MTG Salvation

The store that I play at is the biggest in our town. We have a big group for pre releases, and the biggest problem, for everyone, is time issues. Rounds always go to time, usually for the same players, and then the extra turns take another 15 minutes to resolve, usually ending in a draw. This problem is exacerbated by the two headed giant tournaments, of which there are the same number as the sealed events. The main problem I have with slow play, is that often you aren't slowing the game down for just your opponent, your slowing it down for the other 75 people waiting for your match to end. As a veteran player, sitting across from a newer opponent who needs to spend 2-3 minutes deciding if he should attack with his one creature or not on turn 3 is incredibly frustrating. If, over the course of a match, I use 10 minutes of our collective time, and he uses 40, how is this fair in any way? Especially if we go to time as a result. I help newer players as much as I can, but being new to the game or the set only buys you so much leniency. Our midnight pre release was 5 rounds, top 8, and ended up going until 10 AM, because of constant delays in and between rounds, mostly due to players taking way too much time to make decisions. When youre scheduled to be back at 1pm to play a sealed event, this gets really frustrating. There needs to be harsher penalties for extreme slow play, all the way down to the casual level.

I made a list I'm going to try to put together, assuming no more cards are printed that outclass the ones in this list. It goldfishes pretty consistently on turn 4, and has some late game reach as well. If I'm missing something please let me know, I realize the mana base is painful, but the idea is that the opponent will be dead before it matters. I built this with Courser / Caryatid dominating the meta in mind, which I think is the first place a lot of people will go on rotation.



The single murderous cut is still up for testing, a hero's downfall may just be better. The deck has no double mana costs of any color so as long as you have a single source of BWR you can cast anything (+1 colorless for Sorin). The sideboard initial plan is a selection of removal so you can pick and choose depending on what your up against.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'll probably be drafting any rare land I see immediately. Feel free to pass me any fetches you don't want. Thanks!

He's always done pretty good work for me. He can completely swing games vs mono B and U/W cleansing control and isn't bad in most match ups, from what I've seen.

Magma Sprays and Fiendslayer Paladin in the sideboard will help a lot in seeing a turn 5-6, also it looks like you guys are missing out on some of the best reasons to play UWR in the first place, Keranos and Assemble the Legion. I run Keranos as a 1 of main and 1 assemble in the side, both are the nuts vs mono B, and are strong plays against many other decks. If you land a Keranos against black or a planar cleansing control, there is nothing in their deck that removes it. I'd also have to say I disagree with all the hate against izzet charm. In the current meta, its almost always a 2 mana shock, with the added bonus of looting into land drops if necessary, or countering a turn 2-3 domri or xenagos before you have dissolve mana. I'm taking my UWR control to the TCG 5k tomorrow, I'll try to remember to post my results here after. I think its a very strong meta choice right now.

Here's what I've pretty much decided on for the WMCQ / PTQ weekend in Oakland:



Sideboard is still up in the air a bit, but I like having a good mix of 1 and 2 of's that are relevant against several decks, lets me toolbox for any particular match up. I'd love suggestions, though I'm not looking to spark another debate on the usefulness of thoughtcast. I've tried it and cut it 3 or 4 times now, and I think its just not where I want to be. It's strong against the mirror, but so is a maindeck spellskite and strong artifact hate post board.
Almost forgot, I have 2 blood moons I'd like to find room for in the side, some people hate them, but they've done a lot of work for me in the past. I may just leave them out though.

Same here, Exitus, I just fixed mine as well, I'm just hoping people are noting the correct cutoff date for verification. Since I was verified on June 25th, and the cutoff was July 7, I should be fine, but some people are saying the cutoff was in June, so I can't know for sure. Maybe I'll just email them and see when I get off work.

I thought the cutoff date was July 7th?

I wanted to check and make sure I have this information correct; I was certified as a level one judge as of June 25th, 2014. I just realized that I did not have my address in my contact information, but have since added it in. So, I should qualify for these promo cards, and I should expect to receive them sometime in September, correct? Or are there any other steps I need to take?
Thanks

Does anyone know if newly made lv 1 judges will receive these? I just finished my lv 1 judge certification about a month ago and id sure love a set of these.

My LGS simply ran out of product, I think they just shipped a lot less this time around, which the shop owner was complaining about a lot. She still owes my girlfriend and I a box and a half in prize support which we wont be able to get until friday at the earliest.

I was originally on the black bandwagon because of the promo, but after looking at the set as a whole, I believe green is the best choice, followed by white. Taking the seeded pack and on color rare into account, I feel that green has the strongest pool to choose from, as well as being a good color pairing for whatever your other strongest color in the pool may be. There are at least 1 or 2 nearly uplayable rares in every color except green, and I would be happy to open pretty much any green rare in the seeded pack. Phytotitan itself is a little underwhelming but serviceable. I'll be interested to see how it all shakes out.

From what I've heard from our LGS owners, I would expect this trend to continue. It makes WOTC money, since the shop owners end up needing to pre order a bunch of these prerelease boxes to run their events, instead of just booster boxes. Also, this style caters to the more casual / newer player to build a bigger player base, when the hardcore players will pretty much end up playing the prerelease to get a taste of the new set, no matter how annoying the seeded packs and promos get. Those that don't play, probably wouldn't have played either way.

As long as we are venting, here was the story of my Conspiracy release draft (before I continue, yes I know its supposed to be a casual format, I would have preferred a theros block FNM draft, but everyone wanted conspiracy):
I sat at a 9 player draft pod with 4 or 5 newer players. Normally this wouldn't bother me but conspiracy is complicated, so I knew I was in for a long draft. It ended up taking over an hour just to finish the drafting portion, and after another 30 minutes of deck building, I was assigned to be one player in a 5 man game. I had put together a very solid G/B deck with spirit monger, lots of removal, 4 howling wolves with 4 hidden agendas to back them up, etc. All in all I thought it would at least be fun to play to see how the synergies of the set worked. At least that was until turn 5, when one of the players at the table played 2 mana geysers into the multi kicker ogre to hit me for 20, with a big grin on his face, with the rest of the players at the table ready to tear into his now empty hand and meager board state. So, with that, my 2+ hours of drafting and deck building led up to getting to play 8 minutes of magic for the evening. A frustrating story I'm sure will get picked apart, but venting does feel good sometimes.

Couple things; I hadn't provoked this player, I had a decent board state but nothing overwhelming. The way the tournament was set up was pretty poor, only one game, winner of each pod gets a few extra packs. So you basically only get to play with your deck once. I happenned to really like my deck, and was looking forward to playing it, which only added to my frustration. I honestly don't mind losing all that much, but I hate not getting to play the game. Getting basically booted out of the tournament because some guy decides arbitrarily to kill both me and himself just sucks. Oh well, my next few drafts of conspiracy went much better.

Went undefeated (5-0) with my UWR control list on gameday. I played against a couple brews (RG agro and mono U splashing R/B) as well as beating out esper control and mono B splash G to take home the mat. Here is the list, I've been winning most of the standard tourneys at the LGS with it lately too.