Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

so many statiscasters i've stopped running souls - have also gone back to main deck slime and main deck sin collectors

cider do you think you could find room for rancor in your r/g list? i feel like it should be really good in that style of r/g deck but don't know what i'd cut - how much do you need the searing spears?

rancor is kind of shitty actually in my experience. you don't always have green mana to spare and it doesn't make your guys much better at getting through the problem cards for the deck especially boros reckoner. generally i want my guys to survive combat rather than trade up, due to hellrider, so madcap skills works better. i'm really happy with the current configuration right now and don't want to mess with it for a bit.

spear seems like an auto-4-of, never really considered dropping it. its too important against other flinthoof boar decks and for reach vs control decks

did you try this deck out with Firefist Striker and not like him? do you just prefer to have extra burn rather than a ton of dudes?

madcap skills is better than firefist striker, i am fairly sure. i ran striker in the ptq last weekend and counted how many times i activated its battalion over 9 rounds, and the answer was zero.

good to know, I want to try out your deck, gotta track down my 4th Boros Reckoner and Hellrider

I went 4-1 with my g/r aggro deck at FNM. That cackler promo's looking pretty good!

The one deck that destroyed me was the first place junk deck that ran voice, resto, thragtusk, blood baron, and ready//willing. I made some bad sideboard decisions with that one, although I don't know that better choices would have helped. Having blood baron and resto untap against my little attackers was very painful.

thoughts on m14 limited:

- i think the format is set up to really reward you for playing a primary and secondary color. the most powerful cards almost always have heavy colored mana requirements. drafting powerhouse cards in two colors will likely make your mana inconsistent. i will almost always be looking to draft a main color and a support color.

- for that reason, good cards with single-color-mana requirements will probably be my first picks. apart from planeswalkers and other crazy mythics, i don't think there's a card in the set that i'd pick over briarpack alpha. trained condor looks like a very solid p1p1 - it sets up blue as a potential support or main color. i'm going to be all about staying open in this draft. once i've settled on a comfortable color, i expect to see high-ceiling cards flowing.

- examples of these high-ceiling cards that shouldn't be picked by people not solidly in that color: kalonian tracker, rumbling baloth, quag sickness, nightmare, barrage of expendables, awaken the ancient, water servant, phantom warrior, celestial flare... basically, if you need to play the cards on curve, don't pick the double-colored-mana ones if you're aren't solid in that color. some of the primo removal, like claustrophobia and chandra's outrage, might even flow on down.

- i don't think there will be such thing as a "sliver deck", because slivers will never be "open". because they're such solid vanilla creatures, they will rarely wheel. that said, no harm in picking up as many as you can in your colors.

- i suspect white will be the "worst color" but still totally playable if open.

took the RG aggro deck i posted above to the starcity open today. went 6-3 then dropped to catch a train back to boston rather than play out the last round for top 64. was pretty fun and i don't think the deck needs many changes, though i did want a couple more sideboard cards for UWR control since it was the biggest deck in the room by far. might try a 22nd land too since i lost a handful of games due to being stuck on 2 or 3 land with a loaded hand that was bottlenecked by mana

What are you thinking of for the sideboard?

no idea, will have to get back to you on that one. maybe a 3rd domri at the least.

also i never used the blasphemous acts but they're really only in there for one matchup anyway (junk aristocrats) which i didn't play vs. i'm just not sure if its worth having the card in there just for that or if it should be electrickery.

not really feeling m14 so far, seems a lot more portal-esque than m13 did? blue seems good

full spoiler out now - I'm amused by Tenacious Dead, which to me feels like an attempt to "re-do" regeneration.

most of what fennel said above seems like solid advice. seems like the last couple core sets were like that too - the best cards (at uncommon, at least) seemed to cost two colored mana.

I do think people will try Slivers though - while it's true that they're pretty much all playable in a vacuum, the Sliver guy is obviously going to pick them earlier. They're decent but not really remarkable on their own. I remember Onslaught Slivers being the same thing.

whose kid is on the blood bairn art? i feel like either some wizards employee had their kid model for it, or someone won a contest.

wow, just saw the millstone art for the first time, amazing
also kudos for *finally* bumping it down to uncommon!

I don't get the point of making Tenacious Dead (which will henceforth be called Tenacious D by everyone) rather than reprinting Drudge Skeleton or Reassembling Skeleton. The latter was already a crack at a regen variant but played a little differently - we needed a card that was halfway between the two?

my theory is that they may be thinking about getting rid of Regenerate for good and replacing it with this ability, so this is just a teaser card? Regenerate is one of those mechanics that most new players seem to always play wrong anyway.

the set has a lot of mediocre commons and very few good 2-drops, hopefully that doesn't create a race to the bottom like what happened in AVR. if it does then the +1/+1 sliver becomes the best common in the set i think, since it's a strong bear in a set where bears barely exist

the P/T ratios on common creatures grade out much closer to M13 than M12 at least, so i don't think it will be very fast.

If they wanted to move away from regenerate, I think they would have replaced the other two regen cards in the set. Wouldn't mind honestly, Tenacious' templating is more intuitive than the idea of a regeneration shield.

removal in this set seems a lot worse than M13

man, Strionic Resonator seems like it might get a section all by itself in the comprehensive rules. it works very strangely with imprint cards like Spellweaver Helix and Isochron Scepter.

i think it does in fact work how you want it to work with scepter, no idea about spellweaver helix

Spellweaver Helix is bizarre with Resonator. Apparently you exile 4 sorceries, and then when you cast any of the four spells, you can copy all or any of the other three!

am i a bad person if the m14 card i'm most excited about is Burning Earth?

No, this is going to be very powerful versus all the 3-4 color decks out there right now. May be less impressive after rotation.

cider what do you think of the rug aggro deck that 4-0'd this daily?

i've beaten that guy in 8-mans a couple times, the deck seems kind of marginal and not as good as just playing the red deck

i think the bant version of that deck is closer to a real deck, the one with geist of saint traft that mtgo user 'sai_2011' plays e.g. http://mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=601590

wow, looks like R/G aggro is everywhere. given the way people complain about WoTC's treatment of red you'd think it was damn near useless. what beats that deck?

winning the die roll

i've been playing it a lot, it's good and certainly 'tier 1' but i don't feel like i am crushing the format like i did with past decks (naya humans last fall, naya pod last year)

thats not really fair but i feel like my games against r/g are just really coin-flippy, idk, i haven't played any standard in a few weeks now except fnm

i figured that deck was bad, i played something like it (maybe that guy) a few times but i really like the sideboard. sleep! unsummon! ral zarek for some match-up that i dont think actually exists!

im gonna play your r/g list tonight any particular sideboarding advice? it seems p self-evident for the most part

i swapped out the blasphemous acts for electrickery, its a much more flexible card

RG mirror and naya midrange:
-3 hellrider -3 madcap skills +4 volc strength +2 mizzium mortars

naya blitz:
-4 hellrider -3 madcap skills +3 volc strength +2 mizzium mortars +2 electrickery

junk rites:
-4 hellrider +2 mark of mutiny +2 electrickery

sphinx's rev decks:
-4 pillar of flame +3 skullcrack +2 domri against all of them, then depending on their colors/build you cut madcap skills or boros reckoner and add volcanic strength or mark of mutiny or even electrickery if they have sorin/lingering souls

jund:
not really sure about this one, i usually go -4 pillar -3 madcap skills +2 mortars +2 mark of mutiny +3 volc strength but it's possible you want skullcrack or even domri here? the auras are not very good vs them but neither is anything else. my record in this matchup is surprisingly good even so.

aristocrats:
+2 electrickery obviously but i have played this matchup almost never somehow so i don't really have a plan. maybe you cut stromkirk nobles here?

bant midrange:
-4 hellrider +2 mark of mutiny +2 mizzium mortars

mark of mutiny is the worst card in the sideboard and i'm pretty excited to get it out of there for burning earth or whatever else

also you'd think sideboarding would be self-evident but i see people do all sorts of crazy stuff on modo, they are constantly bringing in domri vs me in the mirror match, leaving in hellriders in matchups where it's a liability, etc.

I don't think I've ever sided out Hellrider because it's been the most reliable game closer for me. Is it a liability due to the 4CMC or other reasons as well?

the 4cmc is the liability against junk rites, once they start putting thragtusks into play you can never win so you want to be as low to the ground as possible and you can't afford to have a 4-drop in your hand in the games where you don't draw the 4th land by turn 4. i'd actually consider cutting land in this matchup too.

in the aggro matchups you are going to be behind on board half the time and a 4 mana 3/3 is an awful play when you're behind and need to block. also volcanic strength is such a powerful finisher in these matchups that you don't need the hellrider to close games even when you're ahead.

lol swift 0-2 drop with r/g. that fucking deck

I managed 3-1 with RG tonight. My proudest moment was overloading electrickery after my opponent went all in with lingering souls.

I also finally unloaded my one copy of voice that's been haunting my binder for:
2 domri rade
3 abrupt decay
1 supreme verdict