Dies to Removal

I just searched all the placing decklists of SCG, not a single copy of Hound of Griselbrand in any R/x decklist...

Why is no one having success with this card? Just too slow in a vacuum?

@Tube - whole thing looks better too.

@Fate - I imagine it has a lot to do with it not seeing much play. Most lists are focusing on speed over resiliency and those that do focus more on resiliency are mostly playing for FA.

Welp, got my fact that I can't spell out of my sig!

looks great!

Thalia's only worth like $5, right?

I don't see that price coming down too much considering it's a pretty good little bear in Modern.

Alrighty, I'll hold onto them. I'm fond of the gal, anyhow. Another pet card, I guess.

Welp, got my fact that I can't spell out of my sig!

Looks good, broski!

What's everyone playing at the pre? I'm going Selesnya for both pre's I'm playing in. Has the best pulls in DGM, as well as the best pairing.

Is Modern Hate Bears enough reason to keep Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, I wonder?

Purely from a value standpoint.

Also seeing play in Legacy Death & Taxes that won recently.

I'm playing Rakdos because fuck it.

I'm playing Rakdos because fuck it.

It has some decent DGM cards, Grixis actually seems like a viable archetype for sealed.

Sealed is such a crap-shoot anyway so I'm going with what I know.

Rakdos for me as well. I like the 50% chance of BWR from the guild boosters, and Jund would be quite ok as well. Not too fond of the Grixis chance, but the options from other guilds are less interesting to me.

@Tube - whole thing looks better too.

@Fate - I imagine it has a lot to do with it not seeing much play. Most lists are focusing on speed over resiliency and those that do focus more on resiliency are mostly playing for FA.

makes sense...

I just think "why not both?" R/g has some serious lacking in the resiliency department, and here's this card that works great with pump (rancor and GCR) AND is resilient that is easy to cast and isn't TOO slow (swings the same turn a TMH does, or gets them to 2-1 for themselves).

Its worked great for me, but when I think about going to bigger tournaments and refining my list to be hyper
focused and competitive, I wonder why literally none of the lists have even looked at this card not even as an experimental 1-2 of.

Sealed is such a crap-shoot anyway so I'm going with what I know.

I dunno, I've only ever seen one pool that was legitimately bad. 99% of the time you have decent options.

I'm just trying to make my crap-shoot better than the other crap-shoots.

Sealed is such a crap-shoot anyway so I'm going with what I know.

False. Sealead is just sealed. I don't think I've ever not placed at a pre-release or opening day type sealed event. There is usually always a decent deck in every sealed pool. Just make sure you have a plan for opponents bombs if you don't have your own. Discard, counterspells, removal, or going hyper agro.

Also, I'm surprised Valarian has gone this long without being hit with something. That dude is such a fuckwit. Rides his moral high horse acting holier then though being just insufferable.

I don't know what to go with for the prerelease to be honest. This will be my first one ever. Right now I'm leaning toward either Orzhov or Gruul. The only limited format I've done is draft, but in that format I always preferred to play a slower, more controlling deck because I felt like I was a better technical player than most of my other competitors. I'd allow them to get an early lead but as the game went on they'd make little mistakes one at a time and eventually I'd catch up to them and lock them down. That's why I'm leaning toward Orzhov, but I feel like Gruul has a lot of potential as well since it can play a lot of threats that can be relevant throughout the game and not just early on.

Of course, I did so well with Selesnya at draft that I feel I could go with them as well, but most of my success with them was the fact that everyone always tried to draft Rakdos or Izzet and left white and green mostly open.
Passing me four Eyes in the Skies? Sure, I'll take those!

All my limited expert friends tell me orzhov's not good in draft and that azorius is better. I kind of said thanks for the advice and then registered orzhov I actually think orzhov can be fairly aggressive as that's how I see the extort mechanic and I wouldn't mind being paired with rakdos for that very reason. I really want to open 4 extort guys and I'll be happy.

For those attempting to figure out what guild to go with I would suggest choosing a guild with a mechanic that still works if you don't have tons of it. Remember you won't get to cherry pick like you do in draft so some mechanics are going to be harder to capitalize on as the clusters are now diluted(only 3 sources(guildpacks + block packs) of a mechanic vs 6).
You are probably going to want to read this article from the mothership:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/A ... ily/rc/244

With the formula working as chosen guild + random allied guild + 4 DGM packs, I feel its the random ally that can get you. So I've been number crunching on what chosen guild opens up the most build win lines under BREad.

As I love sealed and thinking about it I'll have a new rare break sheet for these parings soon. For those who weren't around for last prerelease, I calced
out all the removal and evasion that each guild has access to at the common and uncommon slots. I'll be reposting my new tallies for this weekend tomorrow.

Sealed is a crap shoot. Almost every time I build a deck in sealed it feels like making the best of a bad situation - the other small percent of the time I get a legitimately broken card pool and just skull-fuck my way to the top.

I'm not saying there's no skill involved - but the card pool to build from is so shallow and random that I feel comfortable describing it as a crap shoot.

I agree with the crap shoot terminology for sealed--it is entirely possible to draw an inconsistent mess as well as overpowered insanity. I'm not saying good players can't rise above mediocre pulls, but there is a limit.

As a player who is mostly seated in Limited play, I have to say this, and it's going to sound mean, and I'm sorry for that:

If you think sealed is a luckshoot, you are not as good at evaluating cards as you think you are.

I've played sealed for every set from Kamigawa forwards, and I've never actually seen an "unplayable" sealed pool. You have to be able to read your cards more than just reading the text on them. You need to know what archetype is going to be the strongest in your pool, and you need to know how you're going to address bombs. A lot of my ability to do this comes from being a game designer throughout most of high school. When designing a game, you have to know how to drop everything you know outside of your game and only focus on the elements that you have in front of you. Sealed play is exactly the same. While most people have premonitions of what is the "
better" card overall, when playing sealed the card that is generally more constructed playable can often times be unplayable trash if you don't have the cards to go with it, and you'll often fall into traps of trying to play "good" cards over playing the "right" cards.

Anyone know what this 'Fabiano Grixis' deck is in Standard? A quick google search didn't produce any hits more recent thatn 2009, but I have seen some mention of it in the last day or so. Thanks!

Anyone know what this 'Fabiano Grixis' deck is in Standard? A quick google search didn't produce any hits more recent thatn 2009, but I have seen some mention of it in the last day or so. Thanks!

Funny you should mention it, 'cause I'm the one who edited the article, lul.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/stan ... iness.html

Edit: PS, it's right up your alley, James. It's literally DuskmantleSeer.dec.

Thanks! Curious that google returns nothing though.

Love the deck....will be playing this...immediately (helps that I own all the cards). Just need to fiddle with some of the numbers on spells (because I play on MODO, not because his interpretation is off; the metas are a bit different).

Thanks! Curious that google returns nothing though.

Love the deck....will be playing this...immediately (helps that I own all the cards). Just need to fiddle with some of the numbers on spells (because I play on MODO, not because his interpretation is off; the metas are a bit different).

Google probably hasn't cached the article yet, it only posted this morning.

Makes sense. It would seem that if you can stick a Duskmantle Seer in play, Uxx decks aren't beating it. Very interesting indeed. The move away from a tempo deck into a midrange-control shell is interesting; and the power of many of the cards is not immediately obvious to me ~ it is the sort of deck that will warrant playtesting to really understanding. There are enough exile effects to give some game against reanimator, and beyond angel of serenity, they do not really interact all that favourably with your own threats. If you can counter Revelation, you can beat UWR or Bant; you don't care about anything else they do anyway ~ that just leaves the aggro matchup, which between cheap removal, Augur and Snappy, you have pretty good game. I imagine that Jund is a bit rough, as you basically are playing similar decks, but they have more lifegain and Thragtusk/Huntmaster; which on paper feels like it gives them an edge ~ but maybe
Duskmantle Seer is that good? Or maybe, it is good enough to be at least 40-45% in the matchup, which would be acceptable.

As a player who is mostly seated in Limited play, I have to say this, and it's going to sound mean, and I'm sorry for that:

If you think sealed is a luckshoot, you are not as good at evaluating cards as you think you are.

I've played sealed for every set from Kamigawa forwards, and I've never actually seen an "unplayable" sealed pool. You have to be able to read your cards more than just reading the text on them. You need to know what archetype is going to be the strongest in your pool, and you need to know how you're going to address bombs. A lot of my ability to do this comes from being a game designer throughout most of high school. When designing a game, you have to know how to drop everything you know outside of
your game and only focus on the elements that you have in front of you. Sealed play is exactly the same. While most people have premonitions of what is the "better" card overall, when playing sealed the card that is generally more constructed playable can often times be unplayable trash if you don't have the cards to go with it, and you'll often fall into traps of trying to play "good" cards over playing the "right" cards.

For the sake of developing as players, we should take pictures of what we open / end up playing and post / discuss them.

I personally am going Boros in my first one, Rakdos in the second if I do a second. That's assuming I get what I want.

As a player who is mostly seated in Limited play, I have to say this, and it's going to sound mean, and I'm sorry for that:

If you think sealed is a luckshoot, you are not as good at evaluating cards as you think you are.

I've played sealed for every set from Kamigawa forwards, and I've never actually seen an "unplayable" sealed pool. You have to be able to read your cards more than just reading the text on them. You need to know what archetype is going to be the strongest in your pool, and you need to know how you're going to address bombs. A lot of my ability to do this comes from being a game designer throughout most of high school. When designing a game, you have to know how to drop everything you know outside
of your game and only focus on the elements that you have in front of you. Sealed play is exactly the same. While most people have premonitions of what is the "better" card overall, when playing sealed the card that is generally more constructed playable can often times be unplayable trash if you don't have the cards to go with it, and you'll often fall into traps of trying to play "good" cards over playing the "right" cards.

I can accept that--I just know that the lack of control over, say, draft is often frustrating. I would argue that sealed is somewhat higher variance than other forms of magic, simply due to the nature of the pull. Basically, some pulls are just better than others, and you have not one lick of control over that. However, I will concede that better players are better able to deal with poorer pulls--probably goes to the card evaluation skills you mention.

Alex, if you don't think the strength of your deck is directly related to the strength of your card pool and that the card pool is random then I don't know what to tell you.

Card evaluation and deck building are essential to doing well and good players will do well more often than not despite the random nature of their pool, but I've seen incredibly strong players get blown out by incredibly weak players more often in Sealed than any other format - and there's a reason for that - because the nature of Sealed makes it more luck-based than any other format.

I'm going to miss the pre-release. Bah. I got tons of cards to sort through too, but haven't gotten enough of my shit that I can build a new deck yet. Oh well one more go around with jund aggro it looks like (shitty outdated version. I actually like Cedric Phillips list, but I don't want to buy any Hellkites until I know if it's getting a reprint. If it is, great the price will drop. If not, don't want to shell out the money for a card that's rotating.

Turn and burn seems like it could have a place in that grixis list.

Alex, if you don't think the strength of your deck is directly related to the strength of your card pool and that the card pool is random then I don't know what to tell you.

Card evaluation and deck building are essential to doing well and good players will do well more often than not despite the random nature of their pool, but I've seen incredibly strong players get blown out by incredibly weak players more often in Sealed than any other format - and there's a reason for that - because the nature of Sealed makes it more luck-based than any other format.

Because they're stuck in the mindset that the "good constructed cards" are still good in sealed, which isn't true.

There's variance but it isn't so large
that it can't be overcome with superior knowledge of the format and the ability to not tunnel vision onto cards.

Makes sense. It would seem that if you can stick a Duskmantle Seer in play, Uxx decks aren't beating it. Very interesting indeed. The move away from a tempo deck into a midrange-control shell is interesting; and the power of many of the cards is not immediately obvious to me ~ it is the sort of deck that will warrant playtesting to really understanding. There are enough exile effects to give some game against reanimator, and beyond angel of serenity, they do not really interact all that favourably with your own threats. If you can counter Revelation, you can beat UWR or Bant; you don't care about anything else they do anyway ~ that just leaves the aggro matchup, which between cheap removal, Augur and Snappy, you have pretty good game.
I imagine that Jund is a bit rough, as you basically are playing similar decks, but they have more lifegain and Thragtusk/Huntmaster; which on paper feels like it gives them an edge ~ but maybe Duskmantle Seer is that good? Or maybe, it is good enough to be at least 40-45% in the matchup, which would be acceptable.

I think the funniest part about this list is that against Reanimator, Duskmantle Seer basically says "2UB, 4/4, Flying, Occasionally kill your opponent at complete random."

@Kaze: Got the tea today. You are a gentleman and a scholar.

@red: Incredibly strong players don't always make for strong deck builders. The strength of your deck is dependent on your pool to some degree, but also your ability to evaluate the cards in that pool, and assemble the optimum list. Sometimes people get lucky, but that's like saying a pro shouldn't lose to a nut draw: it happens. You can also pilot a weaker pool to victory by being a strong player, and capitalizing on every mistake your opponent makes. But 'nut' pools happen, just like nut draws. Standard isn't a crap shoot just because there's a glass cannon deck like Blitz that can nut draw like no one's business.

@Johnny: I'll do that, great idea. I fancy that I'm much better at Sealed than at Standard, probably because the shallow card pool allows you to easily get a feel for the format.

[quote=&
quot;LP, of the Fires » Thu Apr 25, 2013 3:54 pm"]All my limited expert friends tell me orzhov's not good in draft and that azorius is better. I kind of said thanks for the advice and then registered orzhov I actually think orzhov can be fairly aggressive as that's how I see the extort mechanic and I wouldn't mind being paired with rakdos for that very reason. I really want to open 4 extort guys and I'll be happy.[/quote]

Draft and sealed are totally different formats. Orzhov was absolutely disgusting in Gatecrash Sealed. You had the best removal, the best bombs, and really strong commons. I went 3-1 and then 6-0 with two different Orzhov pools. My concern with it in Dragon's Maze is that you don't gain a whole lot from the set, so you're more dependent on your guild pack. Your best pairing is
probably Selesnya anyway. Picking Selesnya straight away, you gain a lot of strong commons and uncommons in-guild, and every possible 2nd guild pack allows you to splash into equally strong colors. Every other guild has a 'bad' pairing, with Orzhov having two of them.

Also, remember, if you can build a two color deck, just do it. You'll win so many games against the folks who think 'play all the colors!'.

Makes sense. It would seem that if you can stick a Duskmantle Seer in play, Uxx decks aren't beating it. Very interesting indeed. The move away from a tempo deck into a midrange-control shell is interesting; and the power of many of the cards is not immediately obvious to me ~ it is the sort of deck that will warrant playtesting to really understanding. There are enough exile effects to give some game against reanimator, and beyond angel of serenity, they do not really interact all that favourably with your own threats. If you can counter Revelation, you can beat UWR or Bant; you don't care about anything else
they do anyway ~ that just leaves the aggro matchup, which between cheap removal, Augur and Snappy, you have pretty good game. I imagine that Jund is a bit rough, as you basically are playing similar decks, but they have more lifegain and Thragtusk/Huntmaster; which on paper feels like it gives them an edge ~ but maybe Duskmantle Seer is that good? Or maybe, it is good enough to be at least 40-45% in the matchup, which would be acceptable.

I think the funniest part about this list is that against Reanimator, Duskmantle Seer basically says "2UB, 4/4, Flying, Occasionally kill your opponent at complete random."

Everytime the ability triggers revealing Unburial Rites for them and Synocpate for you, they must die a little on the inside.

"I didn't want to run Forbidden Alchemy because the flashback is too expensive..."

I just heard:

"I don't want a job because my end-of-the-year bonus isn't very high..."

I love me a Forbidden Alchemy; but an Duskmantle Seer turns the game into a pure race (at least this is how it seems) ~ I don't think you're realistically going to flash it back in any game where your deck plays remotely how it is intended to; even in games which do go long, you have Snapcaster, Desolate Lighthouse, Think Twice and Ravings to still try and get ahead; which while not as good as Alchemy (or Revelation), is still a lot. The deck seems like it can put a very quick clock on your opponent's anyway ~ I think this is the sort of deck you need to really play with quite a bit to understand, because just looking at it, a lot of the interactions are not immediately obvious and might be more or less powerful than I think.

Does look like a lot of fun though, though one does wonder if an Esper Version (with Azorius Charm and Revelation) might be better.

Actually, going Esper completely costs you a viable beatdown plan, which likely just makes your deck a worse version of Esper Control.

Think before you type James! This isn't MTGS where that is encouraged!

Anyone know what this 'Fabiano Grixis' deck is in Standard? A quick google search didn't produce any hits more recent thatn 2009, but I have seen some mention of it in the last day or so. Thanks!

Funny you should mention it, 'cause I'm the one who edited the article, lul.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/stan ... iness.html

Edit: PS, it's right up your alley, James. It's literally DuskmantleSeer.dec.

That looks all sorts of awesome. I
think I'm up for running that.

@Kaze: Got the tea today. You are a gentleman and a scholar.

Glad to hear it! ^^ Hope it suits your fancy.

Actually, going Esper completely costs you a viable beatdown plan, which likely just makes your deck a worse version of Esper Control.

Think before you type James! This isn't MTGS where that is encouraged!

Well, you're playing a reverse Revelation in Rakdos's Return. And I actually think it's a cooler card.

It is MUCH more aggressive as well, which definitely fits the strategem of the deck much better. Gerard makes the point of how quickly this deck can kill an opponent who is at or around 20; something I initially underestimated; if you strip your opponent's hand to nothing and have an active Duskmantle Seer, they're almost certainly dead ~ they don't draw until your turn; they take damage first and you have two draws to lock them out on your turn to get the extra hit for 4 in etc ~ super interesting concept; although my only concerns are Jund with maindeck Cavern and Naya Blitz; if those matchups are at or around 45% or better, the deck looks really good!

Duress into Snapcaster + Duress is filty, FYI.

3-1, lost to my friend with the reckoners I LOANED HIM, was so mad.

Toped deck a bonfire for 2 against him... he had a bunch of bears and a reckoner. Walp.

Beat Jund, Bant, and Jund. Hound alone won me the games against jund and bant (you sphinx's for 6 to avoid lethal? Actually I bloodrush my hound, deal 20.)

So yeah, still think this card is definitely legit.

It is MUCH more aggressive as well, which definitely fits the strategem of the deck much better. Gerard makes the point of how quickly this deck can kill an opponent who is at or around 20; something I initially underestimated; if you strip your opponent's hand to nothing and have an active Duskmantle Seer, they're almost certainly dead ~ they don't draw until your turn; they take damage first and you have two draws to lock them out on your turn to get the extra hit for 4 in etc ~ super interesting concept; although my only concerns are Jund with maindeck Cavern and Naya Blitz; if those matchups are at or around 45% or better, the deck looks really good!

The deck also doesn't fold to a lot of the "public enemy #1"
cards like Sphinx's Revelation and Angel of Serenity. It's interesting, and is pretty close to the list I was playing at the start of R2R. (With less Olivias and more Duskmantle Seers, basically.)