Magic: The Gathering C/D

Yeah, I like that one, was a bit closer to it last week. Currently I'm at -1 Heir, -1 Polukranos, -3 Strikes, -1 Crater's Claws, -1 land, +2 Stormbreath, +1 Surrak, +3 Stubborn Denial, +1 Temur Charm. Also a somewhat different sideboard with an additional Surrak, Icy Blast, 2 Angers, and Hornet Queen.

I've found that I'm much more excited about Stubborn Denial than Lightning Strike in general, so I've swapped them between main and side.

started gp ottawa 6-0 ended up 7-2. i was up a game round 9 and basically had the win on the board but fucked it up for reasons that will probably always remain a mystery. (although playing 8 rounds of magic on 3.5 hours of sleep def played into things)

anyway finished day one in 60th but i feel p confidant in my khans draft.

awesome, gl tomorrow. what was your pool like?

go Lamp!

Nice job Lamp, eyes on the prize. Latest episode of South Park was about MTG, was alright. Surprised that they kept the game about 75% accurate, even down to card names.

It was weird, at one point they were clearly just reading cards off the M15 spoiler, most everything was from that or Khans, though at one point they had a Psychogenic Probe and even read the text off it, totally a wtf moment for anyone who knows the game. Interesting for me was how they cheaply reproduced the art on all those cards with similar but really shoddy images. If you know the original images it's kind of funny. This screenshot was the biggest I could find:

http://moargeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Magic-Board.png

awesome, gl tomorrow. what was your pool like?

solid but not super busted abzan. i had a seige rhino which i got to cast in almost all my games. i kept joking that the gp anthem shouldve been S.R.E.A.M. cuz there were siege rhinos everywhere around me all day. the other rares i played were windswept heath and grim haruspex which was really good once i started playing against duneblast and/or end hostilites every round. the best thing about my pool was that i didnt have to play any bad cards like my worst card was probably war behemoth. also dead drop was insane for me and i felt pretty good about my choice to play one scout the borders as fixing and to enable cut/dead drop. day one biggest brag: beating someone with the wingmate roc, foil wingmate roc pool.

i had another disappointing day two though. i went 1-2 in my first draft pod 2-1 in my second. ive managed to day two all three gps ive played but have had pretty miserable day twos or really just first drafts. ive gone 0-3, 1-2, 1-2 in those three drafts. mostly this serves to remind me that mtgo 8-4s are really pretty soft and that i still have lots to improve in my limited game. anyway i ended up 10-5 for 78th place and 250 bucks. then since three people that i was carpooling with were still in contention in the sunday super series i decided to use my voucher for $15 off a side event to play a draft win-a-box. because it was the last one of the night they gave everyone an additional three packs for registering. i drafted probably the best khans deck i will ever draft - just the perfect b/w warriors decks with an amazing curve, perfect mana (i had two scoured barrens) good rares in bloodsoaked champion, utter end and the haruspex &c &c. had a very easy 3-0/6-0 and when i went to collect my box they gave me another three packs. so i won a box + 9 packs in a free tournament which was a fun way to end the weekend. sorry for blogging

holiday cube is BACK! took me 3 minutes to get totally screwed by the new unerrata of Time Vault, which turns out is a pretty good combo with Tezzeret...

yeah time vault is super busted in this cube

I actually find this less fun than the legacy cube because fair archetypes are basically unplayable

like last night I won in the finals with t1 crypt, island, tinker, inkwell which is 'fun' but...

otoh monored was way too strong in the legacy cube and it's nice to not just have to always lose to the fun police. other than that I *really* liked it though.

I didn't do the legacy cube but I suspect you're basically right, but as a long time player I do really appreciate the opportunity to play with all these cards. I've played some really busted games of 5-color back when that format was becoming insane and to be honest I kinda miss that form of raw, no-holds-barred Magic (with the side benefit of essentially getting to play a different deck every time). I like the idea that you have little idea of where you stand on any given turn, that things can just flip on a dime so quickly. That said it's definitely good to only have it like one month out of the year

Also I do appreciate getting to play all the Commander stuff that I've basically never seen before

welp, just like that

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

started the turn with Metamorph in hand, almost played Wurmcoil and was like "wait a minute..."

some bonkers cards spoiled today. Soulflayer looks particularly susceptible to abuse. Dash, manifest, and bolster all seem like cool mechanics, but it's also nice that the clan mechanics are returning.

The terrible combo player in me wants to use Manifest to get around drawbacks or with blink-type effects to power broken creatures into play

Soulflayer is neat indeed, but which creature exactly are you going to want to exile?

feel like that might be too many combo pieces for an eternal deck but it would be fun if that manifest deck existed in standard. tho I can't even think of any std blink effects off the top of my head.

yeah it's just a fun mechanic in general. 4/4 Treefolk dude seems very similar to Master of the Wild Hunt which IIRC got a decent amount of play in its day. Dash is pretty cool too, though I guess it depends how much it's pushed. Heelcutter already seems like it could be a pain in limited.

I feel like there will be one pretty strong manifest card that becomes a cube mainstay

like that's a pretty great format for the mechanic

dash is kind of a throwback to http://magiccards.info/vi/en/100.html which saw some standard play back in the 90s. i'm a fan

oh yeah that card was sweet

yeah I thought of the Viashinos as well, I think this goes more with R&D's recent tendency to make cards that won't just sit in your hand for whatever reason

hooo boy @ this new preview card

like I'm guessing it's not all that great, you need to delve 6 to be on par with Time Walk and even with 8 I feel its like a slightly better Cryptic Command, but still I love that they're just going for it with these blue delve cards

the time walk effect is not that powerful a. if it takes a ton of time/energy to set up b. if you're a monoblue draw-go deck where it's just gonna be explore

so they've done a good job making sure that all the time walk cards fulfill both those criteria

Love the subtle art changes for the reprinted lifelands. That's a cool trick they've never gotten to do before, because they've never reprinted a cycle in back-to-back sets.

I suppose some are not that subtle

they did it with the guildgates already

there was a legacy turboland deck a few years ago that could cast walk the aeons every turn but other than that none of the many time walk variants have been more abusable than plain old 3UU time warp. temporal mastery was exciting but only ended up in fringe decks in the end

this one has the problem of just being outclassed by treasure cruise in any deck that would want it

there's still a goofy modern time walk-howling mine deck. my friend played it for a while. it's solidly t2.5 but it's actually pretty playable.

the fact that temporal mastery is better and still doesn't even see play in like, legacy miracles, seems pretty telling

yeah and not just outclassed but also competing for the same delve-bait

Well yeah, like I mentioned Cryptic Command is probably the best Time Walk we've gotten though it's not a Time Walk proper. but it's basically just as good.

I doubt anything but a goofy combo deck is going to want this, I just love extra-turn effects. I still love Temporal Mastery even though I was desperate to sell as many of 'em as I could at $10-15 before they crashed

time walk was a broken card because of recursion, not because taking an extra turn is inherently busted. this and temporal mastery have the safety clause on them so there's not much you can do with them

I feel like the safety clause is actually pretty unnecessary since the delve cost already is a pretty good safety clause

not to mention the 3 blue mana which should deter any sort of goofball Dredge thing in Modern

anyway, enough about that thing, how cool is the Jeskai Infiltrator

http://media.wizards.com/2014/ujehvsbfrf153/en_lw5yaa6hq8.png

cool card garbage art

yeah I reallly dislike the cgi art that's been showing up lately, this one's even worse:

http://mythicspoiler.com/frf/cards/sageeyeavengers.jpg

the look they developed for the djinn is so horrible

that Soulfire Grand Master looks a nice upgrade to Seeker of the Way in Jeskai decks

Hmmm how did I forget the Guildgates

did i ever comment about how the Crackling Doom art looks like it was borrowed from a neo-prog album cover

I always kinda liked this dude's CGI-art

http://magiccards.info/ptc/en/15.html

but yes some of these more recent ones are terrible. so is the one I posted too but I like that 90's movie-CGI style.
That said, plenty of great art in Khans thus far

Soulfire seems like fun with Blasphemous Act, at least :)

Jeskai ascendancy is a straight up superhero team comic book cover. Cute, but weird for mtg.

this new uncommon cycle looks really strong. also the green siege seems better than the others so far.

iatee u r famous https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iukVnoydb4&list=PL04lbfeNAaS8BbABBy0KmtKoAd4h9tM-G

oh whoa i did not know ilx embedded youtubes now. round 2.

haha yeah I saw that / kinda figured it was being recorded while I was playing. the end of g2 is a pretty dumb punt, I was annoyed at myself for not having sided out academy for an island and when I finally could play elendra I was like "okay now he just needs to not have upheaval for exactly one turn". I was also annoyed at him for cutting all the storm cards cause that's what I was trying to force p1.