As midrange Gruul, fighting Red Aggro is a lot of fun. Seeing them open with a blitz and dropping me to 13-15 is hilarious when my turn 3 Nullhide Ferox drops and they realize this is about to get a lot harder for them.
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Magic: The Gathering |OT| Core Set 2020 - Red Head Wins
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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You forgot Mono Black Control.
Everyone has forgotten Mono Black Control.
(cries)
Remember for like a decade, anytime they would do something like reprint Mutilate, people would go "FINALLY MONO-BLACK CONTROL IS BACK"
...and do you remember what *actually* finally made Mono-Black Control a T1 deck again?
Gray Merchant was great. Great Commander card these days too.
Gotta love the cycles Magic design produces. Every color has its time in the sun in standard and it always rotates. And every time there's a 'worst color', especially if it's a result of design pulling it back after it being dominant and/or annoying, fans of that color complain. And it always eventually cycles back to prominence again. Rinse, repeat.
Red will be good in standard again, red fans. It just might take time.
Gotta love the cycles Magic design produces. Every color has its time in the sun in standard and it always rotates. And every time there's a 'worst color', especially if it's a result of design pulling it back after it being dominant and/or annoying, fans of that color complain. And it always eventually cycles back to prominence again. Rinse, repeat.
Red will be good in standard again, red fans. It just might take time.
I'm waiting on that Standard+ or whatever announcement before I start buying into a Standard deck. Supposedly they're going to say something during the M20 release period about it. I hope they support it in paper.
playing cards that actually do something to progress the game is trash
real magic is durdling with counterspells and tuck until the opponent gives up/gets decked
real magic is durdling with counterspells and tuck until the opponent gives up/gets decked
I want red to be good in EDH though and then they printed the red force
No mono color is truly good in EDH and red is definitely near the bottom, but it's not even the worst and it's got plenty of utility that plays well with other colors. White is far and away the worst color in EDH.
I would rather play mono red than RW funnily enough.
mono blue is absolutely good in EDH (based on the power of their generals it's among the strongest strategies you can build), red is the 2nd worst and by a wide margin to BUG, so what if white is worse they also got a terrible force.
Absolutely. And I'm sure a commander could be printed for both Red or White that would be of such high power that a mono colored deck in those colors could be good.
What I meant is that a generic "mono-blue goodstuff" deck, such as Baral, isn't particularly great. Urza, Azami and Teferi are what make those blue decks so good.
are you trying to say my lorthos sea creature tribal deck isnt competitive
i have eight reasons why it is
i have eight reasons why it is
Err... The overall card quality in blue in Magic history is definitely a factor too. It's why big Teferi, baby Jace and Vendilion Clique are great commanders.
San Diego Comic Con exclusive card art
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I'll be trying to order a set. If nothing else, I'll be able to flip it for cost to a buylist easily, and we could have another situation where WOTC fucks up and we get something awesome as compensation
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arguably mono green is stronger in non cutthroat metas than mono u yeah. It's just at the dumbest powerlevel mono u pulls ahead
Yeah any mono colour can have good decks, Godo + Helm is an almost top tier cEDH strategy for instance, but the good stuff decks can almost only be pulled off by mono u and mono g because they don't have glaring weaknesses.
Green in particular has access to everything but countermagic because it's so good at making mana.
Mono-Black works fine in most Commander environments as a combination big mana/value strategy. Yeah, the Golgari and Sultai versions play the value game better, but you lose the big mana consistency that comes from getting full value off things like Cabal Coffers, Nirkana Revenent, etc. (Unless your playgroup is lousy with Urrborgs, which admittedly isn't rare to see.)
Hopefully Return to Theros gives some really strong devotion to White and devotion to Red cards. Like Gary level cards. That'd help out those colors in EDH.
Magic Story - The Gathering Storm - Chapter Three and Four
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Didn't read last week's chapter before, so I'll read that and this week's now. Since this is a new thread, this is the story that was supposed to be released before WAR came out, but didn't for reasons. The WAR novel pretty clearly expects you to have read this.
And I discovered you can read them at this link.
Magic Story - The Gathering Storm - Chapter 3
* As Ral approaches Azorius HQ, he notices they've become much more militarized recently. He's stopped at a checkpoint but insists he's there as a representative of Niv-Mizzet. He's eventually allowed in.
* Boros soldiers and Aurelia herself are waiting in a meeting room. Aurelia is arguing with an Azorius vedalken about how Azorius and Boros are supposed to work together and Azorius doesn't need its own soldiers, but Boros isn't doing a good job enforcing the laws, but that's because Azorius keeps changing them, etc.
* Aurelia and Ral are let in to meet Isperia, leader of Azorius. The vedalken sits with Isperia. He turns out to be Dovin Baan.
* Aurelia and Isperia are suspicious of Niv Mizzet's claims of a dragon from another world coming to attack.
* Baan confirms that Bolas is real, and claims he crossed paths with him on his home world of Kaladesh. Aurelia is surprised he would claim to be from another world too, but Ral insists that such beings exist. Ral feels odd confirming it after trying to hide it for so long.
* Aurelia is dismissive of Bolas's strength; she's sure The Boros Legion working together could kill Niv-Mizzet and Bolas wouldn't be any different.
* Ral claims Dimir will be working with Bolas, and likely others. They move on, accepting the premise that Bolas is a real threat for now.
* They gawk at Niv-Mizzet's plan for the Guildpact to amended to grant him power, not believing his claims that he'd be neutral afterwards. Still, they agree in principal to have a Guild Summit. Ral wonders how Niv-Mizzet plans to get guilds like Gruul to come.
* Ral thinks things are looking up, since Azorius's endorsement at least makes it seem less like an Izzet power play.
* As he leaves, a girl tells him that someone wishes to meet him about Bolas. He sits on a bench and waits, noticing a Rakdos puppet performance for kids; Azorius guards stop them from setting things on fire.
* Lavinia meets with Ral at the bench; she is on the run from Azorius. She left because she discovered foreign agents in Azorius, and thinks Bolas has agents in every guild. She'll contact him with more details when she can.
* Ral meets with Tomik in an apartment. They kiss and have dinner. Ral prefers super spicy food.
* Tomik is a high ranking Orzhov member, so them meeting publicly would raise awkward questions. Ral feels more strongly about him than his previous lovers.
* They have sex.
* We get Ral's backstory through a dream. He was from a poor region that couldn't afford mages for metalwork, instead using the disposable tenement dwellers. Ral's mother died after a metalworking accident. Ral left his drunk dad after at the age of 13.
* We see Ral's lover at 18, a 19-year-old living a bohemian lifestyle with aspirations to be a writer named Elias.
* Ral has the power to make it rain, and he uses this power to water the gardens of rich folk for money. The narration mentioned earlier that Ral worked for Izzet for decades, and he isn't in Izzet at this point, so present day Ral is at least in his late 30's / early 40's.
* The client's son harasses him, claiming he got his hat wet and demands he pay for it. Ral refuses and is beaten for it.
* A stranger approaches Ral after this and heals him, then offers him a way to get revenge. The stranger reveals his name is Nicol Bolas.
Chapter 4
* Ral gets a letter from Niv-Mizzet asking to meet.
* He gets coffee (pointing this out because some people are surprised coffee exists in Magic).
* Ral goes to meet with a Dimir agent, only to find her dead. Lazav, taking the form of a little girl, talks to him instead.
* Lazav claims he wasn't behind the attack on Niv-Mizzet. He mentions he'd like the assailant returned to him for interrogation.
* He says someone has put their own agents in Dimir. He is uncharacteristically upset about this, which Ral is unsettled by. He will attend the Guild Summit himself.
* Vraska is in the process of making a throne out of people sent to kill her. It's taking longer than she expected, but finally enough assassins were sent after her to complete it.
* She moved Golgari HQ back from the rot farms to Svogthos.
* Her throne is just about to be done, but the assassin moves his arm at the last second as he's turned to stone, ruining the symmetry. She knocks the arm off and says it's good enough.
* She has everything she wanted, but she still feels empty.
* Xeddic, the telepathic kraul, hesitantly brings up that he's been investigating her mind without permission and found something odd. Part of her mind is sealed off.
* She wants the seal removed. Xeddic says it appears she consented to have the seal placed, but she says that isn't possible. She has him remove it.
* Vraska's memories of Ixalan and Jace come flooding back, though she doesn't fully know what to make of it yet. She previously had the Azorius messenger who came to invite her to the Guild Summit killed, and she can't bring herself to agree to an Azorius invitation, so she has a letter written to Ral instead.
* Ral is in his office, taking stock of how the invitations are going.
* Hekara of Rakdos (who was introduced having died off screen in WAR) is introduced by entering Ral's office while kicking one of his attendants after yelling, "Think fast!"
* She says Rakdos has agreed to the Summit, but in the mean time, Rakdos wants her to stick close to Ral, to his annoyance.
* Hekara starts hitting on Ral, to his annoyance.
* A rot zombie from Golgari announces that Vraska will attend the Summit then dissolves. Hekara remarks that won't come out of the carpet.
Say what you will about the cards and the WAR novel, but this story is leaning right into Ral being gay.
And I discovered you can read them at this link.
Magic Story - The Gathering Storm - Chapter 3
* As Ral approaches Azorius HQ, he notices they've become much more militarized recently. He's stopped at a checkpoint but insists he's there as a representative of Niv-Mizzet. He's eventually allowed in.
* Boros soldiers and Aurelia herself are waiting in a meeting room. Aurelia is arguing with an Azorius vedalken about how Azorius and Boros are supposed to work together and Azorius doesn't need its own soldiers, but Boros isn't doing a good job enforcing the laws, but that's because Azorius keeps changing them, etc.
* Aurelia and Ral are let in to meet Isperia, leader of Azorius. The vedalken sits with Isperia. He turns out to be Dovin Baan.
* Aurelia and Isperia are suspicious of Niv Mizzet's claims of a dragon from another world coming to attack.
* Baan confirms that Bolas is real, and claims he crossed paths with him on his home world of Kaladesh. Aurelia is surprised he would claim to be from another world too, but Ral insists that such beings exist. Ral feels odd confirming it after trying to hide it for so long.
* Aurelia is dismissive of Bolas's strength; she's sure The Boros Legion working together could kill Niv-Mizzet and Bolas wouldn't be any different.
* Ral claims Dimir will be working with Bolas, and likely others. They move on, accepting the premise that Bolas is a real threat for now.
* They gawk at Niv-Mizzet's plan for the Guildpact to amended to grant him power, not believing his claims that he'd be neutral afterwards. Still, they agree in principal to have a Guild Summit. Ral wonders how Niv-Mizzet plans to get guilds like Gruul to come.
* Ral thinks things are looking up, since Azorius's endorsement at least makes it seem less like an Izzet power play.
* As he leaves, a girl tells him that someone wishes to meet him about Bolas. He sits on a bench and waits, noticing a Rakdos puppet performance for kids; Azorius guards stop them from setting things on fire.
* Lavinia meets with Ral at the bench; she is on the run from Azorius. She left because she discovered foreign agents in Azorius, and thinks Bolas has agents in every guild. She'll contact him with more details when she can.
* Ral meets with Tomik in an apartment. They kiss and have dinner. Ral prefers super spicy food.
* Tomik is a high ranking Orzhov member, so them meeting publicly would raise awkward questions. Ral feels more strongly about him than his previous lovers.
* They have sex.
* We get Ral's backstory through a dream. He was from a poor region that couldn't afford mages for metalwork, instead using the disposable tenement dwellers. Ral's mother died after a metalworking accident. Ral left his drunk dad after at the age of 13.
* We see Ral's lover at 18, a 19-year-old living a bohemian lifestyle with aspirations to be a writer named Elias.
* Ral has the power to make it rain, and he uses this power to water the gardens of rich folk for money. The narration mentioned earlier that Ral worked for Izzet for decades, and he isn't in Izzet at this point, so present day Ral is at least in his late 30's / early 40's.
* The client's son harasses him, claiming he got his hat wet and demands he pay for it. Ral refuses and is beaten for it.
* A stranger approaches Ral after this and heals him, then offers him a way to get revenge. The stranger reveals his name is Nicol Bolas.
Chapter 4
* Ral gets a letter from Niv-Mizzet asking to meet.
* He gets coffee (pointing this out because some people are surprised coffee exists in Magic).
* Ral goes to meet with a Dimir agent, only to find her dead. Lazav, taking the form of a little girl, talks to him instead.
* Lazav claims he wasn't behind the attack on Niv-Mizzet. He mentions he'd like the assailant returned to him for interrogation.
* He says someone has put their own agents in Dimir. He is uncharacteristically upset about this, which Ral is unsettled by. He will attend the Guild Summit himself.
* Vraska is in the process of making a throne out of people sent to kill her. It's taking longer than she expected, but finally enough assassins were sent after her to complete it.
* She moved Golgari HQ back from the rot farms to Svogthos.
* Her throne is just about to be done, but the assassin moves his arm at the last second as he's turned to stone, ruining the symmetry. She knocks the arm off and says it's good enough.
* She has everything she wanted, but she still feels empty.
* Xeddic, the telepathic kraul, hesitantly brings up that he's been investigating her mind without permission and found something odd. Part of her mind is sealed off.
* She wants the seal removed. Xeddic says it appears she consented to have the seal placed, but she says that isn't possible. She has him remove it.
* Vraska's memories of Ixalan and Jace come flooding back, though she doesn't fully know what to make of it yet. She previously had the Azorius messenger who came to invite her to the Guild Summit killed, and she can't bring herself to agree to an Azorius invitation, so she has a letter written to Ral instead.
* Ral is in his office, taking stock of how the invitations are going.
* Hekara of Rakdos (who was introduced having died off screen in WAR) is introduced by entering Ral's office while kicking one of his attendants after yelling, "Think fast!"
* She says Rakdos has agreed to the Summit, but in the mean time, Rakdos wants her to stick close to Ral, to his annoyance.
* Hekara starts hitting on Ral, to his annoyance.
* A rot zombie from Golgari announces that Vraska will attend the Summit then dissolves. Hekara remarks that won't come out of the carpet.
Say what you will about the cards and the WAR novel, but this story is leaning right into Ral being gay.
mono black works fine because it is extremely consistent, the commanders are pretty bad however.
Cabal Coffers are so abundant here I don't ever put urborg in my decks if I don't plan to abuse it with coffers and regularly keep it in hand until I can get both pieces.
I didn't put that in because it was before my time playing and watching standard. Thoughtseize is a heck of a card though.
Did the Devotion mechanic succeed in promoting single color decks last time it existed?
Also, not fun running into Huey on ladder when on a cold spell and testing out a new deck 😩. I remember reading about the dude winning GPs or PTs when I was in Junior high and playing Masques/Invasion Type 2.
Also, not fun running into Huey on ladder when on a cold spell and testing out a new deck 😩. I remember reading about the dude winning GPs or PTs when I was in Junior high and playing Masques/Invasion Type 2.
Mono-Black was the main one, although it often had a splash. There were green based ones as well based on the land Nykthos but I can't remember details
There were heroic and enchantment based decks as well, as a block it was quite successful at pushing it's keywords into constructed.
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Mono-Blue was pretty big too, mainly due to Master of Waves.
Yeah I've just started looking at lists, Master of Waves was obviously a deck at one point as was Red with Fanatic of Mogis
I will let you know I played with devotion before it was cool, back in my day we called it chroma.
I just love lorwyn block
I just love lorwyn block
Welp. I had been on the fence about jumping into Magic for years. This thread put me on board. Getting a spellslinger set tomorrow to learn to play.
I have to say that it is really intimidating from the outside. :)
I have to say that it is really intimidating from the outside. :)
You'll have fun! Be sure to check out Magic Arena. It's a great introduction as well.
I played Dark>Ice Age and hadn't really played seriously since. The game is still, for the most part, fairly easy to learn. The only issue is the amount of time you need to invest to simply build up card knowledge, i.e. knowing what things do, what are common interactions, what are staple themes, etc. That you only get with time, and playing a lot. Definitely recommend Arena to anyone, not just because it is free, but because the visual representation it gives of the stack and when you can cast spells/trigger abilities I think is extremely helpful for new players.
Games on camera that took 90 minutes.
Games.
Not matches. Games.
Good luck, if you really want to climb at the start of a season I think the best thing to do is just pick the fastest, most aggressive deck. You'll get in more matches/hour and a lot of the time you'll run into players trying out new cards in builds that haven't been optimized yet. Also White Weenie is probably just the best deck right now.Think I'll call it quits here for the season.
Gonna try for Diamond with 2020.
Looks like I'm gonna finish in mythic top 1000 for the first time as long as I don't decay 500 spots over the next 3 days, pretty stoked since I've been percent gamering quite a bit.
The only one that never really worked was white (alone) because the payoffs were not big enough. Once Khans came in red, black, and blue went away because their best devotion enablers went away (Pack Rat, Boros Reckoner, Nightveil Spectre).
Okay bit rambly but I am EXCEEDINGLY pleased with myself.
My Plat 3 promotion match was against a Red/White aggro deck. He dropped me down to 9 REALLY fast before I managed to get a Nullhide Ferox out, but I relied on being patient to work it out.
He had Gideon Blackblade out on turn 2 or 3 I forget and it took some work to get rid of. So I have a 4/4 Spellbreaker and Ferox on the field. I'm at 9, he's at 20. He's got 2 2/1s on the field and 2 1/1s.
He pays 2 to drop my Nullhide on my Ferox as he attacks, and that makes me HIGHLY suspicious. I'm thinking he figures I'll block the 2/1s, then kill my Ferox with Lava Coil/Bombard. So I block a 1/1 with the Ferox, a 2/1 with the Spellbreaker [since she wouldn't survive a Coil anyways] and sure enough he wound up casting nothing. Drops me to 6, I roll with it.
I drop Phoenix the next turn, swing with just the Ferox. He eats it. 6 to 14. He doesn't swing because now I've got fatal if he doesn't block at least one. Stalemate. I feel this is when I was confident it was in the bag. Next turn, I drop Ilharg.
Swing with the Phoenix. 6 to 10. His turn, he goes 'Good Game' and drops Lyra. Not sure if he was going Last-Ditch or assumed it'd win it for him, but either way, I drop Nullhide's aura and throw down Domri.
Nullhide eats Lyra, he gains 5 from Lifelink, back up to 15. But I attack with Phoenix and Ilharg, leaving my now 7/1 Ferox so he can block next turn and not die swinging here. Ilharg brings my Skargan Hellkite to the field. Dude concedes.
I was -patient-, I was tactical, and I didn't panic even when I got really low, and it won me the match.
My Plat 3 promotion match was against a Red/White aggro deck. He dropped me down to 9 REALLY fast before I managed to get a Nullhide Ferox out, but I relied on being patient to work it out.
He had Gideon Blackblade out on turn 2 or 3 I forget and it took some work to get rid of. So I have a 4/4 Spellbreaker and Ferox on the field. I'm at 9, he's at 20. He's got 2 2/1s on the field and 2 1/1s.
He pays 2 to drop my Nullhide on my Ferox as he attacks, and that makes me HIGHLY suspicious. I'm thinking he figures I'll block the 2/1s, then kill my Ferox with Lava Coil/Bombard. So I block a 1/1 with the Ferox, a 2/1 with the Spellbreaker [since she wouldn't survive a Coil anyways] and sure enough he wound up casting nothing. Drops me to 6, I roll with it.
I drop Phoenix the next turn, swing with just the Ferox. He eats it. 6 to 14. He doesn't swing because now I've got fatal if he doesn't block at least one. Stalemate. I feel this is when I was confident it was in the bag. Next turn, I drop Ilharg.
Swing with the Phoenix. 6 to 10. His turn, he goes 'Good Game' and drops Lyra. Not sure if he was going Last-Ditch or assumed it'd win it for him, but either way, I drop Nullhide's aura and throw down Domri.
Nullhide eats Lyra, he gains 5 from Lifelink, back up to 15. But I attack with Phoenix and Ilharg, leaving my now 7/1 Ferox so he can block next turn and not die swinging here. Ilharg brings my Skargan Hellkite to the field. Dude concedes.
I was -patient-, I was tactical, and I didn't panic even when I got really low, and it won me the match.
Looking at the full M20 spoilers, White Weenie is actually getting some nice cards. Leyline, Pacifism, Raise the Alarm, Disenchant, Gods Willing, Loyal Pegasus. Brought Back I'm not totally sold on but we'll see.
The deck will still take a huge hit when Dominaria/Ixalan rotate out, losing History of Benalia and Benalish Marshall is rough, but maybe they'll print another 3 drop anthem or something. Oh, and Legion's Landing and Adonto Vanguard... yikes. At least we'll still have Loxodon. Might just have to switch to Boros.
The deck will still take a huge hit when Dominaria/Ixalan rotate out, losing History of Benalia and Benalish Marshall is rough, but maybe they'll print another 3 drop anthem or something. Oh, and Legion's Landing and Adonto Vanguard... yikes. At least we'll still have Loxodon. Might just have to switch to Boros.
Standard Plus will be "Historic", starts at Ixalan
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Standard Plus will be called "Historic"
It starts at Ixalan. Kaladesh and Amonkhet will not be included, for now at least.
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