PSA: ponder is not a good card in m12 draft.
this is not construncted where ponder is often a striclty better sleight of hand. in limited u usually have 0-2 shuffle effects and w that ponder gets very meh. u will often have like 1 good card and 2 ok-bad cards and theres rly no point in playing ponder since it just rearrenges ur library. the only time it really helps is when u have 3 bad cards on top and even then u just draw a random card.

im not saying its completely unplayable but its close to it imo.

Ponder and Preordain is played in the deck that won the PT though.

IMO, Ban Preordain is fine.

Banning ponder is way too much.

I still don't get the ban of GSZ/Cloudpost. Just ban Emerakul.

in combo decks with access to a lot of shuffling, ponder > preordain

same goes with brainstorm, Jace they are at their best when you shuffle a ton(and have incredibly strong situational bullets/tutor targets)

now that they are going after those kind of cards in extended/modern I wonder if they'll go after brainstorm in legacy, I suspect it'd be a better format if people had to preordain instead of brainstorm

Brainstorm needs to be banned in legacy when zoo is splashing blue for jace/brainstorm.

edit: I give Jace another 6 months before it gets banned in legacy.

In general legacy players on MTGO are pretty good. But my god, do most people play brainstorm terribly. End of turn brainstorm is my favorite thing to see out of an opponent. I don't even misstep in this case.

So I went to a prerelease today at a random local card shop I found on google. Maybe 20 people there.

Glanced over the pairings and see "Vienneau" (not paired vs me thank god), and vaguely recognize him from event coverage and whatnot.

Kinda weird to see a Pro caliber player at a random dingy cardshop, lol.

new set is so fun.

I think this draft format will be really interesting. All kinds of graveyard, morbid,etc synergies that really weird.

Cards that look near unplayable will turn out to be pretty good in draft just because of what they do for other cards.

That said, I was on the fence for transform but now hate it with a passion. It makes limited extremely high variance. If you have a slow start, miss a land drop, and don't play a spell suddenly you are getting you face smashed in for tons every turn.

Also, the sealed format is pretty bad. There are plenty of mythics/rares that can only be handled by a handful of cards(rebuke,brimstone volley). You have a bunch of bombs that sorcery speed removal sucks against and like 3 decent instants in the entire set.

Agreed.

Olivia Voldaren, Kessig Cagebreakers, High priest, etc etc etc.

Planeswalker points!

1x multipler oh snap!

I got like 13 points over 11 rounds this weekend.

deckbuilding in a draft... howd i do? i prob f'ed up atleast one slot, help me out



edit: I just want to say this is the first time out of 100 m12 drafts or whatever that ive played greatsword, i know its normally a garbage 14th pick card

edit 2: also crimson mage in the board ?!?!

With so much bloodthirst, crimson mage really doesn't help much.

Practically every card in your board would be better than Greatsword. For 6 mana, you're getting 3 damage... 6 over two turns. For 5 mana, you're getting 5 right away from Lava Axe. Fling with the Crumbling Colossus seems better than greatsword too.

I'd play fling instead of greatsword and be real happy with that deck! I might play the lava axe over the crumbling colossus too.

pretty sure collusus is way better than axe. might play both tho!

I like slaughter cry in bloodthirst decks since they'll always block

Hi guys, just came in here to check out the 2p2 MTG scene. I haven't played in a while (after college I moved away and just stopped playing - that was toward the end of Onslaught block) but my roommate recently got back into the game and he's always bringing home boxes and scrounging up a few of our friends for a draft, so maybe I'll get back into it and hang out in here some. Have been lurking a little bit and this forum seems like a pretty good place to learn the game again; thanks to whoever suggested the Channel Fireball videos, those are great.

Anyway, I went to an Innistrad launch party tonight and after grabbing two Diregraf Ghouls and two Victim of Nights as my first four picks, the guy on my right decides to start drafting black, and apparently the guy on my left was already drafting it somehow. I didn't see any black for the rest of the draft so halfway through pack two I start scrambling for another color and came across a combo that worked much better than I expected in Bloodcrazed Neonate and Cobbled Wings. If you are going first, he'll almost never be blocked on the first swing, and then he starts to get out of control. He'll quickly get out of Geistflame and Dead Weight range, he should be outracing Harvest Pyre and Corpse Lunge, and I'm happy to trade a Neonate for a Brimstone. Victim of Night can't target him, and you'll often have other creatures to sac to Tribute to Hunger.

White and blue have a few enchantments to deal with him (luckily my other color was green so I had a pair of Naturalizes in the board). White also has Rebuke and Smite the Monstrous, though Smite requires your opponent to let you hit him for six before he can use it. It also has Slayer of the Wicked and that white Faceless Butcher guy (can't remember his name). Blue of course has bounce to reset him. But getting your opponent to dump his answers on your Neonate is great.

Anyway, just thought I would mention it as it won me a couple of games tonight, and neither card is a very high pick so you can probably grab a pair of each fairly late in your picks if you wanted to try it out, and wings themselves aren't that bad as potential answers to fliers if you aren't playing blue or white.

Also used the cobbled wing + neonate combo when I went to a pre-release draft. Got him down to 10 life before he could deal with it.

Unfortunatly, chances of you getting that by turn 3 are small, unless you run multiple neonates and cobbled wings which seems a bit excessive (maybe not?).

Playing against red id want to make sure I had a healthy amount of 1/2 drop removal/creatures to avoid the neonate snowball. Can be quite vicious.

dont wanna diss too hard, but that "combo" is quite bad.

basically each individual card is not good and the "combo" doenst win u the game.

the wings are pretty much unplayble imo and tbe neonate is good on turn 2 and useless afterwards. insane variance card.

basically u got a combo thats consists of a unplayable and a barely playable card that work together if u hit ur curve perfectly otherwise its pretty meh.

=> do not want

agree viridian claw would be the type of equipment you'd want for that combo

I want my avatar back god damn it

Dunno how you call wings unplayable.

do u like it?

red curse OP. someone got 6 of them in a draft this weekend. so awesome.

Noob question about Chandra's Pheonix. If its in the graveyard and I incinerate my opponent by decide to assign the damage to a planeswalker does it still trigger the pheonix's ability. I think it wouldnt because its dealing damage to the planeswalker instead but it seems like the pheonix might still trigger since the decision to assign damage to a planeswalker also trigger when damage is dealt. Is the planeswalker damage choice a triggered effect or is it something else?