- You already know the website to go to for forums, ruling discussions, and new set spoilers. That would be here.
- This is the website you need to know what you missed. This is the game's OFFICAL card database. All card errata is final and trumps what is printed on the card (you were around for Lifeline and the endless loop of Psychic Battle). This is probably your best resource of finding out what is out there if you want to try MtG card discovery like a Netflix binge.
- This is the site to get caught up with the rules. Damage is no longer "on the stack". Manaburn doesn't exist, making Mana Drain go from a mediocre card to the best nonfree counterspell ever printed and ruining the original intent of most of the printed set of Prophecy. I have referenced the comprehensive rules many times, but I still come here to the rules forum to check on particular card interactions. NateDogg and Rezahann are just a couple of the regulars there to help out and they know what they are talking about.
- This is the site you should use to buy English singles and booster boxes. Sure, I have found cheaper sites, but they wouldn't ship to my country :(. I'm expecting a shipment from tcgplayer through next week actually since I bought prerelease cards from the new commander set (if you don't know about the Commander/EDH variant, you should check our forums because it is all the rage now). If you are interested in Chinese singles, let me know. Sometimes you can get cards for less in the right places if they are foreign, sometimes they are worth more, all depends if you are okay with looking up a card to prove it does what you say it does for your opponents. Anyhow, TCG typically has the best prices and I've gotten some great deals on "damaged" cards since I don't mind if my cards are white around the edges. TBH you should be buying singles once you know what you want.
- If you have a smartphone, get UMagic (it is technically the Greek-symbol-"Mu"-in-lowercase-Magic) it lets you look up cards, price them, and make decks (the first deck you make on there should be "wishlist" and never delete the deck, so that if you are browsing cards later and click "Add to deck" wishlist will be at the top). Here is a website to show you who makes it and what he icon looks like. The free version lets you make only three decks. The pro version is five dollars for unlimited decks, as well as deck statistics and gives you your mana curve, card type distribution, and color distribution. I sprang for pro version and have no regrets: I've had people steal my decks in the past, and if I can have each of my decks cataloged on my phone, it makes constesting a whose deck it is much easier and worse comes to worse, I have the exact build if I lose it in a freak accident {also happened to me}.
Now that you have all of that knowledge stuff, lets talk about you and your return:
- The first thing I did when I returned was that I went to my local LGS. They had a chaff box with random cards for ten cents each. From that I made a monoblack infect deck that consistently wins on my fourth turn. All commons, cost me under ten bucks. Right now mono red aggro is SUPER EASY with the chaff I saw yesterday thanks to them finally printing decent burn again as well as Brute Strength. Believe me, I checked last night.
- I'd recommend you (if not chaff hunting) pick a set (I'd recommend Conspiracy: Take the Crown due to the card selection, but it is your life) and buy a fat-pack/bundle of it. This will become your "second base" after Revised. From this second base you can start making your modern deck. Look around, see what other people use in similar decks and add the singles that would fit with your version. I personally recommend never making a 100% netdeck from a single source. The reason why is because the maker of the netdeck does not have the same metagame that you do (metagame is essentially referring to the decks your opponents are using). Sideboarding against Lich makes no sense if no one around you uses it, but on the flipside, sideboarding against it makes no sense if almost everyone is using it, since at that point, you should be maindecking your answer if you run into it that often!
- Since you already started playing, I would not recommend a deckbuilder's toolkit for you. Don't get me wrong, it is my number one recommendation for beginners, but you are not a beginner.
- Sorceries and instants have been slightly nerfed, creatures have been greatly buffed.
- Counterspell is not modern legal, Cancel is. Cancel is the worst counterspell ever printed. Even in modern and standard.
- Dark Ritual is not modern legal. There is no replacement. This isn't nearly as bad as it seems, since this means that black now has creatures like Typhoid Rats and Vampire Nighthawk.
- They stopped printing Disenchant (not modern legal, just kidding, it apparently is) and started printing Naturalize. There was a time as we both recall that if there was a permanent, white had a sorcery to destroy all of it. They decided to "define" the color pie more.
- You can play with planeswalkers Liliana of the Dark Realms now. These aren't creatures, they are a planewalker type permanent. That little number at the bottom is their beginning loyalty, they get that many counters. On each of your turns, during either (not both) of your main phases you may use one of their abilities. +abilities add to the number of loyalty counters, -abilities cost loyalty counters (and must have at least said amount to use these). When a planeswalker has 0 (or less, which isn't really possible, so zero) loyalty counters, it is sent to the graveyard. When opponents attack, they may choose to attack you or one of your planeswalkers, either way, you can still use your creatures to block. Each damage dealt to a planeswalker removes a loyalty counter. If I lightning bolt you to the face (targeted player damage) and you don't prevent or counter it, I can choose to have that damage be dealt to one of your planeswalkers.
You can't have two planeswalkers of the same subtype on your battlefield at the same time like Liliana of the Dark Realms and Liliana Vess, however you can have multiple planeswalkers with different subtypes, like controlling a Liliana Vess and Karn Liberated.Once Ixalan is released this stricken portion is no longer true due to a rule change and errata to all old Planeswalkers. - Emblems are special created things (mostly created by planeswalkers) that exist in a player's command zone. Nothing can currently interact with emblems beyond their initial creation. Once they are there, they exist until the player controlling the emblem has left the game.
- They stopped printing Llanowar Elves and started printing Elvish Mystic. Llanowar elves ARE modern legal, but harder to come by.
- Fog is modern legal, but hold onto whatever you got, because they seem to have a love hate relationship with it.
- Wastes is a basic land, but not a basic land type...this means that if you ever wanted to run a truly monobrown deck, you can now put as many of this cards in as you want, since they are basic lands. HOWEVER, a card such as Evolving Wilds or Power Armor don't acknowledge Wastes. The five basic land types are still just Forest, Island, Mountain, Plains, and Swamp.
- stands for colorless mana. Deceiver of Form's mana cost is 6 of any type of mana and one that has to be colorless. the 6 in its mana cost is still GENERIC mana (any mana you use, doesn't matter). This isn't as big of a change as people made it out to be. You could never use an Urza's Power plant to cast Llanowar Elves but could use it to help cast Giant Spider. Yes, Sol Ring now taps to add to your mana pool. It means the same thing it did in the past, it just looks different.
Welcome back, and let us know what you decided to make as your first modern deck!
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https://sites.google.com/site/mtgbasics/
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So we agree on an unban at least and I think we're mostly on the same page. I still don't believe any deck with Stirrings is near being broken or dominant, and just listing how many decks it beefs up certain archetypes that would be worse off (if not unplayable) if it was banned makes me continue to think that more bans aren't the answer. This is still banmania.
Various posters and pro players also loathed the idea of a Jace unban for years. Posters can be wrong, the length of time they make their argument doesn't give it merit. There is not one deck that Ancient Stirrings currently slots into that is oppressive or bad for the format.
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I think the problem people have is that when the police deck is aggro, it's unfair because now you have a deck that is consistently good against combo, which naturally should pray on aggro, while also still being good or at least fair against control, and also simultaneously be the best aggro deck against other aggro decks. It's just a weird wedge to put a police deck because its not only insanely versatile, but the conditions for it to be made better (human subtype creatures) are also assumed overwhelmingly abundant in the future.
Just to clarify, before some accuses me of otherwise, I don't play Humans and I think the deck is fine/not ban worthy (and I also could care less about Twin), but I am not going to go as far as pretending like other peoples criticisms aren't valid here.
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It's sweet mill mainboard tech.