Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

momentous fall was in ROE, if it had been in standard this past year i'd have played it in everything

if there's a midrange grindy rock deck in the new standard, it's probably going to use disciple + thragtusk as its card advantage engine

hey ciderpress - which guild is best if i'm generally a big fan of white weenie type strategies?

unfortunately, the real white weenie guild is Boros which is in the next set. if you like the 'fast aggro' angle of white weenie then Rakdos is closest to that, but if you like the 'having lots of creatures' angle i'd go Selesnya, since Rakdos doesn't actually have a ton of good creatures and will be relying on burn spells and such to finish people off.

also obviously Rakdos isn't actually white, if having white cards is the important thing

nah- fast aggro is the important part

rakdos also looks like the hardest guild to play in this set - the unleash mechanic forces you to make tough choices on turns 2-4 that could seriously backfire without a good read on your opponent's strategy. i think you're always going to want to unleash the 2-power guys to get them to 3 power when you're playing them early in the game, but the 1/1 regenerator and 1/2 deathtouch are a lot trickier since they have serious value as blockers if the game goes long.

btw, the full set is up on magiccards.info now for browsing/searching/etc:
http://magiccards.info/rtr/en.html

angel of serenity seems awfully expensive for a mythic rare 5/6 flyer w/ a 3x journey to nowhere effect

haha that card is p nuts, way better than just journey to nowhere effect

you have to believe there's a sick combo in there somewhere

yeah angel of serenity is the best 'fatty' in the set, since having the additional option to get your own guys back, especially a second angel, gives you an almost unbeatable endgame

its probably less playable than armada wurm tho, even if its better value

for limited or constructed?

both of those cards are huge limited bombs but i think the wurm is a lot better positioned for constructed or at least more obviously playable

are auctions like this a terrible idea?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1600-UNCOMMON-DECK-LOT-Magic-the-Gathering-MTG-CARD-/200823749761?pt=Trading_Card_Games_US&hash=item2ec2073c81

no that seems like a good way to get a lot of cards

for fun I mean

what exactly are you trying to accomplish by buying that

have a playable deck i guess

than just buy one of the decks that wizards puts out. the green/white event deck from M13 is p good value and its only like $20

i mean if you just want lots of cards i have boxes of draft commons and uncommons you can have for free

let's play sometime. i need to learn more than just ipad-style

those mixed lot auctions are okay but kind of a ripoff given that there are plenty of people out there like me or Lamp who draft a lot and will gladly dump off all their commons/uncommons on you for no charge. i don't even bring all my drafted cards home from the store anymore, i just leave the commons/uncommons lying around for other people to pick up, unless i specifically need them for a deck.

forks I live in ny and will play w/ you

yeah Wizards has a lot of products for those who want an okay Standard deck for cheap. if you're looking for bulk common/uncommons just head on down to a store where people draft and ask around. most drafters are more than happy to give away stacks of cards...hell when I draft I would say maybe 1 or 2 of the guys actually keeps what they draft. the rest just lies around. just getting a bunch of random uncommons really won't get you anywhere.