Magic: the Gathering

[FireThunder]

Finally spent some time playing Temur Elementals last night. There's some things in this deck that are really strong but it needs a little refining.

Risen Reef is being compared to Rogue Refiner, which is a fine card to be compared to. I liken it to a Coiling Oracle that can trigger multiple times. Really powerful card advantage engine, especially when paired with...

Chandra, Acolyte of Flame. The ability to throw two 1/1 elementals with haste onto the battlefield works great with Risen Reef and Creeping Trailblazer. There aren't any really great cards to flashback with her -2 ability in my build right now, but getting a second use off of Shock or a Fry out of the sideboard could make it worth while.

Chandra, Awakened Inferno is nuts. I beat Esper Control last night solely on her back. An uncounterable planeswalker that gives your opponent emblems that damage them? *chef kiss*

Omnath, Locus of the Roil is a great payoff card for elementals. It deals damage to any target equal to the number of elementals you control when it enters the battlefield which can be either free removal or a little pain to your opponent. The second ability pumps up an elemental when you play a land and even draws a card when you have 8 or more lands in play. Also works well with Risen Reef.

Ok, time to make vampires...

[tbarrie]

Risen Reef is nuts. I ran into it in a Core20 sealed deck league and the two games I lost were directly attributable to it. I commented on how strong i was the first time my opponent played it; when they followed it up with the green Cavalier a few turns later they made a comment about how that one's pretty good, too - but it really wasn't close. The green Cavalier's triggers are nice but far from amazing, so it's mostly just a big body. I had enough big creatures of my own that I could double-block it or kill it with a pump spell. But turning over half my opponent's creatures into cantrips? No way I'm beating that in a reasonably long game.

[Craig H]

Wound up cracking all of my packs I earned of War. It was something between 50 and 60, can't remember the exact amount. I wound up with almost having 4x of every rare and at least 2x of almost all mythics...

Except Tezzeret and Gideon. Both of them. The rare and the mythic one. I have seen at least 8 Vivien's Arkbows in draft, but I haven't seen a single Gideon in drafting and not a fucking one came up in any of my packs. I can understand not opening up a Tezzeret since it's the buy a box promo card and you could only get that by buying the $100 or $50 bundle of packs in Magic Arena, but not seeing a single Gideon is weird. I have something like 15 mythic wildcards and a shitload of rare wildcards. Weird shit.

Oh, and the only other notable oddity is having just 1 Teferi. It's a rare for crying out loud. I have 4x of Liliana at mythic, but only one damn Teferi.

It is what it is I guess. Trying to determine what standard deck I want to put together, but I think I'm just going to keep jamming drafts until the sets rotate. The only downside to drafting War at this point is that you pretty much have to play one of three archtypes. You have to play GW proliferate, RU Spellgorger, or BU amass.

Every once in awhile I'll switch it up especially if I see an Ashiok in the first pick of the first pack. The prospect of getting 2 to 4 of those or even a couple of them and a couple of the B enchantment that puts the planeswalker back into play if it dies is too much to pass up. You can deck people pretty fast if you have enough kill spells and counterspells.

 

[FireThunder]

I've moved on to a more midrange version of elementals that packs mana dorks, Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Cavalier of Thorns instead of Chandra and the aggressive cards that I was playing.

Cavalier is ridiculously good. On rate, a 5/6 reach for 5 mana is playable. Add an ability to ramp your mana (with synergy with Omnath) when it ETB and the ability to Noxious Revival a card to the top of your library when it dies and I can't imagine not playing it if you can swing the three green mana in its cost. And for the icing on the cake, it's an elemental. Card is some good.

Vampires is good too. Huey Jensen hit #1 mythic playing the suckheads. The new Sorin is just wild, especially when you use him to cheat Champion of Dusk into play on turn three. Knight of the Ebon Legion is a great aggressive creature and a great mana sink late in the game.

I made the joke on LSV's Twitter about having to play with Fifth Edition while today's kids get a core set like this, but this set is fantastic. And I haven't even done any limited play with it yet, which I've heard is really good.

[Craig H]

2 hours ago, FireThunder said:

I made the joke on LSV's Twitter about having to play with Fifth Edition while today's kids get a core set like this, but this set is fantastic. And I haven't even done any limited play with it yet, which I've heard is really good.

Yeah, M20 is pretty great and fun. Weird to think that's what a core set is now when I started out with Unlimited (or really, Revised was when I really started buying a lot of shit instead of something here and there). Then you watch all of the other core sets from then until now and it's just such a different world.

[Craig H]

This was fucking weird...

To take a break from jamming drafts every day on Magic Arena, I put together a couple janky ass decks. The first one was mono red, but not typical mono red. It had a lot of burn and synergy with creatures and sac effects along with cards that let me take control of other creatures. I was fairly successful with that and I noticed my opponents were all UB or UR aggro decks.

So then I played the janky mill deck I put together with Persistent Petitioners, the new Jace, and so on. First game I play a BW aggro deck. I quickly get 4 PPs on the board, tap them and mill 12 off the top and my opponent put a random Gaea's Blessing in their deck. So that was annoying. Next couple of turns I shifted my strategy because I drew my Jace and thought, well, I'll just mill myself and win. And then my fucking opponent starts dropping Ixalan's Binding on everything. I played a deck to do one specific thing and ran into a deck perfectly constructed to beat it, including having a completely off color card in the deck that they could never play.

I play another game with my mill deck and run into a mirror match.

I swear, the matchmaking in this game feels as insidious as Google or Facebook ads.

[FireThunder]

Feather deck: *goes wide*

Me on turn 5: Math, math, math. Yup, I can do this.

 

[southofheavy]

I've been playing with that Nissa/Mass Manipulation deck lately, and yeah, its devious. 

[FireThunder]

The new bane of my existence: the Scapeshift deck. Four players including LSV piloted it to a top 8 performance at GP Denver. Now to decide if I want to burn three mythic wild cards to play a deck that will only be standard legal for two more months or so.

Art from the new set has made its way onto the internet thanks to an SDCC panel. It looks like the set (named Throne of Eldraine) has a storyline based on classic fairy tales with incredible art to match.

WotC is also changing up the way they do booster packs for paper Magic. It's pretty in-depth, so I'll let MaRo explain: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/project-booster-fun-2019-07-20

[Craig H]

I'm so tired of seeing Risen Reef. Especially in drafting. Jesus. Every deck is a Risen Reef deck. Weirdly enough, in constructed, I rarely come across Risen Reef in platinum. Go figure.

[Craig H]

Oh, and as for constructed, I'm playing a Cavalcade deck that is the shit. I win more than I lose with it to get as far as I got. It kills opponents in so many ways. I've killed a number of folks with the Cavalcade + Chandra's Spitfire combo. I've won without Cavalcade even being on the board by just overwhelming my opponent on turn 4 or 5 with a just ton of 1/1s. I've even recovered from a Settle the Wreckage to win the next turn because I had 2 Cavalcades on board and casted the 3R elemental 1/1 guy that puts 2 more 1/1s into play and attacking. There's just so many ways to win even if I mulligan down to 5 cards as long as I'm on the play. If I'm on the play, I probably win at least 90% of the time. If I'm on the draw, it's probably more of a coin flip.

[J.T.]

I'll post this in the Awesome Commercial thread but yeah, it belongs here first:

 

[Craig H]

Woooooooooooooooooooo!

The current season on Magic Arena ends tomorrow and I finally hit Platinum in constructed (I'm stuck at Gold Tier 4 in limited). I didn't think I would make it. I had been stuck at Gold Tier 1 for 2 days where I'd win 1, lose 1, win 2, lose 2, etc. I went on a tear tonight and won 6 in a row with most of those being turn 4 or 5 kills.

I've basically just been riding this Spitfire Cavalcade deck the whole way.

T1: Play Scorch Spitter
T2: Play Cavalcade of Calamity, hit for 3 damage
T3: Play Chandra's Spitfire, attack again for 3 damage
T4: Play anything else, attack for at least 14 (the most damage I did on turn 4 was 26)

Soooooo good.

[FireThunder]

I'm a little late to the party thanks to working too damn much, but if you like Treasure Standard, the free event that runs for another day has some gorgeous Rebecca Guay art basic lands and a John Avon Unhinged full art mountain as its rewards.

I'm being the fun police, playing mono-green ramp with maindeck Karn, the Great Creator.

[FireThunder]

Yup, Hogaak was a mistake. I liked the foresight that WotC had as well, realizing that the next modern format would just be Arclight Phoenix and Dredge all over again and decided to put Faithless Looting on a stake while they were at it. And Stoneforge Mystic finally gets a chance to shine in modern.

The funniest B&R change for today was Rampaging Ferocidon being let out of its cage a month before it rotates out of standard. The reason for this: vampires and Scapeshift are too good. Who would have guessed, eh?

[Craig H]

I love Ferocidon being unbanned now because honestly, why not? It's got a month or so of life left until rotation, let it out to play one last time.

And fuck Hogaak and Faithless Looting. Hogaak should have been banned months ago and while it's frustrating that WotC was literally the only source I saw say that Hogaak didn't need to be banned, I'm glad it's banned now. 

I'm also very happy I held onto my set of Stoneforge Mystics. Those should shoot up in price now.

[Craig H]

Ok ok ok ok ok...

Am I alone in thinking these new storybook cards look like fucking trash? They're ugly as hell.

[Craig H]

They also announced the sets for next year yesterday, which will be Theros Q1, Kioria Q2, Core Set Q3, and Zendikar Q4. Maro kept making it sound like a return to Theros would happen sooner rather than later, but Zendikar is a surprise. I wonder if they'll wind up doing a print run of fetch lands. Hell, do the allied fetch lands in Core Set 2021 and do the enemy fetch lands in Zendikar.

Oh, and please don't print any more stupid ass Eldrazi cards. 

[FireThunder]

Special event in Arena going on right now, you can play with Eldraine cards that have been previewed in precon brawl decks. The fairy deck is my favorite one.

The storybook cards are... interesting looking. Lots of value, since you can cast the spell side and then cast the creature later on.

I'm still not sold on food tokens, though. What an odd concept.

[Craig H]

I already finished up the Eldraine brawl event. I played the UWB deck. That one seems to be the best. It just overwhelms your opponent and even if they get a board wipe, you can quickly recover and rebuild. Plus the UWB deck has multiple removal spells and two Wrath-like cards.

[Craig H]

There were very exciting announcements for Arena yesterday. Things in the works are 4 player mode, cube drafting, drafting against humans, Commander, etc. They're only in the works at this moment so it's not part of their roadmap, but hopefully it makes it's way to Arena next year.

[FireThunder]

I found the announcement of the event letting everybody play with every card in standard to be pretty exciting. Let everybody brew new decks, at least for a short period of time. Then there'll be a one entry only league on October 6th where you can play any deck in standard. 12 wins gets you a copy of every card in standard but you're out after 2 losses.

If you can get 12 wins in that event, more power to you. Really high bar to set.

I've been doing M20 drafts mainly the past few weeks. I'm really looking forward to how Eldraine effects standard and I'm really looking forward to drafting the set!

[FireThunder]

Throne of Eldraine is live on Arena, as is the "play any deck in standard" queue. Last night, I got some games in with Esper Dance, Golgari, and Simic Food. The Dance deck in particular was a lot of fun to play, using wrath effects and Doom Foretold to control the board then fire off a big Dance of The Manse to reanimate a bunch of artifacts and enchantments from your graveyard, drawing cards off your eggs and globes and making them all 4/4 creatures. Good stuff.

Questing Beast is dumb as hell.

[Craig H]

Questing Beast is very good.

Here's my very early take on the format post-Eldraine: Too many people are trying to make Questing Beast, among other cards, work and I just wind up steamrolling them with my revamped Cavalcade deck. People just try to pump out the beast as fast as possible or playing that goose card and try to gain life  with food cards and golden eggs. And I'm just like, well, I can't block your dude, but I'm about to swing with my Chandra's Spitfire for 16 damage sooooooo...GG? Or if it's not that, then I just go wide with a bunch of 1/1s and crank out damage from Cavalcade of Calamity.

[FireThunder]

Cards that I've said are "messed up Magic cards" while playing on ladder the past few days: Fires of Invention, Rankle, Murderous Rider, Questing Beast, Oko, Wicked Wolf, Fae of Wishes, The Great Henge.

This set is gas and I love it.