Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Anyone go to a prerelease? I didn't, I haven't even looked at set spoilers yet really. I'm excited for the legends, though!

I just finished working four of them. Good lord I want that Simic champion.

The Simic maze runner (guy you're thinking of) is quite good. I want the Simic shapeshifter. So much greatness exists in that little card.

I played in a prerelease yesterday to get out of the house and hang out with a few friends who regularly play in Magic events. It's probably been ~ a decade since my last MTG event, and most of my owned cards are 10 or 15 (some 20) years old, but I remembered some of my basic principles for limited environment building:

Focus on cheap aggression
Go creature/removal heavy
Keep conscious of your mana curve

My friends recommended that I try Boros, but it was full, so I took Rakdos. Red/Black gave me good cheap aggressive creatures and a fair amount of removal. I got Demir as my allied pack, and got some nice blue stuff (a couple of evading creatures, Demir charm, Blast of Genius, Aetherize). I also got a few nice white or green cards, but really couldn't use them. I like how the Guildgates and mana artifacts make building three colors (or four if you get a bit lucky) reasonable without a high percentage chance of manascrewing yourself.

I had four fun matches; 2/0, 2/0, 0/2, 2/1, with the last two against fellow Rakdos players (first two were Golgari and Boros, the other two guilds I was interested in). At least two of my wins were games where I did JUST enough damage to kill my opponent the turn before they would have definitely killed me. Some really fun, tight games. Reminded me how much I enjoy limited Magic (sealed and draft). It also wasn't too expensive for a day's gaming. I already made back $17 of my $25 entry selling off some of of the packs I won and a couple of my rares. I'll probably recoup the rest of my costs Friday selling more rares back to the store, then keep my commons & uncommons for possible use in casual home play with friends. I get out to play home games with friends a couple of times a year, so a few dozen more cards for that don't go amiss.

I did appallingly at pre release. It's shameful, I lost all six matches which us the worst perfirmace I've ever had at an event.

I picked Boros and was paired with Izzet, but had no Izzet creatures and a couple of poor spells. I dropped it in favour of going white-red-black but it just didn't work.

Did you just not get enough creatures in general? I think I wound up running something like 16 lands, 2 mana-producing artifacts, 23 creatures, and 9 other spells (at least half of which were removal).

Also note that they probably played with a 40 card deck, so as to make it easier and more likely to get to the stuff they do need. It's totally optional the amount of cards you decide to run. There are untold factors that play in to how things could go bad. There are only 8-12 games in a 4-round prerelease, leaving not a ton of time for things to work themselves out.

Huh? I don't follow. Yes, in sealed or draft you play with 40 card decks (optionally, but rarely, you might put in more). How does that relate?

I just made out like a bandit in my draft tournament.

We were doing a special draft tournament where you would play with teams of 3 people. Your team split a box, and each of you got 10 booster packs. The remaining 6 booster packs were added to the prize pool.

On my last booster pack, I got the foil of voice of resurgence ... which is worth $70.

I won every game with a golgari deck, but everyone else on my team lost every game so we placed last... but its ok because I totally got my moneys worth. I paid $35 for the tournament, and I made out with at least $120 worth of cards.

Good work my friend. Does anybody here play EDH? I'm curious as to what people do with that.

m14dude wrote:
Good work my friend. Does anybody here play EDH? I'm curious as to what people do with that.

I want to do a mono-color of each color. I have white and green so far... but my next project is a blue-green EDH. I'm divided between experiment kraj and momir vig.

I'm currently running a Selesnya EDH with Trostani as general, and it's quite fun. The amount of creature tricks and such is really quite fantastic.

 stealthxstar wrote:

m14dude wrote:
Good work my friend. Does anybody here play EDH? I'm curious as to what people do with that.

I want to do a mono-color of each color. I have white and green so far... but my next project is a blue-green EDH. I'm divided between experiment kraj and momir vig.

Momir Vig is better. Just have Kraj in your Momir deck and you should be able to get him out whenever you choose


Automatically Appended Next Post:

m14dude wrote:
Good work my friend. Does anybody here play EDH? I'm curious as to what people do with that.

I do. Its really simple and my favorite format.


These are the rules, banlist, history etc
http://mtgcommander.net/rules.php

m14dude wrote:I'm currently running a Selesnya EDH with Trostani as general, and it's quite fun. The amount of creature tricks and such is really quite fantastic.

Rhys the Redeemed is a hilarious populate/token general.

ChocolateGork wrote:

 stealthxstar wrote:

m14dude wrote:
Good work my friend. Does anybody here play EDH? I'm curious as to what people do with that.

I want to do a mono-color of each color. I have white and green so far... but my next project is a blue-green EDH. I'm divided between experiment kraj and momir vig.

Momir Vig is better. Just have Kraj in your Momir deck and you should be able to get him out whenever you choose

Good point. I'll probably try playing with both of them as generals and see how it goes.

But right now my favorite deck is my green EDH. When it goes off (which is fairly often, unless I get really mana screwed or other people blow up my field), its funny (at least I think it is!) My Avacyn deck is basically "lets put up defenses and make myself untouchable, get out avacyn, and BAM you're dead by general damage"

Wow, Rhys is quite the sexy beast. I'll have to look into trying to get her. Quite pricey though and not general worthy compared to Trostani, in my eyes. It's got lots of nice life gain and token making.

My friends just got me into this last night.

They bought a Deck Builder's Toolkit and we played a 3 man demo game (I chose green and played against red and black).

I won, one friend gave me his Selesnya deck which he didn't like using.

Then, I went out and bought my own Deck Builder's Toolkit, traded with them so I have the white and green from both toolkits on top of the 70 card Selesnya deck.

I'm excited to start getting into this a little more (which is ironic because I once swore I would never play M:TG...I did the same with 40k once as well...).

 Dr. What wrote:
My friends just got me into this last night.

They bought a Deck Builder's Toolkit and we played a 3 man demo game (I chose green and played against red and black).

I won, one friend gave me his Selesnya deck which he didn't like using.

Then, I went out and bought my own Deck Builder's Toolkit, traded with them so I have the white and green from both toolkits on top of the 70 card Selesnya deck.

I'm excited to start getting into this a little more (which is ironic because I once swore I would never play M:TG...I did the same with 40k once as well...).

XD welcome to the game!

So after some good games with my brother I'm really pleased with the intro decks , and pulling planes walkers out of the boosters .

My next question is about were to go next . If I'd like to play tournaments for fun . That's usually standard I think . I could be wrong .
Shal I just hold out until m14 is out or as dragons maze has just released shawl I buy some of that . But as dragons maze is the last in that block what will m14 go with ? All seems overwhelming still haha cheers guys

m14 is a core set, so it just goes as its own thing. Every year, Wizards releases a core set (m14) and a block of some sort (Return to Ravnica which contains Dragon's Maze for example). Most often, cards in the core sets remain the same for the commons and a few uncommons. Wizards knows from internal research some of the basic commons that people use most often from core sets and try to keep them in print. Hope this helps.

I'd play casually for a while before you try to do tournaments. If you want to do drafts, those are fun (and more balanced) then a typical standard tournament (where people pour hundreds of dollars into their decks). You can practice drafting on some deckbuilder sites, one I know of is tappedout.net

But if I play casually with a deck built for standard play which set of cards should I use to go with my m13 .

Casual play is just that, random games with whatever decks happen to be at hand. It's be easier for new players to build standard decks as opposed to other formats. M13 fits well with anything as a whole. Specific cards come down to how well they work with other specific cards. One of my decks has at least one card from every set since m13, so it really doesn't matter on the whole.

Cheers , I will pick some boosters up from different sets over the weekend maybe a dragons maze intro deck . I was just confused with dragons maze with the land cards

I feel almost bad, I've spent a good 100 bucks or so on the Return to Ravnica block (RtR, GC, DM), and I've played maybe 5 games D:

Also... not sure about how I feel about Dragon's Maze atm... the few cards I've picked up for my Rakdos and Gruul deck(s) seem lack luster to what I have. Granted I don't have massive choices for those decks, but I still feel that even as a compliment sent DM doesn't stack up to RtR and GC...

Do you guys use any other good forums for mtg ?

I played in the dragon's maze pre-release. I DQ'ed my first day because I had to go2 work 8 hours into the 8.5 hour tournament (I was expected to get 5th) and came in 8th out of 40 players on day 2. Not bad imo for my first tourney. I'm sticking with the guild I bought, which is Selesnya, but I'm still making changes with it. I only like a handful of DM cards so far.

I play extended, Legacy, and vintage formats. Prefer Legacy casual games though.

Dragon's Maze is lackluster on its own, but put with the sets before it and it's a lot better. It fills in the gaps and adds new toys where needed. The guy that adds extort is quite silly.

Well, I've played 8 games or so now and I've won 2 (My first game was a win, as posted above and I won on a forfeit).

I've decided to mainly focus on a white deck, using Angels/Clerics/Inquisitors. I call it my Inquisition deck.

My big issue with winning is mana management/summoning the right creatures whilst taking down the right ones.

That and the fact that cards become useless after a few years...

They don't become useless, they just transfer to other formats for worth. True, standard is only good for so long, but EDH/Commander, modern, legacy, and vintage (for official formats) see newer cards keeping their value.