Magic: The Gathering C/D

aluren is pretty cool, I might try that in paper one day since I have a playset of recruiters and can borrow my friend's shardless bug deck

Sorry to be here asking so many beginner's questions, but what are these pre-named, pre-made decks? Does anyone ever build their own deck from scratch or is that not generally what is done if you are playing in tournaments?

There's plenty of people who build their own decks, but most competitive players are content to start with a proven strategy and make tweaks from there.

Ty, good to know. I'm far from that stage yet

I haven't played competitive constructed in a long long time but I think it's a lot harder to be successful with your own homebrew these days, since formats get effectively solved and sorted into tier 1/tier 2/fringe decks very quickly. Also I think the cards are in general more powerful now, it's tough to really metagame well for some of the better decks in the format.

yeah, to elaborate, there's so many people playing this game that generally every time a new set is released, all the powerful strategies/interactions get found within a few weeks and then competitive deckbuilding becomes more about picking your preferred one of them and slowly evolving it to match up well against whatever's popular.

of course, you could always be one of the people who found a major strategy in those first few weeks but the odds are against you

man, I remember it taking like...a month before people figured out you could effectively "cheat" Tangle Wire, and suddenly there were copies in what seemed like every Standard deck. those were the days.

also sometimes you dust off some old idea that was publicly known but discarded as a gimmick and stumble on a slightly different build of it that's a bit more consistent and win a bunch of events with it on magic online and then some pro tour player sees it and brings it to the next PT and then a year or 2 later a card gets banned in modern

>Does anyone play/know of anywhere to play in London that isn't terrifying?

Your choices are mostly Dark Sphere in Lambeth or Leisure Games in Finchley. I don't know anything about the latter but it's meant to be nice. I have only good things to say about Dark Sphere - it's super nerdy obviously but they try hard to make it pleasant and friendly.

How did folks do drafting Eternal Masters? I had a ton of fun playing a BR aggro/sacrifice deck with 3 copies of Dragon Egg. Love that card. Gonna draft it a couple more times this coming weekend :)

Draft the set, that is. Maybe not the same deck

didn't sign up for the local drafts in time, gonna draft it on magic online whenever it's out on there (probably next week?)

it's friday. i am starting to get a cold already. maybe the flu. something at any rate.

I went 11-4 at gp columbus this weekend but finished out of t64 on breakers. woulda liked to do a little bit better but I do have my first pro points.

still haven't touched eternal masters but it does look like a good limited set.

not bad! you still playing the recruiter taxes deck?

yep. in prague someone ended up one misplay away from t8'ing with it http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/430202#paper

it's a very strong list, vial + imperial recruiter is super broken in a format where card advantage is hard to come by and mana is super tight

Hope you're feeling better, Roberto! xp

thx, have a feeling i'll be fine by friday evening

so this new set looks uh...pretty nutso thus far. everything's turning into an Eldrazi. plus they're finally doing a merge mechanic where two specific creatures become one super-creature.

there's 3 things i'm particularly tired of right now: 1) eldrazi 2) multicolor sets 3) sequel sets throwing so much of their weight into callbacks e.g. second iterations of legendary creatures

we've been getting a lot of 1 and 3 lately so my engagement level is low. this set looks fine, i'll play it, but nothing's gotten me too excited yet.

my favorite card so far is the G 1/1 deathtouch with delirium +2/+2. curious to see how many formats it cracks

seems like just the word eldrazi is making ppl check out right now but i do like how they seem to be using them in the context of innistrad from what we have seen so far.

also, i can't imagine we will see back to back return sets again any time soon. i get the impression there is the feeling that a successful return requires both recapturing the milieu and also the experience of the earlier set and imo if they are really going 50/50 with new and old planes they need to question the wisdom of that or it will stale the return sets. varying the approach will keep things feeling fresher.

ok another new one i like a lot:
http://media.wizards.com/2016/ouhtebrpjwxcnw5_EMN/en_D0gaFPhvFg.png

the fall set is Kaladesh the steampunk india plane from all the origins thopter cards, so that should be a nice respite from eldrazi for a bit. maro's been talking it up as his best design since original innistrad which uh...he said similar things about theros and that one ended up being just okay so we'll see

The Eldrazi reveal caught me by surprise but only because I only know about the story vaguely. felt like I was the only one on my FB feed surprised. if it was just Emrakul that'd be one thing, but based on Meld and Emerge, it seems there's gonna be a sizeable amount of Eldrazi here. if Thought-Knot Seer, Reality Smasher, and Displacer hadn't invaded every freaking format in the game in the last year, I would be more excited. SOI is also my favorite draft format probably since original Innistrad so I hope that Eldrazi don't ruin the good INN vibes

yeah that's a cool card Cider xp

i do like that there are only 3 meld cards, that's a level of restraint we don't always see from them with wacky new things

oh i also like the curious homunculus, that's a card that seems like it should be good enough for standard with an outside shot at bigger formats

did they change the Legendary rule for Ulrich? or can you have one side flipped and one unflipped?

http://mythicspoiler.com/emn/cards/docentofperfection.html

I love that Delver has become a whole storyline. This is a part of MTG design that I absolutely love.

yes you can have one of each side in play, this is already happening in standard with Avacyn

oh yeah forgot that one was legendary. that's kinda dumb. there should just be a rule that says "both sides of a legendary card can't be in play at the same time".

the overall cost on this card is too conservative for it to actually be good but it is definitely sweet

http://mythicspoiler.com/emn/cards/soulseparator.jpg

man I really liked that card until I saw that you had to sac it

wait on second thought that would be totally broken as a repeatable effect

clearly, this is going to be the best card in the set:

http://mythicspoiler.com/emn/cards/harmlessoffering.html

cool, can't wait to get a red Time Walk next

but seriously, it'll be interesting to see if pure 2-card combo can make it back to Standard

handing your opponent various pacts seems fun

murder at uncommon. black uncommon kill anything in SOI is just sinister concoction, right?

right, murder is standard-relevant, there's nothing more efficient already

my attitude with spoilers lately has shifted from "yay, new cards!" to "oh no, it's going to suck to have to play against this". Not sure that's a healthy attitude.

I am happy about good black removal and the possibility that vampires or werewolves might become standard-playable with this new set. The Eldrazi werewolves are a pretty neat idea. Merge seems kind of weird and clunky though.

I don't see anything that's likely to be obnoxiously omnipresent yet

the only time vampires was a good constructed deck was because of Kalastria Highborn and i still don't see any card on that level. bloodhall priest is great but you need something lower on the curve that's really powerful and right now we just have lots of cards that aren't quite there

http://mythicspoiler.com/emn/cards/eldritchevolution.jpg
they're really poking the bear with this one, natural order does not seem like an effect that scales down safely

re: vampires, it's just disappointing to me that in a set with these great horror creature types and cool mechanics, the one tribal deck to succeed is humans. I think that's a really boring choice for wizards to push.

xp yeah i was wondering about that. there is definitely power there in combination with other acceleration. t3 gurmag angler t4 iona or inkwell leviathian or s/thing. and chaining a couple could be nuts. idk, doesn't quite seem broken tho.

there are a whole host of creatures with come into play abilities that this would be very good with. agree that it seems dangerous but I can't think of anything offhand that would break it (someone will figure it out soon, I'm sure). seems pretty sick with Kitchen Finks at least

it's another tutor option for assembling the creature combos in modern (melira or kiki-jiki), at the least