Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

just gave two fat boxes worth of cards to 4 kids in the neighborhood who wanted to get into the game. didn't give them any of my epics of anything, just a decent selection of cards from when i was playing (eldrazi/mirodan sets). felt really good to get 2 fat boxes out of my house and into the hands of ppl who will actually use them!

i have a giant box of cards i dont need sitting around hoping i'll have a chance to do that at some point but haven't run into an opportunity yet. feels weird to put them in the recycling even if they've already been picked clean of cards that are worth more than the cardboard they're printed on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l0U13vCZ4U&feature=youtu.be

this looks like it should be p good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l0U13vCZ4U

I once gave all my cards (incl. the good ones) to the neighbor kid circa '99, now I regret it.

I will however take free crappy cards if anyone is going to throw them away! My partner & I have enjoyed playing again, but not enough to justify spending money on it.

despite complaining about the boringness of a whole year of ravnica I'm actually really feeling the first handful of preview cards

It looks good and I am so ready for rotation. Bailing on the shortened rotation schedule was an incredibly stupid move.

the core set looked really boring, and I more than got my fill of Dominaria, so I'm also looking forward to a new set. the new mechanics and revealed cards look fine, nothing earth-shattering, but I generally prefer multicolor blocks. also, I keep forgetting the name of the set because Guilds of Ravnica is basically the same as Ravnica: City of Guilds

http://mythicspoiler.com/grn/cards/assassinstrophy.jpg

this card is insane

is it the first 2cmc 'destroy target permanent'? i can't think of another.

what is the flavour of this card??

it's probably the first 2 cmc vindicate, and it's instant speed. this is the most pushed card since the delve stuff imo.

nice card

it's weird to call these efficient removal spells pushed though, they're never going to break the game like the delve draw spells or whatever. i don't think this is a bigger deal than fatal push

lmao

http://mythicspoiler.com/grn/cards/imperviousgreatwurm.html

it's funny, obv it is a powerful card but i wonder if there is a modern deck that even wants this? e.g. jund, would you swap any number of terminates or abrupt decays for this?

the big convoke beefer that had me rolling my eyes was the 7/5 hexproof uncommon. why does every set have to have a variation on a large hexproof dork now?

in bigger formats abrupt decay hits a really high % of things so this might be relegated to sideboard

if I were building a jund deck I would start with this as a 4-of

being able to hit lands is no joke though

yeah, in legacy half the decks literally don't play basics

in modern, jund gets perpetually wrecked by stuff like tron-lands

I'm sure everyone's experienced dying to inkmoth nexus with an abrupt decay in hand

ah v good point, ghost quarter alternate mode is definitely relevant, hadn't considered that