Magic: The Gathering C/D

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yeah that's pretty well known though the theory stuff is way out of date and misleading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

that's like 90% of it yes. there aren't enough copies of the older staples, and it's a vicious cycle of people won't buy in for that much $ because no one plays it, which means no one plays it. also modern caught on a lot harder on MTGO than irl initially, which peels interest away from legacy.

do people think that it's just a matter of time before it catches on? I mean even in spite of all this, Jace was quite valuable before FTV:20...

also i think MTGO players tend to skew towards new-schoolers like me who never liked it when blue cards were blatantly overpowered, and legacy is sort of a time-capsule-suspended version of that type of magic

As someone who has only played Legacy casually with friends' decks, part of the fun for me is that I'm killing my opponent with hundred dollar bills. I still get excited casting JTMS while cubing irl; that excitement doesn't translate to MTGO. Maybe I'm alone in that, but I imagine that's some of the appeal for the hardcore Legacy players, that they get to play with physical, super expensive cards that they may have owned since they began playing. MTGO Legacy has none of that history baked in.

i honestly don't see legacy growing much past its current level of 'a daily event fires on most days'. i think the format is deeply flawed and inaccessible beyond just the card prices and has been propped up by the SCG open series for the past few years without which it would crash pretty hard.

i do wonder how much of it is also legacy players not embracing mtgo? there's a pretty decent legacy scene in southern ontario and from casually talking to people that play there's little interest in mtgo. i do like the idea of vintage becoming an interesting mtgo format, since it sort of makes more sense as a digital format than a paper one

also i bought a playset of nimbus maze today, just on the offchance

yeah i think nimbus maze or daybreak coronet is most likely for the future sight plant but who knows

here's what i'm currently up to in standard
http://i.imgur.com/2MUXcEJ.jpg

don't laugh, it works

i played against so many of those decks last weekend, they seem good

its really good! i thought it was garbage when i played it earlier in the year but voice and paladins put it over the top finally. just 4-0ed a daily without much trouble.

http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-m14-draft-overview

agree w/ the dude for the first time, tho none of the insights really required 'big data'

archetype win rate also kinda a tricky thing because G/W slivers is maybe the best deck if it's open but G/W not slivers is pretty terrible. for a lot of decks it's less about color archetype than 'did you pull off gimmick x'

on tuesday I had a super solid u/w flyers deck and lost to my friend who played t2 mana sliver t3 doublestrike sliver t4 megantic sliver. with enlarge in hand.

we've got more legit-sounding text for the monster mechanic in theros now, it looks like:

activation cost: Monstrosity N (if this is not monstrous, put N +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes monstrous)

and then the duel deck hydra preview thing also has an ability that triggers when it becomes monstrous

curious if they're going to use this mostly on splashy higher rarity cards with bonus triggers or if there will be random commons too like the standard 1G 2/2 that can become a 4/4 for six extra mana or whatever