Magic: The Gathering C/D

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.

you'll see marvel too. ppl dont usually find radically new stuff before the PT unless its super obvious like drake haven or w/e

this is my favorite deck i've drafted so far though sadly i hit the ass end of variance in the games http://i.imgur.com/MklfkLd.png

This is my favourite sealed format I think I've ever played - you can do so many different things across all five colours and they all seem to work really well. The number of unbeatable cards is really small - like Rhonas, Glorybringer, Samut, Liliana, maybe the R/W gods or the Sphinx, but that's about it - nothing at rare.

i haven't tried sealed yet, i got annoyed at that format because there was a long string of sets where BUG were way better than R and W in sealed and it got boring always playing the same colors

also 5 matches feels like a marathon compared to the only 4-round events for some reason

*old

I've had little success in Sealed so far but lots of close, fun matches. The number one thing that bugs me is the lack of enchantment removal, cause there are some game winning enchantments, but I did manage to outrace the black curse one match, which was thrilling. Glorybringer also should've been mythic, I have yet to beat that card

yeah idk why that one is the rare and the double combat step one is the mythic

complexity maybe? idk. i've had glorybringer one time and the only time i drew it it got cloned and then killed. terrible card.

i'm winding up super grindy almost every draft, probably i ought to correct for some biases. as far as enchantment removal goes, i was in a very control-y game with drake haven vs an opp whose way to win the game was convergence, also happening to nerf my win con, and i was able to win by using the griptide/timetwister card to get rid of it for long enough. felt almost like cube.

earlier today i had someone plague wind me by casting blazing volley 4 times in one turn.

4 times? how did that happen?

rares and mythics have the same level of complexity I think - it's more the uh epicness that distinguishes them. or something. I don't know anymore. on paper, the double combat step guys seems very powerful, maybe even mythic level powerful, but no cards with that effect have been playable in constructed... ever? I'm predisposed to be disappointed by double combat step cards

t I did manage to outrace the black curse one match

Yeah I can't evaluate that card at all - I've faced it a lot on t2, where it's like "drain 7" - which is a good card in a format that can be race-y at times, but I also don't see the games where it's stuck in their hands being embarrassing, so... I don't think it's a for-sure maindeckable card but I could be totally wrong.

i think he meant the 7 mana curse.

i experimented with the 2 mana curse after 1st picking the cycle drain 2 enchantment. i had enough early good blockers and interaction to make board stalls likely, and if you can get to mid game alive and have a couple of those on the battlefield it's a real thing. my win cons were drain and a couple big fliers, i don't know if i would consider it outside of exactly that kind of shell. in the game i was referencing, i was in a long stall vs a guy playing a bunch of RW dorks and we both had a pretty full hand - i had a bunch of cyclers and had decided to wait to draw the enchantment as it didn't seem like there was much urgency, and i assumed he had little creatures he wasn't playing because of the couple of curses i had down. but no, he was collecting his blazing volleys until he had all 4... i still won tho!

Yeah I meant Cruel Reality, the sac a creature or planeswalker every turn. yeah I don't think the drain curse is very good

xp lol I am not surprised that you beat a person with 4 Blazing Volley in their deck

yeah but of course i happened to play that guy when it was actually reasonable tech against me! who knows what he thought he was doing otherwise. and it was g1 too.

the other time i built around the drain 2 enchantment i neglected to included the additional win support. i had a few big ground creatures - the 4 drop that gets indestructible, a couple of the 5 drop black dude that gets a boost, the blue 6 serpent - but if you don't get those down pretty early, later on it's hard to break a stall with them. every single game i decked with me at 30 life at opp at 4.

the 24 damage in turn 4 was t2 dork t3 red mythic w/ double attack step t4 white trial and red cartouche, falter my blocker, both creatures attack twice because of vigilance

Oh! I forgot about the 7 mana one, sorry.

xp aurelia the warleader was played in standard a bit - the double combat phase effect really needs to be on a haste creature to be effective.

i think i now have gust walker and hooded brawler as my highest priority commons in draft, alongside magma spray. the drawback on the pacifism is surprisingly massive in this format - it doesn't actually answer a lot of the good cards and even when it does it just gives the green and black creatures a spot to dump their counters and come out bigger.

i like the pacifism a lot. those downsides are valid in ordinary paced games but having a simple answer to a 4 power 2 drop or 5 power 3 drop is huge, enough to offset the downsides imo.

ppl seem to be taking hooded brawler highly now, i never see it anymore past like pick 4. green commons being a bit lackluster outside of the cartouche is probably contributing too.

Finally managed to draft a deck that wasn't a trainwreck

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/39uw992kj5ukrdz/WG%20Exert.PNG?dl=0

3-0 with my dream deck. #PTAKH pic.twitter.com/daMntuaFBc

— Owen Turtenwald (@OwenTweetenwald) May 12, 2017

ok, i give up

Hahaha at that draft deck

I've played about 30 more sealeds in this format, and it's only gone up in my estimation

yeah it's a good set. not one of the best ever but above average imo.

objectively i think i would agree but personally i don't enjoy it and i haven't been playing it. it's a forgiving environment for high variance strategies, actually i would say welcoming more than forgiving, and while i think every good limited format should allow the dream of going all in on some bullshit, that shouldn't be tier 1. you have to be open to drafting decks where you can just look at your top 10 cards instead of playing the game, and that's not fun for me.

have to admit i only played a couple sealeds right at the release so although it seemed like 'who's got the bombs' i can't give that initial impression too much weight. might give sealed another shot actually. if only to keep me from looking at constructed decks...

I think every small set format has been better than its respective triple large set format since they​ went to the new system, so the bar for Hour of Devastation is high

really? i thought aer sucked

i have played 0 sealed of this format but have a bunch of sealed events coming up so i need to start practicing. i hear that it is good tho

Yeah, I think to some extent the things that make it a flawed-but-good draft format are the same that make it a great sealed one - I feel like a lot of sealed formats end up as midrange vs control vs more midrange, whereas because RW 1/2-drop aggro is so deep it's actually a sealed deck you can play which feels very fresh to me. And the same with combo - you never normally get to build around cool effects in sealed but it feels like cycling means you can a bit more.

MM2017 is the worst sealed format imaginable so I might just be biased that it isn't that.

exert is a really good non-linear aggro mechanic which is what most sealed formats are missing. aggro decks in sealed usually aren't cohesive enough to beat someone who just trades 1 for 1 with your guys, whereas this set has a bunch of cheap common creatures that are hard to trade evenly with.

there's also a bigger thing going on here in the past 5 years where giving green removal has been great for draft but has tended to unbalance sealed in favor of green midrange decks. several things that green does like creature size and color fixing have always been a lot more valuable in sealed than draft, and having fewer answers on average in green/x decks was a counterbalance that's now gone.

Wow that's a great point about green, cider. I've noticed the overrepresentation of green in sealed the last few years but didn't connect it to removal. Was there a good green removal spell in BFZ? That's the only recent format where I think green was not great in sealed (and of course, it was horrendous in draft)

there's also a bigger thing going on here in the past 5 years where giving green removal has been great for draft but has tended to unbalance sealed in favor of green midrange decks. several things that green does like creature size and color fixing have always been a lot more valuable in sealed than draft, and having fewer answers on average in green/x decks was a counterbalance that's now gone.

yeah, just chiming in to say this was an amazing post!

Wow that's a great point about green, cider. I've noticed the overrepresentation of green in sealed the last few years but didn't connect it to removal. Was there a good green removal spell in BFZ? That's the only recent format where I think green was not great in sealed (and of course, it was horrendous in draft)

yeah - moving tail slash-style cards from red to green has always kinda bothered me but its particularly noticeable in sealed. i think w/bfz it wasnt absence of good green removal (nissa's judgement was legit) but that green creatures didnt size that well against the rest of the format because of the eldrazi so it couldnt accrue natural card advantage by simply having the biggest/best creatures.