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Magic: the Gathering |OT4| Izzet Me; Izzet You? A Love Story

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Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
And while I completely believe that R&D shouldn't design for EDH in regular expansions, calling these dragons "Elder Dragons" and then giving one of them a completely-useless-in-Elder-Dragon-Highlander ability was a stupid tone-deaf move.

I just killed a guy with Dragonlord Kolaghan's second ability :lol

no, he did not read the cards.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
As an aside, I have like a 70% win rate off of this dumb 5 color Dragonlords deck
KuGsj.gif
KuGsj.gif
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
What's the meta that you're playing in? My Greedy Naya does about the same thing (Dlords all day e'rrday) and does really well cause the entire meta at my store is soft to that strategy.

MTGO :lol

I own all the cards in paper, but I played a Temur version last week. This week I'll bring the Dragonlords to a regular tournament and see what happens.

I'm getting lucky at not playing mono-red with it though. I can't beat Mono-Red at all, I just scoop and play someone else. Nobody plays that at our store other than this one 8 year old (because his brother gave it to him because its cheapish) because its not actually fun to play - its for tryhard gunner spikes.
 
MTGO :lol

I own all the cards in paper, but I played a Temur version last week. This week I'll bring the Dragonlords to a regular tournament and see what happens.

I'm getting lucky at not playing mono-red with it though. I can't beat Mono-Red at all, I just scoop and play someone else. Nobody plays that at our store other than this one 8 year old (because his brother gave it to him because its cheapish) because its not actually fun to play - its for tryhard gunner spikes.
Mono-Red is boring. Red-Green is where it's at, that deck is fuckin' ferocious.
 
That face when you enter third round of a draft 2-0 and in first(6 person) and you lose to Mana flood in game 1(mulled to 6 on a 2 land hand, keep a 4 land on 6 because I had 25% of my Land, not that likely) and lose to Mana Screw on Game 2(Red White with 9 Mountains 7 Plains, Drew nothing but Mountains/white cards the entire game) and placed 3rd

Feelsbadman.gif

On the bright side, I placed in Prizes and cracked a Chandra, so that's nice.

I kind of want to go Red White in Standard, but temples are about to rotate, gain lands are awful, and I'd rather not use pains if I can. Here's hoping BFZ has good lands.

Mono-Red is boring. Red-Green is where it's at, that deck is fuckin' ferocious.
Red White you mean. Ride Down, Deflecting Palm, Iroas,etc, though Red Green is hella nice with Atarka's command/the fatties it gets.
 
An interesting Great Aurora brew from Kenji Tsumura (worth watching just to hear SaffronOlive try to figure out what the hell is going on). He basically ramps into a ton of land, then uses it to get massive card advantage with Aurora and then drop Ugin and Demonic Pacts. The Pacts help increase the gap in card advantage by forcing his opponent to discard and thus have a smaller draw when the next Aurora hits. Seems way too slow to be tier 1 but it's clearly powerful and who knows what tools BFZ will bring.

Tomoharu Saito made a similar deck when Origins released that ramps into Elspeth and Atarka but it never really went anywhere. It didn't have any of the black control elements this new build does though.
 
Uncharted Realms presents "Ugh! Another Nissa Story!" At least Gideon pops up toward the end to liven things up. Nissa is going around killing Eldrazi when she suddenly has all of her mana bonds cut and she is no longer able to cast magic. Gideon is able to rescue her and that scholar he was looking for, and they go to the refuge.

EDIT: Also, I have to say, I didn't consider the mulligan tips in this article until now, with you considering opening hand scenarios and dividing the cards in your deck into ones that you want to draw in the next few turns. I hadn't considered how bad five-land opening hands were until it pointed out how likely it is to draw additional lands instead of spells.

And apparently two of the Forests in Magic Origins are direct remakes of Lorwyn lands.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
EDIT: Also, I have to say, I didn't consider the mulligan tips in this article until now, with you considering opening hand scenarios and dividing the cards in your deck into ones that you want to draw in the next few turns. I hadn't considered how bad five-land opening hands were until it pointed out how likely it is to draw additional lands instead of spells.

And apparently two of the Forests in Magic Origins are direct remakes of Lorwyn lands.

Lorwyn ones still look better. *sigh*
 

OnPoint

Member
Uncharted Realms presents "Ugh! Another Nissa Story!" At least Gideon pops up toward the end to liven things up. Nissa is going around killing Eldrazi when she suddenly has all of her mana bonds cut and she is no longer able to cast magic. Gideon is able to rescue her and that scholar he was looking for, and they go to the refuge.

They're really selling Gideon's strength and prowess as a fighter in the stories lately. He better be a seriously kick ass card.
 
They're really selling Gideon's strength and prowess as a fighter in the stories lately. He better be a seriously kick ass card.

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar - 3WW
+1: You gain X life, where X is the number of Ally creatures you control.
+0: Until end of turn, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar becomes a Human Soldier Ally creature with indestructible with power and toughness equal to the number of Ally creatures you control that's still a planeswalker. Prevent all damage that would be dealt to him this turn.
-9: Put a 1/1 white Ally creature token onto the battlefield. You lose X life, where X is the number of Ally creatures you control, and then you lose the game.
3
 

OnPoint

Member
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar - 3WW
+1: You gain X life, where X is the number of Ally creatures you control.
+0: Until end of turn, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar becomes a Human Soldier Ally creature with indestructible with power and toughness equal to the number of Ally creatures you control that's still a planeswalker. Prevent all damage that would be dealt to him this turn.
-9: Put a 1/1 white Ally creature token onto the battlefield. You lose X life, where X is the number of Ally creatures you control, and then you lose the game.
3

It wouldn't make sense flavorwise to me since he's strong with or without people. He's gotta be powerful. But lol at the ultimate. I can see now your suggestion is a joke haha

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar - 3W
+2: Gideon, Ally of Zendikar becomes a 5/5 white soldier with indestructable until your next upkeep.
-2: Destroy target colorless creature if it is tapped
-7: Search your library for three Planeswalkers and put them onto the battlefield
4​

Reasoning: Costed aggressively but not oppressively, and is splashable (since he is working with everyone, flavorwise, he should be splashable). Ability one: Shows off his combat prowess but allows him to defend as well. Ability two: Kills Eldrazi, especially if they attacked (naked, non-tapped ability is way too good). Ability three: Represents his quest to bring people to Zendikar to help. I also wanted his -7 ability to not kill him if you plus him twice, but bring him down to a low "life total" while bringing back help. Again, for flavor reasons, but also, who enjoys losing a PW?
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The chance of Gideon being that parasitic is like 0.

Also, I told y'all that Tutelage deck was horrible - MTGO analysis shows a 36.8 match win percentage.

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/meta-snapshot-magic-origins-standard-aug-2015

Remember how I said that drawing cards with UR Tutelage Mill wins you games? Apparently this isn't true very often. The deck is — by far — the worst performing deck out of the ten most played decks in our sample coming in at a lowly 36.88 match win percentage. In fact, UR Tutelage Mill is one of the worst five performing decks in our entire sample. It's that bad.

Looking at the individual matchups just makes things worse. UR Tutelage Mill's best matchups is Jeskai Tempo, and even here UR Tutelage Mill only wins 44 percent of the time. Yes, that's right: UR Tutelage Mill is a 6 point dog in its BEST matchup. Some of the other matchups are downright laughable. 16 percent against Abzan Aggro, 17 percent against GW Megamorph, 26 percent against UR Ensoul Artifact, 27 percent against Mono Red Aggro. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. And remember, this is over the course of 5,000 matches, so its not like the numbers are being skewed by a small sample size. While we don't have the historical data to back this up, there seems to be a very real possibility that UR Tutelage Mill is the worst "Top 5 Most Played Deck" of all time, in the entire 20+ year history of Magic: the Gathering. This also shows you how much players love Mill and how desperately they want to make it work.

You also gain a 10% advantage in winning matches by winning the die roll, so get better at your die rolling. Also, the data shows that control decks have a 45 win% right now. Nice.
 
It wouldn't make sense flavorwise to me since he's strong with or without people. He's gotta be powerful. But lol at the ultimate. I can see now your suggestion is a joke haha

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar - 3W
+2: Gideon, Ally of Zendikar becomes a 5/5 white soldier with indestructable until your next upkeep.
-2: Destroy target colorless creature if it is tapped
-7: Search your library for three Planeswalkers and put them onto the battlefield
4​

Reasoning: Costed aggressively but not oppressively, and is splashable (since he is working with everyone, flavorwise, he should be splashable). Ability one: Shows off his combat prowess but allows him to defend as well. Ability two: Kills Eldrazi, especially if they attacked (naked, non-tapped ability is way too good). Ability three: Represents his quest to bring people to Zendikar to help. I also wanted his -7 ability to not kill him if you plus him twice, but bring him down to a low "life total" while bringing back help. Again, for flavor reasons, but also, who enjoys losing a PW?

Undercosted, his +2 would never last past the end of your turn, and that ult is too crazy in combination with the rest of the card. In a G/W deck with even one ramp spell to play in the first two turns he comes down on turn 3, is a 5/5 indestructible blocker to keep you alive for the next two turns (vulnerable only to well timed instant speed removal) and on turn 5 you have four planeswalkers in play.
 

Yeef

Member
They're really selling Gideon's strength and prowess as a fighter in the stories lately. He better be a seriously kick ass card.
They've always played up Gideon's combat abilities. It's why all of his cards let him become an indestructible creature that beats face.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
They've always played up Gideon's combat abilities. It's why all of his cards let him become an indestructible creature that beats face.
Which kind of awkwardly fits with Sarkhan still around.
 
Red White you mean. Ride Down, Deflecting Palm, Iroas,etc, though Red Green is hella nice with Atarka's command/the fatties it gets.
R/G with Monastery Swiftspear, Wild Slash, Atarka's Command, Shaman of the Great Hunt, Warrior's Lesson and Fanatic of Xenagos were a very fun core to my deck.

R/W is fun though, no doubt about it. Chain to the Rocks is the real deal.
 

duxstar

Member
So does wizards always try to make every color combination somewhat viable in standard ? The reason I ask is because for as long as I've been playing (since the beginning of theros block) , fleecemane lion and g/w in general has been somewhat competitive. Was this just a product of fleecemane being standard legal and such a powerful 2 drop?

There are certain colors that haven't been as good , b/w, g/u , r/u , b/r for example haven't seen nearly the same play and I was just wondering if it's a possibility that going forward there will be times where my Timmy side and Spike side are fighting against each other and I'm 99% sure my hating to lose will get the best of me.
 
So does wizards always try to make every color combination somewhat viable in standard ? The reason I ask is because for as long as I've been playing (since the beginning of theros block) , fleecemane lion and g/w in general has been somewhat competitive. Was this just a product of fleecemane being standard legal and such a powerful 2 drop?

There are certain colors that haven't been as good , b/w, g/u , r/u , b/r for example haven't seen nearly the same play and I was just wondering if it's a possibility that going forward there will be times where my Timmy side and Spike side are fighting against each other and I'm 99% sure my hating to lose will get the best of me.

Well, they try to make all color combinations competitive, but sometimes things just don't work out in the real world. Notably, they expected Sharkon (Sarkhan with blue) to be a big player, but that card just isn't yet.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
So does wizards always try to make every color combination somewhat viable in standard ? The reason I ask is because for as long as I've been playing (since the beginning of theros block) , fleecemane lion and g/w in general has been somewhat competitive. Was this just a product of fleecemane being standard legal and such a powerful 2 drop?

There are certain colors that haven't been as good , b/w, g/u , r/u , b/r for example haven't seen nearly the same play and I was just wondering if it's a possibility that going forward there will be times where my Timmy side and Spike side are fighting against each other and I'm 99% sure my hating to lose will get the best of me.

No.

80% of the colors you could be playing are going to be non-viable. All they really try to do is make sure that there isn't one color that absolutely sucks either by itself or in combination with other colors.

Maybe this will finally be the set where they make a Modern playable Red Mythic.......yeah right =(
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I'm thinking about going to a cube at my LGS, what should I know in advance?
Never tried to draft one before.
It's impossible to say without knowing what's in the cube which will vary based on the owner.
 

Hero

Member
I'm thinking about going to a cube at my LGS, what should I know in advance?
Never tried to draft one before.

Without knowing the style of Cube (power/unpower/supported archetypes) my best suggestion would be to draft colorless, strong artifacts to keep yourself open while noticing the types of cards in the pool and then go from there.
 
I'm thinking about going to a cube at my LGS, what should I know in advance?
Never tried to draft one before.

Ask the cube owner what kind of cube it is. It's likely going to be a fairly standard cube list; the most recent MTGO "Legacy Cube" should be a good starting point for you to look at. Watch videos on Channel Fireball to get an idea: http://www.channelfireball.com/tag/legacy-cube/

Black is often the worst color in the cube. Mono-red is often the strongest strategy, but many players will simply refuse to play it because it's "lame." Blue is often the deepest and best color, but will often be heavily fought over.

Symmetrical effects are not symmetrical and can be built around and abused. Upheaval decks, for example, contain piles of mana rocks; the player floats a ton of mana, casts Upheaval, then re-casts their mana rocks to get a huge advantage. Wildfire decks work in a similar manner.

I like to encourage new cube players to go after green ramp strategies because they're usually very good and don't require a lot of specialized understanding of the cube to play properly.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Ask the cube owner what kind of cube it is. It's likely going to be a fairly standard cube list; the most recent MTGO "Legacy Cube" should be a good starting point for you to look at. Watch videos on Channel Fireball to get an idea: http://www.channelfireball.com/tag/legacy-cube/

Black is often the worst color in the cube. Mono-red is often the strongest strategy, but many players will simply refuse to play it because it's "lame." Blue is often the deepest and best color, but will often be heavily fought over.

Symmetrical effects are not symmetrical and can be built around and abused. Upheaval decks, for example, contain piles of mana rocks; the player floats a ton of mana, casts Upheaval, then re-casts their mana rocks to get a huge advantage. Wildfire decks work in a similar manner.

I like to encourage new cube players to go after green ramp strategies because they're usually very good and don't require a lot of specialized understanding of the cube to play properly.

The best part about making your own cube is making sure Mono-Red isn't viable
 

Hero

Member
Mono red keeps the format honest. If your cube doesn't support mono red I'm not really sure why you have a cube to begin with since red is pretty bad at most everything else.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Mono red keeps the format honest. If your cube doesn't support mono red I'm not really sure why you have a cube to begin with since red is pretty bad at most everything else.

That doesn't really make any sense.
 
And apparently two of the Forests in Magic Origins are direct remakes of Lorwyn lands.

Omar Rayyan > all, but that's still pretty neat. I'm almost sad they didn't do that for all the returning planes now, actually.

Which kind of awkwardly fits with Sarkhan still around.

Sarkhan does that once out of four cards. It's much more Gideon's schtick.

There are certain colors that haven't been as good , b/w, g/u , r/u , b/r for example haven't seen nearly the same play and I was just wondering if it's a possibility that going forward there will be times where my Timmy side and Spike side are fighting against each other and I'm 99% sure my hating to lose will get the best of me.

Historically speaking green and white traded off being the worst color for the game's first ten years or so, while blue and black were always the best, so WG, RG, and WR have all spent a lot of time not being particularly amazing. These days red's the shittiest color and they pay specific attention to which color combos will be playable in standard, so it's a lot more evenly spread out. You will see a split in almost every environment between combos that ride one or two super-good cards to continual viability (like how you mention Fleecemane Lion) and ones that only occasionally have a contextually-good deck.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I agree its not Sarkhan's schtick, its just weird having two things like that in one block since they both have "dome opponent" and "kill dude" modes.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Played 12 matches on modo today

1-11

"mana screw is fucking fun guys variance is awesome" -Maro

Edit: 1-12, I mulled to 0 because the most lands I got was 1
 

ironmang

Member
Anybody see any problems with the GP London winner's Abzan Aggro list? Looking for a good list for the scg invi this weekend. Usually play mono red at the local store due to it being cheap and nobody else taking standard seriously enough to travel to events but I want to do well instead of getting buried by fleecemane decks all day. What kind of tweaks do you guys think should be made to the main or side, if any? Only thing that sticks out to me is the Ajani. Just not sold on him as being better than another Sorin.

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10263&d=258890&f=ST
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I don't even understand the appeal of mill decks - they don't do anything at all until you get them to have 0 cards.
 

Matriox

Member
Anybody see any problems with the GP London winner's Abzan Aggro list? Looking for a good list for the scg invi this weekend. Usually play mono red at the local store due to it being cheap and nobody else taking standard seriously enough to travel to events but I want to do well instead of getting buried by fleecemane decks all day. What kind of tweaks do you guys think should be made to the main or side, if any? Only thing that sticks out to me is the Ajani. Just not sold on him as being better than another Sorin.

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10263&d=258890&f=ST

Since it did so well it's going to be expected, but the deck is powerful. Anafenza and hangarback Walker are gross together, and anafenza shuts off opponents hangarbacks is pretty great. Ajani I didn't get to see but it gives you late game card advantage and also is really gross with either hangarback walkers or a bunch of flying tokens.
 
Abzan has been expected for a long time now and it still Top 8's constantly. The Hangarbacks replacing Deathdealers gave the aggro variant a big boost and it's probably the safest bet until rotation. I have no good answer for Sorin vs Ajani. I love Sorin so I'd probably play two because I'm dumb but Ajani's card advantage and synergy with the Hangarbacks is a real thing.
 
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