The way I read these two together is that once Rubinia targets a creature an opponent controls with her ability, Willbreaker says gain control of it. Thus, since it has already changed control, untapping Rubinia again on my next turn wouldn't cause me to lose control of the creature, correct?
So I have a rule question. I believe I know what the answer is, but I would like confirmation and/or clarification.
A player has Pacification Array in play. They attempt to tap a creature. The ability goes on the stack. I respond by tapping that creature to crew one of my vehicles (on my opponent's turn).
The way I read the stack is:
-Pacification Array activated ability goes on the stack.
-Crew response goes on the stack.
-Crew vehicle ability resolves.
-Pacification Array resolves.
Have I got it correct? I can tap a creature in response to an effect trying to tap it, right?
In addition, if you play a second Metallic Mimic choosing the same type as one you already have, the new Mimic will actually get the counter. An "as this enters the battlefield" effect takes place before it hits, so the Mimic will have the type when it would be affected by the original one.
I just had this come up in a game. Is this the official ruling? I plan to play a deck with Mimic in it.
I started drafting Aether Revolt recently. One of the cards that caught my attention right away was Lathnu Sailback. On the surface, it's a pretty boring common. It doesn't do anything except attack. But sometimes attacking is all you need.
Pros for using it:
-It has only one colored mana symbol, making it ideal for multi-color decks. Thus far, I have run red/white/black. Land fixing is almost non-existent in draft, so it's good to have a card that doesn't require too many of the right lands to cast, such as Aetherwind Basker. If those two cards were in the same pack, I would probably draft Sailback first. I am not sure that I would ever have the opportunity to cast Basker. Putting it in my deck locks me out of using three colors.
-Five power for five mana is pretty good in draft. There are a lot of small creatures running around. Quite a few folks like to draft around a theme. I just try to combine low-drop creatures with big old beaters and attack relentlessly. I've won a lot of draft games doing that. For me, Sailback reads "target player sacrifices a creature during combat." Then, since there isn't draw excel that anyone is playing, my opponent's creatures dwindle over time. It can be a slow roll to victory, but slow and steady will get you there.
-So far, no one is drafting it. Everyone passes it to me, so I can confidently take something else expecting that it will come back around.
Cons for using it:
-It doesn't have trample. For a creature that does nothing but attack, trample is the keyword it needs to have. First strike would also be good. But it doesn't have any keywords. It will be overmatched with uncommon or rare creatures that can do more things. Putting Siege Modification on it demonstrates just how good it would be if it had first strike.
-Not everyone likes playing red. This is a personal preference. Red doesn't have the best creature removal in Aether Revolt. Chandra's Revolution is a card that drafters play out of necessity. Red also doesn't have low-drop hasty characters as commons and uncommons. Anyone who commits to drafting red should expect to have a slow first few turns only to come on strong later in the game. This is generally how red drafted decks work, with the exception of the odd rare or mythic thrown in.
Overall, Lathnu Sailback is an excellent card for draft or sealed where Aether Revolt packs are involved. Playing this card makes me understand why Wizards had Mahamoti Djinn as a rare for so long.
Ever since moving to New Hampshire a year ago, I've been struggling to find a place to play magic where I would actually enjoy myself. I didn't want to go to a place that's super competitive with people who do nothing but spend oodles of money on all kinds of decks. It took me about eleven months to discover Weggas.
Weggas is a locally owned and operated store run by a friendly guy named Greg. The store is open six days a week. Thus far, they are doing draft events every Thursday. There are plans to have a sealed/draft league with Aether Revolt some time in the future. Greg is currently hoping to register more players at the store so that he can run a prerelease with the next set in May. I believe he needs like seven or eight more.
In addition to magic, they sell video game consoles, books, movies, CDs, comic books, board games and action figures. Sometimes there's free popcorn. There's a room in the back of the store where children can play XBox games. There are usually at least three kids running around at any given time.
Overall, I've had a very positive experience there. I would recommend the store to anyone looking to start magic or get back into it. I always have a fun time when I go there.
My question is: do the counters cancel each other out? Or does each remain independent of the other? If they cancel each other out, you could do an infinite combo with this, since Kitchen Finks' toughness will always be 1 when it persists.
I personally think the current standard meta is going to be super-controlly. Planar Outburst, Descend Upon the Sinful, and various other tempo/draw tricks in the deck should be able to deal with anything that comes up. Compelling Deterrence will beat Westvale 10 times out of 10. It's not like anybody will be surprised when they see a bunch of tokens happening.
I also think that Tamiyo's Journal is an underrated card for control/tempo decks. These decks want to stall until they can find a trump card- ie, something will win them the game. In the past, this was Sun Titan or Mind Sculptor or Batterskull or whatever. Now it might be something different. Pearl Lake Ancient comes to mind, as it can be cast on someone's endstep. Geralf's Masterpiece probably will be the best choice out of all the creatures available due to its high power, decent CMC, and recursion ability. It's a late-game finisher, rather than a middle-game beatstick like Baneslayer Angel was/is.
I'm also a fan of Reflector Mage as a tempo-changing card that acts as a body to eat up damage. Tempo is the most important aspect of control decks. If you get tempo going your way, you win. If the other player has all the tempo, you lose. That's why Force of Will is a legacy staple: it puts control of the game's tempo in the hands of the control player, rather than the player who wants to drop a 12/12 creature on turn 2.
Now let's say I'm in my main phase, and I have a draw trigger from Temple Bell. Do I draw two cards, or four? I'm wondering if only one of these cards count because they say the same thing or if it works like, "You would draw a card, so you must draw two cards [You would draw a card, so you must draw two cards]." For each instance of Thought Reflection happening, the Archive would double it. Is this correct?
I am not sure if they are triggered abilities or replacement effects. They read like replacement effects, but I thought I would ask to make sure.
The biggest problem I have with magic is that the rare lands always get expensive, no matter what set they're from. I don't know if it makes sense to have printed fetch lands as rares since forever. They should be commons, as should be the shock lands, pain lands, and "enters tapped unless ___" lands. The primary obstacle to many players seeking to play competitively in eternal formats (ie, Modern and Legacy) is that the land base can cost more than a used car.
This serves as a barrier for both players and event hosts. Hosts lose out on revenue when they can't get X number of entry fees due to the high price of constructing a deck. People who do have their competitive decks have to drive a long way out of the way because it just isn't profitable to hold eternal format events. No one shows up to local Modern events. The store I went to tried to let people use an unlimited number of proxies just to play, but that didn't work because no one who looked up the event online knew about that.
Now, certain rares, mythics, and some uncommons will become staples and get to be really expensive. I don't see that there's a reasonable way around that. Card prices will rise suddenly, then fall suddenly while other start out cheap and become expensive. There's no way to stop that from happening. But what can happen, and what should happen, is for all the rare multi-colored lands to become commons in a new set (with the exception of attacking lands). Lands don't win games by themselves. Creatures, instants, sorceries, enchantments, planeswalkers- those cards win the game. Now if Wizards wants to see greater participation in their events, if they want more parity for standard (a format known for stagnation and repetitiveness), they can just offer Hallowed Fountain or a similar land to every player who opens a pack. The same for Scalding Tarn and all the others.
In the short term, collectors won't like it. They'll be upset that their cards have dropped in value. In the long term, they'll be happy because more people will start playing the game which will lead to more chase rares and mythics becoming more expensive- more people will be buying them because more people will be able to afford playing competitively. Today, my understanding is that the vast majority of magic players play casual. They show up for the midnight pre-releases by the hundreds, but the further back constructed formats go, the less they're interested in it. This is a negative for everyone who makes money from the game- dealers, traders, collectors, event hosts, website owners. Everyone.
Hello friends, I'm not sure if I am posting in the right area...
I have a Bant Commander deck that uses creature ETB triggers to influence the game state in a control-ish way until a trump card is found. It only has one instant or sorcery- Primal Surge. I'd like to keep it that way, as it's more challenging to build and play with a gimmick deck than it is to simply run the same Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator combo in a Bant shell that's been around since a third of forever. In order to do that, I'm looking for creature cards, enchantment cards, or artifact cards that remove or destroy other creatures with ETB triggers. I'm looking for Blue/Green/White colors.
I'm not sure if there are any others. I'd rather not run clones in my deck; I've found them to be hit or miss. I'd rather abuse the ETB triggers with blinking. Ideally, I'd like to have 3 to 5 more exile-ish permanents that aren't Banisher Priest types where someone gets the creature back right away if the exiler dies. So I thought I'd ask you all if you guys know of any creatures that do this.
To begin with, there's plenty of room for innovation in a color-shifted plane (ie, Planar Chaos) in which:
-Goblins draw cards and counter spells
-Soldiers do stuff with the graveyard and can't block
-Zombies have haste as long as X condition applies (ie, one opponent has less than their starting life total)
-Merfolk live in forest marshes and help with mana fixing/generation
-Elves are forbidding and like to say "no" to everything
-Dragons are teeny-tiny and don't cost a lot of mana, but they work a little bit like Faeries, except with unique ETB triggers for each color.
-Red is the color of taking of extra turns
-Black is the color of hasty, powerful creatures
-Blue is the color of mana fixing
-Green is the color of removal and limitations
-White is the color of graveyard interaction and weak creatures
So no, the ideas will never run out, not if I can think up this stuff off the top of my head. I'm sure the design teams can do a lot better with enough time and testing.
The more I look into this deck, the more impressed I am with it. I particularly like Blind Obedience being able to keep creatures tapped so that I can bounce their best stuff with Mistblade Shinobi. At the least, it should slow down every opponent's tempo, which is what ninjas desperately needs. It also hoses Splinter Twin, which more less means they get a game one loss right off the bat. Here's the list I came up with:
Lifebane Zombie seems like a really good fit for ninja decks. It has intimidate, it has a good enter the battlefield trigger. Detention Sphere is probably being overlooked as a card that's really good. There's not a lot of enchantment destruction in Modern, as it happens. So it will be good for the same reason Maelstrom Pulse is good.
I tried out this deck the other day. I really like it. Unfortunately, I went 0-3. The deck's biggest problem, so far as I can see, is Cryptic Command. What the dilly? Counter target spell, bounce something? Incredible loss of tempo. I'm not quite sure what in mono-black can help this out, if anything.
I came across the "time traveler's mill" deck and couldn't beat. Made them discard five cards by turn 3; they drew them all back. I haven't thought of a way to beat that deck save with Underworld Dreams- and they'll probably bounce it before they take 20 damage.
I really like how the deck seems to match up against Pod and Twin, but I've never seen those. Just lots of control. I'll keep plugging away with it for a while longer to see if I don't get any better results. Defense Grid? For the decks that can't really draw cards and need to win by turn 4-5, mono-black infect seems like a blowout.
Also, I am probably going to run two copies of Eradicate in the sideboard. Getting rid of all the Goyfs, or all the Meliras, or all the Wurmcoils all in one shot seems really powerful.
Willbreaker
The way I read these two together is that once Rubinia targets a creature an opponent controls with her ability, Willbreaker says gain control of it. Thus, since it has already changed control, untapping Rubinia again on my next turn wouldn't cause me to lose control of the creature, correct?
A player has Pacification Array in play. They attempt to tap a creature. The ability goes on the stack. I respond by tapping that creature to crew one of my vehicles (on my opponent's turn).
The way I read the stack is:
-Pacification Array activated ability goes on the stack.
-Crew response goes on the stack.
-Crew vehicle ability resolves.
-Pacification Array resolves.
Have I got it correct? I can tap a creature in response to an effect trying to tap it, right?
I just had this come up in a game. Is this the official ruling? I plan to play a deck with Mimic in it.
Pros for using it:
-It has only one colored mana symbol, making it ideal for multi-color decks. Thus far, I have run red/white/black. Land fixing is almost non-existent in draft, so it's good to have a card that doesn't require too many of the right lands to cast, such as Aetherwind Basker. If those two cards were in the same pack, I would probably draft Sailback first. I am not sure that I would ever have the opportunity to cast Basker. Putting it in my deck locks me out of using three colors.
-Five power for five mana is pretty good in draft. There are a lot of small creatures running around. Quite a few folks like to draft around a theme. I just try to combine low-drop creatures with big old beaters and attack relentlessly. I've won a lot of draft games doing that. For me, Sailback reads "target player sacrifices a creature during combat." Then, since there isn't draw excel that anyone is playing, my opponent's creatures dwindle over time. It can be a slow roll to victory, but slow and steady will get you there.
-So far, no one is drafting it. Everyone passes it to me, so I can confidently take something else expecting that it will come back around.
Cons for using it:
-It doesn't have trample. For a creature that does nothing but attack, trample is the keyword it needs to have. First strike would also be good. But it doesn't have any keywords. It will be overmatched with uncommon or rare creatures that can do more things. Putting Siege Modification on it demonstrates just how good it would be if it had first strike.
-Not everyone likes playing red. This is a personal preference. Red doesn't have the best creature removal in Aether Revolt. Chandra's Revolution is a card that drafters play out of necessity. Red also doesn't have low-drop hasty characters as commons and uncommons. Anyone who commits to drafting red should expect to have a slow first few turns only to come on strong later in the game. This is generally how red drafted decks work, with the exception of the odd rare or mythic thrown in.
Overall, Lathnu Sailback is an excellent card for draft or sealed where Aether Revolt packs are involved. Playing this card makes me understand why Wizards had Mahamoti Djinn as a rare for so long.
Weggas is a locally owned and operated store run by a friendly guy named Greg. The store is open six days a week. Thus far, they are doing draft events every Thursday. There are plans to have a sealed/draft league with Aether Revolt some time in the future. Greg is currently hoping to register more players at the store so that he can run a prerelease with the next set in May. I believe he needs like seven or eight more.
In addition to magic, they sell video game consoles, books, movies, CDs, comic books, board games and action figures. Sometimes there's free popcorn. There's a room in the back of the store where children can play XBox games. There are usually at least three kids running around at any given time.
Overall, I've had a very positive experience there. I would recommend the store to anyone looking to start magic or get back into it. I always have a fun time when I go there.
Persist goes like: the creature dies, it enters play again with a -1/-1 counter.
Bolster says: choose the creature with the lowest toughness among creatures you control. Put a +1/+1 counter on it.
The cards are Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit and Kitchen Finks.
My question is: do the counters cancel each other out? Or does each remain independent of the other? If they cancel each other out, you could do an infinite combo with this, since Kitchen Finks' toughness will always be 1 when it persists.
I also think that Tamiyo's Journal is an underrated card for control/tempo decks. These decks want to stall until they can find a trump card- ie, something will win them the game. In the past, this was Sun Titan or Mind Sculptor or Batterskull or whatever. Now it might be something different. Pearl Lake Ancient comes to mind, as it can be cast on someone's endstep. Geralf's Masterpiece probably will be the best choice out of all the creatures available due to its high power, decent CMC, and recursion ability. It's a late-game finisher, rather than a middle-game beatstick like Baneslayer Angel was/is.
I'm also a fan of Reflector Mage as a tempo-changing card that acts as a body to eat up damage. Tempo is the most important aspect of control decks. If you get tempo going your way, you win. If the other player has all the tempo, you lose. That's why Force of Will is a legacy staple: it puts control of the game's tempo in the hands of the control player, rather than the player who wants to drop a 12/12 creature on turn 2.
Thought Reflection
Now let's say I'm in my main phase, and I have a draw trigger from Temple Bell. Do I draw two cards, or four? I'm wondering if only one of these cards count because they say the same thing or if it works like, "You would draw a card, so you must draw two cards [You would draw a card, so you must draw two cards]." For each instance of Thought Reflection happening, the Archive would double it. Is this correct?
I am not sure if they are triggered abilities or replacement effects. They read like replacement effects, but I thought I would ask to make sure.
This serves as a barrier for both players and event hosts. Hosts lose out on revenue when they can't get X number of entry fees due to the high price of constructing a deck. People who do have their competitive decks have to drive a long way out of the way because it just isn't profitable to hold eternal format events. No one shows up to local Modern events. The store I went to tried to let people use an unlimited number of proxies just to play, but that didn't work because no one who looked up the event online knew about that.
Now, certain rares, mythics, and some uncommons will become staples and get to be really expensive. I don't see that there's a reasonable way around that. Card prices will rise suddenly, then fall suddenly while other start out cheap and become expensive. There's no way to stop that from happening. But what can happen, and what should happen, is for all the rare multi-colored lands to become commons in a new set (with the exception of attacking lands). Lands don't win games by themselves. Creatures, instants, sorceries, enchantments, planeswalkers- those cards win the game. Now if Wizards wants to see greater participation in their events, if they want more parity for standard (a format known for stagnation and repetitiveness), they can just offer Hallowed Fountain or a similar land to every player who opens a pack. The same for Scalding Tarn and all the others.
In the short term, collectors won't like it. They'll be upset that their cards have dropped in value. In the long term, they'll be happy because more people will start playing the game which will lead to more chase rares and mythics becoming more expensive- more people will be buying them because more people will be able to afford playing competitively. Today, my understanding is that the vast majority of magic players play casual. They show up for the midnight pre-releases by the hundreds, but the further back constructed formats go, the less they're interested in it. This is a negative for everyone who makes money from the game- dealers, traders, collectors, event hosts, website owners. Everyone.
I have a Bant Commander deck that uses creature ETB triggers to influence the game state in a control-ish way until a trump card is found. It only has one instant or sorcery- Primal Surge. I'd like to keep it that way, as it's more challenging to build and play with a gimmick deck than it is to simply run the same Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator combo in a Bant shell that's been around since a third of forever. In order to do that, I'm looking for creature cards, enchantment cards, or artifact cards that remove or destroy other creatures with ETB triggers. I'm looking for Blue/Green/White colors.
I have thus far found:
Duplicant
Phyrexian Ingester
Luminate Primordial
Angel of Serenity
Angel of the Dire Hour
I'm not sure if there are any others. I'd rather not run clones in my deck; I've found them to be hit or miss. I'd rather abuse the ETB triggers with blinking. Ideally, I'd like to have 3 to 5 more exile-ish permanents that aren't Banisher Priest types where someone gets the creature back right away if the exiler dies. So I thought I'd ask you all if you guys know of any creatures that do this.
-Goblins draw cards and counter spells
-Soldiers do stuff with the graveyard and can't block
-Zombies have haste as long as X condition applies (ie, one opponent has less than their starting life total)
-Merfolk live in forest marshes and help with mana fixing/generation
-Elves are forbidding and like to say "no" to everything
-Dragons are teeny-tiny and don't cost a lot of mana, but they work a little bit like Faeries, except with unique ETB triggers for each color.
-Red is the color of taking of extra turns
-Black is the color of hasty, powerful creatures
-Blue is the color of mana fixing
-Green is the color of removal and limitations
-White is the color of graveyard interaction and weak creatures
So no, the ideas will never run out, not if I can think up this stuff off the top of my head. I'm sure the design teams can do a lot better with enough time and testing.
4 Blind Obedience
1 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Darkslick Shores
1 Drowned Catacomb
3 Familiar's Ruse
1 Glacial Fortress
3 Godless Shrine
3 Hallowed Fountain
3 Higure, the Still Wind
2 Imposing Sovereign
1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
1 Island
4 Mistblade Shinobi
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Polluted Delta
3 Seachrome Coast
1 Swamp
2 Remand
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Tormented Soul
4 Triton Shorestalker
2 Vendilion Clique
3 Watery Grave
2x Exhaustion
3x Extirpate
3x Jotun Grunt
3x Lifebane Zombie
2x Negate
Lifebane Zombie seems like a really good fit for ninja decks. It has intimidate, it has a good enter the battlefield trigger. Detention Sphere is probably being overlooked as a card that's really good. There's not a lot of enchantment destruction in Modern, as it happens. So it will be good for the same reason Maelstrom Pulse is good.
I came across the "time traveler's mill" deck and couldn't beat. Made them discard five cards by turn 3; they drew them all back. I haven't thought of a way to beat that deck save with Underworld Dreams- and they'll probably bounce it before they take 20 damage.
I really like how the deck seems to match up against Pod and Twin, but I've never seen those. Just lots of control. I'll keep plugging away with it for a while longer to see if I don't get any better results. Defense Grid? For the decks that can't really draw cards and need to win by turn 4-5, mono-black infect seems like a blowout.
Also, I am probably going to run two copies of Eradicate in the sideboard. Getting rid of all the Goyfs, or all the Meliras, or all the Wurmcoils all in one shot seems really powerful.