Magic: The Gathering C/D

iatee ground down my weak boros deck with endless mill. I think I got battalion off one time in 3 games.

now to build an insane gruul deck...

here we go: http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-gatecrash-prerelease-primer

he seems to be ranking the guilds
orzhov > simic > dimir > boros > gruul

which is wonderfully counterintuitive to current public opinion

I can buy that ranking if you move dimir to the bottom

a so-so gruul deck is nothing special for sure but its decent creatures and combat tricks

a so-so dimir deck has a decent amount of removal but really crap creatures for the most part

a strong boros deck is def not as good as a strong rakdos deck but has a lot of game winning rares

basically his point w/ gruul is that the common creatures are not efficient enough as creatures, and bloodrush often gives up too much long-game value to get an attack through early (i.e. if you keep using bloodrush to get your 2/2 through, you still end up with just a 2/2 but without any more guys to play)

maybe I read it incorrectly, but I'd think you could flip 3 and 4 there (does he actually say Dimir is better than Boros?). otherwise I think his opinion's as good as any. keep in mind that the prerelease hasn't happened yet. I remember a lot of people saying that Izzet was unplayable and that Unleash was a terrible mechanic

that's true but a deck w/ 17 playable creatures is still gonna win some games...I don't think it's great, no doubt, but bad dimir decks basically have to luck into a win

bad izzet decks are the same way! i should know :(

no he doesn't actually say dimir is better than boros, he lists all the problems with dimir and then basically says 'i think this could still be strong but will require very nuanced decisions for it to work'

or whatever

i'm still running gruul at the prerelease i guess, but this has been super helpful in thinking about the bloodrush guys

I've been winning games w/ dimir fwiw they just feel janky as hell and always take forever. maybe it's not all luck and that's how the deck's supposed to play.

i think zhur-taa swine is still very good, as are the uncommons, but i can see the 3/2 not playing as strong as it looks, and the 2/1 and 2/4 are obviously filler

I will play anyone tonite btw come at me bro

i think zhur-taa swine is still very good, as are the uncommons, but i can see the 3/2 not playing as strong as it looks, and the 2/1 and 2/4 are obviously filler

I always considered Golgari Longlegs to be a bit underrated in general so I think this card is good too. The bloodrush on that one seems more useful for shooting your opponent for 5 than as a combat trick. he's got a point about Gruul, but lets keep in mind that Azorious basically got shut down by Trestle Troll or Towering Indrik and it still does fine. having difficulty powering through 1/4 walls isn't necessarily a showstopper.

yeah if they're tapped out it's basically explosive impact, if they're not it's golgari longlegs

golgari longlegs was mostly good in RTR because it was a 4/4 or bigger in a format of 3/3s. this format doesn't have anything that trades with a fire elemental profitably at common though (or did i miss something?) so i'd expect swine to be similarly solid.

ok yeah the only commons that reasonably trade up with it are scorchwalker (yuck, you're never playing this if you plan on blocking) and a twice-evolved shambleshark

multicolor gate-trick deck gonna be a possible fringe deck maybe?

greenside watcher + gateway shade + hold the gates + crackling perimeter

yes i will be going into every draft attempting to get the crackling perimeter deck

you could even draft an enchantress-style deck where you stack verdant havens on a gate and then use greenside watcher to generate vast amounts of mana

prob is all the big dudes are rare

except for ruination wurm, which is cheap

im sure you can find a guildmage or something to convert all that extra mana into advantage

i'm reading the tracks poll and realizing that i've enjoyed magic more than music this year :|

lol truth bomb

can't believe i missed the jessie ware album all year though. other than that i'm like zzzz

anyways i was trying to figure out voidwalk combos. it can be quite strong and very underdrafted! wondering if voidwalk is the key to successful dimir.

uses:

dinrova horror (the one card i would play dimir for)
that angel generating 4WW d00d (limited esper control!!)
leyline phantom & other evolve triggermen
balustrade spy
sage's row denizen

not to mention bouncing undesirable auras, counters, tokens, etc

wanna try a voidwalk control deck out.

yeah it resets your opponent's evolve creatures and such too

damn. this jessie ware album is so nice. i'm pretty sure i initially avoided it cuz i mixed her up with jessie j. loool

yes im posting music stuff in here, the big ilx threads are scary

its really hard to get a handle on how good/bad Cipher is. at best it's like an artifact that you can tap to activate the effect, which you can use twice the first turn (making every single one really good). at worst, they're just really overcosted spells. i wonder if they'd be costed any differently had Invisible Stalker not been printed...

most of them are costed such that you get your mana's worth as long as you get the guy through once, which seems reasonable to me. the draw one could have been 2U by this metric though

well I think in most cases you play it when you know you can get a guy through unblocked, so you get it twice on turn one. so after that it's kind of a freeroll.

based on my limited experience playing w/ it that seems about right

so what do we think about the guildmages, charms, keyrunes?

in Limited? well - as for charms, it doesn't look like there's anything unplayable like the Rakdos one was. Boros is obviously very good. Dimir is small removal which is always good. Gruul seems like it can get stuck in your hand at times but it can kill flyers and if they don't have flyers than it makes your dudes unblockable which is also good. Orzhov - again, removal. Simic may actually be the best in Limited because all three abilities are things you really would like to have at certain times.

Guildmages - not too impressed with any of them the way I way with Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage, but they all seem like solid, high picks. Zamec (the Simic one) is the one I'm most curious about, I have no idea how it'll actually play but both abilities are cheap and feel like they can add to a major advantage over time.

Keyrunes - the Dimir one is probably the best, but they all seem decent. Simic's is a little weak.

there really aren't that many flyers in this set, so I'm wondering how often someone would maindeck gruul charm

guildmages are def all playable cause there are so few decent two drops regardless

keyrunes seem kinda crap to me, boros maybe unplayable

these guildmages seem like less of an immediate threat than the RTR ones, several of them are more in the long-game-advantage style of the izzet one from RTR than the good ones from RTR. sunhome is my guess for the best, just because it's a riff on selesnya guildmage from old ravnica which was undoubtedly the best of the original 10. duskmantle is the scariest in a long game though.

i want to guess simic charm is the best for limited, all 3 modes are relevant while orzhov and dimir will be played mostly just as removal.

keyrunes are all fine but orzhov and dimir look way better than the other 3

keyrune power level seems real flat to me. you draft/play them if you're getting a lot of 5/6 drops, otherwise don't take them. that said I can see Boros being not good, Orzhov maybe being the "best" since it looks like you'll usually be able to dump that one mana

if your opponent has no flyers then Gruul Charm is "all creatures are unblockable" which is a big deal for a guild with two common 5/x's and a mechanic that leads to alpha strikes.

oh I think I misread it as the reverse

which seems more in flavor really

dimir keyrune seems like an ideal thing to cipher onto in the mid to lategame (yes, the cipher stays on it)

I was wondering bout that

Would rank the Guildmages thusly (for limited):

Zameck > Skaarg > Sunhome > Vizkopa > Duskmantle

Zameck is strong, it's almost UG for a card, given Simic's MO. Skaarg and Sunhome are really similar to each other and probably have about the same power level. Vizkopa is situationally good, but most of the time not great. Duskmantle almost seems unplayable, except that it's still a bear. I guess if mill is a decent strategy, it has a place there, but 4 mana is a lot for only two cards. Overall, none of these are close to Vitu-Ghazi or Rakdos though.

Charms go:

Dimir > Orzhov > Simic > Boros > Gruul

These are weird because the Vendetta effect on Orzhov is probably the best single effect, but Dimir and Simic are more versatile. Orzhov Charm will probably always be Vendetta, whereas the others could be anything. Boros is a big step down, but still pretty good. Ironic because it's the best Constructed charm by a lot imo, and because double-strike is possibly the most useful mode in Limited, least useful in Constructed. Gruul is ehhh.

http://mtgaaron.tumblr.com/post/41336783700/because-my-camera-sucks

this is kind of what i'm hoping my sealed deck looks like tonight

ha otm

Dimir charm isn't really that versatile, is it? First mode seems only good vs. other Dimir decks and third only when you absolutely need to mill or need to prevent your opponent from topdecking (?). I find it hard to really rank the charms since they all have different functions, I agree that Gruul is probably the worst but far from unplayable. Simic Charm may even be the best since there should be so many game situations where one of those effects is the difference between winning and losing.

yeah simic is super strong...it's both removal and counter removal in the same card

unsummon isn't really removal, its a tempo play

i dunno if anyone here plays legacy/vintage but people are semi-freaking out right now because of Balustrade Spy and Undercity Informer, which are 1-card kills if you have 0 lands in your deck, which is not an impossible restriction in eternal formats. Goblin Charbelcher was already a turn 1 combo kill deck that a lot of people played, and this is basically like having 8 charbelchers instead of 4 and they cost 4 mana instead of 7 to kill (you mill your deck putting 4 Narcomoebas in play, then flash back Dread Return on an Angel of Glory's Rise which returns Laboratory Maniac and Azami, Lady of Scrolls, either of which taps to win the game; if one of these ends up in your hand somehow you can use the 4th Narcomoeba with Cabal Therapy flashback to discard it)