Magic: The Gathering C/D

yeah i think its probably the most powerful modern deck but i didn't really enjoy playing it that much. it also gets a new card in kaladesh with the 1R discard 2, draw 3 spell.

haha I have enjoyed playing it because I hate modern now and just want to watch it burn / beat up on 'srs' modern players playing bgx.

will be interesting to see how busted that new card is.

i'm back to just playing scapeshift since it's my favorite deck and does a good job of beating up everything that isn't infect or death's shadow

haha I hate valakut decks, esp the newer ones which are just super linear ramp

my build is a prismatic omen version that i don't think has been on the radar in a few years but it still works about as well as the others

well there's a standard deck that can cast emrakul on turn 4 now, time to see how consistent it can get

what's the combo? emrakul seems like a horrible addition to standard, they really need to stop making playable timmy cards

i'm back to just playing scapeshift since it's my favorite deck and does a good job of beating up everything that isn't infect or death's shadow

i ended up playing a bunch of r/g shift and breach in leagues leading up to the wmcq and enjoyed it a fair amount although i kind of hate modern. i was thinking abt messaging you actually cuz i knew you played it a bunch and we were having trouble w/ some of the postboard match-ups and various tech-y options (like is fog actually good &c)

xp its not really a combo, its just the card aetherworks marvel + all the cheap energy producers. you can kinda jam them into an emrakul ramp deck i think.

lamp i haven't actually put much thought into the bad scapeshift matchups since i assume they're gonna make changes to modern before the next time i have to play it in a real event. currently i've got sudden shock for infect and not really anything for death's shadow.

i think repeal is probably better than fog but i haven't played the matchups enough times to be sure

hah yeah when I saw Aetherworks Marvel my first impression was uh...that's really dangerous

unfortunately my mtgo beta account got revoked for some reason so i cant test stuff atm like i was planning to

Eldrich Moon gold cards often feel like traps in draft, but Kaladesh gold cards feel super pushed. Are some of these first pickable now even if it forces you into 2 colors?

a few of them probably are e.g. cloudblazer or the 1RB kill spell

voltaic brawler and the UR thopter maker too. WB gravedigger guy is borderline and not sure if i'd ever first pick the others though some are quite good

I've first picked Lashweed Lurker from a weak pack but that's because it's not really a gold card

my strategy for moon has been force ur or ug and lurker/geists are the really strong multicolor cards. pretty much ignore the others.

seems like early reports have Smuggler's Copter as the strongest standard card in kaladesh, which sounds about right to me

my strategy for moon has been force ur or ug and lurker/geists are the really strong multicolor cards. pretty much ignore the others.

I'm amazed at how strong the UR deck can be, especially if you can wheel a Pyre Hound. I can't think of any other draft formats where UR spells is even remotely decent.

it's been decent plenty of times but this is the first time since probably Guildpact that it's been the strongest archetype

I dunno, UR Burning Vengeance in INN was good, and in both Ravnica formats it was one of the strongest guilds. Shadowmoor/Eventide too. But I agree UR is particularly good right now. I think Pyre Hound is one of the weaker reward cards for the archetype, which says a lot. You got me thinking what the weakest two-color combo historically has been for limited though. BG almost always seems to be awful or at least on the lower end, Infect in Scars block one exception

BG has been good for quite a lot of recent years (except in BFZ)

i think historically it's one of the white color pairs, probably WB? white has been the worst color in a lot of formats

might be GW or UG if you include the pre-modern sets, just because removal was so strong back then

WB was the other one I was thinking about for worst. I agree that GW used to be flat out the worst, back in the days when green and white had basically no removal

yeah the presence of all the 'fight' commons and having at least one Pacifism variant per set definitely helps there. my problem with GW is that it usually doesn't have the fun synergy that other decks have and as a result you get landlocked a lot.

I went to my first Kaladesh prerelease today and opened a thoroughly mediocre pile of cards. I had plenty of removal, but nothing in the way of power. So I decided, since I didn't have anything else going on, that I might as well jam my 4 copies of Self-Assembler into my deck and see what happens. Suffice it to say, I ended up with a deck that annoyed the hell out of my opponents.

that card is pretty good if you have 2-4 of them

I had 4, although I mostly played with just 3 as the fourth was putting too much pressure on my curve.

lots of high toughness plus servos everyone seem to lead to constant boardstalls. I'm finding cards like Ghirapur Guide and Maulfist Doorbuster do a good job of breaking things up if you have a ground-focused deck.

that's funny since i've seen other people saying the same but my games so far have all just been a lot of ships passing, zendikar or theros style

this draft format is a delight

yeah been loving it so far, though I have yet to lose a match on MTGO so that's coloring it a bit.

first time I got an incredibly strong B/G deck with Nissa, black Gearhulk, and the Marionette rare, plus a bunch of aggro artifact stuff and five of those "if you control an artifact..." creatures. just a lucky draft all around

second time I sorta forced the UR energy counters archetype. the deck wasn't as good but still performed surprisingly well, plus was a blast to play

I've done four drafts so far and I like the format. Pick order is not that meaningful, I've found - synergy is more important. Like sure, start with the best card, but I've found myself taking stuff like the white or blue Puzzleknot highly cause it fit my deck so well. Energy, +1/+1 counters, artifact matters, ETB, even vehicles all kind of have their own cards that matter to them, and there's a lot of cards that overlap strategies, which is cool

i abandoned my old heavy forcing draft strategy after theros since it stopped working but this format + draft leagues seems like a good opportunity to try it again

still have no idea how to evaluate the Vehicles. they seem to work better for my opponent than they do for me. they remind me a bit of the Bestow creatures in Theros but more susceptible to combat tricks and they make for worse topdecks.

I've been surprised how similarly they play to equipment, if the Equip cost was 0. same problems with bounce and other tempo effects apply. like equipment, you only want them in a deck with lots of creatures. pretty much the only ones I don't think are playable are the crew 4 and 5 vehicles, which seem pretty obviously underpowered anyhow. most vehicles are fine, a couple of them are bombs. I played against Skysoverreign the other day and that card is pretty insane

lol I just 3-0'd with a draft league deck where my house's power went out for the full second and third pack. I was mono-black pack 1 with quite a few strong playables (Embraal Bruiser, Ovalchase Daredevil, Tidy Conclusion) and ended up with about equal amounts of the five colors in packs 2 and 3. An auto-picked Shrewd Negotiation, Peafowl, and Wind Drake pushed me into UB and luck carried me the rest of the way

I *really* dig fabricate as a limited mechanic. the decisions are very skill-testing and rarely obvious, unlike some this-or-that mechanics. they've been making fabricate-type-creatures before this set, I guess you can't have it evergreen because it punishes x/1s so hard.

format would be a little better if renegade freighter was not a common. pretty sure that's going to be one of the things people say about it a year from now, similar to trip spirits in m15 etc.

that's hilarious vinnie. 3-0 the hard way

i have found very little to complain about in this set but it is very weird both that renegade freighter is so pushed and that the uncommon vehicles are mostly garbage, especially in comparison. why not have bazaar barge at common and then freighter and dragster as the good uncommons

even the vehicle that pings turned out to be pretty meh and i have never even seen the 10/7 or whatever it is in play

freighter doesn't seem on the same level as something like triple spirits to me, it's just more ubiquitous due to being colorless. reminds me more of vulshok morningstar from original mirrodin or something like that, where it's good in most decks and wins you games but also has diminishing returns with multiple copies as well as with better versions of itself at higher rarities

I *really* dig fabricate as a limited mechanic. the decisions are very skill-testing and rarely obvious, unlike some this-or-that mechanics. they've been making fabricate-type-creatures before this set, I guess you can't have it evergreen because it punishes x/1s so hard.

format would be a little better if renegade freighter was not a common. pretty sure that's going to be one of the things people say about it a year from now, similar to trip spirits in m15 etc.

yeah Fabricate has been surprisingly difficult, especially since there's a +1/+1 counters matter theme and an artifact theme. Also: lots of 1-toughness creatures.

Freighter I think is alright since a high artifact pick, but yeah it may be better than expected since there don't seem to be a whole lot of 4-power guys that it trades with. Which is also why the Crew 4+ vehicles aren't so good. Pinging 6/6 one was quite good in my testing but yeah big difference between Crew 3 and Crew 4.

i 3-0ed my first draft league attempt last night with a freighter in my sideboard because i had fleetwheel cruiser in my deck and really didn't have the creature count to want a 2nd vehicle

if anyone is interesting in watching someone really go off with some of the interactions in the set i would highly recommend the 2nd draft on this lsv stream. draft starts about 1:27. looks like a total pile but pretty incredible/hilarious how he is able to make it work. https://www.twitch.tv/lsv/v/93632563

is that one of the ones where he combos off with aetherflux reservoir?

lsv streaming more often is such a major boon for mtg on twitch, there's so few truly entertaining streamers still

he just uses it for incidental lifegain to keep him alive. the main engine is a combo using the r/u guy that makes thopters with energy and the module and enchantment that make energy off of creatures/artifacts, so with them all out he can make thopters for 3 and get 2 back. one game the other guy is at 20 and lsv survives until he can make thopters for 1 energy each, also getting a +1/+1 counter each time, and creates 20+ damage worth of thopters in one end step, about 2 cards from decking

draft leagues have really been a boon to streamers like LSV, they can just crank out one after another without lots of dead space or confusing double queuing. I've been enjoying following these quite a lot lately.

that's awesome. I played a U/R deck in my 2nd draft and yea - some real shenanigans possible if you get the right uncommons. A lot of these cards slot together in funny ways.

i checked back into twitch for the new set and there are now multiple streamers on a given weeknight with several hundred viewers which is obv still p lol in comp with the really popular games but is tons more than was there even a few months ago. but yeah not always the most captivating personalities. kenji blazed the trail but i can't really ever get engaged watching him. caleb durward appears to be trying the kenji route with 365 day consecutive streams and is kind of funny at least. and there seem to be a raft of respected mtgo grinders with like 50 viewers whose streams seem pretty good from a learning pov but not so much for entertainment.