Magic: The Gathering,GO TEAM MS!

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Blocks, not sets, BV.

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You can(for now).

Shards of Alara (until October 5, 2012)
Conflux (until October 5, 2012)
Alara Reborn (until October 5, 2012)
Magic 2010 (until October 5, 2012)
Zendikar
Worldwake
Rise of the Eldrazi
Magic 2011
Scars of Mirrodin
Mirrodin Besieged
New Phyrexia
Magic 2012
Innistrad
Dark Ascension

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Maverick and stoneblade are 2 of the most popular decks right now and tend to have 4 in their 75 (often in the main deck)...

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Wingsplicer seems really mediocre in a limited context untill you consider other soulbound guys you could pair with it (like the 2/1 ophidian pairer). If there are other good abiltiies that increase the relevance of the 1/1 body it could be a sweet role player type card in the limited format.

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Card advantage > removal.

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Well the definition of too slow changes.

Like, personally, I will NEVER run a 6 in an aggro deck without an alternative casting cost. At 23 land, you're just not seeing a 6 drop before turn 8, and you want the game to have ended by then.

Draft, if you get a sweet 6, ya run it. Or even 2. In moderately to very aggressive decks.

Meanwhile, ironically, a lot of strong constructed cards drop in value. Watchwolf, for instance, is infinitely better than Selesnya Guildmage... in constructed. In limited, I'd probably take the 2 drop wayyyyy sooner than the Watchwolf, because 3/3s are replaceable, and a 2 drop that matters for the entire game isn't.

So I think he's making a good point, just in a bad way.

But yeah, if you've got 5 3 drop creatures and there's a 4 drop creature that's marginally better than some 3 drop, you take it, because you have something to do on turn 3 anyway.

The strength of a 3 drop is that it can be played with 3 lands or 4 lands. And that at 5 mana you can reasonably play it and a 2 drop. In the case that you are already heavy on three drops and you have the choice between a 3 drop and a 4 drop thats only marginally better without considering cost, in nearly every format ever its going to be better to still take the three drop.

edit: for instance in the current format, if I were drafting a gw aggro deck, already had 5 3 drops and 0 4 drops and I was given the choice between an abby griffen and an orchard spirit, I'm fairly confident its nearly always right to still take the orchard spirit.

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They're very nearly the same card, vigilance isn't really worth 1 on a 2/2.

If it was a choice between spirit and a Moon Heron in a GU deck, I'd think your choice would probably be influenced by how many 3s and 4s you have.

First I'd wonder why I wanted either of those card in a ug deck in DII, and likely cry at having to take 1. Then I would consider my existing curve yes, I didn't say it was irrelevant. Perhaps the issue here is different understandings of the word marginal in terms of magic. I don't think an extra point of power is marginal. I do think the addition of vigilance and the ability to block fliers does fit the bill.

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I went 2-0, didn't play a round 3. Stomped greyice in 2 and squeaked it out vs. CPE in 2.

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What trick? My memory seems to be failing me.

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Didn't forget that. basically:

But what does that have to do with Mutavault?

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Just got back from a midnight release. Either my pool was bad or I don't get this format at all. Still not sure which, I'll come back to it in a month and find out.

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I don't know infraction procedures for prereleases, they are so lax. I'd geuss you still get to choose and just get a warning or something.

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Im in my league too. You should be playing with the special rules, which will let you abuse your deck for the first week. The first weeks special rule is starting with a basic land in play. To abuse this, you can go 3 color, make sure one of your colors is all spells that only cost 1 of it, and only put the 1 land for it in your deck, always searching it out. It will let you run a 3 color deck but effectviely having a 2 color manabase. Hopefuly this makes things easier on your pool because of its even spread. You will need to change for week 2, but you'll have another pack then.

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I'd probably do a sealed.

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I was assuming RTR, I have no interest in M13 at all.

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You'll be at a GP (lots of vendors) And the most expensive pauper decks are probably going to run you like 10-20 dollars for the whole deck.

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It is common only. But the card just needs to have been printed as a common at some point, most recent printing doesn't matter (Assuming you are talking about rancor).

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In that deck as it is you can probably get away with as few as 20 lands. Mono white aggro has historically had reach problems (recovering after a wrath or once your opponent just plays bigger dudes) I don't think it can really be fixed without branching into a 2nd color.

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ok because I can't afford to waste money on pride (not revealing my deck till I make it) because it might suck:


I was thinking Curse of Stalked Prey for a Gruul deck

idea is:
Skaarg Guild leaders give boardwide trample+Curse of stalked prey=snowballthreat fast. Pit fight rapes flyers and Skullcrack laughs at druid's deliverance and shit like that

its not AS fast or aggro as Rakdos, but it provides more stability against bullshit wipes with hexproof (GAMMA GIVE ME YOUR RANGER GUILE)



Also Nightshade Peddler+Ash Zealot=for teh cheap deathtouchfirsttrike LULZ?

NO ONE STEAL MY IDEAZ

its k cause no one will play gruul except me and gamma

Buttons is right here. Curse of Stalked Prey is a very bad card. It only does anything when you are already ahead on the board, has no synergy with other copies of itself, does nothing on its own. And for those disadvantages, it doesn't contribute to your ability to kill your opponent the turn it comes down or significantly increase the difficulty of answering the threats you do have on the board.

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Did my post insulting Reck get deleted? Really?

Still want to know what sTuffy doll its all about

If Reck actually has a stuffy doll list, it probably involves Blasphemous Act. But I mean I'm pretty sure no even close to tier 1 stuffy doll deck exists.

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also a 1G enchantment for delayed get a counter on all your dudes every turn would be super broken, people play cathar's crusade and something that similar for 2 mana would have the shit played out of it with stuff like champion of lambholt or regenerating creatures plus rancor

Might barely be playable. Would not be super broken.

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You might want to try goblin rally as another token producer, but given that you are only running 3 increasing devotion, perhaps mass token production isn't a hole in your deck. lingering souls is really good if you dip into black, but would require a better built manabase. Alternatively green gives you gavony township as another way to abuse the number of tokens you generate. Guttersnipe seems like it should be really bad in that deck, and is probably the card that should be replaced first, but having never played with or against a deck like that (and it being in a more casual grounding than I'm used to) some of this advice may be bad, so make sure to test it all yourself.


edit: On more thought entreat the angels also seems really weird in the deck to me. It produces very large tokens that win on their own, which is different from the rest of the decks synergistic approach to abusing mass produced creatures.

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Gradual advantages are almost always fair. I have a tough time thinking of a comes-into-play mechanic that was inherently broken except Palinchron (even Worldeater dragon wasn't about what happened when it came into play). Chunking out the game with expensive incremental advantages is usually fun.

Now on-cast mechanics can be absurd. Bloodbraid elf?

Primeval titan, in the context of valakut, had a pretty unfair citp ability, it was really close to just being 'I win the game'.

Edit: I think Planeswalkers kind of ruined that subset of creature that was very powerful, kind of expensive, but did nothing right away. Planeswalkers tend to be comparably difficult to answer, but can all do something the turn they come down. Thats why most creatures these days either cost 1-2 mana, or have some immediate effect on the board in the 3+ spot (be that through haste or a citp ability).

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Gradual advantages are almost always fair. I have a tough time thinking of a comes-into-play mechanic that was inherently broken except Palinchron (even Worldeater dragon wasn't about what happened when it came into play). Chunking out the game with expensive incremental advantages is usually fun.

Now on-cast mechanics can be absurd. Bloodbraid elf?

Primeval titan, in the context of valakut, had a pretty unfair citp ability, it was really close to just being 'I win the game'.

Edit: I think Planeswalkers kind of ruined that subset of creature that was very powerful, kind of expensive, but did nothing right away. Planeswalkers tend to be comparably difficult to answer, but can all do something the turn they come down. Thats why most creatures these days either cost 1-2 mana, or have some immediate effect on the board in the 3+ spot (be that through haste or a citp ability).

Fair enough, but 6 mana cards follow different rules, thanks to the 5/6 dichotomy.

Anyway, I don't think the category of 'expensive creatures that take a while to work' was never one that was truly tournament viable. The closest I remember was Akroma, and she was mostly just to seal the game up (and did something when she came down anyway). Other than that, most expensive things have always needed to do things immediately at the tournament level.

It's one of the reasons planeswalkers were made, beyond the marketing/theme. The design space for incremental advantages were artifacts/enchantments, and those really lacked counterplay (playing W/G or W/G/R? No? Have a counter? No? Sucks to be you).

Expensive is a relative term, there always was a point that was too expensive, I think that point has come down considerably over the time I've been playing.

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Well, how expensive a card should be to be balanced always depends on the surrounding environment. My main issue with the game is the speed of it- it feels very much like games either end quickly, or stretch to eternity, with little in the way of middle ground.

Well it's also balanced around the math of the game (7 card starting hand, 1 card per turn (yes p/d). With this math, at 24 cards, you can expect to reach ~5 mana on turn 5 without acceleration.

6 mana cards have a higher threshold because 6 mana basically requires acceleration or card draw (resources invested) to come out before around turn 8, and because turn 6-8 is way late. Due to this you'll notice a HUGE threshold between what makes a playable 5 and what makes a playable 6.

I haven't done the math right now (and don't care to) But based in my memory of an article I read on this, 5 drops don't typically hit until turn 6 with 24 mana sources out of a 60 card deck, with 1 draw a turn. (math that's too simplistic has needing 5/24ths your decks mana, which should work out to 12.5 cards proportionally, which is turn 5.5 on the draw, and turn 6.5 on the play

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mm thats important to know

more as I think of them (or remember because there were some I had combos in that I didnt want to ask my opponent)

Here's two for mostly clarification:

1. You can cast instanst between first strike and normal combat damage, Im p. sure? Aka First strike 3/1+Searing Spear to rape a x/6

2. This one needs more in depth explaining: Wild Beastmaster. I read something about "announcing the trigger" what the hell is this about?

Aka:

I want t giant growth my Wild Beast Master. I read that downsize can shit on wild beast master pretyt hard, but in a response post someone else said that "they don't have a lot of window time to downsize wild beast master"

I think this meant that I should be:
1. Casting Giant growth BEFORE I declare that I'm attacking
2. Now my WBM is 4/4, and I say "I'm attacking"
3. Now they can downsize THEN, or not, and if they DO I don't swing with WBM because she'll get blocked and raped.
4. They say "Ok you are attacking, I do nothing"
5. I THEN tap the creatures I Want to attack with, if I tap WBM all my other creatrures get 4/4 and they CANT downsize before that effect takes place (they can do it before combat obv but they can't prevent the +4/+4 counters going out)


Do I have any of that wrong?

The -2-2 wont kill an indestructible hussar patrol with 2 damage on it, its toughness would need to be reduced to 0 or less (-4-4), damage doesn't reduce toughness.

Triggers go on the stack just like spells do. When you announce who you are attacking with (the WBM) there is a window for them to downsize while the WBM trigger is still on the stack. The end result being that your team gets +0+0 because the WBM is a 0/4 when the WBM trigger resolves.

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So Shea, I picked up a door to nothingness from a prize pack tonight.

TELL ME ABOUT THIS OMNIDOOR YOU SPEAK OF

Door is by far the worst card in that deck before considering context. It is straight unplayable in nearly every other format including casual, the deck is named after it because of the absurdity that its playable in the deck. What I'm getting at is that having one shouldn't be a draw to make the deck.

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All your matches ending in 2 games is very strange.

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ALSO they told me I could Pit Fight+Pay 1 red to activate first strike on my creature and when they "fought" my creature had first strike I didnt die

I think I was cheating because it specifically says "deals damage equal to its power to one another" and nothing about actual fighting

They were wrong about this interaction. They would both deal damage to each other. Fighting doesn't consider keywords, just power. With that said, reminder text (the text in italics and brackets) is not rules text. Although its intended to be intuitive and right in most situations, it does at times cut things out in the name of brevity, so using it as anything but a guide is a bad idea.

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gruuul is op as fuck in limited guys

I predict, without playing it, that its less OP than it seems. I think the way their mechanic plays is just sufficiently different enough from normal magic to catch people off guard. When people learn how to play against it properly it should seem less OP.

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BBE wasn't even that scary of a card in jund. Bob and liliana + 1 cc discard + lightning bolt make that deck what it is.

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Get rid of one Domri, three is overkill

If hes trying to be aggro that wins on turn 5, 1 is overkill.

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Rubblebelt Raiders is probably the worst card in your deck, a couple silvers isn't a bad thing. They don't need to come down on turn 5 to impact the board. RUbblebelt doesn't actually do anything unless you have a lightning mauler basically.

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All negative no suggestions eh chamber

Raiders with hellraisers is a huge threat turn 4 and synergies with my lots of early creatures theme

I don't know how to make the kind of semi-competitive deck you are looking to make. My suggestions would probably involve adding cards like hellrider and Thundermaw Hellkite if you are just looking to make it better. And probably 2 more 1 drops of some nature

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Hellkite's are 5 mana and too high for the curve I want

Hellriders will probably make it in, but I want to use Raiders more and I can't fit two 4 drops. Also Hellrider RR opens up potential to be color screwed (I dont own any stomping grounds yet)

I just want advice for cards that are good with the strategy I proposed. No "well youre in G/R you have to get Huntmaster trololol and Rancor's and XXX"

Huntmaster is more for midgame he isnt a game winner.

Anyway yeah I need more 1 drops thats what I dont have a great knowledge base of. Throw in wasteland vipers? Stromkirk Nobles? What? Vexing Devils?

What spells should I throw in now that I wont have Domri?

Also I like Domri still because I can't think of any decent 3 drops (Beastmaster is pretty niche and Hellraiser seems good, but thats all besides going something else), but if he's not aggro enough I'll take your word. I just like the "draw more into my creature pool that I need to win+Removal fighting"


I also have zero way to get rid of indestructible stuff, any g/r cards that do that, or is that just going to be my weakness?

I'm thinking Gruul Charms and Ground assaults on the SB to deal with heavy flyers, but other than that the only weakness I can see is Predator Ooze and even that I might be able to ignore for two turns or so?

The 3 mana 2/2 that makes all your dudes attack and gives them haste is probably fine, so is that undying has to be blocked by at least 2 creatures guy. There are a plethora of good red 1 drops right now. crackler and stromkirk are the 2 I'd look at first. Beastmaster isn't good at all but it+ pump seemed like the kind of gimickyness a semi-competative deck was looking for.

5 mana spells aren't too slow when they have haste or immediately effect the board in some other way(silver heart), and also help get past stuff like thragtusk (hellrikite flying over top at that point is important, the fact that it still can win the game when your early game gets murdered for w/e reason is also helpful)

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Its not actually a weakness. Indestructible creatures aren't exactly common, indestructible blockers even less so. You just trample over the ones that do exist.

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alternate wincons p good

Thats not really an alternate win con, at least not in an effective sense. They both require you to augment a creature and attack with it, which means they are both largely disrupted by the same things, but they don't work towards the same goal. Thats basically the opposite of what you are looking for.

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Not enough creatures that smash said doll with pit fight

I am dissappoint

You can use your opponents creatures.

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ALSO I told someone at the pre-release something that is apparently wrong. The Gatecrash FAQ SPECIFICALLY said each time you pay to activate the keyrune's ability of turning it into a creature, it is a NEW creature with NO memory of its past self. aka if they enchant agoraphobia (i think the example was) on your shit, you let it resolve, then pay the activation cost to make it a NEW creature that ISNT agoraphobiad

FOLLOWING this logic, I told someone that they couldn't cipher encode onto a keyrune, well they could but it would be LOST once it turned back into an artifact because its encoded on the CREATURE keyrune, and once it turns back into a artifact all knowledge of that creature is gone forever, and no cipher.


But then the Magic site said you CAN encode onto a keyrune and it will stick...??? not following the rules logic here

Just so new players don't get confused. The card used in the example was diminish not agrophobia. Agrophobia's effect would continue to apply on top of any power/toughness setting effects, no matter how many times they were used. It is however a creature aura which means that if its ever not enchanting a creature it goes to the graveyard as a state based effect. So at the end of the turn after it was put on the keyrune it would go to the yard.

The reason the diminish example works is because power toughness setting effects all apply in the same layer, below power toughness modifying effects and power toughness switching effects. Both diminish and the keyrunes activated ability set the the power toughness, meaning they are applied in time stamp order, so keyrune > dimish > keyrune would leave you with the keyrunes power/toughness at the end because its the most recent. Because this happens below modifying effects though, agrophobia/giant growth/etc are all applied after the base power/toughness is determined.

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Can you redirect a bloodrush?

Short answer is yes. Long answer is to make sure whatever card you are using can redirect abilities, not just spells, because bloodrushing is an ability, and to make sure you have a legal target to redirect to, because bloodrush can only target attacking creatures.

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I assume its because red just has way better options available at the three drop slot.

reds 3 drops are actually kind of shit right now. (which is the only reason the card fate mentioned is even close to being maybe playable outside of combo)

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with the bonus of nuking something while coming in.

You realize it only hits players right?

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Hamlet captain is actively not good.

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A 2 mana 2/2 isn't even close to being good enough on its own.

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As a vanilla? 3/3 really, MAYBE a 3/2. 2/2s and 2/1s and 3/1s with the right abilities are fine. Evasion<Haste<Utility, generally. Utility obviously has less value in hard aggro decks.

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Nope. That is in fact exactly what they just changed away. A trigger only becomes missed at the point a player is forced to make a decision. That means if you attack with exalted triggers and they block forgetting about the triggers, they still happen.

Well, then I've been completely misplaying it. We've been playing that a trigger becomes missed when you pass priority after the trigger should have happened.

That was the proper way to play it until this update. Of course it was also only for professional/competative REL not FNM/prereleases/casual.

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Shea's criticism isn't laughing at your lack of knowledge about magic, fate. Myko is right that shea isn't being as constructive as he could be, but the questions you are asking aren't very clear, which makes answering them frustrating. In your head you have some limitation other than making the best deck possible, but you've never communicated that limitation effectively. If its a matter of the budget, give us a budget to work within, if its a matter of card availability, describe what kinds of cards you have access to. If its a matter of casualness, define how games you enjoy tend to play out, and the turn that games normally end on. If its a matter of innovation, well you have to do that yourself not ask us for help. But more than that, you are putting false restraints on yourself if innovation is all you are worried about. You can still innovate on top of existing decks. You don't need to carve out an entirely new space yourself and build from scratch. The nature of information in all fields these days is that the crowd knows more than you, yet we still learn new things. You can still use net decks as a foundation, or as a way to understand what needs to be beat, and still end up with progress.

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Its not that those are the only 2, its that those 2 extremes are well defines goals, and 'somewhere in the middle' is much less well defined. Your desired strategy is also super straightforward, which makes it harder to innovate/be interesting in. I don't know what cards you know, if you want to learn all the r/g cards in standard, read through gatherer here: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Searc ... 29&format=[%22Standard%22]

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pillar can always go to the head for 2, mugging has more trouble doing that if they've actually stabilized, or if they have no board at all.

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The only burn I enjoy is a flipped Chalice.
Is there a card that provokes flipping?
Thatd be a cool card

Only for humans.

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Random MYOS has 2 advantages going for it, the first is that the format we end up with should be unexplored, allowing people that want to test their deck building skills a way to do so, the 2nd is that the card pool will be constrained enough that people like fate or nuwen or myko still have a reasonable chance of understanding what will be good or bad in the format without days of research time.

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1 format, everyone getting their own is way too random.

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boros reckoner is seeing absurd amounts of play in the ongoing pro tour, so I wouldn't call that card untapped at all.

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You aren't shanba.

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I'd go three domri 2 pit fight over the reverse. domri is a lot better without the combo.
You should hit 5 on turn 6-7 with that many lands and 4 arbor elves.

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MWS has been around forever. There is presumably a reason cock got shut down and it hasn't.

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I'm super excited for this cube that I'm building

Cubes are sweet. I hope you get as much use out of yours as I got out of mine.

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I'm super excited for this cube that I'm building

Cubes are sweet. I hope you get as much use out of yours as I got out of mine.

what is this past tense

Too many magic friends moved out of town. Hard to get 6+ magic playing friends together these days. It still gets pulled out on some holidays, but not being used multiple times a week.

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I think it would break the randomization of the packs if they had to include a code with each one that accurately marked each pack for what cards were inside. I suppose there's a way to do it via computer, but I feel like that'd be easily game-able.

And yeah, financially, they'd lose a ton of money if they did that.

I don't think it would directly hurt them financially that much. The vast majority of the online product that gets opened is in sealed events, and presumably you couldn't use coded packs for that because that just wouldn't work. It would completely crash the online card market though, which would likely mean indirect losses through people being less willing to draft because they would be getting no value out of what was opened.

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or he might be reprinted and jump back up in price

His price will go down regardless, because him being reprinted means more supply for equal demand.

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Twice the supply with only slightly increased demand. I've seen this happen many times.

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he won't be reprinted, MaRo said that the LTB trigger was a huge mistake and they should have made it "dies" in hindsight

I think

MaRo words things very carefully. If he didn't explicitly say that it wouldn't get reprinted, then its still on the table.

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no snapcasters?

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Snapcasters=expensive as fuck

Reasonable answer, you just had a lot of shock lands and etc.

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We've been pretty lucky with winning drafts and opening shocklands with wincons. If we get enough to be able to trade off extras, 1 for 1 to trade for snapcasters might be feasible (although trading a shockland for a card that'll be good for 6 months is meh.)

Evil twin over soul ransom is a good point I suppose, and triggers Thrag's ETB effect? I just think Soul ransom catches people off guard and can even make then board in enchantment hate into G2 when she just boards them out all together.

Its more like 2 shocks for a snapcaster atm.

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Olivia is legendary, copying it kills both before anything else can happen.

Shocks are like 10(obviously there is variance between different ones, but its like 8-14) and casters are like 20. I can't speak for local values I guess.

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Crackling Counterpart is a pretty win-more card in most situations, which is too say it normally only does anything when you are already ahead. If you have no creatures in play, or even if you are just behind and need to use it proactively instead of reactively, leaving yourself open to getting removed in response, it ends up being very bad.

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I wouldn't say she is "winning" if she has a lone guttersnipe on the board, which this has synergy with. Also forcing people to discard 2 to answer it on something soul ransomed or face down two threats is huge.

Right, but if they are pressured to remove it shes winning. If they can afford to leave it in play, when she does try to crackling it, it will just get killed in response 1.5 for 1ing herself.

edit: I really wanted to make the card not awful when it first came out, so I'm talking from experience more than narrow mindedness.

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1.5 for 1ing?

What the hell? Soul ransom giver her TWO cards and costs him TWO.

Since she cast a spell that fizzles she only gains 1 NET.

So +1 her -2 him.

I'm not seeing how this is bad.

If they aren't pressured to remove it she just improved her board state and (maybe) triggered a Snipe or talrand.


You say you tried it when this card FIRST came out

That's not the same as now.

If it a card wasn't good when it first came out that doesn't mean it will never be good in the standard enviroment.

Soul ransom didn't exist back then, did Guttersnipe?

I also think your playstyle and sort of decks you use to win with are much too different than Nuwen's for you to fairly give feedback.

Your form of "control" is too white chamber. You are much more reliant on "safety" cards, so obviously you're not going to "get" a deck like Nuwen's.

I mean correct me if I'm wrong here, but would you ever play in Grixis in standard with all cards available to you for free? Would you EVER play Grixis when Sphinx's Revelation exists?

I'm pretty sure the answer is no. You love Sphinx's revelation too much. Its never a dead card right? Its always going to both stabilize you (Safety) AND get you card advantage no matter what right? Its a safe, reliable, good card.

Why would you trade that for risky hand destruction forms of CA and aggressive control tactics?

If I'm coming off as too judgemental here, forgive me because that's not my intentions (I try to understand, not judge), but my reads on this site have been historically better than average. And my read here is that you're being narrow minded because you are speaking from your own playstyle and view of magic, rather than seeing the potential (a more "experimental" attitude, which is what Red blue colors signify) in new decks.

The fact that you don't post "new" decklists but instead "reactively" sit back and judge other decklists shows that you are pretty firmly in Blue white mindset like I was thinking, so understanding a deck that isn't in this colors is hard for you. "Why play risky when you can play safe sphinx's?" is what your subconscious is telling you. Its because risk can pay off if you're willing to make it.

Are we better magic players than you? No. No one's saying that. Obviously you and a lot of other people making comments on nuwen's deck are much more experienced. And that comes into play OFTEN when PLAYING magic. You beat me pretty regular on cockatrice, I'm sure you'd beat Nuwen to. That is NOT proof that her deck design is bad though, it means you played better.

Deck design is more about a puzzle than skill. What beats the meta game? Whats interesting? What will surprise people? I think that's a skill you can have, being inventive and

creative

, without necessarily being good at magic.

I think I've played every combination of 3 or less colors, and every strategy at FNM level. The reason I haven't been posting decks is because I haven't been actively playing standard, so haven't been actively making decks. You are right that deck building and playing are separate skills. I don't even think myself a very good deck builder. You are right that the environment changing can change the viability of cards. I don't think the issues I ran into with counterpart were actually fixed by anything. You and nuwen can always test things for yourselves, if you don't want me to comment on your future decks I wont, but given that you were posting them I assumed you wanted community input.

I think the 1.5ing for 1 that Chamber is referring to is if your opponent uses removal on the creature that is being counterparted in response (in this case, guttersnipe, since that is specifically what you were talking about.) causing you lose that card (1) and half of counterpart (.5)

It was.

Counterpart is strictly a response to removal targetting my guttersnipes. You don't greedily use it to get a 2nd guttersnipe.

Basically, play counterpart anytime you'd counterspell removal targeting guttersnipe. Think of counterpart a a counterspell that gives me back a vital wincon (a waste of their 1 card, because my win con is on the board for a net trade)

zz

If thats the only time you are using it, why isn't it something like negate instead?

[chamber]

imo

Negate is less flexible as a mainboard card. Consider: creature-dense decks like Fate's gruul smash, Naya humans, boros humans. I think counterpart as a mainboard puts my deck in a happier place game 1 and will see the most interaction (my game 1 includes soul ransoms).

Negate can't answer threats in what I think are my hardest matchups/strongest meta decks right now: Jung Midrange and Jung Aggro. Abrupt Decay will FUCK up my board state and put my on the back foot in a matchup where I need to be in control of their tempo. I can't lose a beat or I'll get run over by Deathrite Shamans, Huntsmaster, Olivia, Rakdos' Return. These are all HUGE threats that need counterspell slots reserved to answer.

Unsummon?

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I think in my deck counterpart > ghostly flicker > unsummon. Recasting guttersnipes just isn't an option. The tempo loss is pretty significant. On-tempo options like counterpart and flicker keep him in play, safe, AND proc.

I don't really understand the tempo argument. You are spending 3 mana for counterpart and 1+3 for unsummon and replay. You are spending both on your turn unless you play vs baddies who try to use instant speed removal on your guys when its their turn not your own. If anything unsummon lets you be more flexible because it only demands you spend 1 mana in response, and lets you spend the 3 mana whenever its most convenient.

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I would like to note that it is not always incorrect to cast instants (even removal) on your turn.

Sure. The assumption is that nuwen has at least 3 mana open. Given that, its normally right to wait for the upkeep.

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Whooooops.

Played Soul Ransom illegally at an official tournament at least a dozen times. Even one of the judges seemed to acknowledge the effect as-played though. If nothing else it proves that true conviction can do ANYTHING.

The card is worded extremely poorly. Level 1 judges don't know anything (store owners tend to know even less).

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Anyone who won their first round at a big tournament? You were tied with 268 other people.

He was technically in first. At that point the tiebreaker being used is order you signed up in I believe.

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Thats what I take from that pack.

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i'd go legion loyalist
boros v. good, and surprise trample-haste-first strike for all your dudes is also pretty good

Eh. Imo loyalist is only ok and not very exciting in boros. And is pretty unplayable unless you end up very aggressive. I think I'd take the drake wing krasis before the loyalist, and still stand by kings pin before both.

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It's possibly because in the color pie each color is distinct, so thinking of it in terms of color combinations makes no sense. Why is vigilance make sense for blue? Why does reach make sense for white? Unless soldiers can jump really high, I don't see how it does.

I think reach IS secondary in white, and that its typically depicted through archers.

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I can't recall the last time I saw a white creature with reach. White typically just gets flying, I thought.

Just went through gatherer quickly and white definitely has the 2nd most number of creatures with reach. Most modern examples are white/green(and not archers). Very recently both green/black and green/red have gotten a reach creature, relatively recently white/greens gotten 4.

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His deck is entirely focused on hitting his curve, you can't remove 1 drops without making it a completely different deck.

[chamber]

This could actually be a deck for wolfbitten captive.


I'm no expert on floor rulings, but there is no way that gets a DQ for cheating unless there is clear evidence it was intentional or he has a pattern of doing it. At regular REL I'm not even sure that's more than a warning the first time it happens unless they suspect its intentional.

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I was already looking at 4 questionably, I think you could go down to 3 already. (snapcasters)

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yeah garruk and olivia where in the same pack somehow, neither of them are foil

double faced cards were on their own run, so their rarity is independent of the rest of the pack.

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http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/A ... /03282013C happened and I am currently playing in one. 20 minutes to read 150 cards, many of which I had never seen before and build a reasonable deck out of them was pretty tough and I badly misbuilt my deck as a result. With about three minutes left I finally had read all the cards and started building - the first colour combo I thought I would run was short on creatures and playables and then my second combo was also short so I ended up just jamming cards in with thirty seconds of deckbuilding time to spare. Unfortunately I have some cards I shouldnt and dont have some cards I should in my colours, but I ended up with something reasonable and am currently 1-0 in matches, surviving a blowout from dead ringers thanks to grafted wargear putting in some extra hours.

Here is the pool and the build (and yes I am on the open beta client).



I think my green may also have been worth a more serious look but I never had time to assess it seriously. EDIT: Yup, looking again I should have had some green in there, and probably g/b with maybe a u splash for, like, recoil and vorosh the hunter (though the latter is probably too ambitious.)

I'll probably try one of these if I can get in, are they all full?

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2-0 in this random packs daily. No idea if I built right but everyone else seems to have worse decks so far, which surprises me given 150 cards.

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avatar is like 11 tix I think.

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You can buy it from the store for 12 dollars I believe. Most bots try and sell it for 14 but users sell it for 11-12

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I don't want to know how many cards I have.

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Triple small set drafts can be fun in small numbers. They tend to have broken/odd behavior though.

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So, Me and tbm go to a pr and its full, so we are like shit, and find another close PR to go to, but its 2 headed giant. We quickly realize that 2 headed giant + extort is stupid and that 12 pack two headed giant is just stupid period, so both choose orhzov. We go 3-0, sometimes extorting for as much as 6 points. We get to round 4 of the 4 round tournament, and run into turn 1 thrull turn 2 new 2/1 lifelink guy, turn 3 loxodon smiter, turn 4 ral and 5/5 trample token. We ended 3-1 .

[chamber]

I can probably find a quote from chamber saying "it will never see play in a top tier deck".

I don't think I would ever say this about many (or any) cards. Time has proven that sometimes some of the most unplayable cards when they are first printed can find their ways into obscure decks as long as what they do is powerful, just also weird and narrow. (like splinter twin). I do tend to speak very deliberately though, so its possible you misinterpreted something else that I said too strongly, I do vaguely remember making negative comments about the card pregatecrash.

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If it actually hit 150 that seems like an obvious bubble to me, or star city artificially raising the price by limiting supply. It barely hit that price at its high point in standard, and I just don't believe that the standard demand then wasn't significantly bigger than the legacy demand is now. It was basically a 4 of in every good deck.

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Hes taking naya blitz I think.

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well done. Shame that he drew his 5th land the turn her did game 3.

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well done. Shame that he drew his 5th land the turn her did game 3.

If Fate had drawn any non land card in his deck those three turns he drew lands, it would've been game.

It was hard to see his hand for the majority of it, so I'm not sure which 3 turns you mean, but by the time his opponent drew his 5th land to play the tusks, fate was pretty dead, certainly not live to the point of any spells being enough.

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Huh. EDH is perhaps the best reasoning I've heard for these changes.

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Outside of the 3 months of geist being an asshole its a pretty neutral change.

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look at a list of legends, find one that appeals to you, make a deck in those colors.

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vs a control deck with land d?

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I may go to scg Baltimore.

not sure if I'm going both days, but

standard: GR aggro
legacy: Dredge

There is a mafiascum meet happening in baltimore right now and you choose mtg instead? .

[chamber]

It seems you are still doomed to never cube.

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It seems you are still doomed to never cube.

Been meaning to ask you, how large should a cube be? I kinda want to do a Rise of the Eldrazi cube, but I have no idea what size I should be looking for. Would 3xCommon, 2xUncommon, 1xRare/Mythic be a reasonable size? It'd be about 483 cards without basics. Would I just trim 33 total cards to make it an even 450?

I cut mine down to close to 360 for this meet because I knew we wouldn't be drafting it too much and wanted to increase the awesome density for those few drafts, in general I'm in the 720ish pool of thought because of the dynamics it allows. This is all for a traditional cube though, for set based cubes I think smaller is likely better, and that you should exclude mythics.

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TBH I think a lot of people get too caught up in cycles when they're building cubes. Like, there's no intrinsic reason why you shouldn't pick the best 720 cards, and damn all the rest. If you want lightning bolt and ancestral in your cube, that is not a reason to include giant growth and healing salve. Pick cards of equivalent power levels at that slot instead.

I think this is really something that is important when it comes to lands. A lot of cube builders feel the need to include every land from every cycle in the cube, and thats not necessary imo because different color pairs tend to want different things from their lands.

Signets too.

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You can make a cube just by throwing powerful cards together, but battles of haymakers get boring quickly. I know lots of people say they cube to do broken things, but that really does get boring quickly imo. TBF I've cube drafted literally hundreds of times (probably over 500 but I don't count), so my sense of boring may be different.

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Its like 45, don't know what fate is smoking.

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Tend to enjoy the constraints of Block Constructed more than Standard since I think tighter guidelines forces more creativity, and Pauper is just cheap.

If you want to see a variant format survive locally, you are probably going to have to own it. Find a store that has a night thats not already occupied, declare it pauper night yourself, advertise on local facebook magic groups etc, have a bunch of decks for people to use if they show up, to get them interested in the format. Keep this up an hope the community around it grows.

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And its blanked by 2 blockers and its blanked by removal spells.

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I wasn't saying its bad or good. I honestly haven't been following standard enough to say, it seems plausible that its fine, especially if Shea thinks so, I just think Sudo was underselling the value of a card like searing spear in his comparison.

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Not every conceivable way? It costing 5 less is obviously huge, but that pulpit answers the card on its own without help from anything else, and that its better at dealing with other creatures gives it some amount of power over pithing needle. I rarely doubt that it justifies the cost.

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Just had a bit of a frustrating encounter at a work draft, want to see what other people think.

I'm attacking with a 6/3 first strike Kithkin Greatheart and have a Blightspeaker on the field with 5-6 mana up. Opponent has Penumbra Spider token and about the same mana up. He says "Test of Faith, block." At this point, I try to respond to the Test of Faith by rebel-searching in a Bound in Silence to play on the Spider before blocks. At this point, he's insisting that he already blocked, but I said that he played Test of Faith first so I get to respond. We discuss the situation a bit, until he says "it's a casual game, you clearly know what I'm trying to do and should lighten up". Now, this guy and myself are both pretty laid back guys most of the time, so I'm a little taken aback by this. Yeah, it's casual, but I have a couple problems here. First, he clearly said(and acknowledged that he said) "Test of Faith, block", which, to me, is not clear that he's trying to block first. He may want to just be sure that Test of Faith resolved first before he blocked. Secondly, because he said it so quickly, I didn't have the chance to play anything between blocks and Test of Faith if I allowed them to be ordered that way.

At this point, we've discussed it a little bit, and he's not backing down, so I just rewind to after attacks have been declared. I could just rebel search for Bound and put it on spider because I know what's in his hand, but that feels a bit sleazy to me, since I know what he wanted to do at this point, so I let it play out the way he wanted it to. After this, I feel a bit taken advantage of because the situation clearly played out to his advantage as my creature died, and he's ticked because he thinks I'm being too much of a stickler in a casual game. What would others have done in this situation? Was I being unreasonable?

If I was cubing with my friends and this came up, I'd let them have blocked first unless there was a clear strategic upside to having test of faithed first. In this instance I can't think of any, so you are just punishing him for trying to play quickly and short cut in a casual setting which likely benefits from those things.


edit: like if you had blue mana up, maybe its less reasonable to let him block first, because then his test getting countered is a real worry. Its still fair to have to conversation about clear communication. And you could have tried to clear things up before going for the bonds 'ok, so you are test of faithing before blocking?' etc.

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I mean, I hate this format too, but to say that blinking Thrags is the reason the format sucks is kind of blatantly false. Don't get me wrong, Restoration Angel was a huge mistake and should never have been printed, but the real problems with the format are easy mana, too much life gain, and bad removal.

Those may be your issues with the format. I've liked plenty of formats with easy mana. And life gain isn't that bad eiher. My issue with this format, like most recent formats, is too many high impact cards. I think it was finkle who said something like 'when I used to play magic it was a game of attrition, and now its a game of haymakers' And I feel like that is my biggest issue with current magic.

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Print 2 sequential blocks of less impactful cards, which will cause them at least a year of reduced revenue, so its not going to happen.

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I suppose that, so long as Magic's profit margins are based on "Look at all these fucking overpowered rares", there's no real hope that the trend will reverse itself.

Unless they get very good at printing cards that look much better than they actually are.

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Your land:Shadowborn Apostle level seems intuitively too high.

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In fact, technically, sharing accounts is against the TOS. If they were to find out you both were using the same account they would banz.

Could banz* they are pretty lenient on not enforcing that unless you do something really dumb, like take part in a mocs and gp at the same time or something.

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Yep. Or that one time I really needed arbor elves for a deck and the vendors didnt have any and no one had any so I cracked three packs that I had been saving to draft with and got there.

Canadian laws prohibit entree fees for tournaments, its considered gambling, tournaments here get away with it by giving out some sort of product that they force you to buy. So tshirts, or packs, or w/e.

One time, Rise of Eldrazi had just come out, and everyone who entered the standard ptq got 6 packs of RoE, a friend I was with couldn't get the Gideon he needed for his deck no matter what he did, cue like 6 of us all cracking the RoE packs we had been given looking for a Gideon for his deck.

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OH MY GOD

OH MY GOD

OH MY GOD

OH MY GOD

OH MY GOD



I AM SO FUCKING HAPPY RIGHT NOW SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Pretty sure this card is unplayable for at least as long as rtr block is around. Maybe in block if the rest of the sets look as slow as this one does so far.

[chamber]

Let me remind you of your Boros reckoner evaluation chamber

I'm right (within reasonable tolerance) way more often than I'm wrong.

Edit: Also outside of the initial weekend where gatecrash made its debut I don't think my evaluation of reckoner was actually that far off(though still probably fairly outside reasonable tolerance), its only seen borderline play since then.

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I'm sorry, its just when literally this entire thread turned into "me vs. them" its kinda hard not too.

Especially when all those people conveniently "shut up" and disappeared when facts and results occurred that showed their stances to be completely wrong, instead of humbly making concessions or anything.

So when they come back makign MORE stances and saying "well In the past ive always been more right than wrong" it kinda sets me off.


Looking back Bv, I realize that you had only said Aggro might not be good ni the current meta, not that it was an unviable archetype, so I've got no issues there.

Please point to me saying RG aggro was bad? Or that gore-clan rampager was bad? I actually liked the rg instant that pumped for +4+2 and gave trample when it was in alara, so I can't imagine myself ever directly knocking rampager which is almost strictly better. You are falsely associating me with people that aren't me. I did say I didn't think reckoner was that good, and the biggest thing I missed was how little removal actually dealt with it at the time. As more removal got printed that actually killed it, its fallen out of as much use. As for it being 'Us vs You' You are the one that brought up a single past card evaluation when I made my current comment, so perhaps its you doing the antagonizing?

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The only reason the mill of drowyard was good as a wincon was BECAUSE it was hard to interact with and didn't take up a card slot. Its not like slowly milling your opponent out is the preferred win condition of all control decks. When forced to play a card that takes up a slot and can be interacted with, control decks are going to pick a win con that can actually interact back.

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You can indirectly interact with the gods, the new watchwolf is probably the bigger contender for complain there.

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It can't be used the first turn. Your opponent has a chance to react to new mills before it can do anything. How is it any better than just playing a creature in the slot?

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What else could you have done T3 in a UB control deck?

Drew cards.
Played removal spells.
Played new augur of bolas like creature (kind of like option 1).
Held up counter mana.

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Thats... not assuming they print cantrips? cantrips aren't that good. I mean actual card advantage. I'm pretty sure if I'm in the situation you described, I'd far rather my 3 drop have been read the bones. And I'm not even sure that card is going to see wide constructed play. Your situation is just kind of idealized (you on the play, you have the ability to deal with all their threats in the right order) I mean given that situation I could play anything and win.

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I think I'd have run the shocks and goblin diplomat over glimpse, rod of ruin, and frost breath.

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i feel like that would be pretty greedy given that he has 11 double costed blue cards in the deck

Eh You can still be like 11/6 and have ok mana. The biggest issue is that you still want red early for the shocks. but the cards I named are just very weak. You could cut the 2nd disperse over one of them too.

[chamber]

White red and Green white are like the two weakest color combinations in m14, I wouldn't worry too much about getting beared out in that deck. Maybe a reason to run an 18th land.

[chamber]

White red and Green white are like the two weakest color combinations in m14, I wouldn't worry too much about getting beared out in that deck. Maybe a reason to run an 18th land.

I took a GW aggro to the finals of the 8-4 I mentioned like two pages ago, where I lost after flooding to a RW aggro deck. I find the idea that blue is obviously the best color in M14 color and that white is obviously the worst to be way overblown.

Limited formats are always self balancing within reason. White has the worst commons by far, but it has 1 very strong common and several very strong uncommons, so if only 1-2 people are white, they normally end up with fine decks, the reverse happens too, if 4-5 people are blue their decks will suffer. I think r/g is actually my favorite color combination accounting for how over drafted or under-drafted colors seem on modo.

[chamber]

think she'll go the way of Vraska and be mostly overlooked until the meta's just right/she'll be mostly a sideboard card.

I mean, this is basically what I said when I first said the card wasn't good? Though I think shes notably weaker than vraska even.

[chamber]

It's mostly a surprise counter. Like, countering something with it early probably isn't that great, but being able to play out a threat and still leave U up to get a Sphinx's Revelation or something is a big game. I don't know that I'd play it in dedicated control, though- it seems like more of a tempo card.

Eh? Dispel did the same thing and barely saw sideboard play.

Dispel only hit Instants. I'm not saying it amazing, but it can be a solid roleplayer in the right deck. For most decks, though, you're probably just better off with Izzet charm or Dissolve or something, but if mono blue aggro or fish become things, I'd look at Swan Song for them.

card seems much better in hard control than in fish to me. In tempo giving them a body matters way more than in control where you have sweepers and etc anyway. I'm not entirely sold on the card yet, but I don't think it can be awful.

[chamber]

I certainly don't think I would want to run 4.

a hand with multiples is pretty unplayable, yeah.

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looking at averages is bad. You want to get actual counts on below/above certain toughness values to determine relative strength of toughness based removal and how big a creature needs to be to be relevant.

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The other issue with this set, and I don't know how to account for when doing a math break down like this, is a lot of the heroics add counters, and there is a lot of auras, meaning that I'm not sure on the relevance of base p/t.

[chamber]

The format seems very slow, and initially without having played it at all, to me blue looks like the strongest color by a fair margin. And black looks quite bad. Need to play a bit before I can ever be sure though.

[chamber]

I thought red would be the strongest color. It has tons of removal/damage, early game bombs, and late game bombs. It has everything. Black also looks pretty strong.

I'm willing to admit that I'm not entirely sure without playing, ever. But black looked like by far the worst color to me. probably something like blue>>white>green>red>>black. But I'm way less certain on the middle colors. Black does have what I think is the best common though, so there is that.

[chamber]

I was thinking about it more, and the 3 mana 2/2 flier with bestow for 5 in blue is probably less of a bomb common than I was thinking. That enchantment removal is likely main deckable, and that there is an instant in both white and green at common to deal with enchantments, likely means that you can get blown out if you aren't careful. Still obviously a good card though.

[chamber]

Enchantment removal is 100% main deckable in this limited format, it kills a bunch of threats.

It likely maindeckable like artifact D was in SOM, which is to say, the first piece is great, but you probably only want like 1-2 in your deck.

[chamber]

Young pyromancer seems awful in that list.

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Going back to the other deck 20 lands would be ambitious without 2 being mutavaults, that's just way too few. I'd probably want to go up to 23 if I were adding mutavaults.

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I just put a deck together that I want to test if anyone is interested. No idea if its good or not.

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assemble the legion wins you the game if it stays in play without a Purophos, so thats not really actually a combo?

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Only drafting (and not playing) on some simulators, I think blacks probably not as bad as I thought, and blue not as strong. blacks uncommons help fill its issues out a bit better, where as blues are just better redundant versions of effects it already has. I still think my earlier order is probably right though.

[chamber]

5-1 for fifth at my prerelease . I got 6 packs, person in second got a box, same record. Damn you tie breakers.

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Oh, I'd suggest everyone go white if its an option, the sealed is a lot more tempoy than it seems. If you fall behind on board it can be very hard to catch up. The abundance of combat tricks makes medium creatures a very poor stabilization option.

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titan strength is a blowout 9/10 times

This really makes little sense to me, but was also my experience. I do suspect some bad plays may have been the cause of it in my case though.

[chamber]

2) Enchantment removal is not only maindeckable, but I think it is actively good. I started one each of the gain three life one and the scry 2 one, and I can think of only one time during the whole tournament where I didn't have a target I was happy to kill. One match I sided in 2 more pieces. I think I am going to be pretty happy running 1-2 pieces in almost all of my non-hyper aggressive decks.

My experience was different, I maindecked the gain 3 life one, and although it was only dead for me once, it was also never a blow out, and the things I removed with it I felt like I could have dealt with in other ways for the most part. Still a small sample size, but with my experience I can't see myself ever being happy with 2.

[chamber]

I found scry pretty underwhelming? scry 1 is just a lot worse than scry 2.

[chamber]

what was your final list?

[chamber]

I ran two and took one out after the first match, because I didn't have enough creatures and had hands that did nothing. Probably should have taken something else out. Or just chalked those two matches up to bad luck and kept trying with what I had. Since I took two things out that you would have used.

@kdowns: Montag's

There is a very reasonable chance that you didn't have enough guys, but you should have taken out your do nothing black auras, or even the bb deal 2's, before the 1 enchantment removal and 2 hard removals.

[chamber]

Hm... what about newGarruk? I think he'll drop

The old garruk shell is basically all rotated, and although hes extremely powerful hes equally narrow, I doubt he finds another home soon, but he may at some point while in standard.

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Purphoros looks so out of place in that list to me.

Have you tested at all? I'd worry that you can't tidebinder on turn 2 to curve in to thessa because there wont be a guy to lock down.

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Jace doesn't look out of place at all to me?

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Yep. Pro black only counts on the field. Which means it does have funny interactions with Animate Dead.

That interaction used to be much more funny.

[chamber]

If anyone wants to test, hit me up, working on a sweet brew.

[chamber]

Fanatic of Mogis was much more impressive than I was expecting.

I never actually got to see an ashiok in play. So its hard for me to comment on its performance. The deck with them mained did the worst of all the esper decks in the top 8 though .

[chamber]

They already have a strong incentive to kill it, just so that it doesn't kill them. The drawback against a lot of decks is going to be irrelevant. You probably don't want them in the mirror though.

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I read it, just posted anyway to prove that I don't always disagree with you.

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I really like that nearly mono green japanese devotion deck.

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So, this deck is strange enough that I'm not at all confident in any speculation but, rapid hybridization seems way sweeter at triggering the heroic effects once than mantle. So like, once you've burnt through your other targeted effects or in response to their removal it seems amazing, I don't think cutting all of them can be right, I'd probably be tempted to add more of them. But, again, strange deck, haven't played or seen it be played.

[chamber]

got 2nd at standard open trial due to tiebreakers, beat the 1st place guy in finals who was playing G/R devotion.

After beating him I told him Armed//Dangerous wasn't jank, its a better card than Garruk at 6 mana.

He took that one real well, I thought of you guys.

In green/red aggro I can see Armed//Dangerous being better than 6 mana Garruk, I would question playing either in such a deck, but this standard has proven consistently weaker than I think, so I can believe that its playable. In Gr devotion to green (the only deck I know of that runs 6 mana garruk) I can't possibly imagine Armed//Dangerous being the better card.

With that said, you telling a guy his cards are worse than yours after you beat him is being a dick, so I'd likely attribute any negative reaction of his to that.

[chamber]

Traditionally most/more decks had the ability to punish the 2 for 1 cards. Decks shifting so far away from that, and thus, decks adjusting and using more 3/4 drops without immediate effects/more risky cards is whats made the very good 1 for 1 decks (esper/mono black) so good recently (imo anyway).

[chamber]

also if there was a way to give up my two free byes if I won my GPT I totally would but I don't think there is

If you make it to the finals, I'd ask the other guy if he was going and wants to agree to give all the product to 2nd because the win gets the byes, then if he says yes and agrees, concede. its important to not mention conceding first though, that would be collusion which could get you dqed.

[chamber]

temple of silence is one of those lands, so even if you have the COLORS you aren't casting soldier T1, captain T2, lfiebane/downfall, etc. T3

so there's literally like a 10% chance you can curve out with lands, because you HAVE to have godless shrines and 1 plains 1 swamp.

I have issues with the manabase too. I think it should be running like 3 guildgates over 2 mutas and a duress. I have other issues with the deck too but I'd start there. With that said, you basically count tap lands as 1 drops. So that it has to run tap lands is why a deck like this would only be running 4 1 drop creatures, its game plan isn't really going to be dependent on hitting that 1 drop creature every turn 1. The deck is running 4 blood baron and 2 elspeth, its not like its hard aggro.

[chamber]

While we're critiquing, someone help me with my deck again.

Spoiler: Rw Pyro

4x Firedrinker Satyr
4x Rakdos Cackler
4x Ash Zealot
3x Young Pyromancer
3x Firefist Striker
4x Chandra's Phoenix

2x Chained to the Rocks
2x Chandra, Pyromaster

3x Shock
4x Magma Jet
4x Lightning Strike
1x Flames of the Firebrand

4x Sacred Foundry
4x Temple of Triumph
2x Mutavault
12x Mountain

SB: 4x Boros Reckoner
SB: 2x Chained to the Rocks
SB: 2x Mizzium Mortars
SB: 3x Skullcrack
SB: 2x Boros Charm
SB: 1x Hammer of Purphoros
SB: 1x Flames of the Firebrand

Mainboard: I like having access to FFS, but I'm not a huge fan of BTE. I kind of want to drop one FFS for a Pyrewild Shaman (another 75 I've seen runs an extra land + Chandra + Pyrewild over 3x FFS). Dunno yet. I'm also tempted to get really greedy and go up to 3x Mutavault, but that only gives me 19 Sources for Reckoner out of the board... ew.

Sideboard: I'm tempted to side in a Rod of Ruin somewhere for monoU. There's also Last Breath, but I'm not sure how much better it is. Also considering a one-of Stormbreath Dragon, and 2x Fanatic of Mogis (for mono-U or any stalled-board-state matchup).

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/Ma ... rn/6303751

The deck that won this isn't actually -that- close to yours but it seemed similar enough, and its really impressed what I've seen of it so I thought I'd recommend it anyway.

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I ran Boros Burn last night after all and made top 8 (4:2). Deck's fun as shit.

-1 Firedrinker Satyr
-1 Ash Zealot
-1 Skullcrack (to sideboard)
+1 Viashino Firstblade
+1 Mountain
+1 Toil & Trouble (from sideboard)
SB: -1 Peak Eruption // +1 ??? (currently testing Young Pyro and Ratchet Bomb, may try another Anger since my FNM store plays lots of aggro)

Casting Trouble for 7 is hilarious, btw. As well as Boros Charm double strike on a Spark Trooper.

Get to make any 3-0 splits against jace? Those are always funny.

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Its like a slightly better Tamiyo. Not amazing but not terrible. Solid one or two of in UG control decks.

That effect is a lot weaker than tamiyos in a number of ways. This doesn't look all that good to me tbh.

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I don't see it. Maybe getting devotion will be easier than I think.

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pack rat gets considerably worse without vaults.

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Wait is there a team format in Detroit next year?

Edit: I can't imagine myself not going to that. Though I may find RL people to form a team with. Still a year away.

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I haven't been much into the GPs for a few years, but Detroit is literally like 30 minutes away.

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I think bolt is a bad card to be building a game plan around, the card is so good that it's largely pushed the stuff it's actually great against out of the meta. If I was going to cut a colour from uwr it would be the red.

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I only skimmed the article. Has it been said how block constructed will be resolved?

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Anything that means standard actually changes.

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I don't think its possible to play the type of magic that made fires good anymore, unfortunately. Like, I think if they printed all the cards that were in that deck right now in a special standard legal set, it wouldn't be good.

I think you are both right and wrong. The deck itself would almost surely be unplayable. I think the core idea still sees approximate equivelents though, jund monsters is fairly similar for instance. People put too much value on the Fires card itself, which just happened to synergize well with some cards of the time (ftk, blastoderm, saproling burst).

This limited format looks potentially great. Need to actually play it a bit to be sure mind.

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Theros limited -sucked-. Card synergies in drafting had very little weight, which always lead to boring straight forward drafting. And then the play also heavily favored being proactive, meaning that the game play was also boring.

This set, at least at a glance, seems like drafting and pick orders will be highly dynamic. Harder to speak of the way it plays.

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I liked morph a lot in TPF, it was quite bad in onslaught limited though. Really depends on the amount of it and whether they punish you for doing opposite things. I haven't looked at the spoiler enough to know here ( the cycle the flips by revealing a card of a given colour seems like the wrong way to do morph though).

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40 words given 40 card decks would be a little harsh ._.

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I didn't realize repeat words were allowed like that, I was assuming every card had to be 1 word at that point.

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We've fucked with the format a lot, but never individual restrictions. (brainstorm draft was easily the worst idea).

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You take 3 cards from the pack and put 2 back, instead of take 1 like normal.

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I just don't think it played very well, but we only did it the once, its possible take 2 put 1 back would play better. Too much room to just dump past investments when you could unload 2 cards per pack.

Fact or Fiction draft was quite fun as a 2 player draft variant (flip 5 random cards, alternate who controls the fof effect).

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So

If I have a 2/2 and I attack into a morph. He blocks. I have a jeskai charm in hand READY to use. I pass priority on the phase. He unmorphs the abzan 4/4 lifelink guy! Since morph doesn't go on the stack, and since we have effectively both passed priority on an empty stack, do I then not get a chance to jeskai charm his guy before damage happens? OTOH if it isn't the abzan guy but instead, say, the jeskai guy who gets +3/+0 and first strike when unmorphing, cause that puts an ability on the stack, I do get a chance to respond?

Also that doesn't work if it's the other way around?

No I looked it up and I think the definition of passes is "116.3d If a player has priority and chooses not to take any actions, that player passes." which seems to preclude that interpretation by suggesting that unmorphing is not passing. Incidentally, this seems to suggest that if you could play lands on an opponent's turn that means that when you played the land and passed he would get priority before you (as active player) and then after you played the land and passed - and then you would get priority again! I think.

On other fun rules stuff - Meandering Towershell and raid. The turn it comes back into play it does not activate raid - only the turn it actually attacks. Which makes sense, I guess.

Morph makes my head hurt.

You need priority to unmorph and priority would pass back to the other guy after you unmorph. The only thing you can't do is like shock the morph in response to them paying the unmorph cost before it flips.

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Destroying the longbow or rat in response to the ability being used won't do anything.

Equipping is targeted and passes priority, so yes, in response to her equipping you could kill the rat or bow while it was on the stack.

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people have some trouble grasping is spells that target must have legal targets at resolution.

Minor nitpick/could just be a function of your wording but for the sake of clearity; At least one target needs to be legal on resolution for the spell to still resolve. If the spell starts with 3 targets and 2 are illegal when it goes to resolve, it will still resolve doing as much as it can.

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The draft too or just the sealed?

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Is Seige Rhino actually that good? People keep talking about it like it is, and I look at it, and I just don't see it being better the poly or even reaper of the wilds.

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How good are aggro decks actually? I assumed the base deck having 4 caryatids and 4 coursers would push aggro into fairly unplayable.

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I feel like fetches are probably better fixing than pains. But obviously you have fewer fetches than pains in wedges.

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Would anyone be interested in a sealed or standard tournament?

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1 week? If I'm running this I was thinking more like 3 days.

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Not to be a wet blanket. But he did eat a ban for his own cheating right? I think it's okay to be cautious around someone that's been caught cheating previously, but I think it's pretty dangerous to think that someone else's cheating is somehow vindicated. Especially when as I said before, he's already been punished by the system.

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There weren't really used 3 color identities prior to alara. But with alara giving the shards identities players had to fill in their own for wedges. Makes this shift really awkward.

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'Remember, lifelink now happens at the same time as damage' <- It's been 5 years. When do we stop talking about the m10 rule changes.

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Jeskai is easily the worst. I don't mind Temur.

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Chamber - Marshall (LR) was interviewed by the LRR guys a few months back, and he mentioned that when he's casted for Wizards, they want him to not use slang, mention things that may not be obvious to newer players, ask easy questions to co-casters even if the answer is obvious etc. I'd link it but I'm at work on mobile

I know SCG isnt Wizards but still.

Pedit - yeah I vaguely remember the others, I just prefer slang and Dega didn't have a good one (except Borzhov but ew)

I think this is the opposite of that though. The only people that remember the way it worked before m10 are going to understand anyway, you are functionally just bragging about the fact that you've played for 5 years.


'Life link happens at the same time as damage, so he wont die.' Is different, I think.

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Eh. It's a 6 mana walker. Even if its too pushed, it's the first time they made one that cost more than 4 that saw a staple amount of play, hard for me to view it as a mistake.

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I do think it's a little over tuned. Its really hard to tell without any competition in the 6 mana walker spot though.

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2 Breeding Pool
4 Mana Confluence
2 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills

2 Arbor Elf
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Sylvan Caryatid
1 Dryad Arbor

3 Jeskai Ascendancy
3 Cerulean Wisps
3 Manamorphose
1 Noxious Revival
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Glittering Wish
1 Grapeshot
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
3 Treasure Cruise


This deck is sweet.

Josh Utter-layten was advocating for the banning of ascendancy in modern, and I really wouldn't be surprised if that happened, so enjoy it while it lasts.

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Also, isn't JUL the one who wants to ban Bob and goyf?

I don't remember that, but its possible. I know he's talked about bannings/unbannings before a modern protour being a good thing just to shake it up so people actually have to test. It's possible he made that comment within that context, not the context of them being too good.

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Stoneforge would probably be only very good if they banned batterskull... for now. Once they want to print other expensive equipment Stoneforge becomes dumb again. It's the broken card of the 2.

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which makes sense given rabbles are selling for like 16.