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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Reflector Mage or whatever is like 90% of creatures in BFZ in that it has prospects once Siege Rhino rotates out. Reflector Mage seems pretty decent all around. It comes down early enough to be relevant and has a decent enough body for a utility creature, while the added no-recast effect on its bounce will absolutely win some games. It would probably be playable in 4C Rally as another way to keep Anafenza off the board and as general tempo fuckery. EDIT: actually it would probably be really good as an Anafenza response in 4C Rally. Right now Sidisi's Faithful gets used for the job, but bouncing Anafenza off an exploit trigger means something's getting exiled. Usually it's the Faithful, which means it can't be used for another bounce off a Rally. Reflector Mage can bounce Anafenza, then get itself into the graveyard for another trigger, and guarantees a whole extra turn of Aristocrats shenanigans without any Anafenzas in the picture. Obviously they fit in at very different places on the mana curve but for something that's already in color it seems like a desirable answer to a difficult card. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 00:58
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Count Bleck posted:Aristocrats seems pushed. Doesn't play that nicely with Collected Company, but with Haruspex about to rotate out maybe they're pushing the deck more towards Smothering Abomination and mass tokens as a card draw engine instead?
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Dec 31, 2015 01:14
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Haruspex is a bulk rare and a core 4-of in most BGx Aristocrats decks. I highly recommend trying it out since being able to turn all your chump blocks and Husk pumps into sweet, sweet cards is a really good effect and it's got a tolerable body if you happen to end up ahead on board through the simple act of playing creatures every turn. It's also nice board wipe insurance since it means you just get to replace all the cards they blew up. I agree that between this thing, Catacomb Sifter, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Smothering Abomination, there's a pretty good BGx Tokens Aristocrats deck emerging. New Nissa might even be playable in it if they're moving away from CoCo and non-token sacrifices. The real question, of course, is if we'll get a new mass revival spell in the next block to replace Rally the Ancestors, though I suppose a token-centric deck is less concerned about replaying its graveyard. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 01:29
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People were talking about Zada earlier; digging through Deckstats, it turns out there are some otherwise negligible White instants that also happen to draw a card. Normally, their effects are so negligible for their mana costs that the fact that they cycle isn't worth just having a better card in your hand to begin with, but this does create some potentially goofy as gently caress Zada situations where draft leavings like Defiant Strike draws like five cards. I kind of want to make a RW Zada Tokens deck with Monastery Mentor, Gideon, and a bunch of other token/pump spells. I think this could be a decent FNM contender for goofy decks that can also win games. Added bonus: Valorous Stance on Zada blanks wraths other than Languish! EDIT: quick n' dirty decklist for suggestions. http://deckstats.net/deck-8709158-4c6931b7c073e9f02e32b5eb4e9500cd.html The Pressure Points are more likely to be cast on your own Zada at the end of the enemy's turn as a way to draw cards. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 02:06
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AlternateNu posted:I think the consensus for best Zada spells in standard are Defiant Strike, Titan Strength, and Valorous Stance. Feat of Resistance is also a possibility. I'm pretty sure Arcbonding Zada results in an infinite loop but holy gently caress do I not want to figure out how those triggers get worked out. I think if you're ahead on life you can win the game by stacking them correctly though. Edit: not infinite: damage gets checked every time a trigger resolves, so while it does create a feedback loop, it's one limited by the toughness of the creatures on the table and the life totals of the players. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 02:59
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1st pick.
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Dec 31, 2015 06:37
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This by itself might be enough to make Allies playable, though it's gonna be loving terrifying with Eldrazi decks too. It's like a poor man's Coat of Arms.
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Dec 31, 2015 22:39
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A big flaming stink posted:equip cost 2 seems too much for that Maybe, but I don't think Allies usually has much to do with its mana once their hand is played out. Not sure about the BG Manland. Deathtouch is not a great ability for a 2/2, but lategame an extra land could very well be worth less than the creature you can trade it for.
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Dec 31, 2015 22:57
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So watching some of the Modern stream, I realized the reason I don't hate Twin the way I hate other combo decks like that Goryo's trash is in large part because Twin combo'ing off is just them casting Splinter Twin and asking if it resolves instead of jerking off with their cards for ten minutes while their opponent waits to be dead. The fact that it's a fairly interactive combo deck that cannot go off before turn four no matter how much bullshit it draws also makes it much more bearable, but I really think the fact that Twin games just end when they're over is the biggest reason.
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Jan 3, 2016 02:48
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Count Bleck posted:I'm aware, it just has that "haha wow I just randomly won out of nowhere" and it does it much better than twin, you don't even get to see the win until you actually cast CoCo. A CoCo deck passing the turn with four mana up should be a pretty big tell as to what their plans are for your combat step.
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Jan 3, 2016 23:42
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PJOmega posted:True, but even the CoCo player doesn't know what their creature play will be in the combat step. Sure, but this is already Wizard Poker. There's a fair amount of uncertainty in everything we do, and I don't feel like CoCo not being 100% certain on what (if any) answers it will find is inherently more offensive than any given card draw spell maybe finding the perfect card for the situation or maybe finding nothing. The play itself is fairly easy to see coming and you can have a reasonable idea of the likely outcomes when you decide how to attack.
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Jan 3, 2016 23:52
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Brownhat posted:That is pretty much the only actual reason to ban out Bloom Titan. Yeah watching a deck spend ten minutes digging through its library to kill someone on turn two sounds really fun.
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Jan 4, 2016 02:53
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I respect the creativity and effort that went into making some of the more esoteric combo decks work and watching the interactions play out is interesting the first few times, but it's not actually something I want to play Magic with on a regular basis.
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Jan 4, 2016 02:56
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Brownhat posted:Except that wasn't what I was saying. It requires high skill AND high variance, and it's taken two years for it to win something serious. Turn two and three kills are incredibly inconsistent. Shoal is more consistent, especially on turn two. And if we're banning decks because they aren't fun to play against, they should burn Lantern Control to the ground first. Decks that can regularly (not necessarily reliably) pull off turn 2 kills shouldn't exist in a format without cards like Force of Will. There isn't enough interaction available to decks that might die before their second land drop, and as we saw today, a deck like Bloom going off can just brute force though removal or counters anyways. I respect what it took to put the deck together and play it successfully, but playing a harder deck than your opponent doesn't mean you get to break the format.
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Jan 4, 2016 05:45
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The last one is actually true. When everyone has access to all the tools they will ever need, the answer to any given situation will generally boil down to 'use the correct tool'. It's when people have limited access to the toolbox that they have to start coming up with more inventive solutions to their problems.
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Jan 5, 2016 00:56
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kizudarake posted:Sounds like every combo deck, though. Bloom can go off before their opponent gets to play a second land. Modern doesn't have the cards available where it's reasonable to expect decks to consistently have answers to something like that.
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Jan 5, 2016 08:18
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Kilo147 posted:Wait, I thought the Titans we know are simply weakened projections of their true and impossibly powerful forms in the Blind Eternities? And doesn't killing them on Zendikar release them to the rest of the multiverse, with severe consequences? I think you just spoiled the plot for season two of the Planar Rangers.
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Jan 6, 2016 00:22
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The last two times I went to my LGS for Standard the events didn't even fire. Guess it's time to start calling ahead.
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Jan 6, 2016 00:44
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bhsman posted:I think the idea is that the Eldrazi are able to avoid taking physical damage due to their inherent bullshit, so Jace found a way to lock their physical forms in place and Chandra just took care of the rest. My theory is that the MTG genre fiction writers aren't very good.
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Jan 6, 2016 02:44
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It's half Chandra so it costs another 2 on principle. Girl's got expensive taste.
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Jan 6, 2016 06:46
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I like it because the 3/3 is enough of a body that it might be worth using early as an offensive combat trick in addition to being an Ulamog killer. That's a pretty decent amount of utility for one mana. That flying sac dude is actually pretty busted since in addition to being a baseline 2/1 flyer for 2, it's also an uncounterable edict. I'm noticing a lot of the Eldrazi coming from the next set have been building towards a pretty good Aristocrats deck, but with a focus on on-cast abilities and a lot of CMC 4 dudes that wouldn't play well with Collected Company. It will be interesting to see where the deck goes in the future.
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Jan 6, 2016 07:05
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Angry Grimace posted:The whole argument "well you gotta do anything to win" is one of those eye-rolling arguments where it doesn't actually extend to everything despite everyone acting like it does, e.g. monitoring what cards opposing teams are ordering (which isn't actually illegal) and doesn't actually apply to lots of things despite people saying it does. The George Brett incident is notable because its an outlier, the same way you don't see people arguing that guys don't run up the first base line in the runners box even though technically you are out if you run outside of it and there's a loving lot more money on the line. Golfers literally call penalties on themselves. I think this last part is the crux of it. We all understand that by the rule he was technically correct, and we all understand why the rule is necessary in general. Just don't pretend to not be a dick when you win this way or get offended when people point it out to you.
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Jan 11, 2016 05:14
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black potus posted:the spirit of the joke is important Nothing can wash off the stench of your posting.
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Jan 11, 2016 21:02
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Sickening posted:He ended up winning his match with his "gotcha". To be fair he was on a 2 turn clock anyway with his opponent in top deck mode and was going to win anyway. No he wasn't. He had to sacrifice his creature at the end of the turn and was basically reduced to playing a really lovely reanimator deck.
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Jan 11, 2016 21:56
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PleasantDirge posted:Re: scumbagchat, it's not a needle problem. It's a "how to name a card" problem because when you can get away with "that big rear end R/G dude what throws lands for DMG" and be considered to have named a legal card the issue is not "nit picky minutia filled bullshit rules" it's "dudebro didn't do his homework" problem so hard cheese for him. The rule is as forgiving as it can be with leaving minimal room for shenanigans. I think the general permissiveness with naming contributes to the problem. Usually even the vaguest description is good enough, so if you don't know that some obscure card actually has another, even more obscure card from ten years ago with an overlapping name, there's no reason to expect so much precision to suddenly be necessary to not get rules lawyered. Again, I understand that the Judges did their jobs and interpreted the rules correctly, but what the situation actually reflects is an undesirable snag in the current rules and not something we should pretend is somehow a good outcome. In general, I'd say that in situations where ambiguity exists, the desirable outcome would be to clarify that ambiguity before proceeding to adjudication.
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Jan 11, 2016 22:48
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Serperoth posted:You don't even need to NAME something. I can say "That blue planeswalker with the 4 activated abilities", and that'd be JTMS. If there's doubt, call a Judge, and clarify it. The problem isn't that he named something that wasn't Borborygmos Enraged. The problem was that he named the one card that was unambiguously the WRONG card. I posted earlier in the thread a list of things he could've named that would have counted. It isn't "Ha, gotcha, I was bluffing all along", it was a misplay by someone at the top 8 of a Modern tournament. Hell, he could have named (as he asked later) "Borborygmos, the one in your deck", and it'd have been clear (mostly). Right, that's what I'm saying. In almost every case, throwing out anything even vaguely describing the card in question is good enough. If Borborygmos Enraged was the only card depicting that character, just saying half of his name would have been more than sufficient. The fact that there was another version of the card with an overlapping name was a fluke chance, and I don't feel like asking players to have an encyclopedic knowledge of every card every printed to be safe from similar situations is a reasonable burden of knowledge.
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Jan 11, 2016 23:13
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uggy posted:Ya well you should have added "naming borborygmos against a goryos deck" cause it's incredibly obvious what card the dude was naming. Congrats on not being a shitbag professional magic player.
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Jan 11, 2016 23:15
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The edge case here seems to be cards whose full names are contained entirely within the partial names of other cards. You couldn't make the same mistake by saying 'Jace' or something because that's not the full name of any card; in situations where it mattered, you would simply have to clarify specifically which card you were referring to. There should probably be an addendum to the rules to cover any ambiguity that arises from a situation like this, deliberate or otherwise.
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Jan 11, 2016 23:21
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Zoness posted:If you're playing on modo and your opponent needles naming borborygmos do you kill them with borborygmos enraged? Do you assume your opponent meant borborygmos enraged? If it happens on Modo they have to pick form a drop-down menu that would make them aware of the existence of another card with Borborygmos in its name and prevent this sort of ambiguity from happening in the first place. They could even tab out and look up the card if they were unsure.
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Jan 11, 2016 23:30
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little munchkin posted:Clearly it was the quarterback's intention to throw the ball to his teammate. Everyone on both teams knew it too, so intercepting the ball and running the other way with it is such a scumbag move. mcmagic posted:This might be the dumbest comparison I've ever read. Congrats on getting owned by mcmagic.
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Jan 11, 2016 23:41
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little munchkin posted:it was a joke, sorry y'all There's a difference between holding your opponent to their mistakes when money is on the line versus deliberately misinterpreting what they said so you can ride some inane technicality to victory.
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Jan 12, 2016 00:04
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One of the guys at my LGS just took apart his Twin deck because half the loving store was playing it. I actually agree with Wizards on this one; the deck wasn't necessarily overpowered, but it was taking up too much space in the meta and the Twin combo isn't really interesting enough to be missed.
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Jan 16, 2016 06:12
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Glad my LGS is doing Prerelease this weekend since half the store doesn't own a Modern deck anymore.
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Jan 16, 2016 18:26
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Death Bot posted:on one hand i get your point but on the other hand as an infrequent (or non-, honestly) player who doesn't like standard and has had Titan half built in my binder for a while there's just a solid chance I never play paper magic with my own cards again. Congratulations, you're free!
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Jan 16, 2016 18:32
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I Kiki really a 100% unplayable substitute? I understand that being more expensive and dying to bolt are both extremely relevant drawbacks, but Twin already had to play around Exarch dying to every removal spell that wasn't Lightning Bolt anyways and Kiki has the silver lining of not getting you 2-for-1'ed if your combo gets interrupted. Obviously the end result is a slower combo that's more vulnerable to disruption, but that's not necessarily the same thing as a dead deck and Twin getting tuned down a little bit is probably not a bad thing for the format.Cactrot posted:Healthy meta. Yeah if half the store gets knocked out by one card getting banned that is probably a sign that things weren't great to begin with.
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Jan 16, 2016 18:42
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Ciprian Maricon posted:The difference is pretty significant. 1 turn later, 1 mana more is a lot in this game. The difference between Preordain and Anticipate, Bolt and Lightning Spear is one turn and one mana but in game play terms its massive. It's absolutely a worse card in a meaningful way. I'm just curious to see if UR Twin can work with it as a substitute while still being competitive, since Wizard's stated goal with the ban was to make the deck weaker more than to kill it outright. Up to now there was no reason to even try with Kiki because you had an obviously better card to use, but I'd at least like to see it tested out before people start flushing their decks.
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Jan 16, 2016 18:59
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Angry Grimace posted:It's a 4/4 with Vendilion Clique's effect except better people are gonna loving hate this card. Want a new card? Have fun killing this loving 4/4.
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Jan 18, 2016 07:35
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Kilo147 posted:I've just learned to hate four-of. Every game is the exact same with those decks, its like reading the same lovely book over and over and over again until you're so goddamn sick of it you cant stand to even see the cover. At a certain point you might as well just stack the deck and play in a predetermined order. At least with a generally singleton deck, each time I play makes me react differently, think up new strategy, and respond to threats in previously unused ways. Id go Commander, but I couldn't use my Emrakul, so gently caress that noise. Play decks that are more interactive or have more possible decisions to make while playing them. I don't usually care for aggro decks because they often feel like they could play themselves, but picking a more nuanced archetype that also cares a lot about your opponent's game can make the same deck stay fresher longer.
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Jan 19, 2016 03:39
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Kilo147 posted:any recommendations for someone still new to the game? I've really been digging this deck so far. It's an Aristocrats deck, which means it gains benefits from its own creatures dying, and it usually wins by throwing bodies in front of enemy attackers until it has ground out enough of an advantage to win the game. This particular build also has a lot of fun tricks it can play that give you ways to mess with your opponent's plans. Collected Company and Rally the Ancestors both let you slam creatures onto the board in the middle of your opponent's combat phase, and the threat of a mass pump on Nantuko Husk is something your opponent will always need to play around (though you should also be careful about feeding all your creatures to a Husk attack just to have it die to a removal spell). The other good news is that most of the cards in the list aren't really played in any other deck, so it's pretty cheap to put together as far as decks go. The only moderately expensive card that you really can't replace is Collected Company. If you're a beginner, this also has the upside of training you on some of the mechanical nuances of the game. You have a ton of triggered effects that play into each other (be ready to have five things happen from one creature dying) and can do a lot of neat stuff at instant speed, so while it will take a bit to wrap your head around exactly what's going on, once you've got it you'll have a much better understanding of how to play the game. An example of goofy stuff this deck can do, from a game I played the other day: I had a Liliana, Heretical Healer on the table. She's a creature that turns into a Planeswalker when another creature I control dies. My opponent goes to cast a removal spell on her, which this something this deck doesn't have a straight answer for. I respond with a Collected Company, find a Fleshbag Marauder, and the sacrifice trigger causes Liliana to flip, dodging the removal spell. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 04:05
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Angry Grimace posted:it's not actually particularly fun to play and still costs like 800 dollars. What is wrong with all of us.
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Jan 19, 2016 04:32
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