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[A Serious Man]

Jesus that's an expensive deck.

And it costs about $200 less than most Esper Dragons builds. Jace and Ojutai double-teaming ya wallet.

 

[Etrian Oddity]

That's why I only splash Blue, if I deign to play it

 

[Wichu]

Jesus that's an expensive deck.

$300? You haven't seen my plans

4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
4 Soulfire Grand Master
4 Mantis Rider
4 Siege Rhino
1 Clever Impersonator
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
4 Radiant Flames
1 Abzan Charm
2 Jeskai Charm
1 Utter End
2 Ojutai's Command
4 Bring to Light
1 End Hostilities
3 Evolving Wilds
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Windswept Heath
1 Prairie Stream
1 Sunken Hollow
1 Smoldering Marsh
1 Cinder Glade
1 Canopy Vista
2 Plains
1 Island
1 Mountain

TappedOut link if you really want to see the price!

 

[Giant Panda]

Jesus that's an expensive deck.

I opened a fair number of deathmists and den protectors, so I didn't need to shell out much for them. I lot of the other cards I had already owned. The only cards I specifically need to buy for this deck are the Hangarbacks and Canopy Vistas. Basically, I'm actually playing this deck so I don't play one of the other wallet killers that are popular right now haha

 

[Etrian Oddity]

I opened a fair number of deathmists and den protectors, so I didn't need to shell out much for them. I lot of the other cards I had already owned. The only cards I specifically need to buy for this deck are the Hangarbacks and Canopy Vistas. Basically, I'm actually playing this deck so I don't play one of the other wallet killers that are popular right now haha

Ah. That's not so bad then.

 

[Kid Ska]

Community Cup BFZ draft is about to start on the wizards twitch channel. If the community wins everyone who gets on MTGO during it will get Unhinged full art lands and a Thalia promo

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

BfZ Draft starting now any second http://www.twitch.tv/magic

Community better take this home

I did end up signing up to MODO. The starting cards are a bit of a joke do the tickets and play points at least add up close to $10?

Wow we'll see the mana fixing capabilities in action with Joel Larson's deck.

 

[A Serious Man]

These full-arts look fucking great.

 

[shrapnelmagnet]

These full-arts look fucking great.

They really do. I'm excited to crack some packs and will be keeping a close eye on the price of the basics.

 

[Draxal]

Island is the best card in the set. (I love awaken as an ability).

 

[The Technomancer]

Island is the best card in the set. (I love awaken as an ability).

Awaken is my favorite mechanic in the set easily. Super interesting to see how it plays. I thought it would be the Ingest/Process dynamic, but what they've shown off isn't exciting, maybe Oath will change that

 

[shrapnelmagnet]

Honestly looks like a fun draft format, but I'm no expert. I've never gone to a pre-release, but I think I'm going to seriously entertain the idea this time around

 

[Etrian Oddity]

What a joke of a set that the basic lands are the most exciting things about it.

 

[Angry Grimace]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";179404351]I dunno, I played half a dozen games with dux right now and early reports seem to indicate the mana's not too unreasonable. That's also the power of playing a ton of two-drops in your deck

Zulaport Cutthroat + Catacomb Sifter is the real deal. I don't know if my 4c shell is where you want to be, but expect some sort of pseudo-aristocrats deck to be a player in the coming season. Any game where I got to play two cutthroats or connect with drana basically ended on the spot.

Unified Front is pretty medium but man is it satisfying to cast for full converge.[/QUOTE]
It doesn't seem unreasonable when you play against someone else doing the same shit no

 

[hort]

That kenji egashira match from earlier where he stablized on 2 life with a turn against to turn around and win with big eldrazi was fantastic to watch.

 

[A Serious Man]

Avon lands for everyone!

 

[shrapnelmagnet]

I still can't believe the volume levels on this Magic stream, though. I swear Tim Willoughby is trolling us.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Yay we get Thalias and unhinged lands.

Joe Larsson's deck was insane I wanna draft 2 planar outburst and I wanna draft that BW ally leaching deck

 

[OnPoint]

Where is the stream?

 

[Firemind]

Where is the stream?

it's ovah

and, yeah, always play around the second planar outburst kappa

 

[Hero]

Damnit was away from my PC all weekend if I sign on now can I still get th cards?

 

[shrapnelmagnet]

Damnit was away from my PC all weekend if I sign on now can I still get th cards?

I think you can as long as you log in sometime during Sunday (PST) - but that's just a guess based on what they were saying on the stream.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Damnit was away from my PC all weekend if I sign on now can I still get th cards?

They still advertised it at the end of the stream and they always said log in this weekend

 

[OnPoint]

Logged into MTGO, let's see if I get anything then.

 

[The Technomancer]

Okay I might get into MTGO just to play some otherwise dead draft formats

 

[The Technomancer]

Wow I had forgotten how utterly trash single player Sealed is

 

[ugoo18]

New to MTG and am wondering if there is a community thread for MTG where you can post deck lists for advice or is here fine?

 

[charlequin]

New to MTG and am wondering if there is a community thread for MTG where you can post deck lists for advice or is here fine?

This is the community thread, lol. We're bouncing it temporarily to OT as an experiment.

 

[OnPoint]

New to MTG and am wondering if there is a community thread for MTG where you can post deck lists for advice or is here fine?

Here is fine!

 

[ugoo18]

This is the community thread, lol. We're bouncing it temporarily to OT as an experiment.

Ohh lol, is it alright to post for deck advice here?

Here is fine!

Alright thanks

EDIT:

Deck list

Artifacts
Quicksilver Amulet x1
Everflowing Chalice x3
Expedition Map x2

Creatures
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn x1
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth x1
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre x1
It that betrays x1
Gilded Drake x2
Pestermite x1
Walking Atlas x4
Wurmcoil Engine x3

Equipment
Deathrender x1

Sorcery
Ponder x1
Divination x4
Terminus x4
Supreme Verdict x4

Instant
Hindering Light x4
Brainstorm x1
Cyclonic Rift x1
Gifts Ungiven x1

Planeswalker
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon x1

Land
Urza's Mine x3
Hallowed Fountain x4
Plains x3
Island x3
Flooded Strand x2
Urza's Power Plant x3
Urza's Tower x3
Eye of Ugin x1

 

[The Technomancer]

Like jesus. Maybe I should have gone black just for the Husk, but I mean...G/W had a bunch of Renown creatures and at least that's something

 

[The Technomancer]

Oh my fucking god does everyone let the damn game sit on their combat response window with no untapped lands for like five fucking minutes?

 

[kirblar]

Oh my fucking god does everyone let the damn game sit on their combat response window with no untapped lands for like five fucking minutes?

Yes.

Now you know why everyone plays HS at the same time.

 

[Yeef]

BFZ Sealed Simulator

BFZ Draft & Sealed Simulator

Running through these a handful of times, I feel like RG is typically where you want to be in this format. I'm sure my opinion will change after I've played it a few times for real.

 

[Crocodile]

If my opponent can play a Woolly Thoctar on t3 then all the power to him/her. Magic is a game of variance after all and drawing two different basics and a panorama isn't that outlandish. The WGR restricion is very real, and it's an uncommon in a big set, so it shouldn't come up often. Alara draft might be tempo-based at times, but sealed certainly wasn't. Contrast that to RTR sealed where you can still be aggressive because of stupidly powerful cards like the Guildmages.Populate is extraordinary dumb. Either you have the token generators to make it work or you don't in which case it does completely nothing. And Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage does both. And don't get me started on Pack Rat. That should be a crime against good set design.

But I guess you've shifted it towards Khans now. :lol Khans had better uncommons, and morphs, but it still had unfair 3colour cards you could open with like Mantis Rider, Savage Knuckleblade, Butcher of the Horde, Siege Rhino, Anafenza. They might be rarer, but they're much more powerful than freaking Woolly Thoctar and Tower Drake. You also had the Charms and Ascendancies. My point is, Shards is still a good set despite the mana intensive cards. You do have influence on what you draft. And complaining about Exalted is a bit like complaining about Convoke in M15. Or tokens in MM2015. Or G/W in Innistrad. Or B/R in Zendikar. There will always be draft archetypes that are stronger than others.

Sorry for not getting back to this earlier

Anyway, of course variance is intrinsic to Magic. It just that the way Shards of Alara the set was constructed, especially relative to other multicolor sets, is that the relatively poor mana-fixing and the way some of the cards were constructed at lower rarities (bomb rares are something you find in every set, on the whole Khans wasn't any worse at this than Shards) made the variance even worse.

The color requirements in RTR aren't as harsh as they are they are in Shards and the fixing is better relative to the format. As such, there are fewer games where you are losing to your mana (missing colors or taking too long to assemble all your colors or being restricted on how many spells you can cast due to being pinched on a color) in RTR than Shards regardless if you are talking about sealed vs. sealed or draft vs. draft for both formats. Even if RTR was a naturally more aggressive format, RTR has more "real" games which makes the format more playable and fun. Also all the guild mechanics are more fun to build around and more flavorful than the Shards of Alara mechanics but I recognize that last point is a more subjective statement.

Moving to Khans (again I have no idea what point you're trying to make comparing rare to uncommons - talk about a non-sequitur) there are several things that make it a better multicolor format than Shards of Alara besides how that uncommon cycle was designed:

• The Morph mechanic means that as long as you have 3 lands, a ton of cards in your deck are playable even if you're missing colors. It's better and more fun if you can do something (even at a poor rate) then do nothing at all. Furthermore, the Morph mechanic encourages you to run more land (and thus more color sources) in you deck any which helps avoid screw
  
• Khans has 56/269 multicolor cards while Shards has 57/249 multicolor cards. As a percentage of the set and "as fan", Khans has fewer multicolor cards. Furthermore, no multicolor card in Khans has a CC in its cost whilst Shards has that Ultimatum cycle (and Punish Ignorance).
  
• Khans has more fixing and better fixing. It has the same number of trilands but 10 gainlands versus 5 Panoramas and the Banners > Obelisks. On top of that it even has fetches (though as rares their overall contribution is small). That's an additional 5 commons and an additional cycle of rares. The lifegain from the gainlands also help to slow the format down ever so slightly meaning people get more time to draw their mana sources.

If you like Shards of Alara that's ok, more power to you. But there are real flaws with its design: bad fixing, cards and mechanics in the set that exasperate those shortcomings, tons of straight up bad cards (hello NWO being retroactively fit unto the set), unbalanced shards and shard mechanics, etc. This isn't a minority opinion either. RTR is a better designed general multicolor set and Khans is just a better designed 3 color set - which makes sense as they've learned a bunch of stuff since then.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

BFZ Sealed Simulator

BFZ Draft & Sealed Simulator

Running through these a handful of times, I feel like RG is typically where you want to be in this format. I'm sure my opinion will change after I've played it a few times for real.

why, why did I click this, I drew a Gideon.... noooooooooooooooo

 

[The Technomancer]

MTGO is teaching me that I don't understand combat timing at all. So I can't play instants after I declare attackers?

 

[Yeef]

MTGO is teaching me that I don't understand combat timing at all. So I can't play instants after I declare attackers?

You can. After declaring attackers, each player gets priority, then you move to declare blockers, then each player receives priority, then you move to damage, then each player receives priority, then you move to end of combat, where each player receives priority, then you move to main phase 2.

In MTGO, you need to set up your "stops" places where you'll automatically hold priority until you manually pass it. During each part of your turn you can set stops and during each part of your opponent's turn you can set stops. If you don't have a stop set, the client will auto-pass priority for you unless you hold [some button].

 

[GregLombardi]

MTGO is teaching me that I don't understand combat timing at all. So I can't play instants after I declare attackers?

You have to set stops on all the phases during which you might want to cast instants, otherwise the program assumes you have passed that phase. You can set stops by clicking the little arrows under / above the phases.

Edit: beaten

 

[The Technomancer]

You have to set stops on all the phases during which you might want to cast instants, otherwise the program assumes you have passed that phase. You can set stops by clicking the little arrows under / above the phases.

Edit: beaten

It is so dumb that is not turned on by default

 

[Yeef]

It is so dumb that is not turned on by default

I think it's only turned on for certain places by default. Like your main phases and beginning of combat.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

I think you can't go much wrong beginning drafting white, from there you can go into any colour combination with decent synergy

• BW Ally leach
  
• UW Awakening
  
• RW Ally aggro
  
• GW tokens

 

[Yeef]

White feels a little weaker than the other colors, overall, in this set, though Lithomancer's focus is a hell of a trick. I think it's the first time white's gotten more than +1/+1 for 1 mana on an instant.

It looks like the only other time is Piety Charm, but that can only target Soldiers.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

By itself I can see that but I do think paired it might be one of the strongest.

 

["God's Beard!"]

BFZ draft is pretty fun. A little vanilla coming off KTK, but still fun. Rolling Thunder is as good as you'd expect.

 

[Negator]

I was really down to go back into Zendikar, but man this set looks really underwhelming. I might draft it a while but I just can't get excited about these cards. I was on a Magic hiatus for a while but it's looking hard to go back now.

 

[GregLombardi]

It is so dumb that is not turned on by default

I agree. Magic Online is truly a horrible program, with horrible architects. I still see flashes of the 90s even in the current day.

 

[Firemind]

If you like Shards of Alara that's ok, more power to you. But there are real flaws with its design: bad fixing, cards and mechanics in the set that exasperate those shortcomings, tons of straight up bad cards (hello NWO being retroactively fit unto the set), unbalanced shards and shard mechanics, etc. This isn't a minority opinion either. RTR is a better designed general multicolor set and Khans is just a better designed 3 color set - which makes sense as they've learned a bunch of stuff since then.

I agree with you that RTR and Khans are better, more carefully thought out sets, but they are a bit, how should I put this, safe. They aren't as raw as the original Ravnica and Shards. Let me explain this.

Khans for instance, with morphs as a mechanic, there was no way you could screw up your draft (unless you tried to force goblin slide or something). There are more than enough playables that actually made deckbuilding difficult at times. Morphs being ever present also meant less strain on the mana and curve. Everything was designed so you could play morphs on turn three. And nothing had an unmorph cost below five mana with toughness higher than two, which played into this. It's all very meticulously designed. Being an Izzet aficionado, I felt it wasn't brilliant in a crazy way. It didn't reward skill enough. There are few unmorph triggers unlike in Onslaught. The morphs were generally bigger creatures with no opportunity costs. It was laden with bombs. Comparing uncommons and rares isn't fair, but Khans had a vast number of bombs. So many that it warped drafts. Like there was no way to come back after your opponent plays Savage Knuckleblade on turn three while you're holding a bunch of morphs. Savage indeed.

RTR on the other hand was too restricted compared to the original Ravnica. And the bombs in RTR were much worse. Compare Loxodon Hierarch with Loxodon Smiter. They're both 4/4s with marginal abilities but the Smiter costs one mana less which is huge in limited. At uncommon level, there were the guildmages which were completely busted in the right deck. The original Ravnica's guildmages were mostly just playable apart from Selesnya. The original Ravnica actually had a lot of bad cards at all rarities. Why is it despite that lauded as one of the best limited formats? Because it rewards skill. It's satisfying and therefore fun to draft Ravnica. Having karoo lands and signets at common helped a lot as they lowered the chances of mana screws and floods.

I prefer formats where bombs aren't numerous (because I rarily open them.) They're a part of the variance in the game, but please, no more 4/4s with upside for three mana that are piss easy to cast.

 

[red13th]

On closer inspection I might be adding 7 or 8 cards from BfZ to my cube, might give Ruinous Path and Scatter to the Winds a shot.
The other additions (in order of certainty) are Lumbering Falls, Shambling Vent, Hedron Archive, Kiora and Woodland Wanderer (these 5 I'm adding for sure), maybe Greenwarden of Murasa if I cut a 5 drop.

 

[WanderingWind]

If I cultivated a cube with any sort of forethought, besides evening out the colors with cards I like, I'd definitely be adding the man lands. Everything in balance, yo.

I'm mainly looking to just buy up full art lands from launch until the day the set rotates out. I want all my decks to have full art lands. My cube, too. All full art everything.