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[Angry Grimace]

Um, no. They could have, if they wanted to. WOTC can do whatever the fuck they deem necessary for the health of the game and if that's sidestepping the mechanical theme of a particular set with a single, very much needed reprint, it's not going to kill anyone. Limiting themselves to things that fit mechanically and flavor-wise is unnecessarily prohibitive and, in turn, creates an increasingly unhealthy environment going forward. Such restrictions practically guarantee that a lot of cards that could use a reprint to alleviate cost concerns or supply issues will struggle to potentially find a place in new sets because those older cards might have some conflict with the story/mechanics/zodiac sign bullshit. This dogmatic insistence that everything in a set be singularly unified in design & flavor is the same lack of flexibility that's made the art in the sets too sterile.

BFZ/Oath wouldn't have been the ideal places for Inquisition of Kozilek but then they already fucked up by not putting it in the set that already had an original Zendikar block Eldrazi subtheme, MM2015. The absolute dearth of necessary reprints in recent sets has created a Modern environment that is becoming financially untenable for a lot of players and potential players.

They have a mono-black vampire tribe that serves Kozilek. There's also a black vampire guy that produces Eldrazi Spawn when he dies.

They could have reprinted it and didn't for developmental reasons, not lore ones.

 

[Angry Grimace]

The only card which has gotten unbannable which was previously sacrosanct is SFM, mostly because of the Dragon Commands.

My assumption is that SFM has a lot of opposition to an unban simply because of the *idea* of SFM being legal sounds busted. But I think in reality none of the things SFM does are broken by Modern standards because the best thing you can tutor cheat into play are Swords or Batterskull.

Broken things are obnoxious BS you can't interact with (Bloom, Storm, Grishoalbrand) or legitimately can't be beaten.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Kiblar got another question answered

kirblar024 asked: The absence of desired high-profile Modern-legal cards would seem like it'd cause a negative reaction to the more casual-oriented reprints present in the set. ("They got their fun, why can't I have mine?")

Here’s the problem with high-powered reprints in normal expansions. A set only gets so much power. Think of it as power points. If we put a lot of our power points in old, returning things, then we can’t put it into our new things.

And players really want the new things to be powerful. That means we can occasionally do an exciting high powered reprint but there’s a limit to how many we can do.

Basically, reprints like Thoughtseize meant that Theros had less powerful cards that were new, and from feedback, they decided that players prefer when the new cards are the powerful ones and not reprints. Perhaps this will lead to powerful reprints being a Modern Masters and such thing, while Standard sets will just have mundane reprints.

 

[An-Det]

What are the big reprints that we know about that they have skipped because of that? I know of LOTV, Serum Visions, Inquisition, Damnation, any others that were publicly acknowledged?

My assumption is that SFM has a lot of opposition to an unban simply because of the *idea* of SFM being legal sounds busted. But I think in reality none of the things SFM does are broken by Modern standards because the best thing you can tutor cheat into play are Swords or Batterskull.

Broken things are obnoxious BS you can't interact with (Bloom, Storm, Grishoalbrand) or legitimately can't be beaten.

Yup, there are a few cards that fit into that on the Modern banned list. Reminds me of when Bitterblossom was unbanned two years ago, the memories of Standard Faeries domination were the only reason people were opposed to it, rather than looking at the format and realizing it'd be fine, then it hit and nothing came of it.

 

[Firemind]

rip jtms

 

[Exokell]

Green somehow seems even worse for limited now. Feel like they had absolutely no idea what the hell to do with green as a color this block.

Which is incredible stupid because green is all about lands.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Kiblar got another question answered

Basically, reprints like Thoughtseize meant that Theros had less powerful cards that were new, and from feedback, they decided that players prefer when the new cards are the powerful ones and not reprints. Perhaps this will lead to powerful reprints being a Modern Masters and such thing, while Standard sets will just have mundane reprints.

I don't even necessarily disagree with Maro's reasoning, but they pretty explicitly said they would reprint all this crap. But what they actually did was put in a bunch of it as Mythics in 10 dollar packs

 

[Infinite Stars]

Which is incredible stupid because green is all about lands.

Honestly, nuke Converge from orbit in BFZ and shift Awaken spells from White to Green. That'd probably fix some issues.

In fact, why did Green get Eldrazi in BFZ but not white? Green should be Devoid of Devoid, considering they're the color that hates change/unnatural things the most.

 

[shrapnelmagnet]

I forget who was mentioning Troll and Toad earlier, but I've used them once in the past and had a fine experience - lower than TCG Mid prices on some stuff I was looking for, etc.

I tried ordering again on Jan 2nd (it was processed on the 5th), and my current status is "Credit Card Changed" and it's been that way for a while, so they are taking their time with this one. The last time I ordered, it was processed and mailed on almost the same day. Curious to see what happens.

As for buying singles, I get a list together in a spreadsheet with all the cards and all the stores I'm looking at buying from. Then go down it, comparing prices at each site. As I find the cheapest copies, I put it in the column until the end and add it to the shopping cart. At the end, I check shipping to see if there are any savings to be had moving stuff around (when possible).

I'm in Vancouver, but I ship to a friend in the States who works right downtown every day so he brings it across for me. Fairly lucky, but I gotta stop buying cards - in Canada it's a fucking 40% mark up. Oh, that $3.50 card? Try $5.00. Not to mention the rates they convert are worse than I can get at the bank. My last order came to $90 US and was $126 CAN. Just gross.

Sites I have used:

StarCityGames.com (I haven't in a while though)
CardKingdom.com (always worth a look, I got a Demonic Tutor for $9 US there a little while ago. They grade super high so when it says, "Played" - it's basically fine.)
AdventuresON.com (always have the weirdo shit bulk stuff for wayy lower than anyone else. I love this site. Their site is not good, though, lol)
MTGIsland.com (Toronto-based, kinda sketchy site-wise, but I've found some good prices there. They list in USD by default)
TrollAndToad.com (been over this)
ChannelFireball.com (top notch, no issues with them. Selection is amazing, but they rarely go below $0.25, so if I see a card for that price, I check AdventuresON and they'll have it for $0.06 or $0.10, usually.)

 

[traveler]

So, after seeing it all..

Surge looks good- a true fixed storm- but not too many super splashy implementations or even a couple real standouts. I guess Crush and the Dragon are close. B+

I like "colorless only"- it's a needed expansion for consistency's sake, a welcome bit of tension for gold heavy standard, a fit for Eldrazi, and has some real payoff for going out of your way to get the mana in limited. A-

Support is boring, but serviceable. Should play well with scions in limited, at least. C

Cohort is underwhelming, if not outright bad. Super clunky, slow, and the cost to benefit ratio seems to be seriously off pretty much everywhere. Should have extended to your ally's, well, allies, and only required tapping the cohort rather than both the creature and its partner. No idea what happened here. D

Maybe it will all end up playing different than it looks though.

 

[Haines]

Enjoyed draft tonight but nowy second draft and again only 6 player pools

Going to start going to the 8 player pool only shop now that I have a couple under my belt

 

[OnPoint]

The lowest priced IoK on eBay is 27 bucks.

What.

 

[kirblar]

The lowest priced IoK on eBay is 27 bucks.

What.

Game's population's exploded between RoE and now

 

[OnPoint]

Game's population's exploded between RoE and now

Sure. I get that. I guess I'm on the side of the debate where I find Wizards' lack of making-sure-cards-like-that-get-reprints to be pretty irresponsible. That's just too much money for an uncommon.

 

["God's Beard!"]

What's the best way to sell cards? Ebay?

 

[cooltrainer]

So this looks like a pretty damn fun set to draft. Cohort looks so bad to me. Tap two of your allies for a boring effect. The Eldrazi are sweet; the novelty of the colorless mana costs is growing on me. A healthy dose of powerful cards helps too.

 

[charlequin]

Limiting themselves to things that fit mechanically and flavor-wise is unnecessarily prohibitive and, in turn, creates an increasingly unhealthy environment going forward.

I want them to reprint Inquisition as much as anyone but c'mon. The second the mechanical picture on BFZ was spoiled we knew that Inquisition wasn't coming during this block. The problem is not finding some other place to reprint it, not just randomly breaking a block's design rules to shove in inappropriate reprints.

edit2: confirmed, something big went down that isn't public yet.

I thought this was just referring to new story focus + 2-block paradigm + their latest change to the design stages that Rosewater mentioned but whose name is escaping me (the one after adding exploratory design.)

Green somehow seems even worse for limited now. Feel like they had absolutely no idea what the hell to do with green as a color this block.

The natural consequence of adding blue to the eldrazi (which almost inevitably led to the blue "colorless matters" theme supporting colorless mana dorks in blue) was cutting out green's primary mechanical role for the eldrazi.

"Set aside spot for reprint" "reprint is deemed too good" "price spike" is turning into a real ugly pattern.

They need one more route for reprints on top of what they have. A lot of stuff can be bled off via Standard reprints, Commander reprints, and whatever happens to fit in the summer supplemental, but they really need some annual product whose entire purpose is just reprinting expensive commons and rapidly rising low-printrun rares to keep supply up. Like, the modern event deck was a decent effort in this direction, they need to just take that further.

Basically, reprints like Thoughtseize meant that Theros had less powerful cards that were new, and from feedback, they decided that players prefer when the new cards are the powerful ones and not reprints.

I think this is basically correct -- people throw a fit when a set has mediocre new rares but powerful reprints -- but that just means they need to work much harder at providing opportunities to reprint them in non-Standard-legal sets.

Sure. I get that. I guess I'm on the side of the debate where I find Wizards' lack of making-sure-cards-like-that-get-reprints to be pretty irresponsible. That's just too much money for an uncommon.

Part of the issue is just that prices are skyrocketing faster than they can react. I wouldn't have guessed Inquisition would be a $30+ card a year ago; similar things for cards like Serum Visions.

 

[Angry Grimace]

I would have guessed that Inquisition is a $30 card without any reprints at all. I thought it would see a reprint but I was not confident enough in that to abstain from buying it for 8 bucks a pop because I could easily see it getting dumb without a reprint - the card is played in basicaly every deck with black in it.

Also, 1-3 sadface with Modern Junk at FNM. Beat Burn (barely) and losses to Bloom, Bogles (SADFACE) and Tron. All of them went to game 3 though. Misplayed a bunch against the bloom guy too: I literally inquisitioned myself and dropped a decay to attack in and then miscounted and my Goyf died anyways lol

 

["God's Beard!"]

I literally inquisitioned myself and dropped a decay to attack in and then miscounted and my Goyf died anyways lol

Reminds me of the time a guy cast rally the ancestors against me with three Zulaports and no Nantuko Husks in his graveyard.

 

[charlequin]

Re: Inquisition, I guess I'm wrong, although AG's whining about Maro is also misplaced:

despoglee asked: If it hadn't created development problems, would you really have reprinted Inquisition of Kozilek as is, despite it being a non-devoid Eldrazi-themed card? Or would you have made a devoid version with a new name?

There is a faction of vampires that are Eldrazi sympathizers. There was some talk that maybe the card would refer to them. The card got killed by development before it got figured out.

And this is a sort of comedy-of-errors thing that speaks to the issue kirblar brought up earlier:

griefermadness asked: Okay, so why no Inquisition of Kozilek reprint in Modern Masters 2015?

Because we were planning to reprint it in Battle for Zendikar block, but it turned out to be problematic in Oath of the Gatewatch playtesting.

 

[kirblar]

This has happened to LOTV, Damnation, and now Inquisition.

They need to stop putting off reprints in the hopes of getting them in Standard.

 

[Daedardus]

Is there no way they can do a MM16 late summer? They don't have to do the same cards each year, but there are some staples that are getting really expensive due to the very low supply. Next year's modern is going to be very expensive.

 

[charlequin]

This has happened to LOTV, Damnation, and now Inquisition.

They need to stop putting off reprints in the hopes of getting them in Standard.

Funny how these cards are all black.

Is there no way they can do a MM16 late summer?

No.

 

[Jhriad]

The second the mechanical picture on BFZ was spoiled we knew that Inquisition wasn't coming during this block.

If Maro is saying that it was kept out for developmental reasons, rather than design, I'd assume that it was initially slotted to be in the set regardless of it conflicting with across the board Devoid.

 

[OnPoint]

He said it was problematic in playtesting, but then also alludes to it being out of flavor. Seems contradictory, but I guess it could be both.

 

[blindrocket]

The lowest priced IoK on eBay is 27 bucks.

What.

Jebus.

 

[Firemind]

The lowest priced IoK on eBay is 27 bucks.

What.

Time to fish out the old shoe boxes

 

[Daedardus]

Time to fish out the old shoe boxes

Oh man, my old card collection is probably 500 euro worth more than I initially thought due to IoK, sucks that I lost it.

 

[WanderingWind]

Frankly, the fact that they're not addressing what is becoming a huge issue among the community is becoming less and less cute as time goes on. The game has always been for people of means, but it's never been quite the "get fucked poors" game it is now.

"It doesn't match flavor" is a complete bullshit excuse. You make the game. You make the flavor. It is entirely within your abilities to make the flavor match. If IoK wasn't perfect, or Damnation isn't flavorful for whatever reason, make Inquisition of Eldrazi That Isn't Technically Kozilek. Make Dammernation, remove the "can't be regenerated" clause if that hurts your fee-fees and print the damn card. Or don't, but don't act like you give two shits about the community.

"But WanderingWind, what about this bullshit format that nobody actually plays?" Yeah, and technically, you could also fish draft dregs out of the LCS garbage bin and throw them at passing alley cats, but that doesn't really qualify as Magic: the Gathering.

 

[kirblar]

Flavor wasnt the issue.

One guess what card was.

 

[OnPoint]

Flavor wasnt the issue.

One guess what card was.

Honestly don't have a clue

 

[GoutPatrol]

Jace flashing back IoK into feelbads?

 

[kirblar]

Jace flashing back IoK into feelbads?

dingdingding

IoK/Jace get played together in Modern/Legacy. Standard would be no different.

MiniJace is a dev fuckup.

 

[charlequin]

If Maro is saying that it was kept out for developmental reasons, rather than design, I'd assume that it was initially slotted to be in the set regardless of it conflicting with across the board Devoid.

Yeah I just posted about that like four up.

He said it was problematic in playtesting, but then also alludes to it being out of flavor. Seems contradictory, but I guess it could be both.

It is out of flavor, they tried to make an excuse to print it anyway and development shot it down.

 

[WanderingWind]

The thing there is of course good cards are going to be good cards when they're reprinted. They're expensive for a reason. They're good cards and people want to play with them. If "this card is too good" is an excuse now, it'll always be an excuse. Yes, there are fringe cases where Lingering Souls kept LotV in check (hey, look another card that was too good to print) but for the vast majority of cases, IoK will always be strong in Standard.

They have to drop the tri-illusion that is "we can print staples in modern." Apparently, no, you cannot. Two; "Modern Masters is where those reprints go. Again, apparently not based on the last value-dreck edition. And three: 50 dollar, easily reprintable cards are healthy for the game.

 

[kirblar]

It is out of flavor, they tried to make an excuse to print it anyway and development shot it down.

There's a Legendary Cleric who worships Eldrazi in the set for a reason.

 

[Lazy vs Crazy]

This years Commander set has actual nothing in terms of reprint value. I mean I guess it has Phyrexian Arena but even that isn't all that valuable. The only card that sees real play is Eternal Witness. Huge wasted opportunity.

 

[kirblar]

This years Commander set has actual nothing in terms of reprint value. I mean I guess it has Phyrexian Arena but even that isn't all that valuable. The only card that sees real play is Eternal Witness. Huge wasted opportunity.

Spike reprints via casual precon ends badly. There are good reasons not to do it.

 

[Lucario]

Terrible jeskai ascendancy.dec

Cantrips/Draw:
4 Slip through Space
3 Defiant Strike
4 Expedite
2 Magmatic Insight
2 Tormenting Voice
4 Treasure Cruise
2 Dig Through Time

Draw this or you literally cannot win:
4 Jeskai Ascendancy

Jace:
3 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy

Mana dorks/awaken
4 Rattleclaw Mystic
2 Elemental Uprising
4 Wall of Resurgence

The worst manabase
3 Mystic Monastery
3 Wandering Fumarole
4 Flooded Strand
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Windswept Heath
2 Prairie Stream
1 Canopy Vista
1 Cinder Glade
1 Plains
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Mountain



SB:

4 Oath of Chandra
1 Oath of Jace
3 Monastery Mentor
4 Radiant Flames
2 Dispel
1 Zada, Hedron Grinder

 

[OnPoint]

It is out of flavor, they tried to make an excuse to print it anyway and development shot it down.

I know, I read it too. I'm curious to read the post mortem more than ever now.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Re: Inquisition, I guess I'm wrong, although AG's whining about Maro is also misplaced:



And this is a sort of comedy-of-errors thing that speaks to the issue kirblar brought up earlier:

So I was totally right when you said I was totally wrong but I was in fact also wrong and a big whiner because ??????

 

[Fou-Lu]

I've been playtesting a bunch of decks lately to see where I want to go in my return to Magic. I am finding I don't like Modern very much as a format, mostly because I am a control player and control seems to be an uphill battle in Modern with the large pool of fast AND powerful creatures.

 

[Angry Grimace]

I can't be the only one who finds it weird that Awaken isn't centered in green and that none of Nissa's theme cards or even her actual card have anything to do with the mechanic. That seems like a strange lore-based decision.

 

[SigmasonicX]

We also almost had Hedron Crab
Post 2

waxingnostalgicforthe90s asked: Why no Hedron Crab reprint?

It caused problems in constructed playtesting.


asmallforayintothehugeunknown asked: Does that mean there was almost an overly hedron crab strong mill deck in standard?

For a moment in time, yes.

 

[A Serious Man]

Oath of Nissa is stupid.

 

[Angry Grimace]

From far away this guy appears to be wearing a Sombrero

 

[A Serious Man]

GP Oakland coverage has been fire so far. 10 minutes of Patrick Sullivan walking over some scrub's enchantment brew followed by 30 minutes of a recorded MTGO match between LSV and Efro and now 20+ minutes of a "Please stand by" screen over GarageBand's greatest unlicensed hits.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Spike reprints via casual precon ends badly. There are good reasons not to do it.

The 2014 Commander decks were awesome in terms of the random cool stuff in them.
The fact that they have much looser themes and are closer to "cool shit in X color" kind of helped.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

They need to go hog wild with Conspiracy 2. They did good with the first Conspiracy (Misdirection, Exploration, Stifle, the chance for foil Swords and Brainstorm), but they need to let the chains off with the next one.

 

[Infinite Stars]

They have to drop the tri-illusion that is "we can print staples in modern." Apparently, no, you cannot. Two; "Modern Masters is where those reprints go. Again, apparently not based on the last value-dreck edition. And three: 50 dollar, easily reprintable cards are healthy for the game.

If they could just make Modern Masters not suck value wise, that'd be great. I know you're not supposed to buy packs to get staples, but dear god it's frustrating when I bought 6 packs and the best thing I opened was Apocalypse Hydra. Like, they have to realize that Modern is this big format that they need to support once a year at least with cards that actually matter.

There's no issue to me that Goyf, a premier card, is around $150-$200. That's somewhat fine. The issue is when stuff like Path, Visions,Inquisition, are above $10 per card. It shouldn't cost me $100 for a playset of an uncommon, or $200 for a playset of Aether Vials. Wizards wants this format to grow, I mean FFS they give it a PT and a large chunk of GPs. So why are they so afraid of actually helping it? They get relatively nothing from the second hand market.

Path isn't as broken as Wizards thinks it is in Standard. Maybe nor this round of standard, but it's honestly one of the fairest types of removal: You get to kill a threat and remove it from the game for your opponent getting a basic land.