Magic: The Gathering C/D

went to eternal weekend in philly and did pretty well going 8-2-1 at legacy. playing 11 rounds in a day is as much a physical feat as a mental one. my hands were literally cramping when I shuffled at the end of the day.

anyway eternal weekend is great. my friend threw together an unpowered d+t deck in vintage just cause he wanted the sweet tolarian academy playmat and he went 6-4, having never played the format.

i really like this scapeshift build, i hope it's not terrible
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/315203#online

playing with coiling oracle and compulsive research in 2015 is some sort of weird dream

BFZ full set is up http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-image-gallery/battle-zendikar-2015-09-18

set looks fine for limited, looks a lot faster than the ROE-esque format people thought we were getting but that is okay with me.

really nothing new that i am excited to play in constructed though. i'm just gonna sit back and draft for a while and let other people come up with the standard decks.

manabases are going to be crazy, time to polish off those 5-color decks

the knight otr / retreat to coral helm combo seems legit to me. t3 win in modern. would be cool if bant was a deck now.

overall the set is fine, not super exciting but limited should be fun for a while at least

considering knight is still bugged on mtgo a friend was theorizing you cld build a pretty broken modern combo deck w/it for the ptq today, although part of me worries theyd refuse to honor the win if you gamed a programming error

what's the bug?

you can sacrifice any permanent (incl. itself) to knight's ability. looks like as of latest bug update its still a problem

haha that's insane

so I feel like Standard has found itself in a pretty unhealthy place with the release of BFZ. The battle lands have had this perverse effect of making it so every deck wants to play all the most powerful cards, and now singles prices, which were already on the rise, have shot up to crazy levels. Is this an unforeseen circumstance or is this the direction that WotC is trying to push the game? I know these types of situations have happened before, but it feels like a letdown after the more open environment we saw during Khans block. Is this just a return to the norm? Is new Jace headed for a banning?

I've been out of it for a while, what's shooting up to crazy prices?

don't know about paper but new jace is about 70 tix online now. i think i opened three during origins and prob sold for 70 total.

Delve is a degenerate mechanic and fetch lands are dumb as shit, this is what we get when they bring them back. Luckily with the new standard rotation scheme they'll be gone in 6 months rather than a year.

Also there's definitely other strategies that work, it's just easier to build the goodstuff midrange decks so if they're not worse than the other options then there's no incentive to test other stuff

Origins jace is strong but its power seems appropriately gated if fetches don't exist

ok so I haven't been following the BFZ stuff at all (we had a baby...)

I know they've reprinted all the fetches/shocks in some fashion, but does this mean they're all standard legal now? Because if so, that's really dumb - resulting in exactly the sort of enviroment that Moodles is describing, where everyone plays Modern Jund-type decks full of overpowered mythics.

There are ally colored fetches and new ally colored duals that are worse than shocks but are fetch-able in standard currently, yes. Having only the ally ones leads to a weird situation where playing 4 colors is no harder than playing 3 colors so there's just a lot of 4 color midrange decks.

Right, the issue is the combination of fetches & battle lands makes mana bases too open-ended, plus you have all these ridiculous graveyard interactions with cards like Jace, Kolaghan's Command, Ojutai's Command, Den Protector, Deathmist Raptor, delve cards, allowing you to recur and re-use cards endlessly. It feels oppressive to me, but maybe I was just spoiled by the way things had been going over the past year.

some solid graveyard hate could possibly help the situation

The PT was pretty silly, with deck names like Dark Jeskai and Blue Abzan. I remember reading something the developers said about how they wanted lands that would encourage two color decks. Don't know if they meant post fetches, but right now it's pretty dumb how every deck can play any card.

I do like BFZ limited now that I've played it a bit. There's a bit of variety of decks to make, and it feels like there's less bombs (though Rolling Thunder at uncommon increases the number). I still get confused what cards are allies and what cards have ingest though. I think they failed a bit on the theming.

Shadows Over Innistrad confirmed for April

i did a few bfz prerelease sealeds on mtgo when it came out even tho they are shitty value but i 4-0'd nearly all of them and had some good opens so i went into the format with like 40 packs and a bunch of tix. since then my limited rating has dropped exactly 150 points from 1856 to 1706 and the cupboard is bare. think i ought to take a break until April maybe.

None of this is surprising to me, but it's interesting to see this spelled out in such detail:
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/the-most-expensive-standard-since-caw-blade

I'm not super upset about the high prices, I've resigned myself to playing mediocre decks like R/G Landfall and Aristocrats. The frustrating thing for me is that local standard play has absolutely bottomed out in Austin, TX. During Khans block, my LGS would get between 20-30 people for FNM standard. Now, it's a struggle to get even 8 people, and this is the case across a bunch of stores. I'd be ok with my crappy decks if there was a consistent pool of players to compete with.

the landfall deck is not mediocre, the become immense / temur battle rage combo is really brutal for standard. also the ramp decks are putting up results on MTGO now which is opening up the format a lot since there's now a predator for the midrange decks

the current high prices are mostly a product of the fetchlands which are going away in the next rotation. without them jace is a lot less powerful and manabases move back towards 2 colors as a default instead of 3-4.

I guess what I'd say is that landfall is the best deck I have access to, but it still feels a bit underpowered. It manages to get by in part because many decks (except Jeskai black) don't pack enough removal to disrupt it. This could easily change if the deck gains at all.

I agree that this state of affairs will probably change at next rotation assuming we don't see enemy fetches come back or something crazy like that. It would also be helped if Oath contained a reasonable amount of premium removal and graveyard hate.

this is the first standard in 3 years that I have had any interest in, cause jeskai black seems like the first cool modern-style tempo deck in years

not gonna actually build it though

this deck isn't nearly at the same power level, but it allows you to play a modern-style tempo game and is a more affordable option.

jeskai black is more of a clunky midrange deck to me

after playing delver in standard, pretty much all new standard 'tempo' decks feel like crap in comparison. i've been ruined

yeah I don't think they ever want a delver equivalent or strong cheap countermagic in standard, which means that a true tempo deck is only gonna be happen again if they screw something up

considering all the incredibly shitty changes to mtgo since i started playing it in 2012 im not sure why but the change to mocs is the one that bothers me the most.

what elements in particular? i like that it is easier to get into a mocs event now but all the events being standard and modern is lame imo.

anyone play the legendary cube yet? I played one last night and found it pretty fun. idk if it will be too hard to solve though. it's sooo slow, peoples' curves start at 4 and it mostly seems to be about choice removal vs choice bombs.

on of my budz says he's still gonna be picking signets over everything as if this were a normal cube, but idk if that's actually even right because the format is slow enough that you can't really do anything broken within the first few turns anyway. the big mana rocks seem really strong though.

ive watched some streams but it seems like the exact kind of magic that i find unfun so ill probably skip it

apparently gp pittsburg hit their cap earlier today which is interesting to me. validates my decision not to make the drive down i think

yeah people really like modern. I have kinda burnt out on it but maybe I should just start playing a deck that doesn't always lose to burn and tron. I kinda think burn is probably just the best deck in modern. they really need to stop printing new burn cards.

'burnt out on it'

legendary cube doesn't seem like my thing if it's basically the cube parallel to EDH, which is what it looks like.

i think my mtgo burnout period is about over at this point, now i'm just waiting for a new limited/standard format i like before i dive back in. BFZ is ok but way too loud about its intentions strategy-wise, there's not really any discovery process, the decks are all just there in your face from the start. i never feel compelled to draft a ton in formats where that's the case

I think the edhness is overstated a little bit probably, but I have been drafting control decks w/ like 5 creatures

guy from my local store top 8ed the GP with commune with lava scapeshift, i've spent the last year or 2 throwing unusual cards in that deck but i feel like i've been outdone here

commune with lolva

cider did you play the gp?

no i didn't make it

would have played scapeshift or infect, that's all i've got atm

anyone got some draft advice for BFZ? played a monogreen deck with lots of Eldrazi and got crushed - didn't get a whole lot of accel and my big dudes kept getting bounced. hadn't seen a single card from the set before the draft which means I was probably hopeless going in, now I know a little more but still have no clue what's good/not

A lot of pros seem to think you should stay away from green altogether

ppl avoiding green is at en extreme right now but even so you have to have a really good reason to be there. for any green deck (landfall, ramp, converge/allies, bg sac) you have to have a strong start with the other half of the deck before it is worth looking at most green cards, in particular the weak commons. e.g. you can pick up a bunch of good aggressive red cards early pack 1 that could be the start of a few different decks but you want to be getting something rare or uncommon like grove rumblers tabling before you go green.

ramp really has to be land ramp to work, with the scions being 1/1s they are often too valuable to sac and risk getting your fatty bounced or killed. e.g. the 2/3 plus scion 4 drop is a decent card especially for the modal value of the 1/1 but if you lose that for nothing the 4 drop 2/3 is a bit gross.

the allies deck can be v strong but it only fires if you have a bunch of the strong uncommons, especially the rw double strike dude, the menace guy and the tapper. i would take one of those speculatively early and see if a few arrive in a row before being happy about going that direction.

but unless you get a good steer early in another direction, some combo of the grixis devoid colours is the safest route to a decent deck.

uw fliers is solid, just be careful of overextending on awaken and getting short on mana. it is a mana intensive format for sure.

is this like Black in Avacyn Restored, or even worse? hard to believe R&D would nerf a color so hard in this modern era

both decks I lost to were 3-color - is this strange or are 3 color decks common? also is it proper to play 18 land here?

yes 18, i might've played 19 as often as 17. 3+ colours is fine but the fixing is scarce so you have to have a good reason and then prioritize evolving wilds etc. i think part of the reason green is so poor is that they have kind of sacrificed it as the foundation of multicoloured decks instead of adding more broad fixing. the 3 drop guy who taps for any colour might be the nest green common, and this set's variation of the common land grab spell is very playable.

evolving wilds is almost first pickable, I have def 2nd picked it a few times now.

19 is def okay if you are using one or two utility lands too.

awaken cards are all better than they seem. just pretend that they're creatures. roil spout is better than most rares.

is this like Black in Avacyn Restored, or even worse? hard to believe R&D would nerf a color so hard in this modern era

If green is open there's a good chance of getting lots of so-so green cards and no payoff cards

that said, some of the green archetypes are solid - RG landfall and the '5-color' green deck (usually GWU) come to mind - but the green cards for those decks are generally available mid-late, you're early picking the red burn spells or the UW awaken spells, and those cards let you get into other powerful decks in the event that green isn't wide open to support them

i think the only non-rare green card i've pack 1 pick 1'd in this format is Brood Monitor