Magic: The Gathering,GO TEAM MS!

[Shanba]

I mean have you seen Dimir's 6 drop cipherables? If they control the board until then, undercity plague or whatever (SACRIFICE A PERMANENT OH AND NOW MY ROGUE MAKES YOU SACRIFICE SHIT AND DISCARD SHIT EACH TIME IT SWINGS UNBLOCKABLULZ) rapes ****, the stolen identity rapes **** a bunch of their shit rapes and it isn't that hard to get to turn 6 with Basilica guards, the 2/3 denizens, and control.

Stolen identity is a super strong limited card, and undercity plague isn't bad either (I think, not 100% sure) - but both of these are 6 drop rares, of which you can expect to maybe get one of either across an entire draft - the real proof is in the commons and uncommons, and I think most of these are too slow/don't have a big enough impact on the board when they are played to the point where the card advantage that you might theoretically be generating from them becomes irrelevant. Hands of binding is good, though, I think. It's worth noting that while all these effects become significantly more powerful if you can guarantee to connect with the opponent, some of them are unplayable garbage if you can't (call of the nightwing? Mental Vapors?) and will sit in your hand doing very little until you can establish a board presence. I'm not sure the upside beats out the downside there.

[Shanba]

Fate, I would seriously consider cutting the wild beastmasters. Without pump spells or effects for it's just a mediocre 1/1 for 3 - it'll give your guys like, no noticeable effect at all. Hamlet captain and ranger's guile, quite apart from the fact that you probably want to be saving the latter to use as a pseudo-counterspell most of the time, also don't amplify it very much, and that just leaves ghor-clan rampager. Which is obviously a powerful interaction, but I'm not sure it's worth having in your deck. Also super awkward that it never evolves experiment 1.

The second awkward thing is that all your dudes are small, and you have pit fight. I'll be blunt here, most of the time pit fight just wont clear dudes out of the way like you want it to. Searing spear is 3 damage, which is about the high end for your pit fight damage - yes in some dreamworld you might have a 6/6 rubblebelt raider and get to eat a thragtusk, but I think it's more likely that you're stuck with a 2/2 against an augur of bolas or something and pit fight is just dead in your hand where searing spear is not.

If you can pick up rancors, do that cause that card is sweet and awesome and the best thing. Plus if you make any other green beatdown decks rancors go in that as well.

[Shanba]

invasion onslaught fifth edition?

sweet!

[Shanba]

the best way to win games of limited is to play massive flyers

[Shanba]

Yeeeeeah, I can't play constructed at all because my answer to "what could be in his hand" is often "a flying pumpkin shooting eye lasers" or some other card I haven't seen.

Isn't that just a question of experience with the format? Especially just after a new set enters standard people have to get used to all the cards and that happens just by playing matches and stuff. There's really only a limited number of archetypes running a limited number of different cards - most stuff doesn't make it because it simply isn't good enough, so the pool of cards you have to learn is much smaller than it looks like on the surface. Even between archetypes a lot of cards are shared.

If the cards that are getting you are unusual cards then dont feel too bad - it's much harder to play around an unusual card than a usual card. It's like in limited, you're probably going to fall for that furious resistance or that tower defence more often than you're going to walk into that martial glory or slaughterhorn because slaughterhorns and martial glories, being more powerful cards, are the ones you're more likely to expect your opponents to play.

[Shanba]

Any Naya deck,

Goddammit

[Shanba]

Is the fact that tormod's crypt allows you to leave mana up a relevant consideration when comparing it to ground seal as a graveyard hate card? I honestly dont have enough experience deckbuilding to know. It also allows you to not turn off your own snapcaster mages.

[Shanba]

His deck's gameplan is to kill people as fast as possible. He is an aggro deck. His counters and tempo cards are there to clear dudes out of the way. An 0/4 is in no way helpful for advancing this gameplan. Even as a sideboard plan it's very bad, since he still actually needs to kill his opponent, so he needs more proactive cards.

[Shanba]

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.)

[Shanba]

They opened up some more, so no!

MY DECK WAS SO BAD UUUUUUUUUUUUGH how did I misbuild so much...

went 1-2.

[Shanba]

Yeah it was real.

If you want to keep mana open for a counterspell, having a card like think twice (instant speed card draw) available to allow you to do something even if they dont play anything you want to counter or searing spear or whatever. It's a free and guaranteed two for one (a sign in blood with a different drawback?). I imagine cheap flashback is also kinda sweet with guttersnipe.

The only thing that slightly worries me about nuwen's deck is the lack of a sideboard for graveyard strategies which I believe are in vogue right now, but idk for sure

[Shanba]

There are a couple of "top tier" pauper decks, namely stompy and affinity that cost I'd guess around 40 or so tix each - more for affinity if you shell out for sideboard cards like gorilla shaman, hydroblast and pyroblast. Both of those are super competitive and dont cost an arm and a leg. Slightly less competitive but still winning a lot of events is the goblins deck which has been undergoing a resurgence lately.

I have a few standard bearers you could borrow, but honestly they're sideboard cards almost exclusively for the stompy matchup these days, since infect got banned out, and that matchup is already pretty decent for WW, so you can get by without them. The issue with WW is a mediocre matchup against a lot of the rest of the field, particularly post decks and temporal fissure decks. If you're trying to pick up standard bearers yourself they actually go for quite a lot. Must be from a set that hasn't been drafted much online or something, I guess.

120+ tix for a deck means you're playing mono blue, and not just mono-blue but the most expensive version of mono blue you can find with multiple dazes, cloud of faeries etc. Of the expensive cards in the deck, only cloud of faeries is an auto include. I honestly think daze is pretty poorly positioned and wouldnt be running it in my delver deck, but that's personal preference.


Orzhov guild champion seems overcosted to my admittedly untrained eye.

[Shanba]

If you really want a cheap deck, affinity's core is a lot cheaper than stompy's core - the money cards in affinity are the hydroblast and pyroblasts in the sideboard which aren't strictly speaking necessary (and checking results, there are plenty of affinity decks that have 4-0ed and 3-1ed without these cards.) Stompy's core, on the other hand, is the expensive part - the money cards (quirion ranger and nettle sentinel, thank you legacy elves) are both vital to the functioning of the deck and a version without them would be significantly weaker.

In other words, if you want a true budget deck, affinity is probably the way to go, and it would run at something like 90-95% of the pimped out version for roughly a third or less of the cost. The pimped out affinity and pimped out stompy would be roughly the same price, but budget affinity is much cheaper.

Word of warning - there are card selling bots out there that market themselves as "pauper" bots - these things, by and large, engage in massive price gouging and should be avoided (particularly PorkysPauper I think its called).

Also I'd be surprised if you can get a standard deck, even mono red, for less than 100 tix. The very budgetest of standard decks brushes up against the most expensive of pauper decks in price range.

[Shanba]

I could actually see the nivix cyclops seeing some pauper play. Kiln fiend 5-8 for the wee fiend deck that dodges almost all (nonblack) instant speed removal is actually a pretty big deal, though I'm not certain that deck's biggest issue is a lack of kiln fiends. At the very least it seems like a solid sideboard option.

[Shanba]

I wish skylasher was common. Take that flickerstorm and delver!

Oh well. I dont see anything that really looks that exciting in pauper. +5/+5 sorcery speed for 1g, maybe... deputy of acquitals maybe in esper(familiar) storm? I would be quite surprised if it did, actually. Nivix cyclops has a place in weedragonauts, but that's barely a deck. Might be more of one now I guess. Hidden strings is a small possibility as well. Nothing else exciting.

[Shanba]

Actually, to be totally fair I've seen assault strobe played in pauper in a fringe kiln fiend semi-combo deck that also runs other janky fun cards like shadow rift. But yes, armed/dangerous wont see any standard play.

[Shanba]

I could be wrong, but arent all the cards from a new set initially more expensive?

[Shanba]

I'm also in (P. Dalton)

[Shanba]

Won my first match!

Lost the second game when I kept a 6 card hand with only one island, but with a thought scour and a think twice in hand on the draw. Several turns later I've been beaten down and only have a second island to show for my efforts. Games 1 and 3 played out similarly, with him racing out to an early lead before my burn stabilised the board and my frostburn weirds slowly chunked him down while he desperately dug for more gas to finish off the last few points of damage. It eventually featured frostburn weird going full on abyss mode. Was fun!

[Shanba]

Beat flickerless BUG gatekeeper deck (no archaeomancers either) to go to a record of 2-0!

[Shanba]

This card. I want to make pauper decks with this card.

[Shanba]

Beat my B/W opponent in what felt like a very lopsided matchup. Now 3-0 in the tournament

[Shanba]

I recently discovered that borborygmus is the scientific name for stomach rumbles.

Also pyroclasmesque card is the first slam dunk rare I've seen.

Swan song is like 1 mana negate with a drawback. I'd expect it to be a sideboard card if anything, cause when its bad its abysmal. In older formats the combo decks that run non-fow counters might find a place for it, I guess.

[Shanba]

I lost in my standard pauper match this round

[Shanba]

FIREDRINKER SATYR IS HERE TO CHEER YOU UP


RIP FOUNDRY STREET NOBODY LOVED YOU ANYWAY

What about a deck like this:

4xfoundry street
4xsatyr or cackler, whichever ends up being better
4xpyromancer
some number of chandra's phoenix
chandra herself
bunch of burn/token making/dynacharges

[Shanba]

Blue hasn't particularly caught my eye thus far. What makes you think it looks good in theros limited?

[Shanba]

Delver has some pretty bad matchups that were being held down by fissurepost. All the grindy 2for1 mad creature kill decks that generally have good game against that deck were completely unplayable thanks to fissurepost. And delver was good against fissurepost. Actually the bans recently have hurt the delver deck - it thrives against combo and all the combo is slowly being removed. Its like the WW effect where they removed its good matchups and replaced them with bad ones and it became unplayable as a result. I dont think delver becomes unplayable but the deck gets worse now.

[Shanba]

If anyone cares about pauper, here's a decklist:
2 Benevolent Bodyguard
4 Avacyn's pilgrim
4 Lanowar Elves
2 Bonesplitters
4 Journey to nowhere
4 Devoted Druid
4 Midnight Guard
4 Presence of Gond
4 Sigil of the Nayan Gods
3 Guardian of the guildpact
2 Lanowar Empath
1 Totem Guide Hartebeest
4 Selesnya Guildgate
6 Plains
12 Forests

The deck makes infinite 1/1 tokens with the central combo of midnight guard+presence of gond or alternately, devoted druid sigil of the nayan gods and presence of gond. I like having the alternate combo in the deck because its pretty low cost to run the sigils, which cycle when you dont need them. They also advance the alternate plan of just beating down with dudes which wins a surprising number of games (guardian of the guildpact with bonesplitters and sigils). When theros comes out, the most difficult part of this deck (finding the missing combo piece, particularly the presence - there are many creature searchers) becomes way easier with the new green grisly salvage thing (commune with the gods). Playing white and green gives you access to sweet cards like standard bearer, qasali pridemage and scattershot archer in the board. Veteran armorer is for electrickery decks.

It's possible some of the beatdown slots should already be dedicated to more search cards. I like the 8 mana elves into turn 2 midnight guard, though - that feels really powerful.

[Shanba]

I won my standard pauper match. I think that means shea and I are both now 4-1?

[Shanba]

I won my standard pauper round again, now 5-1. Game 1 was unusual in that I actually beat flickergate with damage, which never happens. Game 2 I kept drawing answers but couldnt deal with the stream of archaeomancer into gravepurge. I dealt with the first set and then he drew his second copy and I was sad. Game 3 I drew three curses but not enough things to deal with his dudes and won a tight race thanks to a bunch of thought scours lowering the clock for him. Literally won by one turn.

[Shanba]

I'm X-2.

Probably dead. I'll play it out though.

May as well, you might win more sick prizes (you too could be the proud owner of an echo tracer!)

[Shanba]

Basically? The threshold for being good at 1 mana is way lower than at 2 or 3 or w/e. You play this turn 1, turn 2 you can probably hit for 2 before your opponent can really get on the board. Even doom blade costs 2 mana. Fill your deck with enough 1 and 2 drops and you can run people over. 2 power means that it hits for a relevant amount (halves the clock compared to 1 drop) and firebreathing keeps it good if it goes longer.

The drawback is less relevant because generally your life total doesnt matter - you never end up racing them, you just end up dying if they blunt your early assault.

[Shanba]

friends!

I continue to represent mafiascum in standard pauper. Now 6-1!

[Shanba]

ty ty

depending on the other results I think I can draw in, but I think it requires the paired down x-1 to win.

[Shanba]

We've been sent out the tiebreakers, and it turns out my OMW% is the second highest in the whole damn thing - plus I'm up against one of the two people at effectively 20, so we'll be IDing in.

[Shanba]

Player Points Opponent Match Win % Game Win % Opponent Game Win %
1: Charlie S 20 67.33 81.25 65.24
2: Conor Moran 20 59.38 76.47 56.32
3: P. Dalton 19 64.79 66.67 62.42
4: Jason Gray 19 62.5 76.47 57.85
5: Hugh Kramer 19 61.63 70.59 61.22
6: Ben H 19 60.14 80 57.39
7: Justin Beckert 19 57.08 75 55.84
8: Andrzej "Onion" K 19 56.77 72.22 55.37
9: Andrew 17 57.47 68.75 58.96
10: aceracerff 17 57.29 68.75 56.03



P. Dalton (18 pts) vs Charlie S (19 pts)
Jason Gray (18 pts) vs Conor Moran (19 pts)
Hugh Kramer (18 pts) vs Justin Beckert (18 pts)
Andrzej "Onion" K (18 pts) vs Ben H (18 pts)
Andrew (16 pts) vs aceracerff (16 pts)

[Shanba]

blimey that formatting is nasty, sorry

[Shanba]

My pre-testing preliminary conclusions, based on some brewing last night a look at the pretty small card pool are something like this

- card draw is pretty lacking. Divination and read the bones are arguably the best (pilfered plans competes with read the bones which is surely just better). Sources of uncondintional raw card advantage being rare and mana expensive make it hard for the slower kill threats decks to keep up with the fast aggro.

- mono red was barely hurt by rotation and should still be one of, if not the best deck in the format. Brimstone volley becomes minotaur skullcleaver. I don't believe there is a compelling reason to play boros over mono red.

- white has access to pacifism, celestial flare and last breath, which are arguably three of the best removal spells in the format. It's to the point that arrest is likely not needed, and neither is banisher priest.

- green has a nice mix of cards that make it hard to die (centaur healer, saruli gatekeepers, deadly recluse) and efficient (in context) fatties like rumbling baloth. It also has one of two playable one drops in the format in elvish mystic. It also has a fair amount of decent early beaters. I like green in this format.

- blue is not very compelling (especially to me). It's all tempo cards and only a few decent dudes.

I've looked at g/w big stuff using common bond and the two heroic dudes in those colours, plus leafcrown dryad, hopeful eidolon and a couple fatties. Seemed to play ok, and it was doing some powerful stuff. Wasn't as good against the red deck as I was hoping - it tripped over its own mana too much.

The red deck seems truly fearsome. Like, really good. Any deck going in needs at least a plan against it. For that reason, I want to be playing white - either white black or white green, I think.

[Shanba]

Spoiler: DECK THAT COMBINES DERPINESS WITH BEING EXPENSIVE

2 Whip of Erebos
3 Corpsejack Menace
4 Elvish mystic
2 Kalonian Hydra
4 Prime Speaker Zegana
4 Sylvan Caryatid
2 polukranos
4 Devour Flesh
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Far//Away
3 Hero's Downfall
4 Read the bones
4 Breeding Pool
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Watery Grave
4 Temple of Mystery
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Forest

SIDEBOARD:1 abrubt decay 2 doom blade 2 far//away 2 ashiok 2 opportunity 2 putrefy

Obviously a lot of the numbers are wrong or w/e, but zegana draw infinite cards is kinda awesome. And then you whip it back for round 2!

[Shanba]

I can also loan a few decks:

Stompy,
an old build of Delver (it would be substantially different if I built it today),
A really old pretty bad build of g/w auras,
NivixClops (in case you like me more than bv )
Jace's erasure turbofog (sideboard needs rebuilding though - also not a top tier deck)
r/b or g/b tortex (not tier 1, but I've tuned them pretty hard),
Presence of Gond combo (:D)

[Shanba]

Hmm. I'd like to play a fun deck... don't know much about pauper, though. I want a deck that is very synergistic, IE, isn't just "playing best value things in the best slots and then winning".

Value things don't exist in pauper. This is not the land of thragtusk, heh. However, I think that description probably rules out delver.

nivixclops aims to drop a kiln fiend or a nivix cyclops and attack for 10 doublestriking damage the next turn. Cards like apostle's blessing serve as both evasion and protection.

tortex decks work on the synergy between dredge creatures, the enchantment tortured existence, grave scrabbler (a madness card) and sacrifice outlets. It's a very difficult deck to play to potential - certainly the hardest I've played.

Stompy is a relatively interesting mono-green beatdown deck. It has a highish skill floor - its hard to really suck with it - but a ton of play in using the pump to maximum effect.

B/w edge of divinity plays b/w creatures and edge of divinity. Pretty simple

g/w auras - you've heard of gladecover scout and slippery bogle - well, they have a home in pauper too.

jace's erasure/turbofog - play fogs every turn, play card draw spells, play jace's erasure is the basic plan. Tends to fold to control decks.

Presence of Gond combo - midnight guard+presence of gond is infinite tokens. The rest of the deck is dig, protection, acceleration or redundancy.

Slivers - muscle, predatory and sinew slivers are the backbone of an aggro deck that makes very big fellas to beat down. Often a bit soft to spot removal, and as a multicolour aggro deck occasionally just loses to itself, but nevertheless powerful.

Affinity - turn 1, darksteel citadel, springleaf drum. Turn two seat of the synod, frogmite, frogmite, thoughtcast, carapace forger YOUR MOVE.

r/w wellspring - midrange deck that gets value from bouncing ichor wellsprings and prophetic prisms with glint hawks and things.

[Shanba]

http://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2013/ ... t-players/

Has interviews, including with me

[Shanba]

My standard testing with BV on cockatrice has brought forth decks: one solid, one... well.

This red/white control deck is because I really like anger of the gods and chained to the rocks.
http://deckstats.net/deck-3404742-e72e8 ... 59958.html

This one is many colours and has young pyromancers in it.
http://deckstats.net/deck-3404720-fbff9 ... 194f6.html

[Shanba]

re: RW Control
-1 Heliod, -1 Purphoros, -1 Elspeth
+2 Hammer of Purphoros, +1 Spear of Heliod

4x Anger + 4x Chained fuck over your control matchup. Hammers help that a bit, and can also help against mana flood and deal with aggro by spawning 3/3s. I love Hammer in my RW Devo deck. I also like Spear in a control shell, mainly for the activated ability, not to mention it saves your Dragons from opposing Mortars. Ran into a Naya control-ish deck last week and Spear caused me a lot of problems.

Reasoning for the cuts: 3 Elspeth seems a bit much when you have a lot of threats+finishers (Dragon, Assemble, Elspeth, Chandra). Heliod seems to do the least in this deck, although situationally he'd be okay (I imagine Vigilance isn't terrible, and it does spawn tokens). Only other card I could think to cut would be a Purphoros. He's better than Heliod, but I like Chandra better (having 3 of her is fine, for card 'draw') in the 4-mana slot. Could also cut the singleton Helix, but I like that as a one-of as well. Could also cut a Chained/Anger if you're running into a lot of Control: Spear would be better usually, since it blanks Aetherling/Mutavaults.

I imagine the board has some combo of:
4x Boros Charm (control, mono-B over Dragons)
1x Assemble (mono-B)
1x Mortars (for Blood Baron)
1-2x Last Breath (for mono-U)
1-2x Wear/Tear (mostly for D-Sphere)
1-2x Glare of Heresy (mirror, WW, Wx control)
?x Hammer (if you don't want to run them main)
2x Helix (could be useful sometimes)
1-2x Burning Earth (if you run into a lot of Esper/Naya/Dega/Junk)
maybe 4x Firedrinker Satyr for control/mono-B matches where you need creatures? seen some RW Devo lists do that

The boros charm firedrinker satyr plan simply doesnt work for this deck - the plan of beat them down and burn them out is fine when you have other threats the are relatively cheap, but the first thing that hits for damage in this deck costs 3, so you'll never have enough to kill them before the revs and such kick in. When you build a deck like this you have to be prepared to fight the control decks in the lategame somewhat, which is obviously a losing proposition and hence why most midrange decks have a bad matchup against control. This one has a worse one than most, but its not keel down and die. But anyway, the point is that we're not winning by beating down with a 2/1 for a few turns. It just doesn't do enough. Nor does boros charm, which is honestly only ever going to be 4 damage for 2 mana in the deck (we have few permanents that are likely to be destroyed - exiled (detention sphere) and bounced (cyclonic rift), yes, destroyed, not as frequently.)

Scrylands and magma jets do a good job managing the manabase, generally, but a deck like this is always going to suffer from that kind of thing from time to time.

Spear of heliod is definitely a consideration, but it feels pretty win more-ish - if we have a bunch of tokens down, its rare we need them to be 2/2s - and in the situations where that would be useful, purphoros I think normally does a better job.

The extra walkers and win conditions are concessions to that matchup - we have enough action to last the course against anything trying to beat us down, since our board wipe costs 3 and we have a bunch of other removal to supplement it. Heliod is definitely the weakest of those, but acts as another thing to try and tax their detention spheres. Purphoros is the better god by a margin and heliod could definitely face the axe.

Mortars is actually pretty clunky in the deck because its very rare we'll be overloading it for any reasonable kind of value - we have too much removal and mass removal that we want to be casting for that to be a thing very often, so it's normally just 2 mana kill a small creature, which isn't a great rate of return. Blood baron is the reason it is in the deck - it replaced the warleader's helixes that previously had those slots.

sideboard is currently
4 Chandra's Phoenix
2 Celestial Flare
2 Pithing Needle
2 Glare of Heresy
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Wear // Tear

of which by far the worst are the chandra's phoenixes and the celestial flares which should be cut for something better. Pithing needle is amazing, and, among other things, a clean answer to aetherling and jace - two cards the deck struggles with. Mortars in case they're packing blood barons and as maybe an extra cheap removal spell against mono-u or w/r beatdowns, wear//tear and glare of heresy for the esper matchup.

[Shanba]

wait what shanba plays standard

Only on cockatrice gaming with bv

[Shanba]

Only in the sense that going to the cinema is a scam. You're paying for entertainment!

[Shanba]

Incidentally I would be surprised if fetches weren't reprinted at some point. But wizards has said they dont like people sitting around shuffling their deck all day long cause thats time not spent BATTLING so that hurts fetches somewhat - regardless even if they're now a no-go for a standard legal set I'd be surprised if they were never reprinted in some supplementary set, because reprinting expensive stuff is a fantastic way of monetising the secondary market for wizards.

[Shanba]

With TNN a thing I think I prefer modern to legacy right now /heresy

Edit: nevermind someone is playing aluren with shardless agents and baleful strix and eternal witness and just 2for 1 ing without even combo oh my

Edit 2:this is fascinating

its like he took shardless bug and said you know what this needs? Aluren combo. VALUEEEEEEEEE!

Edit 3:I think I'm in love with this deck. I don't even care if its good and a playset of imperial recruiters is a down payment on a mortgage. My oh my.

[Shanba]

So, I dont normally like playing 8-4 draft queues because I lose quite a bit in limited still, but today I was waitign in the swiss m14 queue as the only player without really enough time to wait for it to fill and I saw an almost full 8-4 and said, well, whatever I may as well. I joined the queue, started drafting, ended up in kinda ok but not really r/g slivers with the +3/+3 sliver. Pick 1 pack 3 comes around and I'm not too confident in my deck, it feels like I'm being cut (and I actually played against g/w slivers round 1 so that may well be accurate) and I see a pack with a bunch of nice blue and something mediocre for me. I look at particularly the opportunity in the pack with longing but reluctantly pass it.

Its coming to an end, the drafting portion and I've picked up the +2/+0 sliver and my deck looks fine now, probably not going to win anything but at least playable. My opening pack comes back.

Opportunity wheeled

.

I 3-0d that draft.

[Shanba]

I think being a 3 mana god is pretty relevant even when you ignore the ability, which is also fine. It's probably more likely to be relevant than something like karametra's or kruphix's. If the constellation cards were just a little better then I think she would have a place - as is, I think she probably misses out the cut.

Also Athreos is cool but I bet he ends up being really annoying and clunky in practice and not actually that amazing.

[Shanba]

Bad if you want to play standard and have a budget, probably good overall if money isn't really a concern for you for whatever reason.

From wizards' perspective there seem very few downsides.

Incidentally, after learning magic on mtgo since m13, I went to my first FNM last friday. Very first card I opened from a magic pack was a Soul of Theros.

Somehow I then proceeded to 1-2 the draft

[Shanba]

ngggghhhh

why does wizards taunt me so

There are pauper dailies again! 3 per week!

Friday, Saturday, Sunday at 5:30 pm pacific time

aka beginning 2:30 in the morning for me

even had I the inclination to play magic from 2:30 to 5:30 its reasonably likely I would not be playing at my best at these times

so close and yet so far

[Shanba]

Yep, Mono B despite only really appearing in RTR-THS was primarily a RTR deck. Even stuff like Gary gets a lot worse with its best enablers gone - what BBB or even 1BB permanents do you want to play?

U/W control in all its various shells (esper, UWR, Bant) that its had since RTR is fuelled by the UW cards from RTR block - Azorius charm, D Sphere, Verdict, Rev, Jace, even if not all of those are played as much as they were. Losing some quality filler hurts but losing the spine of the deck in the rev/verdict combo makes it fairly inappropriate, imo, to refer to any deck that follows as the same.

Mono U is the one that is interesting to me, because it loses the good filler but keeps the payoff cards of Master of Waves and Thassa, but on the spoilers so far there doesnt look to be anything to play the role of basically any of the existing creature base. I mean, losing stuff like cloudfin raptor and replacing it with hypnotic siren, fine, but tidebinder mage for mindreaver is not exciting and there is literally no replacement for nightveil specter. There's still a bunch of spoilers to come, but Mono U was not a deck in block constructed and without serious help it will not be a deck in standard post rotation either, imo.

It's actually astonishing how few of the decks are built on a core of Theros cards. Burn? Nope. G/W aggro? Nope. Devotion of any flavour? Arguably to some extent, but in practice largely nope. The B/G graveyard deck is possibly the closest, and even that is losing important enabler grisly salvage and Jarad. Theros was a shitty and boring block though with a surprisingly low power level so I guess that's not surprising. Still with three sets to Khans 1 I suspect that it will feature a bit more heavily post rotation.

Which means beyond courser/caryatid midrange decks that are something of a known quantity (and even those could morph dramatically), the new format could have a very different feel to it from the old one.

Block was dominated by Naya midrangey decks with elspeth and courser, but decks like Mono B aggro were around as well, and that deck in particular got some nice goodies (that 2/1 gravecrawler impersonator is nutty). A mono red aggressive deck likely exists post rotation with rabblemaster and miniature friends, and that deck also got some potential cards. I'm looking at a junk shell for a midrange deck, with a play all the good cards philosophy - elvish mystic, thoughtseize, courser, caryatid, elspeth, hero's downfall - and then a lot of maybe good cards filling in the edges like (fleecemane lion/boon satyr if more beatdownny, end hostilities potentially, abzan charm potentially, maybe duneblast if you wanna be ambitious, maybe bile blight if the mana holds up).

Abzan ascendancy is my favourite card in the set, however, and I will do anything I can to make it work <.>

[Shanba]

Tempo cards are not my jam at all, so that thing didn't really stick out to me.

[Shanba]

My favorite card thus far is the enchantment that taps a creature every time you play a spell. But I also don't really think it will work.

That sounds boring pfft

[Shanba]

I am constitutionally incapable of not brewing when presented with a format, and as such I've concocted this:

Spoiler: Abzan Spirit Bonds

4 Elvish Mystic
4 Abzan Ascendancy
3 Spirit Bonds
4 Fleecemane Lion
3 Abzan Charm
4 Sunblade Elf
4 Polukranos, World Eater
1 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes
3 Abzan Falconer
2 Boon Satyr
2 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
2 Ajani Steadfast
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
4 Llanowar Wastes
3 Plains
4 Windswept Heath
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Mana Confluence
4 Forest
2 Temple of Plenty
4 Sandsteppe Citadel

//Sideboard
SB: 2 Glare of Heresy
SB: 2 Selfless Cathar
SB: 2 Mistcutter Hydra
SB: 1 Launch the Fleet
SB: 1 Genesis Hydra
SB: 4 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 Nyx-Fleece Ram
SB: 1 Wall of Essence

Spoiler: Thoughts on brew

The sideboard is a mess, mostly just cards I wanted to test out. I've been running it against the speculative decklists running around online on channelfireball, starcitygames, tcgplayer. Seems reasonable so far, lots of fun.

Abzan ascendancy is nutty in this deck.

Abzan falconer was a card I wasn't sure about, but playing the deck over and over it just keeps going up in my estimation, card is strong - pushes through damage against monsters style decks with aplomb, threatens elspeth, makes attacking with prognostic sphinx awkward, helps deal with herald of torment and mantis rider and other annoying flyers. It's great that if you just have creatures with counters on lying around (which with acendancy and charm and fleecemane and ajanis and polukranos happens fairly often), then you topdeck a falconer, suddenly they all have flying. I haven't tested any of the other sliverlord abzan guys - I'd rather keep the raw power level of cards a bit higher and use the synergies to push it over the top. It's worth noting that just on its own with outlast only costing 1, falconer turns itself on fairly easily even when you're using your mana for other stuff and a 3/4 flyer isn't nothing.

Sunblade elf has caused headaches. The pump is generally a good thing to have access to, and a cheap green creature is ideal because it means you can pay for spirit bonds, but it's relatively frequently an anemic 1/1, which is bad. I could see cutting it, but what for?

Abzan charm has underperformed. I suspected it would be bad against aggro decks, but it's actually just a straight mulligan against anyone with a bunch of 1 drops. Against controlling decks its a difficult to cast sign in blood, against more midrangey decks is where it is at its best. I could see cutting it fairly easily, or maybe moving it to the board.

Thoughtseize is in the board because we're not really black, we're just splashing it and the card gets a lot worse if you can't play it early. This is especially true as many of our black sources come into play tapped. Moving it to mainboard would require a rejig of the manabase and I'm not sure it's worth it - spirit bonds and abzan ascendancy both want you to keep your non-creature count down, so slots are tight for that kind of thing.

Spirit bonds is great, turning early cheap creatures into threats and protecting polukranoses etc in the lategame. It effectively acts as abzan ascendancies 5-7.

Boon satyr over courser - could be convinced the other way.

The mana base has made me scratch my head a lot - I've played pauper and messed around with legacy/modern on cockatrice, and I've brewed before/watched before the standard formats with rtr in (inn/rtr and rtr/ths). Those formats either have easy mana to make (just dump all the shocks in your colours and add temple) or established decklists with the manabase pre-ordained for you. This format is more complicated, I think. I've tried with a bunch of painlands and mana confluences to get the cheap cards out quickly, but I was doing 6-7 damage to myself per game and that wasn't great. I tried with more temples, but then black mana became more difficult, and the number I had to run to get all the colours was punishing on the tempo. The triland (sandsteppe citadel) has been a great solution and its now much rarer to get colour screwed while still running a bunch of untapped green sources for mystic.

Overall pretty similar to some of the Abzan decks I've seen floating around, but more aggressive and less midrangey and with a couple of extras that have worked really well.

I playtested against these decks on cockatrice:

Spoiler: Black Aggro (Shanba)

4 Bloodsoaked Champion
4 Herald of Torment
4 Tormented Hero
4 Mogis's Marauder
4 Spiteful Returned
4 Gnarled Scarhide
4 Mardu Skullhunter
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cruel Sadist
4 Hero's Downfall
20 Swamp

Spoiler: Jeskai Counter/Burn (Craig Wescoe on TCGplayer)

4 Mantis Rider
4 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
4 Deflecting Palm
4 Jeskai Charm
4 Lightning Strike
4 Mindswipe
4 Searing Blood
4 Stoke the Flames
4 Swan Song
4 Battlefield Forge
2 Island
2 Mountain
4 Mystic Monastery
4 Shivan Reef
2 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Temple of Epiphany
2 Temple of Triumph

//Sideboard
SB: 4 Anger of the Gods
SB: 4 Banishing Light
SB: 2 Chandra, Pyromaster
SB: 1 Keranos, God of Storms
SB: 4 Satyr Firedancer

Spoiler: Naya Monsters by Andrea Mengucci on Channel Fireball

4 Forest
2 Mountain
2 Plains
4 Temple of Abandon
2 Temple of Plenty
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
2 Battlefield Forge
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Genesis Hydra
3 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
3 Xenagos, the Reveler
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
3 Nissa, Worldwaker
2 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
4 Lightning Strike
1 Magma Jet
4 Banishing Light

//Sideboard
SB: 1 Magma Jet
SB: 4 Anger of the Gods
SB: 2 Reclamation Sage
SB: 2 Magma Spray
SB: 2 Glare of Heresy
SB: 1 Xenagos, the Reveler

Spoiler: Esper Control by Brian Braun-Duin on Starcity Games

2 Prognostic Sphinx
2 Nyx-Fleece Ram
3 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Island
2 Swamp
2 Plains
1 Caves of Koilos
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Temple of Silence
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Banishing Light
4 Dissolve
4 Hero's Downfall
1 Jace's Ingenuity
1 Murderous Cut
2 Utter End
4 Divination
4 End Hostilities
4 Thoughtseize

//Sideboard
SB: 3 Ruthless Ripper
SB: 2 Nyx-Fleece Ram
SB: 3 Bile Blight
SB: 2 Deicide
SB: 1 Empty the Pits
SB: 1 Fated Retribution
SB: 1 Jace's Ingenuity
SB: 2 Negate

[Shanba]

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.

[Shanba]

I've never been a fan of reaper of the wilds. Just feels like it doesn't really do anything. 4/5 that either gets removed or you have to wait until turn 6 and then hope they don't have a sweeper for the next 5 turns while you slowly beat down and then you can't tap out of green ever again. Completely outclassed by Elspeth, awkward against Xenagos, smaller than Polukranos. I don't think Reaper is something I've ever wanted to be doing.

Siege Rhino can threaten the token making walkers cause it has trample, so you can't just block with 1 of 3 1/1s every turn, helps get you back into games against aggro decks. Granted it loses combat to Polukranos and Reaper, but oh well. It's not my favourite card but I'd much prefer to play that over Reaper.

Polukranos is just a big dumb beater who your opponent has to respect the monstrous on, I think. A useful mana sink in a Nykthos deck. Also mono green, so if there is some kind of RUG monsters then Polly obviously goes in there over the two B/G 4 drops, and while you might be losing out (not sure on that even) it's certainly not some huge drop in quality.

I don't like Reaper. Stupid card, unfun card, not very good card.

[Shanba]

I have that deck online!

It's really fucking hard to play though.

[Shanba]

I think you might be able to get away with it if you don't mind taking 10 damage a game, with mana confluence and painlands. Probably not worth it though.

Mostly I don't see why you would need to add colours when you can have really strong mono-coloured aggro decks with the cards available

[Shanba]

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.

[Shanba]

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.

[Shanba]

oh my goodness that is truly excellent

[Shanba]

It's also pretty fricking absurd that he has the gall to complain about it.

[Shanba]

http://imgur.com/lfakARu

the hidden cards are exhume and oona's prowler



Incidentally the fucking "loading your collection" bug is really annoying"

omg i misclicked condemn on his knight of glory instead of his hero of bladehold I hate everything

[Shanba]

That scg open was painful.

I mean that in the sense that every single one of the Abzan midrange decks on camera seemed designed to start the game at 10 life. Worth noting that none of those with the bizarre deadly mana bases made top 8.

Big mess of green midrange everywhere though. Picking out some winners from among the pack...

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdat ... ckID=73333

ascendancy storm did something! I thought I wouldn't see this deck anywhere near top 8, so seeing one in 11th is heartening.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdat ... ckID=73400

I tested a similar deck to this last season. It couldn't really beat esper back then. The meta may be kinder? Anger of the gods for weenies and chained to the rocks for fatties is a nice removal suite.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdat ... ckID=73324

I'm not sure how good this deck style is if people stop killing themselves with their manabases, but seems to have been a really good choice for the event. Deflecting Palm is way better than I originally thought - every time I've seen it played it's done work.

And that's literally all the non-green decks in the top 16 of two events. Wonderful.

[Shanba]

Lol shanba, you randomly picked my buddies decklist (the storm combo one) I've talked about him before in this thread. The guy who won the wmcq.

Hah! That's kinda awesome.

I really hope the jeskai ascendancy deck is good. If there's a s

Incidentally, I like the name storm for that deck because I do think it plays out pretty similarly to most grapeshot-style storm decks, even if it requires a bit more setup on the board first. (Mostly I think, play a bunch of spells is the defining feature of storm decks - yeah, I would consider things like eggs and ghostly flicker combo in pauper to be storm decks too). Seems like a decent direction for standard legal combo (need a board presence, fast but not lightning fast), though, which I would love to be a thing.

However, I totally agree that sultai dredge is a dumb name. It really doesn't do anything very similar to dredge decks except use its graveyard.

[Shanba]

I just burnt all my phantom points that I amassed from... somewhere? to do a bunch of cube drafts. For the first time I didn't just lose round 1, built some sweet decks, made two finals, lost both. But was worth it, would do it again.

[Shanba]

I was playing the 8-4s and when I came 2nd my phantom points became innistrad boosters, which isn't a bad deal I guess.

[Shanba]

I also lost to mono red in the cube recently but that was, I suspect, because I was playing bitterblossom and serendib efreet.

[Shanba]

I just wanna run standard decks that play dig through time.

[Shanba]

I am beginning to wonder if treasure cruise might not be a rather powerful card

[Shanba]

I suspect it is fine in legacy too - it requires some turns to set up, restricts your deck building choices to a certain degree. Pretty great in fair matchups, but there are many cards that fit that description.

Modern though, every time I've seen people playing the card it has added raw power to the deck. I also suspect that it is the real reason the ascendancy deck is so hyped, and the deck would be way easier to disrupt without it. Like, the plan of grind it out with bolts and decays and thoughtseizes becomes a lot more realistic if they can't just topdeck a draw 3.

I strongly suspect that if you ban ascendancy or wish, some other deck running treasure cruise starts crushing people.

[Shanba]

Some guy who writes on channel fireball agrees with me about treasure cruise

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles ... l-problem/

Edit: also in the comments for that article, Sam Pardee

After playing the Jeskai Ascendancy deck, I predicted that cruise will not be legal in any eternal format this time next year. I also don't think that's any kind of tragedy or anything; it's fine for them to push the envelope too far sometimes, makes things interesting while they do.

[Shanba]

Dailies are in the weekend shea so I don't know yet. Also I can't really play them. Have to admit I haven't really been thinking about the format since KTK came out.

It's probably better than the Accumulated Knowledge delver builds that some people were doing, but then again it's competing with gush as card draw in that deck so yeah.

Arguably lacking reasonable fetches makes it significantly less busted, much like brainstorm is significantly less busted in that format.

[Shanba]

Careful Study seems like it would combo well, knocking it down pretty quickly. Giving Madness a free way to restock seems fairly solid.

Pauper High Tide can probably also use it nicely.

You mean the ghostly flicker combo? Possibly, though arguably when they both cost 1 mana anyway foresee is better.

Madness is a good shout. I don't have a lot of experience with the deck though I do know it plays circular logic - how important is keeping the yard stocked for that card?

[Shanba]

http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/122530

That might be a thing.

[Shanba]

Ari with the sick topdecks into the finals

[Shanba]

Is Quiet Contemplation as sideboard tech for the Pearl Lake Ancient mirror too cute?

[Shanba]

Is Quiet Contemplation as sideboard tech for the Pearl Lake Ancient mirror too cute?

I feel Stain the Mind is a bit more applicable, imo.

Not sure. Stain the mind is 5 mana which means it gets hit by disdainful stroke + is generally harder to protect with counter magic, and is significantly awkward if they're also/instead playing prognostic sphinx, whereas quiet contemplation is neat against that too.

Edit: Isn't Time Spiral a MaRo set too?

If so looks like every time he cuts loose he's been rebuffed and now sits happily in staid conservatism.

Magic design these days is very predictable. Next set will have as rare some creature with above-the-curve stats that also has a decent ETB effect/some way of generating value, a small above-the-curve creature in red or black or white with some trinket text ability and a powerful planeswalker that does w/e (2W 3 loyalty -2 exile target non-land permanent until Name leave the battlefield +1 prevent all damage that would be dealt to Name until the beginning of your next turn -5 exile all non-land permanents until Name leaves the battlefield). Set mechanics will be irrelevant in constructed, propped up in limited by ainok bond-kin (or akroan skyguard, or wojek halberdier, or whatever random just above-par common that is good enough for limited but can never reasonably exist in a world dominated by siege rhinos or whatever random ridiculous value 4 or 5 mana creature.

The dominant strategies are midrange mush, super-lean aggro and tap-out control. The sweet interesting decks are basically unplayable.

[Shanba]

https://twitter.com/bazardebagda/status ... 73/photo/1

hmm

Edit: when does a card start counting as format warping?

[Shanba]

Hm.

The five minute mark is the most suggestive. At 4:52 a card pops out, then the next shuffle could put that card to the top but I can't say for sure that it is (just that you could do it that way - you simply make sure that when you're pulling piles, the last pile is 1 card. Think there are probably slicker ways of doing that too.) Then the mash shuffles that he does don't look like the disturb the top card, it looks like he places them behind.

At 11 minutes, however, I really can't see anything suspicious at all. The mash shuffles he's doing look like they alternate between disturbing the top card and not disturbing it, so he can't really be holding a card there, unless there's something I really don't get and I am not experienced enough at this kind of thing to know.

At 30 minutes you don't see the deck? So uhh yeah. His head may be positioned in such a way that he can see the bottom card. But it looks to me like he's looking away.

Watching the next one. At 4:04 it looks similar to the one against jadine - one overhand shuffle to maybe put a card on top, then mashes that dont disturb the top card. Then an overhand that doesn't disturb (which is kinda fishy), then kent draws a land. Similar again at 6:40, he mash shuffles first and it looks normal, then he overhand shuffles, then the mashes look like they preserve the top card. Context is wrong at 9:30 - he's actually fetching post delver trigger, to shuffle away a card he doesn't want. However, again it looks like his mash shuffles don't disturb the top card after he overhand shuffles. It's actually super hard to tell whether he's cheating when you can't see where his head is looking though - is it pointing down? He does have that same pattern where he does that sketchy shuffle pattern. 14:30 looks sketchy again.

When trevor humphries was on camera earlier in the tournament I immediately thought it looked kinda odd, whereas Jared Boettcher has never stood out to me before.

Pre-edit: ninjad I guess

[Shanba]

I don't know, looks like its just sloppy shuffling to me.

It very well could be. With Trevor, the fact that he was clearly watching the bottom card made it pretty definitive, but without being able to see his head I really can't say for sure. The only times, where he's shuffling zoomed out, it looks like he's looking away, but he could be like, looking out fo the corner of his eye idk.

[Shanba]

A good day!

[Shanba]

I have in the past watched reynad streaming, and I can definitely say that the guy is the most colossal of douchebags. Like, magic streamers have a tendency to issue withering putdowns to the people watching them in this weird kinda I"M BETTER THAN YOU thing, but reynad brought it to a whole new level.

Edit: which of course does not make him a cheater, though

[Shanba]

I don't like people who yell at stupid people because of how often I am stupid.

Like the other day I tried to kill a 4 toughness creature with bring low ;_;

and today I tried to kill a 2/5 with winterflame (there are mitigating circumstances)

[Shanba]

Wait, he had two of both? That's nutty

[Shanba]

It's nice to know that wizards haven't managed to stamp out all broken cards yet and there's still some chance that truly nutty stuff gets through the net.

[Shanba]

Guess that settles it then.

[Shanba]

I cannot stop winning at ktk limited this week.

after 3-0ing at fnm, I came home and went 1-1 in an 8-man. Then I started doing phantom sealeds cause I had phantom tickets and boy is the competition loose, went 3-0 3-0 2-1 1-2 2-1 3-0. Then did another couple 8 mans and went 2-1 and 2-0-1 chopping the finals. My limited rating has gone from like 1650 to 1795 since they re-implemented ratings.

I really like this format.

Edit: containment priest actually seems pretty decent. Hoses dredge (kinda - if they already have the narcomoebas and such in play then it does nothing), reanimator, show and tell and aether vial decks. Awkwardly I guess the deck that would want it most is an aether vial deck, but oh well.

[Shanba]

It might just be that the deck has a fairly bad delver matchup though.

Also, I would be pretty astonished if this got standard banned. It has less results than even angel of glory's rise combo.

[Shanba]

I tried really hard to make u/w control work.

The issue was only partially the wrath being garbage. It was also the spot removal being garbage. The only spot removal spell I wanted to play was devouring light and even that is super clunky. If you can't keep up with spot removal and can't catch up with boardwipes and then there's a whole slew of random hard to deal with threats like planeswalkers and protection from your deck and uncounterable haste hydras and whatever.

I also tried u/b a bunch and that's also garbage.

The only fun thing for blue is that 2 of the most busted draw spells ever printed are legal, and also disdainful stroke is superb. But your counters cost too much, no colour gives you good removal and no colour gives you a good boardwipe.

FWIW, I think this spoiled wipe is better than perilous vault as even though perilous vault nukes everything it also takes 2 turns to play and then you die. It's so much better to find this off dig through time than it is to find vault when you need a boardwipe.

[Shanba]

that deck was sooo coool

[Shanba]

My favourite infinite draw loop is

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... eid=174818

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... seid=15168

and having 10 poison counters.

Since you don't own the mirror (it was donated to you), it is not shuffled away as part of lich's mirrors replacement effect for you losing the game. Additionally, the poison counters are not removed by lich's mirrors effect - your life total becomes 20. But that doesn't matter. So you lose the game, lich's mirrors replacement effect happens... and you instantly lose the game again for having 10 poison counters. And again. And again...

Since this is an infinite mandatory loop, it is a draw!

[Shanba]

I mostly play magic so I can boast at how good I am at magic while being bad at magic.

Playing tournaments might break that cognitive dissonance.

[Shanba]

I dont think UB beats abzan as hard as you think.

Also I have huge loathing of Pearl Lake Ancient, having tested with it a bunch. I think the card is actually awful. It is embarassed by elspeth. It is embarassed by brimaz (lol). It costs 7 mana. It is significantly easier to kill than it looks - because you can cut/downfall/activate vault or w/e in response to the first activation - so to save it from this you need to return 6 lands to hand. Returning 6 lands to hand is a lot. So it often just plays as a 2 for 1 - but a 2 for 1 of otherwise dead cards.

The issue UB has in the matchup, and this depends on deck construction I guess, is that is actually can struggle to keep up on card advantage if the abzan guy is using his thoughtseizes to punch his 2 for 1s past countermagic - the walkers, the coursers. Rhino is the card that matters least but you still have to kill it.

(For example, ari lax's deck from the PT - 4 courser, 4 abzan charm, 2 sorin, 2 ajani, 3 elspeth, 2 wingmate roc. All these are 2 for 1s if they resolve, which thoughtseize helps ensure. Whereas the UB deck's card advantage is Dig, Jace's ingenuity, maybe some number of font of fortunes/divination. Dig is a superb spell, but it is simply a very high quality 2 for 1, so it struggles to pull you way out of reach.

I experimented with these control decks for so long before deciding that like, a 55/45 edge against abzan just wasn't worth the trouble. There are better ways of beating abzan.)

The upside is your countermagic, obviously, but thoughtseize is a major pain for that plan.

[Shanba]

I have spent a lot of money on magic, but spending that much just baffles me.

[Shanba]

I really do like KTK sealed, and I do like that it's possible to make lots of colours and still be right. My instinct/experience has been that the format is slow enough/bomby enough to make you want to run your true bombs - I don't mean the avalanche tuskers level, I mean the craters claws wingmate roc stuff if you can.

Spoiler: Building the sealed pool KOC posted

Intrigued by the building of KOC's pool challenge.

Lessee. The BOMB cards are like Kheru Spellsnatcher and maybe Flying Crane Technique. Armament Corps is also very good, and there are a few other cards dotted about that pool I really like. Suspension field is the best removal spell in the pool.

Fixing is on the low end of what I expect from a KTK pool, looks pretty dotted around different colours. 4 red lands, 3 green ones, 4 blue, 3 black, 1 white. 3 Jeskai fixers, 1 mardu, 1 abzan, 3 temur, 3 sultai. Lot of the fixing is ally coloured, unfortunately.

Green looks pretty deep, a decent amount of high quality creatures. With armament corps and abzan guide, I'd like to at least see where base green/white takes us, even though the fixing looks pretty shallow.

Green:
Highland Game
Alpine Grizzly x 2
Savage Punch
sultai flayer
hooting mandrills
awaken the bear
sagu archer
archer's parapet

White:
Suspension Field
Kill Shot x 2
Alabaster Kirin
Feat of Resistance

Black:
Throttle
Sultai Scavenger

Multi:
Chief of the Edge
Armament Corps
Abzan Guide

Eh. I'm playables short, even if I add some more marginal morphs, but the power level just doesn't look high enough to me. I'm going to lose a lot of games to my opponents doing more busted things. Plus, I'm not playing any of my bombs. Black probably to be avoided except maybe as a splash colour.

Staying base green, what about green/blue/something

Green:
Highland Game
Alpine Grizzly x 2
Savage Punch
sultai flayer
hooting mandrills
awaken the bear
sagu archer

Blue:
Kheru Spellsnatcher
Dig Through Time (really good card in this format, but I don't think it's quite bomb status unless you have real nutso cards to search for).
Jeskai Windscout
Crippling Chill
Waterwhirl (bit concerned about the density of creatures at this point - also this spell is strong but situational, and especially bad if you are lacking board presence, which could be a problem if the creature count is low. This being the case, I'm inclined to add wetland sambar too.)
Wetland Sambar
Singing Bell Strike

Splashing red gets me all the nice snowhorn riders and the avalanche tuskers:
Snowhorn Rider x 2
Avalance Tusker
I'm looking at this build and seeing a remarkable lack of 4 power creatures for temur ascendancy. Egh. And a lack of creatures in general.

Also can add:
Arc Lightning
Mardu Heart-Piercer

Both are solid cards, but beginning to leave the territory where I'm comfortable splashing for them. Plus, I'm still not at enough playables. 13 creatures. Lots of awkward. Still like it better than the abzan build by quite a bit. Worst case scenario, go back to this, splash white for crane technique and suspension field, leaving myself short on creatures but solid otherwise. Could also add the second crippling chill.

Base U/R then. Probably playing white?

Blue:
Kheru Spellsnatcher
Dig Through Time
Jeskai Windscout
Crippling Chill
Waterwhirl
Wetland Sambar
Singing Bell Strike

Red:
Ainok Tracker
Tormenting Voice
War-Name Aspirant
Summit Prowler
Horde Ambusher
Valley Dasher (looking to cut this)
Mardu Heart-Piercer
Act of treason (eh)
Mardu Warshrieker (maybe)
Arc Lightning

Deck already feels deeper, and we can definitely play that crane technique

White:
Kill Shot
Suspension Field
Flying Crane Technique
Efreet Weaponmaster

20 cards. It's a start! I wonder if I can touch green, play the snowhorn riders. Splashing powerful morphs always feels good - either my mana works out and I get a sweet creature like snowhorn rider or if I sense trouble I can play to trade them with my opponent's morphs. Plus, the Frontier Bivouac is giving me a free green source already, since I'm playing it for the u/r part regardless.

Green:
Snowhorn Rider
Snowhorn Rider

That's 22. Lessee if the mana works out or I have to rejig the build a bit.

Green:
Bivouac
rugged highlands
Forest

probably a bare minimum.

Honestly I'm not convinced. Let's cut the snowhorn riders (also I miscounted and that's 23 cards) and add a crippling chill. Not thrilled for the valley dasher to be in the deck. Can add any 1 of disdainful stroke, cancel, blinding spray, weave fate. Let's go with weave fate for "reasons". (I like drawing cards).

Mana base again:

White:
Tranquil Cove
mm...
I probably want, what, 5 to 6 white sources? Lets add 4 plains and see how the other colours work out.

Red:
Bivouac
Saltwater Cliffs
7 mountains

Blue:
Bivouac
Cove
Cliffs
6 islands

That's 20 lands. Mana's gonna be sketch then. I think I can most easily skimp on white, since if I miss on white for a while that's not a disaster, but missing red is a problem, and I have double blue spells.

So:
Ainok Tracker
Tormenting Voice
War-Name Aspirant
Summit Prowler
Horde Ambusher
Valley Dasher (looking to cut this)
Mardu Heart-Piercer
Act of treason
Mardu Warshrieker
Arc Lightning
Kheru Spellsnatcher
Dig Through Time
Jeskai Windscout
Crippling Chill
Waterwhirl
Wetland Sambar
Singing Bell Strike
Kill Shot
Suspension Field
Flying Crane Technique
Efreet Weaponmaster
Frontier Bivouac
Saltwater Cliffs
Tranquil Cove
3 plains
5 islands
7 mountains

I think that's the deck. The mana is sketchier than I'd like, but frankly the fixing in this pool sucks and no colours that I have fixing for are really deep enough. Still, the card quality is very high and I have a solid gameplan.

[Shanba]

I don't dislike the green, I like it quite a bit. I'm just not sure how to jam it in the deck and come back with a realistic deck.

On the building sealed pool note, here's a pool I had a little while ago when still learning the format in the phantom sealed queue on MTGO. Unfortunately my internet blipped out during deckbuilding and although I got back with plenty of time, I felt the pool was pretty hard to build. I'm interested in feedback:

Spoiler: Sealed Pool

WHITE
3 Mardu Hateblade
Brave the Sands
Defiant Strike
Jeskai Student
Ainok Bond-Kin
Watcher of the Roost
Take Up Arms
2 Kill Shot
Pearl Lake Ancient

BLUE
Wetland Sambar
Crippling Chill
2 Embodiment of Spring
Singing Bell Strike
2 Taigam's Scheming
Whirlwind Adept
Mistfire Weaver
Cancel
Treasure Cruise
Jeskai Windscout
Monastery Flock

BLACK
Dutiful Return
Gurmag Swiftwing
Rotting Mastodon
2 Mardu Skullhunter
Raiders' Spoils
Krumar Bond-Kin
Rite of the Serpent
Murderous Cut
Bitter Revelation
2 Debilitating Injury

RED
Act of Treason
Mardu Blazebringer
2 Summit Prowler
Leaping Master
Shatter
Valley Dasher
Barrage of Boulders
Tormenting Voice
2 Bloodfire Mentor

GREEN
2 Archers' Parapet
Kheru Dreadmaw
Savage Punch
Naturalize
Incremental Growth
Dragonscale Boon
Scout the Borders
Tusked Colossodon
Longshot Squad
2 Sagu Archer

COLOURLESS
Heart-Piercer Bow
Jeskai Banner
Mardu Banner

MULTICOLOUR
Flying Crane Technique
Abzan Ascendancy
Death Frenzy
Kin-Tree Invocation
Butcher of the Horde
Mardu Charm
Temur Charm
Narset, Enlightened Master
Efreet Weaponmaster
Jeskai Charm
Abomination of Gudul
Sultai Soothsayer

Land
2 Swiftwater Cliffs
Dismal Backwater
Bloodfell Caves
Flooded Strand
Frontier Bivouac
Sandsteppe Citadel
Tranquil Cove
Thornwood Falls

Spoiler: Thoughts

The obvious deck I want to build is b/w warriors, but there were a few things that made me want to not do that. Putting all the w/b playables into a deck leaves me a couple cards short, and splashing from w/b to red or green (the obvious choices) is awkward because my fixing does not really allow me to do that. Plus, the payoffs I have for the warrior deck is like... raider's spoils. That cards gonna be superb, but the rest of my deck feels lackluster. Unfortunately my red and green are also both pretty bad - splashing red (my best shot) gives me butcher and mardu charm, and then I guess the last card is like something really mediocre like a rotting mastodon in my aggro deck or something along those lines. Alternately splashing green gives ascendancy and kin tree invocation (love the card, but friend I am jamming take up arms and 3 hateblades. This is not gonna be a tall tree.) and jeez death frenzy and hope there's ever a board state where I want to cast that card with this deck. Or splash both colours with no fixing. It's a jam alright.

In the end I built it I think into a worse deck than the obvious one, where I just panic jammed all my fixing, a bunch of powerful cards (the charms, the kill shots, the butcher, the PLA, the narset) filled out the deck with morphs, added some basics roughly in quantity and hoped for the best. I had enough non basics that it worked out and I went 3-0, but the competition in that queue is really soft, so... I think there's a good 4 or 5 colour build in there, though, and that is the correct way to build this pool - otherwise the consistent b/w/x deck just doesnt seem powerful enough to me.

[Shanba]

I think as a particular addendum to that, since I'm not clear Sudo realised it from his post (apologies if you did), but the enemy colour pairs are better than the ally colour pairs in KTK draft, partly because they overlap two clans and so you get access to the gold cards from two clans on the splash, but also because Wizards realised this and put in lots of "subtle" cues to make you draft that way - notably, there's an uncommon cycle of enemy coloured cards that are pretty universally excellent. (U/G - Icefeather Aven, Secret Plans, B/W - Chief of the edge/scale, R/W - Highspire Mantis, Ride Down, R/U - Winterflame, Master the Way, G/B - Kin-Tree Invocation, Death Frenzy. I think these are also supposed to emphasise the themes of these colours - W/B is warrior, U/G is morphs, R/W is... fuck knows, but I always end up in terrible tokens decks in r/w that can steal games from nowhere but normally just keel over and collapse under their own weight, B/G - toughness matters, U/R - again, fuck knows, but something like spells matter.)

EDIT: Went to have a look at the set to see if my instinct that U/G has more morphs than other colours is correct, turned out it was, so in addition to the morphs matters cards you also just get more morphs in those colours - each colour has 1 morph at uncommon in the reveal a card cycle, but U and G both have an additional uncommon morph (pine walker, Mistfire weaver) in addition to icefeather aven. There are also 2 common morphs in each colour but again U and G have an extra one. Each colour except U has a rare morph, U has 2. U/G has an additional rare morph in Sagu Mauler. There are two mythic morphs - Ashcloud Phoenix and Hooded Hydra. So yeah, consistently up and down the rarities there are extra u/g morphs.

Plus there are commons, a lot of them honestly very mediocre, that have enemy colour activations - not sure if this a cycle, but Smoke Teller, Mardu Hateblade, Kheru Dreadmaw, etc.

I think you can splash multiple on both sides sometimes. The cardinal sin imo is having your filler be in more than 2 colours. Think for example it's roughly acceptable to be base U/G, start picking a few of the sultai tricolour cards, then open a Crater's Claws and splash both R and B. Much worse is having a deck that has Ainok Tracker, Salt Road Patrol and Jeskai Windscout in the same deck. They may all be perfectly fine cards, but you're gonna increase your inconsistency with no payoff, and that's a problem. I would rather be splashing cards from all three non-primary colours than filler from a third.

The Trail of Mystery deck can afford to be a bit more liberal with splashing random morphs.

Colour preference for me is like, B/W>U/G>U/R>B/G>>>>W/R

[Shanba]

Archer's parapet is playable in the right deck too.

Think the full list of them is Scaldkin, Bloodfire Mentor, Archer's Parapet, Kheru Dreadmaw, Leaping Master, Firehoof Cavalry, Smoke Teller, Embodiment of Spring, Mardu Hateblade, Unyielding Krumar.

Leaping Master is playable, but I actively dislike R/W so yeah.

[Shanba]

Aye but pestermite does not, and the bell ringer is playing pestermite's position, iirc.

[Shanba]

Aye but pestermite does not, and the bell ringer is playing pestermite's position, iirc.

I still like the UR version better. Village Bell Ringer might be a little better if the deck is trying to go off, but perstermite is WAY better in all the games you win without going off, which I can tell you from a lot of experience piloting the deck is at least 50% of the time.

Yeah that's fair. It looked like the way LSV was playing it that the backup plan was Control Deck rather than Tempo Deck, as it were, so maybe the Bell Ringer makes more sense there. But I have no experience with the archetype (and my only experience with the format is cheesing people out with prime times) so I'm not gonna press the point further.

[Shanba]

nggghhh

hypnotic specter hits me I have 3 lands and a lingering souls (no black mana) in hand. He hits the souls.

next turn I topdeck Gideon Jura. Success! Just need to not have the hyppie dump my gideon...

yep.

[Shanba]

Chamber pointed out to me that cube is a thing right now.

Derp.

Spot on.

Had a sweet deck with token makers, glorious anthem, burn spells and young pyro, but 2 loose keeps and a dose of bad luck made me lose r1

[Shanba]

Went 4-3 at my PTQ; played what felt like a relatively powerful Jeskai deck (Herald of Anafenza, Mantis Rider, High Sentinels of Arashin, Kheru Spellsnatcher; not played: Narset) but was lacking in removal other than basically one Kill Shot and a few tempo plays (Crippling Chills, Force Away) and lost the first two rounds before rattling off four straight wins and closing with a loss in the last round. A last round win wouldn't have even likely gotten me into prize support because there were so many X-2 players and my breakers were so awful.

Curious about your thoughts on the Herald of Anafenza. I think the card is pretty good, but it is glacially slow. Have you been impressed with it generally?

[Shanba]

liliana is probably a better bet than some of the one ofs - medomai the ageless seems very hard to cast (just caryatid and rattleclaw?). Swarm of bloodflies and undergrowth scavenger are also a little underwhelming, particularly the bloodflies. The mana looks a little strange - I think there are too many dorks and not enough lands overall, and rather a large number of 7 drops - and if you have any copies of murderous cut, that would be a good way to get secondary use out of the nyx weavers and communes filling your graveyard.

Besides that - yeah, looks budget, but just having 4 siege rhinos in your deck is going to do wonders.

[Shanba]

could play yasova with a bunch of pump and sac outlets

[Shanba]

Ehehehehehe

I decided to play the modern daily on a whim cause I have vigorous bloom built and basically I was on tilt so making bad decisions.

My r1 opponent is on scapeshift and my game 1 draw is one of those where you just do nothing and die.

Game 2, I have a hand with a summer bloom, a prime time and a bounceland but no amulet of vigor. I keep cause this is still a turn 3 titan and obviously nuts if I can rip an amulet. Not hopeful cause its scapeshift and they have all those cryptic commands and stuff.

Anyway I execute my gameplan, he executes his with sakura tribe and search for tomorrow and stuff, and I land the titan. No counterspell. Neat! I look at my lands, trying to work out what to tutor, thinking probably growth chamber and tolaria west, to tutor for a pact of negation. Before I can choose, however, he concedes! I was a little surprised.

[Shanba]

GO KDOWNS

[Shanba]

The list of people i prefer to listen to talking about magic than rashad miller is really rather long

[Shanba]

My dream is to draft a show and tell and then show and tell in a sower of temptation

does that work?

[Shanba]

Hrm.

Ivan Floch's draft here is fascinating:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/magic/draft ... pick=false

Spoiler:

Pack 1 looks like it gets awkward when he's forced out of black by Huey and so he starts moving into blue with glacial stalker, a pair of monastery flocks and a snowhorn rider. Then, pack 2, he justifiably moves into red, starting with an ashcloud phoenix and finding some other good red cards before picking up a moderately late trail of mystery. So he's definitely temur colours in some way, but it looks like he's red/blue splash green for snowhorns. That, however, does not really allow him to play the trail of mystery which is a card you want to play early and start generating value with.

So pack 3 he opens a pack with a kheru spellsnatcher. I'm thinking he snaps up the spellsnatcher, which is powerful card, but he decides otherwise (I can only assume because he wants to get value from trail of mystery) and he picks a canyon lurkers instead. He ends up playing a green/red deck splashing blue instead of a red/blue deck splashing red.

[Shanba]

I don't see why they wouldn't have pretty decent EV in the packs - modern masters v1 wasn't bad from that standpoint. The concept as a whole makes sense as a way for wizards to tap into the secondary market for magic cards - let the high price of the singles you put into your packs subsidise the sale of those packs for draft players, allowing you to charge higher prices overall.

[Shanba]

Think I would cut the act of treason before the two that BV mentioned (its a moderate at best card, prefers to be in an aggressive deck and yours is very controlling, and is in your least important colour), but yeah no reason not to run 18 lands in that deck. It takes quite an unusual deck to make me go to 17 in this format, and that one in particular just wants to his lands forever.

(arrow storm may also be too greedy, but I'm willing to give that one more of a pass as a strong lategame spell. Double red though.Cut the act and the arrow storm and you probably dont have to run any mountains, and your mana base will be super consistent.)

[Shanba]

4 mana garruk! I would play that. Prolly over like, idk domri rade maybe. Nice deck though.

In other cube news:

I was on the draw. Sadness abounds.

[Shanba]

If you'd asked me two months ago I coulda given you a hell of a list.

But suddenly they've actually started fixing card bugs. I'm not sure if some of the pauper ones (kaervek's torch not costing more mana to target, oubliette not returning the creature after it is destroyed) are still around, but the ones I've run into since (nahiri attaching equipment to the wrong token, cruel ultimatum restarting the game because I had no creature to raise dead, floodtide serpentherpaderping everything, spirespine bestow block bug) have since been fixed.

Like I said this is strange because I can't remember a card bug being fixed before then.

Mtgo has also not bugsplatted for me for a while and every once in a while the client has new features these days. It makes me nervously, cautiously and worriedly optimistic for the future of the program.

[Shanba]

Spoiler: Pauper Turbofog

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
4 Words of Wisdom
4 Evolving Wilds
10 Island
3 Forest
4 Jace's Erasure
4 Moment's Peace
4 Fog
4 Arcane Denial
2 Gitaxian Probe
4 Treasure Cruise
1 Lull
4 Thornwood Falls

Sideboard:
4 Eye of Nowhere
4 Boomerang
4 Temporal Spring
3 Dispel

Thoughts?

[Shanba]

You can run more fetches (and terramorphic expanse is also a common, so you dont need panoramas if they're harder to get hold of) but I'm not 100% sure it works with the curve. If you really want to you can cut the gainlands, I think. It's worth noting that brainstorm works extremely well with Jace's Erasure - towards the end of the game you just start firing off cantrips and can easily mill them out from 20-30 cards in a turn if you have multiple erasures out.

Gitaxian probe could be thought scour, and there could be more room in the list for countermagic somewhere. The boomerang sideboard plan comes in against decks where the fogs don't really do anything, like against ghostly flicler.deck, and against higher curve decks like Mono B or RG Tron when you're on the play. Worth noting that the fog plan is still very good against the latter - save your counters for ulamog's crusher and rolling thunder, beat the fangren marauders by fogging them out.

Lull is a card I just wanted to test out. It's tested really well so far - cycling fog helps because you can get annoyingly flooded with fogs sometimes.

Edit: Colourless mana is a little awkward because of how many of your cards are single blue cantrips.

[Shanba]

Greg Hatch is something else

[Shanba]

You have artificer's intuition in play, sac LED make blue (3 blue), salvage titan goes to your graveyard, exile three artifacts to return titan to hand, activate intution discarding titan (2 blue) to search for chromatic star or conjurer's bauble (hopefully having made them free), play bauble, sac it, drawing a card, activate intuition using the artifact you just drew (only 3 non-artifacts left in the deck), (1 blue), find another star/bauble, play it, draw, activate intuition for LED (0 blue), (5 artifacts placed in your yard), activate LED again, return Titan again. I think if you find LED after the first star/bauble you can net mana. Eventually since you can net both artifacts in the yard and mana you can search up the tops and altar.

The other concern is if you have to exile too many LEDs in this process, but I think you're ok, and you can conjurer's bauble them back into your deck as needed.

I think that's what's going on.

[Shanba]

http://imgur.com/5KFR7IN

I agree cube is fun

[Shanba]

Monastery mentor makes me excited

[Shanba]

I like monastery mentor more, though I'm not sure which is better.

Also, Soulflayer + chromanticore DREAMS. It's pretty hard to give it hexproof in constructed, though. Satyr wayfinder to make it work

Obviously, warriors got a bunch of extra support.

I liked the aristocrats, and this set gave us another couple creatures that rebuy themselves/others from the yard (alesha, the phoenix thing.) Add in grim haruspex (WHY ARE YOU 3 POWER), tymaret, butcher of the horde... Probably not, but I'm testing it.

I like silumgar in u/b. It kinda does the prognostic sphinx thing of making elspeth bad, but does it better because it doesn't leave behind a bunch of tokens. Plus hexproof is built in. Plus crux of fate synergy. Playing PLA in my deck makes me really sad, so I keep looking for ways to make that not happen. (I once beat my opponent's PLA with a brimaz. Gag.)

Limited format looks like it has very little chaff. The runemark cycle is aggressively mediocre. That sorcery bolster 3 thing looks wildly unplayable to me. Friendly fire is very unreliable. Some boring vanilla-y creatures you probably want to stay away from. But I doubt you're going to be scraping for playables.

[Shanba]

Feels like everyone is playing the 2 drops again in KTK draft. I think that makes playing all the disowned ancestors and stuff better again. I keep drafting U/g with tempo cards and getting overrun, and I dont think that's the format any more.

[Shanba]

Spoiler: Shanba has bad ideas sometimes

http://deckstats.net/deck-5702107-ecd20 ... 5dfbf.html

[Shanba]

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.

That was the inspiration, but I liked the addition of the skybind + manifest synergy

[Shanba]

Boonweaver get raised by wolves. Raised by wolves triggers, you get 2 wolves (+any other constellation triggers) skybind, you target boonweaver, exiling it and sending the raised by wolves to the yard. EOT you get the boonweaver back and pull the raised by wolves back from your yard, triggering skybind again, and so on. Effectively you get 2 wolves every turn on both your turn and your opponents turn.

3 Boonweavers might be too many, to be fair.

Lightform + skybind allows you to manifest the top card, look at it, decide whether you want it in play, and then either skybind it or skybind something else. That way if you manifest a hornet queen or a boonweaver you get to use the ETB trigger - you can "cheat" them in for 3 mana instead of 7. If it's a lotus-eye mystics you can grab the lightform back from the yard and try again. Courser helps you set up the top card for skybind shenanigans, as well as just being a good value creature, eidolon of blossoms plays nicely with all the enchantments in the deck, and goes a bit silly with boonweaver loop.

[Shanba]

Went Temur, wanted to play Jeskai based on my cards, but went with a slightly awkward green "splash" instead based on my fixing and played temur instead. Went 3-1, was fun. Largely the cards played as I expected. Notable exceptions - humble defector overperformed even though I never got to play any of the little synergies I had with him (the delve bounce spell and the green nutso uncommon indestructible bounce thing, not that that guy needs synergies to be nutty). Jeskai Sage I also wasn't sure would be good, but I was able to get value out of him an awful lot of the time, and sometimes he was just a straight up 2 for 1. Underperfomed was probably Write Into Being, which ended up being ok but I thought it would be better than that and it wasn't.

[Shanba]

I'm not convinced this is going to make the format more diverse, but I'm sure as hell it's going to make the format more expensive. Prohibitively so, most likely. Also not looking forwards to infinite goyfs bashing into goyfs. We'll see, but I don't see anything to be happy about with the bans.

Edit: Oh, except that I like the ban of cruise in legacy. I actually think the card was more warping there than in modern. Just a quick look at SCG open results shows 3 of the last 5 were won by delver, another had delver in the finals, and overall delver decks made up about a quarter of top 8 slots. Which is extraordinary in a format normally as open as legacy.

[Shanba]

4-0d a daily event today!



whisperwood elemtental is a fun card

[Shanba]

I do love that they keep unbanning stuff and then none of it does anything - nacatl, bitterblossom, grave troll...

I still think that the pod ban was totally absurd and unjustifiable on any axis you care to look at.

Also, quite apart from anything else, the bans made the format so much more expensive. Which is dumb, for the format that is, like, wizard's baby, if they can't get people to play it cause the secondary market is too high.

The only appeal modern has is that I do enjoy putting Titans into play very quickly.

[Shanba]

I understand the Pod bad; Pod is pure value town. Whether it's actually broken is a matter of debate.

That said, I do find it ironic that the secondary market is pricing people out; I thought the whole point of Modern was to give a format to people who were locked out of the eternal format by the secondary market.

I mean, Pod never broke 20% of the meta. Abzan was 25% in this PT. IDK, there's always going to be a "best" deck and "best" cards. Ban the birthing pod when the archetype actually becomes broken and dominant.

[Shanba]

For the pauper tournament, which banlist? I've never played it in paper but I imagine legal Hymn to Tourach is a big deal for the mono black deck. Although given that Treasure Cruise is still legal in the format, you're likely supposed to just play delver if you really want to win.

If you anticipate a lot of delver, one of the appeals of Stompy is it has a decently favourable delver matchup - but it requires a lot of practice to get it right. Don't play your pump into open mana and risk getting blown out by snap (in game 1), spellstutter is their best card against you, but generally you can play under their permission and threaten to race. Post board resolving a scattershot archer is suuuuper good. The deck also benefits from Treasure Cruise being legal, because although it makes delver stronger in the abstract, it actually involves making it worse against stompy AND as a benefit it pushes mono black out of the meta, which would otherwise prey on the green men.

If you like combo, play esper familiars. It's just a much better deck than Eye Candy, imo. I don't like playing it into a delver meta, but if you're against a lot of slow decks, it is straight up the most resilient deck I have ever played - it's just a pile of divinations, after all. I've won many times after being torn apart by discard, I've won after a mull to 4, it's just really strong. But, you know, get in reps with it.

I've honestly never been a fan of the Tron decks that replaced the Post decks. I don't like falling behind while assembling tron, and I don't think the catchup cards are powerful enough to make up for the slow starts you can get. But sure, whatever.

If you want something off the wall, I have like 30 tier 2 or 3 decklists <.>

[Shanba]

[quote="In post 5818, Debonair Danny DiPietro"][/quote]
Bogles is good vs stompy, affinity. Bad vs mono b, mono g - think it's pretty bad against flickerpost too. Metagame accordingly.

[Shanba]

I don't consider there to be a difference - the mono g should have been mono U, but brain went bzkt.

Edit: Elves, of course, is another green deck, but Mono G is a little undescriptive at that point.

Is slivers really a bad matchup? I'm a bit surprised by that - I thought the deck had an edge over everything trying to beat down with creatures thanks to being able to make 12/12 first striking lifelinkers.

[Shanba]

Constructed dailies are the only event on mtgo that semi regularly have positive EV, assuming you can win 50% of your matches. They're tough, though, so that's not a given. 11 Boosters for 4-0, 6 boosters for 3-1. Limited dailies are worse. Additionally, since these are scheduled events, they may not fit your schedule.

Winners of events, both on demand and scheduled, give QPs, that can allow you to compete in the MOCS. Finals of the MOCS are a wizard streamed event with I think a Pro Tour invite and a bunch of stuff. Pretty prestigious tournament. It's been plagued by technical issues the last couple years, unfortunately.

MTGO also has PTQs but these are very very hard - large events, very competitive, mediocre payouts.

I really love MTGO all said though.

[Shanba]

One of mono black's most appealing cards is crypt rats. Alternately, pestilence also works in that slot, but it's quite clunky.

[Shanba]

Yes megamorph is uninspired. I suspect it will play fine? It's just... so profoundly so-whattish. I agree that it doesn't seem like something that particularly needs to be keyworded.

[Shanba]

I had been doing really well with G devotion with 4 whisperwood and temur sabertooth when the format came out, but I stopped playing it cause I didn't like all the U/B control running around and I was getting a bit bored with magic.

This g/w deck is that on steroids. I think I'm in love

[Shanba]

Is Perilous Vault the best answer to this?

Perilous vault is great against this. Better than ugin or crux of fate cause of manifests and whisperwood. Post board, you board in some number of reclamation sage (not too many) and some number of nissa to give yourself outs to vault as well, but u/b control is just really well positioned against what the deck is trying to do. I think as long as they can counter every mastery of the unseen it should be unlosable.

[Shanba]

good luck DDD!

[Shanba]

shame it ended a bit disappointingly, but day 2ing a gp is no mean feat. Congratulations!

[Shanba]

Ugin is actually the bad guy, right? Colourless magic, convinced the heroes not to kill the (colourless) eldrazi and just imprison them, made tarkir worse by continuing to live, dragon tempests - what's that about? What's powering that?

Theory - Tarkir dragons are eldrazi poop.

[Shanba]

Ugin being the bad guy doesn't make Nicol Bolas the good guy, it just means he doesn't like having an ultra powerful evil rival around.

Edit: all that life/cards he draws you? Eldrazi poop.

Plus, what's a good permanent to put into play? Emrakul.

Case closed

[Shanba]

We must find a way to destroy them," said Sorin.

"That may not be possible," said Ugin, "and it certainly isn't wise."

"Worlds are dying," said Nahiri. She rested her hand on the hilt of her sword. "What wisdom could there be in leaving these things alive?"

"Do you know what they are, Nahiri of Zendikar?" asked the dragon. He lowered his enormous head to look her in the eye. "Do you know if they inhabit some unseen ecology, or what will happen if they are destroyed? Do they deserve death? Does your moral judgment extend only to beings you understand? Can you answer any of these questions?"

He peered at Sorin.

"And Sorin, you of all people understand the necessity of balance."

Destroying them certainly isn't wise, UGIN?

I'M ON TO YOU

[Shanba]

If you phyrexian metamorph a nissa'd forest, you get a forest.

[Shanba]

Destroying them certainly isn't wise, UGIN?

I'M ON TO YOU

To be fair, Doug Beyer literally dismissed the idea he is an eldrazi.

More to the point, Ugin is not going to have a heel-face turn due to his position as a major player in both the Nicol Bolas and Eldrazi storylines. I do think his days are numbered because Ugin is kind of in the position of being so powerful a force of good they have to kill him off. I kind of suspect that he will die due to Bolas's interference next block killing Ulamog(because, if you think Ulamog doesn't die in B4Z you're dumb).

I actually have a suspicion Battle For Zendikar will have more planeswalkers than normal. Like, possibly an entire cycle. Gideon's confirmed, Nissa is practically confirmed, Sorin & Ugin are likely en-route(we'll know for sure next week since Doug confirmed next week's UR is Sorin's visit to Tarkir in DTK), Kiora is a distinct possibility, Ob Nixilis is going to make a presence in some form and Nahiri is a big mystery(it's confirmed her story is not over).

After B4Z is interesting, though. I'm very curious to what storyline they'll pick up. The secondary cast right now is too big to just continue ignoring all of them, and you can't have another major plot beat so soon after B4Z(it's been acknowledged that putting ROE and New Phyrexia so close to each other was a mistake). It'll probably be a new plane, with Chandra as the primary protagonist if I had to make a guess.

Ok, I mean you're probably right and all, but not actually being an eldrazi doesn't stop him from being aligned with the eldrazi or the creator of the eldrazi.

[Shanba]

Yeah, it's shifted to be 'safe'. Every set since ISD has been 'safe'. There have been no real attempts at dangerous things since ISD(And, before that, Lorwyn).

The gameplay mechanics shift is part of it, because they want these sets to be safe and digestible to the casual player, but it's not the whole picture.

What did ISD do that was so dangerous? I admit, I've only started playing snce M13, but apart from the draft environment being apparently very good (and one I am sad I missed out on) it doesn't appear to be pushing the envelope, especially.

I also don't think Treasure Cruise was a deliberately pushed card, I just think they had no idea what the correct cost was on delve cards. Like, there clearly is a "fair" cost for treasure cruise, cause you wouldn't play it if it were 20U, but they missed. It reads as costed for limited (where it is playable, but not broken) and standard (where it lacks the enablers to make it busted). Deliberately pushed cards are like, Loxodon Smiter, where you look at the combination of stats and abilities and you see a card that they decided to make a cornerstone of constructed play. I don't really like this, but this is development in action rather than design. I think development can be more subtle than this. One of the things magic does well is to sell a dream - the dream that if I am creative enough, if I can scour the cards deeply enough, I can find something different, something magical and something uniquely powerful. These kinds of pushed no-brainer creatures punish you for thinking this way, since they push towards a deckbuilding style that emphasizes the efficient over the interesting. Magic is better the closer it is to Lego.

I have to say I love kill reviews, and agree with him on a bunch of things. He's right that RTR is not a particularly inspiring set from any standpoint - it is not pushing any boundaries, it's just filler. I like the parallel he's drawing between RTR and Roseanne, here. It makes sense - creatively, we're talking about something that is not so much a void as it is a deliberately and slickly structured regurgitation - comforting but bland. But I sort of suspect it's a deeper malaise - not just the result of marketing intervention but the result of a worn out creativity, a consequence of the limits of a human capacity for creative exploration. Fundamentally I think Mark Rosewater is running out of ideas. (That, of course, isn't helped by his own insistence on drawing limits on what spaces he is allowed to play in. I know his constant refrain is "restriction breeds creativity", and to an extent this is true, but it is a creativity born from being forced to explore a smaller design space more thoroughly and potentially coming up with some surprises. Eventually that design space will run out, no matter how creative you are. If exalted were the main mechanic of every single set from now on out there would almost certainly be some interesting spins on exalted, but eventually the mechanic would get a little stale.)

Theros block is the biggest pile of shit. I was so excited for Theros block - Greek mythology theme? Enchantment theme? When I was little I had an illustrated book of Greek mythology. I loved that book, all the epic stories condensed down into a handful of paragraphs, evocative and satisfying, with grotesque monsters leering behind the text. And I loved enchantments from the moment I laid eyes on them. Magic sometimes has this quality of being a bit like nomic, where the rules are whatever the cards happen to say on them at the time. You win when you have 40 life. All permanents are enchantments. Creatures have haste and attack each turn if able. And enchantments are the permanent type that most encompass this philosophy. So a magic set that based on these foundational points should have been something that appealed to me, specifically. But Theros...

It's my firm belief that the mediocrity of Theros can be traced directly back to the mechanic of Heroic. Heroic is a moderate mechanic as it is, I mean whatever, put some counters on a dude, that's fine, I can get behind that. It's supposed to be this wonderfully flavourful "ah my guy went through these trials and now he is stronger", but for me it slightly misses the mark on that point - firstly cause I don't think that is an especially strong theme of the stuff, though it is there, but also cause sticking an enchantment on a dude isn't quite what I would describe as heroic deeds. But whatever. The problem with the mechanic is how it warped the set around it. All the removal is crap. None of the other mechanics have any support (I strongly feel that the mechanic that got crapped on the most in this regard is Inspired, which is a mechanic that could have worked if there were a bunch of twiddles and so forth in the set, and if the inspired cards were costed a little more aggressively, such that you could start to hope of activating them a couple times a turn. That dumb 5 mana 2/2 flyer with inspired draw a card mighta been playable with a few more cards that allow you to get value from it. (And yes, I know things like triton tactics existed. The problem with these cards is untapping your creature is only half the puzzle - you need to tap it first. Maybe inspired was just unworkable, I'm certainly sympathetic to that viewpoint, but it's not like Theros particularly tried to make it work.) Devotion also got crapped on, incidentally - yes you could draft Black devotion in trip THS draft, but that was it - and devotion decks in constructed only worked when paired with the hybrid creatures from RTR. I appreciate blocks supporting the other blocks in their standard pool, but there should be something, at least, from the set it came from.), and I suspect that the reason this is is because so much effort was spent in making Heroic work and playtesting Heroic that none of the other mechanics and draft arounds really got any development time.

And then there's the enchantment theme, which ends up not being an enchantment theme, but actually an aura theme. Auras are cute, in a kind of Rita Repulsa GROW kind of way, and they can be interesting designs that do cool and powerful things, but I think on the whole they are less interesting than global enchantments. In terms of these global enchantments, the nomic enchantments, I think Theros does worse than almost any other block

at all

, which is really impressive in a depressing kind of way. Yes yes there were the enchantment creatures that purportedly filled that niche but when Maro said they worked really hard to make sure they didn't just feel like normal creatures with abilities on, I'm afraid he didn't quite get it right. If they wanted to do this then they needed to do more work to make the enchantments feel enchantmenty, with, I'm afraid, effects like "all my creatures gain flying" not quite cutting it. Or at least, not filling that niche.

Although, to be honest, I can't believe I wasted this much time on a block where the design/development team put this and this in the same fucking block. I mean, come on.

[Shanba]

holy crap that was a rant sorry

[Shanba]

I somewhat disagree, I think the shitty removal is pretty unique to theros. M14 just before has doom blade, pacifism, liturgy of blood, corrupt, time ebb and a bunch of other random rare removal and removal build your own removal (with the act of treason/sac outlet subtheme).

Khans has abzan charm, jeskai charm, arc lightning, throttle, burn away, dead drop, murderous cut, debilitating injury, smite the monstrous, kill shot, force away, mardu charm, savage punch, set adrift, singing bell strike, sultai charm, plus some rares (two wraths!), winterflame... not all of it is premium, but it exists.

Dragons has similar amounts and similar amounts of premium removal - ultimate price and pacifism, the latter at common, spring immediately to mind.

m15 I always thought of as a pretty low removal set too, but I reckon even it has more premium removal than theros.

[Shanba]

Yeah, I can see that. A lack of removal I think tends to make comebacks harder, because premium removal is generally the stuff that allows you to either get your 2 for 1s (recovering card advantage) or your tempo advantages (doom blade your 4 drop, play a 2 drop), which makes a block like theros feel very linear - if you fall behind, it's quite hard to catch up, particularly with stuff like god's willing also being in the format. (Sip of hemlock your giant battlewise hoplite, run into god's willing is the WORST THING).

I like the point on the art, that's a really good point and you're right that a lot of ISD art is very evocative. I've never really liked the GRIMDARK stuff so much (a bunch of my favourite lands are the super colourful Lorwyn ones), but there's no denying that ISD does it very effectively. Cloistered youth is a wonderfully atmospheric card, for example. Comparatively, RTR, THS, and even Khans (but to a lesser extent) feel just like generic.magic.art. Like, the average card from ISD you can tell doesn't quite fit with the core set magic aesthetic, but has its own aesthetic, whereas I'm not sure you could say that with RTR. From what I've seen of the original Ravnica, and to be fair this is not very much - the format staples and some others at random, it does look like it captured an urban aesthetic just a little bit better. Rumbling Slum strikes me as a card that couldn't exist in any other set, for example.

ISD seems to share (from a draft perspective) with cube and with ROE the condition that all the archetypes are well supported, such that if a card suggests you can do something, you can do it - I think this is a point that Killingagoldfish raised on the reviews of those draft formats - but it's instructive to think about because you can compare that to, for example, Theros block, where the vast majority of draft arounds were not actually draft aroundable. That makes drafting less enjoyable, because you're making fewer decisions - drafting more on rails. Khans has some of that choice, where the value of cards can go up and down in different archetypes, but it doesn't go as far as RoE or ISD - and correspondingly isn't as interesting to draft long term. (That said, it's the best draft format since I started playing and by far the set I have drafted the most, not close.)

Not every set is going to be a hit, I guess.

[Shanba]

Oh, absolutely, Lorwyn is my other favorite block. I actually ordered bulk of this island and this swamp so I can always just use those land. My first two commanders were Oona, Queen of the Fae and Ashling the Pilgrim. It had a similar thing where it had a specific theme and it executed it really well. The day/night flip to Shadowmoor was done much better and much more interesting than the Khans-to-Dragons, too.

That said, Khans isn't a bad block. Quite the opposite, I think it's a pretty good block compared to most recent blocks--I'd say it's the third best post-Lorwyn block after Innistrad and Scars. It didn't hit all the notes, but they tried.

I think it's Morph--morph is just a really fun, interesting mechanic that in another world would be evergreen.

Scars is actually interesting as foil to Khans--they are both good blocks, but Scars is fun because it's a huge hot mess of half-baked but interesting ideas, while Khans is good because they took a really easy, if uninspired theme and just focused on making it good.

Morph is a great mechanic, but I am glad they added the 5 mana rider thing they added, because I can't imagine the damned if you do damned if you don't where it seems choosing whether to block is actually not a possible decision, just a coinflip. Albeit I never played onslaught, so I don't know how well it played in practice. I think delve deserves a lot of credit as a mechanic that leads to nice pacing in a limited game - you get these really great feeling turns where you play 2-3 spells a turn thanks to one of them being a heavily discounted delve spell. This plus morph plus decent card draw mean you rarely feel like you're struggling to find things to do with your mana, which is a really nice feeling - you can get mana screwed in khans limited, but it's really hard to get flooded.

Khans is just a really competent block, I think (and, yes, I do realise that Treasure cruise and Dig Through Time do not suggest competence on the development team). But apart from its impact on eternal formats, everything else is just really nice. Like, you rarely just die to some absurd bomb - I've lost to wingmate roc, but I've also beaten it. It's a format that gives you control.

On the subject of lands, Khans has my favourite mountains. I'm so glad to see mountains where the red is used as contrast, instead of just being REDALLOVER. Also some great islands, all the icy ones are just really nice. Actually, it's basically just the Titus Lunter art. I really hope he keeps on producing amazing lands.

[Shanba]

I really liked Theros

block

draft. Note, block draft. Triple Theros was miserable with all the 1-drop -> Ordeal -> GG games, and adding only Born of the Gods wasn't much better. Once Journey into Nyx made it a bit more diluted of a draft format, I felt like there was more you could do, and more interesting games.

I actually do agree that Theros block was quite considerably better than either of the two preceding formats.

That said, this was one of my favourites from BNG-THS-THS: http://imgur.com/hQPehaZ

[Shanba]

I have developed a seriously good strategy for DTK draft.

Open dragonlords. I've 3-0ed 3 of my last 6 8-4s with this astounding strategy.

On the plus side, I do think I'm improving at limited, cause I don't think I 3-0ed very many 8-4s before DTK even

with

insane decks. Playing 8-4s instead of swiss on a more regular basis is I think the reason.

[Shanba]

DTK's alright, I think. Nothing special. I'm still enjoying the format, but I suspect I won't draft it as much as I drafted trip ktk.

FRF is a miserable pack though. It does nothing nice or exciting or interesting.

[Shanba]

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

My personal feelings on those formats were
Trip KTK is the best format since I started playing (m13).
RTR Block I never really understood - I couldn't find a strategy that worked. And ugh, I'll die a happy man if I never see another cluestone.
Theros is my least favourite format that I've played and actually by a distance.

[Shanba]

nessian courser tends to be among the earliest common picks when it's there.

M14 is the only format I've played where I maindecked millstone. It was definitely sweet.

[Shanba]

I agree TSQ and particularly I think green is very underdrafted. Yes pack 3 sucks, but packs 1 and 2 are really solid for green, particularly if you can complement it with some amount of removal from the other colours. This format overall has less playables than KTK did, so you have to be a bit careful about moving into an open colour, I think, whereas in DTK you could often just force your favourite archetype super hard.

That being said, I do prefer red if I can get it. Twin bolt is nuts in this format, best common imo, better than flatten. Every colour has multiple playable x-1s and so you can often get some amount of card advantage out of it, and although this is less relevant than it was, it also picks off morphs for 2 mana, which leads to some nice tempo swings on the draw.

[Shanba]

On DTK, sometimes R/B is open!

http://imgur.com/NPanxVV

[Shanba]

I thought my LGS was stingy for prize support of 2 packs for winner and 1 each for 1-2... (although the entry fee is 12 euros, so that's actually pretty ok, I guess)

redrafting makes me cringe. I'm not sure I really buy the "people picking money over good cards" thing - like, that's at most once per pack and more likely significantly less likely than that, since you first have to open a money rare, then have that be a money rare that isn't good in limited. It's not like anyone would be passing a pack 1 deathmist raptor or a whisperwood elemental at a GP anyway.

[Shanba]

Personal achievement reached!

http://imgur.com/tjugD4b

[Shanba]

9th place in PPTQ yesterday on 3% breakers.

All the daggers.

ouchy

condolences

[Shanba]

Yeah, azusa is a really mediocre replacement - the nut draw is obviously the Amulet+bloom+bounceland+action draw, but the backup nut draw is bloom+bounceland into turn 3 action spell, which is often good enough - that's partly the reason the deck is consistent, despite needing to assemble so many strange pieces.

Draws where you're relying on azusa you tend to lose, honestly. The equivalent turn 2 azusa draw sort of works, if azusa survives - amulet t1, bounceland azusa t2 (play 2 lands), turn 3 play 2 lands play a 6 mana spell. But the equivalent of the non-amulet draw simply doesn't work - it's like, turn 3 azusa, turn 4 6 mana spell - turn 4 is normally too late when you're not winning the game on the spot.

[Shanba]

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

Devoid is possibly the most boring mechanic they have ever printed

[Shanba]

BV announced the ban by bursting into scumchat and telling me twin was banned.

I was all excited til I checked the banlist and saw that amulet bloom was also banned. I just want to do incredibly stupid stuff, please wizards, please

Either way twin ban is very dumb and I don't get it. I also think the pod ban was dumb as hell.

[Shanba]

Shanba is probably a grisshoalbrand player.

Not yet.

But probably soon, yeah.

[Shanba]

Which is why legacy is a wildly better format imo.

I loved eggs too. What a cool deck - it just sort of grew and grew and grew and then everything exploded. I've even messed around with the version that Conley Woods was developing with KCI post the second sunrise ban, but it's just not very good, I think.

[Shanba]

Surprises me that lapse is better than daze against burn. Lapse is a 2 mana counter, daze is a 0 mana one. I think calling it a time walk is ambitious when it's likely 2 mana trading for 1 and a card for a card. I'm not sure how much it matters though, when I've played mono blue decks in pauper against burn I've found the matchup incredibly good regardless.

Stormbound geist was tech when mono black was the most popular deck. I'm not up to date with the meta so I don't know if that's still the case. It's also decent against that w/r bouncey stuff deck, where it's bigger than all their flyers and trades with two burn spells, where spire golem likely gets flame slashed or galvanic blasted. Really depends, people prep for four toughness creatures because of affinity and it's lodestone myrs and carapace forgers. I saw some people boarding it in in the mono blue mirror, which I sort of get - that mirror can get very stalemate-y thanks to the existence of spire golem, but you wouldn't be trading it FOR spire golem, because spire golem is the best card in that matchup. Mostly I think it's a sideboard card.

If you see a lot of tron then I'd say you want lapse over daze, that's the matchup where that trade seems good.

I don't mind bear. People were taking it out when stompy was everywhere, because getting it killed by a random zero tempo gather courage is annoying and getting it killed by a quirion ranger activation even worse, but if that's not the case or you're happy to weaken that matchup then I think it does good work at getting pressure down.

IDK I'm sort of excited to see what banning cloud of faeries does to the format, even though I loved the flicker combo deck. I might even start playing again. I think it hurts some of the decks I like though.

[Shanba]

Looks like it's just leagues still. Found an EV calculator, says you need 54% to break even, but you're still getting a weird mix of tickets and play points which probably ends up siphoning value away. I guess it smooths out after you invest a bit, if you can maintain the winrate.

http://www.goatbots.com/ev_calculator.php

[Shanba]

Looking at that calculator again, the value they have for packs seems extremely high. I haven't played mtgo in a while, but it would be quite shocking if packs were able to maintain a sell price over 3 tix a pack. And it doesn't allow me to adjust for that :/. Or to put it another way, new sets have higher booster prices and as they drop the value of these events will drop too.

[Shanba]

Have you considered a tortured existence shell? There are good r/b and r/g tortured existence decks, and I could see making a 3 colour variant work.

Tortured existence also happens to be one of my all time favourite pauper cards so, biased here.

[Shanba]

I mean, I've seen envelop in legacy sideboards before and this is marginally better, I guess.

[Shanba]

Super sick, I'd love to get into legacy properly. I appreciate that the new force of will art is also by Terese Nielsen.

[Shanba]

I am a little bit skeptical that this will make legacy affordable for most players on, say, a modern budget.

The big elephant in the room is the duals. If they don't dissolve the reserved list and reprint them likely any lowered cost of staples like forces and wastelands will lead to increased cost of the format in the form of higher demand for duals.

:/

It's shitty, but this is the position wizards has put us in.

I don't have issues with budget, tbh. It's just motivation to actually go and build a deck, find a playgroup or w/e, you know?

[Shanba]

Is there any dirtier feeling than dropping COP: Red against a burn deck?


<.>

[Shanba]

I've been watching the archives of Randy Buehler's Gauntlet of Greatness series, particularly the No Banlist Modern. Holy crap that actually looks like a super fun format, if you ban a couple of obviously degenerate things. It's also left me totally convinced (not that I wasn't already) that half the modern banlist is total nonsense.

[Shanba]

It's a cool card. I'm not sure how strong it is, though. I have a few problems with it that make me wonder if it's as good as you might expect - but with an effect like that, it's very tough to evaluate without playing it, so it could be good!

For anyone who thinks about the pro scene, and particularly if you saw any of the controversy about Eric Froehlich's article where he complained that someone didn't scoop him into the top 8, here is a wonderful article by Ross Merriam addressing some of those issues:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/32 ... -Game.html

[Shanba]

I love spoiler season. I love fruitlessly trying to judge whether or not a card will be good in a format I don't even know how it will look until both the spoilers have been done and the real deckbuilders have put their collective weights behind discovering the best decks in the format. It my be pointless but it is fun.

The new rare lands. They're almost guaranteed to see play - duals that can etb untapped are basically a standard staple - but it's weird how clunky their interaction with the Battle for Zendikar lands. The Zendikar lands turn on the clause that allow these guys to etb untapped, but these guys don't allow the Zendikar lands to come in untapped themselves, since they check for basics. Which means that if you have a mana base heavy on both, you're going to have lands enter tapped, probably quite a lot of the time. This to me strongly suggests you'll want to limit the number of colours in your deck to some degree. IMO this might be the worst total fixing package since I started playing magic - first you had check/shocks in Inn/Rav, which was great. Then it was Rav/Ths - Shocks and Temples, which were great. That was probably the next worst though, and with the devotion incentives to play mono colour too there was a powerful pull away from the multi coloured monstrosities to come. Ths/Khans had a lot of taplands, but they forced you into tri-colour, since if you were playing gainlands anyway why not play the trilands and cast powerful three mana spells. Now we're in Khans/Zendikar, and we know the outrageous levels the fixing are at. Post rotation fixing looks good enough to comfortably play 2 colour decks but punishing if you try to play more than that.

Sin Prodder. I think this guy is pretty mediocre. He's a boggart brute with upside, but the upside is a punisher mechanic. It's fair to say that boggart brute is a fine limited card but not even close to constructed playable in any format I can think of (maybe standard pauper, and I'm not even going to guarantee that.) So the upside has to do some serious work to justify playing the guy. Punisher mechanics are the converse of charm mechanics - charms are as good as their best option at any given time, while punishers are as bad as their worst option. This means that the best punisher cards are the ones where both sides of the card are equally good for you. That already limits the options for Sin Prodder, since it means that you cannot play this guy in a deck unless that deck is pressuring your opponents life total in other ways - otherwise, they can simply deny you the card draw and not worry about the life loss. The more aggressively slanted your deck is, the better this guy becomes, because the less your opponent can afford to deny you draws off him - you want him to become as close to "At the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card" as possible.

The issue is that I'm not sure he's a great finisher for an aggro deck. Aggro deck play patterns, when they are winning games, tend to be something like - you force your opponent to deal with your guys inefficiently (because they are cheaper than his removal) allowing you to push points of damage. So they deal with your 1 drop on turn 2, one of your 1 drops on turn 3, you get in some damage, etc. And then since you are forcing them to tap out every turn, you hit em with a hellrider or a stormbreath dragon or a thundermaw hellkite and end the game on the spot. This guy, that play pattern looks bad - you force em to tap out, and then you say - well, here is a 3/2, it doesn't have haste so you can untap, can you deal with it or do I get to gain some incremental card advantage? That's not really a great look imo. Plus, if your curve is too low, it becomes easy again for the other deck to nuke the cards as you draw them even if you are aggressive. Taking 1 to deny you a lightening bolt is obviously fine, and if this guy says "at the beginning of your upkeep, deal 0-3 damage to the opponent", he's a bit mediocre. So there's a kind of fundamental tension in needing to play stuff that is expensive enough to threaten significant damage to your opponent, and being aggressively slanted enough to make the life loss meaningful. So I don't really like him very much, I just don't see how it all comes together into a coherent, powerful card.

Engulf the Shore seems to have made a bit of a splash in the spoiler threads, but perhaps it is because I haven't been playing the game very long but I've yet to see a mass bounce spell really hit the spot in standard. Cyclonic Rift was the closest, and that was a 1 or 2 of in a deck that really lacked good removal options (rapid hybridization!), and it worked as a kind of disperse if need be. This, on the other hand, is always a 4 mana card. That hurts. Plus it doesn't even necessarily bounce what you want it to - it only hits creatures, and in order to hit big creatures imposes a deckbuilding restriction on you (have to have enough islands). I think this card is going to be good in limited but not a constructed card.

Ulvenwald Mysteries is a typical limited build around me card. I doubt it's powerful enough for constructed, since the card advantage it offers is painfully slow. But it is possible.

Tireless Tracker seems kind of similar, but better, and more likely to make the cut. A 3/2 for 3 with Landfall: Draw a card would be a dead cert to see play in a slow format. This isn't quite that card, but it's kinda close. It's the best non-land card spoiled today, but that's not saying much. It's on that threshold line for me, where you can't say it's good enough to see play, but neither can you dismiss it out of hand - you have to playtest it a bit to get a feel for what's going on before you can really say yes or no to a guy like this.

Call the bloodlines is an intriguing card - I inherently like obvious synergy push cards like this, so my perspective is a bit biased - but enablers like this can often see a surprising amount of play relative to the inherent power level of the card (which is low - this card sucks without madness/delirium synergies, as a 1/1 lifelink is worth neither a mana nor a card.) I'm a bit skeptical of this particular one - isn't Jace just a better madness enabler? - but it's cheap and synergistic enough that I don't feel comfortable dismissing it out of hand.

[Shanba]

Prized Amalgam is my new favourite card spoiled so far. In standard we already have two very playable ways of triggering it (relentless dead and deathmist raptor).

[Shanba]

I like From Under The Floorboards a lot. Life gain + creature has been a good recipe in recent standards, and this one comes with madness and scalability.

[Shanba]

I like this format

[Shanba]

I adore the deck that LSV is playing

[Shanba]

http://imgur.com/OUZwIU2

I really enjoy this format

[Shanba]

That pauper list looks very sweet, but glacially slow. Are the bojuka bogs really necessary with all your other exile effects? I would try trimming those, if possible, but if not I would definitely drop down on orzhov basilica. Bouncelands play really awkwardly with other taplands, and a hand with basilica+tapland means you're spending your first three turns down a mana. That's painful.

Against delver and green stompy the w/r boroskitty deck has 8 1 mana removal spells, and that's how it gets the tempo back to enable it to durdle with ichor wellsprings. Your deck has only 3 dead weights as 1 mana removal, 3 journeys at 2 mana and then the other 4 spells are 3 mana. That is definitely expensive. The lifegain I'm sure helps, and the removal suite looks good at dealing with big creatures - I wouldn't be surprised to hear you had a good affinity matchup - but I'd be worried about the random tiny dude flood the board decks just running you over while you fumble with taplands and struggle to reach 3 mana.

Have you considered a maindeck kor sanctifiers? It has applications in lots of matchups, and in the ones where it isn't great a 2/3 body is often surprisingly relevant.

For the sideboard I'd work out which of shrivel or crypt rats was better and just play 4 of that. I suspect it is crypt rats.

Erase is a weird one. Is that for bogles? I think just more edicts is better in that matchup for a deck like this that wants to go long - a tempo-ey fast deck can get away with just picking off a key enchantment and win while the bogles deck tries to recover, but I think control really needs to get on top of everything the bogles player is doing. Like, erasing an ancestral mask is ok, but then you need to deal with the next ancestral mask or ethereal armour where a player playing a faster deck possibly doesn't. If the erase is for some other matchup then fair enough. Perhaps other kitty style decks with journeys and such are the targets? In which case, fair enough.

I think mesmeric fiend might just be better as duress. Most of the decks you want that effect against are decks that pack a lot of removal anyway. I understand the synergy with your mind rakers, but I don't think that interaction is earning you enough to justify the slower, easier to answer alternative that is the mesmeric fiend.

Anyway, sweet deck and I'm glad thraben inspector is starting to see play as it is very much a sweet card.

[Shanba]

For the graveyard hate, I agree it's great against those decks (though, as an unreformed tortex player, relic of progenitus is a much bigger beating than just a bog or two <.<) but I just don't see those decks very often. Teachings from time to time but I can't even remember the last time I played against tortex. And against teachings, you're basically only hitting the backside of mystical teachings and possibly a think twice if they're even running it.

That said there's also that u/b gurmag angler deck I'd forgotten about, so maybe it is worth it anyway.

I like the changes to the mana base.

The suggestion for kor sanctifiers was in case you wanted a more midrangey option over the ruin processor that has applications against bogles, affinity, curse of the bloody tome, enchantment removal and a bunch of other things, which you can also rebuy with skyfishers or font of return if you need to. I haven't played your deck, but I was always impressed with it in u/w kitty.

[Shanba]

Wondering if Relic of Progenitus is better than Nihil Spellbomb?

Pros: can cycle off white mana, only costs one mana instead of two for an exile effect for Mind Raker, double Relic post-board seems real good against gy decks

Con: anti-synergy with Font of Return and Auramancer

I'm thinking the pros outweigh the con since I can somewhat play around exiling my own important cards but idk.

I can definitely see that. You only have one font and one auramancer in your latest version. It's really nice to be able to nuke the yard once (with bojuka bog say) and then drop a relic to stop them rebuilding.

Test it out and see if it causes you issues.

Maybe the thing to do is one spellbomb maindeck and 1 relic in the board for matchups where their yard is more important than yours?

[Shanba]

I love pauper and I love a sweet brew, so you're talking to my interests here

[Shanba]

I would probably avoid it - they're likely bringing in any enchantment removal against you anyway, so I doubt it's that effective. I think you're better off overloading on the hand disruption to try and take the rolling thunders out of their hand, which is the only card you can't deal with on a 1 for 1 basis. Still though, I reckon tron's just going to be tough whatever you do.

[Shanba]

tonight the person to the right of me had a first pack with Nahiri and Arlinn Kord and so now I'm in possession of a wolf mom. love that wolf mom

Sweet, grats

[Shanba]

Raven's crime I think might be awkward in a deck like this, since in the early game you really want to be hitting your land drops. The deck looks like it gets a lot stronger when you're getting your engines online with the skyfishers and cracking inspector clues and so on. And then later on it starts to lose relevance. Still, it's at its best when a deck is really trying to attack the hand of the opponent which yours is trying to do. I think I like it better than Cenn's enlistment - I've tried that card in a bunch of decks and even as sideboard tech and it always disappoints me. It's so slow that by the time you finally get it online it immediately starts losing relevance.

Seal of cleansing is a neat idea, but you do only have one auramancer now, so counting on recurring it seems iffy.

The current build of the deck looks like it's stretched in a lot of different directions. You have some auramancer synergies, some mind raker synergies, some of this, some of that... I think I'd like it to look more focused, somehow. It's clear the deck is built around kor skyfisher, but you only have 4 of those. I just look at the list now and wonder, you're gonna get hands that are like castigate, kor sanctifiers, angelic purge and 4 lands and they're going to be bad against everything because the cards aren't really working together.

I think if I wanted to take the deck forwards, I would sit down and work out what the most powerful synergies are in the deck (thraben inspector+kor skyfisher? Auramancer/Dead weight? O-Ring/Mind Raker?) and just try and get the deck to do that as consistently as possible. Then you can like, in the board tailor it so that you bring in the right combos for the right matchups. You're very hedged in the maindeck and some hedging is advisable in the main, but it feels too much right now. Most of the cards are powerful enough on their own that perhaps it doesn't matter? But perhaps it does, and perhaps it could make the deck stronger.

[Shanba]

Having to sandbag the auramancer was more or less exactly what I meant, I guess, when I was talking upthread.

Disfigure's good. Dead weight also kills Atog dead, and is better against stompy since it kills through gather courage/mutagenic growth (of course vines still gets you!).

[Shanba]

The art for this set is out of the park.

Commons that stood out to me for pauper:

peregrine drake (poor man's cloud of faeries for the flickers deck?)
Nimble Mongoose (powerful card, but weirdly I think it might be quite badly positioned for pauper. Tons of edict effects, and the green decks that might want this tend to want to be able to target their dudes.)
Elite Vanguard - I don't think this will see play, but astonishingly this is the first no drawback 2 power creature in pauper.
Cephalid Sage - interesting. Not sure where it would be useful, but a card to keep in mind.
Warden of Evos Isle - Familiar effects can be pretty strong, and this is on a decent body. Still, it's pretty narrow. Notably hits peregine drake and mulldrifter.
Night's Whisper - Sign in blood copies 5-8, with a less restrictive mana cost? I'm sure there's a deck that wants this.
Wakedancer - pretty sure this makes this pauper legal while the previous conspiracy printing did not. It's an interesting value creature and I might well try it in a tortex deck. That said, I don't think the power level is quite high enough.
Avarax - Herd of Aurochs saw some play in the old mono green cloudpost decks? IDK though this one seems a bit loose. I could see tron wanting it, but I sort of doubt it, you know?
Desperate Ravings - Sweet card. Not sure what deck wants it, since storm is dead.
Dragon Egg - More tortex goodies maybe eh eh eh? Probably not, but a sweet effect to have at common.
Orcish Oriflamme - this one is very interesting. The cost is high, but this is literally the FIRST permanent anthem at common. There have long been some ok token makers, but without anthems they've relied on stuff like guardian's pledge or whatever, which are clearly strong but still. This might have a place somewhere.
Wildfire Emissary - If a deck that relies on the journeys and o-ring effects for its removal became popular, this could be tech?
Elvish Vanguard - Elves is sort of a deck, this might make it better?
Yavimaya Enchantress - So, Aura Gnarlid is a thing, which restricts the space for this to be good a little. But this does count every enchantment, not just every aura.

[Shanba]

Peregrine Drake ban incoming

I mean, it's so much worse than cloud of faeries in that deck. Like, cloud of faeries gave you super broken fast starts to go with the deck being outrageously resilient. Honestly that's the best deck I've ever played in magic, it was just... so good. On every axis.

[Shanba]

Don't have a trade binder anymore, but now the proud owner of these minty beauties:

ooh they're gorgeous. Congrats!

[Shanba]

http://imgur.com/a/EJ05T