Magic: The Gathering C/D

also some of that is gonna be 'cards popular w/ good players as much as cards that, themselves, added wins'

I guess 'cards included in winning decks' is a better metric for that reason?

I don't think it suggests rakdos isn't winning as much as 'it's easy to be an also-run rakdos / rakdos-splash deck'

The idea is that decks that take Fire can also be Izzet which wins more than Rakdos? I dunno. Spree is much better.

it's better - and I don't think izzet wins more? - but you're locking yourself in w/ a guild w/ your first pick. (alt. throwing it away)

i'm not sure i understand what you're saying here

a strong rakdos deck would be marginally better off w/ spree, but picking spree first only has a certain correlation w/ ending up w/ a strong rakdos deck, has a decent chance it will be a wasted pick if you go w/ anything else

like I'd bet the % of winning decks w/ a spree in it is higher than the % of winning decks w/ a fire in it, but that doesn't necessarily make it a better p1p1

I'd argue that it is, because you can't really play the Fire in every red deck either. Neither blue based three-color (Izzet/Azorius) nor green based (Rakdos/Golgari) are really able to get RR consistantly enough; I've sadly had to cut Fire from both those decks. Fire goes in Izzet of course but for Rakdos and the Rakdos/Izzet decks you want the Spree. Unless people just don't play 3 colors as much as I do?

I would imagine that as a whole winning decks are slightly more likely to be two color than they are to be three color

Agreed but I wonder what % of people play 2 color as opposed to 3? And how many take Fires/Sprees wind up in sideboards?

Anyway, I wish we could get the top 20 instead of 10. I wonder how all the rares (not mythics) rank. I'd put 'em like this:

1. Pack Rat
2. Mizzium Morters
3. Collective Blessing
4. Archon of the Triumvirate
5. Desecration Demon
6. Deadbridge Goliath
7. Chaos Imps
8. Righteous Authority
9. Supreme Verdict
10. Loxodon Smiter

With special mentions to Deathrite Shaman (which just gives you so many advantages over the course of a game) and Grove of the Guardian (awesome by itself, really sick with populate)

demon would be #2 for me. and I'd always rather have supreme verdict than righteous authority if I were azorius.

The problem with the Demon is that it has to stick for a few turns before it's a huge advantage, while Morters/Blessing basically win you the game right then and there.

I was thinking about Verdict and Authority but in the end I'm really really fond of Righteous Authority, only one real playable answer at common (the Appiration) and it gives you such a huge advantage if you can keep the creature in play for even two turns. Obviously Wraths are good but I've had way more games where I played Verdict and lost vs. one of these puppies.

if it's sticking around for a few turns, they're losing a card a turn!

Or taking 6 damage? Thats what I'm saying though; the best Limited cards are one that turn neutral or losing situations into winnings ones, which Morters and Blessing do. The Demon doesn't help so much in a losing position because it allows your opponent to control it in a way.

I agree, it isn't always the blow out you want it to be

you forgot cyclonic rift on your list, i think that one's 2nd between pack rat and mortars

oh yeah, totally slipped my mind

though I don't think it's quite as good as Morters, how many 5-toughness guys get played in Limited?

-instant speed
-splashable
-hits keyrunes and arrests and such

i think these make it a bit better than mortars

mercurial chemister is another one i'd put in my top 10

Overloaded, the Morters is still one less, plus if your board position really sucks the Rift can really just be a glorified Blustersquall; usually by that time your opponent can recast everything in two turns. What really gives the edge to Morters (IMO) is that it's an incredible removal spell on its own. If you're just trying to push through early damage it's like a cheaper Auger Spree which is already a top 20 card in the format. Rift is also good by itself but sometimes you really need that emergency removal (like against an early Hellhole Flailer that you don't have an answer for)

ok sure i'm down with that but it's definitely top 5 still

I can agree with that, and i think you're right that Chemister probably belongs on there too, it's similar to Righteous Authority but a little better. Though there are a number of ways to take care of it, you pretty much get one turn to do so otherwise it's going to result in a ridiculous card disadvantage. Anyway I'll leave it like this:

1. Pack Rat
2. Mizzium Morters
3. Collective Blessing
4. Cyclonic Rift
5. Archon of the Triumvirate
6. Desecration Demon
7. Deadbridge Goliath
8. Mercurial Chemister
9. Chaos Imps
10. Righteous Authority

Any uncommons you think are better than any of these? I don't think Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage or Call are better than any of these but it's close.
As far as mythics go I have no idea how to judge something like Veraska (which really just plays like a Lux Cannon w/ 5 counters, though it's vulnerable right away if you blow up something, otherwise it's kinda slow). Angel of Serenity is just a big game ending bomb. Necropolis Regent wins quick too. And both Trostani and Armada Wurm are dumb as hell. Seriously, playing against Trostani is the worst.

i think trostani, niv mizzet, armada wurm, and angel of serenity are all better than archon of the triumvirate if we're using this list for reference. probably both planeswalkers too, though i've beaten them both several times just by curving out decently.

here's all the cards i haven't played yet in RTR limited. i got this list down to single digits for innistrad, not sure i'll get there with this set but it's fun to try for some of these when the draft is going awful already

Rest in Peace (maybe sideboard vs a really linear golgari deck?)
Sphere of Safety (this is for some sort of niche prison control deck i guess)
Trained Caracal (passable with scavenge or ethereal armor, just haven't had to yet)

Chronic Flooding (this is definitely a shitty niche deck and i want to do it at least once)
Psychic Spiral (wincon for the flooding deck)
Search the City (probably not even worth it in a deck with a bunch of multiples, won't try too hard to hit this one)

Destroy the Evidence (i dunno, it doesn't mill or LD quite efficiently enough)
Drainpipe Vermin (definitely see myself stooping to this at some point)
Shrieking Affliction (these effects are rarely good but might be fun to try once)

Guild Feud (the deck that wants this probably can't win without it sadly)
Pyroconvergence (not the worst build-around, just haven't had the opportunity yet)
Racecourse Fury (my vote for most useless card in the set, don't expect to ever hit this one without intentional sabotage which is not what this exercise is about)
Survey the Wreckage (could sideboard vs underworld connections)
Utvara Hellkite (had this in a sealed pool once but that pool also had 2 Chaos Imps so it wasn't necessary. seems fine as a finisher in the ramp deck)
Vandalblast (i'm not this afraid of keyrunes. maybe there'll be a better target for it in full block)

Oak Street Innkeeper (if i play this it'll be because i forgot to draft enough creatures, not because its ability is relevant)
Urban Burgeoning (would take a ton of cheap instants and activated abilities before this actually worked as a ramp spell and not a blank)
Worldspine Wurm (will gladly try this in the ramp deck if i ever get the opportunity)

Epic Experiment (i'm sure someone's done this properly by now but it wasn't me)
Havoc Festival (have heard that this actually works in limited but haven't seen it in action yet)
Heroes' Reunion (i've sideboarded in angel's grace before so maybe)
Isperia, Supreme Judge (obviously a good card, just haven't had it yet)
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord (same)
Lotleth Troll (same)
Rakdos Ringleader (this isn't even bad in a 'wouldn't it be amusing if i actually played it' way, it's just a really inefficiently costed creature)
Righteous Authority (haven't had it yet, seems great though)
Search Warrant (super awkward in that lifegain and peek effects are good against different types of decks, and neither is playable regardless)
Slaughter Games (not even interested in this vs pack rat unless they have more than 1)

Blistercoil Weird (the guy who won last weekend's MTGO PTQ had this in his top8 deck but i can't imagine it being very good)
Growing Ranks (fine card, haven't had it with enough token generators yet)
Judge's Familiar (goes in the same deck as Trained Caracal i think)
Nivmagus Elemental (i like all-in strategies more than most people but i still think this doesn't do it well enough in limited)

Codex Shredder (seems custom designed for the chronic flooding deck, mills you then gets your spiral back when you mill it)
Pithing Needle (marginal sideboard card vs planeswalkers or pack rat)
Street Sweeper (4/6 for 6 is okay, just haven't needed it bad enough yet)
Tablet of the Guilds (yeah i dunno, there's no chalice of life pipedream wincon for lifegain cards in this set yet)

If you pull a Lotleth Troll, Urban burgeoning becomes a nice way to always have regeneration available on your opponent's turn

that doesn't really work because if they have instant speed removal then you can never actually tap that land anyway or they kill it before it untaps again

haha maybe the reason im bad @ rtr is that ive played w/at least half of those...

there are a # of cards that work 'best' in gimmick decks i think you noted the doorkeeper/flooding deck but i had some success w/havoc festival in my hand destruction/shrieking affliction deck. this deck also wants drainpipe vermin and ringleader as much as any deck 'wants' those two. this was actually the most successful of the gimmick decks i tried but its almost never supported by the card pool

i tried a nivmagus deck once and managed to get to the finals of an 8-4. i also played it and blistercoil weird and the familiar in a deck w/two civic sabers and a bunch of other cheap hybrid creatures which i think might have been good if i had built it a little better and played a little tighter w/it. i think i ended 2-2 @ an fnm with that one

ive had burgeoning, sphere and caracal in ethereal armor decks, the sphere was obv p bad. i think i thought it was soul tithe when i was building. still went 3-0 w/that partic deck tho which is p lol since i have generally done p bad w/ethereal armor

strangely isperia, jarad and worldspine wurm are the three mythics ive never opened. also for general interest i have never drafted or opened a carnival hellsteed or an underworld connections on mtgo

awesome, i'm glad someone else out there is with me on the 'must try everything' plan for limited formats

you guys are crazy

while i'm at it, here's my 5 most-owned cards for the 3 limited formats i've played a lot on MTGO, they really betray my preferences a bit:

RTR
Voidwielder
Pursuit of Flight
Chemister's Trick
Sunspire Griffin
Viashino Racketeer

M13
Watercourser
Disentomb
Sign in Blood
Essence Scatter
Crippling Blight

ISD
Grave Bramble
Armored Skaab
Victim of Night
Rotting Fensnake
Mulch
Silent Departure (tied for 5th)

i def managed to draft/open every common and uncommon in M13 and avacyn although i doubt i actually cast all of them. M13 might have been close the only card i can think of offhand that i def didnt play was craterize. oh and serpent's gift. i have never played a serpent's gift.

the burgeoning goes with underworld connections I'd say

whoa awesome i didn't even think of that. doubt it'd be worth it with just that though.

presumably the land enchantment theme will continue through the block so there might be more relevant things to do with it later

I will say a Sphere of Safety deck can really be a lot of fun if you build it right. You need multiple spheres though since getting two of them out is ridiculous.

Today I did a real horrible Azorius deck and eeked out 2-1 anyway. My connection dropped at the end of pack 2 and didn't pick back up until pack 3 pick 7 which is to say I was forced to play multiple Downsizes and a Search Warrant because I did not want to run 18 lands and I literally had to play every card in color I had. It was actually quite good at locking opponents down, it had a bunch of 3 toughness flyers, 3 Voidweilders, lots of other dumb stuff, just no real way to win. Match 1 I took the guy down to like a minute because we were playing this dumb game where he'd play Trostani, I'd bounce it a bunch of times, then we'd race flyers and his infinite tokens + my Rogue's Passage, just a real stupid match that would have made me feel like a champ had I won. Match 3, Game 1 I play against another Azorius deck and we're at a total stalemate. I'm just waiting for Rogue's passage and I finally get it on turn 21 but he gets his Guildmage. He eventually kills me at 1 life but uses 22 minutes of his clock in the process. In retrospect this is really the only way I could have won this match.

this already got posted in the death grips thread but i dunno how much these threads intermingle. thought i'd xpost here for posterity

"We perceive that this record label is running a game, right?" says Hill. "The Control deck is the shit because, basically, you un-summon people's magic by using their own magic against them. It's totally control; you put yourself in the same place as the other person, so they have nothing on you, it's like an illusion. Redirection of power and putting yourself in the environments these other people are in — it creates a chaos element to it. We started thinking about that in the sense of where we were as a band."

8-)

Thinking about heading back into Standard. Someone upthread (maybe Cider?) had posted an interesting Devastation Tide deck that looked really neat so I was thinking about running something like that. Sphinx of the Chimes is one of my favorite build-around RTR cards since it doesn't seem too tough to just draw yourself out with it once you get rolling. And of course you can win with Lab Maniac, which would make this my 4th Lab Maniac deck. Here's the start:

4 Abundant Growth
4 Gatecreeper Vines
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Archeomancer
4 Devastation Tide

3 Sphinx of the Chimes
1 Labratory Maniac

And then a bunch of mana accel, probably Farseek and Ranger's Path.

Also thinking Cyclonic Rifts. Between those and devastation tides you can clear your opponents' board over and over again.

Easy to splash a color in this deck - White gives you Terminus while Black gives you Treasured Find.

No idea if this'll work, I haven't really played Standard since Dark Ascension, but it at least looks fun to try!

Standard seems pretty fun right now - good amount of variety, room for innovation, and no overwhelmingly popular deck. I'm tickled that there is a deck with Nightshade Peddler that has done decently. I'm mostly about Limited, but I played Standard a bit this summer during the height of UW Delver and it was miserable to play against that deck every other round. That Tide deck seems too fragile, but probably way fun to get the combo off.

Yeah I have a buddy who won $1250 (possibly more, I don't know if he split) with a 4c Peddler deck! There's definitely more variety than the Delver/Mana Leak/Vapor Snag/Geist days but from what I've seen the same few cards are showing up in every deck, particularly Thragtusk and Restoration Angel, which have no real good answer anywhere. Lots of Farseeks/Sphinx's Relevations too. Definitely preferable to a lot of Standard eras but I don't really like what winds up happening when there is so much good mana fixing available. Between Shocklands and buddylands (the M13/Innistrad ones) you don't need basics at all!

Really have no idea how the Sphinx deck will play out. Some of my ideas for Standard wind up working really well (such as Seance or my "fateful hour" deck that abused Hex Parasite), some really just can't win unless you draw a perfect hand (such as my really-stupid-in-retrospect Riddlesmith deck that would play 15 spells in three turns and lose, plus a Battle Hymn/Reforge the Soul deck that tried to win with Molten Psyche). The problem for me is they all seem good in my head!

frogbs i gave up on that deck when thragtusk took off, its essentially just another bant control variant and thragtusk control mirror matches are absolutely miserable to play. the guttersnipe deck i played at gameday which i posted upthread is pretty bad now too, though it was prescient in its use of thundermaw hellkite, which is nice because i picked them up at half their current price.

my default standard deck for now is GWB unburial rites, swinging back and forth between the midrange thragtusk/angel builds and the all-in craterhoof ones as necessary. have also been looking at naya humans, and worked a bit on an ethereal armor/spectral flight deck feat. geist of saint traft and invisible stalker. would like to revisit that one at some point since it seems uniquely powerful with the right build, but i'm focused on getting stuff for modern season right now.

haha i had an idea for a human sac deck that abused thatcher's revolt and blood artist this summer so i ended up picking up three falkenrath artistocrats for $16 total and hellriders for p much nothing. the deck was really terrible and i ended up playing rites as well but its amusing to see that a similar (if much better) decks has been getting some traction. the upside tho is that most of the cards i bought for it have like tripled in value

i like having good mana in standard because it makes stuff like the nightshade peddler deck viable that might not be otherwise. i don't mind restoration angel or thragtusk on their own as top tier standard cards but i dislike their interaction with each other and how many deck shells there are that support that combo in a way that makes not playing it seem foolish

haha i bought a ton of falkenrath aristocrats on MTGO for 4 tickets each when DKA came out because i thought they were going to be amazing, then sold them back a couple weeks later for the same price because i decided speculating was dumb and i wasn't playing them in anything. whoops

i had an idea for a human sac deck that abused thatcher's revolt and blood artist

I was thinking about doing something with Thatcher and Goldnight Commander. That combo was basically an auto-win in Limited so I have to think it's at least somewhat good in Standard?

yeah i tried that in boros tokens/humans w/champion of the parish and gather and stuff. i found that r/b was better but neither were really powerful enough and lol if golgari charm starts seeing significant play

whoa, a buddy of mine's Peddler deck just became a DailyMTG feature!

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/deck/1119

Nice. That deck is the best kind of janky deck.

standard seems really fluid right now, with almost every deck feeling like it exists on the same continuous spectrum with the red-black aggro deck at one end and the 4x sphinx's revelation decks at the other. also there's an interesting element to it where the most powerful individual cards tend to pull you toward the edges (revelation, falkenrath aristocrat) while the most powerful synergy cards pull you toward the middle (restoration angel, unburial rites, etc)

obviously there's always a few cards and interactions worth griping about but i think this is generally the model of a balanced format at the moment

sooo theres a gp here this weekend which i wont be playing in BUT that means that therell be a p dece standard tournament on sunday that i should be able to make. if this thread has any suggestions about what deck to play i will def play it (unless it requires a bunch of cards i dont have i guess) since im p bored of reanimator but i really want to play something

i 3-1ed a standard daily with naya humans last night, the deck runs 34 creatures and 3 selesnya charm so it's not for everyone but it seemed to match up well vs the R/B aggro decks while having some good nut draws vs midrange.

if you want something less 'fair' that's not reanimator you could play the ethereal armor/invis stalker deck but i was having trouble racing R/B with it so now might not be the time.

there's also this deck
http://mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=557724
which i am kind of terrified of but no one plays it because it's like $800. its basically a continuation of the deck that was 80% of the innistrad block metagame. if you somehow have all the cards it might be really good, i dunno, i have no way of testing it.

update: just found this in MTGO results, you should play it
http://mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=558781