I've seen a delver deck make relatively effective use of it with Ponder. *shrug* Whatever floats your boat though, I guess.
And it works pretty well in limited, since Avacyn is such a slow set.

 

Who likes Dream Halls?:awesome

Avacyn limited isn't as slow as it was advertised. There are enough good Human and other low CMC cards that Gio's strategy of Bears.dec can easily work in both sealed and draft. Synergy is the key. Without it, you have a slow, grindy deck. With it, turn 4 or 5 wins are not impossible.

 

best standard deck i've seen yet (i stole it from a friend who stole it from some pro.. the card list isnt exact cause i was dumb and didnt copy paste it..)

5 swamp
4 plains
4 island
3 isolated chapel
2 vault of the archangel
2 darkslick shores
2 seachrome coast
3 evolving wilds

2 snapcaster mage
3 oblivion ring
3 mana leak
3 think twice
2 day of judgement
2 gideon jura
2 curse of death's hold
1 elspeth tirel
1 go for the throat
2 doom blade
2 tragic slip
3 forbidden alchemy
3 liliana of the veil
2 consecrated sphinx
3 lingering souls
1 batterskull

havent beaten it.. and havent lost with it yet (not that i've played anyone very good with it)

 

Esper control huh? I run grixis control myself in standard, but I was this close to going esper, the fact that I had Olivia is what swayed me.

The issue I have with esper compared to grixis is that I while I would agree that esper can handle aggro easier than grixis, being able to drop a devils play as an alternate win condition is something that I've fallen back on more than not, especially vs other control decks. Meanwhile, while I can't say that this is true as I haven't played esper, I look that that and think it could easily get out controlled, since all it's running for counters are mana leaks. To each is own I guess.

On the topic of Temporal Mastery, I've got to side with Gio here. I don't play anything but standard atm, so I'm not sure if brain storm or Jace Mind Sculptor would make it playable (hes legal in eternal right?), but I do know in standard it will fall flat without ponder. And even then, too often it's an explorer. It's like that big fatty you see and get excited about, and imagine all the crazy combo's you can do, but then hes just clogging your hand and then gets doom bladed the moment he comes out. If you play it, I imagine more often than not you'll just be hoping the card you draw with it will be the vapor snag you need.

 

I was thinking of buying a box of the new set AR, do you guys think it's worth it? Or should I wait for another set to come out? I have limited funds so I really want to make sure I'm making the right decision here.

 

Don't buy boxes. They're a universally poor investment (unless you can get one in Korean, Japanese, or Russian.) I was just happy to see SCG sold out of Flame Rifts at 2 dollars each in Providence this weekend.

 

Why a poor investment? If nothing else, they provide good trade fodder - You're basically guaranteed a mythic or three. [Anecdotally, I opened two boxes and they paid for themselves in cards.]

That said, my favorite thing about Magic is opening packs, so buying boxes is awesome for me, even if I didn't get anything cool.

 

Russian, really Giovanni? Know where I can get my hands on some? As a native speaker, it'd be awesome to have some.

 

MSRP on a pack is 3.99. If you buy a box then you're paying something like 2.77/pack instead. A bulk rare is 10 cents, a bulk mythic is 25 cents, and that's where the overwhelming majority of your rares will end up. Yeah, there's a chance at opening the really sweet mythic, hell it might even be foil, but your packs are generally not paying for themselves long term if they're in English. Also, when you say your boxes paid for themselves, are you going on an eBay minus fees/MOTL basis or a retail basis? If the latter, I can assure you that they haven't as retail values are always ultra inflated versus those two. As you are certainly not retail . . .

Well, you see where I'm going with this.

Some stores carry them (something weird about agreements with WOTC. Not quite certain of the specifics since, supposedly, WOTC doesn't want non-English distributed in the US -- pretty sure they reward some retailers with boxes though based on conversations I've had with some store-owners.)

Generally though, if you're really hankering for them, Star City Games sells them. Otherwise, I'll see if I have any connections that can get Russian language cards/packs. The answer is probably no (although I can get Korean ones.)

 

If you're running Magic as a business, then yeah, boxes aren't worth it.
If you want to run a six-player sealed game with your friends? Why not. Or if you like opening packs and have the cash to drop.

 

Ebay minus fees. But I got very lucky.

It seems that most rare play sets are going for $.50 a card right now, for Avacyn. Not sure if it's 'new set' syndrome or what have you. Some are significantly more, some are a bit less. By 'paid for itself' I only mean the top 12 cards - I still have two huge stacks of cards that probably have some decent cards in them.

In general, from what I hear, new boxes usually lose you some money, but if you enjoy opening and playing with them, why not. They *can* net pretty good profit, but it's a gamble.

 

New set syndrome. Prices will deflate to sane levels in 3 weeks.

 

Sealed product is like a lottery ticket. Sometimes you get something worth it, but most of the time you do not.

The plus side for Avacyn though is that it has something for every kind of player, and for every format. There's a lot of value to be had from AVR, so this is one of the few times that you might hit more than miss when it comes to sealed product.

 

So yeah, finished 5-3 at SCG Madison with an aggro deck. Bumped into Combo 5 out of 8 rounds, so I'm happy that I had a winning record at the end of the day. Also beat RUG twice and Maverick once.

 

General consensous at my LGS is that we all suck at sealed. So to fix that, we started up a Sealed League. Buy in is $3 + the cost of the packs, and we add one pack every week for four weeks. The winners get store credit. Repeat until we run out of money/interest.

No matches yet, but I like me deck so far.

The rest of my pool is okay. I'm a few cards away from having a decent UW fliers thing, or a Bx thing. Here's hoping I get something spicy in my additional packs.

 

I'd really like to do sealed, but everyone at our LGS (and all other game stores in the area) prefers draft. Unfortunately, I suck at it - any tips?

 

So since Gatecrash is out and I hadn't played in almost a year, I decided to attend some events. Went to a Sealed Release yesterday and a Draft Release today. Didn't know much of anything (couldn't play around cards since I didnt know what existed in the set, etc.) and tanked accordingly in the Sealed, came much better prepared for the draft.

Decks:



My sealed deck, I picked the Orzhov guild but didn't get the guild leader This was what I ended up with, not entirely sure if its any good, got color screwed and had to mulligan atleast once each match, when the deck worked in one match it worked well. Probably a weak deck though, didn't have much of a pool.

Went 2-3.


Draft:



This one was much better. I first picked Skaarg Goliath over nothing (I should have probably taken whatever good common I saw) but I was luckier than smart and people just kept passing me sick gruul shit. The moment I'd wheeled a Spire Tracer in pack one was the moment I knew I was just stocking up on equipment/bloodrush and killing shit. Gruul kept flowing and I assembled a really good deck imo. Only filler card I had to play was Ember Beast and he was okay. Madcap Skills is possibly the best common in the set, it is the absolute nuts on any evasive creature (Tracer, unblockable rogues.) I had a turn 4 kill ON THE DRAW with this deck in one of the games.
T1 Tracer -> T2 Madcap -> t3 double slaughterhorn bloodrush -> t4 zhur taa swine blood rush.

Went 3-0 obviously, this deck was just too good. Mugging is like the only card that genuinely answers Tracer, people don't value reach creatures high enough and the flyers in this set mostly trade with Tracer/die to it when its bloodrushed. I definitely recommend the tracer/bloodrush archetype, tons of fun.


EDIT: NFI why you can't see the pictures, if I just post the direct link it stretches the page like fuck. Just right click and open image in a new tab to see the decks :x

 

Well, GTC Prerelease is starting in 45 minutes on MODO and I'm streaming it. Already started for a bit of chatting and music, if you want to hear my sexy, sexy voice, come join us at http://www.twitch.tv/Lorven_#

 

So, I've been playing a lot of MTG for the last few months. I've been having a lot of fun playing Epic Experiment, which either gets blown out, or blows you out, so it's pretty fun glass cannon deck. I've also been toying with a generic bant midrange thing, which is pretty much every $10+ blue, white, and green card stuffed into one deck. Needless to say, it does pretty good, and I did top 8 Gameday today (and top 8 FNM yesterday). But I've been playing the game for so long that winning doesn't really excite me, so I play oddball decks like Epic Experiment, and I've been toying around with a standard Stax build using assemble the legion and descent into madness.

I've been doing a lot of drafting as well. I rocked m13 drafts on mtgo - including 3 premeir event wins (two back to back), getting up to nearly 1800 rating and making a good chunk of change through redeeming sets - why hello thundermaw hellkite, thragtusk, jace, and sublime archangel spikes! I didn't rare so well in RtR drafts, but I've done excellent with Gatecrash. Live prerelease I went 6-0 with orzhov, because Obzedat will win every game you play him pretty much. Online I've done decent as well, although I haven't X-0 any of the big events - I haven't done worse than 2-2 in them, but I have done a lot of 3-1. I've won quite a few drafts, although I haven't played as many as I would like - no time during the week. I've had some sick drafts, I've had the dream Obzedat P1P1, soul crushed everyone to 3-0, I had a sick dimir deck with Lazav - I hear counter spelling a giant adephage with him in play is alright. I 3-0 that one as well. Tonight, I had a sick simic build with 4 primordials - 3 green and 1 blue. Yeah, 3-0 that one too. And I've 3-0 a couple times with gruul, the biggest blow out was with borborygmos, adephage, and two skarg goliaths. Surprisingly, I haven't done too well with boros (I think i've only 3-0 once with it, and that was just with good commons/uncommons). I drafted reckoner 3 times, aurelia's fury once, firemane angel twice, but of course I never draw them when it matters.

Anyways, I've been sort of buying/selling stuff on the side. I'm up around three grand on the year, after just selling 160,000 bulk cards for $2250, and dumping all my reckoners and obzedats after release, as well as selling all the modern spiking cards like Vendilion Clique, Oblivion Stone, Fulminator Mage, Grove of the Burnwillows, Auriok Champion... It's crazy how much some of these shot up. I'm thinking of dumping thoughtsiezes, but those are cards I might actually play. I've been stocking up on some cards, I've got 3 playsets of Deathrite shaman, and a ton of ash zealots and supreme verdicts. I've also been picking up foil shocklands since they aren't getting reprinted in Dragon's Maze, and their price should remain fairly stable. I just picked up a 10th once today, so I'm 1/4 of the way to a full set.

So yeah, I've been quite involved with magic recently. I wish I had been able to attend the recent GP in Edison, but a blizzard said nah.

 

I've been playing a hell load of magic lately as well, and am highly looking forward to the GP Pittsburgh: hometown tourneys FTW. Mostly, lately, I've been trying to assemble a Modern deck, but unfortunately, no one around here has the trades I need. Turns out that not having money makes Magic considerably harder to play. Heh. I have also assembled a total of three EDH decks: a Glissa deck which vomits utility artifacts until I win, a Rasputin, Dreamweaver deck that loathes torpor Orb, and a surprisingly effective Lazav Mill deck that everybody asks me to play because it gives everybody card draw.
In other news, I am building a growing hatred of countermagic.