MTG thread

And to reanimate all the stuff you pitch to Troll.

Well damn. My friend was playing in the Legacy Open today and had his whole bag stolen right from under his chair during play. His Modern and Legacy binders, plus a KikiTwin deck and about half of Combo Elves. All the fetches he wasn't actively playing, and a bunch of Modern Masters.

It got me thinking, and I'm pretty sure I had a card or two lifted by traders yesterday without realizing it. I was keeping pretty good track of what was coming and going, but I'm short a couple of cards today. Nothing too huge, but there's definitely things gone that I can't recall trading away. I only made a few larger trades yesterday, so it's not hard to recall everything that should have gone out the door.

It's pretty disheartening how easy it is to have things lifted at big events like that. The list of people I know who've been robbed is starting to equal or exceed the number of people who haven't.

Yeah, I am incredibly glad I wasn't trying to play yesterday. I never had my things out of sight, and I'm still missing shit here and there. My Crucible of Worlds is MIA, plus a duel deck Counterspell and whatever was behind it on the next page. Neither of them were ever part of a trade, or had any reason to leave the book. It's nothing big, but that's likely why I never noticed it gone.

I get super fucking annoyed at people who can't keep a list in their head and insist on pulling cards out of my binder that they're "interested in". If I can keep track of what caught my eye and make an offer in my head, so can everyone else. Cards shouldn't be laid out on the table until the trade is about to be finalized, imo. I had to ward more than one person off from that kind of thing yesterday, and they were clearly old hands at it with very large, expensive collections of their own. It makes me suspicious of the entire trading community at a large event.

Once I actually did the math in my head, the things I got from SCG yesterday vastly outweighed what I traded for otherwise. I didn't get taken advantage of, but I certainly had a lot of people try (take these 5 or 6 EDH cards for this Deathrite/Obzedat/standard staple... uh, no). It's almost worth the hit in value to sell things into a shop just to not have some dude try and rip you off or lift cards, smiling the whole time. At least with the shops you know where everyone stands up front.

Vilgan_sl said:

Heroic seems too gimmicky for me.

Click to expand...

In most of the colors it seems a tad meh. White *seems* to come out ahead, with solid casting cost to body size ratios, AND a couple solid heroic triggers. Green *might* be decent, since the pumps are larger, but you still have Grey ogres/Hill Giants until you can trigger it. Everyone else pays too much upfront for the effect. The targeting restrictions make me think they'll do a "when an opposing player targets..." heroic in the next small set, followed by "when anyone targets" heroic in the last set.

Proxied up 4 Color Loam to play with friends at the shop. Still another $750 to go. :/

edit: This deck is really goddamn fun.

So.. through being extremely lucky (knowing the right person, being in right place and right time, etc..) I actually got to draft Theros last night with real cards. Went U/R aggro but learned quite a few things seeing the cards played out. Warning: incoming lengthy post.

First of all, bestow and heroic really are NUTS in limited. The removal sucks in this set, and it's expensive even when it's good. Most good decks are going to revolve around 'build-a-fatty' style play. Even in draft, which is faster then sealed, I think it would have been correct to play 22 spells/18 lands if you aren't playing mana ramp effects. You want to hit your first 4-5 land drops pretty quickly. Nothing significant happens in the first few turns barring some crazy draws. Even then, if your opponent is playing green and/or white, they have access to enough lifelink effects on big creatures or lifegain effects that you can't put them away quick enough.
The quickest game was one where I curved out on making a flyer dude huge with ordeals + bestow effects that outclassed their removal.

On to specific cards that under/over performed.

Overperformed:
God's Willing- holy crap is this card amazing in this format. Since most of the true removal spells without drawbacks cost 4+ mana, this is often a counterspell with scry 1, for a single mana. It's a huge tempo swing, and often you are protecting a heroic guy so he gets an extra trigger as well. The two decks that got to the finals undefeated were running 2 and 3 of this spell.

Hopeful Eidolon- This guy is great in a deck with even a marginal amount of heroic creatures. +1/+1 and lifelink for 3W might not seem great, but triggering heroic and getting lifelink on a fatty just completely stabilizes against any super aggro decks. He's also a good target for other enchantments so you can make him into a relevant threat. So, even if they remove the guy he is bestowing, you still have someone left on the board to build up into a fatty with your other effects.

Every heroic guy: We knew they were gonna be good, but the ones that get bigger are almost unstoppable. The centaur that gets +3/+3 and the warrior that gets +2/+2 are broken in the right deck, and all the white ones are playable even without heroic triggering. Most of the ones with effect triggers are still very good, such as wavecrash triton (blue guy that taps down a creature for a turn when heroic triggers) as he can help swing combat math when both sides have huge fatties staring each other down afraid to attack for fear of dying on the crack back. One of the weakest ones is probably the rare red guy, Labyrinth Champion. I drafted him, and 2 damage is rarely relevant to anything by the time he hits the board. Only on a super aggressive start, with very cheap enchantments/combat tricks and then just aiming the damage at their dome would he be any good. He's like a 7th pick in the 2nd/3rd packs when you know you are building that type of deck.

Ordeals of XX- Some neat interactions with these, if you are like me and didn't read them correctly the first time. If you have two in hand, cast one on a creature, then next turn cast the other and attack.. both will immediately trigger so they didn't get to 'plan around' the 2nd one. So, they become effectively sorceries in regards to their sac effect and +1/+1 counter to a creature, makes the black and green one look a little better. Also, if a creature has two counters already and then you cast a 2nd ordeal on him, they'll both trigger and he'll end up with four +1/+1 counters left afterwards. If you cast it on a heroic guy who already has three +1/+1 counters, it's the same thing. Note: The counters stay on the creature after he's gone, that's probably obvious to many of you, but a few of the players made that mistake when seeing them for the first time until they saw them in play. In any case, these are all very good, red/blue/white being the best, but green/black are both very playable as well. I'd take the R/W/U ones anywhere from 2-5 in a draft, G/B 3-7 depending on your deck style. In a sealed, I'd play any of them after fitting all your bestow guys in.

Sedge Scorpion(or any guy with deathtouch) - Things get huge quickly, this guy is one of the cheapest deterrents around. Play all that you open if you are in green. Trust me.

Benthic Giant- This guy is crazy. Take him early, or play any you open and load up on enchantments/bestow effects for him. I had two in my deck, and they single handedly won 4 games for me with my opponent showing me a hand full of removal afterwards. Only time I got one out and didn't win, was against the guy who won the tournament with a G/W heroic deck, where he just made guys bigger, faster. Got mine to a 9/10 flying, draw a card when he hits monstrosity. He then loaded up some guys and swung with a 11/12 lifelinking, reach and a 10/10 trampler.. when he was at 30 life after going to 4 early on..

Dissolve- Most deck's key moments are at 4+ mana, and often they are casting 6 mana+ spells. Cancel would be waaay better in this format then most previous ones, and this has the bonus of scry 1. Counterspells aren't normally amazing in limited formats, but this is an exception. Annul is also very playable if you want to be control-ish.

Underperformed
Spark jolt- I knew it wasn't going to be amazing, but it's practically unplayable. Even most of the 1 drops that get played in this set have 2 toughness, so you really can't use it to remove something early game. As a combat trick, it's horrible because rarely is one creature only outclassed by 1 toughness or power. Often, you might make a guy into some 6/6 monstrosity to outclass their 4/4 guy, then they make their 4/4 guy (or some other creature) into a 8/8 or bigger. The format is very much a 'haymaker' style format, where you want to be aggressively playing out bigger threats then your opponent.

Scry 1 effects- hard to explain this one.. I wasn't exactly overvaluing scry, but scry 1 really does mess with your head. It's generally a bonus on a spell you would play anyways, but considering how mana heavy this format is, if you see a land when you could use either 1 more mana to cast a big bestow guy or you need a removal/bounce spell for the current board state makes the decision pretty hard. It's still gambling on what the next card is. You get frustrated that you can't just draw that card. That said, omenspeaker is amazing and scry 2 (or more) effects are very good. Basically, if you see a cheap card with scry 1 on it, pretend it doesn't have scry 1 and ask yourself if you'd play it anyway. If not, don't include it in your deck. (i.e. spark jolt and lost in the labyrinth, which I messed up on as my 22nd and 23rd cards, partially to support two spellheart chimeras and trigger heroic effects in a pinch, but I should have just had two more creatures/enchantments)

Rage of Purphoros- Maybe it was just shitty luck on my part, but whenever I could cast this to remove a guy, they had God's Willing (or some other combat trick) to save their guy. So, I'm spending 5 mana to their 1 or 2, after they just used the rest of it to lay out a threat. On the same note, it seems pretty hard to build a reactive control deck in this format. You rarely are dealing with a threat with a more efficient answer, which is the basis of control decks working.



Tl:dr This IS a slower format in that you want to get to 4+ mana as quickly as possible, but the games can end VERY quickly once it does get to that point. If you want to go super aggro, it's still viable, but you need some mid range tempo stuff and to have ways to deal with big fatties with lifelink. For example, grabbing bestow guys (the 2/2 first strike for 2R is good for this) that are aggressive if cast as a creature and cheap heroic guys that get bigger is the way to go to be 'aggro'. I got people down to 5 or less life multiple times before they suited up a big dude with lifelink and bounced right back up to 14+ life. I only had one voyage's end (bounce) and would never draw it at the right time. One mistake or hole in your defense like that and the game is often over.

Oh, and my new color ranking is G/U/W/R/B, with green and blue being very close. Black is actually very good, but it's best commons require BB to cast, so you have to commit heavily to black. the disparity between the colors isn't that huge though. Picking black for the prerelease is not a bad idea, even though it's sort of the 'weakest' color imo, you automatically get more black cards in the promo pack so it has high risk/reward. Plus, red's promo lets you keep people off big mana so that's a viable strategy as well. I'm personally going to pick green, as it goes well with every other color in different themes.

I picked black for an extra shot at Thoughtseize, mostly. It sounds fun!

Looks like you can't get thoughtseize in the black pack.. People are taking pictures, there's certain pre-made combinations you can get and one card is the same every time (a common). There's only 8 rare/mythics that can be in the pack, the Gods being the only mythic, so you have a 1 in 8 chance of opening your god as well as a 1 in 8 chance of opening their weapon.

I went green, and ended up U/G at my midnight prerelease. Had a crowd of 79, the largest ever in this area and now the store is eligible to host PTQs (yay!). Myself and two others went 5-0, all three had blue as one of their two colors. I considered going G/W for a little bit, after seeing how nuts a heroic deck in those colors can be, but a prophet of kruphix and 2 (TWO!) u/g scry lands was a sign from the magic gods to go U/G. Nemesis of Mortals + Aqueous form was my mvps, for sure.

I think this format is interesting in that you want to play 18 lands almost every time and keeping 4+ land hands is correct. You can scry away extra land after that, but you want to hit the 4+ mana mark earlier then others. I joked with my 2nd to last opponent that I almost kept a 6 land and one 6 drop hand against him before mulliganing. After the game, we started discussing it and think that might actually be a fine decision for some decks. It's pretty surreal that most common ideas are thrown out the window in this limited format. Voltron-ing one creature is generally bad because if they remove it you get blown out, but that's the best thing to do in Theros. Additionally, a lot of 'win more' cards that you shouldn't normally play are very good due to the board stalls and lack of removal.

I had to work a bit today, but planning to go hit up a few sunday events at another store while I'm ahead of the curve for limited. Opened a couple high dollar cards, including Xenagos, in my prize packs. Selling them on ebay while prices are inflated for actual cards rather then pre-orders . One of them is a 2HG event, if they are giving the promo packs for it, I think it's best for both players to pick black and have one person run mono-black while the other plays the next best two colors you open. Grey Merchant of Asphodel plus devotion effects, such as the promo, would just be amazing in 2HG.

That was a bitch move to not include a chance at getting thoughtseize in the promo pack. I would have gone straight up white if I had known that.

As it was I ended up playing Blue/white and going 4-0. Having the ability to bounce cards either back into their hand or back on top of their library turns out to work very well in a enchantment/monstrosity/Heroic based environment. The blue hexproof guy with the unblockable/scry enchantment was sweet. I also got a Daxos which wreaked havoc with that enchantment on it. The MVP for me though was "Sea God's Revenge". Returning 3 creatures to a person's hand and scrying one after you hit them for 9+ damage was so much fun. I got the Red God and just sold it for $16.00 along with another $9.00 from my prize support. My friend got wrecked by a green deck that had not 1, but 2 Mistcutter Hydras. That card is "So" good in a sealed/draft environment. That Hydra will be a 4 of in every green sideboard because it just destroys blue/white control.

Mono black is definitely the right choice for 2HG. Fanatic of Mogis is also rough in 2HG given how easily the board stalls out. We got hit by one that did 24 damage to us. Kind of sucked since next turn I was about to ultimate Elspeth. Also we were playing that guy that can copy spells. The other team had Heliod and Purphoros on the board and the look on their faces when I cast "Fade Into Antiquity" and my partnered copied it to take out both gods was priceless.

Surprisingly Ashiok does a lot of work if you can slam him down early. Yesterday I managed to mill out a few of my opponents but the star play was comboing it and grip tide to steal a Polurankos, World Eater

In terms of value I got Elspeth, Ashiok, two Nythkos and a few other money rates that I am definitely selling.

Messing with Ashiok in the MTGO beta he does seem very underestimated - he's definitely a little abstract to value from the opponents view I think is part of the issue with his power level - he looks easy to ignore but at the same time gets out of hand easily as well - even after using him I do like him - but it's really hard to say where he'll land in the longrun.

I didn't pull any value from my prerelease on Friday, but I got some decent stuff to play with. My MVP was Whip of Erebos. Holy shit that card is a game breaker when it hits. I played B/G with basically no early cards, just a shitload of bombs. Ended up 2-1 before I was so exhausted at 3:30 a.m. that I just dropped and went home. I was supposed to go play a Sunday sealed today as well, but I'm too goddamn hungover to think, nevermind play cards.

Enzie, thanks for posting the advice. Played my first tournament ever this pre release after reading your post. I did pretty well and pulled about 80 bucks worth of stuff.

Ordeals, fleecemane lion, and several others you mentioned did very well for me.

So....I spent about $2300 on Legacy staples yesterday. I literally haggled with sellers online ALL day. I ended up with some great buys, but I still need a lot of stuff. Qualifying for multiple SCG invitationals is almost a curse because you have to have a competitive Legacy deck.

Yes, I know there are budget decks, but I want to be on the Shardless BUG train. My traveling buddy Chi Hoi Yim hit 2nd place in Atlanta couple weeks ago with it.

I've been building 4 Color Loam and probably Manaless Dredge as a backup plan. Loam is about $1500 total, whereas Dredge is about... $80. I picked up a lot of Legacy staples in Atlanta myself, and quite a bit more with SCG credit.

You ought to be able to build Shardless for less than $2300, though. I realize it's one of the more expensive Legacy decks right now, and Underground Seas rape wallets, but 2k should still do it.

Gotta love release nights. I ended up with a box of Japanese Theros by accident since the shop's distributor messed up an order and I did them a favor by grabbing foreign stuff. It was an alright box; I managed to snag an Elspeth, Heliod and a fifth Thoughtseize which I flipped almost immediately. By the end of the night, I'd traded up into two Stormbreaths, 3 Xenagos, a set of Caryatids, 4 more scry lands and 2 Nykthos, while still keeping my Elpeth and Heliod. Flipped a couple of old commander cards, but by and large nothing major. I think the largest thing I traded was my fifth Chord of Calling for one of the dragons + stuff.

Met up with some guys from WotC for drinks (underlings, no one really important) at Oracle OpenWorld this past week and got me wanting to play again. I haven't played since Ice Age. Best place / site to get a re-primer on playing?

I read the forums at mtgsalvation.com, and some of the articles on starcitygames.com. Otherwise, just play. It doesn't take long to get reacquainted.