Magic: The Gathering C/D

I am way too insulted at the idea of $40 online drafts where you can open a lotus w/ dumb art

they're only 25, still a lot but maybe decent if you can win prize packs and open decent cards. anyone know the EV of a pack here or is it way too early to tell?

no idea

i am guessing they'll run phantoms eventually like they did for modern masters, once the release hype/sales die down.

Had friends over for a Conspiracy draft this weekend - lots of fun. I ended up in black because it was underdrafted and I ended up getting 4 Liliana's Specters before the last pack. I opened and took Secrets of Paradise in pack 3, and realized two picks later that all of a sudden with that Secrets pick I could splash any cards I wanted to, thanks to having so many Specters. I didn't make that much use of it though, only taking a Dack's Duplicate and a Selvala's Charge. The Conspiracy cards are really fun but also pretty interesting for gameplay. I wouldn't be opposed to them showing up in regular Magic.

I <3 Grudge Keeper. My friend to my right played a Custodi Squire, voted to get back some bomb and I voted for him to get it too. My other three friends were priced into voting for some other card to prevent the bomb from getting returned, and taking 2 damage for it. Needless to say, I was killed quickly that game, but it was worth it

Another highlight was killing a 13/13 Custodi Soulbinders with a Morbid Tragic Slip

has anyone else been drafting vintage masters? i've drafted a bunch over the last few days and while its fun both to play the crack a lotus lottery and to continually draft battle screech and/or goblins its starting to feel a lot more narrow than modern masters draft.

i've done a couple drafts so far and i like it a lot. i didn't draft MMA enough to get a good sense of how deep it was so i can't really compare them in that regard, but this set pulls from my favorite era of magic so i'm probably naturally inclined to like it more.

M15 looking kinda exciting and weird for a core set. i'm excited to get a new non-theros draft format irl, at the least.

yeah it def seems more promising than m14

pretty much every single one of the guest designed cards look awesome. gonna have to see the commons and uncommons to figure out how it's going to play in Limited but what we've seen is very interesting. I'm guessing the rest is reprints??

The guest designed cards are all really out-of-the-box. Maybe they should do those more often.

yeah a lot of them are actually pretty cool, only a few cringeworthy ones

the 'designed by' tag makes them all a little bit cringeworthy

Eh I don't mind that. OTOH I'm really not digging the "movie trailer for 300" look of the new dailymtg.com

yeah they were so dedicated to making a site that looks good on an ipad that they sacrificed a site that people actually go to

where can i go to see the guest designed cards?

This is where I always go for spoilers: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/spoilers/141-magic-2015

The guest-designed cards are mixed in but have the "Designed by" tag

cool, ty

Aggressive Mining looks pretty excellent

finally figured I'd try Vintage Masters - it's a ton of fun. don't go into the chatroom though, it's pretty much nonstop griping about how they're not pulling Power 9 cards. it's an excellent format...Goblins feel really pushed but there are some safety valves (the Buzzard that gives all creatures -1/-1 when it dies is nice). really wish they could print this in paper, would be tons of fun.

I feel like these draft-only formats get to be more wild than normal sets because they don't have to worry about constructed implications, can allow busted things, you get to open cool cards etc.

but they also seem like they have super streamlined fun archetypes, like vintage masters might be more fun than theros right now but I don't think it could hold its own for half a year of limited

yeah i very much agree with that - the 'real' set most similar to these formats in structure is probably ROE which was a 3-month format and does in fact wear itself thin with repeated play due to having heavily delineated archetypes

VM does seem to allow for a lot of different archetypes - White Weenie, Goblins, Stompy, and Skies all seem possible, along with more syngery-based decks like Cycling, Madness, and Reanimation, plus there's a possibility of Storm (which would be a blast to play, but really could use something like Cloud of Faeries - that said, Brainstorms/Dark Ritual/Frantic Search seem to not get drafted often)

cloud of faeries is in the set (?)

storm is definitely draftable but not that good unless you get it perfect

cloud of faeries is in vma

i do think that vma is even more narrow than mma was although iatee is right, neither of them have the depth of replayability of even triple theros, never mind a really good limited format. that said i've found vma a really interesting format to play even as its become kinda boring to draft. i also like how the more 'constructed' nature of these limited-only formats allows them to create a rock/paper/scissors style meta - like storm loses to goblins loses to g/w - and as one archetype becomes overdrafted you can start to look for that archetypes natural weakness. idk, i havent gotten bored of the format yet despite playing it p heavily

my bad about Cloud of Faeries - I never saw one in the drafts I did. I actually never looked at the spoiler. so Storm is stronger than I thought.

I tried to draft Storm a lot in power Cube, mainly because it's the most fun archetype to build (for me at least) and you can wheel a lot of the cards you really need. VM seems mostly the same, nobody's going to pick a Brain Freeze for example. Obviously you're not getting as many crazy artifacts as you would in Cube but you probably die a turn or two slower so I think it's worth trying. I agree that it's not a very good archetype but the cards are there...

though Reanimation may be more fun and possibly a lot more doable. the mixed up rarities have really thrown me off though a lot of them are Rares -> Uncommon which is nice

the key storm cards are uncommon which means that a good storm deck won't be in every draft. cube storm is also way wilder because it allows / requires a lot of weird interactions and a multicolor deck. vma storm is just a bad legacy high tide deck.

i havent really found 'not gettting enough pieces' to be storms big problem - i think it just has a bad match-up against some of the better archetypes in vma

yeah I think the good Goblin or White Weenie decks can get out of hand very quickly if you don't have a way to keep them in check.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-2015-week-one-previews-2014-06-25

really liked these things in m13

nightfire giant is borderline limited bomb I think

Nissa is sweet. Very reminiscent of Koth's abilities, who I also liked a lot. Love the art too, it's an unusual style for a PW

I hope they spoil a jace that doesn't ruin drafts

crucible of fire reprint seems like an obvious plant for the next block, not that it's ever going to be a constructed card

also the card that the minecraft guy designed is super sweet

I really hope we get one or two more cheap Dragons in M15 to go along with Dragon Egg, Dragon Hatchling, and Mutavault so that people will foolishly try to make the deck work

http://mythicspoiler.com/m15/cards/chiefengineer.jpg

this seems like a card with a bright future

Agree! Though I don't think the people calling it an affinity card are quite right - I feel like its home is some bonkers Intruder Alarm / Beck-Call / Genesis Chamber thing?

yeah it doesn't really bring you much when your curve tops out at 2

i think the closest comparable is Grand Architect, a card that a lot of people (myself included) were real excited about but ended up just being a fringe player in standard

they may work well together

really happy to see chord of calling reprinted

I'm not really, it means more pod players

yeah me too, that's probably the most fun and balanced card of its type for standard

haha i feel like if you can afford the other pieces of birthing pod than you can probably stretch for $25 chord of callings

they were $35 apparently, crazy

i never thought to check in on them recently or i probably would have tried to trade mine away, i'm finally tired of pod after playing it for a year in standard and 2 years in modern

idk I think a lot of people might open a few and then say 'okay I can be building/trading towards a modern deck now'

though i'll probably still have to run pod at the GP unless i can throw together UR delver before then

Bleh, I picked up the last Chord I needed at the GP this weekend for $35. Feel like all the signs were there - no Modern Masters reprint, Convoke returning in M15 - I just didn't see them.

Liking new Garruk. I'm all in favor of expensive but super powerful Planeswalkers like Nicol-Bolas and Karn.