Magic: The Gathering C/D

i don't like cube, i'm more excited about tempest drafts next week

i've never drafted mirage or tempest. awesome this is happening but i'm kind of sad it's only going to last a week or so. either way this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me forgive MTGO for its many many flaws

mirage was the last block with banding, make sure you know how it works before you play or you will find your creatures all inexplicably in the graveyard the first time a band attacks you

rip benalish hero

essentially it means the controller of the band gets to decide where damage goes, right?

stuff like banding + flying/trample has always confused me but i'm willing to just wing it

did a cube draft last night for the first time. it's not as degenerate as a cube a buddy of mine has (with all the power 9 and dumb stuff like Tinker and Time Spiral) but it was still really fun. went 2-1 despite completely blowing the draft after realizing that the cards needed for a Necropotence deck weren't really there. seems like big accel/bomb-ass spells is the way to go. anyway it's really fun and with their new "Cube ticket" you can actually do a bunch for not much cost.

yeah black has been unplayable in the MTGO cube so far, to the point where they removed the 2 pro-black swords this time around, which seems ridiculous when they could just improve the black options instead

and in light of that i have no fucking clue why they removed vampire nighthawk

man you guys are really tempting me w/ mtgo

translated to human money how much does a draft online usually run you?

its about the same price as irl, like $13-14, but you can cycle all your winnings right back into the next draft so depending on how good you are you can potentially end up only spending a few bucks per draft on average.

That's a tough question b/c it depends on your skill level but I'll try to break it down. Anyway, tickets sell for $1 apiece. Drafts cost 3 packs and 2 tickets. Packs of M13 sell for ~ 3.2 tickets now, so the cost is 11.6 tix/draft. But if you do Swiss (for example) you win a pack for every match you win. So say you win two, then your next draft would be 5.2 tix, but you can also sell the cards you drafted. In AVR this was a big deal since some Mythics were worth a boatload of tickets. I'm guessing RTR will be easy to sustain because a whole lot of rares look to fall in the 2-4 tix range.

On average for me I'm looking at around $2-3/draft doing Swiss. Apparently some real top pros can "go infinite" doing it but it's very tough to do.

Also, 4-pack sealed has no ticket requirement, so you can bang out a bunch of those for even cheaper. It's less fun though.

oh yeah forgot to mention, you have to buy packs from the bots. Wizards online store will charge you 3.99 apiece no matter what, but the "market price" fluctuates a lot

this is what i've been waiting for http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-rtr-prerelease-primer

yeah black has been unplayable in the MTGO cube so far

based on what I could see during the draft, red looked pretty bad too. not sure I'd first pick any red card there. green seems really strong though.

xpost

dude is going hard for Selesnya, interesting...

I'm leaning toward Rakdos for the draft with either some overload or scavenge cards thrown in depending on what I open

my takeaways from that article (much better than the Conley Woods ones, by the way)

1) avoid drafting 3 drops because you're going to end up with a lot of them no matter what
2) may be a lot of stalemates due to a lack of lategame threats, which the guild mechanics should be able to break
3) creatures with 3 or more toughness are at a premium because there's an abundance of 2-power creatures
4) for Azorius, draft good offensive creatures high because there's a lot of good defensive ones
5) Izzet is probably the worst guild as it has lots of unplayables
6) Golgari has a glut of 4 drops
7) Selesnya has a lot of token generators, so don't worry about not being able to populate
8) Selesnya is probably the best guild (which was my hunch as well)

I think ciderpress said as much upthread, but will 'best guild' even matter after the prerelease? I'd imagine an 8 man draft will make drafting along guild-lines kinda difficult - like if you happen to be lucky enough to be the only one drafting that color combo, you are gonna be a good place regardless.

well remember, the multicolor cards are only in the 5 guild pairs, and those comprise most of the strong cards in the set. if you're in an 'off-pair' you're almost certainly going to have to splash the in-between color for multicolor cards or else your deck is going to be underpowered.

so like you don't have to be GW in draft, but if you're GR, you really want to be splashing black to get access to GB and BR spells

usually it takes a few weeks before drafters at large catch onto what the best color combinations are. basically it looks like both G/W and G/B are going to be good so I'm more likely to take a good green card over a good red one. you're right that draft "self-corrects" but unless one color is noticably weak (like black in AVR) I don't think casual players really catch on much to what the best/worst colors are

especially since each guild has a lot of support. I think a LOT of drafters are going to open a very good multicolored Uncommon or Rare and just go with it

i'm willing to believe that 1 in 10 drafts or whatever, you'll be able to get a focused deck with just an off-guild color pair but it's going to be the exception not the norm

I was more suggesting that 3 color becomes inevitable rather than people going off pair

and if you've got a solid 2 deck you're in a really good place / got slightly lucky

yeah that sounds about right to me, with the caveat being that i don't think the mana fixing is quite good enough or the format quite slow enough to do pure 3-color like you could in the old ravnica block. you'll want one of your 3 colors to only have things that are relevant late-game so that you can run fewer mana sources of it.

for example, imagine having a RWU deck where you have your early plays in red and white, and your blue is Isperia's Skywatch, Detention Sphere, Teleportal, Voidwielder, New Prahv Guildmage. That's the type of 3-color that will work here I think.

maybe I don't remember the original Rav block very well but I don't think two color decks that weren't a guild pairing ever really worked. going G/R or U/B in RTR seems like it's going to cut you off from a lot of synergy and all the gold cards, which are among the best commons and uncommons in the set.=

I'm really interested to see how the colour fixing goes in this set. It seems to have a lot less at common (bouncelands and signets being replaced by just the gates and no manadorks that i've seen), but people have pointed out that things like the gates and the uncommon man-artifacts (whatever they're called) are A LOT less appealing to people not in those colours, so they are more likely to come later.

this set is a lot of fun! i've never wanted to go back for a second prerelease before but i've now done 2. some things:

-The guilds are quite well balanced. Selesnya seems like the strongest if you get enough of the cheaper token makers to get your engine rolling but that's far from a given.
-Rakdos is pretty polarized - it's super powerful when you're curving out decently, but if you stumble and lose the initiative and have to stop unleashing, your guys are all trading down and you probably can't win.
-The format is faster than I expected - it seems faster than M13 but still slower than Innistrad due to the stretchier manabases and less efficient tempo tricks
-3-color decks are way more doable than I thought they'd be. My first pool was light on fixing, but my 2nd pool had 6 guildgates and 2 keyrunes, plus some green fixing that i didn't use. i could probably have played 4-5 colors with that pool and been fine, and this is in sealed.

I originally thought the "guildpack" + promo was kind of a gimmick that would give people powerful sealed pools, but seeing this in action I realize that pretty much everyone would have to go 3 colors if they didn't have it. I played like 12 out of the 15 cards in there.

I picked Selesnya and it really did work well - starting as early as turn 2 you can just pump out 3/3's nonstop. Also they have a lot of combat tricks that can turn your opponent's attacks into blowouts. But it really is more balanced than I thought.

also Radkos having a 1/4 reach and a 3/3 lifelink is kinda weird isn't it

the 1/4 reach is BG isn't it?

and the lifelinker has haste so that's fine. helps race vs other aggro decks when you can't block

i won so many games with Stab Wound, its got to be the best common in the set

i guess you're right. guy I was playing was mostly Rakdos but now I remember he splashed some green. I remember that card well b/c I kept a sketchy hand because it had all 3 Eyes in the Skies I got and he didn't seem to have much vs. fliers. that card = ouch

as for the other guilds, Azorious looked actually pretty decent, but you really need to get the right dudes out. someone speculated that it really wasn't going to be a good draft strategy since a lot of the good commons/uncommons will just get taken by other guilds (whereas, say, the Populate cards are not very good in non-Selesnya decks). Izzet did not look good but the 2/2 for 2R that zaps your opponent for 2 on every instant/sorcery seems really good. I expected a lot of people to go Izzet but it seemed to be the least popular by far.

Had lots of fun at the prerelease. I chose Rakdos and ended up going 2-2. The store I went to was very generous with prizes, so I went home with a couple extra boosters and a $5 gift certificate.

The highlight for me was pulling Vraska, my first planeswalker! I didn't come up with too many creatures in Rakdos colors, so splashing green was a no brainer. I agree that color fixing is very easy with cards like Transguild Promenade. I think going with more than 3 is absolutely workable. Playing Vraska was excellent and completely demoralizing for my opponents and won me several games.

My biggest challenge was getting off to a fast enough start because I didn't have enough 1 and 2 drops. I also had a tendency to stall out mid-game.

Deviant Glee was probably the biggest surprise all star for me. You get a ton of value for one swamp and a bonus mountain. Slitherhead (aka Tony Harrison's corpse) also played a surprise role in support of Launch Party.

Here's my final deck list:

Slitherhead
Deviant Glee
Grim Roustabout
Ogre Jailbreaker
2x Stab Wound
Dead Reveler
Dark Revenant
Launch Party
Brushstrider
Towering Indrik
Rakdos Shred-Freak
2x Gore-House Chainealker
2x Splatter Thug
Lobber Crew
Annihilating Fire
Auger Spree
Skull Rend
Rakdos Ringleader
Carnival Hellsteed
Vraska the Unseen
2x Transguild Promenade
Rakdos Guildgate
Golgari Guildgate
5 Swamps
6 Mountains
2 Forests

cool, looks good except that i'm not sure you want to be playing a 2-drop (brushstrider) off of a splash. you want splashed cards to have some late-game value because you won't always have access to your green right away, and i think a 3/1 fails the late-game test.

Yeah, it definitely wasn't my ideal choice, but I was starved for cheap creatures in black or red. Brushstrider ended up seeing a fair amount of play and I always seemed to have green available. Being able to hit for 3 in the early game fit well with the Rakdos theme, but then the vigilance gave me a blocker when I needed it, which was lacking due to unleash.

Several guys that gave me fits and are now on my must kill list:

Corpsejack Menace
Rix Maadi Guildmage - a pain in the ass if you ignore him
Frostburn Weird - this dude is really slippery

frostburn weird has to be one of the best commons, no?

G/W guildmage has to be on that list too, jesus that thing gets nuts in the late game. Also want to say "thank you R&D" for making Scavenge sorcery speed. It would be such an annoying mechanic otherwise.

Really looking forward to drafting this set. I'm thinking 3-color is really not going to be that hard. Things like the 1G wall that searches up "gates" singlehandedly can fix your mana problems.

Interestingly enough my store has a "buy a box" tournament next week for the release. It's basically 36-pack sealed. I'm guessing it's just going to be "go where the bombs are" but I'm wondering if a U/W deck full of the good detain guys would work. Not sure if I really want to drop the cash but I'm really interested in seeing how it plays out.

yeah it was good for me

rix maadi guildmage is fucking brutal, i think it's the best guildmage now - vitu-ghazi guildmage is more powerful but you have until turn 6 to kill it before it takes over the game while rix maadi does it the moment it hits play

stab wound is surely the best common, it singlehandedly won me several games through giant bombs like the azorius promo and collective blessing

The first guy I played was also Rakdos and he dropped double Rix Maadi Guildmages, which just steamrolled me.

I played Stab Wound quite a bit, but didn't get as much milage out of it as I had hoped. Several times I was forced to use it for removal.

stab wound is def the best common. auger spree also surprisingly good removal for being three mana. runner up is the 3/3/3 centaur i think? or is that an uncommon?

anyway i played three prereleases - one saturday went 5-0 and then two on sunday i went 3-2 and then 2-1 drop. i was p burnt out and once i lost my first game in the third one had no appetite for playing two matches for at best 6 packs. will be challenging to draft this set i think, seems like there will be a lot of nuance in how your pick orders work. efficient removal seems p lacking so red/black will probably get overdrafted and i think rakdos is probably the weakest at common - a lot of its cards match up really poorly against the format and can basically never beat a X/4 creature. populate probably the strongest plan out of the gate (ha) since it doesnt really share much w/the other guilds and has a v good match up against the other guilds creatures.

Launch Party worked very nicely against Azorius. I got a real kick out of sacrificing guys who had been frozen out by Arrest or Paralyzing Grasp just to hit my opponent with the double whammy of creature and life loss.

yeah launch party is a p interesting card and sorta encapsulates the difficult time ive been having deciding on pick orders - hes obv really good against pacifism effects and works p well w/scavenge but like how good is it w/ the black 2/2 flier that goes back to the top of your deck? how often can you use it still be 'ahead' on mana? there arent that many cards that deal w/problem creatures esp multicolored ones (man having the two mana kill spell be a dead card seems like a thing) &c &c. there are a couple of players here whove been testing for the pt so ive been thinking about this stuff and i feel kinda lost w/o playing a bunch to really get a feel for the set whereas i think i had M13 p well figured from drop

I didn't get to go to any prerelease but I've been practice drafting this and it does seem extremely tricky

can we start a list of no-doubt great cards at each rarity?

xpost

I can't imagine you'd want to play Launch Party more than once a game. There is definitely a lot of removal that I'd choose above it. It can be very powerful if you have Scavenge cards that you want to see in your graveyard.

I'm curious to see how difficult it's going to be to play against G/W. So many cards that can just blow up an attack step - like the fog/populate is the kind of thing that doesn't seem too great on the surface, but A) it only prevents damage to you, not creatures, so you can still exploit good blocks, and B) if you have a Centaur out, it's basically 1G instant 3/3 with an upside. Rootborn Defenses and Trostani's Judgement can just be blowouts. Attacking into an open 6 mana vs. G/W is gonna be a nightmare.

i think the commons that are always going to be great are Stab Wound, Annihilating Fire, Augur Spree, Centaur Healer, and the gates. everything else is somewhat contextual but those are all mana-efficient and play strong on offense or defense

Eyes in the Skies?