Support NeoGAF

[Crocodile]

I forgot to comment on this earlier but boy is it lame (though I mean we all called it ages ago) that Dragons of Tarkir is headed towards an allied colored theme :/

Oh also, if anybody cares, new info on the Magic board game has been revealed!

• $30
• Limited release in June, wide release in August
• Supports 2-5 (Play as Gideon, Jace, Liliana, Chandra and Nissa)
• Box contents: six modular board pieces, four plastic terrain pieces, three plastic glyphs, two temple ruins, five painted Planeswalker mini figures, 30 squad mini figures, one 20-sided die, eight combat dice, 30 damage counters, 60 spell cards, 10 Squad stat cards, and five Planeswalker cards.

 

[ElyrionX]

Dimir mechanics always seem to revolve around mill, which is the worst mechanic. Izzet has counterburn, which is like, the holy grail of deck building. If there was a legitimate counterburn deck in modern, it would be the only deck I'd ever play. UWR Delver/Geist is basically the closet thing at the moment.

I like Izzet as well but I never really understood what counterburn really means. So it basically just involves holding up mana every turn to counter your opponent's spell and to throw burn spells at their face when appropriate? I've always like creatureless decks which is why I tend to gravitate towards control decks.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

It's not lame, it's super smart. Alara showed that they're unlikely to be able to sustain creativity through three sets of tricolor design.

 

[Crocodile]

It's not lame, it's super smart. Alara showed that they're unlikely to be able to sustain creativity through three sets of tricolor design.

Who said anything about 3 sets of wedge cards? As I said before, allied colors are over-represented over the history of Magic. If they are only going to focus on a subset of color pairs (as opposed to all ten equally like Ravnica block), I'd prefer they give enemy color pairs some more love.

 

[WanderingWind]

I like Izzet as well but I never really understood what counterburn really means. So it basically just involves holding up mana every turn to counter your opponent's spell and to throw burn spells at their face when appropriate? I've always like creatureless decks which is why I tend to gravitate towards control decks.

Yup. It sounds boring, but it requires a ton of decision making, which makes the deck super fun to play. The problem is that it's at best a Tier 3 deck. Straight burn is much more efficient and counters work best when you can use them to protect creatures who can deal repeated damage without other mana costs. It's a fun kitchen table deck, but that's all it would ever be.

 

[Firemind]

Pyromancer Ascension was the last legit counterburn deck I believe. Why yes I'd like to target all the Lightning Bolts to your face.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Who said anything about 3 sets of wedge cards? As I said before, allied colors are over-represented over the history of Magic. If they are only going to focus on a subset of color pairs (as opposed to all ten equally like Ravnica block), I'd prefer they give enemy color pairs some more love.

Wedges have one allied and two enemy pairs. If you go from wedges to pairs, allied pairs are just the logical place to go.

 

[ElyrionX]

Yup. It sounds boring, but it requires a ton of decision making, which makes the deck super fun to play. The problem is that it's at best a Tier 3 deck. Straight burn is much more efficient and counters work best when you can use them to protect creatures who can deal repeated damage without other mana costs. It's a fun kitchen table deck, but that's all it would ever be.

It doesn't sound boring to me! But yeah, I was thinking that straight up burn would probably be more competitive. If there was a viable tier one counterburn shell in Modern, I'd definitely play it too.

I tried building a counterburn deck in EDH as well but it always seem to end up gravitating towards non-interactive storm strategies with Melek as the commmander. While I'd like to play a deck like that, I don't like sitting at a table of 4-6 people and watching someone go off on his turn for 20 minutes so in turn, I don't want to be *that* person who does it to everyone.

The other approach to EDH counterburn is to use infinite combos to generate infinite storm count or mana and use spells like Grapeshot or Comet Storm to finish off everyone while using blue counters and bounces to keep everyone at bay. I have tried this before but the strategy is not very fun to play as the infinite combos are braindead easy to execute and always involve the exact same cards (Reset/Turnabout, Reiterate). I played the deck for a while and then disassembled it and switched to Azami Mono U control instead.

 

[Firemind]

LOL the irony. If there's one commander who takes twenty minutes for one turn, it's Azami.

 

[WanderingWind]

I still can't get into doing anything more than the basic archetype commander decks. Oh, and buying the annual decks, natch.

I really miss knights. Not sure what dumbasses they interviewed that liked soldiers more than knights, but fuck those dweebs

 

[divisionbyzorro]

I really like my Melek Jank-Storm deck. It's an incoherent mess where sometimes I look at my hand and go "Huh, I guess I just win here." Or I just yolo, pay a bunch of life into Treasonous Ogre, and cast a giant Epic Experiment.

I really want to add Goblin Charbelcher, Fabricate, and Mana Severance.

 

[Socat]

I forgot to comment on this earlier but boy is it lame (though I mean we all called it ages ago) that Dragons of Tarkir is headed towards an allied colored theme :/

Oh also, if anybody cares, new info on the Magic board game has been revealed!

• $30
• Limited release in June, wide release in August
• Supports 2-5 (Play as Gideon, Jace, Liliana, Chandra and Nissa)
• Box contents: six modular board pieces, four plastic terrain pieces, three plastic glyphs, two temple ruins, five painted Planeswalker mini figures, 30 squad mini figures, one 20-sided die, eight combat dice, 30 damage counters, 60 spell cards, 10 Squad stat cards, and five Planeswalker cards.

I saw a video on the game, and I am interested because board games are my jam and magic is amazing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCFdkwdJxs4 does a decent job of explaining it, and I could see myself enjoying the game a lot

 

[ElyrionX]

LOL the irony. If there's one commander who takes twenty minutes for one turn, it's Azami.

Well I don't play those cards. Or I simply don't combo off.

 

[Firemind]

You don't play wizards? I mean 20 minutes is slightly exaggerating, but killing people with Azami is definitely a problem. You know you're losing, but unlike an actual combo, you're not sure how and when.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

You don't play wizards? I mean 20 minutes is slightly exaggerating, but killing people with Azami is definitely a problem. You know you're losing, but unlike an actual combo, you're not sure how and when.

Yep. The Azami player looks at their hand, sighs, and says "Well, these cards don't do it. So...I guess I'll draw one more." Then they re-evaluate their entire hand and say "I guess I could do this, or that, but...well, let's draw one more just in case." Then they re-evaluate their entire hand again...

 

[SigmasonicX]

Random thought, it would be interesting to see these variations of red effects:

Misaimed Summoning - 1RR
Instant
The next time a creature would enter the battlefield under an opponent's control this turn, it enters the battlefield under your control instead. It gains haste until end of turn. As long as you control that creature, it can't block. At the beginning of your next end step, that creature's owner gains control of it.

Hijack - R
Instant
Gain control of target instant or sorcery. (You don't change its targets.)

 

[ElyrionX]

You don't play wizards? I mean 20 minutes is slightly exaggerating, but killing people with Azami is definitely a problem. You know you're losing, but unlike an actual combo, you're not sure how and when.

Yep. The Azami player looks at their hand, sighs, and says "Well, these cards don't do it. So...I guess I'll draw one more." Then they re-evaluate their entire hand and say "I guess I could do this, or that, but...well, let's draw one more just in case." Then they re-evaluate their entire hand again...

I used to run Azami tribal with a wizards beatdown plan with Coat of Arms and Door of Destinies and other enablers. There wasn't much decision-making required for that deck and it was pretty simple to play.

But after the appearance of a few players with more competitive decks (one dude who had Maelstrom Wanderer literally took 20 minutes to combo off on turn two) at my local LGS, I got annoyed and made my Azami deck far more cutthroat and included cards like Mind Over Matter and Laboratory Maniac and jamming more control and counter spells.

When I play Azami now, I tend to hold back a lot more especially with the more casual players and usually won't combo off just to win the game. We play a very unique format of EDH though which is team-based and I prefer to support my teammates with the "fair" decks to win using my suite of counters and other control cards. Since tuning Azami though, I have yet to play against the aforementioned competitive players but when I do, I expect to be able to disrupt their combos and police their ridiculous shit, if necessary, for the sake of everyone's sanity.

 

["God's Beard!"]

It doesn't sound boring to me! But yeah, I was thinking that straight up burn would probably be more competitive. If there was a viable tier one counterburn shell in Modern, I'd definitely play it too.

Twin :3

 

[ElyrionX]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";151752635]Twin :3[/QUOTE]

Exactly what I'm playing!

 

["God's Beard!"]

Finally gonna meet Karla Ortiz next week!

*swoon*

 

[bigkrev]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";151772045]Finally gonna meet Karla Ortiz next week!

*swoon*[/QUOTE]

Footage FROM THE FUTURE of this meeting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud5Gh4oEIS8

 

[Crocodile]

Wedges have one allied and two enemy pairs. If you go from wedges to pairs, allied pairs are just the logical place to go.

I mean yes this is obvious (hence why I thought this was a possibility when we were told it wasn't going to be a wedge block, why I was pretty damn sure once I saw the allied colored dragons and why I'm 99.99% sure after the latest story article). That has nothing to do with why I'm disappointed though LOL

 

[charlequin]

I forgot to comment on this earlier but boy is it lame (though I mean we all called it ages ago) that Dragons of Tarkir is headed towards an allied colored theme :/

It's not gonna be a gold set, though. Look at FRF -- it only has ten gold cards. Just because the set has five ally-color factions doesn't mean that it'll have a lot of ally-color gold cards or anything; it mostly just means that the five brood mechanics will each just be in two colors.

 

[kirblar]

It's not gonna be a gold set, though. Look at FRF -- it only has ten gold cards. Just because the set has five ally-color factions doesn't mean that it'll have a lot of ally-color gold cards or anything; it mostly just means that the five brood mechanics will each just be in two colors.

In fact, to balance the wedge set inside the block, you deliberately want half as many 2-color gold cards in DTK as KTK had.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Speaking of balance, 3xKTK and 3xFRF are both more fun than FRF-KTK-KTK. The sets just dont have enough synergy.

 

[Crocodile]

It's not gonna be a gold set, though. Look at FRF -- it only has ten gold cards. Just because the set has five ally-color factions doesn't mean that it'll have a lot of ally-color gold cards or anything; it mostly just means that the five brood mechanics will each just be in two colors.

Yeah you could be right

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";151785695]Speaking of balance, 3xKTK and 3xFRF are both more fun than FRF-KTK-KTK. The sets just dont have enough synergy.[/QUOTE]

I don't think there exists a small set format that is fun for more than like 3 drafts (except Conspiracy) so I'm inclined to not believe you, at least with regards to 3xFRF. FRF has issues (bomb rares everywhere, shallow commons, etc.) but it still works fine with KTK.

 

["God's Beard!"]

It's not good, but it's better than FRF KTk KTK. The set just doesn't do anything with ktk. At least triple FRF gets you funky nut decks that are a blast to play. The imbalance between the sets is too strong once they mix.

Theros block had an awesome limited balance in comparison.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";151807253]It's not good, but it's better than FRF KTk KTK. The set just doesn't do anything with ktk. At least triple FRF gets you funky nut decks that are a blast to play. The imbalance between the sets is too strong once they mix.

Theros block had an awesome limited balance in comparison.[/QUOTE]

BTT was bad (mostly due to color balance), but TTT and JBT were great.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Another random thought, would this be good for Modern reanimator without being too overpowering?

Graves Unfilled - 1B
Instant
Search your library for up to four cards with different names and reveal them. An opponent chooses two of those cards. Shuffle those cards into your library and put the rest into your graveyard.

 

[Socat]

Another random thought, would this be good for Modern reanimator without being too overpowering?

Graves Unfilled - 1B
Instant
Search your library for up to four cards with different names and reveal them. An opponent chooses two of those cards. Shuffle those cards into your library and put the rest into your graveyard.

Too powerful to be an instant and 2 mana. Needs to be sorcery speed and cost one more at least to be reasonable imo

 

[The Technomancer]

Wow, I didn't actually expect an answer:

mezentine asked: Do you guys have any data on the breakdown of the gender ratio of players, and its shift that you're able to share? I'd certainly like to hope that its increasing in the last decade or so

Our most recent market research shows the gender breakdown of male to female is 62% to 38%.

That's much higher than I was expecting, and further reinforces the idea that there are lots of women playing, just not "publicly"

 

[kirblar]

Wow, I didn't actually expect an answer:


That's much higher than I was expecting, and further reinforces the idea that there are lots of women playing, just not "publicly"

Women play. They just don't play competitively. This is true across pretty much every game post-puberty and this might be a big reason why.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Too powerful to be an instant and 2 mana. Needs to be sorcery speed and cost one more at least to be reasonable imo

Gifts Ungiven is 3U and is often used to get two specific cards into a graveyard (by only finding two cards), and can be used to get cards into your hand in addition to that use. This just gets cards into your graveyard, but your opponent chooses which ones and you can't "cheat" the same way you can with Gifts Ungiven. I suppose raising it to 2B is reasonable enough, but I'm not sure if making it a sorcery is necessary.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Or just reprint entomb.

 

[SigmasonicX]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";151816925]Or just reprint entomb.[/QUOTE]

Both that and the similar Buried Alive seem like they'd be considered too strong for Modern.

 

[charlequin]

That's much higher than I was expecting, and further reinforces the idea that there are lots of women playing, just not "publicly"

That is way higher than I would expect. I knew that the competitive and public face was going to underrepresent the female playerbase, but 38% suggests they have been really successful with women during their current six-year acquisition wave.

 

[The Technomancer]

That is way higher than I would expect. I knew that the competitive and public face was going to underrepresent the female playerbase, but 38% suggests they have been really successful with women during their current six-year acquisition wave.

Part of it is definitely that, through whatever confluence of circumstances, Magic got to be part of the "new geek" rise of the last several years.

Actually, thinking about it, what this data really implies is that the vast majority of Magic is being played in living rooms, given the lack of women at the "store event" scene. That's always something I figured was true, but not to this extent.

 

[kirblar]

Part of it is definitely that, through whatever confluence of circumstances, Magic got to be part of the "new geek" rise of the last several years.

Actually, thinking about it, what this data really implies is that the vast majority of Magic is being played in living rooms, given the lack of women at the "store event" scene. That's always something I figured was true, but not to this extent.

DOTP. DOTP. DOTP. That was huge for them.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

DOTP. DOTP. DOTP. That was huge for them.

It's why I'm here.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Opponent activating tasigur when they're dead on board is hilarious. "Please sir, give a removal spell please." Nah, take a five drop you can't cast thx.

 

[keeblerdrow]

Is there anything you can do in a deck to capitalize on the interaction between Outpost Siege's Dragons ability (When a creature you control leaves the battlefield, Outpost Siege deals 1 damage to target creature or player) and the Dash mechanic? They come in, attack, and hit for another 1 when they leave. Also, any tokens that disappear at EOT trigger this, too. Like Twin Flame and Flamerush Rider.

I'm also trying to put together a RB deck to take advantage of/abuse Prophetic Flamespeaker and Shaman of the Great Hunt. Maybe they belong in a RW shell with God's Willing. Flamespeaker being a 3/5 after 1 combat seems good. Plus you have the card advantage of his exiled cards.

Got a ton of ideas just floating around in my head because I'm kind of bored with my Abzan Aggro and Temur Aggro decks.

 

["God's Beard!"]

I just decked someone for the match in a FRF KTK KTK 8-4 holy shit

 

["God's Beard!"]

Gotta say, credit to all the guys in the 8-4 for putting up a real right against this 7-rare pile of disgust, really made me sweat it:

Not only do I have two sweepers, but my cards actually synergize with them. Three cards with death triggers AND the turtle. Probably the closest to a 9/10 deck I've ever drafted. All that's missing is a couple more taplands.

Bonus pic:

GET BODIED

 

[Joe Molotov]

Dude at draft last night pulled Ugin, Sorin, and a Flooded Strand and then just scooped his cards and dropped. Fuck you too, buddy.

I won the thing and all I got for my troubles was a Flamewake Phoenix and a foil Palace Siege. I'm not jealous or anything.

 

[kirblar]

I've had a 10/10 deck exactly once. Mono-Red with at least 13 removal spells at the MBS prerelease, picking MIrran.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Dude at draft last night pulled Ugin, Sorin, and a Flooded Strand and then just scooped his cards and dropped. Fuck you too, buddy.

When the second and third most valuable cards are worth more than winning the draft its pre... Wait, sorin? He stayed for the whole drafting process then dropped?

 

[Transhuman]

4x Warriors' Lesson
4x Titan's Strength
4x Titanic Growth
4x Temur Battle Rage
4x Become Immense

4x Charging Badger
4x Elvish Mystic
4x Monastery Swiftspear
4x Akroan Crusader
4x Heir of the Wilds
4x Bassara Tower Archer

4x Wooded Fotthills
4x Mana Confluence
6x Forest
2x Mountain

So what am I missing that would be sweet in this deck? Trying to keep it under 3cmc, but if there's some blowout shit I'm missing, I'm all ears. No Rabblemaster's though.

 

["God's Beard!"]

I've had a 10/10 deck exactly once. Mono-Red with at least 13 removal spells at the MBS prerelease, picking MIrran.

Geez.

 

[Crocodile]

Elspeth Vs Kiora Decklists (via MTGS)

Elspeth:
Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Icatian Javelineers
1 Mother of Runes
2 Kinsbaile Skirmisher
1 Kor Skyfisher
1 Precinct Captain
2 Veteran Armorsmith
1 Court Street Denizen
1 Standing Troops
2 Veteran Swordsmith
1 Banisher Priest
2 Gustcloak Harrier
1 Gustcloak Skirmisher
1 Gustcloak Sentinel
1 Gustcloak Savior
2 Loxodon Partisan
1 Gempalm Avenger
1 Noble Templar
1 Captain of the Watch

1 Mortal's Ardor
2 Sunlance
1 Mighty Leap
2 Raise the Alarm
1 Soul Parry
1 Celestial Flare
1 Dauntless Onslaught
1 Dictate of Heliod
1 Decree of Justice

2 Secluded Steppe
22 Plains

Kiora
Kiora, the Crashing Wave
1 Omenspeaker
2 Coiling Oracle
1 Kiora's Follower
2 Grazing Gladehart
2 Netcaster Spider
2 Man-O'-War
2 Lorescale Coatl
1 Nessian Asp
2 Surrakar Banisher
1 Sealock Monster
1 Scourge of Fleets
1 Simic Sky Swallower
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Nimbus Swimmer

2 Explore
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Peel from Reality
2 Time to Feed
1 Explosive Vegetation
1 Aetherize
1 Whelming Wave
1 Plasm Capture
1 Urban Evolution

2 Evolving Wilds
1 Temple of the False God
11 Forest
11 Island

 

[Lucario]

Holy shit, 4 Accumulated Knowledge in a precon? Mother of runes? These seem pretty stacked.



EDIT:

Mother of Runes -- $4
Explosive Vegetation -- $1.50
2 Lorescale Coatl -- $4 (2each)
Inkwell Leviathan -- $3
Simic Sky Swallower -- $1.50
Captain of the Watch -- $1