MTG Salvation

This equipment is especially dangerous since it creates tokens when it attacks, that you can then equip it to in order to make more tokens.

Karn's price is going to depend heavily on how the Standard metagame shakes out. Right now the only decks that definitely want him are the WB variants and Bant Midrange. If the UW build that comes out on top is one with him in it, he'll be able to maintain a ridiculously high price, possibly reaching close to $100. If he remains a 4-of in the dominant WB archetype but falls out of favor in other places, he'll fall down to a bit above the $30 range where Scarab God and Hazoret were when they were on top of the meta. If he continues to see play in WB and is good in tier 2 standard decks and/or finds a home in non-rotating formats, he'll end up around the $50 range he's currently in.

There's really no downside to Gharna over Cerberus, you can still run Therapy if you want but if you draw all your Therapies you can still win.

If you don't want to run Street Wraith, Conflagrate is an alternative to Laboratory Maniac. Get all your creatures into your hand, use Simian Spirit Guides to flash it back discarding the rest of your hand.

Quote from Aazadan »

Going by the numbers presented so far, GDS was in high numbers but didn't put up results.

GDS was one of the bottom decks in terms of number played on day 2 not lumped into the "other" category and we don't have conversion rates to know if it was more popular day 1.

I think people overreacted to the unbannings in regards to dropping Grixis Death's Shadow for other fair decks. Jace and BBE are excellent against other fair decks but not nearly as useful against fields like this one full of the linear strategies GDS preys on. Hopefully we'll see a meta correction.

Quote from javert »

Has draft being good anyway? Haven't followed recent sets in a while, but now I see a bigger amount of vanilla creatures, eerily resembling of core sets, activated abilities with extremely clunky mana costs (3G to give +1/+1 to a creature), removals mostly shifted to uncommon or rare or costing 5 mana, creatures mostly designed to excel at attacking and suck at blocking etc. That can't possible be welcome by good draft players, who wants to have his turn options reduced to one and his cards played by themselves and being clunky at that?

Ixalan was deemed godawful for limited at least. Maybe if they don't focus on draft the sets become more pleasurable to play on Limited.

Ixalan was terrible, but Rivals of Ixalan was a good format and Hour of Devestation was a great one.

The hyperstage explanation is understandable to me. Iijil, that graphical aid is great - having visuals will make it vastly easier to understand.

Quote from sylvanllewelyn »

They really REALLY want Hedron Alignment to work. They're trying really hard.

I doubt that's the intent here. It seems more likely they want people to use it with aftermath cards in standard.

Quote from Colt47 »

We are seeing multiple decks go over the 2000 dollar mark now or approaching that point.

Where exactly are you getting your numbers from? The only deck I can find over $2000 is Jund, and Jund's always been ridiculously expensive. UR Breach is an outlier at $1700, and Storm is an outlier in the opposite direction at $350, with the rest of the format spread pretty evenly between $1400 and $700.

If you guys are moving on to 60+sideboard, can we get a writeup on how the 60-card deck works? I'd do it myself if I actually understood it, but unfortunately I don't.

A two-drop that turns into a potential 3-for-1 in the lategame is not bad in limited.

The downturn in GDS was mostly due to fear of Jace decks. Since that fear's turned out to be overblown I expect GDS to make a comeback.

Whether you want to be playing Traverse Shadow or GDS depends on what removal you're expecting to face (Now that Traverse Shadow players have adopted Stubborn Denial and sometimes Snapcaster Mage.) If you want to beat Fatal Push, play GDS for the Delve creatures. If you want to beat Path to Exile, play Traverse Shadow for the higher threat density.

An interesting list in the latest MTGO Modern Challenge.


Traverse and Snapcaster lets you turn Traverse into a spell and Snapcaster into a creature.

Quote from Melkor »

I don't think people are upset about it being reprinted exactly. nobody is ever going to be sad to pull it. the problem is that it really isn't scare or in dire need of a reprint. that's in keeping with everything else I have seen for the reactions to this set, people are just unhappy becaue cards like Clique are on their nth printing, but it's very difficult to find other cards. FoW would have been better in that spot, Crucible of Worlds, Engineered Explosives, a bunch of others. It's a perfectly good reprint, but the demand of something like Goyf isn't there, and there is nobody who can't make a deck for lack of Clique being available. Doubling Season, Urza lands, Colonnade, Heirarch, even TNN. even cards not as expensive would have been met with more approval than some of the choices. the thing people object to isn't the cards in the set, it's the cards not in the set.

You've completely missed my point. Clique is "the wrong card," but the list of "wrong cards" is going to keep growing the more cards are reprinted.

Given the number of complaints I saw over Vendilion Clique being in A25, reprint equity is absolutely a problem. When it was first printed in MMA it was one of the biggest chase cards in the set. When it was printed again in MM2 it was still a high-value card you were excited to open. Now, it's "only $30" and thus is apparently a waste of space because of that.

Right now there's a good backlog of old cards that have never been reprinted, but once they get a reprint they cease to be "exciting." Wasteland or Mana Drain or Imperial Recruiter coming back won't drum up the same excitement. Tarmogoyf has plummeted from where it was when the Masters sets began.

I suspect this is also the reason for upshifting Chalice of the Void and Ensnaring Bridge to mythic. It won't impact their price much, meaning they can be used in future Masters sets as chase cards. Sacrificing some sales now for the sake of selling more in the future.