Magic: The Gathering C/D

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.

ah interesting that they've just pushed up the January set. that will make a long wait for the next Standard set but presumably they'll shift the schedule or find other non-Standard sets to tide people over

Koma is a truly unfun card to play against. pretty much it's "have instant-speed removal right now or lose", though I guess it won't always bring you back the way a Wrath could. I've never beaten it. Immersturm Predator has more answers for it but still annoying to play against

Agree that Masked Vandal and Cinderheart have overperformed, but I think the Longboat is bad. it trades with too many things and the aggro decks have plenty of similar options at that p/t. Karve at 4/4 with a good ability is much better

hoping strixhaven is functionally different from a 5-guild ravnica set since those have a pretty low ceiling imo, even the ones where none of the 5 decks are a flop

I played against someone with both Koma and the Predator in their deck and I found that Trickster God's Heist is a good way of dealing with them

yes! i just won a game with that, stealing their Cinderheart giant nerd

its neat when MTGO offers an old set (like the Time Spiral Remastered thing they're doing now) and you can see just how much the gameplay has evolved over the years. it's just a mess of small creatures with weird abilities and between Slivers and cards like Sporoloth Ancient you wind up with tons of text on all your cards. so much going on yet so few ways to actually win, half the games are just "fuck this I concede"

that said it is kind of nice to play games that don't just suddenly turn on a dime due to mythics/rares/uncommons that do 3 things at once

3x time spiral is the best draft format of that era imo but yeah the games play really differently from current stuff. lots of utility creatures with tap abilities which they don't do as much of anymore

also mixing the best cards from the 3 sets together probably changes the texture of the set substantially, i haven't played it but it looked like there's a lot more removal than vanilla time spiral so its probably harder to close games

like e.g. in the original block amrou scout was still good but you couldn't pick them up knowing you already had copies of bound in silence for it to fetch because that was in a later pack, it was only getting other low impact creatures

strixhaven looks corny af and is another set with novel-length double-faced rare legends to parse, but i appreciate that it doesn't do the full on 5 keyword mechanics for the 5 factions thing like a ravnica set, it looks fairly lightweight so far outside of individual rares.

learn mechanic seems the sort of thing that will give the set unique texture in draft much like a mutate or snow. while piling on a zillionth 'this card is actually n different cards' mechanic onto the current standard, what an exhausting format that is to play right now

I like that mechanic a lot, feels almost like a Conspiracy thing. wonder if they're gonna nerf it so it doesn't break formats like Companion or if they're just gonna have to go "whoops I guess allowing people to tutor a bunch is broken"

there's already a card in standard that lets you pull any instant/sorcery from your sideboard and not just a small curated subset, don't see how this will break anything that that didn't

oh, idk what card that is, just thinking about how a pushed version of this mechanic might make control decks really obnoxious

i would rather a wish mechanic be good than the 'ramp into 7 mana win the game' that control decks are doing currently

only played a few matches of Sealed with this new set but it's pretty fun! lots of dynamic cards, nothing (thus far) seems overly broken, and the Learn/Lesson mechanic gives the deck a bit of reach. also someone just cast a Swords to Plowshares on me???

very cute and charming flavor too, the school thing

yeah one of my cards was like "Professor Bear" or something, incredibly cute

also dig Tome Shredder, literally "dog ate my homework"

hah i didn't catch thats what that card was representing

professor bear is good, top 3 common in the set imo along with frost trickster and the 4 damage red spell

thus far the format seems to be pretty slow so Rise of Extus is probably up there as well

its good but its 6 mana so you cant really play too many copies so you cant value it that much higher than the crowd

wait scratch that I misread it, I thought it returned an instant or sorcery to your hand

huge disconnect between MTGO/Tabletop prices on Magma Opus & Prismari Command, wonder why that is. neither of those cards seem very good to me but rn the Command is worth 27 tix which is insane for a normal rare

might be some modern application, thats the main constructed format on mtgo these days

no standard play means the entire set value gets shifted into the modern/eternal cards

sure but why is that card any good in Modern? seems worse than Kolaghan's Command and probably worse than Electrolyze...either way I've got one so I'm gonna try to finish this league ASAP so I can unload it for 42 tix (!!!)