I don't think I played with or against a single dragon all day. "Dragons" Of Tarkir? What a joke. The set is a huge failure as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, with 4x Dragons of Tarkir packs and a seeded pack that could contain dragons you would expect to maybe pull a few dragons, especially after how much they hyped up the asfan. Honestly, I felt trolled by my packs after opening up Sarkhan's Triumph without a single dragon in my pool to tutor for :/ I feel like they opened up a big can of feel bad for all the people that were excited about the dragon set by not including at least one of the uncommon megamorph dragons in every seeded booster.
I went Atarka because I figure if I'm going to be playing at the dragons prerelease I want to be in the colors with the best chances of ramping out big dargons. So I opened up my box and my seeded booster promo staring back at me was Crater Elemental. A little disappointing, but at least it is a good roadblock that will help me stay alive until I reach my dragons right? Wrong! I had a whole bunch of mediocre defensive red cards in my pool and nothing to build up to. My green was ok. Nothing to write home about, but some solid creatures and some ramp to get to my non existent end game sooner (seriously, my curve dead stopped in the entire pool at 5 with the exception of one Segmented Krotiq and two copies of Dirgur Nemesis). My white on the other hand was outstanding. Pacifism, Silkwrap, Hidden Dragonslayer, Arashin Foremost, Misthoof Kirin... I built an aggressive to midrange Selesnya deck with a 3 card splash into blue to have enough creatures (morph birds made this possible), and then threw caution to the wind and splashed my Sarkhan off of 2 evolving wilds and an Explosive Vegetation like a madman. Turns out, it was more than worth it as Sarkhan on board where you aren't behind is every bit as crushing as it should be, and won me a couple games where my initial assault was ground down hard.
Round 1 was pretty terrible. Game 1 was a case of flood versus screw, but I drew out of it first and got there on the back of Sarkhan once I drew my 4th land to go fetch my mountain. Game 2 was even worse, my opponent drew all B/W warriors curving out like a bawse and goldfishing me as I never drew my 3rd land to play my first creature. Game 3 was pretty soul crushing as I had a decent aggressive start (2 drop, 3 drop) and my opponent plays 2 drop to block and trade, mind rot on 3, mind rot to empty my hand and dragon hunter to block on 4. Turn 5 he draws 3 with a Damnable Pact. Next turn I make a bad attack into combat tricks because I forgot that you can only activate Shu Yun if you play a noncreature spell, and all I'm holding is the first of 4 bricked off lands. My team gets wiped and he is left with a 2/2, but proceeds to bury me over the next 4 turns.
Round 2 I get paired against a pretty vicious Dimir deck, but I luck out game 1 and she draws her cards all out of order so I manage to aggro her out before she can put up a good defense. Game 2 is closer. She locks up the ground pretty good with a Sidisi and the 2/3 exploit guy, and once I over extend a bit to get around it, she plays the black regent and blows up the world. Fortunately I draw the blue source I needed to cast my Sarkhan and make a dragon using my remaining mana to pacify her dragon. She puts up a fight still, but never quite overcomes dragon, draw a card, dragon, draw 2 cards...
Round 3 I get a pretty sick draw curving out Hidden Dragonslayer into Arashin Foremost into Artful Maneuver and a creature to have him basicly dead on turn 4. Game 2 was all about the Misthoof Kirin. Stormrider rig into morphed kirin into unmoporph it and play echoes of the kin tree and from then on out I just protected the queen and smashed across putting his flyers into the abyss until game over.
Round 4 I don't really remember the details of the games too well, I got paired up and due to the expected prize structure I offered the split (didn't want to win and end up screwing my opponent out of packs). He decided to think about it and I smashed him pretty bad game 1. I again offered to split, and again, since we weren't able to get comfirmation on what the prize support was going to be (pool was 2 packs per player and prize split was based on number of players with a 3-1 or 4-0 record) he decided to think about it. I got hosed a bit on mana and lost this game. I again offered the split, and we got confirmation of the number of people with 3-0(3) and 2-1 (11) records going into the round, he mulled it over and accepted the split but suggested that we play it out to see what would have happened. It was a thrashing. I proceeded to 2 drop warrior into arashin foremost and go to work. I concede the match and wait for prizes to go out. Ended up with the same 6 packs I would have gotten had I just won the match anyway.
I picked Ojutai (oops: Azorius) with high hopes. There are some excellent cards in those colors, but the boosters were horrible. The sole UW was the promo card, Ojutai's Command, literally the best card I pulled in any color. No dragons - zip! But strangely, every dragon tribal support card in the world, including Dragon Tempest, Dragonlord's Servant, Orator of Ojutai, Silumgar's Scorn, and even Sarkhan's Triumph. Everything dragon except the actual dragons themselves. I've never been so insulted by a box in my life.
Built a pathetic UW vanilla bears deck with some makeshift attempts at removal and control and a single Evolving Wilds as my only color fixer. Proceeded to get creamed by everybody who drew anything better than a 1/3 defender. Dropped. I've seen the pictures online of that one person who chucked their deck in the bushes outside the shop, and I swear I'm not that person, but I can relate.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
This signature holds priority until end of comment.
I'm amazed that folks all had decks that were so frustratingly bad. That sucks big time. I wonder if that's just inexperience (I had a similar reaction to the Khans only sealed in my first prerelease) and things got better once I learned what the format actually called for. Similar thing happened with Fate.
I went with the Jeskai dragon pack. Only got one gruul dragon and it didn't fit the deck. No colour fixing at all. Nearly a third of my cards wanted a dragon or a warrior. Ended up with a bad midrange deck. I still did okay because everyone else had bad midrange deck. Every game was a bland grind
This is the worst designed set for limited that I can remember. Afterwards we played EDH and I won with the true Dragon Lord, Niv Mizzet. Someone played Alesha and kept emphasizing using the wrong gender and then looking around the table to Bully anyone who was offended.
Overall it was a pretty bad experience.
whats the right gender its a she right ? no one actually really cares do they ? jesus -.- strikes me as a she anyway w,e
The right gender is a she. Alesha identifies as female. And yes, there are many people, whether they directly identify with Alesha as a character, consider themselves allies and sympathetic to transgender causes or are just happy that Magic is opening up a bit more, for whom using Alesha's correct gender does matter.
The guy who was trying to bully people is most assuredly a jerk and I'm sorry you had that experience Ratinyourwalls
This time, I did not go for single and 2HG, only for 2HG.
We picked Ojutai and Dromoka. Got Arashin Foremost and Ojutai's Command as promos, and a good deal of other good rares - Thunderbreak Regent, foil Pitiless Horde and the rest was all on-color stuff - another Ojutai's Command, Dromoka's Command, Blessed Reincarnation, Myth Realized, Secure the Wastes, Gleam of Authority,Assault Formation. Sandsteppe Mastodon and Supplant Form in FRF. Yeah, save for one booster, everything was in Bant colors
Even more luck in FRF uncommons - we got 2 Mistfire Adepts, one in each booster, and the "mythic" uncommon Elite Scaleguard.
Needless to say, the white was so deep it supported two decks, with one being bolster themed and the other (pseudo)prowess themed. So we went GW and UW with the decks. I also got two Elusive Spellfists. Also, we got all the nuts rebound spells - Arftul Maneuver, Great Teacher's Decree and especially Taigam's Strike. THAT thing is broken. And Skywise Teachings. Sadly, besides the Regent, the only dragon in our pool was Herdchaser Dragon.
In the end, we scored 2-2, with first game me colorscrewed a bit and one of the decks packing like 15 removal. Another game was ended in two attacks from a 3/3 Aven Sunstriker with both Taigam's Strike and Artful Maneuver they had no response on - two attacks for 28 in total. Third game, we faced Silumgar+Ojutai, that played UB and RG...because the RG guy had f...ing THREE Dragonlord Atarka in his deck. Needless to say, we did not win that one. In the last game, I landed T1 Myth Realized, followed by Elusive Spellfist, Pacifism, Silkwrap, Mistfire Adept, Skywise Teachings.
I won 4 boosters, I opened Atarka's Command, another Blessed Reincarnation, Corpseweft and Hidden Dragonslayer.
I scored 20 in the Dragonfury game, got all the promos, and all the dice. Overall, I liked the prerelease a lot.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
100% Vorthos Spike and Storyline Expert
Former Fact Prospector of the Greek Alliance.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
I'm amazed that folks all had decks that were so frustratingly bad. That sucks big time. I wonder if that's just inexperience (I had a similar reaction to the Khans only sealed in my first prerelease) and things got better once I learned what the format actually called for. Similar thing happened with Fate.
Well, mana fixing is extremely poor, more so if you're not in green who has at least Explosive Vegetation at common, and as such can make playing more than 2 colors really miserable. KTK wa a feast with the dual lands at common, the trilands and the occasional fetches. So, when your seeded booster psushed you that way but the rest of your boosters pushed you the other way, and you wanted to splash to make everybody happy, things could actually really get ugly.
Did two pre-release events. A sealed and a two-headed giant. Went Silumgar for sealed and got Silumgar's Assassin as my promo and whiffed on blue [14 blue cards in total and they sucked]. Went black/red and crushed almost everyone, ending the day at 5-1. Would have gone 4-1-1 but the last guy wanted to win so he got steamrolled cause Sprinting Warbrute [or whatever the red 5/4 dash guy is called] is a freaking monster. Pulled Shaman of the forgotten ways, Shorecrash elenetal, and Dragonlord Dromoka in my prize packs. Two-headed Giant started right after and I went Atarka. Pulled a Foe-razer Regent, Den Protector, and foil Avatar of the Resolute. But playing in two-headed giant...ugh. Impact Tremors is ridiculous in two-headed giant. One team did us 24 damage with that card alone. Luckily me and my partner placed and got two packs each. Nothing amazing in the winnings, but after going 2-2 we were happy to get anything.
And why are people complaining the Boltwing Marauder can't benefit from its effect? It doesn't have haste! Giving itself +2/+0 is pointless without haste.
DtK prerelease is possibly one of the worst I've played. But I never played Born of the Gods or Journey into Nyx so I can't compare which was worse.
Seeded boosters for DtK are absolute garbage, or the best cardgasm one can get. Which means it's not a very good idea.
The fact that "seeded", means you should be playing your chosen means it makes for a very tough choice for a new player who doesn't understand there could be stronger combinations at first glance. There're many ways to gift a promo; seeded boosters may be a reason to, but it shouldn't be THE ONLY reason.
I do hope Wizards stops the rot when Zen comes back. No more clans, broods, shards, wedges, guilds for while please.
One of the worsts limited environments I played in my entire life, basically. I played 2 preleases with Ojutai and Atarka and went 4-1-2 and 5-2, so I'm not crying because I failed and wanna blame everybody except me. All these points are just my impression, so probably I could be wrong on most of it.
1) The mana fixing is TERRIBLE, which leads you to play 2 colors only and maybe splash to a third one if you you're lucky enough to open a pair of Evolving Wilds. The fact that the mana rocks are uncommon doesn't help at all.
2) The seeded boosters is the typical idea that could be great but it's shaped horribly. First of all, in a format without common mana fixing, the seeded booster must guarantee the monument of your brood. Neither prelease I get any of the monuments of my clan, so I played a lot of matches with the Ojutai one praying to draw the second plains or island. Special mention to Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest, which I opened on my fate reforged booster and cannot pay the ability on the whole tournament because the double white requirement. Fantastic. Secondly, I seriously wanna meet the guy who decide the promo card pool, just to thank him/her because it's hard to do it worse. My 2 promos were Stratus Walker and Volcanic Vision. I could complain about the first one being promo while there are plenty of huge bombs to put inside, but at least is a 3/2 flying that could stop a trick of the oponent. But Volcanic vision is inexplicable. Unplayable in any existing format and most of the future ones, putting this as a promo it's about being a terribly bad person, like the Grinch or Cruella de Vil. I totally agree that both cards must be rare for being part of a cycle and complexity terms respectively, but putting in a product that comes up to help playing the prelease it's totally insane.
3) Dash when most of the instant removal on the common ground are combat tricks, specially Sprinting Warbrute. Deciding that this ogre should be common, or put it 4 of toughness, deserve an applause for one of the worst decisions taken. If the ogre was a 5/3 it'll be more balanced, but in it's actual form I could see how most of the games this silly creature deals 10-15 damage easily, unless your oponent want to chumpblock again and again. And when you achieve to kill this bastard, most of the time it will be a 2x1, maybe because you double block or because you're forced to spend a combat trick to deal with it, because with his stats he'll probably kill your creature too. Bonus points if you have a Warbringer in your deck.
And that's all. I enjoyed Khans and Fate reforged a lot more than this one,
Many players chose Kolaghan or Atarka, though I ended up being beaten by a Dromoka deck. All rares I saw performed great, and some of the outstanding commons / uncommons were:
- Impact Tremors - This puts a serious clock on the game and pushed me to overcommit with attacks, so that the other play would just hard-cast their Dashers.
- Dromoka's Gift - This is the card which took me down in the last round. I was on 12 and they attacked with 2x 2-power double-strikers. I decided to block one and let the other through, thinking when I untapped I'd have more permanent ways to shut down those attackers. Forgot this was instant speed...
- Sprinting Warbrute - This was a scary clock to race. The epitome of Dash, which came close to stealing games from out of nowhere.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Gaymer
Custom Card / Set Reviewer
When reviewing custom cards / sets, I look for (a) flavour, (b) function, and (c) cohesiveness, generally through a risk focus.
Fixing is terrible for the reason that the set is about 2 color.
Khans was 3-color and for that had much more fixing, in Dragons you are supposed to be 2 color and if at all, just splash a giant 6+ drop (by playing 3 basic lands, or Monument, or some other fixing you might have, if you have nothing of that, and your deck is aggressive, simply dont splash, build a 2 color deck and use fillers if you need to).
The good thing about the set is that all the bombs are beatable and theres plenty of common removal to kill them. Completly busted bombs like Citadel Siege dont exist (well you had 1 booster of Fate).
Theres a bunch of really nasty combos among commons and the theme cards work very well together, be it exploit or dash.
Bolster is pretty bad in the set, but white still has its share of Pacifismn and pretty powerfull rebound combat tricks that push in damage. If you go white, you are beatdown, playing white as a controll deck in Dragons is simply wrong, unless you only use all its removal and big dragons and avoid any of the commons.
Red overall has really strong creatures and put a ton of damage in with the 5/4 dash. The black tricks allmost allways act as removal and protection for your creature and if you ever get to megamorph and ping with deathtouch, you get a brutal advantage and kill any opponent that stumbles on mana just a little, as they are dead in just 2 turns of attacking.
The 4/2 cat also becomes an unstoppable force if you get its first strike bonus, have 2 of those, and its allready a nightmare for your opponent.
Format is quite nice, you just have to make sure you stay 2 colored and only splash when you "can" , not because you just badly want to play that rare/mythic.
Did two pre-release events. A sealed and a two-headed giant. Went Silumgar for sealed and got Silumgar's Assassin as my promo and whiffed on blue [14 blue cards in total and they sucked]. Went black/red and crushed almost everyone, ending the day at 5-1. Would have gone 4-1-1 but the last guy wanted to win so he got steamrolled cause Sprinting Warbrute [or whatever the red 5/4 dash guy is called] is a freaking monster. Pulled Shaman of the forgotten ways, Shorecrash elenetal, and Dragonlord Dromoka in my prize packs. Two-headed Giant started right after and I went Atarka. Pulled a Foe-razer Regent, Den Protector, and foil Avatar of the Resolute. But playing in two-headed giant...ugh. Impact Tremors is ridiculous in two-headed giant. One team did us 24 damage with that card alone. Luckily me and my partner placed and got two packs each. Nothing amazing in the winnings, but after going 2-2 we were happy to get anything.
And why are people complaining the Boltwing Marauder can't benefit from its effect? It doesn't have haste! Giving itself +2/+0 is pointless without haste.
My partner and I got destroyed by Impact Tremors in 2HG. Our round 2 opponents had 4 copies! Our round 3 opponents also played this early in the game.
We tried to run with a bunch of removal and some giant creatures, but ended up getting overrun with weenies on the ground. We were expecting instead too need to kill dragons. We wish we had main-decked the 3 CMC ground-only 2 damage sweeper (of which we had opened 3).
I sucked at the dice throwing gimmick. Missed the board entirely with the first roll, got 3 points with the second roll, organizer let me throw a third time out of mercy. 4. Yes! At least I got the Evolving Wilds!
I sucked at the dice throwing gimmick. Missed the board entirely with the first roll, got 3 points with the second roll, organizer let me throw a third time out of mercy. 4. Yes! At least I got the Evolving Wilds!
Don't feel so bad about your dice roll. Somebody missed the board and hit the organizer at my place. I however did fairly well on the roll. First roll was a 5 or 6, second roll was a 17. After counting it up, I blew hard at the board and knocked down 3 more points. Sadly they didn't count.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All your base are belong to us!
RIP Batman guy. I hope somebody picks up the slack now that you are gone. Sick children need their Batman.
Put together a mardu dash deck that wasn't great but it absolutely punished everyone stumbling on mana to cast their big dragons. I only lost to a guy who turned not one but BOTH Kologhans sideways to win his games. I found it very suspicious that he pulled both in an Atarka pack but because my friend and I took a draw in the first round it screwed that guy out of first so whatevs. I ended up taking third with 3-1-1.
I picked Silumgar and made a stupid deck with infinity removal going 4-1. The last two rounds were kind of intense and swingy, which made for some fun games.
Silumgar Assassin was so much better than I thought. He was able to kill a large majority of the board at most times. Most of my deck played out like I expected, but I did enjoy some of the exploit shenanigans. It really helps to kind of nullify the goodness of Reduce in Stature. Sometimes you get some pretty sick plays with it too, depending on if you play any of the overcosted guys with death benefits. It just felt unfair when I'd sacrifice a Youthful Scholar to a Gurmag Drowner.
i didn't like the look of this set on paper. its bloated with reprints, the power level of most cards feels weak, dragons feel slapped onto everything, mechanics feel under explored or just underwhelming, there is just an avalanche of things of i don't like about this set.
that said i gave it the benefit of a doubt. i figured, hey maybe i'm wrong. maybe this set will be awesome to play, so i went to the prerelease anyway.
what a huge mistake.
i've been playing this game for 20 years. this is the first prerelease i have ever gone to where i have felt completely ripped off. after sitting there at the table for about 15 minutes i couldn't make a viable deck. i asked a few other guys to take a look. two other people couldn't build anything viable either. there was tons of dragon support - and no dragons. there was almost zero removal. almost zero combat tricks. no bombs. not enough creatures. the few good cards i did pull were in colors where i didn't get enough support to viably be in those colors.
it was awful. just. awful. i actually really wanted my money back. the cards were bad, and a deck wasn't workable so actually playing wasn't even an option. i took the spindown and left the box on the table before round 1 even started and went home. the whole experience has actually soured me to prereleases in general now.
Well with core sets going away soon regular sets are going to have more reprints. Have to keep the staples around and such. There does seem like there was high variance in the packs though.
i didn't like the look of this set on paper. its bloated with reprints, the power level of most cards feels weak, dragons feel slapped onto everything, mechanics feel under explored or just underwhelming, there is just an avalanche of things of i don't like about this set.
that said i gave it the benefit of a doubt. i figured, hey maybe i'm wrong. maybe this set will be awesome to play, so i went to the prerelease anyway.
what a huge mistake.
i've been playing this game for 20 years. this is the first prerelease i have ever gone to where i have felt completely ripped off. after sitting there at the table for about 15 minutes i couldn't make a viable deck. i asked a few other guys to take a look. two other people couldn't build anything viable either. there was tons of dragon support - and no dragons. there was almost zero removal. almost zero combat tricks. no bombs. not enough creatures. the few good cards i did pull were in colors where i didn't get enough support to viably be in those colors.
it was awful. just. awful. i actually really wanted my money back. the cards were bad, and a deck wasn't workable so actually playing wasn't even an option. i took the spindown and left the box on the table before round 1 even started and went home. the whole experience has actually soured me to prereleases in general now.
So you got a bad pool. Big deal. But every reason is good for badmouthing the set, I see.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
100% Vorthos Spike and Storyline Expert
Former Fact Prospector of the Greek Alliance.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
i didn't like the look of this set on paper. its bloated with reprints, the power level of most cards feels weak, dragons feel slapped onto everything, mechanics feel under explored or just underwhelming, there is just an avalanche of things of i don't like about this set.
that said i gave it the benefit of a doubt. i figured, hey maybe i'm wrong. maybe this set will be awesome to play, so i went to the prerelease anyway.
what a huge mistake.
i've been playing this game for 20 years. this is the first prerelease i have ever gone to where i have felt completely ripped off. after sitting there at the table for about 15 minutes i couldn't make a viable deck. i asked a few other guys to take a look. two other people couldn't build anything viable either. there was tons of dragon support - and no dragons. there was almost zero removal. almost zero combat tricks. no bombs. not enough creatures. the few good cards i did pull were in colors where i didn't get enough support to viably be in those colors.
it was awful. just. awful. i actually really wanted my money back. the cards were bad, and a deck wasn't workable so actually playing wasn't even an option. i took the spindown and left the box on the table before round 1 even started and went home. the whole experience has actually soured me to prereleases in general now.
So you got a bad pool. Big deal. But every reason is good for badmouthing the set, I see.
I will say this... this "prerelease" was strange. Due to the seeded packs we only where given one guaranteed multi-colored land. This made building decks "strange".
I went to all 5 pre-releases at my local store. My best finishes were 4-0 and 3-1... in both cases I had at least one multi-colored land. There is a reason for that.
Despite that, I think this format could be a very fun limited format.
i didn't like the look of this set on paper. its bloated with reprints, the power level of most cards feels weak, dragons feel slapped onto everything, mechanics feel under explored or just underwhelming, there is just an avalanche of things of i don't like about this set.
that said i gave it the benefit of a doubt. i figured, hey maybe i'm wrong. maybe this set will be awesome to play, so i went to the prerelease anyway.
what a huge mistake.
i've been playing this game for 20 years. this is the first prerelease i have ever gone to where i have felt completely ripped off. after sitting there at the table for about 15 minutes i couldn't make a viable deck. i asked a few other guys to take a look. two other people couldn't build anything viable either. there was tons of dragon support - and no dragons. there was almost zero removal. almost zero combat tricks. no bombs. not enough creatures. the few good cards i did pull were in colors where i didn't get enough support to viably be in those colors.
it was awful. just. awful. i actually really wanted my money back. the cards were bad, and a deck wasn't workable so actually playing wasn't even an option. i took the spindown and left the box on the table before round 1 even started and went home. the whole experience has actually soured me to prereleases in general now.
So you got a bad pool. Big deal. But every reason is good for badmouthing the set, I see.
there's more to it than that. i've had bad pools before and still had fun, haven't felt completely ripped off, been able to at least build a deck.
bad pool is the vomit icing on the ***** cake that is dragons of tarkir.
but sure, recognize i make my dislike of this set very well known and then just ignore every single reason why. thats cool.
I found this to be a really rough pre-release. Did not help that we had a really low turn out for the day I could make it resulting in a whopping three rounds and done. I went with GW and actually ripped the majority of cards in my colors and stuck with it match one even though I had some good RG choices. Then I proceeded to get mana screwed game one and stuck off color game two. I figured if I am going to get screwed on mana in any way, I am going to deserve and swapped over to Naya and wrecked in my next two matches. That stupid Monument did more damage than any other single creature that I played somehow. Harbinger of the Hunt did the most work by far. All in all, it was not a very fun set to play limited with at first experience, but I will not discount the entire set as bad until I get the chance to draft it a few times.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Yeah, with 4x Dragons of Tarkir packs and a seeded pack that could contain dragons you would expect to maybe pull a few dragons, especially after how much they hyped up the asfan. Honestly, I felt trolled by my packs after opening up Sarkhan's Triumph without a single dragon in my pool to tutor for :/ I feel like they opened up a big can of feel bad for all the people that were excited about the dragon set by not including at least one of the uncommon megamorph dragons in every seeded booster.
I went Atarka because I figure if I'm going to be playing at the dragons prerelease I want to be in the colors with the best chances of ramping out big dargons. So I opened up my box and my seeded booster promo staring back at me was Crater Elemental. A little disappointing, but at least it is a good roadblock that will help me stay alive until I reach my dragons right? Wrong! I had a whole bunch of mediocre defensive red cards in my pool and nothing to build up to. My green was ok. Nothing to write home about, but some solid creatures and some ramp to get to my non existent end game sooner (seriously, my curve dead stopped in the entire pool at 5 with the exception of one Segmented Krotiq and two copies of Dirgur Nemesis). My white on the other hand was outstanding. Pacifism, Silkwrap, Hidden Dragonslayer, Arashin Foremost, Misthoof Kirin... I built an aggressive to midrange Selesnya deck with a 3 card splash into blue to have enough creatures (morph birds made this possible), and then threw caution to the wind and splashed my Sarkhan off of 2 evolving wilds and an Explosive Vegetation like a madman. Turns out, it was more than worth it as Sarkhan on board where you aren't behind is every bit as crushing as it should be, and won me a couple games where my initial assault was ground down hard.
Round 1 was pretty terrible. Game 1 was a case of flood versus screw, but I drew out of it first and got there on the back of Sarkhan once I drew my 4th land to go fetch my mountain. Game 2 was even worse, my opponent drew all B/W warriors curving out like a bawse and goldfishing me as I never drew my 3rd land to play my first creature. Game 3 was pretty soul crushing as I had a decent aggressive start (2 drop, 3 drop) and my opponent plays 2 drop to block and trade, mind rot on 3, mind rot to empty my hand and dragon hunter to block on 4. Turn 5 he draws 3 with a Damnable Pact. Next turn I make a bad attack into combat tricks because I forgot that you can only activate Shu Yun if you play a noncreature spell, and all I'm holding is the first of 4 bricked off lands. My team gets wiped and he is left with a 2/2, but proceeds to bury me over the next 4 turns.
Round 2 I get paired against a pretty vicious Dimir deck, but I luck out game 1 and she draws her cards all out of order so I manage to aggro her out before she can put up a good defense. Game 2 is closer. She locks up the ground pretty good with a Sidisi and the 2/3 exploit guy, and once I over extend a bit to get around it, she plays the black regent and blows up the world. Fortunately I draw the blue source I needed to cast my Sarkhan and make a dragon using my remaining mana to pacify her dragon. She puts up a fight still, but never quite overcomes dragon, draw a card, dragon, draw 2 cards...
Round 3 I get a pretty sick draw curving out Hidden Dragonslayer into Arashin Foremost into Artful Maneuver and a creature to have him basicly dead on turn 4. Game 2 was all about the Misthoof Kirin. Stormrider rig into morphed kirin into unmoporph it and play echoes of the kin tree and from then on out I just protected the queen and smashed across putting his flyers into the abyss until game over.
Round 4 I don't really remember the details of the games too well, I got paired up and due to the expected prize structure I offered the split (didn't want to win and end up screwing my opponent out of packs). He decided to think about it and I smashed him pretty bad game 1. I again offered to split, and again, since we weren't able to get comfirmation on what the prize support was going to be (pool was 2 packs per player and prize split was based on number of players with a 3-1 or 4-0 record) he decided to think about it. I got hosed a bit on mana and lost this game. I again offered the split, and we got confirmation of the number of people with 3-0(3) and 2-1 (11) records going into the round, he mulled it over and accepted the split but suggested that we play it out to see what would have happened. It was a thrashing. I proceeded to 2 drop warrior into arashin foremost and go to work. I concede the match and wait for prizes to go out. Ended up with the same 6 packs I would have gotten had I just won the match anyway.
I picked Ojutai (oops: Azorius) with high hopes. There are some excellent cards in those colors, but the boosters were horrible. The sole UW was the promo card, Ojutai's Command, literally the best card I pulled in any color. No dragons - zip! But strangely, every dragon tribal support card in the world, including Dragon Tempest, Dragonlord's Servant, Orator of Ojutai, Silumgar's Scorn, and even Sarkhan's Triumph. Everything dragon except the actual dragons themselves. I've never been so insulted by a box in my life.
Built a pathetic UW vanilla bears deck with some makeshift attempts at removal and control and a single Evolving Wilds as my only color fixer. Proceeded to get creamed by everybody who drew anything better than a 1/3 defender. Dropped. I've seen the pictures online of that one person who chucked their deck in the bushes outside the shop, and I swear I'm not that person, but I can relate.
On a side note.
The right gender is a she. Alesha identifies as female. And yes, there are many people, whether they directly identify with Alesha as a character, consider themselves allies and sympathetic to transgender causes or are just happy that Magic is opening up a bit more, for whom using Alesha's correct gender does matter.
The guy who was trying to bully people is most assuredly a jerk and I'm sorry you had that experience Ratinyourwalls
We picked Ojutai and Dromoka. Got Arashin Foremost and Ojutai's Command as promos, and a good deal of other good rares - Thunderbreak Regent, foil Pitiless Horde and the rest was all on-color stuff - another Ojutai's Command, Dromoka's Command, Blessed Reincarnation, Myth Realized, Secure the Wastes, Gleam of Authority,Assault Formation. Sandsteppe Mastodon and Supplant Form in FRF. Yeah, save for one booster, everything was in Bant colors
Even more luck in FRF uncommons - we got 2 Mistfire Adepts, one in each booster, and the "mythic" uncommon Elite Scaleguard.
Needless to say, the white was so deep it supported two decks, with one being bolster themed and the other (pseudo)prowess themed. So we went GW and UW with the decks. I also got two Elusive Spellfists. Also, we got all the nuts rebound spells - Arftul Maneuver, Great Teacher's Decree and especially Taigam's Strike. THAT thing is broken. And Skywise Teachings. Sadly, besides the Regent, the only dragon in our pool was Herdchaser Dragon.
In the end, we scored 2-2, with first game me colorscrewed a bit and one of the decks packing like 15 removal. Another game was ended in two attacks from a 3/3 Aven Sunstriker with both Taigam's Strike and Artful Maneuver they had no response on - two attacks for 28 in total. Third game, we faced Silumgar+Ojutai, that played UB and RG...because the RG guy had f...ing THREE Dragonlord Atarka in his deck. Needless to say, we did not win that one. In the last game, I landed T1 Myth Realized, followed by Elusive Spellfist, Pacifism, Silkwrap, Mistfire Adept, Skywise Teachings.
I won 4 boosters, I opened Atarka's Command, another Blessed Reincarnation, Corpseweft and Hidden Dragonslayer.
I scored 20 in the Dragonfury game, got all the promos, and all the dice. Overall, I liked the prerelease a lot.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Well, mana fixing is extremely poor, more so if you're not in green who has at least Explosive Vegetation at common, and as such can make playing more than 2 colors really miserable. KTK wa a feast with the dual lands at common, the trilands and the occasional fetches. So, when your seeded booster psushed you that way but the rest of your boosters pushed you the other way, and you wanted to splash to make everybody happy, things could actually really get ugly.
And why are people complaining the Boltwing Marauder can't benefit from its effect? It doesn't have haste! Giving itself +2/+0 is pointless without haste.
Seeded boosters for DtK are absolute garbage, or the best cardgasm one can get. Which means it's not a very good idea.
The fact that "seeded", means you should be playing your chosen means it makes for a very tough choice for a new player who doesn't understand there could be stronger combinations at first glance. There're many ways to gift a promo; seeded boosters may be a reason to, but it shouldn't be THE ONLY reason.
I do hope Wizards stops the rot when Zen comes back. No more clans, broods, shards, wedges, guilds for while please.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
1) The mana fixing is TERRIBLE, which leads you to play 2 colors only and maybe splash to a third one if you you're lucky enough to open a pair of Evolving Wilds. The fact that the mana rocks are uncommon doesn't help at all.
2) The seeded boosters is the typical idea that could be great but it's shaped horribly. First of all, in a format without common mana fixing, the seeded booster must guarantee the monument of your brood. Neither prelease I get any of the monuments of my clan, so I played a lot of matches with the Ojutai one praying to draw the second plains or island. Special mention to Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest, which I opened on my fate reforged booster and cannot pay the ability on the whole tournament because the double white requirement. Fantastic. Secondly, I seriously wanna meet the guy who decide the promo card pool, just to thank him/her because it's hard to do it worse. My 2 promos were Stratus Walker and Volcanic Vision. I could complain about the first one being promo while there are plenty of huge bombs to put inside, but at least is a 3/2 flying that could stop a trick of the oponent. But Volcanic vision is inexplicable. Unplayable in any existing format and most of the future ones, putting this as a promo it's about being a terribly bad person, like the Grinch or Cruella de Vil. I totally agree that both cards must be rare for being part of a cycle and complexity terms respectively, but putting in a product that comes up to help playing the prelease it's totally insane.
3) Dash when most of the instant removal on the common ground are combat tricks, specially Sprinting Warbrute. Deciding that this ogre should be common, or put it 4 of toughness, deserve an applause for one of the worst decisions taken. If the ogre was a 5/3 it'll be more balanced, but in it's actual form I could see how most of the games this silly creature deals 10-15 damage easily, unless your oponent want to chumpblock again and again. And when you achieve to kill this bastard, most of the time it will be a 2x1, maybe because you double block or because you're forced to spend a combat trick to deal with it, because with his stats he'll probably kill your creature too. Bonus points if you have a Warbringer in your deck.
And that's all. I enjoyed Khans and Fate reforged a lot more than this one,
My seeded pack gave me Dragonlord Ojutai and I also pulled Ojutai's Command and Sage-Eye Avengers to cement me in those colours. Skywise Breezedancer never got to live up to its potential as it was continually hosed, whilst the above three cards played exceedingly well. All-star common was Elusive Spellfist, which I discovered is great when backed up by turn 3 Honor's Reward and consistent soft removal like Reduce in Stature and Pressure Point. Artful Maneuver and Herald of Dromoka were very solid.
Many players chose Kolaghan or Atarka, though I ended up being beaten by a Dromoka deck. All rares I saw performed great, and some of the outstanding commons / uncommons were:
- Impact Tremors - This puts a serious clock on the game and pushed me to overcommit with attacks, so that the other play would just hard-cast their Dashers.
- Dromoka's Gift - This is the card which took me down in the last round. I was on 12 and they attacked with 2x 2-power double-strikers. I decided to block one and let the other through, thinking when I untapped I'd have more permanent ways to shut down those attackers. Forgot this was instant speed...
- Sprinting Warbrute - This was a scary clock to race. The epitome of Dash, which came close to stealing games from out of nowhere.
Custom Card / Set Reviewer
When reviewing custom cards / sets, I look for (a) flavour, (b) function, and (c) cohesiveness, generally through a risk focus.
Khans was 3-color and for that had much more fixing, in Dragons you are supposed to be 2 color and if at all, just splash a giant 6+ drop (by playing 3 basic lands, or Monument, or some other fixing you might have, if you have nothing of that, and your deck is aggressive, simply dont splash, build a 2 color deck and use fillers if you need to).
The good thing about the set is that all the bombs are beatable and theres plenty of common removal to kill them. Completly busted bombs like Citadel Siege dont exist (well you had 1 booster of Fate).
Theres a bunch of really nasty combos among commons and the theme cards work very well together, be it exploit or dash.
Bolster is pretty bad in the set, but white still has its share of Pacifismn and pretty powerfull rebound combat tricks that push in damage. If you go white, you are beatdown, playing white as a controll deck in Dragons is simply wrong, unless you only use all its removal and big dragons and avoid any of the commons.
Red overall has really strong creatures and put a ton of damage in with the 5/4 dash. The black tricks allmost allways act as removal and protection for your creature and if you ever get to megamorph and ping with deathtouch, you get a brutal advantage and kill any opponent that stumbles on mana just a little, as they are dead in just 2 turns of attacking.
The 4/2 cat also becomes an unstoppable force if you get its first strike bonus, have 2 of those, and its allready a nightmare for your opponent.
Format is quite nice, you just have to make sure you stay 2 colored and only splash when you "can" , not because you just badly want to play that rare/mythic.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
His "accolades" so far
-Avacyn Restored
-Gatecrash
-Journey into Nyx
-Fate Reforged
-Dragons of Tarkir
The record is pretty consistent with the draft environment.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
My partner and I got destroyed by Impact Tremors in 2HG. Our round 2 opponents had 4 copies! Our round 3 opponents also played this early in the game.
We tried to run with a bunch of removal and some giant creatures, but ended up getting overrun with weenies on the ground. We were expecting instead too need to kill dragons. We wish we had main-decked the 3 CMC ground-only 2 damage sweeper (of which we had opened 3).
Check out Odds//Ends - My articles on Quirky Cards and Oddball Builds
Long-time PucaTrade member and sometime author. Send me cards!
Currently playing Knight of the Reliquary - Retreat to Coralhelm Combo
I have no idea what you're talking about!
Don't feel so bad about your dice roll. Somebody missed the board and hit the organizer at my place. I however did fairly well on the roll. First roll was a 5 or 6, second roll was a 17. After counting it up, I blew hard at the board and knocked down 3 more points. Sadly they didn't count.
RIP Batman guy. I hope somebody picks up the slack now that you are gone. Sick children need their Batman.
My best play of the night though was Eot Secure the Wastes for 5, untap, play Brutal Hordechief, swing with 5 dudes, drain for five, play Foul-tongue Shriek, drain for 5, then deal 5...game.
Silumgar Assassin was so much better than I thought. He was able to kill a large majority of the board at most times. Most of my deck played out like I expected, but I did enjoy some of the exploit shenanigans. It really helps to kind of nullify the goodness of Reduce in Stature. Sometimes you get some pretty sick plays with it too, depending on if you play any of the overcosted guys with death benefits. It just felt unfair when I'd sacrifice a Youthful Scholar to a Gurmag Drowner.
that said i gave it the benefit of a doubt. i figured, hey maybe i'm wrong. maybe this set will be awesome to play, so i went to the prerelease anyway.
what a huge mistake.
i've been playing this game for 20 years. this is the first prerelease i have ever gone to where i have felt completely ripped off. after sitting there at the table for about 15 minutes i couldn't make a viable deck. i asked a few other guys to take a look. two other people couldn't build anything viable either. there was tons of dragon support - and no dragons. there was almost zero removal. almost zero combat tricks. no bombs. not enough creatures. the few good cards i did pull were in colors where i didn't get enough support to viably be in those colors.
it was awful. just. awful. i actually really wanted my money back. the cards were bad, and a deck wasn't workable so actually playing wasn't even an option. i took the spindown and left the box on the table before round 1 even started and went home. the whole experience has actually soured me to prereleases in general now.
So you got a bad pool. Big deal. But every reason is good for badmouthing the set, I see.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
I will say this... this "prerelease" was strange. Due to the seeded packs we only where given one guaranteed multi-colored land. This made building decks "strange".
I went to all 5 pre-releases at my local store. My best finishes were 4-0 and 3-1... in both cases I had at least one multi-colored land. There is a reason for that.
Despite that, I think this format could be a very fun limited format.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
there's more to it than that. i've had bad pools before and still had fun, haven't felt completely ripped off, been able to at least build a deck.
bad pool is the vomit icing on the ***** cake that is dragons of tarkir.
but sure, recognize i make my dislike of this set very well known and then just ignore every single reason why. thats cool.
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.