Magic: The Gathering C/D

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'

yeah legacy dnt is the deck I have the most experience w/ and I was excited about the possibilities for like, 3 seconds, but there just aren't enough of those decks in legacy / they generally have some way to do damage to a planeswalker too. even fewer in modern. even the purest of combo decks in modern (storm / ad naus) win can kill a walker on their combo turn.

ad naus could play this instead of phyrexian unlife in some matchups though heh

the throwback standard gauntlet thing is back today. maybe it will work this time. i am def intrigued, could be fun to try out altho my own expectations for actually winning anything would be pretty low.

of course, my expectations are low in general currently after getting a sound beating at the hands of iatee in an mm3 league match yesterday.

this was my deck btw

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

gifts package def felt like cheating

RS what's your mtgo name? curious if i've played you in the past year or however far back the game logs go

I've played one of lamp's friends while he watched before, and I've played multiple of my irl friends

it's kinda crazy what a small world mtgo is

the player numbers on the draft leagues look high until you realize that pretty much everyone who plays mtgo plays those

right yeah. for legacy leagues it's like a small town where everyone knows each other.

yeah gifts was a real groan both times. i was v jealous of how much more fun your deck was than mine.

btw i could see your last couple msgs after i conceded but of course it wouldn't let reply. another great mtgo innovation.

cider my username is onami. are you still smh? i don't recall ever seeing you

yeah i've been playing on an alternate account a bunch lately since it had some play points / QPs on it that i wanted to use but smh is still my main one and i'll be back on it for amonkhet

I remember frogbs figured out from this thread that he and I had played against each other in Cube

sounds about right. I remember once playing against someone in a draft whose username was the name of a good friend of mine, someone I'd been playing Magic with since I was 11, but didn't know played online. I messaged him on FB - "dude, am I playing you on MTGO" right now? turns out it was him. he kicked my ass, by the way.

we get Cat lord

also some good hosers for Scrapheap Scrounger, Saheeli, and artifacts in general

cat lord so strong for limited, getting ready to hate that card.

the throne strikes me as more of a fun that competitive card, but it is interesting coming right after improvise. could maybe be something there for standard.

and another efficiently costed large blue flyer. i wonder if there might be some kind of blue dump-your-hand aggro deck here.

lol at this 4/4 lifelink for 1w. always watching is still legal right? if we can get white a competitive planeswalker, maybe one that makes tokens even, there might be something here.

Throne being legendary makes it more difficult as a build around but it still seems quite good - are there any viable improvise decks in standard?