MTG Salvation

Quote from Hackworth »

Quote from Ronin009 »

There's also a card coming in the new Ravenica set that directly removes infect.

I'm gonna need supporting data on this one.

EDIT: The old card which removes poison is called Leeches, and it's a rare from Homelands.

I also think it should be able to target controller, I don't think this hosing infect would be a big deal.

Infect was designed as a horror-story type mechanic, meant to make players feel uneasy because poison can't easily removed. Having too much anti-poison tech damages the emotive core of the design.

The ways in which I don't give a toss about the emotive core of the design are too numerous to mention, and that is probably true of most players in sanctioned events who want to play a game with tools to fight every strategy. You could call STP or FOW "my aunt Alice" and it is still getting played and nobody cares about the name, feel or emotive core. In Legacy you go from 0 or 1 counters to dead t2. It is a game, the game needs infect hosers that work at the speed of the formats in which infect is played, this could have been one of them. In the draft format Scars was an enormous flop because removing poison counters was not possible. The game dog should wag the flavour/flavor tail.

Quote from Dynamite_Private »

He also mentioned on Blogatog that poison counters being impossible to remove is at the core of making them feel and be different than just another life total, or something along those lines. Don't have a link to the post right now, but yes, he confirmed (either there or on his column) that he did indeed stop this from targetting yourself specifically to keep it from interacting with your own poison counters.

Yeah, I think he did. Then again he has helped oversee the debacle that is Standard these past years, his "newbie first" strategy really backfired, and his one huge hit was a casual unglued set. It is a shame he did not get the Stoddard esque moving on, what has saved him is the fact that they often go back on ideas- Core sets, Llanowar elves, three blocks, Masterpieces etc. They certainly listen to players, and he is pretty good at issuing the mea culpa.

Just no really. The core set is a blow out pretty much. The odd option but nothing major.


Right now for control I would rather play Martyr proc, with its great Humans match, or if I was able to put the reps in, Lantern Control. Jeskai control is probably a better colour combo for Walker decks, especially with Teferi and Jace available. RG landkill is better than RW landkill right now due to pace and BBE; the best thing to be in white for was Suppression Field and there are fewer fetches out there for it to hose (frankly I have a homebrew GW land restricting deck that has been performing better than the RW one that did very well for a couple of years).
In short, the RW prison feels a little obsolete. We have 4 drops galore, we have leylines etc., all the good stuff tools, but we are getting nothing new and don't have a reason not to play 3 colours beyond Blood Moon, which feels weak unless it comes down t2. That means to me that Bridge/SSG is probably the way to go.

I would love to be more positive, but what we really need is the meta to be different, and for WOTC to put more into answers, as their recent attempts are way below the mark.

For me the ELO removal changed my motivation but it was probably not causal. I never went to a PT when I took it seriously (I only did 3 maybe, I top 8d one), I rarely travelled to GPs and the like anyway, (and when at a GP I found side events more profitable) but whenever you sat down with somebody you had a certain level of respect due to the ranking. I am fortunate to live in a tiny Mtg country, when we had the rankings I spent my time at the top of mine and pretty high up in the UK (I have printouts somewhere of me topping all the different rankings at one time), I have three county/territory/state champs, I won countless pre release events and have a few nice trophies, I helped design a couple of decks in the late nineties that won our tiny nationals and have played in the old Euros via our nationals (in the days when they paid flights and accommodation) and later in the UK nationals via Ranking and qualifiers. Nowadays even that has diminished, I have only entered one WMCQ and it was tiny, I got to the semis with a brew as it happened. But most of my contemporaries from back then do not play seriously now, and that will happen to all the current players, from casuals to Pro players from ten years ago some of whom are barely remembered from outside their circle. If people starting today want to be remembered as great players I think the time is basically gone for them to do that. The standard today is so, so high and the volume of reported events so huge that it barely matters who is very good and who is great, and the system to tell the difference probably does not really exist. There are masses of named players now generating content but it is so ephemeral.

When people start talking about doing X/Y/Z they have more opportunities to do massive events now, and some are pretty scornful of those who don't. Go big or go home and all that. It is a common mentality. Truth be told there are loads of great players out there who could be pros, people get good at the game quickly. But they spend a hell of a lot on Mtg to do so and when they are going and spending £100 to play an event every weeek and stay overnight with travel etc. I am sat at home, and have made that amount of money in trades and sales. I think in the end that sums it up for me. I don't want to pay for the game any more, I want it to be cost neutral and have an asset that grows, and if that means no RPTQs or PPTQs then so be it. That is my goal, and at the end of it I can live without the glory because I realise the emphemeral nature of it. I will be remembered by my current contemporaries and a source of decks and cards and my former ones as a spike, and in the end I don't really mind either way.

Most spikes end up not being spike.
I used to be spike. I think most people go through it.
The glass trophy or money win, or even the stupid local dominance can be reward enough.
In the old days those chess style rankings could be a powerful motivator. With me the conversion was dramatic, practically Damascene. Nowadays when I run into long-since-quit spike buddies and tell them how my constructed crowds view me now as the guy with the brew they laugh, because they knew me as a ranking point win pc junkie. Ironically I don't think spike goes away, he gets sublimated. When ranking points went and real life commitments reduced the amount of practice I could put in anyway I swapped my focus. I started playing decks I wanted to play, something alien to me. At first I found it frustrating, and especially when I lost to players I would have often expected to beat, but I stuck with it, and quit Standard, buying and selling into nascent Modern and eventually Legacy. I built up a huge collection, when the grinder Spikes went on road trips I might treat myself to the odd RL card instead. I started building top tier decks not for me but for others to borrow. The freedom of not playing top tier gave me opportunity to acquire top tier decks after relevant reprints, and in particular to sell on draft winnings not caring about Standard. In the end I became the go to guy to borrow decks off, an evangelical for eternal formats, always able to loan decks at the drop of a hat. The spikiness never really went away, but for me winning mtg became winning at mtg finance whilst winning at Mtg took second fiddle, and in the mean time I could play whatever I liked. Literally. I still drafted competitively, I still played to the best I could but I could enter events with a brew or ancient build long past tiers and that felt so, so liberating. Even today locally the phrase "watch me lose to tier five jank" has been uttered by more than one player when pairings are announced. If I go 2-2 with a ten year old archetype most Legacy players will respect that, in a way most Standard players of spike tendency would be scornful.
I think the data of "he beat the field with a brew' are gone in Standard, long long gone. I think they only exist on the margins of Legacy and not much more in Modern. You can, every now and then, run a brew and top 8 a fifty player plus event. I don't think you can do that at 500 player events.
Fundamentally you have to ask do I want max win pc or not? Brewing is horribly ineffective in ratio of time put in to effective result. That time is better spent learning match ups. If you don't brew, learn two decks that are good at different times and be done with it. Don't worry about what someone thinks about your deck, respect varies from person to person, some respect skill, some respect innovation, some respect good manners, just learn two good ones, be it boggles or humans or whatever, just run with them. Forget leveraging skill or any such, just learn two solid decks, most decks do have some kind of skill anyway.
For what it is worth I would recommend not worrying too much about win pc, in five years half the people who you beat will be quit or playing commander, and those worrying about win pc the most tend to be those spending most to play mtg.

Quote from jonnyreco »

anyone got any post dominaria lists?

obviously leyline may not be a good as it used to be

Only if you run Sun and Moon pw builds. If you are running Suppression Field builds with no PW then Leyline is the same. That said landkill is the only one I gave seen run S Field and it is not especially in need of Leylines in the board, unlike most W decks.

As for Dominaria there is more for Pillow Fort builds/enchantment control or Enduring Ideal builds due to Sagas than for any traditional RW Prison. Sun Moon and Bridge variants gets little so far beyond the rather obvious mini trinisphere, Damping Sphere, which is excellent. The Sagas offer stuff, the blast may be a great reset button, but generally the
Legendary critter themes just do not help. The cards like board the WL may work in a heavily skewed shell type.
Mox Amber I can see working with some decks, but not a prison like RW, unless it is a full Norrin the W type deck.

I miss land destruction more...

I will give you my take.
Firstly- my background, so that you can see any bias. You are welcome to skip.

I have played a long time, I do drafts where the rares are prizes- redraft and by and large I am strong enough at limited to make whatever skills I had pay. Under the K ranking system I would fluctuate between top 100 uk and just outside the top 10 in limited, without ever doing more than a few rounds of a big event outside nationals. Most of my "best" picks in draft are not the hot cards at the time but the second picks where I took a long term view. I started taking an interest in finance around a decade ago. My ebay sales cleared 100+ last month, in the last two I made £1200 plus private sales of 500, my average per month is closer to £100-200, private sales can vary. Rarely someone comes to me with a collection or high end cards to shift on privately, but mainly it is my cards I sell on to obtain higher value ones. My collection is, well, let us just say I store my cards in a safe, I own a lot of legacy decks in that safe, in full, and a similar number of modern decks, and it has mainly been paid for by dropping out of standard and selling off in 2007 or so. I don't touch vintage, I speculate a little here and there, I bought a lot of old boxes when they were sub 100 Euros from European sources, I take advantage of the disparity between Europe and the US, and the disparity between what cards sell for on Ebay and their trade value in dollars. I read mtg finance reddit and Mtgstocks daily, I never post on finance ever- the major patterns in finance are pretty obvious, and when I do get some inkling or a whisper I don't tell anyone because that is not how it works, and, of course, I always sell into the hype and get out early, I am risk averse. The only secrets I can tell you is that anyone looking at finance needs to not play every format because that is how you get stung, the formats you are not playing in are the ones that makes you cash, and that as ever everyone needs to stay ahead of the curve but by definition they can't, so you have to jump first.

On this set I have no special wisdom but I think this will be the last set of its kind. Their formula for all masters sets has been consistent since the second, and it takes no account of price after release, only initial price pre reprint. The formula simply does not work outside of Modern, and barely works within it. We all know a cards value is a function of supply and demand, and that cards can maintain a high price as a function of scarcity rather than widespread demand. Goyf and its ilk drop a small amount and rapidly rebound, because now you need another 3 Goyfs. Imperial Recruiter won't work like that- it has a direct replacement for most decks and inconveniently for WOTC the Top ban killed Imperial Painter, the deck now best as a fring mono U deck. As in the disparity between Chronicles City of B and it's AN counterpart, the original will hold a lot of value, but the reprint won't- 40 dollars or so, maybe 50 if few boxes get openened. For IR read Mana Drain and you are basically there.
Similarly let us assume we all know that the value of the rares and uncommons is a huge driver of the "feel bad/feel" good in a pack. Opening a Bident of Thassa does not feel as bad when it comes with a Brainstorm and foil Swords. This set will feel bad way too often whichever way you run the maths. There is some uncommon value, and common value, but the rare/myhtic value is awfully centered on fewer cards than usual. Even those opening, say for example, a Rishadan Port will feel "great this card is worth X" but then have to try and find a buyer who does not own them already for D N T, brown Stax or Lands. That is a tall order in terms of Lands- if you own a Tabernacle then Ports were unlikely to be an issue, and your Lands deck may run without them. If you are lucky enough to find a Brown Stax player they will probably own all the cards too. If you don't own a Tabernacle then Lands probably should not be your deck choice. Port may be the bottleneck to D N T, and you will find out if it truly is if you check the price of the other cards in the deck, assuming the demand is real and not speculator driven. Chalice and Bridge are cards that are notable for being used in multiples, they will hold a lot of their value. The optimum number of Chalice is 4 in Legacy, but that will lead to a lot of frustrated players. In fact that is this set over - an awful lot of packs will annoy or upset, meaning repeat buyers will be few and far between.
In short the set will bust by virtue of rotting on shelves, low player confidence and a myriad of other factors including the disenfranchisement of the player base by a host of feel-bad decisions over the past 6-12 months. Wizards as ever will get sales to LGS, but they will have cut back on orders after Iconic, and they will not fly off the shelves nor will LGS be clamouring for a second printing. If you assume they saw what happened to Iconic, realised the distribution of A25 is similar, it is likely that they unbanned JTMS to boost sales of a set made with a similar calculation- a few high end mythics, little value in the rare slot, and a large number of cards who maintained a high price due to scarcity rather than organic demand. In short the set is only really worth it as a draft experience, as is often the case, but this is more true than ever. Their careful management of spoiler season felt like Punch and Judy show where everyone can see the hand and the curtain has fallen down, as soon as we got into the third day it was obvious where it was heading.

I know my local LGS ordered less of this set than Iconic. Unless there is some sweet "treasure" esque suprise, the set will basically be Iconic II, but with the added bonus that people's expectations are lower, meaning a few more may buy it and sales might kick in earlier. As Atari found in 1985, when a product is talked of as being dead (8bit e.g. 800XL), and retailers cut prices, it can act as a short term shot into the arm. Pauper too may cause a shot in the arm as there are a few goodies for Pauper players, but it is not enough. If the worst happens with Iconic, and prices get slashed early then all bets are off. If it does not, then I would wager the next masters set has an RRP of about 8$, and may even have some kind of masterpiece/alternate art theme running through them, even affatecting uncommons/commons- rarer art foil Brainstorms, for example, even old style foil ones. The alternative is a masters set with fetches in, which is a sure way to make a set sell, albeit one that cannot be continued indefinitely.

Personally I hate the Mtg art of today.
I like abstract and whimsy you saw on some of the older cards, but most of all I liked the idea of not knowing what the art would be before I opened the pack. It is called variety, and I hear humans rather like it.

Each set should have a loose style to match the theme, sure, I can envisage good reasons for that. Each block? Always the same. Oh look, digital art depicting some guy called Gideon with ludicrous muscles and presumably shrunken genitalia and a failing liver from steroid abuse. I know what the artwork on the next Gideon will be too. The same. Always literal. Generic. Dull. Anodyne. Could you make Mishra's factory winter under the new guidelines? No. It would look like a factory. Some of the most talked about cards in history arose partly from the art. Drew tucker, the Foglios, Rebecca Guay etc. Look at Jones's Stasis. Iconic, debatable, and noteworthy. I see John Avon stuff now and it looks like everyone else's.

Secondary market must influence the rarity, but I don't see it impacting reprints in isolation- other factors are equally prominent.
Goyf and FOW are not mythic for any reason at draft level, and it is only their widespread use and relative scarcity (of which price is a function) that got them purple status. Clearly if FOW was a 5 dollar common from m10 it would not be Mythic, but it is story and power level that impacted LOTV not being reprinted in standard, and a good many other things besides. Now for my money story can go and reproduce with itself in anyway it sees fit , and any player who tells me "I can't have another Elspeth/Urza's underpants/whatever because X happened in this book/story" can go with them and enjoy some roleplaying or a good novel, because I don't want to be playing Mtg and discussing story after with them- ever. Mtg Lore should be a servant, not a master. Similarly for me if LOTV is too powerful for Standard you need to make standard more powerful in terms of answers. Nonetheless, even though I do not agree with their reticence to reprint in Std, I fully believe that their reasons for not putting in older cards are more to do with these factors than simply price, because there are loads of really obvious and relatively cheap cards they avoid reprinting in Standard for power reasons, such as Path, Bolt, Counterspell. They have always tried to give players novel designs on established ideas or characters (*shudders* at the mention of characters)and that means Emrakul gets a Mk II makeover and not Emmy I, LOTV gets replaced by new Lilly etc. The whole idea of wishing to emphasise plot tends towards novelty in individual cards- even when a mechanic returns like Madness very few original cards came with it. Strangely this doesn't apply to Sailor of Means, but that is Wizards all over, and the fact that so many people commented on it shows how rare it is to reprint an existing card, even a common one. I will wager something odd went on in that process too.

Quote from Colt47 »

Quote from idSurge »

There is no harm (Pithing vs Spyglass) in having functionally similar, but distinct, cards.

There is when talking about which card is going to see more play. A one mana increase in cost means a ton in formats like modern, and the tacked on effect doesn't really help much. When you cast something like Pithing Needle, you aren't interested in their hand: You already know what you are aiming to disable preemptively by using the card, so in terms of which one is better, the former is. However, in this case since the casting costs are both below 3 I'd say both are playable cards.

But in Legacy the Spyglass sees play in Chalice decks- the extra mana does not matter in the sol land decks which normally set Chalice to 1 counter. Some cards are Legacy playable but not Modern playable because of differences in the format.

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2014: Let's drop core sets and 3set-paradigm and introduce 2set-paradigm...
2017: A mistakes were made... Meet core sets and no2set-paradigm...

2016: Meet masterpiece theme...
2017: A mistakes were made... Meet not-every-set masterpiece theme...

2015: Meet Gatewatch storyline...
2017: A mistakes were made... Meet less-Gatewatch storyline...

2007: Meet duel decks...
2017: A mistakes were made...

A Soldier Stompy deck T8ed MKM Barcelona last weekend.

Decklist is here: http://series.magiccardmarket.eu/2017/11/05/remi-herve-lacombe-stompy-soldiers/

Rémi Hervé Lacombe – Stompy Soldiers
Main Deck:
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Karakas
8 Plains
4 Daru Warchief
4 Enlistment Officer
4 Preeminent Captain
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Suppression Field
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Recruiter of the Guard
1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
1 Odric, Lunarch Marshal
4 Palace Jailer
4 Chrome Mox
4 Aerial Responder

Sideboard:
1 Containment Priest
1 Cast Out
1 Worship
2 Selfless Squire
1 Rest in Peace
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Armageddon
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Leonin Relic-Warder

I am not hot with the "symbol" thing.

For me magic is all about the "gathering" symbol, magic is about its 5 colors , not about planeswalkers, no matter how hard they try, they want to make it a brand with something they can actually own as something (and planeswalkers are easy to brand around and produce tons of merchandise if you want to).

----

Anyway, i dont like it, but in the end, even for the sole reason to make a somewhat logo that works on smaller scale, ok, it wont matter anyway as i can gladly ignore the logo as it has nothing to do with the actual card game if you play the game (its nowhere on the cards, and it doesnt contribute anything to the game to have it).


For me putting effort and money into making a new logo, is a giant waste of money and time.
Theres always a special thing to staying true to your roots, theres simply no reason to use a new logo at all, especially as ALL the cards they print have the old classic blue magic logo anyway, so putting a different logo on other products is just stupid ...

That logo was really bothering me. So I took a harder look. I just realized why I dislike this logo so much. That's the freaking Planeswalker logo!

Really WotC?

I thought my issue was the new vector friendly font and colors but now I realize that WotC/Hasbro decided to just blatantly toss their old logo and make the whole thing all about the Planeswalkers!

I hate the Planeswalkers. Not the card, what they represent. Magic is supposed to be about you, not 30 some-odd Planeswalkers derping it across the Planes. This new logo doesn't strengthen Magic's identity as Magic, it weakens players role in the game.

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Hello all,

I am a previous magic player who due to life is starting to work on modern again. Traditional I am a control player and mostly play grixis and UWR but enchantress has always been my pet deck. My current list Of Naya enchantress is as followed

Creatures
Herald of the Patheon x4
Courser of Kruphix x3
Eidolon of BLossoms X1

Enchantments
Ramp
Utopia Sprawl x4
Oath of Nissa x3

Don't die
Journey to Nowwhere x2
Banishing light X1
Oblivion ring X1
Cast out X1
Runed Halo x4
Ghostly Prison x3
Peace of Mind X1
Sphere of Safety X1
Phyrexian Unlife x2
Solonimity x2

Eventual kill them if they don't scoop
Starfeild of Nyx X1
Assemble the Legion X1
Form of the dragon X1
Dovescape X1

The reason most player hate my deck
Idyllic tutor X1
Enduring Ideal x2

Lands
WindSweapt heath x4
Wooded Foothill x4
Temple Garden x3
Stomping Grounds x2
Sacred FOundry X1
Forest x3
Plains x3
Nykthos X1


Side

Kor Firewalker x3 (this is only until i gets leyline of sanctity)
Suppression field x2
Stony silence x2
Rest In Peace x2
Never more x2
Greater URAMANCY X2
Story Circle X1
Open the Vaults X1


So first let's agrees the Elphants in the room:
1. Yes i run the enduring Ideals i love that card and this deck lets me play it
2. Its a 61 card deck which mathematically doesn't really change anything to a degree I'm concerned with
3. This is an update and still needs more testing
4. Please don't kill me for the creatures lol

That being said i play the great creature base along with the green enchants because getting sphere on the board was always my main game plan. They die some time and as long as it is a burn spell I'm ok with that cause they gained me like and got me some advantage. The Prison package is tuned for an older meta but i think it is still at least close. I originally had a single unlife but in Solenimty i went to 2. The form of the dragon and dovescape are the original win con and i may shift away if i like the unlife combo. I haven't played modern in a while and i know its fast and creature based so i hope yaw can help me tune this baby up so i can make people quit games before i kill them :). Thank you in advance and i hope everyone enjoys their evening.

If there is a white one,
I could hardly imagine a better option
than The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
which can tap for W.

DO IT, WIZARDS!