I think the math would.be this guy hitting maybe 3 times for a grind out, but you should take out a significant chunk of their useful cards in the process. He's no scalpelexis.....but he'll do. I only play sealed/limited
Mirage, Visions, Onslaught and Planar Chaos each had a different cycle of mono-colored Charms.
But I agree that something should be done about the dominance of multi-colored decks. In Modern, it's too late, but at least in Standard it should be possible. Of course, while RTR block is around, it would be ridiculous for mono-color to be good in Standard, but once it rotates away they should go multiple blocks in row printing only weak color fixing and only a handful of gold cards. I'd be fine with the primary multi-colored lands in Standard being the ETB tapped lands (Elfhame Palace etc.).
Dominance of multi-colored decks? Build a mono-colored deck that can beat them. Simple as that. Just because there haven't been many tier-1 mono decks in standard doesn't mean wizards is discouraging it, it simply means the top players aren't building them because mono colored decks simply don't answer every threat in any given format. they're naturally weaker than a good 2-color combination, but they can be built and be competitive-I seem to recall Red Deck Wins being a thing not too long ago, and it still pops up in top 8's from time to time.
Wizards obviously wants people playing 2-3 color decks right now with the Ravnica block, but that doesn't mean YOU need to play it.
Let's see-mono-black Ramp/control, red deck wins, white exalted, black exalted, blue aggro....that weird green dungrove elder hexproof deck thingy...green ramp. Those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are some other solid curve-out decks waiting to be made-particularly ones that can be catered specifically for your own meta.
Stop blaming net.decks for lacking something YOU want. Build it yourself.
MVP: Gateway Shade did work in my deck. With my Crypt Ghast and 6 on-colour gates, he was pumping and swining for crazy damage every time he hit the board.
Worse: Executioner's Swing. I dont know why I was expecting a dismember, but it most certainly isnt. The damage the creature does is often crippling.
Better: Bane Alley Broker is an amazing looter that gives you amazing card advantage. Cant complain at all.
Both executioner's swing and smite performed very well for me, although I found gateway shade as nothing but overcosted junk in my deck-i would have been better off putting in a dutiful thrull, a slate street ruffian or even the rat(bear).
My orzhov pure deck ran smite, 2 executioner's swing and charm. The conditions were never an issue, and my favorite play of the night involved the unlikely combo of beckon apparition, which removed a boros charm, blocked an assault griffin, smite the griffin and extort for 3. Many of my games had 2-3 extort triggers by turn four and every turn I dropped a 1-2 cost creature or spell, extorting for full amount every time, unless I needed to hold one or two back for removal in hand.
threshold. it would combo well with Innistrad's self-mill/flashback theme, and even work as a foil for dimir's mill and reward golgari's graveyard filling cards.
it's a simple enough mechanic and easy to design around.
Also, jumping.in on this point again, why is everyone saying this set has light removal? There's more removal than rtr, if I'm not mistaken. it's also cheaper.
Orzhov. Extort and removal. As long as you keep your curve low and extort as much as possible, it laughs at boros. Nothing in my sealed went above 4 mana except treasury thrull and urbis protector, And I honestly think I could have been better off dropping those and running 2 more slate street ruffians or dutiful thrills(which I didn't run at all).
MVP
between boros reckoner, gift of orzhiva, and Orzhov charm.
I only ran bw and never had a problem getting the reckoner out.
worst
not the worst, but most inconsequential was vizkopa guildmage. I always tapped out for extort or left open for removal, so his abilities were never used.
better than expected
slate street ruffian. Basically an unblockable scathe zombie.
I went 4-0 with one game loss due to my own misplay.
"When you walk in to a Dragon's Maze Prerelease, you'll get to select your favorite guild from among all of the ten guilds of Ravnica! That guild pack will have a secret allied guild, which will share one color with your chosen guild, and also always be from the opposite set as your chosen guild.
So let’s look at an example: You’re a Dimir player, so that’s the guild you pick. That guild pack might have Return to Ravnica's Azorius as its secret ally (although it could also be Izzet, Rakdos, or Golgari). That guild pack would have four Dragon's Maze booster packs, one Gatecrash Dimir guild Prerelease pack, and one Return to Ravnica Azorius guild Prerelease pack. The two guild packs will be the same as they were in their original Prerelease, but will not have that set's Prerelease promo for those guilds. The guild Prerelease packs will contain the Dragon’s Maze Prerelease promo but not a Spindown life counter, sticker, or guild welcome letter."
that's the wording from arcana.
thus-if you choose azorius, your other guild pack is going to orzhov, simic, dimir or boros.
if you choose gruul, your other guild pack is going to selesnya, golgari, izzet, or rakdos.
so on and so forth. Whichever guild you choose will have that pack's guild pack, the other set's allied-color guild pack(if rtr guild, your secret ally is a randomly picked gtc allied color guild and vice-versa), and the other 4 packs are DGM.
Overall I could have cut the Wight and added another Slate Street Ruffian(I had 4 total), and I excluded a lot of decent on-color cards. However, I went 4-0 with a game record of 8-1. The only loss i had came at the hands of a Boros deck dropping Foundry Champion for lethal, and that was due to my misplaying of attacking into a Guardian of the Gateless forgetting it could block all of my flyers(basilica screecher, kingpin's pet and a spirit token), killing them. Had I retained my flyers I would have been able to block his two flyers that brought me within lethal from the champion, and I could have extorted him to death the next turn.
I actually won two games by attacking with my creatures and using Executioner's Swing with extort targeting my own guys for the win.
I also never dropped below 14 life except in the game I lost.
Round 1-Gruul. Answered any threats with removal and flew over/extorted to victory
Round 2-Simic. Stomped. Started strong and never relented-he scooped both games by the fifth turn.
Round 3-Boros. The above game loss, second game I kept a two-land hand on the draw with blind obedience, basilica screecher, ruffian, charm, and executioner's swing. Never got above 4 mana and won on turn 7.
Game three I curved perfectly and won handily turn 6 with 28 life
Round 4-Orzhov. Back and forth for the first few turns, double executioner's striked his two attackers that I let through. His next turn he drops Ghost Dad, I charm it and extort putting him within lethal from my attackers. Game 2 I open with gate, plains-obedience. Turn 3 Screecher with extort. Turn 4 Tither with double extort, turn 5 Reckoner with double extort. Turn 6 I charm his blocker with triple extort and swing in, he scoops.
My deck was just too quick for anyone to handle minus the Boros player who curved out in one game, and never once did it matter that my biggest guy was a 4/4(treasury thrull hit once, and i had a Gifted Reckoner against the Simic deck).
I stand by my initial assessment of Orzhov being the most solid guild, with Boros in second. I think I might move Dimir up to third, followed by Gruul and Simic. Gruul's biggest problem seems to be bloodrushing throws away too many creatures to keep the deck going throughout the game. It really seems to need support from another color or burn to get rid of blockers to allow huge alpha strikes. Simic seems like it might be fun, but every game I watched with Simic builds seemed to show Simic trying to build an army with no path to victory.
Small tourney(14 players), so my prize was 7 packs-pulled a Gideon, Ghost Council, foil Unexpected Results, Diluvian Primordial, Undercity Plague, Clan Defiance, Illusionist's bracers and something that I can't remember.
Unused rares from sealed pool-legion loyalist, glaring spotlight, mind grind and unexpected results
I also pulled skullcrack, mugging and the red that forces a block and initially considered splashing red, but after constructing my pure Orzhov build there was no room, as I cut 3-4 cards from there as well. Ran Reckoner and never had a problem getting him on the board.
All I can say after my prerelease is, this set is really awful. Just dreck (at least in limited)
The lack of removal is embarrassing, and it all being concentrated in B & W make Simic and Grull pretty much completely unplayable. Out of the 30 or so people there, the Simic and Grull players were universally getting trouced and going 0-2 drop.
this set has far more removal that RtR, and it's nowhere near limited to black and white...
codex shredder has a lot of uses, and is only bad if you've never played with/against it. even without the ability to mill your opponent, codex shredder becomes "5: return your bomb/removal to your hand"
in my league i'm running a pretty aggro UBR build with cackler/2 shred freaks/gate ogre(with 2 gates), batterhorn, chaos imps, mercurial chemister...and codex shredder/chronic flooding.
turn 1 shredder, turn 2 chronic flooding on their gate/dual/off-color land is a stomping to thier deck, because every 2-4 drop they make on-turn becomes a skaab...and the shredder ticks along.
my favorite league play so far(very corner case, but a fun story)-turn 6 i use chemister's ability to burn my opponents x/5 flyer using my chaos imps, then used my on-board shredder to return imps to my hand. turn 7 i play the imps unleashed, turn 8 i win.
edit-and if you're running an izzet sealed/draft pool, late-drawing chronic flooding(when it's useless) makes for great looting fodder
here;s a relevant question.
has any of this box mapping ever yielded any kind of usable data before? From what I'm seeing, the distribution of each rare is random-as it should be.
To me this seems to fall in the same general kind of speculation as statements such as "prerelease packs are front-loaded with valuable cards to get collections started" or "WotC intentionally assembled guild boxes with higher then expected mythic rare distribution"
is it so impossible to just accept that card distribution is random, and that's part of the fun of opening packs? I mean, beyond limited tournaments, what reason would you have for opening packs if not just for the surprise that goes with it?
Random packs are random. There was no weighting of the packs. Some people were obviously luckier then others. My pool was amazingly good, but I overvalued certain cards and undervalued others. My straight GW deck(picked Selesnya) could have easily splashed for black or could have been built as a rakdos deck with a green splash...
At the least, I ended up with Loxodon Smiter, Temple Garden, and Vraska. I still *****ed about not getting any foils(minus the promo grove).
I went 2-3. My deck basically curved out perfectly(t1 some kind of tapped dual, t2 call of the conclave/brushstrider, t3 loxodon smiter...) or it took a dive.
As an aside, a friend of mine who was running Izzet and went 4-1 played me for fun in between rounds 4 and 5 and I stomped his face-such is the way of sealed events-probably why I enjoy them so much.
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Dominance of multi-colored decks? Build a mono-colored deck that can beat them. Simple as that. Just because there haven't been many tier-1 mono decks in standard doesn't mean wizards is discouraging it, it simply means the top players aren't building them because mono colored decks simply don't answer every threat in any given format. they're naturally weaker than a good 2-color combination, but they can be built and be competitive-I seem to recall Red Deck Wins being a thing not too long ago, and it still pops up in top 8's from time to time.
Wizards obviously wants people playing 2-3 color decks right now with the Ravnica block, but that doesn't mean YOU need to play it.
Let's see-mono-black Ramp/control, red deck wins, white exalted, black exalted, blue aggro....that weird green dungrove elder hexproof deck thingy...green ramp. Those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are some other solid curve-out decks waiting to be made-particularly ones that can be catered specifically for your own meta.
Stop blaming net.decks for lacking something YOU want. Build it yourself.
Both executioner's swing and smite performed very well for me, although I found gateway shade as nothing but overcosted junk in my deck-i would have been better off putting in a dutiful thrull, a slate street ruffian or even the rat(bear).
it's a simple enough mechanic and easy to design around.
between boros reckoner, gift of orzhiva, and Orzhov charm.
I only ran bw and never had a problem getting the reckoner out.
worst
not the worst, but most inconsequential was vizkopa guildmage. I always tapped out for extort or left open for removal, so his abilities were never used.
better than expected
slate street ruffian. Basically an unblockable scathe zombie.
I went 4-0 with one game loss due to my own misplay.
So let’s look at an example: You’re a Dimir player, so that’s the guild you pick. That guild pack might have Return to Ravnica's Azorius as its secret ally (although it could also be Izzet, Rakdos, or Golgari). That guild pack would have four Dragon's Maze booster packs, one Gatecrash Dimir guild Prerelease pack, and one Return to Ravnica Azorius guild Prerelease pack. The two guild packs will be the same as they were in their original Prerelease, but will not have that set's Prerelease promo for those guilds. The guild Prerelease packs will contain the Dragon’s Maze Prerelease promo but not a Spindown life counter, sticker, or guild welcome letter."
that's the wording from arcana.
thus-if you choose azorius, your other guild pack is going to orzhov, simic, dimir or boros.
if you choose gruul, your other guild pack is going to selesnya, golgari, izzet, or rakdos.
so on and so forth. Whichever guild you choose will have that pack's guild pack, the other set's allied-color guild pack(if rtr guild, your secret ally is a randomly picked gtc allied color guild and vice-versa), and the other 4 packs are DGM.
1x Blind Obedience
1x Smite
2x Syndic of Tithes
1x Urbis Protector
2x Basilica Screecher
1x Gateway Shade
1x Shadow Alley Denizen
1x Slate Street Ruffian
1x Syndicate Enforcer
1x Wight of Precinct Six
2x Executioner's Swing
1x Kingpin's Pet
1x One Thousand Lashes
1x Orzhov Charm
1x Treasury Thrull
1x Vizkopa Guildmage
1x Beckon Apparition
1x Boros Reckoner
1x Gift of Orzhova
3x Orzhov Guildgate
7x Plains
7x Swamp
Overall I could have cut the Wight and added another Slate Street Ruffian(I had 4 total), and I excluded a lot of decent on-color cards. However, I went 4-0 with a game record of 8-1. The only loss i had came at the hands of a Boros deck dropping Foundry Champion for lethal, and that was due to my misplaying of attacking into a Guardian of the Gateless forgetting it could block all of my flyers(basilica screecher, kingpin's pet and a spirit token), killing them. Had I retained my flyers I would have been able to block his two flyers that brought me within lethal from the champion, and I could have extorted him to death the next turn.
I actually won two games by attacking with my creatures and using Executioner's Swing with extort targeting my own guys for the win.
I also never dropped below 14 life except in the game I lost.
Round 1-Gruul. Answered any threats with removal and flew over/extorted to victory
Round 2-Simic. Stomped. Started strong and never relented-he scooped both games by the fifth turn.
Round 3-Boros. The above game loss, second game I kept a two-land hand on the draw with blind obedience, basilica screecher, ruffian, charm, and executioner's swing. Never got above 4 mana and won on turn 7.
Game three I curved perfectly and won handily turn 6 with 28 life
Round 4-Orzhov. Back and forth for the first few turns, double executioner's striked his two attackers that I let through. His next turn he drops Ghost Dad, I charm it and extort putting him within lethal from my attackers. Game 2 I open with gate, plains-obedience. Turn 3 Screecher with extort. Turn 4 Tither with double extort, turn 5 Reckoner with double extort. Turn 6 I charm his blocker with triple extort and swing in, he scoops.
My deck was just too quick for anyone to handle minus the Boros player who curved out in one game, and never once did it matter that my biggest guy was a 4/4(treasury thrull hit once, and i had a Gifted Reckoner against the Simic deck).
I stand by my initial assessment of Orzhov being the most solid guild, with Boros in second. I think I might move Dimir up to third, followed by Gruul and Simic. Gruul's biggest problem seems to be bloodrushing throws away too many creatures to keep the deck going throughout the game. It really seems to need support from another color or burn to get rid of blockers to allow huge alpha strikes. Simic seems like it might be fun, but every game I watched with Simic builds seemed to show Simic trying to build an army with no path to victory.
Small tourney(14 players), so my prize was 7 packs-pulled a Gideon, Ghost Council, foil Unexpected Results, Diluvian Primordial, Undercity Plague, Clan Defiance, Illusionist's bracers and something that I can't remember.
Unused rares from sealed pool-legion loyalist, glaring spotlight, mind grind and unexpected results
I also pulled skullcrack, mugging and the red that forces a block and initially considered splashing red, but after constructing my pure Orzhov build there was no room, as I cut 3-4 cards from there as well. Ran Reckoner and never had a problem getting him on the board.
this set has far more removal that RtR, and it's nowhere near limited to black and white...
in my league i'm running a pretty aggro UBR build with cackler/2 shred freaks/gate ogre(with 2 gates), batterhorn, chaos imps, mercurial chemister...and codex shredder/chronic flooding.
turn 1 shredder, turn 2 chronic flooding on their gate/dual/off-color land is a stomping to thier deck, because every 2-4 drop they make on-turn becomes a skaab...and the shredder ticks along.
my favorite league play so far(very corner case, but a fun story)-turn 6 i use chemister's ability to burn my opponents x/5 flyer using my chaos imps, then used my on-board shredder to return imps to my hand. turn 7 i play the imps unleashed, turn 8 i win.
edit-and if you're running an izzet sealed/draft pool, late-drawing chronic flooding(when it's useless) makes for great looting fodder
has any of this box mapping ever yielded any kind of usable data before? From what I'm seeing, the distribution of each rare is random-as it should be.
To me this seems to fall in the same general kind of speculation as statements such as "prerelease packs are front-loaded with valuable cards to get collections started" or "WotC intentionally assembled guild boxes with higher then expected mythic rare distribution"
is it so impossible to just accept that card distribution is random, and that's part of the fun of opening packs? I mean, beyond limited tournaments, what reason would you have for opening packs if not just for the surprise that goes with it?
At the least, I ended up with Loxodon Smiter, Temple Garden, and Vraska. I still *****ed about not getting any foils(minus the promo grove).
I went 2-3. My deck basically curved out perfectly(t1 some kind of tapped dual, t2 call of the conclave/brushstrider, t3 loxodon smiter...) or it took a dive.
As an aside, a friend of mine who was running Izzet and went 4-1 played me for fun in between rounds 4 and 5 and I stomped his face-such is the way of sealed events-probably why I enjoy them so much.