MTG thread

Flight_sl said:

Control and Esper dragons have had some time in play due to the shifting meta but at last weeks World Championship even though half the field played Dig Through Time not a single one of the top four contained a single blue card. Whereas while 8 of the 24 were Abzan three of those were in the top 4. I'll be glad to see the back of Courser and Thoughtseize next month and the end of Rhino in March/April.

Hoping to see more Blue over the coming months but losing Ashiok hurts. Not to mention the scry lands which I feel are comparatively strong for control.

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That was a 14 round tournament with only 4 rounds of Standard.

lendarios_sl said:

Also as a personal note, Im the kind of magic player that brings Hivemind to a 6 player Commander, via academy rector, then busts out an actual pen and paper to keep track of spells, then says pass.

I dont win, but it is ungodly fun.

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I do the same in my Nekusar deck. Very fun deck and it wins a ton =)

a_skeleton_03_sl said:

Interesting article on the new lands.

The Financial Impact of BFZ: Full Art Basics, Shocks, Fetches and New Duals

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That was quite the read

a_skeleton_03_sl said:

Interesting article on the new lands.

The Financial Impact of BFZ: Full Art Basics, Shocks, Fetches and New Duals

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The other thing I love about the slowlands in Modern is they provide a budget option that doesn't cost too many percentage points. While this might not be apparent right away (as Standard demand could keep slowlands at near shock prices), over the long term this cycle should give players a cost effective option to play a "real" (i.e. fetch for duals) Modern mana base at a fraction of the cost. This impacts some decks more than others. For instance, in UW Control you can literally play all KTK fetches (at about one-third the cost of ZEN fetches) and all slowlands (in the future, perhaps one-half to one-quarter the cost of RTR shocks) and lose almost nothing in terms of match win percentage. The new cycle also works with the Core Set buddy lands (e.g. Glacial Fortress) which further increases the budget mana base potential.

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Never thought of it this way. That's actually pretty cool.

I hope Whisperwood Elemental gets banned.

Dedface_sl said:

I hope Whisperwood Elemental gets banned.

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There is no chance of this happening.

lendarios_sl said:

I'm talking about counterspell the effect, not the card. On legacy too many decks use the counterspell effect to win. Do you want a list of the decks that use 10 or more counterspeels effects on the main deck?
Because of the top of my head here are some.
RUG delver
Miracles,
Melfork,
BuG Delver

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Have you played any of these? If so you ought to know that's not how they win. Rug Denver plays 4 FoW so it has game vs combo, and then 4-6 soft permission. It's about early pressure, not lol I win.

Miracles is true control, and counters are always a big part of that, but it still wins off its namesake cards. I really think you're letting your preference for combo get the better of you.

Heylel_sl said:

Rug Denver plays 4 FoW so it has game vs combo, and then 4-6 soft permission. It's about early pressure, not lol I win.

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This is only partly true. RUG Delver's objective is to play an early threat and then protect it through disruption. It's an added bonus that counterspells are very strong against combo.

But I haven't seen a competitive Legacy Merfolk list or BUG Delver list that runs much more than 4 FOWs (and like has been mentioned moreso to stop the 1st turn cheese decks).

Let's not forgot to mention High Tide and Omnitell as combo decks that rely heavily on counterspells too.

I don't know how people will feel about me posting a deck. But, this is the only place I feel like I could get some decent feedback.
My small playgroup is dipping its toe into modern, but the current group rules are no direct copying the big name decks (splinter twin etc) and there has to be a theme. I made a mono black Liliana deck (has to have 1 of each Liliana) and the rest is a very different version of pox.

74 cards, 14 sideboard

2 Tectonic Edge
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Polluted Delta
17 Swamp
25 lands

1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
1 Kalastria Highborn
4 Bloodghast
2 Vampire Nighthawk
2 Nyxathid
1 Liliana, Heretical Healer
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Vampire Nocturnus
1 Phyrexian Obliterator
1 Vengeful Pharaoh
15 creatures

2 Raven's Crime
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Doom Blade
1 Go for the Throat
2 Victim of Night
4 Smallpox
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Read the Bones
2 Hero's Downfall
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
1 Liliana Vess
20 other spells

Sideboard
1 Bloodline Keeper
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Go for the Throat
3 Doom Blade
4 Dash Hopes
1 Vampire Nighthawk
2 Temporal Extortion
1 Crux of Fate
14 sideboard cards

Any ideas on how I can make the deck better while still keeping the theme? I want to be able to take the deck out of the group occasionally and win a match or two down at our FLGS.

Also, what happened to pox? I came back to the game with khans after a break and have been surprised to see no one playing it outside of Raphael Levy's Loam Pox.

Beta is becoming less of a shitty waste of time. Slowly but it's happening so thought I'd post this up in case anyone was interested.

Hello Beta Testers!

As you probably know, our last Constructed Leagues Beta came to a close recently and Leagues will be available to play live on Magic Online on September 9th! Thank you for your help getting Constructed Leagues launched!

As has become our tradition, we wanted to share some information from the last Beta and also give a sneak peak of what's coming up next.

This Leagues Beta had 541 users log in to play 3036 League matches! We averaged 250 active users per day in the League, which was a great way to stress test the system.

We had about 59 total reports that came in from the Beta. Of these reports were 12 new bugs, 6 specific to the League itself and 6 card-related bugs. Also happy to report that we had 0 bug reports that our QA team couldn't reproduce or found to be invalid - so props to you all for your excellent bug writing skills! There were a few bugs that were caught that are more visible, and so a special thanks goes out to:

StevetheDM for finding that when viewing your League deck, when you return to the deck after leaving the deck viewer it does not remember the sorting options you had selected.
Cyphern for finding that the flip side of Origins planeswalkers has the wrong background when viewed from the Collection.
Tmurdock for finding a scenario where upon joining a League for the second time, cards from previous iterations of a deck appear in your sideboard.
Leonard_McCoy for finding that planeswalkers' loyalty counters in the bottom right corner display differently based on whether you zoom in or not.
Mundisv for finding that navigating too quickly to the League can cause you to search for opponents in "Stage 0" and prevents you from being able to find a match.
Fomris for finding that exiling cards with Ugin inappropriately causes those cards to be placed underneath Ugin on the battlefield instead of in the Exile area.
TallNorthernGuy for finding a bug where spells appear tapped on the Stack when you cast them.
MichaelHani for finding that Starfield of Nyx incorrectly overrides Myth Realized's ability to set its own power and toughness.
Looking ahead to the Battle for Zendikar, we anticipate that the Beta will open on September 18rd. Get ready!

We have a couple of exciting plans for the Beta, including a Beta-testers only prerelease event and a scheduled BFZ draft event with Wizards of the Coast employees. Hopefully we'll have another surprise or two to add in, but stay tuned for a more official calendar when we get closer to the Beta start.

In the meantime, we're always looking for more people to join the Beta program. Please encourage your friends to apply by visitinghere.

We're continuing to improve the Closed Beta experience and hope you continue to help us make Magic Online the best it can be. If you have any general feedback about the Beta please feel free to leave us a message on the forums.

Thank you for all of your testing!


The Magic Online Team
1600 Lind Ave. SW, Ste. 400
Renton, WA 98057

The constructed leagues are a sad, sad use of the term leagues - hopefully the limited leagues when they're in are close to the old leagues.

a_skeleton_03_sl said:

Not thrilled with all the landfall in BFZ.

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It's one of the main mechanics of the set, not sure what you expected.

We just haven't seen our Lotus Cobras/Emeria Angels/Rampaging Baloths yet. This iteration of landfall has been pretty underwhelming, comparatively. Of course, we've seen like, a fifth of the set, so there's more to come.