Limited Play - Avacyn Restored
- Thread starter Encaen
- Start date
Much better than my 1-2 and bye record. I didn't pull any real bombs, but I will say that Angelic Overseer is going to make a comeback with Glory of War, probably in a red white human angel build.
I got second throughout all three events at my local pre-release (3-1, 2-1, 3-1), managed to pull three Champion of Lambholt over the course of the day and rode her to victory using boosts like Revenge of the Hunted and Zealous Strike. Avacyn Restored is looking to be super fun in limited draft and sealed.
And for the question, would there be no combat damage assigned at all because the Trusted Forcemage was removed from combat as a result of Cloudshift? The Forcemage could not be still attacking because it is a "completely new object with no memory of it's former state" as my friend so loves to quote from the rulebook.
And for the question, would there be no combat damage assigned at all because the Trusted Forcemage was removed from combat as a result of Cloudshift? The Forcemage could not be still attacking because it is a "completely new object with no memory of it's former state" as my friend so loves to quote from the rulebook.
I had Champion of Lambholt, Cathar's Crusade, and 12 2 drops...that was my deck. Alright, so I had a Howlgeist in there that won me a few games and ended up 2-2.
For the question: Nothing happens at all, Cloudshift removed it from combat.
For the question: Nothing happens at all, Cloudshift removed it from combat.
No combat damage is actually dealt. Having been flickered by Cloudshift, Trusted Forcemage was removed from combat. By extension, so is our Borderland Ranger; it is no longer blocking since it does not have anything to block.
I had a similar conundrum at the pre-release of which I was a part. Cloudshift is a fantastic preservation card; good for reallocating soulbond pairs or just ETB effects in general, like Goldnight Redeemer or Gryff Vanguard.
I won 3 out of 5 matches this weekend, my friend was able to be at the top-8, because he beat me at our match. 
Used white-red with mostly angels and humans, I got to use Silverblade Paladin and Tibalt quite often but they didn't always helped me. My two Seraph of Dawn were really helpfull, so were the Bladed Bracers and any angel and human I could equiped them to.
My Heirs of Stormkirk won me two matches.
Used white-red with mostly angels and humans, I got to use Silverblade Paladin and Tibalt quite often but they didn't always helped me. My two Seraph of Dawn were really helpfull, so were the Bladed Bracers and any angel and human I could equiped them to.
My Heirs of Stormkirk won me two matches.
Thought this would be the article for this week after not responding to the last week's oneEncaen said:
So what are your thoughts on the speed and style of the format? From my 5-0 both days I've found it be slightly faster than I expected but with a much greater emphasis on the higher end your curve (4-5-6 drops) than other formats where your 2-3-4 decided if you won or not. Soulbond though is much greater beating than I thought it would be with the green ones in particular being very brutal.
My Sunday deck was W/R humans with a Restoration Angel, 2 Cloudshift, 2 Thatcher Revolt, 1 Kessig Malcontents and 1 Vigilante Justice making up the core of my deck with lots of dudes (only 1 soulbond guy, the lifelink one). The number of games I won out of nowhere by waiting for 7 mana and going Revolt, Malcontents, Cloudshift the Malcontents was very silly. One opponent said that it was like playing against hive mind which made me chuckle.
I opened a single Entreat the Angels in my prizes and was my money card from AVR, I traded for 6 more over the course of the weekend before they shot up in price this week. You also never said if you had a premium helvault at your event or not.
edit: Looked through your pool. Forcemage, Peddler and Gloomwidow should have been in the deck I think. Taking out the vanguard's shield and black creatures leaving in 1 swamp and your vessel for death wind. Would have lowered your curve, stabilised your mana base and provided another body to activate your tomb with. I might've also taken out the bracers for the Timberland guide bringing the creature count to 14 and adding another 2 drop that can pump your sage out of guise of fire/ghoulflesh range and activate your tomb. He also provides a useful effect to cloudshift giving your guys an emergency pump. Very nice deck though, I can see why you went 3-0-1.
Yep no combat damage is dealt (Still think removing damage stacking was a silly thing to do). The forcemage is removed from combat (no longer an attacking/blocking creature) and can bond with any unpaired creature upon re-entry.Dorano said:
Exactly! My matches went pretty quickly, so I was observing a lot and it seemed like half the people casting Cloudshift would forget about the "new object" thing in terms of how it affected combat. Figured that would make a fun trick QotW.Dorano said:
To be honest, I really like what I've seen of the format so far. I like the tempo, I never got blown out in the early game where my deck was generally lacking, and there's plenty to keep the action going into the long game where the sets abundance of bombs get to come out to play. There are so many tricks to play that Combat is an absolute nightmare, but that's half the fun, right? I must have soaked up 20 damage through the day just trying to avoid getting blown out by combat tricks.TheGuy(wantstobe) said:Thought this would be the article for this week after not responding to the last week's one
So what are your thoughts on the speed and style of the format? From my 5-0 both days I've found it be slightly faster than I expected but with a much greater emphasis on the higher end your curve (4-5-6 drops) than other formats where your 2-3-4 decided if you won or not. Soulbond though is much greater beating than I thought it would be with the green ones in particular being very brutal.
My Sunday deck was W/R humans with a Restoration Angel, 2 Cloudshift, 2 Thatcher Revolt, 1 Kessig Malcontents and 1 Vigilante Justice making up the core of my deck with lots of dudes (only 1 soulbond guy, the lifelink one). The number of games I won out of nowhere by waiting for 7 mana and going Revolt, Malcontents, Cloudshift the Malcontents was very silly. One opponent said that it was like playing against hive mind which made me chuckle.
I opened a single Entreat the Angels in my prizes and was my money card from AVR, I traded for 6 more over the course of the weekend before they shot up in price this week. You also never said if you had a premium helvault at your event or not.
Congrats on the Entreat the Angels, that was a solid investment. Avacyn and Bonfire are the closest things to money cards I pulled, though I did see a gentleman open a Foil Cavern and squeal.
And I didn't actually know there were Premium Helvaults until I saw an article on it today. We had a normal one, it was cool but not super-exciting. I got an oversized Griselbrand which I'm not entirely sure what to do with, though I do like the Angel/Demon token!
They also announced a 2-Headed Giant sealed deck event this coming Sunday which I'm planning to attend. Do you have any particular advice for building for 2HG? Does one person play aggro and the other play control, or do you go for two standalone decks and just try to outclass the opponent?
Yep I've never been so afraid of a single white mana being left open lol. Bonfire is still climbing and is likely to hit $15 and stay there as it is simply absurd. I picked up the entreats because Decree of Justice was one of my favourite cards years and years ago and playing it again just seemed right. That they went up in value means I can get those caverns I need without having to break up playsets of anything too.Encaen said:To be honest, I really like what I've seen of the format so far. I like the tempo, I never got blown out in the early game where my deck was generally lacking, and there's plenty to keep the action going into the long game where the sets abundance of bombs get to come out to play. There are so many tricks to play that Combat is an absolute nightmare, but that's half the fun, right? I must have soaked up 20 damage through the day just trying to avoid getting blown out by combat tricks.
Congrats on the Entreat the Angels, that was a solid investment. Avacyn and Bonfire are the closest things to money cards I pulled, though I did see a gentleman open a Foil Cavern and squeal.
And I didn't actually know there were Premium Helvaults until I saw an article on it today. We had a normal one, it was cool but not super-exciting. I got an oversized Griselbrand which I'm not entirely sure what to do with, though I do like the Angel/Demon token!
They also announced a 2-Headed Giant sealed deck event this coming Sunday which I'm planning to attend. Do you have any particular advice for building for 2HG? Does one person play aggro and the other play control, or do you go for two standalone decks and just try to outclass the opponent?
For the Griselbrand make a Suicide Black commander deck. Or be cheeky and bring it along to FNM and put it in play whenever you cast a normal sized one
2HG advice: Look for synergies in your decks (I.E one goes U/B loners while the other goes G/W dudes) and build so you should almost always be able to answer some massive bomb. Gray ogres are pretty useless while cards that are usually see little play for being too narrow are much better.
The loner mechanic is going to be pretty awesome so long as your partner can clog the board which negates the biggest problem with it in single player.
Naturalise variants are mainboard material.
Slower creatures and bigger creatures are better in just about every way.
Play every single removal spell you have. Barter in blood is the nuts in this format for this purpose.
Landwalk is usually the best non-activated ability you can get as you will be able to hit with it roughly 80% of the time. Intimidate much less so.
That's all I can think of as I don't play the format very much.
I pulled foil Griselbrand in my second pack, and I was able to play him shockingly well when I finally switched my red/white deck to red/black. He and Tyrant of Discord (especially when I can Cloudshift him) managed to win two games for me. In fact, one match, I was down 20-1 late in the game, and I pulled out Griselbrand... came back to win with over 30 health. My handiest cards, however, turned out to be Herald of War (gotta love cheaper Angel summons), Dark Imposter, Vessel of Endless Rest (nice little mana acceleration), and Havengoul Vampire (especially with two Thatcher Revolts to feed him).
..and I ended up with three Moonsilver Spear promo cards, and all four angels' Commander cards. I call that a good day. Gisela is definitely going to see some action if I ever get into Commander.
..and I ended up with three Moonsilver Spear promo cards, and all four angels' Commander cards. I call that a good day. Gisela is definitely going to see some action if I ever get into Commander.
I scored all the angels except Sigarda, myself. I got Gisela originally, but also picked up Bruna and Avacyn 'cause I was the only one to break two seals on the Helvault. Gisela will definitely see some EDH action, but I would have preferred smaller versions of the angels. Y'know, ones that can be used in your usual decks.2xDouble said:
I actually pulled a Sigarda. If I had gotten more white, I probably would have gone W/G and run her in the deck. Of the 3 Legendary Angels I don't have, I want Gisela or 4 so I can build a pretty interesting W/R human/Angel deck. Herald of War is going to be a pretty big bump to the deck. I'll try to get the first one in with Defy Death after discarding it by using Faithless Looting. For a bit of mana acceleration, I'll probably use Battle Hymn, and then use Slayers' Stronghold to help get things going faster. I'm thinking about using Inferno Titan in the deck, simply because he can smash face.CounterAttack said:
Gisela makes the Inferno Titan hit twice as hard. Give him haste and vigilance with Slayers' Stronghold, That's 12 damage before blockers are declared, and then you can fling him for another 16.
So that was an interesting experience. Our pool was pretty weak with only Vorstclaw and Wolfir Silverheart for bombs, plus precious little removal. Five of our rares were in Green, and we ultimately ended up running a mono-green deck because of it. It seemed that adding a second color would have just diluted the power of the deck as a whole, as we had a pretty impressive green pool. The second deck was hard, though. We went with Black/White to cram as much removal as we could into the deck. I didn't want to splash a third color because we didn't get any mana-fixing at all. I did run four Farbog Explorers for their Swampwalk, which won us the game the one time it was relevant.TheGuy(wantstobe) said:
I was pretty impressed with how the decks played out together, though. Green mostly played a defensive role, clogging the board with giant creatures and Giest Trappers to defend the skies. White/Black generally just went to town with equipment and cheap creatures. It had a Cathedral Sanctifiers that got in for something like 30 damage over the course of the day thanks to the equipment and Predator's Gambit giving it Intimidate.
The one match we lost was pretty epic, with a really strong start from us, we got them down to around 15 life pretty quickly. Then they dropped Tamiyo and Captain of the Mists and just took over the game from there.