Magic: The Gathering C/D

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.

the thing with Frostburn is that he buys you so much time, throwing a wrench into the early game plans of G/W and B/R, since they can both drop a lot of early 3-power creatures. he trades with nearly any creature you'll see if you have mana open and if he goes unblocked you can get him up to 4. really great value for a two-drop.

one card I'd be interested to try is Stealer of Secrets. seems like Azorius has so many ways to temporarily wipe out blockers. Not just all the detain stuff, but there is also Arrest and two commons that bounce creatures (the instant one is very good vs. populate)

nah its still fine unless your red is just a small splash. the 2 red burn spells, stab wound, auger spree, trostani's judgment are all high picks just for being good removal, even if they're awkward in various ways

also one card which is non-obviously insane is Thoughtflare. its not good in aggro and there might be a couple other uncommons that are better than it but if i'm midrange or control i'm going to windmill slam it almost every time, and will happily splash it as my only blue card

anyway if it wasnt obvious, this format seems pretty difficult - maybe not quite as difficult as 3x innistrad, but yeah don't be discouraged if your first few draft decks fail to do anything

haha on saturday i realized at the end of pack two i had 15 playables at a stretch and... 8 guildgates :/

stuff i have realized: goblin electromancer is really good but requires some work, unleash seems like it ends up overdrafted, blue slightly underdrafted, non-flying evasion is really important.

one thing I'm kinda realizing is that Golgari doesn't really have a whole lot of synergy. you can build up creatures but when you look at the commons it has there is little outside of the Imp that really WANTS those +1/+1 counters. I have a hunch that G/B is a trap unless it's part of a 3-color splash, but can't say for sure.z

yeah golgari is probably the weakest guild and is definitely the guild that most wants to be the lots of colors / ramp deck, the hard part is finding an endgame that actually goes over the top. big ground guys don't really do it.

I do like how Scavenge is built in card advantage, but the creatures are often trading down so it's not really a huge thing. It reminds me of M13 blue or AVR white, you can really do well with it if you get enough bomb-ass uncommons and rares - but many of them will be splashed by Rakdos and Selesnya players, so first-picking a Golgari Guildmage seems like it can really lead to an ineffective deck with a weak early game and a bad late game, with Guildmage functioning as your best card. That said it really worked well for me, but I think my deck was kind of a fluke.

on the contrary, i think the guildmage is the exact type of card you need but could have trouble getting - the golgari cards are interchangably good at generating board stalls but can't break them

What I'm saying is that the Guildmage is excellent but the deck as a whole is not going to be good without other power uncommons and rares, and you can't count on them coming to you. On the other hand you can build good Selesnya or Rakdos decks that use 18-20 commons. First picking the Guildmage can certainly pay off but I think you're also kinda likely to be first-picking a Drudge Beetle in pack 3, wondering how things went so wrong. Unless of course you splash red or white.

I think Golgari is going to have trouble coming up with 23 playables, that's all

Yeah, Scavenge is less impressive than I was expecting. The best thing I can say about it is that unlike the other guild mechanics, you don't have to actively use it for it to have an effect. Just having creatures with Scavenge in play will cause your opponent to think twice about killing them (similar to Undying).

I drafted G/W/B last week and mana fixing was definitely an issue. I came up with very few gates and found myself stalling out in the early game. I guess the flipside to that is to avoid overdrafting small multicolor cards. Maybe multicolor needs to be a bigger factor after the first bunch of turns.

The Green and Black Scavengers are both different; the Green ones are generally on the curve but have a higher scavenge cost, while the Black ones are under the curve but scavenge for much cheaper. The 5B 3/3 bug is kind of interesting scavenge for only 2BB is a good deal; with Grisly Savage you can essentially draw 2 (or more) cards for BG, the second being something like "2B: put two +1/+1 counters on a creature"

does detain actually make much of a difference in games?

yep, it plays pretty well

the detain guys are way more powerful when used as goblin shortcutters instead of for stalling

like you can just tempo your opponent out of the game completely with a well timed Justiciar

it's a great mechanic when you're racing, and the cards it appears on only add like a one-mana "surcharge" for it (besides Lyev Skynight which is insane)

Have yet to do a draft but the detain cards were all very good in my experience, even the 2/1 guy.

I'm playing in a PTQ this weekend and feel hopelessly unprepared. Is there an article that lists all of the combat tricks? I remember reading one for another set a while back.

Here are the ones you'll need to watch out for:

Populate stuff - not only can it make instant-speed blockers, but they're combat tricks as well. Rootborn Defenses and Trostani's Judgement can be blowouts. The fog isn't as good but note that it only prevents damage to players, making it a little better, as they can kill exploit blocking matchups.

Swift Justice - it's been talked up a bit on this thread, I'm coming around on it since it really does do a lot for a one-mana card. I think it's one of those Unsummon/Vapor Snag things, the lifegain is just enough to make it playable.

Chorus of Might - worth noting in games where you've landlocked your opponent and are winning with flyers, because there is a common that can give your opponent a giant trampler and if you don't block conservatively enough it could cost you games you should win

Giant Growth/Savage Surge - the Surge is a lot more dangerous, keep it in mind if your opponent is making "suspicious" attacks

Common Bond - instant-speed Travel Prep

Dramatic Rescue - nerfs populate if you only have one token; if your opponent has UW open, try to have at least two tokens out before you populate, if possible

Golgari Charm - particularly "regenerate all creatures you control" and "creatures all get -1/-1"

Hussar Patrol - 2/4, 2UW, Vigilance, Flash. easy to walk into

Any others I'm missing..?

Cool, thanks for the primer. I keep forgetting that Giant Growth is in the set, feel like it's been a while since it was in a non-core set.

It can be deadly. One game I got attacked by a Centaur token, played Auger Spree on it to kill it, then he Giant Growthed it, turning it into a 10/2 which I had to eat. The lesson is, maybe play Auger Spree on your own turn vs. green.