Magic: The Gathering C/D

Nice. I drafted a similar one yesterday with Melek, Biomancer, double Cyclops and a bunch of little aggressive guys like piker, double chainwalker and bomber corp. Chemister's trick was very good for me as a cyclops activator.

The top 8 for GP Miami has been very entertaining today

Finals on right now

i played chemister's trick a bunch during 3x RTR draft, it came around 13th/14th pick most of the time and was not that much worse than blustersquall when your deck needed that type of effect

yeah this seemed like it should be true to me yet I'd never seen it cast despite having played a ton of rtr and dgm

yeah that was a very exciting top 8 broadcast

i haven't drafted in over a week :(. i really like this format too although the last time i drafted i scrubbed out round one against a terrible five color deck with my focused, efficient g/w beatdown deck #nojustice #skillgame &c

cider, how do you feel about RG aggro against Esper or American control? Any particular strategies you can impart?

i've been playing jvl's u/w/r tempo list to some success and i think the cards that really matter are burning-tree and hellrider. domri rade is fine but not impressive, although i'm probably running above average on having renounce in hand when my opponent plays him. i think it's worth extending into a hellrider draw particularly game one. i actually won the finals of my fnm because the r/g player was too afraid of overextending into a supreme verdict i had revealed with my auger. i had an extremely slow hand with only M10/ISD lands and no counter magic and the extra time that his sandbagging threats gave me was vital, although he obv had no real way of knowing how my hand was composed.

gwb rites questions: do i go all slimes vs jund or do i still want thragtusks? do i cut unburial rites since they often have tons of ground seals in the sideboarded games?

Lamp, I suspect the fear of overextending is a trap for the RG aggro deck. Giving up some dudes isn't nearly as bad as giving the opponent a chance to ramp up for massive card draw.

cider: i've added putrefy to my sideboard for jund since the only card they can have that beats you is olivia. currently i board out mulch, rites, and fiend hunter (i think he's bad against jund's removal) and bring in sever, putrefy and obzedat. tbh i like slime for wolf run as much as like it for mana-denial, w/o olivia and wolf run jund can just never beat you basically

i can't wrap my head around whether new chandra is good or bad

its got essentially the same +1 as the last one, which was mildly effective 2 standard cycles ago but not in the current or previous one. so it's obviously all about the 0 ability, which is a weak form of card draw but historically any card draw at all has been good enough on a 4cmc walker.

i'm kind of surprised it isn't splashier even if it was good enough in their internal testing - i guess sorin lord of innistrad set a high bar for 'planeswalker that reads well but doesn't play too strong' and a lot of dumb people got burned pretty badly on that one preordering it for $50+

feel like it would be bad if it's 0 was -1, but as is it basically pays for itself w/ that ability. is the ultimate really that great tho?

like you almost need to build a deck around it

I think it's pretty good, and will see more play than any other Chandra (faint praise). Unlike Firebrand, there's always something useful to do with it. It maps close to what Domri does, but Domri is still better. Chandra's ultimate isn't great, probably not game-winning unless you build around it.

ultimate is not too relevant, its a hail mary if your opponent has some huge play e.g. angel of serenity. most of the time if you're stabilized with her in play you're just going to 0 for more cards

I'd like to see a mono-red deck with Chandra and the new Manabarbs. No one plays basics anymore.

pretty sure new manabarbs, like the old, is an effective sb card vs control decks but little else

what about some weird izzet chandra/ral deck

if that becomes viable I will play standard

Hmm that's a shame. I don't have much experience playing with Manabarbs but I thought it might be good against midrangey decks too. Does the fact that this one doesn't hurt you (in mono-red) make a difference?

I am certain some of my desire to see Burning Earth do well is my bitterness at the price of manabases in Standard

you can't afford to spend a turn not affecting the board against creature decks, especially when they can play a creature that gains life equal to the amount they lost from the manabarbs

also standard manabases are generally much cheaper now than in the past. dragonskull summit was a $10 card the first time around, now it's 3 and not even blood crypt is 10.

if you pick up standard duals while their set is still being drafted, you can get them for 1/3 to 1/2 the price they'll be the following season, sometimes it's even more extreme. i remember trading for seachrome coasts at only $4-5 during cawblade season when they were currently a 4-of in the most powerful standard deck of the past 10 years. a year later they were brushing $20 despite a much more color-balanced standard.

will we see shocks go up in price post rotatation? I assume the checklands will be gone at that point.

I'm wondering if this Manaweft Sliver will see any play. 2 CMC for any color mana is not bad.

http://ark42.com/mtg/pricehistory.php?q=Seachrome+Coast&d=0
http://ark42.com/mtg/pricehistory.php?q=clifftop+retreat&d=0

shocklands are interesting because they have a higher baseline of $8-10 instead of $4 so you'd expect them to go up to $20-30 next year but the other eternal-playable ones we've had recently, the zendikar fetchlands, were basically $10-12 their entire time in standard. so who knows, the point is get cards for next year during the summer

Wow I didn't realize shocks had dropped so much. I should pick them up now huh.

yeah they're fairly close to a freeroll right now since there's no way they're worth less next year and will likely be 50-100% more

absolutely. i'm still getting them as a 3rd pick sometimes in draft - just trying to pick up as many as possible at this point

i'm kind of surprised it isn't splashier even if it was good enough in their internal testing - i guess sorin lord of innistrad set a high bar for 'planeswalker that reads well but doesn't play too strong' and a lot of dumb people got burned pretty badly on that one preordering it for $50+

I pulled two in the DKA events I did and wound up trading them for 4 Lillianas. Probably the best trade I've ever made!

i can't wrap my head around whether new chandra is good or bad

i think its just mediocre? i'm about as good at evaluating new cards as everyone else on the internet so who really knows, but i think the decks needs a creature at this spot that can force through extra damage like hellrider rather than a source of potential card advantage. i do think the +1 is the realest ability but ::shrug::

i like garruk's free cards a lot more tbh

this thing is quite odd

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=143494&d=1372652332

it seems like it will be worth monies

at the very least an edh staple but pretty easily breakable for other formats

its even made so that it will look nicer in foil

scg has it at $1.49? really?

http://sales.starcitygames.com/category.php?cat=5260&color=A

I don't see how that effect is not gonna lead to *something*

Oath of Ancient Wood 2G
Enchantment
Whenever ~Oath of the Ancient Wood or another enchantment enters the battlefield under your control, you may put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.

Another card hinting at a potential enchantment theme for Theros

BTW I love the Festering Newt/Bogbrew Witch/Bubbling Cauldron set. So far the Witch is the #1 card I want to pull in a draft.

i'm not really digging most of the linear themes in this set, i suspect i will be forcing the warden of evos isle deck a lot since that's the only one that appeals to me so far

Core sets are always like that. I suspect it'll be a good draft format anyway. From the looks of the White stuff it appears lifegain as Limited strategy may finally be viable.

My main question right now is just how good Young Pyromancer is. I feel like there's a really great red deck out there with him and the new Chandra.

yeah, as much as i've enjoyed mma and full block ravnica drafts i'm really looking forward to core set draft. i liked how in M13 you can draft a color w/o needing to necessarily draft a deck but there were still a lot of useful synergies btw cards.

also if anyone is still drafting full block rav i have just started straight up forcing U/x as much as possible

yeah i always want to be in blue in DGR unless i manage to get a good selesnya deck which is really tough to pull off

I've had a lot of success with Grixis, to the point where I force it pretty frequently - both Izzet and Dimir are frequently open, and DGM has a lot of good removal in those colors (especially the split cards). Right now it seems to me that a solid removal base is probably enough to win right now. I dig those 11th pick Pilfered Plans too.

5-color strategy is definitely the most fun but I have a lot of difficulty 3-0'ing with it. I'm surprised how many games I've won in spite of mulliganning a LOT (as I seem to get 1-land hands pretty frequently with this for some reason), but in general the pattern is that I can beat the more complex 3-color decks because I have more bombs and can generate card advantage a lot easier, but solid 2-color decks, especially Azorious, Boros, and Gruul, just roll me since I often don't have any board presence until turn 4.

yeah i always want to be in blue in DGR unless i manage to get a good selesnya deck which is really tough to pull off

haha i finally had a really good g/w deck after p1p1 unflinching courage and lost round one to a terrible five color green deck. i crushed him game one then never hit a third land drop game two. game three went really long after i kept a slow six of four land, centaur herald, and the 2/1 that untaps gates. he had a killing glare for my herald and i never really recovered although i think i made some mistakes that game too. anyway i was so mad at my play i switched over to mma drafts until last night

I have yet to see a 2 color azorius deck in this format

it's the type of thing I'd try to force if I saw it but it's kinda hard to pass up the dimir bombs that always get passed in gtc

lol i had a no-mountains-just-gates u/w deck last night splashing for two turn // burns that i went 2-1 with. i probably should've won in the finals but my limited play has been terrible lately. i took any u/w creature that had flying over everything and ended up with just enough playables. i did have a frilled occulus i could never turn on.

Hahaha the Bogbrew Witch triad is so dorky. Love it.

I have also changed my mind about aetherling

not a big surprise, but wizards confirmed that dual lands are not returning in m14

this just makes me more curious to know what they're doing in theros. c'mon nimbus maze!!

from the dev article:
There was so little downside in the speed or consistency in your deck in moving from a two- to a three-color deck for the last year, and that will change when Standard rotates in the fall. Again, I believe the lands we have in place for Theros block are wonderful, but they do not offer the same level of ease and power with three-color mana bases as the shockland/M10-dual-land combination.

i feel like this rules out filters and possibly nimbus maze cycle too

had a good day with RG aggro today, accidentally triple-queued with it this morning and ended up winning all 3 events anyway despite being bad at double-queuing

new list is as follows and i would recommend it to all:
4 rakdos cackler
4 stromkirk noble
4 burning-tree emissary
4 flinthoof boar
4 boros reckoner
4 hellrider
4 ghor-clan rampager

4 searing spear
4 pillar of flame
3 madcap skills

11 mountain
4 stomping ground
4 rootbound crag
2 temple garden

SIDEBOArd:
2 domri rade
3 skullcrack
2 mizzium mortars
2 mark of mutiny
4 volcanic strength
2 blasphemous act

and here's my rites list, this one changes a lot more than the RG though, there's a lot more variety in potential card choices

4 avacyn's pilgrim
3 arbor elf
2 fiend hunter
3 restoration angel
4 thragtusk
1 obzedat, ghost council
3 angel of serenity

4 mulch
4 grisly salvage
2 lingering souls
4 unburial rites
2 garruk relentless
1 sever the bloodline

4 overgrown tomb
4 temple garden
2 godless shrine
3 woodland cemetery
2 sunpetal grove
2 isolated chapel
3 forest
2 gavony township
1 cavern of souls

Sideboard:
2 deathrite shaman
2 abrupt decay
1 putrefy
1 sever the bloodline
1 trostani, selesnya's voice
3 sin collector
3 acidic slime
2 gaze of granite