Magic: The Gathering: The Megathread: Tenth Edition

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Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Vines of Vastwood. It's just one of the most well-designed, skill testing cards out there. In addition to being a pump spell, it's also green's version of counterspell and stifle, all in one card. If you play Infect in Modern or Stompy in Pauper, your success will be determined largely by how well you use this card. I doubt it will ever be reprinted since it would need to be in a set with Kicker, and it's confusing because it's similar to but not the same as hexproof, but hopefully there will be more cards like it in the future.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2014 14:59

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 04:03

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Madmarker posted:

Heh, its crazy how good creatures have become, I mean, would people even run Wild Mongrel if it were legal in standard now?

edit-sorry for the double post

I doubt it, since the only place it would fit would be some sort of graveyard deck, those normally have black, and that means they can run Lotleth Troll instead.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2014 17:28

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Plus, I doubt Wizards even thought about block formats other than the full THS-BNG-JIN format when designing the sets. I'm not sure why they even have it as a format for Daily events on MTGO, it's really not that fun to play with such a restricted card pool, especially for an extended period of time.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2014 17:35

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

I personally don't understand why Wizards is so protective of the secondary market. The could easily sell a "Modern Power Pack" with 10 of the most expensive cards in the format for $200, and almost all of that will be profit for Wizards. Since the whole point is for them to make money, why would they turn away from this obvious source of revenue? I doubt it would anger game stores that much, sure the prices on those particular singles will take a hit, but they get a cut of each $200 sale which should make up for it. It would anger the speculators, but that's a tiny fraction of the community, while keeping the prices of tournament quality decks from going out of control will do a lot for the health of the game.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2014 00:51

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

I think this system is much better than having huge tournaments, especially for Limited. Having a 700 player Sealed tournament cut to Top 8 means you have to open an insane pool. Only issue I can see is the prelims filling up too quickly.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 07:41

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Boxman posted:

Over in the SCG open, someone playing in their first feature match has forgotten important things like ticking Jace AOT up and drawing off his Bident. It's a competitive event and his opponent (Chris Vanmeter) is correctly enforcing rules, but I can completely see myself making these mistakes in his place. I would just want to crawl into a corner afterward.

Does anyone have any tips for cleaning up play besides just slowing down? Not "making optimal choices" but actually "not being stupid."

Practice, Practice, Practice. I'm willing to bet that guy just borrowed the deck and didn't play more than a few practice games with it. When picking up a new deck type, I'd recommend at least a dozen games before entering a competitive event, and more is always better, especially if you're a beginner. Switching to a new deck the day of the tournament without that significant practice time is never a good idea.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2014 19:46

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

mcmagic posted:

I always wonder how the guy at my FNM who loads trucks for a living buys a case of every new set that comes out...

On another note I've been playing Pauper on MTGO and it's usually been fun other than against these horrible storm decks. How did not EVERYONE quit playing magic when that was dominating standard? I'm so glad I wasn't playing back then.

They banned all the good Storm cards in Pauper a while ago, the closest thing to storm now is an Esper Control deck that's similar to the old FissurePost deck.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2014 04:33

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

The big thing with singles is that, even if you don't sell many of them, the large selection helps attract and retain customers. If Joe Casual wants card X, and the LGS doesn't have it, he'll go online or to another store that does, and next time he makes a purchase, he might decide to just buy online rather than check to see if the LGS has it. I worked for a company that sold specialty auto parts, and this is a core part of their business model. They may only sell a dozen of a low-value part per year, and make next to nothing on it, but the customer calls them first because the competition says "We'll have to special order that, and it could take 6-8 weeks." Sell them a $5 bracket that's hard to find and they'll come back when they need $5000 worth of parts to do a complete restoration.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2014 16:49

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Promoted Pawn posted:

You're probably fine selling M14 since it's a few sets old at this point. Selling packs of the most recent set/block is almost always bad value though since everybody is selling their prize packs and keeping the price down.

Edit: I also just wanted to post this again since it's much more important than it looks and I edited it in after you quoted the post it appeared in:

As someone who normally just plays constructed, I generally sell off my prize packs right away. In the short term, pack prices usually don't rise and fall that much, and it's generally not worth speculating on unless you really care about possibly getting 10 cents more per pack, and are willing to wait weeks for that to happen. If you don't want to draft with the packs just sell them off and don't worry about it.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2014 16:39

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Jabor posted:

Honestly I think the BG deck is actually really solid, just very easily hated out. If no-one's playing graveyard hate, it beats up on top-tier decks really well. RG monsters struggles to deal with anything once it gets bigger than its own guys, and gets absolutely wrecked by Shadowborn Demon. Bestow laughs at mono-B Devotion. Supreme Verdict is probably only going to be a 1:1 against you. The only things that really give it trouble are mono-U Devotion (which can probably play a better tempo game), and Kiora.

It's probably too early to be picking things for block, but if JiN gives one more dredger (to replace Grisly Salvage), and no meaningful graveyard hate, it's probably going to be a block constructed deck to beat. Not overpowering (since you do lose Deathrite and Shadowborn Demon), but still really solid.

The issue is that if it sees much play at all, every green deck will bring in Scavenging Ooze, and then it will be terrible. You can deal with graveyard hate, but it's a lot harder to deal with maindeck graveyard hate that is also a huge creature that gains the opponent a ton of life. It might be a thing in Block if the BG God uses the graveyard in some way, but it's obviously too early to tell.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2014 06:57

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

So the MOCS event just crashed, and took down several other events with it. I wasn't playing in the MOCS since I cut way back on MTGO in the last couple of months due to their constant problems, but I felt like playing some Magic and was 1-0 in a Daily. Gotta love MTGO.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2014 19:59

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Hearthstone does have a ton of luck based cards, which helps balance it out. I do think it would be interesting to see if people would want to play second in Magic if you got a free Lotus Petal in addition to an extra card, I think it would make the decision a lot less of a no-brainer.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 20:56

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Sorry for the threadjack, as someone who hasn't seen Lotus Petal except as an extremely niche legacy card in the most degenerate of combo decks, I had no idea it would be so powerful in standard/limited, but I'll take your guys' word for it. Also, super standard sealed has been tried before, the issue is that the cards in a particular block are designed to work together in a particular limited environment. Things like Populate or Heroic are nearly useless if you don't have the cards that make them good, and there are a lot less of those cards if you're opening multiple blocks in the same sealed deck format.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2014 22:28

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

GoatBots was the consensus best bot chain, but they were shut down by Wizards for some reason. I typically use LunarBot for selling extra packs/cards and CardBot for buying, while a lot of the smaller bots on WikiPrice may have slightly better prices I find that the website is slow in updating or refers me to bots that are unavailable or malfunctioning. It's worth it if you want to buy something really expensive, but CardBot always has reasonable prices and the only time I've seen them sold out is when there is a short term bubble on an obscure card. LunarBot tends to have a high buy price and high sell price for most cards/packs, so sell there. get tickets, and buy somewhere else.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2014 01:52

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

BXCX posted:

My favorite part of Constellation is Mana Bloom getting picked up as a speculation target again after it first got a lot of hype in Theros spoiler season and never went anywhere.

Another speculation target is Legion's Initiative. If there's a constructed playable constellation card in red or white you could flicker all your enchantment creatures and get multiple triggers, which might make it worth a slot.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 16:15

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Zorak posted:

Setessan Tactics - 1G Rare
Instant

Strive - Setessan Tactics cost G more to cast for each target beyond the first

Any number of target creatures each get +1/+1 and gain "t: Fight another target creature" until end of turn.

It's interesting, but I really think it should be uncommon rather than rare. I don't see this going anywhere near constructed play, and it's not that high a pick in Limited, especially since JIN will be opened first so you won't know if you will end up with a lot of Heroic cards.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 15:48

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

drat, functional City of Brass reprint is a huge deal. I can easily see it being ran in almost every deck after rotation if the next set's duals are weak, and City + Shocks is a decent enough Modern manabase if you can't afford fetchlands. Wouldn't surprise me if it hit $20 this fall.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2014 08:49

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Anyone know how Strive will work with cards like Elite Arcanist and Meletis Charlatan? Seems rather abusable if you can get around paying the extra mana.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2014 05:34

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

It's a pity that Dack isn't Modern legal, he would fit right into the UWR Control deck. Loot every turn filling your graveyard for Snapcaster, take care of that pesky Spellskite, and have a great finisher that turns all your red burn spells into Act of Treason.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2014 00:34

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

He would certainly be Modern playable if he was legal in that format, but Legacy has Brainstorm, Ponder, and Jace for card filtering. It may be a 1 of sideboard card against artifact decks, but that's about it.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2014 06:04

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Here's a couple more tips:

If someone approaches you, ask what they are interested in. If they say something like 'whatever', then they probably intend to screw you.

Values from shopping sites don't tell the whole story. In general, there is a hierarchy that goes something like Power/in demand reserved list cards > Modern/Legacy staples > older casual/EDH cards > Standard staples > Bulk. If you want to go up more than 1 or 2 levels you probably won't get any takers at any reasonable rate, people in general don't want to trade their high dollar cards for a large number of cards that won't hold their value and might be tough to unload. Even trading Standard cards for Modern ones is tough, expect to get screwed if you try, and if you want to go the other way you should be very picky and demand a significant premium. No one wants bulk, if you keep it sorted you may be able to get :10bux:

for a shoebox full of commons/uncommons from a dealer, but that's about it.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2014 07:06

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

In eternal formats, you typically have redundancy in your combo decks, which is much harder to achieve in Standard. Being able to run both Twin and Kiki Jiki, or Birthing Pod and Chord of Calling makes cards like Thoughseize much less effective. In Standard, you don't have that redundancy since so few cards are legal and they actively try to prevent it from happening, so if Thoughtseize takes a critical card you only have 3 other copies of it to draw.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2014 06:15

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Music For Cats posted:

With all 10 original dual lands in Vintage Masters, that probably doesn't leave room for the 5 Onslaught fetch lands. Which obviously means all 10 fetch lands reprinted in Huey block.

Keep in mind that Vintage Masters has twice as many cards at Rare and Mythic Rare as a normal large set. That means there is plenty of room for more than 10 lands, but any particular rare or mythic will occur about half as often as you'd expect from a normal set.

# ¿ May 12, 2014 05:46

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

It's really regional, some areas have a ton of judges, others have very few. My area has a big surplus of judges since there are several L2s who are willing to mentor anyone who wants to be an L1, but from what I've read the issue in some areas is the shortage of L2s. In order to get to L2, you need Competitive REL experience and an L3 to interview you and administer the test. In some areas there may only be a few Competitive REL events a year and the only L3 could be hundreds of miles away. Of course, if you live in an area without an L2 then it's tougher to get L1s, which compounds the problem. I'm not sure what the solution is, maybe have a dedicated program at GPs where L1s could interview, attend a structured course, judge a side event, and earn the L2 certification in a single weekend without having to coordinate the process themselves.

Konstantin fucked around with this message at 07:46 on May 18, 2014

# ¿ May 18, 2014 07:42

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

mcmagic posted:

Block constructed is a pretty boring format. Even less verity than your typical standard tourney.

There's a reason why there are only 1-2 block events a year, when the card pool is this small the meta becomes stabilized very quickly, and there are usually only a few viable decks.

# ¿ May 18, 2014 17:32

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

BJPaskoff posted:

Isn't this insane in Legacy? It lets you exile whatever you want, including True-Name Nemesis.

I can see it replacing Vindicate in Esper Deathblade, and Miracles might have one or two in the sideboard for TNN decks.

# ¿ May 23, 2014 05:56

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

I'd sell now, but the Power 9 could be a long term speculation once the price bottoms out in August or September. It's not like people will stop wanting them, and if Vintage Masters is a one-time thing that they don't bring back that price will keep going up. Of course, that's a big if, they could offer VM events every few months as a supplement to or replacement for Cube, which would keep prices low, but even then I don't see the price continuing to drop from the low point during this initial run since every new player will want a Black Lotus.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2014 00:05

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Johnnie5 posted:

Is WOTC still claiming they're going to make the switch? Because we've been down this road before and they pulled back at the last minute.

The last official word from a while ago was "July, before M15" but the fact that they haven't announced a specific date yet means that they might pull it back again. Of course, they should have written it off as a lost cause long ago and built something entirely new from scratch with no backward compatibility, both server and client, but they seem committed to limping along with this terrible foundation indefinitely.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2014 00:49

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Even still, in things like PTQs sealed is way too luck-based to be a serious format. I think at the very least they should change it to 4-5 rounds of sealed, cut to top 64, and then have two full single-elimination drafts to determine the winner. With a 150 person PTQ I'd say only 1 out of every 4 sealed pools is good enough to reach Top 8 even if you're the best player at the tournament, and I don't like those odds. At least in GPs if you have 2 byes you only have to go 5-2 to reach Day 2, which is much more realistic.

Konstantin fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Jun 15, 2014

# ¿ Jun 15, 2014 02:11

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

I don't think we'll see Soul of Ravnica in Super Standard, but after Revelation and Aetherling rotate out control will need some big way to draw cards, stabilize, and finish the game. It might be this or it might be something better that will be printed, or we might even go to a Standard where pure control decks just aren't viable, there's no way to tell at this early point.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 19:39

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

rabidsquid posted:

Apparently there is one bathroom available at the GP. Good job.

That's insane. Usually events such as this are bound by the maximum occupancy rating of the building, and there are generally supposed to be sufficient bathrooms to support that number of people. Of course, you can cut that number by quite a bit since there's the assumption of 50/50 male-female and most GPs are at least 95% male, but even then should still be a decent amount of capacity. With smaller events like PTQs they can get away with stretching maximum occupancy since they are unlikely to be caught, but there's no way a GP organizer would risk an event this big being shut down by the police or fire department for being over capacity.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 22:46

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Minority Deport posted:

Obligatory burn spell go!

drat, between this and Raise the Alarm my RW token burn deck is going to be insane in super standard.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2014 20:18

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

It might make that Dredge deck popular again, because in the lategame it's more like "1G, Temporarily sacrifice Jarad: Draw 7"

# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 03:39

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

I have a few older copies of the painlands that I won't mind getting rid of at some point down the line. Since I'm sure everyone else has the same idea and are dusting off whatever stock they have, what's the best time to unload them? I'm thinking either now or the next Standard PTQ season, but I'm not a cardboard futures guru.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 05:00

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

And of course, you have the case where a deck name sticks around even after the ability it's named after is no longer relevant. Any deck built around a bunch of low cost artifacts is "Affinity" and any deck built around self-milling is "Dredge".

# ¿ Jul 5, 2014 09:48

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Cipher is a decent mechanic, but they had to really tone it down since it was in the same Standard as Invisible Stalker and a bunch of other good Hexproof creatures. Hopefully they can bring it back in a few years.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2014 01:27

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Kasonic posted:

It's really too bad Lightning Rift will remain the only good red trigger-enchantment ever because every one after has been safely unplayable.

That U/R Scry control deck must've been a killer in the FFL.

Purphoros sees a decent amount of play, and it's mainly because of his triggered ability.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2014 03:56

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

The issue with felt is that it can absorb liquids, and with how messy some nerds are I wouldn't have felted tables without a food/drink ban.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 18:04

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Exactly. This time last year people would have called you crazy if you said "The best deck in Standard after rotation will contain 4 copies of both Nightveil Specter and Pack Rat."

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 22:01

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 04:03

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

I'd have built that deck a lot differently, but then again when I cube I tend to force GW Equipment builds too much. In that deck Mirran Crusader and Silverblade Paladin are cards you value extremely highly and would never consider sideboarding since both work so well with the Swords, and you'd also want the obvious second Sword, the Clamp, and the tutor to get a Sword or Clamp. I'd probably put in the Fleecemane Lion as well, and cut out the Ermakul and most of the ramp.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2014 10:20

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