Board 8 > Magic the Gathering: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms

(+) Yeah! (+)

3-3 on Ikoria, first loss was an awesome match that went back and forth, he killed me at 2 life with a flyer I couldnt block.

Next two were mana screws, felt bad :( Especially the first one, I drew 0 land in my starting hand somehow, then only drew 2 blue on my second, and never saw another land until I lost. My hand when I died was five 1-2 drop red spells and I just couldnt pull red.

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i've already drafted a bunch of ikoria, and almost always ended up in cycling. mutate with human/non-human synergies a couple of times

this time, for my free draft, i tried being different for the sake of being different- i forced mardu humans.

Given that nobody else wants it, it was surprisingly easy to get what i wanted and plenty of removal. The deck felt good and the results were... okay. 5-3. one of my losses was very unlucky, but i'm sure twice as many of my wins were super lucky.

6 copies of whisper squad is fun times. and nobody was taking the bastion of rememberance and multiple copies of sanctuary lockdown, checkpoint officer, and daysquad marshal

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Foil Ophiomancer is finally happening!!!

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New sets next year

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty - cyberpunk kamigawa
Streets of New Capena - noir/gangster themed set, gonna be a 3-color set, assume it'll be shards
Dominaria United - self explanatory
The Brothers War - also self explanatory, about the Urza/Mishra conflict

Pretty excited about Dominaria and Urza. The other two...we'll see.

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fortnite secret lair lmao

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ha ha Im so happy theyre doing Kamigawa again

when I was like thirteen I got two booster boxes of Kamigawa cards (two different sets, dont remember which ones). I didnt know anything about the metagame, so I had no idea they were supposed to be bad.

then coincidentally I stopped playing for like a decade within like a year of that and missed out on Ravnica.
if only I had waited a year to buy booster boxes, I would have had a million shock lands instead of a bunch of junk ass Kami.

anyway, I made a rat ninja deck back then and loved it, so I am excited for more rat ninjas

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The Mana Sword posted...

New sets next year

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty - cyberpunk kamigawa
Streets of New Capena - noir/gangster themed set, gonna be a 3-color set, assume it'll be shards
Dominaria United - self explanatory
The Brothers War - also self explanatory, about the Urza/Mishra conflict

Pretty excited about Dominaria and Urza. The other two...we'll see.

Seems like a pretty good mix of traditional magic and really weird stuff

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Also, people complaining about fortnight magic cards are the neckbeardiest of gatekeepers. They are reprints with fortnight art. Just don't buy them.

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https://gyazo.com/53a7cadd07f4df0228cb641525298c8d

this streets of whatever art is pretty great.

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masterplum posted...

Also, people complaining about fortnight magic cards are the neckbeardiest of gatekeepers. They are reprints with fortnight art. Just don't buy them.

But every card must be made specifically for them! How are they supposed to get through life if some people design things for other people with different interests?

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The Mana Sword posted...

New sets next year

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty - cyberpunk kamigawa
Streets of New Capena - noir/gangster themed set, gonna be a 3-color set, assume it'll be shards
Dominaria United - self explanatory
The Brothers War - also self explanatory, about the Urza/Mishra conflict

Pretty excited about Dominaria and Urza. The other two...we'll see.

The other two sound interesting, which is what I care most about.

Sounds like a good year!

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oh wow, with all the standard stuff they announced, I totally missed that they announced a Baldurs Gate themed Commander draft set and another Double Masters for some reason and another paper Jumpstart

they may be making too many cards

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It's about the same number of sets that we've had the past few years.

2020 -
Theros
Mystery Booster
Ikoria
Core Set 2021
Jumpstart
Double Masters
Zendikar Rising
Commander Legends

2021 -
Kaldheim
Time Spiral
Strixhaven
Modern Horizons 2
D&D
Innistrad 1
Innistrad 2

2022 -
Kamigawa
Capenna
Dominaria
Brothers
Double Masters 2
Jumpstart 2
Un-set
D&D Commander Legends

We've been on 4 standard sets + 3-4 supplemental for a few years now.

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Capenna looks awesome, hoping for some art deco/Bioshock vibes from the set.

Also desperately hoping they make a Disney set someday like they're doing with Lord of the Rings so I can buy every single variant of the Rapunzel card in a PSA 10 graded slab XD

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Continuing to print cards at the current pace necessarily means printing far too many cards tbqh
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MoogleKupo141 posted...

https://gyazo.com/53a7cadd07f4df0228cb641525298c8d

this streets of whatever art is pretty great.

Yeah this set's aesthetic totally slaps. The plate armor pinstripe suit. The tragically hot demon boy. WEW.

MoogleKupo141 posted...

oh wow, with all the standard stuff they announced, I totally missed that they announced a Baldurs Gate themed Commander draft set and another Double Masters for some reason and another paper Jumpstart

they may be making too many cards

did you also miss the full-sized supplemental LotR set that is for some reason also Modern and Historic legal? 2023 but still.

Just absolutely insane announcements today. I feel overloaded. And yeah this isn't any more sets than the past few years but uh when I came back to MTG last year I was immediately overwhelmed by the recent set release schedule and that feeling hasn't stopped since.

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Oh, it's definitely too much! Just saying, we've been on this ride for a while now, so it's not that surprising.

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It's been a trend of having a lot of product come out over the last couple years but they've always included a bunch of reprint sets (masters, mystery booster, etc) so it didn't feel that bad. I think reprints are needed but I do agree that there's a bit of set fatigue.

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I'm excited for Warhammer 40k Commander decks. Usually they come in sets of five, so Space Marines, Chaos, Eldar, and Orks feel like a given. But the fifth? Tyranid? Necron? Tau? I dunno. And what could their colors be?

Space Marines = Blue
Chaos = Black
Eldar = White
Ork = Red
...Tyranid = Green?

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So Brandon Routh was just announced as playing Gideon Jura in the upcoming Netflix MTG series. This makes me happy.

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I just logged into Arena and they gave me like 10+ decks and hundreds of cards, but I dont know why?

I mean Im not complaining, it was awesome lol.

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I just logged into Arena and they gave me like 10+ decks and hundreds of cards, but I dont know why?

I mean Im not complaining, it was awesome lol.

New player deck update

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They want to make sure all players have some baseline ability to play the game, and since standard is "the game" for most players everytime rotation comes up they need to give players a bunch of cards.

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Yeah it's because a bunch of sets rotating out of Standard in ~1 month
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I didnt start playing until it came out on iOS, so pretty recently, never knew this.

fucking awesome

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Is it just me or is Standard 2022 shaping up to be one of the slowest constructed formats in a long time?

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redrocket posted...

Is it just me or is Standard 2022 shaping up to be one of the slowest constructed formats in a long time?

We are missing an entire set from it. Impossible to say until it comes out.

Also we are losing the most OP standard set. Since what? Urzas Saga? Mirodin?

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It depends on how you define OP. If you mean one singular strategy (like Mirrodin or Urza's Saga) it's not even close to either in terms of one-sided dominance that had to be banned out of existence. But, for over a year in the Eldraine era, every time one broken deck got banned there was another one just waiting in the wings. Field of the Dead, if you recall, had to be banned before Oko actually took over, but he took over so fast he got banned a month later. Then Fires and Agent of Treachery, then Wilderness Rec and Cat Combo, then Omnath and Lucky Clover. Also in this period we had the first Vintage card to be banned since 1996 (iirc) and the only errata I know of that just simply changed the way an entire mechanic played. I know they errata'd Time Vault a few times, but all of companion had to be changed.

That said, it was a much more fun time to play standard than it has been the last six months. Now we have the opposite of a dominant strategy in Standard, we don't have any consistent strategies at all. It's a crap shoot, and it's total luck of the draw whether you get opponents with decks you can beat or opponents with decks you can't beat. No 60(80)+15 gives any consistent results and the one thing less fun than being beaten down repeatedly by a broken deck is being beaten down repeatedly by a lame deck because you metagamed incorrectly. Good riddance to the remaining dregs of this standard, and by the gods I hope Alrund's Epiphany either gets banned or the metagame gets too fast for it because the card is far too present in both Standard and "Standard 2022"

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I really liked this Standard for awhile--like back during Zendikar Rising and Kaldheim I was having a lot of fun with the format. Eldraine is really strong but the cards are also really fun to play with in my opinion. Adventure is probably one of my favorite mechanics ever. (To clarify, I am specifically referring to the period after the banning of Oko, Lucky Clover, etc...)

The final straw was probably the cracking of the Winota deck during the most recent set, but in retrospect I think Elite Spellbinder might be the card that did the most to ruin the player experience, at least for me. It's just not a fun card to play with from either side, and it goes a long way in discouraging interactivity and encouraging decks that just try to goldfish the opponent. (I don't know if this is exactly the right usage of that term but hopefully it's clear what I mean >.>)
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Man there are so many decks I want to try with Historic Horizons out and I don't have the wildcards for any of them. Anyone tried or seen other people try either Enchantress or some type of Soulherder blink deck? Those are probably the two I'm most interested in.
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I've only seen the Vesperlark combo and it's as much bs as you'd expect.

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Bant Ephemerate felt bad

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Looking to Standard 2022, what are some good cards for Simic Ramp to replace stuff like Maraleaf Pixie, Cultivate, and Beanstalk Giant/Fertile Footsteps? Obviously there may be something good in Innistrad but what existing stuff should I be looking for? Field Trip + Environmental Sciences sort of gets me Cultivate + 2 life for 2 more mana which isn't terrible but not GREAT. Maybe I could also rely more on card draw + Druid Class?

There's the one 2 mana spell that makes a searched land into a creature, right?

Frankly I hope that ramp slows down a little bit early on in the new standard.

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Aw but I've been having a lot of fun using it to cast big creatures quick and get a bunch of copies of them with Volo + Esika's Chariot

If only Volo could crew the Chariot by himself

I don't think ramp as a general strategy is going anywhere. The treasure package used in Gruul and Naya is very close to being (and might actually be?) the strongest ramp in 2021 standard and all of those cards are sticking around after the rotation.

This doesn't help with Simic specifically unless you have enough creatures to effectively utilize Jaspera Sentinel, but yeah.

CGB has a list in a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TqqQEfC2Z0) that shows a few options he's using for standard 2022. I suspect Vastwood Surge is probably also playable, especially if you're trying to ramp into a 7 drop as your payoff.
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Im running Simic ramp now. Ive been running a package of neverwinter dryad, prosperous innkeeper, and quandrix cultivator to good effect. No field trip, but I am running divide by zero and gnarled professor (people are sleeping on this card) into environmental science. Eureka Moment is worth trying to if you have the room.

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I am so bad at evaluating draft decks sometimes it feels like.

"This deck seems pretty good" -- 0-3
"Sure it can do things but it seems like it's missing something" -- 7-2
"Yeah this seems great" -- 3-3
"Eh it's fine I guess" -- Currently at 5-0 in convincing fashion

In other news I've recently realized that you can cast Ephemerate on an evoked Mulldrifter to draw 4 cards and keep the Mulldrifter. This seems good.
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Spoilers for Midnight Hunt have started, some pretty cool cards so far. Spoiler season always gets me.

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I'm so impressed that they made a werewolf commander that functions well and even works with the old cards! People have been asking for a decade now. Also just seems good for Standard. Curving Ranger Class into him? Yes please.

I was reasonably excited for spoilers to start but not TOO excited since werewolves and vampires were my least favorite tribes in the original. But werewolves were mostly due to the underwhelming implementation. I always appreciated the interplay with the Human tribe and this new actual day/night mechanic has me hopeful for this redo.

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So, they reprinted Delver... yay?

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Delver was fine in Standard previously after all the broken Scars block spells rotated. It's probably okay?

Historic though...lol. And they seriously wanted Brainstorm to be legal.

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Excited to try both Delver and that Mythic 1W in the Monk class deck, along with perhaps that face stealing card.

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Was probably too optimistic to hope that they were gonna reprint Snaps instead.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Delver was fine in Standard previously after all the broken Scars block spells rotated. It's probably okay?

Historic though...lol. And they seriously wanted Brainstorm to be legal.

Suspecting this is a big part of they reason the pulled the trigger on killing Brainstorm.

Delver will be fine in Standard. I dare say it might actually just not be good enough these days, but well see what else is in the set.

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They printed a sorta fixed snapcaster vampire, at least

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They can throw Snapcaster into another Masters set whenever, Delvers reprint opportunities are comparatively limited. Its a good choice here. (not that its really related to snapcaster being reprinted or not, they could have done both... or they could still do it in Crimson Vow potentially)

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Anyone playing Historic lately? I'm trying to decide what to play for the Arena Open this weekend. I think I'm currently torn between Jeskai Control and Mono-white Humans. Jeskai is probably the safe bet, but Mono-white got some really good new tools recently in Esper Sentinel, Thalia's Lieutenant, and Ranger Captain of Eos. I think mono white does quite well vs matchups like Jeskai, but I'm less sure how it fares against the rest of the field.
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I've been watching LSV play Jeskai Control, and it feels just unstoppable against most decks. I like his anti-control sideboard package.

I think Lightning Helix is just such a busted anti aggro card

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