Magic: The Gathering C/D

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.

and the one card it gets to itself is boulderfall which you can't really play more than 1 of with a straight face

gr can use auras on two headed and t strength on green heroic dudes but ultimately ends up with a voltron w/o evasion. the unblockable equipment is pretty good in that deck for that reason but you still have to invest so many cards into your only win condition.

yeah i don't think gr heroic/auras/etc is a good strategy at all outside of corner case decks with a very specific composition of card that makes it work (obv this exception applies to pretty much any fringe archetype in limited, and You'll Know It If You Have It)

though noble quarry is an example of a new card with the ability to make that one work

fun on sedge scorpion.

sedge scorpion plus noble quarry plus green emissary plus +2/0 first strike instant

11-1 in Theros block drafts so far. Part luck part skill and part due to some really bad players in the Swiss drafts right now. I 3-0'd a godawful B/W/G deck that had to splash green because I didn't draft enough playables in my other colors. Twice I've seen opponents cast Retraction Helix on the creature they wanted to bounce. I'm not immune either, I based my strategy one game on Bolt of Keranos being an instant.

Thus far I can't really say what's better or worse due to the new set. Things that give unblockable are obviously good with Inspired but I don't see a lot of gamebreaking Inspired stuff out there. Two cards in Theros whose stock went up are Vipers Kiss and Spark Jolt, due to an influx of 1/1 heroic boosters, Elite Skirmisher, Loyal Pegasus, Nyxborn Wolf, and a ton of good 1-toughness uncommons

Better than expected:
Asphyxiate - Initially disliked because it doesn't get the dude that's attacking you every turn, but it's proven really good both early and late game. Outside of Lightning Strike it may be the best common removal spell.
Glimpse the Sun God - Its just really flexible, does Fog, allows an Alpha Strike, and clear something obnoxious, plus it allows you to hit all your Heroic triggers. Always want to get one in a U/W heroic deck.
Karametra's Favor (and Springleaf Drum) - First one hits heroic, both hit inspired, and there's still lots of big mana Bestows to hit. An abundance of good uncommons makes you most likely to splash 3 colors, too.
Kiora's Follower - Instantly hitting inspired is awesome, plus it combos well with Retraction Helix
Retraction Helix - I think we already figured that it was the set's best common, but the ability to hit any permanent and not just creatures makes this one of the most flexible commons I've ever seen given the format.
Servant of Tyramet - I missed that Regenerating hits the Inspired.

Worse than expected:
Acolyte's Reward - This can be nasty and it's a neat heroic trigger but it's been rather clunky most times it's been in my hand. The best-case scenario just doesn't happen as often as I'd like (it's really really awesome with Phalanx Leader obviously)
Archetype of Imagination - Just so darn expensive for a 2-toughness creature, and in U/W and U/B a lot of your dudes are gonna have flying anyway. Not something I was ever glad to be playing.
Griffin Dreamfinder - Never liked it to start but even playing a lot of enchantments you don't get much with it. Bestow creatures have to die twice, after all...
Pinnacle of Rage - Double creature kill spells are usually always good but you generally don't need to kill 3-toughness dudes on turn 7 or 8. Maybe this would be good in a different format.

Will also add that I like the Tribute mechanic a lot. They put a lot of work into making both options unappealing in similar ways, as opposed to stuff like Breaking Point where one of the two options is relatively inconsequential.

any opinions on amulet of vigor in modern? cider i know cjlack has been playing that deck off and on what do you think?

yeah cj's my friend and he still endorses the deck, though it takes a bit of practice to get used to playing it since it does really weird things with extra land plays that don't really have parallels in other decks.

it has roughly the same matchups as the other big mana decks like scapeshift/tron (beats up on pod/midrange, loses to twin) but has more explosive draws and dodges sowing salt if that's the SB card people are running for those matchups. on the flip side it is even weaker to blood moon than scapeshift/tron, so if that card gets popular i'd avoid playing it. i'm kind of waiting for the PT results before i decide whether i'm all in on continuing to learn it, but with birthing pod expected to be a menace it seems like it could be good going forward.

I'm also very interested to see how the PT Modern portion shakes out. I'm gonna hit GP Richmond in a couple weeks and while I'm committed to Robots for monetary/time reasons (it's the only deck I have all the cards for and any real experience with), my SB is up in the air. Used to run 3 Blood Moons, but I found that they slowed my own deck down enough that it sometimes gave Tron decks enough time to drop a Wurmcoil anyway. So I'm likely cutting them.

feeling like an expert magic speculator after i picked up most of the key cards for amulet of vigor in modern this week and unloaded my promo bitterblossoms @ $120

next season (feb 26-march 26) mocs promo is Lion's Eye Diamond, maybe a good time to start grinding

yeah i took this season off of modo but i'll be back with a vengeance on the 26th

i still need a standard deck though and have no idea what i want to actually play this season

really hoping this blood moon deck doesn't get too popular on MTGO since that would push me off of all the decks i've actually worked on & practiced with recently

yeah although that match was heartening, i think matthias could've won if he had made his land drop before trying to summoner's pact

back with a...goryo's vengeance?

was just seriously considering that, though griselbrand is a painful 40-something tix right now

http://i.imgur.com/VBZAeSX.jpg

man this deck was so fun (tho I was lucky I never faced a legit aggro deck)

floodtide serpent + fate foretold + wavecrash triton
agent of fates + retraction helix + mnemonic wall

vortex is really really good

would play that deck

vortex is good, helix can be very effective, especially with wavecrash triton. i kind of hate eternity snare so far. i can't believe it doesn't even tap what it hits.

blue feels very strong now.

went all in on minotaurs last night, which was fun when I got to spam a whole bunch of hasty +2/0 dudes, less fun when I didn't.

I really like eternity snare, it's better than sip of hemlock I think

also I have decided to play storm in modern for a while

I'm really not a fan. I assumed it tapped too but knowing it doesn't I sided it out every match.

Helix is obviously very good, though it does carry some risk (namely them removing the creature in response which will put you at a massive disadvantage)

usually their late game voltron you have to deal w/ is already attacking you esp if you're in blue and you're likely to be outclassed in pure p/t

also when you have a bunch of bestow dudes stacked up - not an uncommon situation in this format - freezing them is better value than blowing it up

i have run snare a couple times and the only time it really did anything was when i snared an arbor colossus and i still lost because the other player was able to monstrous still and kill my flying threat. the voltron-negating upside is pretty high but for 6 mana the effect is too limited and conditional imo. i'd rather have sip and just kill something.

it's def not good in all decks but in the above deck a. they're gonna be attacking me b. I need to get ahead via card advantage and tempo. nerfing a bestow voltron w/o costing a card makes the difference between a win and a loss there.

It can still use triggered/activated effects, can be untapped via Crypsis or Savage Surge, the Snare can be blown up, the creature can be bounced, God's Willing will make the Snare fall off, it doesn't work on creatures with Vigilance (or anything with Observant Alseid on it), it requires that you're already being attacked by the creature, and it can't clear out a blocker that's giving you an issue...yeah these are mostly corner cases but all these are reasons why it's worse than Sip, which I don't think is that great a card anyway

I have found this format slow enough that 6 mana removal seems fine, even sip seems much better than it did in ths/ths/ths

i like sip a fair bit, its gone up a number of spots in my pick order in the new format but i've found eternity snare unplayable for the reasons frog points out.

anyway it's not like I take this card p1-6 but it's def got a place in the format. in a tempo deck you don't even really care if they have to waste their god's willing on it if they draw it 3 turns later.

I don't find it unplayable, just that every time I drew it I didn't want it. I never had the scenario where it goes 3-for-1 with dude/bestow/attack/snare happen. I feel like it's a card that requires a specific type of game...you curving out while your opponent puts all their eggs in one basket.

I haven't been playing much limited but the PT was fantastic I thought - Modern feels so... decision-y all of a sudden! I wish I could afford more of the decks - I have BW tokens but maindeck Anger everywhere has made it pretty unplayable unless you go the Wescoe route of three maindeck War&Peace which ughhh.

modern is so in

yeah this PT was a great bounceback for modern after the last one was a kind of boring jund-fest. no 'best' deck with even 20% metagame share and a lot of fringe decks without much exposure up to this point doing well on camera.

gonna have to go hard for that LED this season, which currently trades for 130+ tix. it looks like the price probably will not tank much (if any) afterwards - FOW is more valuable than ever, even after giving away a bunch as promos last year.

Dunno if this is helpful to anyone, but I'm working this out for my own sake:

50%/120/4.3
55%/90/3.2
60%/70/2.5
65%/55/2

First number is winrate, second is avg. number you would need to get 15 QP, third is the number of tournaments you'd need to play each day (the season is 4 weeks) to hit that number. As you can see it's quite a grind to get 15, even if your winrate is good. No wonder I have only once gotten the required number of QPs. Anyone else plan on giving it a shot?

just play block dailies