Magic: The Gathering C/D

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.

yeah i always found kenji obnoxious and most of the other people just aren't that engaging. I still like MJ but he doesn't stream much anymore and is certainly an acquired taste. lsv is just a natural at it, probably partly from recording draft videos for years before twitch was even a thing.

the draft RS linked is the most LSV of LSV drafts ever

i miss watching dzy stream but am happy lsv is streaming mtgo more. i cant think of another streamer i actively enjoy watching and dont just put on as background noise.

i had my worst gp ever this wknd in atlanta, missing day two for the first time. not really happy w/ how i played but my pool was beyond awful. one thing that ive found tough in the practice limited weve done over the last two weeks is how hard it is to play from behind in this format. its not just obvious stuff like renegade freighter but the quality and cheapness of tricks, how most common removal seems better offensively, how little payoff there is higher on the mana curve. going in to the gp a couple of ppl were arguing for defaulting to 16 land because of how punishing flooding is and ive kinda come around to that. i was also p wrong abt the playability of the 0/4 reach two drop, although i think its now getting overplayed a little. mostly i wld like to figure out this format soon. at least standard seems fun

oh personal limited development criticism - i wish blue had a real unsummon effect. obv punishing for vehicles but i think thats fine given how strong the cheap ones are. still been happy getting ppl with the one mana one.

by real unsummon you mean one that can hit untapped creatures? seems like that would just further contribute to the problem you're describing, the existing one is limited to defensive use rather than removing blockers. blue could probably use a little bit of extra help in this set though, i'm just not sure that's the place to put it rather than like giving it a real 2nd 2-drop instead of the unplayable curio vendor

would have been cute if the curio vendor made a do-nothing artifact token, though thats the sort of thing they dont like to do these days due to fear of confusing new players

sorry to hear atl went badly man. from the ~ 8 drafts i have done i have got the impression that the super low curve 16 land aggro style of deck is a trap because the midrange cards are so strong and there are punishing cards like the 1 mana bounce and the 3 mana instant artifact kill/lifegain. r/w in particular feels like the colour combo that's most disastrous if it doesn't get all the way there. the 3 drafts i won 1 was a sweet bw recursion/removal deck and the other 2 were basically just attacking with thriving rhinos which i think might just be the most powerful thing you can do in the set.

the argument is more that even yr midrange decks shld be playing 16 land because theres so little to do w/ excess mana and getting behind on board is so punishing

re: unsummon i think its more that a disperse type card might reduce some of the outsized disadvantage of being on the draw rather than making slower more defensive decks better. agree re: blue tho - curio vender is one of the worst commons in the set and the 1/3 scry energy guy is... not great either

scry guy seems fine to me, but it seems like they have mandated that one of blue's 2 common 2 drops every set must be awful

feels like every recent set has had a blue 2/1 with minor upside and they decided that was too pushed and went vanilla

the skulk one was bad too though, need a better ability to make coral merfolk playable in this day and age. The one from bfz that gave unblockable late game and was also an ally is about where you have to land

I didn't even play OGW enough times to learn whether the prowess one was playable

nope

feel like 'we can't give blue good 2 drops at common' is more some maro colorpie nonsense than a real design issue

i don't even mind if theyre bad, it's just nice when they actually do something at all

DTK is a good example of a set where they found 2 that both felt good to put in decks (palace familiar and elusive spellfist)

1/3 skulk dude that froze a guy for a turn from the last set was alright

cider is right, Freighter is no Triplicate Spirits, and Vulshok Morningstar is a good comparison. It's probably the best common to first pick because you'll play it almost no matter what but once you've decided a color, I don't think it's the best. If I'm in red, I'd take Welding Sparks over it most of the time. With stuff like Sparks, Impeccable Timing, Appetite for the Unknown, and especially Select for Inspection, there's a lot of times you will lose tempo on Freighter. Trip Spirits I would take and play every copy I see, up to like ten copies or something. Like equipment, I don't think a deck wants more than 3 vehicles, though don't get me wrong, Freighter is still one of the best commons

I also haven't found a streamer I like as much as lsv. There's a few streamers that are skilled but lack charisma and then way too many who are entertaining but just aren't good enough players and I find myself yelling at the screen. I really miss when Owen T would stream regularly. On the streamer note, I recently played against Marshall while he was streaming, in a very challenging match that he ended up winning. Was cool to go back and watch his vid and see how I could have played better

I wasn't saying it was the best (haven't played the format a ton yet), just that it's kinda annoying to see a card like that game after game and even if it's not broken it feels like it was a mistake at common. would be pretty fine at uncommon.

ok I can see that, but in my six or so drafts, I haven't found it to be a nuisance yet. it's still early in the format tho

It's super sad to me that Cuneo doesn't stream a lot anymore because it was always such a delight to watch him, but him stopping seemed to coincide exactly with him getting good again, so ~

I love cuneo too, one of my t5 fav players