Quote from Teia Rabishu »There's a lot about the pro scene that really trickles some bad values down through the playerbase when you get right down to it. Problem is I can only antagonize so many people in one article, you know?
True that.
There's only so many times I can handle people questioning why I mainboard Duress instead of Thoughtseize or inquisition of Kozilek, when those cards are outrageously priced and someone would have to have either gotten lucky with their drafts or have a lot of disposable income devoted to magic just to have them. But yeah, it goes back to the whole deal of Wizards needing to print something like Vingolf Engage Knights each rotation that contains all the dominant main deck cards found in top pro-tour decks that are rotating out. Just slap two of each in there and sell them at msrp 35 usd to all major retailers.
There basically shouldn't even be a ranked version of play in Arena right now for anything other than traditional best of three. Fast play one vs one is just broken all day long.
I mean, just today trying to play this game at all in one vs one has ended up having a match where someone ixalan binds a krasis, and the deck shuffler stacked all the krasis together followed by a land pocket 3 deep.
The next match, I get all four arrests bunched up, a land pocket of 4 lands, and die because the other guys starting hand basically was better.
The match after that, I ended up having all my hero of precinct one stacked, a land pocket of 3 lands, and then got into another pocket of three of my four negates.
I'm sorry, but this is not acceptable. If I mulligan once, it does not behave at all like this.
On that front, pick up your Arcane Tempo challenger decks while they still exist at MSRP. The Phoenix pays for the deck.
After thinking on it I believe Modern Horizons was planned alongside the concept of the London Mulligan. If they institute the new rule, an entire series of cards could potentially be banned in the process without replacement. We're talking every leyline printed along with syrum powder, and a friend of mine already broke the game with the mulligan rule using a combo reanimator strategy. The game literally turned into praying you had a thoughtseize, and then you'd think exiling a graveyard works, but wizards put in a funny answer to that in Pull from Eternity... which also combos with Syrum Powder. So then the logical thing is to have Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's cage, except both players can mulligan until they have the cards they need, so what happens is that one person gets the answer, the other person gets a card to kill the answer, and we're back to square one.
It really changes how the game plays by a fair margin.
The issue most people don't realize with Carnage Tyrant is that it really does die to removal, just not traditional point removal (technically, they may even know it has that weakness, but do not account for it). In the mental chess game, one brings in that kind of card against a control deck that is loaded up with Counter Magic or someone playing removal.dec. Game 2 the control player will either board edicts or board sweeps, since board sweeps that hit unilaterally are pretty cost effective. That's sort of why I like Prime Time over the dino most of the time. I figure he's going to die in those matchups one way or the other and the extra resources he brings to the table if he lands can help pull off a finisher.
Also I like Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner. She can untap Nikthos and gives card advantage on the bigger plays when our hand starts drying up. Plus, if they waste a turn killing her, that's one more turn or one less removal to deal with when we get to the good stuff. Heck, you can Bloodbraid right into her as well.
1) It's not made clear why Bolas picked now to do an invasion. Lazotep plated zombies probably have a life span, but at the same time if his minions have not perfected the embalming process after doing it on multiple generations of people I'd be at a loss for words. Also, I'm not even going to start with how many different engineering improvements my Ravnica DnD playgroup already thought up on how to build better eternals.
2) Bolas not foreseeing Liliana's betrayal a mile away when he was able to manipulate Kefnet and entire civilizations. That's just them not wanting to kill their cash cow.
3) Supposedly the Eternals and the Statue don't matter, yet they are strategic pieces in the game to reclaim his pre-mending powers. How he can't fathom that losing the statue would bolster the morale of the opposing force and that more morale = bad for me is a little bit much.
I think the teams handling of Ravnica uniting is pretty interesting to see, though.
It's best not to think about the end of tomorrow, but in terms of two years. What do you think the possibility is in two years time they are reprinting Blackcleave Cliffs and Verdant Catacombs? Given how things worked last time they brought in shock lands they had the fast lands adjacent to the shocks. The only other possibilities that could be adjacent to shocks are Temples, pain lands, and filter lands.
This set is going so strong that I'm expecting it to end up like dominaria on the box EV. Just wait for June after modern horizons. They are probably going to be drafting this at GP Vegas as well.
I've been picking up Rishadan Port, sanctum prelate, and other cards that look like they will go up a lot if introduced to modern. If they include containment priest I'd be surprised as it was just printed, unless they wanted to soften the card price due to it only being in the old commander decks.
Hermoine + Jaina = Kasmina. It's like the fusion dance between two universes.
Oh, people think that Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace are good hate cards? I prefer it when my hate cards can also channel their rage into punching someone in the face Thalia, Guardian of Thraben style!