Magic: The Gathering C/D

Of course, it could just be that I got a weird pool of cards. I had Nicol Bolas, which is utterly ridiculous and pretty much unbeatable, but my other rares were Reason to Believe, Temmet, Abandoned Sarcophgus, Dread Wanderer, Hostile Desert, and Scavenger Grounds. So 3 multicolor cards that only had blue in common, and then 2 colorless lands. Luckily Bolas balanced out the utter worthlessness of the other rares. After trying out an ill-conceived 5-color build, I landed on G/R beatdown splashing for Nicol Bolas, which was pretty solid.

yeah there were a lot of spots open in nyc prereleases too. I had a fun 3 unsummon tempo deck and lost to glorybringer in the finals, as one does.

it was fun (mostly because I played interesting games against good players and not 10 y/os) but does feel like a super forgettable set already. eternalize is the new megamorph.

iatee i'm one trophy ahead of you in the vintage cube competition you didn't know we were having and times running out...

i realized recently that you can filter the trophy lists by your buddy list which provides a good source of motivation

my buddy list is just trade bots lol

ha! well roberto it's good to know I was grinding those leagues for *some* reason. I got one more last night and ended with 13 so we might have tied unless you also got another one. I would def have more if I just kept to a 'never draft storm ever' philosophy.

I think mono-w was underrated in the cube, I had a lot of success with it. as long as you got a few pushed pieces like a mox, strip mine, etc. you were gonna get 100% of the rest of the deck, so you could aggressively grab anything someone else might want (eg STP, Wasteland) knowing that the cards you needed more like thalia would wheel.

mono-w is free wins in all of the mtgo cubes. i guess most people find it boring

legacy dnt is my pet deck so I find it pretty fun. I think people think mono-red is boring but super powerful while mono-w is boring but a bit underpowered. my guess is that's because they build and play it wrong. limited manabases are very tight on colors so stuff like revoker/relic warder your signet and waste your dual will often win a game.

also underrated - commit to memory, which I think is in the high tier of blue cards, but always seems to wheel. new cards that people have to read tend to be underrated for a while.

i played one match vs the guy who topped the board with ~45 trophies. he was running a mono W smokestack/resource denial deck. i beat him with my...BW smokestack deck

iatee i got 14. i thought i was done sunday early evening and just thought to take a look to see if you guys were playing. i saw you had 13 too and i was like, ok one more. pulled it out with a W deck w/ light U splash.

so yeah, i think we're all on the same page! i drafted base G a bunch too because it seemed opened all the time. but also always have my share of "this seems like it will be fun" decks

I try not to draft ramp because I hate playing green. it's def one of the stronger archetypes, but I loathe pure ramp in all formats. would rather play mono-red.

it's interesting that the guy w/ 45 trophies was on smokestack, I wonder if he plays it a lot and it's secretly underrated or something. I generally try to avoid smokestack and wildfire type strategies, they just seem to require too many pieces (many of which are in high demand) and they don't even guarantee a win when you have them all. in total I think I played against exactly one deck that beat me with smokestack.
attrition strategies don't feel as great when everyone is topdecking powerful swingy cards - like I think LotV is actually fairly overrated in cube.

wildfire decks are a little better because you can do a lot of simultaneous things w/ big artifact ramp / tinkerer effects.

iirc his deck was a p classic white weenie cube deck of the kind that tries to get value/disruptive low drops down and then blow resources up with an armageddon or stack. mine was more token makers, clamp, stack/braids except i sided those out against him.

it's not really something i look for often but when you can get braids or stack down turn 3 and follow up with souls or ophiomancer that doesn't leave a ton of outs. and that kind of deck is resilient to/can run wraths and recover a board presence quickly.

weird, I never consider ss in ww, maybe I should be.

I think those stack/braids openings *do* leave a ton of outs. e.g. bolt your braids/ophiomancer. so many of the token makers are easy to kill. so you ultimately have a one-key-spell game plan which also just loses to counterspells without even winning 100% of the time when you do resolve your one key spell. plus you can't really play blue, which also neuters you deck.

For you guys that play MTGO a lot: are you basically infinite at this point or do you still have to put money into the game sometimes? And which format gets you the most value? I remember the calculator frogbs linked but curious if you all have a format where your winrate is particularly high. After about three years of not having to put in money, I am totally out of tix/points/cards to sell and I've been putting off paying again cause of wounded pride. HoD will be a fine set to skip it seems anyway

been pondering this a lot lately myself. Been slowly talking myself into investing in a standard or modern deck (or both) for MTGO so that I can get more reps in, but I don't know if this is the best way to build value or a collection. Limited definitely doesn't seem to be the best route for me, but I play much more constructed IRL.

i've had a couple good stretches, nearly a year once and another time 6 months, but it is super hard to do playing (non-phantom) limited only. the ingredients for the stretches i had were consecutive formats that clicked and also had decent card value but for true infinite you have to be really good, like 1900+ the whole time. i've heard in the past of ppl (marshall lr?) playing constructed to pay for limited but idk if that is still a thing with current payouts.

i put a lot of money in a long time ago and have basically been bleeding out extremely slowly ever since they got rid of daily events.

constructed play is still sustainable if you're average or better. sealed you have to be pretty good to break even, draft is a losing game unless you're among the best players.

I've moved to online poker lately, but I definitely think I've been breaking even in the friendly sealeds, which admittedly are not the most fun event

yeah going infinite off limited is pretty tough, esp if the current set doesn't have many chase rares. I usually build the mtgo bankroll other places and play current limited for fun. I borrowed modern dredge from a friend to prep for the last gp and it really felt like I was printing money. playing a tier 1 constructed deck at above average competency in leagues seems like the way to go.

flashback drafts have also been pretty good to me, I like to get good at all these old formats w/ decent money rares. I think people walk into those queues expecting to lose / have a good time, so they can be weirdly high value.

flashback drafts are super soft yes. especially for sets prior to like innistrad or RTR which was when the biggest influx of players happened i think. most people just don't know which cards are good in old sets and don't care enough to learn for a 1 week event.

Yeah I think I underestimated how much of my winrate/card value was from flashback drafts. I was doing about 50/50 flashback and latest set drafts for a while - when draft leagues became a thing, I basically stopped the flashbacks. Kaladesh + Aether Revolt quickly dwindled what I had built up

http://i.imgur.com/34UOWtE.jpg

first draft went pretty well, I think I solved this format

seems decent

my first hand in the format was 4 basics, cycle land, 3/2 white lifelink 3 drop and an aven initiate, that i kept with a sigh thinking to myself 'this ain't cube any more kid'

The ol' draft Nicol Bolas strategy.

the browser triple threat...

3-0

http://i.imgur.com/kxuylpL.png

yeah, idk

Awesome, you must have been real fun to play against.

yeah i kept thinking how tilted i would've been to lose to this deck

i haven't really been playing this set but inferno jet is the thing i like most about it

I love that deck so much.

hey cider/anyone that knows is it better to fly into boston and take the train to providence or to just attempt a flight into providence? its ~$200 more to fly into providence but idk how easy to use the commuter train is

Take the train

it's pretty straightforward. silver line from logan to south station is prob 15 mins and that's where the providence train leaves from. if money is more of a consideration than time i wouldn't hesitate.

the commuter trains are fine, i've used that line a lot. the only caveat is the schedule is pretty sparse on the weekends and off-hours so i'd look at that ahead of time, there's sometimes as much as a 2 hour gap between trains.

in addition to it costing a bunch more its actually less travel time to fly to boston and take the train because otherwise i have to connect through jfk as there are no direct flights into providence. but it looks like the flight i want gets into boston later than the last train to providence so i might be stuck taking a direct flight anyway :/

yeah theres no trains between like midnight and 5am

are there are non-amtrack trains because the last one of those is like 9:36pm

yeah there's commuter trains that run until midnight http://www.mbta.com/schedules_and_maps/rail/lines/?route=PROVSTOU&direction=O&timing=W&RedisplayTime=Redisplay+Time

thanks thats perfect, the flight i want gets in at 10:10 so i should be good to catch one of those. ill buy you a drink if youre in providence that wknd

there's also bus lines that go between Boston and Providence - the Greyhound bus is like 10 bucks or something

http://i.imgur.com/fuLrklE.png

tfw you accidentally play your land instead of cycling it. apparently.

The internet's a cool place

So my gf and I bought one of those paired duel deck packs, Nissa v Ob Nixilis. It was really fun! Nice to know that it's basically the same game and the mechanics aren't inscrutable for someone who played in the mid '90s.

The black deck won 3 out of 3 though and feels way more interesting and powerful. It's too bad, because it doesn't seem like it would have been that difficult to make the green one a little less one-dimensional.

We don't want to go into the rabbit hole of actually buying packs and building decks, but would it be possible to buy a different duel set and then have four to choose from? Or are they at really different levels? I really like the idea of having some evenly-matched decks around where it could go either way. Since it's just the two of us playing, there's no point to one of us building the killer deck.

most of the duel decks are around the same power level so you could probably mix and match a bit. If you can find "blessed vs cursed" that's a recent one that people seem to think is well balanced. the only one i would avoid is "mind vs. might" as it's got a higher power level and i don't think it would mix and match well.

Sometimes, even when we aren't looking for it, adventure manages to find us. Who's ready to brave the unknown with #MTGXLN? pic.twitter.com/MAfLW5FhL2

— Magic: The Gathering (@wizards_magic) August 28, 2017

really like this special frame for the transformed land, nice bounceback after the gross amonkhet invocation ones

yeah i like it a lot

whoa that's a neat card