Magic: The Gathering C/D

my impression of the format so far is that the synergies have power and are well supported and playables run deep so you can and often should end up with a really good deck in draft. but having a deck that attacks every turn is still legit and probably the most consistent route to victory.

starting with Amonkhet, online set releases are happening immediately after the paper prerelease rather than 2 weeks later, it's about damn time

ooh that is excellent news. the last few limited GPs I've gone to have been close to the start of the format and I spend most of the Friday before the GP learning the format through grinders. nice to know that I can come in with more practice

in fact, I'm planning to hit GP Beijing in May, which was originally planned to be two days after the MTGO launch

yeah map is def a very high pick in this format

another potentially high pick - Scrounging Bandar. anything that lets you activate Revolt w/o a mana requirement seems good right now. Bandar has synergy with everything, it seems

i don't think bandar is better than the mana guy, prey upon, or the big trampler for green common

its much better than cavalry i think and probably better than the druid

being able to revolt on a curve is such a plus in this format. my current sealed pool is G/W and it seems like if I get my Renegade Map or Bandar out early my chances are good, and if I don't the deck tanks. might take Prey Upon over it though.

i think g/w revolt is kinda awful and am surprised by high many ppl seem to draft it

yeah cavalry is pretty hard to turn on on curve in limited

the Grixis improvise decks are really fun but I dunno if they're any good. feel like you load your deck up with some janky artifacts and you're really praying for those 3rd pack Prisms and Serpents. but I've managed to 2-1 a couple drafts with decks that look awful on paper.

just saw the Friendly Draft League, these are...uh very strange

so you get to play 10 matches, but every match is 1 game

if you win 7 you get your 120 play points back. but there's nothing beyond that

goatbots EV calc thinks they're better than the intermediate/competitive draft leagues. not by a whole lot though

anyone tried them yet?

not really interested in 1-game matches of draft but multiple people have suggested that now that they have that structure coded in they should use it for a momir league, which i fully support

absolutely, I wish MTGO would do more things like that which aren't possible in paper magic

bet Momir leagues would get a lot of new players on board

there used to be a lot of mtgo-exclusive formats like 10 years ago but people gradually stopped playing them over time other than momir and pauper

well I'm talking more about formats that would be impossible or difficult to do in Paper magic. the flashback/cube stuff is a step in the right direction.

I had a buddy that played Prismatic a lot, really did love that format though at the time none of the Vintage stuff was available so it was a totally different format than the 250-card 5-color format that was popular at the time.

glad to see Mardu Vehicles making a showing at the PT. For now, this is the most viable direction for me to go in the new standard, but I've been pretty doubtful about its effectiveness vs saheeli and G/B.

just looking at the development article today and saw the card Inspiring Roar. i have done maybe 8 drafts online and a sealed and i have literally never seen this common once, not in a pack and not played. has anyone seen this card on mtgo? feel like i am going crazy.

I assume it's like this card, which I haven't seen

https://cdn1.mtggoldfish.com/images/gf/Flame%2BLash%2B%255BKLD%255D.jpg

what the fuck is that???

oh that's an intro pack card i guess

yeah must be. probably ditto for the card you're referencing? its card number is 186/184 and it's worth a buck on MTGO.

speaking of, KLD Masterpieces are playable in limited if you get em, right? I have yet to see a single one on MTGO though I played this format a ton. bummer.

masterpieces aren't in packs on MTGO, they're in treasure chests

ahhh didn't know that

I did occasionally see the Zendikar Expeditions cards, I thought it was odd that I never saw any of these

guy from my local store is now the mortal enemy of twitch chat after winning a game off his opponent's rules flub

ha i saw that, that guy's local? awesome

ruling seemed a lil harsh

yeah the ruling was due to some really dumb new rule that judges decided on recently where you can't take priority in the start of combat step on your turn unless you're extremely explicit about it, just saying 'go to combat' means 'go to declare attackers'

i kinda hate playing paper magic above Regular REL because of stuff like that

I don't think this is a new rule, it's just getting more attention now due to vehicles and cards like Toolcraft Exemplar that require you to be very specific about what combat step you are in. I do agree that it's pretty dumb "go to combat" does not translate to beginning of combat.

yeah this rule has been in place at least since goblin rabblemaster. i got fucked in a random sealed pptq once by it a year ago

kinda happy to be vindicated in my opinion that vehicles was a really good choice for this wknd less happy that i argued against four fatal pushes. v v curious to see what the day two conversion rate was for various archetypes

AAK trophy #2: http://imgur.com/a/l5qFO

tusker just too good

how are you guys judging the cantrippy artifacts? feel like the green one seems pretty obviously good since boosting a creature w/o costing a card is a real thing. the black one seems too expensive to be playable and the blue one seems fine in a deck that wants divination. but the white and red ones - just playable when you have a ton of revolt? medium-high picks? only playable in all-in revolt? it's a hard effect to judge and also kinda makes land-calculations hard for me.

red and white i play as filler when i have revolt and/or improvise going on. i think the black one is playable too. blue is a divination as you said. green is actively good but you still cant play too many. they all take up the 'nonsense' slots in your deck which means you can't really value them that highly, i dont take any of them over playable creatures really.

oops I just looked it up - I confused the black one with the black puzzleknot

black one is pretty decent actually

as long as they are doing something more than just what's on the card i'll play them. the BR improvise/sac deck can be very strong and that will play as many of them as it can get, and can drop a land or two to accommodate if it gets enough. the 5cmc improvise black uncommon 2/2 will wheel all day and if you have that on board with one of the guys that eats artifacts, getting the sac effect plus drawing a card plus getting a servo is constant fuel.

had this earlier http://i.imgur.com/Ynsilk9.png. was p strong but lost in the finals vs guy who managed to pick up 3 self assemblers in pack 3. couldn't ever get past them without the basker, which won me one game, or the call of unity which i never saw. did manage to kill that fucking bomb flying whale with harpooner followed by acrobatic maneuver with return trigger on the stack, almost as good as winning the match.

i seem to be white a lot. probably i am doing something wrong but results have been ok. both my trophies were WB decks. love the black uncommon -3/-3 revolt guy.

hadn't seen Monstrous Onslaught before. that...looks really strong

I am enjoying this format a lot more than kaladesh and, related, winning a lot more

feels a lot more bread and butter, like reading a draft well and having a good curve will get you far

also keep getting passed p2 tusker, so I'm still getting some freebies

sealed deck - straight 2 colour 23 to the left or do you try to make room for the bestiary?

http://i.imgur.com/PVN1cW5.jpg

that deck looks fine without the Bestiary. think it would just gunk up the works a bit.

whoa I didn't know Revolt worked with self-bounce stuff, makes Greenbelt Ravager even better

went 6-2 in the mtgo ptq with the deck, no splash. bestiary is very strong i think and mitigates the worst failing of the deck, but not worth the disruption and i am sure i benefited from smoother mana more than the couple times i lost games on flood.

how good were your green cards? not sure that your red is all that strong and bestiary is really good

iatee are you going to be playing gp new jersey next month? im thinking abt going on my own if your playing

it was all fight spells - 2 each of preys and hunts and an onslaught. i looked at a green build but the only colours with enough creatures were red and white. a good amount of 3 power creatures at least.

Most boring PT I can remember in a long time. I don't think the metagame is settled or anything, but there were very few times on camera where they featured a deck other than Mardu Vehicles or some flavor of BG. And very few interesting games in the top ́8.

having flying on all the pushed vehicles was just a format-ruining mistake imo

Did they ban copter to coerce players into opening more hearts of kiran?

lamp I haven't decided whether I'm playing or just bumming around at side events while my friends play, but I'll def be there. I am at like ~2000 pwp and want to hit 2 byes for the vegas gps, going to another gp would almost certainly get me there but I'm not sure I want to pay $80 to play a format I don't play at all just for pwps. but...I might.

heart of kiran is weaker than copter in the abstract, as crew 3 is way more than crew 1, but there's even fewer maindeckable things below 3cmc that answer it, and scrapheap scrounger does a ridiculous amount of work bridging the power difference