Magic: The Gathering C/D

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.

orz just doesn't have the free mana to be pumping into it, the opportunity cost is higher xp

azorius had the heavy-on-detain deck and the flyers+blockers route...but the speed ultimately just seemed related to how many flyers I had

as far as the block goes, my favorite guild I think

also having a way to deal with Towering Indrik and Tresle Troll was pretty key

i'm starting to get a better feel for limited in this set and i feel like the big difference is that boros is simply able to apply early pressure more consistently with worse cards than any of the other guilds. both gruul and simic can be way more explosive and have better creatures, they're just simply a little slower and little harder to curve into. boros also some of the better rares in the set and that seems to give it an edge in sealed but my xp has been that i just need to keep my curve low, resist the urge to splash and i can run over much better decks. i beat a guy w/ a really strong simic deck last night with a boros deck playing no rares but sacred foundry on the strength of a double mugging hand on the draw.

i also feel like a lot of people are losing w/their boros decks because they don't trade enough on the draw and then put themselves in situations where they can't profitably attack either

kinda hoping dragons maze doesn't have fast w/r cards, otherwise a boros + splatter/chainwalker/etc. deck might be even more too-good-boring

like cutting red hard seems obv w/ the combined sets, cause even if you end up in gruul you now have shored up gruul's current slow start w/ rakdos dudez

also is populate even gonna be viable? I mean it'd have to appear in dm almost at the same rate as it does in rtr, no?

dragon's maze is going to slow the format way the fuck down just by virtue of not getting 3 packs of the same color combos. unless something weird/unexpected happens, i'd expect 3-color decks to become the default, so you'll end up with 2 RTR guilds and 1 gatecrash guild, or vice versa

as for populate all you really need is 1 or 2 common token-makers in DGM and it should be fine. gatecrash is a bit light on tokens but there's at least Knight Watch which is an obvious plant for full block in addition to being a battalion-enabler (very clever)

Populate an army of frog lizards

i cant wait for the ogre slumlord + pack rat combo

also if that's really what the format is supposed to look like then it actually makes sense to run back some of the fan-favorite removals from old ravnica block (lightning helix, putrefy, mortify, etc) since they promote splashing and help combat fast starts better than the existing removal in the block. i don't know if they'd actually put lightning helix and boros charm in the same standard format though, that seems kind of insane, but whenever someone asks 'why isn't card X from old ravnica reprinted' the wotc people always give a 'the block isn't over yet...' answer.

I noticed that on Rosewater's blog too! They tend to go a little nuts on the 3rd sets sometimes (see also Apocalypse and Future Sight) and I would expect this to be no different.

My feeling now is that full set drafts pretty much will force you into three colors. Boros/Rakdos may become a thing but you're still in three colors and therefore your deck should stumble a bit out of the gate. I guess it remains to be seen. U/G/R with Frostburn Weirds, Lobber Crews, and Evolve seems pretty damn tight.

yeah izzet w/ evolve and gatecrash's tempo stuff, gruul charm could be effective

plus bloodrushing for your teleportal/bluster turn

hmm I look forward 2 this deck

5th dawn and alara reborn are some more examples of nutty 3rd sets. saviors of kamigawa too, but that was in a bad way (hey, let's make the 3rd set mechanic reward you for not actually playing your cards! cool idea)

i'm already anticipating the full set draft to be amazing. kinda strange how 6 out of the last 7 draft formats have all been single-set (M12, INN, AVR, M13, RTR, GTC)

also if you play MTGO it's a good reason to pick up some cheap RTR packs since they're pretty low right now

I actually cashed in a bunch of junk for Gatecrash packs, they were selling at 3.19 last I saw

the new redemption policy is going to suppress gatecrash prices a bit, probably still worth it at under 3.3 though

new redemption policy?

its $25 handling costs to redeem a set now instead of $5

which means fewer sets redeemed which means slight bump upwards in paper prices and downwards in MTGO prices

i dont think it'll make a dent in paper prices but it definitely drives MTGO prices down 10% or so. so packs are cheaper but the cards you open sell for less and ultimately the 2 tix/draft fee is the same. so it's a net negative

ok right - we even discussed this upthread

they always charged an additional $30 for sets redemption if you live in canada so i've never actually bothered to redeem anything

the $30 is per order. my friend who plays a lot of MTGO just accumulates sets and redeems them all in one fell swoop. i shipped him my digital DKA cards and he included the set in his order. should be getting from him p soon 8-)

yo cider is this your naya deck here? think you made the big time B-)

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/pr/234

Good job dude!

yep that's me

credit for the deck goes to the guys from goodgamery forums though, i just tweaked a few cards and ran with it

lol I didn't know that Emmissary was human, that's nuts

my picks for the fantasy pro tour facebook app thing:

Planeswalker: Domri Rade (might change to Jace Memory Adept at last minute)
Large Creature: Thragtusk
Medium Creature: Restoration Angel
Small Creature: Snapcaster Mage
Instant: Azorius Charm
Sorcery: Pillar of Flame
Enchantment: Blind Obedience
Artifact: Rakdos Keyrune (no clue on this one really, they're all bad)
Nonbasic Land: Sacred Foundry
Gatecrash card: Sacred Foundry

i basically just took w/e cards overlapped the most with jund and naya decks:

Planeswalker: Garruk Relentless
Large Creature: Thragtusk
Medium Creature: Huntmaster of the Fells
Small Creature: Avacyn's Pilgrim
Instant: Searing Spear
Sorcery: Pillar of Flame
Enchantment: Detention Sphere
Artifact: Grafdigger's Cage
Nonbasic Land: Stomping Ground
Gatecrash card: Stomping Ground

relentless is kind of a hedge against some potential bug/rouge strategies over domri/big garruk. detention sphere is probably wrong - i had forgotten about blind obedience/thought it was bad but its just playable in more decks than d-sphere is and thus probably a better card. i suppose that makes rancor a better choice as well but i did want to hedge away from only green-based creature strategies. i think cage is a better choice than keyrunes for the same reason. i may be underestimating the # of blue decks but i think azorious charm is a really bad choice - probably worse than boros charm and maybe sel charm?