Magic: The Gathering C/D

these seem better than the theros temples which were Very good in standard

scry lands were probably better for early game and these are probably better in the late game

scry lands were good late game compared to pretty much every land except these

wonder why they gave 'em the basic types

are there any standard-legal cards that would make these good search targets? can't imagine wanting to fetch these over other fetchable lands in other formats.

no but I'm guessing there will be. I don't think they just do that randomly.

basic land types make them play well with the SOI duals and i'm sure they'll be relevant with some future thing too

man this is the best i've done in a draft format since the last modern masters. i wonder if there is a reason or if it's just coincidence. anyway, i now have 8 trophies from 18 drafts, which is the amount i got in 3xKLD - i think my worst format to date - over ~60 drafts.

roberto, are you still playing 100% online? I feel like you are probably good enough at this point that you could prob crush at some irl competitive limited events

I always liked the tension with the previous cycling lands - play them early so that the tappedness isn't a problem, or hold them to get value later. This seems like it will be a very widely played cycle

xp my results are pretty variable overall but i do have streaks. the sum total of my paper experience is playing occasionally with gentleman of this parish call all destroyer.

boston kinda sucks for events bigger than FNM, everything is really far out in the suburbs

there's a scg event in worcester next weekend actually. cider, any chance you're going? (I am.)

not sure yet. not up to speed on legacy these days but might play the modern event on saturday

I might play that if I flame out in legacy d1. I kinda want to build grixis shadow, looks fun, might want to play that in vegas.

anyway if you're around you should hit me up

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dw466ytu5_akh/en_3zm4wIPG70.png

i like how much cleaner this is than the theros gods while still being a similar mechanic

I liked Devotion, but yeah this is pretty cool

I agree w/ everything in this article:

https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/modern-masters-2017-draft-guide/

I have gone into every draft thinking 'force dimir'. I remembered liking the last mm a little better, though I barely remember what was even in the set at this point.

yeah i quit mm3 after 8 drafts because it was clear that there were only 3 decks (+ a potential 4th in GW that requires a very high power level to compete since it's too disadvantaged vs the blue cards)

shifting dinrova horror down to common was a pretty big mistake i think. falkenrath noble and mist raven should also probably not be common

I have done somewhere from 15-20 drafts and have yet to see a real gw populate deck. I've seen a few okay RG and RW aggro decks. aggro is in a weird place - those 4c control decks are actually soft to it in theory, but I think it's hard to build a deck that reliably curves out w/ good cards to punish them. usually you just don't get punished for durdling for 4 turns and can just jund out the other guy.

and yeah, dinrova horror is rare-level powerful, especially in a set filled w/ tokens and flicker effects. I'm okay w/ the noble at common because it's so core to the br sac deck actually working, and that deck isn't overpowered.

this is the only good green deck i managed to draft, needing green rares in order to have a high enough power level to beat blue commons is not a good place to be
http://imgur.com/a/ze7eA

my sole 3-0 BR deck had 0 nobles -_-

there are several different decks under the esper umbrella and several under jund but within each they are close enough to be functionally the same, although for the former there is a much faster WU deck. i haven't had GW really come together since my first online draft except the time i opened craterhoof. i have been beaten a couple times now by GW soul warden / the fog populate / the indestructible populate decks which count among my most miserable magic experiences. in terms of off the wall decks, i lost handily with a strong jund deck to the ol' UG explore/mist raven/flicker/genesis deck. i literally only saw those cards, and in multiplies. i think overall the payoffs for bant aren't there, RW and naya are very bad, and a UR/grixis core while intriguing seems hard to pull off.

but yeah, i did a couple more drafts over the weekend and realized i was just choosing between esper or jund.

looking at the deck cider posted there, lingering souls plus a couple anthems really is how you are trying to win with GW

lingering souls is just an absurd card in limited regardless of the format

i think it was probably the 2nd best card in DKA, after huntmaster and ahead of sorin. a true mythic uncommon

i recently took souls p1p1 over voice of resurgence. i wasn't 100% sure that i was right but i slammed it all the same.

phantom, obv

it's def better than voice

yeah lingering souls always seems like the easiest first pick in the format. not only is it always strong in limited, but this particular grind-y format is the perfect place for it. also lots of the rares aren't even that strong in limited. the rares I'm looking out for are niv mizzet, deadeye navigator, cruel ult, olivia, thragtusk. I think souls is better than any other non-mythic rare.

oh wait olivia is mythic

I thought of another...damnation

Drave Heaven looks pretty solid - better than Lightning Rift even? Not sure why the "cycle or discard a card" wording is necessary, unless they're just helping people to connect the dots.

I mean obviously it'll depend on what the cycling cards look like. but it seems like a viable Standard build-around card.

Standard is faster now than in Astral Slide's heyday, but I think it's possible. Depends a lot on what the Std cards look like - so far Renewed Faith slots in pretty well

wanted to say it makes a neat combo with Smugglers Copter but then I remembered it was banned

there may be others but a little sad to see the cycling buildaround at rare.

blue god is kind of interesting. it doesn't seem particularly strong in any deck that would care about getting a dragon out for 3 mana, but maybe a control finisher in some format? idk, hand size requirement maybe just too finicky for the payoff.

yea really would love if it was "6 or more" but that seems a bit too good

6 or more would be obnoxious since it would come down online on turn 3 without any additional work

right - but you'd still be limited to playing one card per turn

that said I did misread the activated ability, which lets you online this on turn 4

it still seems a bit hard to use. I'm not sure really what kind of deck wants this. It looks like a finisher for the sort of draw-go decks that don't really exist anymore. Skies-type decks can't use it. It's easy to imagine a deck using the Red one, this one on the other hand....

nu-Gideon is hilarious, wotc is really trolling all the people who have been calling for a ban on the BFZ one.

i think the planeswalker card type would just be better all round if the typically competitive/midrange pw were 5 mana and the cheap/aggro one 4, rather than 4 and 3. they would be less dominant and they could do more with them.

gotta sell those packs tho

remember that when they developed this set, it was supposed to rotate BFZ out of standard. so we're gonna see some weird vestiges of that, like the discard spell that's real similar to transgress the mind, and this gideon

that said, this gideon is one of those cards that reads better than it is. it's not nearly on the same level as the BFZ one.

yea the "ultimate" is probably not very good at all - I wonder how often it'll actually get used

as one of my friends put it 'if you control a planeswalker, you can't lose' is not actually an emblem, mostly just a description of a magic board state

the emblem is more interesting in eternal formats where there are decks whose plan vs planeswalkers is 'ignore them and combo kill opponent'