Magic: The Gathering C/D

the price of modern cards has decreased significantly over the last two years (i think? i havent actually measured this, just anecdotally) which is kinda interesting. it feels like modern is significantly less popular on mtgo than it used to be

i have been spending several hours a day playing standard over the last few weeks and i honestly think its pretty fun

What are you playing in standard?

standard is better than the last 2 seasons but still below average for the format i think

I felt like Kaladesh had greater diversity of decks, but I'm making peace with Mardu Vehicles

Of course, part of that diversity came from a huge pool of new cards and mechanics that took longer to solve

ive been trying a bunch of stuff but mostly mardu and g/b energy aggro. a friend had a bant marvel deck that had an insane g/b match-up but was ultimately too inconsistent/bad against mardu. i also played a couple leagues with shouta's RUG tower deck but thought it was p underwhelming

i really liked vehicles but it can be an frustrating deck to play with

lantern ended up being...idk, something between a bad choice and 'I got unlucky'. we went 5-3-1. fact that lantern won a gp (with a list very similar to what I ran) suggests it wasn't the worst meta call in the world, but I just didn't hit my bridges and had too many 0 land hands. I'm playing in my store's invitational this sunday and prob just gonna bring dredge.

i still like BR aggro in standard, feels like it has more balanced matchups than mardu at a time when walking ballista is freaking everywhere (even mardu ppl are playing it now as a mirror breaker, yuck)

having fun online http://imgur.com/a/7V0R0

lost that deck to sideboard bug, disappointing. was fun while it lasted

loool efficient construction is on my mental 'this persons a bye' list of cards

it was actually pretty good but I needed more blockers and not aether swoopers to have time to set it up

these decks are really good if you can get 2 Serpents. I've cast so many 2 mana 5/6s in this format. sadly I think the card moved way up in the pick order so good luck.

efficient construction has been good for me in grixis improvise decks. I don't take it highly cause they wheel, but it's def a card I'm happy to have as a one-of if my deck is 50% artifacts.

i'm getting kinda weary of improvise decks now but they always seem to be the only thing open, along with UW which i hate

this limited format definitely inspires some crazy, LSV-style decks

I recently 3-0'd a deck with 2x Call for Unity, it was such a dumb deck but it wound up working, I'd win by swinging in with a bunch of 7/7 Servos or something crazy like that. Granted most games I won I was at like 3 or 4 life but still.

UW is very much the open colour pair on mtgo right now, ppl are underdrafting both. in my last couple drafts i just leaned into it and got 3-0 both times with very similar decks - good fliers in combination with 3-power 2/3 drops and vehicles.

pvddr is the latest person i have seen saying that white is the weakest colour but more than half of my trophies have been with white decks, and although i haven't personally drafted it all that often, i do think WR is the strongest colour pair.

yeah i could be down with some traditional UW fliers decks, its the aegis automaton grindfest UW deck that turned me off of the color pair

the only improvise deck i want now is UR. if i have an opening 7 with say brawler and thopterist but no artifacts, it feels bad but i still have some % to win, whereas if my plan is to cast the 6s and 7s the range of unkeepable opening hands feels much broader.

I've seen the U/W gold uncommon wheel so yeah, definitely underdrafted. IDK if it's so much that white is weak as it is the deck is just boring in an interesting format.

emergency 3xKTK flashback on mtgo! w00t

lol is that compensation for them royally fucking up the old standard formats event?

yep. i hope they sort that shit out because it sounds like a blast, but for now i'll take this.

this set if any ought to be a real gauge for how significant the effect of crosspod drafting is

lost my first match to a naya deck

i have a love/hate relationship with khans where it's got some of my favorite individual cards and look&feel of the past 10 years but i've just never liked like the morph mechanic or formats where you have to draft mana fixing

really bummed that the flashback standard gauntlet got taken down before i got to play any

several of the decks were completely nonfunctional, it'll be back once they fix the bugs

opponent conceded on this turn. closest i came :(

http://i.imgur.com/jE3v8Nx.jpg

lucky, making infinite cats on mtgo is a pain

Kari Zev has got to be the only 1/3 with First Strike

hello http://magiccards.info/tp/en/199.html

I'm sick of your fake news, cider. Kari Zev is the ONLY 1/3 with first strike

The only 1/3 with first strike and menace.

oh damn, forgot about that dude. even still that guy has firebreathing so it makes sense. I wonder how many first strikers there are with greater toughness than power that don't have some sort of power boosting ability.

there's one other in AER

yea I mean, besides that one

prophetic flameseeker is a 1/3 with DOUBLE strike (thats two strikes!!)

theres a couple 1/3 first strike defenders too, one was in dragons of tarkir

cant believe i forgot about prophetic flamespeaker, thats an old pet card of mine that never took off

i try to constantly keep tabs on JOU cards since the supply of that set on modo is so tiny that if anything ever enters modern it will skyrocket in price (for example eidolon of the great revel is currently 27 online vs 6 irl). i have piles of all these dumb cards like sage of hours and eidolon of blossoms on my account just in case something new comes out that works with them

Double Strikers are different - stuff like the 2/4 First Strikers are just strange to me because the ability seems to be not relevant all that often. A lot of times they seem to be in common cycles where each creature has an ability and the white one always has to be first strike.

after some research here's what I've come up with

first off Cider's right, there are some 1/3 defenders with it, one was in Saga, another in DTK
Khans had the Gurmag Swiftwing (1/2 First Strike, Haste, and Flying for 1B)
Eventide had a hybrid 1/2 First Strike flyer
Shadowmoor has a 1/2 First Strike with wither
Kobold Overlord from Legends kinda counts, I guess
Master of Cruelties, from Rakdos. 1/4 with Deathtouch and First Strike
There are quite a few 2/3s with First Strike, mostly white cards. White has a couple of 3/4s too
Ancient Spider from Invasion is a 2/5 First Strike with Reach. So what, I guess it eats up all those 5/2s running around.

so, there's a few

first strike with 2 or more power makes double blocking harder so its not as weird on mid-sized creatures

also obviously wither/infect change the math

yeah it makes sense on those, plus stuff like the 2/3 from AER with the discard/draw when tapped ability

the 1/3 defenders are strange too. at least with Kari Zev it prevents you from double blocking with a 2/2 and a servo, the defender ones I can't figure out

its just so they can block all 2 power creatures, not too hard to figure out

great against ball lightning type cards that pop up fairly frequently

also speaking of wither, apparently amonkhet is gonna be a -1/-1 counter block. wither and persist are both worthy mechanics to return, i wonder which of the 2 they'll go with.

ha! i read that the bunch of proliferate-like cards in AER were a vestige of that actually being a mechanic in the set, so that made me think -1s were coming up.

thought it might be a shard block but the presence of 5 gods plus bolas ruins the numbers for that, i think.

the non-rares are probably pretty dependent on the context of their limited formats (e.g. toughness matters cards in KTK, bolster, the 1/2 was a limited payoff for that delve rare) and even the rares tend to be designed towards limited mechanics/environment

wld be very excited for persist to come back

-1/-1 counters? sounds like a funny way to wreck snake decks

the 1/2 was a limited payoff for that delve rare