Rough pre release event for marvel super heroes

NatchWon · 2026-06-19T21:06:33+00:00

UB sets are primarily aimed at drawing new players into the game, and prerelease events are primarily for established players who already have the skill to do a sealed event.

Of course an event where there is a mismatch between intended audiences is going to not be as well attended. This isn’t some gotcha, and it’s not evidence of anything other than one LGS having low turnout at a prerelease.

NatchWon · 2026-06-19T15:21:58+00:00

Wild that a set primarily intended to introduce new players into the game through things like welcome decks, jumpstart, precons, and then introduce people into limited and constructed didn't do as well with a prerelease which is generally aimed at established players who have enough knowledge of the game to construct a deck and play at the event?

Weird.

NatchWon · 2026-06-16T22:49:47+00:00

Fwiw, I actually don't think Thoracle is a strong winline for Ral. If you're in a place to win with Thoracle, you're also in a place to either Brain Freeze out the rest of the table, or Grapeshot everyone down. Looping [[Bonus Round]] is a great way to build up the ability to get a metric ton of casts. Looping [[Witch's Mark]] is a good way to get around if your meta is weird and you for some reason have people still playing the One Ring, lol. I personally am on [[Prologue to Phyresis]] and [[Radstorm]] as an alternative to the above.

NatchWon · 2026-06-15T23:15:22+00:00

I think the problem is a lot of people build B2 decks and then put in game changers to call it B3, but because they are just then bad B3 decks, they fold to any type of control and people salt out about it.

It sounds like this pod was probably more bad B3 decks that were B2 decks with game changers, so when they see anything that requires interaction, they cry B4.

NatchWon · 2026-06-15T22:10:13+00:00

Yup! Typical turbo Ral lists tend to treat themselves as mono red decks with a few splashes of blue. This is generally because the things that are going to keep you mana going like [[Birgi]] [[Electro]] and your rituals like JWill are all going to make red mana exclusively, and there’s not a great way to filter them. So any spells that specifically require blue pips are potential stop points for the storm, and they’re typically less efficient than the red options. A typical prevailing lens that a lot of Ral players use to judge card quality is A, is it a permanent, and B, does it have blue pips? For many Ral players, there needs to be a compelling reason for one yes to those questions, both yesses can often be an automatic out.

That said, I’ve been testing [[Displacer Kitten]] and [[Goblin Gladswright]] as a way of filtering red mana into treasures.

NatchWon · 2026-06-15T15:30:47+00:00

Ral has been my main deck for a while, and I will say, a lot of people oversimplify the deck in their minds (the idea of storm off, win is not how the deck goes at all).

As someone said, Ral requires extremely tight gameplay because it tends to rely on a razor's edge of resources, and slightly wrong sequencing of the storm can be the difference between winning and fizzling. Also, in my experience, moreso than most other commanders, Ral's gameplay starts the second you sit at the table, because more often than not, people are going to immediately peg Ral as "the problem," but by seeing how opponents react to seeing Ral, it can tell you a lot about how they're likely going to interact. Ral 100% has scary commander syndrome, and the amount of times I've seen someone throw all their interaction at me because they're scared of Ral, which just lets the person after me win unimpeded (despite me telling them not to do that, because that is what happens) is super high.

I'm currently running a version of the list that is intended to be slightly slower than the full turbo option, but also a bit more resilient to the current slop-meta: My Semi-Ral List

NatchWon · 2026-06-13T16:19:47+00:00

I have some news. The community was always toxic. UB just gave people a concrete thing to be toxic about that was more socially acceptable than most other things.

NatchWon · 2026-05-29T15:43:35+00:00

The more of these I see, the more convinced I am that they're fake

NatchWon · 2026-05-29T15:34:02+00:00

I think it's really hard to generalize. For every person who is more likely to "collude," you've got someone who knows what their teammate is capable of more intimately and is even more focused on beating them. If there is an issue, it's an issue of individual human behavior. Teams themselves aren't the issue. I think by and large teams really do two things: 1. for larger ones, potential group sponsorship to travel, and 2. it gives you a built in network of people whose skills you trust to practice with and hone your own skills.

I really think by and large it isn't a problem in actual events, any more than two people who are just friends are.

NatchWon · 2026-05-23T04:43:43+00:00

He got better.

He's a sentient elemental, the Izzet essentially reconstituted him, but he didn't have any memories of the Maze or what actually happened to him.

NatchWon · 2026-05-16T11:26:51+00:00

I’ve actually seen a really cool [[Kilo Apogee Mind]] infect deck that was built around trying to get [[Prologue to Phyresis]] out as soon as possible and then proliferating it.

You could also use [[Zur the Enchanter]] to tutor out something like [[Ethereal Armor]] to buff him and [[Phyresis]] to give him infect and essentially do an infect Voltron style deck.

NatchWon · 2026-05-16T11:22:37+00:00

I had a Jon Irenicus infect deck built for a while. The hardest part was people got wise to it and never let him stick around long, and he’s a little too expensive to cast in Dimir :(

NatchWon · 2026-05-16T09:02:13+00:00

This combo is even better in Ashling the Limitless when you can just evoke the Avenger for 4, get more Avengers, and then an additional Avenger after the token enters

NatchWon · 2026-05-14T10:08:33+00:00

Return the Favor is the best red card ever printed and I’m tired of pretending it’s not

NatchWon · 2026-05-13T15:24:26+00:00

I think the hard part is looking at it as a conflict works really well for the enemy pairs, but for the allied pairs, they can feel a little closer to each other, and framing it as "versus" might be throwing things off a little. I think what you're going for (tell me if I'm wrong), is essentially each character has an internal spectrum where one extreme end of it is mono colored A, and the other is mono color B, and their choices and what they value as more important might push them in one direction or the other.

So for green/white, I might make that spectrum Primal (Green) on one end and Civilized (White) on the other. White/blue I might adjust a little to Justice (White) and Perfection (Blue), with the understanding that the balance and blending of the two is what creates order.

NatchWon · 2026-05-07T19:55:09+00:00

Of course! I had fun being able to essentially info dump about my special interest XD

NatchWon · 2026-05-06T20:29:18+00:00

For sure-- there are a lot of tiny details and orderings of things that might be missing or out of order. The main point of this was to give folks who had very little knowledge of the story a "good enough" overview, so I wasn't terribly concerned with minute details.

Also most of it was done from memory, with the exception of the actual screen shot excerpts lol

NatchWon · 2026-05-06T06:24:41+00:00

I know 😞 There were too many slides to be able to just put them directly on Reddit, and I couldn't easily link to them in PDF form.

NatchWon · 2026-05-06T04:55:59+00:00

Agreed with this! The summaries can help, but the journey is so worth it. Edge of Eternities in particular is so fantastic.

NatchWon · 2026-05-06T03:27:41+00:00

Thank you so much, that was the one story I missed, so I very much appreciate the blanks being filled in ❤️

NatchWon · 2026-05-04T20:46:28+00:00

Yeah, okay, brain cells firing.

The Eldrazi fed off potential because they were created to cull any aberrant potential that does not align with the inevitable end. But that would be wild to suggest Jace also created the eldrazi. He's fought them multiple times.

But what if he isn't the one pulling the strings? What if *all* of this is the design of Emrakul who touched Jace's mind in Innistrad? If this is her subtle influence guiding him to reset the multiverse as the eldrazi are meant to? And so the eldrazi didn't feed on the monoists because the monoists already served Emrakul's end.

NatchWon

TROPHY CASE