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Barrage of Boulders is a wonderful stalemate breaker. Just another reason Temur is a good choice. e: I never had a game finish with un-revealed Morphs and in all my matches I was the only one using Morphs, sadly, so the "revealing Morphs" rule never really came up. Cernunnos fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 01:18
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While everyone was messing around with outlast and prowess and sorting through their library, I had fun charging bears, yetis and this very excellent barbarian across the field thanks to temur ascendancy. It actually has me wanting to see what I can build for FNM with polukranos and friends. Ended up 3-1, only losing to a friend who had high sentinels and a bunch of lifegain, including death frenzy to clear out all my X/2s. I blame not drawing temur ascendancy game three.
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Sep 21, 2014 01:19
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Went 2-2 with abzan, to my eternal shame. One round I lost game three to mana-screw, the other round I just got run over when my opponent just went removal spell into removal spell into removal spell. Gurggggh. Rough game. I felt like I let my pool down, which was bomb-heavy and awesome, the sort I would love to run at any ptq.
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Sep 21, 2014 01:50
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As someone who doesn't play a whole lot of Magic anymore, it's been fun watching this thread go from "Naya mechanic again? Ugh" to "gently caress YEAH SMASH FACE WITH BEARS" over the course of the past week and a half.
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Sep 21, 2014 01:51
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Rinkles posted:So... no complaints with forgetting to reveal morphs? I never actually ended a game with a facedown card on either side of the table. A friend of mine was judging the event, so I was thinking I could concede in style by illegally casting a creature without Morph facedown and immediately calling the judge, but as it turned out I won every match.
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Sep 21, 2014 01:51
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Rinkles posted:So... no complaints with forgetting to reveal morphs? Everyone revealed when I asked so there weren't any major issues there. I did have one guy that kept moving his facedowns around when he played new creatures which I had to call him out on. Froghammer posted:As someone who doesn't play a whole lot of Magic anymore, it's been fun watching this thread go from "Naya mechanic again? Ugh" to "gently caress YEAH SMASH FACE WITH BEARS" over the course of the past week and a half. Smashing face with bears NEVER gets old.
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Sep 21, 2014 01:57
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This set is fun but I'm not sure you can do seeded sealed in a set like this and have it not be loving broken. Abzan shitstomped everyone at our event (and I'm sure tons of others) because it supplies pretty much everything a good deck wants in its colors and the pressure release you have in draft (overdrafting, people stealing your cards in a splash, etc) doesn't exist.
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Sep 21, 2014 01:58
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I got forced into Sultai in today's prerelease since most of the Abzan, Mardu, and Temur boxes were already gone from the midnight prerelease. After a disastrous first match where I got pretty stomped by a decent but very unexceptional Temur deck, I discovered that my choice of clan could be worse; at least I could audible into Abzan. Other than Sidisi, pretty much all of my blue cards were worse than my white cards, which weren't amazing but did have a Bond-Kin, a pair of Kill Shots, a Smite the Monstrous, and a Hordemate. Meanwhile blue was headlined by Pearl Lake Ancient, which actually is just bad, and Riverwheel Aerialists, which is pretty good but unable to salvage the rest. I just splashed for Sidisi painlessly off some taplands and my deck seemed a lot better, though I still lost again in round 3 and dropped pretty quickly. For all you blue-haters out there, I expect KTK will be a pleasing followup to M15, as it is once again bottom-tier. On the plus side I pulled a Heath and Mire as consolation prizes, so I can't complain too much about the outcome.
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Sep 21, 2014 01:59
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Went 3-1 with Temur, losing to Abzan in game 3. Man is Outlast ever a newb trap. I don't know what it is about that mechanic, but I saw so many misplays related to it, from thinking they can use it on my EOT to not using Outlast when they have absolutely nothing else to do with the mana and no intention of attacking or blocking... Edit: Heir of the Wilds was absolutely MVP. Alpine Bear is a perfect partner and Roar of Challenge on Heir is usually a blow out. odiv fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 02:13
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The prereleaese tonight was my first foray into organized MTG. I went Sultai because whatever, the cards are the coolest  . I almost didn't get my deck put together in time and hastily threw together a bunch of stuff that I didn't know the mechanics behind which was pretty exciting when I discovered some accidental synergy with Kin-Tree Inovacation and Rotting Mastodon. Went 2-2-1, and I'm glad to hear that a lot of people were running out of time because I thought I was just going way too slow or something.
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Sep 21, 2014 02:21
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Pete Zah posted:I'm glad to hear that a lot of people were running out of time because I thought I was just going way too slow or something. Twice I hit the time limit with Mardu of all things. First time it was set to go 1-1-1 for the game but I gave up the last round to him since he was clearly gonna win and I was being nice  . Second time I got killed before time but I just kept stalling the board with no real bomb to win.
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Sep 21, 2014 02:24
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I went with Temur, and deckbuilding felt ridiculously hard because there's a lot of good stuff and a lot of good fixing so I just went with five colors. I had three tri-color tap lands, and a bunch of the common guildgates with the 1 life gain, so it actually ran pretty well. Using all five colors probably didn't make deckbuilding that much easier though because it was so tough deciding what to trim out, particularly in terms of combat tricks and removal. This set is really cool, even with Abzan being pretty decisively the best wedge for sealed.
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Sep 21, 2014 02:32
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Went 4-0 in junk and got BR, GW, GR, and foil GR fetches in total. No kawaii UW fetch though. The skeleton looks like the super Mario skellie.  I want foils, v kawaii.
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Sep 21, 2014 02:34
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Count Bleck posted:I'd honestly be surprised if Mardu Charm DIDN'T see modern play. I can't think of many situations where you would want Mardu Charm over Lilliana, it's just a much better card that does similar things.
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Sep 21, 2014 02:41
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4-0'd with Temur. Deck construction was hard because I had so many good cards, I ended up just playing my good rares, which were 2 Master of Pearls, 2 Knuckleblades and a Crater's Claw. Turns out Knuckleblade is hard to deal with and my deck was basically fatties, early disruptive creatures and removal.
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Sep 21, 2014 02:48
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Picked Temur and ended up 2-2 playing UG beats with R removal and combat tricks. Round 1 was a Temur mirror where I lost to a topdecked See The Unwritten (w/ Ferocius) in game 3, Rounds 2&3 were 2-0s against Mardu players new to the game, and Round 4 was against Jeskai splash green where I curved out perfectly game 2 but was just shy on tricks games 1&3. It was probably better than my pool deserved. My rares were Hardened Scales, Trap Essence, Rakshasa Vizier, Azban Ascendancy, Villainous Wealth, and Altar of the Brood  Looking back I also had a Sultai Charm, Sultai Banner, and a BG refuge with some other black cards so maybe I should have run BUG instead. Would have missed the two Act of Treason I ran though, that card rules. Other all-stars include Quiet Contemplation and Hooting Mandrills. "3-1" got me two packs (the other guy would have been 2-1-1 for one pack), so I gave him a pack as a sign of good faith. I opened a Clever Impersonator in mine (he had Rakshasa Deathdealer), and my participation pack had Utter End. A fun day all around, I may make an effort to draft this set since there's some good mechanical bleed between clans with all the single color cards.
C-Euro fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 02:50
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Picked Sultai because I wanted to delve, and the purple spindown die goes so well with my purple draft sleeves. That and there was a run on pretty much all the other clans, so my choices were that or Jeskai. Proceeded to open up absolutely unplayable blue and a pretty bad pool in general, with gently caress nothing for on-color rares or even much in the way of interesting interactions (http://deckbox.org/sets/785715?s=a&o=a) Black and green were unspectacular, but playable, and my next best color was red, but the mana fixing to go Jund was non-existent, so I had to play Abzan colors with a blue splash for the 3/4 flying looter. Here's my decklist: http://deckbox.org/sets/785707 Went 2-1-1 with the two wins coming against newer players who played pretty badly. I had a chance of going to 3-1, but I punted game 2 of the second round that ended as time expired. Cracked an Utter End out of one of my two pity packs, so I guess it wasn't all bad. Literally the only exciting/splashy play I got to do was get a one-sided wrath out of a Windstorm after my opponent tried to swing in for the win with Flying Crane Technique and about five creatures. Most everything else was a grindfest, and as a result it started to become kind of a slog after a couple of rounds. I'll have to try drafting the set, but that was a pretty bad first experience for me. I'm more than ready for regular 6-pack sealed again. This seeded thing stopped being fun ages ago since it feels like practically everyone just goes for the "best" box.
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Sep 21, 2014 03:00
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Baldrash posted:Picked Sultai because I wanted to delve, and the purple spindown die goes so well with my purple draft sleeves. That and there was a run on pretty much all the other clans, so my choices were that or Jeskai. I don't really see how regular 6-pack sealed helps balance problems between the clans. In M15, the balance problems were actually much worse in regular sealed than it was in prerelease sealed.
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Sep 21, 2014 03:15
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Chill la Chill posted:Went 4-0 in junk and got BR, GW, GR, and foil GR fetches in total. No kawaii UW fetch though. The skeleton looks like the super Mario skellie. Jesus Christ i won a full box and I still think you came out ahead. 5-0-1 and 1st place as Sultai with my draw coming a turn before I could go lethal on his empty board. My rares were bad, my colors other than blue were super shallow, but my fixing was insane and so I splashed Red for a charm, a Winterflame, and a Bear's Companion and proceeded to trounce all over the competition with Rakshasa's Charm + Treasure Cruise and delve version of Time Ebb shenanigans. Also anyone who thinks blue is bottom tier is CRAZY. It doesn't have good common creatures but you have Treasure Cruise and Singing Bell Strike at loving COMMON and I'd argue those are two of the very best commons in the set by a big margin. You also have a bunch of extremely good uncommons that are primarily cheap to play or Delve-powered/enabling or both at once. The common unblockable morph 3/2 dudes are very solid in a pinch and great for filling out the slots and giving you simple blockers or reach in the mid/late game or just trading with 2 or 3 toughness dudes which is really important for blue since it is fine filling its graveyard with poo poo and keeping the board clear to gain huge card advantage later. Blue is all about massive card advantage and filter/looting and time walking the opponent as often as possible. Seriously, with blue you need to be thinking "how best can I timewalk the other guy over and over again with the cards I have available." I Love You! fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 03:17
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That opponent's Flying Crane Technique for lethal into your Windstorm thing sounds pretty drat good as far as fun plays, though
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Sep 21, 2014 03:26
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I Love You! posted:Also anyone who thinks blue is bottom tier is CRAZY. It doesn't have good common creatures but you have Treasure Cruise and Singing Bell Strike at loving COMMON and I'd argue those are two of the very best commons in the set by a big margin. You also have a bunch of extremely good uncommons that are primarily cheap to play or Delve-powered/enabling or both at once. Singing Bell Strike is solid, but I don't think it's anywhere close to the best common in the set. The format is slow, so it's almost certain that you'll reach a point where you can just pay to untap; that was my experience with it. Much like Oppressive Rays, it's basically Pacifism for a while, but it stops doing anything after your opponent is out of better uses for their mana. As for Treasure Cruise, I think it's pretty comparable to the other draw spells in the format. It has strengths and weaknesses compared to, say, Weave Fate. Lastly, not having good creatures at common is usually a death sentence for a color in limited, so that's not really something you can just brush off.
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Sep 21, 2014 03:27
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Myriad Truths posted:Singing Bell Strike is solid, but I don't think it's anywhere close to the best common in the set. The format is slow, so it's almost certain that you'll reach a point where you can just pay to untap; that was my experience with it. Much like Oppressive Rays, it's basically Pacifism for a while, but it stops doing anything after your opponent is out of better uses for their mana. But as Sultai you WANT your opponent to be spending a full turn untapping some idiot they played on turn 2 through 4. You can just bounce that dude or bounce another expensive guy and effectively set them back two turns while you're spending 1 mana to reload your hand and such. You have so much card advantage and filtering that you're trying to drown the other guy in wasted turns while you loot and attack unblockably, not necessarily trying to kill everything they play permanently. Treasure Cruise is an ancestral recall at least 2/5 of the time you play it and usually costs from 2-3 the rest of the time. I have no idea how you can say it's worse than other draw spells. Literally the worst case I saw the whole tournament was paying 5 to draw 3 which, if you've ever played Jace's Ingenuity in a slow limited format, is unbelievable. Every time I played this card it won me the game and I played it a whole lot of times. And finally, this is a format where you easily, easily can go 3-4 colors. There is no need to have on-color common creatures when you can use your other 2-3 colors to get your meat and rely on blue to keep you rolling in tempo or cards or removal. I think it's pretty disingenuous to say that blue lacking common creatures makes it bottom-tier when there is literally no reason to pick a blue creature over a better on-clan creature for the sole reason of wanting blue creatures.
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Sep 21, 2014 03:36
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Isn't Mystic of the Hidden Way one of the best common creatures? (mono colored anyway) Jeskai Windscout seems solid as well. And Embodiment of Spring will probably be very useful (if you're G as well).   Also, I think there are some great uncommon blue creatures.
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Sep 21, 2014 03:41
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Yes to all those points except the Embodiment of Spring is shockingly clunky and I found it very hard to find the time and mana to activate it with all the other good things I could be doing with my mana. For example, I almost always would play a tap land t1. So I couldn't possibly play it until t2. But then on t3 I probably wanted to play a morph creature or removal or body to trade with stuff, so I didnt want to activate it the either. And t4-5 I might be flipping my morphs or playing card draw or removing creatures or dropping more threats so it was really hard to use then. And t5 you are DEFINITELY either playing something big or flipping a big morph so that's right out and- I Love You! fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 03:46
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I Love You! posted:Yes to all those points except the Embodiment of Spring is shockingly clunky and I found it very hard to find the time and mana to activate it with all the other good things I could be doing with my mana. Did you play w/ 18 or 17 lands? (not that your logic wouldn't work either way). I assumed it'd be easy to get mana screwed.
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Sep 21, 2014 03:51
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Rinkles posted:Did you play w/ 18 or 17 lands? (not that your logic wouldn't work either way). I assumed it be easy to get mana screwed. 17 But I had good looting and card draw and most of my creatures were morph so as long as I had 3 mana I had game. Masters of the Hidden Way were really nice value bodies as were the 3/4 Looting sultai flyer guys. Both came down for 3 and clogged up the board and both could trade up or go over the top for big damage with a flip. A lot of the relevant morph cards in Sultai have activation costs of around 3 so even if you stall on lands and don't have more creatures to play you might still have to use your mana on something that isn't the embodiment of spring. I Love You! fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 03:53
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I think the best blue creature at common is the Glacial Stalker, which is exactly the right size and cost to be a problem. Mystic of the Hidden Way and the Wetland Sambar are the other notables for blue common creatures, but other than the Glacial Stalker it just feels weaker than what any other color is doing. It seems like the key to this format is managing the swingy big creatures that can come out around turn 5 and 6, and blue isn't as good as the other colors at either providing the big creatures or dealing with them.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:00
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Went 5-1 with Temur, losing to a really fast Mardu. I had double Rattleclaw Mystic and was playing turn 4 6-drops all day. When I wasn't doing that I was playing the 1G 2/2 deathtouch guy and triggering his ferocious on turn 3 with the 4/2 bear. All in all good timesRinkles posted:Did you play w/ 18 or 17 lands? (not that your logic wouldn't work either way). I assumed it'd be easy to get mana screwed. I think in general 18 is going to be right in this format outside of the fastest Mardu decks, you really want to be able to hit a three drop, and the most relevant morphs don't do anything until 5 mana.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:09
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Myriad Truths posted:It seems like the key to this format is managing the swingy big creatures that can come out around turn 5 and 6, and blue isn't as good as the other colors at either providing the big creatures or dealing with them. I really don't agree with this at all. Blue goes around them completely while drawing answers and has super cheap, efficient tempo cards to deal with them. Tapping them down for 1U, bouncing them for 1U and drawing a card, Time Ebbing them for U with delve on top of flipping a big morph threat the same turn, blue has ways to punish someone extremely badly for playing big threats like that. Crippling chill is also amazing at common, and monastery flock can stuff all sorts of poo poo if you need it. These are all things they can do at common (with the exception being the Time Ebb at uncommon). And there are plenty more uncommon and multicolored blue tools for stuffing big investment creatures. Blinding spray is one that comes to mind at uncommon as a fog + cantrip that can just kill someone outright without ever having to bother with actual combat that is a great SB spell against blowout-style decks. I think blue is probably the very best in the set at totally scoffing at big bomby creature plays. Why are you trying to win a power/toughness fight as blue in a set where you're playing 3 colors? There's literally no reason to care about this. I Love You! fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 04:09
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 I just finished a prerelease with one of the most ridiculous temur sealed pools - 3 of those man-o-war birds, 4 of the temur 5/5 morphs, rattleclaw mystic, surrak and savage knuckleblade, backed with plenty of burn, bounce, and 7 on color dual and triland fixers. 3-0 and drew last round. Unfortunately my luck at pulling fetches is not so good - opened about 30 packs or so between midnight and now with only a bloodstained mire to show for
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Sep 21, 2014 04:12
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Rinkles posted:Isn't Mystic of the Hidden Way one of the best common creatures? (mono colored anyway) He's OK. He attacks well, but blocks really poorly, and he's very easy to kill. And 3 power isn't huge for 5 mana, even if it's unblockable. Other decks will be able to do stuff at 5 mana that races 3 damage a turn just fine. This kind of unblockable creature is always really good in stalled boards where you both have a bunch of creatures staring at each other, but will be unexciting when you actually want to interact with your opponent's creatures. I Love You! posted:Yes to all those points except the Embodiment of Spring is shockingly clunky It's a mana fixer that can only fix your mana once you already have 2 of your 3 colors. It would be roughly a zillion times better if the activated ability was green. None of the common blue creatures excite me at all.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:13
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Someone singing bell struck my phoenix and tapped it down for most of the game. Only after I had won did I realize that I should have just cast a removal spell on it then flipped it face up.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:13
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Entropic posted:He's OK. He attacks well, but blocks really poorly, and he's very easy to kill. And 3 power isn't huge for 5 mana, even if it's unblockable. Other decks will be able to do stuff at 5 mana that races 3 damage a turn just fine. This kind of unblockable creature is always really good in stalled boards where you both have a bunch of creatures staring at each other, but will be unexciting when you actually want to interact with your opponent's creatures. Yeah but he unmorphs for 2U.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:14
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I Love You! posted:I really don't agree with this at all. Blue goes around them completely while drawing answers and has super cheap, efficient tempo cards to deal with them. Tapping them down for 1U, bouncing them for 1U and drawing a card, Time Ebbing them for U with delve on top of flipping a big morph threat the same turn, blue has ways to punish someone extremely badly for playing big threats like that. Crippling chill is also amazing at common, and monastery flock can stuff all sorts of poo poo if you need it. These are all things they can do at common (with the exception being the Time Ebb at uncommon). And there are plenty more uncommon and multicolored blue tools for stuffing big investment creatures. It feels like you could try and tempo out their monsters while letting your other colors pick up the slack as to winning the game, but the ideal, simplest and most effective way to deal with a big creature is just to control a slightly bigger one or more of them, which is something blue just can't do. Also in general I like my colors to contribute evenly to my gameplan, so if I don't have an ideal distribution of spells and lands in my opening hand I'm always doing something anyway. If you rely on blue spells exclusively for tempo plays, it sounds easy to have lopsided hands.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:18
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Entropic posted:It's a mana fixer that can only fix your mana once you already have 2 of your 3 colors. It would be roughly a zillion times better if the activated ability was green. I don't see the problem. Just splash for fixing!
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Sep 21, 2014 04:25
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Myriad Truths posted:It feels like you could try and tempo out their monsters while letting your other colors pick up the slack as to winning the game, but the ideal, simplest and most effective way to deal with a big creature is just to control a slightly bigger one or more of them, which is something blue just can't do. This would be the case except an inordinate amount of the blue tempo plays either cantrip or feed into delve drawing cheap cards to reload and curve better/have more cards than your opponent, and on top of that you have access to a handful of very good loot effects in blue. And the delve effects are extremely overpowered for what you'll likely end up paying for them, skewing it further. And in this set where spells are actually very strong compared to creatures relative to other draft formats (due to charms, huge alpha strike cards in lots of different colors, enormous pumps for almost no mana, etc) taking the time walk that a Set Adrift nets you, or even the psuedo time walk from a regular bounce, often for 1 or 2 mana while you continue to develop your board, more or less forces your opponent to tap out multiple turns in a row giving you tons of free damage and absolute safety from the extremely dangerous Instants and Sorceries they are likely to be packing. I feel like controlling your opponent's turns, especially when you have access to very potent card draw, is much better than simply having a bigger creature in this set. Pretty much none of my games were determined by who had the biggest body on the battlefield, but then again I built my deck to function this way.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:25
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Went 3-1-1, splitting for packs with a fast Mardu deck. Chief of the Edge->Mardu Hordechief->Raider's Spoils is a pretty great curve. Ainok Bond-kin + Feat of Resistance also did work.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:49
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I Love You! posted:This would be the case except an inordinate amount of the blue tempo plays either cantrip or feed into delve drawing cheap cards to reload and curve better/have more cards than your opponent, and on top of that you have access to a handful of very good loot effects in blue. And the delve effects are extremely overpowered for what you'll likely end up paying for them, skewing it further. Well, in the end my experience with blue was lopsided because I didn't have most of the cards you liked. The blue players I faced weren't doing anything like what you're describing, and the cards you're talking about were mediocre when they were used against me, but I'm not in a position to judge if that's because the cards themselves are bad, or if my opponents just didn't build a good deck to use them, or if my opponents' draws were unlucky anyway. It'd be different if I was playing them myself and could judge how effective they were for me. I also wouldn't be surprised if it was a lot more workable in draft than in sealed.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:56
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Went four color, splashing blue just for a Villainous Wealth. Greedy? Yes. Casting for seven, hitting five creatures and a kill spell? 
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Sep 21, 2014 05:06
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Watching ChannelFireball stream right now while they do some sealed Khans, I can't tell if Matt Sperling is a huge dick or its just so late at night he's a little loopy and playing it up.
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Sep 21, 2014 05:08
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