Magic: The Gathering C/D

whoa Harsh Mentor seems like a pretty efficient combo killer and potentially maindeckable, if the environment's right

doesn't trigger on planeswalker activated abilities :(

it's def gonna see legacy play, prob has some role in modern

someone's going to make a hilarious deck with this:

http://mythicspoiler.com/akh/cards/shadowofthegrave.html

looks like it has the potential to cause mischief somewhere

that looks like a card that does something in eternal formats if anywhere

very good with Contract from Below

I think this is good:

http://mythicspoiler.com/akh/cards/hieroglyphicillumination.html

missed this card yesterday, think there's a potentially very fun Improvise deck brewing here. if I was still building Standard decks I'd take something like this to FNM

http://mythicspoiler.com/akh/cards/harvestseason.html

With the cycling Shatter, a green Manic Vandal, and Shatterstorm x-spell, looks like there is a lot more Standard playable hate for artifacts

i think standard looks pretty grim if they drag their feet on banning saheeli combo again.

set is very interesting for limited on first look through. there's some extreme durdle/value but also hellbent aggro in red and huge efficient beaters in green. an the former might be string enough not to be totally crowded out by the latter. the uncommon 2U instant bounce tapped creature cantrip is going to be first pickable is my prediction, with things like the cartouches, but also all of these giant idiots that come into play way undercosted but make you put -1/-1s on your own stuff. there are a few 1/3s and 1/4s that may be in demand because of that theme too.

i'm surprised at the raw volume of cards with cycling - last time they brought it back in alara i don't remember nearly this much

though they didn't do cycling-matters in that set iirc, it was just a smoothing mechanic there

does seem like a 'cycling deck' will actually be a viable thing in draft

other observation is the common creature quality is really high - and in addition to that a few colors have an extra creature over what they usually do (black and red have an extra 2-drop, blue has an extra 3-drop).

fall set is called Ixalan, sounds as if that'll be the mesoamerica-themed thing we saw fake booster art for previously

also GP Providence in september will be a release weekend event for it (team sealed)

makes sense, nice idea for a theme tho kind of funny right on the heels of amonkhet. also, i wonder how they are pronouncing that.

oh cool I'm def gonna go to that gp

looks like the mtgo folks read the email i sent them about the uncommons, they're pretty thoroughly shuffled in this set

ha!

apparently exert doesn't work with "attack with all" on mtgo. if you want to choose to exert you have to click attackers individually or else the option is not presented

yeah it's not a trigger, it's just an additional choice you make when you declare attackers

big shakeups in the eternal scene

What changed that made top/miracles a ban target?

miracles had been the best deck for a while, at least in the hands of experienced players

4-5 in my first Amonkhet sealed league. Thought it was supposed to be a friendly league ;_;

Exert made combat much trickier than I thought it would. Rather than figuring out what creatures should attack and what creatures should block, you have three states now. And exerting forces you to think a turn ahead. And then you have to do the same thing for your opponents creatures. I thought it would be straightforward, but there were several times I wasn't sure I was making the right play

I don't play Legacy but I really hate Top, so good riddance

miracles was the best deck for like 4 years straight, which is pretty unprecedented

I think it was mostly just them listening to people complaining though, I liked the legacy meta under pax miraclecana. it's probably going to be like souped up modern now.

top is the 2nd most miserable card ever printed and i approve of its removal from every format possible

ok, what's the 1st

mental misstep

the actual answer is probably shahrazad but that card is so miserable that it's banned in vintage which means it transcends any list placement

idk I think if you include MTGO then Top is way more obnoxious, it pretty much singlehandedly adds 5+ extra minutes to the match, can't think of another card like that offhand

personally I find Jace TMS the most miserable card to play against, I was so happy when that got banned

top in cube is particularly obnoxious. overall if my opponent is playing top i figure i am getting like +5% win equity at the cost of sitting through 10 minutes additional pointless fucking around time.

top can be strong in cube in decks that look more or less like legacy miracles (lotta fetches, maybe some actual miracles)

the card is obviously very poorly designed, for sure. it's funny can any number of small tweaks (add a mana here or there, make the draw effect sorcery speed, etc.) would have made it a totally fine card, but in the end it's just a little bit too efficient.

if you had to tap to do the Sylvan Library ability that would help too. a lot of my frustrations with the card had to do with the fact that I could never kill it. plus I remember a lot of "upkeep Top, crack fetch, Top again" where people would spend 2 full minutes before getting to their main phase.

my one amonkhet discovery so far is that, because all of the cycling synergy stuff triggers off discard, the 1U sometime looter guy can potentially be strong in that archetype. effectively makes any non-creature spells you cast potentially count as a cycle, which could be very important for critical mass. just at common, that guy into the 2/3 sentinels that pump on discard is a p nice start

I did one draft last night and opened the stupid dragon + lili so I 'did okay' but the one deck that scared me was a mono-cycling deck that really went off one game. I guess you try and dive into that deck if you open a powerful enabler early? I wonder how fringe it's gonna be.

drake haven is actually unbeatable unless you have one of the two enchantment removals in the set, both of which have cycling so the drake haven drafter is gonna cut them from other people if they're smart (they're also both white so if you're not playing that color then you're just screwed from the start)

it's not quite pack rat but it feels similarly futile if they have it on t3

That card is bonkers, yes. It basically reads "1U: drake" in the right deck. I Lay Claimed it because my opponent was going off, and still lost just to the two drakes he/she had already made

i just had an opponent play it vs me and my immediate reaction was 'oh fuck i'm dead' and then they made a single drake with it over 3 turns and i was like 'oh phew they drew the wrong part of their deck to use it' and then they played sandwurm convergence and i died. quite the emotional rollercoaster

i just got hit for 24 on turn 4 in draft

did it involve that 4/1 mythic?

Buh bye, Felidar Guardian.

it's the right thing to do but the optics are really really bad for them to not have done it on Monday.

they should just get rid of the set release B&R announcement and only have the mid-season one imo, makes everyone's job much easier

Do you buy their explanation? I think people are generally happy enough that they'll look past or forget about the clumsy way it was handled.

Maybe they should just announce bans whenever they need to rather than worrying about a schedule.

the schedule is important so that players can prepare for events appropriately

i don't really buy the stated explanation, i think 2 days of mtgo data is not enough to base a decision on. i think they were planning to hit it in the next one in 6 weeks to be consistent with the previous B&R message about waiting until after PT Amonkhet, but the community pressure plus fear of a stagnant PT forced their hand.

Would be cool if we get a real wild assortment of decks at scgatl, will probably just be 50/50 Mardu and GB thiugh.