Magic the Gathering • Page 12

We went 2-2 in the 2HG event. Pretty fun format, but so slow. Managed to pull a Liliana so of course I forced BW zombies lol

 

up in NYC with some free time before my bus today so gonna check out a prerelease later today. hoping for some nice pulls

 

pulled a worship out of my winnings this week, invocations look so much better physically

had a sick green red deck with combat celebrant and a bunch of green cartouches and the red trial, smashed a lot of face but i only played one official match lol

got a blue god as well

 

Played pre-release yesterday. Lost 2 rounds and got a bye in the third, but lucky for me winner of round 3 got 2 packs by default so that's the easiest 2 packs I've ever gotten, ha. I am not very good at limited formats at all, but it's fun nonetheless. No spectacular pulls and I don't think I'll be buying much sealed product for this set/from now on (been burned too many times by bad pulls this past year or so), but there are a few cards I'm excited to pick up.

Also, hoping to see something interesting on today's B&R announcement!

 

I spoke too soon.

Standard - no changes. Modern - no changes. Legacy - Top is banned.

 

and gush/probe restricted in vintage

well...this was a wild one. assumed gideon and cat were gone from standard, hope some of the new decks can fight it but if not, well, fuck this wizards. heh.

that's an enormous change for both legacy and vintage though.

 

Booooo kill Gideon off

 

Yeah, I think this is solidifying my choice not to keep buying into standard. I am not a fan of bans in a standard format, but the 4C Saheeli and Mardu Vehicles decks are just too dominant and I don't feel like there's all that much in Amonkhet to sufficiently hate them out. Maybe PT Amonkhet will have some fun new decks to watch and I absolutely hope that's the case, but I think they're making a big mistake here.

 

I'm still gonna try my hardest to make RDW work

 

i messed around with a UW cycling control deck and a UR spells deck with drake and that 6/5 that you can cast for 2 with enough spells in the yard. got wrecked by vehicles though...

 

I'm pretty sure I'm just gonna take advantage of this nonsensical standard time to test terrible brews at FNM until something finally happens. I miss playing Jeskai Ascendancy Combo in Khans standard and decking my opponent. I lost all the time to Esper Dragons/RDW, but gosh it was so fun and hilarious when it worked.

 

Man, that was my favorite period of Standard. I played the U/R Ensoul Artifact deck and loved it. No other deck has come close to how fun that one was for me.

 

Oh man, that was a cool standard deck. Almost built it, but every store around me sold out of some of the main cards for it real fast. I played so many fun decks in that period of standard. RDW, Atarka Red, Jeskai Tokens, Jeskai Midrange, Jeskai Combo, Sultai Delve/Sidisi Whip, Abzan Control, the list goes on. It's when I started playing the game again and it was the perfect time.

 

Yeah I remember purchasing my copies of Ensoul Artifact, Phyrexian Revoker, and Ghostfire Blade the day before that deck made the top 8 at PT Origins, right before they shot up in price.

I only got the god hand once. It went as follows:

T1: Play Island, Play Ornithopter, tap the Island to play Springleaf Drum, activate the Drum by tapping the Thopter to get one floating mana (color didn't matter), play Ghostfire Blade, pass.
T2: Play land, put Ensoul Artifact on the Thopter, activate the drum by tapping the Ghostfire Blade to add one floating mana, use that mana to equip the Blade to the Thopter, swing with a flying 7/7 on turn 2.

Only ever happened once. That was a quick game.

 

omg they banned guardian

 

Yessss, I have so many angry meta deck friends right now.

 

hahahahaha that is hilarious

 

I feel odd about how many bannings we're seeing in standard right now, but I think Felidar Guardian is the most necessary of all of them. Standard is not the format that needs two-card infinite combos. If Splinter Twin was too much for modern, Cat combo is too much for standard.

 

it's the fact that the deck had so many other ways to win too. they could play the tempo/value game while also threatening to combo at any time. and the fact that a four color deck could play so few lands and still have great fixing due to attune and servant and aether hub...just unfair

 

I love how it took them two days to realize "Yep, this is out of control, gott ban the cat" lol

 

Yeah, absolutely. Just kinda forced everyone else to play sub-optimally. I did get to Summary Dismissal a Saheeli activation once - that felt good.

 

Banning needed to happen but fuck Wizards. So sick of their constant bullshit.

 

I just don't understand their logic in things like this playing out the way they do. Pre B&R they had almost everyone in standard clamoring for a Felidar Guardian ban, hell, even people who played the deck were like "yeah, it probably should be" and just about every pro was saying the same, yet they decide not to in order to "collect more data." I understand that with the fact that Amonkhet was released a week early in MTGO, but still, they really thought they printed enough silver bullets that it would even out the meta? These cards were evaluated by R&D, by other pros, and the fact that silver bullets are needed to even out a meta should probably say that the meta is too uneven to begin with.

Better way to handle it? Push out the B&R announcement a week to get better data rather than announcing "no bans!" followed by "oh, wait - bans!" Best way to handle it? Just ban the damn cat the first time - I'm a pretty firm believer that the people who broke the card (the players, not the developers, clearly) are the ones whose voices should matter in this situation. Plus, why risk a Pro Tour with 8 copies of the same deck in the top 8 again (a la Eldrazi winter before Modern PTs got discontinued - another crummy WotC decision). Standard right now is not good enough, in my opinion, to dictate that it should be the most "televised" format and it was a hell of a lot better in the times it did actually share decent stage time with Modern. I understand wanting to sell product that they, well, are still actually selling themselves, but with people leaving the format in droves (I literally went from saying "man, I just don't feel like buying into Legacy for FNM down the road" one week to "ok, done with Standard, guess I'm playing Legacy now" the next week) they need to do better at acknowledging their other formats. I know they say they don't develop any new cards with Modern in mind, but it'd be nice to see them still actively support its existence. I don't think they should consider that a loss, they should think of it as a celebration of their successes in creating thousands of cards over many years that people want to play.

Lastly (in a rant that ended up way longer than I anticipated, sorry - lol), some random points that could prove interesting based on random internet data, just not sure when or if they'll actually happen.

- Pretty sure they'll make Frontier an actual format, but starting in Origins instead of Khans to get fetches out of the format and make an easy entry point for newer players, kind of a stepping stone to more eternal formats while also supporting the dollars spent by recent standard-only players. Wish they'd go back to Khans, but I'd for sure play this.

- Reddit is referencing a possible return to core sets via Wizards' online survey. This also feels like an "admission of failure" sort of, but I can't disagree with the need for this - I think those base cards were pretty important and allowed for more experimentation in all supplemental sets. I'd like to see less of the Gatewatch, if anything - NO MORE GIDEON, PLEASE.

 

sticking devoted druid in abzan company with vizier seems so legit. so many game ending combos in that deck

 

My friend preordered copies of the Vizier just because of this combo