Magic: The Gathering C/D

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?

the store i play at runs Standard FNM and Draft FNM at the same time, so i don't play Standard much since I prefer drafting. I'll usually put together a Standard deck and play it every once in a while as a break from drafting. I follow the various Constructed tournaments and such pretty closely though so I tend to have a good sense of what cards/decks are good despite not playing a ton.

for new sets i generally just play Limited events to get cards, sometimes i'll buy a box or a fat pack if i feel like it but in general i end up with more than enough cards just from drafting once or twice a week

just another box of cards (entry fee was just the box you had to buy so not huge prize support); still well worthwhile

once I can find it I'll post up a decklist, but I did wind up using 11 or so rares; 2 of them were dual lands, the rest were mostly bomby stuff like Niv-Mizzet, Archon of the Triumvariant, Mercurial Chemister, etc

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?

liliana sees play in all constructed formats (usually as a 4-of), plus cube and commander. she is hurt by decay/smiter, but i'd be a little shocked if she ever went below $20?

does anyone do the fantasy pt draft thing on facebook? i'm thinking of betting hard on jund; dreadbore, abrupt decay and maybe loltroll seem to make what was already a good deck very insane? maybe i'm just underestimating the power level of modern

ive been playing some larger constructed events lately and will probably play regionals if i can both manage to get the day free and feel like my play is strong enough to top 8. but generally i prefer to limit my constructed play to mtgo since live its just more fun for me to draft

in terms of putting my standard/modern decks together i mostly traded for the cards i needed and then purchased w/e singles i couldnt trade for. i draft quite a lot so i tend to accumulate more cards than i really want already and the odds of opening the specific things i need are p low, even with a box. i did win like 30 packs of rtr at prereleases and i opened most of those, as well as my actual sealed pools which gave me a decent amount of rtr cards to build on.

xp i filled out one of those - i agree with Jund being the best deck going into this tournament. Abrupt Decay is the only real important new card, but its a huge one for patching up Jund's weakness which is that it's slow and clunky and loses tempo vs blue decks easily.

my list off the top of my head was
Planeswalker: Liliana of the Veil
Big Creature: Kiki-Jiki
Medium Creature: Kitchen Finks
Small Creature: Tarmogoyf
Instant: Remand
Sorcery: Serum Visions
Artifact: Relic of Progenitus
Enchantment: Honor of the Pure (completely clueless on this one, Threads of Disloyalty might be a safer pick)
Nonbasic Land: Scalding Tarn

my picks were

Planeswalker: Liliana of the Veil
Big Creature: Kiki-Jiki
Medium Creature: Bloodbraid Elf
Small Creature: Tarmogoyf
Instant: Abrupt Decay
Sorcery: Gitaxian Probe
Enchantment: Oblivion Ring
Artifact: Sword of Feast and Famine
Nonbasic Land: Verdant Catacombs

okay tonight's my first night actually drafting rtr
please organize all the wisdom so far and present it to me

figure out ASAP whether a single guild is open, especially selesnya or rakdos since they have the most powerful linear strategies and benefit the most from sticking to 2 color. if no single guild is wide open just take the best cards you see and enough mana fixing to tie them together into a deck.

one thing i learned last night is that figuring out how high people are going to draft the guildgates and transguild promenade is tough and can really make or break your draft - i was taking them early and then ended up wheeling more of them instead of playable spells. i think it's correct to pick them high if your deck isn't really linear but new folks who haven't drafted a multicolor set before can skew things a lot.

how many gates/promenade should a 3 color deck aim for? is 3 color screwed w/o mana fixing?

4 color ever worth it? let's say p1p1 and p2p1 are bombs w/ 4 different colors in total

Did one yesterday, took first with GB/W. Maybe the packs opened were weak but it didn't seem like there were any two-color decks that did well. Like, if you want to draft just one guild, I feel like that guild has to be pretty open. Then again, I've only done this once. I think having a 'main' guild and one back-up guild is nice. Also, like the original Rav block, fix color fixers early if you're doing three colors.

This way, you have a base color, and can draft accordingly:

Primary: White Secondary: Blue and Green
Primary: Blue Secondary: White and Red
Primary: Black Secondary: Red and Green
Primary: Red Secondary: Black and Blue
Primary: Green Secondary: White and Black

Anyway the point of all this is that when you do a solid 3-color split, value cards of your "primary" color higher. For example with G/W/B I was running 8 Forests, one B/G Gate, 4 Swamps, and 4 Plains. First off, you want more Gates/promenades than that. Secondly, I had to do such a radical mana split because my deck simply wouldn't function without Green. Without White or Black, sure (and obviously I had games where I didn't draw one), but without Green, no way. So cards that were "mono-white" I tended to shy away from, unless they were high-mana (like Trostani's Judgement) or really good anyway (like Arrest). For example the 1WW 2/3 flyer isn't really playable unless your primary is White.

As far as which guild to draft, they seem pretty balanced at common, but I feel it all comes down to whatever bomb uncommons/rares come your way. Again, don't underestimate Frostburn Weird, outside of maybe Stab Wound he's my pick for favorite common in the set. Also, green has two color-fixing commons, which do work together (and can be deadly with the guildmages). The Vine (0/2 gatesearch for 1G) is excellent. Don't be afraid to draft him early.

i played 4 color last night, i had 5 guildgates, 2 gatecreeper vines, 1 axebane guardian. its totally worth it if you get enough powerful cards but i didn't really.

i think for straight up 3 color, having 3-4 gates/promenades is ideal. most of your 3 color decks are going to be more like 2.5 colors though, where the 3rd color is just removal and stuff later on the curve, in which case you can get away with 1-2 easy.

Also I do agree with cider, G/W and R/B are the most focused strategies and probably have the best plans for turns 1-4. Both blue guilds seem to focus more on the long game so you can definitely play three colors there. G/B splashes well with the other two guilds though make sure you don't scavenge on unleash creatures that didn't have the counter before because that does in fact screw you over :)

One final remark, the Daggerdrome Imp (1/1 flying lifelink) is kinda crap, but works very nicely with Scavenge

ha I didn't think about that

w/r/t unleash

oh yeah frostburn weird is the best non-removal common in the set, centaur healer and splatter thug probably 2nd and 3rd. these are important things to know imo since they're less obvious than the removal if you haven't played a bunch of games with/against them.

the removal seems mostly crappy this time around. is it still always high pick just cause it's removal? the 1RR lightning bolt esp tough if you're running 3 colors and red isn't your base, I would think.