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Magic: the Gathering - Battle for Zendikar |OT| Lands matter (but nothing else does)

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Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I wonder if they were aware that land-based ramp isn't less annoying than Elvish Mystic since you have no way to interact with land.
 
I hate Madness. It's dumb. You need both Madness and "discard for value" to make it work. It's too many hoops to jump through. It's awkward with spell timing. It's inelegant. I really don't like it at all. Grumble.
 

OnPoint

Member
Things we may see in SoI if Madness is indeed included:

  • Casting costs that require a discard
  • Tibalt 2.0 with abilities that discard
  • Creature abilities that cost discarding
  • Decent targeted discard options
  • Liliana of the Veil
 
Things we may see in SoI if Madness is indeed included:

  • Casting costs that require a discard
  • Tibalt 2.0 with abilities that discard
  • Creature abilities that cost discarding
  • Decent targeted discard options
  • Liliana of the Veil

Land with Madness!
Creepy Legend that gives your spells Madness!
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I would sincerely doubt Madness is coming back. It's a cool name for a broken mechanic that causes rules nightmares.

At the very least Delve is a "clean" mechanic even if everything it does is broken.
 
Is Shroud too complicated/inelegant, or is it just too feel-bad for kiddos that want to aura up their fatties?

The difference between shroud and madness is that, for the player with the madness card, it works as you would hope it would, despite the complications of how it's implemented, so a player could potentially be willing to overlook how complicated and weird it is. With shroud, a player could try to Giant Growth his shroud creature and be confused and disappointed that it doesn't work out.

Plus, it is possible that they figured out a way to simplify the rules of madness.

I would sincerely doubt Madness is coming back. It's a cool name for a broken mechanic that causes rules nightmares.

At the very least Delve is a "clean" mechanic even if everything it does is broken.

My guess is based on MaRo's indication that Shadows over Innistrad has a returning mechanic that he didn't expect to ever return. Starting from the assumption that they'd use a mechanic that fits into what we know about Innistrad, and that he typically doesn't refer to Future Sight mechanics as returning, then it could be one of the following: dredge, haunt, madness, offering, shadow, soulshift, transmute, threshold, and vanishing.

Out of those, madness has the odd feature of being far more confusing for entrenched players who would care about the rules interactions than new players who would view it as fairly straightforward, isn't considered broken in terms of card quality like dredge and transmute, and isn't difficult or cumbersome to keep track of like haunt, vanishing, and threshold.
 

ultron87

Member
The current Madness rules aren't that bad. Miracle worked pretty similar, actually. Just write reminder text that says it gets exiled first.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The current reminder text is: (If you discard this card, you may cast it for its madness cost instead of putting it into your graveyard.)

This is pretty much fine in terms of how it works in practice, but the problem is that the actual mechanical way it works is wonky as all fuck:

"If a player would discard this card, that player discards it, but may exile it instead of putting it into his or her graveyard. When this card is exiled this way, its owner may cast it by paying (cost) rather than paying its mana cost. If that player doesn’t, he or she puts this card into his or her graveyard."

It just has a lot of weird corner cases like what it does with cards like Hallowed Moonlight and such. The problem is that the first set of reminder text isn't actually an accurate instruction as to what the card is doing, but it probably makes a lot of sense to newbies.
 

ultron87

Member
It doesn't spell out the part about putting it in your graveyard if you don't cast it post exile, but I think something like this could work and get the important bits: (If you discard this card, you may exile it instead and then cast it for it's Madness cost.)
 
I don't think it's necessary for the reminder text to mention that the card is exiled for a bit, since it's heading to the graveyard no matter what, and there isn't any opportunity for the card to be processed or anything under the current rules.
 

bigkrev

Member
The current Madness rules aren't that bad. Miracle worked pretty similar, actually. Just write reminder text that says it gets exiled first.

I would say Miracle is another mechanic I wouldn't bring back because of the feel-bads of you just drawing your card for the turn like you have your entire life, and then not being able to cast the spell because you put it in your hand like you were taught to do.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I don't think it's necessary for the reminder text to mention that the card is exiled for a bit, since it's heading to the graveyard no matter what, and there isn't any opportunity for the card to be processed or anything under the current rules.
There isn't but there are cards that care whether something was cast from your hand or not, and its at least sort of unclear, so I suppose it might be relevant. I just think they should try as hard as they can to make it clear how an ability functionally works. I'm guessing the cleanest way to reminder text and have it say what it does is something like: "If you discard this card, you may choose to exile it and may immediately cast it for its Madness cost. Then put it into your graveyard."

Also, apropos of nothing, I think that spoiled card Goblin Dark Dwellers is better than people are imagining. Stormbreath Dragon was playable as a 4-of: this guy gives you probably better immediate value than Stormbreath Dragon, has the same stats and a relevant evasion ability.
 
If anyone cares, I updated my custom set Clash on Beledin at my site mtgpile.com. Some of y'all gave really good feedback last time, and I'd like to think the last six months of development polish have been worthwhile.

Interesting, I've got another better design then if you think it works this way:.

That's better. I'm not sure it's a perfect solution - I like to use color indicators as a method of last resort, not to clarify mixed messages that the frames are telling you, but they very clearly signal their 'colorness' as well as their 'whiteness'.
 

kirblar

Member
There isn't but there are cards that care whether something was cast from your hand or not, and its at least sort of unclear, so I suppose it might be relevant. I just think they should try as hard as they can to make it clear how an ability functionally works. I'm guessing the cleanest way to reminder text and have it say what it does is something like: "If you discard this card, you may choose to exile it and may immediately cast it for its Madness cost. Then put it into your graveyard."

Also, apropos of nothing, I think that spoiled card Goblin Dark Dwellers is better than people are imagining. Stormbreath Dragon was playable as a 4-of: this guy gives you probably better immediate value than Stormbreath Dragon, has the same stats and a relevant evasion ability.
Agree. Card is nuts even id snappy is more nuts.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
It's especially dumb with either of the relevant Commands (Dromoka's and Kolaghan's Commands can both generate stupid levels of advantage).
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Is this the worst standard since cawblade, or the absolute worst standard ever

no seriously, every single thing about this standard fucking sucks from the price, the cards to everything
 
Is this the worst standard since cawblade, or the absolute worst standard ever

no seriously, every single thing about this standard fucking sucks from the price, the cards to everything

I sold what I deemed non-eternal playable out of all my Khans and FRF cards last weekend. I'm probably not gonna play a whole lot til April. It's better than actively not enjoying every game I play.
 

Toxi

Banned
Rakdos as Cute and Evil has been something I've wanted for a while. They've had a few hints of that direction, but I think it's way more interesting than their generic S/M stuff they've been doing w/ them.
Hmm? Rakdos was generic S/M in the original Ravnica block, but they had a much better defined circus theme in Return to Ravnica that worked pretty well.
 

kirblar

Member
Hmm? Rakdos was generic S/M in the original Ravnica block, but they had a much better defined circus theme in Return to Ravnica that worked pretty well.

http://magiccards.info/query?q=c!brm+e%3Artr%2Fen&v=card&s=cname
It's still mostly generic.

However....

166.jpg


is where I think they should go and push further. It's very unique in MTG.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
MTGO might be a dumpster fire, but I appreciate how easy it is to cash out when you've had enough of said dumpster fire.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
How? By selling your account to the established traders for Paypal money?

I just manually trawled through and found everything worth more than .1 tickets, put them in a trade binder and sold them, then sold the tickets for .95 each. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a better way to do it but I went from an empty paypal account to one with several hundred dollars in it in like 10 minutes.

I did keep a bunch of tix for drafting and limited, which I still like and am excited for the upcoming Modern "year" or whatever.
 

tch

Member
I just want RTRTR so we can get a Butcher Clowns card mentioned on Rakdos Ragemutt

Some of that new art is great. Particularly the one in the forest and the one hovering over the water.
 

ultron87

Member
If you want some drama a bunch of the judges in the Southeast got banned potentially in relation to the leaks. Includes lots of high profile judges like Justin Turner, the Regional Coordinator of the region, and 2 of the 3 hosts of the Judgecast podcast.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3xrtyv/most_of_the_l3_judges_in_the_southeast_us_region/

Kind of sounds like Wizards took the shotgun approach to it. Seems unwise to piss off the community of people willing to volunteer their weekends to run premier events for you for minimal pay.
 
This is so rad.

161245_5F00_CN.jpg

I'll probably use that as the stinger of the next OT's OP instead of the Pledge of Allegiance. Which makes me realize that spoiler season starts just next week, and the OT will have to go up on Sunday. EDIT: Oh, come to think of it, the last time I changed my avatar was when I made this thread, and I changed it just now about a week before I'd make the next one.

On another note, Craig Wescoe put up an Introduction to Modern article, and of course, people are acting salty. Most notably, on Reddit, PV (username pvddr) is making weird arguments as to why Legacy is the superior format because Force of Will while also saying that it would be bad for Pro Tours because you'd be stupid not to play blue.
 

kirblar

Member
If you want some drama a bunch of the judges in the Southeast got banned potentially in relation to the leaks. Includes lots of high profile judges like Justin Turner, the Regional Coordinator of the region, and 2 of the 3 hosts of the Judgecast podcast.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3xrtyv/most_of_the_l3_judges_in_the_southeast_us_region/

Kind of sounds like Wizards took the shotgun approach to it. Seems unwise to piss off the community of people willing to volunteer their weekends to run premier events for you for minimal pay.
Sounds like it leaked out of a facebook group, so they basically hit everyone who was adminning it?

I mean judges are part of the same strategy they use on everyone else (same thing nonprofits do) - use people's emotions to get people to work for you under market rates.
 

ultron87

Member
If this statement is actually true, screw WotC and I'm done giving them money. I'm completely serious. Judges make this game work and do it for a pittance. This is reprehensible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/c..._l3_judges_in_the_southeast_us_region/cy78r92

Yeah, that's straight fucked if that is the case. It sounds like Turner will probably tell his side of the story soon if Wizards doesn't. So that'll be interesting.

Given how interconnected the high level judge community seems to be this could have some really nasty effects on organized play if people decide to protest. Like individual store events will be okay, but there are only so many people that can run an SCG or other bigger tournaments and if they're all just like "nope", things won't really work. They basically all do it because they enjoy doing it and not as their livelihood, so that's the crew you don't want to piss off. And I wouldn't blame them if it went down like reports are currently suggesting.
 

pigeon

Banned
Sounds like it leaked out of a facebook group, so they basically hit everyone who was adminning it?

I mean judges are part of the same strategy they use on everyone else (same thing nonprofits do) - use people's emotions to get people to work for you under market rates.

This was not a super smart move from the perspective of managing people's emotions.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Am I supposed to take a man who professionally uses the name "Trick" seriously.
 

Bandini

Member
So they gave the same penalty to the guy who notified WOTC of the possible origin of the leaks? LMAO

Last week, Wizards of the Coast, after completing our investigation, temporarily suspended the DCI accounts of a number of individuals found to have been involved in collecting, accessing, disseminating, and/or snitchin' about Wizards’ confidential and proprietary information before it was officially made public.

Seriously though, Wizards is fucking up lately. They're risking pissing off their core base
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Last week, Wizards of the Coast, after completing our investigation, temporarily suspended the DCI accounts of a number of individuals found to have been involved in collecting, accessing, disseminating, and/or snitchin' about Wizards’ confidential and proprietary information before it was officially made public.

Seriously though, Wizards is fucking up lately. They're risking pissing off their core base
the core base are slavish dullards that never waver in their commitment to send WOTC money

Exhibit A: all of these dudes who got suspended wrongfully will be back working for basically free pretty much the second their suspensions are up
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I mean, I'm not gonna say it works in every deck but 11th pick Skullclamp seems off
 
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