Magic: The Gathering C/D

also an answer for Bonfire

xpost

I haven't seen a band-aid card this clumsy since Teferi's Response. Still it's an exciting card.

The Prime Speaker seems like a nice tool in a certain type of deck - I already desperately want to make a Corpsejack Menace deck w/ the doubling Hydra and Predator Ooze, this guy would be absolutely ridiculous there.

Also seems pretty stupid with Deadeye Navigator! (as do a lot of cards)

Medic is such a mish-mash of a card. It's a Medic that is apparently a fighter (why is a Medic 3/3?), and sacs to Mana Leak an X spell? Pretty much screams "card made by development to fix problems in Standard".

zegana is pretty good yeah, not sure if its better than garruk primal hunter which has a similar draw ability but can't be blinked etc for more cards. medic is the first card spoiled that might actually make it into my current standard deck (naya humans)

i'm adding the cipher plague thing to my sleepers list though it's a pretty loose one since its the type of card i think they'd pay special attention to to make sure its not good

Especially since you'll be able to play Invisible Stalker for a good while in Standard. I would think development would spend a lot of extra time tweaking those cards to ensure nothing gets out of hand. You'd think after Urza's block they'd be a lot better identifying things that have the potential to be seriously broken, but then again we've gotten Storm and Affinity/artifact lands since, not to mention Dredge. I think every Cipher card deserves a second look, especially when you consider that if you build around them you can activate them twice the first turn. Still I fear that Development may price nearly all of them out of Standard play.

well Boros just got A) a stupidly good Charm and B) the most flexible, upside-loaded Fireball ever printed

Just saw Boros Charm, probably the best charm of the lot. Double strike not too relevant in Standard, but a combination Flame Rift/2-mana Rootborn Defenses is insane for aggro decks. I've been waiting for them to make an anti-Wrath card that actually has some value against non-Wrath decks. This plus the new Flames of the Blood Hand makes control look a lot worse.

yeah that XRW card in limited is uhhh

also consider that Boros Charm is nearly an instant "destroy target planeswalker" too. this card seems like it's going to be nuts in pretty much every format (Flame Rift still gets played in Legacy doesn't it?)

the issue with boros charm in burn in modern/legacy is that deathrite shaman already improved burn by so much. i've been running deathrite burn in modern and it's nuts but you really want that one fetchable green source to interact with reanimator, kitchen finks, etc so its essentially a 3-color deck now and boros charm would make that 4 which is pretty loose for a deck whose appeal used to partly be perfect mana/no wasteland losses

i read this whole thread over the holidays. it was like reading a long, very strange play. the cast of characters seemed unconvincing but by the end they had become like old friends, each with their own quirks and idiosyncrasies. so, in summary, we are old friends now.

now i'm trying to figure out how you'd build the dice factory deck in modern, god someone stop me please

I've been away from tournament play for a while but now that I think of it, Deathrite Shaman is a pretty ridiculous card for multiple reasons. If you make the mana work it's almost like a better Grim Lavamancer. Might be a $25 card in a few years.

it IS a better grim lavamancer, except for in the mirror. plus black gives you access to bump in the night and rakdos charm which are better cards than some of the red ones you'd play

actually its good in the mirror too, i just had a bad experience the other day where my opponent always had a lavamancer and i drew all my lava spikes instead of lightning bolts, which i think is clouding my judgment

gd boros charm huh

for anyone keeping track btw i am terrible at rtr draft again but am awesome at opening sphinx's revelation so i dont know how to feel

also should i grind the 6 qps i need to get a fow? doubt v much that im gonna actually play the mocs... one day...

6 qps for a fow? what do you mean

i need 6 more 1ps to qualify for the season 1 mocs at the eotm for which registering in you get a promo force of will or maybe thats for registering the prelims or something - idk i read a thread on mtgsalvation about it and 6 seems doable in two weeks but kinda a grind. otoh netting a fow seems like its worth it

fow is worth like 100 tix and I can win 6 drafts in 2 weeks, there has to be a catch

all of that for an online fow??

what would you even do w/ it

i have 18 points on the season already somehow despite being away without MTGO last week. might actually take a shot at getting the full 35 to skip the first round of the mocs, though its legacy this month which is not a format im comfortable with

enough people are grinding FoWs from this that the new promo ones will probably only be like 40 tix not 100. the old ones are already down to 85 before they've even started giving the new ones out.

well you need to win 15 to qualify and then you need to register in the prelim. if you actually have a legacy deck you can actually win another by doing well in the prelim. you can also win a third by doing well in the actual mocs. so you can come really close to getting a playset by winning a bunch of legacy matches which seems kinda '...' but there you go

yeah i'd probably enter with a draft deck if you really just need QPs to get it

iatee - you just sell it. 40 tix can finance many a draft.

the 40 figure is just an uneducated guess, could quite possibly be more depending on how many people actually make it to 15 points. usually its not too many but the attendance in daily events since they announced the FoW promo has doubled or tripled so people are really trying for them

what are you planing on playing? elves? was thinking about playing jund cuz i have most of the cards for it

i sold a shitload of standard/modern cards i wasn't using at the moment and bought wastelands, will probably play a maverick variant with some black for deathrite shamans. i dont want to buy goyfs or FoWs so that rules most things out.

basically whatever i play will just be for this event, then im gonna scrap it for tickets to buy gatecrash cards

sam black zombies seems like it might be a decent fit then? i feel like a jund is my only real option because i know how the modern deck works reasonably well and its not like im going to figure out storm or high tide or w/e atp

i don't like the zombies deck, i just want to play maverick since its the only legacy deck i've really played in the past, and even though it hasn't had high profile success lately i think its because people are just jamming the old lists rather than tuning it.

Classic!

If the Medic wasn't strange enough, Army Loyalist has a rather odd "cannot be blocked by token creatures", which I believe is one of the few cards now ever printed to actually reference creature tokens (outside of populate/Phantom General in RTR)

gatecrash cards have all been really weird and techy so far compared to RTR, there are a lot fewer utilitarian/staple effects

Was thinking the same, I'm waiting for the Detention Sphere/Abrupt Decay/Mizzium Morters type cards to be spoiled. I do like Soul Ransom an awful lot though, finally something good vs. Thragtusk

Most punisher cards kind of suck on principle but having to concede 4-to-1 card advantage seems a lot tougher choice than "take 4 damage"

okay, the wording on this card is confusing. I thought the discard 2/draw 2 effect sacked the creature. in this case it's definitely worse but I always thought Mind Control effects were underrated in general, maybe this'll work as a sideboard card

shitty control magic for 2ub is eh w/e

yeah I'm a lot less enthusiastic about it now that I actually understand how it works. the word "ransom" should have clued me in.

also a big chunk of the best Standard creatures have hexproof, ETB abilities, or haste, so I guess there really isn't that much value to be had right now. Evil Twin is probably better.

i just want to play bump in the night in standard, please print the cards that let me do this

I mean if the modern price for the control effect is 3uu shouldn't 2ub already be a fair price for a clean card?

not necessarily, control magic is an abusive effect in limited at 5cmc so they might not want to print a straight up 4cmc one even at rare.

Plus 2UB is better than 3UU. I can see going from 4U to 1UUU but generating colored mana is so easy these days. Either way I dont think Control Magic would be broken in constructed (obviously in Limited it's stupidly good) especially given how hard Phantasmal Image and Phyrexian Metamorph were pushed, both of which give you the benefits of ETB effects (which run wild now)

yeah I guess that makes sense.

I think this card would be more interesting if the 2 cards were discarded at random.

Don't know about that - I would assume most times it gets activated are when an opponent only has 2 cards left. Discard/draw 3 would be interesting. The problem with the punisher cards is that they've made ones where the "negate" effect is either almost always preferable (Vexing Devil) or at least on par (Browbeat), but never one where it truly had to be a last ditch thing for your opponent.

well 'at random' just makes it marginally harder to play around - right now if you have some crap in your hand and the creature is important it'd be a no brainer.

3/3 and it becomes essentially a clean 2ub control magic...

Weird card, but I like the flavor and the mechanic. I don't see it getting any play though. Despite how good control creature effects are for tempo and card advantage in Limited, when was the last time one was played in Standard? I know Volition Reins got some play, but it was mostly used as an answer for planeswalkers. Surprising to think that they aren't more commonly used.

i think it'll see play vs green creature decks at the least