Magic: The Gathering C/D

cheap and colorless teleportal makes it a very high pick in limited, I'd think

I can see Stompy or Gruul decks packing a few of these. I like how the narrow hosers like "counter target X spell" or "cannot be blocked by tokens" are being printed on already playable cards.

Looks like Bant Auras isn't going to have a very long run

ha

i wondered if hexproof + cipher was too broken in testing - that whole card feels like some p inelegant dam-building on wizards part

the only cards that ive liked so far are boros charm and the medic so maybe i'll try building a boros deck? wouldn't mind playing a very fast aggro deck with some resiliency

certainly Invisible Stalker + hexproof was a problem. actually I would imagine the presence of Invisible Stalker encouraged them to "play it safe" with a lot of cipher cards (like making the mini-Pox 6 mana instead of 5)

i want to attempt to play that card still even at 6 mana. is probably not good though if everyone's gonna be jamming aggro with boros charms.

also i'm a bit bummed at gruul charm being more of a sideboard card and not an all-star like some of the others, its really only good if the hurricane mode is relevant, and the best flier in standard has 4 toughness. forsythe said that it was balanced in relation to the other gruul cards rather than the other charms so hopefully that means there's some more pushed RG stuff we haven't seen yet.

it does seem pretty sick in limited though

i wondered if part of the reason gruul charm isnt that good is modern? it feels so much more narrow than anything except well, rakdos charm

the fact that this doesn't kill Restoration Angel is pretty obnoxious - really wish they'd printed it as a 3/3

rakdos charm seems less narrow though, i'm actually maindecking 2 copies in my burn deck in modern and there's almost no decks that it's completely dead against since all 3 modes are different relevant sideboard effects. gruul charm's first 2 modes are a lot less relevant i think.

no its definitely better than gruul charm but its probably the next worst charm in standard. well maybe izzet charm is worse.

I thought people played Izzet Charm in standard? It seemed solid to me, unless it just doesn't kill anything these days...

my p1p1 and p1p2 were both steam vents on what will be my last rtr draft. I kinda forced izzet cuz hey 2 steam vents and had a neat deck that always lasted like 20 turns but ultimately sucked cause winning requires a win condition. also pulled a vraska so w/e.

theres still two weeks of rtr drafting

oh yeah the prerelease is pre, release, I forgot

I might do one more then

but I'm kinda over it

i think ooze flux will be very good in limited simic decks! like, force simic p1p1. if you have 2 evolve creatures out, it is pretty much unlimited bears for 2 mana. i'm ok with that. looking forward to getting passed it all the time

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/gtc/is276nnn03_en.jpg

dope card imo

that is very cool

the one thing we haven't seen yet is a cheap Krenko's Command/Raise the Alarm style token generator for Boros. I know they generally try to ramp up the synergy for a bunch of Limited strategies but I wonder if a cheap token producer would make Batallion a little too good...

there'll probably be a card that makes 2 of those 1/1 haste tokens that the guildmage makes

we've only seen like 10 commons out of 100 so far so its useless to fret about some important thing missing for limited

well if Batallion on cheap creatures is too good they probably won't. I don't really care one way or the other I just like to make guesses. same way I wonder how many 0/6 walls there will be (to trigger Evolve), guys with evasion for Cipher, etc

q:

do you guys follow any good general mtg blogs / twitter accounts

pretty much all the pro players and top MTGO players are on twitter but none of them are singularly interesting off the top of my head.

most MTG articles are about constructed decks or are boring tournament recaps; the few limited articles that exist are mostly unhelpful, with a couple exceptions which are behind the paywall on starcity, plus the Ars Arcanum guy who i've linked in here before and only writes when a new set is out.

that sucks

my friend told me about the limited resources podcast, I kinda like it

have you all chosen guilds for prerelease yet?

I'm probably going Gruul and Orzhov.

the best twitter follow is probably @mtgaaron who's the head of magic r&d and tends to be pretty forthright rather than hype-y marketing-y like some of the other WotC people

Gruul is my fav guild so i'll definitely be running that at the midnight prerelease, not sure if i'll do 2 prereleases this time since that was a lot of magic for one weekend when i did it at the RTR one

You can get any and all questions about MTG design answered at http://markrosewater.tumblr.com

ciderpress can you start a blog where you post long articles about limited and then I will read it

that arcanum guy's stats post seems pretty otm in retrospect

Luckily the store I'm going to is holding their prereleases in the early evening on Saturday and Sunday. I can't manage the midnight events.

oh yeah limited resources is pretty solid, i don't like podcasts in general though so i rarely listen to it.

i used to think limited resources was good but then i watched loucks stream and realized hes actually p terrible

Mark Rosewater's tumblr is a good read; even if you disagree with some of his philosophies, he's pretty clearly an expert in game design

haha yeah mark rosewater seems to have been constructing near religious beliefs about the game over the last decade

i think Sam Black and Ari Lax are the most insightful current pro players but sadly their articles are behind the paywall on starcity

Rosewater's also very prompt about answering questions. I sent one in and he answered later the same day.

i like the gamestate guys - although they deal almost exclusively with constructed formats i think theyre generally really good at dissecting why certain things work and metagame stuff

agree that sam black is a good writer/thinker - his draft streams are p good too although he hasnt really been streaming much since rtr started

sam black's article on m13 limited changed the way i approach drafting in general and i've done much better ever since, lemme see if i can find it

i used to think limited resources was good but then i watched loucks stream and realized hes actually p terrible

yeah I def disagree w/ the things they say all the time but I still like it as entertainment

ok here's the article, shouldnt be behind paywall anymore
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/generallimited/24692-Draft-The-Cards-You-Want-To-Play.html

weirdly, all the commas have vanished from old SCG articles when they migrated to the new site layout

that's a great article!

it feels like an inspirational speech, he should be giving it to a huge crowd of players who then break out in a standing ovation

lol!

that period where loucks, owen, sam and a few others were regularly drafting and streaming M13 and watching each others streams probably did more to help my limited game than anything else

Yeah that one is incredible, I'd say it's a must read. I hate the articles that people like Conley Woods put out whenever a set is spoiled where he goes through each common and writes stuff like "2.5, I guess this is okay, kind of expensive but it blocks well", and then "welp, there's your pick order". It's been a while since draft has been so simple! I have a similar "weakness" with 5cc counterspells like Fall of the Gavel or Lost in the Mist. I realize they are bad but I love them as 23rd cards and I have won plenty of games with them. In RTR if I'm going well with Selesnya I'll start picking up stuff like Sundering Growth over Towering Indrik because the Growth is incredible against the guy with Stab Wounds and Deviant Glees.

pretty interesting stuff spoiled today, including a 4cc 4/4 flying Dark Confidant for both players, really like that and think it'll be a 4-of in something

also a Ball Lightning with Lifelink