Magic: The Gathering C/D

deathrite is a better card than both and never commanded $20+ price even when it was modern-legal, whereas snapcaster was $20 on day 1. hype cycles and price memory are a big part of it.

Frank Karsten's KTK draft article is out:

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-a-pick-order-list-for-khans-of-tarkir-draft/

Some interesting observations here. He thinks that blue is the best color (and U/G the best combo) and that black is the worst; IMO it's hardly a core-set level imbalance, and the fact that most decks are 3-color minimizes if one color isn't pulling its weight. Best common, all things considered: Mystic of the Hidden Way. I would still argue it's Debilitating Injury but I don't think black is as bad as he thinks it is.

Overall KTK has an awful lot to think about. It's not very much like RTR or Gatecrash or Alara where you try to hit your faction as hard as possible. I could write a whole article on a card like Force Away or Sultai Flayer since there is just such a depth to what the different clans do. I recently 3-0'd a draft with Sultai (though it only splashed blue for 3 cards) and it had only one card with Delve - it was sort of a Green/Black big toughness deck that won with Pine Walkers and Savage Punches. There's nothing like Populate or Battalion where a bunch of good cards chain together to produce something even better.

a lot of karsten's observations were somewhat at odds with my own and that will definitely give me a different angle when i am drafting from now on, although i am not quite ready to throw out my own experience/instincts wholesale, by which i have managed to get up to a respectable win rate now. i did agree with him about u/g more or less. definitely if i do not have a strong early pull elsewhere i am looking for u/g because i have found it gives me the highest chance of not ending up with a garbage deck. so the upside is consistency rather than power, but you can do a lot of powerful things off of that consistent base, which can be sultai or temur obv, both are super solid, but the mana is there is do anything.

and although i don't rate mystic of the hidden way as highly as he does, i would guess if i ranked the cards that have done the last points of damage to finish me of then mystic and direct damage spells would be way out on their own at the top of the list.

mystic is so good, in some other format it might be pretty eh, but being able to get in for 3 a turn in a format filled w/ clogged up morphy boards

I rate singing bell strike as a top common tho

dig through time as a 'decent single color card' seems kinda lol, whenever that card is resolved against me I basically know, deep down, that I am not going to win

ride down is also a lot better than decent

i don't think bell strike is a top common in the abstract but it's very good in the aggressive UGx and URx decks i prefer to draft so i still take it highly to make sure i get it. i feel like my archetype preference is the same as his but my pick orders are pretty different & im not too interested in changing them unless i start getting crappy decks on the regular

yep basically the same here

idk if its variance or the difference btw 8-4s/lgs drafts and pt drafts but i am nearly undefeated with b/g decks and have not had a lot of success with other decks. i could also just not be drafting the mystic decks correctly

Kin-Tree Invocation is such a monster. I think it could be first-pick worthy. There is a playable 0/4 for B and a 0/5 for 1G and outside of a Force Away not many tools for dealing it that early.

iatee is OTM about Mystic - KTK is just the right draft format for it, and outside of Debilitating Injury there aren't a whole lot of tools for easily removing it

http://i.imgur.com/en7jwpj.gif

would you guys include mardu charm here?

definitely. take out one of the Summit Prowlers -a deck with 3 Valley Dashers shouldn't have so many 4-drops

Helmsmasher is totally sick - just straight up "kill me on your turn or it's over". Shanker is easier to deal with but much the same. Good luck!!

If you take out both Prowlers you won't have any double red so you could probably swap out a Mountain for a Swamp

I like prowler, also triggers boulder

I kinda feel like mardu charm is actually not that good?

also I already had to mulligan a 2 swamp + 5 card hand (I won anyway)

I think if I had one more black dual land the charm would feel like an easy include

despite being secretly not that good

i think mardu charm is right at that spot where none of the modes is super exciting for the cost but the modality pushes it over the top. i would've thought about putting it in over the 2nd act of treason. the only charm i left out in an on-colour deck is temur, that is not a good card.

Well I see 3 Valley Dashers and I feel anything that can take out a potential blocker is good. Second mode on that Charm is also useful, it lets you burn it if you don't have a t3 drop and can blow someone out from time to time. None of the charms feels like real high picks to me but I think they're all useful, even Temur - sure it's often a worse Savage Punch but it's at instant speed and the counterspell option is always nice to have.

I lost r2 to another mardu deck who went 2/2->2/3+1/1 white dude->4/5 ogre both his games on the play :(

yeah I almost never take / play the charms, partly because I'm 2c like 75% of the time, partly because everyone else seems to value them way too high

the Jeskai one can be a total killer if you've got a ton of prowess dudes

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/limited/analysis/draft/ktk_ktk_ktk

what do we think of this? is armament corps really just that insane an a dedicated abzan deck?

interesting that two-color decks are way below a 50% win rate

the collection method is just too biased to be particularly worthwhile. i mean its interesting to note that in a slow format with lots of board stalls lure and overrun are probably better than usual (and i do think roar of the challenge is a little underrated) but those cards are def not as good as those win %s represent them to be. like i can think of a lot of cards i would take over flying crane technique. id also probably take cut, arc lightning and suppression field over corps. but i may value being two colors way to highly its not like my winrate is all that good in triple ktk

I would've guessed Dead Drop was top uncommon given how the data is collected.

yeah me too

armament corps' super high winrate is kinda interesting because it's *not* a 1 dimensional overrun effect, it's a 5 drop that generally comes down as soon as you can play it

btw I'm coming around to Tormenting Voice; I don't think anyone gives any priority to it but I think any instants or sorceries that are cheap and aren't card disadvantage are playable, given Prowess and Delve. plus a slow format affords you the opportunity to play cards like this. maybe it's just me but it seems so much better than Wild Guess - this along with Treasure Cruise can do wonders in Jeskai

but yeah Armament Corps is very good but I didnt think it was THAT much better than the other 2XYZ clan uncommons (Sultai Soothsayer, Warden of the Eye, Bear's Companion, Mardu Roughrider). I'd probably rank it as the best anyway but Roughrider is probably my #2, so I'm surprised to see it ranked last among them. all of them are real good though

I am big on Wooly Loxodon though. One extra mana to unmorph but it eats all the big turn 5 dudes.

i think roughrider is the second worst maybe worse than warden of the eye and i like mardu decks. i dont have any solid reasoning for that except i think it just slots into the better mardu decks really poorly esp at 5 mana. i also think those decks want tri-colored cards the least and its often just worse than the other mardu cards you might have

corps is a 6/6 for 5 with a high degree of synergy with many of the best uncommons in its colors - obv its really good! i guess i question whether its a better early pick than murderous cut or suppression field though, given those cards flexibility

Cut is my #1 uncommon and I pretty much always take it if in black. Supression Field I like but it doesn't take a Morph out, I'd go Corps over that because as mentioned it's nutso synergy. Given the ability of a +1/+1 counter to "turn on" lifelink, flying, first strike, deathtouch, etc. it can be a real bomb.

I never had an issue playing Roughrider - it's where you want to top out and I think tri-colors are ok when they're 5 mana but unless they remove it right away it pretty much wins over the next 2 turns. That's my experience though. I would vouch really hard for Sultai Soothsayer too though, I've always found that card really coming in handy

yeah roughrider is bad because 5 drops are bad in aggro decks, I would still probably play it in most builds but I'm not picking it in like the t5 picks of any pack even if I'm mardu

the methodology behind mtggoldfish's limited stats is really flawed and i would ignore them completely

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/16295

so the only 4-0 deck modern deck tuesday that didn't run 4 treasure cruises is the burn deck, which ran 3 treasure cruises

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/pvs-playhouse-khans-of-tarkir-limited/

another article on KTK limited. interesting that even the members of CFB can't agree on what's good. I don't like the "play 41 cards so you don't get decked first" advice though. For one, I've never played a game of KTK limited that came down to decking. For two, there are a lot of playable cards that draw you cards or mill you, plus stuff like Embodiment of Spring, so if it did come to decking I think it wouldn't be up to whoever played 41 cards. For three, KTK is so skill intensive and has so many decisions to make that if you actually did get to Turn 34 then the match is more likely to come down to the clock than who wins that game. I've seen people chew up 18+ minutes on Game 1 over like 13-14 turns. I don't have a problem with playing 41 cards but this just seems like bad advice

Also, even though I really have started to like big elephant, Savage Punch is definitely the best green common

i am increasingly finding that the 2 mana interactive spells are really important. punch, singing bell strike, force away, injury, feat, suspension field and ride down obv. mana and tempo are just nuts in this format, and being able to effect the board for cheap, and hopefully cast multiple spells in a turn, is a huge deal

2 in particularly because not infrequently the 3 mana equivalents, e.g. awaken the bear, kill shot, can put you in awkward spots re efficient mana use on key turns.

punch and bell strike are both very very good in the right decks and kinda bad in other spots, injury and feat are cards you are basically always happy to have around

there was a good marshall sutcliffe article that highlighted how strong the feat/god's willing effect has become as limited removal gets worse - feat in response to a 5 or 6 mana removal spell is a blowout

on a related note, i have had a mentality switch w/r/t face down morphs from thinking that a morph is a good plan for turn 3 to making sure i have something better in my deck for that turn and playing a morph as my fall back

having creatures that can be either 3 drops or late drops is not bad, but you have to account for the mana+tempo costs from unmorphing

I play 2c aggro decks 80% of the time in this format and having someone play a t3 morph, refuse to trade w/ my 2/1, unmorph it, then get it bell striked or whatever = so many easy wins

so yeah morphs are generally powerful cards but I regularly end up w/ only 2 or 3 in my deck

i think its ok for all your 3s to be morphs if it means you're picking up more good 2s and 4s which are in much shorter supply in this format

yeah I think you really screw yourself if you don't have *some* play t3, given that that's what this format revolves around

i think there are enough good cards at 4, altho it is easy to fall into the trap of neglecting t4 in between the major morph turns. but yeah good 2 drops are hard to find. one of the inherent advantages of a more aggressive deck is that it forces you to have a curve, and you're not skipping your early turns just because you have a stack of powerful cards and you hate wasting a spot on gdman wetland sambar

haha I won a draft w/ a 5 wetland sambar deck the other day

I'm starting to think the 0/4 Outlast for B is even better than I thought. You don't often play anything turn 2 so you can usually Outlast 'em right away and if you do it twice you get a 2/6 which is pretty much a brick in this format. Plus it's a Warrior, it makes Treefolk sorcery real good, and gives you a Raid trigger for a turn 2 Mardu Skullhunter

yeah it's solid, so is the 0/5 pinger wall

agreed on both. and that they are 2 of the better early drops tells you about the general quality on offer. one problem with the B 0/4, and really with injury to an extent, is that early black is otherwise pretty bad. skullhunter is your only other good black common at 1, 2 or 3 and even that is an awkward card. black seems to be better as a third or splash colour.

yeah skullhunter is underwhelming, you often have to hold on to it to get the raid trigger, and it feels like a one for one so often because a later-game 2/1 is just dead

or you just need a 2 power blocker. the saddest skullhunter is they have face down morphs, you have nothing on board, you play your 2/1, tapped, no trigger

skullhunter isnt great but i think people undervalue how effective hand disruption is. like a) the average cmc of most peoples decks is higher than in other formats b) people are often cheating by one or even two mana sources s c) morphs mean that people will not play cards from their hands as quickly all of which means you are v likely to get a relevant card off the raid trigger and that its not a terrible turn five play in conjunction with another card. i think the biggest downside to skullhunter is that it comes into play tapped

ancestor and skullhunter being p reliable wheels is one of the big reasons that i am drafting black in almost 80% of my drafts