The LiquidLegends Lounge - Page 1400

And I will still like SC2 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

The two people to my right haven't played in a couple years and don't remember all the mechanics/have no idea about the format (specific mechanics, synergy-driven, etc.).

P1P1 is weak, and I pick a Selfless Spirit, really annoyed because White again? Man I'd want to diversify... I pass Drogskol Shieldmate.
P1P2 is Cryptbreaker, passing Lone Rider. Both mentioned cards will get picked by my left neighbour.
P1P3 is Collective Effort over a couple other cards, including foil Drownyard Behemoth (hesitated hard as I felt like forcing Emerge if I could, tired of that shit). Prob a bit of decent W passed again.
I remember passing a Gryf and Survivalists kinda early, but overall B was very obviously dried up past the first 4-5 packs, and I'm a bit annoyed that my neighbour believes W is open, maybe because of Cryptbreaker that doesn't look live anymore.
I clearly can't get into Emerge because there isn't much G (or not very good) either, but I get Spontaneous Mutations, 2 Slayers, a Vexing Scuttler, a Cultist... end of pack is shit obv. and I end up taking a couple artifacts/artifact creatures for it.

P2 I see my neighbour mishandle a pack and him pick a Choking Restraints at some point so... yeah, I'll be playing without removal EMN removal obviously. Oh I also see Bruna opened... to my right. Well wherever it was opened 'cept for my pick I wouldn't get it anyway.
Except for the Faith Unbroken I open, and already knowing I may not get much W I'm pretty happy to see it.
Another Scuttler and Mutation, Grizzled Angler, Laboratory Brute (not that happy but oh well)... there are no spirits, Emerge didn't pan out, W's removal is already shit and I'm not receiving any... I have cute little synergies and a couple flyers and the 4/5 bodies but that's all. Collective Effort isn't a bomb and I don't have the stuff to go with it.
I also see some stupid good UR cards passing by very late so I wonder what colours people are in, 2 sits from me is some kind of R already. Of course Curious Reader isn't for me so whatever.

P3 has me getting a bit of U as Stitched Mangler, Ongoing Investigation (actually 2, but I passed the 2nd for Sleep Paralysis, need the goddamn removal), sadly I have to pass the UG land and hey it's 10-man pod so kiss it goodbye. Dauntless Cathar, Spectral Shepherd were picked early (Cathar was P3P1 with Ever After as the rare and passing Puncturing Light) and W dries up, of course. Final picks are whatever R people didn't want (Voldaren Duelist when my right neighbour was RG is weird), Wild field scarecrow, Just the Wind picked out of desperation for tempo/removal, Expose Evil, Lamplighters...

My deck is basically all 3-drops, with ~10 of the creatures. 1 and 4-drops are auras and the lone Lab Brute, I cut the Lamplighter and so now my curve stops at 3 with the scuttlers at 8 a bit farther.
I can easily get stuff back with Slayers and 2 spells with Scuttlers, 'cept I need to actually play them before (and in the case of the auras somehow kill the creatures bearing them).
It's not good but it's what I had to go with.

We were 4 in W at the table, me, my left neighbour (GW), the guy 2 sits to my right was mostly B with a dash of W and splash of R, partly for Nahiri (his first pick was campaign of vengeance), and the guy 4 sits to my right, GW too, with a bit of a splash (his P1P1 was Spell Queller).
My left neighbour, when I told him I knew I'd "put" him in W somehow and that it'd fuck with me, showed me his 4 Drogskol Shieldmates, the Puncturing Light, etc. and said that I passed him so much W pack 1 that it was clearly open.

The fuck dude, you can't just tell me I pass you excellent W when I pick Collective Effort over shieldmate, Cryptbreaker over Lone Rider, and Dauntless Cathar over Puncturing Light.
'course it won't matter, he'll end up at 2-1 because he'll play both "comeback" guys, including a pairing down since both will end 0-3. Cut whatever shit you want.

The draft will be won by the usual guy, on... Emerge. Fuck's sake.
He was 3 sits to my left, and got a couple W cards, a good B one, the foil Behemoth, the Bloodbriar I passed somewhat late, maybe a Cultist I let go since I had one too... and then he proceeded to cut all the U in pack 2, which is why that part was dry of non-shit after literally 4 picks for me. To his left were GB, badly built UR and another, but he still got enough value.
Basically pack 2 allowed him to play Emerge so even though I saw most of the P1 picks he actually played I couldn't have forced from my sit, while he could.
It's like Emerge fucks me over even when I don't play against it, and it fucks me over when I try to build it too. That garbage will be format-ruining for me.

Match 1 vs UR not-quite-spells
(As in I had to ask him what he took over Lightning Weaver and 2 Curious Homunculus that I saw toward the end of pack 2.)
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1-0

Match 2 vs BGr removal/ramp
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1-1

Match 3 vs BR vampires
Note that he was 2-0, and paired down the previous round and this one, because of 10-man. He possibly had the best/most synergistic deck and I'd really would have liked to see him play against the eventual winner instead (to see if he could win).
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1-2

Spoilers: despite the breakers I'm 7th, not even 6th, so a 1-2 is ahead of me.
Picks went like this : Emrakul, Nahiri, Spell Queller, Ishkana, Selfless Spirit, Distended Mindbender, then I took Collective Effort (over Defiance and one of the 2 Cryptbreakers, 'cause I dunno if I'll build these decks/colours later).
Picked up my 4th Thalia's Lieutenant next, and Avacyn's Judgement, Cryptolith Rites and Coax.

So, clearly, the pool wasn't kind to W anyway.
10-man pod, only one restraints and no Sigardian Priests in the whole pool. Sure.

But W feels like fucking shit. Its creatures are garbage stats-wise and have utility to make up for it, but either you need the good cards to use it (auras that easily go to the yard) or that utility is only geared toward offensive play (Fiend Binder).
W only ever knows one direction in this format and it's fucking mindless aggro. In GW it's G's removal and bigger butts that actually make a bunch of the work, or if you can curve out into Inspiring Captains, in RW your W is there to curve out and maybe Restraint a potentially good blocker or 2, the rest is up to burn and brazen wolves to deal the damage, and even the damn tricks are Borrowed Grace in a sea of Borrowed Hostlity, Adrenaline Rush and Uncaged Fury.

U is a support colour, but an excellent one, W is a colour that needs to be supported and it's extremely demanding in that regard.
Plus Emerge or even U in general with the bounce just shit over your aura-based play.

W is shallow, both in actual quality cards and in archetypes diversity, it's demanding, it doesn't match up well with the other colours in terms of creatures (fuck's sake, Ingenious Skaab is a better 3-drop than anything W combat-wise), and its removal although good on paper is poor due to the format's mechanics.
I'm already bored of it, but I keep getting forced into it.


It feels like at the end of OGW where I kept getting forced into UG even when I tried as hard as I could to steer into B or W (since I always value removal highly), 'cept then I was never so I didn't mind nearly as much, and BW is nowhere near Emerge in terms of domination—I'd argue it also holds for how shit it is to play again, since although BW strived on board stalls, it was a fixture of the format so not specific to it, while Emerge's oppressivenes comes from the deck itself.

I'll play out the drafts with my own packs either way, but I don't know if I'll show up for FNM. I'm sick of playing such a frustrating half-colour and getting forced into the same things over and over and having to deal with Emerge.

Sure, there's a part of RNG in stuff like
getting at my garbage sit tonight (or my neighbour forcing R so hard yesterday),
getting matched into a miserable, low-odds match-up twice into mana issues to the point that I only played a single game for the 3rd match last friday,
and getting paired up against a legit contender for my final match rather than people with a deck closer to mine (and a fairer chance at a 5th-6th spot to get a taste of the good cards) tonight.
But I've had fun in such shitty circumstances other times. Between the draft and the games, the only times I've had fun/excitement tonight were when I noticed playing Lab Brute was setting myself up for hilarious "self"-mill and tried to get out of it, and navigating the last 2 turns of m2g2 trying to get these last 4 points of damage in against a deck I knew far superior to mine in the long games.

Match 1 vs bye
So I watched the rest, we were 9 people, there was :
- Bant CoCo (slightly brewed, he never played Pacifists for instance) vs a pal of mine with his BR vampires Brew
- UW (mainly) spirits brew vs UR visions (brew ending up very close to the PT maindeck-wise)
- Temurge (slightly brewed, no Coax, runs Invasive Surgery f.e.) vs mono-R burn/aggro (didn't really get to see the content)
- BW control (PT version) vs what looked like UR artifacts? didn't see much, bunch of Origins cards

Spirits vs Visions was interesting, they didn't really bother blocking or stuff, and Spirits had Rattlechains and Essence Flux to void some removal early. He took risks and won game 1 out of an Invocation of Saint-Traft on a 2/2 Topplegeist for lethal.
I came back late in game 2, where Spirits had used Reflector Mage on TitI, 2 Declarations in Stone on 2 Lightning Weavers at different points, and losing an Invocation gave him Delirium so he kept the Reveler/Reader down. Apparently Visions stumbled on lands then drew a bunch of them over removal, and Spirits was up to 6-7 mana. He was using Topplegeist to hold an attacker down, go back to hand with Shepherd EoT, then played to tap a thopter token and go in for 2. Then he found Rattlechains, and could block stuff, send back to hand, then go back to retap, while keeping Shepherd mana open, and he won off that.
1-0 ('cause bye)

Match 2 vs UR Visions
I know this deck wrecks ramp and can apparently be an issue for stuff like emerge too because they don't empty the hand fast enough? I noticed he plays a bunch of creatures out of the board so I figured if I can stay off the visions maybe Gideon can win it for me... otherwise harsh.
I'm paired down since I was the bye amongst the 5 "winners."
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2-0

Game 3 vs BR vampires
My pal. I only really played against his deck a couple times, and he killed me with a topdecked Uncaged Fury off an Elusive Tormentor.
According to him he's slowed down his deck, so he's a bit more about madness and bigger board/midrange, less about t4 kill you.
Paired down again, he actually beat CoCo off some bad draws (he has trample and a bunch of buffs/flyers to get through, his opponent won when he got there but game 3 a big Drana couldn't be handled) and lost to Temurge then. 1-2, and he thinks he may have won it if he played better (and of course if he topdecked a Fiery Temper ) which is cool considering it's a brew!
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3-0

Meanwhile the battle of the "real" 2-0s is still going, Temurge vs BW control.
I see the end of game 2, where a Languish gets countered by a delirium-fueled Invasive Surgery (so it exiles all copies in yard/hand/deck), with Ishkanah and a Deep-Fiend in play. Liliana's at 7 but Atarka drops, kills Avacyn and open the way to kill Liliana. A turn later they kill the player instead.
Game 3 starts with 4 minutes on the clock, they go kinda fast and first turns are quick as Temurge tries to fill his yard while BW passes, no creatures to remove, or builds a lifepad with manland beats.
Chandra shows up, then Deep-Fiend gets hit by Stasis Snare in response to tapping all the lands. Another appear but Kalitas's been played and reduces the damage taken from it + Chandra tokens (who then wipes the board to remove Kalitas).
A Traverse (for probably Ishkana or 3rd Fiend) whiffs because Temurge unfortunately only had 3 types after 2 early Grapples, so no Delirium. It makes the difference as it delays an Emrakul cast in turns, and the lifepad of BW ensures his survival.
They draw.

Match 4 vs BW control (PT version)
I think I'm losing either way, since my deck was already inferior to the SOI "full" versions and I haven't upgraded it with the PT stuff, and temurge blanks most of my removal so would prob eat me alive, but I'm glad I get the mirror. Sure it's not very interesting and I haven't played a Temurge yet, but... well, at least I'll play, this way.
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4-0... uh ?!

After the others are done watching our game, my opponent leans in and tells me that since he couldn't get first, he didn't win (and thus draw) on purpose so I would get first over the Temurge build.
According to him it was something like letting me kill his manland earlier, because since he could remove my Stasis Snare (Anguished Unmaking I assume) he'd have been able to swing for more than 4, with me not having the mana for Grasp+Snare.
I'm not sure how, since I don't remember whether he had the mana to activate 2 manlands, he certainly couldn't cast Unmaking and activate both, and even knowing my hand when his manland died he couldn't have known whether or not I'd find the 5th land to cast double removal and whether it'd be relevant... and he'd have needed to have 3 attackers anyway since manlands come back tapped and Kalitas would have summoning sickness, so Unmaking only mattered if I didn't flash the Stasis Snare in on his last turn.

I'll choose to believe him anyway (or if it wasn't possible, that he still genuinely thought he was letting me win), because I talked a lot during games and mentioned how I thought I was super behind (when he found his 2nd Read the Bones and was 3+ cards up on me with less lands in play, dropped me to 10 with my empty board and 2 cards in hand, etc.) and how I thought my deck to be the weakest of the top-3 too. When it turned out I was so wrong as maindecking Gideon gave me such an edge, I apologised to him and admitted my mistakes since I didn't want to come across at "that guy" who's never happy unless he crushes people, even when ahead.

Plus, in his reward packs he got a Tamiyo so his kind gesture was rewarded then.
That mat is looking sweet but now I have to find room to put it. D: And it's not like I deserved it.
In the end BW mirror also proved more interesting than I'dhave thought, especially the way you use your mana and manage your manlands since them dodging all sorceries, ultimate price and anguished unmaking makes them oh so crucial to your overall plan. Certainly interesting decisions there.