Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

apparently close to 100 ppl at the pro tour decided that the turbo aetherworks marvel decks were consistent enough, this is pretty weird to have such an all-in combo deck be a major part of standard after they've been suppressing them for so long

so I was riding pretty high tonight after 4-0ing FNM with my spirits deck, didn't really think things could get much better. Then I opened Mana Crypt.

not bad!

nice work Moodles

So far I am not digging the Aetherworks deck at the PT. Keep uninteractive decks out of Standard please, we already have Modern for that. I do find it amusing though that Contingency Plan made it into a Constructed deck, a card I absolutely never would have guessed

I mean to say that I am not digging WATCHING it, I'm sure it's a good enough deck to compete if that many pros are on it

do we know which if any of the big teams are playing it? it could be a high risk high reward choice by worse teams trying to spike the event.

This was the deck I faced in the finals last night. It turns out Aetherworks Marvel doesn't match up well against Spell Queller, and if you can't cast Aetherworks Marvel, the whole plan kind of falls apart. My biggest challenge was managing the Cranes because they are such good blockers against most of my deck.

yeah spell queller just shits on the marvel deck

Not sure which teams specifically, but they've had a couple pros on camera playing Aetherworks. Owen Turtenwald is on it, which is usually a sign that the deck is good

no doubt it is good, it can pretty reliably crank out a turn 4 monster, but like so many combo decks in Standard, it is a bit fragile.

yeah it seems unplayable if people are ready for it since there is so little you can do to protect your combo, finding it is already hard enough

shota having multiple main deck ceremonious rejections was p lol yesterday

It's a good card!

PT top 8 #5 for Lee Shi Tian?? I don't feel like anyone ever talks about electing him to the hall of fame, maybe because he's not even eligible for a couple more years, but I feel like this has got to cement him.

was hoping there was a dynavolt tower deck, that's my favorite energy card in kaladesh

pierre dagen has a ur spells deck w/ 4 towers

oh wait, misunderstood

after flying high at FNM, I decided on a whim to take my deck to a PPTQ yesterday, which was my first competitive REL event in over a year. Ended up 4-2, 15th out of 48. I would have loved to sneak into the top 8, but I'm pretty happy with the experience overall. I took down 3 different energy decks: one Aetherworks, one Dynavolt Tower control, and one that was trying to make infinite servos. I got absolutely demolished by Grixis emerge, not really sure what I can do to stop that deck's graveyard shenanigans.

Now I'm getting ready for Game Day. I like a bunch of the U/W decks that popped up at the Pro Tour, so I may do something similar. I've also been gathering up cards for R/B aggro and R/W vehicles. Don't know which is the best direction. Spirits feels like it's not quite tier 1, but it has the element of surprise, not a lot of people are preparing for it, plus it is really good against all these combo decks that are popping up. It is pretty weak to delirium and emerge, and maybe 50/50 against the aggro decks.

R/B and R/W seem much more powerful, but are such known quantities at this point that they seem less attractive. Which way should I go?

i like the spirits deck (both the full tribal version and the UW midrange one from the PT) so if you've got a lot of practice with that i'd just keep running it

i'm working on metalwork colossus ramp myself but i haven't gotten it to a state where i'm completely happy with it yet - i'll be playing either that or spirits at the grand prix next weekend

do you have a particular spirits build you like or is that TBD?

this is from memory since i don't have access to mtgo at the moment

4 mausoleum wanderer
4 selfless spirit
4 rattlechains
4 spell queller
3 nebelgast herald
2 bygone bishop
2 archangel avacyn

2 essence flux
2 anticipate
2 revolutionary rebuff
2 unsubstantiate
3 stasis snare
2 gideon, ally of zendikar

8 plains
8 island
4 port town
4 prairie stream

sideboard is up in the air but currently something like
1 jace, whatever his subtitle is now
1 linvala the preserver
2 ceremonious rejection
2 negate
1 summary dismissal
1 stasis snare
1 bygone bishop
2 elder deep fiend
1 quarantine field
3 blessed alliance

i think it is very possible that just replacing the anticipates+rebuffs with smugglers copters improves the deck, but i havent tried it yet. niblis of frost is also an interesting direction to go but requires changing a bunch of cards to make work and isn't good vs control which just won the pro tour

This is very close to what I ran yesterday. I agree with swapping in copter. A couple changes I'm seeing in the PT lists is swapping Wanderer with Thraben Inspector and Nebelgast with Reflector Mage. I'm on board with swapping in Inspector, but I don't really like Mage over Nebelgast because you lose a lot of flash and spirit synergies, and a lot of the creatures you might bounce with Mage have strong ETB effects.

the pt deck is very much just a UW midrange deck, not a spirits deck. that's fine as well, you just need to be comfortable with playing grindier games rather than aggroing people out

I'm going to try keeping in Nebelgast, I don't feel like I'd get much from Reflector Mage. I'm happy with the deck's ability to shift gears towards control as is.

nebelgast is definitely better in the tribal version

okay so I just got matched up against the same dude twice in a row during a Sealed league, which sucks because even though I won the first match (thanks to him getting colorscrewed in game 3), his deck was absolutely nuts and I got obliterated the second match. didn't know that was possible!!!

yeah its not supposed to happen i dont think? but its definitely happened to me in constructed leagues where theres fewer players in the pool

here's where i'm currently at with colossus
http://i.imgur.com/xXwRcpL.png

it really feels like its missing some major piece but it'd have to be a noncreature artifact and i've scoured all of standard and haven't found it yet - have tested everything up to and including aetherflux reservoir

Panharmonicon isn't playable, is it? Doubles up Crane, Prism, Puzzleknot, Trap, Skysovereign, but I doubt even that is enough to earn its place

Seer's Lantern seems like it could be ok though. Maybe Terrarion?

ive tried those. panharmonicon is crappy, the others are okay but dont really improve things especially in the bad matchups. i think more keys + kozilek's return might be worth pursuing

what's the Woodweaver's Puzzleknot for?

artifacts for colossus and helping stay alive, presumably

I'm excited for 24 months of turn 4 Aetherworks Marvel cheating a massive win condition onto the board!

Remember when it felt like Collective Company was Standard-legal forever?

But seriously, I generally take wotc's endless and capricious tweaks to their model in stride, but this new change has me irritated. Was the new set rotation really just an unmitigated disaster?