Magic: The Gathering C/D

Yeah I thought not having a viable linear scry deck in limited was a real missed opportunity, especially because UR seemed the most likely color combo for it and UR didn't have much of an identity this block

UR scry is there, i've drafted it, but the payoff is not quite good enough for how tricky it is to get all the parts

you need more things like the Flamespeaker Adept. the problem is that outside of Spite of Mogis most of the deck's best cards are plenty good in other decks. also that constantly scrying does you no good when your card quality is less than your opponents. there's not a very clear path to victory there.

adept could've been at common without hurting anything and that might've been enough to give UR a deck that instead basically barely existed

It's obvious they wanted the deck to happen, because they wouldn't make cards like Knowledge and Power otherwise. Just seems like the developers didn't care enough about the deck to cost the cards appropriately or put in enough support. I guess "viable" is vague. I'm sure the deck has been made as cider says, but it seems like you have to get very lucky with your opens

Or more likely, the developers ran out of time to cost it right

reminds me a bit of Izzet in RTR, it was rather frustrating how clearly it was the weakest guild - I think they try not to make spell-based strategies very good in Limited which nerfs U/R.

Heh, many of the best repeated Scry cards are creatures though

I thought Spellheart Chimera was kinda supposed to be the "basis" of the deck, you play a bunch of instants and sorceries that pump it while stalling your opponent's creatures. I think I once was able to kinda-successfully build that deck in 3xTHS.

izzet was so not the weakest guild, golgari was the weakest guild

u and r were both great support colors for an aggro-tempo w deck in theros block, but they lacked good two drops - vaporkin and the suicide minotaur (who's generally terrible in ur because you don't have an aggressive deck to back him up) were really all you had

yeah common 2-drops are incredibly important and are often what define which archetypes are viable in limited formats

https://twitter.com/mtgworth/status/486647438933889024

it is amazing that wizards lets a hapless dude like this make important business decisions

yeah its kind of amazing that worth still has his job, but he's a super oldschool wotc guy so they're probably reluctant to get rid of him and also he oversees DotP as well which is about as huge a success as MTGO is a failure

He oversees DotP? That's baffling to me, the two programs are night and day

important distinction is that DotP development is outsourced to an actual software company, WotC only does the game design for it.

oh I didn't know he oversaw dotp, that does explain why he has a job

or rather why he has half of his job

dotp surely 1000x less complicated than mtgo too

yeah, the core of dotp is strong enough that the yearly changes aren't what makes or breaks its success w/ new players

if anything, on that level (the marginal changes) even dotp is poorly managed

i have this theory that wotc keeps worth around because nothing is quite so rage-inducing as the serial incompetence of a smug nerd and it lets them really bank on the image of their customers as irrational complainers. so instead of just sort of getting irritated and with mtgos general terribleness and being like 'enh ill just download hearthstone' people get worked up over w/e recent shittiness has gone on lather at the mouth about it, worth is like ::crossed arms:: 'have you ever thought you might be the problem' someone dies of apoplexy the issue gets clouded no one at wotc has to take any real blame. storm.

storm.

IRL roffling @ this.

m15 seems pretty good but this prerelease format is getting really played out at this point, i hope they switch it up soon, or at least put more effort into balancing the promos. half the room at mine was black just because the black promo was considered the best. i played green and the green promo didn't even make the cut for my deck.

yeah, black was way over-represented at mine too (including me) and there were about 2 people in green.

yeah the blue promo was straight unplayable too

and the black one was indeed a back breaker, too bad I didn't draw it until my last round

the blue one could cost 3U and the black one 4BB and the black one would *still* be better

I picked blue at my prerelease, unaware that the blue promo was hot garbage. Just assumed they would balance the damn promo cards. Ended up ditching blue and playing rampy Jund - cast In Garruk's Wake 3 times in 4 rounds. Maro recently said they are aware of the complaints with the "pick-a-color" prerelease format and he didn't dismiss them, so it sounds like we might get a change-up soon.

Yeah this prerelease format made way more sense with RTR block, where each guild had a very distinct identity and play style, plus essentially there were 5 two-color combos that were unplayable. The issue now is that there's a 20% shot that your weakest color in the five regular packs is the one you chose (this is what happened to me) and the result is a crappy pool you have to force one way or the other. RTR had this issue too but it's much less pronounced when you're working with two colors.

That said I do love the idea and hope they tweak it for future releases.

They didn't do a seeded color pack for M14 prerelease, right? or am I mis-remembering. I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense for this release.

It was pretty tough going for me, even in black, because the promo was the only real game closer I had in my deck. I also opened a copy of the green promo guy, but couldn't support green in my deck.

i went blue as well and was pretty irritated by the power-level discrepancy in the promos. also because blue was the worst color the islandwalk stuff ended up being worse than it should be

I got trucked hard by Darksteel Citadel + 5/5 Animate Artifact aura, I had no clue Citadel was in this set

i decked an opponent with avacyn, that card causes really dumb stalemates when they have something that keeps it from attacking for the win

how are we liking m15

Drafted a fun G/R deck last week that included Chord, Hornet Queen, Siege Dragon, and a bunch of other heavy hitters, and ended up pulling a Nissa in my prize packs. One real breakout card in my deck was Kird Chieftain. Being able to give any creature +2/+2 and trample at instant speed was huge. Netcaster Spider was also a big help. The combination of the spider plus Shield of the Avatar allowed me to blank an opponent after they got me quickly down to 5 with turn 1 Ornithopter, turn 2 Ensoul Artifact. Looking forward to more draft tonight.

prerelease starts on mtgo today right?

yeah, & everyone gets 1 free prerelease entry as a 'sorry we screwed up mtgo' consolation prize

new client refuses to download on my (new) computer so I get to be one of those people who actually boycotts the new mtgo

what idiots they are

prerelease entry is a nice gesture but I really don't see why they couldn't leave v3 up until they have a halfway usable client ready to go.

its about as usable as v3 at this point honestly. 90% of the complaints are just from people who don't like it, not people like iatee who have actual technical issues

tbf theres a lot to dislike about v4. i do think with time people will probably appreciate that its a better piece of software than v3 was but it also wont work on my laptop so i havent played any mtgo since v3 went offline which is kind of a bummer.

having a ton of floating windows that are impossible to attach, gameplay that's weirdly unintuitive and difficult to follow, and a client with so many memory leaks that my computer slows to a crawl if I leave it open overnight isn't really what I had in mind

I mean, it is still playable, it's just disorienting in a way I assumed I'd get used to but haven't...v3 took a week or so to really get used to but it still felt kinda natural after that. I've played the new client for much longer and it's still irritating in so many little ways. There's so much functionality that's really unnecessary and my computer can't cleanly handle all the graphics going on at once. At least the life totals aren't a tiny number in the corner anymore like they used to be.

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!!