Magic: The Gathering C/D

I think it will be like lord of the rings and you will find it very difficult to give up that power

i have no recommendations for standard now, i started losing with hexproof which is why i swapped decks for the PE

gonna go back to just jamming red aggro until rotation i think and save my tickets

interesting to see that the r/g aggro deck with reckoner is still competing on mtgo while it's fallen out of favor in paper with the Kibler r/g build taking its place.

The new mega game store in Austin is putting up either boxes of Modern Masters or FTV: 20 as prizes for FNM standard this month, so I'm going to try to bag one of those with my version of the r/g deck.

yeah i'm still playing that deck in irl events since it's the only deck i own, and it's still fine. i put 2-3 burning earth in the sideboard and that's the only new change with M14. have considered chandra as a 1-of too.

I've been wondering about chandra in there too since I pulled one in the last draft I entered. It could play a similar role to Domri in terms of card advantage.

I'm also trying to plan out where the deck is going post-rotation. I don't see a good finisher that can step in for Hellrider at the moment.

dunno if you've experienced a standard rotation before, but basically throw everything you know out the window and start over. the go-to aggro deck next season could be white weenie for all we know

I suppose, but I still expect some r/x aggro variation to be competitive since very few cards in the deck are going away and the only crucial one is Hellrider. Compare to something like Jund Midrange where the deck is pretty much going out of existence.

yeah i agree with that, its just important to realize that environments change a lot at rotation. at this time last year, thragtusk, huntmaster, olivia, garruk primal hunter, farseek, and bonfire were all standard-legal an d yet jund midrange was unplayable. this year it's been one of the top decks with that exact same set of cards.

I'm toying with a few potential changes to the r/g deck. Let me know what you think.

• Moving 2 Domri from sideboard to main deck in place of 2 burn spells
• Upping count of Burning Earth in sideboard from 2 to 3
• Adding 1 copy of Mutavault to main deck in place of a spell, would put me at 22 land
• Adding 2 Scavenging Oozes to main deck in place of a couple spells or to the sideboard to swap with Firefist Striker

are you playing a burning-tree version of r/g?

yes

This is what I'm considering:
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Stromkirk Noble
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Firefist Striker
4 Flinthoof Boar
4 Ghor-Clan Rampager
3 Boros Reckoner
3 Hellrider

2 Pillar of Flame
2 Madcap Skills
2 Searing Spear

2 Domri Rade

1 Mutavault
4 Stomping Ground
4 Rootbound Crag
3 Temple Garden
10 Mountain

Sideboard
3 Skullcrack
3 Burning Earth
2 Electrickery
1 Mark of Mutiny
1 Traitorous Blood
2 Volcanic Strength
3 Mizzium Mortars

i had absolutely no success w/that deck but my thinking would be that ooze is probably not good for you - you're really a red deck so you wont have much green to activate/cast him and you typically want to be curving out anyway and not leaving mana up. you also already have good match-ups against the decks that ooze is good against and you don't care much about you're own life total. i like domri a lot right now but you probably want removal more but i can see why he'd be better than spear. burning earth seems good, although the meta has definitely started to adjust to it on mtgo. i had an oddly large # of mana problems with that deck but i think it can probably support a mutavault. ::shrug::

ooze is bad, not enough green mana and too mana-hungry anyway

1 or 2 mutavaults might be doable

domri should stay in the board, he's not great in this deck except as card advantage vs control

just as a point of reference my current deck looks like the one above except for:

-2 Scavenging Ooze, -2 Domri Rade, -1 Mutavault, -1 Temple Garden, +1 Pyrewild Shaman, +2 Searing Spear, +1 Pillar of Flame, +1 Madcap Skills, +1 Mountain

and in the sideboard
-1 Burning Earth, -1 Mizzium Mortars, -1 Skullcrack, +2 Domri Rade, +1 Electrickery

So the main change would be to sub out some spells for a couple more creatures. I haven't had problems with mana since the curve is so low. Adding Mutavault would bump up the land count by 1. I'm interested in the ooze because it could be a nice midgame mana sink against a removal-heavy deck.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/08142013c

lol I'm not tripping am I? they revised these numbers without mentioning it

"Phantom Points come with a new graphic, and they can be used as entry fees to events. Phantom Points open up additional possibilities for future events and prizes. On August 21, Phantom AVR Sealed, Phantom M14 Sealed, and Phantom RTR Block Sealed will all have an entry fee of 6 Event Tickets OR 10 Phantom Points."

haha yep, nice catch. still think 4 or 5 tix is fair price, not 6

And the other option was 10 phantom points + 2 tix.

Still the most irksome element to me is that the prize payout isn't either packs or at least something that can get you in to other types of events.

at least now they're kinda okay for grinding out the last few QP you need. making them tradeable would almost make it worthwhile. (I still doubt many people are going to play these but it is nice to see them respond to the massive backlash at least)

Nice job iatee!

Kinda bummed by the theros art tbh - wanted something more http://jaddeyekabir.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/sarpedon-vase.jpg

https://twitter.com/MagicOnline/status/369601413141508096

so happy I wrote an angry email

prob still not gonna play

i'm still getting crushed in m14 drafts, it's probably mostly variance but it's kind of discouraging. i've had a lot of cool decks that looked powerful but haven't panned out.

I feel like the colors are so disproportionately powerful and the alternate strategies (slivers, act etc.) so linear that you're less likely to end up with an 'okay' deck that you can carefully pilot to wins if you didn't end up w/ blue or green or enough acts or w/e

yeah that's spot-on i think - you want your deck to be as fast as possible or as slow as possible since if you end up in the middle then you need to be packed full of the good green and/or blue cards to win

i get mad at the set every time i look at the white commons in my sideboard and there's an angelic wall, griffin sentinel, pillarfield ox, dawnstrike paladin, siege mastodon, and suntail hawk

white had started to be ridiculously open lately, although that wasn't as true last night as it had been for about a week or so prior, that i've been consistently X/w. i like the gimmick decks in this so i've been happiest moving into B/w enchantments and B/r sacrifice if they look at all open. my record for this format is much worse than it was for M13 though, partly because i don't think it fits my playstyle very well, i tend to like aggressive tempo decks in limited, i have had a hard time playing both against and with the slow blue and black decks that seem strongest in this format. i hate disperse btw, which makes me sad because unsummon was my most drafted common in M13

why do you hate disperse, it's one more mana and sometimes you get to do boss moves like disperse the trollhide midcombat

I mean...it's no time ebb for sure

disperse doesnt gain you the same advantage because the texture of the games is mostly different. im racing less often, im trading creatures in combat less often, i want to remove blockers less often. and i very rarely find situations where playing disperse on a non-creature is helpful. i mean sure sometimes it lets you kill a gladecover scout but ::shrug::. its easier to play around than unsummon was in this set, its harder to disperse/scatter because of the way blue-based decks curve now. this is my xp at least. disperse and frost breath and time ebb just aren't that good.

creatures in this set are so dumb

my experience is 100% the opposite, the number of my games that have been decided by those cards is astounding

i am featured in daily decks today!
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/deck/1304

i feel kinda bad about getting credit for the deck though when i didn't create it myself and the guys who did put a lot of work in on it

Written by LSV no less! Nice one!

that seems like a challenging deck to play, i bet it is a lot of fun.

it was a bit too slow so i ditched it and am back to playing elves. it was real cheap though, only 3 tickets for the entire deck (most pauper decks run you like 30-50)

i haven't really looked at pauper much but 3 tix is right in my sweet spot

i can't say i recommend getting into pauper right now to tell the truth, the temporal fissure combo decks are incredibly frustrating to play against and are a huge portion of the field since it's the de facto 'best deck'.

commons-only may sound like a chill format, but as it turns out, the power level of decks is really high and there's a kind of steep learning curve to playing against the broken combo decks without getting your ass kicked

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/silvestri-says-m14-by-the-numbers/

yeah i knew that data was floating around out there, its apparently very against the mtgo TOS to collect it though so it's hard to actually get a copy of it from anyone who has it because they don't want to get in trouble

finally 3-0'd a m14 8-4 draft:
http://i.imgur.com/RiBr0TG.jpg

I had a really sweet w/b enchantment deck last night in swiss but I threw a match due to a lazy duress. white is getting so open that my #2 serra angel wheeled.

wait is that a foil thune?

shhh

how do you like Goblin Diplomats? I've been pondering whether it might have a role in standard.

its fine in limited, i don't see it cracking standard except maybe as a sideboard card vs bigger creature decks

red's 2-drop slot is still loaded after rotation, with burning-tree emissary, young pyromancer, firefist striker, ash zealot, and gore-house chainwalker.

I'm still waiting for the Young Pyromancer deck to come along

there are young pyromancer decks in all formats, what are you looking for?

if they exist I just haven't seen them. it's definitely the M14 card (along with Chandra) that makes me want to build a Standard deck again.