Magic: The Gathering C/D

anyway, with it only being a friendly league hopefully it'll find a good level, and the glut of new legendaries hitting tomorrow will make things interesting. i'll see where it's at after i've played the new limited a while.

yeah i think once the new set is out there will be enough options to make it interesting

Hi

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/bb26gd4yhxpmzia/20180421_235415.jpg?dl=0

playing 2 prerelease together, gf and I opened up a playset of karns. pretty nuts. wondering whether to trade off our bounty or hold on to them. my instinct is hold.

*prereleases

Jeez, that's nice. Split the difference? Hold 2, trade 2.

I think Karn is a solid hold. If he's good, he's gonna be used in a lot of decks, possibly as a 3-4 of. Lot of potential for the price to skyrocket

i don't think Karn is very good and he's being priced as if he's a format staple. i'd sell em if i had em

this is a really interesting draft format, as expected. the possible hole is how poor red appears to be, but i think that is being somewhat overplayed right now. ppl have got used in recent sets to dropping an aura on a 2 drop and winning the game, and that's not really on the menu here because the 2 drops are pretty crappy and the removal is better and/or cheaper. red wants to have some kind of synergy, and i think UR wizards and RG kicker can be legit archetypes (maybe WR equipment?) and red being so poor as one of 2 colours in a non-synergy deck means that although the colour is spread thin across these archetypes, no one else should be taking the cards these deck wants. i can't imagine playing BR in this format unless it is an all-removal plus bombs deck.

so there aren't that many assertive decks, and as a result the format looks like it will be a bunch of slowish midrange decks with a high power level due to really op uncommons. to be competitive those decks really need those uncommons, and so there is a very strong incentive to splash. based on my experience so far, if you aren't splashing one or two cards you are probably doing it wrong. the twist is that the colour fixing is horrrrible, which in practice creates a pretty compelling tension. in the draft i did yesterday, i picked a WB rare and a strong B uncommon, and 3rd pick with no strong cards in either W or B i took the 3 drop green dude that colour filters, as that increased the chances i could play both my first 2 picks. green is the deepest colour at common but it is going to get stretched pretty thin when everyone is trying to use it as the base for 3/4 colour decks.

i would guess the ppl who end up loving this format are going to be the ppl who recognize this and draft around it; whereas there are going to be a bunch of ppl steadfastly playing sensible 2 colour decks, or playing 666 mana every draft, who come out of the format hating it.

It definitely seems like first picking a powerful gold card is a much more reasonable option than usual.

I've done three drafts so far, red each time. First one started with Siege-Gang into Chainwhirler, ended up with a 3-0 mono-red deck, splashing a couple removal spells. The Cyclops pairs really well with removal (obv)

Next went 1-2 with what I thought was an insane control deck. triple Fight with Fire, double Vicious offering, Fiery Intervention, Wizards Lightning with Josu Vess and Darigaaz as finishers. Kept losing to six-toughness creatures like Zahid and the Wurm, which might be the magic toughness number this set

Then 1-2 with a terrible RW aggro deck. Actually, I haven't played against a single aggro deck yet, maybe because there aren't the commons for one

It's a weird format so far. There's a lot of uncommons on power level with rares, but also a lot of removal to keep them in check

Opened a Karn in my draft tonight. Never drew it, still 3-0ed with my BG deck, then opened another Karn in prize packs. Not too shabby. Knocks off about $85 from the UW control deck I'm scrambling to build. All these new mythics are killing me!

Yeah seriously the new WG deck is like just all the expensive mythics in Dominaria

Still need Lyras, but I got to test my control deck today with Gideons and History of Benalia's in the sideboard. Seemed pretty powerful, especially when I went full superfriends. Will need to test more to see if it is viable without the angels.

The Raff versions of UW are intriguing, but I'm not convinced the flash ability is that great or necessary. Meanwhile, Blink of the Eye was surprisingly good. Bounce/draw is great, it's basically Cryptic Command.

I usually ignore Std because I suck at it (and it also sucks, often) but this time I need to test for the PT. Started out with GW midrange and struggled with sideboarding and sequencing - there were a lot more decisions than I anticipated! Think I need a more mindless deck to start with

There are a number of different aggro varients that seem good at the moment. I like the looks of the BW one.

Yep think that's my next deck to try

changes to brawl: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/future-brawl-2018-05-10

biggest are the detachment of brawl banned list from standard and the change to 20 starting life in 1 vs 1. brawl banned list is now baran, spyglass, copter. i like the former a lot, having recently done a whole 5 game league vs baral decks with my vraska. i don't love the life total change, i think it will really push curves down which is a bit less fun, but i imagine overall the format will be better for having viable aggro.

singleton already pushes against aggro hard enough i think

this draft format is really wonderful, possibly the best regular expansion since i started playing. however, i think i have to tap out already because i can barely win a match. i did p mediocre in ixalan block but i put that down to just hating it so much. but i think i may just be bad now? v sad.

It's been kind of feast or famine for me depending on how solid my curve is. I tend to gravitate towards the more control oriented cards, which works given enough cheap removal and blockers, plus solid top end, but can fall flat in the face of good avgr decks. Also, I need to stop falling in the trap of picking the triple color rares if my mana base doesn't support it well.

I've been impressed by how challenging the draft still is after about 15 drafts. Lot of choices between synergy, power, and consistency. Cards that are filler (like that 5/5 artifact trampler or the 2/2 that adds counters to Sagas) get way better in the right deck. The play is interesting too, and while I wouldn't say aggro is great, I've had some success with lower-curve tempo decks that bounce and remove blockers, or evade. It's a good format overall

idk i think this format is trash - the power level of cards is widely disparate the answers are weird and clustered in only a few colors games are often very uninteresting play/draw matters too much &c &c &c

Apart from the power level being disparate, that's been pretty opposite my experience. About 1/3 or more of my games have gone long (though I still wouldn't ever draw in draft) and usually come down to something breaking the stall. I've found it pretty interesting whether to sandbag removal for said bombs or try to use it to tempo my opponents out

i don't think Karn is very good and he's being priced as if he's a format staple. i'd sell em if i had em

― ciderpress, Sunday, April 22, 2018 6:28 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was wrong about this, sorry all

Lol, Karn's ok

Been enjoying playing uw, even doing decently against red decks, but I'm probably just dodging their nut draws. I'm sure in another week I'll be extremely sick of all red decks.

I am the king of holding onto the wrong cards, so it's pure coincidence that I called Karn correctly. Case in point, I thought Walking Ballista would go even higher than 30 tix and now I'm stuck holding a couple that I'll probably take a 10 tix loss on

I went 3-5 at the PT, overall had a fun experience. Both draft and standard are in a good place and I had a lot of great matches, including an epic game against Craig Wescoe. Made a huge blunder in round 8 that likely cost me making day 2, but can't complain much. Most proud that I was only a few cards off a couple of the top 8 decks

I'm playing uw at a team rptq this weekend, anyone have any tips / sb guides? 0 reps so far.

What is your list looking like?

I was gonna go off the brad nelson pro tour list maybe: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1127540#paper

Looks solid. One card I really like right now is Gideon. I play 1 main, 1 side. It's great at buying you more time to dig for key spells.

I also like Hieroglyphic a bit more than Glimmer. I play 2 Hieroglyphics and 1 Glimmer in the main. If you can cycle a Hieroglyphic or Cast Out on turn 1, it's almost always correct to do so to dig into lands or cheaper action. The cycle is huge in helping to hit lands.

Another good one for me is Aether Meltdown. It gets vigilance creatures and vehicles. It's nice because it leaves creatures in play that can be mopped up with fumigate for max lifegain value. Fumigate is a key card, so play it wisely. Settle, OTOH, gets played around most of the time, so don't be afraid to fire it off for a single creature, especially if it can he recurred with gearhulk.

You can bounce History with Blink and re-play to get more knights.

If you play teferi and minus vs red, be prepared to lose it to Chainwhirler. Disallow bomat sac ability can be devastating to red. Many red decks right now go bigger than the ranumap versions. You need to hold removal for their 4 and 5 drops. They are very bad at coming back once they burn through their hand.

Vs. Mono-green be careful of their many anti-control cards: Blossoming Defense, Brontodon, Carnage Tyrant, Heroic Intervention, Serpopard.

With sideboarding, I almost always side into more and cheaper threats, taking out some number of teferi and gearhulk (aporoach for you), plus taking out some card draw and dislows vs creature decks.

For these versions without any maindeck creatures, you need to be extra mindful of the clock. I think opponents recognize this and have a tendency to slow play.

I like the deck, but without reps, I wouldn't play UW because it's too easy to draw the match. In a control mirror (and you'll run into that often), you need to play fast to have a chance of finishing. After five leagues with the deck, I still often timed out online. Lot of annoying things to remember like untapping lands with Teferi, using Azcanta on your own turn because Teferi untaps it, etc

Yeah, I steered away from the no win condition version because of this, but you do get to a point where every turn has a bunch of triggers and activations to manage. Luckily, if you get to that point you are probably winning. I feel like I've gotten to the point where I can play pretty fast, especially if my opponent isn t painfully slow. Hoping to run this in upcoming pptqs.

iatee i think our current configuration is esper/monored/snake. which rptq are you guys playing?

the jersey one. we're on mono-red, mono-green and uw, but none of us have practiced much. my practice was mostly 'watch the pro tour' but I'm borrowing the deck online tonight.

vinnie, I basically agree with you, but someone on our team has to play the blue deck. I generally play pretty fast fwiw.

Running uw control at a PPTQ in the morning. The build I have has been feeling pretty good lately, but I have a feeling it's going to be tough going.

Good luck!

Thanks!

We top 8'd our rptq but couldn't convert. I played Lyra main instead of approach as an rptq meta-call and it was quite good.

Nice work nonetheless. Yeah Lyra basically forces BR to have a Disintegration or lose. That and Hazoret were the cards I least wanted to see

the lyra thing is interesting - our control seat played a slow esper deck and didnt finish that many of his matches and his one loss was our match for the invite to b/r. pretty disappointed. we played esper/snake/scrounger red and the two aggro decks felt pretty good

that's really disappointing lamp. we were green splash black/red/uw. we lost to red/esper/green, I was on route to beat the green player and our green seat would have beat his opponent g3 if he had a half decent hand.

anyone gonna be in vegas? I'm going but skipping modern and just playing limited.

Anyone else following EFro's WSOP run. Dude is sitting on $10M in chips, which should put him very close to the top of the pack. The field has already narrowed to under 100 people from around 8000.

He's currently in 5th. I don't recognize any of the other names in there so I'm gonna pull hard for him. Always loved to see Magic dudes achieve success in the poker world. My Dad pushed me hard in that direction when I was a kid..."it's like that shit you play, except you can actually make money at it!!" ...in retrospect he was absolutely right

poker was accessibly lucrative for a minute in the mid 00s but now you have to be actually good at it again

honestly feel like my life would be significantly different had I ran good back in '04 when I had my first go at it, instead of losing my fifty bucks and swearing it off for over a year. back then you could crush $2/$4 NL without being any good. not only that but you could clear like $1k in bonuses every month pretty easily if you knew what you were doing. sadly I figured that out only a few months before it all went downhill :/

efro is like the pro version of the guy I hate at every lgs, I refuse to ever root for anyone with a literal neckbeard

everyone i know whos played vs him at PTs/GPs says he's mildly unpleasant which definitely fits that profile

WOTC revoked WPN status for a shop with Kekistani flags and other bullshit, predictable meltdown has ensued.

yeah keep coming across random complaints about it in various inappropriate places, but gratifyingly always being shouted down in volume. wotc seems to be sincerely, and effectively, taking responsibility for the overall experience of its player community