Magic: The Gathering C/D

esp since you see a lot of boros in sealed

idk his deck requires getting lucky w/ the amount of green fixing stuff you see and the 'bombs' aren't even that good

― iatee, Tuesday, February 12, 2013 9:52 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Greenside Watcher and Verdant Haven have been widely available in the drafts I've done, the guildgates less so. You probably need to value guildgates higher than most other cards. To me, those are the key cards to make a 5 color strategy work. The bombs will vary based on what you open or get passed, I'm not convinced you need to grab the specific ones he mentioned.

it's more that the payoff isn't worth the trouble - greenside isn't even ramp unless you happen to get lucky w/ both getting and drawing gates.

holy shit boros reckoner is 25 bucks

I do believe a Simic/Dimir mana ramp strategy would work really well on its own. Simic and Orzhov both seem to be able to use all the mana they get and Dimir has some interesting long game stuff.

i'd say sell high on them right now if you have them, but the pro tour hasn't even happened yet and that usually gives a price bump to all the new standard all-stars, of which that card is certainly one.

its really rare for a Standard non-mythic to even top $15 so yeah that is quite ridiculous. that said I really love that card, particularly its amusing synergy with Pit Fight :)

if by pit fight you mean domri rade, that is what i will be attempting to do in standard this season

reckoner also plays really nice in UWR tempo which is significant because there are a bunch of pro tour level players who i just can't imagine ever picking up a green creature-based beatdown deck no matter how good it is

hmmm yes that would work too

i had to play against that card in a draft and it's one of the most obnoxious things to play against

i would like to know how strong your non-boros cards have to be for it to be correct to not play boros in sealed

i've gotten several pools with no playable boros deck

sure, but that's not really what i mean. it's more pools where you have a playable but mediocre boros pool and a stronger simic or w/e pool - is it still 'correct' to just jam the legion? that's what i've been doing and it's working out but i feel like im just giving in to some lazy thinking

the trick is to not play sealed

i love sealed...

i think it depends on the curve of the mediocre boros deck - also a lot of players tend to be bad at playing vs fast aggro decks, especially in an unfamiliar limited format, so you get some extra equity from that by just jamming boros.

that said i'd always go with what looks more powerful in a vacuum, at this point in the set lifecycle i want to be playing as many different cards as possible

also i think boros probably sucks in a good draft pod though i haven't drafted enough to confirm this

also if you have a chance take a look at the top 8 draft decks from the limited GP last weekend, it's pretty funny - there's one guy who forced simic and got a good deck and won the tournament, and the other 7 decks all look unplayable, like everyone was fighting over the same few cards

yeah I'm always surprised at how bad tournament winning limited decks look, but it makes sense

While it's good to try different strategies, playing to your play style is underrated. At GP Kansas City, I had a sealed control deck my friends all thought was insane, 3 Control Magic effects and some other bombs, but I found the deck hard to build and play because I'm much more used to aggro and midrange.

There's also a good chance Boros is just the best guild!

i think aggro is usually correct the first few weeks of a format but people really seem to adjust quick. I remember when RTR started, Rakdos always seemed like a cheap and easy way to victory, nowadays I have trouble going even 2-1 with it. nobody seems to have trouble vs. a turn 2 Chainwalker anymore.

cider are you doing those 4 tix phantom events? there's only 6 packs of prizes for 32 tix in entry fees, but I think if you're good you average out a pack or better per tournament. which means that you really only lose like one ticket or less per event which is really not bad for a couple hours of entertainment

i tried forcing boros in a draft last week and it was definitely not the best decision but i have yet to feel bad about just jamming as many two drops into my sealed deck as i can and letting people beat themselves, essentially

@frog - the released sealed queues are really good value and p soft - i went 12-2 in four sealeds last night (and got a bunch of qps as well - i have a realistic shot of hitting 35 this season)

i've stunk it up in the release sealeds so far but i feel like i'm learning at least. one of my 2 pools last night was pretty abysmal though, had multiple copies of pretty much every unplayable common in the set e.g. predator's rapport, tin street market, the mill 3 cipher, etc. and only 2 2-drop creatures in the entire pool

yo fennel - sorry i had to bail on ya yesterday, wife came home from school, yadda yadda yadda

lost to contaminated ground in the 3-0 bracket of a sealed event last night, now questioning everything i thought i knew about magic: the gathering

I went 1-2 w/ an above-average orz deck in a field of better than above-average decks

the best simic deck I ever done seen still lost to a boros deck, which seems telling

xpost

Please elaborate. Contaminated Ground is a card that has intrigued me, but I haven't tried out so far.

combatting Boros seems so much harder than combatting Rakdos was. this format doesn't have the good 2/4s and the flying/first strike that their 3-power 2-drops get makes things even tougher. I don't think Boros is going to dominate like this the whole way but it definitely feels like the Ars Arcanium guy whiffed on this one

moodles it's not really playable, it's a card that's only good when your opponent is tight on mana, which is too circumstantial to play - my opponent just happened to manascrew me (and 3 other people) with it, which can happen but doesn't justify playing the card.

dont feel bad cider. i once lost to a guy who played 3 chronic floodings by turn 4. that was actually quite brutal.

the only time someone tried that deck against me, I was playing golgari

dont wanna drag this thread down to "cool story bro" territory but when Morningtide came out and you'd do those drafts that were 3 packs of a small set I wound up with 9 Ink Dissolvers (there were 10 people drafting and I guess nobody else took one). that was the kinship - Mill 3 guy. loaded up with other odd Merfolk and Changelings and was basically unbeatable. needless to say people hate drafted them pretty regularly after that.

boros is not great in draft, its better in sealed because people running the slower decks don't necessarily have the right mix of cards to hold it off

personally i haven't had any issue beating boros decks, the only one that's rolled me so far was the one that curved firemane avenger into guardian of the gateless into foundry champion into hellkite tyrant, which is not a typical boros curve-out i don't think. he also killed me with aurelia in another game.

i think Boros is still really good in draft because you need a good draw to beat even a bad Boros deck. they shoot down all the common extort drops (Mugging kills them all but the wall) and run over Simic. I do see how it would be much better in Sealed though.

I haven't seen Boros do a whole lot in draft so far, I think they are pretty weak when they can't get a consistent deck together.

it seems like the only real weak Boros decks are the ones without many creatures or the ones with a lot of bad expensive ones like the 4/4 W: Vigilance guy. granted I've only done like 7 drafts here but my super weak Boros deck still went 2-1 and I've never had a matchup against one where they didn't get some early pressure. by the way, that Firemane Avenger is crazy, easily a top ten limited card in this set if you ask me. in fact pretty much every card that makes you say "this would be amazing in Standard if there were no Wrath effects" winds up being a bomb in Limited. but Avenger pretty much needs to swing once w/ Battallion before it becomes really tough to come back

btw I got a Gideon in my last draft and I can say that thing is definitely nutso if you're in a stable board position but oddly terrible if not. at least Vraska could blow up their best creature!

if they have early pressure, you just put down guys and block. if you can't get something on the board that can block them profitably by the time they've assembled 3 creatures then i don't know what to say. firefist striker is the only early guy that really messes up combat with battalion in my experience, the rest aren't very scary.

the prob is you just don't have room to have a bad draw

that's the case vs any fast aggro deck though, a decent rakdos deck did the same thing (though was harder to get since there were fewer good 2-drops in RTR). i think playing infinite matches vs mono-red in standard over the past few months has definitely gotten me better at fending off these types of decks.

Wojek Halberdiers and the 3/1 flying guy can be tough too. It's not like you can bring in Gutter Skulks to go 1-for-1 with anything. They're scary because they're 3-power dudes that can hit the board before you've played a second land (like the turn 2 Chainwalker, it's insane vs. a bad draw), that then become bigger problems in conjunction with other dudes and any removal.

yeah not only are there 2 three powered commons vs 1, but they're both better than chainwalker and they're less likely to be cut by orz

more playable 1 drops too

(less likely to be cut than chainwalker was by izzet)

at the very least im quite certain boros isnt as strong as selesnya was in RTR

what do you guys think of the guildmages after a bit of play? I had two of the orz and she was prob worse than a syndic of tithes in most situations.

red ones are good, simic is okay but really needs the full-on evolve deck to be great, black ones are slooow but reasonable wincons if you stall out the game fully

skarrg guildmage is probably my favorite of the entire cycle of 10, i've been trying to play it in standard even

"at the very least im quite certain boros isnt as strong as selesnya was in RTR" <----- I agree with this, Selesnya was a format-defining guild because it just had so many good commons AND a large share of the best uncommons. Plus it could play fast or slow grindy games equally well, while Boros doesn't seem to have much of a shot should your opponent still be at 20 after turn 5.

when they talked about having a slow and fast strategy for each guild, selesnya is the only one of the 10 where both the slow and fast are fully fleshed out, deep in cards, and complementary to each other. dimir is actually the 2nd closest i think! but is missing the complementary bit which is a killer.

as for the guildmages I think they're worse this time around - Selesnya and Rakos mages could just take over a game and both Azorius and Golgari's were a nightmare late in the game. they all strike me as good, not great, and I can't figure out which is the best one other than that it's definitely not Dimir. Skaarg's second ability seems to come into play a lot since 4/4's are pretty tough to deal with. the Boros one is okay but it's slow and I think I'd rather have the Paladin that looks like a guildmage over it. Orzhov one strikes me as alright - the second ability is very nice but it fits in with what the guild pretty much does on its own anyway; it's a nice piece to have but not a necessity. With 9 mana it's a killer (since you can activate the second ability twice) but I think what you're saying is correct, you would rather have a Syndic (which is a first-pick common anyway, IMO). Simic's is awesome but takes a LOT of time to get going - very cool and fun design though.

cider I think Azorius kinda fits too - the "fast strategy" is to just overload with flyers and detain the big ground dudes, while the long game was mostly throwing down bigger flyers. that guild played better than it looked.

i didn't really feel like there was a distinct slow strategy for azorius, i guess fast was playing all the wind drakes and slow was playing armory guards and doorkeepers and trying to chip shot them out with a skywatch or something? it didn't feel different enough to me.