Magic: The Gathering C/D

when your best threat is a removal spell, you get cannibalized pretty quickly

I've seen golgari decks w/ 3 stab wounds only doing okay

it mighta been better to price that card at GB tho so golgari got it to itself, its not like rakdos needed it

not really in green's flavor I guess

I had a Golgari deck with 3 Stab Wounds, 2 Manglers, 2 Dreadbridge Goliaths (!) and Pack Rat - I only lost one game because I'm an idiot and forgot to submit my deck so I had to play three games with an 80 card deck. Also got 3 shocklands that draft.

Stab Wound is good in Rakdos yeah but for Golgari it really pulls double duty

haha okay well that deck would be fine without the stab wounds and manglers probably

yeah that was a rare combo of getting playable bomb rares AND getting money rare AND having your guild completely open

the only izzet uncommon that i always really wanted was teleportal. rally and charm were good but izzet was so good when it was open because its strongest cards were at common

I'm pretty fond of Nivix Guildmage and Hover Barrier for that deck as well. Teleportal takes a good Izzet deck to great but it can actually make a bad one worse.

yeah I think when izzet is open and you have as many weirds/stealers/voids/crews as your heart desires you only need a few other things to round out your deck

sorta true w/ azorius but on their own the good commons aren't as good

Weilders get snapped up quick by Azorius and Lobber Crews tend to go quick too. Stealer is a good card with the right support but it can also be an expensive bear that does nothing. Taking them early seems to be a bad idea all around.

The thing about Azorious is that there are just so many 2/3 mana flyers - Pegasus, Griffin, Vassal Soul, and Tower Drake are all common, and outside of Troll and Indrik, decks really have a problem holding off so many. That's when Detain really gets good because you can wipe out a blocker and/or prevent the swing-back.

oh yeah - Runewing too. basically there are no 3/3 flyers for less than 6 mana at common or uncommon which means those 2/x guys are hard to negate.

sadly I'm noticing Rakdos players taking Frostburns now too. I guess the secret is out.

Here are my resolutions for tonight's draft:

Make an effort to stick with 2 colors only.
Don't try to force a guild, take what is open.
Make sure to have some legit closers, don't expect to win by getting a bunch of small hits in.
If the strategy calls for playing defense in the early game, make sure to have enough defenders and removal to actually support such a strategy.

somehow fell into a big pit of gruul but had some good simic cards to balance it out. went 2-1. I think I was alone in gruul. lost to a fast boros deck 2-1, mana screwed both times, but I don't think my deck was worse.

wasteland viper
burning-tree emissary
2 crocanura
2 crowned ceratok
cinder elemental
ghor-clan rampager
viashino shanktail
ruination wurm
giant adephage
gruul ragebeast
nimbus swimmer
gruul keyrune
simic keyrune
gruul charm
simic charm
urban evolution
arrows of justice
aetherize
rapid hybridization
2 homing lightning

stomping ground
simic guildgate
2 island
7 forests
6 mountains

dnp:
2 ruination wurm (sometimes sided one in)
alpha authority
act of treason
massive raid
skinbrand goblin
slaughterhorn
adaptive snapjaw
warmind infantry
2 towering thunderfist
clinging anemones
foundry street denizen

would you guys build this differently? my deck was more fun to play than my prerelease gruul deck (and better) tho I'm not sure I'm any less skeptical of gruul. ragebeast is fun to play.

I broke my resolutions after opening Domri Rade p1p1 and then trying to force my way into Gruul. The draft was fairly chaotic and I ended up going 3-0 for the first time. Folks were passing me all kinds of rares.

Here's my deck:
Smite
Spire tracer
2 greenside watcher
Disciple of the old ways
Madcap skills
Martial glory
Gruul charm
2 verdant haven
Ember beast
Warmind infantry
Act of treason
Domri rade
Viashino shanktail
Crowned ceratok
Ivy lane denizen
Nav squad commandos
Angelic edict
Rust scarab
Zhur tar swine
Foundry champion
Molten primordial
Boros Guildgate
4 plains
6 mountain
6 forest

Also picked enter the infinite and lazav (who I traded to a lucky individual for boborygmos). Pulled a godless shrine in my prize packs and got both promo cards, so overall quite a good night.

so after my resolution to avoid the presumably-overdrafted boros, i opened p1p1 firemane avenger, successfully cut white, and ended up with a sick boros deck which did not lose a game despite me never drawing the avenger or my hellkite tyrant

then somehow ended up in a 4 on 4 team draft where i was probably the worst player at the table, drafted a decent simic deck feat. master biomancer, and promptly went 0-3. luckily the pro player on my team bailed us out and i got a bunch of undeserved rares

yeah i had vowed to avoid boros got passed ordun minotaur followed by ordun minotaur p1 picks two and three, got cut packs two and three, drafted a really terrible orzhov deck went 1-2 and dropped. not the best start to the format. also think i probably misplayed a couple of games but i got blown out by aurelia's fury in three games :/

i don't think that minotaur is too good, not enough to be a signal at least

i think hes fine, not that strong a signal p1p2 but seeing him again seemed like a sign. im probably overrating how high he should go though. he was also the strongest card in both packs i think - i really wanted to take a black card cuz i took the double black four mana kill spell p1p1 but there wasnt anything except cipher spells - not even the 'good' ones. i do regret passing a cartel aristocrat for the two mana tap a creature red uncommon. and i probably passed some other ok orzhov stuff that pack, or at least better stuff than i ended up running.

also if you have any good ideas for standard id like to hear them - i have three byes for the upcoming gp + a place to stay + its reading week so id really like to go but i want to start testing soon if im gonna bother

I'm starting to ponder a way to pull together my golgari, Rakdos, and Gruul decks into some kind of deadly rgb deck with a haste and trample theme. Not exactly sure the best way to make it work.

i don't have any brilliant ideas yet - there's the angel of glory's rise combo deck i mentioned previously which isn't really 'public' yet but i know a few people who are planning to test it. there's probably some UB aggro-tempo deck with duskmantle seer but i don't know exactly what support you want for it. delvers probably?

i think jund and naya midrange will still be fine, esper and bant control will still be fine, mono-red will still be fine. there'll be some boros aggro decks, probably one that's the current mono-red deck splashing white stuff and another that's a champion of the parish/silverblade paladin deck. the UWR deck will probably shift back from controlling to aggro with boros charm playing nice with geist of saint traft and snapcaster. there's a way to combo off with immortal servitude returning blood artists and bloodthrone vampires and such but it probably sucks. there's crypt ghast into huge demonic revelations but i don't know if that's good. i'd like to try playing domri rade and 32 creatures but i don't know if that's good either. basically i'm going to try everything but it'll mostly be on modo and we'll have decklists from the pro tour by the time the new cards become reasonably priced on there.

guys i don't think gutter skulk is a maindeckable card

i just wanted to tell you this

cool art though

gift of orzhova wins the art award from this set i think

yeah I have heard like 5 people mention the art already

I think the Gutter Skulk art is pretty gross.

I did read about a dude who put together a winning deck featuring a bunch of them along with a couple Ogre Slumlords.

I pulled a foil Gift of Orzhova, which is indeed fairly pretty. Planning to sell it off to a dude at my LGS who was trying to track these down.

to elaborate, i did a sealed the other day and thought i had a sick orzhov deck but i was playing 2 gutter skulk and in a bunch of games i lost because i drew gutter skulks vs my opponents army of 2/3s (there are a lot of 2/3s in this set!) and they were basically blanks. you want to sideboard them in vs fast boros decks probably since you want an early board presence in that matchup but i won't maindeck them again unless i have to.

so its similar to Merfolk of the Pearl Trident in M13 - sucky vanilla creature that helps with a certain matchup, if you're savvy enough to recognize

yeah except it's not quite that bad, it's still a bear and you'll play it as filler if your creature count is too low, or if you have an actual beatdown deck in black (probably doable with orzhov using the white boros cards)

right - I've seen Tavern Swindler get play in RTR though nobody ever seems to use the ability, even when it makes sense. I just don't think straight Bears are good in any deck; Drudge Beetle and Keening Apparition had just enough upside to be good but I'd never want to play Swindler - both RTR and GTC seem to have lots of low cost commons with 3+ toughness

I've used/seen people use the ability but in all cases the use was related to the fact that the decks were bad enough to be running tavern swindler

there are formats where straight bears are high picks though! walking corpse was fine in innistrad (though there was some upside to the creature type) and a bear in AVR would have also been a fine playable. glory seeker was first-pickable in onslaught. zendikar was all about who had the most bears in their deck.

people seemed to think gatecrash was going to be one of these formats going in due to the cheap boros guys being scary, but in practice, the other decks don't really care about a 2/2 if it doesn't do anything else.

It's funny, for a long time it didn't occur to me that Tavern Swindler should be used sometimes. I just saw it as "expected value: break even", one of those do-nothing cards that are for players who like coin flips. Then I saw a draft video where LSV used it and explained how the 3 extra life would buy him a turn, while the loss of 3 life made no difference. I felt dumb.

I've used/seen people use the ability but in all cases the use was related to the fact that the decks were bad enough to be running tavern swindler

lol very possible

yeah, the value of life isn't linear so depending on the game state there's some number(s) of life at which you should be using it. in general +3 life does not balance out -3 life in value though so you shouldn't just use it without a reason.

i've never played with it but i've definitely seen opponents miss good opportunities to use it - like say before combat to determine whether or not you can let dudes through and go for an all-out alpha strike next turn

i think when it comes to bears it's just a matter of how well the format supports them - is it fast, can you interact with them (such as through Soulbound), are there, say, a bunch of 3-mana 2/2s running around via Morph, etc...

it'd be more fun if the ev were positive but it still had a risk, like it were +4 -3 or something

i dont know if that would be more fun since then it would be correct to use it every turn and you'd randomly lose games when you lost 2 or 3 flips in a row

well you have to price in that risk! it's not necessarily correct at 6 life because -6 and +8 aren't the same things

I like it better as is (it hides its usefulness, at least from people like me), though I do think +4/-3 could be interesting too. Is +0.5 life EV always worth gambling for? Probably not.

I think Wizards was correct to make it +3/-3; an uncommon where the correct move would be to flip coins every turn with a 7-point swing between winning and losing would result in a lot of games where the coin flips determine the winner.

a good percentage of games are determined by coin flip like dynamics but I guess making this more explicit doesn't make people happy

if anyone is interested over the next couple of weeks id be up for testing standard for the gp - i'm leaning towards either a R/w deck or some kind of BUG or RUG tempo deck and would be interested in testing a few different variations. i also have an idea for simic manipulator build that's probably too slow and too fragile but seems like it could be really powerful if i can get it started a turn earlier

i'll be testing a bunch on MTGO starting next week whenever release events knock the card prices down to reasonable levels, will keep you posted

dimir is playable after all. still not great, but not terribad either. mortus strider is a real MVP.

btw cider i do a ton of drafting so if youre looking for anything in particular i can definitely sell at the bot buy prices

what just happened. i just drafted 7 sage's row denizens and 3 mortus strider on cockatrice. will keep you posted looool

deck dominated tonight:

2 grisly spectacle
one thousand lashes
aetherize
psychic strike
killing glare
rapid hybridization
2 smite
totally lost
orz keyrune
dutiful thrull
luinate primordial
corpse blockade
2 kingpin's pet
crypt ghast
basilica guards
bane alley broker (so good)
keymaster rogue
mortus strider
basilica screecher
duskmantle guildemage
two dimir guildgates
godless shrine
4 swamp
5 island
5 plains

had a very nice r1 showing against gruul. deck had no issues. removal was strong. r2 i played a very interesting dimir mirror match. my opponent went more the unblockable cipher route, and had some success with it, milling me out one game. one thing i've noticed is that a lot of the cipher cards that look horrid by themselves are very strong in bunches. the key is to trigger as many ETB effects as possible - so call of the nightwing actually becomes quite good if you have blue and black denizens. voidwalk too.

it has really been quite solid; a pleasant surprise. btw, about 2/3 of my dimir wins were mill wins, and the 1/3 were damage wins. you don't have to make a pure mill deck, i'm thinking. if you're doing it correctly, you'll have a lot of flexibility in your gameplan.

also, breaking news: my r3 opponent spectated my games and saw my onslaught of sage's row denizens. he thought i was cheating and ragequit