Magic: The Gathering C/D

I miss them too, with this set comes the realization that sometimes a one-land hand is just a one-land hand

this set feels very Cube-ish, not just in that it's swingy but also because there are a ton of powerful, high-impact cards at uncommon - very good legendary creatures, the Sagas which can be tremendous value, even the lands which can sacrifice for a pretty big effect. also it kind of welcomes playing 3 or 4 colors so you see a lot of decks that can do a ton of crazy shit.

not wild about the fact that there are 2 board sweepers, was kind of nice that the last set didn't have any

also I strongly suspect in a week or two the format's gonna be all 4-color snow & W/R aggro boast decks

by which I mean Equipment decks, as the RW uncommon legend & the Runesearching equipment are pretty nutso

As a weaker player I love and rely on the board-sweepers.

also I just found out that Valki is going for 92 tix (!!!!!!) so I am really trying to scrub out of this league fast so I can sell it

everyone switched to arena for draft so mtgo has supply issues for new cards playable in modern/legacy

also why is Tibalt's Trickery valuable? what are people planning do to with it?

people are playing gimmick decks where they use it to cast a turn 2 ugin in standard, or cascade into a turn 3 emrakul in modern. these decks fizzle half the time and auto-lose to any counterspell but some folks just want to flip coins for wins

hah best of luck to 'em

gotta say I dig the "randomly mill 1-3 cards" thing, makes it feel like blackjack

to clarify, the modern deck is: 4 violent outburst, 1 tibalt's trickery, 4 emrakuls, and then 51 lands of various utility (cycling, etc). you mulligan to violent outburst and then cast it on turn 3 and it hits trickery which counters it and turns it into an emrakul. if you can't find a violent outburst you lose, if your trickery gets countered you lose.

obviously if you get thoughtseized you probably lose too, have to draw another one of your 3 outbursts

yeah I cannot see that deck having any tournament success once it's out in the wild

and yet if I worked for the DCI I'd ban it for being too stupid

this might be the most skill intensive non-Cube limited format I've ever played. there are so many weird little things you have to keep track of. even how you tap your lands matters a lot.

yes. there's a great many subtleties and i haven't quite got it wired. i've made a couple entries into this weekend's arena open and gotten wrecked.

the snow decks are really strong but its a headache to play through the board stall-y mirror matches they create so i've mostly been drafting aggro

I've only played the format a small amount so far, but I've been disappointed by how many long board stall games I've had. I used to enjoy that type of game more but Arena has really changed my preferences

Also I was shocked to start seeing Strixhaven previews. I know we're not in preview season yet but I don't think I even know all the Kaldhiem cards yet!

the relentless barrage of new sets plus the constant overly pushed cards that require bannings has really put me off of playing in general. The main thing I miss at the moment is the social aspect of drafting in person, and that's not happening any time soon.

theres still the same 4 "real" sets per year as there always was, they just do a million supplemental products now. i ignore them

this is true, and I mostly ignored the other stuff too, but the ramping up on Modern-relevant sets made that more difficult

I've only played the format a small amount so far, but I've been disappointed by how many long board stall games I've had. I used to enjoy that type of game more but Arena has really changed my preferences

― Vinnie, Saturday, February 20, 2021 5:00 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah definitely noticed I have to leave like 40 minutes open to play a match, I’ve had to concede a few cuz they took way too long and I had things to do

One thing that makes this set extra complex is a bunch of creatures have types like “Elf Berserker” where both elves and berserkers have their own tribal shit going on

most of the tribal cards are at rare so you don't have to pay attention to it much unless you take one to draft around. the only playable common that cares about tribal is Squash

got destroyed at the Open today, very discouraging

I suppose it doesn't help that every other uncommon has like 3 paragraphs of text on it

its certainly been a real trial by fire set to get back into drafting with. not a favorite but i don't think it's a stinker either

Sad that I missed the first limited Arena Open (I really, really miss limited GPs) but the timing of the Opens is always a little rough for me here in Asia. But I probably couldn't have helped myself from rebuying like five times, so guess I saved myself some money?

i qualified for day 2, and, yes, i think it was like the fifth try lol smdh @ myself. here in honolulu, entry for the second day is from 4am — 6am, so i will be pulling an all-nighter. ahaha, aha. god help me.

Congrats! I think you've got a worse time zone than me for this

thank you. yea, 4am is just about the least convenient time... 25 minutes until showtime and i am inebriated enough to not give a shit that the format is sealed deck and luck is going to be the major deciding factor ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i don't really understand why they have a 2 hour window to check in when you can play the matches at any time during the day

that struck me as odd, too. i'd guess it might be to get people in the door early so players won't be waiting around for pairings, but idk.

or, more likely, it's because it's (up to) 7 best-of-three matches, and that could take close to 10 hours including breaks and such

went 4-2. almost every match was super close. i had a really good pool, but my own sweeper ended up losing it for me in the last one, owing to my forgetting about that dumb troll that can make itself indestructible. ah well. it was lots of fun. it turns out i like this level of play. this was my first time and i'm probably going to do more of these.

i'm looking forward to the next constructed one now that i have some decks. not a huge fan of sealed in most sets and this one's no exception

just lived the dream and 0-9'd a Sealed league

I've kinda gotten back into the groove of enjoying long matches, so now I'm *thumbs up* on Kaldheim. Though still probably happier when RW comes together and I can finish the draft in half the time

kaldheim definitely plays against my strengths as a drafter since some of the 'open lanes' are just really weak even when you're getting all the cards e.g. WB midrange is always open but can't beat much. in most sets after my initial exploration i like to find an underappreciated deck and get really good at drafting it but i haven't found one here.

basically, battlefield raptor + goldvein pick, tuskeri firewalker + run amok, and icehide troll + berg strider are the only 3 winning ideas at common, everything else requires specific higher rarity cards to come together

sarulf's packmate is the best common by far because the power level is high and you can put it in all 3 of those decks

Yeah I get what you're saying. You do get forced into W-based aggro, R-based aggro, or snow most of the time (I'd also add UR to that, which sometimes goes more controlling), and so far I've had no success with black except as a secondary color, usually for powerful uncommons/rares. Feed the Serpent would usually be a top 5 common in a set, but the double black commits you to a color you just don't want to be in. In spite of that, I have felt there's enough variation in the play of the games to enjoy it. Snow in particular can draft and play quite differently depending on what you open

So, we get five Standard-legal sets this year. For the first time ever, I think? Wonder if it will become the new norm

because of the double innistrad set? they still haven't explained how that's going to work have they, or is it actually just two completely separate sets? i figured they'd share a common foundation like a pokemon red vs blue thing

going to try to get back into booster drafts once I get my vaccine

apparently the number of standard-legal sets isn't changing, they're just spacing the sets differently next year. so there won't be a january set, the november one is that slot but pushed back 2 months.

err pushed forward. whichever one means earlier

Kaldheim draft post-mortem:

I warmed up to the set a lot in my last dozen drafts when I really started to get a better feel for when to dip into the 'bad' color pairs vs. avoid them, and how to use some of the reject commons to salvage weaker drafts. I still wouldn't call it a favorite due to the elephant-in-room color balance issues. and also the narrowness of the commons meaning that you're too often looking for exact cards in the draft to make your deck function rather than ranges of cards. which leads to a lot of frustratingly not-quite-there decks whenever you try to go off the beaten path of snow or white aggro.

some late pick commons that i gained an appreciation for over the course of the format:

Raider's Karve - 4/4 is massive in a world where all the other 3-drops are 3/2s. every color except white has good pilots. if it hits a land once it's already outperformed most commons in the set and sometimes it hits two or more since no one can block it well until turn 5. i'm actively looking to play this card in midrange decks.
Draugr Thought-Thief - this is below rate on its own but it's the best common in the set at driving the Karve to new lands
Funeral Longboat - not nearly as good as the karve but still a decent beater in GW or GB aggro decks that goes last pick.
Cinderheart Giant - it's weirdly easy for even aggressive decks to hit 7 mana in this set via treasures and Jaspera Sentinel. i often want one of these in GR and even RB, not just the UR giants deck.
Karfell Kennel-Master - ought to be an indicator that RB wants to be curving out with decently statted creatures and not the 1-drops + equipment of the other aggro decks, though a lot of people don't seem to have taken the hint. this is my favorite common in the set and i wish i got to play it more but much like a lot of the commons it's only good in the one deck.
Arachnoform + Snakeskin Veil - i've tried this a couple times to mixed results but i do think there's something there. if i'm starting my draft in white aggro i keep an eye on how many Arachnoforms are in the first few packs as they'll all table, and if the good equipment is being contested this is a high risk high reward alternative

good evaluation here. that Karfell Kennel nerd wrecked me just now. it's been fun to watch the limited format evolve as ppl figure out more ins and outs, but even so i agree there's too little room for error off the beaten path.

i'll put in an honorable mention for Masked Vandal (exiles a nerd from the graveyard to destroy an artifact or enchantment) since it often played an important role, and Bind the Monster had the least bad downside among blue interaction. at uncommon i found Firja, Judge of Valor very difficult to stop once it got going, and eventually i was splashing for it where i could. 3-way tie for the most un-fun cards to play against: Koma, Kaya, and Immerstrum Predator all snowball and were almost always impossible to stop.

props for them making the pacifism/arrest card enchant permanent this time, i beat kaya a couple times just by putting that on it

I agree that Raider's Karve is underrated, seems like one of those cards that gets punted a lot because there's so much going on in the set.

also yes on Cinderheart Giant - a big creature that 2-for-1s if they kill it is always nice and it's definitely easier to get out than you think...in most Limited formats it would be unplayable.

Masked Vandal is great, dunno where it goes in the pick order but between Changeling & 3 toughness & the ability to wipe out some very obnoxious rares it's definitely a card I want in every green deck.

3-way tie for the most un-fun cards to play against: Koma, Kaya, and Immerstrum Predator all snowball and were almost always impossible to stop.

yes to all three of these, especially since they're all cards that I've always managed to avoid in my pool, except Koma once - I threw it in my deck without really reading it, and when I got it out I was astounded at how insane it was. almost Pack Rat-esque, you basically get one small window to take care of it and if you don't, good luck fucker. Kaya is stupidly powerful, that ghostform ability is just stupid. Predator I am just constantly losing to as well. I'd also give an honorable mention to Arni Slays the Troll, which as mentioned upthread is just insane value for a 2-drop uncommon. so often that card just completely turns the tide in a game I think I'm winning.