Magic: The Gathering C/D

I don't think your deck is a great fit for Whirlermaker, but has some synergies, and there aren't any other RG creatures to put in. If you had any other two/three drop creature, I'd put that in instead

Put another way, 12 creatures is very low for a deck that wants to be aggressive. That might even be a bigger problem than your being split between 3 colors

Indeed, was really hoping for more than solid 2-drops

This, on the other hand...

http://i.imgur.com/Fvyds1H.jpg

deck is ultimately a bit slow but thus far it's doing well

Yeah that looks sick

i have an early report on the draft league split. played a friendly league, drafted a p mediocre uw deck, 3-0 6-0, in the 2nd game of finals got stuck on 3 lands and my opponent cast dubious challenge and gave me a riparian tiger that i rode to victory

no one was in the competitive one yet last night, i had to wait a while for a draft whereas they fire instantly in friendly

getting the chandra prestige avatar might be harder than i thought

yeah it was like 1000 ppl on competitive vs 5500 on friendly when i went on

1000 is a lot more than the 120 that were in it when i was on

obv because of single elimination it'll show fewer people in the league at any one time though even if the throughput is the same

i have an early report on the draft league split. played a friendly league, drafted a p mediocre uw deck, 3-0 6-0, in the 2nd game of finals got stuck on 3 lands and my opponent cast dubious challenge and gave me a riparian tiger that i rode to victory

Dubious Challenge and Madcap Experiment are my two most opened rares by far in this set (still waiting on that Smuggler's Copter) so I'm glad someone's at least trying one of em out :)

as much as I like the payout structure of the competitives it looks like a bad run can shred through a ton of tickets very quickly. I do enjoy the friendly leagues giving you a gimme match every once in a while

i'd be fine with just playing the friendly leagues if they hadn't moved the QPs and rewards to competitive only - i still kind of want to play in the MOCS events despite my long string of brutal failures in them a few years ago

yeah i liked always having enough tix whenever a limited mocs monthly came around. i do think it was the correct decision to move qps out of friendly tournaments tho. my aim will be to play competitive if there are enough ppl but i will be realistic about switching if i am getting murdered. i think it will be v format dependent for me.

i don't recommend playing the competitive draft league yet unless you don't mind waiting 5-10 minutes for matches

Ugh that's disappointing to hear. As I'm in a time zone with few MTGO players to begin with, that translates to like 15-20 minutes for me, I'd bet

i'm hoping by the weekend more ppl will have moved over, i want to see closer to 1k in the league (which would probably be equivalent to 2-3k in friendly league due to single elim) before i try again

since the trophy counts have carried over for friendly i'm wondering if there might be some investment in that for grinders who otherwise would flip to competitive. that can't be huge numbers of ppl tho.

you dont get anything for friendly league trophies after your 5th though, its just showboating after that

but yeah i do wonder if it will take a new set reset to fully get everyone playing the 'right' queue for them

just as an FYI, KLD pack prices are starting to bottom out, you can snap them up for about 2.50

effectively this makes the Sealed Leagues a total of 19 tix, if you've got the tickets you can just stockpile play points now.

realized yesterday that it is exactly 2 months until the release of aether revolt. meanwhile, eldritch moon was around for about 2 months total. mtg release calendar is really something.

yeah I'm kinda overwhelmed by it lately

yeah the fall set always gets the longest run because of the holidays, and the summer set gets the shortest run because it used to be core sets which were less popular

it actually looks like they're finally adjusting the release schedule next year to fix this though, the fall pro tour is scheduled for november which implies the set will release in october rather than september

I've been hearing rumblings that Kaladesh has been a big flop. Is this true? What went wrong? Seems like a pretty good set to me. Are the masterpieces backfiring and causing the set to tank in value?

yeah that doesn't seem right to me

would suck to have sets like this flop while "Return to X" blocks do well, because we all know WoTC pays very very close attention to their bottom line

can't be sure about for constructed but for limited seems to have been generally well received? only ppl i can recall complaining about it are those e.g. pvddr who are convinced it is a one dimensional all aggro all the time format.

lol what its definitely a fine format for control decks, theres no real tempo disasters to be on the wrong end of like aether adept style cards

yeah, I haven't heard people complain about the set, only people saying it wasn't selling well. I have no idea if there's any truth to that though.

it ticks all the right boxes for me - nothing seems too underpowered or overpowered, there are a lot of skill-testing decisions (Fabricate), aggro is good but outside of the Longtusk Cub/Rhino draw it's not overpowering. plus there are a lot of fun rares to build around, like Animation Module and Panharmonicon (which is way better than I thought it was in Limited, since it triggers on every Fabricate and energy creature)

i'd rate it as 'fine' for limited and slightly problematic for constructed (the fact that a bunch of viable standard decks are essentially block constructed decks is worrying me given that there's still another set of this stuff coming. also aetherworks marvel is some real bs)

and by 'fine' i mean better than most recent sets which other than eldritch moon have been uninspiring

so far under the new system both small set limited formats have been significantly better than their parents imo, hoping that continues with aether revolt

agreed. i think ktkx3, ogw/bfz and edm/soi are my clear favourite 3 draft formats since i started playing (c. gatecrash)

kldx3 is not that far off, it has v high heights imo but if i'm not doing something fun with it it feels kinda flat. a big chunk of the format is solid/unexciting curve out decks that can feel p uninspiring. also some high impact aggressive low drop commons and uncommons plus the absence of the kind of smoothing mechanics they have done well with recently, and the scarcity of mana sinks, makes variance seem higher than normal too which harms the overall perception of the set.

yeah i'm not a khans liker as everyone else seems to be, i've just never liked the morph mechanic, and on top of that it had the same issue as old ravnica where the common lands were too good and its not that interesting or fun, at least to me, to just draft a lot of lands.

i've drafted most sets going all the way back to invasion block, but since i started drafting a lot circa scars of mirrodin, the ones that i've had the most fun with are ISDx3, DKA/ISD, M13, THSx3, ORI, EDM/SOI, with an honorable mention to DGM/GTC/RTR sealed which is afaik the only time in the game's history where a sealed format has been significantly more fun than draft.

on top of that it had the same issue as old ravnica where the common lands were too good and its not that interesting or fun, at least to me, to just draft a lot of lands.

yeah that's a big problem with KTK, especially since you're basically forced into a tri-color archetype. but I did love the format since all five of the combos were so well defined, they all had their own unique goals and ways of creating value. it was a slow format but the agro decks had a lot of ways to bust through. thought things got worse when Fate Reforged was introduced and DTK was pretty much a dud, though the dual concurrent draft format thing was pretty cool.

older formats that i enjoy but don't have enough reps to really compare them against the newer sets: invasion/planeshift/apocalypse, 3x champions of kamigawa and champions/betrayers, 3x time spiral, 3x shadowmoor, 3x rise of the eldrazi

for my part i have enjoyed the additional decisions/tensions added by having to draft lands. i liked it in khans and thought it was a good feature of oath too.

cider glad you mentioned thsx3, easy to forget how much fun that was with the subsequent sets really killing that block.

i forced RB minotaurs like every draft

yeah Theros is a good case study in how 2nd and 3rd sets can really ruin a draft format

my issue with drafting lands is that there's too much guesswork in it. I hated passing up good cards for lands because you're afraid you won't get enough, especially when you've got people trying 5-color builds where they just snap up every one they can get.

Man, I love Kaladesh draft, more than most of the formats mentioned here. I love that fun, build-around synergy decks are easy to make and competitive with straight-ahead decks, and the fact that pros STILL disagree on what archetypes are good is pretty remarkable IMO. The flavor of the set matches the gameplay well, and that also adds a little enjoyment value for me. It's my favorite format since ISDx3, I think

have any of you had good RB decks in Kaladesh draft and if so what did they look like?

also has anyone played the competitive draft league since my warning last week? i don't like how you have to lock in your entry fee before finding out how fast the draft queue is filling

R/B is the one combo I don't think I've ever gone into, but there's a good artifact aggro deck there based around Salivating Gremlins, Embraal Bruiser, and Dhund Operative. The uncommon that kills a creature and hits the opponent for 3 is brutal.

i haven't had a good r/b deck. the common creatures are split in half between energy and artifact synergy and kind of meh overall. and the couple times i have tried the lookout/skiff deck i have wanted to quit magic. the problem with aggro (certainly in limited) is how dependent you are on your opening hand and i think however you go with this archetype that factor is even worse, adding in synergy elements as a layer on top of having the exact right mix of early beaters/tricks/removal. too easy to find yourself with just a handful of shit cards.

anyway, i came to ask if anyone has tried the new cube, the one that won the competition. i haven't even looked at it. wouldn't mind trying something different over the holiday weekend and avacyn restored not really calling to me...

Aggro in general isn't great in this format. One because red is a shallow color (and I would argue the worst of the five), two because there are a lot of very good midrange creatures - the 2W 3/3 and 2GG 4/4 Trample (with Fabricate) are tough roadblocks to get over. In fact Fabricate in general is bad for aggro since you don't want your opponent dropping two creatures a turn. Plus, there aren't a whole lot of good uncommons to support the archetype. Pretty much all the good aggro decks I've seen were based on dropping a Renegade Freighter and backing it up with combat tricks in order to force your opponent into bad decisions.

I like how they tried to bury AVR flashback week with this new cube

yeah that format was pretty awful, so many all-or-nothing style cards and so little removal, plus the highest concentration of bomb rares I think I've ever seen in a set

i kind of like aggro decks in this format although my draft win % is the lowest its been since origins and i have my worst ever gp performance in this format so my opinion is pretty garbage. i havent drafted a tonne of r/b since i generally prefer pairing either color with white but i have had and played against some good r/b decks. unlicensed disintegration is obv a great card but the tricks in r/b are very strong and can be hard to beat with a lot of the other cards (w/ the exception of select which is such a killer trump) and engender a lot of bad blocks/misplaying by my opponents. i think ive gone 2-1 with every r/b deck ive done. i usually screen shot all my draft decks so i can probably find the handful of r/b decks ive drafted but theyre mostly just traditional aggro decks w/an emphasis on built to smash and the two mana black tricks. i also really like the bat in those decks. fwiw my worst results in this format are still with bad multi-color green decks

cider i played a couple of the competitive draft leagues last night and the average wait was like ~2.5 minutes for a match. cant remember how long i waited for the q but it wasnt that long. actually shorter than the twisted cube league q i played im pretty sure.