I am just wondering if anyone has a pulse on whether this card Rishadan Port will ever get reprinted online. It is currently $154 on MTGOTraders.com I tend to think this is not because of how good it is, but because Mercadian Masques did not get a lot of circulation online and it is therefore very scarce.
I want to actually buy some to build Legacy Death and Taxes, and I can afford it. But I feel like if this card got reprinted as a promo or in a limited set or something, the price would drop significantly because the demand is not that high.
I cast Lightning Bolt. My opponent casts Remand targeting my Lightning Bolt. I cast Remand targeting my own Lightning Bolt that is currently on the stack.
I understand the Lightning Bolt comes back to my hand, and I draw a card. The question I have is: what happens to my opponents Remand? Does this mean his Remand fizzles, and he does not draw a card? Or will he still draw the card off his Remand despite having no legal target upon resolution?
- No, thats not a typo: I am trying out good old Sorin, Lord of Innistrad over Sorin, Solemn Visitor. I'm quite unsure of this, but here is my reasoning: he makes tokens with his +1, so he protects himself. Contrast with Solemn Visitor, who makes tokens with -2. But, I am thinking I will switch over to Solemn Visitor for the lifelink, which the deck really needs. We lose a lot of life with Dark Confidant, Thoughtseize, Dismember, and the lands. Lord of Innistrad makes 1/1 lifelink tokens, but its not quite enough. Thoughts?
- The sideboard is a toss up - I am trying to shore up decks / cards I am soft to, but there is literally no way to cover all of the bases. There is a strong argument that certain cards should be dropped in favor of others. This is me throwing my hands up in the air.
- Thoughts on Murderous Cut? I chose Dismember over it, because I can potentially use Dismember on turn 1 to kill mana dorks, which you def can't do with Murderous Cut. The problem, of course, is the life loss on Dismember. Burn is currently competing with Junk as the most popular deck (at least on Magic Online it is, which is what I play). Dismember, along with the large amounts of life loss in the deck, can bite us in the butt in that matchup. So I'm torn. Thinking about putting Cut in the sideboard
We've had the "I'm bitter that my $2000 Jund deck is worthless and tier 2" discussion before.
It is a (1) risky, (2) loose, (3) greedy strategy. The Jund that existed before UR Delver blew up maindecked 4 Thoughtseize, 4 Dark Confidant, 8-10 fetchlands, and several shocklands. It is (1) risky because you deal yourself a ton of damage. It is (2) loose because pre-KtK, the spells were so powerful in sum that you just jam the spells in your hand on curve. Pre-KtK, some decks just can't beat turn 1 discard spell, turn 2 Goyf/Bob, turn 3 Lily, turn 4 everything else. It is (3) greedy because you deal yourself a ton of damage in return for card advantage and extremely strong attrition spells - some of the best in the format.
Now, in January 2015, that strategy basically doesn't work. For the above reasons, I don't feel sorry for you.
To be fair, 4 Treasure Cruise UR Delver is also a risky, loose, greedy strategy. You tend to get rewarded for playing fast and loose - you don't have to engage in in-game analysis about conserving this or that card in your hand for the perfect moment. Rather, you want to play spells the first chance you get so that your graveyard gets larger, which allows you to Treasure Cruise into more cards.
But I think TC does not need to be banned because it is not in every deck, and it certainly COULD be. At 1 blue / 7 colorless (or delve) CMC, it is extremely splashable.
PS - I love Jund. It is such a fun deck to play. But, as an objective fan of the game as a whole, I understand it is a risky strategy, and unfortunately just doesn't work in this format. It doesn't seem unfair, and it sort of bothers me that people think there should be a ban / unban SOLELY so that this deck can be playable again. Just get over it and metagame. Re-build Jund with less life-loss spells/lands, which I think can definitely be done.
Is this in response to me? If it is please note that I'm still playing Jund, I'm not bothered that it lost some footing. I enjoy playing Jund and always will, I sincerely don't care that the meta is hostile towards it or whether or not that changes through bannings/unbannings/metagame changes. I was just pointing out that Pod is not being curtailed by Jund any longer and that is why people are noticing it more. The last time Pod boomed Jund main decked Anger and SB'd Olivia, etc and the Pod issue was neutralized. I was just pointing out that that won't (or is unlikely to) happen this time around as Jund has too many hostile MUs in the current metagame - and that is unlikely to change with bannings/unbannings anyway.
My post was not necessarily in response to yours. I just read the last few pages and saw a lot of talk about the aforementioned, which is exactly what people were talking about the last time I looked at this thread a couple months ago, so I just wanted to reiterate my humble opinions.
We've had the "I'm bitter that my $2000 Jund deck is worthless and tier 2" discussion before.
It is a (1) risky, (2) loose, (3) greedy strategy. The Jund that existed before UR Delver blew up maindecked 4 Thoughtseize, 4 Dark Confidant, 8-10 fetchlands, and several shocklands. It is (1) risky because you deal yourself a ton of damage. It is (2) loose because pre-KtK, the spells were so powerful in sum that you just jam the spells in your hand on curve. Pre-KtK, some decks just can't beat turn 1 discard spell, turn 2 Goyf/Bob, turn 3 Lily, turn 4 everything else. It is (3) greedy because you deal yourself a ton of damage in return for card advantage and extremely strong attrition spells - some of the best in the format.
Now, in January 2015, that strategy basically doesn't work. For the above reasons, I don't feel sorry for you.
To be fair, 4 Treasure Cruise UR Delver is also a risky, loose, greedy strategy. You tend to get rewarded for playing fast and loose - you don't have to engage in in-game analysis about conserving this or that card in your hand for the perfect moment. Rather, you want to play spells the first chance you get so that your graveyard gets larger, which allows you to Treasure Cruise into more cards.
But I think TC does not need to be banned because it is not in every deck, and it certainly COULD be. At 1 blue / 7 colorless (or delve) CMC, it is extremely splashable.
PS - I love Jund. It is such a fun deck to play. But, as an objective fan of the game as a whole, I understand it is a risky strategy, and unfortunately just doesn't work in this format. It doesn't seem unfair, and it sort of bothers me that people think there should be a ban / unban SOLELY so that this deck can be playable again. Just get over it and metagame. Re-build Jund with less life-loss spells/lands, which I think can definitely be done.
So I finally have a decent job and I've been thinking that I want to build Death and Taxes in Legacy on MTGO. Always been a huge fan of the deck, and now I might finally have the means to make a Legacy deck. Then I looked at the price of Rishadan Port. Holy cow. It is literally HALF of the ~$1000 that Death and Taxes costs to build from scratch online.
Now get this - according to MTGGoldfish.com, Death and Taxes will cost between $1000 - $1100 to build. $970 of that money is allocated as follows: 4 Wasteland ($377.84) and 4 Rishadan Port ($592.60).
I know MTGO has a lot of backdoor ways to "print" these cards in MTGO - as a promo for certain achievements, or in smaller, exclusive sets like Vintage Masters and others, etc. Does WotC have an incentive to reprint these? I'm no economist, but the HUGE price tag on the above two cards are entirely secondary market. It doesn't affect Wizards' primary bottom dollar whether 4 Wasteland cost $3, $3000, or $377.84. People don't buy these from them directly. Does it cost them in other ways? Maybe I guess. Sure they hit MTGO retailers pockets a bit by reprinting Rishadan Port and Wasteland. But I think the opportunity is greater for Wizards - more people might play Legacy and other formats online if the price tag on some of these decks just dropped by a few hundred bucks.
Thoughts? Also, any theories behind the way Wizards print runs these older, expensive, exclusive cards in MTGO would be great to talk about too.
Owen Turtenwald is number 1 in the world right now and just really on top of things. Still, his earnings from Magic have been shown (during the Magic Cup) to be $130,000. I doubt that it is easy to make $350,000 after 6 years of playing, considering he probably is working harder (and smarter with Huey Jensen and Reid Duke as teammates) than anyone in the game right now.
This doesn't include overhead and the cost to travel around the world to play in Grand Prixs and Pro Tours. Although for someone like Turtenwald he is getting a lot of that comped by CFB who he has been repping for years, long before all of the former SCG pros jumped on CFB. Even still, their sponsors aren't paying for everything. This isn't Lebron James and Nike; this is Magic the Gathering.
It should also be noted that there is a difference between being good enough to win an SCG Open or even a Grand Prix, and being at the level where someone will pay you a full-time wage to write MTG articles for them, and then comp all of your expenses as you travel around the world to play a trading card game.
And can you imagine when / if you have to fall back to reality and get a real job? What are you going to list on your resume? Although to be fair people like Gerry Thompson and others have gotten pretty amazing jobs and internships working for Wizards of the Coast. But these people are few and far between... you've got your work cut out for you if you are chasing that dream.
The news media has played such a central role in the Ferguson debacle it is sickening. I am an objectivist - I try to stay as impartial as possible with heated issues, and look at both sides. While taking said stance, it has become apparent that the news media IS Ferguson.
Don't believe me? Think I'm a conspiracy theorist? Whatever happened to ebola? Funny, I haven't heard a peep about it on MSNBC.com (which I view every time I open my Internet browser), the televised news, Facebook, Twitter, or any American-based news outlet or social media whatsoever since the Ferguson grand jury decision last Monday.
The reason is that once there was a better story, the American news media moved to that.
No one was ever really at risk of catching ebola in America. You have a better chance of winning your state lottery than catching ebola in America. Similarly, you have a very low chance of being the victim of unwarranted extreme police brutality, such as a gunshot wound, today. ESPECIALLY TODAY. But the news media would practically have you believe that cops are just begging for African Americans to mess with them so that they can riddle them with bullets. Couldn't be farther from the truth. Today, police are TERRIFIED of African Americans, because they know that with one wrong move they could be the next news story.
Player shuffles, then opponent shuffles. Then player rolls a twenty-sided die before touching the deck (if the player touches the deck before rolling, opponent shuffles again). Opponent counts off that many cards from the top of the deck and places them on the bottom without re-ordering.
I actually really like this proposal. Lord knows most MTG players always have a D20 on them. It is efficient (doesn't require more judges / manpower) and it seems like it would be hard for cheaters to get around this method. Also, it doesn't sound like it would effect the shuffling process - you shuffle how you want, you allow opponent to shuffle / cut your deck as many times as they want and in whatever way they want, and we add 1, quick step.
The question is whether WotC would be willing to implement this at competitive REL. I have heard that their view on policy-making in this area is sort of a "balancing act" - they want to prevent cheating, but they also don't want to bog down the pace of the game with inefficient steps.
Getting sort of off topic here (but relates to why I like your idea) - from a policy standpoint, WotC is doing a poor job at the first part of the balancing act - preventing cheating. They awarded Rookie of the Year to a cheater, and allowed him to be one of the most successful players on the planet for close to a year. Therefore, while there is a good argument that we don't want to bog down the pace of the game, I think it is outweighed by WotC's need to restore the integrity of competitive REL. So, while your idea adds another step to gameplay and thus slows down the game a little, WotC has an urgent need to have better anti-cheating measures - in other words, it's worth it.
I've been an MTGS member since (see date to the left). During that time, some of the worst, flaming, angry threads that moderators usually have to intervene on are discussions about cheaters in MTG. It ends up being a heated discussion, but I'm not sure why. Most of the people discussing cheating in these forums probably share a common view: cheating in MTG isn't good. It ruins the integrity of a game we like a lot.
I would like to dedicate this thread to a constructive discussion for proposed ideas, rules, methods, systems, etc. to prevent cheating in competitive MTG tournaments. There are several ways to cheat in Magic, so some of these ideas might not encompass all types of cheating. We are still in the wake of the Jared Boettcher / Trevor Humphries cheating fiasco. To be honest, I create this thread with their shared method of cheating at the forefront of my mind.
I could fill this thread with paragraph descriptions of types of cheating and links to videos (including the many videos catching the 2 guys referenced above). But what would be more efficient is for anyone who is not familiar with certain types of cheats to Google search the key terms, like "Jared Boettcher cheating video." There, you will find links that will fill you in and inform you better than I can here with my own words. I think most people that post in here will already be familiar with this information, so I'm saving space, except for a small description at the bottom.
There is another sub-issue for a broader discussion that I would also like to address. That is: how agreeable would WotC be to implementing any new cheating safeguards? I bring this up because I think we could whittle our discussion here down to a formal petition-like proposal to be sent to WotC to consider. Or, easier yet, we could just make them aware of our discussion via Twitter. At very least, this can make WotC aware of what its players think about this issue. At very most, we could have an impact and influence on future preventive measures for cheating around the world.
So, what would be an example of a preventive measure? That seems like a good segue to get the brainstorming going here:
Jared Boettcher and Trevor Humphries were caught using a cheating technique used when shuffling an opponent's library. With opponent's deck in hand, they glance at the bottom card of the library, and if they want their opponent to draw that card, they shuffle it to the top. They continue shuffling seemingly normally but never change the top card of the library. They repeat this process any number of times, the end result being that you draw a hand that they want you to draw - perhaps it is 7 lands, perhaps it is 0 lands.
Proposed preventive measure: when shuffling an opponent's library, you are allowed X shuffles only. In some of these videos, particularly of Humphries, he is shuffling an opponent's deck for an abnormally long time - probably because if you use a stacking technique with every shuffle move you do, it will be more obvious. By shuffling in a normal manner 90% of the time and utilizing a stack-to-the-top technique 10% of the time, its more difficult to detect. However, shuffling an opponent's library for an abnormally long time isn't cheating per se. It seems you could randomize an opponent's library and thus prevent any stacking by an opponent of his own library with, say, 3-5 shuffle moves. This rule would also make it exceedingly difficult for a player to stack an opponent's deck as Boettcher and Humphries did.
Maindeck darkblast, duress, and four siege rhinos. Dark Confidant, a card called one of the greatest creatures of all time, nowhere to be seen.
This truly shows how far the meta has been warped by burn cards. Not happy that modern has been warped to a place where Bob is unplayable. :/
Hoping this is just temporary or else I'll be in favour of the ban list being amended.
I completely agree with you, this format is not fun at all.
Is unablanced and boring, it doesn't remind me of Modern as it has always been, looks like half modern half legacy.
I really hope they don't ruin the PT not banning TC. Many people in Spain were upset they had ruined GP Madrid.
We'd probably see some changes in the next B&R update because of the PT, right?
I disagree with this post and the post it quoted.
Can any of you explain to me what the difference is between the format "warping" and the format "changing" or "evolving?" The format has definitely changed, I'll give you that. But change is a good thing. If it weren't, we'd be playing Morphling and Masticore in Legacy.
Sorry Dark Confidant is less playable. To be fair, it has always been a risky, loose card, and the decks it was played in (Jund, Junk) played risky lines. The fact that some decks in the format are punishing a 4 Dark Confidant 4 Thoughtseize 10 fetchland strategy doesn't really make me sad. It actually makes a lot of sense.
It sort of sounds like you're just bitter about losing to Treasure Cruise, and for that I don't have a lot of sympathy. Your logic is also kind of circular here. You say Treasure Cruise is too good, but you also say you're sad to see a Darkblast + Siege Rhino + Duress deck make the top 8 of a GP. THAT DECK BEATS TREASURE CRUISE DECKS. It grinded through 2 days of a Grand Prix and probably beat a ton of Treasure Cruise along the way. So, Treasure Cruise actually ISN'T that broken, and you're pointing it out in your own post. So what if the deck plays weird cards? It wins matches against tier 1 Modern decks. Its called a metagame. It evolves, adapts, and changes. Nothing wrong with this in my opinion.
NOTE: No bias here. I play a non-Treasure Cruise deck (Scapeshift), I play lots of competitive Modern, and I am 100% fine with Treasure Cruise staying in the format.
I'm not really sure what your post means. On one hand you're saying Golgari Grave-Troll is a possible unban, on the other hand you're saying, "but that probably wouldn't be good for the format" without any explanation why you think that.
Dredge is an "extreme" strategy - like Infect or Burn, you're all-in on somewhat fragile, but powerful, lines of play. It is an extreme strategy that isn't being utilized at all currently in Modern - no one is really dredging in tier 1 Modern, ever. The takeaway here is that Dredge is unique. The Dredge player is on a rare strategy that most Modern decks aren't on.
That's called variety. That's not unhealthy for the format. One could strongly argue that is actually what makes a healthy format.
Dredge isn't even good in Legacy. Yes, I'm aware it won an SCG Open a few weeks ago. That is an extreme rarity on the Open circuit. It is extraordinarily easy to hate out Dredge. And I've been there with the deck - when your opponent resolves whatever hate card it is (Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void), 85% of the time you lose the game.
Dredge is indeed an extreme strategy. It operates along a completely different axis than other decks, and demands completely different answers. Variety is good, but this kind of extremity isn't. I played Extended back when Dredge was legal and it was horrible. Dredge was at that point much, much better than any other strategy - but it obviously folded to hate. So there were two strategies for the other decks: either you dedicated half of your sideboard to graveyard hate, and you got to beat Dredge but at the cost of playing with only a half sideboard for the rest of the field. Or you put zero anti-Dredge cards in, and just hoped to dodge the match-up. I'm completely aware that, to a degree, all sideboarding and metagaming works like this, but Dredge at that time, in that format, took this way too far, so instead of Magic you were playing rock-paper-scissors. Simply put, decks that can only be beat by very specific, narrow hate cards aren't healthy.
To be clear, I'm not saying Dredge would be overpowered if GGT was unbanned. As I said, it almost certainly wouldn't do anything, because Dread Return is banned. But if it somehow became good, that wouldn't be a healthy thing, because of the situation I described above. Whether it's good in Legacy is completely irrelevant - for one thing, the presence of Force of Will impacts the deck (it also increases the amount of interaction other decks have with it without resorting to narrow hate); second, Legacy is irrelevant to Modern discussion because the formats are simply too different; third, I'm saying it likely wouldn't be good in Modern anyway.
But if it's not good, what does unbanning GGT accomplish? (apart from having a consistent banlist, which as I said, doesn't seem particularly important to them)
And in the unlikely case it's good, I don't think that helps the format at all.
(For the record, if I were solely in charge of the banlist, I would in fact unban it, because I value a consistent banlist. But I believe what I described is their logic, and I do think it makes sense, given their priorities.)
I wasn't playing Magic when Dredge hit the fan in Extended. You're not the first person I've heard tell horror stories. So I'll just take your word for it that it was probably too powerful in the context of that format. However, much like Legacy is nothing like Modern, is Extended (a now non-existent format) years ago anything like Modern now?
Modern is still a pretty young format; there isn't a whole lot of precedent in terms of whether certain cards will break the format, TODAY. I capitalize TODAY for emphasis - the format changes. For example: In the recent past we saw two unbans of once "broken" cards that are now just hilarious. Wild Nacatl and Bitterblossom currently do not have a home in a true tier 1 deck. But can we really say WotC was wrong for initially banning Nacatl? There was in fact a time in Modern's short history that Nacatl was really, really good. Now, not so much.
I say all of that to say: similarly, I understand that WotC and players such as yourself have witnessed Dredge break a format. I genuinely do not see that happening TODAY with a single unban of Golgari Grave-Troll. Rest in the Peace is the best graveyard hate card ever printed. Leyline of the Void, also a relatively young card, is playable in all colors.
But also I don't think that single unban would ever rise to the point you mentioned in your post, where you have to dedicate half your sideboard to the deck. Today, I really see Modern as a "crabs in the bucket" format. When one deck starts climbing to the top, the other decks evolve and bring it back down to a reasonable level. U/R Treasure Cruise Delver topped out at 23%+ on Magic Online according to Daily results (4-0 / 3-1). It is now at a more reasonable number, and we've seen certain decks fall off (Tron) and other rise to the top (Bogles).
I think a similar pattern would occur if GGT Dredge ever got too powerful, but I don't even think it could. A whole different topic of discussion is whether GGT Dredge is even tier 1 viable in Modern. With Remand seeing as much play as it currently does, it sounds like quite an uphill battle for GGT Dredge in Modern to even be relevant...
I also think the fact that Dread Return remains banned (and should be) would promote a healthy entry of Golgari Grave-Troll into the format.
Third is Golgari Grave-Troll, but I don't think they'll unban it. It almost certainly wouldn't do anything, but in the unlikely case it does something, it's probably not something healthy for the format. So why bother? The only reason is to make a consistent, logical banlist - but I don't think they're interested in that (see numerous examples).
I'm not really sure what your post means. On one hand you're saying Golgari Grave-Troll is a possible unban, on the other hand you're saying, "but that probably wouldn't be good for the format" without any explanation why you think that.
Dredge is an "extreme" strategy - like Infect or Burn, you're all-in on somewhat fragile, but powerful, lines of play. It is an extreme strategy that isn't being utilized at all currently in Modern - no one is really dredging in tier 1 Modern, ever. The takeaway here is that Dredge is unique. The Dredge player is on a rare strategy that most Modern decks aren't on.
That's called variety. That's not unhealthy for the format. One could strongly argue that is actually what makes a healthy format.
Dredge isn't even good in Legacy. Yes, I'm aware it won an SCG Open a few weeks ago. That is an extreme rarity on the Open circuit. It is extraordinarily easy to hate out Dredge. And I've been there with the deck - when your opponent resolves whatever hate card it is (Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void), 85% of the time you lose the game.
My opponent plays Goblin Rabblemaster during his first main phase. It resolves. Can I cast a removal spell and kill the Goblin Rabblemaster before the Rabblemaster's combat trigger goes on the stack? Or, because my opponent has priority after it resolves, is there absolutely nothing I can do about that trigger if he goes straight to combat after resolution?
I'm pretty sure that the new leagues will have worse payouts than DEs, and they will justify it by saying you're paying a convenience tax to play whenever you want in leagues.
Where can we find more information on these Leagues? Link? Article?
In an ideal world, this isn't a bad idea. Some of us have trouble scheduling 4 consecutive, uninterrupted hours in order to play competitive MTGO. Of course, MTGO is far from "an ideal world" in virtually every respect right now... I'm just saying I don't want to be so quick to bash something that on its face sounds OK.
I want to actually buy some to build Legacy Death and Taxes, and I can afford it. But I feel like if this card got reprinted as a promo or in a limited set or something, the price would drop significantly because the demand is not that high.
I understand the Lightning Bolt comes back to my hand, and I draw a card. The question I have is: what happens to my opponents Remand? Does this mean his Remand fizzles, and he does not draw a card? Or will he still draw the card off his Remand despite having no legal target upon resolution?
Thank you
4 Tidehollow Sculler
2 Dark Confidant
4 Mirran Crusader
4 Mutavault
4 Marsh Flats
2 Windswept Heath
1 Bloodstained Mire
3 Plains
2 Swamp
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Godless Shrine
4 Lingering Souls
4 Thoughtseize
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Path to Exile
2 Dismember
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Rest in Peace
3 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Duress
2 Zealous Persecution
2 Disenchant
Some points / questions for the thread:
- No, thats not a typo: I am trying out good old Sorin, Lord of Innistrad over Sorin, Solemn Visitor. I'm quite unsure of this, but here is my reasoning: he makes tokens with his +1, so he protects himself. Contrast with Solemn Visitor, who makes tokens with -2. But, I am thinking I will switch over to Solemn Visitor for the lifelink, which the deck really needs. We lose a lot of life with Dark Confidant, Thoughtseize, Dismember, and the lands. Lord of Innistrad makes 1/1 lifelink tokens, but its not quite enough. Thoughts?
- The sideboard is a toss up - I am trying to shore up decks / cards I am soft to, but there is literally no way to cover all of the bases. There is a strong argument that certain cards should be dropped in favor of others. This is me throwing my hands up in the air.
- Thoughts on Murderous Cut? I chose Dismember over it, because I can potentially use Dismember on turn 1 to kill mana dorks, which you def can't do with Murderous Cut. The problem, of course, is the life loss on Dismember. Burn is currently competing with Junk as the most popular deck (at least on Magic Online it is, which is what I play). Dismember, along with the large amounts of life loss in the deck, can bite us in the butt in that matchup. So I'm torn. Thinking about putting Cut in the sideboard
My post was not necessarily in response to yours. I just read the last few pages and saw a lot of talk about the aforementioned, which is exactly what people were talking about the last time I looked at this thread a couple months ago, so I just wanted to reiterate my humble opinions.
It is a (1) risky, (2) loose, (3) greedy strategy. The Jund that existed before UR Delver blew up maindecked 4 Thoughtseize, 4 Dark Confidant, 8-10 fetchlands, and several shocklands. It is (1) risky because you deal yourself a ton of damage. It is (2) loose because pre-KtK, the spells were so powerful in sum that you just jam the spells in your hand on curve. Pre-KtK, some decks just can't beat turn 1 discard spell, turn 2 Goyf/Bob, turn 3 Lily, turn 4 everything else. It is (3) greedy because you deal yourself a ton of damage in return for card advantage and extremely strong attrition spells - some of the best in the format.
Now, in January 2015, that strategy basically doesn't work. For the above reasons, I don't feel sorry for you.
To be fair, 4 Treasure Cruise UR Delver is also a risky, loose, greedy strategy. You tend to get rewarded for playing fast and loose - you don't have to engage in in-game analysis about conserving this or that card in your hand for the perfect moment. Rather, you want to play spells the first chance you get so that your graveyard gets larger, which allows you to Treasure Cruise into more cards.
But I think TC does not need to be banned because it is not in every deck, and it certainly COULD be. At 1 blue / 7 colorless (or delve) CMC, it is extremely splashable.
PS - I love Jund. It is such a fun deck to play. But, as an objective fan of the game as a whole, I understand it is a risky strategy, and unfortunately just doesn't work in this format. It doesn't seem unfair, and it sort of bothers me that people think there should be a ban / unban SOLELY so that this deck can be playable again. Just get over it and metagame. Re-build Jund with less life-loss spells/lands, which I think can definitely be done.
Now get this - according to MTGGoldfish.com, Death and Taxes will cost between $1000 - $1100 to build. $970 of that money is allocated as follows: 4 Wasteland ($377.84) and 4 Rishadan Port ($592.60).
I know MTGO has a lot of backdoor ways to "print" these cards in MTGO - as a promo for certain achievements, or in smaller, exclusive sets like Vintage Masters and others, etc. Does WotC have an incentive to reprint these? I'm no economist, but the HUGE price tag on the above two cards are entirely secondary market. It doesn't affect Wizards' primary bottom dollar whether 4 Wasteland cost $3, $3000, or $377.84. People don't buy these from them directly. Does it cost them in other ways? Maybe I guess. Sure they hit MTGO retailers pockets a bit by reprinting Rishadan Port and Wasteland. But I think the opportunity is greater for Wizards - more people might play Legacy and other formats online if the price tag on some of these decks just dropped by a few hundred bucks.
Thoughts? Also, any theories behind the way Wizards print runs these older, expensive, exclusive cards in MTGO would be great to talk about too.
This doesn't include overhead and the cost to travel around the world to play in Grand Prixs and Pro Tours. Although for someone like Turtenwald he is getting a lot of that comped by CFB who he has been repping for years, long before all of the former SCG pros jumped on CFB. Even still, their sponsors aren't paying for everything. This isn't Lebron James and Nike; this is Magic the Gathering.
It should also be noted that there is a difference between being good enough to win an SCG Open or even a Grand Prix, and being at the level where someone will pay you a full-time wage to write MTG articles for them, and then comp all of your expenses as you travel around the world to play a trading card game.
And can you imagine when / if you have to fall back to reality and get a real job? What are you going to list on your resume? Although to be fair people like Gerry Thompson and others have gotten pretty amazing jobs and internships working for Wizards of the Coast. But these people are few and far between... you've got your work cut out for you if you are chasing that dream.
Don't believe me? Think I'm a conspiracy theorist? Whatever happened to ebola? Funny, I haven't heard a peep about it on MSNBC.com (which I view every time I open my Internet browser), the televised news, Facebook, Twitter, or any American-based news outlet or social media whatsoever since the Ferguson grand jury decision last Monday.
The reason is that once there was a better story, the American news media moved to that.
No one was ever really at risk of catching ebola in America. You have a better chance of winning your state lottery than catching ebola in America. Similarly, you have a very low chance of being the victim of unwarranted extreme police brutality, such as a gunshot wound, today. ESPECIALLY TODAY. But the news media would practically have you believe that cops are just begging for African Americans to mess with them so that they can riddle them with bullets. Couldn't be farther from the truth. Today, police are TERRIFIED of African Americans, because they know that with one wrong move they could be the next news story.
I actually really like this proposal. Lord knows most MTG players always have a D20 on them. It is efficient (doesn't require more judges / manpower) and it seems like it would be hard for cheaters to get around this method. Also, it doesn't sound like it would effect the shuffling process - you shuffle how you want, you allow opponent to shuffle / cut your deck as many times as they want and in whatever way they want, and we add 1, quick step.
The question is whether WotC would be willing to implement this at competitive REL. I have heard that their view on policy-making in this area is sort of a "balancing act" - they want to prevent cheating, but they also don't want to bog down the pace of the game with inefficient steps.
Getting sort of off topic here (but relates to why I like your idea) - from a policy standpoint, WotC is doing a poor job at the first part of the balancing act - preventing cheating. They awarded Rookie of the Year to a cheater, and allowed him to be one of the most successful players on the planet for close to a year. Therefore, while there is a good argument that we don't want to bog down the pace of the game, I think it is outweighed by WotC's need to restore the integrity of competitive REL. So, while your idea adds another step to gameplay and thus slows down the game a little, WotC has an urgent need to have better anti-cheating measures - in other words, it's worth it.
I would like to dedicate this thread to a constructive discussion for proposed ideas, rules, methods, systems, etc. to prevent cheating in competitive MTG tournaments. There are several ways to cheat in Magic, so some of these ideas might not encompass all types of cheating. We are still in the wake of the Jared Boettcher / Trevor Humphries cheating fiasco. To be honest, I create this thread with their shared method of cheating at the forefront of my mind.
I could fill this thread with paragraph descriptions of types of cheating and links to videos (including the many videos catching the 2 guys referenced above). But what would be more efficient is for anyone who is not familiar with certain types of cheats to Google search the key terms, like "Jared Boettcher cheating video." There, you will find links that will fill you in and inform you better than I can here with my own words. I think most people that post in here will already be familiar with this information, so I'm saving space, except for a small description at the bottom.
There is another sub-issue for a broader discussion that I would also like to address. That is: how agreeable would WotC be to implementing any new cheating safeguards? I bring this up because I think we could whittle our discussion here down to a formal petition-like proposal to be sent to WotC to consider. Or, easier yet, we could just make them aware of our discussion via Twitter. At very least, this can make WotC aware of what its players think about this issue. At very most, we could have an impact and influence on future preventive measures for cheating around the world.
So, what would be an example of a preventive measure? That seems like a good segue to get the brainstorming going here:
Jared Boettcher and Trevor Humphries were caught using a cheating technique used when shuffling an opponent's library. With opponent's deck in hand, they glance at the bottom card of the library, and if they want their opponent to draw that card, they shuffle it to the top. They continue shuffling seemingly normally but never change the top card of the library. They repeat this process any number of times, the end result being that you draw a hand that they want you to draw - perhaps it is 7 lands, perhaps it is 0 lands.
Proposed preventive measure: when shuffling an opponent's library, you are allowed X shuffles only. In some of these videos, particularly of Humphries, he is shuffling an opponent's deck for an abnormally long time - probably because if you use a stacking technique with every shuffle move you do, it will be more obvious. By shuffling in a normal manner 90% of the time and utilizing a stack-to-the-top technique 10% of the time, its more difficult to detect. However, shuffling an opponent's library for an abnormally long time isn't cheating per se. It seems you could randomize an opponent's library and thus prevent any stacking by an opponent of his own library with, say, 3-5 shuffle moves. This rule would also make it exceedingly difficult for a player to stack an opponent's deck as Boettcher and Humphries did.
I disagree with this post and the post it quoted.
Can any of you explain to me what the difference is between the format "warping" and the format "changing" or "evolving?" The format has definitely changed, I'll give you that. But change is a good thing. If it weren't, we'd be playing Morphling and Masticore in Legacy.
Sorry Dark Confidant is less playable. To be fair, it has always been a risky, loose card, and the decks it was played in (Jund, Junk) played risky lines. The fact that some decks in the format are punishing a 4 Dark Confidant 4 Thoughtseize 10 fetchland strategy doesn't really make me sad. It actually makes a lot of sense.
It sort of sounds like you're just bitter about losing to Treasure Cruise, and for that I don't have a lot of sympathy. Your logic is also kind of circular here. You say Treasure Cruise is too good, but you also say you're sad to see a Darkblast + Siege Rhino + Duress deck make the top 8 of a GP. THAT DECK BEATS TREASURE CRUISE DECKS. It grinded through 2 days of a Grand Prix and probably beat a ton of Treasure Cruise along the way. So, Treasure Cruise actually ISN'T that broken, and you're pointing it out in your own post. So what if the deck plays weird cards? It wins matches against tier 1 Modern decks. Its called a metagame. It evolves, adapts, and changes. Nothing wrong with this in my opinion.
NOTE: No bias here. I play a non-Treasure Cruise deck (Scapeshift), I play lots of competitive Modern, and I am 100% fine with Treasure Cruise staying in the format.
I wasn't playing Magic when Dredge hit the fan in Extended. You're not the first person I've heard tell horror stories. So I'll just take your word for it that it was probably too powerful in the context of that format. However, much like Legacy is nothing like Modern, is Extended (a now non-existent format) years ago anything like Modern now?
Modern is still a pretty young format; there isn't a whole lot of precedent in terms of whether certain cards will break the format, TODAY. I capitalize TODAY for emphasis - the format changes. For example: In the recent past we saw two unbans of once "broken" cards that are now just hilarious. Wild Nacatl and Bitterblossom currently do not have a home in a true tier 1 deck. But can we really say WotC was wrong for initially banning Nacatl? There was in fact a time in Modern's short history that Nacatl was really, really good. Now, not so much.
I say all of that to say: similarly, I understand that WotC and players such as yourself have witnessed Dredge break a format. I genuinely do not see that happening TODAY with a single unban of Golgari Grave-Troll. Rest in the Peace is the best graveyard hate card ever printed. Leyline of the Void, also a relatively young card, is playable in all colors.
But also I don't think that single unban would ever rise to the point you mentioned in your post, where you have to dedicate half your sideboard to the deck. Today, I really see Modern as a "crabs in the bucket" format. When one deck starts climbing to the top, the other decks evolve and bring it back down to a reasonable level. U/R Treasure Cruise Delver topped out at 23%+ on Magic Online according to Daily results (4-0 / 3-1). It is now at a more reasonable number, and we've seen certain decks fall off (Tron) and other rise to the top (Bogles).
I think a similar pattern would occur if GGT Dredge ever got too powerful, but I don't even think it could. A whole different topic of discussion is whether GGT Dredge is even tier 1 viable in Modern. With Remand seeing as much play as it currently does, it sounds like quite an uphill battle for GGT Dredge in Modern to even be relevant...
I also think the fact that Dread Return remains banned (and should be) would promote a healthy entry of Golgari Grave-Troll into the format.
I'm not really sure what your post means. On one hand you're saying Golgari Grave-Troll is a possible unban, on the other hand you're saying, "but that probably wouldn't be good for the format" without any explanation why you think that.
Dredge is an "extreme" strategy - like Infect or Burn, you're all-in on somewhat fragile, but powerful, lines of play. It is an extreme strategy that isn't being utilized at all currently in Modern - no one is really dredging in tier 1 Modern, ever. The takeaway here is that Dredge is unique. The Dredge player is on a rare strategy that most Modern decks aren't on.
That's called variety. That's not unhealthy for the format. One could strongly argue that is actually what makes a healthy format.
Dredge isn't even good in Legacy. Yes, I'm aware it won an SCG Open a few weeks ago. That is an extreme rarity on the Open circuit. It is extraordinarily easy to hate out Dredge. And I've been there with the deck - when your opponent resolves whatever hate card it is (Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void), 85% of the time you lose the game.
My opponent plays Goblin Rabblemaster during his first main phase. It resolves. Can I cast a removal spell and kill the Goblin Rabblemaster before the Rabblemaster's combat trigger goes on the stack? Or, because my opponent has priority after it resolves, is there absolutely nothing I can do about that trigger if he goes straight to combat after resolution?
Where can we find more information on these Leagues? Link? Article?
In an ideal world, this isn't a bad idea. Some of us have trouble scheduling 4 consecutive, uninterrupted hours in order to play competitive MTGO. Of course, MTGO is far from "an ideal world" in virtually every respect right now... I'm just saying I don't want to be so quick to bash something that on its face sounds OK.