Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

When I was going Dimir all the time I'd always wind up with enough that I wouldn't want to/need to splash. Kingpin isn't good enough for that. If you're heavy Orzjov I can see wanting to splash power uncommons like Dimir Charm, Horror, Call, and maybe Hands of Binding as well. Also Orz is the best with that 5-c Prism so I guess I should be trying this.

bane alley broker

esper is the most natural 3 color splash of the set I think

yep, since they're the 2 control-ish guilds and control tends to splash easier than aggro

plus you have Cipher + Extort. they are both control-ish but they play out in very different ways which is why I think a deck that has like a 4-5 card splash either way is probably best. Dimir that splashes for Kingpin, Orzhov Charm, even Angelic Edit should be good.

the only thing is you have to have really good fixing because control is a bit hard in a format this fast regardless, and if you're stuck w/ useless cards in your hand you really don't have a chance

cider that w/r/b midrange deck has been showing up a fair bit in the dailies, not sure if you guys were really on to something or if lots of people are just hungry for something interesting/new in standard

either way i dont think its really what i want to be playing, although i've done reasonably well w/it

i think it's a fine deck, there's nothing overpowered about it or anything. i haven't actually played it since the PE on sunday, since i decided angel of serenity is well positioned again and have been playing decks with that. just 4-0ed with butakov's junk reanimator build which i think is probably the best one despite not having a single gatecrash card in it, strangely.

i think this is the first standard format ever where i've had better results hopping decks every week than i have just picking one and mastering it

haha i was just thinking that reanimator was probably bad rn when i was going over stuff i could play this weekend. i feel pretty adrift in this standard, the only deck i've really liked playing was the grixis delver list (and to some extent the delver-less tempo BUG w/mayors) but i get too frustrated losing to keep playing those decks. and i think unlike you im like, a step behind this format, im kinda just reacting to it instead of thinking about what might be good going forward? idk.

strangely despite not really liking this format i've had really good limited results and now am at the highest limited ranking ive ever had on mtgo so i feel like i cant be playing that badly, i just dont have a good feel for the standard meta maybe

i've always played best with midrange creature decks so i guess it makes sense that this standard works for me

it is kind of weird to me to realize that in all my years of playing Magic, G/W vaugely comboish decks have been responsible for like 90% of my success

so i was inspired by the chatter about signals and switching. i too have a problem with committing too early, and decided i would take these words to heart. so, today, after picks 1-3 were mugging, massive raid, and madcap, i saw dinrova horror p4 and never looked back. red seriously dried up and i was stuck with an embarrassment of esper riches. i actually passed a syndic that wheeled in favor of a voidwalk (i had dinrova and urbis protector, and figured why not win more, heh heh).

attn iatee: i played a local standard cash tournament today with... three maindeck assemble the legions. i didnt do that well - finished @ 5-2 in like 19th place but people still learned to fear the legion. i also started 3-1 and had a good shot @ top 8 except i had some unfortunate mulls/draws in my win and in.

I bought a big batch of GTC rares to fill out my various casual guild decks this past week including sets of Assemble the Legion and Spark Trooper for my son's Boros deck. Now I'm regretting it because those cards can be real back breakers.

I think the trooper has potential for competitive play because connecting for a 12 point swing can be absolutely devastating. If you don't counter or kill it immediately, you will suffer.

i'm kind of surprised that armada wurm is only $3, i can easily imagine some future standard metagame where it's the premier high end creature

i guess it gets trumped by angel of serenity from the same set though