Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

i played against that at the ptq last month, or at least something along those lines. i imagine its a least a bit better given putrefy but it didnt seem that well set-up against aggro

yeah it seems like its designed to beat up on other midrange decks or something - i haven't lost to it yet with my RG domri deck and it seems even worse against faster aggro decks like blitz.

as far as i can tell though the list comes from reigning MOCS champion Butakov who's a very good player so there must be something worthwhile to it

its basically jund with the red removal swapped out for Mutilate and the rest of the deck adjusted accordingly - the problem is you lose Olivia which was one of the best cards in jund vs midrange decks and also lose Huntmaster and Bonfire, the best cards in jund vs aggro. so yeah i don't really know why/how it's better.

it's crazy to be playing in an era where a 6/6 flyer for 4 just can't cut it

creature stats matter so much less than creature abilities - but hasnt that always been true? like creatures are so much better now than in 1997 in part because they're more efficient but mostly because they're also just now spells

yeah I mean nothing like snapcaster or stoneforge existed but creature stats matter less than creature abilities is still ultimately dependent on creature stats being 'fair' - if a vanilla 7/7 for 3 appears one day creature stats won't matter less. I guess that's a less interesting card than snapcaster despite not really being a worse one, which is why it's unlikely to happen.

also fucks up limited. but so does a 6/6 flying for 4.

it's incredible how much the value of the MOCS promo cards fluctuate. some months it's a Force of Will or a dual land, this next one it's gonna be a Cryptborn Horror, a card which nobody even plays in Limited!

hey i played a 16/16 cryptborn horror at the boston ptq last fall...

at least next month has an interesting format, modern masters sealed

how much is that gonna cost? like $40??

haha i think they make the ones that coincide with set releases purposefully crappy cuz they know people will be playing anyway, and they don't need a particularly sweet promo as an incentive. i mean it can't just be coincidence that a typically slow month like january gets an awesome promo like force of will imo

is mind's eye worth much? i had an awesome day today and could reasonably make 15 before wed. but figured its not worth the effort

iatee what do you mean? the MOCS won't cost anything because it's phantom but i think modern masters packs are priced at like 6 or 7

mind's eye is a 1 ticket card in its normal version so i can't imagine the promo will be worth much. i'm at 14 points right now though so i'm obviously going for it anyway with DGR events going up soon

gotcha didn't know it was phantom xp

or that it was mocs

yeah i was talking about next month's MOCS since frogbs brought up the bad MOCS promo cards

if theres anything i've learned about full block draft yet it's that it's impossible to cut the person on your left off of your colors - i think i've gotten an average of like 5 playables out of my gatecrash packs

also people seem to be drafting with gatecrash logic i.e. take 2-drops and 3-drops over everything - there's always an overabundance of really powerful 5s and 6s in my drafts and i end up with way too high a curve

yeah i always either have a terrible pack w/ gtc or rtr

but people still misjudging dgm cards enough that I end up w/ like 12 dgm cards in my deck

here's my first 3-0 DGR draft deck:
http://i.imgur.com/Lcwy1kF.jpg

nothing too exciting, extort is still an absurd mechanic in full block. i wanted to try lyev decree and it was okay and even won me a game that nothing else would have, but i boarded it out for shielded passage a lot.

were you close to playing bane alley?