Magic the Gathering Appreciation Station

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Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

It's just another card like Seek the Wilds or Ancient Stirrings � probably playable, but usually nothing amazing.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 20:05

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 16:58

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

the real reason combo decks are annoying in modern and are fun everywhere else is because there's no viable control deck in modern

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 11:48

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

the two decks that are kind of considered "control" in modern run remand as their only real countermagic because they're fundamentally tempo decks that try to resolve splinter twin/gurmag angler ASAP and beat you to death

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 11:50

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

A standard deck which starts with:

4x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
4x Retreat to Emeria
4x Oath of Gideon
4x Oath of Nissa
4x Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
4x Hangerback Walker

Seems like it can't be too bad.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2016 17:13

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

odiv posted:

Too affordable. The Retreat is uncommon.

Hopefully there are some mythic lands that will drive up the cost of Standard to a reasonable* level!

*for my playgroup of kleptocratic third-world despots

# ¿ Jan 4, 2016 17:22

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Angry Grimace posted:

People are bound to notice that Dark Petition can instantly get you and cast rear end in a top hat 1-of sideboard options like Drown in Exile, Virulent Plague, Infinite Obliteration, Ruinous Path, etc.

Drown in Exile isn't nearly as bad as Kozilek's Return is for tokens, I'd think. Instant speed Pyroclasm is playable even if the second clause is never relevant.

Obviously they're really bad for the tokens deck, but I wonder how much Drown/Kozilek's Return can be played around when you have Gideon surviving an an immediate ultimate and Nissa or Retreat+fetchland pumping your dudes.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2016 17:39

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

I think Baloth Null will be really good, as long as green is playable. Dutiful Return is a card that can be powerful but it's just too often blank when you don't have two dorks in your yard. Baloth Null is never blank and can get one or two creatures back (which by turn 6 you will presumably have).

Plus, getting back Eyeless Watcher or Brood Monitor has to be great, not to mention getting another shot at your processors.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 13:50

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

the ETB is okay, but lolll that is the worst loving planeswalker trigger

even if you manage to play two planeswalkers (!) you only get one ping

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 16:43

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

TheKingofSprings posted:

Are you misreading the card or am I? That trigger seems really good to me.

You get to Shock once, at the end of the turn, if you played at least one planeswalker. Not sure if that's what you thought it does or not.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 17:08

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

does Hedron Alignment's trigger work if you have a Hedron Alignment exiled face down by that 6/6 eldrazi guy?

e: Inverter of Truth

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 17:21

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Booklegger posted:

I don't understand at all why wizards hated on public access to that information. Even if you accept the "solve the format too fast" argument, (I don't but w/e), that can't / shouldn't matter for eternal formats that aren't going to be so trivially solvable.

Makes me want to up a conspiracy.

Can't someone else do it or have they plugged the data leak? Given how knee-jerk Magic fans are I'm surprised no-one got angry and made their own version.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 11:07

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Chaos Warp. :smug:

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 11:44

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

The Real Foogla posted:

I didn't follow it back then, but reading the statements it seems entirely voluntarily on SaffronOlive's side, and I guess that WotC can at least detect massive data gathering on this scale (to sanction anyone trying the same). Otherwise all this would be pointless.

Ah, yeah, tracked down a reddit thread where mtggoldfish said:

Goldfish posted:

The matchup statistics were gathered via Magic Online replays. Wizards can easily block access to this data by either blocking bot access to replays, or removing replays altogether. I would rather remove the data (which we did) rather than having the Magic Online team divert resources to block access to the data (instead of developing and improving Magic Online), or worse yet, everyone losing the ability to watch replays altogether. Either way, Wizards can block this data since Magic Online is the source.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 13:06

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Gensuki posted:

Can you have devotion to colorless? Does nykthos interact meaningfully with jank eldrazi stuff?

Not as the rules are currently defined, but in principle WotC could print a card with devotion to colourless given the new symbol. Nykthos says "choose a colour", and by definition colourless is not a colour, so it doesn't work.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 23:23

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

superstepa posted:

Aight, that sounds pretty good. I might get myself a deck just to see if MODO works for me. One last question: does the $10 registration fee come with 10 tix?
Thank you

Basically I only play (modern) leagues to supplement my obscene drafting habit, but I'm sure if you don't care about draft and just play pauper leagues (and daily events, if they have those), then it's not too hard to end up not spending any money on MODO except buying your decks.

A couple things that confused me when I first started:

Use a site like mtgowikiprice.com to look at card prices. Lots of bots are traps for the unwary and will price gouge you if they can. If you find a deck you like on mtggoldfish they normally have a link to buy the entire deck from cardhoarder, which is a bot network run by a pretty decent guy and it's all pretty painless. There are online vendors that sell tickets (which you will have to put in a binder and make tradeable to get cards off a bot), but I've always just bought tickets from the MODO store.
Check your stops. (The little white arrows near the turn progress bar on the bottom.) Right click (or left click on the arrow) to see when MtGO won't skip a phase or step without asking you if you want to do something. If you don't, for example, have a stop set at your opponent's upkeep, or at your opponent's beginning of combat step, you won't get a chance to do anything there if your opponent doesn't. (You'll still always get a chance to respond to their spells and abilities and make blocks.)
Use the function keys. F2 is the equivalent of "sure" or "resolves" in paper Magic, it's just passing priority to the thing on the stack. F4 is "go", it passes priority until the end of the turn, unless your opponent adds something to the stack. F6 is the "I see you've got your amulet bloom combo assembled, I'm gonna see if you whiff" (it passes priority on EVERYTHING until end of turn). F3 is "oh poo poo, I pressed F6 by mistake on my own turn, let me cancel it so I don't skip through my land drop".

I think that's it. I'm sure people in the thread can help you when other things come up.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2016 09:16

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Elyv posted:

scars scars scars was a real limited format that people actually played and was awful for this

it's also the name of my emo band

# ¿ Jan 7, 2016 18:31

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

mcmagic posted:

The black removal in this set is pretty drat good by 2016 standards.

White has Immolating Glare, Isolation Zone, and Searing Light though

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 16:58

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Count Bleck posted:

This SCG Modern Open brought to you by people that aren't Mathias Hunt or Cedric Phillips.

Dark times indeed.

Cedric is on camera though. :3:

# ¿ Jan 9, 2016 16:56

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

I think he's technically the black cloud at the back of Last Stand. I don't think that was supposed to be him on Yawgmoth's Bargain but idk, they didn't exactly have tight creative control or consistency at that point

# ¿ Jan 11, 2016 16:24

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

mandatory lesbian posted:

huh apparently they're getting rid of all but like 2 of the weekly columns

are they getting rid of maro's?

please god please

# ¿ Jan 11, 2016 17:28

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Hellsau posted:

They got rid of their forums because they can just use Reddit (even though it can't be much effort to maintain the MTG forums) so getting rid of their columns and relying on SCG and ChannelFireball for promotion is the next logical step. Presumably they'll shut down Gatherer and just use magiccards.info for oracle text.

They got rid of their forums because of about seven or eight different apocalyptic meltdowns which a saner company could have avoided. At one point the WotC forums (including D&D) were one of the biggest forums in the world. They proceeded to gently caress that up by:

Migrating everyone from normal vB forums to "Gleemax", Randy's abysmal attempt at making WotC a social media platform for games. This had half-hearted options for blog posts and groups that they never fully implemented and abandoned pretty quickly.
Firing all the volunteer moderators ("WizO"s), who were posters in the forums and consequently had a lot of community buy-in. They replaced these with VRCs, like the MODO moderators, who were paid employees of WotC who were contractually prohibited from talking about the reasons behind their moderation decisions. This lead to several high-profile misogynistic harassers never getting banned and lots of female members leaving.
Transfering all the forums from wizards.com/forums to forums.wizards.com without leaving up any redirects, permanently breaking all existing hotlinks.
As one of the largest vB boards in the world, when WotC's contract came up for renewal, vB asked for more money. Since asking WotC to pay money for a digital product is like asking a teenager to pay for music, they cancelled their contract and announced a transfer within two weeks to a new platform. Turns out this new platform was a blogging platform rather than forums software and so looked abysmal. I think at this point they were down from millions of users to thousands.

Barry Shitpeas posted:

Maro's column is like the only one worth reading outside of previews, what are you talking about

he's somehow deluded himself into thinking he is a half-philosopher, half-author genius. his articles read like every time he sits down to write he reaches into a bag and pulls out three pieces of paper on which are written things like "invent a new jargon word for something people already do", "retell a story about R&D that makes it look like you were right all along", "write this entire article as if you were the magic card and were being drawn in a player's opening hand!"

# ¿ Jan 11, 2016 18:22

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

WotC, a few weeks ago: We expect DCI-registered players to report misuse of our intellectual property or face suspensions.

WotC, this week: Using sharpied cards to represent other cards is a misuse of our intellectual property.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 09:40

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

BJPaskoff posted:

I can assure you that smugly bringing up Collector's Edition cards doesn't contribute anything to the argument. Bringing up that there's a two year old article on the official Magic site suggesting you ask your LGS to run proxy tournaments, however, is a big deal.

A user on Reddit had this to say:

Some of that makes sense. Anyone from Wizards with the ability to comment on this at all is a robot who has to repeat the company line and nothing but that. I don't think there's a "wink" involved here at all though. Since no one's been suspended over this, had their WPN privileges taken away, or been explicitly threatened with either of those penalties, it's hard to say whether this Reddit person is right or if this "first warning" marks the start of Wizards actually enforcing their policy.

It doesn't really make that much sense. "Counterfeit" is a recognised legal concept. Things that are intended to confuse people into thinking they're real Magic cards are problems. Things that players are using for shorthand are completely different. If Wizards doesn't have a policy that differentiates between these things, that's on them, not on us for asking questions about an asinine policy.

You can't say "they have to because of the laws" and absolve the company of its abysmal customer communication skills. You can have Trick come out and say "if you're not using proxies to confuse people into thinking you're using real Magic cards you're ok". It's WotC's fault they won't do that.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 17:00

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Hellsau posted:

That slope isn't particularly slippery when WotC is sending out invoices to people who do draft on those online draft websites. $11.97 per draft, suckers!

What? They are??

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 19:12

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

How do you do that without stopping people showing cards in their articles on CFB/SCG?

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 19:24

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Zoness posted:

Apparently magic players, who are--according to Mark Rosewater--known for being unable to read cards, really like humor that derives from overly wordy explanations of mundane concepts.

It's often not even humorous. Like the one the other day about the diamond mana symbol was just a rules-savvier-than-thou diatribe about how dumb people who confuse historically confused game concepts are.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 19:29

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

WotC posted:

I want to emphasize that we've never suspended a player who has proactively come forward to us with confidential information before it's leaked publically when they had no part in acquiring it.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 22:07

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Angry Grimace posted:

Fun MTGO Tips from Angry Grimace!

Don't keep random stops on every loving phase where you get priority you numbnuts turn off your "opponent's draw step" poo poo especially if you don't know what F2 does

I don't mind this because my opponent took so long F2ing through my draw and upkeep step with nothing to do that he spent 10+ minutes in each of games 1 and 2 and so literally could not win game 3 in time.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 08:57

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

You can do T1 Thoughtseize T2 Thought-Knot if you're playing in the mirror and your opponent leads with Urborg.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 11:32

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

haha the idea of a mouthbreather with a binder holding a flipjace up to the fluorescent light at the convention center with a jeweler's loupe jammed in his eye is hilarious to me

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 15:00

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

"hmm, first run printing..." *sniffs card deeply* "...opened in australia..." *waggles card past ear* "...stored at optimal humidity..." *runs finger along length of card and touches his fingertip delicately to the tip of his tongue "...and played in three SCG tournaments, top 8'ing once."

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 15:04

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Gaby will be great. I'm really happy that WotC is making an effort to get new blood in the commentating booth because they really need to push Randy and Rashad out a high window. BDM can stay as long as he's relegated to interviews with Japanese pro players where the translator ends up really confused.

BTW, the LR set review is up. It's nearly 5 hours.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 09:49

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Rinkles posted:

They need to find a Sullivan or G�rtzen (obviously another Sullivan is unlikely). A lapsed pro that'll actually be informative in their commentary (Marshall's a play-by-play guy), that's willing to do this on a semi regular basis. My guess is that most of those willing would also be more expensive than Wotc is interested in.

e:Getting Ian Duke on PTs was a (great) move in the right direction.

Yeah, agreed, Ian Duke is great and really personable. LSV is great as a colour commentator but he's still trying to compete in PTs, so we only see him when he inevitably doesn't make top 8.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 11:09

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Chill la Chill posted:

Same. Must be cuz I use twitter often enough. Speaking of which, whatever happened with the wolf of wall street magic finance twitter? Or the dack fayden twitter? They seem to be dead now.

E: nvm, dack fayden made one tweet about the new sharpie rules the other day. Still no mtg finance tweets though.

if there is funny magic stuff on twitter please embed them into this thread tia

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 17:15

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

dragon enthusiast posted:

is there a tldr version of the lrcast that just highlights about the high impact limited cards of the set

idk how helpful it would be, since a lot of what LR is about is thoughtfully examining how cards interact with other cards in set and how they situationally change in value and priority as you pick other cards. you could just go to LSV's set reviews on CFB and ctrl-f "bomb" i guess

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 18:00

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

MiddleEastBeast posted:

The best was that horrific cube video on CFB a few months ago by I think Josh McClain where he scanned his P1P1 and confidently declared Archangel of Thune the best card in the pack without a doubt (I believe it included, among other things, Noble Hierarch and Recurring Nightmare). Even being exceedingly generous, it was somewhere around the 13th best card in the pack.

I would take Nightmare, Hierarch, Looter, and Counterspell comfortably over Archangel. Maybe even Cursed Scroll or the dual.

Lancelot fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jan 15, 2016

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 20:48

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

AlternateNu posted:

I still think Grixis Control will be more than adequate in picking up Twin's slack.

Agred but I think they need to be a lot more counter-heavy to stop tron curving out.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2016 18:27

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

The whole "neo-planeswalkers" storyline is crap, but also the whole Weatherlight saga was crap too.

The bits of Magic creative that are good is all worldbuilding, and occasionally flavour text.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 15:36

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

Crackling Doom still seems really good, and you get access to Kozilek's Return and more black removal if you want it. It feels like Dark Jeskai is still a better place to be than straight Mardu since I don't think a 3 colour deck is going to be any better at generating colourless mana for the C-costing cards.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2016 09:29

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 16:58

Lancelot: May 23, 2006; Fun Shoe

The Shortest Path posted:

We really do not have any straight-up Murder variants in Standard at all do we.

Also kill everyone who makes this game, tia.

Murderous Cut?

# ¿ Jan 20, 2016 16:57

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