Board 8 > Magic the Gathering: Kaldheim spoiler season etc

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was at a War of the Spark prerelease and half the people there freaked out that I didn't sleeve up.

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Arena cube is back.

Just went 7-1 with a sweet U/R Delver deck.

For some reason memory lapsing your opponents alrunds epiphany or planeswalker or whatever every turn while attacking with brined cuttthroat or young pyromancer 6 turns in a row is so satisfying.


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Jumpstart is also back, but it sure feels underwhelming now. A year ago it introduced a lot of great historic cards, but now not so much.

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do you guys think brainstorm is good in historic

https://twitter.com/MagicEsports/status/1401656318121988103?s=19

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To be fair I'm pretty sure you could play Izzet Phoenix without Brainstorm and the deck would barely even notice. It doesn't feel much better than just "1 mana draw a card" in that particular deck to me.

It does feel like it helps the consistency of the Jeskai Turns deck a lot though, especially because it allows you to hide your key spells from Thoughtseize, etc.
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Brainstorm is just too good at too many things. Its a hard counter against the best black card in the format, thought seize. Its a 1 mana Draw 3 discard 2 with any sort of shuffle or discard effect (Which exist even without fetch lands.

Its got to be banned. Even if Phoenix doesn't play it, it hates out decks that are weak to it.

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Im not really convinced Brainstorm is the problem, but I think its likely to die for other cards sins, as Wizards is often wont to do.

I dont think Phoenix and Jeskai control are problem decks, theyre just good decks that happen to play Brainstorm. Jeskai turns is an issue. Maybe killing Brainstorm makes the deck too inconsistent to function, but I suspect thats not going to be the case.

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I think many people underestimate brain storm because it might be one of the highest skill variance cards in the game. I cant think of any other card where the intuitive play pattern is so far from the optimal play pattern. People just fire off brainstorms turn 1, or whenever they have 1 extra mana all the time when it is almost never correct to do that. That makes me think people underestimate the power of brainstorm based on their own mediocre performance with it.

The card is stupid good

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Having played the deck a ton on the ladder I'm convinced the pros just weren't prepared for it. It's good but doesn't feel dominant and has poor matchups against the other 2 top decks. Though, admittedly the version I was running had Chandra, Awakened Inferno rather than Nezahal, Primal Tide in the sideboard which might make the Jeskai Control matchup better.

I will say it runs over any deck that doesn't have interaction. I view this as a good thing for the meta if anything, but I guess I can see this maybe being a potential issue from a neutral standpoint. Even like red aggro decks can run Abrade and Fry both of which interrupt the combo though.

Edit: Guess I should clarify my characterization of the Phoenix vs. Turns matchup is closer to even. I do think the Phoenix deck is favored but not by much. Jeskai Turns has a noticeable advantage game 1 but then the Phoenix deck should be favored once it boards in more disruption
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Im not trying to downplay how good Brainstorm is. I play legacy, I know how good it is. Im personally of the opinion that its not necessarily too good for historic.

I am admittedly biased because it helps the kind of decks I like to play and hurts what I think is the actual most unfun card in the format to play against (Thoughtseize). A lot of the blame can be leveled at Wizards for completely unbalancing the Archive cards though. Like, yeah, no shit Izzet decks are going to be good when you juice up blue with Brainstorm, Memory Lapse, Faithless Looting, Time Warp, and the other colors barely get anything.

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I wouldn't mind a Time Warp ban. I don't think it needs to go right now purely from a strength argument, but it's not exactly the most fun card, and I think it's going to continue to be a potential problem for a while.
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I do hope they at least give the meta time to fix itself before doing an immediate reactionary ban, but thats not really how things tend to go these days.

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It's not just the Turns deck that's the problem. 5 Turns decks in the top 8 is one thing but it's not just a case of pros being unprepared for that one deck. If you look at the meta breakdown, over 60% of the meta is split between Phoenix, Turns, and Control. It's very clear that UR(w) is far more powerful than other colors right now. If the meta doesn't settle around something else then I think it's inevitable that Brainstorm dies to knock all 3 decks down a peg.

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Ban Steam Vents

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I agree generally if the meta shakes out that way but like I'm pretty sure Jund Food and Mono-Black won some lower level events in the leadup to this one.

It is admittedly still true that if you look at those events the most played decks are Jeskai Control and Phoenix, but I'm not convinced other decks can't be viable.
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Other stuff can be viable but WotC typically doesn't like it when similar strategies are so dominant at high-level events. This is basically the equivalent of the Pro Tour (I think?) and the meta tends to follow those

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https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/june-9-2021-banned-and-restricted-announcement

Well, now we get to see for real if it's just Turns or if UR is too good

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UR is still going to be a disproportionately large part of the meta, but I'm glad they decided to go this route first and see how it goes.

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So I got my MH2 prerelease kit. My store was giving out a set booster with each kit so I opened that first. Four rares/mythics in that pack including a Karmic Guide and an extended art Thrasta. My prerelease promo is a Verdant Catacombs.

Not a bad start so far.

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Grats. If everyone is getting fetchlands for a prerelease promo that's very cool. Imagine being handed a free lottery ticket that's a guaranteed winner. I wish I would have known at preorder time that Wizards would effectively be giving the things away for free.

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Nah, prerelease promos are always just a random rare/mythic now. It's not guaranteed.

That said I just opened up the rest of my packs and I opened up a Misty Rainforest too. So two fetches in one kit, I'm happy.

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Ah. Goes to show how long its been since I regularly attended prerelease events.

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Some interesting implications there. I don't know if a 3 mana sorcery is really even playable in Legacy or Vintage, but there are decks that could be totally wiped out by the time you hit mana value of 20+. Like, even if you didn't get 100% of their cards you could get enough key pieces to render a win impossible for the opponent.

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ChichiriMuyo posted...

Some interesting implications there. I don't know if a 3 mana sorcery is really even playable in Legacy or Vintage, but there are decks that could be totally wiped out by the time you hit mana value of 20+. Like, even if you didn't get 100% of their cards you could get enough key pieces to render a win impossible for the opponent.

Yeah, exile is absolutely bonkers. Makes me think this could be eternal playable

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Its definitely situational, but yeah that could be a beating against certain decks.

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The Mana Sword posted...

Its definitely situational, but yeah that could be a beating against certain decks.

For sure. I think the biggest strike against it is outside of dedicated mill decks, this feels too dead against some decks to be maindeckable which means it competes with every other silver bullet sideboard card in existance.

I don't know if you want to to put this in a sideboard over your Burrenton Forge-Tenders or rest in pieces for instance.

But hell, if it makes mill no longer a tier 4 deck that's cool

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Went to prerelease

opened both Nevinyrral's disk and Damn and had a silly 4 color no red control deck that did well.

Also my pulls were pretty great. Classic border Damn, Sword of Hearth, Ignoble Hierarch, and from a set booster prize support Scalding Tarn and Full Art Dakon Planeswalker

good value for $50

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Going to one this afternoon. Ive heard a lot of good things about this sealed format so Im pretty excited.

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The Mana Sword posted...

Going to one this afternoon. Ive heard a lot of good things about this sealed format so Im pretty excited.

I think the most interesting part was I opened something like 10 tapped lands, which combined with the land cycling cards means you can probably play no green 3 color decks. That makes deck building much more interesting

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Yeah, the mana fixing seems really good in general, which usually leads to good limited formats. Being able to actually play all your good cards is fun, turns out.

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Went 3-0-1 with a pretty mediocre BW reanimator deck. Got a foil Verdant, nonfoil Verdant, Mesa, Cabal Coffers and Yavimaya in my pool. Foil retro Ignoble Hierarch and a regular Solitude in my prize packs.

p good

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Wow, ok. So I bought a Japanese set booster box of Strixhaven to split with a friend and with COVID restrictions finally being lifted we got together to open the packs. 15 packs each.

I got a Japanese Mystical Archive Time Warp and Counterspell and also opened up a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth from the List. Those three cards more than paid for my half of the box and that's not even including the other Mystical Archives or rares/mythics. Amazing.

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BlackDra90n posted...

Wow, ok. So I bought a Japanese set booster box of Strixhaven to split with a friend and with COVID restrictions finally being lifted we got together to open the packs. 15 packs each.

I got a Japanese Mystical Archive Time Warp and Counterspell and also opened up a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth from the List. Those three cards more than paid for my half of the box and that's not even including the other Mystical Archives or rares/mythics. Amazing.

Those are good pulls for you, what'd your friend get?

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I think the most notable things he got were like.. Chaos Warp and a Foil Blue Sun Zenith.

I clearly got the better pulls haha.

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Got my collector box in for MH2 today.

Retro foil Scalding Tarn, etched foil retro Arid Mesa, non-foil extended art Scalding Tarn, Arid Mesa, Misty Rainforest and Marsh Flats, foil retro Force of Negation.

not punished for gambling lol

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Oh damn, those are amazing pulls. Congrats!

I still need to get some Scalding Tarns for myself.

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I finally checked out mtg arena. It's been fun to play magic again.

I ordered a collectors box of MH2, cancelled it after 20 minutes and ordered singles to build modern WB stoneblade

its been like 4 years since I played constructed but I just love Ephemerate decks

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Looks like a very easy include for RDW, but how many people are really going to be into this art style? 99% of D&D players probably don't have nostalgia for those old modules, and there's no way that doesn't look awful in an actual deck.

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Yeah, Im usually okay with the alternate border treatments they do for each set now, but this is a little too much for me.

Thankfully its just a variant.

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It has to be either your first or second land to be untapped.

I dont think its very good.

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Yea I don't like that art style. The card is cool though.

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That card seems ok in a vacuum maybe but mono-red already has Faceless Haven which I think is just better. If there's a home for this I think more likely it's in 2-3 color aggro decks that can't as easily afford to run snow+colorless lands. Could also see coming in tapped being a big problem even in that case though, since you aren't always going to be able to play this in your first 2 turns.
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I really like the alternate card style but not as an actual card, if that makes sense. If this was the era where special promo borders were few and far between, I think it would be great, but given how common this will be I don't think it's a good idea.

I'm reminded for example of the Amohnket Invocations which were even more illegible and got trashed for it. I liked the aesthetic and was okay with it due to the rarity, but we are at the point now where alt frames show up in every pack and you expect to see them constantly.

also Invocation series gave us Hazoret the Pervert and that's great

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Yeah, for some reason on my first read I thought it'd come in untapped as your third land, not just first or second. It looks less good now, but I still think it's got potential. Faceless Haven is probably better right now, but this does interact with Torbran for the time being and who knows what else in the future.

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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79530870

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