Magic: The Gathering C/D

tarmogoyf again, cavern of souls. the hits keep coming. blood moon yesterday too.

yeah this is the strongest masters set for sure now

the only big holes at this point really are ancestral vision, noble hierarch (which was in the last one but still needs another printing pretty badly), and the janky artifacts that are worth a ton now like explosives and chalice

this is bonkers

I've never felt any urge to buy a box of mtg packs, this is making me consider it

with signets now on top of land based fixing cycles at common, uncommon and rare, it is going to be interesting to see if the synergies will be strong enough to prevent everyone going balls out 5 colour every time. suspect that the success as a limited format might hinge on that dynamic.

glad that signets are uncommon, they are stupid strong in draft

yeah different times etc but it is lunatic that they were common. also just weird inclusions for a supposedly 2 colour format.

even the mana myrs in scars of mirrodin were format warping in limited, a lot of the 2 and 3-drops in that set were garbage since your opponent was going like t2 gold myr t3 4-drop in such a large portion of games since they were 5 commons.

one of the worst things abt the MM2015 limited format was the superiority of 5c decks. none of the 2c archetypes were all that developed w/ maybe the exception of affinity and it made drafts really same-y and tedious not to mention how shitty it made the sealed format. i generally dont like formats with heavy fixing and am worried this is going to be another rares + rocks format

imo if you drafted any cards that weren't g/w/b you were doing mm2015 wrong. online either a convoke/tokens or spirits deck was wide open every time. my win% was through the roof on that format, 74% or something nuts.

i probably did less than 20 drafts in that format fwiw but i just remember feeling like it was very easy to slide into green-based ramp decks that splashed for all the good cards you cld get. and then having a really hard time drafting because there were no real signals or lanes, it was just 5+ ppl drafting the same basic deck

i did really like every other masters format limited (with VMA being my all time favorite draft format) so im hopeful for this one

i do feel weird though because i have no connection to/interest in the secondary price of cards really since i either already own or have no interest in owning any of these cards

damn this set really feels like it'll be the last MM, huh? nothing is being held back. (not actually saying this will be the last one.)

hadn't realized signets were moved to uncommon - a good move for limited I think

full card gallery is up

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-image-gallery/modern-masters-2017-edition?true

lot of AVR cards in here, a bold attempt at rehabilitating some of the good bits of that set

though thunderous wrath at common is maybe a bit overeager

i think this does look like it'll be a 4/5c goodstuff format. there are some clear themes but they don't seem pushed, and there's so many powerful gold cards.

the UW blink theme seems well developed but the other pairs don't really come through as particularly strong to me just scanning the card list

UB is supposed to be mystical teachings control apparently but there's no good instants to get with it. they chose grisly spectacle for the doom blade slot (??) and rewind is the only hard counterspell and a lot of the other good spells in UB are sorceries. theres basically no archetype payoff there

there does seem to be a wide variety of strategies available in 3 color decks though, i assume that is intended as the default in this set.

right, i noticed there is a lot of bleed off 2 colour themes that would encourage a 3rd colour. but even with the blink stuff, if you got say a strong themed bant deck together you are getting a couple 'free' 3/3s and occasionally bouncing things? at the minimum it's short like a mulldrifter at common or something. there's sort of go wide with some anthems but no overrun kind of haymakers that really push that, the sacrifice/regrowth stuff looks pretty sketchy and i don't know if something like blood artist would even make it enticing. seems to me, on first viewing anyway, that they're all at least a strong common short of being where i hoped they'd be.

anyway, that is a lot of complaining but in truth i am still extreme hype to actually play this thing. i really hope it comes together, so much goodness.

separate but related, this modern cube on mtgo seems like really weird timing. idk if it is supposed to whet the appetite for mm17 but i don't think the timing will be particularly beneficial to the success of either it or mm17.

yeah i just said the same thing elsewhere, it feels like they step on the toes of each other pretty badly

also i realized mystical teachings is probably pretty good if youre grixis and not just straight UB since red has 3 instant burn spells at common and theres also augur spree. its just weird for it to be so lightly supported on-color, compared to white where if you look at the commons almost every single one is in the service of either populate or blink.

it feels like aether revolt has been out forever but its still got almost 2 months left. i'll probably draft both the modern cube and mm3 a bunch just because theyre new

same. for as much as it was a breath of fresh air for me after triple kld ended up somewhat frustrating, aer is pretty shallow outside of some wrinkles

the color balance issues in AER have really manifested now that it's mostly good players left in the queues - i'm finding it harder and harder to compete with green decks, or to win with white decks

interesting. single elim or 6-2-2-2?

have only played 6-2-2-2 thus far

interesting. my win rate has plunged from 80% to a more reasonable 68% although ive done way fewer drafts in this format because ive been playing so much more standard this season. my last couple of 3-0s were with R/W although i dont think ive managed to draft a green deck in a couple of weeks and have def lost a bunch to random ridgescale tuskers. i also lost the finals of a comp queue last nite to a dude that was monored which was... good.

my very first deck in this draft format was monored and it was an easy 3-0. haven't been able to replicate it since

lamp are you still coming to the gp next weekend?

like 80% probably? im not q'd for nashville so its a little less likely i go now but id still like to play it. are you playing?

I'm def gonna be there saturday, but I decided against playing w/ zero practice. just gonna look at overpriced cards, maybe play a side-event, return stuff I borrowed to like 4 different people. email me if you end up going and we'll find some time to hang out.

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-aether-revolt-draft-guide/

this by ben stark is really interesting to me. many things that are contrary to my experience and make me want to reevaluate. i do think red is the strongest colour but inside that, revolution over shock and chaser i am not sure about, and all three of those over scrapper champion??? and then at the other end, i know white being the weakest colour is a pretty commonly held opinion and, even accounting for variance, i think i am benefiting from that personally. i believe 8 of my 10 3-0s played white. imo there are four strong white commons - eagle, brights, infiltrator, crusher. infiltrator is good to great because of crusher, and even bastion enforcer is playable because of it, although you can usually do better. and i think eagle is in contention for best common, even if you can only play a couple max. also, if you can get say 3 infiltrators plus a couple random revolt payoffs, a copy of conviction becomes a strong inclusion too. and for most of the life of this format you can be passed any of the good white cards up until late late in the draft.

and also, laying it out like this supports a thought i've had that green often doesn't seem open not just because it is overdrafted but also because it is pretty shallow. i do think bandar is a very strong 2 drop but implement is not super exciting as the 2nd best common, although i agree it is, and after that the cards are varying degrees of filler.

i think druid is the card he's the lowest on relative to conventional wisdom, most ppl i talk to had it as the best green common

druid IS underwhelming though. the effect is unusually low impact and the 1 power really plays badly. i would probably take leaf gilder higher but still not over, idk, leopard?

i think i tend to weight low cmc higher than most people in evaluating things, like i usually take the white 3/1 over dawnfeather eagle. you can always pick up crushers as finishers, or the 3/4 flying in pack 3, but if you prioritize eagle then you cant always get the 2-drops later. i've had too many drafts ruined by pack 3 being completely devoid of 2-drops with more than 1 power

caught in the brights is currently my most drafted card from this set, which is really unusual for it to be a good removal spell rather than some middle of the pack common that i rate higher than most people

i think a lot of ppl would straight up say it is the latter rather than the former, altho i do think that is crazy, even in a hostile environment for pacifisms.

it does give you a sneaky way to trigger revolt though

I do agree that Revolution > Shock, because as mentioned cheap, limited removal isn't a lifesaver in this format the way it would be in others. Tapping a land with Revolution is surprisingly obnoxious.

that said it is kind of difficult to evaluate these cards in a vacuum, since the set is so big on synergy - a card like Defiant Scavenger can be incredible in the right kind of B/G deck, but it's mostly unplayable. Maybe this has just been my drafting style but I tend to go all-in on a Improvise or Revolt strategy. I play the R/G beaters deck in Sealed but I don't think I've ever drafted it. So my card evaluations are maybe a little off.

yeah white is so underdrafted at this point that 'always force white' is probably a viable strategy. like, white is relatively weak, but it's not like m14 draft where you'd pass p1p1 serra angel for divination. I think people have overreacted / there's a lot of groupthink with these things.

I routinely see Eagles and the U/W uncommon wheel. I think the Skies deck is really underdrafted - maybe cuz it's kind of boring

owen turtenwald posted his draft stats for this format: https://twitter.com/OwenTweetenwald/status/838917736046587906

makes me want to start doing this myself, i've tracked my constructed matches in the past but never draft

hope to see saheeli combo banned today - i can live with there being a really good aggro deck but emrakul was clearly bad for the format and i think this is worse

the cards of a lot of high $ standard stuff kinda tanked on MTGO over the last week, I think they're anticipating something getting the axe

man, when was the last time there were standard bans? Ravager/Artifact Lands? Jace? I can't remember.

before kaladesh the last one was jtms/stoneforge mystic.

haven't thought or read too much about the bans, but why was emrakul chopped instead of marvel?

i find ppl going OTT criticizing wizards at every opportunity is overall a pretty tiresome element of the culture of the game, BUT... missing the saheeli combo entirely is fucking unreal.

it definitely feels like something about their internal testing has been off recently - they missed reflector mage as a standard-playable card too

almost as if in both cases the pairing of a gold card with a card of a different colour confounded them.

although i guess reflector mage had rally to abuse it first