Magic: The Gathering C/D

I think I just like the mindgame aspect, the 'I'm a wizard, you're a wizard, let's assume this will take a long time and there will be a lot of subtle moves and decisions'. but this is just taking things back to lamp's sandbox poll about why my favorite color is obv blue.

like counterspells might be annoying but I think they add a huge decision-making element to the game

yeah I like Innistrad too, just wish they never printed Nihil Spellbomb as that destroys like half the cool decks you can build with that set and it's only a one mana artifact. which sucks because as far as a "graveyard-based" set it's so much more complicated than stuff like "get 7 cards in your graveyard for +2/+2"

on the other side of that there's nothing more unpleasant than playing against a control deck that's absolutely destroying you because you mulliganned twice or got Wrathed pretty badly, only you don't actually lose until 10 turns down the road...

that said, those games were very awesome in the old 250-card 5-color format

I definitely get a rush playing Black Lotoses and Ancestral Recalls n shit on Cockatrice

yo i am excited for dark ascension. i'm getting really into G/W. i think mayor of avabruck is gonna be the block's sleeper, with all the human tokens coming out. my G/W deck is doing okay with just mild synergies - i am doing cheap token strategy with geist-honored monk, midnight haunting, and intangible virtue, but also cranking out wolves with the mayors. throw in some cheap werewolves and pump them all with gavony township. then parallel lives for fun. it's been going ok so far and i think when i can switch from spirits to humans i will be able to get the most out of those mayors.

blasphemous act kills my deck

erm... Darmok?

played the prerelease on saturday. got almost no sleep the night before and was super exhausted and everything took forever to happen so i left before they finished (went 1-2). the guy sitting across from me pulled the big DA planeswalker and an isolated chapel so i was stupidly kinda bummed from the start. wish i had more fun but i won some boosters so it paid for itself, mostly

planeswalkers seem like they'd be pretty broken in sealed play

well this was my first sealed tournament but the format seems too fast for them to really work.

I did the one locally and went 3-1. Won the first 3 and nearly won the 4th - I had 11 2/2 tokens out plus some flyers and couldn't imagine how I was going to lose, then my opponent plays a card that literally removed all my stuff from the game for one turn and swung in for the win. That thing is so nasty.

I haven't seen too much of the set yet but my first impression is that the "undying" creatures seem very nasty and possibly very good in standard. My pick for the sleeper of the set is "Increasing Savagery", which gives a creature 5 +1/+1 counters for 2GG and can be flashbacked to add 10 counters (for like 7-8 mana). Normally this would suck but green has a bunch of creatures now that are tough to kill right now.

I got the planeswalker too and am desperately trying to trade or sell it while it's $50+. Seems very good in a token-based deck but otherwise it's very underwhelming. W/B tokens looks really good (especially with the flashbacker that makes flyers) but it also seems like it's going to get absolutely stomped by cards like Ratchet Bomb.

are any of you guys interested in doing a draft/tournament online for one of the newer sets (maybe Innistrad)?

I got the planeswalker too

fuck you

dont feel too bad. it's going to tank hard.

haha i got one too, my first time pulling a money card at a prerelease

if the tokens deck is real it's not gonna tank too much, keep in mind that the next set is going to be a standalone, so this one's only going to be drafted/opened for a few months. this is what happened with Jace the Mind Sculptor in Worldwake, tho obv this one's not nearly as good.

the next set is a standalone? is it still part of Innistrad block?

IMO you can't really compare Jace, as the card's power level was so high that it was playable in basically every blue deck, and not just in Standard. I mean Lilliana's only $30 and she seems good enough to play in other formats. Whereas Sorin only looks good in one potential Standard deck. I just can't see a Black/White planeswalker getting enough play to justify a $25+ price tag.

yeah it's still part of the block story-wise, but it's a large set with new/different mechanics and will be drafted by itself. basically the same deal as Rise of the Eldrazi a couple years ago.

ahhh, cool. ever since Coldsnap I never had any idea what was going on with the block structure. crazy how much I was worried back in like Kamigawa block that they were running out of ideas, and they responded by printing way more new and well-designed cards every year

yeah i think it's sweet because i love triple-large-set draft formats and don't really like full block draft formats with the exception of Ravnica block

exactly - I loved the way Ravnica came together but stuff like the Scars block where you'd suddenly be pushed into doing blue/white infect knowing that there would be nothing for you in the next 2 packs was pretty awkward. but I do like 2/1 drafts with a large and a small

for me it's mostly that being able to consistently get certain cards esp. uncommons makes drafting various gimmicky archetypes a lot easier. like in 3x Innistrad draft, there's a real deck you can draft that plays out like this:

step 1: play out a bunch of defensive creatures to stall the game
step 2: mill your entire deck into your graveyard until you have no cards left
step 3: on your upkeep before you'd draw from an empty deck and lose, flash back Memory's Journey to put Runic Repetition into your deck and draw it.
step 4: use Runic Repetition to get back Memory's Journey

at this point you can use Memory's Journey and Runic Repetition to draw whatever card you want each turn. Now you can play Gnaw to the Bone to gain 20+ life if you're close to dead, then loop Spider Spawning to make enough tokens to kill them.

it sounds like someone's weirdo casual combo deck but you can actually draft this, and it actually works! and stuff like this is really only possible in a 3x large set format when you have the maximum number of chances at getting the important cards

i've never seen anyone pull that off. i did make a (somewhat successful) deck with 4 creatures and a bunch of dream twist/curse that mills 2 each turn which struck me as a very odd thing to do in a draft. you can definitely do really goofy things if you're drafting 3x a small set. i remember the first draft I did of Morningtide in which I picked up 9 of these guys: http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=152736

i guess i'll have to see how the INN/INN/DKA drafts play out - I agree that 3x INN was a great format.

i actually don't think it was a great format. there's a lot of cool stuff you can do but most of it gets crushed by whoever at the table was lucky enough to end up with the best G/W aggro deck, or blue tempo deck with invisible stalker. i've had more frustrating losses than in any other limited format i've played, due to a lack of hard removal and a lot of powerful tempo cards like Silent Departure that punish you for tapping out for something big.

the worst example i can think of was that i actually had to concede a game before my 2nd turn because it was impossible for me to win

i'm not saying its terrible though, it's still a fun format! just not as balanced as other ones i've played

and the Dark Ascension pack should fix some of the problems too

picked up this dude's new game - king of tokyo. looks sick...

huh? what did he play ...or did you just mulligan to 4 or 5 ? (usually that ends things)

I like Innistrad draft b/c it gives you a lot of avenues to explore without 'forcing your hand' (unlike Lorwyn, which was all about how many creatures you could get in your tribe) - instead of drafting colors, it's more about drafting an archetype. Especially since most of them use the graveyards in different ways. Only thing that I hate is Invisible Stalker + Butchers Cleaver which seems to crop up fairly often and is just unfair as hell.

i was on the draw, he played t1 delver of secrets, t2 flipped it revealing brimstone volley, then played spectral flight on the delver and hit me for 5. I now have 2 turns to get rid of a 5/4 flying creature before i'm in burn range, and my hand/deck had no outs to that for less than 4 mana so i just scooped.

well flipping delver on t2 is pretty damn nuts in standard so yeah not much you can do there

worst I've gotten it was turn 1 Pilgrim, turn 2 Midnight Haunting, turn 3 double Travel Prep, I was on the draw and hadn't even played a card yet

ive enjoyed innistrad draft but i think ciderpress is right. on the other hand ive managed to win some games with really terrible decks like blue/black mill with a lab maniac and four other creatures

i have not gotten to win a game with lab maniac yet, and i am jealous of everyone who has

i made a t2 deck with him. basically it was a ton of cheap draw, looters, etc., with 8 counterspells and unburial rites to take Jin-Gataxis out of the grave, draw a ton of cards and win with Lab Maniac. really fun to play and it could really work well if you drew the counterspells but it was really easy to sideboard against

lab maniac is not very good in limited, i drew really lucky to get it to work and was playing a b/w deck with almost no removal

i would really like to do an innistrad draft online w/ ilx mtg players. is such a thing possible?

probably not, there's only like 5 or 6 of us and we'd all have to be online at once

we would just have to draft together. we could schedule the games at our convenience

sealed is 100x easier to coordinate but i'd be down for either

yeah I think coordinating a draft will be impossible but I'll do sealed

oh yeah, i assumed it would be sealed. i guess i didn't realize draft only meant w/ passing packs around.

so is there a way to coordinate that online?

if there is a good sealed generator outside of the one that was included in magic workstation I have not found it

Wow, this thread really took off since the last time I posted in... 2003? Jeez. I never really stopped playing, but I'm happy to see more people into the game again. The last few sets have some of the best-designed cards in a long time and I guess it's not surprising they're hooking people.

http://ccgdecks.com/ is a decent place to do sealed if you don't feel like installing Magic Workstation, though the interface for building the deck is a little hard to manage. I end up doing drafts on that site too, those usually work out well.

i would play either draft or sealed with yall

sealed is hella fun id be up 4 it

if it looks like we can get 8 people we can do some knockout tournament

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

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lahtedTO031qzgp6f.jpg

?

mario made out of magic cards?

oic

I wish I had cards to go to this w/
http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/midtowns-magic-gathering