Board 8 > Magic the Gathering Gopic (Ikoria is here!)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yeah, that works. I'll try to remember to look up my ID next time I'm on.

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There was a Hearthstone page on the B8 Wiki with IDs and stuff, maybe we can do something similar for MTGA?

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I may be biased towards green in general, but I may be extra biased towards UG this set because I've lost to Primal Empathy twice and Parcelbeast like 2-3 times. Both just seem stupid strong.

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lol I'll play in a tourney but I'll get romped

I have questions about drafting in general cause I don't do it enough and I'm not doing well when I am doing it.

1) How early do you want to devote yourself to a color/s? Do you want to go based on if your first rare is good? Or do you just want to be taking best card available no matter the color early on and go from there?

2) How late is too late to switch colors in general? I know there's no hard and fast rule but like, if you spend your first pack going one way and get some uber mythic in pack 2, do you switch? Do you try the next few picks and if it fails just fall back on what you had originally?

3) Is it always better to at least draft 2 colors, even if you don't get any mana fixing for such ventures?
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There are few hard and fast rules, but I like Limited and thinking about it, so here's how I approach these issues.

Emeraldegg posted...

1) How early do you want to devote yourself to a color/s? Do you want to go based on if your first rare is good? Or do you just want to be taking best card available no matter the color early on and go from there?

If your first rare is very good you should probably try fairly hard to play that color. You're not literally forcing it, but you should push in that direction if it's possible, or consider whether you can splash it if the color simply isn't there. If you aren't taking a true bomb first, and are taking a more replaceable card first, then you're certainly looking to take the best card available. It's not completely without considering the color, though. Once you take Blood Curdle first pick, there should be a very slight preference towards taking another black card. That's on the level of a tiebreaker, where you should take the strongest card unless you don't have a firm idea what that is. The more black cards you accumulate, the stronger that preference becomes. That's how I look at it.

EDIT: Or to put it a different way, the quantity and quality of your cards within a certain color both affect your commitment to that color, though you are more interested in quality. If you leave pack 1 with five red cards but none are all that special, you aren't strongly committed to red. If you have only one red card but it's very good, you still aren't that committed to red, but I'm at least more interested.

Emeraldegg posted...

2) How late is too late to switch colors in general? I know there's no hard and fast rule but like, if you spend your first pack going one way and get some uber mythic in pack 2, do you switch? Do you try the next few picks and if it fails just fall back on what you had originally?

I would say that if you open one of the best cards in the set in pack 2 and it would require you to ditch one of your colors, it is generally a good idea to take it and see what happens, yes. It depends what you're giving up, though. Maybe you're RW going into pack 2 and open Vivien. Vivien is unquestionably a bomb, but I won't snap it up right away. What is the best card in your colors in the pack? Is it an above average but not absurd common or uncommon, like Divine Arrow, Drannith Healer/Stinger, Flourishing Fox, something like that? Sounds like an opportunity to try Vivien and see if you can maybe play RG or GW. Is it a strong common, like Fire Prophecy? There I am very unsure and I would probably check my sideboard to see if I already have any green cards. What if it's Savai Thundermane, arguably the best nonrare card you could open for that deck? There's no chance I take Vivien then.

I would say after around pick 2 in pack 2 I would be pretty hesitant to change my colors, though incorporating a splash is a different story. There was a story of someone taking a Dream Trawler in the third pack in Theros draft and changing colors entirely to support it; I cannot recommend that move, even for Dream Trawler.

Emeraldegg posted...

3) Is it always better to at least draft 2 colors, even if you don't get any mana fixing for such ventures?

It's possible to play a monocolored deck in Limited, but it is incredibly rare. You should expect to play 2 color decks with no mana fixing most of the time in most formats. Ikoria has several common lands that provide good fixing, so you can be a little more picky here. However, I think it is a hard and fast rule not to play a third color unless you have at least a little fixing, regardless of your reason. Once you start thinking about a third color, getting mana fixing is not merely something you should keep in mind, it is critical to ensuring you have a working deck.

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I'm not a great player by any means, but in my first Ikoria draft I opened the 3/5 double strike mutate guy pack 3 pick 1, and prior to that I was running blue green, splash red. I got lucky with some late lands & crystals to help the fixing, so i ended up splashing both the red and black, with five cards that could help me fix. I ended up going 5/3, without too much land trouble.

I guess my point is that it all really depends, and Ikoria as a set is way more flexible to splashing than Theros was.

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You want to play your bombs but you also want to make sure your deck has some sort of synergy. Splashes are very possible in this set so you should definitely consider it if you get a really nice bomb sometime during the draft.

This is also kinda tough to do but with player drafts, if you can recognize what's "open", it'll go a long way as well. The people to the left and right of you are picking specific colours and you want to try to make sure you're not picking their colours since you'll be left with slim pickings.

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I appreciate the insight guys, thanks a bunch. I am very bad at the whole "recognizing dudes next to me what they're playing" aspect of it but I suspect I might get a little better if I did it more. My issue is I just get so focused on what i'm drafting I suck at keeping track of "okay this color was in this pack nwo it's not, he's playing red" or w/e
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Emeraldegg posted...

I appreciate the insight guys, thanks a bunch. I am very bad at the whole "recognizing dudes next to me what they're playing" aspect of it but I suspect I might get a little better if I did it more. My issue is I just get so focused on what i'm drafting I suck at keeping track of "okay this color was in this pack nwo it's not, he's playing red" or w/e

That doesn't actually matter that much. Yes, pay attention if you see a good card going late, but don't worry about what other people are doing.

I guess what I'm saying is just that recognizing what's open isn't the same thing as having a clear picture what the people to your left and right are drafting, because that's not a realistic goal.

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Man, so I just saw the jump in rewards last night from 2 wins to 3 wins in premier draft, that's nuts. 200 gems to 1000 gems? You really get screwed if you don't get to 3 wins, with how they increased the entry fee in gold
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On the bright side, you can go infinite with gems by averaging 4 wins!

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BlackDra90n
Peace___Frog
The Mana Sword
Sceptilesolar
Blue-G
Emeraldegg

These are the only people who explicitly expressed interest in a Standard tournament, I think; are there any other takers?

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I'd be down

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Does anyone play any of the non-rotating Constructed formats? I hear they're getting trashed by Companions. I used to play Modern but I've been out of it for a couple years.

I think I'll pass on a tournament because I have no decks in Arena

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I played Modern/Pioneer/Legacy in paper, so obviously haven't had a chance to do that much over the past month, but yeah looking over decklists from MTGO events, Companion extremely looks like a mistake.

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I only started playing during Guilds and have only followed standard since then.

Is the issue with eternal formats that it's a guaranteed card, or is it a few notable broken combos?

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It's the fact that you can guarantee you will have one, on curve, every single game. Some of them do allow degenerate combos too, of course, but having one of your combo pieces 100% of your games is huge.

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From what I understand, Lurrus in particular is a problem because its restriction (all permanent cards in your deck must be CMC 2 or less) is a non-issue in older formats and the recursion is extremely good.

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So I'm still having those long loading times, turns out this was a known issue and wizards put out a workaround about a week ago in case otehr people are still having these issues

https://forums.mtgarena.com/forums/threads/58489

There's also another workaround some dude did that alot of people have said have worked:
1. Open regedit.exe / Registry Editor (Windows key + R ; type regedit)
2. Go to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wizards Of The Coast\MTGA
3. Change "HashFilesOnStartup_h572346022" value from 1 to 0
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I'd be interested in a standard tournament, but I'm not sure how it'd be scheduled or anything like that.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Does anyone play any of the non-rotating Constructed formats? I hear they're getting trashed by Companions. I used to play Modern but I've been out of it for a couple years.

I think I'll pass on a tournament because I have no decks in Arena

I play Legacy, and cannot wait for these cards to be banned. All these new printings over the last year have not been kind to Legacy imo

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ChichiriMuyo posted...

I'd be interested in a standard tournament, but I'm not sure how it'd be scheduled or anything like that.

We'll likely just keep it informal. Set up a bracket and give everyone time to play each other.

I think this brings us to 9? Anyone else?

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Eh, I could join

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Cool, threw a spreadsheet together for us to record our IDs as well.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jyxKuX5qYRGXR4IbDqCDBTowln-i6nK0JEZ69xkZVfk/edit?usp=sharing

If you're interested in joining just add your name to that.

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I put in mine, though I don't exactly know what to play. I have an idea that I'm sure is fairly bad, but it's also cheap.

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yeah, I kind of want the meta to shake a bit before the tourney

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Yeah Id be using theros format decks essentially if it happened now

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Is that bad? This isn't really high stakes Magic. I'm fine playing jank myself.

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Peace___Frog posted...

I only started playing during Guilds and have only followed standard since then.

Is the issue with eternal formats that it's a guaranteed card, or is it a few notable broken combos?

In those formats the cost for companions is less and it's an 8th card imagine if we sat down and i got to start with an opening hand of 8 and you got an opening hand of 7.

I am in a hugely advantaged position before we even play the first card, this is what companions bring. Not to mention Lurrus for instance plays very well with good cards like Mishra's Bauble. On 3 mana if you want you play Lurrus get the bauble back use it so Lurrus becomes 3 mana draw a card and get a 3/2 that can get even more value if they don't kill him.

Crap some decks in modern can play lurrus as a companion at almost 0 cost like burn a deck that doesn't even play permanents beyond 2 mana.

Sceptilesolar posted...

Is that bad? This isn't really high stakes Magic. I'm fine playing jank myself.

I don't care!

I'm probably gonna play some mono green or black stuff myself.

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If we want to have Ikoria included or not, I'm fine either way. I'll play mid tier jank regardless.

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Free gold in the store today! Get 750 for the price of 250 or 50 gems.

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I have successfully crafted a deck.

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When are we looking to start?

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BlackDra90n posted...

Free gold in the store today! Get 750 for the price of 250 or 50 gems.

And now free gems!

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I keep forgetting to look up my username augh

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pjbasis posted...

And now free gems!

What are you talking about?

The store always has 'sales' on skins for me. Or I guess discounts on gems, but that's not free...

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banananor posted...

What are you talking about?

The store always has 'sales' on skins for me. Or I guess discounts on gems, but that's not free...

Look under the daily deals tab, there should be one that's 500 gems for 200 gems or 1500 gold. But hurry because it's about to roll over.

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Still missing some IDs, anyone else interested in joining? As mentioned above it's not high stakes magic, just playing for fun. I'm likely also playing jank.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jyxKuX5qYRGXR4IbDqCDBTowln-i6nK0JEZ69xkZVfk/edit#gid=0

If there's no other joiners, I'll create a bracket once the last three post their IDs.

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what's high tier right now? Am I okay using a slightly worse version of a simic ramp deck I found online? Or is that too good?
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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Look under the daily deals tab, there should be one that's 500 gems for 200 gems or 1500 gold. But hurry because it's about to roll over.

Ah, damn. I guess they can train me to look at the store if they want. Obviously it's a one time purchase as opposed to infinite gemz

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Yeah that's how I'm approaching it, too. I'll check the store for these giveaways but have no inclination to ever buy anything other than gems for drafting.

I feel like if you're thinking too much about the quality of your deck then you're already putting too much thought into it. Watering down a top tier deck, sure why not. Even a top tier deck in this weird time in the meta imo should be allowed because it still requires you to pilot it!

What I think would be really neat is if we could set up an in house player draft, then use those decks in direct challenges or whatever they're called.

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Emeraldegg posted...

Am I okay using a slightly worse version of a simic ramp deck I found online? Or is that too good?

We haven't come up with any rules (at least, I don't think). I haven't made a deck since ixalan rotated, but I'm considering making something now

Social agreements to not try *that* hard always leave someone feeling cheated. It's not fun to nerf your deck and lose to someone who didn't nerf their deck as effectively

It would be cool to see wizard's deck power estimates for the casual play queue, but that's never happening

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Well i just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to ruffle any feathers cause like, I am really enjoying this deck, not just cause I'm winning but it just feels nice to play, but I wanted to be sure people weren't going to be upset if I play it, that's all.

Also I didn't really nerf it intentionally, it' sjust more cause it's working well enough right now and I had to shell out a few rare/mythic wildcards to make it and didn't want to spend anymore
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Peace___Frog posted...

What I think would be really neat is if we could set up an in house player draft, then use those decks in direct challenges or whatever they're called.

That's a good idea. Is there a way to do this in game? Or is this just draft sim, followed by individuals spending wild cards

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Peace___Frog posted...

What I think would be really neat is if we could set up an in house player draft, then use those decks in direct challenges or whatever they're called.

Whoops, deleted my post somehow. On a bad phone

How would this work? Use draft sim, then spend wild cards?

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I assumed he meant get us all in the same draft table, which to my knowledge is not possible. The only other way to do this would be just draft our own tables then then just take the decks we built and do direct challenges.
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Oh, that's actually a good idea, duh.

I think we should still play standard, but I would be down to also play a draft deck for fun

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I'm currently 70 gems short of an ikoria draft sadly
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It looks like the current top decks are Fires of Invention, Rakdos aggro/Cauldron Familiar, and some form of Bant control (which your UG ramp deck is probably closest to). Worrying about what's top tier and what's sufficient jank is definitely overthinking it though.

As for a group draft, I think we'd just want to use free software to do that. Magic Arena (or Magic Online for that matter) are just not that well set up for this purpose.

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