Magic the Gathering Appreciation Station

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Magic the Gathering Appreciation Station

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

GimmickMan posted:

She swoops in at the right time to save everyone, but when her power fails and allies die she goes completely nuts and turns into a teamkilling fuckwit. The flavor is really strong.

Geralf's Masterpiece I agree is kind of eh, but not only does it reassemble itself, it isn't even legendary. That's how many spare Griselbrand parts Geralf has.

What's the in-story excuse for anyone being dumb enough to let Geralf scavenge demon parts?

Jetrauben posted:

I'm a bit dubious/disappointed, because it's lazy to keep doing "welp, divine/heroic figure caught Raid Boss Disease; take 'em out back and shoot em." Feels like a waste.

Blizzard and WOTC have been doing this for like 15 years now, doesn't seem to change people's opinions one way or the other.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2016 21:56

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 01:51

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Elyv posted:

code:

Diregraf Colossus
2B
Creature - Zombie Giant
Diregraf Colossus enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter for each Zombie card in your graveyard. 

Whenever you cast a Zombie spell, put a 2/2 black Zombie creature token onto the battlefield tapped.
2/2

Nice Clive Barker reference.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 22:52

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Sin Prodder seems really fun and good value? IDK, punisher cards are usually disappointing but this is way better design space than the usual "discard a card at random" draw effect that red gets.

Also that vampire token discard engine would be worth running if you could use it more than once a turn, but alas.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 16:48

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

deftest posted:

That sort of begs the question as to whether they could be X much bigger if only they did bump their marketing. I sometimes wonder whether they've reached their saturation point though. In NYC at least, there are game stores hosting regular magic events in basically every neighborhood. I'm sure they aren't at their absolute cap, but here at least it seems sometimes as though most of the potential magic players are already magic players.

They've probably hit the saturation point with game shops, but there's still a lot of potential in mobile gaming (see: Hearthstone, etc.,). If they ever got their poo poo together in that regard they could really expand their player base, but given how much of a disaster MTGO was I wouldn't hold my breath.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 18:46

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Lawnie posted:

Great callback flavor, poo poo card. Could've very easily been decent as a static enchantment with "Whenever a creature you control attacks, you may pay 2. If you do, put a 4/4 white Angel creature token with flying onto the battlefield tapped and attacking. Exile that token at end of combat."

C'est la vie.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 00:38

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Is there high-res art of the SoI dual lands anywhere? That Foreboding Ruins art is so good.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 01:54

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

MisterOblivious posted:

Higher resolution for easier counting:

Almost feels that this should've been White, given that White is the color that usually cares about life totals and when they try to make White an evil color it's usually related to paranoia or obsession.

Still, flavor city though. Would be surprised if it doesn't seem some constructed play.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 14:02

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Dungeon Ecology posted:

from Maro's twitter

Cool card, but how many wolves or werewolves are in SoI, not counting the planeswalker? Three or four?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 21:54

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Rinkles posted:

Jeepers Creepers reference confirmed?

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 01:24

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Entropic posted:

I love when they choose numbers purely for flavour on cards like this and Hundred-Handed One.

The flavor in this set is loving incredible. Maybe they'll extend that ability to all Spider creatures in the future and we can get a "spider-sense" keyword.

Also the red alpha werewolf and green hermit werewolf are definitely constructed playable. Way better job of pushing werewolves as a tribe this time around.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 18:30

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

There's no way it's not Emrakul.

1. Nahiri bringing an Eldrazi to Sorin's home plane in order to take revenge makes thematic sense.
2. Emrakul is associated with madness, corruption, etc.
3. The overt inclusion of tentacles, extra eyes, and other Eldrazi-like abberations.
4. In the first Zendikar block Emeria was the angel goddess that was eventually revealed to be a false representation of Emrakul from distant memory. Who is getting corrupted on Innistrad? Angels.

As much as I would like to see WOTC pull something cool with a throwback to Marit Lage, it's probably beyond their capability story-wise. I mean, just look at the Jacetice league. It just makes sense to use Eldritch Moon to close out the Eldrazi/Zendikar related stuff, Sorin or Nahiri will probably get killed off (or both), and the next sets will either be something new or a storyline that starts to bring New Phyrexia back to the forefront as the "Big Threat".

# ¿ Mar 26, 2016 16:02

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Some Numbers posted:

Ran across this today: http://imgur.com/a/weFrT

As amateur designs go, it actually doesn't seem that bad.

Well thought out, but like 99% of fan designs half this stuff is way too strong to ever see play. Calldown alone would be broken in any format.

Does make me wonder how long it'll take for WOTC to give up the ghost and consider MTG sets that borrow flavor and settings from established universes. Something like a Harry Potter, GoT, or LOTR themed set would be a license to print money, however improbable, but they could definitely get their hands on an IP like WoT, The Stormlight Archives, or the Black Company books and still see a nice little bump.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2016 04:23

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

mandatory lesbian posted:

it was only mentioned in one of the stories

i'll be more impressed when they have a trans planeswalker (they will never do this)

Didn't they do some wink-wink, nudge-nudge poo poo with Ashiok regarding them being trans or agender or something along those lines?

Also that one Legendary from Tarkir, Alesha.

Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Apr 2, 2016

# ¿ Apr 2, 2016 00:18

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Rinkles posted:

So, opposing werewolves magnify the problems of early mana screw? If you're unable to cast a spell, you're going to be bashed all the harder.

Yeah, any time I played against early werewolf drops it was just pain.

Opened Mindrack Demon, Westvale Abbey, To the Slaughter, Burn From Within, Accursed Witch, Kindly Stranger, and a bunch of vamps, so I went BR. Made some bad plays and ended up 1-2, but Delirium is a much better mechanic than it seems at first glance (easy to turn on) and syncs pretty well with all the madness Vamp guys.

Might do another one tomorrow, this sealed environment was super fun to play in, although a bit faster than I expected.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2016 00:43

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

This slipped my mind yesterday after the pre-release, but I wanted to ask about something weird that happened during one of my matches.

My opponent and I had both mulliganed our initial hands. On the second draw, we both kept and he took the first turn. When he went to draw, he looked at the top card of his library, put it on the bottom of his deck, and then drew the next card (scrying, essentially). I was like :what:

and asked him what the deal was. He replied that it was customary for each player to be able to scry 1 if both people mulliganed. He was not the only person I saw doing that at this particular prerelease. Since it was the last round and I was already 0-2, I let it go and played on, eventually winning the match.

Is this mulligan scry thing an accepted practice now, or some weird regional thing (this was in upstate NY), or did I just get scammed? I've been playing MTG off and on for 15+ years now, never seen anyone do anything like that before. Had it been for higher stakes I probably would've called a judge, it seems very dubious.

Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Apr 4, 2016

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 02:07

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Well I'll be damned. I thought I'd caught up on all the new rule changes, but I didn't play any BFZ or OOW so I missed that one. Thanks.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 02:11

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

BJPaskoff posted:

No offense, but is it possible you're misremembering the sequence of events since you haven't played in at least a few months, were tired, and were thrown for a loop when your opponent scryed? For your opponent to gently caress up that bad on the mulligan rule (saying it only happens when both players mulligan) is strange when the rule has been in practice for months. Also why did he draw a card if he was taking the first turn, as you said? Also you said you saw other people do the same thing, were they also scrying and then drawing a card when they were on the play?

Fingers McLongDong posted:

He should've scryed before the game started, at a competitive event taking the scry after game actions have been taken is basically cheating. Your post also read to me like he chose to be on the play and still drew on turn 1, I'm assuming I'm reading that wrong?

Didn't misremember. He definitely scryed, then drew on his first turn despite being on the play. And yeah, there were other people doing the same thing. Not sure if I'll be playing at that LGS again, heard some bad things about it after the prerelease was done, but if I see it again I'll bring it up to a judge.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 01:29

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Meatbag Esq. posted:

At SCG in baltimore this weekend,

The mono-white deck that came in 2nd was $100 - Declaration of stone, Kytheon, and 1 westvale abbey.

Anyone have a decklist on this?

Edit: Nvm, found it http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=100676

Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Apr 12, 2016

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 01:54

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Angry Grimace posted:

Nah, she's like "Sorin plz help" and he's like "gimme a second I just got done creating my perfect waifu" and Nahiri immediately goes "gently caress YOU" and attacks.

It doesn't seem like Sorin ever explains his hesitance? If he'd said "hey I just did a big thing, I need a few days to recover" Nahiri probably wouldn't have flipped out. Instead he condescends to her, reneges on his obligation, and then when she gets justifiably pissed he lets his angelic enforcer pick a fight rather than try to defuse the situation.

I mean, it's poorly written, but Sorin comes off like the much guiltier party here.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 23:41

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Yawgmoth posted:

It's not bad but when you include blue you get a stupid amount of extra tricks and reflector mage is just obscenely good to the point where I have infinite obliteration in my SB and generally name it if I know my opponent has it.

Is there a solid decklist for the U/W humans version? Thinking about putting something together for a Standard PTQ next weekend.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2016 17:57

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

stinkles1112 posted:

Serious question, when was the last time the raft of undisputed tier one Standard decks DIDN'T run between $300-$500? If you want the fully blinged top tier decks, it seems to me they've always been stupid expensive. And, it's usually a matter of one card in the list driving the price up so if you can make a budget replacement you can drop a Bant Company list, for example, from ~$600 to ~$300 just by not playing Jace. Furthermore, you can build $100 homebrews that can win games against average local players piloting tier decks just fine, if you play well. I don't see what all the fuss is about.

You could throw together U/G/r madness back in the day for like, fifty bucks, if you skimped on the duals and fetches. Skies was equally cheap, IIRC. Bog standard versions of Affinity were mostly commons and uncommons. But neither Skies nor U/G/r madness were undisputed tier ones; they had a few months to shine before Standard soldified and then got blown out by Rebels, Psychatog, and...Astral Slide? I'm probably missing some others in there on both sides.

God, I've been playing this game for so long.

Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Apr 20, 2016

# ¿ Apr 20, 2016 02:42

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Yeah, even in Urza era the decks were expensive as hell. Masques was around the time that I started playing heavily, so the cheap decks from then onwards are what I remember.

Is it just a coincidence when we get powerful cards at common and uncommon in high enough density to make at least one viable competitive deck in Standard? WOTC is notoriously bad at figuring out what will be powerful and what won't, but it'd be nice to see them put some effort towards lowering the cost of decks or creating some cheaper alternative archetypes beyond Tribal (I know this will never happen).

Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Apr 20, 2016

# ¿ Apr 20, 2016 03:20

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Irony Be My Shield posted:

Our top 8:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptsoi/top-8-decklists-2016-04-23

Zero mainboard copies of Declaration in Stone despite there being five white decks. The card is overrated. Three of them aren't even playing it out of the board.

Standard hasnt looked this fun (and moderately inexpensive) in a long time.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2016 00:05

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

stinkles1112 posted:

I'd venture to bet, very few. Appearance fees aren't really where the money is in pro Magic. And if 2 or 3 thousand dollars a year difference makes it unsustainable as a pro, then it wasn't a financially viable profession in the first place.

Edit: I use the term "profession" exceedingly loosely here

This seems like a counterintuitive way to grow exposure for the MTG brand or get a new crop of people into the professional level. I mean, you have guys like Finkel who have a day job (IIRC he crunches numbers for a hedge fund) so the payout decrease won't make or break it for them, but it's going to be a big factor for younger pro-level people who maybe don't have stable income or jobs yet unless they latch themselves on to an established team (which puts a damper on creativity or competition).

No one is surprised at WOTC doing everything possible to not make good decisions about MTG, but this just seems like blatantly ignoring common sense.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2016 22:55

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

BJPaskoff posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TN0b8ik0B8

The narration was corny, but the reveal of Emrakul in the trailer was pretty neat and I'm sad I saw the card before watching the video. Looks like we're getting Emrakul-warped versions of various monsters. The way they did the flashes of things like the werewolf and the horse becoming Eldrazified leads me to believe that there will be DFCs where one side is the monster and one side is the Emrakul-warped version of it.

Holy poo poo, MaRo's voice is terrible. They couldn't have found anyone else to do this segment?

# ¿ Jun 20, 2016 23:35

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

mcmagic posted:

I might be interested in flipping this...

Now that is a strong card with some goddamn flavor. Just have to hope the flip side is somewhat playable.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2016 03:48

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Count Bleck posted:

The real question is if all it takes to keep the Eldrazi away from your plane is a rock and an angel, why doesn't every plane have at least the rock?

The rock was made of special moon metal that not every plane has access to?

I'm guessing whatever purpose or properties the moon has is the missing piece of the puzzle here and maybe also why Emrakul's influence is much weirder than in previous appearances.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2016 23:11

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Onmi posted:

Jesus

This is pretty neat, what's it from?

# ¿ Jun 24, 2016 17:38

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

EatinCake posted:

So Innistrad's toast after this right? Seems like this is the kind of thing worlds wouldn't come back from.

Really hoping they don't nix Emerakul in this set and instead just have her run away again. The anti-climatic end of Oath wasn't very interesting, and man there are a lot of mechanics that would be fun to revisit sometime. Not necessarily soon, but sometime.

It seems like they're setting Liliana up to be a big part of Innistrad's existence, with all the flavor text about how much of a connection she has with the plane and how much stronger she is there. I doubt Eldritch Moon will be the last we see of this plane. The eldrazi influence will remain, but there's still some interesting design space left that fits the flavor of Innistrad and plenty of horror-esque plotlines they can cook up.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2016 20:55

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Rinkles posted:

Neat stuff

Not amazing, but probably a nice swiss army knife enabler for whatever tier 2 or tier 3 R/B madness or G/B delirium brews that will probably pop up in standard.

Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jul 1, 2016

# ¿ Jul 1, 2016 16:02

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Equilibrium posted:

Wizards can't afford to hire things like 'writers' or 'talent' so it really doesn't matter what template their stories use, they'll always be poo poo.

A lot of their problems could be solved by moving away from relying on Phyrexians, Nicol Bolas (or his puppets), and Eldrazi as the big, overarching villains of every set, and not using the Jacetice league as a characterization crutch. Just scale the stakes down a bit. Not every threat has to be a danger to the Multiverse. Introduce some characters that aren't necessary destined to be legendary heroes or aren't being pulled out of Maro's 20 year old D&D campaigns.

It's really not even a question of resources, they could crowdsource this kind of stuff.

Lottery of Babylon posted:

+1: Untap target Mountain or Swamp. It becomes a 1/1 red and black Elemental creature until end of turn. It's still a land.
-2: If you control a Mountain and a Swamp, add B or R to your mana pool.
-8: You get an emblem with "Mountains you control have 'Swamps you control have "Tap, sacrifice this land: Tap each mountain you control. Each mountain tapped this way deals 1 damage to target creature." ' "
3

That second ability should probably be "If you control a Mountain and a Swamp, add BB or RR to your mana pool" to be worthwhile at all. That ultimate, :wtc:

How about :

-8: Destroy all artifacts and creatures target player controls. Then target player reveals his or her hand and discards X cards, where X is equal to the number of permanents destroyed this way.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2016 20:21

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Elyv posted:

Considering that none of those were involved from Inn1-bfz, that's a weird criticism.

Innistrad 1 was initially unrelated, but is directly influenced by and leads up to Eldrazi-related shenanigans

Theros is Elspeth looking for refuge from Phyrexians, as well as beings and/or weapons that can't be corrupted by them.

Tarkir is Sarkhan resurrecting Ugin by undoing Nicol Bolas' fuckery so that the original Eldrazi fighter trio can seal them away again.

Return to Ravnica is the only block that stands completely apart from the overarching, Multiverse threats. The flavor of Innistrad, Theros, and Tarkir actually isn't bad, each had their own plane-specific threats (Griselbrand, Xenagos, and Zurgo, etc) and at some point WOTC will learn that telling tangential stories works better than beating people over the head with "LOOK AT HOW EVIL THIS BIG EVIL THING IS, ONLY THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP CAN DEFEAT IT".

# ¿ Jul 1, 2016 22:01

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Werewolves and wolves really giving Kobolds and Minotaurs a run for their money as far as "worst tribe ever" rankings.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2016 05:17

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

lockdar posted:

She's here:

I really don't get why her +1 isn't -2/-2. Dead Weight on a stick would be too powerful for a Standard full of x/3 creatures? The rest of it....meh.

The rest of the spoilers today are godawful, unless the commons and uncommons are fun looking I doubt I'll be drafting a lot of this set.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2016 18:20

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

ShaneB posted:

New resource: energy

This seems like it could get real dumb, real fast in the right mid-range or control-tempo deck.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2016 03:06

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Alaan posted:

"I am literally part living metal" is a pretty strong selling point on why he'd stick out. Etherium is unique to Alara as far as we know.

E: the real question is where does he lie on the tez/bolas/phyrexia spectrum.

Yeah, wasn't Tezzeret a Bolas-aligned double agent on New Phyrexia the last time we saw him?

I would've thought WOTC would wait a few more sets to bring back Phyrexia as a threat, but I'm not surprised they're starting to set it up already.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2016 21:29

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Rinkles posted:

Drafting is going to be fun.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2016 01:29

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Soul Glo posted:

I read an HP Lovecraft story for the first time last month and it was so bad I laughed at the Sick Twist, are they all like that?

SoI was cool tho

HP Lovecraft, along with his compatriot Robert E Howard, get a lot of undeserved credit for doing poo poo that their contemporaries were already doing, but better (see: Arthur Machen, for one).

I have no idea why two of the worst people ever get all this renown, but yeah most of his stuff is formulaic and terribly racist.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2016 00:10

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

Jenx posted:

Uhm...yes? Yes it is? Am I supposed to be missing something here?

187 is police code/slang for a murder.

Edit: beaten

# ¿ Sep 9, 2016 22:53

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 01:51

Mat Cauthon: Jan 2, 2006; The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.

suicidesteve posted:

Because WotC is trying to make their game a legitimate e-sport by not broadcasting most of its bigger events which makes sense because

Have fun not having any good stores to play at I guess?

I'm admittedly a scrub that mostly does drafts a couple times a month as time allows, or Prereleases when the set looks fun, but if fakes of that level of quality were available on the cheap then I'd be playing a hell of a lot more often just because I could afford to put together a deck (or multiple decks) for Standard or Modern events (which are the two formats that appeal to me most) without spending literally hundreds of dollars per deck.

I don't see how that hurts LGS, given that I'm still paying the fee to play in tournaments and probably spending money besides that on concessions, the occasional pack, maybe a playmat, etc.

Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Sep 10, 2016

# ¿ Sep 10, 2016 20:40

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Magic the Gathering Appreciation Station

«‹›3 »