Magic: The Gathering C/D

it might have just been exile to avoid confusion w/r/t bestow creatures coming back

also kills gods

yeah clearly there needs to be answers to indestructible creatures or creatures with big death triggers, I like black getting exile like this. furthermore I'm also very glad they finally seem committed to removing the "nonblack" restriction on a lot of black kill spells (outside of Doom Blade I guess)

fyi time spiral drafts are up this week. it's one of the best limited formats ever if you can get past the absurd complexity level, and is my personal favorite so i highly recommend it. there's a few BS cards in the small sets so 3x time spiral would be even better, but full block is still fun and the range of decks you can get is unmatched by any other format (though innistrad came close)

yeah I am tempted tho this weekend is probably gonna be defined by me waking up at 4 am to go to gp philly

any guides/strategy to it?

i dont really have that many strategy tips for it. if you've played modern masters you've seen a bunch of the good cards already - the suspend creatures are really strong, empty the warrens wins are achievable, there's a thallid deck, etc.

oh yeah the rebels deck from modern masters is from this set too

Hey I'll be at Philly this weekend too. Lemme know if you want to meet up iatee, I still have not met any ilxors irl and should remedy that

my strategy in tpf: savagely moneydraft

TSP block is so nuts. Suspenders are indeed good (especially Errant Ephemron or whatever it was), there's a zillion different decks to make. It's more similar to Cube draft than it is a 'regular' draft format. Mostly I remember how incredibly broken (and time consuming) Sprout Swarm was...outside of Pestilence and Sparksmith it may be the most busted limited common ever.

xp theres not much to moneydraft in the first 2 packs though, but yeah future sight is loaded

a lot of the high pick commons from the first pack made it into modern masters it looks like, a few that didn't are: strangling soot (probably best common), temporal isolation, looter il-kor, fathom seer, the rest of the suspend creatures, crookclaw transmuter, & the black thallid i forget its name

once you're past the first pack i feel like things get more obvious, and again a lot of the better commons you'll recognize from MMA, but just know that a) Shaper Parasite in pack 2 is really strong and b) Sprout Swarm in pack 3 is actually broken and almost ruins the format, it's like a common pack rat, so hate draft them out if you're not green and don't have a strong on-color pick

Ephemeron still my favorite TS common by far, but Soot was quite good. I had a lot of success with blue in general in TS block draft. There's a couple crappy discard spells you should consider picking up late to side in against Sprout Swarm.

sprout swarm's a lot more beatable than pack rat still though, you can race it with fliers/shadow, board in counterspells or targeted discard, etc, or if you have a pinger you can keep it from snowballing and force them to actually use their mana to keep casting it while you do other things

or you can just be too far ahead on board by turn 5 for them to use it effectively

yeah I would argue that Sparksmith with its T: Destroy target creature ability was a little more obnoxious

someone should try to compile the greatest draft commons of all time. though I suspect it would just bring up a lot of bad memories.

Don't just hate-draft Sprout Swarm - if you open it, strongly consider splashing it. It's a slow format with a lot of card draw and looting effects, and splashes are pretty easy.

there's a lot of worse ones than sprout swarm for sure, i don't know if it even makes top 10 worst. pestilence in urza's saga gets my vote for the most boneheaded thing to put at common.

The worst thing about Sparksmith was that after a year of dealing with it, we got Spikeshot Goblin which was pretty close to the same damn card

yeah sparksmith, timberwatch elf, spikeshot goblin were all pretty bad. also anything with banding is miserable to play against in limited.

Off the top of my head:
Wild Mongrel - stupid synergy with everything in the format
Rancor - just couldn't be dealt with for the most part
Ray of Command - last printing was Mirage I believe, but it was better than probably any other card in the set
that Elf that gave +1/+1 for each Elf you had - nearly as bad as Sparksmith, made combat impossible

i can't think of any commons that were too annoying from the past 5 years but i'm sure i'm forgetting one

Don't forget Rolling Thunder. Like Pestilence, the potential for one-sided Wraths really shouldn't happen at common

oh yeah, Ballista Squad was a common in Weatherlight and was also miserable to play against. most players would gladly spend 3 cards (or whatever it took) to get rid of that guy.

mist raven is probably the strongest one we've had in a while but its not really a broken card in function, just too efficient

Mulldrifter from Lorwyn was incredibly powerful for a common. Crypt Rats which I believe was common (also from Mirage block which was all wonky power-wise). Mire Boa and River Boa were both nightmares. And let's not forget Wellwisher. Probably the reason behind 90% of all the Onslaught block matches that went to a draw.

oh, I'm forgetting a really obvious one: Armadillo Cloak

the disparity in power level at common in avr was really high, seraph of dawn getting remade as a rare in set with almost no playables is pretty funny to me

Only common from recent years I can think of that I'd call a mistake, and not even a big one, was Dawnglare Invoker. There were ways to deal with it, and 8 mana was a lot even for that block, but an effect like that just straight up wins you the game. At uncommon, would have been ok.

hey yeah pm me before sat vinnie, I am sure we will have some time to talk between rounds

alt we can just plan to meet in the finals

i have won games vs. an active dawnglare invoker but yeah it's not easy - white was pretty weak in that set though so it seemed like they shoved a lot of the color's limited power level into that one card. if i had to redesign it the first thing i would try is 'tap 3 target creatures'

or 'up to 3' obviously

i'm a bit disappointed by UG god's ability, was hoping for an advantage engine and not a scaling enabler. if there's a pushed god in this set it's one of the remaining two i guess.

Yeah good fix for Invoker, puts it in line with the other Invokers: very good but not game-winning.

webmailed you iatee

i am assuming there will be a card drawing strive card to go nuts with the UG god.

got the webmail

yeah the ug god is very edh

tho strive targets so i guess not

sorry, xp to myself

http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/127/901/635326898266336013.jpg

if this isn't accompanied by a Riddle of Lightning reprint, i'm gonna be disappointed

the disparity in power level at common in avr was really high, seraph of dawn getting remade as a rare in set with almost no playables is pretty funny to me

when did this happen?

in the new set i assume he means. there is a rare that is the same card except with heroic +1/+1

thats what I thought too but "with no playables" makes me wonder

i parsed it as its funny that there was an an apparently rare-worthy common in a set with no playables

AVR was a bizarre draft format all around. I can't think of any other limited format with such a high concentration of bomb rares nor one with so many cards that alternate between "slightly underpowered" and "game ending" depending on when you draw them or what cards you have out when you do.

idk i didn't think it was that terrible or that unusual except for the lack of hard removal. the distribution of power at common was similar to old pre-modern sets. definitely a poorly developed format but i still enjoyed it more than core sets and a few other recent formats like zendikar and 3x gatecrash.

I didn't hate it either, just didn't like essentially being forced into U/G so much, though the B/U "loner" deck was lots of fun if you could get it. I also loved the Goldnight Commander + Thatcher Revolt combo which was basically an instant win. The lack of removal may not have been much of a problem in other sets, but there were so many bomb cards through all three rarities that the format really needed it.

i parsed it as its funny that there was an an apparently rare-worthy common in a set with no playables

yeah i was typing sloppily on my phone and phrased it poorly - seraph of dawn was a common in set with a lot of really bad commons and then was reprinted as a rare in a set with a reasonable # of playables was the point

i enjoyed avr a lot, it was the first format i drafted on mtgo and i played the hell out of it but it wasnt nearly as well balanced as the other sets that have come out since i started playing. i think there were a lot of problems beyond just 'little to no removal', too many cards were situational and too many cards didnt interact well w/ the format like its interesting to see necrobite go from almost completely unusable to a reasonable late pick card.

i don't think the removal was the problem at all, it was the presence of a ton of low-impact cards at common that could almost never trade 1 for 1 with anything (e.g. grounded, banners raised, leap of faith, a bunch of 1/1s and 1/2s) plus the lack of a smoothing mechanic

i think the latter is the biggest factor actually - having enough mana sinks built into a format is such a huge boost to its playability. core sets tend to be bad about this too which is a big part of why i don't like them much.

Well lack of removal was a big issue - outside of Pillar of Fire there really was no way to deal with the various R/W human chaining effects nor was there any good way to deal with a Druid's Familiar outside of 2-1ng yourself (or worse). There definitely felt like a lack of interactivity - most games seemed to come down to who got the best Soulbound combo, or the biggest bomb rare, or the most explosive Human/Thatcher Revolt interactions. Like you could draw your opening hand and figure out very quickly what your chances are.

AVR had a lot of things against it. Removal wasn't great, lots of bad commons AND a few extremely powerful commons. The mechanics were not very skill-testing and decks mostly played on autopilot. I still have a soft spot for the set because I went to the PT that it was the draft format for, so thinking about the set brings up better memories than it deserves.