Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

"Dimir proves its place as the best guild in the format." is a statement that basically nobody agrees with at this point

i was winning regularly with dimir as well - i keep track of my mtgo play in a spreadsheet and dimir has the highest win % of the five guilds for me simply because i never draft dimir unless i feel like it's clearly open. i actually got kinda punished for this last week though - dimir was wide open pack one in a five person draft and i had a choice p1p2 of consuming abberation and grisly spectacle. i took the spectacle since i think its really important and there was a chance no one would take a straight dimir card from the pack since there were four other playables (including a boros charm i knew one player would take for money). but someone who was drafting simic took the horror and moved in on dimir as well, having seen how open it was p1.

but one thing that became increasingly important to me when i was drafting gtc was having a tight, cohesive plan with my deck: no splashes, a very aggressive curve and some redundancy. one card i think is really good in the sort of dimir decks i assume hes talking about is prism not because it lets you splash but because it cantrips, allowing you to see more of your deck and potentially extort off it. i don't think its nearly as skill-intensive as innistrad is though with the exception that i think drafting triple gatecrash is probably the toughest i've experienced.

I do agree with a lot of this - splashes have really never worked out for me unless it's a late game splash, and Orzhov never really works out for me as it feels overdrafted. The two I'm 3-0'ing with the most often are Dimir and Boros. I'm with Lamp on the first point, I only really go Dimir when it's open, but it seems to be open pretty much every time. Simic has produced a lot of what look like quality decks but I usually just 2-1 them, losing a match because either I needed removal (Pit Fight is really, really important for that deck), or I just drew things out of order. It really feels like a 'win-more' guild - when your Evolve stuff curves out and all your dudes are as big as your opponent's biggest guy, you win pretty easily. If your late drops and early drops come at the wrong time, you get hosed pretty bad. Something like an Adaptive Snapjaw can be great, because even if it just falls to a Mugging, you can usually get 2 or even 3 evolve triggers off it. If it's just a 6/2, though...

i still think it's good! it's wide open a lot less now, though people are still passing bane alley broker which just isn't right

I think it's playable and can win but the history books are not gonna remember dimir as king and it's not just this thing that's happening en masse w/o nobody noticing

Is the win rate graph by game, match, or draft?

well it's happening in the samples of draft matches that dude watches to do his articles, at the least.

though i'm taking the fact that my unexpected results deck was 1 point of damage short of making the finals of its draft as a good sign that the format isn't quite as punishing to loose decks as people make it out to be. i also won fnm a couple weeks ago with a pile of bad simic cards by splashing 2 dinrova horrors.

moodles it's by match

I'd like to know what's winning drafts overall. If Dimir is going 2-1 a lot but not 3-0, that isn't so exciting.

iatee and i talk about this a lot but i dont think dimir is particularly good in and of itself but i think it can routinely be the correct choice. like 'dimir is the best guild' is an obviously untrue statement if we are talking about a situation in which the ideal guild deck has been drafted, otherwise it wouldnt be the worst or second worst performing sealed deck archetype. what always worries me about dimir is that the line between 'correct' and 'incorrect' is so wide, and salvaging a dimir draft that's going badly is more difficult than salvaging a boros or gruul draft that isn't panning out. i think these game theory-style drafting decisions are really important in gatecrash, which is interesting to talk about but tiresome to play with online because i hate losing.

just found out today that my arch-nemesis from my LGS works in the same office as me. We've routinely split first and second place in our weekly draft these past couple months and I've played against him way more than anyone else there. Wondering if this means some lunchtime MTG might happen.

living the dream

I'd be psyched to be the nerd playing Magic in the corporate cafeteria. There was a time several months ago when I saw some folks I didn't know playing a game in the cafe, probably should have struck up a convo with them.

Well one thing in Dimir's favor is that it really prioritizes removal - while a guild like Orzhov needs those Kingpins and Syndics, Dimir generally wants stuff like Devour Flesh, or Dimir Charm, or Killing Glare, or Spectacle...which in turn powers up Death's Approach, a card that you should get 2-3 of every time. So Dimir is the one guild that can really capitalize on an opponent's creature-light draw and just win with whatever. It's good at nerfing batallion, keeping off the extort dudes that Orz needs, blowing up Simic's enablers, etc.

all i can say is that i'm looking forward to having a format with more fluidity of archetypes again, which the full block draft should necessarily be. i also have this strange feeling that dragon's maze is going to be an incredibly strong set power-level-wise and i'd be willing to buy a box of it blind right now

why do you think that?

i am certainly looking forward to DGM for limited. i've given up on GTC for now and am only playing M13 which has def helped my winrate

finding out that the guild champions which are the flagship legendary creatures of the set aren't even the mythic rares kind of set off alarm bells to me

also lots of hints dropped previously by wotc people about 'the block isn't over yet' when people asked about old hits like putrefy, helix, etc not being reprinted from old ravnica

at the very least i think it will be a high value set for the long term due to having a bunch of guaranteed legendary creatures and the third-set effect.

also WoTC frequently mentions that the "3rd set" is where they tend to take the most chances since it stays in Standard for the least amount of time (see: Apocalypse, Future Sight, Rise of the Eldrazi, plus mechanics like Storm, the Wishes, Phyrexian mana, etc). DGM needs to do so much in the span of 150 cards or so - I'd imagine that they want to give every guild new toys, find ways to make the mechanics intersect and give 3-color pairings an identity, plus the hints that we may get some powerful reprints; all this leaves very little room for the unplayable junk that usually fills like 20-30% of the booster.

well. that's probably the "third set effect". anyway.

third set effect just refers to small third sets having a shorter print run since they're only drafted for a couple months and only at 1 pack per draft

oh. I hadn't even thought of that. Plus keep in mind that you're going to get like 2 shocks per box too so that's like a free 15 bucks.

http://www.examiner.com/article/ruric-thar-the-unbowed-from-dragon-s-maze

so this got spoiled. looks... really good. eager to assemble zoos around him. i'm kinda hoping yeva becomes standard playable, mostly just cuz i think the card is cool.

reckoner becomes more important with this d00d kicking around i think

6 mana is a weird number for this guy, it's hard to picture the deck that would want him. Most of the time, he'll eat a removal spell and the opponent will take six, but what deck wants that outcome? Maybe a midrange deck, but they'd usually rather play something that can get card advantage, or a cheaper creature with the chance to attack more than once. If he was scaled down to a 4/4 for 4 with a 4 damage clause, maybe, but even then there are a lot of cards in that slot to choose from.

The other card that got spoiled, Maze's End, is hilarious.

problem is he's fighting for space with aurelia in the decks that play mostly creatures and still want a 6-drop. aurelia is better in a vacuum.

hm, i dunno if aurelia is better in a vacuum. aurelia can be blocked/removed fairly easily and there isn't really any way to deal with this one outside of countermagic.

time will tell if there's a deck for him though. i think the existence of reckoner really messes this dude up.

but i think 6 mana is not really a weird number for him. i think he plays a similar role to aurelia just in being a finisher for midrange-aggro decks.

I don't know if Aurelia is better in a vacuum, but she's a lot more explosive in the decks that would play her atm. She's capable of doing 10+ damage the turn she's played, and that's what an aggro deck wants. Ruric-Thar's biggest problem is that he does no damage and gives you no card advantage the turn he's played. There could be a deck for him eventually, but I don't see it happening in this environment. I agree with Reckoner being around, he might be a liability.

seriously considering mono-red for ptq this weekend. someone talk me out of this please

haha decided against xMiMx's geistflame + relentless deck? i looked at his list after you suggested it and was like 'this is not for me' and moved on to four color midrange decks. curious about your reasoning for mono-red - i can understand the pyreheart wolf/better against junk and midrange thing i guess but im not sure its better than blitz anyway? idk

are you playing the bonus ptq tonight? i'm playing bant delver in the daily that's happening in 15 min so maybe don't follow my deck advice

nah not playing tonight, i don't care about ptqs enough to sit at home all weekend. i'll just be playing the sunday ones when they're convenient. i still like mim's deck and i've historically done well with his lists but other than the first 6 rounds of the ptq last week, it hasn't been performing well for me lately so i was looking for other options. i'd like to just play naya midrange because it's the most comfortable deck for me in the format, but it doesn't beat the card angel of serenity so if those are still out in full force it's not a great idea.

did you see this delver deck that won the first paper ptq of the season last weekend?
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/events.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/theros13ptq/0323tucson