Magic: The Gathering,GO TEAM MS!

[Knight of Cydonia]

So yeah, doing a booster box opening for the store I work at, pack 1 foil Polluted Delta... pack 2 regular Polluted Delta... pack 3 regular Flooded Strand and a foil Surrak Dragonclaw. Everything after that was just gravy, especially considering with staff discount I got the box for £67.

[Knight of Cydonia]

be interested to see if anyone is playing Abzan/Junk Aggro, with Fleecemane, Rakshasa Deathdealer, Anafenza, Herald of Torment, Master of the Feast etc. I've been toying with a list and going Soldier of the Pantheon -> Fleecemane/Rakshasa -> Anafenza/Herald/Master/leave up mana for Downfall seems pretty strong.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I don't get the chance to play against many serious decks in paper but I've rarely had an issue with not being able to cast stuff. The occasional flood, but that's variance for you.

[Knight of Cydonia]

True, the mono-B aggro list on the stream right now looks pretty good.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Well, I already know what the one guy at my LGS who doesn't know how to play anything but burn lists he finds online will be playing.

[Knight of Cydonia]

The main issue is that all the good mana fixing is tap lands, which are just so miserable in aggro decks. I played a bit of naya and you really couldn't run more than 2 colors of 1 drops easily. The turn 1 untapped mana fixing just got worse.

I could be wrong. Its a new format. Everything is worth testing.

There's also the m15 painlands. Like, if you're playing 3 colour aggro, your manabase probably looks like 8 painland 4 confluence and you're a pretty big dog to any aggro mirror, I think.

I'm currently on 6 pains, 3 Confluence, 2 tri-lands, 4 Temples, 4 G/W fetches and a handful of basics, so yeah, it's definitely a painful base.

[Knight of Cydonia]

6 CIPT lands in a deck that wants to play 1 and 2 drops on curve seems pretty fricken miserably bad.

And yet, I have had one game in 13 I played today at my LGS where I didn't have a solid T1-T2-T3 curve out, and that was on a mulligan to 4. Obviously I need to test

a lot

, but it feels like it just gets there most of the time.

Would anyone be interested in a sealed or standard tournament?

I would love to but for whatever reason mafiascum run tournaments have generally been pretty poor. I'm in, but I'd like a lot more strictness about people playing each other promptly, even understanding that it can be difficult to find a time that works for both people. 1 week should be plenty.

^

P-edit: A week feels better just because people might have work schedules that mean occasionally, that 3-day cycle is gonna screw them where a week-cycle wouldn't.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Thats because 13 games is a ridiculously small sample size. Play 130 games and then tell me what percentage of games your production was hindered.

I truly admire your ability to ignore me saying I know I need to test more in order to condescendingly tell me to test more.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Well, you could always start playing Ascendancy Storm. At least that 'only' runs Rattleclaw and Caryatid.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I'm putting together Constellation "Storm" for something to do for the first few months of Standard, then when Caryatid and Rabblemaster inevitably peak out I'll sell the 3 playsets of both I have off and use the money to either finish my RG Tron list or make a start on Manaless Dredge to take to the local GP. People were literally giving their Buy-A-Box promo Rabblemasters away in my store (thank god for casuals) and I picked another playset of regular ones up when they were about £3 each. I also traded for a set of Caryatids the guy valued at £5 each a week before rotation... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Knight of Cydonia]

5-0'd FNM sealed playing Abzan splashing for 3 Ponyback Brigades. Jesus this format is slow.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I look forward to playing Dega Steve in Return to Dominaria.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I can't believe Bertoncheaty doesn't have a lifetime ban at this point. To not just get caught repeatedly cheating once, but then to come back after one suspension and do the exact same thing... and still 'only' get 3 years, is just incredible.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I know it's made me notice players shuffling oddly at FNM a lot more. Not to a "yo, I want a judge to shuffle instead of you" level obviously, but to the point where I've pointed out to people how they could be interpreted as looking at extra cards and what sort of problems they could see if they ever went to Comp REL events.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Fair enough. Here's hoping Wizards lets combo be a real thing again, though.

Given how much MaRo seems to hate anything that isn't midrange and wants to do his best to completely segregate the colour pie (going by recent comments on his blog) I doubt that'll happen.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Must resist urge to take Jeskai Fireworks manabase and build Heroic Combo.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Any chance one of you guys wants to buy a Modern Burn list on MTGO? I have Eidolons and crap and have no desire to play it. I'll even kick in the stuff you need to convert to Legacy Burn for free.

I only really need Eidolons, maaaaybe Guides, and Searing Blazes, so if you get someone who wants the whole thing I won't bother you to take it apart.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Just played someone at a small (16 man) FNM who swore blind in the final round x-0 bracket (game 1, so pre-board) that his Windstorms and Arbor Colossus had always been maindeck in his Abzan Midrange, and were definitely not just there because he'd sat at the table next to me in the penultimate round and seen Mantis Rider, Stormbreath and Sarkhan.

At a big tournament I can understand these people, but at tiny FNMs where most of the players are casual... eugh.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Our "judge" is a super lazy store employee who hasn't even taken the Rules Advisor test, and with the exception of myself, the Windstormer, and 3-4 other guys, everyone else at the store is... fairly casual, to the point where main-deck Erase/Shatter/Negate and 65-card decks are common.

It's a real shame because I love playing just about everyone else in the store, except this one guy who is the most stereotypical FNM Warrior you will ever meet. In his own words "he totally stomped a GPT to get [GPT Top 8 mat], but then lost to that stupid U/W control deck from last rotation, such a stupid deck."

[Knight of Cydonia]

The only card I will ever bitch about is Hornet Queen.

Seriously, who the fuck through 5 deathtouch fliers for 7 mana in GREEN was a good idea.

[Knight of Cydonia]

when in doubt, go 4/5 colour control

[Knight of Cydonia]

I regularly open pools with enough fixing to comfortably play 4 colours and possibly splash the fifth, my last competitive Sealed event I went 6-1-1 on 4 Colour Flying Crane Morphs with 7 pieces of on colour fixing.

Agree that ideally you want to be in 2-colour splash a 3rd or solid 3-colour with a possible splash off a triland + life land or a basic, but in pools with even distribution your best shot seems to often be "play all the best cards and all the fixing (except Banners 99% of the time)" in my experience.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Fortunately, I still have this sleeved up from aforementioned Sealed event.

Spoiler:

I was solidly in every colour, never had an issue resolving spells when I needed them, and only lost to a nut Mardu deck with a Sarkhan, a Sorin and a Crackling Doom, going to time in third game against a 4-colour deck in the 4-0 bracket. I'm not arguing for or against any number of colours, you can only play the pool you get etc, but this kind of mana base isn't that unrealistic.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Why am I not surprised that you would ask for advice about a format you've almost never played, and then insist you know more about the format than someone who plays it every other week.

Spoiler:

Here's the fucking pool, have fun jacking off over how much better you are at Magic because you played a pre-release, you self-absorbed arsewipe.

[Knight of Cydonia]

UR Delver and variants is *the* deck right now, which also means people are packing a lot of hate for it, which will swing it back down towards T2 again swiftly (as we're already seeing). Pod will always be a top tier deck (short of Pod getting banned, which has never been seriously considered) and is, in my experience having played BUG Delver in Legacy & Kiki-Pod in Modern, just a whole bunch more fun and rewarding to learn to play.

[Knight of Cydonia]

So. Modern Masters 2015. $10 a pack. 8th Ed to New Phyrexia. Not sure if Wizards taking advantage of licence to print money, or packs with insane EV. Knowing Wizards, probably the former.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Resolving Show and Tell for Ulamog and then dropping Silverblade Paladin to soulbond on it is pretty neat. I forgot how fun Cube can be.

[Knight of Cydonia]

There are few people I dislike watching in Magic, but I am genuinely glad Jim "One Card An Hour" Davis is out of the Player's Championship.

[Knight of Cydonia]

...PrintScreen is a button on your keyboard that will do wonderful things.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Ohhh. Never mind then.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Kaalia of the Vast. Angels, Demons, Dragons, IIRC.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I'm really not crazy about this set. Small-set syndrome continues, I guess.

Also, I'm fairly sure I've seen variations on the GW Skybind deck before, and while it's cute and has a neat gameplan, it just doesn't feel like it has the wincons or explosiveness of any other constellation deck with Whip.

[Knight of Cydonia]

The biggest asshole I know in Magic plays Pod against 12 year olds at FNM at lightspeed and then gloats about his wins and makes sure everyone in the store knows what he gets in his prize packs. This gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Also, Dredgevine is back. And Jund. And basically every creature deck that wasn't Pod might have a chance. I'm happy to take that trade-off for "not being able to play out an entire hand of burn then Cruise and find the last 2 points of damage for virtually free".

Not sure about the DTT ban. It just made combo decks more consistent which isn't a bad thing for the format necessarily. No-one was playing it in Delver and I doubt they would play a full playset with the UU casting cost. I'd like to have seen it given another 3 months to see if it became as pervasive as Cruise.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Now you cry.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Spoiler:

Paul Paul Paul
Paul Paul Paul

[Knight of Cydonia]

Bloom Titan can either Hive Mind + Pact their opponent to death or win off straight up Prime Time beats. It's a combo deck, but it arguably has two separate combos that stem from it's main Amulet + bounceland setup.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Oh come on, there would totally be a burn deck and a sligh deck that both make UW Control and RestoRhino sweat until Turn 5.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Depends how much you can get per blowjob out the back of your LGS.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Jund Whip, because OG wedges best wedges.

[Knight of Cydonia]

lost in the finals of 32-man Game Day to my best bud who was on the R/W aggro plan having seen what I was running. Turns out even having 2 Crux of Fate and 2 Anger of the Gods in the 75, along with 4 Thoughtseize and another 6 removal spells, just isn't enough. In my defence, I was basically playing Jund Midrange with a few cute one-ofs and Kolaghan instead of Stormbreath since I traded my playset off for some shocklands.

Highlight of the day - breaking a board-state full of opponent's fat things on the ground vs. a Hornet Queen + tokens on my side, by activating Whip for the one-of Atarka, dashing out Kolaghan and swinging with both for precisely lethal.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Not a fair deck in any way whatsoever, but Manaless Dredge (if you're not playing the blue version with some number of Force of Will/Disrupting Shoal) is super cheap, upgrades nicely when you have more cash to sink into LEDs etc, and is comfortably favoured in game 1 of any match. Games 2 and 3 do come down to how much grave hate your opponent mulligans into, but it's still very doable.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I get to run a 40+ person prerelease this weekend
yaaay (kill me)

[Knight of Cydonia]

pls no

[Knight of Cydonia]

I walk the fuck away from the table and call for an L2 to sort this out, while cursing at you loudly for managing to play all of those at once.

(realistically, it entirely depends on which order they entered play in as to which effects activate first/if the effects are even there TO activate.)

[Knight of Cydonia]

It's actually far from the worst thing you can be asked as a judge, just because so many smart-asses do it and then stick their hand up and yell for a Judge with a shit-eating grin on their face that you can literally pull out a phone and find the answer to any number of Opalescence/Humility related questions in seconds, even if you're not aware of how timestamps and layers work.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Only person to get all the promos at my prerelease is the guy who just threw his dice so hard the board wobbled everything over. Also had a foil Narset and 3 foil Commands opened. Set seems pretty white slanted for sealed.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I live in the English equivalent of Hicksville, Texas. Intelligence is in short supply.

[Knight of Cydonia]

That was the correct rule: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... 2015-02-24

"But, of course, not all of us have that kind of patience. So you get two total rolls. (Resetting the board between each roll.) Whichever one you get a higher score on, write it down on the nearby scoresheet! That's the leaderboard. Try and get the most points out of anybody in your store!"

[Knight of Cydonia]

Bought 3 RTR packs on a whim while in Waterstones, opened 2 shocklands and a Deathrite Shaman. Note to self: act on impulse more often. And not in the typical High Tide "cast it EoT grab a Force of Will" kinda way.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I should have seen this coming when I hit preview and saw Autocard was bringing up that crappy M15 card instead of... well, Impulse.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Neither. Your dragon is on the stack, he can simply pay 1.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Sunscorch is just kind of Not Good. It's a great limited card, but stacking +1/+1 counters on it will mean very little if you tap out for it turn 5 and, say, an opponent on Abzan Midrange/Control goes "Ultimate Price your Sunscorch, Anafenza The Foremost/Courser/hold up Downfall, go". Sunscorch is good in Limited because removal is at a premium and most people are relying on damage/fight effects at the moment. Standard decks do not have that issue.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I feel like my LGS feels the exact opposite of how the wider Magic community does about every format
Triple KTK was bad because "three colours is awkward and nothing feels good", RTR block was bad because "opening lands and mana fixing so often is stupid", Theros block was bad because "whoever gets the best white wins" despite me proving to them that all of those things were bullshit stemming from their inability to do anything but regurgitate what they saw on reddit

Then again these are the same people who think I'm literally a pro Magic player because I spend more than £100 on my decks and have cashed out of a couple of GPs

sooooooo

[Knight of Cydonia]

Ideas like "3 colors are awkward" or "nothing feels right" are symptomatic of weaker players. Most notably, it implies that most of the players at your store don't know how to adjust their draft values to pick mana fixing highly enough.

I moved from a big city that regularly fired off 32-person FNMs to a tiny town's only LGS for about 45 minutes drive that only seats 12 (but lies about hosting 40-man events elsewhere so he can get enough MM2015 boxes to be able to do £200 pre-orders)

I turned up with UW Control in RTR-Theros Standard and literally didn't place anywhere but first at FNM for 3 months, then switched to Boss Sligh and didn't lose for another month when they all worked out that they needed to put pressure on the board before Turn 4. It's like being the only kid who realised how good any kind of mana-fixing could be back in school again. Every now and then I make the drive to the nearest "real" LGS and cleanse my palate.

[Knight of Cydonia]

"Kind of"

[Knight of Cydonia]

Shit, I'd have even taken Goblin Guide with an absolutely un-necessary rarity bump to Mythic over Comet Storm. Or Warren Instigator. Or Urabrask the Hidden. Or even just a big Timmy dragon like Balefire Dragon or Kargan Dragonlord or... SOMETHING. Hell, find a bullshit reason to put Thundermaw Hellkite in.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Rare redrafting is just such a kick in the teeth. "oh you're happy you opened that neat thing? Well screw you, Spike McPlaysMore gets it because he's been drafting this set nonstop since it came out online, if you want nice things you should just GET GUD NERD" (and to be clear, this is coming from the perspective of a guy who would probably be Spike McPlaysMore in this scenario)

[Knight of Cydonia]

KoC, just saying "the person who does better in the tournament gets better prizes" with more pejoratives doesn't actually make it a bad thing?

Context is a wonderful thing, especially when you consider the context of "$18 drafts with no other prize support"

I mean, if you want to argue that that's how we want to introduce new players to the joys of FNM, that's cool

[Knight of Cydonia]

KoC, just saying "the person who does better in the tournament gets better prizes" with more pejoratives doesn't actually make it a bad thing?

Context is a wonderful thing, especially when you consider the context of "$18 drafts with no other prize support"

I mean, if you want to argue that that's how we want to introduce new players to the joys of FNM, that's cool

you're an idiot.

and you are politely invited to insert a large vegetable into your anus

[Knight of Cydonia]

I'm not saying that redrafts are good. I agree they're bad. I'm specifically annoyed by his attitude that seems to suggest that people who are better in the tournament shouldn't get better prizes. Thats just...how tournaments work. And called people names like "playmore mcspikington" or whatever just shows that he's not good at the game and needs an outlet for his anger and jealousy towards people who are.

Given that I've cashed out of the last 4 GPs I've attended I'm confident in saying that actually no, I'm not just crying because I suck at the game
Also I specifically said that my thoughts came from the perspective of "playmore mcspikington" so you know

[Knight of Cydonia]

I don't believe you've cashed the last 4 GPs you've played in.

And I don't believe you're approaching the issues people have with rare redrafting from any perspective other than your own typically blinkered one. Beliefs are fun!

[Knight of Cydonia]

I have at least made my money back on 2 boxes of MM15, including 2 Goyfs. I'm also about the only person in the store to manage to do so off their boxes.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Drafted my box of MM15 with the help of some friends today.

Mythics: Goyf, Kiki-Jiki, Ulamog

Rares of note: Noble Hierarch, Wilt-Leaf Liege, Cryptic Command, Fulminator Mage, Leyline of Sanctity

Overall: Super fun set to draft, feel like I got my money's worth, even if I didn't technically "make my money back", although it's pretty close.

If the prices rebound post-GPs like most people seem to be expecting, that probably is making your money back and a bit.
Picked up my 3rd Goyf today by trading out a bunch of Standard staples + 2 Leylines and a Hierarch. Probably overvalued it a bit but I don't play enough Standard to care any more.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I feel like if anything gets banned it's Summer Bloom, Amulet on it's own does very little while Summer Bloom (+ Simian Spirit Guide) enables T1 kills which is A Bad Thing apparently

[Knight of Cydonia]

They might as well rename every Return To set they print "Strictly Worse Than Last Time We Went To ______ - By Mark Rosewater" since all they want people to do these days is ram big dumb fat creatures into each other like speed dating night at an American steakhouse

thank fuck they haven't quite managed to kill off Legacy yet