Magic: The Gathering C/D

freaking silent departure, that card gave everyone nightmares. a turn late on your stabilizing blocker? now you're 3 turns late, good luck

flyers seem really good in this format

yeah that is becoming evident to me as well

just lost my 3rd sealed match to Avacyn, how the hell do people keep opening this card??

other than that the format is really fun

so who's going to gp ny?

'ny'

Any legacy players on ilx?

haha yeah I play more legacy than anything else these days

Aside from the inane platinum changes to next season (which got rescinded already), this PT was probably the best one I remember since, whichever one had Kibler against Finkel in the top 8. This one was probably better actually. Both Standard and Draft seem so good right now, though I usually think Standard is best right after the new large set, before the format settles. Can't wait to dive into drafts more - the format looks to be close to the same level as orig Innistrad, with lots of synergy, several build-around cards, mostly balanced archetypes

I'm glad the PT introduced a bit more variety into Standard when it was threatening to be very narrow. Still trying to sort out what I can plan without going broke. I have a b/w Eldrazi list that I really like, but it's just a bit too weak against the field.

yeah good format so far

draft format isn't that much like innistrad though except for the werewolf tension

anyone on here tried out Hex? graphically, it looks almost like a copy of Duels. A bunch of pros are promoting it, don't know if it is any good though.

Draft thus far has been really fun, I love formats that make you reevaluate cards that wouldn't be playable in other sets. A good example is Macabre Waltz, or the 1/1 W dude where you can discard to tap a creature. Some of the madness-oriented decks are crazy - I've won and lost a few games on god draws, which strangely I kinda missed.

b/r mad vamps in soi is by miles the highest variance archetype since i started playing. i guess i appreciate its role in the limited environment but i can't stand playing it and find it super aggravating to lose to.

yeah, having some early discard outlets is very important. Makes something like Tormenting Voice a much higher pick than something like Murderer's Axe.

insolent neonate the 1 drop sac/discard/draw guy in your opening hand is either a turn 3 5 drop or a mulligan.

btw - this is a pretty useful tool for MTGO players wondering how the events stack up in terms of EV:

https://www.goatbots.com/ev_calculator.php

basically, you need to win 64% of the time for the competitive league to be better EV than the friendlies (among harder competition too) - does anyone have a winrate that high?

some of the pools i have opened, if i saw 9 games stretching out in front of me i would uninstall mtgo and get on with my life

b/r mad vamps in soi is by miles the highest variance archetype since i started playing. i guess i appreciate its role in the limited environment but i can't stand playing it and find it super aggravating to lose to.

yeah madness is a fun mechanic but at the same time if you have a discard outlet, 'draw a card, cheat something into play' just feels a tad overpowered for fair limited play. and if you don't have a discard outlet you play with a bunch of underpowered cards.

yeah i'm not a big fan of cost reduction madness in limited, doesn't feel necessary to make the mechanic good. would rather madness cost was just always the same as the normal cost

madness already adds instant speed and generally puts you up a card, that's good enough!

running GW tokens deck list for game day this weeknd XD

it's gonna be my first entry into standard since type ii was a thing

had very mixed results with the vampires deck in ltd. seems like a few decks want the key cards so it's hard to get it to come together

I got wrecked by a madness deck at the prerelease. Reckless Scholar is insane if the rest of your pool supports it. I might play some draft next week, it does seem a lot of fun.

Standard actually seems fun now, judging by the PT. I liked both Brad's GR Goggles deck and LSV's BG Aristrocrats deck. But I don't it looks fun enough to shell out the $$$.

I've just started buying into Legacy, built a Solidairty (reset-tide) deck and am now putting together a UW Stoneblade deck.

I don't know where anyone here is located, but I'll probably be playing Modern this Sunday at Channel Fireball.

think you might be the only west coast person on this thread.

yeah this is the first time since innistrad/rtr where I've actually been interested in multiple standard decks, but I don't have enough time to both play it + other formats regularly, so I'm still not gonna buy a deck.

Seasons past is a sweet one, such an absurd card

I had Seasons Past in my prerelease pool. Won all the games that I drew it. It is crazy and great.

Yeah Seasons Past is nutty. Just lost my deciding final match for prize in a sealed league cause of that card

tried drafting RB vampires again last night as it seemed open. i ended up with a cohesive deck with a good curve, but it kept running out of gas and i went 1-2. might've missed a play or two that could've swung a match my way, but all 3 matches were so close. i'm wondering what the contrarian drafting strategies might be. my experiment with UW failed, but i haven't tried the RB spells deck yet. my opponent drew that BW enchantment that gives his creatures skulk all three games, so it was the bane of my existence for that match.

anyway the set seems really well balanced over all. idk, maybe winning just depends on how well you can read what gets passed to you and balancing that with how pushy you can be to force a deck, if you open bombs.

i've done well so far mostly with GB delirium decks, and i had one good UR spells deck too

gonna draft with some actual good players today, curious to see what they're prioritizing

I've had success with B/W, not a very 'natural' pairing for this set but it works better than I thought. The white guy that lets you discard to tap something can lead to some insane blowout games if you got the right Madness cards.

oh yeah, I forget about the GB delirium deck, haven't tried it yet. seems like lots of fun. and B/W is certainly not as bad as it's cracked up to be. good luck, ciderpress, let us know how it goes!

I've had lots of good r/b decks at this point, I've probably drafted it the most. I think the key common is actually insolent neonate, get in for a few few points of damage then cheat something big into play on t3 + draw a card is really strong.

b/w doesn't have many payoff cards but it's still okay. u/w spirits is solid, not really contrarian. g/b delirium is very good, you get to play w/ a lot of good cards that just become better cards if you hit delirium.

the good u/g decks are the scariest to face, since when they go off (w/ all the key uncommon cards) they can build basically unbeatable boards. if I'm playing blue I either want to have that deck or like 10 flyers.

I 3-0'd with a 16 plains monowhite aggro deck, which was a lot of fun. prob not gonna be viable that often.

if you open thalia's lieutenant or always watching (I actually had neither) I think it's worth trying

Speaking of the UG decks you just mentioned, Ongoing Investigation has been so daunting to play against. It's good even in a non-green deck, but ridiculous in UG

Can't trade guys, can't let guys through. Can't win, basically

the worst thing is, not only do they draw their deck but they also can gain a ton of life w/ the various ug pieces, so you can't even really race them after they've 'gone off'

as expected all of the synergy decks depend on uncommons to really fire. one key way they vary is on how much they struggle if you don't get them or draw them. i love the UG deck but the commons can be underpowered, especially if you are fighting over green cards, so if you don't draw one of the good enchantments or the mole you can find yourself with a bunch of cards that don't do a great deal. green and white are the deepest at common so i do tend to favour those - those colours are supporting two quite different decks in delirium and aggro humans but even if you get caught halfway between it's not necessarily a disaster. i have seen some ppl disparage the colour pair but i think my favourite archetype is BW delirium/recursion. not only does that deck have some of the best uncommons it is also pretty strong at common. if you can get a couple each of the black 2 drop and white 3 drop that exile from the yard for tokens you just have plays for days.

GR werewolves is solid, hardly ever really bad and deep enough to be hard to get totally cut out of. because of that i feel okay taking a chance on a pick 2 howlpack resurgance whereas i'd feel a lot more iffy about say a masquerade at that point. BU seems really bad, hardly any of the common zombies are good so the tribal theme is kind of lame. a couple of the uncommon guy that grants deathtouch would make me feel better about 1/3 skaabs clogging up my deck i guess. and the gold rare is so disappointing.

the BG macabre waltz or morbid plunder or whatever-the-current-set's-equivalent-is deck is good in almost every limited format (BFZ/OGW was an exception sadly due to green being awful tokens nonsense) and my friend and i have been abusing it for a long time since it's always underdrafted around here

magic documentary on netflix is zzzzzzzzzzz. even rufus agreed with me and he lives for magic. not enough inside baseball. the magic people produced it so they probably wanted it as cuddly as possible.

competitive magic players are mostly boring people is the problem, i think you could make a good doc about magic but framing it around pro players isn't the most entertaining approach

I actually thought the more personal parts where you learn a bit about their lives was the strongest aspect of the film. Didn't really tell much about actually playing the game and the whole PT drama felt very rushed to where it wasn't really dramatic at all, I couldn't get very invested in the ups and downs of the competition because they zipped through it all so quickly.

I thought the doc did a good job giving an overview of the PT, and I thought it was dramatic enough. Though you're probably right, Scott, that if outsiders had made it we'd get a different perspective. I agree that the personal parts were the most interesting, the only parts that were new for me

I realize this ain't the brag thread but I just 9-0'd one of those new leagues with a R/W deck. Had "only" 2 rares, Bygone Bishop and Burn From Within. MVP card was the 2x Expose Evil - what a workhorse that was.

Not that we have a brag thread. but hey. made me feel good.

forgot to mention. only 1 loss in all 9 matches. I did pull a shit ton of games out of my ass though

i just would have liked more info and facts. they spent very little time on the origin of the game. the inspiration behind it. and were just vague in general about how it got so big. an outside doc might have delved into the money aspect of it more too. how huge of a company it is. how much the pro players make. as rufus said: it didn't really tell him anything that he didn't already know. there is one scene where "The Innovator" is discussing strategy to a crowd and they cut him off after about five seconds. i would have actually liked to hear more from him. it was interesting and i don't even play.

similar actually to the pro video game doc i watched on netflix. those games that tombot likes to watch. they did the same kinda inspirational/generic sports profile thing with the top players but didn't go very deep.

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