SigmasonicX
Member
First Magic Story podcast, an interview with Doug Beyer. I probably won't be able to listen to it until tomorrow.
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Magic: the Gathering |OT10| Aether Revolt - That shit that make your Soul Burn slow
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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Oh yeah, Cascade is a huge mistake. But for a new player it was the coolest thing. I can't believe how they still keep trying with cost reduction mechanics/free spells.
Because while people complain about cheating things into play, they also love it.
Who doesn't love it! It's fun to do. The real problem comes when the things you cheat in are unanswerable or overly powerful and/or when there are no answers. It's all about checks and balances.
Infinite Stars
Member
Yup.
Coco cheating in a Finks and a bird-Cool
CoCo cheating in 2 Reflector Mages when the best removal is fight? Not so cool
Casting Kari Zev's Expertise to play Beck/Call and draw into a Bushwhacker is also cool:
https://youtu.be/bOdeCm-IR4s
https://youtu.be/bOdeCm-IR4s
I prefer the Sram/Brain in the Jar UW Control decks with Beck/Call
The list needs a lot of tuning but it does look like fun when it's not getting torn apart by discard.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Multiple people came to the conclusion it's not an automatic 4 of in the main, which I think is still the case and was at the PT.
Most people thought that Mardu wasn't a playable deck, and Copycat would be a dominate presence
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Who said the former?
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
this is easier than expected. Still gotta cut out the detail and decide just what to keep but I really thought this would be a mess. I bought 4 of these just to experiment.
one and quote happy with. It does not completely fit but it's the best I can do in my current position.
Edit
one and quote happy with. It does not completely fit but it's the best I can do in my current position.decided to keep the costs as I found the lack of it jarring. Tried to make the spear seamless with the border but I ended up a bit off.
Grand Prix are now getting old-style PTQ's on Sundays. Also some stuff about Nationals.
The two years of original Ravnica were fucking amazing. There were so many varied deck choices, you could play any style of deck, and it was so good. It it what Standard should always strive to be.
The two years of original Ravnica were fucking amazing. There were so many varied deck choices, you could play any style of deck, and it was so good. It it what Standard should always strive to be.
I'm in New York and I found a shop in Brooklyn with a buylist.
I contacted them in advance with my list
Went to the store where they checked the condition, and took a few bucks off the offer for a few of the cards due to condition.
Walked out with a check for over a grand.
Was lots of fetches from before the reprint, and a bunch of modern staples and a foil Mox Opal.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Here's the list I'm bringing to Game Day.
Deck: UBW Improvise
//Lands
4 Aether Hub
2 Concealed Courtyard
4 Island
1 Plains
4 Spire of Industry
6 Swamp
//Artifacts
1 Aethersphere Harvester
4 Cogworker's Puzzleknot
4 Servo Schematic
4 Renegade Map
//Instant
4 Fatal Push
4 Metallic Rebuke
//Sorcery
1 Reverse Engineer
1 Baral's Expertise
//Planeswalker
4 Tezzeret the Schemer
//Enchantment
4 Tezzeret's Touch
//Creatures
4 Herald of Anguish
4 Ornithopter
//Sideboard
3 Authority of the Consuls
4 Bastion Inventor
1 Declaration in Stone
2 Dispel
1 Fumigate
2 Negate
2 Reverse Engineer
Display deck statistics
Happy to hear your thoughts on it, although I've been playing it a while and have found it has at the least a reasonable matchup against most of the Tier 1 stuff (although its certainly not a Tier 1 deck by any means), so I'm not too worried about getting totally blown out by some strategy.
Deck: UBW Improvise
//Lands
4 Aether Hub
2 Concealed Courtyard
4 Island
1 Plains
4 Spire of Industry
6 Swamp
//Artifacts
1 Aethersphere Harvester
4 Cogworker's Puzzleknot
4 Servo Schematic
4 Renegade Map
//Instant
4 Fatal Push
4 Metallic Rebuke
//Sorcery
1 Reverse Engineer
1 Baral's Expertise
//Planeswalker
4 Tezzeret the Schemer
//Enchantment
4 Tezzeret's Touch
//Creatures
4 Herald of Anguish
4 Ornithopter
//Sideboard
3 Authority of the Consuls
4 Bastion Inventor
1 Declaration in Stone
2 Dispel
1 Fumigate
2 Negate
2 Reverse Engineer
Display deck statisticsHappy to hear your thoughts on it, although I've been playing it a while and have found it has at the least a reasonable matchup against most of the Tier 1 stuff (although its certainly not a Tier 1 deck by any means), so I'm not too worried about getting totally blown out by some strategy.
Wulfric
Member
Ooh, I hope that includes GP Orlando. I might have to get a later flight on Sunday if SCG adds a PTQ to the schedule. Standard only, right? Or is that for Nationals?
Sweet, my not so local LGS goes to every GP, so they might have decent buy prices. Not one's biting locally for the duals unfortunately, lol. But that's legacy for ya. They cost a lot, but no one wants 'em.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I did not like that when I tried it. It made the deck too slow because you have to pay to get the card out of the Key. I ended up replacing it (and Bastion Inventor as a main board card) with Touch of Tezzeret, which has really overperformed my expectations. The comparison to Ensoul Artifact gives it a bad rap - the plethora of targets means it's almost always just a 5/5 haste. When Ensoul was in standard it didn't see as much play as you'd imagine because there weren't as many great targets.
I can see where you're coming from. I have no idea how good the deck actually is having not played it at all. How's Tezzeret been for you? And how do you feel against Vehicles?
Anyway, slapping Ensoul on a Darksteel Citadel was my favorite thing to do when I got back into the game with Magic Origins.
Anyway, slapping Ensoul on a Darksteel Citadel was my favorite thing to do when I got back into the game with Magic Origins.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Against Vehicles 4 Fatal Push plus the 4 Metallic Rebuke in the mainboard makes the matchup better than I'd have otherwise thought. It's an aggressive deck, but Vehicles isn't anywhere near as aggressive as some of the Mono-Red decks we've seen in recent years. Playing a Vehicle develops a board state a lot slower than playing dudes of equivalent power and toughness.
I think the Vehicles deck is fine, but I also think its success at the PT was part of the Pro Tour meta-gaming that I've mentioned before - it was a good deck in that specific tournament (due to the anticipated field), but I don't expect it to dominate in any real way and wouldn't be surprised at all if it dropped off considerably in the next couple weeks.
I don't like that they killed a big Modern tournament for another fucking Standard event. Looking at the calendar, there are 5 weekends this year where you can play high level Modern (9 Modern GPs with 4 double GP weekends), and 2 Team Unified Modern events.
By comparison, there are still 2 Legacy GPs plus the Legacy Championship you can go to if you are a Legacy player. 5 weekends vs 3 weekends!
By comparison, there are still 2 Legacy GPs plus the Legacy Championship you can go to if you are a Legacy player. 5 weekends vs 3 weekends!
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The problem with the combo isn't that its simply too good to exist in a Constructed environment, its that it actively leads to a poor gameplay experience and warps the entire metagame around it. The combo's existence will continue to warp the meta around it until goes away, even if its not the best deck at any given time.
Pushing Standard is fine, but I think they're making some highly questionable timing decisions. You need to make sure Standard is in a good, healthy place before you start scaling back other events in favor of that format.
Modern is fun to play with, but I kind of agree with the pros that I think its almost always worse than Standard and Limited. It's fun to do nutty shit, but its probably literally impossible to craft a format with that many sets in it and have it be anything close to reasonably balanced.
Infinite Stars
Member
Yeah, them pushing Standard when Standard hasn't been super-healthy is all kinds of wierd.
I do think you could make Modern reasonably balanced, though the way to do so is to nuke 8th/9th Edition from the format,as well as Fast Mana/Grapeshot while giving Valakut an errata to Legendary. Won't ever happen, but I wish.
Joe Molotov
Member
Seems like they're desperate to push people back into Standard, but maybe I'm just misreading this.
Infinite Stars
Member
Every action made by Wizards in the last 3-6 months has screamed "Please play Standard". We've had bans, Promotions, Standard exclusive events, changes to rotation, etc.
And none of this has worked really, because R&D just learned that the pendulum had swung too far.
It is reasonable balanced. Same with Legacy. Standard has had way worse balance lately relatively speaking.
That's likely one of a number of reasons for the switch. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some discussion internally at WOTC about whether or not the slackening Standard FNM attendance is in part due to the surge in popularity of Modern over the past few years. Pulling back on official promotion of the format in favor of the cash cow format seems like a logical, if shitty decision.
I should have posted the link here (sorry), but Reid Duke just streamed some AER drafts on twitch for a couple of hours. Was a really chill stream, it seems like Team Pantheon wants to stream regularly now and turn their team into something. I wonder what that means for their relationship with CFB, but I guess they're mostly being sponsored by D3 now and still write articles for CFB.
The VOD should be here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/120882191
EDIT: Shoving Standard down people's throats can only get you so far when the format has been as shitty as it is right now. I really hope that Amonkhet shakes things up with a new gold block. At this point, I think doing a 180 on Standard rotation was a mistake for the health of the format. It's not as big of a deal when the format is fun, but in this case I prefer faster roations over bans every 6 months. Obviously we don't know if it's gonna come to that, but it's a possibility.
The VOD should be here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/120882191
EDIT: Shoving Standard down people's throats can only get you so far when the format has been as shitty as it is right now. I really hope that Amonkhet shakes things up with a new gold block. At this point, I think doing a 180 on Standard rotation was a mistake for the health of the format. It's not as big of a deal when the format is fun, but in this case I prefer faster roations over bans every 6 months. Obviously we don't know if it's gonna come to that, but it's a possibility.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
They are never going to push people into Modern because they're trying to dull the perception that its a pay to win game and $2000 decks is never gonna get there. Sure, you could address their reprint policy as the cause of that.
Modern is probably the most popular format at my tiny LGS. There is a tournament every other week with stuff like expedition fetches for the winner. I want to get more into modern as well, but I only have cards for a burn deck, which I'm probably selling before Goblin Guide gets reprinted in MM17. Hoping for a Snapcaster reprint at rare next month, but don't know if I'll be able to grab a playset since the Switch is coming out as well.
Infinite Stars
Member
The only format that isn't pay to win is Limited. Wizards could fix this if they didn't decide to cut it following Devotion being a problem
Damn, they are gutting Modern support. Stop shoving standard down our throats, goddamnit.
Mega Spooky
Member
I've only been playing Magic for a year, so my opinion might be a little ignorant, but I don't see the appeal of Modern. Expensive cards, stale decks, & combos that win too fast make it less than fun for me.
I think Modern is a much more interesting casual format than competitive format.
Infinite Stars
Member
Expensive cards are expensive because Wizards refuses to reprint 90% of Modern cards at a decent size. If Lilianna of the Veil had been in M15, she'd not be $80+. If Cavern of Souls hadn't been only printed once, It would not be $80+. The cards are expensive because Wizards refuses to reprint in a decent capacity.
Stale Decks? What are you on about? Since BFZ Block we've had Eldrazi pop up as an entire deck Tron revise 90% of their threat suite, Jeskai Nahiri and Dredge rise and fall, etc. This is on top of Twin being banned, Abzan Company finally becoming a thing, Death's Shadow/KFC being decks, etc. Modern has some stagnant decks, but even those have Changed(Jund adopting Kalitas/Collective Brutality, Abzan adopting Grim Flayer)
Also, no deck in Modern outside of Infect, Cheerios, Affinity and Burn can reliably win before turn 4, whereas Mardu Vehicles/Snek Attack has you mostly out of it, but even those aggro decks lose hard against Interaction.
No, right now it's the lack of pain lands or decent colorless lands (Eldrazi only plays urza lands in a bad version of the modern deck).
Eldrazi Tron is not a bad deck.
Infinite Stars
Member
It's a deck that is hell to play against because what other deck in Modern gets to run 16 Sol lands? Like, it's not bad, but it feels so bad to play against because Oops I have 9 Mana on Turn 4, time to cast Thought-Knot Seer+Reality Smasher I've played Hatebears against it, and even with 4 GQ and Arbiter it is never enough.
It's not a bad deck by itself, but I find it a worse version of both Bant Eldrazi and Tron.
Let me tell you about turning all their Ancient Tombs into White Boardered Mountains
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