Kaladesh Pre-Release Report 9-24-16

Ahhh, time for some day-drinking and pre-release magic cards. The two go well together as higher variance play when under the influence doesn't matter as much when not one not two but THREE people crack Chandra.

Need cards, mana, or to make something dead? Chandra has a solution

Amusingly, for a set with a bunch of cool moving pieces and tons of fun build-around cards, I had the world's most boring, LR-approved deck. 17 lands, 7 spells, 16 creatures. Some removal, some tricks, some fixing. basically it was designed to be thoroughly average but be spectacularly consistent at doing so. Is that enough to bring home victory to my long suffering wife?!

G/W Games. Never give up and never surrender!

Once again I'm less than stellar at capturing screenshots but I don't really think anyone cares. I mean, cares less than the rest of this blog. So I'll recap.

Game 1
I'm facing a deck that is CLEARLY vastly superior to mine. U/G emerge, and it has ALL the pieces.

      

Game 1 I had a mediocre hand with several four drops and three mana. I kept.. but without an early lead I rapidly fell behind to his vastly superior value plays. Game 2 I have a slick little opening hand.
   

That's a fast 1-2-3 with a solid combat trick to knock down their first blocker. I dump my hand, handle his two blockers and win with a topdecked Lunarch Mantle to go over the top.

Game 3.
Basically a word for word repeat of game 1 where he stabilized with his bevy of emerge creatures. I'm able to enchant a Solitary Hunter and swing in for some big hits but he gets down to 7 with a Gryff, Drownyard Explorer, and a flipped Solitary Hunter facing down my one or two blockers. I buy some time with a Heron's Grace Champion (lifelink!!).

Facing a dead board I attack with my little 2/2 flying. For whatever reason, he does not block.
 

Hey, that's seven damage! Whew! Sometimes you steal one.

(2-1)

Game 2
G/W Mirror, except one of us has good cards and one of us doesn't.
     

Yeah... those are his cards. He had enough to slow me down and then I didn't really have an answer for his transformed Ulvenwald Captive. One game he had both of his captives down (one transformed). I attack with an equipped Solitary Hunter and he double-blocked using the mana from his transformed to transform the other one. Mistake by team Jed.

(0-2)

Game 3
Facing R/G aggression. Some good aggression.

    

In the first match, we stall out facing against each other but he's transforming his werewolves into 5/7 monsters and I'm... well not doing that. However, I do have an ace up my sleeve:

  

I equip the Rider with the staff, which demands a whole lot of blocking on his part. I then drop the Woodcutter's Grit for a pretty massive blowout (wiping out three blockers) and gain a lot of life. I eventually, barely manage to win the race. Amusingly, I actually activate Delirium with my only artifact creature in the graveyard which proved to be rather important, making my Paranoid Parish Blade 4 points of first strike damage.

Match two we both mull a bit and I stay on the front foot even when he gets out his Mirrorwing Dragon. I'm able to attack into it with a developed board and my trusty Selfless spirit

 

Amusingly, when I cast the selfless spirit, I thought I had the Guardian of Pilgrims (which I feel is SOMEWHAT justified, given the identical art). Talk about a pleasant surprise!

(2-0)

In conclusion, I think my deck overperformed to eke out a 2-1. It was pretty fun and I really enjoyed being able to schedule magic on my own terms and not have to block out a 3 hours period.

Magic Draft League 9-17-16

Holy cow, magic draft leagues are the coolest thing ever. I can draft and then play games whenever I want. I don't have to block out three straight hours to try and draft. Makes the barrier to entry a LOT lower.

Anyway, here's my draft. Let's review some picks and any missed signals.

Pack 1, Pick 1

   

Let's see an unplayable rare, no help in the uncommons (Blood Mist is contentious as we shall see). Brazen Wolves is a totally playable common, so we'll start there.
  



I like the utility of Selfless Spirit most though Foul Emissary is arguably the more powerful card in the right (emerge) deck. I like staying more open in my opening picks and since Selfless Spirit really can go anywhere, I'll go there. Plus it's not like 2 in the air goes out of style.

After that, there really wasn't any interesting picks of note. Some green, Blood Mist wheeled (lol). I feel like I have a good white base and could bend to either green or red. Oh, and a mispick on the Distemper of Blood but not like there was anything else good in that pack.

Pack 2

  


Dark Salvation is almost hilariously good, and I ponder cutting black. But without a firm first color I don't feel confident that I could pull that off (though it appears in hindsight that I could have). I then almost snap pick the Galvanic Bombardment but truthfully my red is pretty weak and Choking Restraints is almost as good.

P2 P2

  


Iiiiiiiiinteresting. Sigardian Priest is probably the safer choice but I think it's time to go bold and pick some cards that can help win games. Given my base white with playable greens, I go Heron's grace.

The rest of the pack bears out my fear of going red, as it almost completely dries up. And green is reasonably plentiful. Sadly the Hamlet Captain doesn't wheel but I'm able to get playables almost all the way down.

Pack 3

I make the only major mistake of my draft and grab a Solitary Hunter over a Byway Courier. I had plenty (almost too many) 4 drops and could use some more playable 3 drops especially given that all of the decent 3 drops require delirium, which looked unlikely even then.

The Deck

Can be found here:

Remaining in the sideboard
     

I still have one Sentry (need 3 drops badly) and one faithbearer paladin. But running 16 lands means running low to the ground. Blessed Alliance was also turns off as that card feels more like a control deck. I also have two 'good' enchantments in the sideboard. I'm still not sure what my deck will do if my opponent drops a 3/3 on the battlefield.

To the games!

Has Magic jumped the proverbial shark?

Brent here. I know, weird, right? It's been a while.

I've become aware that a new set is almost here and with my beta access, I'm going to jump in and play some sealed in just a few minutes.

But is this even the same game I once knew? The sixth color is here and established (and mindbogglingly, it's not even a color at all). There are Vehicles in this set that get Crewed by Pilots?!?

Hmmmmm...

What's next? Riggers and Contraptions and the return of the Tribal supertype? By my count, we should get Return to Return to Ravnica in 2019?

But I kid because I love. I've been elbow deep in Hearthstone every free minute I've had for the past two years (and there have been plenty). But I'm gonna give M:tG another try right now because sometimes you just want to check in on old crushes on the Facebook amirite?

She's engaged again?? Huh.