (not even Jitte!)

Bonfire/Entreat are not close.

Yes and no. Without Miracle they still feel bomby but are very mana intensive obviously (you really need 7+ mana for a *big* effect). But with Miracle, they're among the most powerful effects ever to hit Limited. Playing against one of those cards, the feeling is pretty much ALWAYS "I have to race here because if they draw it, I'm dead". But as a whole, yes, not as good, because as Vinnie mentioned you can draw Entreat in your opener where it's either a worse Serra Angel or a 7 mana bomb that you may not be alive for (and I highly doubt you'd wait for 9 mana).

cards that invalidate your opponent's combat step are disgusting in limited

This + cards that are insane without mass removal. Pack Rat is no good in constructed because they can all get Supreme Verdicted away. In general anything that creates creatures every turn is going to be insane in Limited. Phyrexian Processor was another card that would just win the game right away. But at least you could Disenchant that.

Like a "Limited all-stars" list would be something like this:

Jitte
Pack Rat
Loxodon Warhammer
Oblivion Stone
Masticore
Phyrexian Processor
Basilisk Collar

Of these, I'd say Jitte and Pack Rat are easily #1 and #2. Interesting how many are artifacts. I hesitated to put Basilisk Collar on here, but the thing really is insane in basically any style of deck. With the exception of Pack Rat these were all good Constructed cards too. Can anyone think of a card with a bigger disconnect in Limited/Constructed value than that? Can you even imagine one?

Also, honorable mention to the following format warping commons:

Rancor, Pestilence, Rolling Thunder, Armadillo Clock, Sparksmith, Sprout Swarm

Siding out your deck for Lost In The Woods and 43-or-so Forests circa INN/INN/DKA?

i never lost to that though, there were maindeckable answers at common. one time i was in red-black so no enchantment removal, but i had olivia and rage thrower so i just killed all my own creatures with olivia and burned them out.

Wow, people must really hate golgari. I was getting passed crazy b/g cards tonight and took a couple opponents for a ride on the pack rat express. I can't believe someone passed me this ridiculous unbeatable card.

Here my deck:

Deviant glee
Giant growth
Ultimate price
Drudge beetle
Gatecreeper vine
Pack rat
Daggerdrome imp x 2
Thrill-kill assassin
Grisly salvage
Golgari keyrune
Dead Reveler x 2
Sewer shambler
Stab wound
Dead Revenant
Desecration demon
Korozda monitor
Jarad's orders
Sluiceway scorpion
Corpsejack menace
Death's presence (foil)
Assassin's strike

Golgari Guildgate
Forest x 6
Swamp x 10

After wrecking the first two matches with pack rat and desecration demon, I ended up getting killed by stab wounds out of a Rakdos deck. Still ended up in 2nd place and we t home with 3 prize packs, a personal best!

Siding out your deck for Lost In The Woods and 43-or-so Forests circa INN/INN/DKA?

homersimpsonboxing.dec

everyone seems really caught up in drafting superfast limited decks lately. i have just been kicking back, prioritizing trestle trolls, and durdling them to death. had great success today with a 5-color axebane deck, for real. it helped that i got passed a bunch of splashy bombs, of course. i guess i'm just saying keep your eyes open for the possibility to play slow decks, cuz they are good.

yeah hhaha i was tired of the 2 color aggro decks so at FNM the other night i drafted golgari splashing Mercurial Chemister. it felt good, though i had to play my roommate in the first round and he's better than me and had a strong deck so i didn't get the payoff for it

i've seen 5-color axebane decks work. playing against turn 5 Risen Sanctuaries is really tough. this is really kind of a board position format - good offensive creatures vs. good defensive creatures, and a couple that are both. Frostburn Weird and Orge Gatekeeper are both excellent because 4 power and 4 toughness are both super relevant. unfortunately Gatekeeper needs help but hey, it at least powers up Axebanes (and remember that even with a Gate out, Axebane gives you an extra mana when you have the Ogre out - an interaction I bet many many people miss). only issue with those decks is that Stab Wound can really destroy you.

even if that deck can work in some games, can you really count on getting the right draw? also getting passed enough axebane.

the idea is to pick up 2 in pack 1, then start getting bombs then hopefully another one in pack 2 or 3? I agree it's risky. Gatecreeper Vine helps a lot with this too.

or I guess my other q is, lets say you're full out going for this - what cards do you prioritize? it seems like your need for picking up mana fixing ends up taking up lots of your best picks

well lots of high-mana stuff like Sanctuary comes around late. but I'd say obviously you kind of transition into it after the first pack, then you go for bombs and guildmages. can't say I've ever built it myself, just that I've seen it work. you pick the strongest card in every pack.

i think that's the wrong approach to that deck - to me it's something you fall into AFTER you draft some bombs/guildmages. if youre only ramping into axebane stags and horncallers chants then you were in the archetype for the wrong reason, not that those are bad to have but you want something higher impact before you move in on them

like you just can't draft expecting to be passed top tier cards