Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

guttersnipe doesn't seem good in mono-red, even with the hybrid dudes (which cost 1 and 2)

guttersnipe would be good if red had more cheap burn, but you're limited to 4 per card right?

okay, the breakdown is like this: total set is 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares. in 36 packs you will get 360 commons, 108 uncommons, and 36 rares. so about 3.6 of each common, 1.4 of each uncommon, .6 of each rare, like .3 of each mythic. Which I think suggests, go where the uncommons are

and yeah it's 4 of each

webber: the guilds ended up being pretty balanced - everyone here seemed to think golgari was the strongest but i saw some folks run statistics on their prereleases and it actually performed the worst, with rakdos and selesnya performing best

i would guess that selesnya is the best overall - its linear plan is almost as powerful as rakdos's but unlike rakdos it can recover from bad draws and it's base green so you can fall back on a splashy control deck if you don't get enough of the good aggressive cards.

I think no matter what you pull, a fast unleash deck will be buildable and playable

Between prerelease and tonight's draft I've picked up Vraska, Abrupt Decay, Temple Garden, and Angel of Serenity. I own very few powerful cards like Vraska or Angel, but very little opportunity to use them. At what point does it make sense to try to sell stuff like this on eBay rather than holding on to them? Would you sell? If you would, what would you buy instead?

All stars from tonight's picks:

Angel of Serenity (won me the game every time it came into play)
Deadbridge Goliath
Seek the Horizon(made Angel happen for me)
Terrus Wurm

Underwhelming additions:

Sluiceway Scorpion
Sphere of Safety (lacked the enchantments to make this shine)

Added to my must kill list:

Guttersnipe
Righteous Authority

I think Vraska and Abrupt Decay are going to go down. Vraska because people are going to realize it's not really a game changer the way Gideon was; it's basically a better Lux Cannon, but you don't actually have to attack it. Abrupt Decay is going to be good but there's going to be so much of this set opened up that I can't see any rare hold its value. Ditto w/ Temple Garden (which was already printed once besides)

So if you were holding single copies of those cards right now, what would you do?

i'm with frogbs, sell high on all your golgari cards. everyone's building these BG zombie decks, but the main thing about new sets is that nobody actually knows anything. the first major tournaments seem to have the hype decks relatively absent, while random cards get pulled out to great effect. see: huntmaster upon DKA release. abrupt decay is very good, sure, but i can't imagine even a "very good" card holding $20 value.

and i think it's basically a given that unless the planeswalker is format breaking (aka, jace the mind sculptor) it will dip in value pretty significantly. i would have said by half or so, then i looked up liliana of the veil. how on earth is she still at $25 on star city, with abrupt decay and loxodon smiter running around?

It depends how much play the Smiter sees. if G/W is a thing post-rotation (and it should be), then Lili's going to be a bit of a liability. I'm also curious to see Dreadbore's effect on the enviroment. If people play Jund or B/R zombies and pack this card maindeck (if those dumb Delver/Geist/Resto. Angel decks die down a bit, since sorcery-speed targeted removal isn't really effective vs. that), then I'd think all planeswalkers will get a bit worse. The upside to playing them is that they were always tough to deal with. Now that a 2-mana spell trades straight up, 5 mana walkers like Vraska have got to suffer a bit.

So if you sold the Golgari cards, what would you get instead? My goal is to have at least one solid playable deck.

well as mentioned I think everything is going to go down somewhat. but U/W cards seem like they'll retain some value thanks to Geist. I feel like new Jace is better than Vraska; you don't even have to fuck around with it, just go -2, -2, and you get really good value out of it.

anyway. wound up winning the box tournament (out of 14 people). very interesting format but deckbuilding was really tough. all I can say is, the hybrid 1/4 U/R 2-drop with the 'flowstone' ability is really, really good.

that's rad dude. decklist? what'd you win?

so guys, humor me, I have some more beginner questions:

When a new set comes out, what do you usually buy? Fat Pack? Booster box? Individual boosters? Intro Packs?

Does anyone on here actively participate in Constructed events or is this a strictly Limited crowd?