Magic: The Gathering C/D

he did do a second AVR article because the metagame swung pretty wildly once people realized that U/G had all the best commons. in general every format has cards that are better than they look and cards that are worse, and even the best limited pros don't seem to figure them out until 3-4 weeks into the set.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3326708/magic-the-gathering-players-championship

The plans are working. Hasbro, which bought Wizards of the Coast for $325 million in 1999, claimed the volume of card sales doubled between 2008 and 2011 with the player base growing 80 percent to 12 million

lotsa people @ the store I go to seem to have gotten back recently.

they should make duels of the planeswalkers free.

I've been having a great time the past two days on mtgo - I created a new account and set myself a challenge to invest nothing and trade up from the starting cards, and it's super addictive to see how far you can get. I ended up with a WB control deck that was doubling as a shop window and it was awesome getting to play with stuff like Wurmcoil and Hero of Bladehold as they passed through inventory. Moodles - play yr Odric deck?

like i try not to even think about 'card advantage' anymore in the traditional sense - valuing cards on a discrete continuum rather than a continuous one seems antiquated, and it doesn't consider tempo which is really fucking important in modern magic
― ciderpress, Wednesday, September 19, 2012 4:07 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
all the creature enchants are p good used correctly (wellll probably not divine favor) i guess im arguing iatee isnt really making correct use of volcanic strength in his deck. i have to admit tho that i really like tricks on reckless brute and have cast this way more than i should have during M13...

This idea is v.v. interesting to me - do you guys think a straight-up enchant creature will ever see constructed play? Not counting stuff like rancor which doesn't have the 2-for-1 disadvantage, or the era when Eldrazi Conscription got cheated into play - I'm thinking more of like some 2mana MotVampire just getting thrown on a gravecrawler or whatever. It seems like it's way overdue, maybe it would have to be super rare so as not to mess up limited.

If I recall correctly Armadillo Cloak saw some play, didn't it? Also, Moldervine Cloak was played in a few decks and you can definitely get 2-for-1'd there.

My favorite creature enchantment for standard was Elephant Guide, as it was kind of like Rancor, just a big bomb-ass creature enchantment that didn't really hurt you if it got removed.

Spectral Flight has seen some play recently in Standard and there's no card advantage there at all. Except there's not really any risk either, since it always got slapped on a Hexproof creature like Invisible Stalker or Geist of Saint Traft. Think of it as equipment that dodges Divine Offering.

Spectral Flight has seen play within the past few months! if that doesn't count then i don't know what does

And though I kind of hate Hexproof, it's interesting that there was finally an environment where a very run-of-the-mill Aura had a place.

Moodles - play yr Odric deck?

Yah, same username on MTGO. Although you may have to face the werewolf pack that Ciderpress has been helping me get set up.

Would love to get some trading tips. It's a topic that I don't really have a feel for in MTGO. Not sure how to approach it.

I didn't know people played that in Standard! I thought people were just doing Runchanter's Pike/Sword of Whatever. I played a dude in draft who had Geist + Spectral Flight and got my ass beat. No way around that.

By the way, I checked my online collection and I now have 7 Sands of Deliriums over ~15 drafts. I'm getting a lot of them passed to me. I can see why people don't like the card - if you draft around it, you'll wind up with some crappy U/W deck that can't win without it, and if you don't, you're sometimes forced to choose between mill and playing creatures. Either way this card has won me a lot of games where I was in terrible shape otherwise or in danger of losing a race. I think I was actually right about this card!

i had another sands failure the other night, this time taking it 2nd pack after i was already drafting a control deck. seems like every time i have it i either draw it when i'm already winning with a harbor bandit, or topdeck it when i'm behind on board and need another blocker. i've had it 5 or 6 times now, all in decent controlling decks, and haven't won a draft with it yet.

xathrid gorgon on the other hand, i have like 7 or 8 of on mtgo and it's been awesome every time.

that is strange; for me I seem to get it a lot when I'm in deadlocked board positions or can play a game of attrition. even getting it in your opener isn't bad. it affects the game in an odd way for both players but I've certainly won my fair share with this card. maybe I'm just lucky.

Gorgon is incredible too of course, though it's led to quite a few games that really just game down to getting decked

i pretty much always have harbor bandit in my draft decks so that's not been an issue

anyone wanna play a quick EDH game on cockatrice?

so i played my first ptq on saturday... got passed a truly brutal pool so only managed to go 4-2 drop. not sure i built my deck optimally but im p disappointed that i didnt have even an average pool to build w/ since i feel like i know this format really well

what did your deck look like?

1 duty-bound dead
1 crippling blight
1 knight of glory
1 elvish visionary
1 flinthoof boar
1 timberpack wolf
1 sign in blood
1 searing spear
1 titantic growth
1 ring of xathrid
1 ring of kalonia
2 servant of nefarox
1 rummaging goblin
1 cower in fear
1 flames of the firebrand
2 bloodhunter bat
1 shimian specter
1 spiked baloth
1 silklash spider
1 garruk's packleader
1 essence drain
1 hamletback goliath

just a really terrible jund midrange deck - my rare pool was battle of wits, the goliath, silklash spider, specter, dragonskull summit and door to nothingness. best uncommon was flames and i had a fog bank. i probably couldve built a very slow u/r/b deck with the fog bank two wall of fires and a bunch of card draw and counterspells hoping basically to win via tricks of the trade on a fire elemental or goliath. i wouldve been playing worse cards but the deck has a stronger gameplan than the one i built since it gave me more outs to all the midrange-y bomb-heavy decks i played against esp in the X-1 bracket

when did you start going green?

trying to figure out something i can build for standard without dropping $100+ on new cards right away. i'm wondering if mono-red will be viable for the first month or so like it often is; Ash Zealot is one of the few rares in the new set that seems reasonably priced, and the rest of the deck would be all common/uncommons

i wanted to port over the angel of glory's rise deck from block since i suspect there will be a shitload of zombies being played early on, but the manabase for that deck is just so terrible, there's no way to trim it down to 3 colors without losing an important card

I would have thought zombies was the budget deck? I don't pay attention to card prices though, so apologies if Gravecrawler is suddenly a $50 card.

gravecrawler is 10, geralf's messenger is 10, falkenrath aristocrat is 15, blood crypt will be at least 10 at the start, it's not looking like much of a budget deck anymore even if you don't run bonfires.

i think junk tokens might be a decent cheap deck the most important cards are almost all uncommons and even the mythics its running are reasonable esp on modo. the real qn is how competitive tokens will be in this environment i guess

yeah i dont mind buying tons of shit on modo since its cheaper and its trivial to sell it back whenever i need the $ again, buying new cards irl is the painful bit

ive got an idea for a bant ramp/control deck that i'd like to test out, im not sure it can beat a hardcore control deck with actual counterspells but if the meta has a lot of midrange then it might crush.

i feel like control really lacks the tools it needs rn esp against stuff like jund zombies or bant midrange variants? theres just too much speed and card advantage in those decks for control to deal w/effectively

yeah i am really missing celestial purge right now. there are just no cards that deal with geralf's messenger or falkenrath aristocrat the turn they come down

cider, i'm probably gonna slap together a cheap little nivmagus elemental deck post rotation. the only thing that costs money there are the fancy-lands. basically, delver/elemental/guttersnipe, then jam the rest with dinky little cantrips. i'm not much for preordering but will probably grab a playset of elementals hopefully at the prerelease. i think that card has the potential to seriously blow up.

guttersnipe, the passive-aggressive goblin

wow, I had thought the Elemental was just +2/+2 until end of turn, that's uhhh interesting

this is the ramp shell i was working on on cockatrice last night, from memory:

cantrips:
4 Abundant Growth
4 Elvish Visionary
ramp:
4 Farseek
4 Dawntreader Elk
3 Temporal Mastery (shut up it is a ramp spell)
sweepers:
4 Devastation Tide
3 Supreme Verdict
board control/wincons:
4 Thragtusk
2 Garruk Relentless
2 Angel of Serenity
1 Entreat the Angels
land:
24 colored land appropriately distributed, plus 1 miser's Kessig Wolf Run to use w/ abundant growth late game

so the gimmick here is that when you cast Devastation Tide you're often returning 1-3 cards worth of cantrips to your hand, letting you dig deeper next turn for another sweeper or win condition. plus it makes a token with Thragtusk, etc etc. meanwhile, your opponent loses their board position each time this happens, even if they've still got all their cards, which should buy you time to convert your mana advantage into a win. i haven't actually tested vs real opponents yet though so it could just be terrible now that there's no Primeval Titan.

I really like that idea. I always wanted to make a deck that abused Emancipation Angel with Abundant Growth (a seriously good card that doesn't see any play), you don't have Angel in here but I think you could make a similar deck with it.

i wonder if jarad's orders searching up 2 angel of serenity is good enough

if they dont have countermagic, looping angels is practically a soft lock in the lategame

man, i keep clicking on this thread out of nostalgia and then not being able to understand a word of it.

don't worry i'm just rambling about cards in the new set that comes out next week

Got signed up for prerelease on Sunday night. This will be my first sealed event. Any tips on how to approach it?

this prerelease has the gimmick wehre you choose a guild and one of your 6 boosters is a special pack with only cards from that guild's colors. so: make sure you pick a guild you're going to enjoy playing. if you don't know what they're about already, here's their basic strategies:
Selesnya (green/white) - dump a bunch of creature tokens onto the board to stall the game out, then keep making guys until you have an overwhelming advantage.
Golgari (green/black) - play defense and trade your creatures off early, then recycle stuff from your graveyard to build giant monsters in the late game
Rakdos (red/black) - play aggressive creatures and keep swinging for the fences until you win or run out of gas
Izzet (blue/red) - control the board with big splashy spell effects that keep the path cleared for your utility creatures to get through for damage
Azorius (white/blue) - beat down in the air with fliers while locking down your opponent's best threats or blockers

-because of the guild booster, there's like a 80% chance that your ideal deck is just the 2 colors of your guild, plus a couple powerful cards splashed from a 3rd color.
-if you're splashing, it should be for good removal or late-game bombs, not just ordinary creatures, because you'll have games where you don't draw a source for your 3rd color until later in the game and you want the splash card you've been holding in your hand that whole time to still be relevant to the board.
-avoid 1/1s or 2/2s without good abilities, because sealed games tend to go long and they get outclassed in the late game.
-make sure your curve is decent. in sealed it's more important to play your strongest cards than have a great curve, but you still want to avoid having a lot of cards that cost 5 or more
-be proactive. your opponents are going to be mana screwed or color screwed or have bad draws sometimes, it's just how Magic works, and you want your deck to take advantage of this.
-40 cards total, 17 lands, no exceptions

won again tonite w/ this deck

ring of xathrid
ring of kalonia
cathedral of war

rancor
duskdale wurm
deadly recluse
garruk's packleader
prey upon
spiked baloth x 3
mwonvuli beast tracker
arbor elf

liliana's shade
dark favor x 3
crippling blight
murder x 2
duty bound dead
tormented soul
vampire nighthawk
bloodhound bats

dnp:
phy lich
mind rot
duress
disciple of bolas (well I did but then I swapped it for another baloth)
titanic growth
fungal sprouting
4th baloth
vastwood gorger

would u guys have made it differently? not that learning more about m13 limited will help me now

i think you have to decide on a plan - like if you're going the soul + multiple favor and exalted route cut most of your green creatures and add disciple + growth for card draw and fungal sprouting to spam blockers and potential swarm strategy. in this case gorger is a better top end than worm since it comes down earlier and blocks essentially the same

if your plan is green midrange draw a card than cut the favors and the soul for the last baloth and i guess the gorger.

either way i think the green ring is really bad since your green creatures mostly already have trample and your good black creatures have evasion. tracker is also p shitty since it cant get you packleader and thats really the only card you care that much about. well i guess nighthawk. i would still rather play something else though. growth + disciple is also really good and should be in any build and i would probably play mind rot in the fast black version of the deck to protect your soul against removal

yeah it played strangely, like half the time it was controlly and the other half it was winning in 4 turns w/ some rancor/favor/ring. I think growth instead of the ring might have been better for those kinda games.

tracker always seemed to be going for recluse.

the green ring giving trample actually won me a game tho

Got signed up for prerelease on Sunday night. This will be my first sealed event. Any tips on how to approach it?

you can always take a look at the visual spoiler just to have some familiarity with the cards beforehand

otherwise i think ciderpress has it p much right, generally its a good plan to build around your most powerful cards and try to think about how your deck is going to play out - both in cases where you're curving out and drawing well and with more difficult draws - and then think about how you might add or subtract cards to help your deck's plan. generally speaking bombs and removal are the things you want to prioritize in your deck but creatures are really good like if you're choosing between a spell and a a creature, most sealed decks just want the body

the green ring giving trample actually won me a game tho

haha wellllll

its kinda sick how good disciple is in your deck the more i think about it, like rancor just gives so much value, favors, growth, ring so many ways to pump stuff and then just draw a million cards...

id probably have built it like:

6 - CC1: blight, soul, dead, elf, rancor, prey upon
6 - CC2: favor (3), recluse, growth, black ring
4 - CC3: nighthawk, murder (2), mind rot
5 - CC4: shade, bats, sprouting, disciple, baloth
1 - CC5: packleader
1 - CC6: gorger

yeah I was playing a fun game w/ disciple in it and I used it on something w/ two dark favors that was gonna be killed next turn

but I was really scared of drawing it in my first 7 w/ no other creatures and/or when I'd have a slow opening

I didn't run into a deck w/ heavy removal, which I think was a big risk w/ the 3 dark removals

errr dark favor
it's late

w/o looking at it too close, i'd say cutting Discipline for another Baloth is a mistake, I think Baloth is fine but it's kind of underwhelming and Disciple's effect can give you a big advantage for the rest of the game. Baloth just seems right for a different kind of deck, one that'll play Titanic Growth w/o reservation

yeah disciple is quietly one of the top 10 cards in the set imo

I absolutely love the card Momentous Fall from Beseiged (I think?) so Disciple was immediately a favorite of mine. I'd do like end step Primal Bellow on a Wurmcoil, Fall it for 12 life and 12 cards + the tokens, good times

Have yet to really think of a use for Disciple but there's got to be some way to abuse it