-
Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:
- The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
- Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration
Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.
We're all just here for the deep Urza lore - Talking about Magic: The Gathering!
- Thread starter Bulgakov
- Start date
I didn't open the pack until I had left, so I still have it. Would've been nice to get it sold then and there since I would've had the chance to do it easily. Ah well.
Also, I just finished compiling all the cards I opened during the chaos sealed event and was wondering if I could get anyone to have a look at it to see if there was a decent deck I could have built.
Also, I just finished compiling all the cards I opened during the chaos sealed event and was wondering if I could get anyone to have a look at it to see if there was a decent deck I could have built.
I don't have time right now to look at a whole sealed pool, but I'll tell you that my general approach to sealed is to start by sorting everything into separate piles by color (multicolor cards get their own pile). Then for each color, sort it into three piles: cards I'd definitely play, cards I'd maybe play, cards I wouldn't play. At this point, if I'm lucky, two colors will have bigger "definitely play" piles than any others, so I'll focus on those and ignore the rest. Sometimes you need to add a third color to get enough playables. But overall I've found that this helps cut down on decision paralysis and lets me spend the most time doing meaningful deckbuilding.
Naaaa na na na na na na na na Katamari Hamacy
I went 2-0-1 (that's 0 losses and 1 tie) at my prerelease tonight. I had quite possibly the worst Bat/Rat deck that was still strong enough to win if I got lucky enough. Basically my MVP cards were Sinister Monolith and Starscape Cleric, and if I didn't have the Monolith in play, my deck was pretty terrible otherwise; I had no other sources of life gain to trigger Starscape Cleric and only a handful of other Bats.
I think I'm going to try building an entirely different deck with my same card pool and see if it would've worked out; most of my best cards were split between White/Blue/Red/Green, so it was pretty tough to figure out how to make 3 colors work, and eventually I just abandoned it to make UB.
I think I'm going to try building an entirely different deck with my same card pool and see if it would've worked out; most of my best cards were split between White/Blue/Red/Green, so it was pretty tough to figure out how to make 3 colors work, and eventually I just abandoned it to make UB.
My own prereleases have given me the impression that because the archetypes are so synergistic, this set is going to be terrible for sealed but awesome for draft. Most of the folks I played with/spoke to felt like it was hard to get both enablers and payoffs for the kindred themes this set is all about in their sealed pools. On the flipside, it seems like draft is where decks are really going to pop off, because once you find your lane people are naturally going to be passing you things you really want to see.
My pool on Friday night had a bunch of strong green and white cards, but no particular synergy. I ended up going 1-3, not because the deck couldn't get there, but because I had the worst flood/screw luck I've ever had in any paper event to date. In my final match I drew 14 lands! I had fun and played some good matches, but I wished I'd had a chance to participate a bit more. I did get to meet the owner of the shop where we've been playing, which was nice. He's really passionate about the game and his store; we're happy to keep coming back.
Last night was much better. My first thought was that I'd build W/B, because I had a bunch of solid black bats, but the more I looked at it the more I realized all those bats depended on me gaining life and I didn't have enough enablers to make that work. At that point I realized I had two Plumecreed Mentors and a decent blue pool, so I went with U/W fliers. The pool in general was extremely light on removal (Friday's pool was too) so I had to use the time-honored game plan of "just kill them". I wasn't super confident in the deck before matches started, but once we got going I felt sure I'd made the right build -- I ended up going 4-0 and winning the whole event. Turns out, turn two Brightblade Stoat into turn three Plumecreed Mentor is a ridiculously powerful opening. I had some really good matches along the way. Special shout-out to my round three opponent, who was a really nice dude and great player with a killer deck. You could feel how much he loved playing the game and it was infectious. After our match ended another player asked him for help with their deck, and he immediately started rebuilding it with them. It's easy to get crabby in this game sometimes but this guy was a great reminder that there can be a lot of joy in it too. It was a pleasure to be across the table from him.
Overall both me and my girlfriend had a great time. I didn't get to see every archetype, but I saw most of them, and I have to say everything felt pretty viable! Obviously once people start drafting we'll get clearer data, but all the decks I saw seemed capable of doing fun and powerful things. After a couple of formats in a row where there were one or two clear Best Decks, I'm optimistic that this one will be a bit more balanced. Really excited for drafts. Super curious about the bat deck in particular.
I gotta say, it's really nice to be fully excited about Magic again. Even if it's only for a couple of months. I've been looking forward to this set since they announced it and so far I think they've nailed it.
My pool on Friday night had a bunch of strong green and white cards, but no particular synergy. I ended up going 1-3, not because the deck couldn't get there, but because I had the worst flood/screw luck I've ever had in any paper event to date. In my final match I drew 14 lands! I had fun and played some good matches, but I wished I'd had a chance to participate a bit more. I did get to meet the owner of the shop where we've been playing, which was nice. He's really passionate about the game and his store; we're happy to keep coming back.
Last night was much better. My first thought was that I'd build W/B, because I had a bunch of solid black bats, but the more I looked at it the more I realized all those bats depended on me gaining life and I didn't have enough enablers to make that work. At that point I realized I had two Plumecreed Mentors and a decent blue pool, so I went with U/W fliers. The pool in general was extremely light on removal (Friday's pool was too) so I had to use the time-honored game plan of "just kill them". I wasn't super confident in the deck before matches started, but once we got going I felt sure I'd made the right build -- I ended up going 4-0 and winning the whole event. Turns out, turn two Brightblade Stoat into turn three Plumecreed Mentor is a ridiculously powerful opening. I had some really good matches along the way. Special shout-out to my round three opponent, who was a really nice dude and great player with a killer deck. You could feel how much he loved playing the game and it was infectious. After our match ended another player asked him for help with their deck, and he immediately started rebuilding it with them. It's easy to get crabby in this game sometimes but this guy was a great reminder that there can be a lot of joy in it too. It was a pleasure to be across the table from him.
Overall both me and my girlfriend had a great time. I didn't get to see every archetype, but I saw most of them, and I have to say everything felt pretty viable! Obviously once people start drafting we'll get clearer data, but all the decks I saw seemed capable of doing fun and powerful things. After a couple of formats in a row where there were one or two clear Best Decks, I'm optimistic that this one will be a bit more balanced. Really excited for drafts. Super curious about the bat deck in particular.
I gotta say, it's really nice to be fully excited about Magic again. Even if it's only for a couple of months. I've been looking forward to this set since they announced it and so far I think they've nailed it.
This was my takeaway as well. Like, I had two great Mice rares in both White and Red, but literally only had 1 other Mouse card I could even use. And that's not even considering the Valiant triggers for them either!
In retrospect I should have been playing White/Blue with maybe a splash of Black. My White removal was off the hook, and my Blue pool was full of stalling bounce spells and stuff like that. I just got too caught up in the fact that I had literally no Blue Bird creatures at all. I even had that same Plumecreed Mentor + Brightblade Stoat combo you had! But I didn't realize how good that would've been until well into round 2.
I've had a rough start to this draft format so far! Just got my first trophy today (with what I thought was my weakest deck) after a week of struggling to get more than 2-3 wins. I did have one five win deck on release day, but that was the best I'd managed until now. I'm still enjoying it though.
Does anyone here need a prerelease code for Arena? Since they changed it back to being one per account in this set (boooooo), I've got three spares I'd be happy to spread around.
Does anyone here need a prerelease code for Arena? Since they changed it back to being one per account in this set (boooooo), I've got three spares I'd be happy to spread around.
I didn't realize this is how it works, otherwise I'd take it. That stinks!
I've been doing okay in draft so far. I went to FNM last night and went 2-1 with a kinda bad Squirrel + Rat deck. On Arena I've done 2 drafts and started my 3rd tonight. I think I had 2 wins and then 4? My current run is off to a good start with 2 wins and 0 losses. For some reason I keep ending up with a combination of Bats and Rats most of the time. One draft I did make GW rabbits and got a win on turn 4 once, which felt great, but that was quite the exception.
Wooo, got my first 7 win draft! I should've taken a screenshot of my last game, the board state was absurd. Like 9 creatures on their side and 13 on mine, I swung with everyone basically assuming I would hit lethal (I had 2 unblockables and 1 menace). They would've won that match if they hadn't attacked into me, because I was at extremely low life with a Darkstar Augur out that needed to go away so I wouldn't kill myself.
I think I have enough wildcards now to build a new Standard deck, and I'm torn between Bats and Lizards. I have no doubt Lizard aggro would easily let me grind out ranked ladder BO1, but Bats seem more fun...
I think I have enough wildcards now to build a new Standard deck, and I'm torn between Bats and Lizards. I have no doubt Lizard aggro would easily let me grind out ranked ladder BO1, but Bats seem more fun...
I went with Lizards and, folks, that is some fast ladder climbing. I played something like 5-6 matches at Bronze/Silver tonight and didn't lose once, and more than a few times they conceded by like turn 3.
Well dang this looks neat.
Shame it won't be in stores. When I did the chaos sealed event at F2F one of the packs was the first mystery booster and it had some neat stuff in it.
When it goes up as a secret lair I might try to score a box for my local group if possible...
Shame it won't be in stores. When I did the chaos sealed event at F2F one of the packs was the first mystery booster and it had some neat stuff in it.
When it goes up as a secret lair I might try to score a box for my local group if possible...
I am convinced this guy is a bomb in Draft. He's obviously really good in Frogs, but he also has plenty of good bounce targets in every other Green color combo, and if you don't have removal for him he can run away with combat too.
Shout out to the person who dropped a Herd Migration for 5, and then next turn dropped a Temporary Lockdown, thereby winning me the match.
Anyway, apparently I am a Red Deck Liker, which I never thought would happen, but here I am. I'm still climbing the ranked ladder with Rakdos Lizards, but I've got a Mono-Red Prowess deck too that's only needing like 5 more rares. Historically my favorite color is Black, and any combination containing Black is also good. So going full Mono-Red is not something I expected to enjoy.
Anyway, apparently I am a Red Deck Liker, which I never thought would happen, but here I am. I'm still climbing the ranked ladder with Rakdos Lizards, but I've got a Mono-Red Prowess deck too that's only needing like 5 more rares. Historically my favorite color is Black, and any combination containing Black is also good. So going full Mono-Red is not something I expected to enjoy.
No I meant they had Domain 5.
Ah, yep, that makes way more sense. I was wondering if the domain decks were maybe running some kind cost reduction thing now that I wasn't aware of, I've mostly just been drafting since Bloomburrow came out. Haven't been paying too much attention to standard!
Mr Bean
Chief Detective
I drafted Lizards for the first time this weekend and it came together very nicely. I was picking up a bunch of red to start and saw black was open so started grabbing a few black cards at the end of pack 1. Pack 2 I open Gev the black/ red rare so I pick him and go all in on the Lizards.
Gev is a bonkers enabler if you can get him to stick since he pings on cast not enters so all those lizards that get bigger when an opponent loses life get 2 counters - one from the ping and one from Gev.
Ended up going 7-1 with my only loss to a really solid frog deck.
Gev is a bonkers enabler if you can get him to stick since he pings on cast not enters so all those lizards that get bigger when an opponent loses life get 2 counters - one from the ping and one from Gev.
Ended up going 7-1 with my only loss to a really solid frog deck.
Heck yeah, Lizards.
I've been doing a bunch of Arena drafts, and my last 3 drafts have all been passing me combinations of Bats and Lizards. I guess everyone wants to be playing Green. But like... a 12th pick Starseer Mentor or Ravine Raider should really make these people question themselves. Sidenote: Ravine Raider can be scary. Had a match just tonight that forced me to blow hard removal on it just to get it off the board.
I've been doing a bunch of Arena drafts, and my last 3 drafts have all been passing me combinations of Bats and Lizards. I guess everyone wants to be playing Green. But like... a 12th pick Starseer Mentor or Ravine Raider should really make these people question themselves. Sidenote: Ravine Raider can be scary. Had a match just tonight that forced me to blow hard removal on it just to get it off the board.
Duskmourn previews have been neat, but I am waiting to see if this combo ends up being any good.
(Level 2+ Talent, cast the demon, sacrifice 3 permanents and mill them for 6)
You have to hard cast the Excrutiator, and if you have a deck playing Scavenger's Talent you're probably not going to be hard casting a lot of big creatures, but I also think that's why this combo works as an alternate win-con; even if you don't trigger the ETB ability, you'll still get a 6/6 flyer that draws you cards every turn. Plus the Talent doesn't even need to be level 3 if you can find ways to sacrifice 3 things for free.
(Level 2+ Talent, cast the demon, sacrifice 3 permanents and mill them for 6)
You have to hard cast the Excrutiator, and if you have a deck playing Scavenger's Talent you're probably not going to be hard casting a lot of big creatures, but I also think that's why this combo works as an alternate win-con; even if you don't trigger the ETB ability, you'll still get a 6/6 flyer that draws you cards every turn. Plus the Talent doesn't even need to be level 3 if you can find ways to sacrifice 3 things for free.
So, obviously I've been out of Magic for several years now, but is the current pace of new sets coming out actually the norm for Magic nowadays? By my count it's only 7 weeks between Duskmourn's prerelease and Foundations in November, and of course Bloomburrow was 7 weeks ago now as well.
Yes and no, but the short answer is that Foundations screwed up the release pacing this year. It's normal to get four standard sets a year, but with the surprise announcement of Foundations (which was only ~2 months ago) they moved the releases of Bloomburrow and Duskmourn up to make room. It's worth noting that we knew the release dates of Bloomburrow and Duskmourn before they said anything about Foundations, so we knew something was coming, just not what.
Five standard sets in a year is not normal and with Foundations being standard-legal for the next five years, we shouldn't see anything like it again any time soon. Barring any other major shakeups, the next few years should have the usual four standard sets spaced roughly three months apart. Of course this doesn't account for supplemental products like reprint sets, remasters, Universes Beyond sets (sigh), etc. People have been complaining for a while now that Wizards is releasing too many products, and according to Mark Rosewater they're aware of that fact and trying to address it, but there've been zero signs of that actually happening so far.
Anyway, speaking of Duskmourn, I was planning to skip this prerelease because This Product Is Not For Me, but my girlfriend wanted to go and so we went. I'm glad we did because I had fun and ended up going 4-0 again. My very first pack had Chainsaw, Overlord of the Boilerbilges, and Split Up (foil), and luckily I opened enough support to build a deck to play all of them. As much as I intensely dislike almost everything about the set, the limited environment seems a little bit slower than the past few, which is refreshing! It was nice to not lose the game on turn 2 because you don't have a 2-drop. Of course, this is all based on a very small sample size, so my feelings may change after getting more drafts in. But I'm kinda looking forward to doing those drafts now, whereas before tonight I was considering skipping this set entirely. Hopefully it stays fun!
Five standard sets in a year is not normal and with Foundations being standard-legal for the next five years, we shouldn't see anything like it again any time soon. Barring any other major shakeups, the next few years should have the usual four standard sets spaced roughly three months apart. Of course this doesn't account for supplemental products like reprint sets, remasters, Universes Beyond sets (sigh), etc. People have been complaining for a while now that Wizards is releasing too many products, and according to Mark Rosewater they're aware of that fact and trying to address it, but there've been zero signs of that actually happening so far.
Anyway, speaking of Duskmourn, I was planning to skip this prerelease because This Product Is Not For Me, but my girlfriend wanted to go and so we went. I'm glad we did because I had fun and ended up going 4-0 again. My very first pack had Chainsaw, Overlord of the Boilerbilges, and Split Up (foil), and luckily I opened enough support to build a deck to play all of them. As much as I intensely dislike almost everything about the set, the limited environment seems a little bit slower than the past few, which is refreshing! It was nice to not lose the game on turn 2 because you don't have a 2-drop. Of course, this is all based on a very small sample size, so my feelings may change after getting more drafts in. But I'm kinda looking forward to doing those drafts now, whereas before tonight I was considering skipping this set entirely. Hopefully it stays fun!
Why would Wizards change anything if people are willing to throw money at them either way
As I said: they're not. The only time I can think of since I came back to the game that Magic players actually called WotC out on bullshit and voted with their wallets was Aftermath.
I'm gonna try pretty hard not to buy any of the Marvel cards next year. But I already know I will NOT be able to abstain from Final Fantasy...
Anyway, I did a 2-headed giant pre-release over the weekend with my partner. It was actually my first time ever playing 2HG, and I had a pretty good time! We went 1-2, but our last match loss was really quite amusing: one person had a Mindskinner in play, the other one cast a Violent Urge on it with Delirum active to give it double strike, we both milled for 24 cards, which happened to be exactly the number of cards in our decks.
Anyway, I did a 2-headed giant pre-release over the weekend with my partner. It was actually my first time ever playing 2HG, and I had a pretty good time! We went 1-2, but our last match loss was really quite amusing: one person had a Mindskinner in play, the other one cast a Violent Urge on it with Delirum active to give it double strike, we both milled for 24 cards, which happened to be exactly the number of cards in our decks.
It'll be nice to take a year off.
I've done 3 drafts of Duskmourn on Arena so far, with mostly not very good records (my best was 5-3, with WB reanimator). I can tell I still have plenty of room for improvement in my drafting skill, but the matches are all pretty fun anyway. My latest draft was RW and I was feeling pretty good about it after the draft, but most of my games sucked. I definitely overvalued Vicious Clown during picks, because it was super underwhelming in combat. And I didn't even get a chance to play my Jolly Balloon Man (who is super fucking good in draft btw, I splashed for him in WB and it was disgusting what I did with it).
Honestly the reanimator archetype seems like one of the strongest ones, but it does rely on a lot of Uncommons; there aren't many great reanimate targets at Common, but at least there's 1 reanimate spell at Common.
I also love the Room cards. I can only think of a few Rooms that are underwhelming, and there's good ones in all colors at all rarities too... I was not expecting them to play so well!
Honestly the reanimator archetype seems like one of the strongest ones, but it does rely on a lot of Uncommons; there aren't many great reanimate targets at Common, but at least there's 1 reanimate spell at Common.
I also love the Room cards. I can only think of a few Rooms that are underwhelming, and there's good ones in all colors at all rarities too... I was not expecting them to play so well!
17 Lands data is showing WB as one of the three worst performing archetypes, which makes sense to me. Black's commons don't feel super strong or deep, and your deck has to be able to function even if the reanimator plan doesn't work out. It definitely can work, but you probably have to be the only person drafting it in your pod. (The other bottom two are UB and UR, if you were wondering.)
I've been doing okay in Duskmourn so far! I've done six drafts and am net positive so far. I trophied my first draft, and since then I've had two 6-3s, a 4-3 (today), and two 2-3s. I'm excited to keep playing so far, though I wish I didn't hate every aspect of this set aside from the actual gameplay. I can't take any of these card names seriously.