Magic: The Gathering C/D

yeah the gold 'signpost uncommons' thing that they started in theros has been a huge success for limited formats imo

im reasonably happy to be in blue since i think both u/g and u/r are really good. the thrummingbird is probably my favorite uncommon, ive gotten to go off w/it and the bandar a bunch and its great. this might be colored by the fact that i mostly end up in blue because i first picked some great rare, i keep having baral's expertise in my deck and buddy is that a good card

frogs idk i know most of the revolt enablers cycle but theyre still just air they also prevent you from playing tricks because you still need a baseline level of creatures/removal. and the 3/1 is exactly the sort of card that makes me dislike being g/w. its awful with green's fight cards and cant block well and gets blanked by lots of other commons. you can enchant it w/holy strength of w/e but youve now spent two cards to trade with a peema outrider. *shrug*

well it is a 2-drop, either you get in for 3 or trade for something which triggers revolt. I do see what you're saying, a lot of the strength of the deck is that it can so easily cycle into bomb uncommons and rares, there's no real power plays you can do with the Revolt stuff other than maybe the dude which kills a tapped creature. but it makes it easy to pick up extra creatures and counters here and there w/o losing cards.

i stopped trying to fight over green cards and now all my decks look like this http://imgur.com/a/zRTpx

y'all play hearthstone?!?

UR is great, not the flat out strongest colour pair but capable of lightning fast starts and the most fun imo. i def lean in that direction early in the draft.

mh i tried it for a while but honestly it does pale

without meaning to i built an aid from the cowl deck: http://i.imgur.com/Vxu63hX.png

it did some work the couple times i had it out but i think it is probably unplayable. my deck was good anyway and would've been much better with a daring demolition instead in most matchups.

mh, there were a couple months in 2015 where I obsessed over hearthstone, playing all day every day, powering my way up the ladder, until one day I just stopped, and I never played again. It's a very well designed game and mtgo could learn a lot from it, but it completely lacks the depth and variety of mtg. It gets dull and repetitive real quickly.

I feel you

i played hearthstone a bit when it first came out but got bored of it before they started releasing expansions and never went back

theres a thread for it in ILG i think

I played it for a while too. I never felt like I had "solved" the game, but I also could tell it didn't have the same depth as Magic. Wish mtgo would play as well as it, that's for sure

Hearthstone is designed for online play whereas MTGO has to conform to the whims and quirks of the paper game. If Magic was digital only I bet it would have been designed a bit differently.

kind of amazing how well the newer sets play in comparison to some of the older flashback drafts - just messes of weird triggers and oddly worded cards

did you ever play with the Graft mechanic online? that shit is a nightmare

yeah funny you mention that, Graft was the reason why I waited so long to get into MTGO. I had a friend who was playing at that time and it seemed awful. not to mention Sensei's Divining Top, annoying in paper magic but super obnoxious on MTGO.

I find top less annoying on mtgo because slow players actually just time out instead of forcing draws

speaking of poor interface, I tend to play very fast, which has led me to cast chandra's revolution accidentally clicking on my own land twice. I felt a little less like an idiot when I witnessed an opponent do the exact same thing.

build your own magma rift

preparing to play some extremely good and interactive magic http://imgur.com/a/7Fa50

lol. looks like a sweet build. are the statuaries there specifically to get a 2-3 mana discount on hardcast ulamog?

if anyone enjoys magic content for giggles would highly recommend the latest video series by caleb on channel fireball

statuaries are there as a plan b to ramp to ulamog off of clues/thopters/puzzleknots

oh yeah, forgot about clues. lol betraying myself as a non-constructed player.

wow, that looks like a fun deck

its pretty good but idk if its better than the more straightforward build that just plays nissa's renewal as the bridge to ulamog

http://i.imgur.com/T155aSn.jpg

been drafting decks like this a lot, kinda plays out like Cube sometimes

i noticed that AER only has one unc0mm0n pr1ntrun online so i mapped it: https://pastebin.mozilla.org/8978613

it loops around bottom to top

please don't share this on bigger forums i don't want wotc to go in and reshuffle it

sweet thanks dude.

i don't know if it is me or them but this block the uncommon runs have seemed much more obvious. i think they have been more deliberate about what they run together, e.g. the aether hub/meltdown/serv. conduit run in KLD. in AER i notice i am always passing hungry flames whenever i pick onslaught.

yeah in past sets there have been multiple runs but there's clearly only 1 now, maybe 2 for large sets. i didnt think to do this with KLD and it wouldnt be as quick or useful to do now with it only being the 3rd pack of drafts

wow cider, that's actually a pretty big catch

yep I noticed this too but didn't think much of it. significant because 3 of the worst KLD uncommons always seem to go together

the fact that MTGO adheres to a print run at all is O_o

yeah it seems like it would be harder to do that than not do that

in AER i notice i am always passing hungry flames whenever i pick onslaught.

yeah this was the first of these that i picked up on because its often been a difficult pick, similar to the veteran motorist/disintegration run or the underhanded designs/aetherborn marauder run (which isnt really close but was frustrating for signaling purposes) in KLD

pretty disappointed work commitments kept me from playing gp pittsburgh this wknd, i feel pretty good abt standard rn

What are you running in standard these days?

xp they've always mimicked the paper print runs on modo, they just seem to have left out a step for this block. If you open a paper booster pack right now, I suspect you will find that 2 of the uncommons are within 2 spots of each other on my list, but the 3rd is not.

http://i.imgur.com/nbEZ8bw.jpg

this one was fun

trophy #3: http://i.imgur.com/OZGOVMz.png

i won one game by 1-shotting my opponent with ninth bridge patrol via 2x felidar guardian, the rest by decking, looping thopters, or cogwork assembler tricks. just a normal day in the office

so much value everywhere

what do you guys cut here?

http://i.imgur.com/CanhUqf.jpg

barge, freighter, filigree crawler, a fen hauler

crawler seems like the easiest cut. I was also thinking revolution maybe, which means I wouldn't have to play 2 red cards off 3 red sources

maybe keep one of those vehicles for revolution? I feel like I want to be reliably curving out on artifacts and then landing one of the 7s on t4/5

obv the deck is removal light, but 4 drop removal splashed off 3 sources isn't super reliable interaction

this is the kind of deck where if everything goes right you don't attack until like turn 15. so all of the good removal is essential and i'd prob play the revolution even with the awkward mana. the freighter is an easy cut because it's just a clunky sometime 4/3 blocker - i would sooner play solvent as a random artifact, but i don't think that's necessary. crawler is an easy cut yeah. i agree one of the haulers too, you can't get clogged on those early and you have plenty to win with later. i kind of like barge, you are light on creatures but more than half have 3 power and barge blocks well. i might cut the either thief but i wouldn't feel good about it. prob that or the blue implement i guess.

looks fun tho. have you played yet?

nope haven't had time, but I'm looking forward to it

I thought about solvent as a mana dork too. I could play it + map + 15 lands but that makes ever using its ability even less likely.

went 2-1 with 15 + solvent + bomat - the 0/4. I only had mana problems the last round when I had both my red cards pretty early vs a gb deck that hit t3 cultivator's caravan both games. almost lost r2 to smugglers copter, but managed to stabilize. sided in select for inspection a lot.

You cut the Thief? That card seems really good to me, even in non-energy decks. Your mana requirements seem pretty rough for a 15 land deck: double blue, double black, and a red splash. I think Reverse Engineer is a good cut actually, since you have so many other 2-for-1s that support your Improvise plans, and probably Revolution like you were thinking earlier.

Finally got to do my first draft of this format: R/W aggro with 16 lands, multiple removal spells, and Angel of Invention. Thought I had a good chance to 3-0, but went 1-2 instead, getting lucky to win the one. I couldn't kill fast enough and my opponents would often start to get their card advantage spells to take over. Invigorated Rampage was a lot less useful than I thought it would be, and I had two of them

thief is decent but in the end I decided to cut the least synergistic card. I think playing solvent was correct too, once the deck went off with card advantage into card advantage you actually could hit 7 mana pretty easily, despite playing 15 lands.

and yeah invigorated rampage doesn't really do what you want combat tricks to do since it doesn't give first strike or boost toughness. so instead it's effectively a lava axe that allows you to get 2 for 1'd. I don't think I would be happy playing it in very many decks.

I took one of them over Precise Strike, and I would have preferred Precise Strike every time

eh I think certain decks that want to alpha strike kinda like it, plus it's good with the Double Striker. but yeah R/W is really the only archetype that even remotely wants it

I keep drafting G/W/B revolt since it seems to be open a lot, you get some bombs early on then stock your deck with fixing/Revolt enablers. Had an interesting deck with Aid from the Cowl and Hidden Stockpile that would take a beating early but then stabilize and generate a bunch of incremental advantage. It wound up 3-0'ing but I still don't know if it's any good. I've mentioned it before but these matches definitely feel like Cube, you have to make a lot of decisions and be aware of what's in your deck, plus you have to pull games out of your ass a lot. But it's challenging in a way that Limited rarely is.

yeah this is my favorite limited format in a long time, probably for reasons similar to what you're saying. the powerful decks are very very powerful, doing things more comparable to a modern masters draft or cube. t1 renegade map enables a ton of different broken starts.

hidden stockpile is my favorite card. nonstop scrying and token making gives you the ability to both take over a game early or play a control game for inevitability.

love the stockpile. BW still my most successful color pair, 3 trophies i believe, and i didn't even 3-0 my double stockpile deck, somehow. having 2 out at the same time, let me tell you. it's like having a bad assemble the legion but 1000% times more satisfying.