That's good. Here's hoping that Ixalan is next in the rotation.
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Magic: the Gathering |OT| Guilds of Ravnica - We built this city on blocks of gold
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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That's good. Here's hoping that Ixalan is next in the rotation.
Quick Draft is switching over to Dominaria this Thursday.
In his specific situation, a long but non-permanent ban seems correct given that all the reports (in addition to one more via Reddit) stemmed from incidents when he was drinking. Given that it appears there's a contributing factor that could be addressed and prevent further issues, an eventual second chance seems reasonable.
This is why I don't play Arena.
Tho I did get passed a Notion Rain in the last three picks today lol
I've gotten plenty of great cards in the last few picks in a live draft. Not everyone is good at drafting.
My understanding is that the bots are seeded with data from MTGO drafts, so, in theory at least, their picks should be in line with what you'd find there.
My understanding is that the bots are seeded with data from MTGO drafts, so, in theory at least, their picks should be in line with what you'd find there.
I've seen Notion Rains go to the bottom of the pack. They're lower priority than Chemister's Insight for most people. I think some people even draft Radical Idea over them, which I personally think is crazy-pants unless you've already got like two Wee Dragonauts and a Crackling Drake or something, but more power to them. I guess people just like the mono-blue for having the option to pivot, especially out of early picks.
Eternal Central is launching "Middle School" a format that allows cards from 4th Edition to Scourge http://www.eternalcentral.com/introducing-middle-school/
It has before and it's about to again in a couple of days. They just rotate the expansions.
So ? 5 guilds for 8 players means 1 or 2 players in each on average. Rain is solid but no bomb, could be that the other potential dimir drafter took something better over it
There are way more egregious things happening in ai drafts though
It has before and it's about to again in a couple of days. They just rotate the expansions.
Dom quick draft should be back tomorrow.
You don't want too many Notion Rains, but in my experience, Dimir without some sort of card draw, not just Surveil (Disinformation Campaign, Notion Rain, Chemister's Insight), are not very reliable. Discovery / Dispersal is a worse Notion Rain. Dispersal almost never comes up.
OP
OP
Clans & Legions
Nicky Drayden
A newly promoted Wojek stumbles upon a massive conspiracy.
* A minotaur named Weslyn is promoted to Boros Wojek.
* They (I don't think they specify a gender) are bothered by Aresaan, a Boros angel who is a clone of Razia (so those still exist). She was demoted for letting 15000 Boros soldiers die after making a bad decision in a battle 30 years ago. I'm unclear if this is a reference to the original Ravnica story. Regardless, she continues acting superior to Weslyn, to their annoyance.
* Weslyn sees a hidden code in their congratulations letter, which leads them to a Gruul informant.
* They play a chess-like game called Clans & Legions. The informant tells them to release a prisoner, then he'll talk about a spy in Boros.
* Weslyn does so, even after noticing the prisoner is linked to a raider who cast a violent chaos spell that killed and injured several.
* They go back to the informant, only to find him dead.
* They rush back to report this, only for the guards to accuse them of poisoning three higher ups, killing two. They discover poison in their pouch.
* Weslyn thinks back on everything and realizes they were set up with the hidden message and informant. The message is no longer on their letter, implying a Dimir mind mage was hired.
* They notice the guard who found the poison on them has the same sort of dust and hydra spittle that was at the area they met the informant and accuses her of being part of this.
* Aresaan arrives to help and uses magic to confirm that the dust is the dragon bone dust specific to that area.
* They confront Weslyn's boss, Skormak, the only one who survived the poisoning, and he's just fine. He complains that elementals like him just don't get promoted, and it's wrong that he'd be arrested for killing three people when Aresaan killed thousands and got a slap on the wrist. Regardless, Weslyn headbutts him and arrests him.
* Aresaan respects Weslyn now.
I wasn't a huge fan of this resolution, but the story was nice enough. I'm leaving out a lot of small flavor details with this summary.
Nicky Drayden
A newly promoted Wojek stumbles upon a massive conspiracy.
* A minotaur named Weslyn is promoted to Boros Wojek.
* They (I don't think they specify a gender) are bothered by Aresaan, a Boros angel who is a clone of Razia (so those still exist). She was demoted for letting 15000 Boros soldiers die after making a bad decision in a battle 30 years ago. I'm unclear if this is a reference to the original Ravnica story. Regardless, she continues acting superior to Weslyn, to their annoyance.
* Weslyn sees a hidden code in their congratulations letter, which leads them to a Gruul informant.
* They play a chess-like game called Clans & Legions. The informant tells them to release a prisoner, then he'll talk about a spy in Boros.
* Weslyn does so, even after noticing the prisoner is linked to a raider who cast a violent chaos spell that killed and injured several.
* They go back to the informant, only to find him dead.
* They rush back to report this, only for the guards to accuse them of poisoning three higher ups, killing two. They discover poison in their pouch.
* Weslyn thinks back on everything and realizes they were set up with the hidden message and informant. The message is no longer on their letter, implying a Dimir mind mage was hired.
* They notice the guard who found the poison on them has the same sort of dust and hydra spittle that was at the area they met the informant and accuses her of being part of this.
* Aresaan arrives to help and uses magic to confirm that the dust is the dragon bone dust specific to that area.
* They confront Weslyn's boss, Skormak, the only one who survived the poisoning, and he's just fine. He complains that elementals like him just don't get promoted, and it's wrong that he'd be arrested for killing three people when Aresaan killed thousands and got a slap on the wrist. Regardless, Weslyn headbutts him and arrests him.
* Aresaan respects Weslyn now.
I wasn't a huge fan of this resolution, but the story was nice enough. I'm leaving out a lot of small flavor details with this summary.
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From anyone who's done Dominaria drafts before, is there typically one color combination that dominates the others, or is it a free for all? Of course, the MTGA AI draft could mess with the situation, and I'm sure I'll grab any rares or mythics I see regardless.
It's something like UR > UG > GB but once you're not UR wizards specifically you can do 4c nonsense W and R are the weakest colourse respectively and Green and Blue the strongest.
Hmm, red would be one of the weakest colors, but blue red is the strongest combo? I guess the strategy would be to see if I get a wizard in the first couple of rounds, and if not to ignore red.
The popular strategy was to either force UR wizards w/ a lot of high tempo cards or to durdle w/ 3 to 4 colours of whatever bombs and removal you opened preferably centered in green since that fixes your colours easily. The common artifact dude that searched a basic makes it so you don't have to be green OTOH.
Who said they are unplayable? I ranked the colours in Dominaria draft and U = G > B > R/W is the common ranking.
In GRN GB is considered by far the worst but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pick a GB bomb and take all the good stuff dimir izzet and boros players pass you.
GRN I think Selesnya is now being considered worse than Golgari for a lot of players. Selesnya is just confused with a lack of great cards (especially at common) and a gameplan that is just a worse gameplan of other guilds (bad aggro, bad midrange, bad late game). If you ignore the bad Golgari stuff, it has a lot of solid cards that can make for a solid deck.
In Dominaria, Red was super shallow but had great cards. White looked deep, but the cards just didn't do enough. UR and GB were regarded as the best combos for a while. Surprised to see UG up there. I don't remember what an average deck from that combo looked like besides jamming as many Tatyova's as you could find. Most of the color combinations were viable, but usually the best UR/GB decks were a step above the other stuff. What do you do when GB is making 2-3 saprolings a turn behind a slimefoot? What do you do when UR is swinging at you for 100 with Adeliz, a few cheap wizards, and 10 spells played that turn? Other decks just didn't have the synergy that those decks had.
In Dominaria, Red was super shallow but had great cards. White looked deep, but the cards just didn't do enough. UR and GB were regarded as the best combos for a while. Surprised to see UG up there. I don't remember what an average deck from that combo looked like besides jamming as many Tatyova's as you could find. Most of the color combinations were viable, but usually the best UR/GB decks were a step above the other stuff. What do you do when GB is making 2-3 saprolings a turn behind a slimefoot? What do you do when UR is swinging at you for 100 with Adeliz, a few cheap wizards, and 10 spells played that turn? Other decks just didn't have the synergy that those decks had.
I still don't understand what the Boros actually do. The Azorius are the actual day to day cops right? Who are the Boros fighting? Just the Gruul?
OP
OP
They have divisions devoted to handling Gruul, Rakdos, and Dimir, but are fine with messing with other guilds. I believe the idea is that Boros is supposed to be like the Justice League, acting above the law with their own guidelines, but ultimately handing people over to actual law enforcement (Azorius).
Dominaria being a durdle format is overstated. Jousting Lance can make any deck outmuscle the green decks. Sure Slimefoot is unbeatable with enough mana. You just need to make sure to win before that. Like a worse U/R wizards deck basically. G/W, U/W, R/W, R/G can play the tempo game too.
Though B/R is definitely the worst combination lol. At least white has Pegasus Courser. A card considered so good they had to upgrade it to uncommon in GRN.
It's not overstated, it is absolutely a durdle format, that is what makes it susceptible to hard aggro.
Jousting lance is just a good card in limited.
What made UG good in Dominaria draft was Tatyova and cloudreader sphinx. Deep Freeze also gave you access to good removal at common w/o splashing for it.
You had access to the most bombiest rares/mythics in Multani and The 5/6 djinn and the best uncommon that's way above most rares even.
Jousting lance is just a good card in limited.
What made UG good in Dominaria draft was Tatyova and cloudreader sphinx. Deep Freeze also gave you access to good removal at common w/o splashing for it.
You had access to the most bombiest rares/mythics in Multani and The 5/6 djinn and the best uncommon that's way above most rares even.
Going back to having the actual story relegated to some dumb book is one of Wizard's worst ideas in forever.
OP
OP
The number of people on Arena who've thrown removal spells or board wipes at Adanto Vanguard really concerns me.
Like if you're making a Control list to post somewhere please put a little note on it that says "If you're new to Magic, consider trying my Green Stompy list at this link instead."
Like if you're making a Control list to post somewhere please put a little note on it that says "If you're new to Magic, consider trying my Green Stompy list at this link instead."
Yeah... it makes me not care about the story days at all, and I'll probably just read a recap for the real thing. I honestly think sales will be quite bad.
Kind of nervous posting this up here but I need some feedback. I tried to repurpose myself as a MTG channel that focuses on collecting sets and maybe a little dabbling of other things once I get comfortable. I'm pretty robotic and the mic I was is not bad, but the way I tried to eliminate white noise kind of ruined the sound. My latest video is a little less cringe, but I need a lot of work. This is my 4th video:
The previous 3 video dealt with pack openings to collect the cards. That's another thing. My videos are too long in comparison to other openings, and there are instances where I stay silent for too long. I'm also wondering if I should hide my previous gaming video to show that this is a MTG channel. Any help is welcome. Thanks!
The previous 3 video dealt with pack openings to collect the cards. That's another thing. My videos are too long in comparison to other openings, and there are instances where I stay silent for too long. I'm also wondering if I should hide my previous gaming video to show that this is a MTG channel. Any help is welcome. Thanks!
You have no idea how many times people have tried to counter my creatures while I have a Prowling Serpopard on the board. it's just absurd.
I'm a control player, if something is put on the stack I will try to counter it on priciple alone.
but really I have tried countering the cat snake at least one emberrassing time. Even after almost 2 decades of playing it's good to remember "reading the card explains the card"
I think I may have run into the Shalai/Kitesail interaction and accidentally reported it because the "you have hexproof thing" is not normally a factor in Standard lol
Rayge
Speaking as a person with a MTG YouTube Channel of decent note, you want to make sure your branding is as consistent as possible, so yes hiding your old videos would be better.
Your videos are a bit too long; they have a nice "sit down with me and chat" vibe but the "chat" part goes a little too long.
I'd try to work on a format where the video can be more of a "highlight" video where you take pieces of your footage and cut between the important parts.
You can separate the segments with different themes (Foils!, High Impact Cards, Rarest Card Obtained This Week, etc) to make it great. I see in your video that you have the camera focus on Dream Eater, which could be edited to not have the "resolve focus" that the camera needs to do on the card.
I do like the kind of "follow me and watch my collection get completed". A lot of this stuff comes with more consistent uploads as you evolve your style and figure out what works best.
The audio isn't too terrible, it does have a tinny sound to it but there's MUCH WORSE out there on YouTube.
Speaking as a person with a MTG YouTube Channel of decent note, you want to make sure your branding is as consistent as possible, so yes hiding your old videos would be better.
Your videos are a bit too long; they have a nice "sit down with me and chat" vibe but the "chat" part goes a little too long.
I'd try to work on a format where the video can be more of a "highlight" video where you take pieces of your footage and cut between the important parts.
You can separate the segments with different themes (Foils!, High Impact Cards, Rarest Card Obtained This Week, etc) to make it great. I see in your video that you have the camera focus on Dream Eater, which could be edited to not have the "resolve focus" that the camera needs to do on the card.
I do like the kind of "follow me and watch my collection get completed". A lot of this stuff comes with more consistent uploads as you evolve your style and figure out what works best.
The audio isn't too terrible, it does have a tinny sound to it but there's MUCH WORSE out there on YouTube.
They should probably make the Player Has Hexproof visual indicator also on the portrait instead of the reminder off to the side, because I've definitely had five or six Mono-Red or Izzet Wizards players drop a Viashino Pyromancer and then burn through a couple of time-outs before accepting they have to shoot themselves in the face, and you can just see them mousing over every card on the field in confusion.
Hah yeah that's a good one especially since you can see the mouseover on the card afterwards. I didn't realise I was protected by Shalai myself.
Okay, so I went to a FNM draft event a bit back, and I wanted to ask everyone's thoughts on two of the things this one guy said.
First, and bigger: I'm... honestly not a very good shuffler, I don't think. I can think I'm doing a real thorough shuffle, then end up drawing like the exact same hand after a mulligan fairly often. So as a result, I've gotten into the habit of having my normal shuffle be doing that thing where you divy out your cards into piles and then shuffle them together. Not in the middle of games, mind you, but between games and stuff I do it pretty often. So I admittedly took the questionable-ish approach of starting to do it before drawing a mulligan from an all-land hand, because I knew I'd surely end up drawing the same damn stack of lands otherwise. Now, the guy said "you're only supposed to do that once at the start, to technically count out your cards. Otherwise it's cheating, because you're purposefully influencing the distribution." Now, I can see that for when you take a mulligan... but would it still be thought of as such say, between games in a match? Just worried about it because (as mentioned), I suck at shuffling, but also don't want to come off as scummy. Oh, and I usually ask my opponents between games too, because I know it takes a bit longer.
Secondly: I've been trying to get into the habit of being polite and shaking someone's hand and saying "good game" after a match. This guy retorted with a "I only say good game when it actually IS a good game, but we just kind of took turns being mana screwed/flooded." I still feel like I'll keep on saying it regardless... but do you guys "good game" people even when it is not, in fact, a good game?
First, and bigger: I'm... honestly not a very good shuffler, I don't think. I can think I'm doing a real thorough shuffle, then end up drawing like the exact same hand after a mulligan fairly often. So as a result, I've gotten into the habit of having my normal shuffle be doing that thing where you divy out your cards into piles and then shuffle them together. Not in the middle of games, mind you, but between games and stuff I do it pretty often. So I admittedly took the questionable-ish approach of starting to do it before drawing a mulligan from an all-land hand, because I knew I'd surely end up drawing the same damn stack of lands otherwise. Now, the guy said "you're only supposed to do that once at the start, to technically count out your cards. Otherwise it's cheating, because you're purposefully influencing the distribution." Now, I can see that for when you take a mulligan... but would it still be thought of as such say, between games in a match? Just worried about it because (as mentioned), I suck at shuffling, but also don't want to come off as scummy. Oh, and I usually ask my opponents between games too, because I know it takes a bit longer.
Secondly: I've been trying to get into the habit of being polite and shaking someone's hand and saying "good game" after a match. This guy retorted with a "I only say good game when it actually IS a good game, but we just kind of took turns being mana screwed/flooded." I still feel like I'll keep on saying it regardless... but do you guys "good game" people even when it is not, in fact, a good game?
LSV got all upset in a draft video of Dominaria because MODO was "broken" because he couldn't target his opponent with Torgaar in a draft (his opponent had Shalai).
Pile shuffling isn't actually shuffling. You're limited to doing it once per game, but not because it's cheating. It's because it's slow play. It wastes time, but since it's useful for counting your deck (to make sure you have the correct number of cards) you're allowed to do it once per game.
I'd recommend practicing shuffling and always use at least 2 different methods of shuffling. For example, you can do a few riffle shuffles and a few mash shuffles before presenting your deck. If you're really bad at shuffling, ask your opponent (or a judge) to shuffle your deck rather than just cutting it.
It's fine to say good game (or something similar) after a game, but it's usually considered good etiquette to let the loser of the game initiate a handshake. Some people get really upset when they feel like they lost a game where they feel like they got super unlucky (drawing 7 land sin a row, for example). At the end of the day, it's not a big deal either way, but if you're really concerned about it, just let the loser initiate the handshake.
There's a form of cheating you can do with pile-shuffling (mana weaving) that requires two pile shuffles (and also starting with your lands and non-lands separated and a bunch of other factors), which is probably what your opponent was thinking of. There is a rule against pile shuffling more than once per shuffle because of a combination of that and the amount of time it takes.
There isn't, however, anything inherently "cheating" about pile shuffling more than once otherwise. It does not magically create a special distribution unless you pre-sorted your cards before doing it. It's just not a very efficient way of increasing deck randomness for the amount of time it takes, as you generally need to pile shuffled like... seven times to get a good random distribution, I think?
No, if someone didn't get to play I apologize to them on behalf of their deck. Not like profusely or something, but a simple "Hey, sorry your deck didn't cooperate there. Did you have to keep something sketchy off the mulligan?" or something. You shake their hand, and thank them for playing if you like, but don't lie and say it's a good game if it wasn't.
I offer to shake hands because that's polite and adults should be polite, but I don't always say good game since it can hurt feelings.
And Risk Factor/burn.
Oh, how I love to see my opponent hold up Settle mana, and then furiously mouse over my portrait and cards when I swing for lethal with Shalai on the board.
(And, yes, I'll admit I was wrong about Risk Factor. Instant + Jump-start make a big difference.)
I usually let the person who lost lead the way with the post match. If someone wants to stew after a loss I'm not gonna butt in there. If nothing gets said silk sometime say "thanks for the games" as I stand up. If I lose I'll shake and say good game basically always. The only exception is if the other player was a real jerk bag. (I'm mostly thinking of one player at my LGS who is just ugh.)
It'd be nice if everyone playing this game could be nice and respectful enough for a handshake and a bit of pleasantries towards someone else after playing a game you both like, but sadly that is not the case.
It'd be nice if everyone playing this game could be nice and respectful enough for a handshake and a bit of pleasantries towards someone else after playing a game you both like, but sadly that is not the case.
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