Magic: The Gathering C/D

subpar rares/mythics too save rubblebelt

slaughterhorn and the disciple are probably the standout commons for gruul, but i really like fast gruul decks so i prioritize the 2/1 gate guy and the goblin p highly as well. not as big a fan of the 5/4 swine as a lot of people on mtgo seem to be so i haven't drafted it v much yet.

thats the thing though, if Slaughterhorn is a standout, you're talking about a card that is either a worse Giant Growth or a worse Wojiek Halbraiders, for an extra mana. I agree that Swine isn't really good either so the best stuff at common is probably Mugging + maybe Crocanura, both which are drafted highly by other decks. Prioritizing 2/1 dudes seems weak since there isn't much of a way to bust 'em through.

also I've never played it but Clan Defiance seems like a pretty stupid rare

by the way a "reliable source" confirmed that the special mythic Dragons Maze land (that goes only in the "nonbasic land" slot) is basically a Thawing Glaciers for Gates that wins you the game if you have all 10 of them out. let's face it - you had to think they were gonna try something like this (at least if you read Maro's blog - he's dropped some hints about this)

on the pro tour coverage they interviewed ben stark a lot and he's probably one of the top 5 limited players in the world and he said that he likes playing 15-16 lands in his gruul decks because bloodrush makes it more important to always have guys in your hand than it is to hit your 4th or 5th land drop

that's interesting. 15 seems like you're pushing your luck tho...

ps: let's say you're running two of the gate-elves in a straight gruul deck. do you ever include simic or boros gates if you have 1-2 laying around?

depends how high my curve is

i hate the rug ramp style decks but i also just kinda hate non-aggro decks. even the dimir deck that i did well with in a 64-man was v v aggressive. i feel like this format is similar to avr in that i am prioritizing two and three drops much higher than i have in other sets and that im only really happy w/my deck when its fast

i think zendikar is a better comp than avr since there's actually removal in this set

green ramp is nice, whether gruul or simic (although simic's a lil better). verdant haven/greenside watcher/gate is a sweet combo. did someone already mention it here? i think they might have. anyways, i got smoked by that in my big magic day yesterday. came real close to top 8-ing a GPT, but lost last round off a spell rupture. oh well.

i kinda want to play this deck in standard. had a lil eureka moment looking at my trade binder, reading call to the kindred again, and thinking about how i could break it. this looks really quite playable, esp with all the hexproof. need to test on cockatrice a bit.

Kindred Spirits.dec

4 Call to the Kindred

4 Drogskol Captain
2 Drogskol Reaver
2 Dungeon Geists
4 Gloom Surgeon
4 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
1 Phantom General

4 Lingering Souls

1 Ultimate Price
2 Cackling Counterpart
1 Azorius Charm
3 Detention Sphere

2 Orzhov Charm
4 Godless Shrine
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Watery Grave
4 Cavern of Souls
3 Glacial Fortress
2 Isolated Chapel
3 Drowned Catacomb

SB: 2 Ghost Quarter
SB: 3 Negate
SB: 3 Duress
SB: 1 Human Frailty
SB: 1 Witchbane Orb
SB: 2 Devour Flesh
SB: 3 Beckon Apparition

anyways, on the topic of green ramp, you can make it work with frilled oculus and crocanura i think... if you don't have those you're out. if i had primordials or other bombs to ramp into i'd pass madcap in favor of either of those defensive creatures.

pretty sure mugging is the best removal spell in gatecrash. it kills so much good stuff... extort dorks, madcap dork, greenside watcher, all the 3 mana fliers...

i also think 3 is the magic toughness number in this set, like 4 was in RTR. crocanura is such a key card; so many annoying 2 power fliers in GTC. a lot of the good ground guys: disciple of the old ways, syndic, denizens, others, are 2 power as well.

i guess i just don't think it's that hard to stop aggro decks, esp if you take the 3 toughness dudes. i rate the 2/3 denizens, warmind infantry, oculus and croc, undercity informer, high for that reason. i'd even take incursion specialist in a pinch, a card i previously considered hardly playable.

i'm also warming to metropolis sprite. it looks so unassuming but is really a decent body for dimir... simic less so.

holy mantle is a holy terror. i play around it heavy if i see it in someone's deck. like, save all non-essential removal for the possibility of it heavy.

here's a standard deck i was working on last week
http://i.imgur.com/FolmUMN.jpg

everyone's playing esper control now though so i dunno how good it is to play a deck that wants to overextend. pre-board you're basically racing to land one of your big draw spells before they wrath, or else you just lose. post-board i don't even know what my plan vs. control should be.

you gotta let me know how the Call to the Kindred deck works. I love decks based on 25 cent rares. I made an Infinite Reflection deck that was absolutely insane when it went off. I think I tend to just build those kinds of decks over and over, ones that win big and in cool ways but actually kind of suck because everyone plays mass removal.

anyway, I think you're right that Mugging is probably the best common removal. It just slots in so well with Boros and it really disrupts an awful lot. It takes out key creatures in every guild except maybe Gruul. 2 damamge in this set means a lot more than it did in RTR; I remember claiming that Izzet Charm was the best of the charms, then I realized that it never kills anything you really need to kill.

Incursion Specialist is not so good. But the other cards you mention definitely are. Luckily Boros doesn't have any of those Rootborn Defense-type cards that turn an aggro start into a complete blowout. Stopping Boros is definitely difficult if they've got removal. Crocanura is really great - its funny how that's clearly supposed to be a Simic card, while the 2/4 bloodrush for 3G is supposed to be the Gruul card, but I'd pick Crocanura really highly in Gruul. Big reach dudes just make the game take forever, in a good way.

Luckily I haven't had to play vs. a Holy Mantle yet but one thing I did notice with Gift of the Orzhova is that it's not quite Armadillo Cloak-level deadly - G/W tended to have the biggest creatures anyway, while Orzhov doesn't have anything that you can turn into say, a Baneslayer Angel. Still a good card but I actually like it more in Boros.

I really like that deck too cider. Though it reminds me of the decks I always try to build in that it is bad vs. mass removal and it doesn't really have anything to disrupt your opponent...it's kinda up its own ass, so to speak. I'd think you should go to 2 or 3 Prime Speakers though, it looks like exactly what this deck wants so I was surprised to see you've only got one. Maybe 3 Garruks too because that not only draw you a ton of cards but it also gives you some kind of weapon vs. mass removal and dropping it turn 4 is awesome.

while no rootborn defenses, martial glory is a pretty strong combat trick, can be good for just the 3 damage, can be a giant growth and can occasionally blow up an otherwise fair blocking situation

Ive never seen it anything more than a 1-for-1 but yeah I guess I can see that. I haven't gone Boros a whole lot but it always seemed to me that you want to keep your deck as close to creatures/removal as possible.

cheap tricks and act of treason are fine too

i suppose, but you can only have so many such cards in your deck. the more non-creature, non-removal spells you play, the worse Act of Treason is gonna be

removal isn't that important, most of the removal is bad in boros. in a boros aggro deck you'd rather have act of treason or the +1/+1 flying/first strike trick than smite or angelic edict. mugging is great, homing lightning is pretty good, massive raid and arrows of justice are just okay. debtors pulpit is probably bad here but i can still imagine running it. martial glory is probably better than all of these except mugging.

If I've got 16+ creatures I definitely want Massive Raid. I agree that Mugging is definitely the most important because I feel it's really important to get some good attacks in on turns 3-5. Smite is pretty bad outside of Orzhov. Angelic Edict I'd play. Homing Lightning is really good. I guess Martial Glory is a good, high-upside trick, so I won't argue that. But the +1/+1 flying/first strike trick was real underwhelming when I played it. I think all of those cards are going to be good so long as you have a good creature base so I wouldn't take any of them outside of Mugging over the good cheap Boros dudes.

i tried making call to the kindred/bruna work for a bit first after avr and then again at the start of rtr - it was better prerotation since i could still cast ponder but it got destroyed by delver decks and then w/o ponder i had to run too many angels to make the u/w control shell viable.

do people play Delver anymore? if so wouldn't Hands of Binding be pretty good there?

no, probably would be good if they did though.

haha i also tried making BUG delver work, played it in the last couple of DE to little success. i kept feeling like i was one or two cards off from having a really powerful deck but i could not get the mix right, again another deck that really misses ponder. i guess that's super obv. maybe now that people are moving back towards bant/esper control decks it will be a little better, the super aggro decks were the worst match-ups for it

My friend and I did several sealed decks this past weekend to practice for the GP in Charlotte this coming weekend. Boros just seems busted in sealed. If one of us had the cards to run it, it basically always won, even without bombs. Feels like it has a higher concentration of good commons than the other guilds, or maybe more synergy between its commons. I had a pool with Consuming Aberration, Deathpact Angel, and Clan Defiance but after trying out some variations, we both agreed that the best build was just playing all the Boros commons/uncommons, not even splashing Defiance.

i feel like control would be even worse a matchup since delver decks are so threat-light by necessity of having 20+ spells.

i played vs a duskmantle seer tempo deck in the standard spotlight yesterday, was pretty interesting and kind of scary to play against. the seer is easily my favorite gatecrash card, i think it's only a matter of time before someone figures out the best shell to abuse it in.

i made it to top 4 of the spotlight with a domri rade naya deck, i really like domri a lot as a planeswalker but i don't like how his interaction with boros reckoner is so strong that the deck basically builds itself with only a few slots up for debate, due to the creature count requirement of domri combined with the manabase requirement of reckoner. i had 1 skarrg guildmage in my deck and it was a complete all-star, crushing an otherwise bad esper matchup since none of their spot removal hits it and they get stuck having to waste their azorius charms on your extra lands

Reckoner should also be really good with Blasphemous Act!

I really have almost no sense of type 2 outside of this thread but I have to believe if Reckoner is a $25 card then some people are trying Blasphemous Act as well.

frogbs did you look at the decklist that won the pro tour yesterday?

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/deck/1171

its a sideboard card there but he stole a key game off of a mull to 5 with it, and some people were running it maindeck in the UWR reckoner decks

i feel like control would be even worse a matchup since delver decks are so threat-light by necessity of having 20+ spells.

tbh i only played epser three times w/my last list and although i won all of them they dont feel like representative games. in my head i feel like the cards BUG tempo plays are working against esper really well, stuff like dispel, deathrite shaman and unsummon are all decent plays against the standard esper lines. lack of threats is one of the biggest problems w/ the deck though. the first list i saw had 4 mayors but he was really awkward against all the aggro decks so i cut him for three duskmantle seers and more land. but even duskmantle often feels a little too expensive for the deck. i think you probably just have to play a tempo deck w/o delver and either go into white for geist or go deeper into green for synergies/power. tbh i do want to try to four-color w/geist and deathrite shaman/decay but i don't think the mana really works.

i'm just not sure the more aggressive tempo decks work right now when you can't essence scatter reliably. i've put a lot of thought into it because as i said i want to play duskmantle seer if its playable, and that's the obvious place to play it

Reckoner + Blasphemous Act was used a ton this weekend at the PT, sometimes in midrange, sometimes in control. The guy who got second place also had an infinite life combo in his deck (Reckoner + Boros Charm + Azorius Charm). Crazy that Reckoner fits into every type of deck. Aggro, midrange, control, and combo decks can all play this guy profitably. Guess it's no surprise it's worth so much.

yeah, i had p high hopes for spell rupture but it has been a little too hard to turn on

i want to play seer as well, and i really love the idea of a good tempo deck in this format but every list i've played w/ as felt underpowered compared the most competitive decks. i'm trying esper rn w/ a slightly higher curve and stuff like obzedat. i'm playing in a gp this weekend so i'd like to figure something out, otherwise i'll probably play something similar to your naya deck since i have all the cards for it.

if you're talking about the fast naya deck you definitely want lots of bonds of faith/volcanic strength somewhere in your 75 since otherwise reckoner is a problem

i haven't played the deck much and i don't know how the metagame will shake out now that the pro tour's happened, but if you're expecting lots of control it seems like a better choice than the midrange builds.

the rest of the pro tour decklists are up btw
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptgtc13/Top_Standard_Decks

not very many brand new decks that aren't just some configuration of red- or green-based aggro, the most interesting to me are
Hiyoshi Ishida
Wenze Krautmann
Tsu Teung Lam (not really a new deck but i'd been struggling to build it correctly and this build seems pretty good as a starting point)

krautmann one kind of looks like a pile though

cider, i like the deck idea, but i'm not sure if elves is the way to take it. i've tried a similar build on cockatrice and gyre sage is actually quite underwhelming with no 3 drop to evolve it. the fact that archdruid does not evolve it sucks so much. if archdruid did, would be a different game entirely.

i've had more success with an undying biomancer build. zameck guildmage, slitherhead, strangleroot, and young wolf. one thing i'd consider is how awesome rancor is in that deck. either you have giant creatures to slap rancor on, or you put it on biomancer for double the pump. it's more resilient against aggro too. and thennn, you get to run a couple ooze flux, which might be my favorite gatecrash card.

lol it took me a while to figure out Reckoner + Boros Charm + Azorious Charm but yeah that's a pretty neat combo if you can pull it off. it's the best kind of combo since all these card are pretty good on their own. I always thought Blasphemous Act was very playable as well.

frogbs did you look at the decklist that won the pro tour yesterday?

just seeing it now, I like it but I'd love to see Mark of Mutiny in the sideboard, there's a ton of sac effects there and the +1/+1 counter is just a bonus. it's really cool to see all these decks - I think at any given time only like 7-9% of the cards in Standard are playable but this is the only time I can remember this much synergy between everything.

It's kind of funny given how much bellyaching there's been about gatecrash on sites like mtgsalvation, and now you're seeing top tier decks getting built around stuff like cartel aristocrat.

So I'm developing this new act that features a vampire, an extortionist, and a Minotaur wizard who shoots fireballs at the audience...

that reckoner combo is genius

mtgsalvation is notoriously bad at evaluating new cards, its fun to look in their archives and see them completely underestimate dark confidant, or hype up elspeth tirel so much that it hit $50 at release then saw only fringe play

and yeah the reckoner thing is a 3 card combo which normally is bad except that the 3 cards are cards you'd have in your deck anyway so it's a complete freeroll

Vraska also got hyped up a ton until everyone realized "oh wait, this is just a Lux Cannon". I think the market is just used to "planeswalker = broken" and maybe acts out of fear that the next one is going to hit $100 like Jace, as though Jace TMS wasn't obviously the most busted card they had printed in quite some time

I think I actually prefer planeswalkers as cool utility guys that do some interesting things as opposed to game over bombs.

BUG midrange is actually sounding better and better to me, if everyone's leaning on boros reckoner then having abrupt decay + snapcaster is a reasonable place to be. i can't imagine beating control reliably without mayors though, as awkward as they are vs. aggro and with snapcasters

for the sake of my MTGO account I really hope Reckoner alone spikes the price of Abrupt Decay.

BUG midrange is actually sounding better and better to me, if everyone's leaning on boros reckoner then having abrupt decay + snapcaster is a reasonable place to be. i can't imagine beating control reliably without mayors though, as awkward as they are vs. aggro and with snapcasters

yeah mayor is really good but so is deathrite shaman - he's one of the best cards in the esper matchup imo. nighthawk also isn't terrible

i can post my list when i get home if you're interested - i don't think its that great but maybe you'll have a better take on it

I think the market is just used to "planeswalker = broken" and maybe acts out of fear that the next one is going to hit i00 like Jace

Ding ding ding. I think it's pretty logical too, when one of them takes off, they are a bitch to get.