TTC - Theros Overview

[Graham]

The crew cracks a pack of Portal and looks over the new (and old) mechanics in Theros.

[Narcuru]

Good show running down the abilities. Though you got Heroic a little wrong; I assume you guys know that now.

[Dusk_Shine]

Just like Graham and Paul, I am indeed having a sumptuous "flavor buffet", if you will, with Theros.

I just keep seeing callback after callback to real myths and my brain keeps on spazzing at all "dat flavor".

[iamafish]

G*, I love your mum, I want to be your mum (only male)...

As in I plan on reading greek mythology to my children before bed. Actually I'm collecting lots of things like that to read (both to my children and just for my own enjoyment), things like the Grim Fairy Tales, the 1001 Arabian nights, some Medieval Romances.

I'm gonna have some messed up children...

Also, as an ancient historian, Theros looks fucking amazing! I love the flavour on some of those cards. Greek Mythology is a really rich and largely underexplored area for fantasy.

I looked through the set yesterday, and as someone who is not a very serious or experienced magic player, I'm glad that your opinions on a lot of the abilities/cards were broadly similar to my own. Shows I'm thinking along the right tracks.

Good cast guys

[Prospero101]

I can't believe it. The guy sitting next to me at my prerelease targeted his opponent's Titan of Eternal Flame with a Chained to the Rocks, then lost to a Bestowed Akroan Crusader.

We even called the judge, but apparently he didn't believe in flavor victory. An utter travesty.

[Lurkon]

I was trying to teach someone Magic the other day, and HE THOUGHT LLANOWAR ELVES TUTORED FOR A FOREST! I thought that was bizarre, and it took me a long time to explain exactly what it did.

[phlip]

Oh hey, the Portal packs showed up (The guy from Barcelona who sent them to you was just the guy I bought them from on eBay...)

Sweet Man o' War... might be able to trade that off to Marshall for the straight cash, I hear he likes that card.

And yes, I've also met a couple of new players who thought that the "mana pool" meant the collection of lands you have in play, so "Add G to your mana pool" meant adding a forest to your lands. It came up pretty often with the guildgates and keyrunes in RTR, since usually dual lands are rare, it's the first some players had seen them.

[ZePancakes]

So thanks to Phlip then!

[phlip]

I probably should've gotten the seller to include a note it was from me or something... Entirely understandable they forgot (it was just a one-off mention on Twitter a couple weeks ago...)

[Lurkon]

Oh, and I went Blue, built a mono-blue deck, and had a LOT of fun with Voyage's End. Releasing the Kraken was SWEET.

[SomeCallMeTim]

I loved playing my blue black deck with the Kraken (which I made sure to announce that I was RELEASING every time I activated monstrosity! Ashiok was a nice pick up as well as the two on color emissaries. Went 4-1 with an admittedly major misplay in the one game I lost (Missed the opportunity to Annul a Spear of Heliod...) Overall got 5th amongst a crowd of 90 people, so I'm really happy!

Deck list (for those interested)
BLUE:
1x Aqueous Form
1x Annul
1x Omenspeaker (GREAT turn two, holy shit)
1x Ordeal of Thassa
1x Voyage's End
1x Triton Fortune Hunter
2x Wavecrash Triton
1x Thassa's Emissary
1x Griptide
1x Prescient Chimera
1x Thassa's Bounty
1x Shipbreaker Kraken
1x Curse of the Swine
BLACK:
1x Thoughtseize (got to turn one this once - felt so dirty)
1x Returned Phalanx
1x Erebos's Emissary
1x Cavern Lampad
1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1x Keepsake Gorgon (fantastic stabilizer)
MULTICOLOR:
1x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver (Got to ultimate once)
1x Horizon Chimera
1x Reaper of the Wilds
9x Island
6x Swamp
2x Forest

Anybody else got their decks saved? I'd be interested in looking for archetypes that are emerging so I can use them at the release weekend.

[Darlingng01]

I picked green, and ended up going green/black with a red splash.

I got Arbor Giant and oh man was he awesome! never had any trouble casting him despite the 3 green and if I was playing someone with flyers they would always start playing funny.

Green is definitely strong in this set and it feels like you're really pulling out giant monsters that make your opponent cringe. I won my first 4 games with little to no problem, but then lost my next 3 to people who had chosen blue. All 3 times I lost to the blue promo card going monstrous in at least one of the two games.

As for flavor: Oh man is this set full of it! The onyl card I know of that can deal with the gods: Fade into Antiquity. You aren't killing the god, or even dealign with it, you're making the other person forget about them, causing the god to lose its ability to aid them.

[Lord Hosk]

The heroic until EOT seemed useless, the heroic + counters worked out awesome, so many combat tricks.

you: "I attack"
Op: "I block that they trade"
you: OK I cast +1/+1 until EOT
Op: "umm they still tra..."
You: "It also gets these two +1/+1 counters
Op: "Ohhhh"

so now its a 5/5 with a +1/+1

Interesting note also about skry

1 Scry 3 and 3 Scry 1 are not the same thing. I had this come up.

Scry three one time is, you look at the top three cards, put them back on top or on bottom as you choose.

scry one three times is, You look at the top card, put it on top or bottom, if you want to keep it, you look at the top card again, and then a third time, keeping that same card on top three times.

[mbooma]

I did 6 events played all colours and black twice. What i found was green had great commons and uncommons to keep you in the game longer eg. Nemisis of mortals, Nessian Asp, sedge scorpion and fade to antiquity. Monstrosity is brutal.

Black had more commons and uncommons that turned the game quickly. e.g. Disciple of phenax, keepsake gorgon, mogis's Marauder and grey merchant

White has awesome combat tricks and best working cards for the heroic trigger (green a close second), better then the rest imho. Dauntless onslaught and god's willing are amazing.

Blue has its good evasion and counter. With nearly every creature having scry is a massive bonus. Great blue cards i found were Omenspeaker, Horizon scholar, thassa's emissary and sea god's revenge.

I found red to be the weakest of the monocolours, not saying it didnt have usefull tools, but it wasnt as threatening with little to no interaction with flying, anything to deal with bigger than 4 toughness. Best cards for red imo are purphoros's emissary, magma jet, spearpoint oread

Best artifact in the set would be prowlers helm, even tho there is a lot of the artifact enchantment removal in the set. If you get this on the board and they dont remove it your bombs are going to hit the red zone and smash life without any real opposition with only 2 walls in the set.

The Best Uncommon in the set would be shipwrecked singer. that card is amazing and hands down a game changer at a really cheap cost.

The card that had the most impact for me was Prophet of Kruphix. I managed to get two of them in my green box, with support from nessian asp, nemisis of mortals, thassa's emissary and agent of horizons (two of each). With removal in fade to antiquity. I went undefeated and always had a constant play on the draw (no mulligan's). In a field of 13 regular players not dropping a game.

[Clypheous]

So my problem is that this is the first paper magic event I've played since several years before LRR existed and I doubt I'll play another one anytime soon, so...

What do I do with all the packs that learning strategy from watching LRR and LR play helped me win?

I went Green/Red with a Black splash. My deck was, to be fair, horrible. I managed to play one of my six rares and I think 3-4 uncommons and the rest were commons. But I played the deck very effectively (I think, I didn't regret any plays, mulligans, etc) and managed to defeat people with what were probably better decks (every game I lost was to someone making that blue 5/5 a 10/10 that taps down four of your guys. Literally every game I lost was to that one card).

All in all I had a bunch of fun, but it's probably not worth that long of a drive and wait when I can play online starting next week and spend my time playing, not driving.

Veni Vidi Vici!

[BenMarc]

We actually have seen the edge of a plane before: Rath's Edge.

[Narcuru]

What do I do with all the packs that learning strategy from watching LRR and LR play helped me win?

My suggestion would be if you haven't opened them, send them to LRR (or LR) for crack-a-packs for fun (even though they do older sets usually). Another idea would be to open them sell the cards at your LGS (or eBay if you need to) and use the extra money to help fund the Kickstarter! (or if you already helped maybe increase your donation a bit because of the profits)

I wish I could have made it to the prerelease, unfortunately studying for the FE means I have little free time anymore.

[phlip]

Another idea would be to open them sell the cards at your LGS (or eBay if you need to) [...]

If that's your plan, you'd probably do better to just sell the packs, rather than opening them and selling the cards. A sealed pack is almost always worth more than the EV of its contents.

Besides, every time you open a pack just for cards, without drafting it, you make baby Cam cry.

[korvys]

Yeah, you have to at least Pack Wars it.

[JayBlanc]

My pre-release packs were packed out with red and blue so I could only play Izzet.

First round, matched against fast white blue control. They prevent me doing anything while they build a voltron that kills everything. Repeat in game two.

Second round, matched against fast white blue control. They prevent me doing anything while they build a voltron that kills everything. Repeat in game two.

Third round, matched against fast white blue control. They prevent me doing anything while they build a voltron that kills everything. Repeat in game two.

[iamafish]

sounds like you had fun...

[Clypheous]

Besides, every time you open a pack just for cards, without drafting it, you make baby Cam cry.

Well, baby Cam is probably going to cry unless he comes to the middle of gaming nowhere and plays pack wars with me. Who else am I going to play pack wars with? See previous comment about having to travel an hour to my prerelease.

[iamafish]

g+ hangout pack wars?

[Trisha Lynn]

Cribbed from the blogpost at my new Magic site, Lady Planeswalkers of the Universe:

I don’t remember much from my games (other than the fact that I lost all of them), except for the last one against Sliver dude. I think he was running a White/Black deck, and he’d had either Baleful Eidolon or some other creature with Deathtouch and a flyer. I used Feral Invocation on top of a creature that had the Nimbus Naiad enchantment bestowed upon it to make it big enough to kill his flyer and I think I used my Sedge Scorpion to kill the Eidolon, leaving me with three other creatures to face. Then, I got enough land in my hand to make my Shipbreaker Kraken monstrous, tapping down his creatures and being able to ping away at his inflated Life total until he was down to single digits, just like me.

We were down to zero cards in hand, each hoping for a top deck miracle. Apparently the gods of Theros were not on my side, as he top-decked Hero’s Downfall, killing my Kraken, releasing all his dudes, and swinging in for lethal. Sitting here a day after the event and recounting it here, I think that what I’ll probably do from now on is that when I’m in a top deck situation, even if I have only land in my hand and I have enough land on the battlefield to cast any abilities, I’ll keep it in my hand so that I can represent either a Cancel, a Negate, Spell Rupture… anything that looks like it can counter that bloody Hero’s Downfall!


Trisha Lynn
...still shaking my fist...

[Lord Hosk]

Sliver dude?