Sets [FRF] Fate Reforged spoilers

[Lucre]

I don't really have anything against affinity lol. I guess it comes from having lived through it? It certainly keeps people from playing garbage but there were still stone rain decks back then putting up numbers too, and decks whos purpose was to play a 9 mana sorcery, a rival tribal aggro deck and several control decks.

Affinity for lands is also a sweet mechanic.

 

[Peter LaCara]

I did. I still cringe whenever I see an Arcbound Ravager, even though it's way more fair in Modern and probably fine in cube. That stupid deck made me quit Magic for years. It made me miss the original Ravnica block and Time Spiral, and for that I'll never forgive it.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I was lucky I guess. I quit Magic around Torment and started again around Fifth Dawn. Champions of Kamigawa was my first prerelease ever and I picked up Standard again a month after the rigorous affinity bannings

 

[Lucre]

I just cast annul and mana leak and pulse of the fields and akroma's vengeance. It wasn't that bad. Sometimes I even stifled!
Omfg and when I started playing relic barriers with shackles dude!

Before that I was really into damping matrix. Later I would become really enthralled with cards like chalice of the void and engineered explosives that would utterly rip clamp/ disciple of the vault decks to shreds.

Other friends of mine had fun cutting copies of piledriver and black cards from their goblin decks to start running green and found those matchups muuuuch better.

I can't stress enough that people were playing BOP into stone rain / viridian shaman into ravenous baloth and doing pretty well in tournaments. Seething song into sword/arcslogger decks also had a real presence.

I think people were pretty thrown off by skull clamp, that's fine, but I never thought having affinity around was so bad. Maybe I woulda gotten more sick of it if I had to play a full standard rotation with it, but I've always held that they banned the lands at champions because they became aware that champions was underpowered and nothing in that set could hold up against affinity the same way beasts, goblins, white control and cycling decks from onslaught could.

I think more people left because they didn't like how much it deviated from normal standard magic, the frame was new, everyone was playing these colourless cards in standard and limited and the same old stuff we used to care about didn't matter anymore. Killing creatures was out, it was usually actively bad unless you were using the rare wrath of god, terrors and smothers and shocks were not cutting it. A 2G elf became the best removal spell in the format over night. We've seen free 2/2s since then and we've seen cheap 4/4s forever. Affinity and KCI were the icing on the cake for the people who were feeling unsettling change on the wind. If that deck had a real culprit it was probably thoughtcast that did quite the ancestral impression. Broodstar may have been more of a fair match than ravager but that didn't mean ravager / vial wasn't really sweet magic for anyone with the determination to come to the table with something relevant. To me it was an era where standard felt crazy and breakneck the way extended did and it was super cool.

 

[James Stevenson]

Some stuff about affinity

Good perspective, that was an interesting read. I wasn't playing then and just have a lot of hearsay to go on about what happened. I know a guy who quit magic at that point, but he wasn't even playing real constructed, just kitchen table magic. I feel like there must have been a big get-angry bandwagon and people just jumped on.

 

[Diakonov]

Last I played Standard was during that time. I didn't quit because of Ravager, though; that's about the time where I dove headfirst into Vintage.

I remember before Fifth Dawn came out, it was all about having the most robust Ravager deck that was as pre-boarded as possible to beat other Ravager decks. Maindeck Oxidize was key. Furnace Dragon was super-tech.

 

[David Bohlander]

I loved playing Standard while Affinity was a beast. But mostly that was because all of the players at my store who had the cards to build Affinity mostly didn't play it. Usually one of us would break ranks, decide we wanted to win that week and play the damn deck, but the fact that we were all more interested in other decks kept us all from getting worn down by Affinity.
The worst thing about Affinity was really that it was so much better than everything else that it wasn't all that interesting to play. At least not at FNM. Yes, you could beat it, but it warped the whole format around beating it. And unless the entire purpose of your deck was to destroy Affinity, you weren't beating an Affinity player who was as good or better than you at Magic.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Anyone else excited about Whisperwood Elemental? There are a LOT of good green 5s, and Whispy does a lot of things well rather than any one thing incredibly, but I like the total package.

 

[CML]

i played it a week ago in cube and it was totally delightful

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, on first reading, Whisperwood Elemental seems like a cross between Creakwood Liege and Wolfbriar Elemental, but with more upside. The five spot got really crowded in green in the last two odd years, but it might be worth squeezing him in regardless.

On second thought, he could even take the spot of a token-making six, like Rampaging Baloths.

 

[Lucre]

I like green midranged creatures that have more to them than creating excessive power and toughness unless it's like silverback that just immediately wins the game over two turns. Adding more play to the green deck is kinda essential and that means not doing things all your other cards are already doing, like making 2/2s. But I dunno army in cans are fine. Hope you get to draw them when they are good.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

Green grave titan goooooo

 

[Eric Chan]

Green grave titan goooooo

for what it's worth, i feel like green needs a gravy t more than black does. it feels more in flavour, too

 

[Lucre]

yeah and green could use 2x premier 6 drops.

 

[shamizy]

FRF prerelease so much more fun that Khans. Oh man, I had the greatest Abzan pool of my life and it was sooooo fun to play:

Abzan Parapets

Some of the awesome things I did include:

1. Going Dark Confidant with the Beastmaster off of Archer's Parapet and drawing like 4 extra cards before he was targetted
2. Making absurdly huge guys with all the counter shenanigans and keeping Mardu from doing anything at all
3. Moving opponent counters with Daghatar to hit for lethal, also doing it to just win combat steps with ease
4. Double Elite Scaleguard to alpha strike for 14 in one turn
5. Using Grim Contest to kill a dragon with a 3/8 Parapet
6. WINNING a game via Parapet pings for like 11.

It was an amazing pool, super interactive. No one ever wants to burn removal on Parapet and it dodges most of the common ones. Stonewalls aggro and pings for days. I think it's my new favorite card.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Nice Deck

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Skipped the prerelease because our organizer is under investigation for hosting tournaments in a non-store location. Well duh, have you seen the store? It's almost impossible to pass each other in the "aisles". Alledgedly the matter was brought under Wizard's attention by the other organizer in town. Well played from a competitor's pov. Ass.

 

[James Stevenson]

Skipped the prerelease because our organizer is under investigation for hosting tournaments in a non-store location. Well duh, have you seen the store? It's almost impossible to pass each other in the "aisles". Alledgedly the matter was brought under Wizard's attention by the other organizer in town. Well played from a competitor's pov. Ass.

Guy needs a brick through his window or I am just crazy or something.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Both organizers used to work together after the new organizer opened a store (my organizer had been the only organizer in town for years before that), but eventually the relationship turned sour. If you ask me they should have worked out the kinks like adults long ago, but enough has happened that that's not going to happen anymore. Now all they do is needling each other back and forth. Anyway, I don't think my organizer, while a good guy, is free of blame in this whole matter, but the guys that show up at his prereleases are the guys I cube with, as well as the guys I used to play with back in the day when I still attended constructed tournaments. It's nice to catch up with old acquaintances. Also, his tournaments are run smoothly and the host location is run by sympathetic people. So, I stand by ass, because while he (i.e. the other organizer) is not the only one to blame for their relationship turning sour, it's still a dick move.

 

[GenericZero]

Still restricted to the mobile, but my list was a Jeskai one. FrF sealed games went long for me, but better than Khans sealed games. Some of the cards in my list included:

Shaman of the Great Hunt
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Sage-Eye Avengers
White Manifest 4 dayz enchantment
3 Sandsteppe Outcasts
2 Prowess/vigilance dudes
Jeskai Windscout
Jeskai Sage
Jeskai 2/3 prowess flyer
Jeskai Charm
2 Flyers with bolster triggers on death
Pressure Point
A ton of value spells like that 5 mana 3 tokens one.

Alesha was sweet every time I got her engine going, almost always traded with at least something in combat. I loved her. Having a large mass of 2 power prowess dudes certainly helped. The white manifest everything enchantment is an engine that virtually cannot lose in the late game. It takes over quick. Manifest played much better than expected. Shaman was solid but disappointing, probably because everything was a 2 power dude. The Avengers were also solid. Alesha was my MVP by far, though.

 

[CML]

Alesha is way cooler than it looks

I'd be interested in a breakdown of every card so far from everyone but especially wanna hear about these

 

[GenericZero]

Temur Sabertooth was disappointing for me but only because I found it very hard to keep at least two or three dudes on the board. Need to draft with it more. Probably in a proper drafting set up, as this guy from Seattle named Mike seems to think we should draft two packs of FRF, one pack of KTK, and start with KTK first.

So basically, he's a fucking criminal.

Shu Yun is the best motherfucker since fucking mothers was even conceived as an idea. He's everything you kind of wanted Dragon-Style Twins to be, but better. Valorous Stance is solid.

Other cards I faced or played in Mike's brilliant piss draft:

-Archfiend of "Kill everything but two dudes": he was solid. I was on the receiving end. Seemed pretty fair. Maybe too fair for some, but probably not all.

-Hooded Assassin: mostly just Thrill-Kill's shitty brother.

-Pressure Point: Surprisingly solid. White Ice is an infinitely better name, though. I'm gonna run it.

-Mistfire Adept: It's the goat's oats.

-Sandsteppe Outcast: Seems possibly good enough for cube.

Side note: if you draft Temur & have to choose between the FRF izzet common or the simic one, the simic one is almost always better. Period.

 

[Laz]

-Pressure Point: Surprisingly solid. White Ice is an infinitely better name, though. I'm gonna run it.

Did no one know about Niveous Wisps?

 

[GenericZero]

Did no one know about Niveous Wisps?

The "becomes white" part feels unimportant and silly. But I like the idea of telling my opponent to check their white privilege for one mana. Thanks for sharing the find.

 

[CML]

Temur Sabertooth was disappointing for me but only because I found it very hard to keep at least two or three dudes on the board. Need to draft with it more. Probably in a proper drafting set up, as this guy from Seattle named Mike seems to think we should draft two packs of FRF, one pack of KTK, and start with KTK first.

So basically, he's a fucking criminal.

Shu Yun is the best motherfucker since fucking mothers was even conceived as an idea. He's everything you kind of wanted Dragon-Style Twins to be, but better. Valorous Stance is solid.

Other cards I faced or played in Mike's brilliant piss draft:

-Archfiend of "Kill everything but two dudes": he was solid. I was on the receiving end. Seemed pretty fair. Maybe too fair for some, but probably not all.

-Hooded Assassin: mostly just Thrill-Kill's shitty brother.

-Pressure Point: Surprisingly solid. White Ice is an infinitely better name, though. I'm gonna run it.

-Mistfire Adept: It's the goat's oats.

-Sandsteppe Outcast: Seems possibly good enough for cube.

Side note: if you draft Temur & have to choose between the FRF izzet common or the simic one, the simic one is almost always better. Period.

what is this guy's last name. describe him immediately