MTG Salvation

This is a lesson for WotC hopefully. You can't both print pushed land value like this and not print real land destruction to remove it. Personally, I'm not a big fan of land destruction, so I know what to choose. It should just have been an enchantment.

Quote from Shadow345 »

Silly. Did people forget board wipes exist?

Highly ineffective against Golos. They recuperate next turn as long as they have a single spell or land ready, which is the vast majority of time. In order to get board wipe working, you need mana for both the zombies and building enough board presence to kill during the same turn - and in a matchup where you're very much behind in mana due to playing against a ramp deck.

Quote from Xcric »

oh thank god. now i get to see knight of the ebon blade every single matchup on arena, instead of every other matchup being field of the dead.

Aggro was artificially pushed because the only real way to beat Golos is to kill it before it lays eggs. Control and midrange will show up more now to combat aggro.

Level up won't return. It mostly failed as a mechanic, as most players have mixed feelings about it or don't like it, many loathe the frame, has a lot of board complexity and doesn't mesh well with +1/+1 counters. Personally I love the mechanic, but I'm not the majority of players.

Landfall is simply not going to be left out. There's no chance. It's the core of Zendikar lands matters design and beloved by most people. And for good reason. It mitigates one of the most frustrating parts of the game, drawing lands in top deck mode, as well as making lands, the card type with the least fans, exciting to everyone.

This is why landfall is so great; assuming you have the necessary lands in play to be able to play your cards in general, this marks the the difference between landfall and no landfall:

Having no landfall permanent in play: Drawing nonlands is exciting, drawing lands is boring.

Having a landfall permanent in play: Drawing anything is exciting.

Now, a good player appreciates lands in a different way than above, but think of Kitchen Table Toby. Landfall increases the amount of exciting draws without undercutting the game's foundation of randomized card draw. It's just great.

Commander is a 40 life game with basically unlimited access to a free, usually powerful card beyond your starting hand. As such, players have a roster of resources that can be hard to circumvent. It's an engine/battlecruiser format at its core. This fundamentally pushes it towards massive combo advantages or wins. Luckily, decks are 100 card singleton, which should circumvent this.

But it doesn't. Tutors and deep or selective draw completely screws over the format's deckbuilding restrictions. It doesn't just counteract it or add diversity (like group slug does), but is a fundamental detriment to the format's core spirit: "I don't want to play a 100-card singleton deck, so I'll just add a load of tutors so I can win fast."

Of course, this isn't always the case when players add the tutors. But groups self-check both in the direction of relaxation and power. People passively empower their decks as time passes, depowering takes self control. The game shop I play at has a very interchangable and large roster of players, so combo and nasty kinds of control is rampant there.

Yes, battlecruiser is still legitimate, but I have been playing Magic since 10th edition, and boy has Commander seen an unhealthy crapload of battlecruiser power creep since then. Stuff like Omnath 2 has become necessary to countact infinite combos. Which is just sad.

EDIT Oh, and for the record, I hate to play battlecruiser myself - well, I do kind of like it, but I'm more enjoying it at the power of stuff like Pelakka Wurm; later, more ridiculously potent cards are not my thing. I tend to make engine builds of fair cards and durdle a lot for incremental gain instead, and my more powerful stuff has real weaknesses I refuse to fix in order, usually intentionally subpar win paths, to let other players beat me.

This is not Mortify and nowhere near clear enchantment removal. Infact it more often than not probably doesn't do what you want it to do. This effect is to me completely decent in black, as I'd much rather play Cruel Edict and splash for artifact/enchantment removal if I want that.

Didn't MaRo say somewhere that Gerrard was actually an RW character that they decided to make monowhite for bad reasons?

Goblin Firefighter 2R
Creature - Goblin U
When Goblin Firefighter dies, destroy target land.
"Oops."
- Naknak, last word
3/1


Next: Show me a custom keyword mechanic, custom keyword action or custom ability word of your own design, on a common card.

I don't want a postmodern format yet, and am pretty happy with the state of things. I hope it's the speculative supplemental product change or a final abandonment of the Reserved List (and the latter is not probable, to say the least)

How's your own home situation, ie table space and such? Maybe you can invite some friends home for Magic game night? What about your daughter, does she have friends that you can invite over?

I think the store is ridiculous but I'm not sure what you can do there.

Just fwiw I read your post and lit all up. You sound like a good dad. Hope this all works out.

People need to stop claiming that Iona is fine because other players can solve the solitary monocolored player's problem. They might do so if they're nice, but they have no incentive to unless the board state calls for it in particular (which is rare).

Quote from Sephon19 »

The number of people that defend Iona baffles me.

Lol
people defended primeval titan
people defended sylvan primordial
people defended prophet of kruphix

There is always someone who want to use the broken card for the easy win and finally games are over can't get over it and work a little to find a new broken toy.

While there's a bit of a Timmy element to Iona it's not a trap card. As nuts as, say, Paradox Engine is a new player could easily slot it into a deck just trying to generate value before realizing how east it is to break.

Iona, on the other hand, is very up front about what she does. Even the Timmiest Timmy runs her to kick the mono colored decks in the groin. It's also not like Armageddon; land destruction is often followed by "now what?" Iona's "now what?" is beats.

Of course there's a lot of people who justifiably don't want to worry about Iona showing up at the table. I don't blame them. But it's not a trap, it's not an accident, and treating it as such masks what it does. It's a hard control option on a stick, not a mythical Timmy-tricking boogeyman.

Quote from Faruel »

Are you speaking of multi-player games? Iona is a 7/7 flyer without any protection. She will not be on the battlefield forever. The monocolor player doesn't have to sit there and wait. He can give up and leave if he wants. Triumpf of hordes often kills just one player. That player has to wait until the game is finished or find another group. Is basically the same.

No not everyone has to play colorless removal because not everyone is playing mono color decks. You should know your game group and you can perfectly adjust your deck to your meta.

There are better ways to keep other players from playing magic. She is an iconic card for me. One of the first creature I got by trading with friends. I have good memories with her, like preventing some Bord wipes or protection from counters.

If other players aren't affected (or majorly affected) by iona, they may well get an advantage from her existing and want to protect her, so that the mono-colored player is locked out. So yes, Iona can survive for a long time and meanwhile you're stuck there doing nothing. Does it always play out that way? Well no. But the range of "how annoying is Iona" goes from "pretty annoying" to "incredibly annoying" with no real room for "actually pretty fun".

My meta is like 30 people. If you get knocked out early, you can find other people to play with. Not a big problem. But I'm supposed to tailor my decks to 30-odd people playing hundreds of different decks of wildly different power levels?

Glad they took Bridge now the bridgeless decks can all be more fair on being mostly agro decks. I m not even sure if Altar Of Dementia(the other problem card) will be that good, i mean it still can outrun a ensnaring bridge prison deck and also can make the deck too fast and resilient but at the same time it is not the auto win that it was before this ban. Lets be fair the deck lost a bit of power but will still be a really fast and good deck.

Quote from Sephon19 »

I've followed the YouTuber Magic_Aids (and others) recently so I've seen this in action a few times. I have little understanding of the Modern metagame, but when people start maindecking black leylines, you know you done goofd.

(I'll recommend him, btw, he's quite charming, although content warning, he's not always kosher in regards to his commentary. Who'd know from such a username?)

Also it's my birthday so this is a weird birthday present lol

I mean, Aids can mean some number of Aid (Help) while Aids can be confused with AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) or better named HIV, but lets be true alot of people write AIDS as Aids, but HIV as Hiv is less common.

Pair it with Greater Good. I heard you like Magic cards?

Quote from theMarc »

Since the card was originally spoiled in a language I don't speak, I didn't see how great Destructive Digger's flavor text is.

"What are you doing?"
"Digging."
"Why?"
"Make a hole."
"A hole for what?"
"More digging."
"...Okay then..."

This set is all over the map and I love it.

This has got to be one of the most ingenious ideas for a homage card ever printed.

Coastal Piracy


If you look closely in the bottom right, they did remember to put the coast in the art.

Quote from lookingupanddown »

Quote from Marl Karx »

Quote from Manite »

Sinew and Steel??? Death and Chaos would have sounded way cooler. Is Sinew and Steel even a phrase?

Not a phrase that I'm aware of. Bone and Steel maybe, as the closest equivalent

Sinew and Steel is apparently a workout routine.

If your workout routine kills someone and causes property damage, you're probably doing it wrong.