Author Topic: M:tG Deck Tips?  (Read 53499 times)

Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #80 on: March 25, 2013, 08:49:33 AM »
Thanks guys, i'll drop my experience so far here. Again after realizing the last of my standing decks leftover from when I played ( sometime back when Weatherlight was in Type II) did not include a blue deck I broke down and spent some money on cards (at Target of all places... mainly because the local card shop closes at 5pm ??? wtf mate?) so I bought the Izzet v Golgarri? duel deck cause a) its 2 built decks that I don't have to work and b) 1 is a u/r and then i bought a deck builders box and a battle booster (which damn it neither has a deck box that fits 60 cards much less a side board....) so in essence my friend and I did a 30 dollar sealed game. He took his fat pack and I took my 30 dollars worth of cards and we played.

I fairly happy with my card selection, I got a Curiosity and an Invisible Stalker (so extra draw per turn thank you very much) a couple of draw 2 cards (one is Faithless Looting), I didn't use them but I got i think five evolving wilderness lands ( the here's a land go get what color you want and shuffle your deck), a Rummaging Goblin (which I'm not using), and maybe something else on the draw front. BUT no Index  :bigeyes 

On the firepower side, 3 Volcanic strengths to go on my 4 red intimidate creatures (yay unblockable!) a smidge of direct damage, a smelt and a torch fiend for artifact control, and a bloody well kick ass artifact called the Trepanation Blade... (mill mill mill mill mill mill millllllllll.....) oh and two scrolls of avacyn ( 2 mana for drawing a card in essence but since its an artifact i can save it for later  underpowered in my deck because it has a bonus of +5 life if you have angels which I don't)

It's much much more hard hitting than my draft deck that i used last week. So i'm liking things so far.

Meta question: If i spent more money and say bought from a supplier the common/uncommon of an entire set, which one would be better? Core Set? or one of the current flavor expansion sets? especially for getting blue and/or artifacts

Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #81 on: March 25, 2013, 12:37:19 PM »
That... Would be unwise. For any edition. You'd end up with tons of useless and outright bad cards, as well as cards that don't work together *at all*. Unless you want to have a neat collection with every card from every edition or something like that, i would refrain from ever buying in bulk like that. Instead, what i'd do, is...

A) Proxy up some cards and test out a few decks to see what works and what doesn't, and then go and buy the cards i proxied and liked.

B) Test decks out in Cockatrice/Magic Workstation, and then go and buy the cards that i don't have.

MTGSalvation forums have tons of cheap decklists in the various threads, even pauper format (commons only), and it's definitely a place to check out if you want to see what the trends currently are on magic, and generally learn a lot about magic. Straight up copying decklists is boring, but checking them out and improving upon them is fun.
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Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #82 on: March 25, 2013, 02:42:19 PM »
except that if there is a place that for 20 bucks I can 4 of every common/uncommon in the set.... it only takes like 3 commons that I want to make it a better deal than buying boxes and boxes of boosters myself.... admittedly those places also sell every card individually..... and when have you not ended up with hundreds of cards you didn't use? I mean my collection is incredibly piddley and i'll still only use 10% or less of my cards (not counting lands) in standing decks.....

not that I'm necessarily going to do it, but i have always been a person to flip through the cards for ideas, that may change though.

Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #83 on: March 25, 2013, 02:51:05 PM »
Well, if it's THAT big of a deal, then of course everything changes :)
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Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #84 on: March 25, 2013, 03:16:02 PM »
currently that deal is only for a few sets: Dark Ascension, SCARS OF MIRRODIN, $30 for core 2011, and a few older ones the place hasn't sold out of apparently (older more expensive naturally).

Offline Halinn

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #85 on: March 25, 2013, 06:45:00 PM »
A quick google search found this article which has some prices for high-value commons/uncommons by sets. I can't vouch for accuracy, but star city games is generally a reputable site for such things. If you are into trading, maybe you can get some good value from your shop with those full set deals.

Offline Elevevated Beat

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #86 on: March 25, 2013, 07:13:12 PM »
Meta question: If i spent more money and say bought from a supplier the common/uncommon of an entire set, which one would be better? Core Set? or one of the current flavor expansion sets? especially for getting blue and/or artifacts
In my opinion, don't buy a core set.
They are more likely to have the mass amounts of bad cards (well, really, they're just basic) you'll never see played in tournaments.
The expansion sets are where you get your commons and uncommons.

This is from prior experience, though. I haven't played for a few years, and I've known WotC to do some pretty random and stupid things so a complete paradigm shift isn't out of the question.
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Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #87 on: March 25, 2013, 07:25:34 PM »

They are more likely to have the mass amounts of bad cards (well, really, they're just basic) you'll never see played in tournaments.
The expansion sets are where you get your commons and uncommons.

This is from prior experience, though. I haven't played for a few years, and I've known WotC to do some pretty random and stupid things so a complete paradigm shift isn't out of the question.

From my limited view over the past month it appears they started adding common and uncommons from old sets and expansion sets into core sets after there's no other way for them to played in standard. This might also apply to Rares but i've only seen 15 rares vs like 100 uncommons because of the type of boxes I bought. The thing that I missed that I wouldn't have thought they would do is they brought back Lightning Bolt.... again and again and again. As if making it an uncommon print would make it less powerful?

Anywho its a thought, I might buy a fat pack instead.

As to that starcitygames article its very interesting, I mean he's all about the prices and commodity mechanics but he reinforces the underlying idea that commons and uncommons have power, and people will want to use them, I always found it amusing how much emphasis is put on rares even though it was really like 4 rares out a whole set that were like godly awesome. And apparently now WotC knows that too and just calls those Mythic Rare?


Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #88 on: March 25, 2013, 08:55:24 PM »
More recent core sets have been seeing reprints of a lot of nice cards from older sets, not enough to justify buying a core set instead of an expansion, but it's getting better.
"All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison" - Schopenhauer, Aphorisms: The Wisdom of Life

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #89 on: March 25, 2013, 09:24:12 PM »
I would buy common/uncommon sets over fat packs most definitely.

Did you say you can get a C/UC playset of Scars of Mirrodin for 20$? Do that. That's a seriously decent deal.

Generally, though, whether you're better off with playsets or singles depends on your budget. Playsets are definitely cheaper per card but they're potentially more expensive per deck and more limiting on your deckbuilding options. If you can afford to buy a playset or two plus a few singles to round things out, that's ideal. If you've only got a very limited budget you may get more deck for your money buying singles.

In this specific case, if you can get a Scars of Mirrodin playset plus some singles from the first mirrodin block, that could set you up with a pretty cool U/R build. Specifically, the artifact land from Mirrodin (Great Furnace and Seat of the Synod, possibly also Darksteel Citadel) sets up metalcraft really nicely. Cheap metalcraft cards and affinity cards also play well together.

Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #90 on: March 26, 2013, 01:54:10 PM »
Colour me intriqued... whats metalcraft?

Edit: and I checked on the Scars of Mirridon it would be $30 which for 161 cards x4....
« Last Edit: March 26, 2013, 02:06:30 PM by dipolartech »

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #91 on: March 26, 2013, 06:58:33 PM »
Metalcraft is a keyword ability introduced in the second Mirrodin block. It's a little like threshold only instead of 7 cards in the graveyard, a card with Metalcraft has an additional or more powerful ability if you control 3 or more artifacts.

Galvanic Blast is a metalcraft card that your U/R would enjoy. Without metalcraft it's Shock but with metalcraft it's superior to lightning bolt.

I like the idea of Metalcraft cards combined with ]Affinity cards from the first Mirrodin block. Specifically Thoughtcast would be low cost drawing.

Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #92 on: March 26, 2013, 08:43:08 PM »
Affinity decks are so cheap... Luckily most of the really broken cards that made it one of the top decks in the history of Standard are banned from Modern, like the artifact lands and more. It just got so ridiculous so fast, it didn't even look like a Standard deck normally runs, it ran more like a Legacy deck.
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Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #93 on: March 27, 2013, 12:00:30 PM »
It's not affinity decks in general that are problematic, just the one build with Ravager, Disciple, Skullclamp, Cranial Plating etc that was out of hand (and in Legacy/Vintage not even that one is a problem.) Interestingly, none of those are actually affinity cards, though Frogmite and Myr Enforcer along with Ornithopter were the cheap food that made the rest of the engine function.

If you run affinity without the silly power it can be decent for casual. I have a 60 artifact gimmick build (the first MTG deck I built from scratch) that's affinity based and more fun than degenerate. I also have a U/B Ninja/affinity build (Ninjutsu is excellent synergy with Ornithopter/Frogmite) that is similarly casual level. I have Cranial Plating in that one because it's amusing to stick it on a ninjutsued creature with its BB ability and because the lower relative number of artifacts makes it less swingy.

Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #94 on: March 27, 2013, 09:37:03 PM »
Ravager isn't on the banned list. Cranial Plating isn't as well. You still have Inkmoth and Blinkmoth nexus as pseudo-artifact lands, and Darksteel Citadel isn't on the ban list as well. Disciple of the Vault isn't as well.

In fact, the only card on your list banned on Modern is Skullclamp. The rest aren't even on the restricted list... Look at this deck for instance: http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Modern_Affinity_deck

So... Most of the cards that compose the affinity deck are Modern legal. Only the really broken ones are banned.
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Offline Sinfire Titan

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #95 on: March 27, 2013, 10:12:42 PM »
So... Most of the cards that compose the affinity deck are Modern legal. Only the really broken ones are banned.

And the lands that made Ravager Affinity so powerful in Standard.
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Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #96 on: March 28, 2013, 05:48:16 AM »
Ravager isn't on the banned list. Cranial Plating isn't as well. You still have Inkmoth and Blinkmoth nexus as pseudo-artifact lands, and Darksteel Citadel isn't on the ban list as well. Disciple of the Vault isn't as well.

In fact, the only card on your list banned on Modern is Skullclamp. The rest aren't even on the restricted list... Look at this deck for instance: http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Modern_Affinity_deck

So... Most of the cards that compose the affinity deck are Modern legal. Only the really broken ones are banned.

So you, uh, proved my point that it was one specific build of affinity, not the decktype in general that was problematic?

Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #97 on: March 28, 2013, 05:50:37 AM »
So... Most of the cards that compose the affinity deck are Modern legal. Only the really broken ones are banned.

And the lands that made Ravager Affinity so powerful in Standard.

Yeah. The lands were the kicker of the mod, really, but there are still pseudo-artifact lands that double as bodies, although it costs mana to do it. Blinkmoth and Inkmoth Nexus. Means the deck is a bit slower, but not terribly slower, than it was way back when.

Artifact lands in the same block as Affinity was simply a BAD idea. Like, a terribad idea. How could they not foresee the abuse? For real, WoTC does somethings sometimes that can only be justifiable as market plays. They release an über powerful card they know is going to get banned/restricted, but before it is, it creates a huge drive of booster pack sales and general interest in the expansion. Mythic Rares exacerbated this problem even further. Shit, Big Jace peaked at 200$ at some point. That's insane for a Standard card. Stuff like this is killing the metagame, i swear.

I was driven away from Magic for financial reasons. I couldn't keep up that hobby and all of my others, i could only choose to keep all the others, or finance my Magic play. Nowadays it's pretty rare to have a reasonable-cost Standard deck, although everyone keeps trying to. It gets harder and harder to justify having massive expenditure after every 2 or 3 months when new expansions come up and new ideas are thrown in, especially considering that you're not only buying the cards as singles, but also buying packs and boxes, and that adds up fast. In the end you're forced into casual play, which is not nearly as entertaining as keeping to the tournament level play, which gets competitive and costly even at city levels.

I try and get the same enjoyment out of playing online, but i find it to be simply impossible to replicate the feeling. It's one of those games that just have to get physical, you need to be able to touch and feel the cards, buy the high quality plastic casings, buy specialized storage, take care and maintain your collection, even though it's not a complete collection nor it will ever be, but in the end you keep getting attached to your cards.

How i miss 10 years ago when it was much more reasonably priced and i didn't know quite enough about it and enjoyed the casual play much more :(



The mechanic in general is problematic. There are many variations on the deck type, but the most efficient kill-con is Ravager/Disciple two-fer-1. Alternates include various metalcraft direct damage spells and pinging  with light hitters in quantity, while using the utility to keep your opponent locked down. Ravager as an enabler to Disciple is especially devious, but there are a lot of other approaches. Disciple is more of a core card than Ravager is, because the Ravager is more of an enabler to Disciple, but it adds another kill con by itself and is really cost efficient, so the two were born for each other. The reason why it was problematic back then was because it was a block where there wasn't a lot of mana acceleration, and it was an artifact focused mod, with a mechanic that heavily favored heavy artifact decks, meaning abuse was to follow.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2013, 05:57:14 AM by brujon »
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Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #98 on: March 28, 2013, 06:33:35 AM »
While I agree with you on Mythics (I've got a real good rant about how they essentially suckered the playerbase into accepting them but this is not really the venue) and Jace (can't explain that one as a mistake like Skullclamp or Tarmogoyf. They just straight up printed an overpowered card so it would sell), I don't put the artifact lands in the same category as that sort of thing.

In the first place, they were hardly a cash grab as they were commons. Secondly, while the effect on the standard and block metas were negative in the short term, Mirrodin was actually a very successful block in terms of public reception, even with the issues in the competitive formats. The artifact lands were a cool and fun idea and if there were negative consequences of R&D going overboard with that block, it still went over better than either Onslaught or Kamigawa blocks which went the other direction power wise. By contrast, Jace and Caw Blade were a much more negative influence on the game (at least from my perspective) even though their negative effect on standard was similar.

I'd say the problem was less with the artifact lands than with the cards that turned them into a game winning engine. I'm rather disapointed wizards decided the artifact lands were a failiure in concept rather than excecution. I would have enjoyed lands with creature types in Lorwyn (which they specifically mentioned were floated by the design team but vetoed mainly based on the precedent of the Mirrodin artifact lands.) A similar thing happened with Storm, where a solid mechanic was tainted by wizards' insistance on printing combo finishers rather than reactive utility (Wing Shards is a good example of what an interesting and non broken storm card looks like.)

Anyway, all this isn't strictly on topic for the deck tips thread.

Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #99 on: March 28, 2013, 09:27:24 AM »
While I agree with you on Mythics (I've got a real good rant about how they essentially suckered the playerbase into accepting them but this is not really the venue) and Jace (can't explain that one as a mistake like Skullclamp or Tarmogoyf. They just straight up printed an overpowered card so it would sell), I don't put the artifact lands in the same category as that sort of thing.


[....]

I'd say the problem was less with the artifact lands than with the cards that turned them into a game winning engine. I'm rather disapointed wizards decided the artifact lands were a failiure in concept rather than excecution. I would have enjoyed lands with creature types in Lorwyn (which they specifically mentioned were floated by the design team but vetoed mainly based on the precedent of the Mirrodin artifact lands.) A similar thing happened with Storm, where a solid mechanic was tainted by wizards' insistance on printing combo finishers rather than reactive utility (Wing Shards is a good example of what an interesting and non broken storm card looks like.)

Anyway, all this isn't strictly on topic for the deck tips thread.

Actually your statement is very helpful to me for deck building as for the longest time (mainly because I started after dual lands) i've avoided fancy lands like the plague they are, but it sounds like at least in the scars expansion they are both easy to get and interesting. So it sounds like I should make an effort to replace my basic lands with as many double/triple use lands as possible?

Also the mythic rares, I mentioned them earlier as well, and in essence its WotC making sure that the 4 or 5 more powerful cards they are print are immediately noticed by giving them a different "color" of rarity. It was always the case that you would buy a lot of booster packs and not care about 3/4 of the rares in them but there were four or five or six of those things that you really liked seeing come out. Wizards just made it official.

EDIT: And by after dual lands I mean the original ones.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2013, 09:30:55 AM by dipolartech »