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Magic: the GAFering |OT2|
- Thread starter The Technomancer
- Start date
It would have been bad regardless of the card type.
EDH's would have picked a do nothing jank land.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
I am now convinced EDH is a blight on the game. Too many shitty cards are being made that "are playable in EDH."
Pegasos123
Member
Thanks for the information ... where is a good place to sell them?
Ebay does come me to mind
Keru_Shiri
Member
I'm just disappointed the GAF submission didn't make it. 
To be fair, shitty Timmy-bait cards existed long before EDH gave them a home.
To be fair, shitty Timmy-bait cards existed long before EDH gave them a home.
Yea but now that there is a large official market for them, they are making more and more.
It's fine to make them, and fine to make products like Commander aimed straight at them.
But Gatecrash is a warning that you need to NOT build a set around them as the primary focus. It's not what drives singles prices in the short-medium term.
FieryBalrog
Member
Right. What Magic needs is to fill all those weird, interesting card slots with a dozen more variants on Thragtusk.
Cards being made for a format I don't play? Game is dying. Except in my case I guess it's been dying for years since I don't play bad formats like Standard.
Yet this YTMC card isn't a Timmy-bait (e.g. Sylvan Primordial, Craterhoof Behemoth...) It's just an offbeat engine card a la Immortal Coil or other Johnny-bait they print once in a while.
I'm just disappointed the GAF submission didn't make it.
Honestly I could've made it a much better and more appealing card if I'd thought on it more before submitting. The flavor and story that the card told was way more interesting than the actual gameplay of it. It shouldn't have been an X spell since that makes it way too slow for any value of X. Instead it should've just started with ~5 counters so they could cost it 1BB or something. And maybe it should've done something more interesting than just drawing cards on your upkeep, which is such a played out effect at this point.
I do still think that the results of this show that it would be much wiser to pick something like creature which has way more design space and knobs to tweak than a global enchantment.
X needed to be life. A pre-paid Arena at 2 mana? That gives your opponent a demon? Has very interesting decision trees.
Honestly I could've made it a much better and more appealing card if I'd thought on it more before submitting. The flavor and story that the card told was way more interesting than the actual gameplay of it. It shouldn't have been an X spell since that makes it way too slow for any value of X. Instead it should've just started with ~5 counters so they could cost it 1BB or something. And maybe it should've done something more interesting than just drawing cards on your upkeep, which is such a played out effect at this point.
I suspect the biggest problem here is that people wouldn't vote for drawback cards, unfortunately.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Because Thragtusk - and it's variants - are the only cards in standard.
Nobody said the game was dying. But EDH is a casual only format - by it's very nature, casual means it doesn't need cards specifically targeted toward it. This is factual and is proven by the fact that it was created by fans, for fans, without any support targeting the format. EDH will be played and enjoyed by MtG fans no matter what, so it's a waste of limited space to design cards in the expansions for EDH. A few of would even be understandable, but when a non-official format is getting a good percentage of cards made for it, that's the market telling WotC that the demands are not being met and them robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Keru_Shiri
Member
True, and I think another point to bring up is that a lot of cards nowadays that are quirky and are 6+ cmc are just being instantly labeled by message board Spikes as EDH-bait. But there are a lot of kitchen-table players who try to make these cards work in 60 card strategies as well, and that is a market that can't be ignored either.
FieryBalrog
Member
Why.
I will agree that some cards targeted towards EDH actively annoy me (Primordials) but mainly because I hate really obvious auto-includes, obnoxious value-bombs, and other shit like that. On the other hand I'm very glad for cards like many of the EDH pre-con generals, Homeward Path, the Vows, and several other cards from the EDH pre-cons. The generals in particular, barring a few.
Thragtusk isn't the only card in Standard; it's just the most obvious flagbearer for a generally dull and tedious format that revolves around generally dull and tedious cards. Especially in recent years. There's the occasional deck that's actually cool and interesting, like Humanimator, or Reveillark combo. Hardly anything else leaps to mind when I think back over the past 6 years of the format.
Commander has exploded since the Commander pre-cons in 2011. I'd say the only factual thing about your sentence is the premise, not the conclusion. Yes, the format would exist and be somewhat popular regardless of whether or not Wizards supported it. It does not follow that Wizards' support is irrelevant; and in fact it's empirically false, given this popularity explosion for EDH.
The generals in the pre-cons are enormously popular, to the point that they make up a massively disproportionate percentage of decks compared to the total number of legends that exist. If they hadn't been printed, wedge colors would be almost unplayable. I play both with personal friends and with a large, rotating playgroup at American University, where I see new players, with limited card pools, very often using variants on the pre-cons.
Don't agree, and don't buy this line of argument. If it weren't for cards like Illusionist's Bracers and Thespian's Stage, I wouldn't have given two fucks about Gatecrash at all. (I don't think Gatecrash was a great set at all, but that has more to do with making good gold cards). This game is much better off accomodating cards like those, than trying to shoe-horn more incredibly dull Standard chase-rares into sets.
They're actually a good thing because of what they do to manabase prices.
How so? If they had switched all "mythic rares" to "rare" starting from RTR what kind of effect would we see on shocklands?
They're way, way less expensive now than they used to be while in Standard. Having hyper-expensive lands is a real problem.
Wasn't that because they had many more rares back then? They had the right idea of trimming some of the bulk to cut down on the # of rares but including mythics just made standard a lot more expensive than it should be. $20+ standard-only cards is why I rarely pay any attention to the format.
Keru_Shiri
Member
I hate the idea that dual lands have to be printed at Rare. I don't think printing them at Uncommon would rock Limited that hard, and I think it would encourage players to be more ambitious with deckbuilding if they have easy access to a good manabase.
Yes. Standard's less expensive now- but the "max" value has definitely gone up.
Everything used to be Mythic.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
I'm not going to get into one of these multi-quote battles, but suffice to say, EDH is sticking around regardless of what I think or say. I'm glad you enjoy the format - really. The more people playing, the better. Personally, I find it insufferable.
Well, perhaps Wizards still has time to tweak the basic concept, even though I guess the card has too much text already. It'd probably be at least somewhat less crappy if it had an extra ability such as "At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent discards a card".
The problem isn't EDH, it's just that new players often find themselves strangely attracted to "trap" cards and strategies such as life gain and discard, and hate paying life or wrathing the board and losing their own creatures for the same reason. If those players make up the majority of the player base as I think they do, it's obvious they might end up voting on cards that look exciting to them, and they probably didn't understand why they'd want to lose life to get a creature back each turn, for example.
Perhaps the earlier cards such as Forgotten Ancient and Crucible of Worlds were better cards overall merely because the MtG playerbase was a lot smaller than it is nowadats, and the amount of players who actually read MtG.com was even smaller than that. In spite of that, I think I remember players could choose to make Forgotten Ancient a 0/2 for 1GG or a 0/3 for 3G, and the more conservative and less competitively-costed version ended up winning, which shows that even back then there was a considerable not-so-competitive player base.
I think the better YMTCs were those with cleaner abilities which worked farily well without too much outside assistance, which is why clunky cards such as Vanish Into Memory or the new build-around-me Necromancer's Revenge often end up being ignored.
Seriously, EDH cards don't have to be crappy in other formats, they just have to be interesting in multiplayer. There are cards such as Pernicious Deed which are fantastic on both regular constructed formats and EDH, but it's true that those cards are few and far between.
On unrelated news, I ended up trading my pair of Garruk Relentless and a Zealous Conscripts for two Master Biomancers and three Gyre Sages, and also traded two cheap rares for a foil M11 Mitotic Slime, since I had the game day full-art promo but not the regular one. I also bought a Mizzium Mortars for cheap since I want to build an Izzet deck someday, and also got a pair of sweet, full-art Meleks (I love the art, even if the card isn't that good).
I'll probably be migrating my BUG flash deck to be post-Theros Standard legal soon, since it looks like my LGS will begin hosting several RTR Block Constructed FNMs starting with June. It'll probably end up as a somewhat sub-par mish-mash of evolve cards, but I'll be polishing it as I go; this is my current deck concept:
I'm not entirely sure about the creatures. I'd like to have some card-drawing effects other than my lone Zegana, but stuff such as Give/Take seems to slow and clunky. Also, the deck is absurdly weak to sweepers in its current state, but I don't know how to address that... maindeck Golgari Charms, perhaps? It'd be a dead card against most other decks G1, though.
The sideboard's kind of mix-and-match, with Dispels, Golgri Charms, Nightveil Specter and Notion Thief to address control, the Illnesses to drop token deck's creature efficiency to more manageable levels, and Far/Away as an all-around utility card that gets better if I manage to ramp my mana.
The few games I did play with a Raptor/Experiment One/Shambleshark build before DGM's release I saw the deck's horribly weak against tempo, and evolve creatures often make for awful mid-to-late-game drops... what should I do?
Would the deck work if I made it RUG-colored instead? I've also been wanting to make a UR deck since forever, but the color combination just doesn't seem to have enough cards worth playing. Stuff like Izzet Charm and Mizzium Mortars would be tempting, but otherwise I don't find any other playable cards, while Golgari gives me access to some very powerful spot removal cards.
The problem isn't EDH, it's just that new players often find themselves strangely attracted to "trap" cards and strategies such as life gain and discard, and hate paying life or wrathing the board and losing their own creatures for the same reason. If those players make up the majority of the player base as I think they do, it's obvious they might end up voting on cards that look exciting to them, and they probably didn't understand why they'd want to lose life to get a creature back each turn, for example.
Perhaps the earlier cards such as Forgotten Ancient and Crucible of Worlds were better cards overall merely because the MtG playerbase was a lot smaller than it is nowadats, and the amount of players who actually read MtG.com was even smaller than that. In spite of that, I think I remember players could choose to make Forgotten Ancient a 0/2 for 1GG or a 0/3 for 3G, and the more conservative and less competitively-costed version ended up winning, which shows that even back then there was a considerable not-so-competitive player base.
I think the better YMTCs were those with cleaner abilities which worked farily well without too much outside assistance, which is why clunky cards such as Vanish Into Memory or the new build-around-me Necromancer's Revenge often end up being ignored.
Seriously, EDH cards don't have to be crappy in other formats, they just have to be interesting in multiplayer. There are cards such as Pernicious Deed which are fantastic on both regular constructed formats and EDH, but it's true that those cards are few and far between.
On unrelated news, I ended up trading my pair of Garruk Relentless and a Zealous Conscripts for two Master Biomancers and three Gyre Sages, and also traded two cheap rares for a foil M11 Mitotic Slime, since I had the game day full-art promo but not the regular one. I also bought a Mizzium Mortars for cheap since I want to build an Izzet deck someday, and also got a pair of sweet, full-art Meleks (I love the art, even if the card isn't that good).
I'll probably be migrating my BUG flash deck to be post-Theros Standard legal soon, since it looks like my LGS will begin hosting several RTR Block Constructed FNMs starting with June. It'll probably end up as a somewhat sub-par mish-mash of evolve cards, but I'll be polishing it as I go; this is my current deck concept:
I'm not entirely sure about the creatures. I'd like to have some card-drawing effects other than my lone Zegana, but stuff such as Give/Take seems to slow and clunky. Also, the deck is absurdly weak to sweepers in its current state, but I don't know how to address that... maindeck Golgari Charms, perhaps? It'd be a dead card against most other decks G1, though.
The sideboard's kind of mix-and-match, with Dispels, Golgri Charms, Nightveil Specter and Notion Thief to address control, the Illnesses to drop token deck's creature efficiency to more manageable levels, and Far/Away as an all-around utility card that gets better if I manage to ramp my mana.
The few games I did play with a Raptor/Experiment One/Shambleshark build before DGM's release I saw the deck's horribly weak against tempo, and evolve creatures often make for awful mid-to-late-game drops... what should I do?
Would the deck work if I made it RUG-colored instead? I've also been wanting to make a UR deck since forever, but the color combination just doesn't seem to have enough cards worth playing. Stuff like Izzet Charm and Mizzium Mortars would be tempting, but otherwise I don't find any other playable cards, while Golgari gives me access to some very powerful spot removal cards.
Playing swiss. These signals. Make. No. Sense.
Ok next time I know I just have to stick to a plan and not even try to read the boosters
Trying to read signals is usually a waste of time unless it's incredibly obvious and even then it's not always a guarantee. Taking the best cards then narrowing it down to the cards that fit well with what you've already taken has been my strategy since I began drafting. Too many times a couple good cards slipped through the cracks prompting me to think that whole color/pair is "open" only to have the person to my right and left think the exact same thing.
Would you like to draft a set with that at rare?
Draft doesn't really influence my decision one way or the other. By that logic Pack Rat should have been a mythic.
Pack Rat simply needed to NOT COST TWO MANA.
But what a cool card it is!
The people who like that card could care less what its mana cost is (within reason)
Playing swiss. These signals. Make. No. Sense.
Ok next time I know I just have to stick to a plan and not even try to read the boosters
What are these signals you speak of?
Is there a way to expand a card or turn a fuse card sideways so you can read all the flavor text? I got a 2nd screen with starcitygames.com up so I can quicky search what a card says because I can't read the full text lol.
Paying attention to the cards in the pack to determine if the colours you're in will be available or not.
You have to learn to read into "Why is this still here?"
Gatekeeper
Member
Pack Rat needed a tap in its activation cost.
I was questioning why you were bothering to mention those combos because none of them make the card playable. I've heard & seen those all before. They don't make the enchantment rise above jank status.
My biggest peeve is how narrow the card is. It only appeals to "discard guy" and those who have Nath as their EDH general regardless of its mana costs. Blood could have appealed to almost anyone who ran black decks and may hit the competitive scene if it was costed aggressively enough.
Anyway, this is an awesome quote: "Figured out a good analogy for this YMTC result: WotC said they would take us to any restaurant for our birthday, and we said McDonalds." - Ari Lax
"God's Beard!"
Member
Green/White/Blue Exalted
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Slippery Bogle
4x Favor of the Overbeing
4x Qasali Pridemage
3x Nature's Spiral
4x Supply & Demand
4x Ardent Plea
2x Armadillo Cloak
1x Unflinching Courage
2x Giltspire Avenger
2x Rafiq of the Many
2x Mystic Snake
1x Sovereigns of Lost Alara
1x Eldrazi Conscription
6x Forest
5x Plains
5x Island
4x Seaside Citadel
1x Simic Guildgate
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Sunpetal Grove
36 non-lands, 24 lands
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Slippery Bogle
4x Favor of the Overbeing
4x Qasali Pridemage
3x Nature's Spiral
4x Supply & Demand
4x Ardent Plea
2x Armadillo Cloak
1x Unflinching Courage
2x Giltspire Avenger
2x Rafiq of the Many
2x Mystic Snake
1x Sovereigns of Lost Alara
1x Eldrazi Conscription
6x Forest
5x Plains
5x Island
4x Seaside Citadel
1x Simic Guildgate
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Sunpetal Grove
36 non-lands, 24 lands
God's Beard!";59830005] [B]Green/White/Blue Exalted[/B] 4x [URL="http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=221896 said:Birds of Paradise[/URL]
4x Favor of the Overbeing
3x Bant Sureblade
4x Reborn Hope
3x Qasali Pridemage
4x Supply & Demand
4x Ardent Plea
2x Armadillo Cloak
2x Giltspire Avenger
2x Captured Sunlight
2x Mystic Snake
1x Sovereigns of Lost Alara
1x Eldrazi Conscription
7x Forest
5x Plains
5x Island
4x Seaside Citadel
2x Simic Guildgate
1x Temple Garden(I only have one ;_
36 non-lands, 24 lands
So generally my gameplan is hold out with some solid exalted creatures until I can use Supply & Demand to draw Sovereigns of Lost Alara which lets me play Eldrazi conscription for free. Pridemage, Avenger and my snakes let me deal with the occasional surprise, but I'm sure I could use a few more options with this deck. What do you guys think?
Deck should have a non-zero number of Rafiq of the Many, replacing the Captured sunlights (you don't have anything super sweet to cascade into like Living End or Hypergenesis, and the 4 life isn't relevant enough like a Bloodbraid Elf)
EDIT: and as ultron87 suggests, some Invisible Stalkers to carry the aura's would probably be good.
There's a quaint little card called Geist of St. Traft now. (And yes, he gets the Exalted Bonuses, they don't see his buddy.)Birds of Paradise[/URL]
4x Favor of the Overbeing
3x Bant Sureblade
4x Reborn Hope
3x Qasali Pridemage
4x Supply & Demand
4x Ardent Plea
2x Armadillo Cloak
2x Giltspire Avenger
2x Captured Sunlight
2x Mystic Snake
1x Sovereigns of Lost Alara
1x Eldrazi Conscription
7x Forest
5x Plains
5x Island
4x Seaside Citadel
2x Simic Guildgate
1x Temple Garden(I only have one ;_
36 non-lands, 24 lands
So generally my gameplan is hold out with some solid exalted creatures until I can use Supply & Demand to draw Sovereigns of Lost Alara, which lets me play Eldrazi Conscription for free. Cascade cards keep the deck moving along which I like. Pridemage, Avenger, Reborn Hope and my snakes let me deal with the occasional surprise, but I'm sure I could use a few more options with this deck. What do you guys think?
You may want to look into him when his price drops due to rotation in about 6 months.
Him + Steel of the Godhead is a fair combination."God's Beard!"
Member
Man, you guys are always so quick and concise! Checking out your recommendations right now.
edit: Wow, Rafiq of the Many is WAY better than the Finest Hour I took out.
edit: Wow, Rafiq of the Many is WAY better than the Finest Hour I took out.
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";59832549]Man, you guys are always so quick and concise! Checking out your recommendations right now.
edit: Wow, Rafiq of the Many is WAY better than the Finest Hour I took out.[/QUOTE]
They're both really good cards, but 1 of each is most definitely better than 2 of either.
Also, fyi, the legend rules are changing in about a month and a half with the next core set.
Short version: It's now "per player", rather than "per game". Also affects PWs.
You should be able to get Temple Garden and the other shocks cheap in about a year when they rotate.
edit: Wow, Rafiq of the Many is WAY better than the Finest Hour I took out.[/QUOTE]
They're both really good cards, but 1 of each is most definitely better than 2 of either.
Also, fyi, the legend rules are changing in about a month and a half with the next core set.
Short version: It's now "per player", rather than "per game". Also affects PWs.
You should be able to get Temple Garden and the other shocks cheap in about a year when they rotate.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Geist does seem a lot better than Invisible Stalker but I think I actually have a couple of those lying around lol
You think so?
Holy shit.
I meant on the board, but you definitely want a mix, rather than all one or the other.
2 Rafiq = 1 dead in hand.
2 Finest Hour = not as good as 1 Rafiq + 1 Finest Hour. Finest Hour does stack slightly better in multiples than multiple (useless) Rafiqs though.
I bought every single Legendary Land I could think of that I didn't own immediately (except Dark Depths, since its not "good enough" in Legacy.)
"God's Beard!"
Member
edit: So if I have double strike and annihilator, do they have to sacrifice double the permanents?
Oh ok, because I dunno if I'd just wanna stick one of each in my deck.
That's smart. Gemstone Caverns!
Oh ok, because I dunno if I'd just wanna stick one of each in my deck.
That's smart. Gemstone Caverns!
"God's Beard!"
Member
Yeah, Volrath seems really awesome.
So I'm definitely sold on Rafiq, what are some other alternatives to Geist of St. Traft for now?
edit: looked at all the hexproof cards that cost less than 5, invisible stalker is the best after all.
So I'm definitely sold on Rafiq, what are some other alternatives to Geist of St. Traft for now?
edit: looked at all the hexproof cards that cost less than 5, invisible stalker is the best after all.
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";59837029]Yeah, Volrath seems really awesome.
So I'm definitely sold on Rafiq, what are some other alternatives to Geist of St. Traft for now?
edit: looked at all the hexproof cards that cost less than 5, invisible stalker is the best after all.[/QUOTE]
Slippery Boggle has been known to cause headaches as well
So I'm definitely sold on Rafiq, what are some other alternatives to Geist of St. Traft for now?
edit: looked at all the hexproof cards that cost less than 5, invisible stalker is the best after all.[/QUOTE]
Slippery Boggle has been known to cause headaches as well
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
NIMBLE MONGEESES!!
...what?
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