Magic: The Gathering

[Chrius]

When I play casual I don't like words like removal and safe

[Weltall]

Set looks like crap so far other than the dual lands.

[Xerlic]

BW guild leader and RW instant seem pretty good, but the rest of the set seems pretty mediocre. I'm mostly a limited player, so I'm just looking forward to drafting a new set lol.

[Nama]

BW guild leader and RW instant seem pretty good, but the rest of the set seems pretty mediocare. I'm mostly a limited player, so I'm just looking forward to drafting a new set lol.

This plus Skull crack is legit given the lifegain meta of standard atm. Boros gonna be pretty popular after release. Unless something stupid is spoiled in the last 90 cards the break down is pretty much Limited: looks fun and will be faster then RTR. Standard: Boros and Ghostdad in an Esper build will make waves. Modern: Get more duals. Legacy: Nothing really notable.

[zoobernut]

What is every ones thoughts on guilds for the pre-release? I think Simic, Dimir, and Orzhov look the most fun for limited but I don't necessarily think they are the strongest. I think right now I am leaning towards Simic though based on the commons/uncommons spoiled. Did I miss anything drastic that should change my mind?

[Nama]

Still alot of commons to be spoiled and most of limited if fought with commons but way things are shaping up Simic looks pretty solid especially if you curve out right. Boros is looks the strongest atm but alot of its useful stuff is at uncommon which isnt always easy to get in sealed also haven't seen a common red burn/pacifism yet. Orzhov looks fun but too slow to deal with Boros and Gruul currently. Gruul looks solid has good sized dudes that can double in utility and its colors have access to most the removal spoiled so far.

The real iffy one atm I think is Dimir it really hinges on the commons yet to be spoiled. Dimir is still really up in the air since all the good ciphers are pretty expensive and theres not alot of evasive guys spoiled yet. Dimir also has the problem that the guilds it can splash(Simic/Orzhov) don't look as helpful to it as other guilds get out of splashing a 3rd color. If Dimir splashing Simic is gets some evasion in Cloudfin Raptor and the Unblockable guy but its own dudes are small so evolve won't tick very high. If Dimir splashes white for Orzhov they get some better defense to get to high cost ciphers but has the problem that its dudes arn't evasive and that Orzhov splashing Dimir looks better then Dimir splashing Orzhov

I think whats gonna make or break alot of decks at prerelease is going to be what you splash for a 3rd color if you can. Given what we know I'm picking Gruul but the deck I'm aiming to make is RUG. Simic guys are great if you can keep evoling, two of the best ones are at common (Cloudfin raptor and Croconura) and playing them along big Gruul dudes means majority of the time they will trigger plus gives some removal which simic doesn't really have.

[zoobernut]

I think currently I am going to go Simic but I will probably splash black for Dimir and make a BUG deck which is my favorite color combo and what I play in legacy. It looks like it could be fun to build.

[Xerlic]

I'm planning to go Orzhov at least once to maximize my chances of pulling Obzedats and Extort seems like a really good mechanic in sealed since games tend to go longer.

[Myrrh_Quetz]

So, I hate people even more now. A local store here did a 2v2 Cube draft.(Not 2hg) and Day one I got paired with two retards. It was 4 people per cube(Lots of people brought their cubes), random teams, double elimination. After each best 2 out of 3, you moved to a new cube and a new group of 4 people(including yourself). Sounds fucking complicated as hell.


Round one, my teammate flips my opponents Erayo, Soratami Ascendant. See, my opponent plays Erayo, he then casts two more spells, my teammate decides to Galvanic Blast it thus making it the 4th spell, thus flipping it, thus making me lose the game cause I was one attack phase from winning.(Was going to play Swords of fire and ice on my turn, swing for game).

Game two, my new teammate has no idea how to play cube, was me vs 2 really fucking strong people, lost very fast.

A friend went 3/0 but couldn't make day two, he past it on to me and everyone was okay with it.

Round 1 of day two, I'm right about to win, I scry 3, teammate tells me to do something other than what I wanted to do. He's pretty good at magic and barely speaks english so I got super confused trying to listen to him and forgot what I wanted to do, did what he said, lost the game due to not getting 1 mountain.

Round 2, new teammate, Opponent is playing a infinite thopter foundry deck.
Teammate asks opponent "Do you have a counter? If you do, we scope. We lose in two turns".
Opponent "Yep" and shows him.
Teammate looks at me and says "Might aswell scope"
Me "How bout no"
Almost win many many times, ended up dragging out that game 25 turns longer because I played fucking sick. I stalled like a mother fucker. Felt good to see that annoyance on their face.

Came in 3rd out of 32 people.

[Weltall]

Congrats sounds fun

[Xerlic]

Full spoilers are up. http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/art.../gatecrash/cig

Set seems to have tons of combat tricks. Gonna stick with Orzhov since it appears to have the most removal. Extort for days.

[zoobernut]

I am torn between Orzhov, Simic and Dimir. I think that Orzhov and Dimir have better pre-release promo's than Simic. Simic has a lot of good evasive and cheap creatures that can get big. Mill for Dimir could be really strong in limited with 40 card decks, extort with Orzhov could also be really strong in limited, those two life point swings really add up in limited. I was thinking of going Dimir because then I could splash white for Orzhov if I get good cards for them or splash green for Simic if I get good cards for them and end up with a three color deck. If I needed to.

Overall I think Boros will be the strongest colors and cards but I don't really like playing red/white.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Boros + Odric is gonna be badass. I'm picking Dimir, though, in the hopes of getting some really nice blue/black cards for a couple of my decks.

Also, I made a token today that I thought you guys might find amusing. I hope my friends do, at any rate.



That's my friend's face. He's a short man. Printed that out at the appropriate size, 8 on a page, then slipped them into sleeves with one of those tips/rules/ads cards you get from boosters for rigidity. I tweaked one of my decks to have a lot of goblin token generation, and it's going to be the first deck I use tonight, so hopefully I don't get my ass kicked before I get these out.

We're not doing anything special or specific as far as games, though. Just playin with whatever cards we want (within the rules of the basic game). None of us have any particularly OP/old cards, so it works and is fun.

[Xerlic]

How's you guys do at your prereleases?

2-2 at midnight on Orzhov. Won round 1 against a newer player. Felt bad, so I helped him fix his deck afterwards to make it more on curve plus he was only playing like 13 lands. Round 2 I lost to a crushing Boros deck. Round 3 I played the Orzhov mirror with a much much better pool. He had Obzedat, Alms Beast, Godless Shrine, the guild promo and the black 7CC primordial thing. I won pretty much on Extort and him not playing around tricks. Round 4 I mulled into oblivion and lost 2 games to a guy who's Gruul deck was based on ramping into his 2 copies of Borborygmos. Sounds janky, but the deck was fun as hell to watch. Orzhov seemed really good. Pretty much any card that said "Extort" on it was an auto-include.

I went to another prerelease the next day and went 3-1 with Boros. The 2/2 Goblin Chieftain wanna be is amazing in Boros. Anytime you're swinging with Battalion up will lead to such a world of pain for the opponent. I one shotted a guy from 15 when he let the 3/1 Batallion double striker through unblocked and I bloodrushed it with the 5/1 red guy.

The format seems pretty fun. Dimir by all accounts seems pretty bad. I wish I could do more prereleases, but I'm busy tomorrow. I would have liked to have tried out Gruul.

[BaneTheBrawler]

The store we went to ended up not doing the event, because we were the only group of people that showed up, and there weren't enough of us. We just bought our guild promo things and went to a friends place to hold our own mini-tournament.

Confirming that Dimir is pretty bad, although (like most seemingly bad cards) if you set it up right it and get a little lucky can be powerful. The cards I pulled for my Dimir deck were mostly more expensive than they really should have been, particularly the creatures. However, a couple really powerful combinations let me win one game just by milling. Consuming Aberration, the Dimir promo card, is by far the best Dimir card I got. Power/Toughness equal to cards in your opponents graveyards, and whenever you cast a spell, each opponent mills cards until they reveal a land. In a 3+ player game, that can get REALLY big REALLY fast, and it's 1 swamp 1 island 3 of any. Another good one is the guild mage (first ability: whenever an opponent puts a card into the graveyard this turn, they lose 1 life. 1 swamp 1 island 1 any. Second ability: Target opponent mills two cards. 1 swamp 1 island 2 of any.) which, when combining the first ability with the milling can get deadly. Another good one is Paranoid Delusions. 1 swamp 1 island, target player mills 3, with Cipher. The big problem I had was that the only unblockable creatures I pulled were 4 mana and required me to return another creature to my hand, so I could never get through my opponent's blockers to trigger my ciphered cards. The one game I won, I got Consuming Aberration out right away turn 5, and he sat there the whole game while I just repeatedly cast creatures, which also just sat there. Eventually my friend ran out of cards. So, Dimir can get increasingly scary the more players there are in a game... but not without serious forethought and planning.

Anyway, I pulled some decent cards (from each of the guilds) and even one Mythic (Aurelia's Fury), but my friend pulled Aurelia herself. It's kinda fitting, since he also pulled each of the legendary angels from Avacyn Restored, and has a giant Avacyn card from that prerelease.

[zoobernut]

I chose dimir and pulled nothing useful for dimir save for a couple of cards. I ended up building a Gruul deck with a splash of blue for Simic charm and Simic guild mage and frilly Unculous or whatever it is called. I pulled Enter the Infinite and Borborygmos. I got to play Borborygmos a couple times was pretty cool. ended up 2-3 because of miss plays and getting mana screwed in 2 key games. I had a lot of fun though. Bloodrush is ridiculous in sealed.

[Olo401]

Played three flights this weekend: First one I went Orzhov/Boros and my pool was pretty crazy - B/W and R/W Guildmages, Mericless Eviction, Assemble the Legion, Frontline Medic (MVP!), Boros Charm, two of the Arrest/mini-Stab Wound things, two of that 2/2 flier for 3 with extort.. went 3-1, lost due to severe mana screw.

Second one I was Simic - had Manipulator, the blue Primordial, Stolen Identity, Illusionist Bracers, two of the flying X guy, Simic & Gruul charms, a couple Bloodrush guys and loads of Evolve including two of the one-drop fliers. Went 3-1 again, again b/c of mulligans & land screw.

Last I went with Gruul, since both Orzhov and Simic were sold out - got Borborgymos, Clan Defiance, R/G Guildmage, Keyrune & Charm, and about 7 bloodrush guys. I played str8 Gruul but also had an Unexpected Results, Illusionist Bracers & Frontline Medic. Ended up 1-2 as the mulligan/land problem persisted.

Evolve is my favorite mechanic of the new batch, tho I definitely think Extort is going to be the most playable both in limited and constructed. Orzhov combined with Boros is insanely aggro, plus it keeps you in the game by refilling your tank with constant lifegain.

BTW Banned/Restricted list changes today - Bloodbraid Elf & Seething Song axed in Modern, plus some changes to pauper on Modo.

[Nama]

Interesting Prerelease weekend we had one guy get 3 Ghost Councils out of his Orzhov guild pack it on top of 5 other people including myself getting ghost councils which is pretty insane out of 40 people. Extort is pretty good no matter what your doing and if your in or splashing Dimir extorting off free cipher casts can get out of hand quick. The single best card all weekend had to be madcap skills that card ended so many games so fast for a common.

Speaking of prereleases info on how Dragon's Maze is going to work has been released. http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...ly/arcana/1156
Gonna have guild packs for 10 guilds available for prerelease the differences being that everyone gets the same promo (which is back to being unplayable in the event) and that each guild pack is being made to also support a secondary guild. Also worth mentioning is Dragon's Maze booster packs will have a change to the land cards inside them. Basic lands will not appear in DGM packs instead in the slot all the guildgates and shock lands will be reprinted, gates will have DGM symbol on them while shocks will keep the RTR and GTC expansion symbols. Shocks are said to appear about half as often as they do in current packs also there will be the first mythic land printed in DGM.

[zoobernut]

Yeah I agree madcap skills was a beast of a card for me when I drew it. My buddy sitting next to me opened a foil ghost council. The mythics seemed plentiful and generous in these guild boxes. I got Borborygmos and Enter the Infinite. Not great mythics but the first pre-release ever where I opened 2 mythics.

[BaneTheBrawler]

So, I built a deck around the good Dimir cards I got (Forgot to mention Mind Grind: 1 swamp 1 island X any, each opponent mills until they reveal X land cards, and Wight of Precinct Six: 1 swamp 1 any 1/1 and gets +1/+1 for each creature in opponents graveyards) and Jace, Memory Adept, and got a chance to use it tonight. It did pretty well in a three-player free-for-all, however, one of my opponents was using a detain deck, and managed to get Archon of the Triumvirate and Martial Law out, so he was able to detain my huge creatures and they both ganged up on me and I lost. By the end of the game, Consuming Aberration was a 50/50 or something ridiculous (we stopped counting after a while), but permanently detained with Martial Law, so I think it could be particularly powerful when paired with a control deck in 2-headed giant or something. I managed to play Jace, too, but because half my creatures were detained, I used his 0 ability to mill 10 cards, since he was going to die right away. Still, bought me a turn and beefed up my creatures.