Magic: The Gathering C/D

sealed is the format with the most bad beats, that's not really specific to this set..

Ikoria is the set I’ve drafted the least since coming back to Magic (exclusively on mtgo) a few years ago. I’ve not enjoyed it - although I don’t know whether that’s because of outside factors with everything going on, or because of the set itself. I don’t like the cycling deck being a thing, and I don’t like companion as a mechanic in limited.

it seems like an unusually divisive one

Hard to give a full list of what was better/worse than I thought, but the format is almost entirely a synergy format so the card values vary wildly based on what you're making. Checkpoint Officer, for example, would usually be a first pick in a regular RW format but RW cycling plays a very low land count and would prefer Drannith Healer. One-mana cycling cards have overperformed, cheap BG creatures that can be mutated on to have overperformed (Almighty Brushwagg, Boot Nipper, Durable Coilbug). White mutate is hard to put together so cards like Vulpakeet and even Cubwarden go down in value unless you happened to pick up a lot of non-Humans already. The expensive non-BG cyclers like Avian Oddity and Sanctuary Smasher have underperformed. Even Dead Weight and Pacifism have underperformed - sometimes they don't have good targets

yeah I'm on board with pretty much all of that, though IMO the problem with Checkpoint Officer lies more in the fact that it costs 2 to activate instead of 1. Dead Weight & Pacifism still solid picks but yeah they don't exactly swing games. the Mutate guys essentially having haste makes sorcery speed removal less good.

sealed is the format with the most bad beats, that's not really specific to this set..

I've missed a few sets but there does seem to be an abnormally high number of bomb rares in this set, and since you can easily play 3+ colors in Sealed most deck have like 4 bombs in them. meanwhile I seem to open pools with 3 Triomes in them a lot. every match is just a slog, it's almost like Cube where crazy shit just comes out of nowhere. I am so sick of seeing that fucking gorilla every other matchup. also I seem to just be on a bad run of luck, I feel like my opponents get a free game every match when I can't draw my 3rd land or just get flooded with the one color I don't have. which I get is part of the game but lol not for the people I've been playing against

As soon as I wrote that, I realized that me calling it a first pick is too strong because usually W gets a one-mana activation tapper and Officer costing two to tap makes a big difference. Even at two mana I would expect it to be good in RW most formats, and here I'm unhappy if I have to play it. To that extent that for a while I missed that it's actually pretty good in BW

Another reason Pacifism is worse than usual is that it's sometimes the opponent still wants to Mutate everything onto one creature, and it doesn't really matter if it can't attack or block

lol yeah I've definitely lost games to a creature I had locked down with a Capture Sphere, that Auspicious Starrix card is just insane sometimes. really fun to play with though.

speaking of tappers Frondland Felidar is such a stupid card, Vigilance + tapping is dumb by itself but when you got a whole army of them its not even a game anymore, you're on the Opposition level of "not fun to win with, really not fun to play against"

anyway I have gone on a bit of a winning streak since posting I was done with the format. then started 3-0 in a Sealed and ended 3-6. this format is so streaky. I'm not quitting until I live the dream of Cycling a Yidaro into play. I know I can do it

I don't mind Felidar that much, but I also haven't played against it a ton. GW is the color combo I encounter the least, and even then I've rarely seen the opponent have more than one vigilance creature. But that could be a sealed/draft difference. Obv still a strong card

Zenith Flare is my bogeyman of the format. Stupidly good for an uncommon

there are a few commons in G/W with it, plus Farfinder & a few uncommon lords. plus the companion that gives a bunch of types +1/+1 and vigilance, I see those two together sometimes

from what I've seen the difference between sealed & draft is that draft decks are more focused & on theme while the best sealed decks are 3-5 colors and play 4+ bomb rares plus a bunch of big mutate dudes. B/W humans is hard to do (since you can't stockpile Whisper Squads), the cycling decks tend to spin their wheels a lot and generally suck. U/R spells is pretty good.

btw I'm really starting to appreciate Forbidden Friendship - gives you a Mutate target, something for the Human triggers, a spell for Sprite Dragon, Mutual Destruction fodder....

And sets up Of One Mind single-handedly, and it's a creature that helps Spelleater Wolverine. Yeah overall way overperformed for a sorcery speed Raise the Alarm

it's called dragon fodder

lmao they just used the June 1st B/R update to change how companion works

now you can't cast it automatically, you instead have to pay 3 to put it in your hand

pretty crazy, I can't remember them ever errata'ing an entire mechanic like this. maybe when they changed the Urzas Saga 'free' spells to read "you actually have to cast it to untap the lands" but even that was more like "yeah obviously that's how this was *supposed* to work" instead of "whoops this is too good, let's straight up nerf it"

looking at the banned cards, not sure what the issue with Agent of Treachery is (I don't play Standard) but Fires of Invention seems remarkably dumb, like Urza's-level "whats the worst that can happen" thinking

it's not a broken card really, just an unpleasant effect to have at the center of the format. think of it as being like the reflector mage ban i guess

yeah idk what kind of mana accel there is but I can see a card like that effectively making a bunch of 4-6 CMC cards unplayable. the fact that killing the creature doesn't give you your permanent back seems like an important pretty safety valve to get rid of

it's being cheated out on turn 4 or 5 (and then blinked for another steal via your yorion which is always available to follow it up every game)

yes I am proud of myself

https://i.imgur.com/DFc4NEN.png

A frog and 4 otters

I thought Lukka would get a ban. The Lukka/Omen of the Sun combo seems like it will work with something else, if it's not Agent of Treachery. Agent was a good ban though, it's become really unfun to play against. Companion change is really strange, like the kind of nerfing that Hearthstone does to individual cards

This seems like overkill to me but what do I know:

https://www.polygon.com/2020/6/10/21287154/racist-magic-the-gathering-cards-banned-removed-from-database-wizards-apology

yeah that's just a kneejerk marketing dept response that no one was asking for

I mean if you really want to go down that route MTG itself can easily be construed as racist.

playing an irl game of magic tonight (you're allowed to hang with up to 6 people where I live)

supposedly the 1488 thing was just a weird coincidence, as they were indexed in alphabetical order

fwiw WoTC has kind of a checkered history with race issues, particularly when it comes to their hiring practices. its been sort of an open secret for a while.

GWoTC

I was pretty shocked to see some of these, and I think there's nothing wrong with throwing them out, even if it is a bit of an empty gesture.

Weird to see these cards dredged up again after 25 years. I was definitely not old enough to understand what was going on on Invoke Prejudice (which I think I own a copy of somewhere)

banning a bunch of cards that nobody has played with in a decade is pretty fucking weird, it is practically by definition performative activism since nobody would ever think of these cards otherwise and now they're gonna sit on a ban list forever.

anyway I have not played a game of paper Magic in about a year but I had a dream last night that I was a Pro Tour player and every time I won a game I'd scoop up my cards, look my opponent in the eye and say "abracadabra"

that's a strong bit

this Jumpstart idea seems extremely cool and kind of brilliant from a marketing perspective

can't believe it's taken this long for them to come up with it

i dont care about jumpset but i love how aggressive the reprints/pseudo-reprints in this core set are, lots of cards from ~10 years ago when i was really into standard, which is making me want to play again

lol they really did bring back phasing for one mythic rare, how weird

the reminder text is way cleaner than you'd expect!

that almost makes it stranger, they do exile/return effects all the time and the differences with phasing (which, if I remember correctly, are that counters & auras stay on, and it's in a different place than the 'exile' zone) don't really seem significant enough to bring back a 23 year old keyword which was kind of famous for confusing everyone. but I'm really amused that they did.

Wizards is about to drop another big artist I think. Been a long time coming for this guy.

Yep he's out. Unfortunately gonna be seeing his art for many months to come due to how early in advance they produce things

gotta love the final days of a sealed league

https://i.imgur.com/2YdJxc9.png

im worried thats what mtgo standard is gonna be like if i try to play again this fall. don't really want to get into arena though

update

https://i.imgur.com/Hxuwgk1.png

Nice of you to give Patroclus a bit of hope

I felt bad for him, we had basically the same deck but he was losing in every fashion possible; he had the stuck at 2 land game, the mull to 5 game, the topdecked 4 lands in a row game, the oops forgot that had reach game, the can’t believe you fucking drew more removal game, the wow that mythic is stupidly good game, etc.

anyway I’ve played 2 matches of M21 and wow what a stark difference, I forgot what the “grind out card advantage” style of Magic was like

I really love Core Sets

I like how core sets have just become a dumping ground for cool designs that just don't fit into other sets. though Brash Taunter has got to be one of the most unfun cards I've ever played against.

I got lucky to open Teferi, can anyone explain why this card is so expensive? It actually seems kinda underpowered for a big blue planeswalker

its the face card of the set, people are gonna assume its good until proven otherwise

remember that you can activate him on all your opponents turns too bc of his instant speed clause

lol yeah I literally *just* figured that out

I am guessing this means it's gonna be huge in Commander which yep means $$$$$$

I think the best color in the set is Red. Shock & Scorching Dragonfire take out a huge % of creatures and the Spellgorger Weird is quite good, costing 3 instead of 4 is huge and the format has a lot of cheap cantrips to power it up. Second is probably Green. Drowsing Tyrannodon is ridiculously easy to turn on and the mana dork is super good value. Plus you've got Hunter's Edge which is obviously great. Weakest has got to be Black. Grasp is good but it doesn't really hit much that Dragonfire doesn't, plus BB can be difficult when you really don't want Black as your main color. As far as the archetypes go:

B/W lifegain can do ridiculous things but it's a bit awkward that the triggers are just at the end of *your* turn, so you can't hold lifelinkers back on defense. I've done well with this deck but the games are challenging.

G/R monsters w/ 4-power triggers is probably the most solid archetype, especially with Garruk's Whatever & Furious Rise, both of which take care of the main problem this deck has, a lack of card advantage.

U/R spells has worked really well for me. Fun to play too. Then again I always seem to get 2-3 Kinetic Augur.

G/W +1/+1 counters....looks better than it is. You can make some insane plays with the uncommon Hydra & Invigorating Surge but you need to draw solid opening hands and have things play out in a certain way. You lose to the decks with a lot of good removal.

Least favorite card has to be Brash Taunter, every time I play it it dies immediately but when my opponent has it I have one of those decks with exactly zero answers for it

Second least favorite is Teferi's Ageless Insight, between the special border & the mana cost I think I got the planeswalker whenever I open it in Sealed, which would make the event a freeroll (and then some). The card is weirdly playable though.