Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

i 'like' u/g a fair bit in this format at least rn in mtgo 8-4s. this is the fourth pick greenwarden of murasa meta admittedly. you also often end up splashing either white or black in these decks for rares.

my big problem was getting Conduit of Ruin out and having it killed right away. those Awaken/bounce spells are nasty. I knew this card was a trap!!

haha that is a sad sequence for sure. conduit still a v good card despite the risk

I've had some success with UG midrange decks, but I think it speaks more to the power of blue than green. The Converge deck is just about the only strong green deck that I've seen, because you can actually make use of Lifespring Druid and Tajuru Stalwart, which are only powerful in the right deck. Basically this:

its more that green is like 100% roleplayer cards

Not a fan of RG landfall though, I've never seen it work well on my side or my opponent's side.

is that commune with lava scapeshift deck the real deal? it is one of very few modern decks that I could feasibly play, but it's hard to tell if it is actually competitive or if dude just had a really good/lucky run

the deck is fine, it loses pretty bad to faster combo decks e.g. infect or storm but crushes the midrange decks and anything else that can't lock the game up in 4 turns

it's also a very easy deck to pilot relative to the rest of the format which is more relevant than people think in long tournaments like GPs imo

so, apparently this is real

http://mythicspoiler.com/ogw/cards/wastes.jpg

Definitely real along with several other related cards including new kozilek

first thought, does this make Domain/Sunburst go to 6?

no

it doesn't have a basic land type, is why

-it's a basic land, so Evolving Wilds and Rampant Growth can find it, and you can play more than 4 copies in a constructed deck.
-it doesn't have a type, so it doesn't count towards mechanics that count basic land types
-it produces colorless mana, so it doesn't count towards mechanics that count colors of mana

why they chose to add a colorless mana symbol midway through the block is pretty perplexing though, now all the spawn token making cards in the first set essentially have to get errataed since they should say 'add (C)' rather than 'add (1)'

yeah a new type of mana seems like a big enough deal that it should've been there from the start. I don't think the intention is to make Waste mana rare (in draft you can add as many of these as you want, right?) so yeah the fact that spawns don't produce it is rather odd

well spawns do produce it, so does hedron archive, kozilek's channeler and probably some other cards that im forgetting. they just dont have they new mana symbol on them which is potentially confusing

this ultimately seems more confusing than interesting/helpful, despite being designed to make things less confusing

the new ullamog seems very strong in older format decks that I hate like tron and mud

are we saying that spawns generate the same type of mana as Wastes? That's not how I read it. For example, I don't think you can cast Kozilek with just a bunch of spawns.

yes they do

yes, every card from sol ring to spawn tokens that used to produce {X} now produces {C}. or, really, they always produced {C} but there was no distinction btw {C} which is colorless mana and {X} which is generic mana of any color. now that there are cards that cost explicitly {C} to cost, its necessary for colorless mana producing cards to dilineate this

is {C} Wastes mana or just any colorless mana? are we saying here that a bunch of spawns can be used to cast new Kozilek?

as far as I know, none of this has been confirmed or clarified by Wizards, or have they come out with some kind of rules explanation already?