Magic: The Gathering C/D

We tried to revive it this year but the school we go to now has serious players who came and wanted to play w/ us and they were very anal about all the rules and also they actually had decks with, y'know, a strategy. Plus protection for all the cards and they wouldn't stop talking about rare cards and such- I'm a geek, but ya gotta draw the line somewhere. So now it's dud.

Yeah, Magic is a game that completely falls apart when people start to take it seriously. It quickly becomes that only certain cards in certain types of decks have a chance of winning, and often in very boring, cheepo, lucky-draw fashion.

Casual play is ok, but is still too expensive.

if you're going to play magic, you MUST play by tournament rules. you needn't bother playing if there are no limits placed on the composition of the deck. wizards of the coast probably still publishes its "restricted/banned" card list as well. check it out.

when i was about 15 to 16 i played in magic tournaments EVERY sunday, and played recreationally with friends most evenings. yes, you could say that it was a very signifigant part of that time in my very sad teenaged life. at one point in the remote northern alberta town of 35,000 i grew up in there were three comic shops that all pushed magic quite heavily and at least a couple more places where the cards were available. some people took it VERY seriously.

i won't argue that magic is a tremendous cash sucker, and ultimately it taught me nothing about anything (there is little about the game that transfers to other pursuits) but there is a tremendous beauty to the inner workings of the game. it's not just about how much money you spend on it. in tournament settings, i was able to consistently trounce educated adult men with high-paying jobs (engineers, systems analysts) simply by spending a lot of time evaluating how the cards in my deck worked together. quite often the answer is not an "expensive" card but four cheap, nasty ones.

if you're going to play magic, you MUST play by tournament rules.

Why? I mean, in a tournament of course you do, but what about those of us who are, err, "casual players" as it were and just want a nice game to waste some time with as opposed to a weapon to "consistently trounce educated adult men with high-paying jobs"?

dude i was like fifteen ...

Haha, maybe that was a bit too nasty on my part, but still- why not play any way you bloody please (or was that "You MUST..." comment just the way you saw it when you were 15?)

I'm going to be branded a geek now.. aren't I?

Let's count the ways we could parse that sentence, hmm?

A lot of Magic players are homophobic (in my experience) and in order to throw them off of their game, I would wear a shirt that symbolized gay pride.

What's really scary is that I'm thinking about playing in a sealed deck PTQ in a couple of weeks just to see if I can still compete after not playing for years.

* (the one where you start with no cards in your card, draw one of your choice per turn, and no card can be played twice? It's kinda fun...)

The "90-95% super homophobe" players mentioned above = DUD. If I was rich (xpost it's expensive xpost) I'd probably play Magic Online, and not have to see the fat guys with "horribly nasal and stereotypically nerdy voices" that unfortunately define the game.

i've been having a lot of "fun" playing with the old cards I rescued from my mom's house. i refuse to spend another cent on the game, however.

a couple years ago i went to a card & comix shop and built a decent blue-white deck for like $4.00, but all the newer card editions just had all these new retarded esoteric abilities that i had no idea about

also, the art was all these, like, cyber dragons and BULLSHIT

We should start an ILG thread where we play against each other using SCANNERS.

i only played magic for the first time a few weeks ago, how weird is that? i was intimidated by the kids who played it in high school, but it's not half as complicated as i thought.

you should have been more intimidated by their allowances

and/or dedication to blowing every dollar earned at the drive-thru window sunday 5am-1:30pm on crazy junk instead of like cigarettes and cds

that is correct i am calling you bustas out

what are you talking about, i pinched a franklin from my dad's wallet to buy a mox jet

haha, i think i was most intimidated by their cliquish aspie superiority complexes.

i think it's really fun now though.

ok http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Andy/ProjectEBAY/MagicCards.html these prices are so retarded omg

people should all be blown up

in my middle school the biggest fight i got into was between pog players and m:tg players

i was obviously a magic player

green & white deck, in case anyone is wondering

omg pog

if i remember those years correctly i was more worried about the shame my seminoles starter jacket would bring me after danny wuerrfle's gators pounced on them in the orange bowl than anything having to do with those fucking things

I used to play magic back in the mid-nineties, I still have a hundreds and hundreds of those cards in some box around here. I never paid much for them though, because I stole most of them from bookstores. I wonder if that stuff is worth something these days, the oldest cards I have are from Revised Edition or whatever it was called.

god, my nerd days were spent playing Avalon Hill wargames. and banging chicks of course

my best nerd days are ahead of me still.

http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic93875_t.jpg

mine did not look quite as good as this one but I got pretty good

i had a revised shivan dragon worth $50

and my color selections were more noise

haha shivan dragon. back in 1995 my friend's proudest accomplishment was owning 4 shivan dragons. I wonder if those cards are worth anything today.

blue + black deck, my sengir vampires and royal assassins were so so gangster.

i had two revised royal assassins

maybe more, hell if i remember

at my 10th bday party i beat the rich kid in magic even tho i had no allowance, i had birthday money and was a HUSTLER with trades

i think sometimes i threw in some green too, but only if u could throw all mana down first turn and i would use it solely for my force of nature

8/8

i have a shivan dragon signed by the lady what painted it ;_;

haha i think i some signed by artists too :-/

yeah i kept that shivan solely because it was worth money since i played green/white almost exclusively, i shoulda sold it off

I saw this stuff mostly when I was in college - 94 - 98. I was too busy playing (then) horrible blues rock, drinking and trying to get laid. Trying being the WAY operative word there.

I sold a revised "Fork" for about 50 pounds.

reading a thread for the first time and then realising you posted to it four years ago c/d

Okay guys how similar is Pokemon the card game to Magic: the Gathering? Bcz I am getting stupidly good @ Pokemon (which did eat up all my spare $$$ this summer...sheesh Abbott).

Y'all heard about The Eye of Judgment?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhlq_GhYGsM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Judgment

It's a Magic type game for PS3 that uses real cards and a camera, just came out. The camera scans the cards as you put them into play and then the monsters on the cards battle it out on your TV. The game keeps track of all the stats and shit too, of course. I haven't played it but it's getting decent reviews.

I probably spent twenty bucks on it total, maybe thirty. It was one summer, a fun thing, a moment in time, a nice little cultural artifact.

This is me w/ M:TG btw, but I've also done the "use Portal decks and ignore most of the rules" thing.

I found a coffee table on the streets of Madison once whose top was a glass plate covering a tiling of just a single magic card. I don't recall what it was, but it must have been the "unwanted" card.

there was originally some card that involved ripping one of your opponents cards that got "banned" under the sanctioned rules...have no idea what it was called.

I had a mox sapphire! and sold basically everything i had owned at some point in '98 (when i was 19) probably for like 450 on ebay...

spent several hours on saturday night playing Magic with ian and was pretty consistently beaten by his blue & black deck.

people used to call blue and black decks "bruise" decks.

apparently people play creatures in type 2 nowadays? I am sort of suspicious of this, it's not pokemon. I wish I hadn't lost all my cards.

i am so mad i couldn't find my old white/green deck when i was home this weekend.

my favorite is the red & white deck.

people used to call blue and black decks "bruise" decks.

-- Ronan, Monday, October 29, 2007 9:16 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

fuck yeah

red & white is a hard deck to play!

there were good all red or all green decks around the time the "mirages" (was that its name) edition of cards came out.

Lightweights. I suspect Gravel may be hardcore, if he's referring to the fact that Morphling used to be the only playable creature.

Creatures are for Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. Magic is a game of technique.

I can only say all this after spending way too much time sniping cards on eBay in order to play something like 3 times in the last year.

The fortunate thing is that Magic card prices seem to be way more stable than the dollar, so that's money in the bank folks.

I did Magic waaay early on. By the time I was too cool for it I gave everything to some neighborhood kid, if only I had sold it for $$$ ;_;

Was not at all impressed by Wizards Of The Coast's headquarters. It's like a mile from Ikea in Renton and looks like any other corporate headquarters. I at least expected animatronic dragons or constant fireworks displays or something other than reflective glass and a fucking fountain.

By the time I was too cool for it I gave everything to some neighborhood kid, if only I had sold it for $$$ ;_;

-- Jordan, Monday, October 29, 2007 2:25 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i did this too ;_;

jordan is leading my parallel life i think

type I was all about DUAL LANDS right?
my best deck was mostly blue, counterspells, those djinns that only cost 3 that were misprinted green; then red & white & green sprinkled in also...black was fairly worthless.
i miss my magic cards!@!!

black can be great if you play it right, especially with red or blue!

i had a black/red deck for a long time but all my best cards were green/white so i tended to stick to that

my best deck was mostly blue, counterspells, those djinns that only cost 3 that were misprinted green

Now we're talking. Your mox sapphire alone would go for like $400 on eBay.

i know! damn my 19 yr old self!!

cant remember what else was in it. maybe JUGGERNAUTS? the (actual) green djinn that was 4/5 and only cost 4 to cast? dunno...

this dude, so bad ass:

http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?&id=1221

MAGIC CARDS.

so we have three decks now.

blue/black: all counterspell, hymm to tourach, serendib efreet, dark ritual, sengir vampire, demonic tutor etc. brainstorms & frantic search.

green/white: standard ernham djinn/serra angel/armageddon deck with sol ring, dual lands, savannahs, giant growth, savannah lions & llanowar elves.

red/green: needs taigas. blood lust/giant growth/kird ape. plus fireballs & 'bolts, assorted creatures and creature enhancers with an eye towards quick playability. i think the red/green deck has the maze of ith. there are also lots of coin-flipping cards in this one, like bottle of suleiman, mana clash and mijae djinn.

the blue/black deck also has some other kind of efreet that costs only 3 for a 4/4 flier, but the downside is that it lets the opponent draw three cards!!

Use that to cycle their deck

the blue/black deck also has some other kind of efreet that costs only 3 for a 4/4 flier, but the downside is that it lets the opponent draw three cards!!

-- ian, Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:37 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Probably not worth it. If the main strategy of the deck is control through counters and discard it doesn't do a lot of good to give your opponent three cards to regain tempo/replenish their hand. Do you already have force spikes in there?

I need to sell my cards. Dual lands go for mad cash on eBay.

maze of ith is one of my favorite cards

I need to sell my cards. Dual lands go for mad cash on eBay.

damn

It was a really fun game as far as I remember. And when I was 18, me and my friends figured out that a couple of bottles of whiskey and a marathon Magic tournament was far and away the best way to get through an acid comedown.

maze of ith is one of my favorite cards

Picture, at least, is rad. I knew some folks about 15 years ago who did nothing but play Magic and do bong hits all day. I called their house the Maze of Ith.

the blue/black deck also has some other kind of efreet that costs only 3 for a 4/4 flier, but the downside is that it lets the opponent draw three cards!!

-- ian, Wednesday, February 27, 2008 5:37 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Link

i think it's an indentured djinn?

lol @ maze of ith

maze of ith vs. mishra's factory

Are you playing with restrictions and stuff?

not particularly. there's only one demonic tutor in the black deck, though there could be two i guess. old habits, etc. also, only one sol ring in the green/white deck.

the indentured djinn is unnecessary (what with 4x serendib efreet and 4x sengir vamp) but still fun and low casting cost. i have no force spikes. i played from revised through about weatherlight, then again for mercadian masques. nothing since. i kind of want to pick up some tenth edition boosters, only because i don't want to buy birds of paradise on ebay.

I could also use some HOWLING MINEs.

also ideally, i would like some hypnotic specters so that i can take out the indentured djinns.

Ian, I played for about the same timeframe as you. Last summer a couple friends and I split a box of 10th and were pretty disappointed. What they do now is keep the current edition cards really simple/boring, and put the more interesting cards/cool mechanics in the expansions.

I had a sweet blue/white counterspell deck. Counterspells, disenchants, icy manipulators, and just a couple creatures to finish the job. I had these sweet 2/2 blue/white flying guys who didn't tap to attack, great two-way creature for a deck like that.

any one ever play online? not the WOTC approved pay-to-play but the janky lo-fi programs? Doesn't look like there's any for Macs.

Was immensely disappointed when I stumbled upon the Wizards of the Coast headquarters by. Had to pick up some shit at IKEA and it's like right down the road. There were no animitronic dragons flying around and no fireworks displays. Just some shitty modern building with reflective glass windows and a stupid fountain. DUD

Was not at all impressed by Wizards Of The Coast's headquarters. It's like a mile from Ikea in Renton and looks like any other corporate headquarters. I at least expected animatronic dragons or constant fireworks displays or something other than reflective glass and a fucking fountain.

-- s. morris, Monday, October 29, 2007 7:29 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

and I was totally going to offer to mail you some force spikes. Not anymore, buster!

I would stay away from boosters, though. Stupidly expensive and you'll just end up with a bunch of worthless cards.

Also you'll hate yourself.

I think I'll hate myself just as much if I buy cards on ebay.
I'm not particularly competitive about it; the only person I play with regularly is bell_labs. I do all the deck construction, but I've run out of things to do with my backlog of cards. Any deck I make now will undoubtedly be much weaker than the ones we currently play with. As it is, the red/green deck is at a disadvantage.

Which of you nerds wants to sell me your old copy of the Talisman board game? Been missing that one lately and it's about as involved a game as I could possibly make time for now.

***

Oh yeah, I was at Gen Con/Origins '88 bitches! The gender ration at that con successfully cured me of RPGs for the last 20 years.

:)

NC

http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/whatcolor_isgreen.jpgTake the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

pretty accurate actually!

Blue
You value knowledge, logic, and deceit. You love to pursue wisdom but also to manipulate and deceive. At your best, you are brilliant and progressive. At your worst, you are treacherous and cold. Your symbol is a water droplet. Your enemies are green and red.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/whatcolor_isred.jpg

I'm making a green/black variation on necropotence using greed & dark heart of the wood combined with drain life/tutors/stream of life/elves that give me forests when they come into play.

also channel & initiates of the ebon hand for drain life.

rejuvenate? is that the gain 6 life for 4 card w/ cycling? that's a useful card for this deck.

elves that give me forests when they come into play LLANOWAR ELVES

see i'm learning!

i can't find my danged bayous. i know i have two somewhere.

NO NOT LLANOWAR ELVES. that's a good, sensible guess though.

ones that let me find a forest card in my deck and put it into play.
wood elves? maybe.

so on sunday my roommate & i played 18 holes of golf then went and bought like $60 each of magic cards. shit is crazy now! they roll out new expansion blocks like every 4 months! (found this out after we just bought some random boxes)

anyway, it was pretty rad for the 7 hrs when we got stoned and opened all the packs, read everything, made decks and played. its still fun, but major diminishing returns(lol not hte card) for sure unless we spend $$ like every week on cards.

played a bit last night. thinking about getting back in semi-seriously.

I was realllllly into Magic from like, 4th grade to 7th grade - like a 24/7 obsession. I was pretty good and read the magazines and websites on a daily basis - if I had more than $5 a week to spend on the game, I woulda been winning local tournaments left and right. Then one day I just completely lost interest. Thank god it was long before I had the potential to spend real money on the game. The funniest thing is that I looked up to all these local 20 year old guys who had the $$$$ for near-perfect decks. And in retrospect it's like, lol, I was looking up to some of the geekiest people ever.

Despite not really thinking about MtG for 10 years, I am bothered by how much info about the game is permanently lodged in my brain.

I remember one point in time where I had this badass green deck made up of relatively cheap and common cards that allowed me to play a dozen creatures in 3 turns and actually compete w/ legit players. It was risky though, cause it was an all or nothing type deal, and I pretty much knew if I was gonna win or not as we drew our hands.

Also there was this one time where I was about to win the local tournament (by tournament I mean like 12 players) and some guy who was watching was like "hey that card you're using, I think it's banned" and he showed me the magazine (The Duelist? I think) and it seemed like he was right, and so he went to the guy who owned the comic book store and that guy decided to just give me 2nd place even though I was winning.

LATER I went home and realized that the card was only banned for like Type 1.1 tournaments or some shit and we weren't playing that. That was the closest I ever got to winning a tournament. But I mean, I was a poor ass 11yo and these dudes were in their 20s - it was pretty hard to compete. The guy who tattled on me did a lot of hard drugs and when you're suburban 11yo it's pretty weird to hear someone talk about their hard drug use.

i have vague memories of playing friendly games in the local card/comic shop's upstairs magic the gathering room (before it burned down) as like a 12 year old. dudes were basically nice but now that i'm a 20-something dude myself i'm not exactly going to be down w/playing against kids at some store. i will play magic the gathering the way i would do anything else--with my friends and over beers.

Okayyy I just spent 10 minutes trying to figure/remember what card it was, and it was this one:

http://wowbox.tw/mtg/images/largejpg/03XXX/03238.JPG

xp was gonna caution u if u somehow meant really serious, the gameplay itself on a advanced/tourney level seems crazily intricate and difficult now just from reading a few articles but yea if thats ur def of semi-serious then more power 2 u itll be rad~

oh, adding to my geek cred - I also remember buying and reading about a dozen of the MtG fantasy-world novels

oh yeah, i have had brief encounters with the magic aspie/dork tournament scene and it's def not for me. i just mean paying attention to cards, buying new cards, reading about stuff. it's a step above what i do now which is play with the same 5-6 decks i've had for five years or possibly longer.

i have a bunch of cards signed by the artists that i got when i was 13. wonder if they're worth anything these days.

I seem to remember that cards being signed by artists actually didn't make them particularly valuable.

also, imo totally the golden era of the game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Edition_(Magic:_The_Gathering)

they are doing some crazy mtg 2010 shit look @ this:

http://www.gatheringmagic.com/images/Cards/GoldenLotus2010.jpg

SHROUD??

btw i have four decks ready to play at bell_labs' house--
white/green
green/red
blue/black
green/black

obv i like green. (slow burner.gif)

the green/black is sort of an aborted necropotence/enchantress deck that i hustled together quickly, and we almost never use that one cuz it's an unlikely winner. when it works it works well, but that is not often :(

One card-printing error of note appeared on the card Serendib Efreet. This blue creature card was misprinted with a green border and a picture of another card, Ifh-Bíff Efreet. The name, mana cost and rules text were of Serendib Efreet, however. The Revised version is now the most common due to the limited print run of the original, intended versions.

Love this card, pack four of 'em in the blue/black deck.

i think shroud means it cant be the target of spells or effects

also, that is just some online series or something, not a real card. my bad

too many new terms & mechanics with each expansion = one of the reasons i stopped playing. the other main reason was... high school.

i kind of want 2 get into this but it seems deeply complicated in an unfun way?

yeah it seems it but if you have any affinity/familiarity with games in general i could teach you to play in about an hour.

yeah it's not a hard game to grasp, especially if yer just fuckin with the basic sets and not making any attempt to "stay current" or anything. i haven't bought magic cards in... a long time. not long enough that i'd be comfortable saying exactly, but a long time. years.

yah i mean ill fuck w/ catan and zombies and bang and fukken dragonball rpg so i figure i can "get it" but everytime my friends start to explain it the whole thing seems really overly rule-y and limited. sad realness: i kind of just want 2 play because i like the pictures on the cards

been readin abt new sets and tournament decks this morning. don't even know where there's a decent game store anymore.

Funny that this got revived because they just announced a set of new rules two days ago to simplify and streamline the game, and make it easier to learn. (Naturally, the hardcore players are up in arms.) Or did you revive because you heard about the new rules, destroyer?

It is a pretty complicated game, but a lot of rules just cover unusual circumstances that rarely come up. The nice thing is most new cards are self-explanatory or intuitive after you've got the basic rules down.

i revived cause i had gotten together with some friends to play, a couple of us had mostly old cards and a couple had mostly new cards (so every game involved a shitload of reading). i read about the rule changes after that. not sure i'm down w/the new combat rules.

picked up 15 alara block boosters on saturday and am opening them now. this set is hilarious, it basically is forcing the issue and making ppl play 3-5 color decks. prob will be fun to put a deck together.

http://rlv.zcache.com/top_hat_bunny_card-p137108767801135068tdtq_400.jpg

^^^ pull that card out of your hat next time cad

As an old school dungeon master, it's impossible for me to see Magic as anything but the game that destroyed the attention span of millions of potential RPGers.

And then they WOTC bought TSR, just to add insult to injury.

Total DUD I say!

xp i would definitely throw down w/a hatbunny card.

this fan-created variant brought me back to the game after 13(!) years.

it's really fun and totally casual. you have a general that must be a legendary creature. all your cards must be one of your generals colors. you start with 40 life. you can use cards from every format. there is a ban list but it's just for the most broken unfun unfair cards.

the format is now officially supported with pre-constructed decks.

the one we used to do was called 250, basically you built a 250 card deck w/ at least 20 of each color, plus you played for ante (had to be a rare though), and could play Contract from Below which made it really fun - was such a great casual format and bascially all that was played at the store I went to for years - then the rules "committee" massively fucked it up, restricting Contract, then banning it, then not restricting or banning cards that were killing the format (mostly b/c most of them didn't even play anymore), then completely changing the rules, and now nobody plays it - meanwhile Commander got a ton of support officially, kinda makes me wonder how big 250 could have been at it been managed even remotely properly

ok http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Andy/ProjectEBAY/MagicCards.html these prices are so retarded omg

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, October 23, 2007 4:06 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
people should all be blown up

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, October 23, 2007 4:06 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

should see how high they are now! (would guess all of them have doubled in price since)

lol you play magic as well as poker - ?

are people who pay that sort of money for magic cards people who are playing at a high enough level to be making bank off of it, or at least people who are close enough to delude themselves of same? or are they like IT professionals who don't know how to spend money

its some from both columns, I guess the one defensible thing about it is that they are almost like stock, and I don't think the prices have ever dropped - as time goes on they only get more rare, the only way they'll take a big fall is if the game dies out, which IMO is really not happening anytime soon. my one big purchase was about 6 years ago, I bought a dude's collection for $1400 with the intention of selling most of it over time, and honestly wish I hadn't dealt any of it, as the entire thing would be worth $6000+ today. here's a card that was worth about $15 at the time, check this out now:

http://sales.starcitygames.com//search.php?substring=underground+sea&Go.x=15&Go.y=9

btw I don't think many people are making much money off of playing the game (maybe like 1% of the players), but if you can predict the market for buying/selling certain cards you can definitely do well

should i play the dark ascension prerelease tournament it means getting up at 8am on a saturday

sealed? does the set look cool?

lamp, do it for those of us who want to live vicariously through you and provide a full report

yeah its a sealed, $25 bucks gets you um some # of boosters (i think 9?) and a promo card.

i totaled up what it would cost me to complete my innistrad set on starcitygames and its like $90 + shipping/taxes. i hate myself sometimes

haha don't do #2 you will find a complete set to be a white elephant. #1 sounds like a decent use of $25.

only pay for cards that you will almost definitely play with + directly enjoy

well i dont have $90 to my name atm so theres no risk i was just curious. amusingly enough ive pulled two of the really expensive innistrad cards (snapcaster and one of the planeswalkers) from boosters so its mostly just cheap cards left

although i know for a fact you two are both way underestimating the pleasure i would get from having a complete card set

its mostly lol cuz you can buy a complete set of innistrad on ebay for like $110 bux atm

yeah I think I have a hard time seeing things from a collector's pov but I'm like aspie on the other side of the spectrum. 'what is this object's functional value for me'

anyway I will play anyone itt cockatrice tonight

man i just started buying cards again. haven't played since ice age. shit is great.

i haven't played a physical match against a real opponent yet, just trying stuff out on cockatrice. i've won a couple games using decks assembled from cards i actually own. thinking about going out to the burbs for friday night magic tomorrow but worry about embarrassing myself horribly.

cockatrice is super fun but dudes keep busting out these like $$$ standard decks and annihilating me, would like to play against decks comparable to those found at a south louisiana gaming store.

yeah when i played iatee last he used a constructed deck that just destroyed me like i could not win

look i like the forbidden alchemy into unburial rites into sun titan into grave titan via 8 million rare dual lands as much as the next guy but at some point it turns into an unwinnable arms race

aw man I like the beauty of the unwinnable arms races, it becomes all about statistics and tailoring the perfect deck

I mean I like the idea of it, I was very much against it when I was a kid and could afford exactly 3 of the cards needed to make said perfect deck

totally. coming back to magic after 15 years, with the internet-enabled secondary market and a grownup's disposable income--these serious decks are somewhat attainable at this point but my mindset is still firmly in buying boosters, opening them up and making do with what i get.

of course i am learning, to which my recent ebay sprees can attest.

haha I still don't have a grownup's disposable income I just play online

nb by serious i mean stromkirk noble rather than 4x snapcaster

look i like the forbidden alchemy into unburial rites into sun titan into grave titan via 8 million rare dual lands as much as the next guy but at some point it turns into an unwinnable arms race

this is why im only playing w/friends or booster draft/sealed

i'm gonna play in the dark ascension prerelease. haven't played since invasion but made a new friend with a sick collection and played a couple cube drafts with him; was ill.

is cockatrice the new good online app? what about magic workstation?

i will also play people itt online. suppose i might as well get cockatrice

cockatrice is way better than workstation!

it's way better in that it doesn't crash / is super easy to set up and use

but the deck builder really sucks and there is no sealed generator

dark ascension seems pretty neat so far, there's a card that raises all Zombies from the dead and then literally says "Destroy all Humans"

sucks to be like the one dude playing the hypothetical "Human" deck and just get totally hosed. guess you have to accept your fate

was thinking about a human deck for dark ascension actually, the human token generators + champ of the parish + all the innistrad human-centric equivalent seems like a good time. until the zombie apocalypse.

I like the 'stuff happens when you have less than 5 life' ability

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37 mil is for the alternative spelling 'magic the gathering'

yeah there are some pretty obnoxious ones (like the pro black and green double strikers and that stupid "geist of saint something" that's way more powerful than it should be), but that card just amuses me - IIRC the Zombies in Innistrad aren't even worth playing in draft

im makin a t2 deck based around this card:

http://deckbox.org/system/images/mtg/cards/234436.jpg

obviously its expensive to cast but it's a damn 20-point life swing and there are a lot of good accel. cards, so why the hell not? it's like a $1 card too

haha that's pretty dope

there are some blue/black mill yrself decks that work with zombies but it requires a really specific draft setup in order to get the big black spells to pay off ime

geist of saint traft is way overpowered but its p easy to work against. i still like g/w humans deck tbh just too many combos in limited rn

the 6-7 mana cards are definitely so much better than they used to be - i've had games where i'd be in total control and my opponent would just tap out and play some ridiculous card where its like "all your crreatures die, and oh yeah mine all get bigger LOL", whereas in the past it would only be like a 6/6 flyer or something

like travel prep + gnaw to the bone make g/w so rad

was thinking about a human deck for dark ascension actually, the human token generators + champ of the parish + all the innistrad human-centric equivalent seems like a good time. until the zombie apocalypse.

yeah 'gather the villagers' or w/e the new dark ascension card is that gives two +1/+1 human tokens looks so rad w/champion of the parish.

geist of saint traft is way overpowered but its p easy to work against. i still like g/w humans deck tbh just too many combos in limited rn

give me a break, it's got "hexproof", the dumbest ability of all time
so like, I can't touch it, but you can play that enchant creature that gives it +4/+4 and flying the next turn

wtf geist of saint traft that's ridiculous

I mean that's essentially a 6/6 w/ no drawbacks for 3 mana

i havent played against decks w/that card much but its only 2/2

yeah but if they get off to a slow start you can hit them w/ 6 damage

I dunno I guess context matters and decks are pretty small creature heavy these days but in old school magic that card would be banned in two minutes

yeah Lamp and Morphling was just a 3/3!

anyway i'm doin some cock on this sorin's vengence deck, it's actually working okay. what I hate is that I'm playing aganist the same damn decks over and over again, it's like these decks are winning magic WORLDS, you don't need to test them to see if they work!

haha i have no idea what morphling is.

i can see why it seems overpowered and certainly the fact that its reaching snapcaster level prices tends to imply its really good but the couple of times ive played against someone w/that card it wasnt much of a problem, there are so many cheap creatures that can take out a 2/2 ive been able to deal w/them quickly and in draft no ones going to have a bunch of them

i wouldve assumed in constructed formats there are a lot of ways to deal w/ it then but the way its risen in price maybe not?

what id really like to see is someone get a werewolf deck that works

problem is there are hardly any good werewolves after transformation. moonmist would slay if transformation got more powerful.

apparently the new werewolves in dark ascension are better

morphling was basically the most annoying creature ever, it just seemed unkillable, especially since decks that ran it usually played a lot of counterspells

geist isn't really a format breaker but it's so clearly powerful, a 3 mana creature that can end the game quick on its own and combos with a lot of stuff. like 3 mana creatures that need to be answered right away are so rare.

i haven't really figured out how to make werewolves work but i like reckless waif as a first turn drop given that cockatrice constructed players often don't cast anything on their first turn as their carefully laid trap decks come to fruition

http://www.cardshark.com/images/magic/Promotional%20DCI%20Judge/morphling.jpg

er idk what format that pic is but it was originally urza's saga

Mayor of Avabruck seems very very good on its own. I have a friend who tried the werewolf deck and it simply didn't work, it gives your opponent too much control over what's going to happen

i mean, if you're under pressure, you have to cast spells to deal with it, but if you do your guys remain shit humans. i would guess dark ascension has a few good ones that actually make the deck viable

haha yeah the one time i tried drafting werewolves it turned out p badly. the good cards are just so expensive to get out!

yeah mayor of averbruck is p good. i like kruin outlaws a lot too but yr curve on werewolf decks isnt great and moonmist is hard to time at least for me

vampires are quite good in limited btw - vampiric fury is everywhere and is pretty punchy, and creatures like interloper and markov patrician are strong too. i did one draft where i first-picked a bloodline keeper, then built a solid and super fast deck around it, with like 3 vampiric furies and 3 interlopers. i lost in round 2 though due to some crap pulls :(

don't think i drew the bloodline keeper once in that second round come to think of it

Moonmist is really the only great thing about the deck. Otherwise like I said it really gives your opponent too much power over everything. Kind of the anti-control

i mean i like a lot of the individual werewolf cards and im p into the flavour but its just so slow

w/ the stuff like 'huntmaster of the fells' it looks like setting up a combo/token deck for werewolves

xp - theres one guy at the store i play at that loooves vampires but i havent been so impressed. the group of friends i play casually w/ theres a dude that plays vampires that does well tho w/ olivia volderen and the nobles.

I think I am opposed to this creaturist stuff in principle, it feels un-mtg

but I guess it's been going on for years

the draft deck I was most proud of was a Curse of the Bloody Tome deck, I drafted 5 of those plus 3 dream twists and just tried to turbo mill. It only played 4 creatures, hands down the weirdest draft deck I ever made. It made it to the finals and got CRUSHED by an insanely fast and super-reckless vampire deck that suddenly had no drawbacks against me

I think I am opposed to this creaturist stuff in principle, it feels un-mtg

what do you mean?

the metagame being about creature types instead of that sorta just being an aside

i think outside of limited the metagame isnt really that much abt creatures? idk this is just from browsing forums

yeah i dont know if i agree with that iatee, creature type definitely matters a lot more now but I think that's just part of an overall plan to make more cards that play well with other cards

I think I am opposed eras where creature decks are the most poweful for aesthetic reasons. like there's something more appealing about the highest levels of the game being complicated mostly-spell decks w/ complicated interactions.

anyway just being a complainy oldtimer ignore me

opposed to*

as an old-timey counterspell douchebag i completely agree. arcane rules interactions are sort of aesthetically pleasing in their grotesque way. see match 2 game 2 video here: http://www.channelfireball.com/home/running-the-gauntlet-esper-vs-8-player-queues/

the problem is that "complicated mostly-spell decks w/ complicated interactions" don't allow for much interactivity from the opponent (whereas creatures can be dealt with/manipulated in many ways) so it kind of removes a lot of the skill component.

also, the creatures themselves (and the cards that interact with them) are getting much more sophisticated ; I have a deck that runs like 26 creatures that's probably the most complex and intricate type 2 deck I've ever made

I think the opposite is true actually - creatures are (eventually) on the board and so most of the time what you do with them is going to be fairly predictable, whereas your hand is hidden so there's a certain poker element

i guess id have to know what kind of decks youre talking about. its just when you say that I think about Trix (the Delusions/Donate deck) and ProsBloom, both decks that were just like "I'm going off now, gg"

yeah when i tried playing the new phyrexia set i feel like there was still a lot of like 6 creature cawblade decks that ran a bunch of complicated spells so ive really like how innistrad plays conceptually. theres something p satisfying abt getting to build a board w/o constantly having to worry abt counters

but ive enjoyed the sheer variety of possible deck builds this set and there are def like mill decks and burning vengeance that arent creature focused

nah I don't necessarily mean combo decks more just eras where the strongest decks are spell based vs. eras where the strongest decks are creature based

I think I just like the mindgame aspect, the 'I'm a wizard, you're a wizard, let's assume this will take a long time and there will be a lot of subtle moves and decisions'. but this is just taking things back to lamp's sandbox poll about why my favorite color is obv blue.

like counterspells might be annoying but I think they add a huge decision-making element to the game

yeah I like Innistrad too, just wish they never printed Nihil Spellbomb as that destroys like half the cool decks you can build with that set and it's only a one mana artifact. which sucks because as far as a "graveyard-based" set it's so much more complicated than stuff like "get 7 cards in your graveyard for +2/+2"

on the other side of that there's nothing more unpleasant than playing against a control deck that's absolutely destroying you because you mulliganned twice or got Wrathed pretty badly, only you don't actually lose until 10 turns down the road...

that said, those games were very awesome in the old 250-card 5-color format

I definitely get a rush playing Black Lotoses and Ancestral Recalls n shit on Cockatrice

yo i am excited for dark ascension. i'm getting really into G/W. i think mayor of avabruck is gonna be the block's sleeper, with all the human tokens coming out. my G/W deck is doing okay with just mild synergies - i am doing cheap token strategy with geist-honored monk, midnight haunting, and intangible virtue, but also cranking out wolves with the mayors. throw in some cheap werewolves and pump them all with gavony township. then parallel lives for fun. it's been going ok so far and i think when i can switch from spirits to humans i will be able to get the most out of those mayors.

blasphemous act kills my deck

erm... Darmok?

played the prerelease on saturday. got almost no sleep the night before and was super exhausted and everything took forever to happen so i left before they finished (went 1-2). the guy sitting across from me pulled the big DA planeswalker and an isolated chapel so i was stupidly kinda bummed from the start. wish i had more fun but i won some boosters so it paid for itself, mostly

planeswalkers seem like they'd be pretty broken in sealed play

well this was my first sealed tournament but the format seems too fast for them to really work.

I did the one locally and went 3-1. Won the first 3 and nearly won the 4th - I had 11 2/2 tokens out plus some flyers and couldn't imagine how I was going to lose, then my opponent plays a card that literally removed all my stuff from the game for one turn and swung in for the win. That thing is so nasty.

I haven't seen too much of the set yet but my first impression is that the "undying" creatures seem very nasty and possibly very good in standard. My pick for the sleeper of the set is "Increasing Savagery", which gives a creature 5 +1/+1 counters for 2GG and can be flashbacked to add 10 counters (for like 7-8 mana). Normally this would suck but green has a bunch of creatures now that are tough to kill right now.

I got the planeswalker too and am desperately trying to trade or sell it while it's $50+. Seems very good in a token-based deck but otherwise it's very underwhelming. W/B tokens looks really good (especially with the flashbacker that makes flyers) but it also seems like it's going to get absolutely stomped by cards like Ratchet Bomb.

are any of you guys interested in doing a draft/tournament online for one of the newer sets (maybe Innistrad)?

I got the planeswalker too

fuck you

dont feel too bad. it's going to tank hard.

haha i got one too, my first time pulling a money card at a prerelease

if the tokens deck is real it's not gonna tank too much, keep in mind that the next set is going to be a standalone, so this one's only going to be drafted/opened for a few months. this is what happened with Jace the Mind Sculptor in Worldwake, tho obv this one's not nearly as good.

the next set is a standalone? is it still part of Innistrad block?

IMO you can't really compare Jace, as the card's power level was so high that it was playable in basically every blue deck, and not just in Standard. I mean Lilliana's only $30 and she seems good enough to play in other formats. Whereas Sorin only looks good in one potential Standard deck. I just can't see a Black/White planeswalker getting enough play to justify a $25+ price tag.

yeah it's still part of the block story-wise, but it's a large set with new/different mechanics and will be drafted by itself. basically the same deal as Rise of the Eldrazi a couple years ago.

ahhh, cool. ever since Coldsnap I never had any idea what was going on with the block structure. crazy how much I was worried back in like Kamigawa block that they were running out of ideas, and they responded by printing way more new and well-designed cards every year

yeah i think it's sweet because i love triple-large-set draft formats and don't really like full block draft formats with the exception of Ravnica block

exactly - I loved the way Ravnica came together but stuff like the Scars block where you'd suddenly be pushed into doing blue/white infect knowing that there would be nothing for you in the next 2 packs was pretty awkward. but I do like 2/1 drafts with a large and a small

for me it's mostly that being able to consistently get certain cards esp. uncommons makes drafting various gimmicky archetypes a lot easier. like in 3x Innistrad draft, there's a real deck you can draft that plays out like this:

step 1: play out a bunch of defensive creatures to stall the game
step 2: mill your entire deck into your graveyard until you have no cards left
step 3: on your upkeep before you'd draw from an empty deck and lose, flash back Memory's Journey to put Runic Repetition into your deck and draw it.
step 4: use Runic Repetition to get back Memory's Journey

at this point you can use Memory's Journey and Runic Repetition to draw whatever card you want each turn. Now you can play Gnaw to the Bone to gain 20+ life if you're close to dead, then loop Spider Spawning to make enough tokens to kill them.

it sounds like someone's weirdo casual combo deck but you can actually draft this, and it actually works! and stuff like this is really only possible in a 3x large set format when you have the maximum number of chances at getting the important cards

i've never seen anyone pull that off. i did make a (somewhat successful) deck with 4 creatures and a bunch of dream twist/curse that mills 2 each turn which struck me as a very odd thing to do in a draft. you can definitely do really goofy things if you're drafting 3x a small set. i remember the first draft I did of Morningtide in which I picked up 9 of these guys: http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=152736

i guess i'll have to see how the INN/INN/DKA drafts play out - I agree that 3x INN was a great format.

i actually don't think it was a great format. there's a lot of cool stuff you can do but most of it gets crushed by whoever at the table was lucky enough to end up with the best G/W aggro deck, or blue tempo deck with invisible stalker. i've had more frustrating losses than in any other limited format i've played, due to a lack of hard removal and a lot of powerful tempo cards like Silent Departure that punish you for tapping out for something big.

the worst example i can think of was that i actually had to concede a game before my 2nd turn because it was impossible for me to win

i'm not saying its terrible though, it's still a fun format! just not as balanced as other ones i've played

and the Dark Ascension pack should fix some of the problems too

picked up this dude's new game - king of tokyo. looks sick...

huh? what did he play ...or did you just mulligan to 4 or 5 ? (usually that ends things)

I like Innistrad draft b/c it gives you a lot of avenues to explore without 'forcing your hand' (unlike Lorwyn, which was all about how many creatures you could get in your tribe) - instead of drafting colors, it's more about drafting an archetype. Especially since most of them use the graveyards in different ways. Only thing that I hate is Invisible Stalker + Butchers Cleaver which seems to crop up fairly often and is just unfair as hell.

i was on the draw, he played t1 delver of secrets, t2 flipped it revealing brimstone volley, then played spectral flight on the delver and hit me for 5. I now have 2 turns to get rid of a 5/4 flying creature before i'm in burn range, and my hand/deck had no outs to that for less than 4 mana so i just scooped.

well flipping delver on t2 is pretty damn nuts in standard so yeah not much you can do there

worst I've gotten it was turn 1 Pilgrim, turn 2 Midnight Haunting, turn 3 double Travel Prep, I was on the draw and hadn't even played a card yet

ive enjoyed innistrad draft but i think ciderpress is right. on the other hand ive managed to win some games with really terrible decks like blue/black mill with a lab maniac and four other creatures

i have not gotten to win a game with lab maniac yet, and i am jealous of everyone who has

i made a t2 deck with him. basically it was a ton of cheap draw, looters, etc., with 8 counterspells and unburial rites to take Jin-Gataxis out of the grave, draw a ton of cards and win with Lab Maniac. really fun to play and it could really work well if you drew the counterspells but it was really easy to sideboard against

lab maniac is not very good in limited, i drew really lucky to get it to work and was playing a b/w deck with almost no removal

i would really like to do an innistrad draft online w/ ilx mtg players. is such a thing possible?

probably not, there's only like 5 or 6 of us and we'd all have to be online at once

we would just have to draft together. we could schedule the games at our convenience

sealed is 100x easier to coordinate but i'd be down for either

yeah I think coordinating a draft will be impossible but I'll do sealed

oh yeah, i assumed it would be sealed. i guess i didn't realize draft only meant w/ passing packs around.

so is there a way to coordinate that online?

if there is a good sealed generator outside of the one that was included in magic workstation I have not found it

Wow, this thread really took off since the last time I posted in... 2003? Jeez. I never really stopped playing, but I'm happy to see more people into the game again. The last few sets have some of the best-designed cards in a long time and I guess it's not surprising they're hooking people.

http://ccgdecks.com/ is a decent place to do sealed if you don't feel like installing Magic Workstation, though the interface for building the deck is a little hard to manage. I end up doing drafts on that site too, those usually work out well.

i would play either draft or sealed with yall

sealed is hella fun id be up 4 it

if it looks like we can get 8 people we can do some knockout tournament

http://i.imgur.com/SBSsE.jpg

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lahtedTO031qzgp6f.jpg

?

mario made out of magic cards?

oic

I wish I had cards to go to this w/
http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/midtowns-magic-gathering

the 'token white guys' thread on sna always makes me lol/confused

lmao

mtg-playing tumblr whites

http://i.imgur.com/HuGiY.jpg

what's awesome about that is that I have a buddy who looks EXACTLY LIKE that, to the point where he's able to convince people who don't play that he won some kind of contest and got to be on the card. i gotta post some pictures of this dude.

really excited cuz im playing a block constructed tournament tonight and i think im really, really happy with my deck

did u include a lot of serra angel cards in it to head off MTG misogyny?

(jk)

haha i totally do love angel cards and im psyched for the new block which seems like its gonna be angel heavy but im playing G/R undying

was playing W/b/g tokens but post-ban thought id give something different a go

i also love angels. white is my fave color by far. angels + white weenie just makes me so happy

i made a Tenab the Harvester EDH deck recently (for when my MTG friends came to visit us from NY) but really i was just enthusiastic about playing the white cards (i do have some killer green moves too). maybe i'll make a white/green EDH deck. or mono white!

whites my fave color too - ive been fucking around with a mono white legacy deck on cockatrice but itd be like $700 to build irl and not actually very good. i just want to run a bunch of stall enchantments like moat and castle and island sanctuary

I think I figured out how to get cockatrice to work on my shitty old computer, we should play again soon

Lamp people actually play block constructed where you live?

http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/large_lightbox/hash/6d/d0/6dd0c8962db9df3706a61569ff42354b.jpg

new preview card

sure have come a long way since the days of Seraph. this thing is insane.

they already made a 'you win' card didn't you? eventually they'll just make it cost 2 blue mana or something

it's not even particularly playable in constructed though. a lot of the best removal exiles or -X/-Xes things, both of which get around indestructible. you can bounce it too

this is what a big angel with an ability that actually wins you the game looks like: http://magiccards.info/zen/en/13.html

yeah compared to Plat Angel and Iona it's pretty tame. but we're in the era of Unburial Rites now. if Iona and Unburial Rites were legal at the same time that would warp the format.

Iona is AMAZING. I played an EDH deck with her once and basically shut down the game once she came out.

man... i just know i could never go down to the game shop w me shitty old decks and play this game. things done changed.

Haha unburial rites was my first thought my second was that she protects virtue and orb from most removal

idk I think shell see some play in W/x tokens

yeah it is amusing to look at the first four or so sets. because you think about Legends and Arabian Nights and you think about Library, Mana Drain, Nether Void, Tabernacle, Mirror Universe, all these insane Type 1 cards, then you look at the rest of the set and it's filled with stuff like this:

http://www.magicdeckvortex.com/cardpics/GOLD/lord_magnus.jpg

I remember going through the Arabian Nights spoiler list and realizing that there's really only ONE card in the entire set that they would print today, and it's Juzam Djinn.

guess that image didnt take. this is your typical Legends card:
http://static.tappedout.net/mtg-cards/legends/lord-magnus_medium.jpg

there is something great about the innocence of it all

they didn't know the cards sucked! they really had no idea how badly the cards sucked

alpha has so many garbage rares but its practically a different game so it's sorta pointless to compare

basalt monolith.

o.g. magic >>>>>> numagic fuiud

for sure

ian do you wanna play irl sometime? I have zero cards. but I sorta want to go to this: http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/midtowns-magic-gathering

http://princessleia.com/images/MyImages/Magic/palladia-morsChronicles.jpg

what is "vigilance"?

just a new name for the serra angel ability

i would go play in the magic midtown meetup or w/e. it seems okay. monday is a good day for me, at the moment, because i don't work late.
i have a few decks, we could share. there is a green/white and a black/blue and maybe a red/green as well..

but but but that's what made the serra angel so special.

all pretty much using cards from around revised/fourth edition/weatherlight era.

sorri 'm not maing ayny sense.

if i still have any dual lands not in decks i think i am going to trade them to the game store for Diplomacy or Settlers of Catan or something.

that was the golden age for me too

wanna go next week?

o.g. magic >>>>>> numagic fuiud

i like the look of the cards and general vibe of really old magic esp like arabian nights - antiquities and a/b/u but i didnt play magic in 93 and i dont really have the money to spend on those cards so

Lamp people actually play block constructed where you live?

it was just a one-off as far as i know but my friends and i play strictly block cuz we all p much stared playing/playing again w/innistrad

http://www.coolstuffinc.com/images/Products/mtg%20art/Fourth/Meekstone.jpg

http://www.coolstuffinc.com/images/Products/mtg%20art/Fallen%20Empires/Icatian%20Moneychanger1.jpg

http://static.starcitygames.com/sales/cardscans/MAGBET/demonic_attorney.jpg

card art used to be better too..

iatee, i will try for next week! i do not know what time? and i can't commit 100% because i'm starting a new part time gig that day and am not sure what time it finishes.

that link doesn't say, it seems so informal that there might not be a set time? I get off at 5 in midtown but can hang around til whenever.

Inspired by this thread/the equiv thread in the sandbox, I found some local bars here that have weekly drafts and went along to a couple of them after getting some practice in (also, reading about a decade's worth of Mark Rosewater columns on design, heh) - was pretty easy to slip back into (sets seem pretty draft-friendly), but quite a different game to when I stopped playing (Tempest-y?).
One of the nights they ran a "Chaos draft" using a couple of boosters from nearly every set back to The Dark & Homelands - they make Legends/Arabian Nights look pretty powerful, heh. Lot of people seem to play EDH/Commander, but I don't think I could easily rustle up a deck.

chaos draft sounds rad, wouldn't that be super expensive tho

revised and later packs are actually p cheap because there are so many unplayable rares

http://s.ecrater.com/stores/64306/4a7b4803ae949_64306b.jpg

Don't think there's any equiv to the Stasis artwork these days. Used to love all the Tennyson/Shakespeare/Poe/etc quotes on Legends-era cards, too.

http://i.backpackgnome.com/11858172334dbcf0ae334519.67025441.jpg

xpost It was 15 euro to enter IIRC (as opposed to 10 for the normal draft) - the guy who organises the weekly events has heaps of boosters lying around apparently and does something like this once a year; I don't think there was anything "valuable" like Alliances/Revised/Antiquities involved. They also had a few packs of Renaissance in Italian, which got confusing pretty fast.

they didn't know the cards sucked! they really had no idea how badly the cards sucked

That's what makes them so entertaining to look at! Especially the legends, their abilities/mana cost/power and toughness wouldn't coorelate at all. It would all seem so random. There would be 2/3 creatures with First Strike, where it's like, what sense does it make to have a first striker with a higher toughness than power? Just things that made no mechanical sense at all. I agree that's there's something endearing about it all! (especially in the art)

haha 2/3 first strike is p rad

i want to build a vintage deck out of all the weird enchant land cards in white cuz they are my absolute favorite kind of cards but its funny how little most of them end up doing

frogs are you playing standard at all? what are you playing?

One of the nights they ran a "Chaos draft" using a couple of boosters from nearly every set back to The Dark & Homelands - they make Legends/Arabian Nights look pretty powerful, heh

We tried this on Netdraft once with the first five expansions. Those sets were clearly NOT made to be drafted. I thought it would be a lot more fun than it wound up being.

frogs are you playing standard at all? what are you playing?

Yeah - my local store is running tournaments with a $1k prize pool which is getting people from all over the state. I wound up getting 3rd/4th with a Seance deck - it was one of the most mentally exhausting tournaments I've ever played. Basically the idea is to win with Lab Maniac, but you can also win with Sun Titan/Phantasmal Image. Now I'm working on an Undying/Proliferate/Culling Dias deck, but I'm not sure if I can get it to compete.

haha i saw that seance/lab maniac deck online and was... skeptical

i have a decent undying deck but its not really standard ready, G/r aggro seems p neat tho

i got 2nd place at a ~60 man tournament last month w/ my birthing pod deck, i think i'm cool with that being the pinnacle of my competitive MTG career

there's a starcitygames open in providence next month that i wanted to play in but then i realized its the exact weekend the new set comes out so i'd have about 24 hours to get any important new cards to update my deck with

xp - Where'd you see it online? basically I've been trying to use Mirror-Mad Phantasm for a long time and Seance seemed like the perfect fit. I really had no idea what to put in the deck so I'd be interested to see other people's ideas for it. Feel like I got lucky with it though, lots of very close victories and I didn't have to mulligan all day.

G/R aggro definitely is good - Strangleroot Geist and Huntsmaster are so ridiculously powerful. Along with Geralf's Messenger that's three insane "2 for 1" (or more!) creatures that can't be dealt with efficiently at all. Sadly I never pulled a Huntsmaster so G/R is off limits for me. Also they're all insane with Birthing Pod. Pod seems like such an insane card now that "Sacrifice a creature" instead means "put a +1/+1 counter on a creature"

there should be a thread on it on mtgsalvation i think he was using snapcasters and armored skaabs in addition to i think 2xlab maniac and 2xmirror-mad

haha i pulled total garbage from innistrad packs but i got three huntmasters (and a sorin) in the dka packs ive opened and traded two cages and a drogs reaver i pulled for the last garruck i needed so i have a p expensive deck for the cost of like half a box? predator ooze is a p insane card too and the combo of undying + blasphemous act is really powerful esp if you have some flayers out and i did really well in the block tournament but i dont think it has enough power for standard...

frogbs i was testing a 4-color seance/unburial deck last month, i'll find the list when i get home from work. it was pretty sweet, though maybe a turn too slow to be really competetive

yeah post the list - mine was just blue/white with some black for Unburial. also Lamp I don't know why you'd want more than one Mirror-Mad - that kills off a lot of the combo potential. you also only need one Lab Maniac. Noxious Revival is a really good card if you're aggressively milling yourself.

the creatures I used were 4 Phantasmal Images, 4 Armored Skaabs, 3 Merfolk Looters, 2 Sun Titans, and 2 Sphinx of Uthuun (really, really, really good in this deck), in addition to the 1 Lab Man and Mirror-Mad. Images and Skaabs really help stall vs. aggro. Ultimately, I lost the way I figured I would - game 3 of the match to go to the finals and I get Nihil Spellbombed 3 times. Not much you can do about that...

undying + blasphemous act is really powerful esp if you have some flayers out

exactly! I am not sure but I think 2 Flayers + 1 Act = 20 damage, b/c each trigger twice? I don't know, but I really like the Flayer anyway.

the keys to that deck (at least the ones I've built) are Culling Dias and Phantasmal Image. Dias turns Young Wolf into a one-mana 2/2 that draws a card. Geist into a 3/2 for GG that draws. It's insane. Image + Undying is also super abusable.

no i was just misremembering - it was also an attempt at a block deck: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=404870

yeah the flayers trigger each other and you can choose the order in which they come back - you can also pump them with kessig before damage resolves apparently but im kinda shaky on some of the rules so have never attempted it

Well, that implies you "only" get 15 damage, since that would be one trigger, then two. I don't really know. The whole deck is a rules nightmare. But it's damn fun!

I haven't really thought about block Seance - I mean Sphinx/Looter/Image were so vital to what I had, I would think you'd have to do something else. However, not having to play against Nihil Spellbomb and Surgical Extraction seem like a massive plus!!

uh, i will giant growth my tundra wolves for four, your go.

haha

pretty sure you'll get 20 damage because they both see each other upon entry simultaneously. it's kind of like in the valakut decks last year where if you were at 4 mountains and then fetched up 2 with your titan, valakut triggered for both of them

ahh, good. Flayer seems like a really underappreciated card in general. I don't know why the 5-color Unburial Rites decks don't pack a couple.

inferno titan's 3 damage divided is just better in the current format, plus you get it again every turn if they dont deal w/ it. flayer kills hero of bladehold but other than that has no great advantage

flayer's def a card to watch for post-rotation but right now the other 6s just blow it out of the water

though i did try to make a modern deck that milled/dredged itself then cast Pyrrhic Revival to 1-shot the opponent with Flayers and friends. it wasn't very good.

the advantage of flayer is that it's better vs. decks with lots of spot removal, which Rites can struggle with. but you're right, that is the reason why. really, the problem with Standard now is that the Titans are all so good that other 6-7 mana creatures are nearly unplayable. I really hope they don't come back this year.

haha yeah titans are a big part of the reason that the avancyn is so unplayable, really, theyre the benchmark atm

i dont mind though since it keeps really good creatures cheap - a playset of flayers cost me $4 - and i have no real desire to play standard competitively

yeah, now more than ever there seem to be a LOT of quality rares in the $1-3 range. instead of ranging from $3-$20 as they did in the pre-mythic days, now everything is either $1-3, $7-8, or $30+. I picked up four Skinshifters from M12 for four bucks, which is nuts because that card seems very, very good. Just don't know how to use him yet.

skinshifter was actually awesome against cawblade, i spent the last couple months between m12 and innistrad rotation beating people up with them. not sure if there's ever gonna be an aggro deck that wants it over strangleroot geist now though

there's a starcitygames open in providence next month that i wanted to play in

going to one of these seems like a nightmare

From what I've heard the prize support is awful, so it's probably not worth it. I don't know much about the pro scene but it seems like with the metagame shifting so rapidly due to the internet and the wide breadth of viable decks in Standard, you can't place high without a good deal of luck. Most Standard formats I remember only had two or three real "Tier 1" decks which meant it was easy to build something specialized to compete.

yeah it seems like standard is (unprecedentedly?) wide open rn which seems exciting, i guess?

ive found out i really like deck-building but w/o regular block events i dont think i could ever play anything but limited competitively

yeah i mostly just draft these days, its the most fun format by far (also the most difficult)

today's preview card is nuts:

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/avr/b7b1vb1clm_en.jpg

I don't think this thing is really great on its own but its ridiculously broken in any format where you have access to Brainstorm or tutor effects. In type 2 you can use Noxious Revival if you dump it in your graveyard. But really I'm interested to see how this impacts other formats where it's a lot more abuseable. Also this thing seems like a ruling nightmare, if someone calls you out on it, saying you didn't actually draw the card this turn, how is a judge supposed to rule on that?

yeah there are whispers that this is just gonna get banned in legacy right away. the next official banlist update isn't until june though

as for standard, i don't know if it's really that powerful without some way to combo out with it. the white miracle is more interesting to me. i'm pretty excited for this set though, it looks bizarre so far

I think you have to cast it *as soon as you draw it* so there isn't room for confusion

yeah but the idea is you can use Brainstorm to put it back on top of your deck so that you get to cast it for 2 mana next turn. it negates the downside of the card which is that sometimes you'll just draw it in your opening hand or off a draw spell and be stuck with a 7-cost card in hand

yeah I get that it's broken, just not the ruling confusion

honestly, brainstorm is the card that's broken, but if they ever banned that, they'd lose a lot of players.

is it not restricted in type1 or whatever the format is called now?

yeah its restricted in vintage but its a sacred cow in legacy

I remember hearing that some pros were also like Rounders-level card mechanics, and unlike that stupid "Morph cheating" problem, I'm not sure how you catch someone at first or even rule for or against someone as a judge.

I also wonder about this thing getting banned in Legacy, but I don't think they ever really ban a card without giving it a fair shake do they? (well outside of Memory Jar, which everyone knew was busted) Even Mental Misstep lasted until the DCI discovered that players were using it "the wrong way" or whatever. I can see this getting a lot of OTHER cards banned though.

also I really hope this thing doesn't see much standard play, I can see turn 1 Ponder, turn 2 Time Walk getting old real quick. as someone who has never played Delver but has played against it a lot I can say the whole "game swings on whatever my opponent draws" is not really a great feeling.

again, I think Noxious Revival is gonna be the key to this in Standard, especially since self-mill is a really efficient strategy now and the big graveyard haters like Nihil Spellbomb and Surgical Extraction are both going away soon

um you can't cast this on turn 2 fyi

well unless you play a birds of paradise turn 1

there are a number of paradise effects you can drop on turn 1...

helll iatee i cannot come to magic gathering gathering tonight cuz i am starting a new job and will be working kinda late and prob not up to going out afterwards, but however, watch out next week!

it's okay, I was gonna say we might have to do it later tonight cause something came up for me too. next week sounds good!

um you can't cast this on turn 2 fyi

ahh yes, for some reason the "when you draw it" part still is eluding me
still, turn 3 I guess? I mean really it's good on any turn.

time walk is more of a combo card than one that goes in a 'fair' deck. it puts you way ahead on mana but not on cards (since your extra draw step just replaces the time walk you used). i think people generally overrate how good it is as a one-shot effect; a big part of the reason its banned everywhere and part of the 'power 9' is because it was pretty easy to loop it

that said, past cards that resembled time walk in some way have all played very strong (remand, mistbind clique, sword of feast and famine) so i guess we'll see

idk, it's harder to think of blue decks that couldn't benefit from 4 time walks than blue decks that could

well yeah time walk has no downside even when it has no upside. not the case with this new card though

that's true

IMo the closest they've come to reprinting it was Cryptic Command, which usually played somewhat similar to Time Walk (in many more words obviously), and that card got played a ton

what pushes "take another turn" over the top is that it's just an effect you're always happy to have. If you have the mana to cast it there's no card disadvantage or mana disadvantage.

a big part of the reason its banned everywhere and part of the 'power 9' is because it was pretty easy to loop it

well, it's a power card even as a one-shot effect, but yes to the second point, and this new card is pretty much asking to be looped

also I'm not really sure how this plays if it's your opponent's turn? can you Think Twice then cast this? I would think not because it's a sorcery but abilities like this (such as madness) generally work at instant speed if I remember correctly

yeah they will probably have to clarify, cause 'after this one' becomes unclear if it's not your turn

yes, miracle lets you ignore the timing restriction on sorceries, same as madness

and what will happen is you'll take your extra turn, then your normal turn

So it seems very good with stuff like Merfolk Looter, since it allows you to discard the card if you get it early, and it gives you another chance at a miracle during your opponent's turn. Also I wonder how this works with "draw two cards" effects - is there a first card and a second one?

Gotta see what the other miracles are like, b/c you could definitely make an interesting Standard deck this way

from what i understand it works like this: if you play a draw 2 and you haven't drawn yet that turn and the first of the 2 is a miracle, you have to reveal the miracle to get the miracle trigger, but then you have to draw the 2nd card to finish resolving the draw spell before the miracle trigger goes on the stack and lets you cast the miracle

if you draw the 2nd card before revealing the miracle, it doesn't work since you've lost the proof that the first one was the miracle

this is why they gave them that fancy card frame, so you don't accidentally just put it in your hand and miss your chance to cast it

I imagine there will be a lot of arguments when people draw too quickly

rules-wise i think madness is the most comparable mechanic to how this works

that's kind of strange - so you pretty much have to draw one at a time now. I've never done it that way - if I play something that says "draw 3", I'll just draw them all at once

the card frame thing makes sense now - at first I just thought it was a "holy balls look at this thing!" like the planeswalkers

you only have to draw the first card of each turn separately, if you're drawing 7 cards on your opponent's turn you can just scoop the remaining 6

that's still kinda obnoxious

esp if you have like 1 miracle card in your deck

in Legacy it seems like it'll be a pain, but it remains to be seen the extent it'll be played since there's likely to be a banning or two soon. I guess you kind of have to tip them off if you're playing any miracle cards. in Standard, they've generally shied away from instants that draw more than one card lately so I doubt it'll be a problem.

either way, I am genuinely excited about this. I feel like Wizards get bit on the ass every time they try to do something abuseable (Storm, Madness, Affinity, the entire Urza's block), but they have to do it anyway.

the psuedo-time walk seems w/e to me, i mean i only play block and limited and i understand there are formats where it can get abused but its not that good a card imo. i think the best preview cards so far are the white angel rare and the white blink common

the mana cost of time walk effects has to be thought of differently since they don't really tap you out. I can't see running 4 in any kind of slowish blue deck really being a mistake!

looks like they're doing the same thing they did with Suspend, using Miracle as an excuse to reprint broken stuff:

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/cards/22325.jpg

a Miracle Balance would be one of the greatest things ever, but sadly I don't think it'll ever happen (as I truly believe Balance is the game's most powerful card and should never, ever be reprinted in any form)

haha some ppl were talking about 'balance' but the white miracle mythic is something garbage about angel tokens

theres a really cool black mythic 'descent into madness' that im tempted to preorder cuz i have the feeling you can do some rad stuff w/ it but overall i havent really been feeling this set

white mythic doesn't seem bad but IMO White Sun's Zenith outclasses it, and few people play that anyway. the blue and red ones seem better to me b/c of that land that allows you to draw and discard in case you get stuck with one in your hand, along with similar effects like Faithless Looting. honestly I have no idea how any of this is going to play out.

I like Decent into Madness too, but the fact that it exiles cards kind of takes away some of the effectiveness (as Reassembling Skeleton was my first though). plus it costs 5 and doesn't really effect the game until your second upkeep.

both the utility lands spoiled so far seem useful although neither are in colors id really consider playing

i dunno about constructed and don't really feel like thinking about it yet but this limited format looks pretty fun

i hope that land that makes creatures uncounterable isn't as good as it looks though, its already got my roommate to lose all interest in constructed since he only plays control

I am not sure how playable that is. There are so many great duals already. I guess in some decks it'll just straight up be better but you'd have to have all one creature type (which I don't think any decks do right now)

My pick for "sleeper" is Zealous Conscripts - think it'll hover around the $1-$1.50 range, but that card seems so damn good.

Right now my favorite design is this:
http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/avr/0h8auar7xf_en.jpg

yeah i feel like im still bad at magic cuz i dont think that rare land is s0 amazing?

i guess for two black and a red you can cast the pit-dweller and lightning bolt him?

3 mana for a 5/4 creature, not shabby

no no - when he dies your opponent gets him

OH. I missed the from the graveyard part. Eh, then.

you'd have to have all one creature type (which I don't think any decks do right now)

human tribal and zombie tribal are both very good decks in standard already. i think people are also worried about uncounterable primeval titans, since the main thing keeping that card in check was mana leak

OH. I missed the from the graveyard part. Eh, then.

you have to figure out a way to use him. if you can put +1/+1 counters on him he loses his downside. or you can bounce him, or...I dunno. it's not a great card, I just love the design of it.

cider - Human tribals play Geists, and Zombie tribals have Phantasmal Image and Phyrexian Obliterator. In both cases I think you'd want the duals that are out already (which are excellent already). Also, many ways to beat titans besides Mana Leak (Phantasmal Image works quite well too)

yeah i was thinking of ways to add that land to boros humans but the mana gets tricky esp if yr trying to use the new W/R utility land as well? im sure itll be useful but i wonder if itll be as powerful as some ppl are predicting, i guess.

i think i may be able to play the prerelease tho so im excited again lol

yeah some spanish site spoiled a shitload of the common/uncommon limited fodder yesterday so i'm getting all excited for drafting this now and trying to find the cool synergies etc. so far all my favorite limited cards are in blue it seems

yeah stuff like tandem lookout seems p powerful in sealed/draft. in general u/r seems interesting

I can't figure out if soulbound is going to be tons of fun or if it's just going to make for incredibly complex board states. Say your opponent's got four creatures out, three with soulbound, and you're trying to figure out how to block...yikes

full spoiler is up on the main site. set looks pretty good for limited, at first glance the power level of the commons/uncommons seems really low for a modern set but i'm sure some of them will play stronger than they look. removal looks worse than innistrad's, which was already pretty bad, so that makes me think the format's going to be all about combat tricks with the soulbound guys, and trying to blow out your opponent in combat without getting blown out yourself.

i'll wait to pass judgement until the prerelease, but right now my feeling is that drafting decks that abuse soulbound as well as the blue/white Flickering ability are going to work well. and for that, I feel like Black will be very underdrafted.

IATEE

do we MAGIC tonight?
should get there around 5:30-6.. i have to find decks but i am p sure i know where they are now.

ahhh I gotta googleproof that

but yeah that time works great for me

I'm excited I haven't played magic irl since jr high

where are you guys playing?

there is this big weekly event that happens in one of those midtown indoor sorta-public spaces

citigroup center iirc.
sorry for lack of g-proof.

yeah 53rd and lex

oh, i hated in NYC that there was no good place to game. Jim Henley's was blah, and all the other gaming/collectibles places were way too small to do anything (like Forbidden Planet, that other place in midtown, Midtown Comics, etc).

the 20 Sided Storw in williamsburg was PACKED with teens playing when i hit it up a few weeks ago.

^^^ magic events there are p well attended ime (which is admittedly limited)

i laughed when i saw that they remade castle in the latest set since its one of my favorite magic cards

I think u guys should make a short documentary film abt this experince and post it here

otm

i hated going to brooklyn. too much travel time from washington heights

if you're limiting your new york experience based on things like "too much travel time from washington heights" then i just don't know what to say.

okay, i can't find my decks where i thought they were. gonna continue looking. might be at work, in which case i will stop over there later. i cld swear i moved them from my last apt directly to here tho, so i am gonna keep digging in the closets.

!! okay here's hoping

this is why i should have made sure to find them after last time i couldn't find them before the day of the event
i am a big procrastinator/lazy.
BUT i do feel in my gut that they are here somewhere, and the closet is very overfull.

if you're limiting your new york experience based on things like "too much travel time from washington heights" then i just don't know what to say.

Lol my NY experience. I lived there for ~13 years.

but what % of that time was spent playing magic in a citibank building

is the real question

it's cute tho. the whole "make sure to get as much out of NYC before you have to leave" sentiment :)

i wasn't trying to insinuate anything! i just mean that you know, any neighborhood is gonna have its own particularities re: travel to other boroughs or neighborhoods, but that's no reason not to take a book on the train for 45 minutes imo.

also, iatee, i think i may have to bail on u tonight. i cannot find my cards anywhere & it is making me crazy. gonna keep looking and will let u know if i succeed. if NOT, i will 100% absolutely make sure to have found them by next week.

the real question i have, is: what is the possbility I accidentally threw them away while moving? idk. i DID find part of a "rebel" deck in a tote bag though, so that gives me hope. also wonder where my binder with raers is

if only it was 45 minutes. more like an hour to an hour and a half. and esp since a lot of these MTG events went until late at night it wasn't practical getting home so late

sux alright keep me updated

cards still not located.

really annoying!!! worried that i threw them out while moving??

but i also feel like they cld be in a tote bag somewhere buried within another bag or box or under a pile of stuff .

so i entered a deck in one of their weekly deck-making competitions

what competition? something on the website?

going to midnight prerelease tonight, because 3 months is just long enough for me to forget how awful it is to be at the game store until 6am

Anyone play in this thing? I did and went 2-2; suspected I got a pretty crappy card pool, as I didn't have any playable rares nor any of the real swingy uncommons that dominated me in the matches I lost. That's the impression I got from this set - lots of haymakers, possibly more degenerate things than I've ever seen in limited, and a surprisingly small amount of removal (believe it or not, blue seems like it'll have the easiest time dealing with creatures this time around)

It looks like Gx Soulbound, W/U flickering, and W/R aggro are all going to be the top limited decks, though Black has some very good aggro cards as well (and you can play Angels if you get the right stuff). IMO this set is pretty terrible for Sealed (as you will likely wind up with 15-16 cards towards all those decks and really have to stretch if you don't get the right card pool), but draft should be really fun.

yeah i went 4-1 with a U/R tempo deck that had good commons/uncommons but no 'haymakers', so i think i had the opposite impression of the set. Except for the one match I lost to Dark Impostor (had no way to deal with a card that wins the game outside of combat) I felt pretty invincible, since I think about 90% of the room completely misjudged the format as slow when it's actually very fast.

i played on sat. i was up 3-1 but i badly misplayed during my final match to finish 3-2. i had 4-5 really solid cards in each color but also lots of total jank so i had a hard time putting together a really solid deck, i ended up going W/R/u humans splashing blue for ghostly flicker, bruna and the 1U unblockable spell. flicker effects and all the excellent etb red cards is really powerful and i probably shouldve gone 3-0 with that deck. my first attempt was with W/U control ft. bruna, a bunch of enchantments and some really good UU cards but i just didnt have enough creatures/removal to make it work and switched after going 1-1.

idk i thought this was a really fun sealed environment - might try to play the actual release next sunday.

well Soulbond is by nature a very swingy mechanic. since my deck had virtually no removal (as I opened almost none) some of the green ones would just destroy me, especially the +4/+4 one which essentially added 12 extra power for five mana. in general I think this set is designed to do very powerful things in Limited. the flickering + 2/2 flying bounce guy gets out of hand quick (the four mana "bounce two creatures" sorcery is also insanely good), and R/W can deal a ton of damage quick as a big % of those commons and uncommons are designed to be played together. add to this the miracles and abundance of huge flying Angels and things get a bit unhinged.

just did my first AVN draft yesterday, as expected it was really fun, and maybe the most complex draft format yet.

first pick was Vexing Devil (which I thought kind of sucked in draft, but it's worth $15 so I'm not passing it) and was able to go mono-red. dunno how much detail I want to go into here but it really feels like there is so much synergy with the Red humans here. Thatcher Revolt is the deck's bread and butter - kind of terrible on its own, but it interacts with SO MUCH in this set. I managed a turn 4 kill with two of them, which I've never done in a draft before.

drafting a fast deck seems like a good strategy - flicker is slow and soulbound is very susceptible to removal. put a premium on 1 and 2 drops (trust me. there aren't many).

okay, here's another observation - this is one of the most removal-lite draft sets I've ever seen. very little "straight" removal at common. I sorted by commons and found everything that can deal with a creature - it's not pretty

White:
Defang - kinda crappy, essentially just reduces a creature's power to 0, but doesn't stop any abilities and can be flickered away
Righteous Blow - great card, but it only does 2 damage

Blue:
Mist Raven - great card but it only bounces
Crippling Chill - only stalls a creature for a turn
Peel from Reality - more bounce, kinda have to build around cards like this
Spectral Prison - this one actually seems okay, but would need to be sided out a lot

Black:
Bone Splinters - this is the ONLY common that actually says "destroy target creature" on it, so it's very good, even if it's card disadvantage
Death Wind - can kill anything, but you almost always pay more for it than the creature you're destroying
Ghoulflesh - sideboard at best
Undead Executioner - pseudo-removal, definitely good but -2/-2 doesn't take care of the good soulbounders, plus it takes some work

Red:
Guise of Fire - sideboard at best
Pillar of Flame - good, but only works on small guys
Thunderbolt - only kills flyers

Green:
nothing

So yeah, there are plenty of playables there, but few of the removal spells actually give you mana advantage or card advantage, and of the decent ones, only two are instants! (Righteous Blow and Death Wind)

i think you're really selling Mist Raven and Crippling Chill short, those seem like great cards. Chill stalls a creature for 2 turns, not 1, since you use it on your opponent's turn before they can attack with it, and it's a freeroll card-wise which is always more powerful than it looks/feels. it played very strong for me at the prerelease.

also, Ghoulflesh and Guise of Fire are perfectly maindeckable. -1/-1 removal has been playable in formats with far more removal options than this one

the lack of instant removal is obviously intentional to make sure that the soulbond guys are good and aren't just constantly setting you up to get blown out

err meant peel, not raven

raven is the best common in the set though i'm pretty sure

agreed, but that 2/4 lifelink angel is a very close second. Raven just has more synergy w/ everything.

Crippling Chill okay, the problem is it doesn't really help much vs. Soulbound (since there are usually two scary creatures out) nor Humans (as they will often have a bunch of critters). Feeling of Dread would be way better. But it does seem very good vs. Angels and the Black "loner" architype. And Peel is one of the best commons in the set, I know that - didn't mean to sell that one short, it's obviously great in this format. But I'm not convinced on the -1 toughness effects - Guise of Fire I like a little better since you can get a few other minor uses out of it, these cards *are* maindeckable but IMO they'd get cut fast if I had too many playables.

Basically it seems like the lack of instant removal is making the Soulbounders a little too good, especially the green +X/+X guys. I don't think this is a problem, just keep in mind that A) Druid's Familiar is really a windmill slam first pick, and B) instant removal is at a premium, and hell I think Peel from Reality may even be first pickable.

is human frailty an uncommon?

ive maindecked guise of fire in two sealed tournaments and not really regretted it, its good as early removal and really anything you can use to disrupt soulbond is v v worthwhile

it only disrupts Wingcrafter, the Lookout, and the Peddler though. IMO the +1/+1 guy is the one you have to worry about (in common at least)

Human Frality is uncommon, but super maindeckable

well i meant 'disrupt' in the sense of forcing them into bad trades or 2 for 1s that will break up bonded pairs and not just using it as straight removal

i feel like there are a lot of really good commons and uncommons in this set and a lot of kinda terrible rares (in limited). should be fun to draft

wait till you randomly lose to a Bonfire of the Damned, that'll change your mind

someone passed me Entreat the Angels at FNM last week, which is a $20 card on top of being an insane bomb. was pretty clear from the other good stuff he passed me that he was pretty much oblivious so i felt kinda bad but if you don't even know enough to know what the chase cards in the set are then i dunno

yeah i've had that happen with a Snapcaster, I had to tell the guy "hey uhhh, back up, this thing is worth money" (I'd feel like shit otherwise)
one of the great things about the first couple weeks of a set's release is that some people really just don't read all the cards, I got an Ulvenwald Tracker Pack 1 as a 7th pick, which is insane, the guy's even better than Daybreak Ranger

someone passed me Entreat the Angels at FNM last week

i would feel so bad but also so good about this

haha i pulled a vexing devil in my sealed pool last saturday and was really surprised to find out it was worth decent money for some reason i thought it was still like a $4 rare...

i was really bummed though cuz i left the cards i wasnt playing with behind on the table after a match and by the time i realized what had happened someone had scooped them up :// nothing supervaluable but it sucked nonetheless

xp yeah i love the few weeks between the set release and when the top players start putting up their draft videos, at which point everyone suddenly starts drafting much better

I haven't played since Ice Age, but downloaded the Magic 2013 Duel of the Planeswalkers for ipad and it's slowly coming back to me, even though the cards are all new. Has anyone else tried the app? Or are you all physical cards only? I haven't paid to unlock it yet but would do so if there were people that played.

wow there is an ipad app? how much is it

I would be into that and also would play with you 4 sure

Free to try out and I think $10 to unlock all the decks, campaign and multiplayer stuff.

I am currently dl'ing it, taking forever but I imagine it's huge. how many decks are all the decks? is there single player?

there is a single player campaign, and you can play against any of the decks you've unlocked. I think there are 15 or do decks.

that's interesting. how well does the computer play?

I've only played the intro section and I win most of the time. They seem to play their cards well, but the shuffle can be cruel.

I like this.

I'd prob prefer a version w/ less sparkles but I think the 'unlock cards/decks/etc' actually seems like a pretty good way to go about an ipad game. I'll def drop 10 bucks on it. you can hit me up whenever. do you know if you can play with internet randos too?

no idea. I haven't dropped the $10 yet. My next couple of days are crazy, but I'll pick it up the beginning of the week. Game Center ID is EZSnappin.

alright this is the first time I've given money to wotc since uh....1998

the AI is far from perfect, I'd prefer the game w/ fewer sparkly flourishes + if they kept all the turn phases + more decks, obvs. but this is def wayyy beyond yr average ipad game and well worth $10.

how's multiplayer?

I just played one w/ a stranger (won, obv). it's pretty good, I think. it allows you to connect to a random person or someone you know. no chat feature but the game played well and quickly.

overall I think this is a great app. the not-insignificant drawback is the limited supply of decks / the limits to deckbuilding and the fact that most of the decks are pretty straightforward and creature heavy. some of the more interesting dynamics of the game aren't around w/ the cards available...makes it easier for the app to do most of the gameplay work for you (w/r/t tapping, life, drawing, etc.). sometimes the fact that it's so automatic can make it hard to do something more nuanced, tho.

as far as playing a random game of magic w/ a stranger or decent-AI, it def works well and looks good.

maybe i'll get this. how does it feel re: touch interaction? do you tap cards w/ finger to tap them, or do you actually do turning motion on screen? also, is it a stress to read the cards or does stuff look pretty big (w/out cluttering screen)? cause that program we used (i forget what it's called) was such a pain to try and read what every card did.

you can easily make a card bigger by clicking on it. you rarely tap stuff yourself, it taps mana for you, you're mostly just dragging stuff across or onto the playing field. I've never been in a situation where it'd matter what lands get tapped (almost all the decks are single color) but I'm curious if it knows enough to give you options.

one problem is there's no 'go back' feature if you accidentally tap the wrong thing, which can happen w/ a pretty fastpaced game. but as far as ipad-ness goes, the game works really well.

tell me how it works when you unlock a dual mana deck! i think i'd be really frustrated if it chose for you which color mana u wanna tap for uncolored costs

iirc there is only one. but you can dl the free version and play around to get a feel for what the $10 game is. I think they have constructed the game sorta-purposely so that the frustrating moments are less likely to arrive to begin with.

in the PC version you can hold ctrl or something to bring up a list of options for how to tap mana. not sure if/how that's replicated on the ipad but the option might be in there somewhere

I actually unlocked the dual color deck and it seemed to sorta assume the obvious choice when the situation came up. but w/ only one dual color deck it's not really a big issue.

like did it take into account what cards you had in your hand? or did a situation not come up where you had an instant u may have wanted to save mana for?

didn't come up

but again I think they've sorta done that on purpose w/ the card selection

I just really wish they'd remake Shandalar but that seems like such a longshot

the thing that's come closest to scratching my shandalar itch is magarena - the AI is *really good* and with the right cube there's an amazing feeling of "all bombs all the time" and every card is joyously unfamiliar if you haven't played since 2001 or whatever.

but still shandalar o man that game was just so amazing. let's quit our jobs and remake shandalar guys.

wait by shandalar you mean the 1997 microprose game right?

that would be pretty ipadable come to think of it

the AI in that game was really weird - it generally understood how to attack and block and when to play instants, but it would also randomly Giant Growth your creatures so it would die faster.

yeah I remember that. the AI in this isn't perfect, but it's pretty good all things considered. like it sometimes misses the higher level thinking moves but doesn't do anything completely inexplicable.

i guess i'll have to give this thing a try then. i'm already getting big into Magic Online - the "draft anytime" thing really is neat, and I'm doing well enough in AVR that I don't have to redeposit, so to speak

yeah i play on Magic Online a bit - my favorite thing about it is that they can randomly bring back old draft formats that are long out of print in paper. they've got Invasion block drafts up right now which was a great format that i would never have gotten to play again otherwise

what's your name on there?

i dig MTGO (its easy once you get past the state-of-1998 interface they got), and yes that is exactly what i love about it. plus the cube randomly coming and going is pretty nice. also it's so easy to unload everything you don't need; you don't really get taken advantage of the way you do in real life

my name on there is 'smh'

also i hope you've discovered the momir basic format, the real #1 reason to own a mtgo account

the avatar is ridiculously expensive (like 15 tix!), but yes it's definitely the second coolest thing (after the drafting). I don't have one yet but my buddy has it so I'm pretty familiar with it. Sucks getting Phage at 7 though :(

theres a momir event deck in the actual store for 10 tix, unless they took it out? anyway its well worth 10 bucks, the format is great and its something that can't really be replicated in paper magic

once you spend $10 for MTG Online, can you play it and enjoy it w/out dropping an additional $300?

depends what you want to do. I started w/ 50 tix which seemed steep but I've managed to wring some 20+ drafts out of that, and I still have like 20 tickets, 6 packs, and a bunch of cards to unload. if you want to do Standard it's fine, most cards are like 30-50% of their paper value, so it's not a huge investment. of course chase mythics are worth about the same as they are in real life (sadly)

i would play the fuck out of an MTG LCG

but fuck CCG's tbh

yeah MTGO is not for folks who don't want to spend much $. there's Cockatrice for that

I really love playing the white lifegain deck in this

I just lost to the computer despite having 120 life because they were able to make 5 32/32 creatures

Battle of Wits confirmed for M13

so far there's nothing too exciting in there otherwise (Thragtusk seems really good in this meta, and that mythic dragon is probably the best tournament-level dragon ever printed, at least among ones you actually want to attack with), except A) they seem to strongly hint that duals will be back next set in some capacity and B) so far, no Mana Leak

im holding out hope for timely reinforcements since i just bought a playset two weeks ago. but w/e cards are in m13 im just excited not to be drafting avacyn much longer

i bought duels because i wanted the promo cards (:/) but havent played it yet.

Yeah I'm getting a little tired of AVR draft though I've been doing so well with it online that it's kind of hard to quit

yeah i went 4-0 last night at a local draft and have won the last couple of 8-4s i played. it seems like an easier format than DII because there are fewer decks or potential lines of play? i mean im also probably just better at magic atp too but thats how it feels rn

Well DII was definitely very interesting because certain cards' values were completely different depending on what kind of deck you got - the 1B 2/1 flying can't block guy (Interloper?) was incredible in R/B vampires and almost unplayable in U/B zombies. I haven't really seen that in a draft format before. AVR is more about exploiting synergy between specific cards; Thatcher Revolt and Flowering Lumberknot are the two big examples, but really there are a lot of 2-card combos with just commons and the occassional uncommon. Soulbound obviously influences this a lot. I still think it's skill-intensive (every draft format is) but there are a lot of bomby plays with no real answer (Goldnight Commander + Thatcher Revolt comes to mind)

My son and I played a bunch of MTG this weekend. We are both neophytes with a biggish collection of random grab bag cards. I'd like to add something fun and not too expensive to our collection but am bewildered by the options. What should I get?

I think there are a lot of "beginner" sets out there. Core sets are usually good for this as they can be fun w/o much complexity. If you're just looking for cards, most stores will have bulk commons that you can get for cheap, especially if you're at a place where people draft a lot.

On a related note, all of M13 has been spoiled, and it seems intentionally weaker than the last few sets - Ponder, Mana Leak, and Cancel are all gone (nerfing Delver), BoP is gone (huh?), and there seem to only be a couple of chase rares (Thragtusk, the new Ajani, and the 5/5 haste dragon). Actually I'm kind of excited to see what this does to Standard in 3 months.

xp pick up some of the duel decks! they have some very cool mechanics, neat interactions, and when you're bored w/ the deal makeup, you can pull out the powerful cards (generally some planeswalkers + other interesting pieces) and put them in new decks. i particularly like the Ajani Vs Nicol Bolas decks if u can find them.

barring a reprint in Return to Ravnica it looks like Birds of Paradise is finally gone...thoughts??

one of my fave alltime cards since i was a grade school student. RIP.

it would be like serra angel going out of print

serra angel was actually gone from 5th and 6th editions, I sorta left around 6th so at that point serra angel felt like it was done

duels app is doing thing thing where it crashes at the startup screen - already did this to me once and I reinstalled and lost my progress. prob gonna reinstall again. annoying, tho considering how quick the progress is it's kinda w/e.

i was a big fan of the card too, but it is kind of out of flavor for green and IMO the 'flying' part of it has always been awkward, so I understand why "it's super popular" isn't keeping it around anymore

Just bought the 2013 version of the Deck Builder's Toolkit and am very happy with it. My son and I have been playing around with it for most of the weekend. Would definitely like to pick up some more of the Innistrad-style cards as I really like the gothic/colonial designs.