Magic: The Gathering C/D

oh nimbus maze is the other possibility, i don't think we know the plane for that yet

i like nimbus maze as the future sight plant - theres been lots of solid spec that the M10/ISD lands are leaving standard for a bit and i think that a cycle of nimbus maze lands would be a reasonable alternative to those

Dryad Arbor is one of the cards that Maro has specifically said likely won't be back because it caused too many rules issues

i really hope the days of skewed information aren't completely over now, i wasn't following the caw-blade pro tour at the time but the stories i've heard about it are great. apparently in the first several rounds opponents were consistently casting inquisition of kozilek, seeing a stoneforge in their hand, and ignoring it and choosing to take something like a spell pierce or mana leak instead. i'd love to see another pro tour where one team has a surprise stranglehold on the format.

i'm actually really excited by this pro tour since i don't really have a clear idea what the metagame will look like. mtgo is so skewed my red decks that it will be interesting to see a meta that exists with them almost entirely absent. i've been working a bit on a block deck for this weekend for the mocs prelim and keep thinking about all these silly midrange-y decks that dont have good enough matchups against red to even bother with

yeah i need a deck for this weekend too - will probably play a varolz deck but i'm not sure if the straight BG one is best or if there's room to add red and make it look more like my standard deck with domri, ghor-clan rampager, etc.

i had varloz in a draft and now kind of love that card - also have had aetherling twice and think it is basically the best limited card ever

varloz jund seems like something that doesnt quite match up w/the mtgo meta tho

i saw a list with boros reckoner, firemane avenger, lavinia that i liked too. basically i want something proactive that's a bit more robust than the mono-red deck

haha maybe thats my list - i've been playing those cards in a w/r/u kinda tempo list. its still a bit of mess but it has a really good match up against red

haha maybe, i still don't know your username

ca1945

little known fact that lamp is 68 years old

ok the one i was looking at wasn't yours then

basically i really want to play domri if at all possible because i've had really good results in standard with him, but obviously block is way different

there's a maze's end deck in the most recent block results...

i want to play a voice deck but i dont own any and dont want to buy them so i've been casting around for stuff that can beat sphinx ok and red ok and isnt g/w which is like obzedat

RBW midrange deck is pretty decent but i've never quite liked it for some reason

i dont have a lot of expectations for this mocs so i might just play one of the UB madness decks i've seen, i get to play aetherling which is p gd sweet and there dont seem to be that many g/w decks to really punish you

there don't seem to be many flying creatures in block, i wonder if you could just play skyjerk/skyknight/firemane avenger and kill people without having to worry too much about voice or advent of the wurm. desecration demon is a problem i guess but there's turn/burn for that

hey guys

this is my gp report

it's c/p'd from an email i sent so the format isn't all ilxy and lowercase etc

i hope you will enjoy

+++++++++++++++++

Round 4 (round 1 for me and my trusty byes) was against a former GP winner, Swedish dude. He had Infect and I had Tron - not a great matchup but something I could work with. I guess I wasn't so used to Infect, and how utterly mandatory it was to remove every threat on the board, 'cuz I lost Game 1 fast. I kept a 1 Urzaland, 1 Chromatic, 1 Ancient Stirrings hand, and it wasn't pretty when my Ancient Stirrings failed to hit a second land. I died on Turn 4 without putting up much of a fight. In hindsight I should have mulled that hand, especially since there was no Pyroclasm, but my Modern skills weren't that sharp at the time.

Game 2 I sided in my Spellskite. I was supposed to have 2 but mysteriously lost the second. Luckily, I drew it opening hand. On his T1, he Nature's Claimed my Chromatic Star and I tried to suppress glee. After the Spellskite hit, he hung out, lacklustre, with a Blighted Agent on board and a handful of miserable pump spells. He scooped as soon as I hit Karn, which didn't take long.

Game 3 I kept a decent looking hand. As in, it had Grove and Pyroclasm. T2, he Blighted Agent. My T2, I Pyroclasmed. All tapped out, he Mutagenic Growthed the Agent to keep it alive, and killed me two turns later. Backbreaking play.

So I'm X-1 heading into R5. I play a hatebear beatdown deck - the matchup is super even. Games 1 and 2 are nice and tight and we split the pair. The difference is, of course, Game 1, I don't really hit sweepers, Game 2 I hit a few. Game 3 he assembles a nice little board and starts swinging. Geist is on there so you know it's scary. I'm exactly one turn behind and lose the match.

After the match my friend informs me that I missed a land drop. I'm like "seriously?" but I know it's true cuz I can get absentminded playing Magic sometimes. Turns out, the missed land drop was Eye of Ugin, which I guess I overlooked 'cuz it doesn't tap for mana. I realize I was one mana short of casting All is Dust the turn before he lethal'd me. Magic has a funny way of punishing misplays - it kind of drives home "don't make any, no matter how inconsequential!"

So now I'm X-2, and I receive an interesting reward for my misplay. My R6 opponent has no idea what Tron is. He's also just a plain old terrible player. There's a point in G1 where I have 2 Power Plants and a Mine out and he's like "ohhhh, damn, does that mean you have your combo?" with a total straight face and I'm just like

I was feeling pretty good about the matchup early on. He drops a T1 Mountain and doesn't play anything. I wait for the Bolt at the end of my turn. Doesn't come. I can't believe my luck. Turn 2 he drops a Tunnel Ignus, which is unplayable in pretty much all format with no combo potential or anything. I continue to gawk.

There's always a catch. The catch here is that he was playing probably 16-24 land destruction spells in his deck. A baby could have beat me with that deck, and I go down in flames to his Tunnel Ignus. Both matches adjacent to mine can't help but gawk and crack up. It's brutally funny - perfect irony. I can't help but laugh myself.

Since I lost R6 so fast I actually have time to head back to the hotel and change. I do so, come back, and now that I'm officially out of Day 2, sweep my remaining 3 matches handily against some pretty good players. So it goes!

It was a pretty great experience overall. I had a bit of a consolation victory in the Super Sunday Sealed where I had a nice showing with a questionable pool and scored 11 packs. Plus, I'm feeling more confident that I can compete with the top players. Obviously I have stuff to work on but I'm not that far off. I'm still proud of a play I made where, with an Expedition Map untapped and 2 Tron lands out, I notice he suspiciously has 3 untapped mana, with a white in there. I decline to pop the Map and cast my Oblivion Stone instead, and right as rain, he ends my turn by flashing in the Aven Mindcensor he had brought in from the SB specifically to hose my Maps. Felt pretty darn good.

also cider, i did well with a block deck that went judge's familiar/skyjek/reckoner/skyknight/hypersonic dragon/aurelia. you should try it out. DGM offers lots of new goodies for that deck. i ran civic saber to great effect but for sure with DGM you can cut a lot of the borderline cards (judge's, skyjek, saber) and throw in heat. maybe legion's initiative and tajic, and for sure lavinia.

fennel i used your civic saber deck as the basis for my block deck i went bigger and cut the saber package and instead focused on etb triggers and tempo

i decided to just throw together the varolz deck since i was only missing 1 card from it (varolz) and it seems to fit my criteria. will probably play it for the first time in the actual mocs event which is awkward but i honestly don't care too much about the mocs anyway

this is pretty neat

http://i.imgur.com/dJmQnwr.jpg

fennel, that was GP Portland? Did you play against any cool brew-y decks?

Also, I am very accustomed to the 6-3 GP :-/

Woot! Went 3-0 in DGR draft at my LGS tonight. I made a vow to limit myself to 2 colors as much as possible and it paid off. My opponents had mana struggles while I managed to stay consistent.

Here's what I ran:

Rakdos cackler
Mugging
Electrickery
Syndic of tithes
Gore-house chainwalker
Martial glory
Street spasm
Azorius cluestone
Avenging arrow
Ember beast
Viashino racketeer
Court street denizen
2 Viashino firstblade
Gift of orzhova
Assault griffin
Smelt-ward gatekeepers
Steeple roc
Nav squad commandos
Lavinia of the tenth
Fortress cyclops
Blaze commando
Foundry champion
7 plains
7 mountains
2 izzet guildgate
Rogue's passage

http://imgur.com/D71LxHs

really wanted this deck to do better than 1-2 :(

well that didn't work. here's the url

http://imgur.com/D71LxHs

ha

been reading some of Matt Tabak's tumblr, which drops some interesting hints - one, there's apparently something in Theros that'll cause some older cards to get errata, and two, there is some upcoming mechanic that's something along the lines of Miracle/double-sided cards/split cards that sort of 'breaks' the existing rules.

yeah i feel like there's been a lot of little hints dropped over the past year that theros has one of those game-changer mechanics in it

gonna keep posting my 3-0 draft decks just so everyone can see how unimportant it is to actually have a good or cohesive deck:

http://i.imgur.com/guSLhoy.jpg

thats a p sweet deck

'you too can easily 3-0 with tajic and a bunch of aggressive 2 and 3 drops plus some removal'

thanks for the encouragement there cider, will keep that one in mind next time a draft goes sour

I'm watching my friend stream 4p sealed and he's won 3 games w/ guild feud (I suggested adding it)

haha i guess its not that bad i just felt really gross about it when i ended up with only a few 2-drops and had to play a gatekeeper with 2 gates

2-drops seem barely existent in this format, no matter how high i move them up my pick order

i went 2-2 at fnm with two two drops in my otherwise fine deck, i lost to a bunch of 3/1 haste guys. i realized that i really need to prioritize two drops in this format regardless of how slow or controlling i think my deck is - i had mostly been staying p clean but that deck was a true three color mess. i was happy to start 2-0 with it but then mad to lose two in a row, even if it was a bad deck

biggest mistake was passing up a fifth pick tithe drinker pack one and not moving in on orzhov, ended up passing lots of really good white and black and i should've recognized that as a clear signal.

figuring out where to take the gates is the big one for me right now. because I'll wind up with like 9-10 good cards in DGM but they will almost all be gold ones, then try to pick up gates in the other two packs but straight up not seeing any or having to pick a bomby rare/uncommon over them. and then inevitably you'll lose at least one match to mana screw.

seems like BUG is really working for me. Drown in Filth is like this set's Death's Approach in that I always end up with 2-3 of them and they work very well. i'm still waiting for the time I use it and mill four good cards and whiff, then draw nothing but lands the rest of the way. It's interesting because you never quite know who to mill. The Golgari cards all want you to mill yourself but if you're using Drown, Grislies, the GTC mill effects, and now Pilfered Plans on yourself you can really get decked kinda easily.

There aren't a lot of gates in RTR and GTC comparatively, right? Kind of taunting to have to pick up Gatekeepers and most of your gates in the first pack.

I actually drafted BUG today in my very first draft of this format, top 8 of a GPT for Providence. I was reasonably happy with how it went - even though there were no bombs, I got good fixing, a few removal spells, good attackers like Rakdos Drake and Beetleform Mage. But my round 1 opponent had Teysa, Trostani, and Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, so that was that.

yeah I agree about drown in filth. it's also kinda fun cause it adds a gambly element to your play.

I had a sweet jund deck tonight w/ deadbridge chant, desecration demon, 2 augers, putrefy etc etc. deadbridge is pretty fun to land.

I curved spike jester, dreg mangler, desecration demon one game

lamp, it's encouraging to hear you've continued to roll with that american shell. i think i might dip back into block constructed as a precursor to finally learning standard. gonna try and go for it.

i always thought the big problem with that deck was the 2-drop, and i'm wondering if electromancer might be the card there, just to speed things up a turn. shaving a turn off verdict is probably huge against those burning tree zoo decks that seem to be dominating. i was hoping it would reduce the turn/burn cost to 1UR but even at 2UR it's still pretty good. also considering running warleader's helix against zoo, too.

so i think i might add:

- skymark roc (which on second thought after looking at the tourney winner lists seems kinda dodgy... i need a 4-drop bad)
- turn/burn
- electromancer
- lavinia
- hellraiser goblin SB
- essence backlash SB

and take out:

- skyjek
- judge's
- hypersonic
- a bunch of charms

hopefully i'll get a chance to test that out this week... it's a toss up whether i get time or not. i'm working outside for the summer so i think about magic a fair bit during my toiling job, with precious little time to actually play

pretty disappointed that thundermaw hellkite isn't in m14, was banking on that one getting the two-time treatment that titans and baneslayer angel got

is that for sure? i checked the name/# crunch on mtgsalvation and theres space for it. a little disappointed cuz i still held onto a playset of that card

well there's another mythic dragon spoiled already, so unless there's 3 red mythics of which 2 are dragons then it's not in. i guess its possible

ok yeah i didnt see those four new cards :(. was hoping for a 3XX mythic cycle with thundermaw and the black and white cards already spoiled.

the angel is pretty insane and might show up in melira pod in modern even

another fun america deck tonight

2 nivix cyclops
2 stealer of secrets
daring skyjek
nivix guildmage
azorius justiciar
cinder elemental
deputy of acquittals
jelenn sphinx
bloodfray giant
ripscale predator
2 dramatic rescue
act of treason
traitorous instinct
pit fight
warleader's helix
swift justice
inaction injunction
last thoughts
boros/azorius/izzet gates, 2 cluestones, sacred foundry

best two wins involved: swift justicing an opponent's voidwielder to kill the 6/2 I stole, nivix guildmaging dramatic rescue then doubling act of treason next turn to win against collective blessing, would have had an even better deck if the other america - who I met in the finals - didn't take two nivix cyclops too.