Magic: The Gathering C/D

i don't expect it to suddenly shoot back up overnight though but can easily see it being worth $20 again during its remaining year and a half in standard

big mana mythics typically don't hang around $20 but this card is way too good and splashy to be worth only $6.

i mean Griselbrand is only around $12 and I would say it's about on the same level, fatty that's good as a 1 or 2-of in a lot of decks + an awesome combo piece

griselbrand's not as good in standard though since it's not as hard-cast-able and doesn't insta-stabilize vs aggro.

how'd it go? i didn't make it past the prelims last week

i started 3-0 but ended up w/ 5-3 for like the high 30s i think - not great but not terrible either. esp for a deck that had 4 pillars in the sideboard :/ i liked your friends deck btw - someone played something similar in the mocs and made top 8 - and i think i may try playing it. the delver decks just aren't good enough, same with the other tempo lists. i'd actually really like to play it at fnm but i need 3 reckoners :(

yeah that's the same guy, we were both working on the same list in parallel last week and he was bold enough to run it for the mocs which seems to have worked

although for no good reason i decided to not play it again last night and instead run a shitty prime speaker zegana bant deck. which i went 3-1 with in the daily but it wasn't very fun and the zeganas weren't better than sphinx's revelation would have been. i like zegana still but i don't think there's any real reason to play her over revelation if your deck has white in it; she might open up some possibilities for RUG or BUG board control decks though.

I hadn't noticed this before but the Phantom Sealeds are actually a pretty good deal. 4 tix to get in, they distribute 6 prize packs among each, at 3.5 tix/pack that's about 2.6 tix in EV meaning an average player would lose 1.4 tix each time. If you're better than average (and the players I've played so far have been pretty dire) you could probably "average" a 2-1 finish meaning you're really only spending .5 tix for 2 hours of entertainment - if you accept that you can't really "profit" playing limited on MTGO, you can only hope to lose your tickets at a very slow pace - these events are a hell of a deal.

I didn't know phantom events had any prizes

Me neither, is the prize support new?

Over the past few days, I've been seeing a lot of variations of R/G, G/B, R/B, and Jund decklists on the SCG and other sites that lean heavily on cards like Burning-Tree Emissary, Flinthoof Boar, Strangleroot Geist, Ghor-Clan Rampager, Domri Rade, Experiment One, and Gyre Sage:

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=53568
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25768_Experimenting-With-Gyre-Sage.html
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/rc/237
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25776_Untapped-SCG-Classic-Series-Louisville.html

It looks like these folks are all groping toward an archetype that is very much in the direction that I want to go with my own deck, but none of these feel fully baked yet.

Have you played with or against any of these decks? Do any seem more or less solid?

xp - yeah, it's 3 packs for 3-0, 1 pack for 2-1. i would love a 4-1 payout just to make it a little more enticing but it's still decent value even if you really can't break even. still they at least fire off pretty frequently, maybe as much as 4-pack sealed did, and a hell of a lot more than the 8 tix phantom even did (which I never saw run even once)

these decks are all good, more or less, since burning-tree emissary is a borderline degenerate card. i think the best ones are the 'mono-red' splashing flinthoof boar + rancor, and the jund aggro with falkenrath aristocrats

Is Burning-Tree Emissary truly that good? I haven't had a chance to really try it out. I'm concerned that it's a bit of an awkward fit with Flinthoof Boar and Ghor-Clan Rampager.

it's best friends with flinthoof boar. people are playing emissary/boar in modern now, it's that strong of a turn 2 play

so apparently Pillar of Fire doesn't exile creatures anymore, lol MTGO

its being fixed tomorrow, but yeah this caused a big stink for the MOCS because 3 of the people in the top 4 were taking advantage of the bug by playing zombies, and most people didn't really have a chance to adjust their decks in time for the event. the 4th person in top 4 was the guy who i worked on the BWR deck with, and he lost his match because he couldn't pillar away a geralf's messenger.

Anyway, here's another one of those "highest winning %s by first pick" lists came out (this is for 8-4 only), and it's surprising to me:

1. Obzedat, Ghost Council
2. Aurelia's Fury
3. Firemane Avenger
4. Crocanura
5. Simic Fluxmage
6. Knight of Obligation
7. Syndic of Tithes
8. Ember Beast
9. Aurelia, the Warleader
10. Zameck Guildmage

1, 2, 3, and 9 make sense. Obzedat is a card I've unforunately had to play against and it's really, really dumb. I thought Reckoner could be on here as well. Otherwise, it seems to suggest that Boros and Simic are really powerful right now. Syndic is definitely a 1st rate common, Ember Beast is excellent as well (as many have noted), and I am guessing that Knight of Obligation makes it over Screecher or Kingpin's Pet because it can be played in Boros. The Simic cards are a little more surprising, this maybe cements Crocanura as Simic's best common. Fluxmage was a real surprise, I don't know how to evaluate that card, to me it seems neat but durdly and I'd take Zameck Guildmage and Elusive Krasis over it every time. Maybe I'm wrong on that one.

yeah there was a warning when you reg'd for the MOCS that pillar was bugged but it definitely warped the tournament - zombies and experiment jund have def benefited from this bug over the weekend and the dailies, and some decks got a lot worse e.g. thats why i was like 'fuck it' in my post about playing the MOCS cuz i had the full four maindeck in my original list for the tournament and didnt have enough cards to build another competitive deck at the last minute. i also had been playing delver a lot whereas i had no experience with like, a drownyard deck or w/e else i had the cards to build.

burning tree is probably the key aggro cards right now and barring an environment w/o pillar of the flame all the best aggro decks whether naya, jund, or mono-red splash green are the ones built to exploit turn two burning tree into boar/mayor/lightning mauler

crocanura is a very strong card in gruul too

simic fluxmage is a terrible card, I have played w/ this multiple times and never have I been happy that I had a simic fluxmage in my deck. it might be more like 'only somebody who was forcing simic hard would 1st pick that, and somebody who was forcing simic hard is more likely to have had the guild to themselves, and somebody who has simic to themselves in generally in a good place'

The Simic cards are a little more surprising

i might read this as proof that simic is statistically underdrafted rn and anyone that is first-picking one of the key simic cards and forcing the guild can do really well as everyone else fights over the red, white and black cards in the pod. i've found simic fluxmage incredibly easy to abuse against anything but the fastest boros or gruul decks and even against them hes at least a cheap blocker.

he's not even cheap! wasting yr key 3 drop spot for a 1/2

i am really mistrustful of that list, i don't think its useful at all. people seemed so lost on drafting this format at first, and even still. i have won 8-4s with horrible decks because all 3 of my opponents' decks were even more horrible.

who doesn't evolve anyone xp

I love the Croc in Gruul. Both guilds really want him but I'd argue Gruul wants him more. He's miles ahead of say, the 2/4 bloodthrist guy. But I do get the thing about forcing Simic. My last 3 drafts I forced Simic and totaled 8-1 in those matches. Outside of Pit Fight and the pretty lackluster Totally Lost there's no removal which is the guild's big weakness - the strength is that if you build it right, by turn 5 or 6 all your guys will be as big as your opponent's best guy.

Fluxmage strikes me as a luxury piece - Zameck guildmage is so much more abusable (especially since the extra counters can then evolve OTHER guys - at worst he's Azure Mage which is alright), while Fluxmage at best is like an Ivy League Denizen that's better in blue-heavy Simic deck. I don't know why this ranks higher than Elusive Krasis, Guildmage, or Simic Charm so maybe it's just variance/small sample size. I don't mind having him because he's easy to evolve (obviously) so having him as a 2/3 with upside on turn 4 isn't bad for a 3-drop.

Anyway I noticed this last week that Dimir isn't quite as open as it used to be, people are at least splashing Calls, Horrors, Bane Alleys, etc. a lot more, I think Simic is the way to go right now.

forcing simic either works well or results in a totally unplayable deck

yeah i'm off the dimir train for now, my last 3 draft decks have been gruul splashing white. all 3 of them were bad, 2 of them won the draft.

haha for some reason i remember fluxmage being a two drop but its 1U to move a counter isnt it

i've only drafted him twice and both times he was pretty good for me since i also had the guildmage in my deck and ivy league and elusives and just a bunch of ways to create and abuse +1/+1 counters and i liked being able to move them off him if only to get an extra evolve trigger i normally wouldn't have. but i can see him being bad i guess

tbh i think i am part of the problem in that i ONLY look to draft orzhov/boros/gruul if i can help it and im still not sure thats wrong. simic is my lowest win % deck personally and is actively terrible in sealed. but i feel like im making the most obvious picks in drafts, in most other sets i feel like i had a better handle on what cards are good when by now but i dont think ive progressed that much in this set, i still havent found any real niche cards or powerful interactions that people are undervaluing. idk

the prob is you're missing out on some great simic or dimir decks when they're open but they're so all or nothing that its always a strategy w/ risk. the others can all support a decent amount of decks.

like if some guy just starts cutting you late there's nothing you can do

yeah this set is kind of humbling me a bit. in RTR i felt like i had a good grasp of all the guild archetypes at this point in the format and was starting to draft other undervalued stuff. in GTC i'm still struggling to master the basic guild archetypes much later into the set's lifecycle.

though i won a draft the other night by putting riot gear on spire tracers so who even knows what's good anymore

i've definitely played quite a few drafts where i'd go Boros or Orzhov with my first 4-5 picks and get cut hard while stuff like Zaneck Guildmage or Call of the Nightwing goes 7th or 8th pick. and you'd wind up with like a 12-creature Boros deck or Orzhov feat. Riot Gear which is just totally unfun to play. I will say that when Boros is open, you feel really stupid for not playing it, because a well-tuned Boros deck with Act of Treason is pretty much impossible to beat - I just 6-0'd a tournament with that despite mulling three times.

cider do you find yourself drafting a lot of 3 color decks? in RTR I'd do this all the time - usually G/W/B or B/R/U, but I can't really figure out what kinds of splashes work the best - splashing Boros seems like a bad idea, Simic and Dimir cards don't really go together at all, and the combos that make sense like Simic/Gruul just don't come up for me.

frogbs i think most of the limited theorists have suggested that in this set you're supposed to abandon your first 5-6 picks in those situations, and that being in the open guild for your seat is worth losing out on a few powerful cards

but if someone else notices it at the same time, yer done for

well that's the trick, you have a very small window to catch the signal in time to cut the person on your left from also catching it

simic is a bit trickier though because of the diminishing returns on evolve creatures - i've moved in on a late shambleshark before and gotten screwed because the simic player to my right passed it because he already had a shambleshark or 2 and needed crocanura more, etc etc

plus this all assumes the that players to your right know what they're doing which is a huge assumption to make at FNM

ha yeah I think that's an underrated aspect of draft strategy, 'knowing whether the people around you are clueless'

Yep I had one draft in which I horned in on Boros, then Simic, then Boros again, then Simic again, and finally Boros. it was maybe the worst draft I've ever done and my deck was awful, Boros with 13 creatures (including a bunch of 4 drops and a Primordial), Riot Gear, Righteous Charge, Beckon Appiritions, 2 Nav Squads. I got berated hard by a Michigan store owner (I got all his personal info off him since I was giving it to him back and he really wanted me to look up how many GP Byes he had or something) after beating him with Righteous Charge which I tried to play as an instant the turn before. I want to post that one on Raredraft because I'm curious how someone with their head on straight would have handled it. Just saying that the "switch after pick 6" strat sometimes really backfires. I remember midway through pack 2 thinking, "I'm 10 cards to Boros and about 9 to Simic, this has to go perfect to be even halfway decent"

a couple weeks ago in a gatecrash draft at FNM my roommate got really frustrated because he was trying to draft well, reading signals, etc and everything went wrong and made no sense in packs 2/3. turned out the guy passing to him was drafting a straight UW deck.

i think my biggest problem in this set is that i prefer forcing than staying open like, philosophically, and staying open is by far the optimal drafting strategy. last week i was passed three solid dimir cards at a live draft p1 and then decided to continue drafting dimir even after it dried up completely because 'dimir is always open' and i didnt want to give up on my horrors and nightwing and rouges even as i was getting like sixth pick firefist strikers and seventh pick homing lightnings.

i think my biggest problem in this set is that i prefer forcing than staying open like, philosophically

there's also the aspect of 'switching to an opposite color pair is proportionally more risky' - ie if you start dimir and boros is open there is no splash deck waiting for you if things don't work out. if you start gruul and boros is open, you're in an okay place either way.

yes but if the open guild shares a color with you then you're less likely to switch in the first place, since a lot of those cards will fit in your deck anyway. early on I try to prioritize the monocolor gems like Mugging, Skyjek, Syndic, Hands of Binding, Grisly Spectacle, Bats etc. over Halbraiders, Skyknights, Kingpins and even the bomb uncommons - if you get three good cards in one color as picks 1-3 then you're in a good spot.

kingpin's pet is too good but agree on the others

kingpin's is the kinda card you want in an esper deck anyway, so its not as all or nothing as some multicolor stuff

I never tried Esper though in theory it should work quite well. Doesn't the Ars Arcanium column say that Orzhov splash tends to fall on its face?

it says lots of totally wrong things