MTG thread

Trying to get a deck together for Fate Reforged game day this weekend. I've been pretty much out of MTG since Theros game day due to work and don't really know the cards from BNG, NYX, M15 that well, so it's been a pain in the ass learning all those cards and trying to drop the rust and horrible misplays.

RW aggro
The plan is to play at various shops tonight, Wednesday, and side games at FNM since my shop is draft that night. My first go with this deck was at FNM last week going 1-2, but my round 4 opponent dropped so I don't really count that as a win.

I was thinking about changing it to 3 Soulfire Grand Master & 2 Seeker of the Way, or even 4 & 1, since the Grand Master instant/sorcery trigger + buy back seems more beneficial than running the deck as is. As for the side board I'm kind of stuck because I know I don't have enchantment removal in there, Wild Slash is good for the mirror, and Abzan Advantage seems so-so despite the bolster 1. Would I be better off dropping 1 Arc Lightning, 1 Abzan Advantage, 1 something and adding 2 Erase, 1 Wild Slash or something entirely different?

As far as how the deck runs I think it will be a lot of fun and should be able to do decent/well. Last week at FNM was the first time I played it, going 1-2 with a free win in round 4 becasue my opponent dropped. What I've played against at FNM/playtesting:
Any help with the side board would be awesome and all input would be helpful.

I went to a PPTQ last weekend and sucked with Jeskai Tokens. Any advice on how to get better/tweak the deck for the games day? I haven't been playing as much recently but I'm doing worse with a real tournament deck than I did designing my own white weenies last standard.

I have the standard list, swapped 2 Seeker of the Way for Soulfire Grandmaster (was quite good) and 2 Chadra for Shaman of the Hunt (never drew it). I wonder if there is some sort of Jeskai Heroic deck without the janky combo.

Justin Cohen / Sam Black amulet bloom at the Pro Tour looked pretty intense, watched most of the tournament just for that deck. (Modern)

businesscats_sl said:

Any help with the side board would be awesome and all input would be helpful.

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Is this Nestico's list? Looks similar. I think going into Soulfire Grand Master weakens you. The card is slow and outclassed as a body. I'm trying to decide if I go back to Abzan where I had a lot of success or stick with this Temur Aggro by Jacob Eckert:


It has a lot of gas versus the Sultai control lists I'm seeing all over. My main complaint is Knuckleblade. I always find I'm spending mana on more hasty threats rather than using any of his abilities. I'm tempted to try Shu Yun in his spot and see if I can get some burst out of him.

Vitality_sl said:

Justin Cohen / Sam Black amulet bloom at the Pro Tour looked pretty intense, watched most of the tournament just for that deck. (Modern)

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So many people are rushing to build that deck who are going to fail hard with it. Bloom Titan isn't an easy deck to play and requires quite a bit of work to thread the needle. If Sam Black is having to tap out the math with his hands, your average Tuesday Night Modern player is going to want to smash their own head in.

That deck looks incredible, I had to look up how it actually works.

I'm going to guess that mulliganing will be a big issue. Some decks are going to be able to kill or chump block x4 6/6 creatures too, did they have any lands which give trample?

I'm looking forward to dropping a Chalice of the Void for 0 then killing 4 titans with Cranial Plaing

I really need to stop reading this thread. My wallet is already crying from the purchases it knows are coming.

What makes Primeval Titan work is that it has trample, so no need for trample lands. The deck is actually fairly resilient. While hands without Amulet of Vigor suck, the deck can still ramp up pretty fast and being able to kill along two completely different axes is important. I played the deck for several months because I liked its playstyle and what Heylel said is true: The deck is hard to play. There are a lot of complicated decisions especially around what lands you fetch with Primeval Titan and when to use a pact without killing yourself.

Justin Cohen was actually the guy that gave me my second loss in the last round of day 1 in GP Omaha. Of course he was playing this deck while I was on Bogle. It was pretty cool to me because Sam Black was intently interested in our match (Sam was on UR Delver like most of the room).

I beat Cohen in game 1. Game 2 I didn't have enough mana to play aggressively enough to win before he could cast Hive Mind and Summoner's Pact (rough part with me being on only 2 mana). Game 3 I had a path for his first Primetime, but he drew a second to be able to win. Tough matchup for sure. He never had the turn 1 amulet, but had a turn 1 Serum Visions each game, which also seems pretty powerful.

Quick notice for any posters in the southeast region. Giga-Bites Cafe in Atlanta was robbed last night and a considerable amount of singles and sealed inventory were stolen. If they're smart (and being thieves who robbed a store with video security, they aren't...) they'll get outside the area before trying to unload it. All of the owners here are in contact with one another.

Heylel_sl said:

All of the owners here are in contact with one another.

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You would think that most hobby store owners wouldn't talk to each other (due to competition) but from my experience in MN, most owners talk about issues or product all the time. I worked as a "fun" job at a store (mostly running pre-releases) for a while and the way the store owner put it is that, "They usually want more stores around (as long as it isn't too close to each other) because the more stores usually means the more players and thus the more tournement / singles sales. Now that is also a double edged sword because you get a lot of bargain shoppers hopping from store to store looking for the best singles prices but with the internet on everyone's phone, that isn't that much of an issue anymore. It got to the point that the store stopped putting price stickers on the singles and just looked up the cards on starcity. Sure the prices overall are higher then the others but we used the site for both buy and sell so it averaged out and the main reasoning behind it is that they keep up on their prices.

Back on topic, I as surprises at the store owner "community" in my area as it looks like its more of a mom and pop "us vrs the Walmart" then "cut throating" each other.

That's typically true. It seems to come down to individual personalities more than business. We had one local guy who was just plain weird. I would drive past his shop to the next nearest one just so I could avoid getting cornered in a conversation. He just had one of those vibes that something was really off. In addition, he was really cutthroat with the other owners in the area and would start little price wars or try to steal business while all the others were working together. Eventually he sold the shop off to a new fellow who is pretty nice and mostly caters to a casual crowd which is now thriving.

Every owner in Atlanta recognizes that Supergames is the king of the hill. They're one of the largest online shops in the entire country, and easily the largest Magic shop in town with an inventory (and prices) to rival StarCity. As best I can tell, Super doesn't make a lot of effort to throw its weight around and has even helped out other locals with inventory issues and things like that. What's good for them is good for everyone, and we have a LOT of stores in Atlanta. There are six hobby stores within 45 minutes of my house ranging from tiny, two-table mom and pops up to Supergames where they can host 200+ person PTQs.

We've also had a lot of burglaries in the last two years. Folks who follow Magic online may remember the Cam Adkins robberies last year where a minor celebrity pro player and L1 judge was arrested along with his roommate and girlfriend for burglarizing the shop he used to work at. He was also suspected of robbing two others after working events for them or attending as a player. It would not at all surprise me if the burglary last night ends up being a pair of recognized players from the local community. It's never just one guy. That much stupid takes two people convincing themselves it's worth the risk.

We have 11 game stores in Omaha. They all want to murder each other, but smile and play nice for Magic Events, because the Magic community has put stores out of business here for dicking with the "OBTAIN MAXIMUM EVENTS" set-up. You can play a magic tournament of pretty much any format during the week, and for draft/standard, you can play a tournament any night.

All but one of the stores communicates and attempts to catch stolen collections. If you call the 11th store to report a stolen collection, they're like "Sweet, cheap magic cards, thanks for the heads up!"

How on earth does that eleventh store even stay in business? Christ, what is it called? I'll make sure I never buy a damn thing from them on TCG.

The Atlanta stores compete sure, but they cooperate a lot more. For one thing, they NEED the local judge community like never before. The switch to PPTQs has opened up competitive play to shops other than the small subset that were actually able to seat 100+ players, and every last one of them needs a L2 or the event can't fire. Plenty of stores have L1s on staff, but most of them don't have an L2 judge. There are lots of reasons, but the big one is that L2s are expected to be area judges that work events at more than one location. Shop owners aren't keen on working for one another OR having the competition running their events, and that includes the revolving door of part-time college kid L1s that they have working the counters. If they don't play nice, the community (and by extension, the L2s) are a lot less likely to be there for them.

Random Magic story: I'm a history teacher these days and I noticed some kids playing Magic yesterday in school. I decided I'd teach them some TCG history today during a break and took a few of my old cards to school: "Drop of Honey" from Arabian Nights and "Mirror Universe" from Legends. The kids had a great time and were surprised when I told them these cards were 4 years older than them. Shit like this makes me happy I'm a gamer (and a teacher too sometimes).

Both of those used to be quite valuable. Mirror Universe was the most expensive card in Legends for a very long time. It's way down the list now, but back in the day it was comparable to a Mox.

Yeah, I used to combo it with Lich back in the day or burn my life away with a Channel or simply take a mana burn. I don't think I ever ran Drop of Honey in a deck, but I'm not sure.

Universe was a lot more awesome back when you died at the end of the phase instead of immediately

Yeah, getting rid of mana burn didn't help either. I suppose many vintage players are happy now, since they can Mana Drain at will.
Any way I think Legends must have been the weirdest set ever. Approx. 300 totally crap cards and then 8 cards people were trading heavily for: Mirror Universe, Underworld Dreams, In the Eye of Chaos, Concordant Crossroads (because it was played as a way to get rid of another Enchant World like Land's Edge), Land Tax, The Abyss, Mana Drain and Nether Void.
There were so many issues with the way it was packaged and distributed too: e.g. where I live we never saw a Mana Drain although it was just an uncommon. You could buy 10 boxes and never draw some uncommons because there was a mistake made in the packaging factory. In other locales there would only be Mana Drains (so to speak) as uncommon. For years Legends was the hardest set to complete, there was no internet. I had to travel to Germany to complete the set, I live in Belgium and only a select number of shops sold Magic and they were all supplied by the same distributor.
And some of the artwork... just look at Invoke Prejudice. They can't do stuff like this now.

Heylel_sl said:

Both of those used to be quite valuable. Mirror Universe was the most expensive card in Legends for a very long time. It's way down the list now, but back in the day it was comparable to a Mox.

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Mirror was more expensive than mana drain?