Magic: The Gathering

[zoobernut]

Just got onto the pre-order list at my lfgs for From the Vaults: Realms. Very happy about that.

[Tricen]

Does anyone play on MODO? A friend of mine gave me his account. It doesn't have anything on it except draft fodder and a random tombstalker. I still like to play for fun though. All my decks are really bad

[Cantih]

I don't pop on all that much lately, but I do have an account. Once the weather cools down and my laptop can do anything other than the most basic shit, I'll update the client and play you a bit.

Also, at least one of them usually still exists, but the bots
MTGOTradersFreeBot, FreeCardBot, & GuildpactBot
Give out ~64 free commons to any account generally ~once a month. You can start rounding out a collection if you hit them consistently over time.

Alternately, even a few dollars worth of tickets, if you hunt down trade bots with a good card/tix ratio can go a long way to rounding out your card pool. (For example, last I ever dropped some cash, I wouldn't even look at a bot that didn't have a 128 common/ticket ratio. [Keep in mind, Apocalypse/Odyssey era cards and very brand new sets command a higher price because the number of cards in the population is lower than average])
No, you generally won't get the big tournament staples that way, but it's fine otherwise.

[zoobernut]

Not sure if everyone saw the entire From the Vault: Realms set was spoiled. Maze of Ith is in, Wastelands is out.

I am pretty happy with the list, as expected for a FTV set there are a couple really awesome cards and a couple medium cool cards and a couple terrible ones.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazin...ly/arcana/1040

[Xerlic]

Overall, FTV seems like a great pickup if you can get it at MSRP between Ancient Tomb, Maze and Urborg.

I've been on a losing streak as of lately, and I'm kind of tired of being a fish so I'm looking into taking a hiatus until Ravnica. I sold a bunch of my Scars stuff locally, but is it wise to cash out my Inn block stuff now as well or hold onto it? Do any of you have experience selling cards online?

[Olo401]

What a weekend.. Went to GP Boston-Worcester & went 6-2 before losing in Rd. 9 and JUST MISSING THE DAY 2 CUT (280th of 1847)! Already decided that I'm gonna go to GP Philadelphia in October and see if I can do better!

Here's the sealed deck I ended up building from my pool of cards:

Spoiler: show

[Nama]

Pretty good limited deck. What match ups edged out of out day2?

[Olo401]

Pretty good limited deck. What match ups edged out of out day2?

All my losses were to other black decks - one guy was B/G with a primordial hydra, one was U/B (switched to B/R after game 1), and the last was B/R.

Goddamn man.. that last match was AWESOME too! Three games, all of them competitive and constantly going back & forth.. Third game I draw a great opening hand, draw & cast a Duress turn 2 to see Searing Spear, Bladetusk Boar, Murder x2, Turn to Slag - he only had a swamp and two mountains at that point so I took the spear. Over the next ten turns I draw out all my pacifisms and a bunch of bodies and systematically lock his board down while draining all his removal by playing out my weakest guys in a row and keeping Nefarox for the very end. The turn before I can finally safely cast Nefarox, he drops Rav Rats followed by Mind Rot to kill my entire hand. We trade a few land draws before he pulls Disentomb, sacs one of his locked guys to get it back, and beats me to dead over the next four turns cuz I didn't draw Murder or O-Ring. We had a crowd watching us the whole game, including at least 4 judges, and everyone was just floored at how great that game played out.

[Xerlic]

GP Boston sounded like a lot of fun. My LGS had a pretty large group go and a couple of them made Day 2. One guy was actually in the running for top 8 with 0 byes. He ended up drawing with Shouta in Round 16, but got 9th due to breakers.

[Tricen]

What was the rest of your pool for that?

[Olo401]

What was the rest of your pool for that?

In W/B, aside from the 2x Duress and Safe Passage I also had Sign in Blood, another Mark, another Vile Rebirth, Captain's Call, Rain of Blades, 2x Glorious Charge and a few other chumps and junk spells. In retrospect I probably would run Sign in Blood and Captain's Call main in place of Vile Rebirth and Show of Valor.

In blue I had Redirect, Unsummon, Rewind, Essence Scatter, Wind Drake, Welkin Tern, Watercourser, Divination, 2x Hatchling, Hydrosurge and a couple other things. If I had an Auramancer and maybe a Talrand's Invocation the blue would be playable, if not good for sideboarding an entire color.

In green I had 2x Arbor Elf, 2x Beast Trackers, Prey Upon, and a lot of not much else.
In red I had Turn to Slag, Battle Jester, Arsonist and a bunch of crap spells.
For artifacts I also had Kitesail, Hulk and Tome.

[Tricen]

With that deck, I would have played sign in blood over the white ring and mark over something. You didn't get a single duty bound dead?

[Olo401]

With that deck, I would have played sign in blood over the white ring and mark over something. You didn't get a single duty bound dead?

Nah man.. I wish! I didn't get either of the exalted pro-color knights either.

[Xerlic]

Running the second mark seems pretty sick with all those exalted guys.

EDIT:

What do you guys think of the RTR cards spoiled so far? All of the delver players in my area are going nuts over Izzet Charm.

[Nama]

Charm is really good and I hope the rest of the cycle lives up to Izzet. I think we will see alot of decks with Delver in it but the current version leans alot on the cards rotating and the deck will need some drastic changes to adapt to the new format. They losing alot at rotation with vapor snag, swords of, mana leak, gut shot, gixtian probe, Hero of Bladehold, ponder all leaving. U/R is an option it would give charm and bonfire plus w/e goodies Izzet, U/R problems atm are its shaky manabase which would be fixed by steam vents reprint and the price of bonfires. However droping white means losing Geist of st taft and restoration angel some of the best creatures in the format. Only time will tell but I'm looking forward to seeing more then G/R and U/W delver variations.

[Weltall]

Izzet is one of the most flexible cards, EVER.

[Xerlic]

Yeah, definitely true about Delver, as a deck, losing a lot of tools. It's just snap habit for the past year that most snapcaster based decks in standard are U/W Delver. Depending on how versatile the other blue charms are, they're going to be insane value in decks with Snapcaster Mage.

[Nama]

For anyone that missed PAX party last night. This set looks bonkers can't wait for Prerelease. I already picked Izzet for prerelease but I think maybe I picked wrong~ Heres some of the more notable cards.

Spoiler: show

and the rest.
http://mtgsalvation.com/return-to-ravnica-spoiler.html

[Tricen]

You have to pre-pick your faction? Do we know what the faction promos are going to be yet?

[Nama]

Since Promos and Guild packs are limited some stores are letting people pre-pick factions so people don't show up and say all try to join one guild. Since promo you get is based on guild you pick and most importantly you get to use it in your sealed pool I imagine were gonna see alot of people trying to flood into one guild or another. My store already started taking sign ups because they mixed up days but I've heard some stores won't allow you to pick till prerelease day. Not totally certain but believe each kit comes with enough packs/promos to have 10 people in each guild for total of 50 participants. Packs might not be as limited since I dont recall a shortage of them on Besieged prerelease when they did the special packs thing but I do know my store runs out of promos every Prerelease and we always have at least 60 people.

Anyway heres the guild promos. These are the set art not the alt art the promos will have. I'll say again you get to use these in the prerelease.

Spoiler: show