Magic: The Gathering C/D

cider i thought you were out west MA for some reason. which store do you go to? i can't think of anywhere that might have that much room.

so does that Ars Arcanum article really say anything besides "the format will be slow" and "populate isn't as good"?

I always find the power/toughness ratio interesting, but yeah I guess not a lot of new information there.

I had to sign up for the prerelease last week before the full set was spoiled since my LGS is small, and I picked Orzhov as my guild. Sounds like a decent choice?

I don't think it's gonna be a good archetype in draft but who knows w/ the prerelease

officially doing the midnight release gah

xp i go to pandemonium in cambridge

just got back from the midnight one, did decently with golgari/simic. format is slow but not glacial, it feels like a slightly clunkier RTR. out of the 100 people there, orzhov seemed to be the best performer and selesnya the worst but it's reasonably balanced.

ha orzhov was easily the worst performer at my event, along w/ boros

I went 3-0-draw-to-go-home-"early" w/ a fun to play izzet splash white deck. two nivix cyclops, ral zarek, lotsa burn, cyclonic rift, big flyers. nivix is fantastic in a real izzet deck - hits hard, is v. intimidating to attack because they don't know if they're attacking a 1/4 or a 4/4. deputy of acquittals is also fantastic in a deck that can take advantage of it but that was pretty obvious. both are p1p1 commons I think.

yeah Nivix Cyclops definitely reads like a p1p1 to me

are the guilds as lopsided as they were in GTC prerelease or does it feel more balanced?

more balanced but I don't think this event is gonna be representative at all

my son and I are headed to prerelease in about 30 minutes, any last minute tips? We'll be playing Gruul and Boros.

don't feel afraid to not stick w/ your guild pairing

cluestones are pretty nice, better than a clunky keyrune most of the time, play them

why are cluestones better than keyrunes?

maybe not across the board, but keyrunes are 'I'm giving up a card for expensive ramp/fixing/and a bad mana sink creature'. cluestones are 'expenive ramp/fixing but you'll get the card back later'. dimir and orzhov keyrunes can hold their own but generally you'd rather just be cycling through your deck in a slow game than paying mana for some clunky 2/3.

i think the good keyrunes are rakdos, azorius, dimir

really? at this point I think azorius keyrune is barely playable. along w/ simic and boros.

I'd go something like:
dimir
golgari
orzhov
rakdos
izzet
selesnya
gruul
azorius
simic
boros

my experience w/ azorius is you don't need the ramp or the fixing so it's just a wind drake w/ an upkeep cost

Golgari did everything I wanted - nice mana, removal, an endgame plan, etc. Mossdog is crazy good - the Ars Arcanum guy called it the best common in the set, right? Certainly didn't seem far off.

i don't know what the best common in the set is - maze glider is really high impact in the right deck but as a 6-drop it probably won't be snatched up early. the common removal isn't particularly efficient except for runners bane and that one doesn't really deal with anything you were scared of anyway. most of the multicolor commons seemed good, deputy of acquittals might be the early frontrunner

another random thought - the red gatekeeper was really impressive at the prerelease. this format is much closer to RTR than to older slower sets in how the games play out tempo-wise. i think a lot of 'aggressive decks' are going to be looking to play a more midrange game and set up a couple big attacks rather than come out fast with 1 and 2-drops, and the gatekeeper's threaten effect is exactly what you want here. i didn't really think about this much before but it's actually the highest-cost effect on any of them (act of treason is 2R, the rest of the gatekeeper effects are all 1-2 mana cards on their own)

also i think zhur-taa druid is in the running for best common

the green and black ones are both great too

7 life swing is pretty huge and if you have, say, dramatic rescue

to expound on druid a bit, i think 2-drops with long-game value are going to be a hot commodity in this format, and it's one of the best in a world where everyone else is ramping on turn 3 or not at all. other than pack rat and gyre sage, i can't think of anything else i'd want to see less than it from my opponent on turn 2.

as for other 2-drops, the guildmages all get a bit better, and even something like the grizzly bear with 6-mana pump ability is probably better than it looks.

I loved my Junk deck for the prerelease. Very slow and grindy, six Gates and two Cluestones so no mana issues, two black Gatekeepers that always hit, and Teysa. If I got to turn 7-8, I couldn't lose.

the thing that makes it tricky is that that druid, cyclops and deputy are all great early picks but you can't justify committing to those two colors for them. split cards where either card is playable seem like even better picks given how a draft is gonna operate - turn/burn has like an 80% chance of ending up in your deck if you p1p1 it.

most of the big losers in the 2-slot are from gatecrash really - metropolis sprite, bomber corps, gutter skulk, even skinbrand goblin and disciple of the old ways are all things i'm not as happy to have anymore

and the split cards are all uncommon, i'm trying to pin down the best commons still and i don't think any of the removals are them except maybe runner's bane. i do think there's a high probability that you will be first picking either an uncommon/rare or a gate every draft, since most of the commons in the set just aren't impressive enough to commit to them p1p1 while the uncommons are mostly insane and you want to set up to play as many as you can.

druid, cyclops and deputy imo

cyclops is fun enough to play that I will prob try and force izzet anytime I see it again

yeah i went izzet at my 2nd prerelease after i saw your post about those and it sounded fun, but i got a pretty unworkable pool for izzet with none of those and no playable instants/sorceries anyway. should be better in draft though where you actually get to choose which half of the izzet cards you get

yeah the difference between my pool being pretty bad and my pool being v. v. good was 2 cyclops

I think an izzet deck w/ one cyclops and one frostburn is in a pretty good place

after getting cut out of aggressive decks for pretty much the entirety of gatecrash limited i am probably going to be trying to beat people up in this format as much as possible. i've cast enough corpse blockades and basilica guards for a lifetime at this point, i want to hit people with cobblebrute again

I played an aggro rakdos/orz deck for my 2nd prerelease yesterday. it was decent, I went 3-1, but yer always in a rough spot when your aggro deck is 3c w/ 4 guildgates, a keyrune and a cluestone. I had 6 pieces of removal so it was mostly just a slow beat down w/ a rakdos drake or w/e while they stayed behind on board.

not a huge fan of viashino firstblade

I mean it'll be amazing in that true boros deck that happens to get built but most of the time that deck won't happen and this guy will just hit them once and then you'll be stuck w/ a 2/2 in a format where they're kinda useless

i don't necessarily want to play the come out of the gates fast aggro decks, just something more proactive than sitting behind walls for 8 turns because other people refused to draft bane alley broker or one thousand lashes, which was the bulk of my gatecrash experience.

izzet has been my favorite guild in the block to play thus far and i don't see that changing much with the new cards. plus i suspect the izzet model of setting up a couple big turns in the midgame rather than curving out fast is going to be the best aggressive strategy in this format

yeah I don't want to oversell the cyclops but it really allows izzet to be an aggro deck. play it and a traitorous instinct t4 and you'll be swinging for 8 on turn 4. if you have some burn coming up or some other izzet tricks, you're already not far from a win at that point - the cyclops sits back until then and they're afraid to attack into it w/ anything good. staticaster seems better in this format than straight rtr too.

a lot of 'gonna be played' creatures w/ 1 toughness - the 2/1 extort, 3/1 fs flyer, 2/1 evolve dude

I tried to go aggro with a RGB deck that had a bunch of unleash and bloodrush dudes. I used the bulk of my two guild packs and just a small bit of Dragon's Maze cards. It was fine if I got off to a good start, but seriously lacked removal, so was prone to stalls.

Weirdly, I ended up playing against my son in two different matches in the same event. He ended up with an insane pool that included Boros Reckoner, Mizzium Mortars, Blood Baron, Teysa, Master of Cruelties, and foil Beck // Call. Master of Cruelties just ripped through all of my guys and I had no way to stop it.

i went izzet at my prerelease, my companion guild was simic which was sorta :/ - i hadnt realized that you could only get companion guilds for your other set colors and i was hoping for more azorius/rakdos stuff but i got a zegana in my guild pack so i crushed anyway. no real insights about this format tbh - i basically just played good creature cards and only dropped a game to a resolved 2/2 pro blue that i never quite managed to find answers for. the simic creatures seemed overall better in DGM - the 2/2 that becomes a 4/4 flier was really effective for me and evolve in general seemed more consistent - having the generally imbalanced red izzet creatures helped but there are also some simic guys w/positive p/t ratios which made a big difference - it was nice not having to lean so hard on a single copy of drakewing krasis or shambleshark. best rare i had outside of zegana was plasm capture - people were playing tonnes of high cmc cards against me and it was also useful to be able to fix my mana a bit - countering some ridiculous six drop and then using the mana to overload mizzium mortars was p lol since i only had one red source

one other thing was that fairy imposter was p good for me and i think, if i had had it, the 6/6 bounce guy would've been p great too - i'm way more interested in this effect than i was in either RTR or GTC at least in a base u/g deck. anyway this was about a 100x more fun than gtc sealed so im happy

also this particular sealed format was p fast/aggressive - i only ran one six and it was a mythic and my only ramp was the 2/1 gate guy but i also dont think this will be that representative of draft in general

a guy on cockatrice passed me this hot tip

4-5 color deck

p1: pick all cluestones, guildgates, and ramp (and maybe a bomb p1p1)
p2-p3: pick all bombs

i actually beat him with a focused rakdos deck splashing white for blood baron, but i trust him in that his deck only loses to hyper aggro.

gonna try that one out next draft i get in

i was drafting something like that in RTR a lot of the time, so presumably it's gonna be viable now with more fixing/ramp. there's a huge number of removal spells and good threats at 6cmc in the format so if you can build a deck that consistently hits 6 mana by turn 4-5 you can do crazy things

the fixing will be there, the bombs aren't always

like, I think it's surely gonna be way more viable than 5c in rtr or gtc because the format is slow and there is crazy fixing. but when you invest most of a round in fixing you are putting yourself at the mercy of the pool. and if anyone else is going 4c nearby or just keeping themselves open late...

well i usually only go for it when i start off the draft w/ an expensive bomb so that i already have a reason, like that RTR tournament i won with 5 color ramp my p1p1 was archon of the triumvirate. if you open something like teysa or savageborn hydra or progenitor mimic that's when you go for it.

thats also a deck where debt to the deathless can be a legitimate wincon

also despite all the talk about slow format etc i've really come to think this is going to be only slightly slower than 3x RTR, you won't always be able to spend your first few turns doing nothing other than developing mana like you could in the old Rav block

I think it's gonna be highly dependent on the pool - sometimes there's gonna be a buncha skyjeks and chainwalkers floating around, sometimes there will be pretty much nothing. I played a rtr/gtc draft tonight and did pretty well w/ azorius/orz deck that wouldn't have been fast enough in straight rtr or gtc. (and then lost to a boring but fast deck, so...)

I keep wanting that card to be called Death to the Deathless, even though it obv makes no sense.