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Magic: The Gathering |OT|

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I would say 17-18, 16 would be a very rare perfect aggro Rakdos deck.

You should never play too many non-creatures unless your deck is somehow built around it (Izzet/Azorius control). Your best removal and utility spells, then creatures for everything else.
 
You can go as low as 15 if you have other sources of fixing.
But if you have to ask just play 17.

The important thing is having enough dudes and a solid curve.
 
A rule of thumb I use is, for every 2 sources of additional mana accel (Keyrunes, Axebane guardian, chromatic Lantern), I can deal with removing one land, with a lower bound of 16.
 
How do you guys feel about this GU Infect Deck? It is for modern play so any modern cards are good if you can recommend some!

Lands:
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Inkmoth Nexus
10 Forest
4 Island

Creatures:
4 Glistener Elf
4 Blighted Agent
3 Blight Mamba
4 Ichorclaw Myr

Other Spells:
4 Wild Defiance
4 Mutagenic Growth
2 Titanic Growth
3 Apostle's Blessing
2 Gut Shot
2 Artful Dodge
2 Livewire Lash
4 Giant Growth
 
I don't know shit about modern but i was looking at decklists last night and I saw this:

4 Breeding Pool
2 Forest
4 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Pendelhaven
1 Temple Garden
2 Verdant Catacombs

2 Birds of Paradise
4 Blighted Agent
4 Glistener Elf
4 Noble Hierarch

2 Apostle's Blessing
2 Dispel
4 Groundswell
2 Mana Leak
4 Might of Old Krosa
4 Spell Pierce
4 Sylvan Scrying
4 Vines of Vastwood

Sideboard
2 Apostle's Blessing
2 Mana Leak
4 Path to Exile
3 Spellskite
4 Viridian Corrupter

It went 3-1, make of it what you will.
 
I like Might of Old Kosa and Groundswell. I will put some of those in.

Edit:
Lands:
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Inkmoth Nexus
10 Forest
4 Island

Creatures:
4 Glistener Elf
4 Blighted Agent
3 Blight Mamba
4 Ichorclaw Myr

Other Spells:
4 Wild Defiance
4 Mutagenic Growth
3 Apostle's Blessing
2 Gut Shot
2 Artful Dodge
2 Livewire Lash
4 Groundswell
2 Might of Old Krosa
 
2-1so far with my Selesnya splash Azorius deck. The general plan is to play a bunch of dudes.

And apparently they decided to cut to Top 8 after three rounds. :-/
 
I went 2-2 with Selesnya splashing U for some good Detain stuff I pulled (They ran out of Azorius before my name was called :( ). My mana was rough, so the games I lost I found myself with a hand full of one color with no way to play them. The deck felt ok when I could do stuff, but at times it felt like the only way to win was to Populate into multiple Grove of the Guardian 8/8's. My pool was kinda awful though.
 
Would you guys recomend the deck builders toolkit to get some magic cards? I have 0 right now. Besides the ones I will get tomorrow @ the RTR event.

Edit: oh I guess I have like 40 from that booster battle pack thing I bought
 
JetBlackPanda said:
Would you guys recomend the deck builders toolkit to get some magic cards? I have 0 right now. Besides the ones I will get tomorrow @ the RTR event.

Edit: oh I guess I have like 40 from that booster battle pack thing I bought
Click to expand...

Are you particular in what sets you're looking for? I have a metric ton of cards from the recent stuff that you (and anybody else willing to pay the shipping) can have for free.
 
WanderingWind said:
Are you particular in what sets you're looking for? I have a metric ton of cards from the recent stuff that you (and anybody else willing to pay the shipping) can have for free.
Click to expand...

Wow! I don't even know what I'm looking for I am just trying to get some cards to start playing. I have Zero experience with magic past like 1998 lol. PM me number of cards and what you want for them.

Thanks
 
JetBlackPanda said:
Wow! I don't even know what I'm looking for I am just trying to get some cards to start playing. I have Zero experience with magic past like 1998 lol. PM me number of cards and what you want for them.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Just PM me your address, and then hold on to yer butt. You're about to have enough to put together a couple drafts.

And now more room for RTR!
 
Played some Shards sealed, I regret missing this set so much.
 
Just got back from the release. Went 3-2. Pulled some great cards from my sealed pool, then a Vraska from a prize pack. Woot, first time actually having good pack luck.
 
Well that sucked. Went 0-3 largely, I am convinced, because of our terrible pool. We went Azorius and Golgari and with twelve packs between us we had basically none of the staples those required, and it seems that everyone else we played did. No Azorius Arrester or Azorius Justicar, no Detension Sphere, no Dreg Manglers or Dreadbores or Lotleth Trolls, not a single Skymark Roc, which wrecked our shit in the two games we played against it.
 
Did Golgari last night but ended up playing white blue instead, the cards just went better.
Went 2-1-1 , made a dumb mistake on the last round of my last game and exiled something instead of playing a creature and detaining something and then finishing it the next round.

Today I went Az but ended up doing white-blue-green and went 2-2.
Fairly sure the person I played in round 3 cheated because they had a perfect Selensya deck, multiples of the every key card, I mean the deck was just like it was constructed.
We had warnings from other events that some people kept cards from last nights event and were slipping them in today at another shop.
Would be nice if that kind of thing was something you did not have to worry about.

It reminds me why back in the day at pre-release events everyone would open packs, log them on a sheet and then they got passed to a random person.

All and all was fun, I am just too damned tired to do the later event at 7:30 tonight and will probably be too tired to do tomorrow too.

All and all I pulled a w/g fetch, and a b/r fetch and a few other things I wanted.
 
Went back today to play Rakdos, but ended up playing Teneb, with black only for Vraska and 2 Stab Wounds. I didn't think I had that great of a deck, but was a bad misplay (forgetting to play a land pre-combat that would allow me to leave up 2 combat tricks) from going 4-0. I'm not going back on Sunday, but will probably draft this every week till Gatecrash comes out- i'm pretty sure draft is going to be way different than the way sealed was handeled for the pre-release
 
Did a midnight prerelease and one at noon today. Went 1-2 with Rakdos and 2-3 with Golgari. Pulled some mythics, traded for some other stuff I wanted so I had a good time, but damn Azorious is just a win button.

I suppose its an aftereffect of there being little to no removal. Detain gets to function as a sudo removal that can easily stall an opponent until they get what they need. All the cards they need to do so are at common too, so people are running around with 4-8 2 mana detainers plus the Archon.

My midnight release saw several undefeated Azorious players (out of 32) and then later 5 out of top 8 in my second pre-release were Az.

I find the concept of the pre release neat, but it's unfortunate that there's such a clear cut imbalance present in the set.

Totally ready for GWB in standard tho.
 
FreedomFrisbee said:
Did a midnight prerelease and one at noon today. Went 1-2 with Rakdos and 2-3 with Golgari. Pulled some mythics, traded for some other stuff I wanted so I had a good time, but damn Azorious is just a win button.

I suppose its an aftereffect of there being little to no removal. Detain gets to function as a sudo removal that can easily stall an opponent until they get what they need. All the cards they need to do so are at common too, so people are running around with 4-8 2 mana detainers plus the Archon.

My midnight release saw several undefeated Azorious players (out of 32) and then later 5 out of top 8 in my second pre-release were Az.

I find the concept of the pre release neat, but it's unfortunate that there's such a clear cut imbalance present in the set.

Totally ready for GWB in standard tho.
Click to expand...

Not really sure where the imbalance is.
Here at midnight the winner at midnight out of 49 was a 5 color stemming from Rakdos.
Second place also came from Rakdos.
Third was Selensya.


Today at 2 was pretty much the same, Rakdos and Selensya were the strongest finishers.
Retain is not all of that, it was cute and all and I loved it last night but it can not compete with fast aggro in the limited format.
There is also plenty of removal to deal with most things, without even going into the new O Ring or wrath white has multiple ways to exile or destroy creatures, as does black and even green has a common way to deal with flyers which dealt with most of the promos.

The balance was rather impressive all and all.
 
Should've went 3-1 both nights, went 2-2 both nights though

Ended up almist going 4-0 with rakdos today without getting any Rakdos rares
 
It's probably a case of the most serious players picking Azorius (as per the INTERNET'S advice), and therefore putting together the best decks using Azorius.

Not that Azorius isn't inherently stronger in many ways.
 
Wow I'm bummed! I just got a call that they canceled the Sunday event because they sold all the guild packs today. Even though I already pre-paid.

What a joke
 
Im so fucking pissed!!! I prepaid for the event on sunday and they apparently sold out even though they have my money. This my my first venture back into Magic in more than 15 years. I dont even get the guild that i paid for. Im really upset about this!!!!!
 
Also the Azorius have the best header on their achievement card, hands down.
1070_azorius.jpg
 
Picked Selesnya on Friday at midnight and went 3-1. Had to splash a lot of black for abrupt decay and the mythic black vampire. That thing is a boss.

Highlight of the night was swinging with an army of tokens that doubled in size, and then playing Collective Blessing

Picked Golgari today and splashed red for Augur spree and the nightmare horse. Went 3-1-1 and got 9th place when they cut to top 8 :(

Highlight of today was swinging with a 14/13 Lotleth troll and then next turn with a 20/19 Lotleth troll

Tomorrow I'm going to pick Rakdos. Seems really strong
 
So, Golgari in this format is kinda ass, unless you pull Stab Wound or splash red. Azorious dominated the evening. Wasn't even close. Golgari's tricks are too slow for detain. Unleash sucks as advertised
 
WanderingWind said:
So, Golgari in this format is kinda ass, unless you pull Stab Wound or splash red. Azorious dominated the evening. Wasn't even close. Golgari's tricks are too slow for detain. Unleash sucks as advertised
Click to expand...
Izzet are the worst (they have no creatures) and Golgari aren't far behind. The other 3 are way better.
 
Haly said:
It's probably a case of the most serious players picking Azorius (as per the INTERNET'S advice), and therefore putting together the best decks using Azorius.

Not that Azorius isn't inherently stronger in many ways.
Click to expand...

Also, Azorius can't stop Selesnya. Picking targets is hard and populate makes some choices irrelevant. I think a big key to placing 1st in my PR was that my first three opponents were Azorius. None of them really stood a chance (one played really well though). Also, the Radkos I faced in my past match went rainbow, so he basically dithered the only guild I was scared of.

I don't know how Izzet and Golgari work. Who are they strong against? Who are they weak to (everyone based on what I've been seeing)
 
I think Izzet is fine, provided you get enough decent pulls. There's lots of overlap with Azorius since they share blue. Creatures like Vassal Soul, Hover Barrier, Runewing, etc. work well in Izzet. Izzet also has lots of damage-based remove and combat tricks to help it out. Teleportal ends games pretty quickly if you can overload it.
 
I went 3-1 with Rakdos and 3-1 with Azorius. I'm doing selesnya and izzet tomorrow and then he has enough guild packs that I'll be doing golgari at the release on friday. I'm pretty worried about Izzet, it seems EXTREMELY hit or miss. Unless you have something to support it, it seems to just fall flat on it's face. I hope my pulls are ok. I got mostly junk commons in both events but got an abrupt decay, dreadbore, rakdos, and lotleth troll. I got 4 shock lands too so overall my pulls weren't too terrible although not create for my actual decks.


WanderingWind said:
So, Golgari in this format is kinda ass, unless you pull Stab Wound or splash red. Azorious dominated the evening. Wasn't even close. Golgari's tricks are too slow for detain. Unleash sucks as advertised
Click to expand...

Zombies suck balls? OMG THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE!
 
Haven't played in a few months but checked out the prerelease anyways. Such a horrible experience even though it's a store I used to go to quite often. Two draws due to shady opponents slow playing the entire match and especially when I had good board position with little time left in the round. Looking back I should have called the judge but this happened to be the store owner and I know for sure he wouldn't give a loss to new customers.

It's like seriously bro, why do I need to ask you "are you done?" every turn?
 
rCIZZLE said:
Haven't played in a few months but checked out the prerelease anyways. Such a horrible experience even though it's a store I used to go to quite often. Two draws due to shady opponents slow playing the entire match and especially when I had good board position with little time left in the round. Looking back I should have called the judge but this happened to be the store owner and I know for sure he wouldn't give a loss to new customers.

It's like seriously bro, why do I need to ask you "are you done?" every turn?
Click to expand...

Eh, if it speeds up the game I don't mind. I have to do it so much I'm just used to asking otherwise the kids just stare at you. As long as it's not malicious where they know they lost but want to drag it out anyhow it doesn't really bother me. All my games seem to end quickly anyhow though. Regardless of it being good or bad I usually always have 20+ mins left each round.
 
Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
Eh, if it speeds up the game I don't mind. I have to do it so much I'm just used to asking otherwise the kids just stare at you. As long as it's not malicious where they know they lost but want to drag it out anyhow it doesn't really bother me. All my games seem to end quickly anyhow though. Regardless of it being good or bad I usually always have 20+ mins left each round.
Click to expand...

I hate asking since a lot of people take offense to it for whatever reason. It's really hard to tell if someone is looking at their hand thinking about plays or just zoning out. They hear me say "pass turn" when I'm done yet some of them just sit there waiting for me to ask if they're done. Not kids either, people in their 20s/30s that look fairly normal.

Both of my draws, especially one of them, were them knowing they had little chance to win and their best bet was forcing a tie. Unfortunately I'm not very confrontational or else I'd call them out on it right away.

I wish I could play at your store. lol
 
rCIZZLE said:
I hate asking since a lot of people take offense to it for whatever reason. It's really hard to tell if someone is looking at their hand thinking about plays or just zoning out. They hear me say "pass turn" when I'm done yet some of them just sit there waiting for me to ask if they're done. Not kids either, people in their 20s/30s that look fairly normal.

Both of my draws, especially one of them, were them knowing they had little chance to win and their best bet was forcing a tie. Unfortunately I'm not very confrontational or else I'd call them out on it right away.

I wish I could play at your store. lol
Click to expand...

Haha, I'm the only one that finishes quick though. Maybe it's my play style? Whether I play well or not it always ends rather quick. I've only had some people get really confrontational but I usually don't care or if they raise a stink they'll make a note of saying they pass their turn after getting angry at least so either way it works to my benefit. I only got in an argument with a kid at another shop when he was stalling to get a draw and then when he got the upper hand was harassing me like crazy to hurry up and I yelled at him and called him out and he called me an asshole and forfeited the match for me to go 2-0 and told me to grow up. I doubt he would forfeit without me even mentioning it unless he knew he fucked up. :lol
 
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