MTG thread

Dimir owned the prerelease where I was at. 3 of the top 4 were Dimir, the fourth was Gruul. I placed 4th out of 30. Pretty happy with that considering it was my first sealed deck tournament in 15 years.

Cipher is a much stronger mechanic than it appears on paper, especially in limited. I pulled two Stolen Identities and raped face with them pretty much every game I drew it.

1-1 dropped the midnight prerelease with an ok Orzhov deck, Friends and I went to a noon one where my simic pack gave me a near perfect orzhov deck there I 4-0 with no game loses at all.

Extort and Cipher are both powerful in longer games, just as Battalion and Bloodrush are powerful in shorter ones. The guy who beat me drafted a damn lucky Dimir deck (2 Aberrations, 2 Stolen Identity, 2 Dimir charm) and supplemented it with a splash of Orzhov white (he pulled a pair of the 4W exile card). Every game he won, he did so on low life having extorted me for 5 or 6 to stay alive.

Went 4-0 with Gruul, opening a Domri in my box didn't hurt. Madcap Skills proved to be extremely brutal with bloodrush.

In the two headed giant sealed my team lost turn 6 to a gruul and Orz team. The gruul guy(splashing white) had a 2/2 with Madcap Skills on it(fucking awesome card) then blood rushed it with the 5/1 then doublestriked it Boros Charm. Since we couldnt block (only had one guy not untapped from attacking) his partner used the Orz guildmage to give it lifelink and then make us loose whatever life when they gained. Was something like 40+ life in one swing. LOL. This set can get swingy QUICK

I hope you laughed and shook thier hand for such an awesome death. Sounds like they got exactly what they needed to win that match.

I went 2-0-2 with a Orzhov deck. I pulled some nice bombs and then just built defense till I could play them, I think I went over board defensive and ended up drawing twice I had a good shot at going 4-0 I think.

I know I asked about MTGO, but is there anyone using Cockatrice? I fired it up to test out some GTC cards integrated into my Naya standard deck. It's a little clunky at first but works pretty well for play testing.

When do you lose mana in your mana pool, is it at the end of every phase or at the end of your turn?

It doesn't make much of a difference, but it is at the end of each step.

Mana empties between phases in a turn. It does make a difference - in addition players no longer are subject to mana burn from keeping excess mana in their pool. I think this changed with Core 2010.

And one more question, does protection from a color prevent that damage or is it reduced to 0 dmg. For instance if I were to skullcrack in response to their faith's shield with fateful hour active choosing red, would bonfire dmg still kill the creatures.

Assuming the stack is resolving Crack Shield Bonfire the bonfire failed because the player gains protection from red and bonfire targets the player. Otherwise bonfire damage would have still worked on those creatures. Protection stops targeting from the colored source and prevents damage of the colored source among other things.

Was still thinking of sticking to my g/r deck but have my sideboard be a complete burn package swap with a beats rush main, having them sub in a bunch of creature removal only to be faced with straight burn.

Protection of a chosen characteristic offers the following (with the easy mnemonic DEBT):
Damage from sources is prevented.
Enchanting
Blocking and blocked by creatures that share a characteristic with what you have protection from.
Targeting

anyone still play, or has a few older cards they want to trade for standard stuff? looking for 4x Mutavaults and some aether vials

its that time again ....