Magic: The Gathering C/D

lamp and I were also having pretty shitty days on mtgo, something in the air

lost two matches due to misclicks + not realizing I needed to fix my settings w/ stops

yeah as of about 9 days ago i had my limited rating over 1900 for the first time and now i'm down at 1768 after going 1-2 in an M13 phantom sealed of all things. also cider my results with that geist list have been terrible. i lent it to a friend for a standard tournament and he went 5-0 with it, so i'm not sure i want to give up on it completely but i've yet to win a match on mtgo with it and went 1-3 at fnm. i'm also irritated because farseek has been one of the fnm promos i've most wanted to get a playset of and i'm stuck w/only one so far this month. i realize how lame this is but it doesn't stop me from being upset by it all the same.

i played a couple matches with your list and aggro matchups seemed unwinnable which is not where i want to be on MTGO where there's a higher % of aggro than irl events

lost two matches due to misclicks + not realizing I needed to fix my settings w/ stops

Were you trying to flash in a 4/4 elemental on your opponent's declare attackers phase?

its the phantom sealeds that are killing me. i havent won two matches in any of my last six. seems like if I play 3 colors that I'm destined to lose one game every match to just not drawing the color I need. I hate going R/G/W and having like one on-color gate but 4 Dimir ones. If I go two color it seems like I'm always playing cards I really don't want (like the 2RW double strike batallion 3/1 guy) and just losing to bomb-ass creatures every match.

not that exactly this time but the same thing more or less. I figured out what was wrong but it's dumb that the default settings prevent flash blocks etc

also lost one where I was trying for like a minute to figure out how to work Simic Charm's +3/+3 with trample to get past a Guardian of the Gateless and wound up getting Smited, not even realizing I could have just bounced the damn thing. i need a break

lol I recently double striked a 3/2 w/ boros charm leaving them at one life and losing on the next turn. gf was talking to me while I was playing so I blame her but...

Ran into a weird problem trying to cast biomass mutation today. I tapped for 6 mana, but it only applied 5 to the spell. I think it has something to do with the choice of which colors I chose for the hybrid portion and then the order in which I tapped, but I'm not really sure.

Do you know how that works? Does the order in which you tap lands impact hybrid spells, X spells, or both?

MTGO has a weird way of trying to figure out what mana you're tapping for the spell and which you're not. I'm not sure of a better way to do it but you really have to watch your pool in these cases. To cast a hybrid spell, I think it works like this:

1) Select "how" you cast it (like...XGG, XGU, XUU...)
2) Tap the necessary colored mana
3) Tap mana for X

If you do, say, XGG, then tap an island BEFORE you tap the two green, the blue mana just goes to your pool, not to the X. So if the cost was XGG and you tapped Forest, Island, Forest, Island, then the rest, you'd have one regenade blue.

Yeah, that's basically what happened with me. Is the same applicable to all X spells?

i played a couple matches with your list and aggro matchups seemed unwinnable which is not where i want to be on MTGO where there's a higher % of aggro than irl events

yeah at fnm i played nothing but aggro decks and did terribly. i also played like garbage but that was partly just getting bored/frustrated with my deck in the last two rounds and not focusing on the matches at all.

i tried playing with it again and it's just not good enough rn. not sure what deck i should pick up next so if you have any suggestions i'm still looking for a deck i really like. might try rug flash next if nothing else fun pops up

i'm currently 5-1 in the ptq with naya humans but i dunno if that's your type of thing

list is almost identical to the one i was playing a month ago
http://mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=575291

maindeck: -1 wolfbitten captive -1 fiend hunter +1 garruk relentless +1 geistflame
sideboard: -1 oblivion ring -2 zealous conscripts +2 rest in peace +1 garruk relentless

yeah i saw you were in that. gl btw

i dont mind naya humans but i only have two sacred foundries irl and i may need garruks on mtgo

garruk has been unimpressive every time i try it but xMiMx, the mtgo grinder guy i get my aggro lists from, insists it's good and he wins a ton with the deck so i dunno. i think you can play it without garruk for sure, i did for a long time.

yeah, i'll give it a try. as much as i want to try rug flash my feeling is that its probably not that great. how'd you do in the ptq?

i crashed and burned after that post, finished 6-4. still think the deck is fine though.

welp I just drafted a deck with 5 kingpin's pet, wish me luck

how is that possible? It's usually a pretty high pick

I uploaded it here:
http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=47d36

Getting one p1p1 is kind of dodgy, but I'm not big on the Hellkite (only seems good in Gruul and I never go Gruul)
Looking back I do have some tough choices - Screecher > Killing Glare is one I kinda wish I hadn't done in retrospect, but I had no idea how the rest would shake out

well i just got pwnz0red pretty hard by that Homing Lightning. guess I was kinda asking for it.

I had 4 kingpens once, my deck was only okay-good iirc

5 syndics would probably be a lot better

i drafted an unexpected results deck the other night and unexpectedly beat a 5 kingpin's pet deck in the first round.

frog, did you actually pick syndicate enforcer over corpse blockade? yuuuuuuuuuck

and why the random biomass mutation/experiment one when there were totally esper playables?

nvm. i'm looking at one of your other drafts and true to your website allegiance you are such a raredrafter!! i just saw you pick an epic experiment in selesnya (with possible blue splash) over gatecreeper vine.

didnt like either enforcer nor blockade, but I already had a blockade...agreed that pick was a bit dodgy. I'm not really a big fan of multiple Blockades.

why the Biomass Mutation? I don't really consider any of those playable, even if I'm going Esper - Psychic Strike would just never get played, especially if I'm splashing, Horror comes around so often and I hate it, and Shadow Slice is definitely not something I'd play..that was a pure rare draft/insurance I don't lose to random Biomass Mutation

I really disliked taking Epic Experiment all the time, but they do sell easy for 2 tix apeice and I can't justify taking any non-money card over it. it sucks but it prevents me from having to pour a zillion $$$ into drafting.

One of the most annoying game losses I had at that last GP was playing my 2nd Ember Beast to the board rather than Hellraiser Goblin after seeing Homing Lightning game 1. The second I played it I knew I was gonna get blown out, and my opponent wasted no time getting his 2-for-1 on his turn.

hm. i play both psychic strike and shadow slice - find them both good. would have probably picked shadow slice myself as i find orzhov/esper can really benefit from throwing through 6 damage in a turn.

also, was about to pull off infinite life vs CLYDE THE GLIDE when he cast aurelia's fury on his own blocker. smart cookie

shadow slice is great and psychic strike def has a place in esper decks

fennel how have you been doing with the RWU list in block? i have that built and have been meaning to play some dailies but ive played p much nothing but M13 limited the last four or five days

shadow slice is great and psychic strike def has a place in esper decks

At that point my only blue cards were one Dinrova Horror and a U/B gate. I wasn't really wanting to play straight Esper, if anything I'd play U/B with maybe 2 or 3 high-powered Dimir cards like Horror, Soul Ransom, or Call of the Nightwing. Shadow Slice I think is alright in Dimir but I never liked the idea of it in Orzhov. Mainly because outside of the two extort flyers there really aren't many evasive guys - I guess the Rogue counts but I never really got him in Orzhov because there are always cards I want over him.

shadow slice is even better in orzhov, cause you need a finisher

slice is a good finisher if you have evasive guys to put it on, otherwise you don't want it

The reason why Cipher makes sense for Dimir is that nearly all its common creatures have some kind of evasion (plus Dimir seems to be more removal-oriented and can just clear a path) and I just don't see that being the case for Orzhov. Or at least not the kind of Orzhov that I always wind up building. I never really found myself needing a finisher since essentially every spell you play late in the game is a 4-6 point life swing.

those two decks have a lot of overlap - other than the bounce rogue all the other dimir evasion dudes are playable in orzhov

Plus the Faerie which I always felt was important to Dimir. The Rogue obviously can get played in Orzhov but I don't find myself playing it often there. Evasion just isn't as important in that deck (IMO)

braggin: i have sublime archangel and sands of delirium in the same draft deck. also got a vampire nocturnus. currently 2-0 despite not even playing that well :/

i never liked sands much in that format despite drafting a ton of control decks. i won games way easier with harbor bandit or vedalken entrancer

I never won anything with Entrancer - Sands was awesome because you could just aggro mill them out if you had any stability at all. I didn't draft M13 that much but I wound up with so many of them. I won so many games with it.

Anyway - I'm starting to get it back - went 6-0 yesterday between a Phantom and a draft, edging my final match because of a Wrecking Ogre, which is such an awesome card; it essentially turns the 'late game' for Boros into "connect with one creature and you win"

my decks never had enough stability to play or use sands it seemed

lamp, the american list has fallen off a bit. i've played 2 dailies since and have not managed to 3-1 either. the matchup against esper/sphinx's remains pretty good, but decks have become better at removing threats. i think the curve needs to be tighter to reliably kill before a big sphinx's/sweeper, and i've been trying to diversify creatures to make SB tricks less effective. some guy brought in electrickery one time, which was just backbreaking.

i think in general, the deck suffers slightly from a dearth of creatures. i almost wanna run 4 hypersonics/aurelias as they have been the most effective. cut down on a couple maindeck spell ruptures for that, iunno

my decks never had enough stability to play or use sands it seemed

yeah I did a phantom draft and had two the other day and the deck still sucked. it eats up a lot of time and mana.

the second one literally does nothing so you should take any other playable over it

you dont want them both out at once but I can see building a neat super defensive deck where Sands is basically your victory condition

ya I took it over thragtusk ;_; but it was a four man new player draft and I didn't want anyone else to have it

that was kinda my goal, I had two fog banks, it just never really happened

I dunno. I guess I really tend to overrate cards like this but I've slotted them into all sorts of decks and it's definitely won me a lot of games that I wouldn't (or probably wouldn't) otherwise. It's worth the psuedo-mull IMO

new ars arcanum: http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-gatecrash-draft-follow

dimir still the best performing guild, surprisingly orzhov is now the worst