Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

3/3 wouldn't exactly be "clean" - it still gives your opponent the option, however unattractive, to get the creature back should they need it to swing for the win or to not die or whatever. even more interesting would be if the card worked as I had originally misread it. Receiving the ransom on a stolen creature then killing it anyway seems like a really cool U/B mechanic. It's true that these things don't really get played in Standard (I used Mind Control as a sideboard card vs. Wurmcoils for a while), mainly because there isn't much that you really want to steal; way too many ETB effects and Restoration Angels floating around

well here's another awkwardly worded card that hoses a very specific subset of cards:

http://i.imgur.com/gtBc9.jpg

cheap and colorless teleportal makes it a very high pick in limited, I'd think

I can see Stompy or Gruul decks packing a few of these. I like how the narrow hosers like "counter target X spell" or "cannot be blocked by tokens" are being printed on already playable cards.

Looks like Bant Auras isn't going to have a very long run

ha

i wondered if hexproof + cipher was too broken in testing - that whole card feels like some p inelegant dam-building on wizards part

the only cards that ive liked so far are boros charm and the medic so maybe i'll try building a boros deck? wouldn't mind playing a very fast aggro deck with some resiliency

certainly Invisible Stalker + hexproof was a problem. actually I would imagine the presence of Invisible Stalker encouraged them to "play it safe" with a lot of cipher cards (like making the mini-Pox 6 mana instead of 5)

i want to attempt to play that card still even at 6 mana. is probably not good though if everyone's gonna be jamming aggro with boros charms.

also i'm a bit bummed at gruul charm being more of a sideboard card and not an all-star like some of the others, its really only good if the hurricane mode is relevant, and the best flier in standard has 4 toughness. forsythe said that it was balanced in relation to the other gruul cards rather than the other charms so hopefully that means there's some more pushed RG stuff we haven't seen yet.

it does seem pretty sick in limited though

i wondered if part of the reason gruul charm isnt that good is modern? it feels so much more narrow than anything except well, rakdos charm

the fact that this doesn't kill Restoration Angel is pretty obnoxious - really wish they'd printed it as a 3/3

rakdos charm seems less narrow though, i'm actually maindecking 2 copies in my burn deck in modern and there's almost no decks that it's completely dead against since all 3 modes are different relevant sideboard effects. gruul charm's first 2 modes are a lot less relevant i think.

no its definitely better than gruul charm but its probably the next worst charm in standard. well maybe izzet charm is worse.

I thought people played Izzet Charm in standard? It seemed solid to me, unless it just doesn't kill anything these days...

my p1p1 and p1p2 were both steam vents on what will be my last rtr draft. I kinda forced izzet cuz hey 2 steam vents and had a neat deck that always lasted like 20 turns but ultimately sucked cause winning requires a win condition. also pulled a vraska so w/e.

theres still two weeks of rtr drafting

oh yeah the prerelease is pre, release, I forgot

I might do one more then

but I'm kinda over it

i think ooze flux will be very good in limited simic decks! like, force simic p1p1. if you have 2 evolve creatures out, it is pretty much unlimited bears for 2 mana. i'm ok with that. looking forward to getting passed it all the time

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/gtc/is276nnn03_en.jpg

dope card imo

that is very cool

the one thing we haven't seen yet is a cheap Krenko's Command/Raise the Alarm style token generator for Boros. I know they generally try to ramp up the synergy for a bunch of Limited strategies but I wonder if a cheap token producer would make Batallion a little too good...

there'll probably be a card that makes 2 of those 1/1 haste tokens that the guildmage makes

we've only seen like 10 commons out of 100 so far so its useless to fret about some important thing missing for limited

well if Batallion on cheap creatures is too good they probably won't. I don't really care one way or the other I just like to make guesses. same way I wonder how many 0/6 walls there will be (to trigger Evolve), guys with evasion for Cipher, etc

q:

do you guys follow any good general mtg blogs / twitter accounts

pretty much all the pro players and top MTGO players are on twitter but none of them are singularly interesting off the top of my head.

most MTG articles are about constructed decks or are boring tournament recaps; the few limited articles that exist are mostly unhelpful, with a couple exceptions which are behind the paywall on starcity, plus the Ars Arcanum guy who i've linked in here before and only writes when a new set is out.

that sucks

my friend told me about the limited resources podcast, I kinda like it

have you all chosen guilds for prerelease yet?

I'm probably going Gruul and Orzhov.

the best twitter follow is probably @mtgaaron who's the head of magic r&d and tends to be pretty forthright rather than hype-y marketing-y like some of the other WotC people

Gruul is my fav guild so i'll definitely be running that at the midnight prerelease, not sure if i'll do 2 prereleases this time since that was a lot of magic for one weekend when i did it at the RTR one