"The vast majority of people will have flipped tails about five times"
Actually only about a quarter of people will have flipped tails five times. I mention this because it illustrates a point related to this topic that a lot of people don't understand: The most likely outcome is not necessarily very likely. You move on to discuss other elements of variance so it's not directly connected with most of your article but I still think it's important to note.
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- Bogardan Mage
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I feel this is a bit of a selective view. The first actual story in Magic was Antiquities, which was anything but high fantasy. Ice Age might look like Tolkien on the surface but it has the Phyrexian and Brothers' War artifacts lurking below the surface. The roots of that storyline were in Alpha as well, where does Sunglasses of Urza fit into this supposedly high fantasy game? Right from the very beginning, Magic was forging its own path. Your disconnect is not because it's moved away from high fantasy roots, it's because it's forging that path in a different direction to the one you anticipated.
As to why they reprinted both, we can only speculate. It might have been specifically to enable decks in singleton formats (for example, Commander) that might want to use both. It might have been just that the designers of Daxos chose Ancient Craving and the designers of Meren chose Ambition's Cost (we know that the decks were divided amongst the design team, it could just have been a variation in personal preference). Whatever the reason, I think it works better to have both rather than two copies of one. It's not like they see play outside of Commander.
I'm not as confident as you about this but as I said, this is a much better argument against Tears being Shandalar.
Why do you think you need to impress upon me how much you dislike the new appearance of Slivers? (and why do you think I don't believe you when you say you have no objection to the mechanics? Why do you think the mechanics are at all relevant here?) The question is whether these opinions are likely to prevent WotC from returning to Shandalar. You have not presented any reason to believe that the majority of Magic players share your views, even now you qualify this claim as "the majority of people who have had the chance to play with the old slivers" as though I'd somehow assume that everyone who plays this game has been playing since Time Spiral at the latest. In fact, we are the minority, so if your opinion extends only to this subset of the playerbase then it is by definition a minority view. Nor have you presented any reason to believe WotC considers the existence of this opinion to preclude further use of the new sliver design. They did precisely that in M15 and your only response to my mention of this is to loudly proclaim how much you hate those slivers as well. Well, point proven then! It doesn't matter how much you (or the majority of the minority) hate this design, they are demonstrably willing to use it anyway. Finally, you have not answered my question of why we should assume that Shandalar is indelibly linked to this sliver design or for that matter to slivers at all. You don't seem to understand that I don't disagree with you about the sliver design, I'm talking about the likelihood of visiting Shandalar as a block setting. But you ignore the latter to rant about the former, as though your primary goal here is to convince me to hate the same art that you do.
A few things on this:
1. Yes, you have a strong opinion. This doesn't matter! I say that there were a range of opinions on the new slivers, you respond with 'No, you don't understand! I have a strong opinion!' The strength of your opinion does not override the opinions of others. I ask you about popularity and you give a totally irrelevant rant about how you personally feel.
2. My point about M15 is that they saw the backlash and this was their response. If your (undeniably strong!) opinion is that this response was inadequate, well get ready to be disappointed by the next appearance of Slivers because clearly they believe this is appropriate. That you personally believe this is a major flavour fail means nothing; this is what they have demonstrably done! To say they couldn't possibly do it again in the future because you don't like it is nothing short of wishful thinking.
3. Saying that people opposed the mechanical change because of the art is drawing a very long bow, but this has nothing to do with the topic so I'll not dwell on it any further.
Thank you, I am aware of this. When I asked if it "counted" as a new setting I meant in the sense of "returning blocks". It seems unlikely they would follow Battle for Zendikar with another return block, but on the other hand they have never had a block set on Shandalar before. So it might count (because of the prior appearances that apparently I need to specifically state in order to prove I'm aware of) but it might not, and that's what I'm asking. If that question could be resolved, it would be much better evidence than 'Don't you understand how much I, personally, dislike the new appearance of Slivers?'
Just how unpopular were they? They got a lot of ridicule from established players but we can't forget that there's a great number of players whose views are not represented on forums like this. When they brought back Slivers in M15, they used both the old and new designs suggesting that the latter is not just the pure poison you make it out to be.
Besides which, Shandalar is not and has never been all Slivers all the time. The idea that they would toss the plane away because one tiny subset of it was unpopular, even if it was universally unpopular, doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The recent appearances of Shandalar (and yes, they have been recent, especially with respect to the game's history. I'm not sure what you think that proves, though) have been grooming it as a generic fantasy setting in the way that Dominaria used to be (Dominaria itself has become more of a post-apocalyptic plane), so I can certainly see them setting a future block there and there wouldn't even necessarily be any need to include Slivers.
That said, there's an important question of whether Shandalar counts as a new setting or not. If it doesn't, it's unlikely to follow Battle for Zendikar. If they do decide to visit a previously depicted plane, there may be copyright or other issues as there were with both Arkhos/Theros and Mongseng/Khanar/Tarkir. Shandalar would presumably sidestep some of these issues because they would already have tested the copyright for the computer game (not sure of the precise law, but I imagine there's a benefit there). Otherwise, it seems likely they will pick up Liliana's storyline soonish and she has two more demonic creditors on (as far as I know) unknown planes, so they could visit both of those without having to worry about reconning Planechase or whatever again.
Do you perhaps see any contradiction in removing all copies of Lightning Bolt to ensure that you can resolve a Lightning Bolt? Countermagic is part of this game and especially this format, you need to accept that sometimes your spells are going to get countered and it's not worthwhile going through some deckbuilding gift of the magi to preserve the pleasure of watching your spell resolve at the expense of making your deck that much weaker.
You know what bugs me? When people ask a fair question, wait for an answer, then pretend they got a completely different answer which they had already decided they were going to get before asking the question. The answers in this thread make it perfectly clear that your irritation is caused by nothing but yourself. If you'd take a rational approach you wouldn't feel compelled to put four copies of Misstep in literally every deck you build. The fact that you personally feel thus compelled is not cause for restricting anything. But if you think it should be restricted, why not try it? Set yourself the challenge of building a deck with no more than one copy. I don't think you even want that single copy, but apparently you're not able to help yourself so go ahead. Build the deck, try it out. Why should it need to come from official channels if it's only your own deckbuilding that irritates you?
Once again, my advice is don't. If you don't like putting them in your Elf deck, then don't. I honestly believe your deck will be stronger if those slots are replaced by more elves. Nearly two years ago, you asked this question apparently in earnest and got this same answer. And yet you're still putting them in your deck and complaining as though someone put a gun to your head and made you do it. If you feel that strongly that you need to have countermagic, perhaps you shouldn't be playing an aggro deck. Again, I really believe your deck does not in fact want Missteps and I'm surprised that you're so resistant to removing them given they apparently cause you so much distress.
I'm confused. You ask a question, get a diverse range of answers, then nearly two years later you complain that the state of affairs is far more clear cut than the diversity of answers you got suggests. I don't think you should run four missteps in your Elf deck. What are they there for? Protecting your Glimpse from other Missteps? Countering Ancestral for value? You're not a control deck, my instinct would be that those slots would be better served supporting your aggro strategy. And the answers you got in January last year support this conclusion!
Kaervek's Torch dodges Misdirection. Also, by the time you hit the payload if your opponent has a Force they'll most likely have used it on Channel or Lich's Mirror or something, so the danger really is something like Misdirection that can hit Fireball but not Channel.
I had Dig and Cruise in an earlier draft of the deck, but I felt they were a little clunky for what the deck's doing. I didn't include Thirst for much the same reason. Wheel is interesting although it might want a bit more red in the mana base.
The trouble with red X spells is you have very few red sources in the deck. Only 10 total, and 7 of them are lands (so if you have to hit your land drop before going off, you're looking at three specific cards to turn on your Torch. Rings allow you to get Lich's Mirror for another reset, floating more mana for the next time around. If you're going to replace them with payloads, they should be Emrakul. I'm not sure if that would make the deck more consistent though.
1 Channel
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Personal Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
Mirrors:
4 Lich's Mirror
3 Ring of Three Wishes
1 Tinker
2 Fabricate
Disruption:
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
3 Flusterstorm
Payloads:
1 Kaervek's Torch
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Misc:
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Memory Jar
1 Brainstorm
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
1 Regrowth
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Lotus Petal
4 Tropical Island
3 Bayou
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Taiga
2 Windswept Heath
4 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Nature's Claim
1 Forest
2 Ravenous Trap
1 Flusterstorm
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rebuild
I was having a conversation about the interaction between Channel and Lich's Mirror (which, for those not familiar, is that the Channel effect sticks around after the Mirror's "reset" so you can pay all your life, reset back up to 20, and keep playing with a new hand of seven) so I came home and built this deck. Mostly it's based on discussions I found on Google dating back to Shards of Alara previews, I've tried to update those ideas with more recent developments so if anyone notices something I missed let me know. I've been having a lot of fun playing it in the MTGO 2-man queues.
I think the appeal of these is that they're highly sought after lands getting reprinted.
As someone who started playing with V4, can you please explain the benefit of this to me? It just seems logical to have the cards you own right there when you're building a deck. I knew V3 separated them but I've never understood why that is, much less why it would be preferable.
Which is a problem, but I'm trying to be realistic here: What incentive does WotC have to basically hand out free packs? It doesn't matter if you're 100% convinced that this is purely an unnecessary act of greed, the end result is the same: It's not going to change. Same deal with redemption costs, except there it's even more plausible that there would be actual unavoidable costs causing the increase. If MTGO isn't viable after this change then I expect it wasn't viable before, at least not at the profit margins they wanted for it. And in that case there's no prize scheme that will save it.
I honestly don't see what's so unreasonable about making a certain mode of play necessary for maximising your value, I think you're just upset that that mode isn't the one you prefer to play any more. Constructed Dailies used to be the way to grind value; if you weren't playing constructed you weren't gaining value. So how is this any different? Plus, if you really can't stand the thought of playing a single round of limited there's nothing stopping you from raredrafting then dropping. The notion of being flooded with so many play points that you can't use them all is a pretty optimistic problem to have anyway.
This execution of play points is far from perfect but it's definitely not a horrible failure. The play points side of this change is broadly positive, it's the increase in the cost of Dailies (and the bizarre pseudo-Dailies for Vintage et al.) that is the negative.