Magic: The Gathering C/D

yeah hold the gates is totally playable in the right context

i love rummaging goblin, that card is awesome

i tried the crackling perimeter deck, it was a total bust, now i just draft M13

i never managed any fun corner case decks w/GTC except kinda izzet aggro and even that was sorta boring

i've just done the unexpected results deck i mentioned a couple of times upthread, plus some other 3-5 color ramp decks that all tend to sputter out and die in the 2nd round. the format's really just too fast to build around the non-creature gimmick cards though like razortip whip or frenzied tilling/structural collapse.

crackling perimeter is like a worse razortip whip

not really, it's only 1 card and doesn't have an activation cost,if you draft enough gates it's way better than the whip

one potentially viable gimmick deck is the all-in gruul deck where you just play spire tracers and madcap skills and the 5 power bloodrush guys and such. i actually won a draft once with a failed version of this where i was playing 3 riot gear because i didn't get enough of the good pump effects, so i think there's something there

yeah i have yet to try the ramp deck. i can't bring myself to bother, my perimeter deck was an easy 0-1 and i was losing enough playing the format regularly i had no appetite for intentionally handicapping myself

but otoh i did pretty well in a paper draft last night with a terrible jund deck with double colored spells in all three colors and no fixing - i had a clan defiane though and that won a bunch of games. i also beat someone in the last round how had gideon AND obzedat in their orzhov deck so i'm happy with myself.

the activation cost is tapping the gates!

haha yes i realized that after i submitted that post and was like 'oops i'm an idiot'

i kind of want to go back and draft innistrad more now that i have another year of experience playing limited. i was looking at my old innistrad draft decks recently and there were a lot of terrible card choices in them, i think i can do better now, and i feel like i should take advantage of the format still being up on MTGO since it's basically an all-time-great at this point.

I don't think of the madcapskillsy gruul as a gimmick deck just a variant of gruul that kinda sucks but steals enough games here and there

I guess that makes it a gimmick deck in a certain sense it just doesn't feel that way cause you see it a lot

i wanted to draft more innistrad but i sold all the packs i had at one point - i think when i was buying wastelands - and now packs are like 4 tickets each and i doubt i'm good enough at the format to really justify drafting it much. i drafted a triple AVR draft just cuz i had the packs and M13 wasn't firing and split the finals but that format is... less worthwhile to go back to.

although on the whole i feel like i should just be playing more constructed since i'm down quite a bit on the month and i feel like my initial success with mtgo was probably just a lot of positive variance :/

I've been getting some interesting exposure to innistrad block through these wacky chaos drafts my lgs keeps having. They randomly distribute packs taken from all the standard-legal sets and you basically have to cobble something together from all that nonsense. I'm not really a big fan of this although I've been winning fairly consistently, but I guess it's neat to draft with such a broad variety of cards.

yeah there's a lot going on in innistrad that you won't be able to accomplish when you mix it with other sets; the only other thing in standard-legal sets that operates on the same axis as innistrad is the golgari cards in RTR

i've been spending way too much time contemplating what the mechanical theme of theros block could be - feels like they could go way off the map with this one, since they're coming off of what's basically the most low-risk populist block possible

i'd bet on scry coming back

there's also some interesting theories about M14 giving a boost to monocolored strategies, which might tie into the upcoming block as well? i'm pretty interested in that actually since i kinda like monocolored decks

i hope the returning m14 mechanic is evoke

evoke and convoke are definitely the most robust mechanics that they haven't brought back a 2nd time yet

i don't think they're going to do monocolor-matters while a ravnica block is in standard.

So after complaining endlessly that I never get to draft GTC, I finally did a GTC draft last night and got absolutely crushed. My mediocre Gruul deck plus general state of exhaustion didn't get me very far. Noted for next time: drafting multiple copies of Foundry Street Denizen, Bomber Corps, and Scorchwalker = bad idea.

On the plus side, I completed my playsets of Stomping Ground, Temple Garden, and Hallowed Fountain. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

all in one draft?

Noooo.... I pulled a stomping ground in draft and finished off the others through trades and whatnot.

so i didn't technically win the gpt i played in today. but i got the byes anyways. it helps being actually willing to go to these things. now i have to learn modern for gp portland. pretty excited.

well I just botched hardcore against KARL THE MAILMAN MALONE by playing Immortal Servitude for 5 with a full graveyard and returning NOTHING - turns out it just gets X, not "X or less", what the hell kind of shit card is that

yeah I had assumed the same thing when I first saw it

yeah servitude is p garbage esp in limited

also cider if yr reading this gl w/the ptq - solid start at least :D

Huh pretty sure I played Immortal Servitude wrong at the prerelease.

haha thanks lamp but i am dead - started 4-0 then lost the next 2, number of entrants was 1 less than the 10 round cutoff so x-2 was dead

i've had that card in 3 limited decks now (mostly out of necessity) and I guess I've never actually played it for any more than 0 (as an extort trigger). holy cow is it awful

i think you can play it in orzhov decks with lots of 2-drops. but yeah - a luxury card tho

Anyone playing in F.O.O.L.S today/tonight? So upset if this is a joke.

yeah I totally hope it's not a joke - if it's a joke it's not remotely funny

what is this you speak of??

btw fennel...how many GTC packs you got?

ahhh ok. I see what this is. very cool and the prize payout is really good for 6 tickets. i doubt this is just a joke

the 10 packs are obviously going to be Apocalypse Planeshift Ravnica Invasion Lorwyn Futuresight Odyssey Onslaught Legions Scourge

ie the era of magic I have 0 familiarity with

let's say I wanted to prepare for this a little bit, with that in mind. suggestions?

i hope this becomes an actual format someday. MTGO's big advantage over paper is that you can do stuff like this, but off-the-wall formats like this seem to come along so rarely.

to prepare yourself - I really don't know what to say. I've done formats like this before. there's a reason you're getting 10 packs.

good removal was a lot more common in that era, but on-board 2-for-1s (i.e. flametongue kavu, nekrataal, shriekmaw, etc) were still insane in limited so those are what i'd look for. not knowing exactly what sets are going to be in makes it hard to give specific advice

I guess we'll find out 3pm east coast?

obviously linear set mechanics become much worse with mixed sets. all the threshold cards and discard outlets in odyssey block are probably not great

same with the tribal synergies in onslaught block

i'll probably play the one at 9pm est i guess

yeah that's the only time that works for me too

maybe I'm reading it wrong but it feels like everyone just gets 10 random sets from MTGO's history? Maybe even including Masters Edition?

the old adage of Bombs, Removal, Evasion...etc is probably best here

at my store we used to do drafts and odd events like this all the time. all I remember is that Kamigawa is really, really awful for this.

I played a format like this once irl and it was a lot less interesting than I was expecting. With so many packs, the decks were all about the same power level and there was rarely any synergy. A lot of cards that could normally be good were unplayable because of lack of support, which made deckbuilding straightforward. I think you'll do best if you focus on power/card advantage and ignore synergy, as boring as that is.

feel like w/ 10 packs there will def be decks that have synergies

there'll be card-to-card level synergies but like if you get a timberwatch elf you're not going to be able to crush people with it like you could in onslaught

Right, Timberwatch Elf is exactly the kind of card I'm thinking about. There's a lot of build-around cards like that that aren't worth it in a random pack format. You might even get 6-7 other Elfs, but unless the power level of those Elves match your best cards on their own (very unlikely in 10 packs), you will want to cut the Timberwatch.

The event I played was 7 pack sealed, using one of all the standard legal sets at the time (Zendikar-New Phyrexia). I shouldn't say there was no synergy; some people were lucky enough to make an infect deck out of 3 packs and do ok with it. But most of the people at the top had very bland decks.

frogbs you're the one who wanted to play corpsejack menace in standard, right? well here is the deck for you:
https://twitter.com/Grapplingfarang/status/318720849354035200