Magic: The Gathering C/D

Ever since I hit gold I've won very few matches, although they certainly have been interesting, lol. I played against a Shrine deck that was pretty cool -- 0 creatures, tri-color lands, just a bunch of Shrines that had crazy effects multiplied by the number of shrines (so all of my creature-control cards, most of which are key for the life gain aspect, were useless).

Slowly scrabbling up (and sometimes down) the Gold ranks, had to redeem some wildcards for a little bit of extra firepower. It's very satisfying when one of those cards actually comes in handy and turns into a win.

Seeing some crazy decks, the most ominous ones are those that don't do anything for many turns except play cards to draw more cards and take out your cards, then set up some insane elder god combo for the win.

Also when someone has so many synergies that you spend what feels like 5 minutes a turn just clicking resolve on their triggers, well, it's just demoralizing.

Yeah I got no patience for that stuff. As I mentioned, I only play Constructed to earn gold but I also only play aggro decks to minimize the amount of time I play (also, a lot of quests are creature-centric). Once you get to the "stacks of triggers" part of the match, I've usually already lost and I just concede

now that Strixhaven is winding down I just wanna give a shoutout to Crackle with Power, a card which has won me an insane number of games in Sealed lately, including several where I cast it for 2 and used Rootha to just hit my opponent for 20 in one turn. It is a fantastically dumb card in limited, it reminds me of the days where you basically had to play around a single bomb rare the entire match.

So what happens with Strixhaven now? It's still in Standard for awhile, but now drafts & rewards will be based around the next expansion? Still getting the hang of all this.

when the new set comes out, most of the events and rewards will switch to it, yeah. strixhaven cards will still be in standard until fall 2022 and the set might still occasionally pop up in the rotation for quick draft

finished at Diamond 1, stayed on the grind to the end. now building unspeakably bad jank with which to assault the new seasons

What's the general strategy for dealing with control decks, if you don't have counterspells? Get counterspells? Aside from ridiculous meta decks, this is probably where I run into the most trouble. My deck has decent counters against creatures and enchantments, but when every single card I play gets wiped off the board, well, there's not much to do.

I do feel like my life gain/life drain deck is kinda slow and missing draw cards, maybe that's it (not being able to replace what gets eliminated and having an empty hand)? Games end up being very long, I often end up with a massive life lead but not being able to seal the deal, and then they eventually get their setup to click and it's all over.

be aggressive, have a backup spell to play after their counter, don't overextend into board sweepers

life gain is useless against control decks so unfortunately you're playing from a disadvantage there with your particular deck.

but yeah counterspells can't play catchup, they can only maintain parity, so playing vs control the idea is to get ahead on the board early, which then creates windows to play more stuff as they have to use their mana to deal with your board rather than holding it up for counters.

Thanks. I re-tuned my deck slightly (got rid of some cards that weren't proving routinely useful -- Silversmote Ghouls, Hallowed Priests), and added four of these little Soulmenders (with the idea of speed + more ways to gain life and trigger other cards), and started winning again! Could be coincidence but I like the idea that there's hope without going stacking a bunch of rares.

I'm still at 65 cards, but I don't know what to cut at this point, I'm still terrible at that.

xp heh fair enough, thanks!

(although now that I think about it, the Hallowed Priests would be more useful now with the Soulmenders -- maybe I should just start getting rid of some of my bigger creatures?)

silversmote ghoul is actually the sort of card you want vs control as they can't easily get rid of it

It keeps coming back from the graveyard, but my problem was that it comes back tapped, so rarely ended up being useful for attacking or blocking. It's nice to sacrifice and draw a card occasionally, but a bit unwieldy just for that?

get down to 60 cards!

If I post my deck here will y'all tell me what to cut? :)

Yeah do it!

Ok, I've been tweaking it a lot even today, but here's the current state:

1 Baneslayer Angel (M21) 6
3 Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose (M21) 127
1 Temple of Silence (M21) 255
4 Scoured Barrens (M21) 250
8 Plains (M21) 260
7 Swamp (M21) 266
1 Speaker of the Heavens (M21) 38
1 Impassioned Orator (ANB) 10
4 Indulging Patrician (M21) 219
1 Gingerbrute (JMP) 466
1 Clackbridge Troll (ELD) 84
3 Griffin Aerie (M21) 22
2 Faith's Fetters (M21) 17
3 Revitalize (M21) 31
2 Bake into a Pie (ELD) 76
1 Erebos's Intervention (THB) 94
1 Shadowspear (THB) 236
2 Light of Hope (IKO) 20
2 Zof Consumption (ZNR) 132
2 Unexpected Fangs (IKO) 102
1 Plains (ELD) 250
1 Malakir Rebirth (ZNR) 111
2 Nighthawk Scavenger (ZNR) 115
1 Heliod's Intervention (THB) 19
1 Revenge of Ravens (ELD) 104
1 Cleric of Life's Bond (ZNR) 222
1 Mazemind Tome (M21) 232
1 Environmental Sciences (STX) 1
3 Soulmender (M20) 37
2 Alseid of Life's Bounty (THB) 1

Maybe lose Clackbridge Troll? It's a fun stunt card, but I rarely do any damage with it -- usually it's just a magnet for unsummon/murder cards, so the most I can hope for is a few life + a draw.

I've tilted it to smaller creatures recently so it feels faster out of the gate, but I'm ending up with a midgame where my hand is gone and I'm just hoping to draw something useful. Are there b/w cards that let me draw when I gain life or do damage?

white doesn't really get card draw and black usually has to pay life or sacrifice creatures for it

i'd suggest maxing out on cleric of life's bond, it's one of the best creatures in this strategy and it's not rare

Yeah, I've had good luck with that! Moreso than the Hallowed Priests. And once you add the Shadowspear or the Unexpected Fangs + a Vito or Indulging Patrician, whew. Will have to find even more cards to take out though. :/

Ok I did as you suggested, trimmed down to 62 cards, and played two thoroughly ridiculous games:

1) Ended up with two superpowered Clerics of Life's Bond w/lifelink, and 93 life at game's end

2) Held the line against someone with a pure white lifegain/angel deck. At one point I was down to just a handful of life and they had 90+, and eventually we were at a point where we were at stalemate creature-wise, and every turn I would attack with my unblockable lifelinked Gingerbrute + use Soulmender, triggering a few Indulgent Patricians and Vito. I got him down to 50 life before he conceded, lol.

I think the most frustrating thing about MtG is that you have these dramatic games, and it sounds like the dumbest thing ever when you try to recount them (and total gibberish if you're not familiar with all the cards).

I'd cut Revenge of Ravens if you haven't already. It's a dead card against control and even against aggro they can play around it sometimes. With all your lifegain, you should be doing pretty well against aggro decks already

Oh interesting, I've had it work well as a deterrent (people don't attack bc they don't want to trigger it when they're at low life), and it seems potentially useful as anti-swarm decks? You're probably right but I have a hard time parting with it, it seems so good on the surface.

I can see the appeal - it buys some time against swarm decks and is synergistic. But it's almost useless against control, which you said you were having trouble with, and it's not good when you've traded off resources with your opponent and you need a threat to close the game. I'd go for something more proactive. Compare just having another Nighthawk Scavenger, which performs a similar role: lifegain to slow down the aggro decks but also an evasive threat to close the game

on paper this dnd set is my favorite in several years, since amonkhet probably. hope it plays as well as i'm imagining

Ok I made some tough choices and got it down to 60 (although I did just throw in a Luminous Broodmoth after seeing it in someone else's deck, just to see how it does). It's going well, even if I don't get my main life drain cards or I'm not drawing lands, it's way faster and I can get a lot done with 2 - 3 mana if necessary. Fun.

I've got maybe 20k gold saved up, guess I'll use that for D&D drafts? I'm curious to see what it's like when a new expansion drops. I'm a little afraid of Premier draft, just the time pressure of absorbing all those cards and making good picks.

for player drafts i would recommend at least reading all the commons in the set in advance, since that's the vast majority of the cards you'll be seeing

-The Forgotten Realms release clearly brought back a ton of players with less than killer decks, because all of a sudden I'm in platinum after bouncing around gold forever

-Speaking of killer decks, I've gone up against a few recently with 'destroy land' spells and, well, that's just mean

-Excited to try a draft of the D&D stuff this weekend

I like this whole D&D crossover, not sure if it will be enough to bring me back, but it has my attention

I remember when I read Maro's blog a while back the question of "will you ever do a D&D crossover" came up all the time. Although I haven't played since I was 12 I'm still very fond of the idea, I remember back in the days of InQuest and Scrye there'd always be a page of people trying to make their D&D characters & spells into Magic cards. and the designs would always be horrible, like "4GR, 5/5, 2GGR, T: Tap target black creature"

this set otoh looks pretty well designed. I suspect they may regret printing that Demilich card though

Oh neat I got a Sphere of Annihilation

definitely getting a vintage Magic feel from this set - a lot of trading & incremental effects, not just constant haymakers the way the last few sets were. since so many cards were based on D&D things I guess it makes sense that this would feel old school. the dice rolling thing is cool, idk why it took them so long to do this. The dungeons are also fun and I like how they don't really take over the game but rather are just neat side quests. Kinda nice to play a set where I'm not constantly getting wrecked by bomb uncommons but everyone but me seems to get some stupid ass dragon you can't do shit about.

It’s seemed to me so far that games are more about the rares and mythics than usual. Maybe it’s because the power level of the other cards is relatively low and flat.

oh absolutely, I've had a lot of games where it's like "I got this unless they have some crazy ass rare" and lo and behold

I've done a couple of Sealed leagues, idk if my pools have been bad but I feel like I'm getting 19-20 playables and then have to decide between splashing or playing some modal cards I don't really like. hard to really get a gauge on how difficult it is to splash w/ all the Treasure tokens around.

I like how this set gives you a lot of things to do with your mana late in games, otoh games don't really seem to go past turn 7 or 8 a lot. maybe its just a small sample size but the format feels fairly quick compared to Strix

Is it just me or are these Celestial Unicorn commons kind of insane? They become very large unicorns with in a few turns provided you have multiple ways of gaining life, put Unexpected Fangs on them and things get ridiculous quickly.

it's just a less efficient version of the several 2 mana 2/2 versions of that card that exist

this is the first time it's at common though, to be fair

Huh I guess Hallowed Priest is 'whenever you gain life' too, for some reason I thought that was limited to once per turn (like Cleric of Life's Bond).

Ajani's Pridemate is the original version of that type of card but it's not in standard at the moment

incidentally, i'm playing a WB life-gain deck in sealed rn. the Celestial Unicorn is good. i haven't buffed mine up yet, but if i didn't have removal on hand in my last game i would have lost to it.

Vorpal Sword and the Spider Queen Lolth planeswalker are also in my deck and both are so, so busted. it's extra fun winning with a card that has LOL right there in the name, lolol

The brightness on the Unicorn art being cranked way up is pretty neat. Agreed that this thing is pretty busted at common - I assumed it was uncommon until I kept seeing it over and over

I was messing around with best-of-3 standard (usually just play standard ranked or 2022 ranked), and I finally got a game that crashed the app.

First game I saw they were doing a lot of scute swarm, whatever. Second game I sideboarded Revenge of Ravens in, and ended up with a scenario where they had scute swarms + Prosperous Innkeeper (meaning they create hundreds of 1/1s every turn and gain life correspondingly), and I had Revenge of Ravens + Vito. So their life goes up to near 100, they attack me with everything (honestly I think they kept doing it accidentally, because they were constantly pressing space bar?), my life goes up correspondingly and theirs goes down, the attacks go through, and we're back where we started.

Eventually they started getting some bigger creatures out and I kept drawing only lands, but the stack was getting ridiculous and my game just completed crashed (had to restart my laptop).

Otherwise I've been stuck in Platinum forever, my decks are very 50/50. I've got a Goblin deck for 2022 that's very dumb and fast, not nearly as fun as the life gain/drain deck but good for a quick game.

Kind of bored with AFR, I should really stop playing until after rotation so I can actually make some music rather than play Arena (although I do always practice on the drum pad while playing MtG).

they've announced all the upcoming standard sets through next year now:

Standard 2021-2022:
Innistrad: Midnight Hunt - innistrad set with werewolf focus, this was already announced and is out next month
Innistrad: Crimson Vow - innistrad set with vampire focus, this was already announced and is out in November
Kamigawa Neon Dynasty - the original kamigawa block was set way in the past compared to the main magic storyline so they're doing a 'present day' return set where its now urban and sci-fi-ish
Streets of New Capenna - art-deco mafia/gangster themed world?

Standard 2022-2023:
Dominaria United - another return to dominaria set
The Brothers War - retelling of the classic brothers war portion of the magic storyline via a full set

when I used to read Maro's blog it was funny how often the same questions would come in over and over and how Maro would always shut them down...he wouldn't say never but he'd always say it's very unlikely that we'll ever return to Kamigawa, or give black enchantment removal, or use "mill" as a keyword, or use dice rolling as a mechanic, or make non-mythic planeswalkers, etc etc...and now they've done all that

Very excited for the Brothers War set, I used to have the graphic novel as a kid and it's pretty much the only Magic lore I've ever been into

Kamigawa was the set when I got back into MtG after a 6-year break, and started to play competitively for the first time. Not sure about cyberpunk Kamigawa.

it was kind of a poster child for how not to design a Magic set - the Arcane shit was awful as was the Saviors mechanic that required you to not play any of your cards. it had the most busted card in Limited EVER which nearly ruined the format. but the game itself is so fun that it still kinda worked