Magic: The Gathering C/D

wow Jace just tanked hard on MTGO

mtgo prices react a lot faster because there aren't really collectors so card use is mostly utilitarian. plus buying/selling is much faster and has smaller margins

Theros looking nice! Definitely cheers me up after feeling less than enthusiastic about m14.

Minotaurs and gorgons make for an interesting tie back to rtr block. Is Reckoner going to end up being even more powerful?

what is m14???

the current core set that was just released

ROE is fun. drafted a ramp deck that lost in r2 to a kiln fiend deck.

my old american aurelia build for block is doing well. 4-0d a daily with it last week and have a couple 3-1s to go with it. i've won packs more often than not with it - it's pretty versatile especially after the SB.

stocking up on DGM packs for when they go up past 3 tix after m14 siphons all the DGM prize packs out of the system. i have upwards of 100 of the things now. looking forward to the cash-in in a month.

for reference, if you open a pack of DGM you will get an average of 2.25 worth of tix from the pack alone. bots can theoretically be opening the packs they're buying for 2 tix each for a profit. i don't see any way that each pack you buy for 2 tix isn't basically a free tix in a month.

i enjoy these set indices that show the average value of cards in the set. the site in general is quite helpful for me.

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/card/DGM

yeah i had to liquidate my dgm packs unfortunately because i had 100 of them from prizes but was out of tickets to actually play the game with which is the important bit. average card value of 2.25 per pack seems really high though, i'm not sure i believe that. there's only 5 cards in the set that sell for more than 2.25 and they're all mythic rares, so that's a 5/121 chance of making a profit by opening a pack.

am hoping that they'll do something about this new phenomenon of pack prices crashing hard every set, it's good for casual drafters but miserable for ringers who are trying to recycle their winnings into more events

i'm just running some quick estimates now and getting under 1 ticket for the average value of the rare slot in DGM

oops actually it should be 80 not 121 for the denominator so it's over 1 ticket but well under 2 still

yeah 2.25 seems really optimistic - only Advent and Aetherling are the only non-mythics that sell over 2 right now. and about half the mythics are nearly worthless.

also they clarified that those hero cards they previewed aren't actually used in the theros prerelease, they're just things you collect for fighting the special hydra deck at gameday. there will be playable prerelease promos again though like with RTR and GTC, which i guess ended up being less of a big deal than people made it out to be last time so whatever.

i think the only problem with the guild packs was in gatecrash when making boros more consistent probably tilted things too much in that guild's favor. as long as the colors in theros are balanced i think it makes things more fun for the average player.

i did feel bad for the 20% or so of people at my store who straight up couldn't even play the guild they chose since their packs didn't align with it at all (and yes for GTC Boros crushed all)

well that's just the nature of sealed pools - giving people an 80% chance to play their favorite color rather than the normal 40% chance still seems like a net positive

well it's worse because if you totally whiffed that guild in your normal packs, your chances of building a viable deck go way down.

and in general the decks at those prereleases were much better than yer average sealed. I dunno. maybe it didn't actually happen so often - I just did the two. and the guild packs were a good idea.

hey all, what are your thoughts about playing against BW decks like aristocrats or BW humans? I have a real hard time with these. I find myself making a lot of questionable choices in combat and often don't know what the best removal targets are. I think all the creatures with sacrifice and life gain effects confuse me very easily. What do you recommend, especially if you are running aggro decks like RG?

those BW decks match up well against RG - that is unfortunately a bit of a matchup punt. i might even consider bonfire in the side for them though...

loved this, apparently classic

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/370207/what-i-know-about-magic-the-gathering

yeah that's pretty well known though the theory stuff is way out of date and misleading

i haven't really figured out m14 draft yet, so far i had 1 really good RG deck and everything since has been garbage no matter how decent it looked on paper.

finally got a fun m14 deck

http://i.imgur.com/k4u67LR.jpg

Well, Ars Arcanum is back

http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-rtr-block-limited-overview

Lots of data but little insight. It seems his big revelation is that "DGM is faster than you think":

I’m not entirely sure which card is the best common in DGM, but I think that it is a pretty close fight between Runner’s Bane, Haazda Snare Squad, Kraul Warrior.

^ Now this strikes me as being entirely wrong - I think aggro is amazing in this format when you can get it, but as he mentioned there's a lack of the synergy that GTC had (or even the RTR Rakdos decks) and you really have to get lucky to build something so focused. Runner's Bane feels like a liability much of the time and the other two IMO pale in comparison to the Zhur-Taa Druid or Beetleform Mage (Tithe Drinker is also quite good). It may be that he's valuing being single-colored a lot more than I am, but even then I'd probably rank Punish the Enemy over these. I'm confused.

currently planning to play living end in the mocs

someone kill me please

i've been drafting a lot of M14 and i have mixed signals about it. i had the best M14 deck i've had yet tonight and went 2-2 @ FNM. both my losses were very close, going 1-2 in both and being very close to winning. i also probably played badly at various points. ok first the draft deck because i want to commemorate it some how:

2 x festering newt
2 x sentinel sliver
1 x corpse hauler
2 x auramancer
1 x blood bairn
1 x griffen sentinel
1 x accursed spirit
1 x ajani's chosen
1 x serra angel
1 x vampire warlord
1 x nightmare

1 x liliana of the dark realms

1 x bublling cualdron
1 x corrupt
1 x mark of the vampire
3 x pacifism
2 x quag sickness

this draft aside i've done reasonably well @ M13 but i find it rewards having a specfic plan more than M13 did. like, i can't just sort of 'be in black' i have to have an idea of the specific black deck i want, earlier, than i had to in M13. blue does seem like the best color but it's also overdrafted rn at least in my local meta and online. i've only done 6 drafts online but my record is pretty good, i've ended up red aggro a lot which doesn't feel ideal, i often have to work pretty hard for my wins in fair games. i had this argument w/iatee but the b/r sacrifice deck seems like the best archetype but it's p narrow, and hasn't really shown up in any of the mtgo drafts i've done. in my local meta it hasn't really caught on yet i've gotten two pretty easy 4-0s with various builds. i've ended up liking this format a lot, and i wish i had more time to grind the release queues because i'd like to keep figuring it out

that deck would be better without 2 sentinel slivers

haha sure, it would be better with a blightcaster as well, you can't have everything. but it was still so good! and yet...

some basic notes about m14 from my experience so far

-blue is the strongest and deepest color by a mile
-white is terrible because its cards are almost all focused towards stalling the ground and it doesn't have enough good evasion/tricks to break the stalls it creates
-the format is slow enough that you can pull yourself back into games if you miss an early land drop or don't have a play until turn 4. this greatly favors stronger players and control-ier decks.
-2 power 2-drops like coral merfolk, sentinel sliver, and even child of night are the worst they've been in a long time. i don't want these in my deck unless i have a very good reason for it
-in general i want every creature in my deck with less than 4 power to have evasion or some other valuable ability.

white is really terrible but i keep getting passed pacifism and serra angel and trying to tell myself that i can't be that bad. did you end up playing the MOCS tonight btw?

nope, probably playing the last one tonight since i want to play gameday. the only modern deck i have built on modo right now is living end so i guess i'm playing that even though it's not very good

yeah I totally agree on blue (which has a. good versions of its normal tricks b. beatdown creatures at a reasonable cost that you'll be passed if blue is open at all d. a pure removal card in claustrophobia e. time ebb, the best card In ths set). sam black seems to think the blue staff is even playable though I suppose most things become playable when you're sam black. there are just very few unplayable blue cards in the set and so many ways to end up with monstrous tempo/card advantage.

I also like green because they gave it advent of the wurm at common. and hunt the week. i had primeval bounty last night, which feels aetherling/pat rack-esque in its unfairness once it's on board. and tusker and enlarge. with that many groan inducing cards at common and uncommon it's impossible to argue that green is bad.

white is obviously terrible outside of slivers and red is an okay support color but isn't as naturally strong as u/g, its core is easy to kill creatures (5/3, 4/1) and shock can't kill anything worth killing in this format. t2 pyromancer is one of the only scary two drops but it doesn't happen that often. black can be very good or very bad, gets better the more you have, not a fantastic support color outside of a few archetypes.

oh wait briarpack is uncommon

someone I end up with a lot

somehow*

>e. time ebb, the best card In ths set

I disagree with this super strongly! Like I don't even feel like it's a card I want in my deck?

at its worst it results in your opponent skipping a draw step and spending some mana. at its best it wins the game because it is basically time walk and your opponent spends the game a turn behind. time walk that kills auras.

time ebb is fine but i don't think it's close to the best common even in blue. would take claustro, the good fliers, and essence scatter over it

can we do an ilx draft on mtgo? is that even possible?

technically probably against some rule or another but it would work if we all jumped in a queue at once

coordinating 8 people around the world is probably the bigger hurdle

there should be a snail's pace draft and play by email form of mtgo.

I want to do this though especially now that I know I'm getting 5 time ebbs

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

Love it - how did it do?

Also lol'd at this Cuneo 3-0: https://twitter.com/AndrewCuneo/status/365676169976233984/photo/1

Love the idea of all hopping into the same draft, let's totally do it.

i'd be in for that though I dunno how we really make it possible
(mtgo really should allow for private drafts though, same way all the good poker sites do)

i played against a pretty bad opponent at FNM who untapped w/ primeval bounty in games 2 and 3. i alpha striked both times; felt gooooood

is it worth it to buy a bunch of FTV:20 sets on MTGO? how long do they sell them for? Jace is around 33 now for this very reason, but once they stop selling these, does it stand to reason that Jace will climb way back up again?

obviously not to its original value, but maybe like 50-60ish?

jace has very little utility on mtgo compared to paper. if you think online vintage will actually get popular when they release the power 9 (happening within the next year) then it's a good spec, but based on the failure of online legacy it doesn't seem too promising.

Sincere question - why isn't legacy a thing on mtgo? Is it as simple as no-one being willing to fork out $400 for non-"real" copies of FoW?