MTG thread

Mist_sl said:

Okay, m14 is actually a pretty good limited set. Color me shocked.

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Yep, I like that it's actually hard to splash many of the bombs due to the lack of mana fixing which opens up some interesting choices in terms of deck construction. Also slivers is a trap unless you can get the right slivers.

Note: My experience is sealed onry, I won't have draft experience until later this week.

morenfin_sl said:

If you want to talk about functional reprints the best example is fork vs reverberate.

vs

People have been clamoring for the repeal of the reserved list for years. I'd like to see it happen but I don't expect it. They used to get around this with foils in special sets/judge promos, but people complained about phyrexian negataor in a dual deck, and got rid of that loophole. Good once upon a time but a fucking dollar rare today. I love playing legacy and would like to see more people play it but its really expensive.

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Maro has said that the Fork "reprint" was a little too close for comfort and they will probably not get that close again.

Spend five whole dollars on tickets and head over to the marketplace. There are bots that do 32 cards for a ticket, 16 cards for a ticket, etc. I mostly just play with crap in the casual room that I like that is not format relevant. For singles I tend to use the same store bot,http://cardbotmtgo.com/

I probably average three or four dollars a month total and I can sit and play all the games I want. And boy, Dragon's Maze was great. Look at all those flavorful nickel rares!

For some reason I am really indecisive on a deck this week for FNM. I put together the BW list that just won the SCG Open, but it felt like a weaker Aristocrats to me, and had some pretty awful matchups vs Jund. I put an updated Junk Aristocrats list together as a backup plan, and may end up playing that. Also tinkering with 3 or 4 other ideas, but none of them have really gelled completely. Gruul aggro, Azorius control, maybe even Golgari control.

I should probably just cave and play Jund, but I really don't want to. Bleh.

Real Men, and 12-year-olds, play Slivers.

American control is where it's at. Aetherling, Tamiyo, Jace AoT + lots of wipes, burns and controlly stuff.

If I had the cardpool to being playing Standard right now, I'd totally be playing some UWR combination. U/R is my favorite two color combo, and UWR/UBR are my next favorites. I'm glad to see UWR is good for a change.

On an unrelated note, calling back to our previous discussions about new players. A few friends got into the game and kinda pulled me back into playing. I had gutted my collection about a year ago, so I just put together a modern legal to play against them. There's a multiplayer casual night at a local bar on mondays. They play casually, so format is kind of irrelevant, but I wanted to limit myself to modern to help handicap against them. So, I made my favorite kind of deck with the cards I still had leftover, a U/R aggro-control, lots of instants (counters/burn) with wee dragonauts/ninja of deep hours. Tricky with lots of card draw, basically. Good for 1v1, need to make changes to bring it into multiplayer (need some isochron scepters, I think).

Anyway, point is, that even the players who started playing that had never played before, figured out within a week of starting how much m14 sucks compared to the ravnica block. They already think m14 is boring, having JUST LEARNED TO PLAY A WEEK AGO. All the splashy effects in ravnica draw them to those sets and those are the boosters they are buying. If that doesn't show you how much they need to change m14, I'm not sure what can. A lot of people that are drawn to playing magic, are naturally smarter then average or at least like to figure things out. Two of the friends started with splitting a duel deck product and then took each deck and improved it as a starting point.

Seriously, the duel decks and maybe an improved version of the deckbuilder toolkit thing (honestly, I'm unfamiliar with the current one, but I hear very little about it) is a better way to introduce players to the game then the current core sets. Especially since they rotate more often then expert sets. They really need to rethink their approach to core, the redesign with m10 was a great step in the right direction, but they need another one just as drastic before they really nail it.

Played Junk, made top 8, got knocked out after an incredibly grindy Jund matchup that went to time. That deck is fucking brutal with Scavenging Ooze. It was bad before, but now it's got an early game threat and yet more ways to gain life and perpetuate itself.

Every game turned into a top deck race, but his average draw is just stronger than mine. The last game I stalled on 3 lands, and couldn't find a second black source to start casting multiple spells. I had a Cartel, spirit token and High Priest on the board and a second Cartel in hand, so I could have activated for a 5/5 demon. I chose instead to Appetite for brains, yanked his Curse of Death's Hold, then did it a second time the following turn to swipe Olivia when I saw he had her. I didn't want to start making demons until I knew she wasn't going to be a threat and just steal them.

A second black source would have won me that game, I just couldn't seem to find it. Ah well, I knew Jund was going to be a terror right now. That player went on to split top prize, so I don't feel too bad.

I PM'd you Heylel.

Anyway,

It's a good deck. I only started playing it about 2 weeks before GP Miami. I won a box last night, and last FNM playing Jund. I'll be going to an IQ in the morning and a Super IQ Sunday with my Jund deck. I'm tuning it for the mirror because I will have to wade through at least a couple mirrors, especially if I top 8

Titan dominance aside I dont think the way they make the core sets has to be changed significantly, I found the others from Tenth Edition up to M13 were well done. I actually prefer core set limited because the color identity is usually shown most clearly. I'm not the biggest fan of the length of pie violations they go to in some expert blocks. That said, M14 is just plain boring/bad compared to not just expert sets but also the previous core sets since Tenth. Maybe I'm just bitter about them gutting what made slivers interesting in the first place just so the cards conform to their current layout desire. Also they take up way too much design space.

Looking forward to Theros being less splashy color-wise.

Grabbit Allworth_sl said:

It's a good deck. I only started playing it about 2 weeks before GP Miami. I won a box last night, and last FNM playing Jund. I'll be going to an IQ in the morning and a Super IQ Sunday with my Jund deck. I'm tuning it for the mirror because I will have to wade through at least a couple mirrors, especially if I top 8

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Definitely. Prepare for the Scavenging Ooze race; I play a singleton Ooze in Junk that I landed turn 2 and it nearly won me the game. Jund has a reason to pay attention to the graveyard now, and I deliberately kept eating everything that hit the graveyard so that when his own Ooze landed it had nothing to munch on. If he hadn't top decked a Dreadbore he'd have died to that card alone by the time I had it up to 7/7 or so.

Good luck in Buford. Some friends and I talked about going today, but it's a pretty long drive from my part of town and my renter hasn't paid up so I'm a little light for the end of the month. I'm going to try to make the Open in mid-September though. I've done a couple big tourneys before, but I don't play enough to really do well at them. I'd like to change that and place well at least once sometime, but we'll see. My plan is to stick to Junk for the month of August if I can and really hone my play with that deck, assuming it doesn't get hated out. Going to bed last night I could identify two or three plays in the Jund match that could have made a difference.

I'm actually going to Chattanooga and then on to to Knoxville for the Super!

Ah, nice. That's what I get for checking the schedule too quickly. Good luck!

edit: I was just reminded that flipped cards have 0 cmc, which would have totally changed my top 8 match vs. Jund. On two occasions I was facing a flipped Huntmaster and holding an Abrupt Decay. Goddamnitsomuch.

Fuck me. Not been playing for a bit and I just looked at Scavenging Ooze. There really is nothing else in M14 at that power level? Are they trying to create another $100 dollar plus card in record time? Sheesh.

It'll hardly be a $100 card. Probably in the $15-20 range.

Eh we'll see. Scavenging ooze was a promo card for Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014 so everyone who wants one should have one. Worst case if you look around you can probably find the promo packs at some of the lesser frequented stores. Just gotta bring them the promo code from duels.

Yeah, I have 4 of the promo ones. Even with the promo being out there it's trading and selling consistently for $14 right now, and it'll only go up after the results of this weekend's invitational. Scavenging Ooze does some serious work.

It looks like the nearby shops are all going to be selling FTV20 at $300. Crazy. Sure am glad I'm snagging it for MSRP.