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[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Cut saheeli rai

 

[DrArchon]

Travelling quite a bit this weekend so trying to make some standard decks to keep me busy. Thoughts on U/R flyers with Saheeli Rai and Glorybringer/Dreamcaller Siren at the top end? Would use a few of the new blue flyers and maybe Hope of Ghirapur for early drops along with some burn/opt/Unsummon.

I've been thinking about U/R Flyers for sometime now. My general thoughts are:

-Saheeli is fucking garbage as usual. I'll never respect a planeswalker that has no impact on the board or your hand with their + ability.
-Dreamcaller isn't that great unless you have that critical mass of Pirates where you can make sure you get that tap 2 effect every time you cast it. If you've got like 16 Pirates go for it, less than 12 probably not.
-Glorybringer is a must, obviously.

You can also go for a slightly slower deck with Whirler Virtuoso and Energy cards (because making 2/2s at instant speed is fun) with Locus God as a top of the curve ender for even more flyers. If you're got the cash, Chandra would be great here.

If you want a cheap planeswalker for flyers, I think the new Jace looks alright for a fast deck. Flyers will get in more to trigger his looting, and making more creatures, even grounded ones, isn't bad. Works great with Skyship Plunderer too to get fast ults for more Jaces.

 

[bigkrev]

wizards considers duress and sorcerous spyglass to be maindeck cards?

Stephen Menedian qutoes about Spyglass in the Ixalan review on So Many Insane Plays (Vintage focused)

-This is worse than Trinisphere
-This might be the thing that forces them to finally restrict Mishra's Workshop

 

[charlequin]

Stephen Menedian qutoes about Spyglass in the Ixalan review on So Many Insane Plays (Vintage focused)

-This is worse than Trinisphere
-This might be the thing that forces them to finally restrict Mishra's Workshop

Yeah, on spoil I correctly read that Spyglass would not block Moxen etc. like Revoker, but I missed that it would as a tradeoff let you block non-mana land abilities, like Bazaar, Library... or any fetchland. With that knowledge it's clear to me that this card is going to be insaneo bananacrackers in Vintage.

 

[Ashodin]

Sealed or draft tonight aww yeah

 

[bigkrev]

Yeah, on spoil I correctly read that Spyglass would not block Moxen etc. like Revoker, but I missed that it would as a tradeoff let you block non-mana land abilities, like Bazaar, Library... or any fetchland. With that knowledge it's clear to me that this card is going to be insaneo bananacrackers in Vintage.

Also, as mentioned, it's going to cause a lot of table misplay if you are used to being on Magic Online. You can't respond once the card is named!

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Yeah, on spoil I correctly read that Spyglass would not block Moxen etc. like Revoker, but I missed that it would as a tradeoff let you block non-mana land abilities, like Bazaar, Library... or any fetchland. With that knowledge it's clear to me that this card is going to be insaneo bananacrackers in Vintage.

Most importantly spyglass dodges mental misstep

 

[charlequin]

Most importantly spyglass dodges mental misstep

....Revoker also dodges Misstep though...?

 

[Santiako]

....Revoker also dodges Misstep though...?

Spyglass dodges triskelion!

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

....Revoker also dodges Misstep though...?

Revoker is blind

 

[Farside]

Just ordered an Inked playmat. I hope it comes out okay.

And picking up my Ixalan preoreders with some bundles today was very cool. My first block release has been great so far (even though I got destroyed at Prerelease).

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

I still don't get playmats, seems like such a hassle.

went 2-1 destroying my round 2 and 3 opponents by finally drawing well and curving out.

Giving a 3/3 hexproof +2/+2 and flying feels great. As does attacking with a 4/4 flying on turn 2.

My 4 prizepack were great. 3 cards I wanted in the blue and black flip land and a Hostage Taker, only dud was the blue mythic sorcery.

Perilous Voyage is incredible, Scry 2 too good.
Got nearly everything I needed for my merfolk modern deck as well.

 

[Farside]

I still don't get playmats, seems like such a hassle.

I thought they were stupid too until I went to pick up a card from a lacquered surface.

And thanks for posting that deck. I think about about posting them, but they're mostly shitty. Maybe when I finally build one that wins a game. lol

 

[kirblar]

Clearly you haven't played PTQs on tables w/ splinters before.

 

[charlequin]

Revoker is blind

Still don't know what this has to do with what you said the first time!

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

I thought they were stupid too until I went to pick up a card from a lacquered surface.

And thanks for posting that deck. I think about about posting them, but they're mostly shitty. Maybe when I finally build one that wins a game. lol

If you're having trouble competing with your decks you could suggest to start a sealed league with your playgroup. Meaning everyone starts with a certain amount of boosters and can add a fixed amount of boosters over time.

Clearly you haven't played PTQs on tables w/ splinters before.

I've never played a PTQ period.

Still don't know what this has to do with what you said the first time!

Idk why you had to compare it to revoker either. The comparison there is pithing needle which doesn't see a lot of play in vintage.

 

[Farside]

Clearly you haven't played PTQs on tables w/ splinters before.

I forgot about this. And most table are hastily made by people who have no business making tables.

If you're having trouble competing with your decks you could suggest to start a sealed league with your playgroup. Meaning everyone starts with a certain amount of boosters and can add a fixed amount of boosters over time.

Outside my LGS, I have two people I play with regularly. Maybe I'll give that a shot, though.

 

[aidan]

Good ol' PVDDR, putting himself at #3 on his personal list of all-time best MTG players: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/top-5-september-2017/

(Not that I disagree with him, but still...)

 

[Santiako]

Good ol' PVDDR, putting himself at #3 on his personal list of all-time best MTG players: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/top-5-september-2017/

(Not that I disagree with him, but still...)

Haha, looks arrogant, but he's right. That top 3 is kind of set in stone right now.

 

[Firemind]

Haha, looks arrogant, but he's right. That top 3 is kind of set in stone right now.

What? Paulo isn't top 3 material at all. He played mono red at PT HoD lol

 

[aidan]

What? Paulo isn't top 3 material at all. He played mono red at PT HoD lol

Yeah, he was real bad at PT Hour of Devastation.

 

[Firemind]

I have much more respect for players who build and play decks that are under the radar, like Shouta Yasooka, than players who play decks others have refined because they give them the highest win percentages.

 

[Boogiepop]

So, I was kind of thinking last night: in getting back into Magic/into Magic proper for the first time, the one thing that's throwing me for a loop is just how easy it is to get boned on the whole "no lands" vs "too many lands" thing. Like, obviously proper deck construction helps plenty, and it's not like it always happens... but it's certainly far from impossible.

Just out of curiosity... do other people find the lack of consistency on that matter to be something of a flaw of the design of the game, or no? Like, I almost feel like the game could be smoother/work better for my tastes if, someway or another, lands didn't have to get mixed in with your deck.

Now, obviously I realize at least that it's not something that could be easily fixed (assuming people even felt it should be "fixed", as I'd imagine such a change would be crazy controversial even if it was pulled off flawlessly and worked great), as the game is totally balanced around things as they are, and any such change would definitely alter the flow of things.

But still, it got me curious. I tried to think through on what could kind of function without trashing the game. Obviously Hearthstone has the setup it does precisely for this reason (with the class specific cards taking the role of colors), but I don't think that works 1:1. Like, even if you tried to say "well, make it so you have an ever-increasing all-color mana pool, then the players have to pick two colors for their deck" or something, it still doesn't feel right. The one thing I did think, though... is what about something like make a seperate land deck that you could tinker as you will, and you always get a single, seperate, additional draw from that each turn? From there, I'd assume you'd end up decreasing your normal deck size, and probably tweak starting hand size or something, and you'd in turn have a quicker paced game, probably.

I'd imagine it'd still end up breaking the game horribly for all kinds of reasons I'm not seeing, both because (as mentioned before) the game's not built around it, and also because I am an absolute rookie with no proper knowledge of the game to actually fully think it through. But I'd still be kind of interested to see how it plays.

Actually, are there any actually functional (aka not super easy to break) alternate rulesets that people have come up with to make the whole "land-screwed" "non-land-screwed" thing less of an issue?

(Sorry for the rambling, and if I overstated how much of an "issue" that needs to be "fixed" it is. But I just find it kind of an interesting topic.)

 

[Ashodin]

A LOT of people hate mana screw/mana flood.

But it's an essential part of deck building to think about how many lands you'll need.

 

[Imperfected]

The ways Lands work in Magic is almost certainly not something anyone would choose to design into the game if they were starting fresh from today. Unfortunately, it's been too deeply integrated into too many of the game's systems to honestly do anything about it today.

Part of me does think that digital clients should take advantage of the fact that shuffling is nearly zero-cost in them and just auto-shuffle until it provides the player with a hand that contains a minimum number of lands based on the ratio they have in their deck. That retains most of the meaningful complexity and deck-building considerations (because you still have to have enough land to meet the threshold, you can't use run a 3-land aggro deck), without all the needless frustrations.

 

[SigmasonicX]

It was a big enough problem that Mark Rosewater, the head designer of Magic, tried to solve it in Duel Masters, which allows you to play any card as a resource. It turns out the inconsistency of lands is hugely important to the game. He wrote an article about this, which I'll find in a bit.

EDIT: Mana Action

#6 – It Keeps Variance in the Game

Several years ago, I wrote a column called Kind Acts of Randomness where I explained how I believe randomness is an important part of making a game fun. (You can click the link to see me explain why.) Variance while connected to randomness is slightly different. Variance is about having different things happen each time you play. Games benefit from variance because players will grow tired of playing the exact same game over and over. Randomness helps create variance.

The mana system is one of the greatest sources of randomness and variance in the game. Let's explore why:

It mixes up when you can play spells – Game 1, you might drop lands on turns one, two, and three. Game 2, maybe you have a turn-one and turn-two drop, but your third land drop doesn't happen until turn five. The change between those two scenarios is merely drawing one land two turns later, but that little difference is a giant deal. Those two games play out very differently. In the first you get to cast your three-drop on turn three, waiting to cast your second two-drop on a later turn. In the second, you get a chance to cast your other two-drops hoping to stay alive until you get more land.

It greatly changes the value of the draw – It's late in the game. You have plenty of mana out but you've run out of cards. In scenario A, you draw an expensive bomb. In scenario B, you draw a land. The difference in the value of that card draw is huge. This creates tension and allows for very exciting game moments.

It restricts how many things you can do – Say you have three spells in your hand you can cast and three things on the battlefield you can activate. Because your mana is a resource, you don't have the ability to do everything, which means you have to pick and choose what to do. This allows even a static board to have variance because there is some flexibility in what the player will do.

The key here is that the mana system's inconsistency which is often pointed at as a bug is actually a feature. I often talk about how restrictions breed creativity but I usually talk about it in the context of design. It's also true in game play. One of the great joys of gaming is not having everything you need but finding a way to get your tasks accomplished with what you have. Players love to curse the "mana gods," but think about how many exciting games you've had because things didn't quite work out the way you were hoping and you had to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Magic's mana system isn't perfect but I've also never encountered another method that I'd say is superior. Heck I complained about getting screwed just today in this threat but dems the beats.

The ways Lands work in Magic is almost certainly not something anyone would choose to design into the game if they were starting fresh from today. Unfortunately, it's been too deeply integrated into too many of the game's systems to honestly do anything about it today.

Part of me does think that digital clients should take advantage of the fact that shuffling is nearly zero-cost in them and just auto-shuffle until it provides the player with a hand that contains a minimum number of lands based on the ratio they have in their deck. That retains most of the meaningful complexity and deck-building considerations (because you still have to have enough land to meet the threshold, you can't use run a 3-land aggro deck), without all the needless frustrations.

Hex a mtg copy cat with an actually decent client does this by eliminating the most resource heavy and resource scarce hands and also including top deck manipulation as a basic attribute.

 

[Angry Grimace]

What? Paulo isn't top 3 material at all. He played mono red at PT HoD lol

didn't he win

 

[DrArchon]

I always figured the inconsistency of lands was critical to making sure that every deck didn't just curve out perfectly every game, meaning that slower decks have more of a chance to thrive when there's a chance their opponent won't go 1 drop, 2 drop, 3 drop every game. I imagine there wouldn't be anything like a control deck in a game without lands, because aggressive players would never stumble and give control players breathing room to set up.

Then there's how the inconsistency helps less skilled players by making so that there's a chance higher skilled players lose regardless of skill. There're always going to be those games where a clearly worse player wins because of mana flood/screw, and making it so that less skilled players have a chance of winning is important for player retention.

 

[Angry Grimace]

I have much more respect for players who build and play decks that are under the radar, like Shouta Yasooka, than players who play decks others have refined because they give them the highest win percentages.

I have no respect for anyone that thinks they should try to make a living playing Magic

Meaning, that list is basically just Jon Finkel. And LSV for being the only person ever to get a super hot girlfriend by virtue of being good at Magic.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Oh shit GabyxLuis talk? Luis fucking killed it cleaning up his actbody the last couple years. Dude went from having no neck to looking tight in a suit.

 

[Justin]

LSV also doesn't play magic for a living. He is a game designer for direwolf, the makers of Eternal and the Elder Scrolls CCG. To bring it back around, Eternal actually does stack your mulligans to make sure you get at least minimum number of mana.

 

[Infinite Stars]

LSV also doesn't play magic for a living. He is a game designer for direwolf, the makers of Eternal and the Elder Scrolls CCG. To bring it back around, Eternal actually does stack your mulligans to make sure you get at least minimum number of mana.

Yeah, Eternal's system would be great in Arena for the casualification.

I'd like to see something similar Esque in Magic proper, but that's just way too iffy to do. Serum Powder Esque, but reveal all your lands? Idk

 

[Justin]

For clarity, in eternal, if you mulligan the system will keep randomly drawing hands until it draws one with 2-5 mana then give you that hand. You only get one mulligan.

 

[Farside]

With Ixalan releasing today, the Shadows and Battle blocks are now out for Standard, right?

 

[SigmasonicX]

With Ixalan releasing today, the Shadows and Battle blocks are now out for Standard, right?

Correct. No more Gideon tribal.

 

[Farside]

Correct. No more Gideon tribal.

Thanks.

 

[traveler]

I mean, he was my entry into competitive MTG, but I'm still so happy Ally of Zendikar is finally gone.

 

[Ashodin]

With Ixalan releasing today, the Shadows and Battle blocks are now out for Standard, right?

Fresh rotation smell!

 

[charlequin]

Idk why you had to compare it to revoker either.

i'm confused why anyone would ever think a discussion of a vintage playable artifact would involve mentioning pithing needle for any reason

Just out of curiosity... do other people find the lack of consistency on that matter to be something of a flaw of the design of the game, or no?

Like fifty games have set out to "fix" this problem and every one of them is a much worse game than Magic. Hearthstone had to eliminate almost all unlimited-choice mechanics and add tons of RNG into the cards at every level just to deal with the loss of variance you get from automatically ramping each turn.

Meaning, that list is basically just Jon Finkel. And LSV for being the only person ever to get a super hot girlfriend by virtue of being good at Magic.

Jon Finkel is smart enough to actually make his money playing poker and stocks and LSV presumably managed the latter by being twenty times funnier and more personable than everyone else around him so I think the contents of both lists is still zero.

(Also I hope no one is seriously arguing with PVDDR as #3... right?)

 

[The Technomancer]

Yeah the land system is flawed but it's a problem noone else has really cracked yet (well...games like Netrunner have very different resource systems)

EDIT: the "worse players can beat better players sometimes" is probably the most important function of variance for any game with more than niche aspirations

 

[charlequin]

EDIT: the "worse players can beat better players sometimes" is probably the most important function of variance for any game with more than niche aspirations

Honestly, even, phrasing it this way makes it sound worse than it is. Having innate variance also helps ensure that there's a smooth skill-comparison curve (i.e. getting a little bit better makes you a little more likely to beat your opponent, not a ton more) and that any given matchup can have a wide range of possible outcomes so metagames aren't deterministic RPS. Letting worse players sometimes win makes sure the game isn't absolutely miserable for 99% of players like, say, chess, but variance does more work than just that.

 

[bigkrev]

Good ol' PVDDR, putting himself at #3 on his personal list of all-time best MTG players: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/top-5-september-2017/

(Not that I disagree with him, but still...)

“Top 5 Olive Garden items”

 

[Dragoshi1]

Quick question;

During Commander, the official rule states "If a player has been dealt 21 points of combat damage by a particular Commander during the game, that player loses a game."

Am I reading this as if the enemy's commander themselves deal 21 damage or more, it's auto-loss for the one they attack if the damage makes it through?

Or, is it a grand total of 21+ damage dealt by assorted creatures, sans the commander?

Asking because someone at my LGS was OHKO'ing everyone, but I don't think their commander was in play. I just caught up on Commander format rules, so I recalled this just now.

 

[hermit7]

Quick question;

During Commander, the official rule states "If a player has been dealt 21 points of combat damage by a particular Commander during the game, that player loses a game."

Am I reading this as if the enemy's commander themselves deal 21 damage or more, it's auto-loss for the one they attack if the damage makes it through?

Or, is it a grand total of 21+ damage dealt by assorted creatures, sans the commander?

Asking because someone at my LGS was OHKO'ing everyone, but I don't think their commander was in play. I just caught up on Commander format rules, so I recalled this just now.

21 damage by the commander to each player.

Most decks do t go through the trouble. Voltron decks are the most likely to actually have it happen, but even that is unlikely because of the target it puts on the player.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

it also works when your own commander does 21 damage to you funnily enough and when your commander is turned face down for whatever reason it still does commander damage.

 

[Santiako]

What? Paulo isn't top 3 material at all. He played mono red at PT HoD lol

I really don't know if you're joking or not. I hope you are.

 

[Dragoshi1]

21 damage by the commander to each player.

Most decks do t go through the trouble. Voltron decks are the most likely to actually have it happen, but even that is unlikely because of the target it puts on the player.

Okay, I'll have to fact check with the people I played with, I was told in general 21+ is a OHKO, good thing I read the rules. Thanks for clarifying it more for me.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

i'm confused why anyone would ever think a discussion of a vintage playable artifact would involve mentioning pithing needle for any reason

We both know that one of the strengths of shops is that it completely strands Mental Misstep, that's what disqualifies pithing needle not that shops wouldn't run more than 4 of these types of effects.
Considering Mental Misstep is banned in any other format this conversation would actually not happen anywhere else.

Okay, I'll have to fact check with the people I played with, I was told in general 21+ is a OHKO, good thing I read the rules. Thanks for clarifying it more for me.

the damage is counted cumulative not single instance.

 

[The Technomancer]

Okay, I'll have to fact check with the people I played with, I was told in general 21+ is a OHKO, good thing I read the rules. Thanks for clarifying it more for me.

Its not just OHKO its also cumulative. a 7/7 Commander hitting for 21 damage over 3 turns is a loss