Magic: The Gathering C/D

yeah i came to the same conclusion though there might be a good heart of kiran deck too

Modern GPs in Hartford, Providence and Toronto next year, maybe it's time for me to relearn that format

yeah modern seems kinda fun right now actually, that new humans deck is cool. I think unclaimed territory might open up some other tribal strategies eventually. the format still has the same core issues it always has w/ super linear strategies / sb cards etc. but overall the meta is a little less 'burn/tron/valakut/affinity' than it used to be.

well i'm one of the valakuts so

you don't have to be...

sorry iatee i dont look at ilx v much anymore - coincidentally i have been playing vehicles this week and can lend you the deck on mtgo if you still want

are you preparing for this anyone btw? i can ask abt adding you to our group chatz if you want

I have 2 guys that I'm going with so kinda, but we're not a formal team or anything. I'd be up for joining your chat if it's nbd.

how are you feeling about vehicles? the sense I've gotten from playing against it is that it's a little too clunky after rotation, also has pretty bad mana. but it does play a lot of sledgehammer cards. I've liked monored in testing, I don't feel like the temur matchup is unwinnable or anything.

the online meta is weird though, I think it might be really misleading. competitive leagues are...not really that competitive.

there's been a lot of players - even really good players - trying extremely fringe-seeming strategies in the comp leagues. i've been playing against u/b/x tezzeret decks all standard season and they've basically put up no 5-0 lists which makes me think its eitger a) they really are bad or b) are so good that ppl are deliberately conceding to conceal info

of all the hazoret decks i think its the most versatile and powerful. the mana is better than last season's although its still worse than your other options. unclaimed territory is legit good and dragonskull summit also helps. i played a small warm-up tournament and two leagues with it and have only lost once and convinced someone else to play two leagues to a 9-1 record but im the only one in our group that really likes the deck still because it can just be so clunky and poorly-matched based on how it draws. conversely it nuts really hard and feels unbeatable with a good draw

I think I can actually just make the deck online, I have monored and can just rent hearts / courtyards.

do you have a list you like?

I just top 8'd the Hong Kong GP! My top 8 draft deck was excellent - thought I had a shot of winning the whole thing (I think they'll have it up on the website soon.) Lost in the quarterfinals in three close games, even after my opponent mulled to 5 game 3. I think I could have played a bit differently, and luck played a part, but obv the weekend was a success on the whole

that's fantastic, congratulations!

congrats vinne!

whoa congrats

awesome, great job!

Thanks y'all

damn homie gj. ilx takes over the pt

iatee - I'm on my phone but I'll send you a list I liked. I 5-0d a league this wknd but idk how good the deck is. when do you leave for NM?

thurs morning - I'm prob just gonna play monored tbh, since it's what I know and I'm not gonna have a lot of time to test in the next few days

GOOD LUCK ILXORS

Went 3-5, felt like I got pretty unlucky overall, wasn't super outplayed or anything. Most of my matches went to G3.

My friends who decided not to wimp out and stuck with that mono white vampires deck we were brewing ended up doing pretty well (8-2 in matches) and were all over the coverage. That deck really isn't that good though, I've played like 15 leagues with it.

I mean it's okay. But they def had good hands and the deck has some real bad ones.

Oh cool, that was your team? That's rad!

PTs don't have a day 2 cutoff anymore, right? Good luck tomorrow, you can still place well

no, 4-4's the cut off :(

my draft deck was a pretty good but not insane merfolk deck - a 2-1 deck that I 1-2d with. my only rare was the control magic, but I had a lot of cheap creatures and 4 run agrounds. merfolk seemed pretty open but I opened poorly. I won r1 vs ur pirates, getting him with the +5/+5 spell out of nowhere. lost to legion's landing r2g1 and got color screwed r2g3. lost to a ub deck that splashed sunbird's invocation r3 - just got buried in card advantage.

with monored I won the mirror pretty cleanly r4, lost to black cartouche on a hydra out of 4c energy r5, lost a close mirror r6 where my opponent mulling helped him get his hazoret online first. r7 lost again to 4c energy, actually beat a cartouche g2 but g3 he just had too many good cards. and won my pride match r8 vs esper reanimator.

I got to play magic arena, which was pretty cool. I think it'll be big.

this was my draft deck:

2 Jungle Delver
2 Shaper Apprentice
2 Shipwreck Looter
2 Ixalli's Keeper
1 Atzocan Archer
1 Sailor of Means
1 Vineshaper Mystic
1 Ravenous Daggertooth
1 Tempest Caller
1 Jade Guardian
1 Prosperous Pirates
4 Run Aground
1 River Herald's Boon
1 Entrancing Melody
1 Emergent Growth
1 Chart a Course
1 Crash the Ramparts
8 Forest 8 Islands

my friend who played our mono-w brew ended up 22nd, I kinda feel a tinge of regret for not being ballsy enough to play it and instead didn't even convert my safe-choice-deck into d2. he did get very lucky and knew it - every time he was on camera he had insane draws and not the 3 legions conquistador 4 plains hands. I think I maybe underrated how good the deck is against temur. I just wasn't winning online but he went 6-1 vs temur in the end, so at the very least it's probably favored. we noticed that pros were way better at figuring out how to play the matchup than everyone else. unsurprisingly I guess. anyway, I had fun, maybe one day when I have more time I'll try to grind my way back on.

glad to hear you had an ok time. its so hard to q for a pt i wish it were a little more rewarding to play one although ive never q'd for anywhere good, which might change things

boy i hope iconic masters is fun

ixalan draft hasn't been horrendous, it was just shallow. there were fun elements for sure, and games played out well more often than i'd have expected, but the experience of actually drafting was really bad. the only draft strategy was to try not to trainwreck. on reflection, i do think i liked 3x amonkhet even less, the big difference being the games played poorly in that format. up to amonkhet i was definitely still in that noobish phase of any limited is good limited but that format broke me out of that, and i had no compunction about just quitting on ixalan and doing something else.

i haven't loved any of the masters sets in draft yet, theyve all ended up being 5-10 different "on rails" synergy decks except MM3 which was just horribly unbalanced in favor of UBx control

i liked mm2 a lot but it definitely fit that description. i ended up lukewarm on mm3 and vm. i wish i had played mm1, that seems to be the one that gets the most positive mentions.

I think ixalan ended up being a pretty bad format. in the end everyone just realized that you wanted to be playing bogles.

i did my first draft in a few weeks a couple days ago and an opponent played the 4/3 2 drop, one with the wind turn 3, mark of the vampire turn 4, and i died with ixalan's binding in hand and no fourth land. a truly fitting final memory of the format.

looked thru the iconic masters cardset again and altho there are clear themes they are not anything like as deliberate or synergy heavy as we have seen previously. hopefully a positive sign.

Basically the more transparent a set is about having you pick from a menu of strategies, the less I like it. Tribal sets like Ixalan are the worst offenders here

an opponent played the 4/3 2 drop, one with the wind turn 3, mark of the vampire turn 4

These are the games of this format that I hate, but I don't think they're all like that. Maybe one in four. This set plays a bit better than I first thought, though drafting is boring

played a bunch of IMA over the weekend. it's good. v much less on rails than other masters sets

The Immortal Sun
6
Legendary Artifact

Players can't activate Loyalty abilities of Planeswalkers.

At the beginning of your draw step, draw an additional card.

Spells you cast cost 1 less to cast.

Creatures you control get +1/+1.

cube staple at the very least

presumably they put all of their energy into making this weird ass set play really well because they appear to have invested no effort at all into design aesthetics or flavour. case in point, this 'blood sun' card is p revolting next to the beautiful design of blood moon, but i imagine it will play much much better.

urzatron decks certainly like it since it turns off ghost quarter but not their bullshit

i loled when i saw the squadron hawk vampire in the card gallery again

have any of you sold off a lot of cards at once and what channel did you do it through? i don't really play irl constructed anymore and don't want to own 2k worth of modern cards

ive buylisted stuff at GPs before and it was always a pretty good process - once with scg once with face to face and once with some smaller midwestern vendor. i sent them a list of what i had (or in scg's case used their on-line trade tool) and indicated which gp i'd be at. in general i got like 75-80% of what id have gotten selling directly to other players but i got paid in cash and it took very little time

I've sent a bunch of cards to cardkingdom and was always pretty happy w/ their grading. I think you probably get worse prices at a GP because people who are dumping cards are more willing to take whatever. kinda case by case though, sometimes vendors at events have very good buylist prices for random cards.

rip standard

what happened

loooool

okay I don't keep up with Standard at all but wtf at banning those four cards specifically. how the hell is that land ban worthy ??? Attune w/ Aether? wow

my guess is that event attendance is way down and ixalan has sold like shit to the point where they're okay doing heavy handed stuff to make it relevant. i don't know anyone who's actually played this standard willingly. anecdotally pretty much all my mtg friends and acquaintances have tuned out and are waiting to see what happens with dominaria