Magic: The Gathering C/D

playing that w/ boros charm...

12 point life swing is a lot but you need to capitalize on it, if you being down a card means you end up surrendering the board then it doesn't matter how far ahead you are on life totals. you can certainly first pick it but i can imagine being in R/W and opening it pack 3 and not wanting it if your deck isn't streamlined aggro already

well i'm sure it'll fit well into the Boros strategy. playing Batallion dudes turn 2 and 3 and then this on turn 4 would be incredible. but I mean sacrificing cards for life swings is not something every deck wants to do. look at how often Essence Harvest tabled in AVR.

yeah it seems like the sort of thing in limited you're really going to want to use as a finisher rather than a turn four play most of the time? maybe not most because the temp swing could be pivotal in setting up for the late game but its not a game winning rare the way the best ones are

I think it becomes one in context, w/ a surprise battalion trigger

also, the later you play it the easier it will be for your opponent to throw out blockers. a card like Loxodon Warhammer, on the other hand...

i dunno, this thing seems like it will steal wins sometimes but generally play fair, as opposed to something like Firemane Avenger which is actually just unbeatable when you start attacking with it

ok this is the last time i talk about firemane avenger i promise

haaa

i will say that i will buy any and all of the firemane top 8 promos any of you pick up

gonna play boros promos at the gp

i think my favorite cards in the set so far are ghor-clan rampager and skarrg guildmage. pretty sure the rampager will be standard-playable, not so sure about the guildmage but i'll certainly test it

welp the B/W guildmage just got spoiled and its 2nd ability appears to form an instakill with Exquisite Blood from AVR provided you can either deal 1 point of damage or gain 1 life while they're both active

Maybe I'm just getting jaded but the Seer doesn't excite me at all. Feels like a rehash and just not that powerful. 4 mana is better than 5, true, but the type of deck that wants this card is so narrow; at least Bloodgift Demon I can see fitting into some decks. Would be happy to be wrong and see it get constructed play though.

New Ball Lightning is fun. I agree with frog, it's much better in constructed than limited, and I don't even think it's a good early draft pick. Powerful, but very hard on the colors and commits you to an aggressive deck so that you can overcome the card disadvantage (though Boros will probably be angling that way anyway).

I can see Rampager and Gruul Guildmage both getting Standard play, there's bound to be some strong aggro/midrange Naya decks after this set (it's already a deck now). Rampager in particular is so versatile, I love it.

yeah Rampager seems like it'll be a staple in midrange. it's like the RG Boros Charm.

i can see why you're down on the Seer, but I have to believe some aggressive Skies-like Dimir deck will emerge that features a lot of hard-to-block creatures and abuses Cipher. I agree it's only good in certain metagames (for example, one in which aggro is not very good) but if U/B can go aggro, the two-way ability of the Seer is really something

http://i.imgur.com/8IWxMEb.png

finally got to try doors.dec

how would you guys build this?

really can't say but I question how much you're going to be able to fire Psychic Spiral off for. I'd probably fit in Skywatch since it's really a nice dude to have, especially if you can get him out fast. what were your results?

i will say that's about the coolest 5c deck i've seen in RTR though. and they're becoming a lot more frequent.

would probably play weird and injunction over maybe spiral and one of the axebanes. spiral only really seems worth it w/chronic flooding

I'd probably swap out Lobber Crew and Trestle Troll for Skywatch and Rites of Reaping. Would consider siding in Golgari Charm if Stab Wound or various Azorius enchantments were a problem and otherwise use either Frostburn or Vassal Soul.

24 mana sources is a ton, you can play 16 or even 15 lands in that deck i think. i'd go 16 and consider cutting a vine or guardian too

it does feel weird to just have frostburn in the board and ya 17 lands seems a bit much considering. the gatecreeper in the board is probably better than a land isn't it?

oh wait i just saw how many 7-drops youre playing, dont cut a land

i think the 3rd gatecreeper is worse than a land in most decks

dunno if i'd say that here. looks like turns 3 and 4 you're not gonna do much but play walls anyway. gatecreepers essentially produce 2 mana w/ axebane, enable doorkeeper, thin out your deck...I'd probably play as many as I got

lost the 1st match (0-2) against a so-so rakdos deck due to bad luck w/ mulls
lost the 2nd match (1-2) against v good selesnya deck cause lol 7 centaurs
won the 3rd match (2-1) against a so-so rakdos deck, deck went off

I really wanted / needed a 3rd doorkeeper, I think I passed the third one for hover barrier hoping it would wheel

anyway it was fun to play for sure. never had any mana color problems tho this was essentially a simic deck. I sided the second horncallers in for most games. casting huge d00ds was a lot easier than the mill win.

didn't draw archon a single game!

my last two decks have been real goofy 3-4 color builds with a ton of bombs; I've gone a combined 1-5 with them. lots of 1-2 losses where I get killed by some guy playing 5 counterspells, or random discard, or I just draw way too many lands (twice I've drawn 15 lands with about half my deck left), or guys just randomly rip Cyclonic Rifts. kind of disheartening but the Jace/Hypersonic/Archon/Utvara Hellkite/Detention Sphere deck sure was fun to play..

in this case the first pack was super weak, it was seriously like axebane or daggerdrome imp, the second was also pretty bad but there was a gatecreeper, and the third had a chromatic lantern. I hadn't really set out to loldraft but it was definitely in the cards.

full gatecrash set is up on the wizards site

looks pretty solid for limited. will probably play significantly faster than RTR due to the mechanics, but the removal is a bit better/cheaper and the cards feel tech-ier so drafting could be pretty hard at first

what do we think the key commons are gonna be in limited?

leyline phantom and deathcult rogue both seem like they will be pretty high picks

sorta want to play dimir now

not really sure what you see in the phantom but yeah the rogue is important for dimir getting cipher hits through.

on the surface it looks like the best common is the 2BB kill spell but i'm sure some creature or other will end up being surprisingly powerful

there's 2 5-power bloodthirst guys at common which is frankly kind of terrifying

phantom = the engine for evolve decks?

yeah playing against gruul is just going to be annoying. can't imagine anyone will ever be happy actually casting zhur-taa as a creature.

yeah but it still feels too tempo-negative to be a high pick

i do like how a lot of the 'weird' commons like that are in there to work with one of the mechanics, like the Armored Transport is a battalion enabler and Wildwood Rebirth lets you rebuy your bloodrush cards mid-combat etc etc

this seems like a very synergy-heavy set is what i'm saying i guess

what % of dimir wins do you think will be mills?

Phantom seems kinda crap outside of Simic. The problem with the Phantom though is that Simic seems slow as it is and should have a lot of mana sinks later on. Of course I can't really say without playing with the cards.

I'm not really sure what the big Limited commons will be - every card I've seen that looks awesome in Limited so far as been Uncommon. Drakewing Krasis, Kingpin's Pet, Shambleshark, Wojek Halberdiers, and Deathcult Rouge all seem like first pickables that fit within their guild well. Lots of good common removal too but nothing on the level of Stab Wound. Anyway I'm definitely liking Simic here, definitely the most interesting. Dimir mill seems like a lot of fun too. The 1UB counterspell/mill 2 is kind of a shock, they don't tend to do hard counters with just a single blue (outside of Fall of the Gavel and Dromar's Charm)

like 15-20%? i dunno, its one of those things i can't really evaluate from the card list, but i didn't see any equivalent to Vedalken Entrancer from the old dimir limited decks, a repeatable miller at common that doesn't require any other resources

I'm also noticing a lot of quality creature enchantments here

one thing that stood out to me just now is that 4 of the 5 guild mechanics give extra value to small evasive creatures, so i'd expect cards like metropolis sprite and spire tracer to be more desirable than they would be in most limited formats

will gruul suffer from boros cutting the red bloodrush?

any decent combat trick + boros charm...

Seems like there's a lot of potential for land destruction in this set.

nope

well if it's anything like RTR, I'll be playing a lot of 3-color decks. in which case Boros/Gruul looks pretty solid.

yeah playing against gruul is just going to be annoying. can't imagine anyone will ever be happy actually casting zhur-taa as a creature.

if you're low on creatures you will. it seems like Gruul will be a lot of attack -> use bloodrush if necessary -> if not, play bloodrush creature

land destruction was a fringe strategy back when they still printed Stone Rain, now they barely print any LD at 4 mana let alone 3

the ramp/fixing on frenzied tilling might make it fringe playable in a very specific limited deck though

they have been very explicit about not making land destruction ever viable cause they think it makes people hate the game

I think they're right on that count. Still, I'm surprised they haven't printed anything to punish greedy mana bases (like Blood Moon, or at least Tec Edge) since the mana fixing in Standard is as good as its ever been.

yeah that along w/ scaling back counterspells is all part of the same trajectory where they're trying to make sure the majority games play out on the board rather than being about raw resource advantage/denial. which i think is generally a good thing. blood moon/tec edge effects go against this too so i wouldn't expect anything that harsh anymore