Magic: The Gathering C/D

thats fine w/ me, let the people have their mana fixing. dual lands always feel like the grossest things to buy when you're starting out in standard because they're kinda expensive and don't really do anything except silently up your % of not getting manascrewed

I went Orzhov at my prelease and despite opening some of the best cards in the guild - Ghost Council, Deathless Angel - my deck didn't seem to work. I'd usually play out a couple cheap guys, get in 7 or 8 points of damage early via attacking or Extort, and then wouldn't be able to close games. My cheap dudes were quickly outclassed on the board and couldn't trade for anything. Would have been nice to have some removal. Also I faced Fathom Seer in two rounds and that card is just unfair.

yeah orzhov doesn't really work without removal, its no coincidence that black and white are where most of the removal in the set is at. not getting any/enough is just bad luck i guess

how are you guys thinking of approaching drafts?

I had a mediocre prerelease weekend. The sealed environment seems incredibly unbalanced towards Boros. The bulk of the folks at my LGS wanted to run Boros with others doing Orzhov or maybe Gruul. Simic and especially Dimir got very little interest.

Ran Gruul the first night splashing some Boros stuff including Aurelia's Fury. Ended up going 2-2, which was fine since my pool was just ok. I had a lot of fun with Bloodrush and I think it will be really good in draft. Ended up pulling a Stomping Ground in a prize pack which was nice and also got a nice trade binder as a door prize, which really made my day.

Second night I did Orzhov and got a terrible pool of cards. I really struggled to make it work at all and barely won a game until the final round. Had a very difficult time holding off my opponents until I was ramped up enough to run some of my so-so big guys. Hardly had enough extort to make a difference and had basically zero removal. It was extremely frustrating.

My biggest first impression beyond liking Bloodrush is that there are lots of great cards that provide various sorts of evasion. I like how creative they got with various forms of conditional unblockable cards, and Madcap Skills may just be the superstar of these.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to draft. I'll be very happy to have a bit more control over the cards I pull.

i don't have an approach for drafts in mind - i'll probably be looking to figure out and force dimir early on since it seems like it will be wide open, and likewise avoid boros aggro

yeah avoiding boros aggro is probably a good idea

i'm also hoping gruul will be misdrafted at first and i can scoop up all the ruination wurms and verdant havens and do that sort of thing

I think boros overdrafting will prob limit gruul at the same time

Yeah, one bad thing is that Gruul cards work very nicely in Boros decks, but the opposite isn't really true.

yeah but boros drafters won't be taking the gruul cards i'm interested in

I think the prob w/ ramp gruul is that there's just so much removal that a turn 4-5 ruination wurm is pretty fragile.

my deck actually played more like izzet than anything else. sit around, get some big dudes out, do a little damage, wait for gruul charm / traitorous instinct card for a 15 damage turn. I lost to a speed gruul deck that was much better than mine, but I wonder if my archetype will be more prevalent.

yeah thats the exact plan that my prerelease deck had and it seemed pretty good

I actually came close to winning a game that I reallllly shouldn't have won against strong simic deck that was destroying me w/ the aforementioned plan. was at 1 life, could have done 14 damage to him via gruul charm. if I had / drew a bloodrush card I woulda won.

I think multiple gruul charms, multiple traitorous instincts (works great w/ pit fight too), maybe the simic wall-esque d00ds as the lobber crews. I lacked that last part of the build.

i want to try dimir aggro, the 4B 3 life cipher is just a scary amount of reach. if you stick it on a deathcult rogue that's 8 damage right there that turn and then you're hitting for 5 a turn after that if they don't have the removal right away

what would a dimir aggro deck look like?

multiple raptors, deathcult rogues. guildmage. metropolis sprite.

could that build do it w/ some decent control and cipher?

You've pretty much got it. Hands of Binding is huge for the deck too. I think it could be a very good deck, especially if Dimir is underdrafted.

one thing I found about Simic was that it may have some troubles actually winning. one match my opponent was playing circles around me, abusing the "friendly" wording on Fathom Seer and getting a ton of card advantage off the Guildmage, but not actually able to punch through much damage. it doesn't seem to have a whole lot of finishers.

im going to force orzhov because its the best

okay so Dragon's Maze prerelease is like this - you choose ANY guild, and your guild pack comes with a guild pack of that guild, plus one from a "secret" guild from the opposite set, which will share at least one color (which should only excluse one guild), plus 4 boosters of Dragon's Maze. very cool!

where did you see that?

Nevermind, found it:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1156

So does each guild always get the same ally or can it get different allies in different packs?

the way I understand it, it's the latter.

I feel already like a lot of the cards in DM are going to be about connecting the different guilds. Maro hinted in his article today that there was something that would link together Evolve and Populate (?)

'turn x +1/+1 counters into a token, populate' could happen

Definitely will choose Gruul for DM prerelease because I'd be very happy with 3/4 of the allies.

I can see an azorius-boros deck w/ 12 flyers and batallion/detain being pretty nasty

unexpected results: limited playable y/n

it's a card 23 for slow decks

makes sense

is it just me or do the drafts get real easy when Cube's around?

i haven't been drafting, i don't like cube and i'm tired of all the other formats that are up (except ZZW which isn't that fun a format anyway)

also at some point i decided i like sealed more than draft

yeah i havent played any mtgo since the mocs and doubt i will until the release

i do have a bunch of cube tickets from last time that but i have no desire to draft the current cube

ive been playing standard/modern but have been on a soul-crushing losing streak the past couple weeks so i could really use a new limited format right now. the 2 week delay on new sets is pretty brutal still even though it's shorter than it used to be

i'm okay with 2 weeks but the longer delays were pretty unreasonable. i agree that it's kind of hard to go back to "normal" Cube now. it seems to be firing pretty often but I can't imagine who would prefer this one over the powered one. the good thing about drafting RTR now is that all the good drafters seem to have quit the format and packs are down to 3.01 right now.

gatecrash drafting tips for tonight, ready, go

i know you guys think its awful but dimir is going to be wide, wide open for the first several weeks i think, so if you can figure it out i'd be on that plan

keys to dimir? getting walls / tradeable dudes to avoid getting overrun? some bounce hopefully? is the mill 3-cipher playable in anything but a to-the-bone mill deck?

what are the key cards for aggro Dimir vs. mill?

can't remember if I mentioned this but people really stayed away from Dimir during all the prereleases here so I wouldn't be surprised if that's true. to draw the comparison again I think everyone said "Izzet really sucks" after the RTR prerelease, until one guy wound up with 4 Frostburn Weirds and destroyed everyone

I don't think dimir has a frostburn weird

rogue would be the closest thing I guess? but that's not gonna take over a game on its own, maybe w/ cipher or in a stall, but it's not comparable to a turn 2 weird drop

key cards for dimir are hands of binding and unblockable/flying dudes, plus a blocker or 2 so you don't lose every race. shadow slice seems really good in a more aggro build and possibly underrated to the point where you could get it on the wheel. midnight recovery seems awesome in the more grindy builds, with corpse blockade and such.

yeah I guess it makes sense that hands of binding will be good if dimir has to rely on tempo and evasion if it wants to win

i think, rather than looking to draft dimir id rather draft orzhov (or simic i guess) and look to pick up useful dimir cards on the splash and let everyone else fight over boros/gruul? dimir just seems like its actually bad, rather than misunderstood or w/e

I think a strong (sole drafter, reasonable card pool) dimir deck might be better than a strong golgari deck but building it is gonna require some nuance

the prob is the drop off from decent dimir to compeltely unwinnable dimir seems like it's gonna be sharp

well there seems to be fewer 3-power dudes that come out on turn two or three, for one. I think outside of a fast Boros start (especially with the 3/2 RW dude) you should at least have a chance to establish your deck.

that said - with Izzet you really do risk getting a terrible deck if the right cards don't come in pack two and three, a risk you don't really have with Selesnya because it has so many good commons that work in a vacuum. with Izzet you can go Electromancer/Stealer of Secrets/Runewing as your "curve" and totally get blown up by a Centaur/Dread Reveler + a combat trick. Dimir looks about the same way, you really need the synergy, and probably really really need Hands of Binging

whereas even gruul at its worst is just some lame R/G dudes, still can win a game against a bad deck / draw