i don't usually like tribal sets but Ixalan looks very tight so far
― ciderpress, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 18:56 (six years ago) link
as long as it feels like there are sufficient directions to take a draft. the development article yesterday was interesting in explaining how they tried to give the 2 color pairs within the 3 colour tribes their own identity but we'll see how well that was realized
― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 19:56 (six years ago) link
yeah i was reassured by stoddard's claim that they were intentionally trying to fall well short of lorwyn style critical mass tribal
― ciderpress, Wednesday, 13 September 2017 21:38 (six years ago) link
yes I was also glad to see that (though I think Lorwyn was fun to play with, if not very interesting to draft)
― Vinnie, Thursday, 14 September 2017 17:35 (six years ago) link
my first impression is that this is going to be a weird set for limited
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 15 September 2017 16:00 (six years ago) link
the treasure tokens are interesting since it enables 5c blue instead of green's usual monopoly on being the base color for that archetype
― ciderpress, Friday, 15 September 2017 17:38 (six years ago) link
blue also has better aggro cards than it usually gets. good set for blue all around
― ciderpress, Friday, 15 September 2017 17:42 (six years ago) link
aggressively costed fliers and tons of tempo plays in blue. looks like that will be what 'aggro' is in this format. hard to tell how reliable treasure will be to support 5c or even just 2/3 card splashes, there is scant other fixing.
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 15 September 2017 17:55 (six years ago) link
control-ish decks probably want to start in white or black for the abundant lifegain. white preferably because you have some dino payoff built in. black looks like kind of a mess, may only be a supporting color for one of its two tribal types.
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 15 September 2017 18:00 (six years ago) link
there sure are a lot of 2-drops in this set
― ciderpress, Friday, 15 September 2017 21:36 (six years ago) link
set seems fun so far but the merfolk deck is the most frustrating to play against limited deck they've made in years
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 26 September 2017 16:04 (six years ago) link
My prerelease involved lots of long board stalls, that mostly ended with someone landing a giant dino.
― Moodles, Tuesday, 26 September 2017 16:13 (six years ago) link
my draft games haven't stalled at all but they've mostly involved blue which has a ton of evasion in this set
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 26 September 2017 16:15 (six years ago) link
3 good fliers and an unblockable at common, plus the aggressively costed flying aura
1 draft, 1 trophy. think i may retire. p sure i've already seen the most the format has to offer.
https://i.imgur.com/BWajvVS.jpg
― Roberto Spiralli, Saturday, 30 September 2017 02:33 (six years ago) link
^^^ilx needs a "like" function
― call all destroyer, Saturday, 30 September 2017 03:01 (six years ago) link
People seem to be really down on it.Is it as bad as everyone says?
― Moodles, Saturday, 30 September 2017 03:25 (six years ago) link
Having not done a single draft but having watched several, it doesn't look promising to me. in what I watched, there were not many tough decisions to make while drafting OR playing. gameplay was pretty run-of-the-mill, not far from a core set. few strong build-arounds to encourage weird decks. I'd love to be wrong and I still intend to hit up the sealed Hong Kong GP in October
― Vinnie, Saturday, 30 September 2017 05:24 (six years ago) link
some ppl were saying it was one of the worst sets, or the actual worst set, within like 2 days of the prerelease, which you can draw your own conclusions about. it looks to me like they sacrificed raw power for synergy, but the synergy is also not particularly strong. i think there are a limited amount of decks there but they do seem p fun. so for the limited directions to go and the lack of build-arounds i suspect it will not have staying power, but i think it should be okay in the meantime.
― Roberto Spiralli, Saturday, 30 September 2017 13:57 (six years ago) link
my prediction (of course) is that rivals will be a significant improvement and the legacy of the 2 set block era going into the 1 set block era will be that the BBA formats were all, or nearly all, better than the respective AAA formats
― Roberto Spiralli, Saturday, 30 September 2017 14:01 (six years ago) link
so far i don't think it's that bad, just average
― ciderpress, Saturday, 30 September 2017 14:42 (six years ago) link
It seems bad in comparison to HOU drafts which were great. Cycling really is the most interesting mechanic.
Most of my success in XLN draft so far has come from black red pirate aggro, but I think blue green tempo is the strongest archetype. Dinosaur decks seem way too slow.
― AlanSmithee, Saturday, 30 September 2017 16:40 (six years ago) link
have been doing a few sealed leagues because i'm planning to play the mocs monthly on sunday. unsurprisingly, a synergy set does not make for a great sealed format. you can actually get a reasonable amount of fixing in green and blue especially but the synergy focus plus the depressed power level means you can easily have a pool with nothing powerful in it to splash. so far i actually think the best colour combo might be golgari, which is funny given that pair's technical omission from the set.
speaking of the omitted colour pairs, i'm sure everyone has figured this out now but favorable winds is the missing WU 'gold' common. that deck is very good. i guess the chupacabra is the BG one, although grim captain's call kinda sorta fits too. i'm not rushing the break the BG explore archetype in draft anytime soon tho.
― Roberto Spiralli, Wednesday, 4 October 2017 19:41 (six years ago) link
hey did any of you guys end up going to gp pvd? how did you get on?
― Roberto Spiralli, Thursday, 5 October 2017 18:02 (six years ago) link
haha yeah my team flamed out and couldn't convert 5-2 to d2. we def put too many lands in two decks. I think explore and treasures make it really hard to have 'the right' manabase in this format.
― iatee, Thursday, 5 October 2017 18:21 (six years ago) link
oof sorry man. v much agree on the challenge with land count.
― Roberto Spiralli, Thursday, 5 October 2017 18:29 (six years ago) link
what decks did you put together?
― Roberto Spiralli, Thursday, 5 October 2017 18:45 (six years ago) link
we had one very good dinosaurs deck w/ huatli + settle the wreckage, one pretty good BR pirates deck that I played and one mediocre UG merfolk tempo deck that could steal matches from bad players but was underpowered. my deck needed to be 16 lands and the merfolk deck actually needed to be 15 lands. I got pretty unlucky regardless - I had some good rares (captivating crew, barrage) but I was basically never in a spot to really benefit from them - I had captivating crew on board twice over 9 rounds, once as a chump blocker, and once in a game where he resolved the draw 7. I drew into 9/10 lands so many times in the tournament that I lost count.
I think our cardpool was solid, so mostly bummed about misbuilding our decks / getting fairly unlucky. I didn't even feel like I made many in-game misplays since I just didn't have any opportunities to. with such an enormous sideboard I think there's lots of room to 'misplay' in not boarding in the right 8 cards - I think that's the area where the pros really get their edge in this format.
one weird thing was how everyone seemed to match our seating configuration - our dino deck was center, and he played against like 5-6 dino decks. I played pirates and played against 5-6 pirate decks.
― iatee, Thursday, 5 October 2017 19:14 (six years ago) link
huh that is weird. and i guess the way the tribes are distributed you are almost guaranteed everyone has 1 dino deck, 1 pirate, and then whatever's best out of what's left. also, variance in team sealed for this type of set has to be huge, some people are just going to open disgusting full-on synergy decks.
― Roberto Spiralli, Thursday, 5 October 2017 19:37 (six years ago) link
ha yeah we sat next to PGO r7 at 5-2 and next to PVD/Stark/Efro r8 and I was like "well if these guys are doing horribly too, maybe all that matters is whether you open up an insane tribal pool" - d2 results seemed to suggest otherwise...
― iatee, Thursday, 5 October 2017 20:26 (six years ago) link
I'm thinking of locking in ramunap as my deck choice for the pt, it seems like the format probably won't be broken in any other direction by then and the deck seems easier to play than temur emergy.
― iatee, Tuesday, 10 October 2017 00:00 (six years ago) link
as long as people aren't maindecking hate i think that deck will be good
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 10 October 2017 00:18 (six years ago) link
It's a reasonable choice, although I think energy is stronger. But then I've been playing an assortment of control varieties, so what do I know?
― Moodles, Tuesday, 10 October 2017 00:20 (six years ago) link
I feel like red gives me the best chance at just getting lucky and hazoreting people out, whereas energy requires playing super well. I have still played 0 games of standard in my life fwiw, though I'm gonna start grinding leagues soon I guess.
― iatee, Tuesday, 10 October 2017 01:04 (six years ago) link
my other plan is to have everyone pass me this deck again:
https://i.imgur.com/qAG9AfB.jpg
― iatee, Tuesday, 10 October 2017 01:07 (six years ago) link
I think Ramunap is a good choice for someone with not much experience. I played Block Constructed Robots at PT Nagoya for the same reason: I never play constructed, it was easy to play, it required little format knowledge. OTOH, my 4-color control deck at the next PT was a train wreck because I never knew what was a threat. If I ever make it back to the PT, I'm just playing the easiest deck
― Vinnie, Tuesday, 10 October 2017 01:14 (six years ago) link
i suspect this red deck is harder to play than most standard RDWs
― ciderpress, Tuesday, 10 October 2017 01:20 (six years ago) link
seems like all the pros are pretty dismissive about remunap now...
― iatee, Wednesday, 11 October 2017 16:07 (six years ago) link
There are some good options for lifegain, good answers to Hazoret, and ways to blow up their desertsAll combined, red is definitely weaker in current standard.
― Moodles, Wednesday, 11 October 2017 16:15 (six years ago) link
rdw is always better than people say it is
― ciderpress, Wednesday, 11 October 2017 16:28 (six years ago) link
yeah also everyone agreeing that it's bad might actually make it a good time to play it
― iatee, Wednesday, 11 October 2017 23:03 (six years ago) link
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/mono-red-at-worlds/
pvddr comments at the end basically boil down to red is still just fine, tier 1, although he wouldn't necessarily recommend it
― Roberto Spiralli, Thursday, 12 October 2017 12:53 (six years ago) link
i honestly don't know how true that is - the rug decks mostly rely on landing a single threat that you're opponent can't answer and then just riding it to victory whereas red requires you to make some real tough decisions about sequencing. also i think there's more skill to the mirror. i think its a good deck - its likely what im playing at nationals this wekend - but like most standard decks it has real play to it
fwiw i wouldnt lock in my deck this early - there's almost no benefit to doing it this far out and nothing in standard is complex enough that you couldn't pick it up closer the the event and still become proficient. also format knowledge as a whole is more important than deck knowledge imo so just playing lots of ~this standard~ with any reasonable deck has real value. finally a lot of yr % is going to come from the flex slots you use to tune yr deck and you're going to make better choices just playing the format for three weeks and not having blinders on
also if you want to borrow standard cards on mtgo msg me ive been playing lots in prep as well
― ( ^_^) (Lamp), Friday, 13 October 2017 01:01 (six years ago) link
I 5-0d my first standard league with it monored so clearly it's the best deck haha. I def got a sense of how the deck has nuanced sequencing decisions, though I think that's probably a skill that's fairly transferable from the decks/formats I play a lot, more than like, midrange mirror sideboarding in standard would be. I may take you up on borrowing stuff, I have access to red/temur on a friend's account but not control stuff. I'm all ears on advice in general.
― iatee, Friday, 13 October 2017 16:23 (six years ago) link
anyone have any deep thoughts on standard? I've been brewing this deck with a friend who's also going: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/801143#paper
it has okay temur/red matchups but gets super wrecked by that stupid abzan token deck, which I keep playing again and again online. not sure deep down if it's a better call than monored, or maybe even mardu vehicles. I don't really want to play temur.
I do feel like I have a pretty good sense of standard after grinding a ton of leagues online, though I really have no clue what to play.
― iatee, Monday, 23 October 2017 02:19 (six years ago) link
tokens deck seems like the sort of deck thats overrepresented online due to being cheaper than other decks + gimmicky
― ciderpress, Monday, 23 October 2017 02:20 (six years ago) link
Mono red has pretty much dried up over here. I've been seeing tons of both temur and sultai energy, a fair amount of control variants, and then just dribs and drabs of other decks. Tokens is absolutely not a big player IRL.
― Moodles, Monday, 23 October 2017 02:34 (six years ago) link
lamp, any chance you have mardu vehicles stuff online? (or anyone else)
― iatee, Monday, 23 October 2017 02:43 (six years ago) link
okay I've decided to lock in monored
― iatee, Thursday, 26 October 2017 01:09 (six years ago) link
I'm doing alright with it online and the temur matchup isn't unwinnable or anything