Magic: The Gathering C/D

yep a pretty high % of my wins were due to having two in my first pre

the best one was in a situation where i knew my top card of deck was a helix from scrying and my opponent had one large guy holding off my team

went attack with team, flash in breaching hippocamp before blocks untapping pain seer, put the helix into my hand, helix pain seer to bounce the blocker

Finally made it to a prerelease this morning and went 3-0 with a BW deck with double Fate Unraveler, Eater of Hope, Ashen Rider, Sentry, Spiteful Returned, double Bile Blight, plus several other removal spells. Probably the best sealed deck I've ever had.

Deathrite Shaman now banned in Modern, Nactal and Bitterblossom unbanned

reasonable change imo. big picture result is that the format speeds up a bit, as nacatl likely brings back tier 1 zoo which pressures combo decks to build for speed again rather than resilience. gifts ungiven is probably the biggest winner on the control half of the spectrum. bitterblossom seems poorly positioned but i'm sure people will try to play it anyway.

i get to play a more combo-oriented melira pod deck again which is appealing to me, and i also enjoy zoo and gifts decks so this opens up a lot of strategies that i like but weren't good enough before. neat.

Went 3-0-1 with a very good Izzet deck at the prerelease this weekend. Tons of removal, solid creatures. Aerie Worshippers was nuts, it took a couple games on its own. I had double Retraction Helix and was hoping to get the combo with Worshippers to really annoy people, but it never happened *sulks*

omg

lol stupid dci.

Vinnie, those inspired cards seem very strong indeed. They need to be answered right away or they just get out of control very quickly.

The card that did the most heavy lifting for me overall was Revoke Existence. There was always a target for it, it came up in almost every game I played, and it exiled Gods in three different games.

4 of the people sitting around me (including myself) got Gods in the clear seeded pack. I thought everyone got one.

Good riddance to DRS. The thing I least liked about it was what cider touched on, that it invalidates certain strategies on its own. Cards that do that should be narrower SB cards.

my favorite modern deck is 4 color gifts so i have mixed feelings about the drs ban but i've been arguing with iatee about whether being so aggressive with bans is good for the formats health overall.

I used to think that constant bans/unbans were a bad thing for any format, but recently I have started thinking that having one format like that is a cool idea. Legacy bans can put you down a ton of money, while Standard bans are offputting to new players. Modern is in that sweet spot where it's mostly longtime players playing, players who are able to keep up with a changing metagame, but the cards aren't ridiculously expensive. Honestly, the willingness to play with the banned list makes me more interested in Modern.

But they better keep their damn government hands off my Arcbound Ravagers

the cards that are ridiculously expensive are kinda saved from being bannable by virtue of being ridiculously expensive

like you ban goyf and some kid who just finished his playset literally quits magic

yeah banning Deathpact only hurts the losers like me who were hording them thinking they'd hit Dark Confidant prices one day

well all investments come w/ risks and that was def the riskiest card to be investing in

I used to think that constant bans/unbans were a bad thing for any format, but recently I have started thinking that having one format like that is a cool idea.

essentially if you write off all the fall 2011 bans as early-format fixing (they all happened within 3 months of the format's introduction, and before they started running GPs and sanctioning it for FNMs) then there's only been 4 cards banned since then, and 3 unbanned.

Interesting, I thought there had been more. Definitely the perception I have is that nothing is off-limits in Modern, except maybe Goyf and Confidant.

i don't think those are off-limits, they're just very easy to interact with so they're unlikely to need benching

7 changes to the ban list in two years is a lot by any reasonable standard tho

'i mean at least they arent banning something every three months!' is kinda just

this feels like the first change since nacatl/fire that's actually going to affect the format significantly more than a new set release though

yeah fair, bloodbraid essentially did nothing and seething song and second sunrise were very targeted. hell storm decks still 4-0 dailies even w/o seething song

i will admit that, having poured a decent amount of money into modern staples over the last 8 months, i just don't love the idea that they're going to ban stuff that is really good but not degenerate for 'format health' reasons

and/or to make pt coverage less of a snooze

so first born draft I found the 1/3 heroic discard guy less impressive when I actually played him...it's always still a card for a card unless you're using the cantrip auras. I also had two of the draw card blue 2/2 heroic dude, and it always seemed better to target him.

retraction helix continued to be amazing and I basically won the draft w/ a janky deck + 2 helix, 2 griptide

yeah i had 1/3 heroic at prerelease and ended up cutting it

i think its a legit roleplayer in a specific deck but not something to get excited about

not that anyone thought this was fake, but the "Conspiracy" thing was sorta announced today:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1429

looks like its a 210 card set, 60 new cards, multiplayer/draft focused, released in June. cool ?

my first 3-0 BTT deck: http://i.imgur.com/MiEPzcw.jpg

i don't recommend trying to learn anything from this

did a prerelease sealed: opened a kiora that i couldn't play but i will take those 22 tix, tyvm. came 2nd overall, destroyed in the final.

i'm having a lot of trouble drafting the BNG pack so far, the cards are all so narrow/contextual that nothing really constitutes a signal and i end up flailing around until the theros packs ground me into something that may or may not be open

the same thing has been happening to me. i have a really mediocre record so far and a large part of that seems to be that i keep flailing pack one, trying to take 'the best card' (none of the cards are good) and not knowing what colors i am in or even what colors i should be in. i've also just been on a bit of a slump in general, i went 4-2 at a gpt today and cant really pinpoint what went wrong for me - i think i built my deck correctly but i had to mulligan in almost 50% of my matches, which makes me think i didnt have the proper # of lands or the right land mix or something.

yeah I'll third that...I always end up in the 'right colors' but it takes half of the born pack til I'm there

I think tons of strong uncommons is probably the source of this misery

also lamp don't discount the possibility that you just got unlucky w/ land, it's gonna happen

yeah lamp that sounds like a good description of what happens in my drafts

i've noticed there aren't that many creatures that play defense well in BNG so i think the first adjustment i'm going to try is forcing 'fast' or 'slow' based on my first couple picks even if i'm not sure what my colors are yet, since that will narrow the options.

new draft strategy - take no black cards pack one then only black cards packs two and three. since black is stone terrible in bng it keeps putting everyone into 'anything that isnt black' meaning that you get really solid black theros cards tabling. am now 7-0-2 (split two finals) with this powerful strategy

asphyxiate and that -3/-2 aura are both good. my draft strategy so far has been "first pick refraction helix over cards that might be better because I want to play with it"

i'm surprised, that -3/-2 aura really seems like it should be bad for the price. i haven't played it or seen it played yet to judge.

i went x-1 on all 4 prerelease events i entered. i got super lucky with money cards tho and came out even on tix and a bunch of packs for free.

awesome

kid (literally a kid, he's like 14) from my store got 10th place at gp Mexico City yesterday. undefeated d1.

the -3/-2 is not what you want out of 4 mana but I have never been unhappy to have it in my hand.

-3/-2 is not 'good' but its passable and so far has matched up well with the decks that other people have run against me

i thought there was something to the black strategy but awkwardly the black cards in BNG are mostly aggro-minded and the ones in theros are mostly control-minded so you have to be careful

i feel like the new green cards want you to attack too? for the couple drafts i did i followed the open colours into blue/green and both times it seemed more awkward a pairing than in THS, or at least it didn't play how i was used to.

it seems almost like certain color pairs between the two sets is the way to go, drafting a particular color in BNG and then going as much as possible for its ideal pair in THS. Some of the pairs I've seen work out reasonably well are:

BNG B + THS W
BNG U + THS B
BNG R + THS U

don't know how much truth there is to this, but it may be a way to manage disparities between mono colors across the two sets

the 1G enchantment that gives you a Birds of Paradise + draw a card seems really good too, you can trigger Inspired every turn while ramping

rg still pretty bad ime though red gets a great common w/ the one sided fight spell

feel like 'heroic' is more open to more colors now, both with more triggers and more dudes

the vanilla bestow guys are so boring to play with and against despite not being bad

I really like the red one, 2 mana bestow is neat. Seems like another neat turn 2 play for my beloved Akroan Crusader...

I'm still not sure what R/G is supposed to do besides some sort of big-mana Monstrosity deck. Most red cards seem aggressive and they play so much better with black or white. Usually when I play vs. a R/G deck I know to expect either a Polis Crusher or a Xenagos.

yeah GR is the big mana deck. it's awkward though because the red commons that are supposed to be for that deck like the monstrous cyclops and the oread are still playable in the aggro red decks, whereas the GR deck can't do anything with two-headed cerberus or deathbellow raider or minotaur skullcleaver or whatever.