Magic: The Gathering C/D

I've been in favor of a lot of changes that haven't been that popular, even the shift to reducing cards with downsides, but this one seems strange. Slivers are so well-defined already, and this makes playing with both types of Slivers potentially very confusing. It's not really a big deal to me, but if their goal is to bring back one mechanic each core set, it's odd to change one of the fundamental parts of the mechanic. It might have been cool to instead make a new creature type that was a clear homage to Slivers, but then people would probably complain that it wasn't Slivers.

playing casual Slivers vs. Slivers will definitely be very confusing but they must figure that matchup won't happen very often (and they're probably right). I don't think there are any one-off Slivers that see much play. what they're trying to solve is the situation where say, you have the 4/4 Sliver that gives +2/+0 in your hand but don't want to play it because it helps your opponent more than it does yourself. they've really tried to shy away from that type of gameplay. probably not a bad thing in the long run but I loved the flavor and art direction of Slivers and this kinda nerfs them both.

I've been doing pretty well w/ izzet splash decks in block draft so far. ran a deck w/ 3 maze gliders tonight. blue is good.

can't wait for block draft to be up on mtgo, i can't get out of work early enough to get to weeknight drafts anymore. awkwardly the mtgo prerelease drafts are 3x DGM which seems like a bad format but i'll probably play it anyway since i need 5 QPs before the release queues go up

haha that's a terrrrrible format

i guess i can just play standard for them since my standard deck i'm pretty sure gets 0 new cards from DGM

on that note, do you still think dgm is gonna be a big money set? it seems like there isn't much there beyond ral and voice.

like advent is gonna hit standard but overall it seems like the set didn't rock many worlds

yes and no - i think it has good long term potential for casual play but is pretty average for standard impact, at least for the rares.

I feel like it's one of those sets that is going to show up more than many people think in Standard. Seems like a lot of solid rares in general, not a bunch of garbage, and some things that'll be one-of or two-ofs in various decks. I want to keep my eye on Notion Thief, a $6 card now that I could see skyrocketing over the next few years if the Modern environment plays out a certain way. I also see Varolz being big in some kind of deck as its ability seems so easy to abuse.

It seems like it's gonna be a low money set, possibly one of the lowest in a while. Also it's going to get opened a lot as far as third sets go, so that will make it tank too. Here's LSVs top Constructed rare/mythic for each guild:

Voice of Resurgence
Plasm Capture
Legion's Initiative
Ruric Thar
Sire of Insanity
Varolz, the Scar-Striped
Notion Thief
Catch // Release
Beck // Call
Blood Baron of Vizkopa

IMO nothing on here stands out like Obzedat, Sphinx's Revelation, or even Dreadbore or Detention Sphere. Voice is probably the closest, but many of these are cards that are metagame choices. I guess at least it has the shocklands.

i disagree re: 'low-money set'. take a look at DKA to see what an average small set looks like value-wise, it's got 3 big mythics and a handful of popular rares. i can't see dragon's maze doing much worse than that.

I'd be shocked if Voice didn't get a lot of play. I also feel like Advent's power level is too high to just be ignored (though Resto Angel may 'block it out', so to speak)

also i've probably said this multiple times already but i am pretty high on progenitor mimic long-term and if you can pick some up at like $3 or $4 i would do that

is a populate deck going to be marginally competitive soon? maybe after rotation?

I don't pretend to understand standard but 4 advents/4 voices/4 calls/4 selesnya charms/4 thrags+buncha populate stuff seems like it would work?

progenitor mimic + biovisionary = lol

you could play the 3/3 GW centaur as well, maybe Centaur Healer, Rootborn Defenses, maybe the W: Populate card, maybe a Trostani or two. i dunno if a deck like that would dominate but I have a hard time believing you wouldn't do fairly well with it

growing ranks too

i've seen some neat delver-populate lists actually but i'm not convinced they're good.

scion of vitu-ghazi seems absolutely standard playable though, it's similar enough to geist-honored monk which saw some play, and its a nice follow-up to your turn 4 end of turn advent of the wurm

i'm pretty down on all-in populate as a strategy in standard though, since it wasn't good enough in RTR-only block constructed, where you had almost all of the good populate cards in the smallest cardpool possible

advent and voice both seem better than anything in rtr

hadn't seen the Scion, that thing looks real good - but you do suffer from the same problem that G/W always seems to have, you can dominate the board with big, over the curve dudes, then lose 'em all to wrath effects. hence why I like Garruk so much in these decks - you can start the recovery right away.

rootborn saves you from wraths and any populate instant as a response to a wrath keeps your board alive

I watched some of Standard in the Somerset SCG Open this past weekend and saw one guy who was running a populate deck with Advent. It looked interesting, but he didn't do too well.

you can practically build an aggro delver deck now, like

4 delver
4 snapcaster
4 voice of resurgence
4 call of the conclave
4 advent of the wurm

4 wake the reflections
4 selesnya charm
2 rootborn defenses

or so, that's a lot of creatures without sacrificing delver flip consistency. then the rest of the deck is just tempo spells to get your team through. i don't know if voice is actually good here or if you want geist of saint traft instead but its worth a try

I guess resto destroys populate doesn't it

destroys it how?

well I just mean having blink effects as a super common 4 of isn't great for a token deck

that deck is better with geist than it is with delver and its probably still not good enough against green and red decks to be viable

i have yet to get to draft this format, i am v sad about missing the release queues even if its for the best, also all i missed an entire MOCS season i think

resto can't blink opponents stuff

oh I just realized that yeah

okay this shows how much I know about standard

also i havent seen this thread for a bit iatee are you still going to providence? who are you going with? i really want to go, i think this should be a p dope sealed format

I am def going w/ a friend and we need a third. I was gonna ask you!

rootborn saves you from wraths and any populate instant as a response to a wrath keeps your board alive

how so?

okay well the first part is true

quick rules question for you: if I have a Renegade Krasis on the board with no counters and I cast Exava, does Renegade Krasis' evolve ability cause Exava to get an additional counter or does it only work on creatures that were already in play?

She'll get a counter. By the time Krasis' ability goes off, Exava is in play with a counter (assuming you unleashed).

Thanks! I'm considering building a deck around Savageborn Hydra and Renegade Krasis along with some evolvers like Experiment One and Gyre Sage. I'm pondering whether any of the unleash dudes would have a place in there.

post the decklist here when you're done, that sounds like something I'd love to play in block

Here's my first draft, not quite a block deck, but could be with some small changes. My plan is to play it at FNM Standard, I'm sure there are some improvements I could make. I really like the idea of playing Gyre Sage, Renegade Krasis, and Savageborn Hydra together.

Count Name
3 Rakdos Cackler
3 Experiment One
4 Gyre Sage
4 Burning Tree Emissary
4 Savageborn Hydra
4 Renegade Krasis
2 Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch
2 Corpsejack Menace
2 Master of Cruelties

3 Rancor
2 Searing Spear
2 Dreadbore
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Deadbridge Chant

4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Blood Crypt
4 Stomping Ground
3 Woodland Cemetary
2 Rootbound Crag
2 Kessig Wolf Run
4 Forest

Sideboard
2 Searing Spear
2 Dreadbore
2 Rakdos Charm
2 Golgari Charm
1 Domri Rade
2 Skullcrack
3 Skylasher
1 Tragic Slip

fyi deadbridge chant doesn't really work in this deck, it's for slower decks with big 6+ mana creatures that you want to get into play for free. it even has anti-synergy with the hydra, bringing it back as a 0/0 that immediately dies again

That's a good point, I'd probably replace that with either a 4th cackler and experiment one or more removal. I'm also not completely sold on Exava and Master of Cruelties. They're good but I suspect there's better options for those slots.

I'm also thinking that Korozda Gorgon might be a better choice than Master of Cruelties. It lacks the First Strike and reduce your opponent to 1 abilities, but it's activated ability could work nicely with all the counters that will be in play.

i think gorgon is too low impact in standard, despite being good in limited

i'm wondering how worried WotC is that a bunch of other game companies are suddenly trying to jump into the digital TCG space while magic online is still in a bad spot developmentally - first it was solforge, and now blizzard and cryptozoic both have online TCG-style games coming. i don't know how comparable these new games are going to be to actual MTG rather than duels of the planeswalkers but it seems like the market is actually starting to try to exploit WotC's main weaknesses in the TCG realm which are software and accessibility

yeah I would guess 'very worried'

i don't like standard but i love sire of insanity so... i cobbled together a little zombie sire deck on cockatrice last night. i envision it like a weird control deck where you build mildly resilient board state with gravecrawler, nighthawk, and olivia, then stabilize with sire. i feel it has an identity crisis - doesn't seem to really attack or play defense all that well - but has potential? i only played a couple matches and never really got to drop sire too much, but i bet there's some way to make it work. anyways, i can really see the sire taking off and have been trying to get him in a good deck. zombies seems good just cuz it has some board resilience, and cuz olivia is a premier mana sink, but 4 nighthawks doesn't seem to defend well enough against aggro. maybe i just need to play more than 2 matches tho :/

SolForge is pretty well made - I don't think it'll take much from the MTGO faithful but it's a lot cheaper and they seem to want to keep their players. It's insane how terrible the MTGO software is - we're on what, a month of those "Game already active" messages? Is it really that hard to debug?

i think it was fixed in todays patch