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Magic The Gathering Megathread

Welcome to the weekly/biweekly/monthly (TBD) Magic The Gathering thread. Discuss a 30+ year old mega-commercialized hyperaddictive card game with us!

Thread Question 1: What formats are you playing? What are your favourite decks to play in these formats?
Thread Question 2: What is your favourite non-infinite, non-immediately-guaranteed-winning combo to play in magic?

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17 comments

  • check out this custom card I made comrade-raccoon

  • TQ1: My favourite format is cube comfy-cool. A guy at my LGS has an (outdated) vintage cube that we've been playing sometimes, and I've begun work on my own. Planning to include silly un-cards and playtest cards for shits and giggles. Anyone here have experience designing a cube?

    also commander I guess

    when we dont play cube I'll play commander and then usually a Gruul big stompy deck large-adult-son.

    TQ2: My favourite combo is Hoarding Broodlord -> Fetch Saw in Half, Cast it on the Broodlord, tutor 2 more cards up, go wild!

    • experience designing cube

      You want to create decks for archetypes that are in your cube and build your cube around those archetypes. Your first inclination is to grab an even split of cards from each color and work your way through by mana costs. While this approach can work, it doesn't create exciting boosters to open.

      What you want to do is decide which archetypes are going to be the focus. For example, let's add Reanimator. You'll build a "perfect" version of the deck, as though a person has 20~30 picks that fit into Reanimator. Add this perfect deck to the cube, making cuts as needed to make room. Then you'll want another archetype that overlaps with Reanimator, like Ramp. Except this time, you'll include cards from Reanimator for the ideal picks/perfect deck (such as Eldrazi or Woodfall Primus).

      Violiñá! You now have two options for your players to fight over. You'll repeat this process with your other archetypes, creating a sort of "ring species" of decks. You'll want around ten archetypes, with leftover spots used on cube staples (Sol Ring, Swords to Plowshares, Demonic Tutor, Wrath of God, Llanowar Elves, Force of Will, etc.) or your whacky/pet/Unglued cards.

      The goal is to create tension during the draft portion. It makes opening cards that aren't yours or new fun because players can think about what cards they need to build their deck. Once you get a few drafts under your belt, it will be time to add and remove cards. You'll want to cut cards that always get picked last and you as a drafter see commonly passed around. Something like Mana Crypt won't make it far before someone takes it, so you know if you're seeing Wood Elemental every draft it's probably time to cut it.

      Lastly, Louis Scott-Vargas (LSV) has a YouTube channel where he drafts on a daily basis. Most of the time, it's teamed Vintage Cube. That's a great way to see how a high power cube functions and he gives excellent commentary on each card in the cube, whether he's playing the official MODO cube or his own.

  • Pauper is my favorite, so much room to brew and such a wide open metagame. Even though there's a huge card pool, new sets still often shift the meta enough to keep things fresh, without totally nuking the format like Modern.

    It's a powerful format but without a lot of individually powerful cards, so you see a lot of unusual and kind of janky synergies you don't really see anywhere else.

    A competitive deck costs as much as one shockland so you can put something together on a whim and experiment.

    I mostly play dimir terror, but also have pestilence, elves, and orzhov blade decks I'm kind of iterating on.

    Pioneer is also pretty good. And I play commander, like everyone, but I've been less interested in it lately.

  • Limiteddddddd. In particular I’m a big sealed apologist, each pool is like a mini puzzle to solve and it’s so skill intensive and rewarding.

    I’m more into little mini engines and incremental value than combos, but I’m a big fan of aristocrats shenanigans eg Priest of the Forgotten Gods + unearth type effects and similar

  • About to do a Winston draft this weekend with my BiL. 3pk Crimson Vow, 3pk Karlov Manner, which feels like a reasonable thematic match (and it's what I've got laying around). Plus a few promo packs thrown in for extra spice.

    Very excited! Haven't been able to go draft for real for a few months since my latest child was born.

    Hoping to pull a Sorin for the wifey while we're at it.

  • 1: I play a lot of Pioneer (because it encapsulates basically every set I played) and Commander because it's what everybody plays. However, I've recently been enjoying Pauper more. The People's Format.

    2: Arcades, The Strategist + A Fuckload of Defenders + Tower Defense

    Alternately, any Lotus Field Combo.

    • Big up on Lotus Field. I play it in a Gandalf The Grey deck which lets me untap my own permanents frequently.

  • Question 1: EDH at lunch with my buddies from work basically exclusively. Pre release draft events 1-2 times a year. I did play standard and draft current sets on arena for a while but I hate "daily quests" so I quit.

    Question 2: Rain of Riches into Temur Battle Rage to exile half my deck temporarily, one card at a time and make Laelia into a 50/50 double striking trampler while she's attacking. Folds to removal or hitting my sol ring 3 cards in though.

    1. The usual Sealed (bleh) and Draft (yay!) on a regular basis, both digitally and paper. Been mostly playing Explorer on Arena with whatever decks finish my dailies. I have been dabbling in Timeless with Mono-Black and 4CC. On paper, I'm building Pre-Modern decks to hopefully rope people into the format. Right now, I have Mono-Blue Storm and Suicide Black for combo and aggro. I'm going to build Turbo Stasis next for a control deck. For midrange, I'm debating between MUD and U/R Tinker (maybe both since there's a lot of overlap).

    2. Goblin Lackey dealing combat damage.

  • just had an absolutely incredible EDH game on MTGO. Turn 1, shadowborn apostle. Turn 2, culling the weak into thrumming stone. Turn 3, we're off to the races and I'm the archenemy. I love when goofy shit like this happens, it's so fun.

    • Sounds sick! Do you have a decklist you can share?

      • Dork Ritual

        it's far from optimal or w/e but I've been having a ton of fun with it. won a game last night by cracking 12 Apostles in combat to get lethal commander damage with Taborax. it's so silly, I love it.

        the best part about playing on MTGO is that cards like vampiric tutor that usually go for $30+ are 2 cents. every deck is a budget deck.

  • I don't play much anymore. I used to love magic, but lately, the constant barrage of new product is too much for me.

    But I still do play commander with my friends. Not too often but whenever we get together a game or two is inevitable.

    My favorite deck is Tatyova, Benthic Druid, and my favorite non infinite, not guaranteed to win combo is (with Tatyova on the board):

    Avenger of Zendikar into Scapeshift.

    I get an army of huge plants, gain a bunch of life and draw a shitload of cards.

  • I'm having a great time with my Regidrago VStar engine, but Gardevoir is still my best deck.

    Wait...

  • I'm trying to make a commander deck with Niv-Mizzet Reborn and it is proving to be challenging.

    Niv lets you look at the top 10 library cards and pick one card per two color pair, so I'm trying to have roughly equal cards for each pair. The main strategy is to search/mill out General Ferrous Rokiric and then make a bunch of 4/4 guys to attack with while being controlly with instants and sorceries. Other features are:

    1. 2 color blink spells, either repeatable or instant speed. Such as Abuelo, Ancestral Echo and Soulherder. Repeats the niv tutor ETB
    2. Lord of the Nazgul and Judith, Carnage Connoisseur for more token production.
    3. Tutors for Rokiric such as Ringsight and Perplex (3 mana transmute)
    4. MDFC dual lands that can be tutored by Niv
    5. Spell-slinger accellerators like Rashmi, Eternities Crafter and Prosper, Tome-Bound and Lilah, Undefeated Slickshot
    6. Other payoffs like Kalamax and Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle (12/12 that is ramp until you play 5 spells)

    Questions I have are:

    1. Do I need more unconditional draw to draw lands, mana rocks, and other mono-color cards?
    2. Should I also include cheaper payoffs like Witherbloom Apprentice (I gain 1 life and opponents lose one life per instant/sorcery I cast)?
    3. Is having unlimited hand size a priority, and if so, will it make me the arch enemy?
    4. Is this deck too slow? Typically it's producing creature tokens by turn 5 to 7.
    5. Rokiric has hexproof from mono-colored. Is that enough to protect him alongside having blinks available? I have some creature yard recursion in case of forced tributes.

    • Cool deck concept!

      1. Probably, yeah. But I can't say for sure without seeing your entire decklist.
      2. Hard to say, depends on your table. Do you think you need something early? A lot of the times people will just ignore you if you have no board presence early.
      3. No. Unlimited hand size is usually a bait. Just discard at end step and keep the best 7!
      4. Maybe. Depends on how fast the other decks at your table are. If you begin building your board after the first boardwipe (turn 5~) you're in a really good spot.
      5. With some blinks, that's probably enough yeah.
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