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Korak posted:One neat trick you can do is take a winning record list from a major tournament and practice with it on a friend to get a feel for what a great deck is made of. I think the big issue is sealed pools. There's no store around here that runs sealed events with any regularity. I'm a pretty good booster draft player, but sealed is a completely different animal.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 19:17 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:41 |
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:I think the big issue is sealed pools. There's no store around here that runs sealed events with any regularity. I'm a pretty good booster draft player, but sealed is a completely different animal. There are sealed queues firing constantly throughout the day on MTGO, though.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 19:27 |
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mcnealys baby posted:There are sealed queues firing constantly throughout the day on MTGO, though.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 19:34 |
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:I think the big issue is sealed pools. There's no store around here that runs sealed events with any regularity. I'm a pretty good booster draft player, but sealed is a completely different animal. If you're willing to practice in MTGO, Born of the Gods release events start at 17th, and they're pretty much the best value sealed events around online. (This is to say: still not terribly good value...)
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 19:39 |
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Am I crazy, or was something about Huey block supposed to be announced today?
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 19:43 |
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Pro Tour Journey will have the announcement on Sunday. Edit: May 18th, so 3 weeks away.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 19:47 |
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Devor posted:I would like to say that Hour of Need (the strive card that makes 4/4 fliers) is freaking insane in limited, and every game I drew it, I was able to ride it to victory. This is from last page but its seriously the truth. That card has won almost every game where it's seen play, especially when thaumaturge is out. It provides ridiculously well costed 4/4 fliers.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 20:03 |
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Am I crazy or does the conspiracy guy spoiled today look like Gwyn?
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 20:44 |
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Thassa's ire was great for me in sealed and lsv saying 4 mana for vigilance or locking a creature down is such a dumb way to try to get his point across.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 21:01 |
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uggy posted:Thassa's ire was great for me in sealed and lsv saying 4 mana for vigilance or locking a creature down is such a dumb way to try to get his point across. Opponent's Thassa's Ire gave me my one loss. Late game it's more like "tap two of your guys down for free attacks with my fatty" or "Kill your crystalline nautilus for 4 mana and 0 cards"
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 21:04 |
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Or it allows you to do inspired at instant speed. It was really nice for me in control to help let games go longer too! like gently caress of course it's overcosted and won't see constructed play. same with a lot of other awesome cards in limited
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 21:08 |
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Hopping Ghost posted:And the FTV card: I hope the entire set has Theros themed versions of all the wraths, that'd be sick.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 21:11 |
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uggy posted:Or it allows you to do inspired at instant speed. It was really nice for me in control to help let games go longer too! Or insane combo with the 1 damage constellation creature and riptide chimera. Thankfully I always had the answer to the chimera so it never came online, but it was really close once when he had two of the constellation guys out. 1 mana to negate the chimera's downside, while pinging for 2 a turn. Ugh.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 21:11 |
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uggy posted:like gently caress of course it's overcosted and won't see constructed play. same with a lot of other awesome cards in limited No one here has been even talking about it in constructed.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 21:13 |
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I really think Battlefield Thaumaturge is gonna do... something in Constructed. I don't know what, but drat, that card is begging to be broken in half. You can't really play combo in Standard while Thoughtseize is around, but it's got a piker body, and that heroic ability doesn't suck. And even if it's doing nothing more powerful than letting you Hero's Downfall for BB and Doom Blade for B, that's still pretty sweet.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 21:27 |
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Lunsku posted:No one here has been even talking about it in constructed. The implication of this statement quote:like gently caress of course it's overcosted and won't see constructed play. is that while it may be overcosted for constructed, repeatable outlets that let you dump extra mana in a limited format, particularly sealed, are still quite potent since they are inherently slower formats.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 21:32 |
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uggy posted:Thassa's ire was great for me in sealed and lsv saying 4 mana for vigilance or locking a creature down is such a dumb way to try to get his point across. What, and by dumb you mean accurate? It's fine if you found the card useful, but its most basic use is Narcolepsy upkeep 3U. The card is bad value. It can gain value depending on the deck; strong inspired triggers certainly make it worthwhile, and if your deck needs additional late-game punch that's a reason to consider it (but in the latter case I think just running a fatty will usually be preferable). But the rating is fair; it's a card that should make your deck only rarely. It's also worth noting that those rankings are for limited in general; some variance between sealed and draft should be expected.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 22:01 |
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No because it's such a loaded way to try to say it's not a great card. It does more than just give a creature vigilance or tap an opponents creature. This set has some play with tapping and untapping things so this card enables that which is quite nice. It know it's not amazing but it feels really good and I stand by my opinion of it. No reason to continue talking about it if we just disagree.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 22:09 |
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Went to prerelease last night. Asked for white but ended up with blue, which was fine. Opened up a pool that had some strong blue and a couple of great green rares at the top end--Heroes' Bane and Hydra Broodmaster. For ramping/smoothing I had Golden Hind, Satyr Wayfinder, Font of Fertility and Market Festival. For tempo/removal I had 2x Pin to the Earth, Griptide and Retraction Helix. Other notable cards included 2x Nylea's Emissary, Scryfish (holy poo poo is he a workhorse), Fated Intervention and Hypnotic Siren. For one of my slots there was a toss-up between Whitewater Naiads and Nessian Demolock. I initially ran the Demolock, but I should have known better, as it usually ended up being an expensive Hill Giant when I was unable to live the dream of getting out turn 4. The Naiads would have been much better for pushing through damage from my fatties. The game plan was pretty straighforward--ramp up quickly and scry into the bombs, while disrupting my opponent as much as possible with bounce and Pins. When it worked, it was glorious, especially a late-game Siren. In a majority of the games I got the Starfish out early and it did an amazing job of smoothing out my draws and was never killed or bounced since it otherwise isn't a threat. In matches 1 and 2 I pretty much dominated. Match 3, I played against a very well-run UB deck that completely wrecked me with an early Daring Thief in the first game. He was able to get Armory of Iroas on it so that I could never block profitably, and once the Inspired trigger was online I couldn't play larger blockers because they would just get swapped away. A Griptide finally showed up later, but too late for me to recover as he had some flyers I couldn't defend against by that point. Second game, I mulliganed to 5 and was not able to pull enough gas to get my ramping up in time. My mulligan at 7 was with a five-land hand, and in retrospect I should probably have kept it as my deck can work better with too much mana than too little, plus there is Scry and card draw in there to help dig if I need to. Match 4 had some back and forth--I was land flooded first game and then dominated second game. Third game went to time and I lost in the fourth overtime turn, but it was very close. It came down to a crazy complex board that looked something like this: His side: Two white weenies, a Nimbus Naiad and a Shipbreaker Kraken that has been Monstrified and also Pinned to the Earth. At 20 life. My Side: Scryfish, one 3/3 centaur token, 4 4/4 hydra tokens (2 tapped down by the Kraken), Heroes' Bane with 8 counters, Hydra Broodmaster (tapped down), something else that's also tapped down. At 9ish life (maybe 7 at this point). I had a line of play that I missed, where I should have Bestowed a Nylea's Emissary on the Bane and kept four mana up to double its counters, as it would have put a huge amount of pressure on my opponent and he may have had to sacrifice the Kraken to avoid losing, unlocking my team. I made the mistake of Scrying away the land that would have put me at the 10 mana I needed, because it was such an automatic thing to do. Shortly after, I pulled my Siren and put it on the Kraken. But right afterward, HE drew his Triton Cavalry, getting us into a situation where my attacks were hugely complicated by knowing he could bounce the Siren at will, AND I had to keep mana up so that I could re-cast it to get the Kraken back. Again, I probably should have put the Emissary on the Bane to make trampling pressure, as my opponent would have been forced to choose between bouncing the Emissary and the Siren, but I opted for keeping mana up for the Siren, hoping that he didn't have multiple ways of targeting the Triton. Final play, with me at 3, was for him to bounce the Naiad, and then play it targeting the Triton, which then targeted the Siren to remove my only flying blocker (the Kraken). Swing for 4 and win. It was one of those awesome, tight games where I'm happy having lost even though I think I had a clear line to win in retrospect. Headed to a 2HG later today, where we are both going black and trying to live the dream of making a 2x Doomwake deck for one of us that can wipe out our opponents' board. Monoblack with multiple Garys would also be sweet, given how Gary works in 2HG.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 22:18 |
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Thassa's Ire is powerful in limited, but given the aggressive RW aggro deck in Theros block I'm not sure it's powerful enough given it has no body and its activated cost is high. Unless the RW agro deck has been severely slowed or made weaker by the addition of JOU, it seems like it's basically a dead card against that match up, one of the strongest deck in the draft format. The dog is a much better card against it, as at least you can do other stuff with it.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 22:42 |
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uggy posted:No because it's such a loaded way to try to say it's not a great card. It does more than just give a creature vigilance or tap an opponents creature. This set has some play with tapping and untapping things so this card enables that which is quite nice. It know it's not amazing but it feels really good and I stand by my opinion of it. No reason to continue talking about it if we just disagree. Synergy != Power Level, especially in limited. LSV has to write a ton of words to review every card in the set twice, so sometimes he is concise to get his point across. He points out synergistic interactions if he feels like they will come up in limited play often. Thassa's Ire has synergy with many other cards, but when the synergy costs 3U to activate, it gets a lot less appealing.
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# ? Apr 27, 2014 23:09 |
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Mercury Crusader posted:Xenagos gets exiled to Sarpadia where nothing remotely interesting happens because thrulls. Zorak posted:I hope the entire set has Theros themed versions of all the wraths, that'd be sick.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 00:16 |
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Lunsku posted:If you're willing to practice in MTGO, Born of the Gods release events start at 17th, and they're pretty much the best value sealed events around online. (This is to say: still not terribly good value...) This actually isn't true at the moment, sealed Dailies are even better. Release events are 12-9-3, the current Theros sealed Daily events are also 12-9-3 but let you enter with packs instead of tickets, so entry is almost a full 6 dollars cheaper. You only need a 56% winning percentage to break even. Play them before they are taken away!
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 00:44 |
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Veyrall posted:I don't know man. Them thrulls really cut loose after taking over the island. I'm willing to bet they could appreciate a professional party-mans. Well 15 cards and 15 gods, only other one I can think of though is a Pharika themed Plague Wind.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 01:23 |
quote:Response Via Email (Support Agent) 04/27/2014 03:27 PM
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 01:29 |
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I'm going to make a guess about one element (ha ha) of the new Duck's block: Gold. The concept of Gold was introduced by Devon Rule in his submission for the Great Designer Search. The Theros block introduced a reworked version of the Gold mechanic (Gold as a lotus petal) on two cards. Maro has stated that design and development have begun to think beyond blocks and to craft inter-block synergies (Ravnica's tribes connected backwards to Innistrad and forwards to Theros). Maro has stated that the Ducks block was designed bottom-up (mechanics first). Production and use of Gold is a new mechanical area for the game that they have already shown that they could use. Evidence suggests that Ducks block will have a Mongolian/Central Asian theme. Creatures that produce Gold when they deal damage, or creatures that sac gold as a cost for activated abilities could easily be skinned as nomadic raiders and/or mercenaries. This is all speculative, but I wanted to throw it out there on the off-chance I turn out to be right.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 01:37 |
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Given that Gold tokens currently convert directly to colored mana, I wouldn't anticipate activated abilities that explicitly need to sac gold. Those run into the same problem as Snow abilities, which is that they do nothing at all without other cards to enable them. EDIT: If a block whose codenames are Huey, Dewey and Louie has Gold tokens but no Scrooge's Vault, I'm gonna be sad. LordSaturn fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Apr 28, 2014 |
# ? Apr 28, 2014 01:46 |
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Ebethron posted:I'm going to make a guess about one element (ha ha) of the new Duck's block: Gold. Golden Goose 2 Artifact Creature 2,T: Put a Gold token onto the battlefield. This token has "sacrifice this: add (1) to your mana pool." "Let's crack it open!" Goblin Tinkerer, last words.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 01:48 |
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LordSaturn posted:Given that Gold tokens currently convert directly to colored mana, I wouldn't anticipate activated abilities that explicitly need to sac gold. Those run into the same problem as Snow abilities, which is that they do nothing at all without other cards to enable them. They could have sacrificing artifacts as a theme without explicitly naming Gold.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 01:57 |
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JerryLee posted:They could have sacrificing artifacts as a theme without explicitly naming Gold. Eggs will ride again!
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 02:45 |
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Oldsrocket_27 posted:Eggs will ride again! That would be amazing, free wins against the super genius eggs players is sorely missed. edit: Jokes aside I would be so thrilled to have a valid combo deck back in Standard. I know the Fiend Hunter decks were kinda close and they could sometimes win on the spot and Immortal Servitude could too if you're really stretching it but otherwise it hasn't been since Twin. rabidsquid fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Apr 28, 2014 |
# ? Apr 28, 2014 02:50 |
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rabidsquid posted:That would be amazing, free wins against the super genius eggs players is sorely missed. I'm pretty sure Wizards views Twin being in standard as a mistake on their part, so I wouldn't hold my breath on this one. Frites was pretty close to a combo deck, too, unless you're specifically talking about infinite combos that aren't garbage.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 03:20 |
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Burn is kind of like combo in that you cast six or seven spells and then you've won. And for a combo deck, it has quite a lot of redundancy.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 03:35 |
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rabidsquid posted:That would be amazing, free wins against the super genius eggs players is sorely missed. The latest versus video SCG did featured a "Bant Grow" deck that has a Vorel, Ajani, Sage of Hours combo in it for infinite turns. The deck's not really built on the combo, but infinite turns actually becoming a thing in Standard would be pretty neat.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 03:35 |
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Ran two prereleases. Picked White and Black, going X-1 with both pools. White vs. White match-ups became incredibly tedious, with life totals getting past 50 quite commonly (if the Seraph of Dawn, Eidolons or multiple sheep appeared). Really interesting set.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 03:37 |
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qbert posted:The latest versus video SCG did featured a "Bant Grow" deck that has a Vorel, Ajani, Sage of Hours combo in it for infinite turns. The deck's not really built on the combo, but infinite turns actually becoming a thing in Standard would be pretty neat. Combo decks will likely not be top tier as long as Thoughtseize is in standard. An incredibly commonly played one-drop staple in every top tier deck that incidentally houses your chance of victory by ditching a piece of your combo is pretty rough.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 03:47 |
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GreyPowerVan posted:(Recommended prize pack stuff) Anyway, full block sealed is much more enjoyable than the last two sets. I still hate the seeded pack because it takes away so many decisions from deckbuilding, but WotC's market research must tell them to keep with it. All my attempts to draft the full block with our prize packs failed, but I'm eager to see if it's more interactive than Born/Theros drafts.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 04:08 |
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I had a fun time at the prerelease. Quick thoughts: - Remember that the prerelease allocation had more JOU than PTQ sealed will, so constellation will not be as good moving forward as it was this weekend. - Speaking of constellation, I dig it. I played a BW deck with 13 enchantment creatures, the 6cmc non-enchantment wrath, the constellation flicker, and the 5/6 etb tuck a dude 7 drop - In hindsight, my deck really was stupid: Whip, the white promo lifelinker, hopeful eidolon, the 0/5 ram, the constellation bw 2/2 and 2b 1/4. I won most of my games at over 20 life after having taken 40+ damage, haha - Everyone always had at least one and often two of the c strive cycle ready to gently caress with you, watch out! - I saw a sick match where Marshalle Sutcliffe won in time with like, 5 Mnemonic Wall tokens on the battlefield somehow. That was a sweet rear end game. - Some people get so butthurt. I lost a round due to inordinate mana problems and walked it off, but this guy was just so salty. He wouldn't sign the result slip, talked about how his deck was so good against mine, how the format forced people to overextend and was stupid etc etc. If you're gonna be like that just don't show up.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 04:36 |
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Fuzzy Mammal posted:- I saw a sick match where Marshalle Sutcliffe won in time with like, 5 Mnemonic Wall tokens on the battlefield somehow. That was a sweet rear end game. Fated Infatuation! Someone had that combo along with Nykthos and Curse of the Swine in a draft the other week. He made 80+ Mnemonic Walls, then used Nykthos to generate a lot of mana and turn them into 2/2s. Someone told me he must've added one or more of those cards to his deck, though of course that's nearly impossible to prove in a draft.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 04:39 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:41 |
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There are a total of four creatures in all of standard with any sort of landwalking ability (Colossal Whale, Merfolk Spy, Sewer Shambler and Woodlot Crawler). A quick search of other recent Standard environments (Inn-Scars, Scars-Zen, Zen-Alara) shows the average around 15. Discuss.
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# ? Apr 28, 2014 04:45 |