Magic: the Gathering - T: Add Three Mana Of Any One Colour To Your Mana Pool

[Benderesco]

I ended up 6-3ing the premier draft, so I'll be able to keep the F2P train rolling for a while (back at >2k gems plus ongoing Sealed and Premier runs)

I just noticed my best runs tend to involve sharks, the more the better:

6-3 premier draft, 1 shark

7-2 premier draft, 2 sharks

7-1 sealed, 2 sharks, this one was a doozy

Honestly, you should be ashamed of yourself for running that last deck. Holy shit.

[Saiga]

Use every advantage afforded to you! Take no prisoners!

[aldeayeah]

Honestly, you should be ashamed of yourself for running that last deck. Holy shit.

Sometimes you get bomb galore, sometimes you get 3 color bad stuff.

Like right now, I'm running Mardu Weaponize the Monsters in Sealed, mainly because no 2-color combination yields an exciting deck (also, I have great mana - 3 Mardu duals, 1 Mardu triple land and 1 Evolving Wilds)

On the other hand, current draft... I tried to force BW humans, ended up with not nearly enough humans, but it sort of worked out? Got a P3P1 Snapdax and a late Porcuparrot to combo with my two Boot Nippers (build-your-own Avatar of Woe). I also have seven pieces of unconditional removal. Now it's time to decide between disciplined BW grindy stuff (boo!), or flashy Mardu.

Trying to get better at Limited, it's super fun, but it is a rocky road indeed. (Also for some reason I always seem to manage to get paired at 0-0 against some fucker with a perfect RW cycling deck)

[aldeayeah]

Managed to 7-1 the Sealed so I immediately bought another one, got a crap pool orz

Sometimes you get bomb galore, sometimes you get 3 color bad stuff.

Like right now, I'm running Mardu Weaponize the Monsters in Sealed, mainly because no 2-color combination yields an exciting deck (also, I have great mana - 3 Mardu duals, 1 Mardu triple land and 1 Evolving Wilds)

Scratch that - I somehow managed to drive that deck to 7-2, including a victory by mill

for posterity

My other 7 win run in Sealed was a kinda boring but ultra effective RW beatdown with the very broken Kaheera. Man, Companions are so dumb when they come together in Limited.

IKO Sealed 7-1

[aldeayeah]

Barely managed to get all the Ikoria rares before running out of gems.

Last Sealed was another 7-win run with a refreshingly basic Boros deck - good curve, good removal, big creatures.

CHONKY TOWN, IKO Sealed 7-2

Now it's time to farm~

* * *

Right now it seems that the consensus fast cheap deck to grind the Constructed ladder is Boros Cycling.

After playing against its Limited version a bunch, and never quite managing to draft it, it's rather satisfying to be the one to Zenith Flare people for obscene amounts of X.

* * *

Ranking system news: Now Gold has the same progression as Silver (1 win = 2 steps forward, 1 loss = 1 step back), so it should be much easier/less of a chore to reach Platinum.

[Ratman]

Lol, forget Oko, Lurrus may be the most broken card since Treasure Cruise (or maybe Skullclamp?)

Skullclamp sounds about right.

[aldeayeah]

It's sorta crazy that these days one could make a pretty good case for the unbanning of Skullclamp in Legacy (hell, maybe even in Modern!)

and that the main argument against would be the fact that Lurrus decks can play it

[I3uster]

Lurrus is only broken in eternals, TC and Clamp were problematic in Standard. The best Lurrus deck is in the view of some just a worse Obosh deck and its p much a meta call at this point.

- - - Updated - - -

Like hes obviously not fine but in a game without reasonable 0 mana plays hes just really damn good.

[aldeayeah]

Eh, he's a freeroll in most Standard cycling decks for all that's worth

[I3uster]

Yeah but hes in there because hes easily included as insurance, if the deck works as intended he never sees the board.

[aldeayeah]

Pretty much all Lurrus decks follow that model.

[I3uster]

No, hes core in auras and rakdos which all get insane value off him, cycling gets a Dranith Stinger revive as best case scenario.

[aldeayeah]

Fair point, but even there he's still not plan A IMO

[I3uster]

Id say the difference is if you dont remove Lurrus vs Rakdos you die while if you dont remove Lurrus vs cycling you take 3 and see another 2/2. Lurrus on 5 is a great turn for Rakdos, it means you dont have a Flare for Cycling.

It does illustrate the failure of the companion mechanic (no opportunity cost) but the powerlevel is not the same.

[Benderesco]

It's sorta crazy that these days one could make a pretty good case for the unbanning of Skullclamp in Legacy (hell, maybe even in Modern!)

and that the main argument against would be the fact that Lurrus decks can play it

Trust me, even without Lurrus Skullclamp would be a disaster. I weep at the thought of Grixis Delver getting to run it alongside Bitterblossom.

It would be excellent for two of my favorite decks (Elves, Death and Taxes), but it would absolutely wreck the format.

[I3uster]

Hows death and taxes now anyway, IIRC it was kind of a meme but Lurrus slots into it now?

[Benderesco]

Hows death and taxes now anyway, IIRC it was kind of a meme but Lurrus slots into it now?

Not a meme by any means; not too long ago it was a Tier 1 deck. Pre-WAR, in fact, you could even argue it was the best deck in Legacy (some would say Pre-M19, since Omniscience turned Sneak and Show from an easy matchup into a slightly unfavorable one).

Then all the bullshit from 2019 happened, and the deck's power was severely drained. Now it is merely a Tier 2 deck at best. A semi-D&T deck with Lurrus won the challenge a while ago, but it is so different from "classic" D&T that many people are saying that list is just White Weenie. In fact, slotting Lurrus into traditional D&T doesn't really work. With some notable exceptions, most of the deck's most powerful creatures have a CMC higher than 2.

Legacy is pretty much a joke now, frankly. The format was at one of its highest points ever at the beginning of 2019. After WAR, MH and ELD, it was swamped with horrid cards that warped it in several different ways (Astrolabe, Oko, T3feri, Plague Engineer, Wrenn and Six, Breach), and only two of those - Wrenn and Six and Breach - were banned. Then came companions, and the format is pretty much just Yu-Gi-Oh now. Even my beloved Elves deck is now running that freaking Lurrus; in fact, of all my decks, the only one that can't simply slot it in is B&R Reanimator, which went from a Tier 1 deck to a questionable choice in the span of less than a month.

Seriously, look at this shit: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/legacy/full#paper. Everything's on fire.

This is the white weenie list I was talking about, by the way: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2020-04-26#mm__st_place

[aldeayeah]

Not much of a Legacy player (only have a couple budget decks), but the high point for Legacy IMO was that brief fleeting moment in which UB Shadow and D&T were both top tier.

or to be more generous, the period between the SDT ban and the release of WAR

* * *

Man, I remember when MH1 was announced, I was pretty excited about having Vindicate and Pernicious Deed and whatnot in Modern (hahaha). They lulled us into a false security with that tame Serra planeswalker, but noooo, you know they had to make new OP cards.

Well congrats WotC, you effectively kicked me out of the format - have barely bought any singles since then. Even though Urza is totally the kind of deck I like, I refuse to become a dupe for that kind of transparent, power-creeping money grubbing.

Now I mostly grind dailies and play Limited in Arena, and spend at most $20 per set, more often $0. I don't regret it.

* * *

I guess I should sell all of my Modern staples before power creep, reprints and bans devalue them into oblivion (RIP Mox Opal, I was literally about to sell my playset when the banhammer hit). I'll keep the preconstructed decks to play with friends and that's it.

Anyone has any experience selling a whole collection? I really don't have the time to sell it piecewise, but I want to get a decent deal. I have pretty much every Modern playable card printed before MH1, so I'm guessing it should fetch a pretty penny (market value $15k according to an incomplete list of my collection in deckbox.org). Thing is, I don't know how to go about it to get the best deal in a time-efficient way - I'm guessing I should approach a large vendor but don't know which one.

* * *

Shower thought: Lurrus would be less broken (although still broken) if its deck restriction affected noncreature cards, like Keruga's.

[Benderesco]

That was a delicious time, yes. The only complaint I had at that time was that there was too much Sneak and Show running around, and for entirely subjective reasons (I find any matchups that involve that deck tremendously boring). WAR was the deck that started the decline.

Regarding selling a whole collection: the best way of getting a decent deal is announcing it on Facebook - more specifically, in a Magic-centered group. Approaching a large vendor will get it sold fast, but they will pay much less than another player would.

What country are you from? Some of them (mine, for instance) have websites that allow players to put up their collections for auction. It is quite useful, but only if you already have a reputation as a vendor (as in, it is not your first time selling pricey cards).

***

Regarding Lurrus: it would help, but frankly, the whole Companion mechanic is stupid, since it gives you an ever-present 8th card from the start of the game AT WORST. With something like Lurrus, it is +2 CA at least. I saw a pro player suggest that playing with a companion (as a companion, not shuffled into the deck) should also force you to necessarily start with 6 cards in hand, not 7 (in other words, it reduces the number of mulls you can get by 1). That would help, but some of these goddamned things would still be too powerful. In my view, they should AT LEAST ban Lurrus and give the mechanic an errata like that.

[aldeayeah]

I'm in Spain. I could list the cards in cardmarket.com, have already sold some there. I'm confident I'd get about 80% of the value of the staples in a shortish amount of time, the problem is the effort involved - I don't really want to be going to the post office every other day with a pandemic out there. Maybe I should do that for the higher value cards, and buylist the rest (still don't know where)

Could also approach some of the larger MKM vendors, maybe they'd be interested. Although again, now with covid everything's on hold.