MTG Standard

It can just get better for each tribe not worse

What are you playing?

Nth for Vraska is a cute gorgon!

I'm gonna get into magic again and my walmart has 3 fat pack sets I can choose from.
Hour of Devastation, Ixalan and Kaladesh

Which should I start with and why?

Kaladesh was a stupidly powerful expansion due to energy synergy and some of the vehicles.

That being said energy is a very toxic mechanic and kaladesh is going to go out of standard kinda soonish. So I'd say Amonket/Kaladesh and Ixalan are better bets.

I'm preety sure any Ixalan card that seemed remotely good got increased in 1 generic mana during developement since we can't have nice things

Esper god pharaohs gift.

get the kaladesh because it has the best basic lands of those three and you'll get like a billion of them in the fat pack
then buy singles

Esper Tokens or Abzan Tokens? I already pretty much have everything to build either version, but I can't decide which to play. Esper's access to Azcanta, Champion of Wits, Cancer God, and Negate make it look outright better than Abzan's access to...just Vraska? Is there any reason why Abzan is the only version really getting results right now that I'm missing?

Because all that other shit just detracts from the deck's focus. Vraska makes tokens and is another source of removal. Azcanta and Champion of Wits are good for card draw/filtering, but they take away from slots dedicated to removal, which the decks really needs because it's so slow to get going.

Having negate is helpful, yes, but lost legacy is going to do more or less the same thing against a WU approach deck, for example.

>get MTGO thinking it'll be more pleasant to play on than XMage
>UI is even fucking worse, their priority system is a buggy pile of shit, your collection search is nothing short of a mess and you generally just want to fucking kill yourself while playing on it
Sasuga, Wizards.

Don't forget the bugs.

It'd be nice of MTG Arena was an updated MTGO instead of the third installment of their duels of the planeswalkers bullshit. Why do they want to keep people from making constructed decks and playing actual draft so bad?

Azcanta in particular looks like it can fix the decks biggest problem though. Being able to search out your token engines seems like a big enough upside in exchange for some mainboard removal.

I'm thinking of runing Abzan tokens and just splash 1 island for scarab god. Is this a good idea?

With 4 maps and 4 evolving wilds it's pretty easy to find the lone forest in the Abzan variant, so it'll be fine.
Just gotta ask yourself what you take out to put the god in.
Depends heavily on the matchup. I'd run Azcanta in the sideboard. I think it'd be good in control or mirror matchups, but against aggro and/or whatever you consider temur energy, it puts you at a pretty big disadvantage since you need all that removal.

I currently tun 2 vraskas and 1 liliana death's majesty. Maybe swap the liliana for the scarab god? or maybe even a sacred cat (as i have 2 of them in the main board), or is 4 things with CMC >= 5 too much?

At what point are you running too many creatures to make Azcanta a bad idea to put in your deck?

What exactly is the point of even running Lili in the current token builds? Her token generation seems too risky since it can mill away your Stockpiles and Processions, her reanimation is practically useless, and her ult is worse than just running another Fumigate/sweeper.

Bought 4 packs on sale for 3$ At Walmart, got a huatli and jace.

Is Jace worth putting in Dimir Pirates? And could Huatli work in a Boris Aggro deck?

Pic Chosen because it’s the walker I really want.

New Jace is pretty worthless, to be honest. He loots if you have board presence, makes a token every few turns, or makes copies of himself to do the same mediocre functions. I can't think of any decklist that he actually improves.

Why the hell is Metallic Mimic, which sees just meme casual play, priced as almost the same as a fucking Walking Ballista, which is an MVP on literally every format?

Failed speculation on how good tribal decks would be.

Why isn't this ran in dinos?

Why play a 2 drop that doesn't help you ramp, in a ramp deck, when you could instead play a ramp creature?

What
said.
It only really sees play in commander and the price is inflated by vendors like SCG. If you look at tribal shit in general, the prices are extremely inflated.

>Speculation on tribal standard
>Fringe play in cats and pirates, and saw play in zombies last meta
>Tribal commanders + tribal duel decks
>casuals buy a lot of cards regardless of meta

i lacked a third vraska

>xmage exists
>people still pay for mtgo

Why¿

Am I understanding this card right

It's like O-ring, but I can play the exiled thing
and if I play the exiled thing it becomes mine and stays mine if hostage taker dies?

Yes. However if ti dies or goes back to the hand, it goes to the opponent's zone.

Oh shit
I just realized why so many of the pirates are blacks

Ixalan takes place in a "what if" scenario where the vampiric jewish slavers that brought blacks to the new world to be enslaved in the americas lost control of their stock and the africans took over their ships and fled to mexico.

Also dinosaurs and merpeople are there

>However if ti dies or goes back to the hand, it goes to the opponent's zone.

So if I were to play hostage taker, and exile a 1/1 dork, then cast the 1/1 dork so its on my side of the field, my opponent will get control of the 1/1 dork after hostage taker goes away?

No. the dork stays, however if the dork dies, or gets sent to a hand, it goes to the opponent's graveyard or hand.

ah

Isn't this walker kind of shit?

No. It's really shit

It's okay, it just doesn't fit in anywhere. Dino decks would much rather spend turn 5 casting a Regisaur, Glorybringer, Carnage Tyrant, etc.

whould've been more viable if they printed it like this instead

The sad part is that that's not too far off

lay off the doobies bro

which is more gooder
Grixis control, Esper control, or Sultai control?

>can make money on mtgo
>people still waste time with free mtg simulators

why?

in standard the only viable control decks are UB (could be grixis if you run that japs list) and UW approach

What's the win condition for this grixis control? Torment or the cut//ribbons

dude at my store plays cat's with this.
Fuck longtusk cub

metallic mimic is good cheap card and fits into most decks its a great 2 slot

its a great card i use it on my Bw vampire deck

its a sideboard card

if you can't afford mimic this is the buget mimic i use for my merfold deck

Same guy that was asking about Esper vs Abzan tokens here. This was the list that was played recently at nationals that really got me interested in the Esper version. It actually uses more removal than the standard Abzan lists while gaining more reliable ways to get it's engine online.

>>can make money on mtgo

Ah, so gambling addicts and fools who think they can make it big play mtgo, then?

Or people who want to practice for competitive play, be it constructed or draft. The playerbase is much wider, but I'm sure WotC would not look kindly upon discovering its pros were using xmage.

>Her token generation seems too risky since it can mill away your Stockpiles and Processions
That's a fallacy, you have no idea what cards you're going to mill so you might as well ignore that. There's just as much chance you mill away non-enchantment cards to get them faster.

Jace works quite well with Drake Haven and Favorable Winds.

It's pretty decent actually, glorybringer, scarab God, and bristling hydra are just a lot better. By their standard, almost everything legal in standard is shit

>drake haven
>favorable winds
Shit how have I not thought of this, you got a list I can look at?

If you want a list that regularly goes 1-3 t FNM.

I’m sure with some changes it could at least go 2-2 and I do have Ramunap Red so it’s not I’m looking for a competitive list or anything. I just like janky stuff.

4 Siren Stormtamer XLN
4 Skyship Plunderer AER
3 Kitesail Freebooter XLN
3 Dreamcaller Siren XLN
3 Archfiend of Ifnir AKH
3 Jace, Cunning Castaway XLN
4 Spell Pierce XLN
4 Lookout's Dispersal XLN
3 Favorable Winds XLN
3 Drake Haven AKH
2 Midnight Oil KLD
4 Drowned Catacomb XLN
4 Fetid Pools AKH
12 Island XLN
4 Swamp XLN

I'm going to at some point change it from UB to UR since red has more reliable ways of discarding, but one game last week I ended up with 5 Jaces on the board.

>I'm sure WotC would not look kindly upon discovering its pros were using xmage.

Wizards is the most incompetent game company on earth and you think they can tell or enforce what pros use to practice?

You're delusional.

>show up for locals three weeks in a row
>most we had was four players
>tfw bought a bunch of standard cards because hadnt standars in some time and now no one is playing
JUST

>starting standard now
>when it's been hot trash since Khans
>Players rewards taken away
>FNM promos replaced with foil tokens

you have only yourself to blame for hopping onto a dying format, bucko.

mtgo has an actual money incentive for better players to use it, no pro would ever consider dicking down some worthless xmage players over and over as good practice
but winning 500 dollars in a week of playing competitive matches is good practice since every other player is trying to do the same

basically if youre good at the game and want to make money you use mtgo but if youre bad/new/poor youll use cockatrice or xmage

I already play modern/edh, but standard is the only format thats suppose to have locals on my days off (thur-fri). And I wanted to play Ixalan cards. But yes Ive admitted my mistake and picked up other card games to fill the void.

Probably should have investigated your scene before hand. I was ready to hop into modern before finding out that my locals are either standard or Legacy.

I had. It was smaller than usual (10-15 people) but went to nothing after Ixalan.

Why no Curator of Mysteries or censor?

Short answer, because I am bad at magic
Long answer is because I wanted to get the most value out of lookout's dispersal I wanted to avoid putting in too many non pirate creatures.

I run a pirates deck and lookouts dispersal is good in that, but if you want to go wide with drake haven then the cycling cards are better. If you do want to use pirates and their payoffs though, then shipwreck looter might be good, it doesn’t have flying itself, but will trigger drake haven to give you two bodies.

One trap newer players (and I still do because I'm an idiot and/or really want to use specific cards) is trying to make bad cards good, rather than just working with cards that are good on their own.

By propping up the bad cards, your deck as a whole becomes worse.

There are certain exceptions, such as some bad cards that together make a very powerful combo, but for the most part, yeah.

Lookout's dispersal is a bad card.

Total newb here, just got 400 cards from a con and built my first deck:

Creatures (21)

1 Agent of Masks
1 Aphetto Exterminator
1 Chieftain en-Dal
1 Drudge Skeletons
1 Duskwalker
1 Expendable Troops
1 Flensermite
1 Glittering Lynx
1 Gravedigger
2 Kami of the Painted Road
1 Maze Abomination
1 Nested Ghoul
1 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
1 Paragon of Open Graves
1 Shriek Raptor
1 Staunch Defenders
1 Tine Shrike
1 Tithe Drinker
1 Typhoid Rats
1 Vampire Aristocrat

Sorceries (10)

1 Assassinate
1 Befoul
1 Distress
1 Ichor Slick
1 Lost Hours
1 Marshaling Cry
1 Raise Dead
1 Remember the Fallen
2 Vicious Hunger

Instants (8)

1 Embolden
1 Grim Affliction
1 Hallow
1 Holy Day
1 Judge Unworthy
1 Renounce the Guilds
1 Riot Control
1 Swat

Enchantments (5)

1 Fanatical Devotion
1 Genju of the Fens
1 Guardian Zendikon
1 Necromancer's Magemark
1 Unholy Strength

Lands (16)

8 Plains
8 Swamp

While I agree with what you say, I don't agree that lookout's dispersal is by definition a bad card. If you can always cast it for 2 it's a counter everything for 2 unless 4, which is playable. But the second you start playing suboptimal pirates to use the card you're just better off using other cards.

If it fits, great, but don't try to make it fit

There was no hype for Ballista since it seemed just a cute not-Triskelion, so (((they))) didn't hoard it. It was too late when they realized how good it was everywhere.

Mimic was hoarded since the start by speculators due to tribal being all the rage right now (Ixalan, C17, Merfolk vs Goblin, etc) and it's an artificially inflated price

>kaladesh is going to go out of standard kinda soonish
It's 11 more months. We went back to one Standard rotation a year.

Woah, Khan's standard was really fucking good, it was when bfz came in that the player base for standard slowly but surely fell into the abyss

Aw man, I don't know how to tell you this... But I think you have what it takes to be the next MTG 2018 world champ.

>Khan's standard was really fucking good
Wait you're serious? Top standard decks were almost $1000 between the fetches and Jace, the Merfolk Looter, as well as whatever other bullshit pushed mythics you wanted to run like Ojutai. Oh and don't forget your Thoughtseizes and Meme Rhinos.

>got one as my prerelease promo and one for draft weekend promo
My bulk collection grows.

just wait till the next set, people said Samut walker was shit, but she fits dino deck better, and really feel that there will be more support later for dinos.

i was wondering if this card could take its place. May I ask what your deck is?

Samut is shit. Easily one of the worst walkers ever printed. Random dinosaurs aren't going to make her not shit.
Dinosaurs are going to get as much support as werewolves did.

tappedout.net/mtg-decks/vampire-monument-1/

I need some advice for both sideboard and ratios.

The vampire subtheme is a big enough deal that I'm hesitant to cut certain vamps for staples of the Abzan Tokens build, and it's also a fun deck to play so I'm not about to jump into the thing proper.

Anointed Procession is also a plank more often than not so I cut it.

One of the strengths of most of the token lists floating around is how easily they can trigger revolt with four evolving wilds and four renegade maps.
You're lacking in that department.
Your curve is very high for 22 lands.

Right now your deck is unfocused and disorganized. I guess, as a start, I'd cut the hidden stockpiles for another land and two more Legion's Landings.
I have a soft spot for Oketra, but you should drop her to a one of, maybe two. Replace her with your 24th land.
I'm iffy on Yahenni. If you had more recursion or token generation I'd be for him, but otherwise I can see there being many situations where sacrificing something would be detrimental to you.
Unfortunately it's not like there's a whole lot of vampires in the format at the moment.

>SCG posts their 2018 schedule
>nothing but modern events
>only two standard opens are in the fucking south
I'm not sure if it's worth it to drive 300 miles and book a hotel for a standard classic. If they can complete it in a day, I suspect there's not many people for it.

>Dropping an Oketra in favour of a land
This seems like a completely reasonable thing to do, and I have no issues with doing so. Part of the problem is that there's not a lot of card draw, so 24 lands just seems like it's begging to flood out.

Yahenni, however, is non-negotiable. It's an absolute monster that just doesn't die once it resolves, and the combination of it and Mavren Fein is, at absolute worst, an indestructible 2/2. Hidden stockpile adds to this combo as well, since I still can net-gain servos. Yahenni into Dusk is disgusting.

Fixing the disorganization and lack of focus is exactly what I'm trying to solve here, so I'm willing to take the advice and drop at least one stockpile for another Legion's landing in the name of consistency.

I think your biggest obstacle is that vampires, as a tribe, are pretty ho-hum.

How has Oketra's Monument been working out for you? I think mono white monument worked because it got a lot of incidental card draw to keep it going, but I'm not sure how it'll do without creatures making clue tokens on ETB.

By the way, do most people use Xmage or Cockatrice on here?

I used to play Monument, and I was aware of the issues the deck had, which sort of lends itself to building here. It lowers the cost of Oketra, and turns those Legion Conquistadors into serious powerhouses.

I side them out often, but it helps the deck go off.

>Make half of the tribe revolve around tokens that this card can't get back
>Make the other half lifegain, have this card interact with that mechanic in no way either
>Guess it needs vigilance because white

Why are all the 5+ vamps complete dog shit?
Why is this even a vampire when it doesn't interact with the tribe at all?

is this bait

For limited, I guess? Getting a whole lot of value bringing back those bears, filler 1 drops, and 1/3 or 2/2 flyers.

>Milled a UB Control Player out with UW Approach using 4 Ipnu Rivulets and 2 Blue Deserts.

Damn that felt real good. He had a Azkanta and Flip Azkanta and was drawing like crazy discarding his dead removal to handsize every turn and had like 5 counterspells in hand but didn't want to tap himself out for ScarabGod in fear of me casting my second Approach .

He got to 20 cards in the deck and on end step i blew up all my deserts for a full deck mill. That felt just too good.

I thought the whole Mill Desert package was a meme from some top players but it proved surprisngly effective.

That must've been an agonizingly long game.