Magic: The Gathering C/D

gerry t's podcast is the only one i feel like that about

it's obv not as relevant if you don't play a lot of constructed though

yeah I like gerry t but don't play enough standard to care

i've caught pro points once or twice and it is good, PV and sam in particular are smart, articulate, interesting dudes. i listen to the first couple of episodes of lord of limited after a new set comes out, those guys are very good at quickly nailing down a few key things about a new draft format in a way pre-LSV LR used to be.

I'll check that one out. LR has always been kind of wack, they have a pretty narrow minded approach to the point where in certain formats it's been easy to identify the LR listeners just by how they draft and play

man these spoilers are really making me wanna get back into Magic Online

i went on my account the other day and bought playsets of glacial fortress and friends...

i was playing a lot of live poker this summer and came to really enjoy both pro points and gam podcasts, as a person who previously never listened to podcasts

most standard stuff is really cheap rn on mtgo

I've been playing standard on arena and enjoying it, it's not super competitive compared to mtgo but I've grown to like the arena software and I think that mtgo straight up won't exist in 3 years

online poker pretty much took over all my MTGO time

is now a good time to sell off ? my account has a ton of play points and a decent collection worth maybe 500-600 tix or so

I don't think there's an immediate urgency, but who knows

I took the introduction of Brawl to be an acknowledgement that older cards wouldn't be making it on to Arena anytime soon, so I would guess mtgo has a little longer horizon than that, but they can't keep them running in parallel for too long. I wouldn't be surprised if by the fall set next year new limited formats aren't available on mtgo anymore. I think it's very likely to die in stages.

mtgo is a necessary practice tool for competitive play and i wld be very surprised if it phased out anytime w/in the next three years in any way. its also p much the only way i play magic so i wld be sad to lose it, although its probably not going to be around forever

yeah i don't think mtgo is going anywhere soon

they will condense event offerings long before they discontinue so that'll be the early indicator

So what's the best prerelease guild from a value perspective?

I think Dimir will get me the most cards I need if I want to continue playing standard control decks, but Golgari might have the most raw card value because of Trophy and Vraska.

Thoughts?

they all seem roughly even to me. but yeah golgari if you want to fish for the overpriced card and then rip off some kid in a trade if you hit on it

Lol, ok, wasn't looking to rip off any kids

like all ravnica sets once people actually start playing the dual lands will become the most valuable cards other than a couple mythics that are hard to predict

True, that's also been a consideration of mine as I imagine some guild pacts would have shocks. I have playsets of Temple Garden and Sacred Foundry, but need the other 3, especially Watery Grave.

mtg arena open beta starts today, with the final account wipe

I'll probably mess around a bit but save all my resources for a future standard deck

Teferi getting oracled, still busted.

I'm strongly thinking I need a 4th copy despite the absurd price. Still waffling over whether I should jump on Nexus.

well the errata makes it (ever so slightly) better

Yeah, being forced to untap lands was a pain, it makes sense.

I just find it funny that was the part they felt they needed to fix.

4-0'd my prerelease with disinformation campaign. card feels really busted for an uncommon, like the raw advantage it gives you once you've got an engine going is planeswalker-esque

Nightveil Sprite + Disinformation Campaign was pretty busted for me.

Dipping my toes back into Arena now that the new set is there and everything's been wiped. Might see what GRN sealed is like on there.

i went 3-1 with golgari, it was solid but super boring compared to the first 2 ravnica iterations, they replaced the shoveling stuff into your graveyard with incremental trading and sacrificing, doesn't really feel any different than a generic core set GB strategy. pretty disappointing. there's also no raise dead effect at common in the golgari set which is ???

meanwhile dimir has like 50 surveil cards and lots of payoffs for it

more interested in standard than limited for this one

It would be cool if standard turbo surveil works as a deck.

hard for it to be turbo when it's 1 or 2 on most cards, past standard dredge decks needed to put 3-4 cards in the gy per enabler spell to work properly

imo surveil, at least how it has been implemented in this set, is too strong and dimir is the clear strongest guild as a result. mostly i think the problem is that it doesn't have a cost - it's put on cards that could easily be, or that we've actually seen recently, at the same rate without it.

that's fair though...Dimir was super weak in Gatecrash, which was kinda nice since everyone knew it was weak so it was always open

I didn't even feel like 'dimir is always open' got you much, since the best dimir deck was at par with an okay boros deck

but yeah, surveil as an ability is just 'you get way better card selection' which is already pure upside, you don't have to do anything to make that good. but then they loaded a bunch of bonuses on top of that (and this creature gets bigger!)

so far the dimir decks I've played have weirdly felt like blue decks in legacy. half the deck is card selection so you never draw another land when you don't want to, and you have a massive amount of virtual card advantage (plus actual card advantage with that 2/3 common, disinformation campaign etc.) I haven't figured out whether that means you can cheat on lands and go down to 16 sometimes, since you can generally burn through your deck to find lands when you need to. but at the same time dimir removal is expensive and maybe you just want to ensure you hit your early land drops, and surveil is your flood insurance, so maybe you play even more lands. or maybe these things cancel out and you play 17 lands.

but yeah, surveil as an ability is just 'you get way better card selection' which is already pure upside, you don't have to do anything to make that good. but then they loaded a bunch of bonuses on top of that (and this creature gets bigger!)

yep, plus I think they have a high percentage of cards that surveil or get bonuses. seems like every Dimir deck will be a Surveil deck and will want the build-arounds, whereas Golgari can go Undergrowth or not, Izzet doesn't want every Jump-start card, etc. Dimir seems like the clear best guild, but I've also played this set zero times so far so my opinion is totally unqualified

yeah that's what i was getting at with my previous post, dimir is the only guild in this set where this iteration of it is more exciting than its versions in the previous 2 ravnicas and it feels like they've seriously overcompensated for gatecrash

like even just looking through the card file before playing anything gave the impression that this is The Dimir Set, their mechanic shows up way more than the 10-12ish cards guild mechanics usually get

just to back up my point, # of cards with mechanic word on them in large rav sets:

RAV
convoke - 15
radiance - 10
dredge - 12
transmute - 12

RTR
populate - 11
overload - 12
detain - 9
scavenge - 10
unleash - 11

GTC
battalion - 11
cipher - 11
bloodrush - 11
extort - 11
evolve - 11

GRN
convoke - 14
jump-start - 10
undergrowth - 12
mentor - 13
surveil - 28

real curious what their internal justification was for this big of a break with the rav formula for a single guild

Could be they see it as a replacement for cycling in standard, a plentiful way to smooth out draws, and reduce the luck factor a bit.

yeah I don't think it's fair to compare surveil - which is really just scry - to stuff like populate and cipher

the problem isn't that it's everywhere, the problem is that the payoffs seem a little too good and the cards are undercosted. you don't need a payoff for scrying.

yeah i think if there was one payoff card at each rarity it'd be fine but there's like 5 uncommon ones which is insane

just have the spybug and the enchantment that +2s your surveils, that's enough

convoke - 14
jump-start - 10
undergrowth - 12
mentor - 13
surveil - 28

Jeez, this is nuts

And I know that they intend for Izzet and Golgari decks to use Surveil cards too, but still that's so out of balance

can't believe they printed a red tarmogoyf this rules so much

Feeling really smart right now. I've been playing Deafening Clarion in all my standard decks since rotation and only just realized I can choose both modes.

Not really your fault, it's a very unintuitive card. Seems like one of those cards Maro would use as an example of poor card design

I only figured out Soul-Scar Mage allows you to kill Hazoret and Rhonas AFTER the PT, long after I had dismissed the card for being underpowered

There have been literally dozens of times when I've cast it lamented not be able to use both modes, especially with my jeskai drakes deck.

So Revitalize is essentially Cryptic Command printed at common for 1W, huh?

it's no runeboggle

I don't know 3 mana for force spike/draw seems pretty steep, lol

they're making some major organized play announcement tied in with the game awards tonight which i assume means a mtg arena based pro circuit