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Magic: The Gathering |OT|
- Thread starter The Technomancer
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divisionbyzorro
Member
Jace, the Mind Sculptor probably (?) wouldn't break the format. But there's still enough bad feeling surrounding that card that I can't imagine they unban it. The same is true for Bitterblossom; that's probably a safe unban in a world overrun with Abrupt Decay (even though Scion of Oona counters it), but people hate Faeries too much to let that deck back in.
Honestly, I can't imagine anything actually comes off the ban list this cycle. I'm just hoping for a Deathrite Shaman ban so Jund can go back to being top-tier instead of god-tier.
Yay! The new Ars Arcanum is up at http://puremtgo.com/articles/ars-arcanum-gatecrash-prerelease-primer I find these articles very helpful- he puts tons of work into them.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Fuck, man. I have to work this weekend. I need those guild boxes. Need.
Anybody want to hook a brother up? Cash money.
Anybody want to hook a brother up? Cash money.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Nah, son. Nah. lol
divisionbyzorro
Member
From Reddit:
Deathrite Shaman deserves the axe. The only question is whether they're willing to pull the trigger so early.
divisionbyzorro
Member
A chase rare from the current set? Probably not. How long did it take them to ban Mental Misstep? Our favorite gravetilling elf isn't quite so degenerate, but he is just as format warping to Modern (IMO).
What's funny is a lot of sites has those two as the top top ranked guilds this set. Orzhov kinda makes sense at the top. Sealed matches tends to last longer than constructed due to lack of having as many removal options. Orzhov can just sit on defenders and fatty creatures and Extort you to death. They also have access to red for more removal spells.
If I wasn't going for dollar value in Boros, I would've gone with Simic. Bunch of evasive guys to slap Cipher onto. Some of the cards I find that tends to have card value are the ones that can be cast cheaper and then can pump themselves up. Simic got a bunch thanks to Evolve.
I'm honestly thinking of switching Boros for either of the two guilds mentioned because I'll doubt I'll do three events this weekend.
T
Transhuman
Unconfirmed Member
If you're going for card value, Orzhov. In the guild booster you have a 1/8 chance of getting the guild leader, and you can't get any mythic besides the guild leader. Obzedat, Ghost Council is worth the most, the rest is fairly equal.
I honestly think Dimir and Orzhov will fall flat on their faces though. It will be interesting to see.
I honestly think Dimir and Orzhov will fall flat on their faces though. It will be interesting to see.
Let's see if these tips help you:
- While opening your packs, don't spend too much time to look at them, and sort cards by color (monocolored, guilds, artifacts and lands).
- If the organizer gives you a checklist to fill, you should sort cards alphabetically (since that's the way they show up on their respective color's list) and make sure you don't miscount cards or mistake them for ones with similar names
- Some organizers make players swap cards with each other to ensure fairness (although it isn't done that often nowadays). In that case, you shouldn't stop to look at your cards for too long while registering them to avoid slowing the event down (since you aren't going to be playing them, anyway)
- After pool registration and swapping's done, it's time to build your deck! Place monocolored cards with their respective guilds in between (say, white, boros, red, grull, green, simic, blue, dimir, black, orzhov), adding guild-specific lands and keyrunes to the respective guild's pile. This makes it a lot easier to spot guilds which have too few cards to be played reliably, but you should still check for powerful bombs you could splash from there
- Trim each color by removing the cards you feel are unplayable, and you'll end up with a slightly narrower pool of viable stuff. Semi-playables should be kept aside as well as filler in case you run out of good cards for your deck
- Splashing a color for a few cards should be done with non-color-intensive cards only; for example, even if you open up a Ghost Council, you shouldn't be playing it if you have a pool with no other playable white cards, since it's double-white mana cost means you're unlikely to get two splashed lands in time
- Try to stick to forty-card decks as much as you can to increase your chances of drawing your more powerful cards. Most of the time you'll be playing with 16 to 18 lands, depending on how many mana fixers (ie: keyrunes) you have and how your curve goes; you don't want to play 15-16 lands with lots of 4+ mana cards, for example, but it'd be a viable strategy if you get lots of cheap creatures and spells for an agressive deck
- Once you're done choosing non-land cards for your deck, add up each colored mana cost in the cards (including their abilities' costs) to estimate the ratio of lands by-color you should be running. Even if a color's ratio should be low according to this, take into account whether that color is giving you early or late-game cards; say, if you're running pure Simic and have more blue mana costs than you have green, you'd most often use 10 islands and 7 forests, or 9 and 8, but if your blue cards are late-game plays and your cheaper spells are all green, you should turn the colored ratios around and run more forests to ensure you can play your early cards reliably
I'll be playing Simic at my local store's midnight prerelease, and I might end up double-dipping and playing in a saturday evening event as well, although I'm not sure if I'll be choosing Dimir, Orzhov or go Simic again.
robotzombie
Member
Thanks JulianImp! That was very helpful advice, ill take that with me on Saturday!
Keru_Shiri
Member
Right click >> Save As...
T
Transhuman
Unconfirmed Member
Expanding on this, the only good reason to go over 40 cards is if you get tons of removal or cards with compound effects like Ethereal Armour, and only if you have a decent creature base to back it up. Considering how unlikely both of those situations are in sealed, it's safe to say that going over 40 is not a good call.
What y2dvd said. Technically speaking, Prereleases use the lowest REL (Rule Enforcement Level), which favors learning the rules over strictly enforcing them and results in a more lax gaming atmosphere.
By the way, try to avoid picking up the habit of repeatedly shuffling cards in your hand for no reason. It's a really strange habit that I've seen most people do (myself included); I don't even remember when or why I had picked it up, but I only noticed a year ago when my cousin pointed out how weird and widespred it was.
I think I've been trying to avoid looking at spoilers for the last two or three sets, but always end up succumbing to my curiosity and ruining the surprise and excitement of looking at new cards on the prerelease events. I guess reading them gives me some strategic knowledge of possible combat tricks and so on, but I really want to give it up soon and finally experience playing with unknown cards once again.
By the way, try to avoid picking up the habit of repeatedly shuffling cards in your hand for no reason. It's a really strange habit that I've seen most people do (myself included); I don't even remember when or why I had picked it up, but I only noticed a year ago when my cousin pointed out how weird and widespred it was.
I think I've been trying to avoid looking at spoilers for the last two or three sets, but always end up succumbing to my curiosity and ruining the surprise and excitement of looking at new cards on the prerelease events. I guess reading them gives me some strategic knowledge of possible combat tricks and so on, but I really want to give it up soon and finally experience playing with unknown cards once again.
Keru_Shiri
Member
There's actually a reason for that. Skilled players can tell what you're holding by watching for witch cards you look down at as they go to do something. Shuffling the cards helps keep you from looking at a specific card. It always helps to have a good poker face.
Shuffling your hand after you draw and before you play anything is also a good habit if you want to get competitive since you generally don't want to let someone know if the thing you're playing was in your hand the whole time or was just drawn off the top.
Oh man, there's so many combat tricks to play around in Gatecrash: http://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/170s5r/stuff_to_play_around_at_your_gtc_prerelease/
Oh man, there's so many combat tricks to play around in Gatecrash: http://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/170s5r/stuff_to_play_around_at_your_gtc_prerelease/
So Travis Woo did this on his stream last night.
He had something like 40 2+ Billion P/T creatures all attacking, fucking hilarious shit.
www.twitch.tv/traviswoo/b/360090779
He had something like 40 2+ Billion P/T creatures all attacking, fucking hilarious shit.
www.twitch.tv/traviswoo/b/360090779
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
So Travis Woo did this on his stream last night.
He had something like 40 2+ Billion P/T creatures all attacking, fucking hilarious shit.
www.twitch.tv/traviswoo/b/360090779
U, Rapid Hybridization.
GG
Keru_Shiri
Member
Yeah, it's hillarious when I'm playing something like Dominion or Marvel: Legendary with some of my competitive Magic friends, and they still are flicking their cards about.
I do this sometimes, and it works since it can bluff your opponent into thinking that you've given up on your current hand for the turn.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I really like the art on Gift of Orzhova.
So do I. I almost wish it had more of a "loan shark/be careful what you wish for flavor", like if it only cost B/W but had "three turns after this card is played enchanted creature gets -3/-3 instead.
I always always root for the other guy when I see someone do this. I don't know why it annoys me so much but it makes me want to drag them outside and beat them into submission.
I also really like bane alley broker's art. And the card itself is really interesting. Probably completely useless but interesting anyway.
And that gift of Orzhova cars is going to look amazing as a foil.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Well, I mean, they're just Not Our Kind of People *sniff*
avengers23
Banned
Thanks for the advice, JulianImp. I too am dipping my toes back into M:TG with the Gatecrash pre-release this weekend at my local store, and I was wondering how to approach deck construction in a sealed deck format where I have no expectations about the cards.
Playing a lot of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 on my iPad the past few weeks is probably giving me a lot of false confidence, but I feel like I could have a really good time this weekend.
Playing a lot of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 on my iPad the past few weeks is probably giving me a lot of false confidence, but I feel like I could have a really good time this weekend.
I was actually taught magic lands over creatures. I still use it for my opponents convienence if I'm playing a mostly creature less deck (like draw-go or storm) because my mana is more important than anything else.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
You should have a good time, unless you run into one of those weird little wannabe alpha nerds. Should that happen, just tell them to take a fucking shower. That'll shut 'em up
whomever taught you should be punched in the throat
speaking of DOTP 2013, the music in that game is fantastic.
Keru_Shiri
Member
Valakut ramp decks would do lands in front of creatures all the time. Glad that's over.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I love the edit here. I saw when it was just the first line and it feels like you were just like "shit, that came off as kind of harsh...I need to say something more lighthearted"
In special cases where your lands actually are the more important part to your opponent I don't mind, but just doing it all the time is weird. It feels like they're trying to pull a fast one or something by keeping the relevant creatures in a place where it is inconvenient for the opponent to see them.
lol im just feeling schizophrenic tonight.
EsotericManiac
Banned
If lands over creatures bothers you so much, how would you feel if you had to play a legacy dredge deck where their graveyard is all over the board?
I can't stand decks that leave the opponent uninvolved period. Elves combo, dredge, high tide, charblecher. All of them can go fuck right off. Dredge isn't quite as bad as the others but there is still a sense of "lets just sit here and hope my opponent is so incompetent he fucks up his own combo."
EsotericManiac
Banned
That's a big part of legacy and a big reason why they won't ban Force of Will
Keru_Shiri
Member
Dredge is the furthest you can get from playing Magic while still playing Magic. (I'm just needlessly hating at this point. 
)
)EsotericManiac
Banned
Yes, it does have very little interaction with the opponent pre-board, but it's not the worst.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
So Travis Woo did this on his stream last night.
He had something like 40 2+ Billion P/T creatures all attacking, fucking hilarious shit.
www.twitch.tv/traviswoo/b/360090779
Do you know at what time he does it? I was skimming it but I don't want to watch 2 1/2 hours to find it.
FieryBalrog
Member
Can't believe I got excited to see what Orzhov removal would be in this set to live up to the likes of Detention Sphere/Abrupt Decay/Dreadbore etc. =/
I knew uncounterable cycle wasn't in, but didn't have to be uncounterable to be good.
This set kinda sucks from the meeting expectations point of view, it's like they made 0 attempt at standardizing the feel and power of the two large sets, leaving five guilds (and their fans) randomly hosed because they got the clown-car design & dev team.
I knew uncounterable cycle wasn't in, but didn't have to be uncounterable to be good.
This set kinda sucks from the meeting expectations point of view, it's like they made 0 attempt at standardizing the feel and power of the two large sets, leaving five guilds (and their fans) randomly hosed because they got the clown-car design & dev team.
It's in the first match he plays, so maybe 10 minutes in or so.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
Haha, and it should be higher since he missed attacking with one creature. :lol :lol
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