[Trick]

This episode was a little delayed but it's live now. Do you agree with the people we interviewed? What is your favorite color or shard?

-- Trick

[Caveman]

You heard it here this episode will be life, Trick says so nothing else will matter. ;)
Can't Wait.

[Trick]

Live... Life... ManaNation is Life. It works ;)

[GodofRoads]

My favorite Shard is Bant, but I have to disagree with a point you guys made. You said you pretty muc have to play three colors, which I think is a mind set most people got into. In my draft I played 2 and my deck really excelled because of it. I originally drafted straight Bant in terms of colors, but dropped blue because it simply wasn't an exective presence in my pool, even if I did grab a couple Bant gold cards. I did way better having only two colors, then some of the people I faced who were just waiting for that third land, and if I could redo my sealed I would have gone just two colors, for better or for worse. I think it really helped me in the end. I still played the Nactil guy in two colors, and granted he wasn't his full potential 3/3, but a 2/2 for 1 is still great, plus exalted boosts? Its good stuff.


Overall I had a great time, and this was my first pre-release and I was shocked at how few people were there. Only around 30, so few in fact that the place had enough product to run a Shards Draft afterwards which I really enjoyed (especially as I consider myself a far better drafter than sealed player.)

And overall I REALLY like the set, I like the fact that it is slower, I was so tired of worrying about what I needed to do turns 1-3, that I like matches being slower and longer. A couple of my single games lasted well into a half hour, which isn't great in terms of a tournament, but I certainly thought it was more fun. And granted Exalted is a quick strategy to play, but I think it has interesting long term ramifications as well especially when you get into tap down and lock down mechanics with Angelic Benediction and Stoic Angel (plus the Naya Battlemage, and perhaps Thoughtweft Gambit)

[donet]

I found this kind of interesting, and it's really no surprise that a tri-color set would be very different. I will be attending the release (couldn't make it to the pre-release), and I'll throw in some more input on the set after that. From what I've learned from various spoilers and from the gatherer, I feel that Bant or Naya are probably the most powerful ones in Limited, with Blightning being the main reason to play Grixis...which might be the best option in a draft since Bant and Naya should be more fought over.

[Hexatomb]

@GodofRoads
I really like Bant for quick decks, but during both days of the Pre-releases that I went to it couldn't hold up vs anything aggressive. Especially Esper creature decks.

I think Grixis is the post powerful for control and burn and Jund is great for card combos for power decks. To compare, I think of Bant as Kithkins, Esper is Faeries, and Grixis as Burn. I personally was able to splash in white to my Grixis based deck for some Esper cards. Grxis/Esper was my winner for Day 2.

Stoic Angel is incredibly powerful with Exalted. After two days, I only saw one person pull off the combo, and I removed the Angel as fast as I could with a Grixis Charm. :-)

Grixis has such powerful gold cards that I see it running strong along with any other Shard. Bant will possibly be the most played with Exalted, and Esper for all the control players...

P.S. The Battlemages can be game winners. :-)

@Mana Choices
In regards to mana, I used this system and never had a problem with land in any game this weekend. I was hedging on the use of mid game 8 cost cycling though..

1.  I picked my 3 colors, and grabbed 6 of each land. Do I need a 4th color for cycling/end game?
2.  Determine my Primary and Secondary Color.
3.  Do I have the Obelisk for my chosen shard? Yes, great! Replace it with a land of my Secondary color.
4.  Do I have more than one? Replace it with a land from my Tertiary color.
5.  Do I have a Obelisk with 2 of my 3 colors and one of my 4th? Add it to the deck as a normal card +1
6.  Do I have tri-color lands? Add it as a replacement for a primary land.
7.  Do I have a tri-color for 2 of my colors? Yes, add it in as a land +1 (this means instead of 16 or 17 lands, normally, you'd be running 17 or 18)
7.  Do I have fetch lands for my colors? How many?
          a. Only 1: Replace a Tertiary land
          b. Only 2: Replace a Primary and Tertiary land, if Primary is less than 5, Don't replace but add in as extra +1
          c. 3 or more: Replace a land of each color with one, only use 3 max

So, let's say I have 2 shard obelisks, 2 shard fetch lands, 1 tri-color of my shard and a tri-color of 2 colors of my shard:

My mana/deck distribution is:
Lands:
5 Primary
5 Secondary
4 Tertiary
Tri-color of chosen shard
Tri-color - off shard
2 Fetch land of chosen Shard

Aftifacts:
2 Obelisks

[JoeChaos]

Thanks guys for interviewing me
and...
She didn't win her flight, I beat her in the finals    lol

[GodofRoads]

@GodofRoads
I really like Bant for quick decks, but during both days of the Pre-releases that I went to it couldn't hold up vs anything aggressive. Especially Esper creature decks.

I think Grixis is the post powerful for control and burn and Jund is great for card combos for power decks. To compare, I think of Bant as Kithkins, Esper is Faeries, and Grixis as Burn. I personally was able to splash in white to my Grixis based deck for some Esper cards. Grxis/Esper was my winner for Day 2.

Stoic Angel is incredibly powerful with Exalted. After two days, I only saw one person pull off the combo, and I removed the Angel as fast as I could with a Grixis Charm. :-)

Grixis has such powerful gold cards that I see it running strong along with any other Shard. Bant will possibly be the most played with Exalted, and Esper for all the control players...

I pulled off Stoic Angel once, but it was with limited exalted (didn't get much in my sealed) and only for a turn or 2 before it was O-ringed. I was so close to getting Angelic Benediction with the Stoic Angel once or twice and it would have been SO SWEET! But I got color screwed...oh well 

I beat an esper creature deck in my final round, but did have some trouble with one in round 3 due to a couple death touch creatures. I ended up going 1-1-1 in that round. It was tough, but they get off to such a slow start that if you can hammer in quick it can be effective, but like I said, Exalted has some trouble making that final kill.

I think Naya is a good shard to mix into the others, especially Bant. A lot of those green cards are decent (the Grizzly Bear Elf and the Battlemage, and Manaplasm is decent in an exalted deck) support cards and can really help out Bant stuff. I haven't really explored the other shards yet, but I like Grixis, and Esper in addition to Bant. I look forward to looking further into them in the future.

P.S. The Battlemages can be game winners. :-)

I LOVE the battlemages, They are just all such solid cards, I think there was only one I was meh about.

[CopySix]

Another great show guys.
I appreciated hearing the feedback from players regarding the new pre-release format.
Unfortunately with pre-releases, I would need to travel a solid hour or more to Toronto so I was looking forward to the event being hosted here in Barrie.  As the MTG gods are not with me, I had to work anyways . . . waah.
I think that WoTC would benefit with smaller localised events by drawing casual players (like myself) to attend but it should not be at the expense of the traditional larger pre-release events.  Perhaps somewhere in the middle - regional venues (?)

[LifeOnAuto]

For the record I did play in another flight... 

[Luchesi]

As a short preface: This was my first pre-release.
     I thought the event as a whole was pretty cool. At Armada we had 58 players and had to play 6 rounds. They said normally they would cut at top 8 and Draft but that would take around 12 hours so they just split up the prizes by standing at the end. (I did end up in the top 8,  ) I have to disagree with most of the comments about how difficult it is to get that "third land" for the shards. I got one Obelisk and one of the uncommon triple lands with a couple of sac lands and had no issues whatsoever.
     As for Shards of Alara, I love the set. I ended up playing Bant and thought the mechanics and intertwined utilities of the charms were very cool.
     

[BigFiber]

I had a decent Big Pre in Philly on Sat and played at my LGS on Sunday. We had a full house. I went 11-1-3 and won 15 packs for the weekend...which would have been 25+ with the old system... but it's not really about the packs, I'm a grown up and I can buy my own packs...it's about the ego baby! I split the finals at my LGS going 5-0-2 drawing into T8 and drawing in finals. The one match I lost was against a deck with 2xAjani and 3xWar Monk!(1 foil) and my buddy judge watched the dude open it! It's funny because me and one of my draft crew buddies, Novak, got paired up in the 4th round of our first flight and we drew so we could go eat. Then I lose to 2xAjani guy round 1 of next flight and Novak loses to him round 2! Novak make T8 at the LGS as well but lost in the first round.

I had a great weekend. Sure, I would have like a bigger Pre in Philly (it was a good bit smaller but Sat was bigger than they expected) and Sunday was a hit with the LGS's in my area. I spoke with 1 already and he tells me his event on Sat was huge, he ran 2 events, and he spoke with WotC reps and he tells me they were "thrilled" with the LGS turnouts all over the country. This could boad ill for us Big Pre supporters...But both of my store owner friends said they saw lots of new faces and even first time Magic players. If this is the case across the board, we might just have to suck it up and deal with it. But I don't have to like it.

[Trick]

Well I'm glad to hear we were wrong with what we were hearing in terms of attendance. Even if I prefer the big ones, I definitely want them to succeed in whatever form they are.

[smile1x4me]

 
To me the ideal plan would be to let the T.O.s that can run PTQs have a 2 week prior Prelease event. Then the next weekend smaller T.O.s and stores can have 1 week prior Prerelease events. This would allow for the Big Prerelease to succeed and support the PTQ T.O.s , but also the local players network would be able to have their share in the excitement too .

Thanks to wotc for opening up the players network, without it i would have to drive an hour and a half away to play FNM. Even though I am a supporter of players network i like Big prereleases too.

So I guess the really question to be answered is "Can they both co-exist?

[Scott M Davis]

My store was expecting over 24 people to show up, but we barely met that. Other then the advertisement in store and online, no one really knew about it.

I've never been to a big release party, I don't ever remember there being one here, or even remotely close to here unless I went stateside.  I would have preferred to go a big release as the store was cramped, and starting to get quite smelly as it approached late afternoon. I think both can exist.  You have a nice small pre-release and then the huge release party, or vice versa.

I really wished they would have allowed for a booster draft, I have a ton of fun at those.