Magic: The Gathering C/D

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.

ok good to know, when I tried it I waited 10 minutes for my 1-0 match and decided to go back to the other queue after that

re: AVR, there's glimpses of a neat aggro-combo draft format in there, kinda reminds me of shadowmoor a bit, but the execution was so comically poor

yeah they just got so many things wrong - completely nerfing Black for one, then giving it such a weird subtheme (cards that only work if you have one creature in play), stacking Green and Blue with most of all the good stuff, making Red and White both combo and aggro with a bunch of alpha-strike style cards, and to top it off filling it chock full of bomb rares that couldn't be beaten because there was so little removal in the set

but you're right, there is the core of something intriguing in there

I drafted R/B at my first irl Kaladesh draft this past weekend. Went 3-1, the deck was good. I leaned heavily on black cards and vehicles - I still think red is pretty weak in this set, and I was mainly playing it for the 3/3 dragon and Pia Nalaar

AVR had a bunch of problems. Almost no control archetypes to speak of (like triple ZEN). Black was super underpowered, you had to open some key uncommons to make it work. Stupidly powerful commons like Mist Raven and Trusted Forcemage. The theme of the set is barely noticeable in the gameplay. I got the sense that they ran out of time developing it

wondering if my lower win % (and maybe yours lamp) has something to do w/ playing in leagues rather than the format itself

maybe - i had a string of about four 2-0 starts where i got stomped in my third round by insane decks that just wouldnt have been possible in my own draft pod but otoh ive def been the beneficiary of same so i think it averages out. i definitely have more 2-1 finishes than i used to - ive now done like 50+ leagues and 40 of them are 2-1 finishes - but if anything that probably helps my win rate. i just dont think im very good at drafting this format, the traditional sort of midrange 'take the best card' strats i like are just hard to put together because the overall card quality isnt there. amusingly i had a pretty high win rate in AVR when it was the new set (in fact i built my mtgo bankroll on the weird 16/8s the ran during AVR) because i just forced red aggro every draft. my problem in KLD is keep taking arborback stomper P1P1 and getting hooked, no discipline to just take that built to smash...

one thing about leagues is that you miss those free wins you could easily pick up by opponents that just don't show up. if you went 0-2 in a Swiss you'd often get a free win just for showing up.

blow up the board and then cast another spell for free? what could possibly go wrong?

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/cards/aether-revolt/28071-yahennis-expertise

well that is a rather interesting idea

that is pretty good

there's also a new trinket/treasure mage that gets cmc 3 artifacts, which is peculiar

artifact soulshift dude p interesting too, possibly a hint that sacrifice will be a theme, and more onbviosuly that recursion will be expanded on from kld

onbviosuly!

well those are all rares besides trophy mage so can't read too much into them

true

initial guess is that Energy will be back but Fabricate won't

energy and vehicles are obviously being continued. they said they were going to stop dropping major mechanics in small sets since people get mad every time they do it even when it makes sense

and the couple times i have tried the lookout/skiff deck i have wanted to quit magic

so get this...the 4-5x Night Market Lookout decks are apparently very very good

(not necessarily because of the Lookout, but because of the 2cc Subtle Strike/Rush/Die Young at common)

nah i don't buy it. they are so fragile. if everything goes right they look unstoppable but if a single thing goes wrong they are total garbage.

Since we're talking about black commons, every time I draft Dhund Operative, my brain sings it to the tune of Smooth Operator

i played start your engines for the first time last night and it was good!

lol. just as a bad trumpet blast or did you have a lot of vehicles?

the only time i have ever seen it cast i was wrecked by it

i had a bunch of sky skiffs, a copter, and the aradara express in my deck but was kind of light on actual creatures

it not only won me every game i drew it but would have won me all the games i lost as well had i drawn it on my last turn.

the only time i have ever seen it cast i was wrecked by it

― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, December 2, 2016 9:49 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is kind of definitional with sorcery pump spells

yeah just 2 skiffs and an express and that is 18 hard to stop damage. that time i lost to it, the big thing was the sudden swing of them being able to attack with their regular dorks as well as the vehicles, it just blew open an otherwise stalled board.

i had a v sweet 2-1 draft this week that started flatwheel cruiser into flatwheel cruiser. my loss was to a fumigate/consulate surveillance control deck.

Always wanted to dick around with Start Your Engines - I've never had anyone play it against me even though people seem more than happy to play Inspired Charge (as the most obvious combat trick ever)...there seem to be enough tokens to make it work

As far as the Night Market decks - here's an example of one that went 3-0

http://i.imgur.com/6V49Yj8.png

Like I was saying, I don't think it's the Night Markets itself, it's the 2cc tricks that are so good with them

take those 5 1/1s out and put in 5 playable commons of m/l any colour and that deck is probably better. sometimes you win in 5 or 6 turns and you feel great. sometimes you don't and your opponent is ripping 4/5 drops and you are top decking 1/1s.

otm

a 3-0 GW deck, a rarity for me: http://imgur.com/a/JZnsJ

eddytrail hawk is probably the card i've shifted on the most over the course of the format, i went from never wanting to play it to never wanting to play white unless i'm playing it

yeah, a lot of cards in this set have shifted in my estimation. I don't think it's clear whether Furious Reprisal is better than Chandra's Pyrohelix, which I would have laughed off if you told me at the beginning of the format

reprisal has won me enough games that i'm sure it's better but it's not far and away better

http://mythicspoiler.com/aer/cards/quicksmithrebel.html

this + Staff of Domination seems good

a lot of things combo with staff of domination

Totally going to play the panharmonicon deck. It's a known quantity now, so probably less effective, but it looks really fun

I've gotten to the point where that's a windmill slam in draft - I didn't consider that it worked with Fabricate and all the energy creatures, there's so much value you can grind out of it

i haven't had panharmonicon in limited. i'd want to have a lot of fabricate. getting a bunch more energy doesn't seem like sufficient payoff.