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Cernunnos posted:I guess this could be a legit reason to not like him if you were playing at the time. How much of a soggy diaper baby does one have to be to not like a guy because he played a combo deck
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Aug 12, 2017 02:58
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It makes me laugh that they reprinted Memory Jar anyways even though it was on the Reserved List because they figured they could somehow do tournament-legal versions that didn't violate the Reserved List. I mean, the Reserved List is dumb, but it was still the most obvious legal technicality poo poo they could do, particularly given that they didn't even change Memory Jar's art. That's what's funny about them being so obstinate about the Reserved List - they said the same poo poo before, then went hog wild on that technicality (FTV: Relics had four different Reserved List cards with Karn, Masticore, Mox Diamond and Memory Jar) and they printed like 6 or 7 other Reserved List cards that year as judge foils) Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Aug 12, 2017 |
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Aug 12, 2017 03:00
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So even playing a budget friendly version of the TheDemon's Enigma Drake is fun as hell. The way it sneaks up on people is just great.
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Aug 12, 2017 03:13
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Angry Grimace posted:It makes me laugh that they reprinted Memory Jar anyways even though it was on the Reserved List because they figured they could somehow do tournament-legal versions that didn't violate the Reserved List. The reserved list originally excluded foils but then they changed it because???
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Aug 12, 2017 03:14
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Curse Dude better get his own card in Commander 2018
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Aug 12, 2017 03:15
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It's also powerful because it's an artifact. So you can activate it immediately after casting (or not, if you want to try to wait a turn and get all your mana back) and you can get it with cards like Tinker (another incredibly powerful card that came out around the same time) and, as people have said, Tolarian Academy. You can also play it with cards like Mishra's Workshop. Here's another way to look at it: Magic has some underlying fundamental assumptions, and most cards are designed with those assumptions in mind. Here are a few: 1. You draw one card per turn. 2. Each land taps for one mana. 3. Spells are appropriately costed for their effects. If you manage to break any of these assumptions in a big way at a low cost, you are going to have a very powerful effect. Here's a few examples that line up with each of the assumptions. These may help you judge cards: 1. Drawing more than one card - Balanced but powerful: Consecrated Sphinx. This effectively means you draw three cards per turn. This makes it very hard for your opponent to keep up, you can simply outspend them. It is balanced because it is expensive (six mana) and also a creature so it is killed by a lot of stuff. Dangerously powerful: Necropotence. This is one of the trickier cards for new players. It looks balanced because it costs triple black, exiles cards you discard, takes away your draw step and eventually it kills you! The difference though is that most of the time being able to draw between 5-6 cards per turn for 2-3 turns is usually enough to win you the game. One key thing for new players to learn is that life is another resource and you win just as much at 1 life as 20. You just need to win. Completely broken: Yawgmoth's Bargain. It costs twice as much as Necropotence! Why is it more broken? Necropotence makes you wait until end of your turn for the cards. Find a way to cast Yawgmoth's Bargain fast and then win on the spot with all those cards. 2. Lands that tap for more than one mana: Basic lands tap for one mana each. You play one land per turn. Most spells are costed with this in mind. Balanced but powerful: City of Traitors: This one often needs the right context to be powerful, but is often used where even being one mana ahead lets you reach a critical threshold and win. It's so key to get that extra mana that people are willing to use what is basically a one shot land. Dangerously powerful: Mishra's Workshop. It's restricted to artifacts, but who cares? Artifacts can be the most powerful cards in the game. Completely Broken: Tolarian Academy. Produces huge amounts of mana in decks that play a lot of artifacts. Remember how I said artifacts were some of the most powerful cards in the game? In a completely crazy idea, this was also printed around the same time as spells that let you untap lands by casting them! Suddenly those spells actually add mana because you get so much when you can tap this thing twice! 3. Appropriately costed spells: Powerful effects are good, but even very powerful stuff can be balanced by making it very expensive. Something like Plague Wind won't see much play because it costs so much even though it is very powerful. Over time and through testing (and blatant mistakes) the developers have mostly figured out what cost each effect should have. For instance a Counterspell effect at UU is very good, while at 1UU it's merely okay. Balanced but powerful: Dismember. Phyrexian mana was an idea that instead of paying a colored mana you could pay 2 life. This effectively reads 1, pay four life: Target creature gets' -5/-5. This kills most creatures, which is usually costed around 1BB. Dangerously powerful: Dig Through Time. Delve lets you exile cards from your graveyard in lieu of paying mana. That means this was often cast for way less than its apparent cost, sometimes just for UU. Notice the theme here with the Phyrexian mana from earlier. In both cases they let you pay something other than mana, which often leads to trouble. Broken: Time Walk. It usually costs five mana to take another turn. That makes it so expensive that you may not be able to do much this turn except cast that spell, so it's not that huge of a deal. But if you take the cost down to 1U, it's backbreaking. The Power Nine (considered the most powerful cards, or at least right up there) are basically all examples of this sort of thing. The moxes and lotus accelerate your mana. Time Walk and Wheel are undercosted. Ancestrall Recall BOTH draws a bunch of cards and is severely undercosted and it's an instant! If you look at Memory Jar that way, it does a very powerful thing (draws seven cards) for what is less than an appropriate cost. Typically drawing that many cards might cost you nine mana, and that would be at sorcery speed. When people look at cards and say "This one looks good", it typically means that it does something important or powerful (does a lot of damage, kills your opponent's stuff, draws a bunch of cards, deprives your opponent of a resource, increases your own resources) for less than what would be a fair cost. Eventually you figure out what a fair cost is - for example creatures should have a power/toughness right around the amount of mana it costs to pay for them - so a 4/4 should cost four mana, but if you get to a point where a 4/5 costs two mana then you've got one of the best creatures out there.. Grifter fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Aug 12, 2017 |
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Aug 12, 2017 03:19
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Grifter posted:Perfectly fine and in no way broken: Mishra's Workshop. FTFY 
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Aug 12, 2017 03:37
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This is a really awesome post!
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Aug 12, 2017 03:41
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suicidesteve posted:The reserved list originally excluded foils but then they changed it because???
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Aug 12, 2017 03:52
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GeneX posted:Here's thread favorite SaffronOlive explaining the idea of that deck, if you can deal with his voice. Man you weren't kidding about his voice. I could only suffer through about 45 seconds of that.
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Aug 12, 2017 03:52
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ManMythLegend posted:So even playing a budget friendly version of the TheDemon's Enigma Drake is fun as hell. The way it sneaks up on people is just great. Enigma Drake is everything Spellheart Chimera wishes it was.
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Aug 12, 2017 04:08
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Count Bleck posted:Enigma Drake is everything Spellheart Chimera wishes it was. That 4th point of toughness is definitely worth not having Trample.
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Aug 12, 2017 04:18
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Cernunnos posted:That 4th point of toughness is definitely worth not having Trample. Being able to Sweltering Suns main phase 1 and swinging for an extra point of power is great.
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Aug 12, 2017 04:22
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Grifter posted:Here's another way to look at it: Magic has some underlying fundamental assumptions, and most cards are designed with those assumptions in mind. Here are a few: 1a: The card you draw each turn is at random. Because of the inherent variance of drawing a specific card in your deck, people generally play the smallest deck legal (60 cards in constructed) and play the maximum copies of cards you want to draw most often (4). Even then, there is no guarantee you'll get what you want, when you need it. While drawing extra cards can get you closer to the cards you need, sometimes you can just go straight to the card you want, or at least get closer. Also, by controlling the cards you get, when you need them, you can have fewer copies of cards you only need in specific situations. Balanced but powerful: Oath of Nissa lets you look at the top three cards of your deck and pluck out the one you specifically need. If you play it on turn 1 it's almost like you started the game with 9 cards in your hand and got rid of 2 bad ones. The second ability is just icing on the cake, though inexperienced players may ignore this card because "oh I can just pay the mana for the Planeswalkers I play, I don't need it", while overlooking the part that actually matters. Dangerously powerful: Traverse the UIvenwald lets you get exactly the creature you want, when you need it, in the back half of the game (once you've reached Delirium). By allowing you to minimize the number of copies of powerful cards that you don't want to see in your hand except when you exactly need it, Traverse lets you dodge cluttering up your deck with cards you don't want to see at inopportune times. Completely broken: Summoner's Pact gets you exactly the green creature you need right this second for no cost to you at all. Sure you have to pay 2GG next turn, but if your opponent is dead before then you don't have to worry about it. Furthering this, some historically overpowered cards let you cheat multiple of these rules. Stoneforge Mystic lets you break rule 1a and 3 because you get to find whatever Equipment you want out of your deck, then just dump the Equipment into play for 1W instead of its actual cost.
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Aug 12, 2017 04:31
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So you guys know the guy on the art of the curse cycle, right? Apparently that's the guy who did the art, Kieran Yanner. Huh.
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Aug 12, 2017 04:32
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Lone Goat posted:How much of a soggy diaper baby does one have to be to not like a guy because he played a combo deck This is like the Tzar Bomba of combo decks. It's a matter of scale. Ed: For context, the following non-lands in the deck are not restricted in vintage: 4x Defense Grid 1x Megrim 4x Mox Diamond 4x Dark Ritual Has a better deck than this ever existed in tournament-legal magic? Eela6 fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Aug 12, 2017 |
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Aug 12, 2017 04:39
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I was mostly pissed about the Academy combo decks during this time because I had a sweet turbomill deck that was completely destroyed by the artifact hate the good decks brought around.
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Aug 12, 2017 04:54
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Eela6 posted:This is like the Tzar Bomba of combo decks. It's a matter of scale. And there have been good arguments made for restricting Dark Ritual. Even recently as part of a giant set of restrictions that might fix the format. There were probably some vintage Desire decks that were this good or better for a very short time but yeah, it's pretty much the best deck ever.
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Aug 12, 2017 05:19
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suicidesteve posted:And there have been good arguments made for restricting Dark Ritual. Even recently as part of a giant set of restrictions that might fix the format. Randy Buehler has some good videos on YouTube of historically powerful decks matched against each other, called Gauntlet of Greatness. I think Jar won the Standard tournament.
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Aug 12, 2017 05:24
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suicidesteve posted:And there have been good arguments made for restricting Dark Ritual. Even recently as part of a giant set of restrictions that might fix the format. Can you elaborate? I never hear about vintage.
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Aug 12, 2017 05:25
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Why shake of a format a few hundred people play?
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Aug 12, 2017 05:26
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There's something they could get rid of which would really shake up the format in a good way. it rhymes with "deserved mist"
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Aug 12, 2017 05:32
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It rhymes with "blintage pooper teague"
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Aug 12, 2017 05:38
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:There was a Megrim+Memory Jar deck with a iirc 60% win rate on turn 1, which contributed to the first emergency ban in Magic's history. Playing it in the throwback gauntlet, it was probably closer to 40% turn 1 on the draw, 30% on the play, but it was nearly certain to win by turn 3 on the play. Deck was dumb. oh wow that version is WAY better than the one in the gauntlet: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-online/throwback-standard-gauntlet-2-combo-winter-urza-block-2017-05-04 Necropotence is secretly terrible in fast combo decks. It was extremely tilting landing a turn 1 Necro when playing the deck in the gauntlet, drawing 14 cards and failing to find a Jar or the mana to cast a Jar or whatever and just dying. The amount of VSL matches where some storm player resolves Necro and then fails to find anything in the 10-15 cards they draw is pretty laughable. I should go and count up the games where Necro wins versus the ones where Necro loses, because I'm pretty sure Necro has a sub-50% winrate.
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Aug 12, 2017 05:48
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Spent day 1 of Birmingham doing chaos drafts (opened a Russian future sight pack, got foil Imperial mask, woo.) and losing round 1 to one of the only three standard 8 mans to fire all day. Going to be doing the 35 pounds sealed in the morning, seems like good value.
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Aug 12, 2017 05:58
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Samael posted:Going to be doing the 35 pounds sealed in the morning, seems like good value. please tell me this is where every entrant gets 35 lbs of bulk cards and has to make a deck out of it in 30 minutes.
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Aug 12, 2017 06:13
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Hellsau posted:please tell me this is where every entrant gets 35 lbs of bulk cards and has to make a deck out of it in 30 minutes. It's mainly for the prizes, 4-0 gets you 1k tickets which is around 3 booster boxes and you get a gppromo for participating. The 35 lb of bulk can be easily chucked at the vendor/ in a bin.
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Aug 12, 2017 06:33
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Hellsau posted:please tell me this is where every entrant gets 35 lbs of bulk cards and has to make a deck out of it in 30 minutes. Nah, it's normal sealed, but you have to put the cards in special sleeves backed with half an inch of solid lead.
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Aug 12, 2017 06:35
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Grifter posted:
Just want to put this out there: Necropotence, Dark Ritual, and Cabal Ritual are legal in Penny Dreadful this season. That's a helluva lot of power in a format where decks cost about a dollar. https://pennydreadfulmagic.com/decks/3525/ https://pennydreadfulmagic.com/decks/3601/ So is Smokestacks: https://pennydreadfulmagic.com/decks/3393/ The One Rule In Penny Dreadful, any card on the 0.01 Tix list is legal to use in your deck. Every time a new set is released, a list of all 0.01 Tix cards is recorded and published here. This list remains valid until the next Standard set release. http://pdmtgo.com/
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Aug 12, 2017 06:37
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ManMythLegend posted:So even playing a budget friendly version of the TheDemon's Enigma Drake is fun as hell. The way it sneaks up on people is just great. Could you post your budget decklist? I want to lose with something fun at standard tomorrow
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Aug 12, 2017 06:52
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Carl Killer Miller posted:Could you post your budget decklist? I want to lose with something fun at standard tomorrow I'll post the specifics when I get home, but the punch line is replacing the Spirebluffs and Fumaroles with Aether Hubs and Highland Lakes and swapping in 2 Flings for (I think...) a Shock and an Abrade.
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Aug 12, 2017 06:58
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ManMythLegend posted:I'll post the specifics when I get home, but the punch line is replacing the Spirebluffs and Fumaroles with Aether Hubs and Highland Lakes and swapping in 2 Flings for (I think...) a Shock and an Abrade. I don't think his initial deck had any flings, at least the decklist I'm looking off of.
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Aug 12, 2017 07:09
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Carl Killer Miller posted:I don't think his initial deck had any flings, at least the decklist I'm looking off of. Yeah, it didn't. I added those in as a surprise finisher.
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Aug 12, 2017 07:15
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Getting rid of the Reserved List wouldn't fix Vintage for the same reason it wouldn't fix Legacy. Because they're not going to print Vintage Masters in real life.
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Aug 12, 2017 07:15
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Yeah, the thing about the Reserved List is that even if right now, today, they say "Yes, we're removing it"...it won't do anything. Because when people say "okay, so now you can reprint Black Lotus. Will you?" WotC will just reply "Nah, we don't think so." and move on. I mean, poo poo, look at Force of Will and what it took to reprint that goddamn card, and that's just an uncommon from Alliances, not the Power 9!
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Aug 12, 2017 07:43
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Carl Killer Miller posted:Could you post your budget decklist? I want to lose with something fun at standard tomorrow As promised: Deck: Budget Drake   //Main 1 Abrade 2 Aether Hub 4 Censor 4 Cryptic Serpent 4 Curious Homunculus 4 Enigma Drake 3 Fevered Visions 2 Fling 1 Hieroglyphic Illumination 2 Highland Lake 4 Insult/Injury 4 Ipnu Rivulet 5 Island 5 Mountain 4 Ramunap Ruins 3 Shock 4 Strategic Planning 2 Sweltering Suns 2 Winds of Rebuke //Sideboard 3 Abrade 3 Dispel 1 Hieroglyphic Illumination 2 Lightning Axe 2 Negate 1 Sweltering Suns 2 Unsubstantiate 1 Winds of Rebuke  Display deck statisticsI'm not super sold on the sideboard, but I haven't tinkered with it yet.
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Aug 12, 2017 08:40
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https://deckstats.net/decks/75808/775431-enigma-drake This is what I've been running.
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Aug 12, 2017 13:40
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Thanks so much for the explanations on Memory Jar guys! They were all extremely helpful and I really appreciate them. I completely didn't realise that the cards were discarded at the end of the turn you played Memory Jar, so I feel pretty dumb. That aside the explanations on how it combos with other cards to make discarding tremendously beneficial to you and damaging to your opponent. I ended up getting two boosters as a weekend treat and got some coll stuff in them! A foil Dusk//Dawn which is my first holographic rare so I'm super happy about that, and Approach of the Second Sun in that booster too. In the other booster I got a blue creature rare so that's good! It's called Glyph Keeper I think.
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Aug 12, 2017 14:03
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Hmm, could Herald's Horn see play in legacy Goblins? It has the cost reduction of Goblin Warchief and repeatable Goblin drawing, but the major downside is it's not a Goblin itself.
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Aug 12, 2017 16:48
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Don't worry if you find it hard to evaluate cards. It's pretty difficult to do as a new player, and it doesn't always get easier. During spoilers season, it isn't uncommon for people to over hype a card only for it to be kinda junk or to dismiss a card that winds up shaping the format. You'll get better with time and playing the game.
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Aug 12, 2017 16:48
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