Magic: The Gathering C/D

i think g/w revolt is kinda awful and am surprised by high many ppl seem to draft it

alright after drafting a bit I have to say no way, G/W revolt is arguably the most consistent deck in the format

the Improvise decks are definitely stronger if you get the right cards, but they also kinda lead you down a dead end a lot of the time. I've drafted a few B/R decks that just don't work if you don't get the right draw.

my strongest decks have generally been u/g 'good cards and tusker' and w/b 2-drops revolt. gw gives you access to a lot of good cards, but as far as payoff cards for the archetypes, rogue refiner is much better than the rallier since you get the value 100% of the time on curve. I have seen lots of pretty good gw decks but few insane ones. I def prefer to be u/g - all the +1/+1 counters / bandar work well with blue's common flyers too, and prey upon + the bounce spell give you enough removal. (if you're lucky maybe you pick up a hunt the weak too.)

w/ w/b if you see a hidden stockpile you can pretty easily draft a token engine (conviction or automaton as the pieces at common) which is just so strong in fair limited. loading up on alley stranglers helps support your 2 drops because once they've come close to stabilizing you still can get damage in with alpha strikes, and b/w token boards work well with eagle.

I've lost to grixis improvise a few times but never drafted it. I mostly seem to lose when they resolve ancestral recall, so I guess that, the ur dude and maybe barricade breaker are the cards that should guide you into the deck? 4/4 hexproof rarely felt relevant to me.

the only time I feel behind vs red-based decks seems to be when they have a scrapheap champion. red doesn't seem consistently fast enough in this format. aether chaser is a really pushed common in a vacuum, but it never seems to beat me, even when they play them t2 on the play.

I did have one pretty insane G/W deck - had two Maps, two Implements, the land enchantment, a ton of Revolt cards (including the Rallier), the Greenbelt Ravager (which triggers Revolt), plus two Ninth Bridge Patrols and two of the self-bounce Mechanics. And an Ajani and a Tusker too, of course. Had some really crazy starts where you'd develop a great board position and keep a nearly full hand by turn 5. Alley Evasion by the way is particularly great in this archetype.

the one card I've soured on is Caught in the Brights. not only is there a lot of self-bounce but leaving the dude out there to Crew vehicles kinda nerfs your advantage, if you can't trigger the removal clause. I'm not sure how good the vehicles are in this format. The 6/6 Crew 3 has been pretty good though, not quite as good as Freighter but it's a tough one to deal with once it gets moving.

Grixis improvise is definitely fun but I think it takes a ton of skill to draft properly. You need to prioritize Renegade Maps and get those 3rd pack Prisms and Serpents. U/R Thopter guy is insane, if it comes down turn 3 you pretty much win b/c you can improvise out everything from there.

BTW is it just me or does this seem like a 16-land format?

3x KLD was a 16 land format, this one has more mana sinks so you can go either way depending on whats in your deck

I think this is def a 16 land format for most decks, sometimes 15 because of maps, tons of cantrips etc

and yeah, pacifism effects are still removal so you play them, but lots of ways to get punished for them. lots of playable bounce and sac effects, even without considering vehicles.

I think almost everyone wants to prioritize renegade maps. is that just the best common? it has to be right?

one reason I really like the automaton cycle is because it gives you late game potential w/o having to play 5/6 drops, so you can keep your land count low but still not be punished as much when you still flood w/ your 16 land deck. esp the black and green ones, which transform into legitimate threats.

i've been taking the good removal and the mana elf over maps but its pretty high among the commons yeah

IDK I only played 16 land in KLD if I got Attunes or a low curve. feel like "curving out" in that format and this format are a bit different.

think you're right about the Map. I'm not unhappy P1P1'ing it. I don't think other drafters have caught up either since I still see them going around as late as Pick 7, probably because the card feels so fillerish. BTW the argument I'd make for Rallier over the Refiner is that bringing back a map or Implement or the land enchantment allows you to hit Revolt on another card the turn after. you can just generate so much incidental value if you get enough of that stuff.

sure, best case scenarios with rallier are great. but it's impossible to ever get an implement with it on curve, and even getting land or draw + double revolt isn't stronger than draw + 2 energy. you never wouldn't play that card, but there are just gonna be plenty of games where you don't have something in your yard t3 + forcing your own revolt often requires mana.

well most of the relevant cards are common. think you're right that Refiner is probably better overall but they're both cards you want passed to you. meanwhile U/R Improvise Thopterman and B/G Constrictor are the sort of cards I would first pick in a weak pack because they can just dominate. a couple days ago I went Constrictor/Bandar/Bandar which was a lot of fun, they both went from 2/2 to 4/4 to 9/9 to 25/25. actually almost lost the game too because I got cute.

g/w is bad because its plan is bad, you have all these creatures that want you to attack but half the format blanks your attackers and triggering revolt on the defensive requires you to play a bunch of shitty cards that arent creatures. g/w cant use vehicles effectively and has awkward removal. most of the time g/w decks are good is because they have good green cards or ajani. also its very easy to just never block against g/w and force them to lose value on their revolt cards. i think the set is pretty balanced and everything is playable given the right combination of cards but g/w is probably the most overvalued combination imo

also fwiw all of my 3-0s on mtgo are with b/g decks with constrictor in them. i have also yet to go worse than 2-1

@iatee cool. i have to figure out if i can stay w/a friend + how difficult getting from manhattan to the venue is but if i go ill msg you my number and maybe we can hang out.

the "shitty cards that aren't creatures" are things like Maps, Implements and Unbridled Growth, all one-mana stuff which cycles. you can load your deck up with them and cut lands if you need to. the difference between that and the Improvise strategy is that the fail case on G/W is that you play a bunch of unexciting Bears n' Baloths, whereas Improvise you need both the artifacts and the big dudes or else the deck stalls. think both G/B and G/W rely a lot on good uncommons. Black's commons are pretty weak, the "destroy target creautre or vehicle" sorcery is good but not exactly a great value card, otherwise I think your best common is the 1/1 Deathtouch. White at least gives you a finisher with the Eagle and I think the 3/1 slots in rather nicely. Also think Alley Evasion + Conviction are pretty underrated.

i know the conventional wisdom is that blue sucks in this limited format but i've found i really want to be blue every draft (except for UW which is boring even when its good)

it's the same place gp nyc was last year they just stopped pretending it was in nyc - still very easy to get there from manhattan. I took the nj transit bus w/ a friend from port authority and it was like 3 bucks and 15 minutes. it's probably no more than a $20 uber from midtown.

I agree w/ lamp on the everything seems playable, if I see a rallier midpack I might consider moving into GW, but more because it's open than because that card is reliably good. I really like sets w/ one pushed gold uncommon per set and what that does for signaling.

yeah I like blue too, the 1u 1/2 flyer has been reliably good for me, and I get them late, and the uncommon 2/1 flyer is very pushed

'one pushed gold uncommon per set' = 'one pushed gold uncommon per color pairing'

yeah the gold 'signpost uncommons' thing that they started in theros has been a huge success for limited formats imo

im reasonably happy to be in blue since i think both u/g and u/r are really good. the thrummingbird is probably my favorite uncommon, ive gotten to go off w/it and the bandar a bunch and its great. this might be colored by the fact that i mostly end up in blue because i first picked some great rare, i keep having baral's expertise in my deck and buddy is that a good card

frogs idk i know most of the revolt enablers cycle but theyre still just air they also prevent you from playing tricks because you still need a baseline level of creatures/removal. and the 3/1 is exactly the sort of card that makes me dislike being g/w. its awful with green's fight cards and cant block well and gets blanked by lots of other commons. you can enchant it w/holy strength of w/e but youve now spent two cards to trade with a peema outrider. *shrug*

well it is a 2-drop, either you get in for 3 or trade for something which triggers revolt. I do see what you're saying, a lot of the strength of the deck is that it can so easily cycle into bomb uncommons and rares, there's no real power plays you can do with the Revolt stuff other than maybe the dude which kills a tapped creature. but it makes it easy to pick up extra creatures and counters here and there w/o losing cards.

i stopped trying to fight over green cards and now all my decks look like this http://imgur.com/a/zRTpx

y'all play hearthstone?!?

UR is great, not the flat out strongest colour pair but capable of lightning fast starts and the most fun imo. i def lean in that direction early in the draft.

mh i tried it for a while but honestly it does pale

without meaning to i built an aid from the cowl deck: http://i.imgur.com/Vxu63hX.png

it did some work the couple times i had it out but i think it is probably unplayable. my deck was good anyway and would've been much better with a daring demolition instead in most matchups.

mh, there were a couple months in 2015 where I obsessed over hearthstone, playing all day every day, powering my way up the ladder, until one day I just stopped, and I never played again. It's a very well designed game and mtgo could learn a lot from it, but it completely lacks the depth and variety of mtg. It gets dull and repetitive real quickly.

I feel you

i played hearthstone a bit when it first came out but got bored of it before they started releasing expansions and never went back

theres a thread for it in ILG i think

I played it for a while too. I never felt like I had "solved" the game, but I also could tell it didn't have the same depth as Magic. Wish mtgo would play as well as it, that's for sure

Hearthstone is designed for online play whereas MTGO has to conform to the whims and quirks of the paper game. If Magic was digital only I bet it would have been designed a bit differently.

kind of amazing how well the newer sets play in comparison to some of the older flashback drafts - just messes of weird triggers and oddly worded cards

did you ever play with the Graft mechanic online? that shit is a nightmare

yeah funny you mention that, Graft was the reason why I waited so long to get into MTGO. I had a friend who was playing at that time and it seemed awful. not to mention Sensei's Divining Top, annoying in paper magic but super obnoxious on MTGO.

I find top less annoying on mtgo because slow players actually just time out instead of forcing draws

speaking of poor interface, I tend to play very fast, which has led me to cast chandra's revolution accidentally clicking on my own land twice. I felt a little less like an idiot when I witnessed an opponent do the exact same thing.

build your own magma rift

preparing to play some extremely good and interactive magic http://imgur.com/a/7Fa50

lol. looks like a sweet build. are the statuaries there specifically to get a 2-3 mana discount on hardcast ulamog?

if anyone enjoys magic content for giggles would highly recommend the latest video series by caleb on channel fireball

statuaries are there as a plan b to ramp to ulamog off of clues/thopters/puzzleknots

oh yeah, forgot about clues. lol betraying myself as a non-constructed player.

wow, that looks like a fun deck

its pretty good but idk if its better than the more straightforward build that just plays nissa's renewal as the bridge to ulamog

http://i.imgur.com/T155aSn.jpg

been drafting decks like this a lot, kinda plays out like Cube sometimes

i noticed that AER only has one unc0mm0n pr1ntrun online so i mapped it: https://pastebin.mozilla.org/8978613

it loops around bottom to top

please don't share this on bigger forums i don't want wotc to go in and reshuffle it

sweet thanks dude.

i don't know if it is me or them but this block the uncommon runs have seemed much more obvious. i think they have been more deliberate about what they run together, e.g. the aether hub/meltdown/serv. conduit run in KLD. in AER i notice i am always passing hungry flames whenever i pick onslaught.

yeah in past sets there have been multiple runs but there's clearly only 1 now, maybe 2 for large sets. i didnt think to do this with KLD and it wouldnt be as quick or useful to do now with it only being the 3rd pack of drafts

wow cider, that's actually a pretty big catch

yep I noticed this too but didn't think much of it. significant because 3 of the worst KLD uncommons always seem to go together

the fact that MTGO adheres to a print run at all is O_o

yeah it seems like it would be harder to do that than not do that

in AER i notice i am always passing hungry flames whenever i pick onslaught.

yeah this was the first of these that i picked up on because its often been a difficult pick, similar to the veteran motorist/disintegration run or the underhanded designs/aetherborn marauder run (which isnt really close but was frustrating for signaling purposes) in KLD

pretty disappointed work commitments kept me from playing gp pittsburgh this wknd, i feel pretty good abt standard rn

What are you running in standard these days?

xp they've always mimicked the paper print runs on modo, they just seem to have left out a step for this block. If you open a paper booster pack right now, I suspect you will find that 2 of the uncommons are within 2 spots of each other on my list, but the 3rd is not.

http://i.imgur.com/nbEZ8bw.jpg

this one was fun