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Magic: the Gathering |OT13| Ixalan - Port to Sideboard
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
- Start date
And we don't know what those criteria are. I know this isn't the typical monopoly, since there is an agent in charge with interest in keeping prices down, but what are their expectations? Slowed increase in costs, lowering costs, better coverage?
Coverage setup will be more efficient sometime, but how often has CF run two major events the same weekend half around the world from each other? The third GP weekend is that scenario, with 4 more after that in the first half of the year.
I'm not trying to be pessimistic and saying it is all DOOM and gloom, but am skeptical it will end up being 'better' for players. If it is, great, I won't complain at all. I'm also not expecting to see the benefits right away and don't plan on complaining January 7 if nothing improves.
She won't tell me how it might be. I really don't let people in, I have one friend that has been over and my Dad, they wouldn't have taken the cards. My wife (we have issues and are separating) has been known to not make the best choices in friends and is a lot more willing to allow people over. So, she has a list of possible people it could be (they also stole shit from her, purses/dresses shit like that), and won't confront any of them. I honestly don't know most of her friends, having spent a lot of time away from home the past year training and deployed.
I'm honestly not expecting the police to do much, but would be happy if they did. Really just need to have the report for the insurance claim. If she comes up with a way to resolve this somewhat without any bullshit, I'm all for it, but not expecting that either. Really just makes me regret not buying a nice gun safe last year (not for guns, but for the design of them).
And on the collectibles rider, my renters insurance said they don't view collections under $10000 as collectibles (though I guess my whole collection went over that sometime in the last few years), and would reimburse market value when I purchased it. I haven't reported it to them yet as I do want to make sure there isn't some 'misunderstanding' and they all show back up. They are an insurance company and will try to pay me as little as possible though. Was hoping to never have to find out if they are as easy as they made it sound, so will be interested to find out. The CGC boards have some good recommendations for companies if you are interested, and depending in how this all goes I'll be happy to look those up and bring them over here.
Unless the prizes are considerably better or the prices actually decrease from current GP prices, I don't see any real reason to go currently unless you're interested in playing in the main event. The EV on side events is terrible. Even the Double Prize events CF has started doing aren't great EV. Hell, I flew to GP Vegas to play Magic and still only played in one side event despite being there for every day and only playing in one main event. Felt like my money was better spent elsewhere rather than battling it out for hours for the chance at redeeming Tix for Standard (yawn) packs. If someone is willing to drop the money to fly in and book a decent hotel room for several days specifically for your event and balks at the price of side events, you're doing something wrong.
And SCG was actually a lot better for side events, if you went infinite. A three day infinite pass ($100) got you one sealed event each morning (where 70% of the field just grabs the packs and drops) and entrance to hourly side events in standard, modern and legacy. If you lose round one, just drop and sign up for the next one. If you go 3-0-1 you get 240 tickets ($50 store credit, $10 in prizes). You could 3-0-1 up to three events pretty easily a day in Saturday and Sunday (not saying it was easy to win, but timing allowed it to be possible easily while still getting a couple 40 min breaks).
So for $100 you could enter any event, get half a box, a playmat and the promo card.
charlequin
Banned
True. I mean I'm not certain it'll definitely be better, just saying that there's a set of incentives that definitely could push it in that direction.
Ah, sorry, my condolences.
Joe Molotov
Member
Deckmasters 4 life.
charlequin
Banned
Same way as it does in all the other card games that switched card backs at some point, you just have to play with sleeves if your deck uses both.
Shotgun Kiss
Member
I've never played Magic in my life, but several people at my work have got into it, so I'm curious.
I recently quit playing Pokemon Trading Card Game however because it frustrated me in a few ways, and I'm concerned if Magic has similar issues.
1) PTCG recently introduced GX cards, which completely spoiled the game for me. Very few decks that don't run GX cards are viable, and certain old cards are now either either overpowered or useless because they weren't designed with the existence of GX cards in mind (for example, there's a trainer card that lets you search for either 1 EX Pokemon or 3 non-EX Pokemon. Well GX Pokemon aren't EX Pokemon, so you can search for 3 of them, even though GX Pokemon are at least as powerful as EX Pokemon).
2) There are a small amount of cards that are damn near required in nearly any deck, and they cost an absolute fortune, especially if you want to run 4 of them (the maximum amount permitted in a deck). Shaymin EX was the prime example of this until it went out of rotation recently, but now it's Tapu-Lele GX. You can expect to pay roughly $50 for each one. So if you want a peak optimal deck, you're looking at $200 just for those 4 cards alone.
3) There are a small handful of deck builds that just completely destroy nearly everything else out there. For example, in a recent tournament in Seattle, 24 out of 32 people built their decks around Garbodor. Garbodor actively punishes the opponent for playing item cards. Such decks are horrendously unfun to play against.
Basically, it seems like in the last year or two, Pokemon Company are more concerned with selling new sets by releasing horribly OP cards than they are with maintaining game balance. How is Magic in this regard?
I recently quit playing Pokemon Trading Card Game however because it frustrated me in a few ways, and I'm concerned if Magic has similar issues.
1) PTCG recently introduced GX cards, which completely spoiled the game for me. Very few decks that don't run GX cards are viable, and certain old cards are now either either overpowered or useless because they weren't designed with the existence of GX cards in mind (for example, there's a trainer card that lets you search for either 1 EX Pokemon or 3 non-EX Pokemon. Well GX Pokemon aren't EX Pokemon, so you can search for 3 of them, even though GX Pokemon are at least as powerful as EX Pokemon).
2) There are a small amount of cards that are damn near required in nearly any deck, and they cost an absolute fortune, especially if you want to run 4 of them (the maximum amount permitted in a deck). Shaymin EX was the prime example of this until it went out of rotation recently, but now it's Tapu-Lele GX. You can expect to pay roughly $50 for each one. So if you want a peak optimal deck, you're looking at $200 just for those 4 cards alone.
3) There are a small handful of deck builds that just completely destroy nearly everything else out there. For example, in a recent tournament in Seattle, 24 out of 32 people built their decks around Garbodor. Garbodor actively punishes the opponent for playing item cards. Such decks are horrendously unfun to play against.
Basically, it seems like in the last year or two, Pokemon Company are more concerned with selling new sets by releasing horribly OP cards than they are with maintaining game balance. How is Magic in this regard?
GregLombardi
Member
Every Trading card game has some of the same problems, but relative to what I think you are saying, the least expensive format in magic (standard) is pretty clean of all the issues you mentioned. 2-3 months ago it wasnt (aetherworks marvel basically ruined the format). Now, however, they banned cards to fix standard. Also between standard, commander, modern, draft, and even legacy formats, you can go as simple / complicated / cheap / expensive / broken / fair as you might like. One of the best things about magic is its breadth / depth. There are 4-6 viable decks in standard right now, fwiw, and hundreds in commander.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
what he described sounded very similar to JVP though. Standard is cheap right now in partr because of the discontinued masterpieces we could quickly go back to standard decks requiring certain cards being super expensive again.
EMN and SOI for instance had very expensive cards, I sold Grim Flayers for close to 30 at some point and there were still Emrakul, Lili, Avacyn that were similarly high in price range.
Wulfric
Member
Well that's lame. I'm honestly surprised by the amount of stores selling them outright. As if their local players don't mean shit.
Royal_Flush
Member
1) This rarely happens in Magic. Yes, they introduce new cards and mechanics regularily that sometimes get broken with older cards, but I don't think I've seen them impacting competitive play much. Usually the interaction require too much mana or are just too slow/vulnerable.
2) If you play any format other than standard on a highly competitive level you likely will have to use fetch lands (usually 4-10) which can be quite expensive. This all gets way worse if you play Legacy or Vintage, but those are rather fringe formats. As a rule of thumb, a competitive standard deck usually is in the low 3-digit range, a modern deck in the high 3-digit range, Legacy somewhere in the 4-digit range and Vintage I don't even want to think about.
3) If there is a deck that makes up a lot more than 50% of the meta key cards of that back usually get banned within a reasonable timeframe.
GregLombardi
Member
Yeah I mean, soon enough you will probably have to spend $200-$400 on a standard deck in total. But I don't know how you could make that situation much better. This is a trading card game, and they release new cards. Unless you want to upend that whole situation, you will have to make investments / make trades in order to complete a standard deck and keep it up with the times.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Eh it's a balancing act, cheap standard is terrible for limited players but great for people getting into standard.
At this point I'll be riding out the gearhulks I have unless WotC has another idea to keep standard at around $200. There's always modern and edh where the value of the cards isn't so dependent on a rotating environment to just evaporate.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
I don't know about this card. It seems like it could be playable but that ability is could backfire if you don't have dinos.
Even if you wipe your board as well, it's still a wrath that leaves you with a 7/7. Not a bad deal if that's what you need.
Big problem is the cost and the fact you can't cheat it and get the wrath. 3 white is nothing to sneeze at. This guy better hope that Treasure Tokens become a big factor.
Also Dino mirrors. Kind of a flop there.
MaRos first Ixalan design article is up.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/just-ixalan-part-1-2017-09-04
Here is the part he has been hinting at for a long time on his blog about how the Monarch mechanic was stolen from Ixalan
Would've been interesting to see how it would've worked in a two player game.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/just-ixalan-part-1-2017-09-04
Here is the part he has been hinting at for a long time on his blog about how the Monarch mechanic was stolen from Ixalan
Would've been interesting to see how it would've worked in a two player game.
Giant Panda
Member
I don't see how it would have worked. Drawing an extra card leads to snowballing if there's not multiple players to team up on the monarch.
Imperfected
Member
You weren't sure if you should have used Monarch as a multiplayer-focused mechanic or not until you threw it into weeks of testing.
:|
:|
Poodlestrike
Banned
That feels like it'll see some use.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
4 mana already puts it to EDH only territory.
Imperfected
Member
Oof, yeah, my brain auto-completed the mana cost to 2 for some reason.
FreedomFrisbee
Member
For some reason it took me till now to notice the centered font on the flip cards. Someone really has a hard on for centered font over there.
4 mana's a lot for reducing instances and sorceries by 1. Usually those effects cost half that much. And you gotta cast 5 spells to get any real benefits.
I'm betting Izzet EDH players will love it though.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
It seems like a lot of steps to get it to work the way that it needs to be.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
they always set the conditions for these types of cards so high that they are terrible in limited.
Not really. It's just "Have the mana -> Kill everything -> Dinosaur". It's like a more expensive Descend upon the Sinful that doesn't need Deliruim and gets you a bigger body (also no exile, which sucks).
Having the mana's the huge problem. I'd be fine killing a couple of my own guys if it meant that I had a 7/7 and they had nothing.
This is really expensive, but I think it could see play in UW control or GW Ramp if those are still a thing come ixalan.
I frigging love this for my Wort EDH deck. LOVE IT.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
That is true, but I feel like this is a card that you will not play in limited unless you have enough dinos or holding some creatures back.
Obviously you wouldn't want to kill a ton of your dudes if you don't have to, but I'd gladly play this in limited if it was the only way I had to kill a bomb creature my opponent had (which unfortunately will probably be a dinosaur). If that means losing a couple of my guys that would've been eating up while chump-blocking, so be it.
If nothing else a 7/7 is probably bigger than whatever else they have.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Sure you would. It's a card that will win you the game even when you're losing - that's why it's Mythic.
You also probably play a lot of treasure to try and play it faster.
I have one (maybe two) EDH deck that would love this.
Edit: oh wait. The mana reduction ability doesn't carry over when it transforms. Meh.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
What's the reminder text on the back even for? It's ugly and it's obvious what it transforms from because it's literally glued to the back of it.
It's to try and show people that you can't just put it in your deck with the land side forward and play it as a normal land.
There was a guy at FNM this week that said there was no rules that said you couldn't just play the land side. I told him it's just like the other flip cards and there are rules you have to play the front first. He kept saying that it's different because these are lands. At that point I was just like "Whatever".
I dunno, there's probably someone out there that wants to copy as many spells as possible at once. Like "How many turns can I take by casting Time Stretch with Melek off the top?" and for that person I'm sure they'll appreciate this.
This, and also it makes it easier to find the other side when you're looking up cards online.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
I would never have guessed that. Is there no indicator for the front of a DFC except the mana cost?
Reiterate already exists and Fork gets you style points.
Any CF GP I've gone to was in a shitty venue and was the most expensive I attended that year. I think at best we see $100 GPs going forward and will never return to the $50-60 that we had a few years ago.
Maybe they'll be able to increase overall prizes and pay based on number of entrants. I'm not holding my breath for that though lol.
It's more tricky with lands since they don't have mana costs (even though amusingly enough these lands have a cmc) so there could be confusion for newer players.
Yeah, but this is one copy more if you have this land in the mix.
Yeah, but redundancy. Someone's gonna want as many sources of "copy this spell" as they can get.
Maybe Izzet was a bad choice. This is colorless after all. Can go into any decks with high enough spell counts.
Yeah, I'm definitely playing this in Wort and I already have Fork, Reiterate, Reverberate and Howl of the Horde.