Magic: The Gathering C/D

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.

I've only done 3 events but thus far it seems like there are a lot more playable one-toughness creatures than normal, so stuff like Forge Devil and Crippling Blight are quite good. IMO it seems way more fun than M14, which way too often devolved into topdecking wars and was unbalanced colorwise. I agree that there is a lot more degenerate stuff available in this format (like Illusory Angel or Ensoul Artifact), not necessarily a bad thing, but it does feel like there's not enough decent removal to temper this stuff. I too have lost to the white Soul which is such an insanely opressive card, in fact it seems like there are a lot more bomb rares (and uncommons!) in this set than normal. It's way faster than M14 which is a plus but I can definitely see why it feels uninteractive to you (especially considering the high amount of evasion in the set)

Kinda considering maindecking Bronze Sable next time, it stops both the intimidate common dudes and gives the 2U 2/3 dude flying

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

haha yes this is the story of me playing m15 so far

oppressive rays is really good in this format

and bronze sable is like a solid mid-pack pick

ime so far, with the way white decks shape up in particular, the all creatures +2/+1 white get first strike is a nutty bomb

yep, either blowout combat trick or out of nowhere topdeck win

you can't really play around it very well either, if I don't block they'll do 12 damage, if I do I lose all my creatures

I wound up losing one in a real painful way due to Avarice Amulet - I misplayed hard, thinking Encrust was Claustrophobia, and didn't have enough mana to re-equip it to my Hexproof dude, so he winds up killing my guy and taking control of the Amulet, then putting it on the Razorfoot Griffin and killing me slowly with it. I look at the card again and it says "designed by Penny Arcade", great one more reason to hate those fuckin' guys

I like how many can-be-good-in-right-deck artifacts/equipment there is in the set, feel like often they design those things to either be playable or totally unplayable, but the artifacts matter theme makes most of them okay in the right deck.

i got torn up by a guy with the red tap to do damage enchantment on a typhoid rats, with 2 forge devils in my library somewhere. that card seems very good in general.

also, i played against a guy with spectra ward and twice he put it on a 2/2 and ran it into my will-forged golem. the 2nd time i was sure he had a trick, because how could you do that twice, but i needed to block regardless. i like to imagine he put in a compensation claim before finally realizing what he had done.

ha

we were doing side drafts/teamdrafts at the GP and one of my friends just kept taking all the undergrowth scavengers and satyr wayfinders every draft and crushing people with 4-mana 6/6s

yeah that + the 3/1 black dude that mills you 3 feels like a decent strategy. nobody seems to take the Scavenger.

have thought about that deck, and having a primadox or the 3/3 that makes you return to hand to 'refresh' an early scavenger if needed.

i dont like primadox as much in this set without elvish visionary, recurring a 4-drop is a lot more of a cost for drawing cards than recurring a 2-drop

there are other targets too, the +1/+1 counter dude, the frost cat, forge devil etc

I just realized that Underground Scavenger is basically just a dumb Lhurgoyf

by the way, I'm still incredibly peeved by the new client, it seems like every time I play it I discover a new, major design flaw; nothing showstopping (though having to play through a pop-up window of my previous opponent's "revealed hand" was pretty bad), but a lot to make you wonder just how little the client was beta tested

the client was beta tested plenty, i've been a beta tester for the past 2 years

still refuses to download on my computer, through googling I've found others w/ the same problem

and as bad as this is, the new wizards website is just...