Magic: The Gathering C/D

yeah I've seen that before. gonna be a lotta mossdogs going around I guess.

golgari (with blue) plus slower format makes whispering madness seem less terrible. probably still quite terrible tho, it just seems like a fun card.

mossdog's really good, one of the best hill giants in a while

a dude at my store has a really fun whispering madness constructed deck that's based on bouncing their creatures w/ aetherize / cyclonic rift / unsummon + madnessing a bunch + playing psychic spiral

oh yes i could be down with that

I drafted ROE more than any other format, probably about 30 times, and it is my holy grail of formats. It's actually not that linear at all - aside from a couple decks like the Aura Gnarlid deck, there was a lot of flexibility in how to build. I saw every two-color combination except for RW win a draft, and I was surprised by what people were putting together even at the end. Similar to how the Spider Spawning deck became popular quite a while after Innistrad came out, it took a while to see the rogue-ish Lust for War decks or Kiln Fiend decks gain popularity to punish the typical slow decks. Not to mention every now and then, you could do well with non-archetype decks like BW, just ignoring synergy and taking good cards.

I think the key that made this format and Innistrad so great was that few cards locked you into a deck. Stitched Drake doesn't make you into a self-mill deck, it just nudges you in that direction, and can be played even if you're just a regular creature-based deck. Similarly, Broodwarden can helpfully pump up those few Eldrazi Spawn in your ramp deck OR it can make you take every Spawn producer you see and ignore stuff to ramp into. Whereas in Gatecrash, the Skyknight Legionaire you first-pick is either gonna make you Boros, or you won't play it.

Actually I think I saw every two-color combination win a draft in Innistrad, so maybe that's a good metric for a healthy format!

haha i don't think skyknight legionnaire is a good example - it's more that the cards with the keyword mechanics in gatecrash all push you towards building to maximize them despite not technically being linear mechanics. RTR only had one mechanic like this, populate, and the rest were incidental value mechanics so the deckbuilding there was a lot more fluid and less rigid. and it's notable that populate decks ended up being the best decks in that format too; linear strategies tend to dominate limited so you have to be careful with how you deploy them.

a similar thing happened with scars block; people thought NPH was poorly designed because it fucked up the color distribution of infect creatures and diluted the amount of metalcraft available, but i think it actually made that block more fun to draft because the linear strategies were no longer overpowering

i definitely won at least one draft with each color pair in innistrad myself. they weren't perfectly balanced or anything though. GR and BW were weak until dark ascension gave them some missing tools (wild hunger and better sac outlets, respectively) and WR was pretty weak the whole way through.

Heh I chose Skyknight because on the surface it's not a linear card in the way Wizards defines them, but in practice ends up playing just like one, and it illustrates my point that rigid archetypes bother me more than formats where you maximize a mechanic. Every good GTC Boros deck looks and plays exactly the same, and the pick order is well-defined. Cards like Skyknight are insane in the deck, pretty much unplayable in any other deck. Boros may as well be a linear deck for how many cards in the set fit that pattern, even many red and white cards. Thankfully, I think this all changes with the introduction of Dragon's Maze.

I'm not against linear archetypes in theory, but when one is so clearly better than the others like Populate was, it's a problem.

forced uwr again tonight and was rewarded by opening aurelia

i went in looking to avoid forcing UWR tonight, then got p1p1 lavinia, p1p2 turn/burn, p1p3 turn/burn, so i ended up in it naturally anyway. rest of my deck was decent but not amazing and i ended up losing a round to some bad draw variance but was still a fun one. curving out into lavinia is predictably insane especially if your 4 is cobblebrute.

brothers in uwr

honestly i'd rather be in UBR than UWR since then i get to play with ogre jailbreaker, plus the black cards in the new set are a lot better than the white cards

really? deputy, helix, steeple roc...

Lived the dream tonight at my first DGM draft. I was mostly picking up Gruul cards, but with verdant haven, axebane guardian, and gatecreeper vine, I ended up going five colors. Allowed me to play niv mizzet, collective blessing, sphere of safety, and merciless eviction. Throw in Ruric thar and clan defiance and things were looking pretty interesting. I was worried at first that mana would be a problem, but it actually went quite smoothly. I won 2 matches and then got blown out by a dude playing a handful of steeple rocs plus blood baron.

Now I'm building a completely batshit 50 card, 5 color deck using my draft cards and prize packs to play in DGM league next week.

i want to find whoever came up with pack rat and throw him/her down the goddamn stairs.

welcome to all of last fall

i think it's been declared the 2nd best limited card of all time at this point

it actually can be a very tricky card to play correctly

yeah people seem to want to rush it out on turn 2 instead of waiting until they have 5 mana, which i kind of understand, it is heads i win, tails i might win. anyway, it is just not fun at all, except for the time a guy immediately conceded the match when when i spell ruptured his turn 2 pack rat. that was pretty entertaining.

maybe he was running the 39 swamp 1 pack rat deck? people actually do this for some reason, i wouldn't do it without 2 pack rats

and even then you can play 5 other spells without diluting your ability to play pack rat on turn 2

have yet to drop a match in gtc prerelease sealed btw, now a solid 8-0 both times with base green decks. i feel like i just want to play creatures in this sealed format?

gtc or dgm?

yeah people seem to want to rush it out on turn 2 instead of waiting until they have 5 mana, which i kind of understand, it is heads i win, tails i might win. anyway, it is just not fun at all, except for the time a guy immediately conceded the match when when i spell ruptured his turn 2 pack rat. that was pretty entertaining.

ya I usually just rush it but most of the time I feel like the rest of my deck is good enough that I'm fine trading it for their best removal rather than structuring my whole game around pack rats. probably the wrong play some of the time but whatever. also I'm lazy.

feel like it's only truly 'unfair' when someone pulls it off t2. as a late game bomb it's not nearly as good as aetherling.

maybe full block will be a little different but holding back a Pack Rat until turn 5 never struck me as the right play. obviously its a little risky but you give 'em a one turn window, and if you're on the play then there's a very limited number of cards that will deal with it. and I've never lost with/won against an unchecked turn 2 Pack Rat. turn 5 Pack Rats are plenty beatable especially if you're in Azorious or Rakdos.

dgm. wanna try a couple of other guilds tbh

haha I think like 75% of the time I've dropped a t2 rats it was killed immediately xp

maybe people in New York just play more removal. gotta look out for yourself on these mean streets.

that's pretty unlucky. I've only seen it once and that was with Electrickery. I can see not doing it vs. Rakdos on the draw because they have the most ways to kill a t2 Pack Rat, plus they're fast enough that laying a turn 3 Trestle Troll may be what's really important rather than dicking around with the Rat.

the chance they have removal for it, especially when you're on the play, is low enough that it's worth it since your chance of winning the game if they don't is like 98% whereas if you slowroll it until turn 5 you could be a lot less likely to win

i've had jarad's orders and pack rat in the same deck a couple times and i found that pack rat was very rarely the right thing to tutor up in the midgame

at the same time rakdos is the worst deck to be plotting a 5th turn 1/1 against xp

its 4 4/4s by turn 6 though

right but you're dead

i didnt play with pack rat much but i feel like its mostly correct to play it t2

this was my favorite deck i've had in this block to date
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=1r5bbk&s=5

iirc i went 4-0 with this and didn't actually draw pack rat until game 3 of the last round, never tutored for it either

ok that didnt work, whatever

http://is100.imagesocket.com/images/2013/05/11/2609775-u8z2.jpg

also looking back at my RTR limited decks, somehow every single one had desecration demon in it. i think i had 10 on my account at one point

yeah I found that card way more annoying than pack rat

i actually beat it somewhat often with decks where i could spam bird tokens and keep it locked down, but it was nuts against everything else

haha i opened so many desecration demons - i actually own 5+ of them in paper in addition to like half a dozen online. i dont think it was unbeatable by any means. i also opened (and got passed) so many chaos imps, that ended up being my favorite bomb in rtr draft

demon gave you enough time to draw removal all you had to do was sacrifice 5 creatures first, maybe take 12 damage. unlike pack rat you could kill it, it just required losing the game along the way.

I think that's why I found it more unpleasant to play against. it really drags out the inevitable.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was in more draft winning decks than pack - at least that was my experience

it also fits better in rakdos aggro which was the best black deck in the format and is a bomb on t4 and also t13

yeah i have at least a playset of demons in paper from drafting too

in related news there's a standard BG control deck that's been making the rounds on MTGO that plays 4 of them