Magic: The Gathering C/D

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?

eyes seemed pretty low impact if it was just making 2 birds, i don't think its even the best white common.

what would you say then? T. Judgement?

in the past any card that made multiple fliers was super playable in limited. that said I wouldn't value it very high in U/W, for example. but in the G/W deck it's really valuable, especially when given the option to go bird/centaur in response to an attack.

I picked Azorius and had a really solid deck, tons of detains and flyers, 3 of the UW gates. It was consistent enough that I didn't splash my Armada Wurm and Deadbridge Goliath, which would have been greedy but possibly more fun. All my matches were close and it seems they did a good job balancing things. Enjoyable time overall, but the prize payout was miserable at the store I went to.

I would grab Deviant Glee. The more I think about it, the more it seems like a ridiculous bargain. Unleash + Pump + Trample is just too good.

How highly should you prioritize mana fixing lands over spells?

xp i think in a vacuum the 2/3 flier, but t judgment if i have any reasonable chance of having a centaur token out

if i'm drafting a 3+ color deck, there's only like 5-10 commons i'd take over an appropriate gate or transguild promenade. if you're getting good support for just sticking with 1 guild, you can take them much lower.

I think the 2/3 flyer is probably the best white common too, though Judgment has the chance to be a total bomb in the right situation. The slower the format, the better Judgment becomes.

Ogre Jailbreaker was a surprise MVP in my first prerelease deck, i'm gonna be looking for him to hopefully be underdrafted at first, along with the gates

my favorite white common is the one mana combat trick but thats probably why im bad at magic :/

gates dont seem like v high picks pack 1 but then get increasingly good packs two and three

Nah, that trick is pretty damn efficient for one mana, it's up there with the best white commons. I got totally blown out by it one match on Saturday: double-blocked a centaur with 2 2/2s in a race situation. That was pretty much a 3-for-1 for my opponent.

it seems like the gate value is very dependent on your deck? like if you have a fairly balanced 2-color deck w/ no gate effects, you wouldn't reach for them. but if you're playing a funky color scheme, they could make or break your deck.

yeah, its a balancing act much like the original ravnica - the higher you take gates, the fewer shots you have at the high-pick multicolor spells which are the reason to prioritize gates in the first place

oh yeah, had forgotten about the 2/3 flyer (had never seen him). I think in G/W Eyes and Judgement are probably better but not in U/W

I haven't really looked at the flyers yet; if there are a lot of 2-power flyers then the 2/3 and 1/3 white flyers are both very good

so ive been doing some practice drafting w/rtr and outside of the obv guild mechanic-centered strategies some potentially powerful strategies im looking to draft are defender ramp in b/g and what im calling 'pursuit of secrets'.

defender ramp seems really strong the key cards are the 0/2 that finds a basic or a gate the 0/3 that taps for mana and the 4/4 that can attack if you have a gate all of which i can imagine going reasonably late at first. ramp is really powerful w/scavenge and it opens you up to other powerful walls like the 0/4 that pings and the 0/4 that mills as a wincon. you also have the 1/4 regen reach in your colors which seems really good. this strategy can get folded into a general scavenge deck but works w/o scavenge cards since theres just a lot of stuff to spend mana on in this format

the second strategy is mostly just put pursuit of flight on stealer of secrets, keep mizzium skin as a backup, draw cards, win. but you can exploit other potentially undervalued cards like crosstown courier and teleport and the blue 2/1 thats unblockable. most of the 'good' izzet decks seem like they just want to exploit either guttersnipe or electromancer so this is a useful strategy that you can draft around another u/r drafter

I did notice that Stealer of Secrets works very well with detain. Your opponent basically has to keep two blockers open, and the more you draw, the more you get to detain things.

i just want to draft insane 4-5 color decks where i'm like casting horncaller's chant off of goblin electromancers and shit

i think ogre jailbreaker is my favorite common in the set and i hope/expect that it will be underdrafted at the start

what's the consensus on essence backlash?

had to skip drafting 2nite cause not enough people came :(
rain + ppl waiting for rtr I guess

i like backlash more than most people i suspect, but it's important to remember that a bunch of the creatures in the set are actually token-making instants/sorceries. it'll be real awkward if you leave it up and they play Courser's Accord.

i think its best in a tempo deck that can consistently drop a 2-drop and a 3-drop before leaving it up, so that you're applying pressure and thus a) your opponent can't play around it as easily since they need to play blockers to stabilize and b) the damage matters

cards like that are seldom good in draft. i suppose if you're full of electromancers and other things that power up w/ instants it can be alright but in general counters only really work if you don't have anything else in that mana slot. like i'd much rather play a Runewing or something. I don't think U/R can really put the early pressure on based on what I've seen.

i'm wondering a lot about Chemister's Trick. it's psuedo-removal and can lead to blowouts. but something tells me it's worse than it looks.

oh yeah, frostburn weird is really good, i'd want 2 of those in any izzet deck

i played chemister's trick as my 23rd spell at the prerelease, it was awkward but did win me a game by being a fog in a race situation. i can't imagine ever being happy with it but some decks need an effect like that if they're light on removal

I am gonna be tempted to play izzet every game just cause blue/red has always been my favorite color combo and even if I lose I'll do it in style w/ counters *and* burn

i think izzet is the trickiest one to build for and people are down on it right now because they didn't figure it out at the prerelease. my roommate played izzet at both prereleases we went to and crushed them both, it just requires some skill at creating control or tempo decks in limited; most people are only used to drafting aggro or midrange

i think chemister's trick and teleport are both 'kinda good' in the way where you dont love running them but they end up winning you at least one game every draft in which you play them

i think [essence backlash]s best in a tempo deck that can consistently drop a 2-drop and a 3-drop before leaving it up, so that you're applying pressure and thus a) your opponent can't play around it as easily since they need to play blockers to stabilize and b) the damage matters

yeah outside of the obvious 'every card is good w/electromancer' case i really liked having backlash in my stealer/pursuit deck because i was generally leaving mana up for other stuff and just wanted to race once my boards was set up

teleportal is like 100x better than chemister's trick, its almost overrun when you overload it

its certainly better but i wouldnt go that far

I can't believe this fell off the first page! So what is everyone's consensus for the best guild to play pre-release? I haven't been paying too much attention but MTGO pre-res are on the weekend so I should probably decide on something.

i like the idea of the axebane ramp deck too, but i don't think it's a deck archetype in and of itself. you need lots of scavenge to make it work, i think. or, like, worldspine wurm. neither are givens

i really like izzet in draft so far. i find that it synergizes really nicely with both rakdos and azorius to produce consistent tempo decks. i'm a big fan of the red unleash creatures: chainwalker, splatter thug, and bloodfray giant. pretty easy to pick em up in draft. detain is awesome with em. if you go rakdos you get access to augur spree and more nasty unleash creatures. ps, i also rep for teleportal. chemister's trick way too situational though. i don't think izzet can make it work, not defensive enough.

fencing ace might be my favorite creature in the set. i really like auras and it's not like there's a whole lot of bounce. it's super easy to pick up a bunch of ethereal armors for him, which can easily get to +2/+2 or more with the amount of enchantment based removal in the set. pity the first strike is redundant on him though

ok so I think I am doing the box-sealed tomorrow. 60 card deck, dunno about sideboard (I would assume just 15). so it's kind of RTR constructed, but with limited access to rares and uncommons. anyone have any idea what kind of strategy this would lend to, or do I just count the power uncommons/rares and go with it?

with all the duals and stuff like the 0/2 gatesearch wall, maybe 3 color could really work here?

if you get a bunch of rakdos cacklers and guttersnipes i'd consider playing mono-red, otherwise just play a control deck with the best cards and appropriate fixing to cast them all

how many of each uncommon does that average out to? I'd think about that number a lot