Magic: The Gathering C/D

i think if you want to bet on the popularity of magic increasing over the next few years shocklands are still the best 'investment'. considering how low the innistrad duals fell last summer and the # of shocks printed in the three sets i bet you'll be able to get them for very little. the summer before rotation prices seem to tank as people start dumping standard cards - i got karns for less $10 each last summer and even stuff like geist, lilianna, snaps were all well below what they are now.

dragonsmaze is gonna be a flood tho

nah there's gonna be like 1/4th as many proportionally in DGM as there is in the current sets, is what they said i think

o inneresting

They said they'd get printed in the normal ratio of rarities, which I would think means out of 88 packs, you'll see 80 guildgates, 7 shocks, 1 as-yet-unknown mythic rare land. That's gonna add a fair number more shocklands to the world, it's a little less than the number of shocks you'd get in an RTR or GTC box.

yeah that is a little worrisome if you're speculating on them - they may go the way of Birds of Paradise

I was so excited to complete my playset of Birds of Paradise as a kid, took me ages. Now you can probably pull them out of the packs that drafters leave on the table at a game store.

that was my "you know you're been playing for a long fucking time when..." moment, I STILL have a playset of 4e Birds (took me forever to acquire as well) and my opponent in an FNM saw one and said, "wow, never saw the old art on those before..."

6 grisly spectacle
2 balustrade spy
3 basilica screecher
2 deathcult rogue
deaths approach
hands of binding
undercity informer
devour flesh
dusk mantle guildmage
keyrune
cloud fin raptor
shadow slice
consuming abberation
wight
guildgate + watery grave

STILL lost a game against a good Boros deck cause I got unlucky but the other two matches were lol

there were at least two other grislies at the table too

i had a deep simic deck tonight, dont feel like typing it out but highlights were zegana and the evolve guy that steals creatures. also had 3 cloudfin raptors and an experiment one and 2 simic fluxmage and 2 crocanura and such, just lots of the good evolve guys. had 8-10 cards in my sideboard that would have made most simic decks i've drafted

you can definitely lose if you don't get to 4 mana! but wow

i went gruul for the first time yesterday and went 3-0; none of the best uncommons (like the Rampager, Guildmage, or Ground Assault), but I got Clan Defiance and Rubblebelt. Strangely neither of them really showed up for me; Molten Primordial won a lot of my games. The +3/0 and first strike to a blocker instant is a lot like Smite.

now i'm about to pilot this awful Boros deck - went Boros Reckoner, Boros Elite, Syndic, Wojek Halbraders as my first four picks, and those are now four of the five best cards in my deck! (the other is Assemble the Legion)

went all in on the MOCS, playing delver, fuck it, winning

how'd it go? i didn't make it past the prelims last week

just won an 8-man and some 2-mans with this
http://i.imgur.com/FWfizyz.jpg

rest in peace should be purify the grave, i forgot to change them over after i put in the unburial engine

cider, i assume you have considered turning that into a reanimator deck?

i'm thinking of a build in those colors that also utilizes seance (my fav pet card). but not explicitly a seance deck.

problem with it is that seance & spark trooper go very nicely together, but both fatten up the 4 spot.

2 cathedral sanctifier
1 cartel aristocrat
3 fiend hunter
3 boros reckoner
4 falkenrath aristocrat
2 spark trooper
2 aurelia, the warleader
1 angel of glory's rise
1 griselbrand

3 seance

2 fling
1 pit fight

4 blood crypt
4 clifftop retreat
4 dragonskull summit
4 godless shrine
4 isolated chapel
1 mountain
4 sacred foundry

4 faithless looting
2 rakdos's return
2 unburial rites

i don't know what turning it into a reanimator deck even means - if you're willing to go all in on the graveyard then you should just play the combo kill reanimator deck. this deck is a midrange deck that uses faithless looting to help you draw the right cards for the matchup/situation, then has lingering souls and unburial rites to recoup some of the lost card advantage.

also i top 8ed the premier event with it today, and the other guy who was working on it top 4ed the MOCS with it, so i think there's something here

it needs a couple more removal spells though

a buddy of mine just did fairly well at a 1K with an Unexpected Results deck. I feel like aggro would tear it apart but apparently he did quite well. Any deck that includes Enter the Infinite cannot be all bad!!

anyway, at the risk of massively derailing this thread, this here is a lot of fun:
http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/bnf.pl?page=AlexChurchill/MagicCardGenerator

its an auto-card generator, complete with flavor text. i haven't seen a single card yet that R&D would actually print but the results are really entertaining:

Instant (green)
Choose one: untap target permanent; or each player gains 3 life; or draw four cards
--Nature is mightier than the pear
Because a single beetle hunts more swiftly than the greatest colour could
– Thiwi Hardfoot

Converted mana cost: 5

here's another good one

Omelellasu Requen
Planeswalker - Omelellasu (blue, Loyalty 4)
+3: target opponent puts a 1/1 blue Wizard creature token onto the battlefield
-4: You and target opponent each untap and gain control of target creature with shroud the other controls until end of turn. They gain haste until end of turn.
-8: gain control of target legendary Bird until end of turn
--Her suit made of soap is greater than the mightiest ball
– Skefiach, King of the Throne

Converted mana cost: 2

lol

okay this one may be the most bizarre magic card ever

Creature - Elemental Rogue (2/1, blue)
Sacrifice ~this~: put a 3/3 blue Bird creature token with flying onto the battlefield
Discard a card: put a 1/1 blue Merfolk creature token onto the battlefield
Discard a card, sacrifice any number of Merfolk: return up to that many target libraries to their owner's hand
3UU: return target library to its owner's hand
~this~ can't be the target of activated abilities
At the beginning of your precombat main phase, target opponent may Pay 2 life. If that player does, put a time counter on target artifact
4, T: each land with a time counter on it gains ''Pay 2 life: ~this~ can't be blocked until end of turn'' until end of turn
--Even the goose burns
– 3og Thoashar, Knight Warrior

Converted mana cost: 4

Hmm so if I animate my Blinkmoth Nexus during my upkeep, and I can coax my opponent into paying 2 life to let me put a time counter onto it, then I can pay 4 mana and 2 life so that it can't be blocked this turn... yeah sign me up

Oh nm I could just return their library to their hand.

apparently people played Type 4 with these cards which sounds like an awful idea

so aurelia actually is insane in standard fyi. i would say buy low but unfortunately she never even dipped very low in price despite not seeing any play before now.

I was surprised to see how much Angel of Serenity has cratered in price, from mid $20s to about $6. Is this card still playable? Does it have more room to fall?

wtf how did that drop all the way to $6? i would have thought $10 was the price floor on a card that good. buy your playset now, buy extra playsets, buy buy buy

i don't expect it to suddenly shoot back up overnight though but can easily see it being worth $20 again during its remaining year and a half in standard

big mana mythics typically don't hang around $20 but this card is way too good and splashy to be worth only $6.

i mean Griselbrand is only around $12 and I would say it's about on the same level, fatty that's good as a 1 or 2-of in a lot of decks + an awesome combo piece

griselbrand's not as good in standard though since it's not as hard-cast-able and doesn't insta-stabilize vs aggro.

how'd it go? i didn't make it past the prelims last week

i started 3-0 but ended up w/ 5-3 for like the high 30s i think - not great but not terrible either. esp for a deck that had 4 pillars in the sideboard :/ i liked your friends deck btw - someone played something similar in the mocs and made top 8 - and i think i may try playing it. the delver decks just aren't good enough, same with the other tempo lists. i'd actually really like to play it at fnm but i need 3 reckoners :(

yeah that's the same guy, we were both working on the same list in parallel last week and he was bold enough to run it for the mocs which seems to have worked

although for no good reason i decided to not play it again last night and instead run a shitty prime speaker zegana bant deck. which i went 3-1 with in the daily but it wasn't very fun and the zeganas weren't better than sphinx's revelation would have been. i like zegana still but i don't think there's any real reason to play her over revelation if your deck has white in it; she might open up some possibilities for RUG or BUG board control decks though.

I hadn't noticed this before but the Phantom Sealeds are actually a pretty good deal. 4 tix to get in, they distribute 6 prize packs among each, at 3.5 tix/pack that's about 2.6 tix in EV meaning an average player would lose 1.4 tix each time. If you're better than average (and the players I've played so far have been pretty dire) you could probably "average" a 2-1 finish meaning you're really only spending .5 tix for 2 hours of entertainment - if you accept that you can't really "profit" playing limited on MTGO, you can only hope to lose your tickets at a very slow pace - these events are a hell of a deal.

I didn't know phantom events had any prizes

Me neither, is the prize support new?

Over the past few days, I've been seeing a lot of variations of R/G, G/B, R/B, and Jund decklists on the SCG and other sites that lean heavily on cards like Burning-Tree Emissary, Flinthoof Boar, Strangleroot Geist, Ghor-Clan Rampager, Domri Rade, Experiment One, and Gyre Sage:

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=53568
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25768_Experimenting-With-Gyre-Sage.html
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/rc/237
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25776_Untapped-SCG-Classic-Series-Louisville.html

It looks like these folks are all groping toward an archetype that is very much in the direction that I want to go with my own deck, but none of these feel fully baked yet.

Have you played with or against any of these decks? Do any seem more or less solid?

xp - yeah, it's 3 packs for 3-0, 1 pack for 2-1. i would love a 4-1 payout just to make it a little more enticing but it's still decent value even if you really can't break even. still they at least fire off pretty frequently, maybe as much as 4-pack sealed did, and a hell of a lot more than the 8 tix phantom even did (which I never saw run even once)

these decks are all good, more or less, since burning-tree emissary is a borderline degenerate card. i think the best ones are the 'mono-red' splashing flinthoof boar + rancor, and the jund aggro with falkenrath aristocrats

Is Burning-Tree Emissary truly that good? I haven't had a chance to really try it out. I'm concerned that it's a bit of an awkward fit with Flinthoof Boar and Ghor-Clan Rampager.

it's best friends with flinthoof boar. people are playing emissary/boar in modern now, it's that strong of a turn 2 play

so apparently Pillar of Fire doesn't exile creatures anymore, lol MTGO

its being fixed tomorrow, but yeah this caused a big stink for the MOCS because 3 of the people in the top 4 were taking advantage of the bug by playing zombies, and most people didn't really have a chance to adjust their decks in time for the event. the 4th person in top 4 was the guy who i worked on the BWR deck with, and he lost his match because he couldn't pillar away a geralf's messenger.

Anyway, here's another one of those "highest winning %s by first pick" lists came out (this is for 8-4 only), and it's surprising to me:

1. Obzedat, Ghost Council
2. Aurelia's Fury
3. Firemane Avenger
4. Crocanura
5. Simic Fluxmage
6. Knight of Obligation
7. Syndic of Tithes
8. Ember Beast
9. Aurelia, the Warleader
10. Zameck Guildmage

1, 2, 3, and 9 make sense. Obzedat is a card I've unforunately had to play against and it's really, really dumb. I thought Reckoner could be on here as well. Otherwise, it seems to suggest that Boros and Simic are really powerful right now. Syndic is definitely a 1st rate common, Ember Beast is excellent as well (as many have noted), and I am guessing that Knight of Obligation makes it over Screecher or Kingpin's Pet because it can be played in Boros. The Simic cards are a little more surprising, this maybe cements Crocanura as Simic's best common. Fluxmage was a real surprise, I don't know how to evaluate that card, to me it seems neat but durdly and I'd take Zameck Guildmage and Elusive Krasis over it every time. Maybe I'm wrong on that one.

yeah there was a warning when you reg'd for the MOCS that pillar was bugged but it definitely warped the tournament - zombies and experiment jund have def benefited from this bug over the weekend and the dailies, and some decks got a lot worse e.g. thats why i was like 'fuck it' in my post about playing the MOCS cuz i had the full four maindeck in my original list for the tournament and didnt have enough cards to build another competitive deck at the last minute. i also had been playing delver a lot whereas i had no experience with like, a drownyard deck or w/e else i had the cards to build.

burning tree is probably the key aggro cards right now and barring an environment w/o pillar of the flame all the best aggro decks whether naya, jund, or mono-red splash green are the ones built to exploit turn two burning tree into boar/mayor/lightning mauler

crocanura is a very strong card in gruul too

simic fluxmage is a terrible card, I have played w/ this multiple times and never have I been happy that I had a simic fluxmage in my deck. it might be more like 'only somebody who was forcing simic hard would 1st pick that, and somebody who was forcing simic hard is more likely to have had the guild to themselves, and somebody who has simic to themselves in generally in a good place'