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On July 10 2014 21:29 Ghin wrote:
I'm seriously considering blowing 50 bucks and buying a mono-red control deck, driving around, and stomping some tournaments for prize money. Shrapnel Blast, Eidolon of the Great Revel, Searing Blood? There are so many decent red cards that I feel like I'm missing something really huge and obvious about why this wouldn't work.
Standard probably not, modern, I think it's actually well placed. With all the Junk going around, main deck Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon just screws them over so hard. Put in some maindeck Torpor Orb and other hate artifacts plus burn and Eidolon of the Great Revel to end the game and you've got a pretty good deck against decks not named Affinity or Scapeshift.
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Excuse me for being a bit noob, but my friends and I had our first experience with irl card Magic today and we really enjoyed it. Coming from a long time yu-gi-oh experience and really disliking the direction it has gone with synchros and xyz's, the pace that you get from magic due to it being mana based is really refreshing. So I had bought the M14 deck builder box and we made a few decks with it and played around. We got the basic mechanics down due to playing the planeswalker game, so now were looking towards what we find the funnest about card games: deck building and comboing (oh and drafting looks exciting once we learn more about the game).
Its just I'm kinda lost with the sheer amount of cards in the game, and not sure where to be looking for the most bang for my buck. I see that the M15 core set is coming out soon and the fat pack looks pretty good, but are we missing out on staples from older sets? Do the older sets become irrelevant? Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Also though it was pretty cool that the mythic rare that we got was Jace, Memory Adept
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The best way to approach Magic is through a specific format because trying to play with all the cards like you said is overwhelming. At the moment, all your cards are of the Standard format. For the sake of simplicity and money saving, I would recommend that you ignore the old cards for now, and just stick with Standard legal cards (Return to Ravnica and beyond). I also strongly recommend that you attend the M15 prerelease and release events to acquire new cards and add to your collection.
Older sets are not irrelevant because of formats like Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. They're not very newbie friendly and are expensive to get into.
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I'm definitely going Black for pre-release sealed. I originally was thinking blue. Black's promo is disgusting and black has the best removal for limited easily.
Using the M15 sealed pool generator (http://www.magicdrafting.com/sealed-m15/) I did some testing on the different sealed pools - ran each color 5 times and recorded some stats to give me a better idea what I would get from each pool on average.
* White was surprisingly unimpressive. You get a lot of junk like strictly life-gain spells or mediocre life-gain plus small benefit like Divine Favor. If you don't get the white creatures pump, you end up with weak creatures that are quickly outclassed. If you can get the uncommon Devour Light you have good removal - otherwise you just get Pillar of Light at common. Not sure what to think of the promo card: 7 mana for a 4/4 flyer is meh. The life gain will be nice, but you have to be able to cast it and stabilize. Getting to 7 mana is the problem.
* Blue has the most removal if you count the bounce spells. Decent evasive creatures and card advantage. Looks like the most fun to play to me. If I can't go black, I'll go blue.
* Black is insane. In my opinion the promo card is the best overall. You get a 5 power flyer for 5 and it delivers card advantage, removes creatures, or bolts your opponent every upkeep. The mana curve also will be good with plenty of good low drops - most noteably cheap evasive creatures like Carrion Crow and Accursed Spirit. Black also has great removal - Stab Wound is insane, and Flesh To Dust is pricy (5 mana) but unconditional.
* Red is very... red. No card advantage, but good creatures at all portions of the curve, and efficient yet conditional removal in burn spells. The promo costs 7, but if it resolves and you swing with it, you easily take over the game.
* Green is okay. As usual, it's weak to evasive creatures and doesn't have any unconditional removal. It's only removal in fact is Hunt The Weak which is very conditional and risky. The promo card costs 7 and is just a big dumb creature without trample, but green has some ramp with the Elf and maybe the convoke spell that gives two tapped lands for 5 mana so you might get lucky and pull it out earlier. Also the promo card never dies so needs to continously be chump blocked or exiled.
From a mix of cheap evasive creatures, bombs, removal, and card advantage, going Black for sure. Blue on the off chance that Black is already taken by too many.
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Ah by older sets I meant like the 8th edition to M12 lol, but it sound good to stick to standard. Should I keep a lookout for surplus standard cards on ebay or go with booster packs?
Also I checked for a a prerelease event and turns out its tomorrow, which makes it a bit hard to organise with friends, however its good to know theres a thriving community nearby for next time, when usually I assume my backwater state doesn't have nerdy things.
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You probably know this, but the first thing you should do is get sleeves to protect your cards. They're going to get banged up, scratched, spilled on, etc. and five bucks for a hundred sleeves will keep your cards safe and looking good.
I started playing Magic literally 20 years ago (1994). I seriously have crates full of cards. Some of them are heavy enough to crush someone to death. If you want to get into Magic, you should know it's a pay-to-win game. You're going to acquire a collection of cards. The format I personally like best is Legacy. Most of the top-tier super crazy overpowered old cards are banned in it, but it still has a lot of room for crazy things to happen. Many people play Standard and Modern formats. Googling can answer pretty much any card/format/type related question.
What cards you want depend on what your friends play. You're going to want to play different types of decks, so just pick up cards you like. If your friends play Standard, picking up older cards won't help you. I'm not really into Standard at the moment, although I am considering blowing some money on it to troll local tournaments. If you're interested in Legacy, you'll always have room in a deck for cards like Lightning Bolt, Diabolic Edict, Counterspell, or Swords to Plowshares.
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Yea due to costs, my 2/3 friends are happy share our pool of cards/swap decks, which worked out ok with just our deck builder box and 40 cards per deck. Definitely not looking at it competitively yet, more or a thing between friends, but looking forward to expanding our collection.
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On July 10 2014 21:29 Ghin wrote:
I'm seriously considering blowing 50 bucks and buying a mono-red control deck, driving around, and stomping some tournaments for prize money. Shrapnel Blast, Eidolon of the Great Revel, Searing Blood? There are so many decent red cards that I feel like I'm missing something really huge and obvious about why this wouldn't work.
The deck you're talking about is R/W Burn. (Link) Game 1, you're not as controlling (because you need to pack a bunch of hate for control), but post board, you'll board into a bunch of removal (unless you're against U/W control, where you go more aggressive) and play a red control deck. Also you have the bonus of a lot of people thinking you're all out aggro and completely misplaying vs you games 2 and 3.
@Spoon, if you're not looking into being competitive yet, then a fat pack should suffice. Assuming you're going to start out with standard, buying a fat pack for m15 or Theros block (Theros, Born of the Gods, or Journey into Nyx) is fine. Don't get m14 or Return to Ravnica block (RtR, Gatecrash, Dragon's Maze) because they will be rotating in 3 months. Also, the moment you know what cards you want (lets say you want a specific rare card or even common/uncommon), buy it online. Don't buy packs or sealed product to try and hit a specific rare. One other option to consider is to split a booster box with your friends. A box has 36 packs, so you can just divide that between your friends and save some money. Also booster boxes are guaranteed to have mythics.
But, my best piece of advice is to get into drafting (or sealed). Drafting is what got me into the game, and it was (and still is) a great experience. Basically in a draft, you get three packs of the current block and you "draft" a deck. So what happens is you open one of your packs (there is a certain order and whatnot), and pick a single card. Then you pass the pack on to your left. You get a pack, and you pick a card and pass the pack. Eventually you'll have a decent sized pool of cards that you need to build a 40 card deck out of (as opposed to 60 cards). Also your store will likely provide lands, so you actually only have to draft 23 really good cards (17 lands is the norm for a 40 card deck). But of course, that's harder than it sounds. But why am I recommending it? You get to keep all the cards you drafted (so pick good rares that you want for your collection), and it is a competitive format that only costs $15 a draft (some stores have it at $12) with guaranteed return on investment.
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I'd also recommend Drafts and Sealed because the Vintage, Legacy, Modern, and Standard becomes pay to win. Yeah sure you can argue that it takes a good pilot to use an expensive deck, but there comes a point where money is an advantage. Also, Standard meta gets boring when everyone runs the same deck like Blue Devotion. Reminds you of the time 2-3 years ago when everyone ran cawblade + stoneforge mystic.
On July 11 2014 02:09 EscPlan9 wrote:
I'm definitely going Black for pre-release sealed. I originally was thinking blue. Black's promo is disgusting and black has the best removal for limited easily.
Using the M15 sealed pool generator (http://www.magicdrafting.com/sealed-m15/) I did some testing on the different sealed pools - ran each color 5 times and recorded some stats to give me a better idea what I would get from each pool on average.
* White was surprisingly unimpressive. You get a lot of junk like strictly life-gain spells or mediocre life-gain plus small benefit like Divine Favor. If you don't get the white creatures pump, you end up with weak creatures that are quickly outclassed. If you can get the uncommon Devour Light you have good removal - otherwise you just get Pillar of Light at common. Not sure what to think of the promo card: 7 mana for a 4/4 flyer is meh. The life gain will be nice, but you have to be able to cast it and stabilize. Getting to 7 mana is the problem.
* Blue has the most removal if you count the bounce spells. Decent evasive creatures and card advantage. Looks like the most fun to play to me. If I can't go black, I'll go blue.
* Black is insane. In my opinion the promo card is the best overall. You get a 5 power flyer for 5 and it delivers card advantage, removes creatures, or bolts your opponent every upkeep. The mana curve also will be good with plenty of good low drops - most noteably cheap evasive creatures like Carrion Crow and Accursed Spirit. Black also has great removal - Stab Wound is insane, and Flesh To Dust is pricy (5 mana) but unconditional.
* Red is very... red. No card advantage, but good creatures at all portions of the curve, and efficient yet conditional removal in burn spells. The promo costs 7, but if it resolves and you swing with it, you easily take over the game.
* Green is okay. As usual, it's weak to evasive creatures and doesn't have any unconditional removal. It's only removal in fact is Hunt The Weak which is very conditional and risky. The promo card costs 7 and is just a big dumb creature without trample, but green has some ramp with the Elf and maybe the convoke spell that gives two tapped lands for 5 mana so you might get lucky and pull it out earlier. Also the promo card never dies so needs to continously be chump blocked or exiled.
From a mix of cheap evasive creatures, bombs, removal, and card advantage, going Black for sure. Blue on the off chance that Black is already taken by too many.
I don't think that giving each color 5 tries each is enough, but your analysis is pretty good. White tends to be situational. You can get a ton of token generators for convoke but that would mean you'll more or less dual color with Green for your deck to work. Black seems to take the cake, however, it does not have as much removals as white does.
noob question though, you can't use the promo card in the pre-release right?
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I'm making a Legacy half fun/half srs business Reanimator deck and I want some names of ridiculous 50 mana creatures that 10 year old Ghin would have drooled over. Ideally they would cost under a dollar to order (so not Griselbrand), be huge (6/6 or more), and have a ridiculous or fun ability. Something like Mindleech Mass or Sire of Insanity.
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Black seems like a trap. The promo is the "best" one in that it costs 5 and is solid, but it dies to several common removal spells and the ability can be blanked by a lot of commons. Also a lot of the other rares suck, which means you have a high chance of opening a blank card in your seeded pack.
Black is also lacking good 2-drops at common. The commons in general are ok but nothing special.
White has Raise the Alarm and Triplicate Spirits at common, almost every rare is good so you are nearly guaranteed a strong card from your seeded pack. Solid 2-3 drops at common, and has some reasonable pump effects in a set that a) doesn't have a lot of efficient tricks at common and b) all the creatures are fairly similar in size.
Red has a pile of removal at common and uncommon, the most powerful promo, and a bunch of early plays. Also mostly good rares.
Green has big creatures, which is important when the unconditional removal is expensive. Solid bodies at all points in the curve except 2. Gather Courage is a strong trick in a format lacking strong tricks. Mostly solid rares. The promo is pretty slow and weak to small creatures.
Blue has a bunch of mediocre rares, so it's a coin flip whether you will get a good rare from the seeded pack. The promo is probably the worst of the bunch. The bounce spells are good in the aggressive/tempo blue decks but pretty mediocre in the slower decks. The common counterspell costs 4, a lot of the cheap interaction is sorcery speed and/or conditional. That said, there are a lot of good blue commons so it's probably a safer bet to open good blue cards in your regular packs rather than being stuck with the blue promo.
The black promo isn't even like a super bomb or anything; getting 1 guaranteed good rare seems worse than choosing red or white and having 1 guaranteed playable rare and a high likelihood of opening another good rare in the seeded pack.
The red and white commons also look a lot better overall than black. Pretty much all the colors look better at common than black tbh.
We'll see how it pans out, but I'd probably pick red.
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On July 11 2014 14:37 MCMcEmcee wrote:
Black seems like a trap. The promo is the "best" one in that it costs 5 and is solid, but it dies to several common removal spells and the ability can be blanked by a lot of commons. Also a lot of the other rares suck, which means you have a high chance of opening a blank card in your seeded pack.
Black is also lacking good 2-drops at common. The commons in general are ok but nothing special.
This.
In as much as we aren't supposed to rely or rares in sealed, knowing that you can open trash rares is what makes me think twice about picking black.
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I'm gonna stop reading this topic. The amount of bullshit and stupid shortcuts is astounding.
I'm just gonna say that in this standard, there have been around 10+ Tier 1 decks, and it has been one of the most diverse ever played. The only "overpowered" card was Mutavault, and MonoB made tons of high finishes because it was by far the most played, not because it was broken.
I know hating on Standard is "in", but that's just straight-up retarded.
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On July 11 2014 18:54 mr_tolkien wrote:
I'm gonna stop reading this topic. The amount of bullshit and stupid shortcuts is astounding.
I'm just gonna say that in this standard, there have been around 10+ Tier 1 decks, and it has been one of the most diverse ever played. The only "overpowered" card was Mutavault, and MonoB made tons of high finishes because it was by far the most played, not because it was broken.
I know hating on Standard is "in", but that's just straight-up retarded.
What hate on standard? I know people complain about standard but people always complain about standard. In any case, I think the format is pretty diverse but unexciting, its all the rehash or variants of mid range decks with a few aggro and control sprinkled in. I wouldn't say any single deck is overly powerful, but the deck approaches are pretty bland.
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On July 11 2014 14:37 MCMcEmcee wrote:
Black seems like a trap. The promo is the "best" one in that it costs 5 and is solid, but it dies to several common removal spells and the ability can be blanked by a lot of commons. Also a lot of the other rares suck, which means you have a high chance of opening a blank card in your seeded pack.
Black is also lacking good 2-drops at common. The commons in general are ok but nothing special.
White has Raise the Alarm and Triplicate Spirits at common, almost every rare is good so you are nearly guaranteed a strong card from your seeded pack. Solid 2-3 drops at common, and has some reasonable pump effects in a set that a) doesn't have a lot of efficient tricks at common and b) all the creatures are fairly similar in size.
Red has a pile of removal at common and uncommon, the most powerful promo, and a bunch of early plays. Also mostly good rares.
Green has big creatures, which is important when the unconditional removal is expensive. Solid bodies at all points in the curve except 2. Gather Courage is a strong trick in a format lacking strong tricks. Mostly solid rares. The promo is pretty slow and weak to small creatures.
Blue has a bunch of mediocre rares, so it's a coin flip whether you will get a good rare from the seeded pack. The promo is probably the worst of the bunch. The bounce spells are good in the aggressive/tempo blue decks but pretty mediocre in the slower decks. The common counterspell costs 4, a lot of the cheap interaction is sorcery speed and/or conditional. That said, there are a lot of good blue commons so it's probably a safer bet to open good blue cards in your regular packs rather than being stuck with the blue promo.
The black promo isn't even like a super bomb or anything; getting 1 guaranteed good rare seems worse than choosing red or white and having 1 guaranteed playable rare and a high likelihood of opening another good rare in the seeded pack.
The red and white commons also look a lot better overall than black. Pretty much all the colors look better at common than black tbh.
Yeah I have to take back what I said on black. I've had some sick pools with it using the generator, but there's a ton of variance and it was just luck there - like I could have gone mono-black and been happy in one of the runs! The commons in general for black are bad.
Not sure what I'll run this coming morning (no midnight release at my LGS this time for some reason).
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Chose red for midnight prerelease. Pool was quite good, drawing no lands or 10+ lands for the last two rounds was not.
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Chose red for the prerelease game earlier.
Great pool, got another Siege Dragon and Soul of Shandalar. I also had 2 Lightning Blasts, 2 Hellfire Blasts, as well as good fillers like Goblin Roughrider, the 5 drop 5/4 Giant with Haste, and the 6/3 Giant that can gain trample. My mistake was pairing it up with Green since Green offered the Rhino that can only be blocked by one creature, as well as Siege Worm and good blockers suck as Netcast Spider and a Paragon. I also had Living Totem which proved useful. I should have gone for Black. My red curve was surprisingly blank at 4-5 and Black filled that spot in pretty well with good evasive creatures. My mistake was going with Green because I had 2 Verdant Havens when I didn't need that much color fixing in a dual colored deck to begin with.
Ended up 2-1-1, the breakdown is here below in spoilers cuz it's pretty damn long.
+ Show Spoiler +Won the first round 2-1, lost the first game cuz I was mana flooded. Won games 2 and 3 because my opponent changed decks and it didn't pay off when my lower curve creatures got into play. I don't know why he switched from Green Red to Green Black.
2nd Round was a draw. Opponent ran a Red Green deck with a lower curve than I did (fucking died to a Runeclaw Bear). Almost lost game 2. Trample for the win.
3rd Round was a 2-0 win. My opponent ran a white green and black lifelink deck. It was irritating, but when you get to that critical mass (turn 6 onwards) where you just keep on drawing better and better spells, lifelink just dies. Game 2 wasn't even funny, he kept a 2 land card with Elvish Mystic and when I noticed he skipped his 3rd land, my turn 4 Meteorite (I had verdant haven) killed his mana dork.
4th Round was a funny game. Lost 0-2 in quick fashion to a guy with a mid range Black Green deck. Game 1, he had two Rhinos in play, I had 2 Siege Dragons in hand, if those resolved and attacked, I would have won. Game 2, I had Soul of Shandalar in play which could begin to mow his creatures down by next turn, however, if he top decks Flesh to Dust, game over for me. As he untaps, I call that card out, and then bam, he reveals his draw (Flesh to Dust) and the table breaks out laughing.
Sealed is fun. I remember telling people to seed blue (which was obviously a joke) then someone from another table seeds blue. Our community is pretty small and we know everyone by face so we get to joke around and make the atmosphere light and the newbies feel welcomed.
There was also a guy who opened a Nissa and a foil Urbog in his packs. However, he got blinded by the Nissa and just made a mono green deck with artifacts to go along fill 40 cards. That's just not a good idea.
Also Pythotitan is useless if there's a Siege Dragon in play. You'll never get to use Pythotitan, unless of course you have plummet in your side board, but then again it dies to that 2/2 Griffin with first strike and any creature with 2/X.
Red is a good color overall, just know how to compliment it with your packs.
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Notables in my sealed pool:
2 Cone of Flame, 1 Stoke the Flames, 1 Inferno Fist, 1 Into the Void, 1 Scuttling Doom Engine,1 Ajani Steadfast
Four 2-drops including 2 Welkin Terns, 4 3-drops, 1.5 4-drops (scrap mongrel and the convoke 4/4), haste giant and common blue 3/3 flyer, siege dragon.
Generator Servant into Siege Dragon gets people.
r1 opponent kept some loose ones and got run over.
r2 played against a friend who was on RG with Nissa. Curved out and tempo'd him out in 2. Generator Servant into Siege Dragon wins g1, Scuttling Doom Engine wins game 2. In reality Cone of Flame wins both games.
r3 mulled to 6 both games and drew fairly poorly in what felt like a bad matchup against GB. Didn't draw enough lands g1 and drew too many g2. Would have been difficult given the amount of removal he had, also Netcaster Spider is as good as advertised.
r4 drew 10+ lands each game to lose in 2 to BW. Was live if I draw a Cone of Flame in either game but it would have been uphill given how bad my starts were.
r5 opponent dropped as the round started
Overall felt good about the deck, other than being unable to play real games of Magic in the last 2 rounds. Most of the non-rare black cards that I played against or saw in play seemed pretty underwhelming. Green looked good but very clunky, pretty much lived and died on having Elvish Mystic and the spider. Red and white were both great, blue was solid though the spider is rough for blue.
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Also, why is standard getting hated on?
I haven't been played Magic in a long time (until the Pre Release hours ago) and I spend some time admiring the new font and new borders. The last time Standard got hated on was when everyone ran cawblade + stoneforge mystic and that was 2-3 years ago, prompting WoTC to ban cards in standard (if I'm not mistaken). I remember the bans because my friend was making a cawblade deck cuz he was pissed that almost everyone ran it. Even a Grand Prix before featured 7 cawblade out of the top 8. I think I also read somewhere that Blue Devotion is everywhere, promting WoTC to nerf blue in the core set, but I'm not too sure about that.
And yes, Cone of Flame is awesome. Can be a good burn or a board wipe. Have it your way.
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On July 12 2014 22:14 SilverSkyLark wrote:
Also, why is standard getting hated on?
I haven't been played Magic in a long time (until the Pre Release hours ago) and I spend some time admiring the new font and new borders. The last time Standard got hated on was when everyone ran cawblade + stoneforge mystic and that was 2-3 years ago, prompting WoTC to ban cards in standard (if I'm not mistaken). I remember the bans because my friend was making a cawblade deck cuz he was pissed that almost everyone ran it. Even a Grand Prix before featured 7 cawblade out of the top 8. I think I also read somewhere that Blue Devotion is everywhere, promting WoTC to nerf blue in the core set, but I'm not too sure about that.
And yes, Cone of Flame is awesome. Can be a good burn or a board wipe. Have it your way.
A lot of people complained about standard during the height of the Delver era.
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EPT
