MTG Salvation

I started around Ravnica/Time Spiral standard (I remember my first PTQ I played with Fiery Justice/Kavu Predator naya deck). I quit rather recently, towards the end of Innistrad/Ravnica standard (which was my favorite standard aside from SOM/Inn); I had to sell my entire collection to pay for my rent that month. I played Magic Online until it got shut down. I was going infinite actually, with RG Aggro and a lot of luck and pretty tight play. Unfortunately the EV is too bad on MTGO currently for me to play without losing money.

tl;dr: necessity.

Let's start off with my list first:



I know that this deck is supposed to have a good matchup against Jund, but for a long while I was just losing to them. Eventually, I started winning, a lot. The difference? I did not side in Burning Earth. I would go as far as to say that Burning Earth is actively bad against Jund outside of specific circumstances. Instead I side in +2 Ranger's Guile, +1 Chandra, +1 Domri, and do -2 Pillar, -1 Mortars, -1 Rampager, which is a MUCH better setup against them.

In general, I found that running out a card that wasn't actually a threat was detrimental to winning. It was the definition of "win-more".

tl;dr Side in Ranger's Guile instead of Burning Earth. You'll be glad you did.

I play RG Kibler and RDW pretty much exclusively, and have had a decent amount of matches against GW Archangel. It's definitely a bad matchup, but it's winnable. You are definitely racing them, and it's very close but slightly in their favor. If they get to untap with an Archangel then you are probably going to lose. If they don't, then I think you are a slight favorite.
Another piece of "tech" that i've been running is MD Pillars. Great against most of the field, and is only truly dead against UW/r. It lets you handle the mana dorks and Voices that GW Archangel plays, and can even team up with a guy to kill an Archangel in a pinch.

I used to play strictly blue control decks, now I strongly prefer aggro and have been having decent success on MTGO with RG Kibler. In real life the only deck I play is RG 18 land aggro. I tried to play UWR at fnm one night and I was very bad with the deck. That was when I realized that I'm just better with aggro than control.

ITT: Every popular card in standard.

I personally don't like seeing Unflinching Courage, because I play G/R Kibler and it's very hard to race sometimes.

Well thank you all for the advice, but this thread just became irrelevant. I will be moving in with a good friend to an apartment in Jersey in July. Everything I could have wanted, will be happening.

Oh wait, I did forget to mention that I will not be allowed to live here indefinitely. I will eventually have to move out and find my own place, and I am a bit of a traveler at heart, hence my wish to find someplace new. I would literally live anywhere as long as it was affordable; a magic scene is just a huge plus.

Of course advancing my position in life is more important, hence why I am perfectly willing to stay where I am while attending community college. I was just wondering if there wasn't any other way. Magic is my stress reliever.

So my life has been fairly interesting, to say the least. I grew up in Jersey, lived in Massachusetts for a month, ended up back in Jersey after that but living out of my car, and now i'm living in Arizona with a steady entry-level job, actual money in the bank, and a stable living situation. From here, I would like to attempt to progress my life to the next step.

I would like to attend a community college for the fall semester. If I continue to net money at the rate I am currently, in 9 months I will have approximately 6000 dollars saved. At the moment I do not have a car. The most realistic plan I have currently is to stay where I currently live, work part time and attend community college full time, then transfer to Rutgers. However, I don't particularly like this plan, because of the fact that there is no magic scene where I live. Ideally, I would move back to Jersey, but there is no way that I can see that happening, given how expensive it is.

Basically, I want to attend college, but not where I currently live. I will have a decent bundle of money by the time the fall semester starts to play for first/last and buy a car if need be. Specifically, I want to live in an area where it is feasible for me to live on my own (potentially with another person, but I don't want to rely on other people for my future plans) and has a decent to large Magic scene. You people appear to be pretty resourceful, so tell me: is it possible, or will I have to settle for living where I currently do?

She appears to be about 5 weeks old. The kittens that live under the house still follow the mother religiously, if that means anything.

If you're a really adventurous type of guy, you could try Help Exchange. You travel abroad and do work (mostly on organic farms, but there are plenty of other types of jobs such as au pair, etc) and gain plenty of experience, both of the professional and life variety.

A few days ago we caught a feral cat that we happen to know was living under our house with her mother and 4 other kittens. She eats solid food and drinks water and goes to the potty all on her own, and took to us pretty quickly, but she is still pretty uncomfortable with the house and scared of our dog (and the dog is scared of her). The only no-kill shelter around here is full to the brim, and I don't feel comfortable with letting her go to a shelter where she will probably just die. I was wondering, since we have only had her for 3 days, if it is still possible to release her back to her family with no repercussions?

I recently moved to Prescott, AZ. I know that there are 3 gaming stores in town, but I was wondering if they got any PTQs in the area, and if not, where the closest PTQs would end up being?

This friday I was playing Delver against my friend who plays nayapod. His board is 4 lands, a Pilgrim, and an Angel, and he is at 6 life, with 1 unknown card in hand. My board is a flipped Delver with a Sword of Feast and Famine on it, 5 lands (no moorland haunt), at 4 life. I draw a blank for the turn, and I immediately swing, hoping that he blocks. I completely forgot that he was actually a competent player. I can pretty much guarantee that would have worked on any other opponent that I had played that night. Either way, I should have shown him the respect that he deserved because it obviously cost me.

Quote from CorpT

Charming, it should be noted that LBS believes that most of magic is luck based and so when hr says that he faces real decks at fnm he doesn't realize or believe that there can be a difference in caliber of player.

I mean to be fair, he probably plays decks like WR humans with decision trees that are pretty much nonexistent, so luck might actually be the biggest factor in his games. Unless he's playing against the TENTH RANKED PLAYER IN THE STATE, of course.

Anubis, I wasn't complaining, and we do have SOME decent players. Playing against bad players is sometimes good practice, too (true story).