Magic: The Gathering C/D

i am getting used to it. i have found myself making mistakes that i would never have made in v3 - esp accidentally clicking thru combat step, why do i keep doing that?? - but that kind of thing i hope i will get past quickly. there are things that i miss from v3 for sure and overall i think it is just less obvious what is going on paying on v4. it seems to be running okay on my laptop so i am at least thankful that i don't have any of the big problems others have experienced, esp since i don't play except online and it would suck to have to quit just as i was getting almost competent.

in other news, i am currently waiting for r1 to end in my freebie m15 sealed. i opened nissa and chandra so i guess i am awesome at m15

just started using the new client a bit last week, and yeah, too many text pop-ups and the like, but overall it looks decent, especially the cards, and I haven't had any computer performance issues.

Is there a thing with the timing of F6? At one point, my turn seemed to get completely skipped, and the same thing seemed to happen to an opponent too.

Morph!!!

so this is the wedge block

Looks like the draft structure I mentioned a couple months back was right. Should be cool.

figured I'd load up the new client again to try out the free M15 sealed, which was definitely a nice gesture on their part. still really irritated by it, especially when playing with a new set - I find the P/Ts and mana costs are too small to read easily and the preview pane just sits on top of everything so it's really impractical. Doesn't seem to be a good way to attach the chat window without it floating all over the place. More than anything I'm just irritated by how they managed to rehaul pretty much everything but the issues that actually needed fixing; it's still incredibly slow for me, I still get booted when logging in, the network still times out randomly even though every other connection works. I guess y'all are right, it's not exactly "unplayable", just kind of remarkable how they fixed a ton of stuff that didn't need fixing and managed to ignore all the real issues (IMO, of course). With a game like this simplicity really really matters!!

aaaand right on cue the disorienting client leads me to accidently punt a match (100% my fault, but still, this thing is so terrible)

made a poor showing at the GP, though i hadn't played modern in 6 months or melira pod in 9 months so i wasn't really expecting much

that sucks, sorry dude. was that the one in worcester? i saw that was coming up.

yeah it was worcester. i dropped at 3-3. i don't really mind though, it was a pretty fun weekend still

re: khans, i'm curious to see how morph fits in to what looks like just another Color-Based Factions block.

judging by the recent tumblr posts of Maro, it's going to be different than Alara or RTR - maybe not so overly multicolor for one, and each faction will have a "base color". also it sounds like the other two sets are not wedge-based so who knows?

pretty interesting that not a single pod or twin deck made t8 at boston

I didn't go because lazy / haven't been playing with anything but storm, which is not competitive in big tournaments atm

kinda want to switch it up to delver or something goofy for a while

there was a ton of pod and twin, and a ton of melira pod in particular at the top tables. kind of just a fluke that none of them made it in.

yeah I think they're still 'the best decks' but if you can have a tournament this large (where a disproportionate amount of players will be bringing pod) and still not have one t8, it's probably really safe from being banned?

2 infect in the t8 seems like even more of a fluke though, since it's a deck that just folds to so many things

also a kid who plays at my lgs was 9-0 after d1 w/ soul sisters

yeah i saw the soul sisters guy at the x-0 tables, thought that was amusing

he's not just some kid who got lucky, he's actually very good, won an scg open this year and I'm pretty sure he had 3 byes

but I guess you have to have a certain amount of luck to win 6 matches of competitive modern w/ that deck

also I really want to see wafo-tapa's esper deck

i didn't see what he was playing but he always had a huge crowd watching him play so i figured it was something out of the ordinary

it's interesting how wescoe and wafo-tapa seem to be able to build rogue decks that fit the colors/strategies they want to play with and still do consistently well in a format like this (kibler seems like a good counterexample as fair creature decks just seem bad in modern)

i walked by wescoe and he had a pack rat in play, not sure what he was playing

some sort of bw dead guy build apparently

https://www.facebook.com/raphael.levy.mtg/posts/308720935968791

wafo-tapa's list

becauser uwr control was just too fast

0 mana leak is interesting but does allow him to play 4 paths

and logic knot is a cool replacement, can eat some goyf food along the way

in retrospect it seems like post-dr ban, the jund shell is doing just fine but everyone (jund and uwr) can throw away their lightning bolts w/o really suffering much. (not that bolt is bad, just more optional)

jund will always be at the top as long as they continue to be more willing to ban 'unfair' cards than 'fair' ones

It must kill Wafo-Tapa that he can't play Wraths at instant speed like the rest of his deck

yeah reprinting bob and goyf really suggests that they will never be banned

and it is hard to imagine a deck with a set of bob/goyf/lili ever being that bad

its the point discard spells that make jund work, goyf/bob are not really that problematic

other than banning thoughtseize (eww) the way you make jund-likes worse is to add better synergy cards to the format so that decks have more redundancy vs all the attrition

yeah as a storm player I have actually found the matchup pretty okay because of that

'rock' decks are pretty much never above 50% winrate though, they're just the ultimate safe deck for risk-averse players

for what it's worth i think the jund family of decks are in a balanced spot right now where they're weak enough that choosing to play them is choosing to concede any deck selection advantage. that they keep showing up at the top of events doesn't really concern me given that they're generally a large portion of the field.

personally, i'll never play a deck that runs maindeck thoughtseize without a combo to protect

I kinda want to build a goofy waste not deck

yeah my first thought was how cool it would be with Wheel of Fortune-type effects but there don't seem to be a whole lot of those anymore

whispering madness

oh yeah. that. make it happen!!

I feel like that + Master of the Feast + Notion Thief could make some kind of dinger

master and notion don't actually work together

are you sure? that upkeep draw seems to fit the "except the first one he or she draws in each of his or her draw steps" clause

no you're right, I was confusing it with spirit of labyrinth's effect

i am slowly coming to hate this draft format. i did a draft tonight at my lgs drafted a reasonable if not overpowered u/b deck and went 2/2. i lost to generator servant into scuttling doom engine and then to turn one profane memento into turn two ensoul artifact. which is just kinda bad beat crybabying but i feel like i keep losing to stuff like this, or generally not good decks, or just like weird my cards not matching-up at all games. i guess my point is that i rarely feel like i am in the games im losing and often the opposite seems to be true for games i am winning. and i know im not doing a good job drafting the format partly because i have 0 mtgo practice thanks to v4 but idk why i am having such a hard time getting the hang of a core set format or why this format feels just really unfun

I like it a lot but I have been winning a lot

ub seems like a bad time in this format

there's definitely more room for blowout draws / decks in m15 than there was in m14, if white tokens is open esp, there are just a lot of cards that I like playing with that just feel like well-designed limited cards that are fun to play with (forge devil, illusory angel, selfless cathar, inferno fist)

cone of flame is dumb tho, wish it weren't in the set

my overall record is 29-12 so i am not actually doing as badly as i had thought but i feel like i am rarely in the games i am losing, so losing is more irritating if that makes sense? i dont have hard evidence for this but i feel like this format is more draw dependent than is typical, like there are just a lot of reasonable cards that don't interact at all with other reasonable cards, so a higher % of games are non-interactive.

like i said, this is early impression still and could simply be some combination of variance, the way/type of decks i am drafting or some other factor i am missing but this format feels very low skill rn

i haven't drafted m15 much yet, will hit the 8-4s hard when i get back from my vacation next weekend, but my early impressions are that triplicate spirits is a stupid common and that the white and red 3-power 2-drops can get you a bunch of free tempo wins

this is my first core set as i was otherwise engaged during m14. it seems quite different - with THS and RTR blocks it was made kind of obvious what you were 'supposed' to be doing, whereas this feels more like "here's a bunch of cards, figure something out". maybe it is just more subtle and passing me by right now. i played a couple of prerelease sealed and half a dozen drafts since then. almost all of my decks have ended up being red based aggro or white based convoke. i don't know if it is just well supplied as an archetype or if people aren't interested but the good convoke payoff cards always seems to be available. one other difference is that bombs seem super bomby. i had a hell of a Rw deck for the first sealed i played, with as i posted at the time chandra (and a nissa i couldn't play), and i tore through the first 3 matches and in the final the other dude landed the red soul on time both games and that was it. the white soul and doom engine have been p disgusting against me as well. my 2nd sealed i opened a garruk and played a pretty marginal BG to 2-2, just for the chance to play the card, and of course even thru 4 rounds of sealed i never cast him once.