Limited Level-Ups is a Magic: The Gathering podcast that aims to get you better at limited magic. Tune in each week as Alex (Chord_O_Calls) delivers a deep dive level-up on a specific topic related to drafting and sealed.
I don't like to be negative but something about the flavour of this set just doesn't gel with me (mostly the Eldrazi and Energy, I think). I'm thinking I won't draft it - the first set I will have skipped since I started playing on Arena 3 1/2 years ago. Does anyone else have the same reaction?
Really good video, im really looking forward to thus set, looks like it will have a lot of replayability with lots of different viable archetypes. Also will ne nice to have powerful commons and uncommons again. I got pretty tired of OTJ and all the bombs.
Cool to see it's coming to Arena. The only one of these special sets I've drafted was the first Modern Masters, back when I was new to Magic, and I remember having a blast with it.
Got a 7-2 trophy (rising to platinum) in my first GRN (why does that sound like the three letter acronym for a hair metal band?) run! All I needed to hear was Boros is the best deck, apparently.
I like your expertise you bring to your videos, but your style is SO long-winded dude. I feel like this video could have been 20 mins shorter just by cutting unneeded exposition. Sorry if its harsh, just wanted to offer input.
Finally! I can't wait to watch it and try to put it into practice. I'm out of gems, last results 0-3 1-3 1-3 2-3 1-3 Since I switched to Diamond I've been having enormous difficulties, my opponents always have removal for my pieces, and the bombs are never missing. I often find myself drafting blue, because I prefer to control the game, rather than see the opponent constantly removing my pieces, it's just that it's not easy to build control decks for me, it's not my thing.
I think green-white is actually still pretty good. I've ended up green-white in my last two drafts on Arena and trophied on both of them (Platinum league currently, because I haven't played as much). Also in my two most recent real-life drafts, I was green-white in both of them even though the person directly to my right was also green-white and I went 3-0 on each of those drafts. The color combination is just that deep. edit: now three trophies in a row with green-white (sometimes splashing more colors) and in diamond league
@@limitedlevel-ups Yeah-- Was thinking what are such cards in OTJ.. Maybe second rate removal... But dunno if any removal is that easily passed - perhaps the +1/+1 and -1/-1 trick... Oh and the customary artifact, enchantment, flyer ..
Small observation with Corrupted Conviction (one black sack to draw 2) - I’ve been happy to have a copy of this around as a sorta foil to my opponent’s removal or trick. I find mid/late game I’ll have a single black I can leave open and when they go to remove my bomb or threat, I can at least get two cards off of it. Also feels pretty good to tease out their trick (ex. Take up the shield) where my thing was gonna die and instead I rob them of the life gain and make up ground with the draw two
Same here, especially since much of the removal you can encounter exiles, and playing some combinations like RB has a hard time dealing with the white enchantments. Then it's possible to recur your creature with cards like Mourner's Surprise.
Was in an FNM pod this evening amongst very experienced drafters where 4 of the 8 people ended up in some flavor of green, with another splashing. And even in its most diluted, contested form, green still easily won the pod, just on the back of a couple bomb rares, some snakeskin veils, and whatever gutterball green commons they could scrape up. I was in a very good, wide open (5th pick Stoic Sphinx), non-contested version of a U/W flash deck and it was embarrassing how badly I got spanked. That's such a shit message for the table... just force the best color and it doesn't even matter. I'm aware piloting, variance, sample size, blah blah, I'm over it, let's move on to MH3.
Meanwhile, on ranked ladder, I climbed from rank ~600 to rank 50 or so with 10 blue drafts in a row. None of them were base green, though a few of them splashed a couple multicolor green cards like badlands revival in UB or make your own luck in izzet. Two of my trophies were with Izzet and two were with Grixis. Notably none were with a base UW deck, that is a combination that's tough to make work as your base color because the signpost uncommons just aren't that good. It just isn't the case that you should be forcing green in this format if you want to do well. You'll find that stops working at higher levels of play against the people that know how to pilot and draft the underdrafted archetypes. Should you draft green more than other colors? Probably, because it's good at facilitating splashes and the cards are strong. But if it's not open, it's not going to be the best deck at the table in most instances. The exception is when you have strong green bombs that you open, at which point you figure out a way to play them and pair them with strong cards from other colors. If you want to do well with UW in this format, try splashing red or black, or having the white be a splash in UB or UR. It's one of the only color combinations that is just not worth drafting even if it's open unless you're getting creative and mixing in other colors. Part of the issue is that the best UW deck in my experience is a tempo deck, but everyone wants to draft it as a control/value deck because that's what the signpost uncommons want you to do. But the best way to draft UW is get good aggressive white creatures, pair them with solid blue tempo spells, a couple counters, and white exile removal. Then play some of the stronger blue uncommons/rares and call it a day.
I think this is asking a lot, especially for all cards, but if you like a card, how many copies of it do you want? Phantom Interference is a great example.
I've really noticed how the formats change after some time. In WOE I drafted a lot of blue based decks at the end of the format and did quite well because people were avoiding it so my decks were pretty strong on average. In this set I got two back to back trophies with RW at the start of the format so I kind of thought it was a bit of a sleeper deck all the time. 100% agree on deserts due, I've seen that card wheel recently or go 7-8th pick and it should never be taken that late. If you can push that card to -4/-4 its absolutely busted.
