The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

A place to talk about standard, casual, limited and everything in between.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Dix » 20 Sep 2013, 12:48

I'm still debating a midnight prerelease or going to the afternoon my LGS is holding (1-6pm).
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Lord Hosk » 20 Sep 2013, 13:09

Do both... It will be just like CQ only a judge will yell at you for falling asleep instead of a Senior NCO
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Kapol » 20 Sep 2013, 14:24

I like the midnight prerelease. But that's because I'm always up at midnight anyways. And this time around, I have to go to the midnight one if I want to go at all... and the same day I get to go to a wedding. Yay. I guess I know where I'm going to get some sleep.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Fantazme » 20 Sep 2013, 14:26

Looks like I can't make any pre-releases this weekend. The worst :(
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Dix » 20 Sep 2013, 16:20

Lord Hosk wrote:Do both... It will be just like CQ only a judge will yell at you for falling asleep instead of a Senior NCO


But.. but... I can sleep.

I was thinking Saturday and Sunday afternoon prereleases. I can hit up two and going to midnight is only tempting because one of the LGS near me has a door prize (ie random) of From The Vaults: 20... of which I was the first person to NOT get one at the LGS thanks to them running out.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Duckay » 20 Sep 2013, 18:31

Really liking Gray Merchant of Asphodel in Theros limited.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby korvys » 21 Sep 2013, 02:31

Went with the path of battle, and did poorly trying to make a r/g monster deck. Dropped and went and got Mexican food. Pulled a thoughtseize though, so not all bad. Going to try white tomorrow.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Kapol » 21 Sep 2013, 05:11

My tip for prerelease: Go blue. The promo is easily the best of them all, and it's just generally a powerful color. It does get hosed by one particular rare (the XG hydra), but other than that... it honestly seemed like the best option among the five.

Also, do mainboard enchantment hate. Just as I thought, it's very relevant. Even if you don't hit a god or creature, there are enough enchantments out there that it'll normally not be a wasted card.

I personally went G/R. I went green because... I'm a green player. I can't deny that. Though I do honestly regret not going blue. And I even got said Hydra in a very blue environment. My deck did well. The only thing that just ended it was the blue promo. It pretty much ended up being 'do you play this creature? If so, GG." There's just not enough solid removal in this format to deal with it. And that's coming from someone who played 2 Anger of the Gods, 2 Lightning Strikes, and a Magma Jet. Anger of the Gods was also really kinda crappy in limited I felt. Unless you run into the other green deck with it's 3/3's, most guys have butts too big for it to kill alone. I got value out of the two maybe twice out of six rounds.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Utilitarian » 21 Sep 2013, 09:24

3/1 at the Midnight pre-release. Enough to be in prizes at least ^_^

Went green. Love it. Huge creatures. Arbor Colossus was my MVP.

Could have easily 4/0'ed or split but in my 3rd round it went:

Game 1: a tough battle, I end up losing
Game 2: a tough battle, I end up winning
Game 3: a tough battle, I get my opponent to one life. She plays Elspeth. GG. -_- The new Elspeth might be debatable in constructed but holy hell is it even unstoppable in limited.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Lord Hosk » 21 Sep 2013, 10:10

I signed up for white at midnight, somehow they didnt mark my box and gave it to someone else, so I got green.

I went 5-2 one loss was 2-1 and was three just amazing games against a opponent who I have had a lot of fun playing before he is a great guy.

The other one I got mana screwed and then just plain beat by a young woman who pulled Nylea, Heliod, Spear of Heliod and Reverent Hunter, she went 3-4 and was complaining about not being in prizes because she "won her first three games and then they just paired her against pro's on purpose"(no pros play at that store) Her husband and sister were trying to explain that 1. her prize pool WAS a amazing prize, and 2. pairings were based on standings but she was inconsolable. She also had a very aggressive attitude which made her very unpopular at the event. Her sister and husband, who are both regulars and very nice, were both apologizing for her all night but of course the whole "Chicks shouldn't play magic, they cant handle it" came out, it was really uncomfortable all night. She called judge just about every time an opponent did something she didnt like, for example:

I was running Polis Crusher, She cast Battlewise Valor on her Heliod's Emissary, then blocked the crusher. I said "you cant block him he has Pro enchantments" she whined, the person next to us said "the emissary is a enchantment, he cant block that" then she yelled at the judge, then she tried to take back the spell and I said "she cast it before declaring blockers" so the judge asked and she said "yeah but I wouldnt have, blah blah". The judge who was already annoyed with her after three rounds said, "no, I would let you pull it back if you did it after blockers because the invalid block trigger would sort of happen first but if you cast it first its on the creature, thats a 5/5 right now, with nothing to block" so I said Hang on a second, and he nodded seeing what was about to happen. I sacked my mana satyr, to get the mana to make him monstrous, Then when I did damage, I said "he destroys the Emissary" Which she also raged about.

I cant stand players like that, its a prerelease its supposed to be fun casual magic, but if you are going to treat it like its super high stakes important, you should really accept what the cards say.

I pulled a Temple of Triumph, The Polis crusher, Steam Augury,and then Prognostic Sphinx, Rageblod shaman, and Anthousa on top of the promo Anthousa in my pool, Every time I had a Anthousa in hand I had both before I played her. At one point my opponent bounced the regular one with Voyage's End on my attack step, so on second main phase I played out the promo and he said "woooh another 4/5 what does that one do? WHAT? the same, OHH its the same card! HA HA"

My Hero pool, in spite of being "green" had only 4 green cards plus the griffon that pumps for green. Apparently Wizards sent out a clarification on the hero packs "Will Favor the hero color, they wont necessarily be all that color, or even mostly that color"

I ran green splash white and red.

I was pleased by how it went, there was a lot more reading, and a lot more judge calls than normal but it wasnt stopping to read EVERY play like I thought it would be. A lot of the trouble I had was there was SO much flavor text, like there are no "this is a 3/3" its a 3/3 with a LONG explained ability or its a 3/3 with 6 lines of flavor text. some of them have 10 lines of text... Thats a lot, and thats saying something from someone who likes to make thorough posts like this one ;)
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Lord Hosk » 21 Sep 2013, 10:19

On thing that happened 4 times

Me:"I play travelers amulet and crack it"
Opp: "sure let me read what it does, OHH travlers amulet!"

Once this happened:
Me: "I play this and crack it"
Opp: Picks up card and reads "Oh so this is just like a travlers amulet or something?"
I replied "ummm"
Guy next to us "wait for it"
Opp: (shakes his head) "Yeah, travlers amulet is the new travlers amulet, im dumb"
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Duckay » 21 Sep 2013, 11:41

I would have been deeply torn between hating that kind of behavior from her, and hating the sexist backlash. Not a fun time for anyone involved, I imagine.

It's one thing at a prerelease to rewind after a complicated interaction that neither party got right or something, but something as straightforward as that is a different issue, especially if you're being a sore loser about every little thing. There's a guy at my LGS who does much the same thing so a lot of us just don't pull punches with him because we're sick of it happening all the time.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby AdmiralMemo » 21 Sep 2013, 12:06

Duckay wrote:I would have been deeply torn between hating that kind of behavior from her, and hating the sexist backlash. Not a fun time for anyone involved, I imagine.
Can't you hate both?

And yeah... It's not "Girls shouldn't play MtG."
It's "This girl shouldn't play MtG, if she's going to act like that."

I mean, there are guys who do that, and do we get "Guys shouldn't play MtG"? No.

You, as a person, do not have to be a representative of your gender, race, religion, culture, etc. all the time. Sometimes, you're just you.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Duckay » 21 Sep 2013, 12:21

But there's twice as much hate energy involved in having to hate both. Really I should just hate neither and move on.

ETA: What I am trying to say is that I think I'd find both equally obnoxious so I imagine that put a bit of a damper on the prerelease experience.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby korvys » 21 Sep 2013, 12:32

http://xkcd.com/385/

Anyway, sealed seems faster than I assumed. Otherwise I probably would have gone blue myself. If you get a good pool for the R/W heroic weeny deck, it's pretty quick.

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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Fantazme » 21 Sep 2013, 12:36

Can't make any pre-releases. Bummed :(
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Kapol » 21 Sep 2013, 13:39

korvys wrote:http://xkcd.com/385/

Anyway, sealed seems faster than I assumed. Otherwise I probably would have gone blue myself. If you get a good pool for the R/W heroic weeny deck, it's pretty quick.

Everyone's stories have me torn. I was thinking white, now blue...


honestly, from what I've seen, you can only make a good aggro deck if you get the nuts pull. And if your blue is decent, then you should have no issues. I didn't see much of my top 8 though.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Lurkon » 21 Sep 2013, 15:15

Went Blue, built mono-blue, and finished 3-2. No prizes, but really enjoyed my deck. Stymied Hopes, Voyage's End, Annul, Aqueous Form, Griptide, and Thassa's Emissary were the stars, I was almost always happy to see them come up. Most of the games I won I won on the back of a Monstrous Shipbreaker Kraken, but I needed the other cards to get there.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby GNRC_SRNM » 21 Sep 2013, 15:32

I'm just back from the prerelease, and it was quite fun!

I chose the path of wisdom, because of the amazing blue fliers, and fliers I got: I pulled double Prognostic Sphinx with a Horizon Scholar as backup, and chose Green as second color with a black splash for Reaper of the Wilds - never used her activated abilities, but she won me games nonetheless, as did the Centaur Battlemaster.

I went 4-1, and ranked third - higher than a friend because the opponents that I beat did better than his.
Funnily enough, I've have had a more direct influence on that score than you usually would, because after my first match I helped my opponent rebuild his deck - from a clunky black-green-white control(?) thing to a lean and mean red-green machine (Sorry, I couldn't help it) that had something like 10 cards with CMC 2. Building that deck was quite fun, and in one of our two test games he absolutely ruined me, killing me before I could even start to cast things. Lesson learned: One-drop into Ordeal of Purphoros is disgusting to play against.

The game that was most fun for me was the one where I beat my opponent when he had out two Prognostic Sphinxes (dual-Sphinx-mirror!), Vulpine Giant and Nessian Courser... oh, and a Whip of Erebos! Monstrosity-ing Shipbreaker Kraken breaks a lot more than just ships. I was at two life when I won, and two turns earlier my opponent had been at 32.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Utilitarian » 21 Sep 2013, 17:01

2-2 in today's Pre-release going green (Never abandon green!)

Pulled Nylea and got her down in exactly one game, and she never became a creature *L*

Also got the mythic UW Sphinx who was fun in the couple games I got in with it. Whee extra turns.

Still ran into mana problems with 18 lands and 9/7/2 mana base for a single card splash. I think I'm going to stop splashing, even for mythic sphinxes that give you extra turns.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Can't Wear Hats » 21 Sep 2013, 17:15

Well, won 2, lost 2 and drew 1 at today's prerelease after picking red (the path of BATTLE!).

I ended up going R/W with a little splash of black for some minotaur action. No gods, unfortunately, but Rageblood Shaman, Minotaur Skullcleaver and Deathbellow Raider put in some good work. Apparently minotaurs are a thing now, they beat face in the first two rounds but started going downhill after a mirror-match round 3. Both me and my opponent had the same secret sideboard tech as well; Peak Eruption for those pesky mountains.

What was really great though was that I played against some LRR fans in the first two rounds! I was wearing my Desert Bus 5 shirt, which they both commented on and we had a good chat about Friday Nights, the Kickstarter and Desert Bus.

All in all a pretty good day for placing 6th.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Juliamon » 21 Sep 2013, 17:16

Managed to go to a prerelease today against all odds (back injury still healing, no guaranteed ride to/from, nana just got very sick yesterday) and went 3-2 with the ever-popular archetype "green weenie" because I seriously didn't pull any green creature larger than the Anthousa that came with the box. In all six packs I literally did not have a single creature with Monstrosity. Fortunately, it turns out those 1/1 deathtouch scorpions do a damn good job in the early game until you can afford to bestow some nymphs on something more substantial.

Snapped a pic of my deck which you can see here. I also pulled both Purphoros and his hammer, but aside from two Lightning Strikes there just wasn't enough decent red in the pool to justify splashing it instead of black (I needed the bestow creatures so I'd have SOMETHING to trigger my heroic creatures). I wasn't terribly impressed with the Bow, should have swapped it out for a second Sandals but I wanted people to be aware that I HAD it, which worked out for me in the end because I was able to trade it and the Sylvan Caryatid for Erebos.

Red was the most popular pick in the store, followed closely by green and blue. I think maybe 3 out of ~50 people picked black. I only played against one opponent with any significant amount of blue (there was one guy splashing blue purely for Thassa and Horizon Scholar) and it did seem really strong.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby DannySmooth » 21 Sep 2013, 18:48

I played my first live event at the pre-release today. I had a great time, the people were mainly nice and the event ran pretty smoothly. I ended up 4-2 on the day, so on the LRR scale, from Cam to Kathleen, I was just above Graham. unfortunately, prizes were given out to people with records 4-1-1 and higher so I just missed out. my two losses were unavoidable, since my deck was fairly slow: one was against essentially mono red burn and the other was green red aggro.

I ran a blue black evasion deck with a side order of control. I pulled Ashiok, night howler and the Bident of Thassa, but my all-stars were Triton tactics and nimbus naiad. Shipbreaker Kraken was also right up there.

I fully expected more green decks to be floating around, but my 64 man pod was overwhelmingly in white decks, then red, black and blue tied and green last.

Anyway, I hope everyone had fun at their games today and tomorrow.
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby phlip » 21 Sep 2013, 18:53

After the last prerelease, I've decided the official term for a creature with 3 or more other creatures bestowed onto it is an "asteroid", because if you kill it, it splits up into a swarm of smaller dudes.

Also, Hosk: Did you say you had a seven-round prere at midnight? How did you stay awake? I barely lasted through our four-rounder...
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Re: The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

Postby Lord Hosk » 21 Sep 2013, 20:35

Yes Philip, my midnight prerelease was 7 rounds BEFORE the cut to 8 (they ended up splitting prizes), today was 6 rounds before cut to 8 (they played it out so 9 rounds total), they offered 0 prize support below top 8 who split over 100 packs. the first and second place guys each gave me three packs though cause they were awesome.

So I had an amazing bonkers deck. how good was the deck you ask? I had two underworld cerberus, an Erebos, and a abhorrent overload, Three
Lightning Strikes and I didnt go black or red. "but what did you have Lord Hosk?"

I went white so the selestial Archon, and I opened Fleecemane Lion,
Bow of Nylea, Foil Hundred-Handed One.

Backed up with Two Vigilance enchantanters, two lifelink enchanter, two reach enchanters, two trample enchanter, a chronicler of hereos, a staunch-hearted warrior, two centaur battlemasters, a nessian Asp, and two flash 2/2 enchantment, Two Verdicts, and two dauntless onslaughts. I also had three ray of dissolution and a fade into antiquity in the sideboard for mirrors.

I went 4-2, like this
2-0 1-2(three land, then two land) 1-2 (two land, 4 land but the 4th one was drawn late game) {sent out frustrated tweet} 2-0 2-0 2-0. I took 9th out of 61 players when they cut to 8.

Turns out my losses were to the guy in first who 8-0-1 and the guy in second who 8-0-1 they each got a a box.
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