MTG Salvation

Am I crazy or should you have been in green for sure? Wolfbriar ant queen and overwhelming stampede all seem to point to green. Throw in those spiders for a mean graft deck. Could have also gone tokens or even red after seeing pick 7 spitebellows.

Also I think most of the ramp cards is for 5 color goodstuff/sunburst.

I was playing fnm, and one of my opponents, who I beat in the match but lost game two, was playing that red card that reveals a random card from opponents hand and then does damage to me equal to its converted manacost. She finished me off game two with it. She was playing an aggressive red deck.

did it fill a roll in her deck as a finisher? Yes
Are there many cards at common or uncommon level that fill the same role as the card in question but do it significantly better? YES (lose calm, burn spells evasive creatured etc.)

It is not that echoes or hero's blade or the red card I mentioned above are bad in every conceivable board state. It is that they are suboptimal cards for the role they fill, and if you are playing them, either the card quality in your draft was bad (happens occasionally) or you did not draft as well as you could have.

I think those cards' roles that you mentioned (stalled board) would be better filled by something that grants evasion trample or lifelink with the size increase so people cant just chump block until time runs out.

She asked me to look at her deck and when I told her to cut that card this was the explanation I gave.

I think he was referring to the double red when he said more difficult to cast.

I have drafted about twenty times now with the same group of sixteen people. (High school friends online) We were not used to the synergy of this set and were way too used to just drafting by color. The 1/1 goblin that enables bloodthirst, waxmane baku, and other cards that do not pass the vanilla draft were way underdrafted.

That could have been the case for you guys as well since it is a new format.

We discussed strategy, and we have switched our focus from color to archtype. Last night I played elementals and splashed bloodthirst.

I have been more successful with this strategy. That being said there are ten archtypes, so in an eight man draft at least two will be unplayed.

People who think a "casual" deck is any deck that wins by combat damage. The same people usually think that infinite combos and mld are not casual. If you can consistently win before turn five in edh because you are playing a re animation deck, your deck is not casual. On the other hand if your deck has a three card infinite combo that does not involve the commander and your deck has no tutors, it is a casual deck.

I mean the game has to end sometime.

I just did a draft tonight. I drafted a mono-red elemental with a bloodthirst sub-theme. It was awesome. I ended up with 4 of the common 2 bolts and one lightning ng bolts. The combo of the elemental lord and spitebellows was Awesome. Get in for seven damage then kill a creature. Had the 7/2 persist and skarg phoenix if the game went long. Elementals seems really realy strong.

Although if you are th Only red player at an eight man draft, your deck will probably be insane.

Edit: I crushed everyone.

I just don't understand online ettiquete. When the title of the game is competitive, I get booted out for playing Arcum or Daretti once people see the disk and darksteel forge or possessed portal. I never talk trash, complain or not let people take back moves so I know it is not how I act. If I get killed by skittles early it doesnt bother, I say gg and play again. In a four man game your win percentage should be 25%

The thing that really irks me is that these people are all playing decks that can also win in the first few turns or hqve hard/soft locks. Is it just not ok to play stax or infinite combos ever? Is combat damage the only acceptable way to win?

I won a game with daretti where two of us had less than 40 cards in our library. I got booted with no gg after playing lattice forge and disk. The title of the game was competitve edh and daretti doesnt seem that competitive to me.

Thoughts?

I don't really have any advice. I just wanted to say i'm impressed with your drafting discipline. I would have screwed that draft up big time. I would have seen that late typhoid rats, forgotten evrything else id seen and probably gone heavier black and screwed the manabase up bad or splashed white instead of black. Kudos

I agree with the points made by dolph and phyrre. However, maybe I'm just imagining things vut fate seems a lot weaker than khans. If this card was in khans, I would not play it. For the prerelease in 4.5 packs of fate and 1.5 packs of khans, an aggro deck might need this as a finisher.

I agree with dolph and phyre. Knowledge of your library or your opponents hand is nice, but not at th e cost of a card. If lens of clarity was a cantrip it would be playable. The comparison to milling is SPOT ON.

Maybe this will help. Let's say my opponent attacks me with a 6/6. I double block with a 4/4 and a 3/3. He then uses removal to kill my 3/3. I just lost two creatures to one card. Playing lens of clarity is like doing that to yourself.

Kind of off topic, but can you flip a manifested card for its morph cost if it is a morph creature?

I would have gone full black/white splashing red for butchers and green for armament core and anafenza. I think red or green splash versus abzan or mardu with shanker could be debatable, but your blue was not playable, and you have two bombs in abzan and two in mardu.

Edit looking closer, I would have gone abzan splashing red for the two butchers. You have some pretty great green also. Death frenzy, heir, savage, sagu archer with ghostblade.

I agree with hardened unless it involves a two for one, for example double blocking into removal is bad. If they attack with an alpine grizzly, i block with a parapet, and then they use a pump spell to kill my parapet. The parapet has done its job.

I think sultai colors are great, but basing a deck around the mechanic is bad. I ran a sultai colored deck where the only delve card were treasure cruise, +6 +6, and the 3/3 flier. I had trail of mystery 8 good morphs, 2 of which were grim haruspexes. I crushed everyone.

It's hard for a deck to run too many delve cards because they are waaay overcosted without delve. Outlast and raid mechanics work better the more outlast or raid u run. Ferocious cards seem ok without the ferocious part. Having all prowess creatures in a prowess deck is great.

Have you thought of removing anger and putting in hammer of purph, claws of gix or kurkesh.

Claws combos with hoarding and is another sac outlet. Hammer basically does the same thing as anger except it is an artifact that turns boring mountains into exciting artifacts. Kurkesh is an ogre and a spirit. He is spooky and has layers like an onion.