Really enjoying the writing in this one so far. Good descriptions, good use of language.
We have cards already for Mabel and Hugs. From the story we also know that Finneas is an expert archer, Zoraline is a cleric, and Helga is a minor mage. Not sure about Gev's class yet but he's some sort of performer: he "wielded a pair of fire maces, swinging and spinning them in a dizzying display of grace and finesse, their flames leaving trails in the twilight."
Additional thoughts:
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If we're losing our enchantments too often, we could build in some redundancy by going up to two copies of each. The problem with that is there's a 33% chance you'll get a duplicate on turn 2, in which case you'd have to wait until turn 3 or 4 to win. So I guess it's worth it if our enchantments are getting killed in more than 33% of games.
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I was wrong about Teferi in particular, the Historic-legal version is the "fixed" Alchemy card and that doesn't get in Chimil's way. Other can't-cast effects, such as Drannith Magistrate, are still a concern.
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Looking at the list of weaknesses I laid out starts me thinking about how I'd build a white prison deck for this format. Unfortunately, it would need a lot of rares and I don't have quite that many wildcards.
I'm early posting this, the Historic Chimil Midweek Magic event isn't until next week (July 9 - 11), but I'm already thinking about it.
About Name Historic Chimil Life Lock
Deck 1 Exquisite Blood 1 Sanguine Bond 4 Spinewoods Armadillo 4 Herd Migration 4 Colossal Skyturtle 4 Cease // Desist 11 Forest 2 Swamp 1 Island 4 Boseiju, Who Endures 4 Botanical Sanctum 4 Thornwood Falls 4 Lush Oasis 4 Brokers Hideout 4 Cabaretti Courtyard 4 Riveteers Overlook
Am I missing anything? Does this deck seem like it should work? Anyone have a deck that can win faster, or more reliably?
The plan is: mulligan any hand that has Sanguine Bond or Exquisite Blood, and hope really hard not to draw them. Discover one at the end of your first turn and the other at the end of your second. Then use one of your two-mana life-gaining effects, or if you don't have one, wait until turn 3 and play a land that either gains you life or damages your opponent. As soon as either of those things happen, the two enchantments will trigger each other infinitely.
32 of the deck's cards are able to start the combo (once you have both enchantments), and 22 of the 42 lands enter untapped, so having two mana at the end of turn 2 should also happen pretty reliably.
The WotC page says you'll "discover a spell with cost 6 or lower" each turn. I assume it actually means 5, like Chimil itself, but if not then we'll have to cut Spinewoods Armadillo.
Weaknesses:
- Anything that gives the opponent hexproof will block the combo. Colossal Skyturtle can help with creatures and Boseiju with Leyline of Sanctity, but Teyo, the Shieldmage probably ruins our day.
- "Can't gain life" effects block the combo. Most of them are creatures and again, Colossal Skyturtle gives us some hope, but we have no way to deal with Tibalt, Rakish Instigator.
- Cheap counterspells like Annul or Spell Pierce will be good against us if Chimil's uncounterable effect isn't part of the emblem.
- Enchantment destruction will obviously be effective.
- Can't lose/can't win effects are a problem. Gideon of the Trials is the most likely, and our only hope of answering it is that they'll turn it into a creature and we'll have a Skyturtle. Phyrexian Unlife will cause a draw.
- "Can't cast spells" effects like Teferi, Time Raveler will stop us, and a lot of other decks too.
Between the two Swamps and Colossal Skyturtle's 2G ability, it's theoretically possible to recover from disruption and cast our enchantments fairly, but I doubt most opponents will twiddle their thumbs while you do it.
Even though the deck isn't bulletproof, I think it should be able to win reliably when not disrupted, and maybe occasionally even through a bit of disruption.
You might think I'm crazy for working so hard to break a casual format that will only exist for two days, and I wouldn't disagree with you....
There's a decent argument that Shuko and anything else that can be activated an unlimited number of times should be banned, because this isn't the first time a combo like this has come around. But I think this article does a good job making the case that Nadu is broken even apart from that. (That doesn't mean Wizards won't hide behind a Shuko ban anyway....)
I've been playing Magic long enough to remember when a 3/4 for 3 mana would need a pretty significant drawback to even be printable. So I'm still surprised when they come out with broken nonsense like Nadu, even though I shouldn't be by now.
This Pro Tour had lopsided numbers and non-interactive games and just wasn't much fun to watch. Wizards should consider it a disaster, but whether they will probably depends a lot on MH3 sales numbers.
Oh god, the page has been updated now and it really is a 60-card constructed format.
Well, if he's cheated so much in the past that he can't get the benefit of the doubt from the judges now, he won't get a ton of sympathy from me either.
It's not like they don't know they're on camera, and on top of that, Van Etten was up a game already. Who would intentionally cheat in a situation where you're pretty much guaranteed to get caught, and you don't even need the advantage that badly anyway? The only thing I can think of is that Van Etten told the judges "Yeah, I realized it a couple of turns later but didn't say anything."
By the way, speaking as someone who's played my share of paper Magic and made more than my share of judge calls: call the judges when this happens. Their top priority is to fix the game state, not to punish you. Sometimes if the game has progressed too far to fix, they'll let the mistake stand. I don't know offhand how enforcement differs at a high-level event like this, but I think there's a real chance that Van Etten could have salvaged a match win out of this if he'd called the judges on himself in time.
The announcement says turn 3 of game 3, but it means game 2. Their game 2 starts at about 5:30:15 of the official coverage, and the play in question happens at around 5:34:00. Twitch chatters catch the mistake immediately, and the commentators bring it up around 5:35:35.
I could easily see myself doing something like this by mistake. I wonder what the judges heard when they interviewed the players that convinced them it was intentional.
I hope it's not a constructed format, because I found a three-card game-winning combo pretty quickly: Sanguine Bond plus Exquisite Blood plus any way to gain life, like Honden of Cleansing Fire or the last mode of Glorious Sunrise. Just put one of each of those cards plus 57 lands in a deck and you can have your combo assembled by turn 4.
Interesting that they considered banning Atraxa or Knight-Errant from Standard. While I wouldn't shed a tear for either one, I can't honestly say that the format is unbalanced right now. Those decks are strong but beatable, and their metagame shares are reasonable.
In fact, I've been playing Poison Burn for so long that I actually look forward to facing Domain Ramp. And I think losing the triomes, and thus the potential for turn-two Leylines, will slow the deck down by a lot.
On the other hand, I don't understand the argument that losing Voldaren Epicure will significantly hurt Boros Convoke. I hardly ever see that deck play Knight-Errant on turn 2, and yet I still lose to it plenty. If I could ban one card from the deck, I'd choose Imodane's Recruiter, or maybe Warden of the Inner Sky.
The Midweek Magic page hasn't been updated yet to explain what "Historic Chimil" is, but assuming it's a format with the Historic card pool where everybody starts with a Chimil emblem, what do we think the strategy is? Just stuff a deck with busted five-drops, right? Do you even need lands? Maybe if you want to put some of the discovered cards in your hand for later use. Or will it be a Momir-like format where you just get a random Historic-legal spell with mana value <= 5 each turn?
Catch up with the latest info and events on MTG Arena.
In this edition:
- Summer Sale Starts Tomorrow!
- Win Physical Magic Cards with Arena Direct
- Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 at MagicCon: Amsterdam This Weekend
- Modern Horizons 3 WPN Rewards on MTG Arena
- July Qualifier Play-In Best-of-One and Bonus Play-In
- Modern Horizons 3 Deck Tech and Format Tips on YouTube
- No Announcements Next Week
- Event Schedule
before we put our children onto the battlefield, not 'create' them like some rules committees would have you believe.
A real Magic fundamentalist would put them into play.
Forbidden Orchard seems like a natural fit.
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- Modern Horizons 3 Out Now on MTG Arena!
- Arena Open: Modern Horizons 3 This Weekend
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- Modern Horizons 3 Launches Tomorrow on MTG Arena!
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- MTG Arena Rewards for WPN Play in Modern Horizons 3
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The article says:
the matchmaking we're discussing today only applies to the Best-of-One play queues ... and does not apply to Ranked play, Best-of-Three play, premier events, or events that have win/loss targets.
Interesting that they exclude casual Bo3. What exactly does that mean? I could see an argument that deck weighting is less important in a format where you have access to sideboards. But they must still do player-skill-based MMR, right? Casual play would surely be a nightmare without it.
We know from the Reddit spreadsheets that they have separate weighting for Standard Brawl and Historic Brawl. I'd bet that each format -- Standard, Explorer, Alchemy, etc. -- has its own set of weights. The reason we only know the weights for Brawl is because only commanders can have negative weights. So no Explorer deck, for example, can ever fail to validate because of a negative total weight.
This is probably a lot easier for me to say than it would be for the programmers to implement, but: the weighting system seems to only judge cards on an individual basis. I wonder how feasible it would be to weight card combos. Like -- Aftermath Analyst isn't too scary by itself, but if you see it in a deck with Nissa, Resurgent Animist, that's a different story.
I think it's probably for the best that we can't see those numbers. For one thing, being able to see your MMR would turn casual games into ranked games, effectively. Plus there's the fact that both numbers are really just the developers' best guess, subject to a lot of fluctuation and not guaranteed to be accurate at any particular point in time, not to mention that you sometimes get paired way up/down if the system can't find a match fast enough. I think publicizing MMR or deck weight would lead to a lot more complaining and bad feelings, while not significantly improving the quality of your games.
I appreciate that they acknowledged the Brawl weighting system -- ignoring it would have been a real mistake -- and I'm satisfied with what they said about it.
I read some of the discussion about it on Reddit, and people were angry (because there are always angry Magic players on Reddit), but it seemed like most of the frustration was that the system isn't accurate enough, not that it exists.
Personally, I'm upset in the first place that Magic cards are so imbalanced that a weighting system is necessary, but given that they are, I'm glad such a system exists, at least for casual formats.
They talk about continuing to make changes to the system. The main change that I hope they'll make is to allow negative-weight decks to validate. Then I can take some of the useless utility lands out of my zero-weight Mycotyrant deck.
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- Modern Horizons 3 Streamer Event June 5
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- MTG Arena Matchmaking and You
- Card Styles Button Returns
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- Currency Update for Players in Japan
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In this edition:
- Preorder Modern Horizons 3 Now until June 11
- Modern Horizons 3 Debut
- Modern Horizons 3 Rewards in Psychic Frog's Horizon Hideaway
- Only Days Remain for the WPN Draft Promotion!
- Play Chromatic Cube and Flashback Drafts
- Modern Horizons 3 Pack Breakdown
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- Preorder Modern Horizons 3 Starting May 21!
- Arena Open This Weekend, May 25–26
- Keep Going in the WPN Draft Promo!
- Next Week's Announcements Coming Tuesday, May 28
- Event Schedule
In this edition:
- Don't Miss the May WPN Promo Happening Now
- Arena Open: Outlaws of Thunder Junction, May 25–26
- Play the Brawl Builder Challenge This Week
- Historic Metagame Challenge, May 17–20
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- Alchemy: Thunder Junction Launches Tomorrow
- Earn MTG Arena Goodies Playing in WPN Store Events
- Flashback Limited Events Start May 14
- May Qualifier Weekend Is This Weekend!
- Event Schedule
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In this edition:
- Pro Tour Thunder Junction Winner and Top Performing Decks
- The Big Score Alchemy Preconstructed Festival April 30–May 7
- WPN Outlaws of Thunder Junction Promo
- May Best-of-One Qualifier Play-In This Weekend
- Arena Open: Outlaws of Thunder Junction May 4–5
- Alchemy: Thunder Junction Gallops into Town May 7
- Event Schedule
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- Outlaws of Thunder Junction on MTG Arena
- Bonny Pall Standard Festival April 23–30
- Pro Tour Thunder Junction This Weekend in Seattle!
- Event Schedule
This is maybe the third or fourth time I've been to Mythic, but by far the earliest in the month that I've gotten there and the highest I've been.
In this edition:
- Outlaws of Thunder Junction Launches This Week!
- Jump In! Update for Outlaws of Thunder Junction
- Release Notes for Outlaws of Thunder Junction
- Event Schedule
Discover topics like diy woodworking, and the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like Octocatcreations.
(This is not my work; I'm just sharing something I saw on another site.)
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- Last Week for Outlaws of Thunder Junction Preorders
- Streamer Even This Wednesday, April 10
- Historic Banned List Update
- Remix Draft: Artifacts Continues This Week
- April Qualifier Weekend Starts This Friday
- Midweek Magic Gladiator Spotlight This Week
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This week's Midweek Magic event on Arena is "Omniscience Draft". You do a bot draft and then throw out just five of your 45 cards, because you have an emblem that says you can cast spells from your hand for free and you can add WUBRG once a turn.
Maybe your brain automatically corrected that to "you can cast a spell for free once per turn." I know I kept re-checking the rules as I was drafting, because I was sure that I was missing something. But no, you just dump your hand on turn one, and your opponent does the same, and then you see what's what. Every game is decided in the first turn or two, and once it is, the loser never waits around to see it play out, and who can blame them?
I don't like to sound ungrateful; Midweek Magic events are usually free, they're a nice change of pace, overall I really appreciate them. But this one is kind of unbearable.
If you do decide to play this one, here's your pick order:
- Anything that draws more than one card.
- The biggest creatures you can find. Evasion is good as usual. Deathtouch is better than usual because you'll need to be able to block enormous creatures immediately.
- Creature removal.
- Smaller creatures.
- Combat tricks.
- For some unknowable reason there are lands in the packs. Do not take them. You might think you're going to set up some cute combo with a card that cares about your land count, or pay some activation cost that needs two mana of the same color. Ask yourself how that strategy stacks up against a turn-one [[Rust Goliath]].
There have been a few Arena events lately where the premise seems to be "what if everybody just played bananas powerful cards all the time?" I will never understand why that sounds like fun to some people. Magic cards have mana costs for a reason.
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In this edition:
- Congratulations to the Arena Championship 5 Winner!
- Outlaws of Thunder Junction Preorders on Sale Now
- April 10 Streamer Event for Outlaws of Thunder Junction
- Announcing Remix Draft: Artifacts!
- Saturday: April Best-of-One Qualifier Play-In
- Event Schedule
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In this edition:
- Outlaws of Thunder Junction Preorders Start Tomorrow!
- Outlaws of Thunder Junction Mastery Details
- Tune in for Outlaws of Thunder Junction Debut Tomorrow
- This Weekend: Arena Championship 5!
- Changes Coming to MTG Arena's Premier Play
- Event Schedule
The event lasts until Tuesday the 19th. You play Bo1 games with 60-card decks using cards from GRN, RNA, WAR, and MKM, and you're not restricted to cards in your collection.
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About Name Ravnica Flash
Deck 7 Island 7 Plains 4 Hallowed Fountain 4 Meticulous Archive 2 Mobilized District 1 Cryptex 4 Doorkeeper Thrull 4 Deduce 4 No More Lies 4 Sinister Sabotage 4 Absorb 2 Teferi, Time Raveler 2 Chemister's Insight 4 Warrant // Warden 2 Intrude on the Mind 3 Time Wipe 2 Commence the Endgame
This one is maybe a little mean for a fairly casual event, but then again maybe not, since I'm seeing a lot of people play similar decks. I don't know; I just seem to gravitate to blue decks where you can play most of your cards on your opponent's turn. You actually have several options for curve-toppers here; consider [[Dream Eater]] or [[Angel of Grace]] as alternatives to the ones I went with.
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About Name 2 Massacre 2 Girl
Deck 6 Swamp 4 Plains 4 Godless Shrine 4 Shadowy Backstreet 3 Escape Tunnel 2 Blast Zone 1 Mobilized District 2 Price of Betrayal 4 Dead Weight 4 Hunted Witness 4 Imperious Oligarch 4 Despark 2 Bleeding Edge 1 Kaya, Spirits' Justice 4 Massacre Girl 4 Massacre Girl, Known Killer 3 Ethereal Absolution 4 Slice from the Shadows
You can play both Massacre Girls in this format, how cool is that? I got this idea from an opponent but I didn't remember their deck well enough to copy it. I think they had a lifegain focus. Mine is basically just toughness-based control. Be careful how you stack your triggers! Sometimes you want your tokens to come into play in time to die. The two Prices of Betrayal are a nod to our bad match-up against Superfriends decks, which understandably are pretty popular in a format where War of the Spark is a quarter of the card pool.
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In this edition:
- Alchemy: Karlov Manor Is Here!
- Scavenger Hunt Clues
- Alchemy Qualifier Play-In Best-of-One This Saturday
- Event Schedule
Evu @mtgzone.com I've been playing Magic off and on since the mid-'90s, though some of the "off" periods have been pretty long.
I used to help run Pauper events on MTGO, before Pauper became an officially sanctioned format.
Check out this Magic-related web site I made: https://housedraft.games/