Is there any way to play an AI using a given deck? I just want to play some more practice games but since I have to use freeform to use 40 card decks, I keep running into people with really rediculous cards/decks that ignore my requests in the description.

Unfortunately there is no AI available for you to playtest your deck against other decks..

Not sure how many times you've played blue in this block, but you definitely never lose tempo by Whelm'ing your own creature. The bonus clash effect is optional, so you never have to put your own guy back on top unless you want to (Kinship, perhaps).

I agree there are some decent red cards, I just don't think there is as big of a strength differencee as you make it out. I think the blue build would be as competitive as the red one. The red deck has decent creatures, but I just think it will stall without enough removal or evasion or ways to remove blockers. The blue version has many more ways to remove, tap, or otherwise nullify some blockers to keep the damage giong.

how does blue remove blockers besides whirlpool and aethersnape and douser does at max -2/-0.

green wants to beat down fast with this pool and red helps out as well. counters are usually bad in sealed because you have no idea what to counter and your holding back mana to counter potential spells.

Wowzer. Just played my first match. Ended up paired against some guy who had an insane deck. I had no clue there were so many cheap removal cards now or maybe he just drew every single one. He had white/black with something like a fifth of his deck working as removal or mass damage (all creatures get +0/-2 type stuff). I ended up going 1-2 against him which I was happy about, in his other 3 matches he's gone 6-0.

I actually had a really good chance to go 2-1 against him. I got alot of guys out early, but the mass 0/-2 basically killed them all and left me with no real chance. Black has some really sick damage/removal and token stuff in this block.

Get used to that in league. In larger leagues it's inevitable that a couple people get insane card pools, and then play lots of tiebreaker matches with them, and this only gets more true as the league goes on.

MediaPA: Here's how I'd build your sealed


red:10
roar of the crowd
blades of velis vel
brighthearth banneret
hostility
ingot chewer
inner-flame acolyte
rage forger
smokebraider
soulbright flamekin
sunflare shaman
war-spike changeling


green 8
hunting triad
gilt-leaf ambush
elvish harbinger
elvish warior
fertilid
kithkin daggerdare
jagged-scar archers
nath's elite

gold:1
nath of the gilt-leaf

blue:2
distant melody
mulldrifter

white:1
meadowboon

Artifact:1
springleaf drum

Land:17
Primal Beyond
Vivid Crag
1 island
7 mountain
7 forest

You might think, we're playing black and white so why no plains and swamps. Well we have a ton of mana fixing. Springleaf drum/Elvish Harbringer/Vivid Crag/Smokebraider Primal Beyond all help our mana situation. Smokebraider/Primal Beyond help us cast Mulldrifter and Meadowboon without having to worry about playing islands/plains. I figured Vivid Crag/Springleaf Drum/and elvish harbringer should be enough black sources so we can play our Nath of the gilt-leaf. I added the island in case we have to use it to cast distant melody. With fertilid, we can fetch the island at will.

The deck is pretty solid. It doesn't really have that many bombs, but what it lacks in bombs it has in creatures. Basically the plan is to play all the shamans/elves, use melody to draw you more cards, use meadowboon to increase your 1/1s to 2/2s, use nath's elite to basically alpha strike for the win.

Where would you rate magic in skill versus luck?

Leagues seem to be all about who you play. There are some times you just run into a guy who's deck works perfectly a couple games while you are struggling. Also what type of deck is against you since there's bound to be some weakness.

Building a solid deck definitely takes skill. There's alot of different views to be had depending on the pool of cards.

I'd like to see the tie breaker be an overall record of the decks performance (+/-). In the league I went 1-4, I wasn't convinced my deck was that bad. Well, I'm on a 5 win match streak now after losing 8 in a row (10 Tie breaker pts. in 16 matches). I tried another deck and gave a guy a forfeit when another league game opened simultaneously.

If anyone wants to test a deck, PM me, I'm usually up for a meaningless game if I'm open.

MediaPA, that's difficult to answer considering there are 3 different types of competitive magic:

Sealed
Draft
Constructed

Sealed I would say it's roughly (pulling numbers out of my ass here..) 50% skill and 50% luck. An amateur (like myself) can open the dumbest sealed deck and basically beat pro's sealed just because the amateur's pool of cards is better than the pro's. However, the pro will make less mistakes than the amateur so it's possible for pro's to have a decent sealed deck and still do well. In my opinion, sealed has the most form of luck in it.

Draft, I would say is 80% skill, 20% luck. Drafting is more than picking the right cards, because once a set is release for so long, most players know the correct pick 90% of the time. It's basically a 3rd level thinking game. Not only do you have to pick the correct cards for your deck, the cards you are sending 7 other people (basically only have to worry about passing to your immediate left 2/3rd of time, the other 1/3rd time you pass to the immediate right) send a signal saying what color's you are in, and what colors you want him to go in. However, there are multiple chances for you to screw over the person to your immediate left. Let's say there is 2 red cards in the pack, for this case let's use lash out and incendiary command. The command is a far better red card than lash out, however, by picking command, you basically have to commit to red. But if you take lash out, you pass the command and the guy to your left is basically committed to red to play the card. There are other higher-level thinkings to drafts but this is one of the concepts.


Constructed is ... well think of constructed as rock, paper, scissors. I say this because constructed decks are very fickle in the fact that they do amazingly well against a few types of decks and very poor against other types of decks. I'd like to compare it to a random table draw in a MTT. If you get a good table draw with a lot of bad players on the table, you're generally going to do well, but if you're at a table with a lot of amazing players on it, you're generally going to do poor.

Meta-game, baby.

The problem with making tiebreakers count is that it rewards the player with a good pool and lots of free time even more than it already does. Also, that would risk feeling like some MMO's ("Man I can't compete, I don't have the time to play 5 matches a day every day"). The whole point of leagues is to be a tournament that very casual players can still have a chance in, and most suggestions I've seen and thought of to balance them tend to wreck that. If that's bothersome to you, I recommend trying sealed premier events or 8man drafts.

Draft is like 90%+ skill. I think Ive won 4-5 drafts in a row at my local card shop without ever dropping a match, usually going like 12-1 in games or so.

A booster draft def has less variance than a sit n go.

This is a whole lot of fun. I've played 3 league games so far and have 4 points, 1-2, 1-2, and 2-0!! I modified my deck a bit. Here's the original from Benholio's suggestion:


I really didn't like how my two splashes (red and white) were working out, especially the tarfire. I ended up dropping the two splashes so got rid of the Mountain, Plains, Tarfire and Avian Changeling. Instead I decided to go with a single splash color - black. I added: Swamp, Oona's Blackguard, Nightshade Stinger and Everbark Shaman. Oona's Blackguard is just so sick if you can get him out fairly early, maybe even more so for the discard than the extra +1/+1.

Also, Pestermite is awesome. I had it actually win a game for me when we both had 1 huge creature and alot of weaker guys along with boosts. Brought pestermite in at the end of his turn, tapped his guy and it was over. I didn't really appreciate how strong flash is at first.

I want to play so bad. I got so many actual cards that don't transfer over into MTGO and I don't have the cash to buy cards (unemployment ftw) unless I start withdrawing from my PS bankroll.

Not that I'm particularly good or anything. It's just a lot of fun.

Okay, so this thread made me decide to try this, I have a few questions though. First, if I want to try the Mormir basic leagues, since i don't really have any cards what is the easiest way o go about getting a Mormir? I go into the trading post but it just looks like a ton of spam. How do the trading bots work? Again related if you buy tixs/packs (think someone said tixs aren't good value for your money) how do you convert them to what you need? Are there bots in the trading post that will do it automatically or do you actually need to seek someone out?

The only way to get into momir is to buy the avatar in the trading post. Going rate right now is about 12 tickets (approx. $12)

The trading post is a lot of spam but it's the only way to get things that aren't currently in distribution, and even the things that are available in the card shop are often cheaper.

Ideas?

I think you posted this one before.

No, I just uploaded the file with the same name so it replaced the old picture on photbucket.

Thornbite staff on a creature with deathtouch is nasty, very nasty.

Oh...Yeah...I'm an idiot.

Really really wish I wasn't so lazy and actually got my games in earlier in the league. Now there's nobody playing except the 10 guys with insane decks camping out for tiebreakers. And I still have 1 game left to go.

GB splash blue for pestermite/mulldrifter

awsome thread

i dont think i have played magic in 10 years +...what am i looking at in terms of $ in order to just play the game again just for the fun of making decks and playing some matches?

and obviously there are a lot of new rules and effects, how much of a learning curve am i going to face comming in with the basic knowledge of the rules that were used 10 years ago?