Magic: The Gathering C/D

it's pretty unusual for standard to have a card go coast to coast as the best card, even collected company wasn't oppressive until reflector mage which came out halfway through its window

While you mention Collected Company, sometimes I wonder how much the current state of things affects players' opinions. For example, I bet it was a lot easier for players to swallow the change to all Standard PTs after the Modern PT this year. Collected Company was kind of an exception to Standard, I think pretty clearly the best card in Standard this year when there isn't always a best card, and I wonder if some of the players who don't like the change to a slower rotation have that card's oppressiveness in mind (I certainly do)

Woot! Took down Game Day with spirits, the deck is the real deal. I'm so glad that it has improved with rotation. Losing CoCo was a big factor in this. My last two rounds today were against bant decks that were not quite so good without it.

I also tried out vehicles at FNM this week, with mediocre results. The deck is good, I'm sure my results were down to weak gameplay, but I don't like being all-in aggro at this point. I felt exposed without all the answers that spirits provides.

ohhh man did I draft a fun U/R artifact energy deck, got out Whirler Virtuoso + Era of Innovation + Fabrication Module which essentially let me spend 1 energy to put a 2/2 artifact flyer in play. totally recommend drafting this deck if you can

the deck only went 1-2 but this was my finest Kaladesh moment so far: http://imgur.com/rspf5vc

awesome

that is truly living the dream

the finest boardstate i've had was in a paper draft but luckily my friend captured it: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvVI7QDUsAARF7U.jpg:large

ha that is quite a collection of cards out there

in general i do best in this format when i draft/build conservatively though - there's less cardflow and fewer mana sinks baked in than most modern limited formats, so you can't afford to play many low impact cards or you'll find yourself struggling to keep up in the midgame. blue is considered weak but it actually has 2 of the best commons that push back against this (aether theorist and gearseeker serpent) so i've found myself drawn to it a lot.

yeah the u/artifact gearseeker deck seems pretty consistent both draft and playwise. the blue and black puzzleknots are actually reasonable in that deck, to help dig and as artifacts on the battlefield.

this format has taught me that i really dislike playing aggro and i will draft something else if there is any alternative. and i have been doing quite poorly as a result! even tho i am enjoying the format a ton, it has to be my least played for a couple years because i have 3-0'd like twice and my account is bare.

also if you are base green, there are 3 common mana fixers (attune with aether, prophetic prism, wild wanderer) and some good uncommon ones too (servant of the conduit, aether hub). that cloudblazer or whirler virtuoso or unlicensed disintegration is actually a green card in disguise. don't pass it.

and yeah i've always disliked playing aggro in limited despite being primarily an aggro player in constructed - i can't even remember the last set where WR was a color pair i actively wanted

blue puzzleknot has been surprisingly decent. I agree that blue is probably one of the weaker colors but it's definitely the most fun to play. That Scry 2/Draw 2/Get 2 Energy card is real good.

I've found almost all my best decks in this format splash (not always base green tho) or play for the long game. It's a slow enough format that you can durdle and win off of powerful cards like Cloudblazer or Virtuoso. I haven't had any success with base red decks yet, but my opponents have so I know it's possible to make it work, I just don't know how

i've had a good RG aggro deck but red's been a supporting color in all my other good ones iirc

tonight's 3-0 draft deck: http://i.imgur.com/2xdBTO6.png

v nice. see, i would've 100% played the prism and had another card that doesn't really do anything.

i boarded in prism along with the incendiary sabotage vs aggro which was effective - prism doesn't do enough in 2 color decks though unless you're way heavier on artifact synergies

Inventors Goggles strikes me as very very good in that deck - think the auto-equip is a lot better than it looks there since you often just curve into it.

How did Aether Tradewinds play in that deck? Its cool to get a bounce + re-cast some energy dude but that scenario doesn't seem to really play out to my advantage too often.

I take Prism pretty highly but don't always play it. With Serpent, Aether Tradewinds, Quicksmith, Era, and a couple double-colored cards, I'd play it in cider's deck though, probably over Rebuff, which is a card I always get trapped in hand. Nice deck though

yeah I'm very anti counterspells in general in Limited, though Ceremonious Rejection has actually been ok in my maindeck a few times

I'm rarely excited to play them maindeck, but some are great in the right machup. Same goes for pinpoint discard effects like Duress. Stuff with riders like Dissipate and Harsh Scrutiny I'll play more readily

xp tradewinds was the card i boarded out for more relevant stuff every match but it did win me some game 1s by protecting chandra

rebuff was just in becuase i was light on 2s and wanted to reduce my chance of getting run over, its not a card i'm generally looking to play. prism would certainly be preferable if i had like one more 2-drop creature

in general I'm friendlier to the 4- and 5-mana counterspell effects that come with decent upsides (for example the generate 3 clues one, from SOI) - they just never play well early game to me, but can be game-changers later on

not sure what to think of Harsh Scrutiny - in general I'm not big on cards that only really work well when they're in your opening hand. still, see their hand + nab their best creature + scry is pretty good for one mana

peregrine drake got an emergency ban in pauper fyi

Confirm Suspicions was legit good, but you can put Investigate 3 on almost any card and it becomes good

xp what I dislike about Rebuff is that even when you have it in solely for that purpose, not to get run over, your opponent can play a vehicle or artifact creature. maybe it's worked for you but I haven't had much luck with the card

yeah I have no problem inserting iffy 2-mana counterspells if I don't have many 2 drops, but a lot of decks seem to play 4-5 artifacts and many of those are 2 and 3 drops so yeah

Finally gave in and went for the full midrange UW flash deck and it absolutely destroyed FNM. I lost my first game after a mulligan to 5 and then didn't lose again all night. Don't know why I resisted it fir so long.

the secret is that it plays 4 gideon and 4 avacyn, the strongest cards in the format

I only own 3 of each and have been playing them all along. The big change for me was dropping Rattlechains and Nebelgast for Reflector Mage, Thalia, and some more removal and counters.

another blue draft deck, another 3-0 http://i.imgur.com/nz9SaA1.png

very nice

as much as things have been going well for me with standard, I've really been struggling with getting a grip on kaladesh drafts. I'm really trying to be more disciplined and draft cards that are synergistic instead of just jamming cards I like into a deck and hoping it pans out. I definitely think this is a format that really pays off a coherent strategy more than just good stuff.

indeed - feel like I've been going into Boros a lot with very mixed results. the cards are all good but it just runs out of gas. I think having multiple good 2- and 3-drops with 3 toughness is a real problem for that deck. on the other hand the decks based around energy and/or +1/+1 counters seem to work pretty well for me. and yeah I'm starting to think blue is pretty underrated in general.

i think red is the trap color in this set, not blue

yep. Red has Welding Sparks which is probably the best common but other than that how many above average commons has it got?

also had a 3-0 draft over the weekend with a blue deck. don't know if i can claim any greater insight into the format, but i do know that using saheeli's artistry to copy verdurous gearhulk twice is decent.

it's possible blue is underdrafted, so you end up finding more playables if you go into blue, even if the card quality isn't super great

wow @ new draft league competitive tier
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-online/magic-online-event-updates%E2%80%94november-2016-2016-11-03

this seems like a really strong addition

yeah those will be the bulk of my magic playing once they're live

yeah...kaladesh may not be the right environment for me to make the switch, lol

i haven't really killed a format since oath tbh. i hit my all time high elo 1882 during that and have been regressing steadily since. think i am going to need to rebuild confidence at friendly before i think about competitive

ive done slightly more than thirty leagues to very middling success but i dont really feel like i have a solid grasp of the format. i think green is kind of the trap color because its so much deeper so you (or at least i) end up misreading a late peema outrider or rhino as a signal instead of just variance in the common runs. so my trainwreck drafts typically start with me picking a strong green uncommon and then getting cut but not quite cut enough to give up on green and playing some 3+ color pile that doesnt really do anything. like all my 1-2 or 0-2 drafts are G/x/y. whereas i think once you have a solid idea of what exactly the red and blue decks should look like you can draft those if theyre open in yr seat/you get powerful rares &c.

i also dont really think this is a synergy format, i think the easiest way to lose is to overall card quality rather than someone 'going off' with a synergy deck. like i almost never lose reasonable games to the module/era of innovation jerkoff decks, which i think are kind of awful. i really like black in this format, or at least the mtgo meta because i think its underdrafted, particularly rush of vitality which is just insanely good imo. and no one respects the 4/6 croc which i love and always play. also dhund operative routinely goes too late. my most recent strat is taking every late sky skiff and the 1/1 drain life guy pack one as a backdoor out. if i dont get enough solid midrange cards p2 i just jam a million of those, the 3/4 and the black combat tricks and 14 land into my deck. managed to salvage two p awful drafts w/a 2-1 doing this

excited for the comp leagues although ive enjoyed being able to play out my drafts in this format. i also probably need to buy a new mouse to play those. its started to stick and ive misclicked my way out of three trophies so far including targeting my opponents operative with rush of vitality instead of my own freighter. i think that was the only possible way i lose that game

I also have been doing terribly at this format fwiw. something about it seems way different from your normal limited format.

ben stark put a draft guide up on cfb yesterday, pretty interesting. he organizes by single colours which i liked - i think during the draft you want to start in a colour and know what you can do with it, because the individual colours have more distinct identity than colour pairs, where there is a lot of overlap.

i've done really well in this format so far. i wouldn't go as far as to say its not a synergy format but it's definitely a light synergy format rather than a heavy one - artifact count is important in a lot of decks and you often find yourself playing some crappy ones to reach whatever threshold your deck needs to operate, but beyond that you generally just want to play the highest impact cards at each slot.

i was watching the vod of lsv's most recent draft on twitch & one of the subscribers was named burt_stanton which i thought was really funny

also i have been running kind of insanely bad at kld limited & need to just complain about it to someone, somehow. i finally was 2-0 in a draft tonight and my opponent in the finals had a million rares including skysovereign. i dont think ive ever been this tilted by magic in my entire life :/

i think red is the trap color in this set, not blue

Yep I'm ready to call this now too. It's no green in BFZ and I'll splash Welding Sparks all day long, but I can't get success with base-red

I've gone 2-1 in about 90% of the KLD draft leagues I've done, weirdly consistent, and I've done more than 20 now. I guess I can't complain, but it's weird how tough it is to get that last win. I've had bonkers decks that win two rounds easily and lose the last due to luck or bad play; I've had trainwreck decks that somehow eke out two wins. as I mentioned, one of the only 3-0s I've done was with an partially-autodrafted deck, which is pretty lol since it's one of the only trophies I've received

My god, yeah. the number of times I've started 5-1 in a Sealed League and finished 5-4 is disheartening, I always seem to run into the decks with two Smugglers Copters, or the ones that play six bomb rares. Dunno if this is just variance or what. I'm doing pretty poorly in this format too. In most formats I can usually judge my chances of winning by my opening hand - by turn 4 or 5 I'm usually fairly confident in what's going to happen. I seem to be wrong a lot about this in KLD - I've lost a lot of games where I thought my opponent was dead to rights, and I've won a few where I was a second away from conceding five turns prior. I'm not sure why that is.