Magic: The Gathering C/D

two things I dig about AFR that I hope they do more of: Ward, which seems like a great way to make things hard to kill without making them busted, and Phasing, as it feels more useful design-wise than the exile/return shit, which is used pretty much exclusively to abuse ETB effects and blow up tokens

ward was in strixhaven too, seems to be a permanent addition

Yeah Ward is great. I'm happy if Hexproof never comes back, though Ward can't be used on instants. Ward 10 on the Tarrasque is pretty silly I guess. Phasing out I'm still not sure has enough of a place, we'll see

it's an interesting discussion, because phasing seems to be way more in the spirit of "blink" effects, while simultaneously getting rid of everything interesting about them

another thing I hope becomes evergreen are the Treasure tokens, feels like such a useful mechanic & it can make games a lot smoother

treasures have been in the last 3 sets, i think they're semi-evergreen now like hybrid mana and colored artifacts and such

right well....keep it that way

it's a great addition to red color pie to finally make up for rituals being removed a decade ago

I like Treasures but not in the large amount AFR had. I didn't like that BR could reliably splash any card with a single mana symbol

Regular standard was getting boring, so I made a Standard 2022 version of my black/white deck, and it was kinda wrecking shop yesterday?

Midnight Hunt looks cool, lots of vampire-themed cards with life drain + gain within black alone, looking forward to rotation and making yet another version of this deck.

my biggest disillusionment moment with MTG was when they introduced the more frequent rotation schedule, and then almost immediately went back to the old schedule

that was a bad idea from the start imo. the stability of full year long 'seasons' is good

it just gets dull much quicker than that for me, cards wear out their welcome but then linger around for 2 years. I like keeping it fresh.

i think eldraine kinda poisoned the well on this topic, obviously people want to get rid of that set but do they really want to get rid of any arbitrary set faster? wait a few more months until january and then ask yourself 'do i really want to get rid of kaldheim from standard right now' because thats when it would be leaving under fast rotation

I played a bunch of Standard 2022 when AFR came out and found it a very refreshing change of pace, though I haven't been spending money so don't have the wildcards to really fill out my decks.

Instead I've started playing a lot of Historic with a U/R Dragon's Rage Channeler deck, after a streamer I follow pointed out that it's fairly budget-friendly for a competitive historic deck. (Not so much the manabase, but I did already have full sets of all the U/R duals). I got to Diamond Rank 1 with it this weekend, and am hoping to hit mythic for the first time ever very soon!

I've still never made it out of platinum. :( This might be my shot though.

I'm very happy to have spent $0 though, and at this point I have plenty of wildcards and gold saved up for the Innistrad sets.

I don't know the exact details of how it works but there's currently a huge bug affecting Mythic players - they are unable to win or lose games! A lot of people couldn't play in the recent Arena Open because of it. Just a word of warning to bernard or anyone else shooting for mythic this season

lol

It didn't end up mattering as I promptly reeled off an epic losing streak, including losses to fucking MERFOLK of all things (never found my third land, drew 4 Wizard's Lightning in a row with nary a wizard to be seen)

Couldn't get back to sleep this morning, so I drafted a b/w Midnight Hunt deck and so far I'm up 3 wins with 1 loss, this is unprecedented.

I think this is the first time I've actually had fun playing draft (and not just because I'm winning, it feels like an actual deck of sorts).

(also I'm assuming that Midnight Hunt is draft-only for the moment and not quite in Standard? It didn't look like I was able to search for or craft cards for my standard deck)

it's in Standard upon release, might be a bug? the servers were crapping out a lot yesterday

also note that as the September set, it rotates standard so your deck may not be standard-eligible anymore.

Yep, I made this deck to be 'standard 2022' a few days ago, and it said standard in the search window. Weird, I'll mess around with it later.

i'd guess its just a search/filter bug then

Reddit to the rescue: "You have to change the deck type from standard 2022 to just standard."

Went 7-1 in a draft today! I played blue/black, with a splash of green for Briarwood Tracker and Old Stickfingers. Wasn't sure about Sticky, but then I ran into someone who had turn 5 Wrenn & Seven. I managed to tap down the treefolk token with Skaab Wrangler (amazing card in this format) while my fliers chipped away at the walker's loyalty to stop her making a second one. Eventually they killed my Wrangler and I just started throwing dudes into the meatgrinder until my X/X was big enough to trade for theirs.

*Briarbridge Tracker, the 2/3 vigilance that gets +2/+0 as long as you control a token of any kind, and makes a Clue token when it ETBs

initial thoughts for draft:
-blue is the best color, red is the worst color
-organ hoarder is the best common, treat it like sarulf's packmate from kaldheim. better than common removal and many uncommons.
-UR spells archetype is a trap that doesnt have enough commons to come together often, don't try to force it based on having a payoff card, you need to make sure you're getting a lot of good spells first
-RG werewolves archetype just sucks, i wouldn't play this without some rares. treat all the common werewolves as curve filler, none of them are good and the more you have the harder it is to beat a good deck since they'll be able to keep it daytime via card advantage and flashback. i suspect there may be a backdoor RG 'control' deck you can make out of unwanted RG cards if people adjust to this situation but that's idle speculation.

I've done 5 drafts so far but had 7 wins with the three black decks I made (UB, UB, BW). Black has crazy good removal options this time around at common (all three close to hard removal), and Diregraf Horde also gives a ton of value at common. Several great uncommons like Morbid Opportunist. I had a very good RG Werewolf deck but I do feel cider's point that it came down to the uncommons and rares

I've only played 1 match but it seems U/B decks have a lot they can do with those dumb Zombie tokens

G/W seems to have a lot of explosive potential. I haven't quite figured out how to build it myself, but I lost some matches to it where I went second and OP was like: T1 Trapper, T2 Join the Dance, T3 3/3 vigilance with coven that pumps their whole team, T4-5 tap down my best blocker and swing for 8

Ummm what's "U"?

I did two drafts just sticking to B/W which made it much less stressful, made remarkably similar decks and went 3/3 both times.

Meanwhile my new constructed B/W deck has been fun, I had a ridiculous game where someone kept attacking with Angel of Destiny against my Marauding Blight Priests and Celestial Unicorns for some reason, I ended up with something like 116 life, lol.

Sorry, "U" is blue because mtg players try to make it as hard as possible for new players to learn heh

U is blue because B is black and L is land so U is the next available letter in 'blue'

i don't know if thats actually the reason

Morbid Opportunist is disgusting, i had 3 in my deck today because people kept passing them to me, don't do this. i got to just chain removal spells and draw my whole deck every game

Yeah I had a game where I traded creatures on my turn, killed a creature with a spell on their turn, attacked with a Decayed Zombie on my turn, then killed another creature on their turn. Enough to get the concession lol

I think that is the reason U is blue, comes from the early days of card design

Needed a vowel to make WUBRG even vaguely pronounceable.

I have made one new Standard deck, running 4x Thermal Alchemist, a couple of the red and blue dorks with abilities that trigger on day/night change (blue draws a card, red loots away 0-2 cards from your hand), and a bunch of instant speed interaction + flashback.

Seize the Storm is the win con, along with a single Smoldering Egg (didn't have the wildcards for more). I also managed to pick up a single Galvanic Iteration late in a draft bc it's obviously garbage in Limited, and it plays well here: spell doubling effects are usually too situational to play outside of dedicated combo decks like Experimental Frenzy, but the ability to loot this one away and then flash it back whenever you need to double a Frost Bite or a Crush the Weak is nice.

initial thoughts for draft:
-blue is the best color, red is the worst color
-organ hoarder is the best common, treat it like sarulf's packmate from kaldheim. better than common removal and many uncommons.
-UR spells archetype is a trap that doesnt have enough commons to come together often, don't try to force it based on having a payoff card, you need to make sure you're getting a lot of good spells first
-RG werewolves archetype just sucks, i wouldn't play this without some rares. treat all the common werewolves as curve filler, none of them are good and the more you have the harder it is to beat a good deck since they'll be able to keep it daytime via card advantage and flashback. i suspect there may be a backdoor RG 'control' deck you can make out of unwanted RG cards if people adjust to this situation but that's idle speculation.

― ciderpress, Saturday, September 18, 2021 9:25 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

agree with all this, though I haven't seen anyone actually try to do the UR spells thing yet. U/B seems to be the best archetype right now, it's so full of card advantage and there are enough removal spells to ensure you don't get trucked by a bunch of fatties. Werewolves doesn't seem viable since there's just so much flashback & disturb, your opponent has too much control over what happens. also there don't seem to be enough instants/mana sinks that allow you to do something important while you don't play any spells.

G/W is what I'm running right now, I think it may be second to U/B, as bernard mentioned it's pretty explosive and the Coven stuff is pretty easy to trigger. that 0/2 Trapper is kind of neat in that regard. also it seems to have enough longevity later in the game. the 3W 2/3 that gives you two +1/+1 counters does a lot of work

my RG control musing is because 3 of the 4 common werewolves have defensive stats which is a bizarre design choice unless that's the intended archetype

Lol I'm dumb (re: "U"), thanks. I was a pre-internet Magic player before coming back to it, so there were no abbreviations necessary. :)

Standard feels fun rn but my main deck needs some work, at least I'm losing in some new and interesting ways (poison counters, lots of control, lots of stealing my creatures, etc). Gonna try adding some more removal.

Also I really wanted to make Vengeful Strangler work for my deck but it's just too fiddly, they're usually just going to sacrifice whichever permanent I attach it to. I guess it would be cool to attach it to a planeswalker, but at that point I've got bigger problems and the Strangler isn't going to change the game.

Its main use is probably having a creature that your opponent doesn't want to kill, which actually is pretty good maybe?

I've only drafted green that one RG deck that I mentioned - green feels way overdrafted, never open. And I've only played against WG once in ~10 drafts!

the strangler is one of those effects that looks better than it actually is because it gives the opponent too much choice - it kills their guy when their guy isnt super important, and it doesn't kill their guy when their guy is actually winning them the game

Makes sense, totally.

Btw bernard snowy, I'd love to see your decklist for that. Not gonna steal it directly, but I need some inspiration for a new deck type and that sounds fun (and aggro is boring for me, I've learned).

Yeah Jordan, I'll post a list tonight when I get home. It's definitely still a work in progress, but I have a lot of fun whenever I play it.

idk how it is on Arena or in actual paper Magic but these new lands make it kinda hard to tell which colors you have in your opening hand

Here's the list Jordan:

CREATURES:
4x 1R Thermo-Alchemist
2x 1R Obsessive Astronomer
2x 3U Firmament Sage

SPELLS:
3x R Frost Bite
2x U Consider
2x U Secrets of the Key
1x U You See a Guard Approach

2x UR Arcane Infusion
2x UR Expressive Iteration
1x 1U Test of Talents
1x UR Galvanic Iteration

3x 1UU Saw It Coming
3x 2R Moonrager's Slash
2x 2R Electric Revelation
2x 1UR Prismari Command

1x 2UU Memory Deluge
1x 2RR Unexpected Windfall

2x 4R Seize the Storm

1x 6UR Magma Opus

2x XRR Shatterskull Smashing

LANDS:
9x Snow-Covered Island
8x Snow-Covered Mountain
4x Frostboil Snarl

SIDEBOARD: 4x Crush the Weak, 2x You See a Guard Approach, 2x Test of Talents, 2x Reject, 2x Sea Gate Stormcaller, 1x Frost Bite, 1x Malevolent Hermit, 1x Smoldering Egg

WOULD LOVE TO RUN MORE IF I HAD THE WILDCARDS: Prismari Command, Memory Deluge, Malevolent Hermit, Smoldering Egg