I did decently at a Sealed PPTQ the past weekend: 4-2, but missing Top 8 on tiebreakers. I had an insane deck though (Gideon, Lanturn Scout, the white rare cohort guy, lots of black removal), but it didn't have as many cheap creatures as I wanted (even running two Slaughter Drones with basically no colorless mana). My main weakness came against fliers--that seems to be a trend in this format, as it was a weakness in the multiple sealed leagues I did in preparation.
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RB's Magic the Gathering Thread!
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(March 16th, 2016, 18:38)Cheater Hater Wrote: I did decently at a Sealed PPTQ the past weekend: 4-2, but missing Top 8 on tiebreakers. I had an insane deck though (Gideon, Lanturn Scout, the white rare cohort guy, lots of black removal), but it didn't have as many cheap creatures as I wanted (even running two Slaughter Drones with basically no colorless mana). My main weakness came against fliers--that seems to be a trend in this format, as it was a weakness in the multiple sealed leagues I did in preparation). Fliers are seriously busted in this format. It's really easy to slow down the ground - although having a common tapper in both W and U mean that fliers aren't guaranteed to work. I splashed Cliffhaven Vampire in my UB colorless deck last night at draft because I needed fliers badly (also splashed Roil Spout), and there was an Essence Depleter in my deck so the two-card combo did read "win the game immediately". Our biggest mistake Day 1 at DC was not looking for a way to make our 4 Jwar Isle Avengers in a maindeck - we should've considered GU with 3 of them, kept UB control, and kept GW beatdown (giving it the W allies - Retreat to Emeria is great in any deck).
It's time for the period I always like the most: the spoiler season of the latest reprint set. I wrote two articles on PureMTGO (in-between the weeks of the Modern Flashback Series), and have been following today's spoilers with obvious interest. I'm surprised at how much they've given us so far--even when you consider that a lot of these prices are artificially high due to low supply (no, Mana Crypt is not going to stay $200), there's already a lot of value in the boxes, especially compared to MM2015. As for my predictions, I'm around 50/50, but a lot of predictions have been quality ones, like the Daze upshift (I always like hitting rarity shifts) and Deathrite Shaman (which means RTR is part of the range, something I was banking on).
In other news, GP Minneapolis is coming this week, and I plan on going to at least part of it. The problem is that I don't have anything close to a Standard deck. I mean, I've certainly tried some things on Cockatrice/MTGO (My UW Spirits deck seemed good, along with RW Warriors), but I just don't have the cards. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be best to just go on Sunday and do the Super Sunday Series, since that's Sealed.
Well that's good. I actually have no idea what good Legacy reprints are in terms of price, because I basically totally ignore Legacy due to ... price.
 But maybe they learned from MM2.Good luck at the GP! I have the same problem with Standard; the deck I want to be playing is Seasons Past, but it's out of my price range. My solution is to build it in Commander, where I only need one of each card!
EMA is looking very good - there's a lot of high-price cards that need it, and where they're printing low-value cards, they're mostly great staples; sure, you want to open a more expensive card than Deathrite Shaman, but it's a Legacy 4-of in multiple Tier 1 decks. Or Balance - it's not legal in Legacy, but it's an awesome Cube or Limited card, and the foils will be great for Cube builders.
And getting Karakas reprinted is awesome.
May 24th, 2016, 17:33
(This post was last modified: May 24th, 2016, 18:43 by Cheater Hater.)
I mean, the quality of the reprints is fine, but the specific choices are weird. For example, other than Daze and Enlightened Tutor (and Wasteland of course), none of the choices have an MTGO slant. Heck, a lot of the choices are reprints from Vintage Masters itself (including a lot of the art). Conversely, Rishadan Port is the most expensive card on MTGO right now (yes, even more than Black Lotus and other pieces of power), and it's probably not going to be in the set (both because the value is already so high, and the fact that it got/is going to get a judge foil printing). I mean, even something like Doomsday at mythic (or rare, as both mythic slots are filled now) would help MTGO, as it's only $2 in paper (thanks to a 6th Edition printing--for some reason) but $25 on MTGO.
I'm also watching the limited choices closely, even though very few non-rares have been spoiled. Right now I think I can decipher three archetypes: B/x (possibly W/B) Reanimator (Animate Dead, Entomb), G/U "Delver-style" tempo (Nimble Mongoose, Werebear, Daze), and B/G Elves. The Elves infuriates me, since even though I predicted it (and even hit the Timberwatch Elf upshift), Shaman of the Pack infuriates me--that card is less than a year old! I get that there aren't any other "tentpole" uncommons (as I've obviously looked, and just ended up with some removal), and Shaman of the Pack is perfect for the role, but reprinting something less than a year old is sketchy for any set, much less one that's supposed to be focused on old cards. Edit: Reading the development article posted today a bit more closely, there are actually some more archetypes, including ones we have almost no cards for: UB Reanimator (I still think WB is harder to find a combination for, and this isn't the best place for Reanimator) RG "Fast Aggro (Bloodbraid points towards this, though there isn't much else to confirm it) GW Enchantments (Again there's nothing, but this archetype is a little close to the GW "Little Kid" archetype from VMA) GB Elves (still salty  )GU Threshold (basically what I predicted, though I don't know if the enablers will be dedicated discard/mill outlets like Aquamoeba or more spells like Daze and cantrips) Also, Elves were confirmed to be the only tribal theme, so Merfolk is out (along with Goblins)--the article talks about how they didn't want to use Changeling, but I thought having Merfolk and Elves in completely different colors would have helped mitigate that. The other problem with my GP predicament (other than the fact that I have basically no cards) is that Standard just isn't that interesting to me, especially since the power appears to be trending downward and Standard is dominated by Dragons of Tarkir (CoCo, the Dragonlords) and Origins (Jace, Painlands to make Eldrazi too easy, even the random Timmy rares like Pyromancer's Goggles and The Great Aurora are getting in on the fun). Instead, I'm trying more Modern stuff--I'm back on the Enduring Soul Sisters plan (which gets a tuned list and Westvale Abbey--I've even bought a couple Auriok Champions on MTGO, but my refusal to pay $30 for Cavern of Souls (even though that's one I actually have IRL) hurts when Jeskai Nahiri is the new flavor of the month), and on Cockatrice I've been trying a Grixis Mill brew (which is the general UB Mill shell that did well in at GP:LA, but with Goblin Dark-Dwellers combined with Breaking/Entering). Quote:Rishadan Port is the most expensive card on MTGO right now, and it's probably not going to be in the set (both because the value is already so high, and the fact that it got/is going to get a judge foil printing) And also because it's annoying as hell in Limited, which they also always develop these reprint sets for. So easy to color-screw an opponent with Port. Even at mythic rare it would ruin games.
Cheater - I wonder if they feel that they can handle MTGO reprints in other ways? I agree that Port being $150 online is brutal, but they have other ways to fix the MTGO economy. This is their only good option in paper - and if it's a bad draft format, then it won't work as well.
And it's impossible to have both Port and Karakas eating up mythic slots with lands; in paper, they're pretty equivalent in value/need/use. If you want paper Ports, now is a good a time as any to get them I think.
May 25th, 2016, 10:45
(This post was last modified: May 25th, 2016, 10:59 by Cheater Hater.)
(May 25th, 2016, 09:15)T-hawk Wrote:But is it going to screw players anymore than, say, Hymn to Tourach at uncommon (which was just spoiled today)? Or be as annoying as Top will be at rare (people were expecting it at mythic for that reason)?Quote:Rishadan Port is the most expensive card on MTGO right now, and it's probably not going to be in the set (both because the value is already so high, and the fact that it got/is going to get a judge foil printing) One mythic doesn't ruin a format--sure, Port is probably going to be a MOCS promo in a few months and that will help, but it's surprising none the less. Edit: Also T-hawk, to not clog up the (already clogged up) Civ6 thread, Oloro's problem isn't that two life per turn cycle is overpowered. Instead, it's that you can't interact with it (people have the same problem with emblems) and that it actively discourages you from casting your commander (and instead you play some normal Esper Control deck with a life buffer, and possibly some bonuses for life gain).
Sure you can interact with Oloro. You interact with life-gain by dealing damage. If you can't deal two damage per turn, go find a less durdly deck.
People whine about command-zone effects because they don't realize Wizards is smart enough to make the results subject to interaction anyway. The other example besides Oloro's lifegain is Derevi. Derevi only does anything unusual if it's in the command zone. You were supposed to interact with it by using bounce or tuck removal while it's in play to keep it out of there. Derevi only became overpowered after the tuck rule change that Wizards didn't foresee. The ones like Prossh aren't a command zone effect at all, that's just kicker. Prossh is overpowered because it's an undercosted self-combo engine, not because it mentions the command zone. Hymn is nasty too. But at least double black doesn't happen early in every game while Port always works. Top isn't annoying in terms of game state, only in taking time, and tournaments have slow play rules to address that. |
