Magic: The Gathering C/D

Whoa I forgot there wouldn't be another Standard set till Sept. I think I've complained a bit about the window between sets sometimes being too short, but five months seems like an eternity. Any chance we get a remastered set? They usually announce those well in advance, right?

i consulted with my friends who are paying more attention and apparently they're putting up an arena-specific variation of the baldurs gate commander set this summer so that'll be the draft format for a couple months

Been having good success with two-color decks that curve out. Had BR two times and an aggro deck is def viable there - so many of my opponents spent their early turns with taplands and so a well-placed removal spell or Plasma Jockey on their big blocker was enough to win. UW fliers also worked well

Disclipined Duelist and Illuminator Virtuoso pretty much ruined what was otherwise an enjoyable format for me. One of those plus Majestic Metamorphosis or Revelation of Power is often game, and you run into that combo all the time. I lethaled someone out of nowhere with a double trick on a Virtuoso the other day

the Virtuoso isn't that big a deal IMO - 2 mana double strikers are annoying but it's not too difficult to kill and the fact that you have to discard nonlands makes it hard to just run away with it. Duelist on the other hand is just stupid, if you don't have Call in a Professional or the -3/-3 instant then you have to 2-for-1 yourself and pray they don't have a combat trick. giving a 3 mana double striker a shield counter seems like a development mistake

IMO the real problem is that WUG Ascendancy which gives your creatures a +1/+1 counter every turn. even if you have enchantment removal you still wind up behind because it triggers end of turn instead of upkeep as these cards usually do. I guess the fact that it's rare makes it much less of a format ruiner but I still seem to see it constantly

Ascendancy is probably worse, I'll agree - I've never beaten it but I've also only played against it twice. Once I hit Diamond, it felt like I was playing against Brokers or UW nearly half the time, which would explain why I ran into that combo so much - I'm not sure if that's a function of players solving the format over time or the higher-ranked players figuring out that Brokers is the best tribe

I also ended up in Brokers about half the time myself, and often had no removal for either creature. The other tribes have an easier time removing Virtuoso, you're right

a big part of that is the Jewel Thief & Inspiring Overseer are so good, being able to play both is a big advantage. for that matter I think cards like Brokers Initiate and High-Rise Skyjack (?) are better than they look because they can stymie them.

one weird thing about this format is there are a bunch of Connive cards, but no cards you really want to discard to them? the 1/1 fishy dude is pretty much it

the connive guys are pretty aggressively costed for creatures that come with a loot so i don't think thats an oversight the loot is just supposed to be good enough without synergy

like 2/1 that loots on etb has not been printed for 2 mana prior to this set as far as i know, even without the chance of being a 3/2

has not been printed at common i meant. theres probably higher rarity ones

Raffine's Guidance is also synergistic with Connive. it plays better than I thought it would in Brokers, I usually include one copy

High-Rise Sawjack is also better than it looks, for exactly the reason you mentioned, frogbs. not just Overseer (which is a stupid common), but Sky Crier, Obscura Initiate, Celestial Regulator, or unkicked Echo Inspector, all of which get play

oh right, I'd completely forgotten about that card. always thought that looked good enough to play.

I agree that the Connive cards are generally pretty good but the way sets are designed nowadays made me think they'd have more cards you'd want to chuck. they're pretty tricky later in the game.

I routinely cut a land in my decks with a few Connive cards unless they have a high curve or difficult mana requirements. Which is nice because in addition to cheating on lands you end up getting the counter more often

Same.

I don't love this set, nor do I hate it. Was more of a fan of neo

if you get several of the 1W 2/1 that's not a bad idea, but everything else is 3+

personally I like just getting 4-5 of those sac lands in my pool and running a splashy 18 land deck. it's nice to be able to just thin your deck out that way.

agreed that NEO was better. kind of obnoxious that this is the current Limited format for nearly twice as long. same thing happened with those Innistrad sets, where the 1st was way more dynamic and fun than the 2nd.

Yeah pretty average format. It's funny that I thought it was a slow format two weeks; I think people figured out quickly that the tempo decks are not just viable but actively good so the whole format speed increased. I end up in straight 2-color decks about the half the time, and I seem to win most with BR and UW, which to me is kind of a design failure for a tri-color set but *shrug*

Two weeks ago*

new format is giving me some flashbacks to Invasion block. dunno how it'll play in draft but in Sealed this domain stuff looks like it may be a wee bit too powerful. maybe having 10 common duals wasn't a great idea.

even in sets without domain the 10 common duals thing tends to make draft smoother at the expense of sealed turning into 5 color mush, it's unfortunate but you have to balance for one format or the other and sealed is kind of fundamentally skewed towards certain strategies no matter what you do so balancing for draft is better

true but it's a particular issue in this format since not only can you splash all your off-color rares and Tier 1 uncommons but also just having those things in play makes the cards in your deck better. in some decks its worth it to play them just to get more land types out there even if you don't have anything of that color

I'm having a hell of a time drafting this set. I played a lot of the Arena-only Baldur's Gate set and found it really fun, especially after the rebalancing; but Dominaria United just feels like every draft I'm getting rolled by domain decks. My last draft, I was trying to do a URw spells thing, and I thought I was in great shape when I got passed a Temporal Firestorm (the rare red sorcery that does 5 damage to everything, but lets you phase out your creatures first). But every time I drew it, I was facing some sick domain deck full of 4/6 treefolk and 8/8 or 10/10 Maros.

So ultimately I decided to shift my focus to Standard for the time being. I built a B/U/g Titan reanimator deck that just goes over the top of a lot of the obnoxious midrange planeswalker stuff, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm also trying to make some form of Suicide Black aggro work, using Stronghold Arena for card draw, and a neat little engine of Cult Conscript + Mukotai Soulripper + Jadar, Ghoulcaller to keep the pressure on.

I've been pretty busy lately but I did get in 8-10 Dom United drafts and didn't find the set very fun. Like Bernard, I also mostly lost to Domain decks, except when I drafted Domain, in which case I lost to aggro decks. seems a very stupid thing to complain about - one of the fundamental principles of gameplay - so probably the set is fine and I'm just losing interest in the game

I've never paid much attention to the collectible aspect of the game but it seems WotC is very much in a capitalize-on-whoever's-left-of-the-whales phase (the idea of the $250 proxy boosters astounds me) and it doesn't give me much faith in the company. so maybe it feels like things are winding down in general. even here it's been almost two months since the last post!

suspect that their ROI on Arena is pretty immense though

Oh, no doubt, they've said as much. By all metrics, they're doing better than ever. Writing this out, I realize I don't have much of a case for things winding down except for a vaguely negative vibe in the mtg subreddit

the MTG 30 thing sounds insane but I suspect those cards will be worth a fortune in a decade

feel like they should just bite the bullet and get rid of the restricted list. the game's expensive cards are so entrenched where they are right now and just leaving open the possibility might drive prices down to a more reasonable level. just let me sell off my collection first :)

theres definitely the feeling of a winding down among the long time players what with major irl events scaled back and new products being increasingly focused towards commander and collectors, the question is how much of the new audience arena brought in get attached to the game enough to stick around for 2+ decades like we did

in the meantime i will continue to draft each new standard set a dozen times or so to get the general set experience and otherwise not engage

I'm at a weird crossroads with it. For me Magic was a really great social thing and a lot of the friendships I still have are a result of that. I think Theros was the last time I actually physically drafted MTG and I remember it kinda feeling like it was the twilight years of the whole scene I'd grown up with. I have kids now so I don't have the time to hang out at the shop, nor do I think that scene even exists anymore. Been thinking about selling out multiple times but I'm not really sure where to start. My son is gonna be 8 soon and I think there is a really good chance he gets into Magic, so I've been thinking about saving my stuff for him, but all my cards are gonna be like 10-15+ years old by that point, so what's the point? When I get together with my friends one topic that always seems to come up is "wish I hadn't sold out, have you checked the prices lately?" But surely things can't keep going up at this rate...?

the MTG 30 thing sounds insane but I suspect those cards will be worth a fortune in a decade

You're probably right, but it's hilarious how much that pack loses value after its opened. I imagine someone spending $250 to open a Chaoslace PROXY. The idea of the set means they don't plan to get rid of the RL anytime soon I imagine, just work around it

But surely things can't keep going up at this rate...?

Unless you're holding RL cards, are they still? I thought a lot of the complaints were about the number of reprints driving down prices (which I kinda like, as a player). My son is a bit younger than yours but I'm also hoping he gets into Magic when he's older. I don't have a collection to give him but I figure we'll probably want to try whatever the new set is

https://thenib.com/magic-on-deck/

awww, that was pretty cute. I miss when the internet was full of weird creative writing exercises like that. and yeah it's unfortunate that Magic never benefitted from the boom in eSports though I think that comic lays out why pretty clearly. I recently watched a video of a guy I used to play with who made it to the semis in a Modern Grand Prix and it occurred to me a few minutes in that I just had no clue what either deck was trying to do. I even recognized nearly all the cards too. the broader issue is that yeah, as the comic mentions, there's really not a lot of personality in Magic players. those who do have a persona usually have a bad one. all the big tournaments I went to I remember leaving just irritated at how obnoxious half the people were. don't get me wrong you'd meet some cool people but they were always the one who dropped by Round 5. I still remember going to one of my first big tournaments at the age of 14, making it to Table 1, and beating some guy who was apparently a big name pro with a Might of Oaks, which caused him to berate me for several minutes and call me "Random Might of Oaks kid" the rest of the day. I Top 8'd and came away with a couple boxes of sealed boosters but still felt pretty crappy overall about the day.

Bet he would have been singing a different tune if it had been a Blazing Shoal

didnt even realize there was a new set out. very much feels like a different game, or at least back to the Eldrazi days. but I think this set is a lot more dynamic. lots of reprints w/ old borders too

there is a card called "The Stone Brain" which looks like a potential game changer against certain combo decks

The Stone Brain

this set looks really cool on paper i haven't played it yet though. fun to see them return to the 90s storyline (also the one MTG novelization i read as a kid)

fwiw I totally called the next set being some artifact thing based on the Dominaria Karn. they love to do that sort of thing.

the Powerstone stuff is interesting, it definitely changes how you view the various mana costs in this set. a lot of the artifacts with activated abilities are probably better than they look.

well the brothers war set was always going to be an artifact set, the original version of it was Antiquities which was an artifact set

the powerstone ramp thing is a neat way to go though

I'm casually interested in getting into MTG after having played and enjoyed Inscryption on the PS. I've got one friend who plays it and we've been up to Forbidden Planet to buy a starter pack. She gave me a very quick lesson in a noisy pub, but I still need to get my head around the basics. Any good resources?

MTG Arena is the online free-to-play version, I think you could pick up a lot of the basics from that. I'm sure there's some good YouTube tutorials too but I don't know any specific ones to recommend

And yeah, LSV played Brothers War draft today and it looked really fun to play

it definitely is. I love sets that seem to tweak the balance of the game in a fundamental way. also think it fixes the problem the Eldrazi set had where you had to figure out how to kill the big mana stuff right away or die within 2 turns. I also really dig slotting in the random artifacts from the past. I have clue what's in there so it's pretty fun to just see random shit like that. less fun when you're starting down a Wurmcoil but still.

also I really like all the little references to Antiquities in there. some pretty subtle ones in there!!

ok so after getting trucked by Phyrexian Processor, Wurmcoil, and Sundering Titan in consecutive matches I'm not such a fan of the reprints anymore

After my grousing upthread, I actually love this set. Been drafting the hell out of it. Despite the doomsaying, this set and Kamigawa from this year would probably be in my all-time top ten (that might be a fun list to make)

Although yes playing against Processor sucks

speaking of reprints, I opened a Charbelcher and built a whole mono-red deck around it only to realize it does NOT count the land you flip towards the damage it deals, so it can sometimes deal 0! I guess I had never seen the card operate in a fair context

hmm, not familiar with that one

*reads text of card*

Vinnie, we've got to fine tune your reading

not sure how they managed this but phyrexia is empirically the most coinflippy draft format in a long time

https://i.imgur.com/AMC0a6z.png

I've only done one sealed league but my impression was that there are a ton of good aggro cards and you often just find yourself needing to put down as many bodies as possible. Also there seems to be a lot of insane rares that can drop on turn 3 or 4 and just take over the whole game

Bit surprised that it's higher than all other recent sets but it's obv a tempo format. I've had way more success with aggro decks than control ones. I just played against a deck that played a couple cheap toxic creatures, then Mesmerizing Dose for my turn 2, turn 3, and turn 4 plays - I'm never winning that game on the draw, but I might have had a shot on the play

Despite that, I have been having fun with the format, but I don't think it'll have the legs of Kamigawa or Brothers War

phyrexia ia some weirdo poison mechanic bullshit we’re all going to have to adjust for in Arena for the time being. honestly, you can go poison or artifact mechanic in the drafts and poison/corrupted is better