Magic: The Gathering,GO TEAM MS!

[Knight of Cydonia]

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

[Natirasha]

This is an interesting set.

I really want to draft it.

[Sudo_Nym]

Not sure how Manifest will work, though. Especially in a format with a lot of Morph.

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

Oh it's going to be a headache; both in terms of playing around possible facedown creatures; confusing morphs and manifests and reveal procedures.

[bv310]

It's one of the times I'm incredibly happy I play on MTGO primarily.

[Sudo_Nym]

And what happens if you Manifest a creature with Morph? There's got to be some consideration given to that already. If I manifest a Ponyback Brigade, can I flip it for it's morph cost since it's face down, or do I have to use it's casting cost for manifest? If it then gets flipped back upside down with an Ixidor, can I reflip it for it's morph cost? I'm confused by the interaction.

And if I can't flip a manifested creature for it's morph cost, then is there some ordained method for identifying which creatures are manifested or morphed?

[Siveure DtTrikyp]

You can flip manifested stuff with morph for either their morph cost, or their cmc.

Which will make hooded hydra and master of pearls insane to manifest.

[bv310]

Sudo, there are 2 different overlay tokens for Morph/Manifest. If they show up anything like the Morph tokens, you'll end up with dozens by the end of Dragons of Tarkir's draft cycle.

[Natirasha]

I mean, another morph-like mechanic is going to be in Dot too.

[PeregrineV]

Looking at spoilers.

[Sudo_Nym]

I don't know if Soulflayer is going to be consistently good often enough to see a ton of play, but I love the idea of a 4/4 for 2; same reason I love Tombstalker.

Soulfire Grand Master feels like it should be a legendary creature.

[bv310]

Soulfire and the Monastery Mentor are both cards I'm keen to pick up/test in Tokens

[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.

[bv310]

I've had a lot of success drafting Sultai with evasion. Basically the only way I do well, tbh.

[Shanba]

Spoiler: Shanba has bad ideas sometimes

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

[Knight of Cydonia]

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

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

[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

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

Why is Boonweaver Giant in the deck? The only card he fetches is Raised By Wolves. Furthermore, if you're insisting on running an enchantment theme/subtheme wouldn't Spectral Ward be a better choice, not that I would dare run an Aura deck in this current standard that's just asking to get blown out with all the Abzan removal.

[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.

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

It's also a two piece combo in which one of the pieces is a seven drop that doesn't immediately win you the game and for which you don't have redundant effects for either. Now obviously the Skybind offers a different combo with Lightform but the critical mass of things that are worthwhile to flicker with Skybind is so low in your deck, there's four cards you really want to hit and that's it. I know you've got a little Courser manipulation but it's a 60 card deck with not much of a card advantage engine. I mean if you've already got the coursers, caryatids, and heaths then it might be amusing enough to play on the tabletop like the UR Artifact deck I assembled was but that's about it.

[Natirasha]

I'm working on two decks atm--Mono R Devotion and UB Control.

UB is sweet, but I think it is actually unfavored vs abzan post-frf. I think it's even or positive vs most other decks, though(Although some decks, like Blue-Whip, comes down to 'How many times do I have to kill that damn Torrent Elemental'). I'm playing 2 Vault/3 Crux, with 4 Ashiok/1 Liliana/1 Ugin as wincons(main, I have Silumgar+PLA in the side).

Mono R Devotion is more tentative, but is performing okay. I feel it's missing something before i build it irl, but this deck should be on radars I think now.

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

UB is sweet, but I think it is actually unfavored vs abzan post-frf.

Define Abzan; I'm currently on Abzan midrange and I feel like the UB control matchup is really bad for me. Now Abzan aggro and Abzan whip probably have more game against UB control but if there's a reason to play UB control it's how good it seems against Abzan midrange.

Huey Jenson wrote an article about Mono-Red devotion for CFB, you should look it up if you haven't already looked it over.

[Natirasha]

Fleecemane/Rakshasa Abzan, rather than Caryatid/Courser Abzan, yeah.

EDIT: Whip decks pretty much come down to 'do they resolve Whip', so I'm not turbo-worried. Sidisi is the worse of the two because Torrent Elemental is an asshole.

[PeregrineV]

Does Grim Contest take into account if a creature has deathtouch? I get it's like Fight except for toughness, but want to make sure that includes lifelink and deathtouch.