Magic: The Gathering C/D

man I just drafted the most insane Goblin Welder deck, I had the Scrap Servant, Tinker, a bunch of draw/discard stuff, 3 bomb artifact creatures, Mindslaver, not to mention Ancestral Recall & Mox Jet

went 0-3 obv

i hope you learned your lesson about goblin welder

the one game I won was a lot of fun though

I like this new Chaos Draft thing they're doing. its sort of the anti-Cube, there's no synergy and the decks are super weak but it's kind of fun anyway. there's something immensely satisfying about winning a match because you managed to rip a Marker Beetles off the top

every time I do one of those I regret it before the draft is even over

I've played a lot of higher powered chaos drafts with friends and I think it's actually a surprisingly great format once you start including masters packs because the decks aren't complete garbage and you get to look for weird new synergies across sets

back in the day "booster draft" just meant mix and matching 3 packs of whatever you wanted, since the sets weren't really designed for that back then. so I guess it gives me nostalgia for that time. I feel like a lot of modern draft formats hold your hand a little too hard, I miss having to figure out how to get the most out of your cards on your own. I agree the draft itself can be frustrating but the games are actually pretty fun

idk I feel like there are usually 2 cards in your deck that do anything. it does remind me of magic 20 years ago though. the gameplay reminds me of the game 20 years ago as much as the draft - a lot of draw go because both decks are so bad, you have a 1/3 and they have a 1/3.

it definitely challenges you to figure out how to generate card advantage and yeah it brings back some bad memories of "well I just drew 3 lands in a row, guess I lose". but I do love how each matchup is its own thing, you genuinely have no clue what your opponent is about to do

would be nice if they left the Vintage Cube up until we've defeated Covid-19. Drafts seem to be firing every 45 seconds or so.

wound up scrubbing out of one in about 30 minutes with this terrible R/B burn/storm deck, unless I'm just awful with it I have come to the conclusion that the red storm/Wheel of Fortune/Past in Flames decks simply DO NOT WORK. but what made this funny is that out of the 6 games I lost, 5 of them were due to god draws - turn 2 Grieselbrand, turn 2 Sundering Titan, turn 2 Channel/Emrakul, turn 3 Natural Order into Progenitous, and another one who played that "can't draw more than 1 card a turn" Walker and then Timetwistered, the bastard. funny that it all happened against a deck that could barely win on its own. though I did get one guy down to 8

as I don't play Arena/MTGO I'm fuckin jonesing. played socially-distant magic in the back yard the other day, which was fine, but man. just miss playing.

there was a full beta set on antiques roadshow that aired last wk, it was cool - https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/season/24/phoenix-az/appraisals/1993-magic-the-gathering-beta-cards--201901A18/

i haven't played in a couple years now but kinda looking forward to seeing the next set since its a totally new from-scratch one. i guess eldraine technically was too but it was so heavily based on real world stuff

Most of my knowledge of storm is received wisdom from lsv's streams and even he loses with it more often than not. I think it's intended to be a tier 2, "challenge yourself to win with this" deck. You're at the mercy of so much: what people at the table open and whether you're the only drafter, the draws you get off a draw 7 or Mind's Desire, and whether your opponent just incidentally locks you out with a Thalia or Sulfuric Vortex. but the wins are so satisfying when everything comes together. Wheel is sometimes a good card in storm decks, but PiF seems slightly too expensive

I'm still plugging away at Arena but mill in Eldraine wore thin pretty quick and Theros is also a so-so set. The mostly unconfirmed rumors of Ikoria look enticing though

yea Storm is arguably the worst combo option in Cube because it relies on getting so much specific stuff and a lot of the cards that really make it work are in high demand anyway. last time I drafted Storm I had the Lotus, a Mox, Ancestral, Sol Ring, and most of the cards I wanted (like Yawgmoth's Will) and still only managed 1-2. in general I think decks like that and Splinter Twin are sort of a trap (cuz who knows when the key cards are coming). even Reanimator can sorta be that way, for one you really really want to grab the Grieselbrand, for two if someone nabs the Putrid Imp or Oona's Prowler you're kinda screwed. the decks I've had the most success with are way more open ended, stuff like Green beatdown (Questing Beast is such an MVP type card, it's nearly first pick material) or standard U/W control, man I forgot how great Force of Will is in formats like this

another cool revelation is how much stuff gets nerfed by Containment Priest, the fact that they gave that Flash is pretty funny

I've found most success starting with dual lands and blue card filtering/draw like Ponder and Preordain. Lets you easily move into whatever combo is open (Storm, Twin, Reanimator), or control like UW, and can even be decent in UG ramp. By contrast, if you start with Storm or Reanimator pieces, the cards are useless outside those archetypes. And yeah, like you said, if anyone fights you for the key pieces, you're screwed. I don't think Twin is as narrow as those two decks because other than Twin itself, the key cards aren't useless, e.g. Kiki as a value card, Exarch as a blocker, Conscripts as a finisher

yeah twin is very strong in cube - it leads you towards drafting cards you want in your deck anyway (blue and red cards, counterspells) and it's really not that hard to put together a 2 card combo in limited. plus your backup deck if the twin pieces aren't there is going to be fine. in vintage cube especially, people don't play a lot of instant speed removal, so the combo wins at a pretty high %. and if it doesn't, you probably have some planeswalkers or something to win with - you don't just fold to a counterspell.

you can find yourself accidentally drafting a U/R deck with a bunch of great cards but no real way to win though

don't sound like great cards to me if they can't win the game

cube is more about not-losing than about winning. the strong decks are usually doing something very powerful, very fast and if you have the right answer for that (a counterspell vs combo, a wrath vs a mono-colored deck) then it doesn't take much to pull ahead w/ a fair blue deck - your win cons barely matter, and you'll incidentally end up with some planeswalkers or creatures that attack. when I'm playing cube to win I force fair blue and take counterspells over basically anything non-power.

cards I think are underrated:
riftwing cloudskate
force spike (sadly out of the current iteration) / mana tithe / daze
moat
karakas
ashiok and shelldock isle are underrated insofar as they should never be passed and sometimes are

overrated:
signets

tangle wire is overrated in that it sees play in greater than 0% of decks

every deck should start with a tangle wire in play

are there really people who haven't figured out shelldock isle still

ashiok is 2 colors at least

err wait its hybrid isnt it whoops

theres like 50 cards of every planeswalker now and i hate it

no it's not hybrid, so there's def some people who should be passing it pack 3, but it's a solid p1p1 over anything but power.

Control Magic seems a bit overrated to me. I used to 1st pick that card but it's never really performed well. Treachery on the other hand is still good

one 'gift' card I've gotten a ton of utility out of is Flickerwisp. I love that that card's still in there, it has interactions with like half the cards in the Cube

what's this Modern Horizons set they're doing? did they really print a whole new set that's legal in Modern but not Standard? pretty cool

not cool, its bad

it broke all formats its legal in while ruining the 'sanctity' of modern only containing cards that were considered sane enough for standard at some point

yeah it basically ruined modern and legacy

fun limited set though

mind expounding on that a bit? just curious. I never actually played Modern, even when I was still big into the game. That new FoW seems like a bad, bad idea

look at wrenn and six and imagine that card in a format with wasteland (and lots of decks built around 1 toughness creatures)

and in modern Hogaak put dredge back over the edge

also a bunch of decks have to play snow basics now because arcum's astrolabe is stupid efficient and combos with various stuff, which is a pain since now even your few basic lands are hard to come by

to be fair now that hogaak is banned there are a lot of cool new modern decks but its weird for such an established format to have changed so much overnight and some peoples decks theyve been playing for ages probably suck now

isn't Wrenn and Six banned in Legacy? Wasteland ain't modern legal is it?

Acrum's Astrolabe...that's super annoying

it is now, yeah. we're back to "normal" but modern is still pretty different than it was before

i am pretty tempted by the thopter foundry modern deck but the game has been so unstable the past couple years that i'm not at all willing to re-enter right now. if that deck's still there and decent in a year i might trade off the remainder of my collection for it

yeah I have pretty little desire to get back into organized paper play anytime soon - that's assuming paper events even happen again in the next 6 months. feel like coronaworld might be a catalyst for them moving pretty much all serious OP away from paper, can you imagine going to a GP right now? it's also hard to imagine wanting to go to a local draft again anytime soon, and that was most of my paper play w/ strangers in the last half year. still been playing a lot of sealed at home with my s/o (mystery boosters are fun) and MTGO still exists.

maybe for the best. when I was big into the game as a teenager I lived for those kind of events but at some point realized I pretty much never had fun at them. on the contrary I've had some pretty bad experiences. I did manage to finally live my dream of making a unique & funny combo deck that was actually very good, wound up dominating one of those tournaments until I got deck checked and DQ'd because I didn't shuffle my sleeves properly. made me feel like quitting the game for good. managed to do it again about a decade later with an even weirder combo deck based around Laboratory Maniac and a very bizarre rules interaction (which had to be confirmed by a judge in 4 separate matches) but after playing perfectly all day I messed up Game 3 of the semis in a pretty simple way

of course these things are poorly run slogs for a number of other reasons

I still enjoyed going to gps for the social aspect but in the last year I definitely turned into a side event player. Legacy had been my go-to format but competitive legacy went from hanging by a thread to dead this year. I really enjoyed my one pro tour a few years ago but have zero desire to qualify for the players tour or grind arena competitively. I still play a lot of magic but the high level competitive play has really lost any appeal.

Yeah basically same for a while now. The last tournament I went to was PT Dominaria, and though I had fun, I honestly regret the amount of testing I put into it. Constructed is always gonna feel like a chore to me, and you practice for PTs to get to other PTs, and the PT is always gonna have Constructed. The realization really made me rethink my relationship to competitive Magic. Now with a young son and COVID-19 around, even limited GPs are the last thing on my mind. I'll stick to Arena

MTG Flashback Stories:

First game I ever played was in late-December 1993. My friend and I each bought a starter deck (which was basically random 60 cards including land) and a booster or two. We each shuffled our cards into our own massive deck (no deckbuilding). My ante that first game was Craw Wurm, which at 6/4 was the biggest creature either of us had scene. I lost the game and my Craw Wurm, which seemed like a catastrophe at the time (lol).

In the next few months, the game was like the wild west: you would show up with friends, acquaintances, game nights with a deck or two and play for ante. The pressure of cutting for ante was intense! There were no card lists available so you only knew about cards that you had or had seen in games. There were no rules for deck construction, so people would be playing anything from 60 card to 200 card decks. I witnessed my friend use demonic attorney twice in two games to take four cards off some kid. I thought the kid was going to cry. I won six card in one massive multiplayer game.

Some of my fondest MTG stories are from Summer of 1994 (Legends Summer). Multicolor cards broke everyone's minds ("are they allowed to do that?").

First tournament in 1994, I ran a UR control/ramp/burn deck: mana flares, high tides, candelabra of thawnos, lots of counterspells, lightning bolts, and disintegrate/fireball for finish. I don't think I had any creatures, which was radical at the time. I won one game by mana shorting my opponent's library of alexandria. I won another game by using mirror universe when I was at 4 and my opponent was at 17 or 18. I got knocked out later because I got land screwed in my opening hand two games in a row and didn't know that the formerly unofficial mulligan rule had been adopted for tournament play. This is pre-DCI days, pre-ban lists.

I think I started in '96, I was 10 years old and remember walking past the Magic displays in stores and being very curious about it. First pack was Fallen Empires and I pulled a Deep Spawn which I immediately thought was the coolest card ever (looking back...holy shit it sucks). Read the rules and was heartbroken to find out that not only could you not save mana from one turn to the next, but you actually got penalized for doing so.

Some random memories from the card shop in those times: lots and lots of group games, full of Mana Flares and Howling Mines, where no one wanted to attack each other because they didn't want to make enemies and eventually we'd either deck ourselves or get Fireballed for 30. My obsession with flying creatures, which I thought were severely underrated, and the endless U/G decks I built that would attempt to win by constantly casting Giant Growth on a Storm Crow. Discovering that Scaled Wurm was a common (holy shit!!!), spending 40 cents to get 4 copies of it, needing to play several games until I actually got to cast one, only to have it immediately Terrored (learned a hard lesson that day). All the crazy "wall-o-text" cards that were written in such a bizarre way that no one at the store could figure out what they actually did. Playing my first tournament and getting DQ'd because I had Hydroblast in the sideboard instead of Blue Elemental Blast (I think Ice Age had just rotated out). Getting all excited for Visions, buying 5 packs with my birthday money and pulling THREE Squandered Resources, a card which I immediately declared as the worst rare in the set. I still have a binder of cards from those days.

ikoria looks appealing enough - the creature stacking mechanic doesn't have as much built-in safety as bestow so games will probably be swingy. cycling is always welcome.

also how dare former you disrespect squandered resources, one of the extremely rare "hat trick" cards that has the complete package of good rules text, art, and flavor text

the endless U/G decks I built that would attempt to win by constantly casting Giant Growth on a Storm Crow.

This the realness. I had a friend who played a 200 card mono green deck with numerous Scryb Sprites, Llanowar Elves, and Gaea's Liege. Just a big pile of green blah.

I am now remembering one of my earliest very focused decks was a control deck with a bunch of Prodigal Sorcerers, Psychic Venoms, and Counterspells. It was very satisfying watching your opponent slowly kill themselves by tapping psychic-venomed lands only to counter whatever it was they were casting, then pinging their last few points of life away. I remember beating a guy whose entire deck was lightning bolts, other direct damage, and mountains that no one had been able to beat.

I didn't play much from 1997-2004 and then picked up again in Kamigawa and played pretty seriously through Time Spiral. Intermittently since and mostly just sealed.

that mutate mechanic is interesting but I suspect in paper Magic it's gonna lead to a ton of misplays. MTGO should at least make it very clear what a creature is or isn't

Companion is very cool, love outside the box mechanics like that though I will point out several TCGs were effectively ruined by including 'side deck' stuff like this. that said the fact that there's a deck building restriction is a good solution. really hoping for one that requires you to play a 250 card deck. also imagine some people are a bit scared they're gonna push the envelope and accidentally create some really consistent combo deck

also how dare former you disrespect squandered resources, one of the extremely rare "hat trick" cards that has the complete package of good rules text, art, and flavor text

I was still 10 when Visions came out (I guess I started playing at 9? damn). All I fucking wanted was a Shivan Dragon or Force of Nature but I kept pulling Fungusaurs. Anyway I could not for the life of me understand why someone would sacrifice a land just for one extra mana. Back then I thought of Magic as just a "build up your army" sort of game.

Ikoria mechanics revealed. I understand that flavor partially dictates mechanics, but this feels like a year's worth of complexity in one set (felt similarly about War of the Spark). I thought Bestow was borderline too complex as a mechanic and Mutate is probably moreso. Despite that, the set looks fun so far