even with the SCG and challenge results, the only thing that makes me consider that dredge isnt just the new flavor of the month was caleb scherer playing it. guy has a ridiculous win percentage, and one of the foremost specialists of storm but he puts it down for...dredge? he never missed a stride, even when humans spiked to its highest rep. dunno, maybe hes playing for some other reason that im not aware of.
He spoke about it a few times over the past bit on stream. With the new SCG championship thing, winning is more important he straight up believes Dredge is a stronger/better deck. Or at least it is right now.
He's also on Dredge for Legacy. He actually top 4'd the event with Orim67's list in the last one.
IMO, Storm isn't in a great place at the moment. It's not bad and can certainly do well with a good pilot, but so many decks right now can flat up race it's best hands. Which for a long time, was one of the strong points of the deck.
I've been mostly playing Bloo over Storm for the past month given how much of a race things are and have been doing quite well. Trying to race Bloo is often funny. For me.
1-Coresets becomes a set to tell old stories.
2-They start to do good planeswalker decks (in each collection) or drop them.
3-A new and interesting set.
4-Stop with the gatewatch tale.
5-Give up on Brawl or change the format/give it competitive status (maybe with sideboard).
You're already getting your wish on #4. The 3rd Ravnica set is suppose to wrap up the Gatewatch story set. Though, that won't be the end of them I imagine, they'll just probably go into seperate stories. Jace, Chandra and Liliana are they're most popular characters by far so I can't see them giving up on them.
So where are all the decks with Rest in Peace hiding these days? Graveyard decks seem to be taking over MTGO right now. Dredge and Bridgevine have been 25% (combined) of the my matchups in the past week. No one seems to be praying on them much at the moment.
I feel more people are looking to find the 'next broken deck' like h0lydiva has perhaps with Steak-Kin, instead of leaning on the proven RIP deck, UW Control.
We dont find out till next weekends SCG I guess.
That's fair. Though with how easy it is to change decks online with everyone using the rental services, I do expect decks to catch on faster online then in paper. I mean Bridgevine in paper is pretty expensive so if someone didn't already have it/could borrow it, I don't know how many new pilots would jump on.
So where are all the decks with Rest in Peace hiding these days? Graveyard decks seem to be taking over MTGO right now. Dredge and Bridgevine have been 25% (combined) of the my matchups in the past week. No one seems to be praying on them much at the moment.
So far the only home I've liked Assassin's Trophy in is Legacy Elves. Though I understand a lot of BUG players are happy they finally have an answer to Jace. I would expect the price to keep falling but in small increments.
At the end of it, it appears that I now have a successful order for 1 unit instead of 2 like I ordered. .
From speaking with a few people who've spoken with WoTC customer service, it looks like the website put through sales but did not actually reduce the stock levels as it did so. Thus most orders that were placed as 2 copies are only going to get one and have the other refunded.
On another thing. Is there some modern deck that's hot on Manamorphose right now? Two people pm'd me today on facebook asking to buy the manamorphose set that I have on sale.
It's a staple for Storm and you generally see it in Mardu Pyromancer. For a common/uncommon it's a reasonably expensive card, so everyone who wants them are looking for deals.
Top IMO, was the wrong ban. It should have been Counter Balance. But WoTC likes to go after the enabler rather then end card so despite thinking it should have gone the other way, at least they were consistent with this choice.
Some reason for DRS and Probe. They're the enablers of silly things rather then the silly things themselves.
I've seen people playing TES where they swapped Probe for Thoughtseize and didn't miss a beat. I don't see why ANT can't do the same.
Said with no malice, sarcasm or anything else, but you don't play ANT do you? Most people don't understand what Probe does for the deck
A) Perfect information is the obvious one. What counters you have to play through, etc.
B) Here's what most people miss. The deck plays Cabal Ritual as one of it's main engine cards which requires getting to threshold. The margins of hitting threshold on Turn 3 (which is when you want to go off) is razor thin even with Probe. Without Probe, getting to Threshold on time is actually hard. It's forcing the deck to go slower to hit critical mana to Ad Naus. As a lover of ANT, I'm playing TES for the time being until we can get the engine going again. Not having Probe has been a big hit in practice even if it doesn't seem like it in theory. I really think Rain of Filth is going to become mandatory for the engine if Cabal Ritual remains part of the package which in turn will make it a more all-in combo deck. And if you're going that route, then you might as well play the better engine that can have a plan B in TES.
C) Cabal Therapy for the sweet 2 for 1 discards isn't a thing. Like most, I've actively switched them over to Thoughtseize. But that's a function of necessity rather then choice. Not having the sweet two or more for ones in a value format is sad. But I'll get over it. That one is just an over the time whinge.
I still think Probe was fine. The Probe ban in Legacy came as something of a shock to the playerbase since the ban cries for it weren't that loud.
Not to anyone paying attention. Multiple Dev's have been on record over the past year as not liking what Probe was doing to the format. Getting perfect information and replacing it's self for functionally no opportunity cost was not considered tickety. Everytime someone would bring up Deathrite to the Dev's, they'd shift the conversion to Probe.
But I'm also a sponge of information who lurks everywhere. So missing these discussions probably isn't too hard.
Inventions and Invocations are reserve list cards in everything but name.
Any EDH playable Inventions are just going to keep going up and up over time. Invocations might as well but don't seem to get as much love due to the awful frame.
The execution of Phyrexian Mana was 100% a mistake. Sure, there are bad cards that just happen to have Phyrexian Mana in their Mana costs, but as a mechanic Phyrexian Mana was a mistake.
And what criteria are you using to determine that?
Probably Randy Buehler who's said as much time and again both when he ran R&D and now.
Increased Tarriff.. maybe it's only for Canadian buyers?
I ordered some cards from SCG two days ago that they shipped yesterday. The card prices and shipping prices are still the same.
Yes.
Straight 10% tariff on all "playing cards" from the US. So all sealed MtG product in all stores is going to go up. Which, if it has any impact on pack sales, will also drive up prices on singles.
Though my understanding is that WoTC is aware and was working with distributors to get Core 19 stuff through the border before things went in place. So in theory, for the first wave of M19, we shouldn't see any jumps.
That's a bit of bad news. I hope large online stores like SCG won't raise prices too much.
SCG won't have any issue directly. They aren't actually allowed to sell sealed product to Canada anyways, so there's no tariff issue. Now if one is shipping from SCG to a place near the border to go down and pick it up, you can probably expect to get charged the tariff when you bring it back to Canada.
Let's face it. We all know SFM will do next to nothing if ever unbanned. They couldn't risk unbanning it without an immediate reprint because by the time it was actually reprinted, all the hype would've died down and there would not be nearly as much (artificial) hype for whatever set they put her in.
I think this is it right here.
Agreed.
And if they actually do want to unban Preordain, I bet it shows up in the same set.
He spoke about it a few times over the past bit on stream. With the new SCG championship thing, winning is more important he straight up believes Dredge is a stronger/better deck. Or at least it is right now.
He's also on Dredge for Legacy. He actually top 4'd the event with Orim67's list in the last one.
IMO, Storm isn't in a great place at the moment. It's not bad and can certainly do well with a good pilot, but so many decks right now can flat up race it's best hands. Which for a long time, was one of the strong points of the deck.
I've been mostly playing Bloo over Storm for the past month given how much of a race things are and have been doing quite well. Trying to race Bloo is often funny. For me.
You're already getting your wish on #4. The 3rd Ravnica set is suppose to wrap up the Gatewatch story set. Though, that won't be the end of them I imagine, they'll just probably go into seperate stories. Jace, Chandra and Liliana are they're most popular characters by far so I can't see them giving up on them.
That's fair. Though with how easy it is to change decks online with everyone using the rental services, I do expect decks to catch on faster online then in paper. I mean Bridgevine in paper is pretty expensive so if someone didn't already have it/could borrow it, I don't know how many new pilots would jump on.
I had an Affinty opponent roll it as a 1 of and in chatting with him, he really enjoyed it. Though he was unsure if it warrants a 2nd copy yet.
From speaking with a few people who've spoken with WoTC customer service, it looks like the website put through sales but did not actually reduce the stock levels as it did so. Thus most orders that were placed as 2 copies are only going to get one and have the other refunded.
Sorry, that should have said died from the Spoils damage rather then decking. And in this instance it was 3 copies of Spoils.
Yup. But it also resulted in really funny games like an Ad Naus player casting Spoils of the Vault and decking the amulet player. Good times.
It's a staple for Storm and you generally see it in Mardu Pyromancer. For a common/uncommon it's a reasonably expensive card, so everyone who wants them are looking for deals.
Top IMO, was the wrong ban. It should have been Counter Balance. But WoTC likes to go after the enabler rather then end card so despite thinking it should have gone the other way, at least they were consistent with this choice.
Some reason for DRS and Probe. They're the enablers of silly things rather then the silly things themselves.
Said with no malice, sarcasm or anything else, but you don't play ANT do you? Most people don't understand what Probe does for the deck
A) Perfect information is the obvious one. What counters you have to play through, etc.
B) Here's what most people miss. The deck plays Cabal Ritual as one of it's main engine cards which requires getting to threshold. The margins of hitting threshold on Turn 3 (which is when you want to go off) is razor thin even with Probe. Without Probe, getting to Threshold on time is actually hard. It's forcing the deck to go slower to hit critical mana to Ad Naus. As a lover of ANT, I'm playing TES for the time being until we can get the engine going again. Not having Probe has been a big hit in practice even if it doesn't seem like it in theory. I really think Rain of Filth is going to become mandatory for the engine if Cabal Ritual remains part of the package which in turn will make it a more all-in combo deck. And if you're going that route, then you might as well play the better engine that can have a plan B in TES.
C) Cabal Therapy for the sweet 2 for 1 discards isn't a thing. Like most, I've actively switched them over to Thoughtseize. But that's a function of necessity rather then choice. Not having the sweet two or more for ones in a value format is sad. But I'll get over it. That one is just an over the time whinge.
Not to anyone paying attention. Multiple Dev's have been on record over the past year as not liking what Probe was doing to the format. Getting perfect information and replacing it's self for functionally no opportunity cost was not considered tickety. Everytime someone would bring up Deathrite to the Dev's, they'd shift the conversion to Probe.
But I'm also a sponge of information who lurks everywhere. So missing these discussions probably isn't too hard.
Any EDH playable Inventions are just going to keep going up and up over time. Invocations might as well but don't seem to get as much love due to the awful frame.
It's going to be back to the days of Goyf, Mongoose and Stifle for the main Delver deck.
Probably Randy Buehler who's said as much time and again both when he ran R&D and now.
SCG won't have any issue directly. They aren't actually allowed to sell sealed product to Canada anyways, so there's no tariff issue. Now if one is shipping from SCG to a place near the border to go down and pick it up, you can probably expect to get charged the tariff when you bring it back to Canada.
Agreed.
And if they actually do want to unban Preordain, I bet it shows up in the same set.