Magic: The Gathering (TCG) Catch-all

4dSwissCheese wrote:

I haven't played since 1995, but after watching some Loading Ready Run guys draft, as well as some other twitch.tv streams, I've decided I have very little interest in constructed (except maybe pauper) but that I find limited formats fascinating. I thinking of hitting my local games store this weekend for the M13 pre-release, but I have only the barest idea of what to expect. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Be ruthless, and expect others to be so as well. Draft is not about taking the rarest card, or the most powerful creature, it's about hitting that 20 life as fast and frequently as possible. Here are the tactics that have won me at least 2nd place in the last few drafts I've played in:

- CMC of 3 or less is the aim. This means fast 1/1 creatures, burn, etc. If your deck is laden with 4+ mana cost spells, you're going to be dead before you can actually do anything.
- Burn rules everything. Blue control *can* be done, but it's hard, and trying to get combos together is even tougher. Red has an answer to everything, and that's kill it. Grab any and all Fireballs, Lightning Bolts, or other burn spells you can. At worst you've denied someone else a good burn spell, at best it'll win you games.
- Speed, speed, speed. Creatures with haste, mana acceleration, and cheap spells (see item #1) are best. Big things with higher costs should be avoided or hate-drafted, unless if you have some way to get them out easily.

It takes some practice, but draft is a ton of fun. Most of all, observe what your opponents did that worked and keep that in mind for next time.

4dSwissCheese wrote:

I haven't played since 1995, but after watching some Loading Ready Run guys draft, as well as some other twitch.tv streams, I've decided I have very little interest in constructed (except maybe pauper) but that I find limited formats fascinating. I thinking of hitting my local games store this weekend for the M13 pre-release, but I have only the barest idea of what to expect. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Read this: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...

Pre-Release will be sealed most likely at your store. Sealed is my favorite format. Its just so fun to see how good you can do with what you are dealt. Draft is not quite as fun for me because it hard for me to give away a good card, but not good for the deck im building.

ahrezmendi, I'm in SF and I on the fence about playing again. I haven't played in probably 15 years, and gave all my cards to my little brother 10 years ago, so I'd be starting pretty fresh. Biggest concern is the cost - I recall it eating through a bit of my time. But the iPad MtG 2013 game has gotten me curious about getting back into it.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Be ruthless, and expect others to be so as well.

At a prerelease this mentality isn't necessary. Whenever you go out to play Magic, you're going to run into a few jerks. But at an event like a prerelease the atmosphere is more laid back. Newer players are expected, usually the shops have free promo cards to hand out, and the sealed deck format kind of brings down the competitive nature. If you're ever considering dipping your toes back into the pool that is MtG, the summer core set prerelease is the way to go.

If you are planning on going this weekend and want some prep/practice, check out Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013. A lot of the cards in the game are in the set coming out, so you'll actually recognize some of the cards and won't feel like such a newb when you show up. . Plus you can probably redeem the code you get for buying the game at the store where you're playing and get an extra promo card while you're at it.

ahrezmendi wrote:

...Draft is not about taking the rarest card, or the most powerful creature, it's about hitting that 20 life as fast and frequently as possible. Here are the tactics that have won me at least 2nd place in the last few drafts I've played in...

While I disagree with a few of Ahrezmendi's points here, the idea that you need a deck capable of interacting early in the game, whether it is defense or offense is extremely good advice. Also bear in mind that the M13 pre-release will be sealed format, which is much slower than draft, and often the deck with the best card advantage and powerful creatures/spells (which are often lategame) will do best.

Standard draft rule: BREAK - bombs, removal, efficient, aggressive, krap. That's your pick order. Sometimes bombs can be subjective, based on the rest of your deck, but particularly in a base set, it's generally pretty obvious. Aside from that, removal is king, followed by efficient creatures.

I get the sense that a lot of folks disagree with my advice because this pre-release will be sealed deck. Note that I said, explicitly, that my advice pertained to Draft, not sealed.

I will be going to the Pre-release this weekend and the release next weekend. I would love to hear share some stories and trade some tips on what you all experienced. Is anyone else going?

Also, here is a little sealed pool simulator someone cooked up thats been fun to practice with: http://taw.chaosforge.org/m13_sealed/

So I did go to a pre-release on Sunday. It was ok, I guess. I was not thrilled with my sealed pool. I got a Liliana, but not much else impressive. Ended up playing a Black-White Exalted deck looked ok to me, but seemed to have a lot of trouble getting any momentum going in practice. It's possible that I should have been playing red instead of one of my other colours. I also had a lot of trouble figuring out when a hand was keepable. It felt like I was encountering edge case after edge case. Went 1-3, though it's on the books as 2-3 since my round 4 opponent was a no-show.

The whole experience was pretty long and exhausting. Both me and my deck play very quickly, apparently, so there was a ton of downtime between matches. (Tallying it up, it seems likely I played about an hour of matches in the six and a half hours I was there.) I socialized a bit, but there's only so much of that I have the patience for sitting in a hot, cramped room. Like I said in my first post, I don't really have any interest in building a constructed deck, which seems to be what people play with between rounds. So, all in all, while I had some fun and I'm glad I gave it a try, I don't think it's something I'm going to make a regular habit of doing.

@4dSwissCheese

That's why I started operating under the buddy system. Even when I have the courage to play constructed I make sure a good friend goes with me so that there isn't as much boredom between rounds.

I get the whole "FNM is relaxed so you can make friends" thing that they try to push, but it just feels like too busy environment to actually make new friends.

I too did the pre-release. I started out 2-0 and then finished the day with a 2-3-1 record (we have large turnouts). I got mostly crap and didn't win, but I had some really fun and interesting matches. A lot went down to the wire in game three. Blue/White fliers were my undoing, so I'm thinking I'll try those in drafts down the road. Black seems pretty strong and paired fairly well with my green. I just didn't have any bombs or finishers. It was Vampire Nighthawk or bust for me.

Mr pre-release was pretty cool. I had a good pool which led to difficulties on which deck to use. I opened a sublime archangel and a chandra, foil krenko mob boss, and the exahulted land. I decided to try White/Green because of the angel, and the mana curve felt good. Unfortunatly I had almost zero reomoval so I ditched it after loosing the first 3 games and switched to a black red deck. Black had some deathtouch and 2 murders along with a public exacution. I ended up going 2-2 and was happy with my packs. Krenko is amazing if you and activate his ability with a couple of goblins out. I stuck around for draft afterwards, against my better judgement and went 0-3. I did crack a liliana in pack 2 so it could have been worse. Im liking this set better then AVR as far as limited goes. The games were close/diverse and there seemed to be a lot of cool intereactions with some of the cards. I'll be going to release this wekeend too.

Oh man, I was over at a friend's house last night playing paper magic with a few friends. I haven't done that in ages. Even better, he wanted to show off his shiny new 'cube', which as I learned is 360 individual cards (no duplicates) from which draft as you normally would with booster packs!

What I enjoyed the most from this cube format is that, like other finite / fixed / static card games (i.e. Thunderstone*) there was a set pool of cards but if you have fewer than 8 people (we had 4) the card pool can vary wildly from session to session.

If I had to pick one flaw, it would only be that the cube lacked a certain sense of flavour, instead focusing on great cards (each deck felt overpowered, which felt great) making every pick in the draft exciting and strategic. So it's not even a real flaw, just a difference in taste.

I enjoyed it so much (and won our little round-robin, too boot) that I'm considering constructing a cube of my own! I'm thinking of making a cube that's a little more thematic, such as basing it on my favourite set, Mirrodin.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder...(card_game)
For some reason, the url tag didn't work.

My friend did a cube draft for his birthday two years ago. What made his particularly interesting is that he's been playing since 4th Edition, so he had cards spanning nearly the entire game, so there were some really tough choices while drafting, and some really crazy decks that got created. It was definitely good times, and interesting in a different way than standard draft. It also took him weeks to put together the cube, so I doubt it's something I would do myself, and he even said he doubted he'd do it again. Good times though, draft of any kind is a lot of fun.

I have a couple of cubes built, and it is probably my favourite format!

My main cube is an unpowered 540 card "best of" cube. This has cards spanning back to Revised and is a collection of all the best limited/constructed cards of all time. It originally was a powered 700 card cube but I wanted to take away some of the variance and stop control/combo being too dominant. I added more support for themes in each colour.
White: aggro, token making, wrath/sweepers
Blue: tempo, card drawing, control
Black: aggro, reanimation, disruption
Red: aggro, burn, combo
Green: mana ramp, midrange, tempo

I also have an artifact cube, about 360 cards, which collects a lot of cards from mainly the two Mirrodin blocks, but not restricted too them. It was kind of fun, but is inherintly unbalanced as black is terrible in this format, and red and green mostly just care about destroying artifacts. Scars of Mirrodin doesn't help much as Infect doesn't really have enough cards and is such a linear mechanic that it fails in the cube format.

I also have a custom made cube which consists of a set that friends and I developed as close as we could to how Wizards do it. See here for in depth details if you are interested.

Some other cubes that I know of in my area:
Graveyard Cube - all cards interact with graveyard in some way (this is awesome)
Teachings Cube - all cards featured in a Mystical Teachings deck that made a top 8 in any Pro Tour or Grand Prix
Split Card Cube - all cards are split cards of two existing cards (I'm working on this one myself)
Complex Cube - all cards are chosen due to rules text length (I've never played this)
Chaos Badger Cube - all cards are created by algorithmically mashing two existing Magic cards together (this is great but can randomly create some really broken cards sometimes)

A good resource for cubes can be found on MTG Salvation.

Finally I know what that mysterious Cube is all about

So if you have a bulk of 360 cards - how do you split them up for the draft?

Shuffle and deal 15 cards to 24 piles?

I guess this should be a very good format for anybody with a large collection.

Probably wouldn't be that much fun drafting with a cube only made up from the Innistrad Block.

MEATER wrote:

Finally I know what that mysterious Cube is all about

So if you have a bulk of 360 cards - how do you split them up for the draft?

Shuffle and deal 15 cards to 24 piles?

I guess this should be a very good format for anybody with a large collection.

Probably wouldn't be that much fun drafting with a cube only made up from the Innistrad Block.

Yeah, basically we had four people last week so we dealt out four packs of 15 randomized cards. The owner of the deck took the time beforehand to make sure the cube was sufficiently shuffled.

I don't see why an Innistrad Block cube wouldn't be fun - you get a lot of flavour packed into a cube that way imo and can allow for some neat thematic decks or decks that have a common element.

'Course I will say that the cube that I'm building on paper right now probably won't feel as powerful as the cube that my friend built since I'm only limiting myself to Mirrodin Block. He made sure that almost every single card in his cube was awesome. I can't afford such luxuries since I have a much more limited card pool. (Each colour in the block has 66 cards O_o)

When I started playing a few weeks ago I got 12 Boosters from M12, Avacyn, Innistrad and Dark Ascension each.

First we drafted with the boosters and then I used the cards to build a deck for FNM. I soon found out that I wouldn't be able to build a deck that could compete. And trading also was way to slow. All in all it seemed way to expensive to get over the bump that would have bought me a deck that would have been up to competition.

By now I also have some cards from drafting M13 and playing at a prerelease and a release event.

Building a cube with the cards might actually be a nice way to just keep playing without having to buy new packs or cards.

Gotta think about that! Just throwing together the cards I have of each color and then picking out the lame cards might be enough to end up with 60 of each color (including lands and artifacts).

We usually play with 3 or 4 people so I guess we would only use 240 or 180 cards of the cube at random so it would even be a nice change everytime we play.

MEATER wrote:

I soon found out that I wouldn't be able to build a deck that could compete. And trading also was way to slow. All in all it seemed way to expensive to get over the bump that would have bought me a deck that would have been up to competition.

A competitive T2 deck is a very different design. I personally do not enjoy T2 at all, the focus on winning as fast as possible and at all costs skirts what I love most about the game - creativity. Some of my most entertaining decks to play are my least efficient decks, but I wouldn't change them because they're fun to play. That's also what I love about draft, it's spur of the moment creativity with the limited choice you have. When you play T2, if your deck can't consistently win in a few turns, then it's never going to compete, and this is why the top decks are always slight variants of the same design theme. I find that boring.

It's also the reason why it is so expensive, Jace TMS (pre-ban) being a prime example.

Yup, I learned that the hard way after dropping some semi-serious cash on building a competitive deck back in Ravnica days. The secondary market has gotten way, way out of control (imo), which is why if I ever start really playing Magic again, it'll only be in Limited formats (draft / sealed / etc).

As for competitive T2 eschewing creativity for raw power yeah I can understand that, though I suppose that is true for nearly any competitive card game, and many other genres of games as well. I guess the excitement for competitive T2 players comes from excellent strategy and clutch topdecks and such. Personally I don't completely understand it, but then again my love for Magic developed from spending hours crafting awesome combo decks.

I actually got drawn into magic because of the competitive aspect.

I was really intrigued by these two blogs:FNM Hero and MTGO Hero.

Those guys try to grind their way to the top with a fixed starting budget and trading up from an event deck and only spending what they win at competitions.

I really liked that idea and wanted to try that too. But online you just will not be able to compete without a very good deck and you will have to put a ton of practice into a good deck to get its worth out of it. And in Germany there is no way to earn store credit at FNMs so you wouldn't be able to improve your deck by grinding store events.

Now all I do is draft at the local store from time to time. The problem with deckbuilding for me is that if you do not play against someone who has a deck with the same power level it just will not be any fun, no matter how fun the cards in the deck are to play. And that's really hard to balance out playing with different people.

Thanks to Magic 2013, my geeky coworkers and our studio's roots in developing digital card games, I've slowly creeped back into playing some sweet M:TG. I am hoping to stay controlled with the spending by playing my friends' decks and milking the Magic 2013 content and maybe picking up a few pre-made decks here and there...

So I got my first one. Spotted a bunch of different decks for Avacyn Restored at London Drugs and settled on Solitary Fiends. I like how they bundle a booster pack in with a fully customized deck but... was really disappointed to find that the deck isn't packaged with a box to hold it in. Just the container package and a flimsy plastic mold inside. Weird.

EDIT: also thank you all, now I know what a "cube" is. Sounds like a great idea for the budget-minded and non-superhardcore.

I was about to start this thread, but searching for Magic first found me this one! Huzzah!

Ok, I've read through the thread now.

I just got back into Magic this weekend - I tend to jump in and out depending on whether I like the current set. I loved Zendikar, then jumped out when it's first small set didn't interest me. I skipped Scars of Mirrodin because I didn't like original Mirrodin. I thought Innistrad sounded awesome, but the Werewolf mechanic of telling you NOT to cast any spells was sh*te. I've heard Wizards has acknowledged that was a mistake.

Anyway, when Fall rolls around I start looking for info on the next block. Return to Ravnica?!?!?! Yes!!!! And Magic Online had original Ravnica drafts this past weekend!

So, in the last few days I've done three 4-3-2-2 Ravnica drafts online. I made the semis twice and the finals once. Each time I felt like I was drafting horribly, but playing semi-competently.

I also was pleased to see that while Leagues are still not back (though there is a room for them, which is maybe a kind of promise?), there are some new, more player-friendly formats. I love that there are Swiss-draw drafts and sealed decks, not just single-elimination. And there are 4-pack sealed Swiss events, which seems cool.

I've never played any Avacyn Restored, so I decided to try a 4-pack Swiss sealed. I love draft best, but if you haven't played a set, sealed is far better. I was scratching my head about how to get enough playable cards together until I saw that I was only supposed to build a 30 card deck.

Honestly, my deck was crazily overpowered. I had two mythic angels, Avacyn and Gisela (though no game went long enough for me to cast one - and I should have run 14 land rather than 13), a couple other angels, two AVC Shocks (whatever), and some other pretty good stuff. Sadly, I only came in 2nd.

So, I'm looking forward to Return to Ravnica. I would like to play more in person, but I only know two people who play, and I've got two small kids. I'm probably going to have to play more online for now.

I've long been interested in trying Commander/EDH, and I'm absolutely dying to try Cube draft. If I had more people to play with I'd probably build a Commander deck and a Cube - my collection goes back to Revised.

Also hoping to enter at least one Pro Tour Qualifier during the Return to Ravnica Sealed season, which starts very soon.

Sat down with my wife last night, and finally broke through her anti-M:tG bias and taught her the game. She had an ex try to teach her, badly, which soured her on the whole idea. Doubt we'll be going nuts with new decks/cards any time soon, but it's nice to have another 2-player game in the apartment now

Tanglebones wrote:

Sat down with my wife last night, and finally broke through her anti-M:tG bias and taught her the game. She had an ex try to teach her, badly, which soured her on the whole idea. Doubt we'll be going nuts with new decks/cards any time soon, but it's nice to have another 2-player game in the apartment now :)

Awesome!

I've decided to take yet another shot at playing with my wife, too. I think my problem is that, while I enjoy teaching people things, I feel like taking someone from no Magic knowledge to someone who can draft competently is just an insurmountable task. Obviously, I need to be thinking more along the lines of baby steps. My problem is that I tend towards being a Spike (if anyone doesn't know about Spike, Timmy, and Johnny, let me know), so they "payoff" of playing a really challenging game seems a long way off.

Still, I broke out some Theme Decks last night, and she seemed open to the idea. She plays Ascension on her iPhone constantly, so she'a open to fantasy card games even when I'm not playing them with her. I wish she had an iPad, so she could see if she likes DotP.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Sat down with my wife last night, and finally broke through her anti-M:tG bias and taught her the game. She had an ex try to teach her, badly, which soured her on the whole idea. Doubt we'll be going nuts with new decks/cards any time soon, but it's nice to have another 2-player game in the apartment now :)

Awesome!

I've decided to take yet another shot at playing with my wife, too. I think my problem is that, while I enjoy teaching people things, I feel like taking someone from no Magic knowledge to someone who can draft competently is just an insurmountable task. Obviously, I need to be thinking more along the lines of baby steps. My problem is that I tend towards being a Spike (if anyone doesn't know about Spike, Timmy, and Johnny, let me know), so they "payoff" of playing a really challenging game seems a long way off.

Still, I broke out some Theme Decks last night, and she seemed open to the idea. She plays Ascension on her iPhone constantly, so she'a open to fantasy card games even when I'm not playing them with her. I wish she had an iPad, so she could see if she likes DotP.

We had a few pre-mades from PAXes of yore, so I just set her up with a green deck, and taught her the basics.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I skipped Scars of Mirrodin because I didn't like original Mirrodin.

I would give Scars another look, it was a really potent set. Not imbalanced the way Mirrodin was. I didn't draft it though, so I don't know how well it does in that format.

ahrezmendi wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

I skipped Scars of Mirrodin because I didn't like original Mirrodin.

I would give Scars another look, it was a really potent set. Not imbalanced the way Mirrodin was. I didn't draft it though, so I don't know how well it does in that format.

Well, maybe I will. I think that the Ravnica drafts are either over or over tomorrow. But I'll probably focus on trying INN/DA, M13, and more AVC. In the event that I decide to dip into Constructed (not my forte), those cards will be around Standard another year.

I understand that Magic Online has occasionally offered Cube Drafting, but not regularly. Man, they just can't figure out a way to serve their customers well. At least Swiss and 4-pack sealed are steps in the right direction. If only I were in charge of Magic Online.

Avacyn Restored is fantastic, my favorite set in quite a while. I play constructed with friends, but looking through the cards I think it would draft well, so if that's an option then definitely try that first. It'll also set you up with quite a few good cards to get started in constructed if you want to move into it, though I don't know how that works in MTG:O. Is constructed limited to particular formats in MTG:O?

You can either build a deck to fit one of many formats, or a "free for all" deck.

I used to have a Rainbow Staircase deck, for instance, which is not a supported format, but was played all the time. I think the GWJ MTGO clan had a RS tournament one time, actually. Anyway, you build the deck as a "free for all" deck and then use the game description to let folks know you're looking for Rainbow Staircase.

Right now, I have no saved decklists online. I'd like to build a Commander deck (and one IRL, too).

I also played some Zendikar Block Constructed back in the day, and found that to be a very cost-effective way to play tournaments once the deck was built. After a while, though, playing the same deck gets boring, especially when you have no real human interaction online.

I'll probably try to build a Commander deck online if I can invest the time. If the opportunity to play more IRL presents itself, I'll build one IRL as well. I like the idea of casual deckbuilding, but haven't had a ton of time since my kids started showing up.

If I really get back into IRL Magic with a vengeance, I'd love to build a Cube some day, although I might have to approximately copy someone else's, since balancing it seems like a serious task.