Datasets:

amitrajitbh1

/

magicTCG

like 0

Easilt still $70 dollars or over, it's a very limited print run and is now a mythic, this will mean that some demand is met, but with a whole pack dedicated to getting modern staples more relevant, as well as shocks being reprinted, will increase the demand as. Ore people want to get into this 'more accessable' format!

When an ability like "regenerate this creature" resolves, all it does is wait until the creature would die that turn. THEN, if it would die, at the that time, it prevents that. In order for that to matter, it does a few extra things. First, it removes all damage. That's important, otherwise a creature regenerating from lethal damage would immediately die again. Then, it does two other things which basically allow a player to remove the creature for a turn even if it does regenerate. Those two things are: tap the creature (if it has not yet attacked at the time it would die, it can't normally attack after regenerating) and remove it from combat (if it hasn't already done combat damage, that would keep it from dealing combat damage). These other two effects aren't things it needs to do, they're just effects that balance regeneration, and perhaps add a little flavor.

I just want to say a few things here. SCG has handled each of the issues you've highlighted almost exactly as you would expect a business to handle them: "Banning other vendors from their event to corner the market." I don't understand how you could consider this them banning other vendors from their personal events. They put out all of the money for things such as venues, prizes, and staffing. Why are they under some mandate to allow other vendors at their events? The other large-market retailers could run their own tournament series and be the only vendor. SCG is just the only site whose decided to do it (TCGPlayer hosts a collection of vendors much like their website's model). "Rampant cheating among their top players." The most notorious of these issues have been events surrounding Alex Bertoncini, Edgar Flores, and that guy who drew the batterskull from the bottom of his deck. Bertoncini is still serving the remainder of his 18-month ban. Elden (Batterskull man) is still serving his 18-month suspension. Flores served a 6 month suspension in 2012 and has come back recently to T4 a Grand Prix. What more do you want from them other than to catch the cheaters that they can and punish them accordingly? Actually, how can you even fault SCG for people cheating in their events? That isn't in their control and it is going to happen in every facet of competitive play. "Canceling people's orders when prices go up." Do you have some hard proof of this happening to you? Because I have proof of the opposite. Back when Valakut was unbanned in Modern I ordered 8 copies of each Prismatic Omen @ 3.49 each and Wargate @ 0.75 each. I attempted to use Paypal to finalize the payment, but after an error in paypal processing, the cards we're removed from their inventory and I thought I was just boned. I received a call 3 days later while in Atlanta for the SCG Invitational (I live in Philadelphia) from their customer service department asking if i still wanted the cards at the price they had been advertised at. I gave them a CC over the phone and got my cards within a week. I will say a friend of mine did have an order canceled for Second Sunrise after PT RTR. Ben Bleiweiss (Basically SCGs #2) came out and said that the order was mishandled from how they normally treat things like this. My friend received his cards shortly afterwards. Read it all here: "Shady judge calls at their events." I've been playing competitively for about 7-8 years now. After playing in about 10 SCG Open events over the past few years, I have noticed nothing "shady" about rulings given during these events. Sure, every once in a while, judges get things wrong. I've seen bad rulings happen at all levels of the game, and it is just a part of the game when it comes down to it. I can't say for certain whether "shady" stuff goes down or not, but I know I haven't seen it. I would also believe the onus is on the accuser to cite specific examples when throwing around accusations like this.

Unless your creatures are going to directly impact combat somehow. (Haste, pumping your guys, etc.), by attacking first you may force your opponent to make a decision. For example, the defending player has 3 mana up and both an Azorius charm in hand and a dissipate. If he uses his mana in combat to bounce your guy, perhaps you can cast a creature without it being countered. The reverse is true as well; maybe we'll hold off on using that Azorius charm, just in case you cast a nasty spell in Main Phase 2. If you always wait, your opp doesn't know if you are planning to just pass the turn or do something else.

It's not a hard and fast rule, there are some creatures you might want to play before combat (ex. Goblin Warchief, Hellrider, etc). Those creatures tend to have haste and/or affect combat. One reason could be playing around your opponents combat tricks like Wing Shards or Peel from Reality. Let's say you have a grizzly bears in your hand, and 3 creatures on the board. Playing it before combat has no real impact. If you enter your combat phase and your opponent has a Blustersquall (which she casts with overload) will leave you with no blockers for the next turn. If you cast it after combat you can at least block with a Grizzly Bears. Another reason could be to play a combat trick or pretend that you have combat trick in your hand. This could be a Giant Growth, Restoration Angel, or Necrobite, etc. The more cards you have in your hand the more likely your opponent would have to assume you have something to affect combat, but it also ensures that you can play your trick when you need to as well. It can also play around Counterspell. It forces your opponent to make a decision to make a play now or take damage to make a play later in the turn. If your opponent is playing some sort of UW control deck with Counterspells and flash creatures and combat instants, then attacking first is forcing your opponent to let you know whether he or she has a counterspell or not. If your opponent just takes the damage with a fistful of cards, then you can be fairly certain that they have a counterspell (or at least really bluffing it). This is valuable information in a game. So, those a few reasons. But ultimately it comes down to the fact that if it won't make an impact at that point, you should limit the information you give to your opponent until you have to. As you can see playing or not playing creature before combat reveals a lot. At the very least, you have one less card in your hand, and a little less mana available to you.

These feel like they all relate to a certain "archetype" of player, alas: 1) Stop loudly fiddling with your cards in hand during my turn, you wretch. Put them down on the table and let me think in peace. I get that you do that because it's your way of directing "thinking stress" and/or you are emulating some "pros" you saw on a stream, but please have the self awareness to stop doing that during my turn. It's annoying and unnecessary. In before: "Nurhurhur! That's why we do it, psychological warfare! :B" 2) Verbal declarations of self perceived advantages or "dominance." Every case I've seen this happen tends to be meshed with childish butt hurt when the delusions are torn down. Guy won't stop jerking himself off about his "crazy board position" and that "it's good game for somebody on my next turn." Mood shifts from "I'm extremely cocky" to "you killed my dog" when that sweet board state is swept off the table. The best example of this happening was during a local legacy tournament. I had been on hiatus due to work for a month or two, where new guy decided to start showing up to the shop. He is relatively new to legacy, but has already picked up something of a name for himself in cocksure attitude. I dragged out a combo elves list I've had rotting on a shelf for a long while, showed up, and got paired with him. He was playing some iteration of The Rock or Junk (Goofies, confidants, removal, yadda yadda). First game I don't do much but fart out 1/1 elves and get dumpster banged. "Elves doesn't have a good match up versus me!" Second game I have another horrendous slow start, but sandbag a hand of elves and glimpse until I can explode off three lands into a hard cast Emrakul. Suddenly -silence- and -everything is on the line- as if I am witnessing a man defusing a bomb and any mistake will cost him his life. I get a "regular" turn 3 blow out and summon the Kooldrazi. Wouldn't shake my hand, instead indignantly digging out three engineered plague from his deck and throwing them down on the table in front of me as a visual aid to himself explaining I "should not win because I have these in my deck, you got lucky." Give me a break, guy (I run a wishboard for that kind of thing! :3). 3) Honestly going to extend the first belly ache with this: I -really- loathe the habits "pro scenes" have invoked in local players. Stop diddling with your cards loudly, you look like you are on meth. Stop mechanically drawing and moving your cards around as if you are invoking the sacred rites of the .1% efficiency Goddess, you just look like a tool. Also, get your grubby mitts off my deck! I shuffled it a crap load, right in front of you, using a variety of methods, and all you need to do is cut it. You don't need to cut it four times, shuffle it, and randomize it again as if I'm some sort of MTG card shark that has spent my incredible gift on durdling with cards at a local tournament. No, I don't know about so and so player or why he thinks the card I am killing you with is a suboptimal choice. No, please don't explain it to me.

Probably a bit late for this, and I'm getting better at it, but I'm still not even perfect. It's just something you notice when you are trying not to do it yourself. Can we please set the record straight that it is Play, then pay? As I recall, and was taught by a friend of mine, the proper process is to play then pay. The worst bit about it is someone seeing you do it the correct way and then saying you're doing it wrong. Or, someone trying to tell you how to play the game and not knowing themselves.

WG travel preps. Try to get like 16+ creatures with as many 2 drops as possible. Getting 3 travel preps isn't out of the question, but 2 is still great. my favourite sequence in the set is turn 3 end step Midnight Haunting into travel preps. Your opponent won't see it coming. I'm also very fond of the UG self mill deck. Start working on drafting a decent blue deck by taking silent departures, stitched drakes or whatever, then dive in if you see any of the finishers. The deck's strategy is made up of two parts. Enablers and finishers. The enablers are cards like Deranged Assistant, Armored Skaab, Dream Twist, Mulch and Ghoulcaller's Bell pretty much in that order (dropping the bell is pretty understandable, but I like it more than most people seem to). The big finisher is Spider Spawning. It's an uncommon, and most of the others are rares. You want to hold off on this as long as you can without dying. I like using gnaw to the bone to help me survive. The deck has a hump of sorts, where it starts off somewhat slow before picking up steam. The other potential finishers are Kessig Cagebreakers, and Boneyard Wurm. If you see Splinterfright, you're laughing. I'd take this above almost anything, because it's both an enabler as well as a finisher. The biggest advantage to this deck is that most of the cards you need are unplayable or borderline unplayable in other decks. You can really work this to your advantage though, by taking cards that aren't as good for you earlier because the better card for you isn't as great for everyone else. For example, Deranged Assistant is pretty good in other decks, but spider spawning is pretty mediocre, despite being more integral to our strategy. There's actually a combo you can draft. Memory's Journey, and Runic Repetition work so that you can deck yourself and survive. This is good because it means you can just mill yourself as fast as possible without worrying about losing, but also because it means you can load up on enablers and you only need very few finishers. Since Memory's Journey can be flashed back, you don't even need to worry about drawing the combo. Oh yeah, don't forget to draft plenty of creatures. It doesnt matter too too much what they are, but it doesn't work that well if you're struggling for bodies in the yard. wow long.

In regards to Sorin, he was and never will be truly good. He is Lawful Evil. He won't think twice about killing anyone foolish enough to get in his way, and sangromancy in general is pretty brutal. He does however have the multiverses best interest at heart - just because your evil as shit doesn't mean you can't care the world(s) ending. Take Zendikar for example. First, Sorin, Ugin and another planeswalker sealed them away. Then, he came back with Nissa Ravine and Anowan to keep them contained. But you have you delve deep into that story to truly understand Sorin's motivations.

I discovered Magic back in the Future Sight days and I loved it. As we all know, FS set was not a very good set for a newcomer (I was also just starting my graduation). I restarted playing mtg about six months ago and I'm trying MTGO now, bought it this weekend (it took almost three days, since, for some ridiculous reason, they have problems with paypal). So, I'll say my impressions about MTGO beta version; the only experience I have with the Current version is because some videos I watch. I don't know how Wizards is doing such a clunky old-fashioned program in 2013. Not only their online program, but their whole approach towards marketing seems old. Their client has absolute no community integration (twitter, facebook, google+, icq, orkut, whatever); I can not see spells' targets without having to navigate the mouse over the stack; I can not put my hand (my cards rectangle) wherever I want, same with pretty much everything. I can not have the cards in the board in the size I want without having to make the cards in my hand minuscle. I can not choose a place in the board to be my 'enchantments place' or my 'planeswalkers place', they will always be together. I mean, the whole space in my screen does not look very well optimized and I can't change the configuration of anything. Please, make a graveyard (or exiled cards, reavealed cards, etc) hotkey, so I can just get rid of that lost space and open the graveyard with the hotkey when I need; it would be so much cleaner!... I have a lot more complainments to make, not only about mtgo, but about wizards approach to their community. Concerning mtgo, I realize the number of features I'm asking for is big, but none of them should be too hard for a good computer games company to make (specially for the price we pay in this thing: $10 just for the account + a lot to be able to play even any of the worse formats (10 for momir lol). I know the basics of Magic, but any new person to it would just throw it away in the first 15 mins of staring at the client). About Wizards: I come from the Dota2 community. Maybe that is too much to ask for, but Valve does A LOT to make their community happy with the game. I mean, things we say in reddit about how this or that feature would be good for the game or for the viewers in twitch streams, for example, are implemented in the next Thursday! I am not asking for a weekly update like that, I know things can take more time, but look at the the Magic coverage in the streams: it is terrible. The mtgo client is terrible. I am sorry to say this, but for the PRICE and time put into MTG to get such a ridiculous game is laughable. I also completely agree with this video I really want to love this game, but Wizards some times makes it difficult.

He didnt misunderstand after you showed him you were right and that is how it worked. he just didnt realize he was playing agianst something he felt was cheap and felt cheated. There are always combos that people get frustrated with to great extremes and your going to run into them. Everyone has a flavor of deck that they find they hate going against. All that i can advise you do is either tell them before hand or during their confusion. If you are going to play a deck of the extreme types try to give a fair warning without giving any tactical details away. ( im not sure how, be creative, maybe tell them its a more serious deck is it ok that you use it ) or when they start to question let them know that you will answer them with sources to enlighten them and if they desire to drop the match thats ok with you. you want to show them that you can understand and relate to the ill feelings that arise towards our individual discomforts when facing a different style but also that your deck is fully functional, within the rules, and you would like to play with it if that's alright. My brother uses a pretty broken deck called his white artifact deck. It uses wall of glare for its defenses, and some other broken white creatures that help abuse some equipment to make it flying, unblockable, shroud, double strike, trample, paired with inquisitor flail. if its blocked its attack gets massive and steam rolls you. he can do this in a few turns. the amount of damage he is able to do was questioned so many times and everyone hates that deck. i take every game light hearted but i can say ive been annoyed with how broken it is so i made my own broken deck suited for the purpose of smashing that deck into the ground faster than it could ramp up. we both enjoy fighting these two decks against each other every once in a while.

Judges live chat has informed my playgroup before that, AFTER I DECLARED A BLOCKER, using Isochron Scepter imprinted with Blustersquall in response was legal in order to prevent it from blocking. I argued that no, the block is declared, but now the creature is tapped. They threw a fit and went to judge's live chat, and got that answer. They're not always right, I pulled out the comprehensive rules and showed them the relevant sections, and to this day they don't believe me. "Judge said so." I don't play with that group anymore.

Subjective. Standard and rotating sets out has made the game a paper-chase where expensive cards can be de-valued overnight and useless(The 'strictly better' phenomenon). Subjective, again. The Vorthos angle of telling a story dominates the game in so that for example, In NP it's stupid to play anything BUT Phyrexians. Blue is the worst, even though they re-printed JTMS and a bunch of other crap in FTV. Standard isn't the end-all-be-all. The game's not just about competition. It's majority of players are casual, even those competitive types play casually also. 'New' cards tend to be re-named cards. Abilities also. Witness Chroma and the new Theros mechanic. [There are 27 cards that allow you to take an extra turn.]( The obvious solution is to print a equivalent JTMS in other colors. WoTC profit is irrelevant here. Ignorance = bliss. Like I said, Punk kids. Subjective...again.

By the numbers: Yes the rules have changed, no they haven't made the game worse. It's always been expensive to play competitively. It's still expensive to play competitively. You cannot "buy wins" any more than you could before. Storyline is a part of most sets, it doesn't dominate nor do "wotc chosen colors" dominate standard. This standard season has seen literally every colour in a tier one deck. Literally every single colour at some point. Blue is the worst it's been since I started playing this standard season. Compared to caw-blade or delver this has been positively blue light. Yes, there's will be about 15 good playable standard cards in any set. That's how competition works, you want to find the best cards, not play all the cards. Most cards, outside of core sets are new and even in core sets there are a good number of new cards. There are very few cards that say "take another turn" and most of them are unplayable. Some cards are banned in modern and legacy mostly because they break the format/ force everyone to play the same deck if they want any hope of winning. Wotc would likely profit more in the short term by unbanning jtms ... Long term? No. The game has more players than ever before, that doesn't sound like the hallmark of a ruined game ... Punk kids? Really? 'cause magic's still mostly a game for people in their late twenties. I've found people to be generally very friendly and helpful to new players, you mileage may vary and there are always dicks but for the most part, mtg players are decent human beings sharing a hobby.

I think it would hinder a lot of professional and competitive players not knowing the whole set before anyone gets their hands on the cards. Now I'm not talking about the guy at FNM that's playing UWR Control with a full set of foil Snapcaster Mages. I'm talking about actual pro players such as Brian Kibler, Tomoharu Saito, LSV, Sam Black among a few. I'm talking about the grinders like Jeff Hoogland, Gerry Thompson, Brad Nelson. These players test and brew extensively to find the best combination of cards to play in their next Open or GP. Part of testing is figuring out what cards and interactions to be wary of and watch out for. Let's go back to M14 and imagine Burning Earth wasn't spoiled. Day of the prerelease, Tommy Lucksack opens one in his prerelease packs, and 2 more in his prize packs. Fast forward a week, and he's brewed up a monored deck featuring his 3 Burning Earths and takes it to an GP in your home town featuring the new Standard environment. He takes the top tables, on a rampage, because no one was expecting Burning Earth, while everyone was playing UWR control, Jund Midrange and Junk Rites. He takes the whole Open down because no one else knew about Burning Earth. Including you, who he beat with his 3 Burning Earths because you were playing Junk Tokens and couldn't cast Lingering Souls without taking a 3 damage. It would be amazing for a surprise like opening a Stormbreath Dragon at the event. But if you're one of the lucky ones to know about it, everyone else is at a great disadvantage.

Phylatery Lich - Yes, T1 dark ritual into Phylacery Lich and Relic is definitely the best card for the job. Moot point, because it also has the upside of not eating a car slot in the decklist. Not banned in modern, no, but modern's a competitive format which means you have to have quite a very good reason to play a card. Being indestructible and being used as sacrifice fodder aren't exactly synergistic, and it's no better at this job than, say, Mox Opal which can be used to cast said spells. Affinity has Ornithopter and Memnite, which are both better in that deck. Not to mention older stuff like Mox Opal or Shield Sphere or Phyrexial Walker. This synergizes with Darksteel Juggernaut no more than any other artifact. See the affinity comment. See affinity and metalcraft. Yes, though the artifact lands were common, and there are plenty of uncommon 0-drops. >Well, it is both of those. Exactly. The only thing it has going for it is that it's the intersection of these two traits. If there's an application that requires a 0-drop artifact AND where indestructibility is more relevant than a body or mana AND where using an extra card is better than having it be Darksteel Citadel, then Darksteel Relic is definitely the card for the job. As I stated at the start, the turn one lich is the only situation that comes to mind where Relic is the best option. But if you're not dropping him turn one, he'd much rather have a Darksteel Axe. As for EDH, there are no shenanigans in the format that would benefit from Darksteel Relic other than what you've listed above. I play a ton of commander (and actually ran a 0-color deck at one point), so that's coming from experience. A lot of people like to assume that the format has weird obnoxious interactions you can't see anywhere else, but that's not really the case. It's an interesting cross between the power of Legacy and the shenanigans of kitchen table magic, but anything you can do in commander you can do in a casual deck. It's definitely a Johnny card, no question there. And a top-notch vorthos card as well. Timmy is kind of a stretch, since Timmy looks to make big splashy plays with beaststicks and X spells and token swarms, but I don't see the "big awesome effect" appeal of Relic.

I remember my first FNM back in Feburary. Went 2-2. Dimir Mill homebrew with Consuming abberation, rouge's passage, Essence Harvest, & Jace's Phantasms. Swept by Jund Goodstuff R1 by one of the regulars. Huntmaster, Liliana, Oliva, Thrasktusk, etc. Yep, wasn't too graceful about it but whatever. 1-1 draw with Esper Control. Game 1 got milled with Nephalia, G2 beat him down with Abberation, couldn't finish G3 so he gave me the win and told me to have fun (and I've always remembered this gesture) Lost to Golgari Beatdown with Lotleth troll, Deadbridge and Garruk. Ended up beating my friend (Rakdos Aggro) in the last round on the backs of two Jace's Phantasms.

If you are new to Magic, /r/cockatrice is a helpful program to try out decks and get used to playing magic. It really helped me get from a novice to intermediate almost overnight! I practiced drafting on cockatrice about 30 times before going to my FNM for draft. My 2nd time drafting in real life and I won! I did split the prize pool but played for the promo card (sin collector) which I won. I did get very lucky but if you want some practice for FNMs or Mtg in general, cockatrice is a free mtg online program for those that don't know already!

I know i didn't have to, i just wanted to. Not so much for me, but to explain the other side to the players. I think if everyone knows all the information we can all be better consumers and create a better economy for the game. We do make money from sheer volume of sales like you suggest, and the higher than MSRP products that I am talking about are the ones of limited quantity, where volume cannot make up more profit simply because there is no more volume to had. I literally can only sell 2 blue decks a week because that is all I can order. I'll sell those for what i need too and make my profit on the back end selling the unwanted decks for their MSRP at $30. Eventually all of those decks will sell, and if they are already paid for, than I can let them sit and it wont cost me anything. Meanwhile all the stores that sold theirs cheaper, or gave them away, basically just gave up on that profit. Which is absolutely fine, perhaps that giveaway helped their event turnout or whatever, it's all cool.

The thing that basic supply and demand leaves out is dead inventory. I run the books for a small business, and dead inventory is the bane of my existence. Say I've got 6 sets of Commander 2013. The Mind Seize and Eternal Bargain decks are going to fly off the shelves. I'm reasonably certain that I can move Evasive Maneuvers, and maybe Nature of the Beast. But fucking Power Hungry. It's gonna take a long, long time for me to move Power Hungry. That means that the shelf space that 6 Power Hungry decks are taking up can't be used for anything else. That's terrible. That shelf space isn't free. Even usable piece of the shop has expenses to cover--rent, utilities, staff wage/benefits, insurance, everything that's required just to keep a business open. That's what it costs to have an empty shelf . To put a product on it costs whatever the Vendor price is. With an MSRP of $30 a piece, those six Power Hungry decks have cost me $90 on top of the shelf space. The longer they sit there, the more they cost me. Those Mind Seize and Eternal Bargain decks? They were there for three days. They cost me three days worth of shelf maintenance money. The Power Hungrys cost months and months worth. Months that could have gone to high value, high mobility merchandise like miniatures or other Magic cards. But wait, there's more! Commander 2013 came out at the end of the year, which means that those Power Hungrys are still in the store on December 31st. That means that, as liquidatable, active inventory (I'm in manufacturing, and I know that our inventory no longer counts as "active" if it hasn't been sold in four years; I don't know the exact timeframe for retail), meaning that they count towards the total value of my business and I have to pay taxes on them. Those Mind Seize and Eternal Bargains decks? I didn't have to include them in my yearly statement because they were fucking gone. Sure, I have to charge sales tax, but I'm gonna do the same to those Power Hungrys if they ever sell.

That's cute. I live in Cleveland, I have 8-9 card shops I can go here to play magic. If I wanted to, I could play standard and limited competitively every single day of the week, and still not visit half the stores around me. None of the stores here sell packs for below $4. There's the rare "3 for 11" deal sometimes, but that's it. There's only one store in this area that sells booster boxes for under $100 now. Only TWO of the stores even employ people (by that I mean almost all of the stores are literally ran by the owner alone), so that expense is non-existent. Most of them have shitty prize support, and if their prize support is decent the store itself either has a crappy player base or the owners will try and fuck you over a different way, like preying on new players or gullible people.

One special item isnt paying their bills. Its a one time money grab that is disgusting to me as a consumer. Whoa. "Disgusting"? FTV is an extremely limited edition product with extremely valuable cards inside, generally worth more for the buyer to pull apart and immediately sell as singles than the inflated price that it was sold at in most stores that have it. Why would anyone sell anything for $40 when it is worth at least $120? The point of FTV and its low MSRP is to give stores a profit bump, thereby keeping them happy, trading and providing their service to magic players. The purpose is not to give loads of players a foil Jace the Mind Sculptor at 1/4 of its market value, it's just a treat for the store and the handful of per store who might be able to afford it. My local actually gave out one of their FTV:20's as top prize of Theros Pre-Release but they didn't have to, they used it as a way to draw in more customers.

Hi, glad to see more people joining the hobby. So, everything said so far is true, deckbuilders toolkit good, fat packs good, prereleases good. If you don't have a local game store yet then look [here]( The LGS is where you can go to buy mtg product, meet new players, play with others, and maybe, eventually, play in tournaments. If you don't have an LGS close to you then send me a PM, I can give you some tips on buying Magic stuff without a game store nearby. As soon as you can, start transitioning to [booster boxes]( for getting new packs. This is the most cost effective way to open packs. If you can't afford it right away try to find a friend to split a box with you, make sure you split the packs not the cards . When you buy packs always buy from the newest block, which is to say the cards released this year. These cards will spend the longest time in [Standard]( which is the format with the most players. Right now the Newest Sets are Theros and Born of the Gods FYI. Avoid buying individual cards if at all possible. Instead trade the ones you have either to the store or better yet to other players. This will keep your actual money free for more booster boxes. Get a binder that can hold your valuable cards that are for trade, take it with you if you go to the game store so you can trade. When trading always remember to check whatever anyone says about card prices online, you can do that [here]( Only trade if you want to, and don't ever feel pressured to do a trade you don't like. You are in control of your cards until you shake hands, no one else has a claim to them. I would suggest learning to [draft]( because this is a way to both play the game and open more packs for value. If you want to learn to draft I would suggest using [Magic the Gathering Online]( for $10 you can do a bunch of really cheap drafts to get used to how drafting works. As far as playing goes, I would suggest playing [Commander]( to start. Commander is about big explosive multiplayer games and it is the cheapest format for new players . All you need to play Commander is a deck designed built for the format, and Magic just happens to sell really good prebuilt [decks]( for around [$20]( ready to play. This hobby can be overwhelming to take in at first, but the main reason I see people quit playing magic is that they get screwed out of all their cards in trades or they get convinced to spend way too much money before they even learn what everything is worth. I started playing only about a year ago and today magic is my favorite hobby. Have fun and end wisely. Find videos and articles online that explain the different aspects of the hobby and find some friends who like to play. Soon you will be established in Magic and you can help other new players get started in magic. Waaaaaaaay

On the other side of this coin, those stores who are unwelcoming to the new guy can be a huge turn-off. I had a friend who was in the process of learning, had played maybe four games and had an intro pack as his first deck. He asked the sales associate for advice on what to buy for his "swamps and mountains deck", and was answered with a blank, sardonic stare. I now cannot convince this guy to buy singles because he thinks he'll get made fun of for not knowing stuff, and he ends up wasting money buying boosters. Instead of jumping on the double-opportunity to help a new player and create a lasting customer relationship, this person chose to be insular and unhelpful. While this is the most vivid example of shoddy customer service from that store in my experience, there were several incidents preceding it of similarly inattentive and apathetic staff behavior. This runs 100% against the atmosphere average customers expect from an LGS. The thought process is something like "I don't know what to do. I'll go to the store and ask them; they'll know!". The stores that do well are the ones that play into this. "Yes, come to us, ask us your questions, let us sell you everything you need :)". This has become a ramble - the first LGS I ever frequented was a neighborhood store in my hometown. My experiences at that store still define what I think an LGS should be. The store owner is an incredibly amiable fellow who would teach anyone who asked to play Magic. If you had money to spend, but no idea what to spend it on, you could give him some themes and a budget and he would build a deck for you. It was clear that he was an active part of the store's Magic community, but he never allowed this to obscure the perception that he was running the store. Mid-game he would excuse himself to greet/assist customers and was the kind of guy who would actually try to help Mom find an appropriate present for Timmy, instead of just trying to sell her expensive cards. 13 years later, that same guy is still running the store and I go there as often as I am able because there is no doubt that I will receive excellent service.

I started playing MTG two weeks before Dragon's Maze came out. I splurged on Jund Midrange, Bant Hexproof and American Control for Standard at the time. (I didn't know about rotation when I started). When rotation did come when Theros was released, I played Orzhov Midrange/Control until I got sick of seeing Mono-Black devotion everywhere, so I traded EVERYTHING that was a Standard staple that wasn't seeing play in Modern into Modern staples. Luckily, I had most of the shocks from the Return to Ravnica block and Snaps, Restos, Voices, Geists, Hierarchs and Lilis from the INN-RTR standard decks, so it was just a matter of getting cards like Goyfs, Bobs and fetches, among other things. Glad I made the switch :) Don't get me wrong, I would love to play Standard, but I don't like punching my wallet in the balls every time rotation comes around. Oh yeah, the first modern decks I traded into were Melira Pod and American Control. From there, I continued trading/slowly acquiring staples for other decks to where I can build whatever I want now. Took a while, but it was worth it. If you want advice on how you can transition into these formats, try and get staples for Modern and Legacy currently in Standard when they rotate out so you get them at (hopefully) their lowest price when the Standard-only players are offloading everything. Hold onto cards that you think you might play in Modern so you won't ( need to get them in the future, especially if there's a price spike in the future (e.g. Abrupt Decay).

I built ur storm. Then they banned seething song. I continued to play it after Finkel t16ed a gp. Built it online. Played a ptq and gp with it(losing win and ins both times) switched to twin. Got 2nd at the first event I played it.

As much as I like starting with a cheap deck, one thing I learned. I moved from cheap deck to cheap deck and by the time I decided to test and build a competitive modern deck, I had spent way more money on cheap deck than I should have. Money that could have gone to making the competitive deck I have now. So I would say test to find the one you want and pick up pieces over time.

Well, FNM isn't casual, it is a competitive environment. There are rules to follow and there is a judge or TO there to give out rulings when needed. At the same time, it isn't a grand tournament and is welcoming to new players. People are generally nice about it and will help their opponents, correct their mistakes and what not. Since money is on the line, don't expect people to go easy on you, and if they do help, it'll probably be after the match.

as long as your goal is to have fun, you are good enough. If your goal is to win, then you need to practice and have a strong deck, and at that point you are still good enough and need to go in order to get good enough to win.

It's a hard question to answer because how competitive a FNM is varies wildly from store to store. Some stores have free FNMS that only have FNM foils as prizes. More often than not these are pretty low key, and as long as you have an ok grasp on the basic rules of the game you'll be just fine. Other stores have $5-10 entry fees, higher prize payouts and thus are much more likely to be more cutthroat. In such cases, the people you're playing will be more serious. Because of this you'll need a better grasp on the rules to make sure not only that you're able to go with the flow of the game, but that you're not getting cheated. It's at this level where you'll have some people not remind you about triggers and such so that they can eek out an advantage because you forgot it. (They won't tell you this, because it's failure to maintain game-state and a big no no on their part, but they walk a very fine rules-lawyering line.) The unfortunate thing is that without actually going, it's unlikely you'll know exactly what the vibe is at your local places to play. What also comes into play is your personality and how you're able to enjoy the game. If you can play and lose every single game and still feel good about the night- either because you did something clever with your deck or because you learned a lot, then you'll be just fine to go to just about any FNM. If you're a poor loser that can't stand to lose and put too much value into what the end result is- then you may need to be slightly more cautious about where you go to play.

This is a problem, I've noticed, in any play environment when there is anything of value on the line. I run a weekly event at my LGS called "beginner magic" because it is a college town with lots of people that want to learn or improve, but get consistently crushed by net decks at fnm. There are some regulars that play in beginner magic that are not really beginners, but they do it because it is an environment when there is nothing on the line or at stake. Only then do you really root-out the players who take the game too seriously. In this environment people chat and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of cards, but they don't feel entitled to win just because their deck sees more competitive play. I saw a similar thing happen when my LGS did a limited pauper magic series, and it was a free tournament with a small prize for first but $1 in store credit for everyone who participated. That was the most pleasant semicompeditive tournament I had ever played, because as soon as you aren't in contention for first, no one really cares how well they do.

Yes. Because they can tap it to pay a cost . Whereas you can only tap is as part of the resolution of a spell or ability. You would, e.g., pay mana to cast a spell that taps their creature. The mana is just gone. It simply leaves your mana pool. Then the tap effect goes on the stack. In response they can place their creature's activated ability on the stack. The cost of that ability is tapping. The tapping just happens. Then the ability (destroy target creature) goes on the stack. Then, assuming you both pass priority, their effect happens, then your effect happens. But your effect doesn't do much, because it taps an already tapped creature.

I had this issue earlier today when ordering from tcgplayer as well. What it is, is that there is an option when you click on the optimizer that causes it to search for cards that are tcgplayer direct qualified. If you are ordering multiple cards from different vendors this means that your order will be shipped in 1 package from tcgplayer directly. Of course the drawback to this is that tcgplayer needs to have the cards in their stock in order to send them to you which sometimes results in cards being more expensive. For example i was trying to order some wurmcoil engines from the new commander set earlier today. When using the optimizer it went from the $7 commander version to the $14 promo version that tcgplayer had in their stock so that i would be able to take advantage of tcgplayer direct.

I feel like one of the most damning things about this whole situation is that the only people I see coming to Márcio's defense are those with something at stake. In this situation, obviously you as his teammate can't be completely unbiased, but the top level players don't really have anything to gain from trying to call out cheating. When I look at any open comments section relating to this incident the only defenders I see there are people who believe the reputation of their home country is tarnished due to this. Now anyone thinking logically does not think any lesser of Portugal, including the rest of the team, but I can understand being defensive if you believe people think otherwise. Also, the large argument I see in open comments is that this is all just jealousy. I personally understand that everyone attending this event is better at Magic than me and hold no grudge for it, but I can believe that random people shouting "Cheater!" may be saying so for this reason. The only issue with that is people like Chapin, while maybe being a bit loose and gossip-y on social media, are already well renowned Magic players and I see no way they gain anything from trying to oust a cheater.

I went to my first FNM at Deriums CCGs. I went with a starter deck with minor changes (BW Exalted). I expected a bunch of people like me (rookies). I got rolled over in the first round. 2nd game ended with more than a half hour left in the round. My opponent took out a notepad and discussed how to improve my deck with minimal investment. He wrote down everything we discussed. I made the adjustments and destroyed my friends (after dropping from that FNM). 2 years later I still play FNM and see him from time to time and think of how he could have done anything else, but he chose to teach me lessons it takes many people a long time to learn. I am now more successful than my friends who had been playing long before me.

There is no extremely dominant deck Referencing the most dominant deck that led to one of the most notable bans in Standard history is a pretty wide margin to base something on. Abzan has nearly double the showing of the next most "winningest" deck this past month. And lol, 25% of the format, what a diverse field. >The swath of viable decks is very wide Not really, see the percentage breakdown. Mardu and Abzan make up for nearly 40% of the format. Woo. >High depth to deck archetypes High depth in the sense that one build of it does well, and the others aren't really decks. What good showings has Abzan aggro had? >A Metagame that doesn't get stale I still disagree to an extent because of how big Abzan and Mardu are. In the past 2 month, Abzan has been 25% and the past 2 weeks it's been 31%. >Tier 1 budget options UW Heroic I'll agree with. Boss Sligh is pretty miserable to play. I piloted it to multiple top finishes but I never felt like I did anything too special. Just kind of came in with a "gotcha bitch" kind of deck and got some easy wins.

CardMaggedon Last Vegas: GB Constellation UW Heroic Jeskai Tokens Abzan Whip Abzan Aggro UB Control Sultai Whip Abzan Midrange SCG Portland: Abzan Midrange Jeskai Tokens Abzan Midrange Abzan Midrange Mardu Midrange Jeskai Tokens Sultai whip Abzan Midrange SCG Atlanta: Sultai Whip Abzan Midrange Abzan Midrange Mardu Midrange G/R Monsters Mardu Midrange Mardu Aggro Abzan Aggro GP San Antonio Mardu Midrange UW Heroic Temur Monsters Sidisi Whip Abzan Midrange Jeskai Wins Abzan Midrange Red deck wins (+cruise) SCG Richmond Jeskai Tokens Esper Control Abzan Aggro Jeskai Aggro 4 color midrange GB Constellation Mardu Midrange Mardu Midrange   Total Jeskai Tokens : 4 Abzan Midrange/Planeswalker : 9 Mardu Midrange : 6 Sultai/Sidisi Whip : 4 GB Constellation : 2 UW Heroic : 2 Control (UB or Esper) : 2 Abzan Aggro : 3 RDW : 1 Temur/Monsters : 2 Abzan Whip : 1 4 color : 1 Other Jeskai : 2 Mardu Aggro : 1 Pretty diverse for the last five open series/grand prix/REL tournament.

There are strong build-around cards that make decks play differently. Because they play differently, it is hard to directly compare them. Jeskai Ascendancy and Whip of Erebos are strong cards which can be built around, but those decks can also win without the card. Further, giving equal (or roughly equal) color fixing to all color combinations allows a lot more possible decks and depth to those decks. The last time we had anything like this was the tail end of Alara-Zendikar, when Jund had been knocked down a few pegs by Mythic and UW Superfriends, and we got some cool stuff like Jacerator, Turbo Lands, Pyromancer Ascension/Time Warp combo, Master Transmuter jank, Naya Vengevine, and a bunch of others. You know, differently-playing decks.

What people and players don't understand is that overhead is a thing. Does that justify some prices? No, but it will absolutely impact prices. MOST LGS locations will be more expensive than TCG so that is a horrible example...heck even buylist is going to be cheaper than TCG. This player needs to realize that store is not the best deal to be buying cards and to get them elsewhere. I had a similar situation locally to me where I went into the store with a printed out list of the cards I wanted from TCG. I had planned on paying a little extra and assumed the $125 in cards from TCG would probably be $150 (I was buying almost a full commander deck). Knowing I was asking for a LARGE quantity of cards and there is only one person there to pull cards for me I dropped off the list and let him do it at his leisure. I had to call him after 5 days and ask his progress. He said just a few more days is all he'd need. When I got the call and went to pick them up a few days later he wanted $225 for the list of cards. After telling him that I supported his store for 15 years and wanted to continue to support him I politely told him I couldn't and wouldn't pay almost double what I could pay elsewhere. He told me he used an online resource to price the cards (I assumed TCG High). After talking to him further he considered coming down to $200, so I told him no thanks. I don't buy cards from that store anymore.

Well then I would say that describing you as ignorant (with regards to this subject) is not an unfair characterization of your knowledge. Let's clear up a few things for you. While it's possible that scry will be in an upcoming set, it's extremely unlikely seeing as scry was a mechanic in Theros, a set so recent it's still in standard, and they generally don't like to reuse mechanics without a large period of time between them. To give you an idea of how soon we can expect scry again in a standard legal set, scry, which has appeared more than just about any other non-evergreen mechanic, most recently appeared in THS and M11. Additionally, the absence of serum visions was expected in THS because serum visions has a plane specific name (serum being specific to mirrodin). Seeing as we're not going back to New Phyrexia / Mirrodin for some time (we were just there a few years ago), reprinting serum vision seems very unlikely. Additionally part deux, WOTC has made it a point not to print "good cantrips" in recent standard legal sets. You have to go back several years to find the last good 1cc cantrip spell that WOTC made. So, in conclusion, we're not likely to see Serum Visions reprinted in a standard legal set anytime soon because: (1) the scry mechanic isn't coming back anytime soon, (2) we're not going back to Mirrodin / New Phyrexia any time soon, and (3) serum vision is "too good" for standard legal sets these days. HOWEVER, for two months this summer WOTC will have FNM promos of "modern staples." The first month is Path to Exile. This is important because Path is NOT in MM2, which suggests that the second FNM promo will also not be in MM2. The obvious options for the FNM promo include serum visions (and some other cards like Aven Mindscensor) due to its high price and frequent use in modern. So, while we shouldn't expect serum visions in a standard legal set anytime soon, its exclusion from MM2 would make perfect sense if they were planning on using it as the second "modern" FNM.

I've been running this deck with doomed travelers instead of delvers for the past couple days. They seem to work well, but the opponents don't really care too much if they're getting pinged for one a turn, so they don't kill them. So I looked for an alternative, and delvers were a strong choice. I wasn't too convinced they were better, so i asked Reddit, hence le thread. I wanted to eventually get some Snapcasters in for more control. I will probably take out the Looters when i get snaps and ponders in, but for now they are working extremely well at getting the flashback of Unburial Rites going turn 4 for the Reavers. I've also had ridiculous success with the Kindred, as it potentially brings out a Dungeon geist for more lockdown, a captain for buffs, a geist of saint traft for the trickery itself provides, as well as the Reavers, which give ridiculous draw power and board control when hexproof and buffed to 6/8 double strike. I will definitely try out the Midnight Hauntings, but I'm unsure of what to take out exactly. I have had problems with board wipes, but that can always be sideboard hated against. And if reanimator becomes a problem, a couple Nihil Spellbombs / Extractions can always be sided in.

You can either run, sen triplets to splash black, which is good if you want to use tezzert agent of bolas or splash green and run Rafiq the Many. I advise you to use Rafiq and run heavy hexproof creature as I can assure you, your opponents are going to kill your creature so you only have a board of equipments.

The price of dual lands won't kill the format. The bubble is how many players can every dual land in existence support. Lets say there's enough duals going around for a million people to play using the most used duals. As long as the cards exist for a million people to play, a million people will play. Since the cards exist, the price can't possibly go up to a point where nobody else can get into to format. The only thing that can happen is you eventually get to a point where growth of the format slows down, which then will eventually lower prices again, and will grow again. The main reason for this is that the reason dual lands are going up in price isn't because it's hard to find duals, it's that more people want to play legacy and are buying into it. With star city and tcg player running events every weekend, the format is more popular than ever. It's not as big a standard(legacy get's about 3/4 the players at SCG opens), but anyone that wants to play can still get in. And if the cards do hit a ceiling price, it just means that the format will only stop growing, not just die off. It will only die off when dual lands are few and far between. For example, vintage is so small because the cards are just hard to come by. The maximum number of people the format can support is drastically lower than legacy. You are talking like one to a thousand ratio. Like if you go to a big event like gencon this weekend and look at what a vendor has, they MIGHT have like 3 or 4 pieces of power. But they'll have at least a 40 set of duals, sometimes even up to 5 sets, plus some extras, in multiple languages, and border colors.

everything is offensive Look, it's highly unlikely that you truly believe this. We started with an article explaining why you shouldn't call people "faggots" at your LGS, or talk about how you "totally raped someone" at FNM. You claim that this is no different from someone finding "demons" offensive. Unless you were raised in a concrete box hundreds of miles beneath the earth's surface, you understand the difference between these positions. I get that this stuff can be difficult. When you said: >having to constantly consider whose line we should respect and whose line is ridiculous is a bit much I understand where you're coming from--it's easier to just throw your hands up, say "everything is offensive so nothing is", and keep right on talking about "Fagtusk" at your LGS or whatever. But by doing so, Chapin argues, you're consigning yourself to sit at the kids' table forever. You're also ignoring the fact that, even if you give no thought at all to the words you use, they still affect other people.

I want to preface this by saying that I was like 13 at the time and the deck I played (white weenie because I couldn't afford scrolls) was completely stolen from Inquest because I hadn't moved past thinking Polar Kraken was the best card ever. Most of this is my logic looking back on the format, not how I understood it at the time. I believe it had three things going for it. First, RDW had a habit of playing out its entire hand extremely quickly and Cursed Scroll offered a way to guarantee you always had burn if the game took more than a few turns. Second, the RDW mirror was effectively who had the most cursed scrolls in play. The meta at the time was full of 2/1s. Third, white weenie was an incredible deck. Part of the strength of WW was Soltari Priest (a WW 2/1 with shadow and protection from red), which RDW could only kill with cursed scroll. In addition to the priest WW ran Empyrial Armor. A Soltari Priest with Empyrial Armor was an extremely quick clock, and the only answer RDW had was Cursed Scroll.

Is anyone really complaining about the best dual lands that are printable in current magic to be $40 for a playset? The Ravnica shocklands are the BEST LANDS PRINTABLE. IN ALL FORMATS. This is a ton better than the M checklands and Innistrad checklands. Speaking of the M checklands, they've been consciously reprinted so much that they afford extremely increased affordability and availability. I don't know how anyone can complain when the most expensive M checkland is $6 on SCG (which is notorious for higher than average pricing). The price of mythics is too damn high, I will agree with this. I don't think that they are necessary for the game and just sell more packs but will eventually turn a lot of people off to the game if they continue the trend of having mythics that you need 3/4 copies of. The price of planeswalker mythics wouldn't drop much if they were rare rather than mythic because of the increased appeal but the fact that Zendikar block released so many chase mythics that could and should be played in multiples drove a lot of long term mythic prices up because Eldrazi and Jace, TMS continue to have extremely high price points.

I'd speculate a couple things here (and, FWIW, I agree with you): Drafts generally take upwards of 3-4 hours to complete. Turn 5 average games make for shorter draft times which means more time for either another event ($$), or time to trade/casual play. Shorter times mean people aren't necessarily burned out on Magic when the draft is done ($$). Also, interactivity = more time (less $$). While it is pretty disappointing to lose a game because you couldn't draw removal, a creature, or something else for 2 or 3 turns, some of the games I've had against Azorius and Selesnya have gone to time on game 2... which is sort of lame for the Spikes (me) and really lame for the first-time/new players that have to read all the cards. Remember all the surveys WotC keeps asking everyone to fill out? We're seeing the results of those (So if you're going to answer one, which I suggest you do, think about your answers a bit more - do you really enjoy Magic by playing fast and winning, or by relaxing and expressing yourself, game expertise, and interaction). It sucks, but we're going through a growth period. Hopefully, WotC will transition to a player retention balance that will involve more interaction.

I've had a rather great time with the current set, better than I did with M13 and RTR, truth be told. I will admit I've found a fondness for the R/G decks, but not the insane aggro decks that you speak. Instead I look to beat them with minor deterrents and verdant haven (seriously, I run 3 of that card whenever I can) that turns my big silly creatures into turn 4-5 wrecking machines. To counter your orzhov, for fun I did draft it the other day and thought I was looking at a HORRIBLE deck. To my surprise I outlived the aggro decks just fine and with the proper late game removal, just coasted through most games.

Accidents happen all the time. It's instinctive to just scoop your side of the table regardless of card exchanges over the course of the game. And it's also why you count your deck before and after every round.

Legendary does not mean balance... Look at Tolarian Academy, for example. Maybe not the best example, but if I could run 4 in a deck you bet I would. Karakas, in some metas, is similar in that you'll want 3-4 of them despite it being legendary. In much the same way people would likely run 3-4x each of these lands. There's no drawback aside from the legendary component. In older formats it would likely just get stupid having access to proper deck fixing and speedy combo decks. I doubt Wasteland would balance these lands properly. The only downside is that you couldn't fetch them, so some legacy decks likely wouldn't be able to support them well. Also: the amount of rage that would come from this cycle being mythic would likely be huge. They'd be an auto-4 of in standard and at least some modern/legacy/vintage decks along with every multicoloured EDH deck ever.

These are called wedges. They were kind of a big thing in invasion, but normally allied colors are much more supported than enemy colors. Like normally an esper deck is really just a blue deck with a black splash and a white splash because blue works well with black and blue works well with white, and even though black and white don't normally work well together it doesn't really matter because the deck is normally basically a blue deck. Something like WBR is normally a really wonky thing because white is typically bad with red typically bad with black, so you don't really have this idea of being a basically mono colored deck with a splash, you kind of have to be 3 independent colors at the same time. It only makes sense right now where we have insane mana fixing where you can run 5 colors as independent colors if you want.

Brown. It borrows from all 5 colors, but then realizes it can't do anything as well as any of the more dedicated traditional colors, sees wubrg is already a thing, and ends up sitting there like a giant turd. Which is appropriate because its brown. Later sets prove brown to be a powerhouse as it comes into its own. Green turns out to be just an infected version of brown. Red is simply brown after too much koolaid. Blue is what you are left with after brown has already finished doing its thing and died its spiral death. White is only brown after its been left out in the sun for days. And black, well, dude get that checked. Of course, at this point the whole game has gone to crap.

RDW is fine, but there is a lot of hate. Thalia, Kitchen Finks, Daybreak Coronet, Wurmcoils, and those are all maindeck! However, despite that, you still get some free wins. I got 3rd out of 25 last week at Modern FNM. I lost to White vial Hate Bears because of Thalia and Finks. I did win one game because of ensnaring bridge.

I didn't downvote you. I would argue it's absolutely fine for local events. If you're looking to grind SCG Opens or whatever, though, you want a deck that functions better in that meta. The other thing to keep in mind is that Affinity and especially the Tezz lists have a lot of room for meta tuning and such. An optimal Tezz affinity list has like 3 or 4 flex spots and the card pool for options in those slots are very deep. Your sideboard options are similarly deep. I feel like OP could gain a lot of metagame understanding from making and tuning these choices.

I always appreciate insight into Magic's design process but the protection from white on a dragon kind of left many people scratching their heads. Gameplay reasons might include that as an anti-Revelation card it shouldn't get Detention Sphered or Chained to the Rocks against UW control. When you do a Gatherer search for "protection" and "dragon" it's the only result out of 110 cards with the subtype. Creatures with enemy color protection are typically personifications of an element in their piece of the color pie, for example [Defender of Chaos]( and [Black Knight]( The way I interpret the flavor is that you can't Pacifism what is essentially a physical representation of chaos and you can't make a knight of merciless slaughter switch his sword to a plowshare. Dragons are classics of high fantasy but in Magic like many other works they are mostly "just" magical beasts. Some old and powerful ones can probably have an intelligent discussion with before they eat you and they might breathe lightning due to being, well, a lightning/storm dragon but avatars or personifications of a primal force they have never been in Magic.

red has nothing anti-specific creatures. red has burn spells. in standard, you got 1cmc 1dmg, 1cmc 2dmg, 2cmc 2dmg, 2cmc 3dmg, 2cmc 4dmg, 3cmc 3dmg, etc. Anti flying is usually the colour of green. Think about that card. Think about the Heroic mechanic. It's a 4mana 2/2 with a heroic ability that burns things or ppl for 2 dmg. Compare with the previous standard's 4mana red benchmark card, Hellrider. Now think about what deck would make a suitable home for him. None. There's your answer. It's a 4mana dude, so you'd need it to have abilities to justify it's cost. It has to have haste or some outstanding ability like protection or something else. It also has to preferably have high power, since it's red. Heroic mechanic also demands that you pack cards that you can use on him, eg. God's Willing, Giant Growth, etc.

Standard? No. Kalonian Hydra may see play in some of the green-based ramp/devotion decks. But thats about it. It's a very much loved card in casual and EDH though. Also, dies to doom blade. Archangel of Thune simply does nothing worthy at it's converted mana cost. Not many decks cram consistent lifelink into their list, and the amount of decks that run white creatures are even lower. BWR doesn't want a threat that doesn't win on her own. Esper ctrl can't make use of it. White Weenies/R thinks she's too expensive for them and doesn't necessarily help them. Outside of constructed I believe she has quite a high demand in casual and EDH too. Also, dies to doom blade. Modern is where Archangel of Thune sees some play. She's used in pod decks as a means of combo-ing for infinite life and power without the use of a graveyard, so common graveyard hate counters like deathrite shaman cannot stop their combo. Also dies to doomblade though.

On the Limited Resources "2013 in Review" show, Brian placed M14 as the best draft format as the past year and Marshall had it 2nd only to Modern Masters. M14 did have very low power level, but the low power level of white was the only unbalanced thing. Low power level is fine as long as things suck equally--I really enjoyed scrapping together decks with Canyon Minotaur and Advocate of the Beast. Also, silence, quicken, wild ricochet, savage summoning, and darksteel forge (I'm guessing that's what you meant) were clearly not for standard--some cards are made for Timmy and Johnny.

And we continue on to read the following: >This is fairly surprising. The overall impact of fetch lands upon the number of extra spells, (as opposed to the true lands the fetch lands removed from the deck,) drawn is not nearly as high as the number life sacrificed for the effect. While the dead draws over the first 16 turns are not surprisingly negligible, over the first 16 turns we cannot realize, on average, a single extra card from our fetch lands. Even if we propagate this data further, the first card we see in the 4/16 case is not realized until around the 36th turn, and at an average cost of 2.8 life. The first card for 8/12 is realized on the 25th turn, but at a cost of 4.3 life.

Blood Moon comes in in the mirror, because it completely hoses both of you. If you have a superior board state than your opponent, and you're both on Zoo, dropping a Blood Moon usually means they won't be able to respond to any of your on-board threats, unless they already have everything they need in hand while the Blood Moon tries to resolve. But if they did, they probably would have already used them.

Got 5th place and earned 2 packs. 2 weeks ago I opened 2 mythic rares (Iroas God and flame speaker), last week I opened 2 more mythics (Ajani and Godsend). This week I opened up a 'YO dog!' Mythic pack! 1 Foil Athreos and 1 non-foil Athreos.

If you're reading my series you would know that the deck doesn't need Godless Shrine. I'll admit, I haven't. I followed the link because: > I want to hear the designer's thought process. Yeah, you've been playing the deck a bunch, so you've made all the guesses you care about in terms of design, but you are not your audience. Even if everything Ben Hayes says is painfully clear to you, it is, in my opinion, interesting to hear him say it. I thought the interview was boring because he didn't really talk about the deck's design. Let me excerpt the interview for an example: > HotC: Mark Rosewater has instilled in the community that ‘restrictions breed creativity.’ Can you give me an example of how that applied to designing this deck? > BH: We tried our best to make sure that this product would get to the people who wanted to use it to play Modern, so a lot of the restrictions I had were related to the MSRP we chose. I do believe I had to get fairly creative to find a deck that I could make competitive with my restrictions. > HotC: How early or late in the design process did you decide on B/W Tokens? Wait...you didn't follow that question up with something like, "creative in what ways?" or "how so?" or "could you elaborate on that?" The guy is straight-up telling you that there's interesting stuff that happened creatively in the process. And then you move on to the next question without asking him anything bout it. Then later, we get to this question: > HotC: What were some of the unique challenges to building the Modern event deck? > BH: Modern has such a wide variety of extremely powerful archetypes, many of which attack on wildly different axis from each other, which made building the sideboard for this deck very challenging. With a Standard Event Deck the goal is very to cover broad archetype match-ups (control, mid-range, aggro) but with this deck I had to be tactical in my decisions about how many sideboard cards to have against more specialize threats and combos. Finding cards that players would want to bring in against multiple different decks was an especially unique challenge. Oh, here was an especially unique challenge. How so? or What other cards did you consider? or ask him about specific match-ups. What was his sideboard plan against X, Y, Z? You might know the answers, but his thought process is what is interesting here, as the deck's designer. That is why you interview him and not some random guy who just plays a lot of Modern. I'm trying to drive home the point that, A) I felt that the interview was unsatisfying, and B) that this is a legitimate criticism of the interview style. Simply defending it because you disagree doesn't make it satisfying. Defending it because you know (or think you know) the answers to some of the questions I would have asked, doesn't adequately answer the criticism that the audience wants to hear the designer's thoughts on the subject. I appreciate you making the effort to get Ben Hayes to answer your questions, and the series is otherwise well-written, but I am attempting to provide constructive criticism on your interview technique. Ben's comments headlined this segment of your series, but I was disappointed because the initial questions didn't press for details, and follow-up questions were non-existent.

The Nissa was explained to me breifly the other day, basically you get to a point with 2(Maybe 3? I forget) mana creatures where you can generate infinite mana. This lets you play and bounce nissa a bunch, turning all your lands into dudes which also untap when you play her. They're all tramplers in addition to getting huge after replaying nissa or whatever your choice of card is, and assuming the land didn;t come into turn that play is not summoning sick, so you can just swing with a couple x/x tramplers for the win.

Keep in mind that (nearly) every set has a mandatory dragon slot. Doesn't matter if you are in horror world or machine world or greek world. There is going to be at least one dragon because the casual market demands it. So RtR had Utvara Hellkite, Hypersonic Dragon, and Niv-Mizzet himself) and Gatecrash had Hellkite Tyrant. In Dragon's Maze, this slot was filled with Dragonshift, which can be a lot of dragons, but isn't exactly a dragon.

90 spells (probably a little less?) in your pool, Let's say 130 lands, slightly less than 1% chance of any given card being Battle of Wits, means you probably have ~15% of drawing it in any given game provided you are able to reasonably defend yourself early. You could probably increase your odds by adopting a policy of mull'ing to 6 whenever your first 7 didn't have Battle of Wits, but I'm not going to math that.

Hello mtg reddit! Today on Gathering Magic I wrote a short story using a "mixed media" of creative writing and casual deckbuilding in order to showcast a narrative on the plane of Mirrodin. The story is about Alcanus, a Vedalken scientist whose research has turned up a strange slick of oil... If you are a Vorthos and are into this type of content, check it out, and let me know what you think!

Sort of relevant: I sold my old cards to my brother (14 at the time and only played cause his big brother did) when I was in dire straits for 100 bucks and didn't play anymore. Apparently I had a set of FoWs, a couple Sensei's Divining Tops (Kamigawa), and one or 2 Bob's. A "friend" of his apparently found out he had Magic cards. Said "friend" then went through his collection and just took the cards without payment saying they weren't worth anything. My brother, being naive, believed him and let him take them.

Giving something absent consideration is simply a gift, and no enforceable agreement is formed as a result. You can't wedge this one into contract law, and you're actually going the wrong way here. In order to seek a remedy under contract law, you need a contract to exist, not prove there isn't one. However, the cards were acquired under fraudulent circumstances, meaning there may be some action pursuable in tort. Your slave analogy is incorrect because j could certainly offer you consideration for being my slave for life, but such contracts are void as unconscionable (legal unconscionability, not just a bad idea).

Sideboarding is difficult for me too but I came up with a small strategy to make sideboarding a little easier. I keep track of what my deck consistently loses to. I also ask myself some questions as I try to find out what makes a deck lose. Are my spells constantly countered? Am I consistent with dealing damage? Do my cards have good synergy with one another? From there, I start to think about what I can use to put in my sideboard. If one card doesn't do what I want it to do, I think about what I can use to replace it.

I'll give a little preface before I share my most boneheaded of plays in the history of Magic. I'm playing in an IQ in Ravnica-Theros Standard. I borrow my friend's Esper Control list (ahh... Sphinx's Revelation). I have barely any experience with it because I'm a midrange man at heart. My friend is spectating my plays during the rounds. IQ starts and Rd 1, win 2-0. Rd 2, win 2-0. I'm feeling fairly confidant with my abilities. My friend is giving me his thoughts on my plays and then we proceed into Round 3. I play Temple scry go. He does then same. "Ahh, the mirror" I think to myself. We then go into the normal draw go, play threat, counter threat, swing with Mutavault normal shenanigans. I get game 1. Sideboarding time. The same draw go happens. I'll fast forward now. I'm currently at 1 life because of Mutavault beats. I have a ton of mana with a Thoughtseize and Sphinx's Revelation in hand, but alas my opponent has all of his mana untapped as well. I glance at his life total very briefly. I sit and think for about a minute and decide to Thoughtseize my opponent to try and nab the counterspell out of his hand so I can resolve my Sphinx's Revelation for a million. He gives me an odd look and reveals his hand. I take the Dissolve out of his hand and then proceed to fix my life total. I notice I'm at one. I write -1 and scoop up my cards for game 3. My friend who is spectating laughs. I laugh. Everyone laughed. Good times.

tend to completely agree with this article, my first thought with the CFB article was that women in magic coverage and finals and what have you probably is representative of women in the field of competition: basically 0. *i also thought the hygiene point was way off. yes, there are some stinky magic players, and there are a lot who let their ass crack show. to say that women wouldn't like this may be 100% true. to say that this is the reason why women aren't playing magic? correlation does not show causation. at my LGS there is a guy who smokes 4 darts between arriving at 5 or 6 and leaving at 9, a guy whose breath is absolutely terrible who i won't sit next to, and a guy who we are all pretty sure let drugs take everything except his extensive magic collection and may be homeless. smokers, non teeth brushers, and hobos are NOT exclusive to the magic community. idk why the fuck people keep thinking that this environment is more prone to gross people, have you ever been out in public? skids are everywhere. they stink, you try to avoid them, you usually can, sometimes not. that's the way she goes. wall of text

There are various rules of thumb about how many times you need to shuffle to have a randomized deck, although 5, 7 and 9 seem to be the common numbers I've seen. A pile shuffle counts as a -1 to that number though. For example, if you go with 5 riffle shuffles being random enough as a rule of thumb, you'll need to do 6 riffle shuffles if you do a pile shuffle first. It might be a little counterintuitive, but a pile shuffle is the exact opposite of a riffle shuffle. You can see this experimentally, if you want. Take your deck, and organize all the cards. Then pile shuffle into two piles. Then do a riffle shuffle, and look at the order. It should be nearly identical, with a few cards swapped around. If you do it with 4 piles, the same thing will happen, except it is equivalent to having the deck cut once. The same is true with any even number of piles (with increasing number of cuts). Odd numbers of piles are better, but not much. In that case, only 1 out of however many piles there are going to get the full effect of the riffle shuffle. That means if you do 7 piles, only 9 or 10 of your cards are getting the full effect of the riffle shuffle, while the rest are put back into virtually the same order as before, plus 2 cuts of the deck. This is because of how shuffling work. A good shuffle does two things: it randomizes* the relative position of the cards, and it randomizes the total position of the cards in the deck. A straight Pile Shuffle only messes with the total position of the cards, which helps the deck look more random. If you "randomly" pick what pile the cards go into, its better since it introduces randomness to the relative position of the cards, but not by much because humans are terrible at picking random things. Riffle shuffling, on the other hand, randomizes the relative position of the cards very well, since cards come down more or less randomly from two piles. It does absolute position much more poorly, and is similar to a cut in a deck. When it comes to how they handle absolute position, they work in opposite fashions, and work entirely against each other if you do both. There is still relative position entropy introduced by the riffle shuffle, but the absolute position of most cards has been returned to the start. * Note, by "Randomize" in this context, I mean introduce entropy. This is not a strict definition of random, rather using the common terms. An example of how you could abuse this, for those of you who would like to say "Who cares?": Say I have a card in my deck that I play a playset of, but never want to see more than one of. I take all 4 of them and place them together in my deck (for instance, last game they were all in play). I then pile shuffle into 8 piles, and collect the piles back together in the same order I dealt them into. At this point, all of my WIN card are in one half of the deck, with 7 cards in between each of them. I then cut the deck and riffle shuffle once. They're now separated by more cards, and are roughly evenly spaced throughout the deck. If I riffle shuffle again, there will now be 2 of the WIN card somewhat close together in the top half of my deck, and two somewhat close together in the bottom. For any number of riffle shuffles, you can find a number of piles that will let you reverse the absolute position change to evenly separate/clump a card as you want. However , after some number of shuffles, the entropy relative position introduced by riffle shuffling offsets the loss of entropy in absolute position. Off the top of my head, I think after 4-5 riffle shuffles you don't gain much of a benefit, regardless of what kind of positional stacking you've managed through pile "shuffling".

One of my friends is like this. He's older and has played longer than most of us, but for some reason no matter what we do it's always cheap and he blames us for building cheesy decks with money cards. Everytime I wrath the board to kill his weenie swarm the turn before he swings for the win or counter his game winning spell I'm an elitist prick. I tried helping him understand how to stop these kinds of things from happening but my lessons fell on deaf ears the whole time. I eventually stopped playing with him and avoided him for a bit, but recently hit him up again for some edh since its a relaxing fun casual format. Whaddya know? He picks up the whining and banter right where we left off. Eventually it got to the point where he started complaining about stuff other than magic and I just stopped hanging out with the guy.

I had an unfortunate experience at fnm regarding shuffling. Normally I shuffle my deck by seperating it in 8 piles and cut it. Whenever I do this, and after my opponents cut my deck, I never get mana screwed or flooded. I don't look at which cards go where when I pile shuffle but I know my land or multiples of one spell won't get clumped. Usually my opponents cut by just seperating deck in 2 piles (or 3), and it's perfectly fine since I do the same thing, but one opponent in particular in 1 round kept mashing my deck horribly after I pile shuffled. It was to the point where I cringed, and after that mashing he cut my deck but at an angle in which he could see my cards. In this entire match I got destroyed by drawing terrible hands, and at one point he accused me of cheating. I'm probably just venting or misplacing blame on this but is there anything I could have done in that situation?

I think booster boxes will give you better value. When Ravnica came out I purchased 18 tourney pack cases and found something very interesting - the rares weren't as randomized as you'd think they'd be. There was a very clear pattern, even after opening just a third of the boxes. IIRC my pulls were along the lines of 5-7 Dark Confidant, Overgrown Tomb, Temple Garden, Eye of the Storm, Followed Footsteps, Life from the Loam, Golgari Grave-Troll, Grave-Shell Scarab with 0 of Watery Grave, Sacred Foundry, etc etc. I think it was pretty clear that the randomization was no where near sufficient. I purchased all 18 boxes at once from the same sort so I'm sure some other player in another area got boxes full of Watery Graves and Sacred Foundries.

One thing we shouldn't rule out is new dual lands with both types. Absolutely not happening. Here's why: The original duals, used extensively in eternal formats, are already quite powerful for their effect and type/subtype. The addition of the "shocklands" gave that mix an additional option - especially in Legacy and Modern (but mostly Modern.) Now, if you add yet a third land card for each color combination that has both land types, you end up with decks in Legacy and Modern that have an over-the-top consistent manabase. Fetchlands would increase in utility, and thus, value. (SPECULATION.) Realistically, you would have Modern decks that would be as efficient as Legacy decks - you could abandon the Llorwyn filter lands. Fetches would have more targets. Finally, the Ravnica duals are not part of the Reserved List. WotC has absolutely no qualms about reprinting ANYTHING not found on the list. The exception is degenerate cards that they would prefer not be a part of Standard again (Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Stoneforge Mystic, Arcbound Ravager, Skullclamp, Umezawa's Jitte, Aether Vial, most cards with Storm, artifact lands, etc.) and even those are eligible for special set printings (Commander, Planechase, FtV, Archenemy, Duel Decks, etc.)

Whenever a player plays a spell or attacks, Norin leaves the battlefield and returns later. When he enters the battlefield again under his owner's control, he triggers Pandemonium dealing 2 damage to target player. With Confusion in the Ranks out when he enters the battlefield, his owner exchanges him for an opponent's creature. Considering Norin constantly leaves and re-enters the battlefield, that means his owner gets to take more and more of their opponents' creatures while simultaneously doing damage to them. Additionally, Genesis Chamber produces a 1/1 Myr every time Norin enters the battlefield, causing 1 more damage and allowing its controller to exchange control of the Myr for another of their opponents' creatures. Same applies with Glitterfang, except it returns to its owner's hand at the end of combat. It can be killed much easier than Norin, but it's cheap and pretty devastating even if you only get it off a few times.

The meta game can easily be summarized as a game of rock, paper, scissors but I think that's a bit oversimplification. Of course skill level, experience with the deck and card draw are factors (among many) that decide whether you win or lose. However, picking the deck by reading the meta can equally be rewarding. For example, on Game Day Avacyn Restored, I modified a home brew deck that I found here on Reddit, (Angels and Humans) simply no one could touch me. I went 4-0 and took home the prize. The next day, everyone went Delver and Humans and I went 3-1 losing to Delver once and narrowly beating it the other time and got very lucky to beat Mono White Humans. (God Draws and Awesome Top Decks) Fast forward to m13 and for almost a month I play tested Mono Green Aggro builds. (Get er Dungrove etc) and at the last FNM went 2-1-1 losing to R/G aggro and a tying round 1 against a janky G/W build. I lent my friend WRR and he went 4-0. I took a risk and played WRR on Gameday Saturday and went 3-0-1 and finished first. (Drew last round as the guy didn't want the playmat...) There were a few infect decks that absolutely ripped apart all the decks and I was fortunate that I met one of them in the last round. We played two Rounds for fun and tied 1-1 but I could tell that WRR was crap against Infect more so then all the other decks he beat to get there. Next day everyone switched to Delver to take on the Infect decks and Infect just got destroyed. I kept my WRR and played Delver 2 times out of my 4 rounds. I ended up 2-2 (both loses against Delver) and someone who I didn't play ended up winning with Delver. I should have gone back to MGA on Sunday knowing that Infect was going to shift the meta that way. Would it mean I would have won? Not at all, but it would have meant that I would have put myself in the position to win percentage wise. WRR won on Friday because Infect lost against Delver in Round 2 and Delver lost in Round 3 against R/G. WRR won on Saturday because I drew Cavern of Souls in Game 2 and 3 against the 1 Delver play I did face and got past B/R Zombies because my opponent said this, "Oh you reached Six Mana, here comes the Primeval Titan" to which I stopped reaching for, thought for second and played Wurmcoil Engine instead. Turns out he had a Go for the Throat in hand with the mana up for it. I think a lot of people miss that aspect of the game as on any given day any deck can beat any deck, but statistically speaking when you play enough games, you get a sense for what decks have good/bad match ups against other decks.

I don't really see why. I don't care about the so-called 'hyper sexualization' of magic. People in general are so uptight about sex, yet it's everywhere and it's the most natural thing in the world. Yes, kids play the game. Guess what? In the movie 'Airplane' there is a topless woman, and that movie is rated PG. Kids have access to the internet, they have access to a lot worse than this. I think a whole lot of maturity is needed in the magic community. Grow up, people.

My local store once got hold of two boxes of Unhinged. Unfortunately, I wasn't into magic at that time, but legends say that it was the funniest draft in the history of mankind. Also, my LGS has pride in their collection of cards. If you need singles or are just looking for rares to expand your collection, you're just as welcome with your tradebinder as you are with your wallet. Another thing I love about my LGS, is that although I haven't been able to attend an actual event yet (I only recently gone more serious with MTG) they are more than happy to give me advice on anything magic-related. The owner doesn't know much about MTG, but he's not afraid to admit it. Instead, some of his staff can name every card ever made. If they're in the store, he'll call them over to you and let them do the talking. If they're not at work, he'd rather you just come back later instead of getting possibly false advice. This really makes me comfortable in there, and though it more often than not ends up with me buying something, I've never felt buyers remorse, because I usually get a good deal and I don't buy more than I need. Right now, I'm just waiting for my batch of sleeves to arrive (another store had a sale on Ultra-Pro Matte sleeves that I couldn't resist) and then I'm off to Draft and FNM :)

You can also use it to do multiple things! I once passed with a Huntmaster on the field so that it would transform during my opponents upkeep. It transformed, killed one of his mana dorks and shot my opponent for two. My foe decided he had had about enough of this crap so he cast some kill spell on my huntmaster. I flashed in Restoration angel and flickered my huntmaster in response. Huntmaster bounced, dodges the removal, came back into play unflipped, gained me 2 life, made a wolf token, and was able to attack along side my army the very next turn.

It reminds him of that time he had sex with Eartha Kitt in an airplane bathroom.

I played burning vengeance for a while and it has spoiled me on every other standard deck. I see them, and I'm like "Wait, why am I only drawing one card a turn? And why don't I get to do ridiculously complicated plays that make the game so much sillier?" (notable example: Killing a consecrated sphinx with draw spells without drawing a card). The deck had a possibility of being good for a bit with the loss of Dungrove, Thrun and Frost Titan (the three cards that the deck had the most problem with when I played it), but now that there are 2 hate cards that just basically force you to scoop to them (Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage), I get to sadly remember the glory that was my awesome standard deck while I sleeve up Thragtusks like everyone else.

Picked Golgari, got Jarad's Orders as my rare and that was pretty much the only notable Golgari card that I pulled. I did get Isperia, Supreme Judge, Hallowed Fountain, and Loxodon Smiter from my other packs, though. I wound up finished 2-3 with GWB, using the playable creatures that I had in my colors and trying to make the most out of the populate mechanic. Literally, the only removal I had came in the form of Arrest (2), so I had to keep white. I had to keep green and black to have enough playable creatures as my red and blue pools were beyond awful. I did pull a Vraska the Unseen from my complimentary post-tournament pack, so I am really happy about that.

Went 5-0 with Azorious Flyers/control. I'm pretty positive that this is going to be a great archtype in limited. You just want enough of the 3-4 mana 2/2, about 8, maybe a bomb (I had the Archon of the Triumvarate promo dude), and then the rest removal and bounce spells. Stealer of Secrets + the Azorius Guidmage is really really good, as it allows you to eek out the card advantage so you have enough answers and enough birds in the air. Another honorable mention is Dramatic Rescue, which I didn't think would be nearly as good as it was. It allows you to stop rakdos from getting the board advantage it wants on turns 2-4. I found that often they would play a 2/2 on turn 2, a haste 2/2 dude on turn 3 and attack with both, but with dramatic rescue you can bounce the non haster and esentially take no damage, putting them back a full turn on getting the 3-4 creatures they need to break through. Dramatic Rescue also deals well with creature tokens and with dudes that have scavenge tokens on them. Here is the list: Spells 1 Inspiration 2 Dramatic Rescue 2 Paralyzing Grasp 1 Detention Sphere 1 Azorius Charm 1 Inaction Injunction 1 Voidwielder 1 Soul Tithe Creatures 1 Archon of the Triumvirate 1 New Prahv Guildmage 1 Keening Apparition 1 Concordia Pegasus (this dude is very underwhelming, only slightly good in the mirror match) 1 Sunspire Griffin 2 Runewing 2 Vassal Soul 2 Stealer of Secrets 1 Armory Guard 1 Azorius Keyrune Lands 2 Azorius Guildgate 8 Plains 7 Islands Here are some match recaps Match 1 2-0 Played against a guy who was playing his first tournament. He played Izzet. He got mana screwed on blue mana first game. Second game he used most of his hand trying to kill the fliers, which was a loosing proposition when trying to kill Runewings. Match 2 My opponent was playing Rakdos, and got a pretty nice pool, opening Rakdos himself. He was building near me and was telling everyone within earshot, so I knew what to expect :). Game 1 I bounced one of his attacking creatures on turn three with Dramatic Rescue, keeping me at 20 with the shred fiend still on the board. Played Paralyzing Grasps the Hellhole dude (3/4 unleash) turn 5. Was able to get the stealer of secrets and Guidmage combo going, and with a good paralyzing grasp on his unleash dudes, was able to shut him down before he got me lower than 10. Game two was a blur, but I built a similar presence, detention sphere on Rakdos, and raced 3 2/2s against the hellstead promo dude, eventually coming out on top. Match 3 My opponent was playing Izzet. Went 2-0, as he was simply unable to deal with the flyers without loosing too much card advantage. I was able to maintain card advantage again with the stealer of secrets/guidmage combo and runewing. Match 4 This was the Mirror match. This whole Match came down to who was able to play the Archon an stick it. Game one, he got it out on turn 7, and I was unable to do anything with it at that point, as we had fought back and forth over control of the air with 2/2s. Game two, I was able to stick the Archon, as he had a couple bounce spells (cyclonic rift), but I was able to keep recasting it. Eventually he ran out of answers and I pushed through for the win. Game 3 he hit me with a big cyclonic rift, but afterwards I was able to play Archon twice. He conceded, partly out of exaustion as it was 5am at this point, and I moved on to the finals. Match 5 My opponent was playing rakdos. Game one i made familiar plays, boucing his agressive creatures, and paralyzing grasp on his bigger unleash guys later. I pushed through and he conceded to 4 2/2 flyers. Game 2 I saw him sideboard in about 8 cards, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Im pretty sure he sided in a bunch of green guys, including multiple copies of Rubbleback Rhino (3/4 Hexproof for 4G). He rode these Rhinos to victory, putting the plus +2/1 enchant on it making it virtually impossible for me to kill by blocking. I made a serious misplay that probably cost me the game. He had the aformentioned enchanted rhino, 2 4/3 unleashed dudes, and the defender that taps for mana equal to the number of defenders. I attacked with Archon, detaining his two unleashed guys. I then played Voidwielder, and for some reason I decided to bounce one of the unleashed guys instead of the mana dork. This left him being able to untap 5 lands, and then cast the 5R spell that does 5 damage, targeting and killing my Archon. Oh well, it was 5:30 am at this point and I had been awake too long. Game 3 was similar to game one, but detention sphere came up huge in this game. Came down to a mostly stalled board state, where he had a hexproof rhino, and a shred-freak, and I had a 2/5 vigilance, 2 2/2 ground guys, a 2/2 flyer and a azorius keyrune. He was at 10. I attacked with everything, lost the keyrune to removal, traded one of my 2/2 ground dudes with the shred freak, and lost the other ground dude to the rhino. I cast another flyer that I had drawn that turn, putting him at 6, with me having 2 flyers and a 2/5. He played the spell that gives you a 4/4 trample rhino and populate. I targeted the rhino token with a detention sphere and exiled both tokens. I flew in for 4 damage, putting him at 2. He drew blank and conceded. Got 12 packs, and I opened another Detention Sphere, Loxodon Smiter, Steam vents, Vraska the Unseen, Lotleth Troll, and a foil Rakdos Lord of Riots.

I seriously want to play Gruul at Gatecrash Prerelease specifically because it seems to have guild boxes again and the guild instructions for Gruul are awesome.

Game 3. Played a game last weekend against a friend at FNM who was running Naya Humans and I was playing a Lifetouch homebrew. I have 4 Prey Upon to take advantage of deathtouch if I can. I saw they had their Mayor out and I had one lonely Typhoid Rat, with the life at 2-2. BUT, I had a Vampire Nighthawk in my hand. I thought, "Hmm, do I keep the Prey Upon one more turn and swing for the win?" So I kept it. They pulled out Riders of Gavony, protected from Vampires (having had 2 Nighthawks a few turns ago) and killed my play in the water. Played Nighthawk anyway, got swung for lethal the turn after.

Recently my EDH deck was countered by Sower of Temptation + Riptide Laboratory. UG Deck had used Vesuva to copy my Alchemist's Refuge. Both decks were down to under 30 cards left in their graveyard. My deck specializes in graveyard recursion as its a Child deck that uses Volrath's Stronghold. AKA I won't mill out. Having Angel of Despair in my graveyard since turn 4, I had casted it continually to blow up problems, but I could never touch sower as we both had upwards to 20 some mana each turn. Each turn I casted cards like Maelstrom Wanderer, Spitting Image, Witch-maw Nephilim, Consuming Aberation, Aurelia, the Warleader, Ruhan of the Formori, The Mimeoplasm copying Aurelia and Ruhan, and finally Child of Alara. Nothing hit him enough to kill, because he'd take my biggest creature and/or do something that forced me to blow the field. Finally, he gets doubling season down and uses a very large petavus to swing and hit me after taking my flying blocker. ...5 minutes later I realized I could have blown up that damned land, taken a non lethal hit, and been done with it. I had exiled his recursion tools early in the game with Deathrite Shaman, so he had no way to get it back. Sigh that is what I get for playing late at night.

Managed to beat this at GP London. Round 5, 3-1, 1-0 down, I have my opponent to 2 and am sitting at 13ish. I have 5 (tapped) lands and cinder elemental on board. Opponent extorts for 1 and attacks me down to 2. My hand is martial glory. Untap, draw daring skyjek. For some reason, I decide holding the two mana up to play something is relevant when if I don't kill him with the elemental I'm just dead anyway, so I crack it for x=2. Opponent: "Ok, go to 1?!" I forgot to mark his life gain down from the extort. Tilted my way out of the tournament.

So I was at the dark ascension prerelease and and all I had to do was win one more game against this kid who wouldn't stop talking. I was off to a slow start and slowly fell behind on board state. He got cocky and decided to ping me to death slowly. I managed to resolve a bale fire dragon, but he had was using a fiend hunter with a ghostly possession to stop it. I knew I had a night birds clutches in my deck so I went into top deck mode. He ended up killing me right before it went to turns. Turns out clutches was in graveyard for a majority of the match. My heart sank when I saw that.

Here's the truth. They are just blatantly inferior. However, this doesn't mean you can't make them work for you. Me and my magic friends used to go to a lot of tournaments, fnm every week, etc., and would do very well. By the time we got to that point, we had most of the good cards and had top tier decks. But I didn't start off that way and was still top 8ing in fnm. You can get there by playtesting aggresively. My brother and I would proxy up all of the solid decks we knew we'd be going up against and just throw our original decks at them and tweak them over and over until we had good match ups. You can't do this if you are stuck in the mentality that you can only win if you're playing the GP winning deck, FNM winning deck, etc. (not that there's anything wrong with it if you can) You may end up with something original, you may end up with something that looks like a pauper version of a top tier deck, but ultimately what will make you win is knowing your deck, knowing your matchups (this is where also playtesting with your sideboard is really important), and testing regularly. Again, don't mistake me; I'm not saying that netdecking is evil, useless, or detrimental, but if you've put in the time you can win tournaments with rogue decks and they don't have to cost $500.

Note: Longtime (exclusive) Legacy player, full playsets of almost all staples from both Modern and Legacy; take that into account as you will in my analysis. I feel as if, aside from Legacy obviously having a deeper cardpool, it's a cardpool that rewards subtle, tight and sometimes psychological play. Not to say that Modern is no skill, but it's just that there are certain elements in Legacy that make the game more complex. Two key examples: Legacy has Wasteland (and to a lesser extent Price of Progress and Stifle). I cannot overstate how much this changes the entire game and differentiates the formats. In Legacy, every land you play (or do not play) matters. Greedy manabases are punished, the first land you play can fuck the game up for you, fetching a land is not always "okay" and getting Wasteland locked (ex. Loams, Knights) is a real thing. Despite having access to the best colour fixing in the game (ABUR duals + fetches) having a greedy mana base can screw you over hard; similarly, fetching the wrong land can lose you the game. Stack interaction, and this is of course partly because there's more blue in the meta. But cards like Brainstorm, Force of Will, dredge triggers (ex. Nacromoba), Aether Vial, Death & Taxes (yes, the whole deck), Snapcaster, Abrupt Decay, Dark Ritual, etcetera all exist together in this format where combo/control/aggro are all real archtypes. Learning how to properly play the stack and when to pull the trigger on things matters a hell of a lot when a vast majority of key staple cards are all instants and, additionally, when you need to prepare to face some of the most efficient counterspells in the entire game. Overall, I'd say that the Legacy meta is less linear. Yes, you'll see a lot of the same cards in every deck (Force, Swords to Plows, Goyf, etcetera) but there's a lot of variation in shells and how the cards are used. While these staples might seem somewhat stale, subtle little changes in a Legacy deck along with the occasionally introduction of new cards (ex. Deathrite Shaman) can change everything. You also have the added benefit of using obscene cards to metagame the shit out of things (see, for example, Nic Vit using Veteran Explorer and Tin Fins using a weird combination of things). Due to the deeper cardpool and a lack of a "turn 4 rule" you also have true combo/control/aggro decks that tend to work in less of a sort of mythical rock-paper-sissors manner and more in terms of a truly fluid meta (ex. Dredge usually beats Maverick game 1 unless they manage to stall long enough with Taalia, but games 2 and 3 depend on the sideboard and the variation of hate/counterhate in both decks). Not a big fan of Modern. Like I said, I have the cards for it, but I'm not really willing to touch it yet. There are too many restrictions and not a deep enough card pool for my liking. Until the B&R list gets figured out and they let me play fast combo (turn 1-2) I won't be touching it (note: I understand that some people love this though, which is totally cool, too). See above. -- Another 5 years worth of cards, a solidified B&R list and a decision on what sort of direction Modern is taking and I -MIGHT- consider dabbling in it. -- Not quite familiar enough to comment here. A lot of eternal players are saying that blue needs more of a presence, though, be it UU Counterspell, Jace or something similar. Liberal in the sense that they're not as scare as, say, Candelabra or Power in Legacy/Vintage. Conservative enough that values don't (totally) tank and piss people off. In other words: $150.00 Goyfs? Probably too much to see format growth. $50.00 Goyfs and the potential to open them in packs every 3-5 years? Maybe more reasonable and it won't piss people off like values yo-yo'ing up and down might (see: Yu-Gi-Oh!). At any rate, cost for both Legacy and Modern along with reprinting is a big, big issue. Trial and error with the banlist. It's going to change a lot until Wizards figures out what works. They're caught in a bind with Modern: they want a format that's accessible to typical Standard players without having the speed and aggression that sometimes scares people away from Legacy. In doing this, and having a sort of implicit turn-4 rule, it means that the B&R list will be wonky for a while. Like I said, this works well for some people because it's exactly what they want. It doesn't work so well for other people like me who don't mind having some ultra fast and aggressive decks floating around. Reprints, I think, are the obvious answer. I'm not going to touch that though and instead I'll say a removal of stereotypes and, in some cases, the stigma associated with Legacy are big issues, too. There's this big myth that says that "Legacy is dying" and "all of Legacy is broken turn-1 kill decks and you're not allowed to play Lightning Bolt in the format because it doesn't do 20 damage on turn 1." Both of these are false... Legacy is not dying and Legacy is not full of broken, degenerate turn 1 decks. The latter myth, especially, seems to really turn people away without exploring the diversity of the meta. Ironically, I've met some people who claimed Legacy was broken because they didn't attempt to metagame and their tier 2 standard deck got crushed by established Legacy decks. I ask: "Did you look at older cards to improve your deck before entering the tournament?" They go: "Well, no, I should just be able to win without needing to do research!" ...You see why this sort of myth making is toxic. For Legacy: www.mtgthesource.com; don't go to Salvation or anything, the legacy on TheSource is usually top-notch and has some well regarded Legacy players writing on the forums. From there sometimes there are more specalized sites you can visit (ex. Storm Boards if you're playing Storm combo). Also check out to get an idea of the metagame and sometimes awesome links to videos of the deck being played by pros. Channelfireball and SCG both have some good articles and streams, too.

What made you think that was a good idea? Its a reprint from a recent set that also is the buy-a-box promo and is very likely to end up in some of the precons. Scarcity is not going to be a thing. It is not even a card that is great in the meta, it punishes tokens, flip-cards, and over aggressive 1-2 drop decks like blitz but its too slow to throw in maindeck if you are expecting any amount of midrange/sligh in the meta.

Doubled in price does not equal a positive return on investment. You are dealing with a large number of small profits with no established infrastructure so you are going to lose a ton to overhead. Unless you have an incredibly large magic community moving 60 ratchets is not feasible and the closer you get the theros release the less likely you are to move any large portion. If you plan on selling them to make any money from an online retailer they need to hit 300% or greater, to make money less labor you need them to hit at least 500% (assuming you can unload all 60 in one place); if instead you are trying ebay you will make more profits but its incredibly easy to spend multiple hours for just an extra buck or two and you open yourself up to a lot of risk via shipping.

Current cards that destroy enchantments]( there is also Merciless Eviction, Vraska, and Angelic Edict with the latter not being too relevant. Theros so far has Destructive Revelry, Fade into Antiquity, and Polis Crusher as forms of enchantment removal. There have been 0 enchantment matters cards in Theros. Nothing cares if you play enchantments. There are 13 Bestow creatures that we know will exist (5 nymphs, 5 emissaries, 3 others), 7 straight up Enchantment Aura cards in Theros, 5 artifact/enchantments being the God's weapons, and the 5 gods. Now of the Bestow creatures most pretty much aren't playable, Nighthowler/Flash Satyr are neat. Of the Enchantment Aura's, 5 of those are the Ordeal cycle which will probably not be playable. The other 2 are Gift of Immortality and Chained to Rocks. Gift doesn't require enchantment removal, just 2 removal for the creature. So, so far we have Chained to Rocks being the only thing that truly cares about enchantment removal. Then we have the god weapons which can be removed by either artifact OR enchantment removal, and they are by no means set up to be universal staples, some decks may play them but not all. Notably Putrefy, Rakdos Charm, and Smelt destroy them. Finally we have the gods. These are now the only potentially hard to remove global enchantments in the entire set that have been spoiled. And again, like the god weapons, they aren't guaranteed staples in every deck. Return to Antiquity and D-Sphere deal with the gods while they are not creatures. Banisher Priest, Chained to Rocks and Angel of Serenity can deal with them while they are creatures, along with a few other cards. They can also be bounced/countered/discarded. So no, there really isn't any reason for a sudden shift in focus towards enchantments. The enchantment focus of Theros itself isn't really done in such a way that enchantment removal is overly important anyway since much of that focus is on things which are enchantments and something else. There has been 0 regular global enchantments in the set. None whatsoever. So sparing the gods, any answers that deal with things we see in standard now, deal with enchantment related things we see in Theros.

Get this book and a ASL dictionary. Learn how to sign "What is the sign for _ " then finger spell the word much like you would say Como say dias ___ in spanish. ASL is a blast and I totally encourage you to communicate with these owners because it's the perfect opportunity to learn a language with something you're interested in. Also a good dictionary is by Random House Webster's ASL Dictionary. Also PM me if you have any other questions.

It helps if you remember that Wizards has a history of decisions that sounded good at the time that later turned out to be mistakes. Basically when MtGO was getting started back in 2002, it was one of the first games to feature an online micropayment system. As one of the first such games out of the gate, most players looking at it would have thought "Why would I pay real money for virtual cards?" so Wizards needed an answer. The answer they decided on was set redemption - Such a mechanic makes it feel like the virtual cards are 'backed' by something, or so was the thinking. It's a mechanic that sounds great in theory, but unnecessarily shackles digital cards to physical ones. In solving the problem of seemingly valueless digital cards (Remember that digital products as a thing worth money wasn't a big thing back in 2002. There were MMOs, but no official micropayment systems as far as I know) they accidentally created a totally new problem.

You're making fallacious arguments. First, you assume that because a color has powerful cards that that color is "favored." The truth is that sometimes R&D makes mistakes. In the early years of Magic, development was much worse at predicting the power level of cards. When Alpha first released, there was almost no thought given to how degenerate a card was because A) Nobody expected Magic to gain such a competitive scene (it was originally designed as something to play at cons or between roleplaying sessions) and B) Stores didn't sell singles and there was no such thing as online shopping, so they only expected anyone to have one or two of any given rare. So why did blue get three of the power nine? Simply put, because Richard Garfield decided that the color of thought and introspection should get card draw and simply didn't understand how powerful that ability was. There was no malicious intent on his part to favor one color over the other. The years following were better, but not perfect. Every once in a while something slips through the cracks (see Jace, the Mind Sculptor). R&D tries really hard to make sure they don't put out anything broken. I don't know if you played during the era of Caw-Blade, but tournament attendance actually dropped significantly when Jace and Stoneforge were tearing up standard. [This article]( by head of R&D Aaron Forsythe also notes that "We don't take banning lightly in any format, and we loathe doing it in Standard. Not only is such an act tantamount to the admission of grievous mistakes on our part, it hurts consumer confidence in our product." So the guys who make Magic openly admit that printing Jace, the Mind Sculptor was a mistake that harmed their business and reputation. Obviously that's not the sort of thing they want to be doing. Printing broken cards, especially several broken cards concentrated in a single color, hurts their bottom line. Now, let's zoom out and take a look at some of Magic's long history. Great cards like Ancestral Recall and Necropotence were awe-inspiring, but ultimately too powerful. Of course, R&D liked that these cards were popular, so oftentimes a designer would attempt to capture that coolness by "fixing" a broken card. As you can imagine, a "fixed" card is usually going to be in the same colors as the broken one it's modeling. You'll go from Ancestral Recall to Brainstorm, or from Black Lotus to Lion's Eye Diamond, or from Necropotence to Yawgmoth's Bargain. People like to make homages to things that were good and popular, and that's okay. Sometimes, like in those examples, the power level doesn't work out, but sometimes it does (Demonic Tutor to Diabolic Tutor, Timetwister to Time Reversal, the cycle of Maguses in Time Spiral block). Point is, a card like Brainstorm existing isn't indicative of R&D favoring blue - it's just one of many of R&D's experiments that span across all colors. Now, let's talk about expense. Specifically, you brought up fetches and duals. As you're aware, these lands form the best mana base in the game and are played extensively in legacy. So since all the blue lands are most expensive, that must mean blue is the best color, right? Well, sort of. Blue clearly has a lot of powerful options in legacy, due in no small part to two cards: Force of Will and Brainstorm. Now, Brainstorm I already mentioned as an homage card to Ancestral Recall, and homage cards aren't evidence that R&D favors a certain color. But you may be wondering about Force of Will - isn't such a powerful catch-all answer a clear sign of blue favoritism? Again, no. Ask any legacy player and they'll tell you that Force of Will is a very important role-player in the format. It prevents more powerful cards from breaking the game. Turn 1 wins are extremely hard to pull off because of the existence of FoW, and "unfair" strategies such as storm, Show and Tell, and reanimator are kept from dominating against "fair" decks because of the protection FoW provides. Even if you want to argue that these cards are evidence of favoritism, all of them are from before the cutoff of the modern format. The R&D from ten years ago isn't the R&D from today. To drive that point home, let's take a look at the modern metagame. I'm going to take all the 4-0 lists from December's MTGO dailies and tally up how many decks are playing each color. My data will come from and I won't count incidental splashes of a single land (such as Splinter Twin running a single Breeding pool for a sideboarded Ancient Grudge). Also note that I'm counting affinity decks towards the colors of its spells (usually Thoughtcast and Galvanic Blast). The final tally: >White: 37 decks >Blue: 63 decks >Black: 35 decks >Red: 77 decks >Green: 45 decks So I guess red is actually the color to beat. But of course, that's not at the pro level, it's just people screwing around on MTGO, right? Let's look at the most recent high-level modern event, GP Antwerp, and do the same thing for the top 16: >White: 3 >Blue: 6 >Black: 9 >Red: 12 >Green: 11 Nope, looks like red still reigns supreme, and blue has an even worse showing at the top tables. Finally, I'd like to take a look at the [list of every card ever banned]( and see what it has to say. I'll include a separate category for colorless, and I won't include cards that were banned because of ante rules or manual dexterity rules: >W: 7 >U: 26 >B: 14 >R: 11 >G: 10 >X: 48 To me that looks like artifacts and lands tend to be the most broken cards.

I personally don't mind him being the face of MTG, because I see other possibilities in the story line. I mean he was a student of Tezzeret and we saw how he turned out. I see him mad with power or perhaps in a dilemma that other Planeswalkers would totally be against. A "dark knight" situation.

Last one. Think of it as a stack of dirty dishes. Playing a spell/ability is akin to putting a dirty dish onto the pile. Resolving something on the stack is the game taking the topmost dish and washing it. Then the next highest dish is now on top, and players get another round of priority to put more dishes on. Repeat until all dishes are clean.