Modern Masters 2015 Discussion

[Puls3evo]

So now that the full spoiler is officially released, I would love to hear everyone else's thoughts on how the format will shape up.

*Disclaimer* I know next to nothing about Modern besides the Big name cards and effects. I also apologize for the Wall of text, but I hope that the points I'm about to bring up evoke discussion. *Disclaimer*

That being said; I've combed through image gallery, and I've noticed that Splinter Twin and Kiki-Jiki have only a few interesting targets since the full combo does not appear to exist here. I guess you'd be looking for ETB or LTB/Dies effects that you'd want the token to trigger, like bouncing with AEthersnipe, filtering with V. Clique, or stealing creatures from graveyards with Puppeteer Clique. Primeval Titan, of course, is a great target if you're ramping into Eldrazi. There are also pure value creatures like Pelakka Wurm and the Persist creatures. I also think that SF/KJ could combo with graft or Soulshift creatures (Graft Example: Novijen Sages; create Token, pay 2 mana to draw 2 cards; Soulshift Example: recurring Nameless Inversion or other Shapeshifters).

Speaking of Soulshift, I don't really understand how the mechanic helps you get ahead of your opponent (at least in this format) unless you use it to bring back one of the Shapeshifter cards or Soulshift 4 into the Ghost Council. It also seems to only be applicable to creatures you either discard, sacrifice, or that die, since there's does not appear to be self-mill, so you can't "cheat" cards in really like in true Reanimator (as far as I know).

Side Note: Reaniamtor is NOT a part of this set, right, and you are actually expected to Ramp into the Eldrazi, Iona, and Elesh Norn?

So there's B/G Eldrazi Ramp, G/W Ramp or Convoke and Tokens, G/R Big Bodies, R/W Weenie Aggro, B/W Arcane Spirits, U/G Graft, R/B Persist / Graveyard and Bloodthrist Aggro, U/W/B Flyers, U/W Affinity, WUBRG Sunburst, R/U Elementals, and U/B Control? Are there any big combo pieces I've whiffed on?

I will probably never draft this, but if I ever do, I would want to draft either G/R Ramp or B/G Eldrazi. If I got to draft for free, and the cards were there, I would go for the Sunburst Artifact deck because I feel like that's the dream in this format. What are the archetypes you are most hoping to open?

(Edit: Just read up on Persist rules, and Twin-ing a Persist creature does not have a token come back with a -1/-1 counter, because the token never hits the graveyard and therefore cannot return. This makes me sad, as that'd be a cool token generator combo, if a bit slow.)

[Atifexe]

Just a small point of order - Tokens do hit the graveyard, they just cease to exist the next time state-based effects are checked. This is a relevant technical point for anything that triggers on something going to the graveyard.'

That said, I feel like the rarity in this set is heavily slanted towards the top end. Is it going to have a higher than normal rate of rares and mythic rares?

[AdmiralMemo]

So, does that mean that Persist actually TRIGGERS, but can't do anything upon resolution because the token is gone? That might be a corner case that affects something.

[Atifexe]

Correct, that means that the ability triggers but does nothing upon resolution.

[LokiTheLiar]

I am not a big limited player, I draft from time to time and play sealed at the prereleases so I'm looking at MM2015 mostly from the constructed perspective. I think it's great that they reprinted so many of modern playable cards, there will be more of them on the market and they will be easier to get, but I'm afraid that it won't change the prices as much as people expect it to. The expensive cards like Goyf, Dark Confidant or Noble Hierarch won't go down in price enough to make a diffrence and the cheaper staples like Lightning Bolt are already rather cheap. It's good that they didn't fill up the mythic slots with worthless (moneywise) dragons, but I can't say I agree with all their reprint choices. I'm aware that some of the cards are in the set because they needed to create a limited enviroment, but still.
That said, I'm really excited for the set and I'm looking forward to playing Goyf lottery again.

I'm also a huge enthusiast of pauper commander and this set can affect this small, weird format. They downgraded Gut Shot and Telling Time, Sphere of Suns and Scion of the Wild to common, which means you can use them in your pauper EDH decks now

[Kapol]

Honestly, I kind of want to draft Modern Master 2. But then I realize I really don't. And here's a few reasons why:

Click to Expand

-Cost. Even if we just go by MSRP, a single draft is going to cost $30 without prizes. And that's if the set holds MSRP. Drafting online is cheaper and easier of course. But I don't feel it has the same 'energy' as drafting the set physically due to the massive value difference.

-Decisions and forced passing. You open a pack with a Noble Hirarch and a foil Remand in the pack. You have to pass one of them. That really sucks in my opinion. And that's not an absurd situation. That's a good rare and a foil uncommon. If you open Goyf and foil Goyf, or Dark Confidant and foil Noble, it's going to be something that creates a hard decision. It's good to get value no matter what. But when you're forced to give up some of it, it really takes away from the joy for me. Hell, even a $10 rare, a Lightning Bolt, and a Remand add up to a sad pass to me.

As a note, I know you can just drop the draft and take the pack. But that likely won't be something others look fondly on. I feel like it'd have to be one of the insane cases to not have a decent amount of backlash.

-Understanding the cards. One of the disadvantages I found when I played the original Modern Masters was that, frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. I don't know modern cards and combos. I didn't know the set. And I didn't want to do a ton of research for something I would end up drafting a total of twice. This lead to be not winning a single match during both drafts. And I feel this is going to be the same for MM2.

I'm a fairly competitive person honestly. Losing does take away from the fun of playing. And I don't think I'm a bad player (though I'm certainly much better than when the original Modern Masters came out). It just seems like a decent number of players are going to go in with a knowledge advantage. People who play modern will at least have a decent understanding of the power of a lot of cards, and know how to play with and against them. Compare that to a new block, where pretty much everyone is on some kind of even footing due to not having played with most of the cards before. It makes a difference, at least to me.

All of that said, I think it will be a fun draft environment. It's just not one I'm too keen on. I feel like this set wasn't made for me, even though it does seem like it was made to be a draft set (and I'm nothing if not a drafter).

So, does that mean that Persist actually TRIGGERS, but can't do anything upon resolution because the token is gone? That might be a corner case that affects something.

Yeah, the creature goes to the graveyard, any abilities would trigger. But as soon as they trigger, SBA are checked, the game sees a token in a non-battlefield zone, and it poofs it away.

And it's actually not as much of a corner case as you might think. If that weren't the case, anything that triggered off something dying (Morbid, Blood Artist, and Grim Haruspex for example) wouldn't trigger. Dying is considered going from the battlefield to the graveyard. So if tokens never hit the graveyard, any ability that cares about dying wouldn't notice it.

[Duckay]

Well, look... Not every product is going to be "for you", as it were. Most of the things you don't like are things I am looking forward to (having to choose between two excellent and expensive cards makes me feel satisfied in the high value of the format, and I love learning new sets) (not to mention that you're not "giving up" much value as people are going to be passing you sweet cards as well). The price is a big downside, of course; most people I know can't afford $50 a draft, certainly not regularly (before you argue, I'm not exaggerating, just Australian).
My biggest problem by contrast is just I feel like the synergies have dipped considerably from MMA. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong.

[AdmiralMemo]

A bunch of your gameplay objections are the same objections that people have regarding drafting Cube on MtGO. The key difference there is not keeping the cards, so no worry about resale value, and lower costs due to being phantom.

[Kapol]

Well, look... Not every product is going to be "for you", as it were. Most of the things you don't like are things I am looking forward to (having to choose between two excellent and expensive cards makes me feel satisfied in the high value of the format, and I love learning new sets) (not to mention that you're not "giving up" much value as people are going to be passing you sweet cards as well). The price is a big downside, of course; most people I know can't afford $50 a draft, certainly not regularly (before you argue, I'm not exaggerating, just Australian).
My biggest problem by contrast is just I feel like the synergies have dipped considerably from MMA. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong.

I'm not saying that all sets should be tailored to me. I'm discussing why the reasons this set doesn't interest me personally. That's why I put it in a collapse tag so it wasn't taking up too much space and started out stating why I don't care to draft it. Though I admit I did use poor wording there.

The reasons I mentioned don't make it a bad set. And I'm sure there are going to be a lot of people who love it. The reason I shared my concerns is there are a lot of people, likely myself included, who will "have" to draft it if we want to play in FNM or similar events. I know all of the stores around me are going to be doing it as FNM the week it comes out. And I think they'll likely due it for a few weeks after if they have enough product.

As for value, the problem is that there are still a lot of really poor rares in the set. Opening a junk rare isn't fun in a normal pack. But when the prices are over twice as much, opening the Master Breeder feels a lot worse to me. That's not something that will always happen. And the average price seems decent enough that you won't end up with too much bulk. But it's still not fun to go through.

And that's one thing I tried to make sure I mentioned. All of that was from my point of view. It's going to be different for everyone. I'm in a situation that passing even $30 in value just will not be worth it honestly. The biggest pay-out for my FLGS is normally about $20 due to a low turn out. That makes it more frustrating to pass something that's around that. You are getting passed some good stuff. But the packs where there are two solidly valuable cards won't be common enough that you can reliably count on it happening to your right/left. And where I draft, pretty much everyone drafts value when they can. So it won't make it past one person in most cases.

I also used $30 as kind of the 'low point' because I know it's going to be more expensive than that pretty much everywhere. I believe you when you say it'll be $50 in Australia. So there's no arguments there.

A bunch of your gameplay objections are the same objections that people have regarding drafting Cube on MtGO. The key difference there is not keeping the cards, so no worry about resale value, and lower costs due to being phantom.

I'm not a huge fan of cube either to be honest. But the fact it's phantom helps cut the cost down and deals with any passing issues you might run into, and those were the two bigger problems I have with MM2. The not being used to it while others will be is something that bothers me. But if I were able to actually draft it with any frequency, it wouldn't be as much of an issue. I feel like I'd be able to learn the synergies and actually be able to implement them later.

[hascow]

Well, look... Not every product is going to be "for you", as it were. Most of the things you don't like are things I am looking forward to (having to choose between two excellent and expensive cards makes me feel satisfied in the high value of the format, and I love learning new sets) (not to mention that you're not "giving up" much value as people are going to be passing you sweet cards as well). The price is a big downside, of course; most people I know can't afford $50 a draft, certainly not regularly (before you argue, I'm not exaggerating, just Australian).
My biggest problem by contrast is just I feel like the synergies have dipped considerably from MMA. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong.

I actually think the synergies are significantly higher than MMA1, but a little more subtle. The format is less "take all cards of tribe X" and more "make interesting interactions happen".

[Asthanius]

MMA 2015 is closer to somebody's actual cube, since it's filled with a bunch of synergistic cards, instead of something with very specific decks that you can build, and if you don't follow one of those archetypes, you'll lose.

[VectorZero]

Things I want to do:

Splinter twin on mulldrifter.

All in on thrummingbird proliferate/graft.

Hurkyl you?

+4 Karn - Emrakul, -14 Karn (yeah...that's not happening)

Two color with a splash seems the way to go. So many good cards.

[eostby]

I think Elementals might actually be a five color deck (especially if you get a Horde of Notions). And Marshall's quick primer on DailyMTG is a decent place to look if the synergy of the set isn't quite clear enough for you yet.

[MowDownJoe]

So, what's everyone's LGS charging for a draft? I've seen $45 as the most common, and that lines up with what my shop is doing.

[Atifexe]

Yellowjacket is charging $50 a draft here in Victoria.

[VectorZero]

$50 most places in adelaide and melbourne, keep what you draft, 2/1 packs to the winner/second.

[Duckay]

My local store is doing $45, redraft rares and foils.

Also, I'm sorry I brought up the synergies in MMA2015 compared to original MMA! Obviously I was wrong, although I still feel as though describing MMA as "take this tribe or you lose" is something of an oversimplification.

[VectorZero]

Played a 4-player casual midnight launch draft. We each pulled one of cryptic, kiki-jiki, mox opal, emrakul.

Went BG tokens. Not enough removal, couldn't get enough blue to do proliferate. Never saw emrakul but got to punch with kicked kavu primarch and gnarlid pack a few times. Seems like it should be fun to draft a few times.

2nd draft: moved into a massively open spirits and got a nice soulshift chain. Got a bit greedy and went junk with green token generators and scions. Devils mana base with 2 Karoo lands, bauble, map. Only saw three lands in game one. Mull to 3 in game two. Smashed in a casual G3 when it all came together *sigh*

'Match 2 v spirits, three grindy value matches. Won in three.

Match 3 v GW tokens. Lost in three to a massive board of tokens and a huge scute mob.

Got passed emrakul 2nd pick! Also opened leyline and noble hierarch, so I guess I have to make a new deck now.

[eostby]

The store I usually go to for drafts is pricing theirs at $30 or 35 normally, but tonight was a $15 dollar draft (with prizes only paying down to about 3rd in each pod, but w/e, $15 MM2015 draft!).

After staying monowhite for the first few picks of the draft, I slide into the very open BW Spirits/Arcane deck, and get pretty well rewarded for the choice with a very solid deck (imo). Still only 1-2'd the pod, so no prizes, and passed the only two "money" cards I saw due to not being in those colors (Remand and Comet Storm). Other notable opens from people in my pod: Karn, Prime Time, Iona, and one guy who opened double Endrek Sahr. Notable opens from other people in the store: foil Mox Opal, Kozilek, Daybreak Coronet, Splinter Twin.

I still had a good time, but with how things ended up for me, I'm really glad I didn't have to pay MSRP for this, because I might have been the only person in my pod whose draft didn't pay for itself.

[ZePancakes]

So I got a box, notables:
Splinter twin
Fulminator Mage
Spellskite
Bitterblossom
Prime time
Iona
Foil cryptic command (yew!)
Noble hierarch
And some others but they escape me.

[Duckay]

I physically opened a Tarmogoyf.

It was not my pack, though.

[JWiley129]

So I have drafted MM15 twice now, and went 4-color madness both times after getting a Noble Hierarch both drafts and comboed it with Wilt-Leaf Liege both times.

On Friday I was GW splashing Red and Black for Banefire and Wrecking Ball plus a blue bounceland+Hierarch for Skyreach Manta + Etched Oracle. The deck went 2-2 though losing to GB Eldrazi and WU Fliers/Artifacts.

Yesterday I was GW splashing Black and Blue for Mulldrifter, Creakwood Liege, and Pillory of the Sleepless. Went 3-0 through just sheer power, especially after having Turn 3 Lieges in each match.

All in all, I am LOVING this format. I may have been greedy going 4 colors in both drafts, but the set is fun and has tons of interactions that make it always interesting. Plus, opening $60 worth of cards both drafts doesn't hurt.

[Volafortis]

First MM15 draft. I may have drafted something insane like this:

Click to Expand

[VectorZero]

Just scored my second ever 3-0. For probably the first time ever in a draft, things were just going beautifully. P1P1 mulldrifter, P1P5 and P1P7 thrumming birds. Drafted a BUG control pile and ended up running this lean Simic graft control deck:

Click to Expand

I made a few loose plays and give my opponents the occasional extra turn. The deck was good to me and deserved a 3-0. All three matches were good fun. The opponents decks got to do their thing; RG stompy, BR bloodthirst, BG tokens.

This was so beautiful. I got to go off with thrummingbird. I cast thrive on two thrummingbirds. I cast mulldrifter with coatl in play. I cast remand with Guile in play (at 20-2, he cast a lethal burst lightning which I turned back at him and punched with guile three times - I think it went guile, remand/burst lightning, repeal an equipped viashino warrior, counter thief of hope.) I had bigger creatures than red green stompy. I had more removal than the black decks.

10/10, would draft again.