Right, in order to deal combat damage to a planeswalker you have to attack the planeswalker directly. The redirection stuff is only applicable for noncombat damage. Comp rules quote, bolding mine:
306.6. Planeswalkers can be attacked. (See rule 508, “Declare Attackers Step.”)
306.7. If noncombat damage would be dealt to a player by a source controlled by an opponent, that opponent may have that source deal that damage to a planeswalker the first player controls instead. This is a redirection effect (see rule 614.9) and is subject to the normal rules for ordering replacement effects (see rule 616). The opponent chooses whether to redirect the damage as the redirection effect is applied.
First, let's not be sensationalist here. Bargain is broken. Far more broken than Prophet would ever be. The only reason you can make that claim is because you've probably never played with the card to see how stupid it is. I get why they banned her, but come on.
I'm not being sensationalist, at least not intentionally. I really do mean that. Bargain is infinitely more broken in 1v1 or in a deck designed to break it, certainly. But in the vast majority of multiplayer EDH decks, mana is already much more of a limitation than cards. Getting enough mana to use all the cards Bargain gives you and win the game is hard (and generally requires tailoring your deck pretty specifically to it). Getting enough cards to spam out with Prophet and win the game is easy as hell and requires nothing special.
It does matter what kind of playgroup you have. More casual or durdly settings were clearly not doing well against the card and even more tuned lists were having problems with it, it seems. However, my group never really had issues with the card. It was "kill on sight" and did run away with a few games here or there, but was largely contained. We recognized it was good and powerful, but to say that it ruined ANY kind of playgroup is baseless and hyperbole. However, it DID ruin enough of the RC's target players' games that they found it worthy of a ban and it is as simple as that. Making sweeping statements doesn't help anyone's arguments.
Again, I feel like I do have legitimate justification for this statement. I get around and I've played in a lot of different types of group. Obviously durdlefest groups were having trouble with the card, but I really do think it was just as much of a problem in the megaspike groups. Yes, it is KoS status there and those groups tend to have the tools to actually accomplish this through a wall of counterspells, but the existence of a single Prophet in any of the decks at the table turns the game into a battle of who can tutor for it, steal it, reanimate it and keep hold of it, and whoever wins that battle wins the game. It's the same argument that was used to justify Primeval Titan and Sylvan Primordial getting banned, I know, and in those cases I had a hearty chuckle at the reasoning. In this case though, I feel like it's actually fair, because Prophet has so much more of an impact than those cards. You do just win the game if you can keep hold of a Prophet and your deck is good. Therefore, suddenly the best play in any given circumstance becomes "how do I get myself a Prophet?" The Mystical Tutor that usually gets you a counterspell or combo piece is now finding Bribery. Your reanimation deck is ignoring its own graveyard because Prophet is better than anything it has. And so on.
I would mind it a lot less if it weren't a creature, actually. Then it would be a lot harder for other players to interact with (other than with removal), and games wouldn't devolve so much into a game of grab-the-Prophet.
I got onto this thread expecting people to be sharpening there pitchforks and burning Sheldon in effigy, but most people seem relatively okay with the changes. I don't think this has ever happened before.
Prophet really sucks man. I'm all for a minimal banlist. I think a lot of the recent bans have been frankly laughable, and if I were solely in charge the banlist would be about 2/3 its current size. I've been desperate for a Prophet ban for a while. I'd rather someone had a Bargain in play than a Prophet in 99% of circumstances.
As the announcement says, it's just too much the perfect EDH card. Doesn't matter what kind of playgroup you have, it ruins games.
I'd love to see Magic cope with more realistic settings. What would a block set in the modern day look like? Or not necessarily on Earth, but just some random plane with similar levels of technology and globalisation, and all the mess that comes with. Perhaps also an honest attempt at a scifi setting (Space: The Convergence doesn't count, sorry).
I feel like the first one would be especially hilarious. Imagine forcing the colour pie onto real life people, organisations, philosophies, politics...I know we've all heard the "What colour was Hitler?" discussion, but trying to apply the pie holistically to our world would be intimidating, properly almost impossible, but definitely entertaining.
How well is Steam Augury working for you? It feels clunky to me - you'll always miss the best out of the top 5. Perhaps playing shows it to be better?
Have you considered Peer Through Depths? You only have 2 non-mana cards that it can't grab. So basically, once you have the mana/counters you need, it digs to make sure you're not just drawing more mana. It has a 97%+ hit rate here, and an average of 2 and half cards to choose from. It seems like Impulse #2 for the deck. Of a similar vein: Uncovered Clues has a 94% hit rate for 1 card, and a 70% hit rate for 2. Foresee even feels like it could be better. You see one card less, but you know you'll get the best out of them. The last two are sorceries, though, but they all reduce down to U, rather than UR. It's give and take.
Yeah, being instant is absolutely key for Steam Augury. If it were a sorcery I would never play it, and likewise if Foresee was an instant I'd play that in a heartbeat. Plus, most of the large-scale instant draw is UU, so it's quite hard to avoid that part of it. And I do think it's important that it gives you a lot of cards, because card quality is generally fairly homogeneous and the ones that go to the yard can still be useful.
That said, I'm wondering whether something like Thoughtflare wouldn't be better. Probably worth a try.
Peer Through Depths is a very good call though, not as a replacement for Augury but in its own right. I'll have to figure out how to make room for it at some point (since at least some of the cards I added will probably be binned at some point).
For Embargo, etc, are you dealing with Hordes or Fat mainly? Crawlspace works well for Hordes.
My playgroup is pretty diverse. I'm up against the whole spectrum from a 40-power commander to ten bazillion Saprolings. I'm trying to think of fairly general-purpose cards because I don't have room for many of them.
EDIT: Something else I haven't quite been able to figure out is whether it's possible to easily slot in some more combo wincons, because currently I am pretty much completely reliant on Reiterate to win. This hasn't yet been a problem, but it certainly could be. I don't really want to run any combos that get in the way too much though, especially since my current wincon of choice (Reiterate + land untapper into infinite copies of whatever cards are in my hand - Firemind's Foresight into Brainstorm + Reality Spasm + Reiterate is a neat little package, by the way) consists entirely of cards that are good by themselves too.
Tezzeret's Gambit is strong here. I'm generally always against small-effect cards (such as minor draw), but I think things synergize too well to overlook. This is the one pure-xp / cycling card the deck wants. It bumps you from "setting up" to "I'm there" quicker than anything else. 1xp becomes 3, and you net a card - at only 2 mana (2 life is almost always negligible). 2+ counters makes the profit margin exceedingly great: Going from 3 to 5 counters and digging in 2 more cards - for basically free. Later game recasting via Past/Mastery is still profit, netting you more cards and more XP.
I'm an idiot. It was a late cut, but that was only because I totally forgot you could prolif players (having played infect in Standard for about a year straight). Thanks for the catch.
I don't think any of the other prolif cards are worth a spot, sadly.
I have a bunch more cards I'd like to rotate through when I have playtested the current list a bit, but in particular I'm wondering whether Overburden/Embargo/Torpor Orb are worth it after the failure of Meekstone.
Okay, first round of changes after about 20 games of playtesting. In general, I feel like winning once I get to four counters or so is pretty easy (and you never tend to go over 6 or so before the game ends), so I think I need more stuff to get to that point and a bit less durdle. Also I think turn 3 Mizzix or earlier is absolutely critical. I've been mulling pretty aggressively with that aim. Finally, I need to be able to protect the little guy a lot better.
-Melek (clunky)
-Seething Song (pretty small amount of value, and it's red mana which is tricky. Would definitely play if it added blue...)
-Scour from Existence (I need removal early, not when I have loads of counters)
-Sakashima (I never actually wanted to cast it, again just too clunky)
-Acquire (nothing to get that I actually care about - Bribery gets Prophets!)
-Dominate (I like it, but it's ultimately too niche)
-Fanning the Flames (was only in there as a finisher, but I can Comet Storm or just Reiterate any burn spell as a finisher)
-Insurrection (by the time I can cast it, I can generally just win anyway or would prefer a board wipe)
-Treasure Cruise (super clunky to cast given that I generally don't want to exile my spells, and not really that much value compared to DTT)
-Spell Burst (as amazing as it looks in practice, it never really gets to counter relevant things for "free". Literally every time I had it I would have rather had any of the other X counters)
-Knowledge Exploitation (too damn expensive, versatile though it may be)
-Mind Over Matter (another one that looks amazing on paper, but in practice any time I did cast it any untap effect would have won instantly, and a lot of the time I just didn't want to spend the 6)
-Meekstone (never relevant against any of the 15-ish different decks I've tested against so far, most of which were big creature based, so blech)
-Increasing Vengeance (rarely want to actually use rather than just casting something else, especially at double red)
-Island (can afford to skimp a little bit)
Hi, I'm sort of back. I'll update my other decks sooner or later.
This current list hasn't been playtested at all yet, but that will occur within the next couple of days and I'm sure a lot of changes will be made. This list is very much all in on the commander, as with most of my decks. In this case, that means just playing as many instants and sorceries as possible, getting access to as much coloured mana as possible, derping around, controlling the game, and eventually(?) winning with an infinite combo or pure attrition. I might be a bit low on control or actual wincons right now, but I would like to test that out first because I still don't really have a handle on exactly how the deck is going to play.
Also, no extra turns. Just no. I'm going to be taking up enough of people's time as is.
Hi folks! If you played in a BFZ prerelease over the weekend, could you please head to the link below and take the brief survey enclosed? It would be a big help to the global judging community.
Ive started to assemble my Mishra deck, and I don't really know what I want to do outside of the Blood Funnel/Possibility Storm theme. I'm trying to avoid the stax and counters like Bur's deck, but it's so tempting.
I swear there are tons of ways to 'abuse' constantly shuffling. But I'm brain-dead and rusty at this game now so all I can remember is Top.
Again, I feel like I do have legitimate justification for this statement. I get around and I've played in a lot of different types of group. Obviously durdlefest groups were having trouble with the card, but I really do think it was just as much of a problem in the megaspike groups. Yes, it is KoS status there and those groups tend to have the tools to actually accomplish this through a wall of counterspells, but the existence of a single Prophet in any of the decks at the table turns the game into a battle of who can tutor for it, steal it, reanimate it and keep hold of it, and whoever wins that battle wins the game. It's the same argument that was used to justify Primeval Titan and Sylvan Primordial getting banned, I know, and in those cases I had a hearty chuckle at the reasoning. In this case though, I feel like it's actually fair, because Prophet has so much more of an impact than those cards. You do just win the game if you can keep hold of a Prophet and your deck is good. Therefore, suddenly the best play in any given circumstance becomes "how do I get myself a Prophet?" The Mystical Tutor that usually gets you a counterspell or combo piece is now finding Bribery. Your reanimation deck is ignoring its own graveyard because Prophet is better than anything it has. And so on.
I would mind it a lot less if it weren't a creature, actually. Then it would be a lot harder for other players to interact with (other than with removal), and games wouldn't devolve so much into a game of grab-the-Prophet.
Prophet really sucks man. I'm all for a minimal banlist. I think a lot of the recent bans have been frankly laughable, and if I were solely in charge the banlist would be about 2/3 its current size. I've been desperate for a Prophet ban for a while. I'd rather someone had a Bargain in play than a Prophet in 99% of circumstances.
As the announcement says, it's just too much the perfect EDH card. Doesn't matter what kind of playgroup you have, it ruins games.
I feel like the first one would be especially hilarious. Imagine forcing the colour pie onto real life people, organisations, philosophies, politics...I know we've all heard the "What colour was Hitler?" discussion, but trying to apply the pie holistically to our world would be intimidating, properly almost impossible, but definitely entertaining.
That said, I'm wondering whether something like Thoughtflare wouldn't be better. Probably worth a try.
Peer Through Depths is a very good call though, not as a replacement for Augury but in its own right. I'll have to figure out how to make room for it at some point (since at least some of the cards I added will probably be binned at some point).
My playgroup is pretty diverse. I'm up against the whole spectrum from a 40-power commander to ten bazillion Saprolings. I'm trying to think of fairly general-purpose cards because I don't have room for many of them.
EDIT: Something else I haven't quite been able to figure out is whether it's possible to easily slot in some more combo wincons, because currently I am pretty much completely reliant on Reiterate to win. This hasn't yet been a problem, but it certainly could be. I don't really want to run any combos that get in the way too much though, especially since my current wincon of choice (Reiterate + land untapper into infinite copies of whatever cards are in my hand - Firemind's Foresight into Brainstorm + Reality Spasm + Reiterate is a neat little package, by the way) consists entirely of cards that are good by themselves too.
-Leyline of Anticipation
+Tezzeret's Gambit
I don't think any of the other prolif cards are worth a spot, sadly.
I have a bunch more cards I'd like to rotate through when I have playtested the current list a bit, but in particular I'm wondering whether Overburden/Embargo/Torpor Orb are worth it after the failure of Meekstone.
-Melek (clunky)
-Seething Song (pretty small amount of value, and it's red mana which is tricky. Would definitely play if it added blue...)
-Scour from Existence (I need removal early, not when I have loads of counters)
-Sakashima (I never actually wanted to cast it, again just too clunky)
-Acquire (nothing to get that I actually care about - Bribery gets Prophets!)
-Dominate (I like it, but it's ultimately too niche)
-Fanning the Flames (was only in there as a finisher, but I can Comet Storm or just Reiterate any burn spell as a finisher)
-Insurrection (by the time I can cast it, I can generally just win anyway or would prefer a board wipe)
-Treasure Cruise (super clunky to cast given that I generally don't want to exile my spells, and not really that much value compared to DTT)
-Spell Burst (as amazing as it looks in practice, it never really gets to counter relevant things for "free". Literally every time I had it I would have rather had any of the other X counters)
-Knowledge Exploitation (too damn expensive, versatile though it may be)
-Mind Over Matter (another one that looks amazing on paper, but in practice any time I did cast it any untap effect would have won instantly, and a lot of the time I just didn't want to spend the 6)
-Meekstone (never relevant against any of the 15-ish different decks I've tested against so far, most of which were big creature based, so blech)
-Increasing Vengeance (rarely want to actually use rather than just casting something else, especially at double red)
-Island (can afford to skimp a little bit)
+Magmaquake
+All is Dust
+Blasphemous Act
+Lightning Greaves
+Darksteel Plate
+Mox Diamond
+Reality Shift
+Recoup
+Misdirection
+Magma Jet
+Impulse
+Brutal Expulsion
+Reset
+Izzet Charm
+Force of Will
Let's see how that goes.
This current list hasn't been playtested at all yet, but that will occur within the next couple of days and I'm sure a lot of changes will be made.This list is very much all in on the commander, as with most of my decks. In this case, that means just playing as many instants and sorceries as possible, getting access to as much coloured mana as possible, derping around, controlling the game, and eventually(?) winning with an infinite combo or pure attrition.I might be a bit low on control or actual wincons right now, but I would like to test that out first because I still don't really have a handle on exactly how the deck is going to play.Also, no extra turns. Just no. I'm going to be taking up enough of people's time as is.
1 Mizzix of the Izmagnus
Instants
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Brainstorm
1 Brutal Expulsion
1 Capsize
1 Chaos Warp
1 Comet Storm
1 Commune with Lava
1 Condescend
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Dig Through Time
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Firemind's Foresight
1 Force of Will
1 Impulse
1 Intuition
1 Izzet Charm
1 Magma Jet
1 Magmaquake
1 Misdirection
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Mystic Confluence
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Power Sink
1 Reality Shift
1 Reality Spasm
1 Reiterate
1 Reset
1 Rewind
1 Steam Augury
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Syncopate
1 Turnabout
1 All is Dust
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Braingeyser
1 Bribery
1 Call to Mind
1 Compulsive Research
1 Curse of the Swine
1 Gamble
1 Mana Geyser
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mind Spring
1 Mizzix's Mastery
1 Mystic Retrieval
1 Past in Flames
1 Pull from the Deep
1 Recoup
1 Tezzeret's Gambit
1 Time Spiral
Artifacts
1 Chrome Mox
1 Coldsteel Heart
1 Darksteel Plate
1 Fire Diamond
1 Izzet Signet
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Diamond
1 Sky Diamond
1 Sol Ring
1 Star Compass
1 Thought Vessel
1 Arid Mesa
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Command Beacon
1 Command Tower
1 Flooded Strand
16 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Mountain
1 Polluted Delta
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Shivan Reef
1 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Temple of Epiphany
1 Volcanic Island
1 Wooded Foothills
http://blogs.magicjudges.org/playerexperience/2015/09/28/battle-for-zendikar-prerelease-survey/
Cheers!
It has been! I've been way too busy this year for Magic.