Board 8 > Magic the Gathering topic: How did that purge before Prerelease

(+) Yeah! (+)

i guess i was fortunate enough to pull two skittering surveyors and a llanowar elf in my pool

16 lands (green/black/red splash) felt like too much
---

Thats... usually too little. How low was your curve?
---

I assume you want to skew towards 17-18 in this format due to kicker being a good mana sink, but having multiple mana sources as spells tends to push it down instead, so it's not that surprising.
---

18 is a baseline in this sealed format for sure. The format is very slow and getting to the 8/9 mana kickers is totally viable. Kicking Fight With Fire feels really good.

Also the removal in red, white and black is excellent, partially because of the slow speed. The 4 and 5 mana removal spells are very good and a lot of them are instant speed and unconditional or as good as.
---

I think it depends on how many kicker cards you have in your deck. I'd play 18 lands if you have a bunch, but if you only have one or two, 17 is probably safe. Your curve is going to be centered around 3-4-5 drops way more than the normal 2-3-4 though, so I don't think I'd ever go lower than 17 unless I had like 3 Llanowar Elves in my deck.
---

trdl23 posted...

Thats... usually too little. How low was your curve?

Really? I always run 24/16 in pre-releases.
---

17 is usually the baseline in sealed.
---

i was really torn between putting 16 and 17 in my deck, but thankfully this format was pretty slow and maybe i was lucky with land draws, plus i had the 3 mana generators in my deck.

if i didn't draw my removal flyers just kinda ruined me unfortunately

Kazarov, Sengir Pureblood
Torgaar, Famine Incarnate
Thorn Elemental
Whisper, Blood Liturgist
2x The Mending of Dominaria (this is why i didn't need as many lands i guess)
2x Slimefoot, the Stowaway
The Eldest Reborn
a bunch of saproling generators
removal
8 forests
7 (or 8 maybe i can't remember) swamp
1 mountain
---

Depends on the speed and gimmick of the format. In Ixalan pre-Rivals, the format was quite fast, so low-to-the-ground decks could get away with 16 lands. Still, 23-17 is the norm for Limited.
---

Ah, with mana sinks like Slimefoot and 7 drops, I definitely think you should not go below 17. It's just so easy for these cards to make up for excess lands. Your deck also sounds insane incidentally.

Also Mending of Dominaria. Card advantage engines are another good reason to play excess lands. If you expect to be drawing 5 more cards than your opponent over a game, it doesn't matter if you draw three more lands than them.
---

trdl23 posted...

How many extra lands are we talking?

I ran 18. Dropped it down to 17 after my first match and it was a bit better.
---

yeah, i felt like my losses were due to incorrect play rather than a poor deck this time around

my only deckbuilding problem was that i didn't have enough answers to flyers. i was low on removal and didn't have many flyers of my own

one of my losses was due to poor play (will be putting a die on my deck to remind me to use EoT abilities), but the other was due to serra angel + that double dragon kicker swinging for too much
---

I don't know about you guys, but at my prerelease it seemed like everyone was playing u/w flyers with Tetsuko. It got kind of repetitive honestly :/ That's definitely an issue that draft improves on.
---

Flying creatures destroyed me. I had no answer at all. That one pegasus that made another creature flying singlehandedly destroyed me a couple times.
---

I think I'm only putting Karn and Dauntless Bodyguard in my cube from this set. I thought there would be more, but it's tough to find room.
---

Shalai has to be able to make it, right?
---

when/how do you all play with your cubes?
---

I count Shalai as a Selesnya card, and my guild sections are pretty tight, so probably not. Maybe in the future I'll take another look at including her.

I tend to cube around once a month with my group and we generally have around 6 people.
---

Huh, I count her as a mono-white card with incidental upside, same way as I count Tasigur as mono-black.
---

I generally use color identity as to where I slot the card, rather that just mana cost, because I want the cards to be taken full advantage of in most situations.

Even something like Vedalken Shackles I count as a blue card.
---

I used to do that but ran into the same problem as you my multicolor slots just got clogged. I do it more subjectively now.

Shackles is definitely a blue card though.
---

I like trying to keep multicolor cards to a minimum anyway because I think it makes the draft environment a bit better, so I don't mind having the slots be really tight.

Its probably been a while since I've posted it so here's my list updated with Dominaria stuff.

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/27702
---

nice looking cube !
---

oh, and what do you use for the proxies?
---

Just an print out of the card on printer paper, and then slide that in the sleeve in front of some other random card. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done, and the cube is double sleeved so you dont really notice the extra bulk.
---

I'll try to update my CubeTutor list after my trip this weekend. It's been a while for me.
---

Played round 1 of my first Dominaria draft, immediately traumatized. Game 1 my opponent plays Phyrexian Scriptures while I'm stumbling and then Rona to get it back. Game 2 I mostly just play creatures and removal and not much happens. Game 3 is an insane back and forth where my opponent chooses to play a Phyrexian Scriptures while I control only artifact creatures, solely for the +1/+1 counter, kills the Zahid I'd been punching them with using Yawgmoth's Vile Offering while getting back their big Vampire, and then the turn before I'm about to kill them, slams Primevals' Glorious Rebirth, bringing back Danitha, Arvad, and Kazarov, which all have haste since it was Garna turning it on.

I chump block down to 1 while my opponent goes back up to 13. My board is Howling Golem and Valduk. My opponent knows I have a Run Amok in hand. And what do I play? Karn's Temporal Sundering, bouncing Danitha. My opponent even has a Syncopate in hand, but is tapped down too much and can't stop me. 2 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 3 = 13.

Complete absurdity the whole way through.
---

My first few Dominaria drafts have not gone well. The MTGO shuffler has been unkind.

I did decide to just crack my leftover Rivals packs seeing as theyre only worth like 1.25 tix now, and got a Phoenix and foil Azors Gateway. So at least those plus the Lyra I got today freerolled all my busted drafts.
---

I 3-0'd mine just now! It was a fairly mediocre UR Wizards deck, though Zahid and Karn's Temporal Sundering were nice. I think aside from round 1 my opponents didn't end up putting up much of a fight. In particular, game 3 of round 2, I had out a 5/4 flying Keldon Raider and Howling Golem against my opponent's 2 loyalty Karn and Saproling token. I have some decent cards in hand, like Temporal Sundering and Academy Journeymage. It's my opponent's turn and they have 7 cards in hand pre-Karn. They have a Mammoth Spider and Gift of Growth exiled that they can get back. They're at 20. The sky is the limit here in terms of what they can do. The game could go anywhere. They could easily find blockers or removal for my flier, even if Karn dies, and stall the game out until they kick their Josu Vess. Maybe I draw one of my legends and get to kill them with Temporal Sundering.

Then they time out.
---

I had one deck I thought was bonkers. Mostly white with a splash of blue. Lyra, Baird, Danitha, Raff, In Bolass Clutches, tons of fliers, decent removal, good curve. Then just never drew a good hand in any of my matches and had to mull at least once in almost every game.
---

I broke the format.



Actually only went 1-2 with this, but this honestly was just like two unlucky breaks away from being 3-0. I won round 1 2-0 without any issue against a R/W deck. Round 2 we went to game 3 against another R/W deck and he hit all his fliers and I missed on all my removal. He also sided in like 10 extra cards. Then round 3, I was up 1-0 against U/G and had a nice hand to go off with Excavator, but then got stick on 3 lands for like 4 turns. Couldn't find an Excavator in game 3 and he had too much pressure on the board.

There might actually be something to this deck, though it requires a real lot of uncommons to make it work. I would have liked another Homarid Explorer or two, and a third Excavator. Maybe some better black removal. Not sure about the Howling Golems, they did help a bit when I couldn't find an Excavator, but giving the opponent a card obviously isn't ideal. I might try this deck again sometime when I see some Excavators table in the first pack.
---

Up

Probably gonna do a draft of DOM next week. For now I've mostly just been messing around with Arena. It feels good to play with Llanowar Elves in a Standard set again.
---

man, i wish the clock was different in mtga- either quicker or with a visual timer or something

been playing against a lot of slow-player blue-black control, if you couldn't tell. it's not even fun when i win...
---

Yeah the timer issue is not perfect. It feels like its somehow too slow for normal spell/response things and way too fast for things like blockers. Plus yeah, so many control players taking 60 seconds to decide if they want to cast Essence Scatter (hint: you do).
---

So we're seeing obnoxious price spikes from speculators buying out Reserve List stuff. Mox Diamond is now $500+, Tabernacle's around 3K, Nether Void is like $1.1K (and nobody even uses that card except Cube players.) Expect Moat, etc. to start spiking as well.

Fuck the Reserve List, man.
---

Went for a draft this weekend and my first round opponent had a ridiculous deck.

Foil Karn, Weatherlight, and Lyra.

Plus he had Thran Temporal Gateway so in our second game he was literally just "flashing" big legendaries in. Still can't believe he opened three mythics in three packs.
---

Damn.

Just had my first draft as well. I was on U/B fliers and whooped my round one opponent pretty handily. Round two my opponent had Forebearer's Blade on that 1/1 first strike Aven and I just couldn't race it.
---

In my second draft, I went too deep. Drafted BUG control with finishers of Rite of Belzenlok, Multani, and Sylvan Awakening. Unfortunately I only went 1-2, but I think if I had some better card advantage tools or counterspells I could have gotten there. The games where I won looked like absolute stomps, I would have 5-10 cards left in deck and a massive board and Sylvan Awakening for millions. But my opponents kept playing cards I had a hard time doing anything about, like Teferi and Icy Manipulator, which is why the lack of counterspells was particularly tough.
---

PSA: Boko made Day 2 of the team GP!
---

Awesome!
---

Congrats to Boko!

trdl23 posted...

So we're seeing obnoxious price spikes from speculators buying out Reserve List stuff. Mox Diamond is now $500+, Tabernacle's around 3K, Nether Void is like $1.1K (and nobody even uses that card except Cube players.) Expect Moat, etc. to start spiking as well.

Fuck the Reserve List, man.

Those prices are insane. I picked up my Mox Diamond playset a couple of years ago for 30 each, and haven't check on the price since. Fuck the reserve list is right.
---

Yeah Im glad I got my diamond a few years ago for like $40. Same with Gaeas Cradle, thats up to like $500 now too.
---

I wish I pulled the trigger on a Cradle back then too. I'm pretty sure I could borrow that one from a friend if I needed it.
---

Reserved list is great. Bad for new players, but older players had plenty of warning.

I always giggle though when people say it makes them unable to play Legacy. No one is forcing you to not use Shock Lands...
---

TomNook posted...

I always giggle though when people say it makes them unable to play Legacy. No one is forcing you to not use Shock Lands...

Running strictly worse cards isn't usually what people have in mind when they say they want to play a format competitively.
---

I bought heavily into Legacy years ago so it really isn't stopping me from playing any deck I care about. I have my staples. Fewer new players getting into the format is also bad for me. I care more about having people to play than watching my collection rise in value - I bought the cards to use them.
---

Tom Nook living up to his screen name
---

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

TomNook posted...

I always giggle though when people say it makes them unable to play Legacy. No one is forcing you to not use Shock Lands...

Running strictly worse cards isn't usually what people have in mind when they say they want to play a format competitively.

I saw actual calculations one time on how often it equals a game loss, and while it matters sometimes, especially against certain decks...its not as huge as you'd think. Definitely not enough to make a format unplayable.
---

ITT, dual lands are the only barrier to entry in Legacy (let alone Vintage).

I mean, it used to be true to a point, but speculators have ended that.
---

TomNook posted...

Reserved list is great. Bad for new players...

TomNook posted...

Reserved list is great. Bad for new players...

TomNook posted...

Reserved list is great. Bad for new players...

Also, this part alone deserves special attention for how LOL it is.
---