Support NeoGAF

[ultron87]

Hm. I don't know what decklists you're looking, but Thoughtseize is the lynchpin of Esper Control. The deck absolutely needs it, unless you're rolling with a budget list. Check out this site for what's being used in the major tourneys. http://www.mtgtop8.com/archetype?a=197&meta=52&f=ST

EDIT: Of course, the Grand Prix deck didn't run them...so...uh. Nah. You still want 'em. lol

I'd say the lynchpin is still the Azorius trio of Rev, Sphere, and Verdict. Thoughtseize is certainly a good reason to put black into the deck at all (along with the various removal options) but there are occasions and variations in the meta where you probably don't want 4 of them. Sometimes you're just facing a lot of decks where it isn't as good as it could be because they have such a high density of somewhat interchangeable threats.

Edit: Not that you were saying you need them as a four of.

 

[Firemind]

bu..bu..bu.. people told me thoughtseize is good in every matchup.

;p

 

[WanderingWind]

I'd say the lynchpin is still the Azorius trio of Rev, Sphere, and Verdict. Thoughtseize is certainly a good reason to put black into the deck at all (along with the various removal options) but there are occasions and variations in the meta where you probably don't want 4 of them. Sometimes you're just facing a lot of decks where it isn't as good as it could be because they have such a high density of somewhat interchangeable threats.

Hard to disagree with those 3 cards, but when we move to Esper instead of UW, right now it's because the great black removal suite, of which TS is definitely the most dangerous across the board. TS is the second most played card, next to Mutavault for a good reason.

Frankly, I'm with kirbs. The part of me moving to eternal formats is glad they reprinted TS, but the part of me that likes playing standard is annoyed the printed that card without anything to really counter it. Not that there is anything short of Mental Misstep and well...lol.

 

[OnPoint]

Hard to disagree with those 3 cards, but when we move to Esper instead of UW, right now it's because the great black removal suite, of which TS is definitely the most dangerous across the board. TS is the second most played card, next to Mutavault for a good reason.

Frankly, I'm with kirbs. The part of me moving to eternal formats is glad they reprinted TS, but the part of me that likes playing standard is annoyed the printed that card without anything to really counter it. Not that there is anything short of Mental Misstep and well...lol.

Would be cool if they put some sort of anti-Thoughtseize mechanic in the next block, similar to Traps in ZEN.

Maybe something like "If target opponent would look at your hand, put XX into play first"

 

[Firemind]

Reprint Brainstorm. :lol That plus fetches.

 

[WanderingWind]

Would be cool if they put some sort of anti-Thoughtseize mechanic in the next block, similar to Traps in ZEN.

Maybe something like "If target opponent would look at your hand, put XX into play first"

That would be amazing.

Reprint Brainstorm. :lol That plus fetches.

Also amazing!

 

[kirblar]

Reprint Brainstorm. :lol That plus fetches.

How much do you cost "Draw 3, pitch 2 cards from hand at random" at? UR Sorcery?

 

[Firemind]

nofunallowed.jpg

That wouldn't work as a response to Thoughtseize anyway.

 

[ultron87]

Would be cool if they put some sort of anti-Thoughtseize mechanic in the next block, similar to Traps in ZEN.

Maybe something like "If target opponent would look at your hand, put XX into play first"

This just gave me an idea of a mechanic where a card does something anytime it gets revealed. Think of the Courser combos!

Bolt of Omens 2R
Instant
Deal 3 damage to target creature or player.

Whenever Bolt of Omens is revealed from your hand or library you may pay R to have it deal 2 damage to target creature or player.

(It is extremely possible this kind of ability exists on some card already that I just don't know of.)

 

[Lucario]

just reprint brainstorm in Khans, immediately ban it in modern, and print no shuffle effects below three mana.

.... then reprint fetches in M16. You have three months to enjoy your brainstorms.

This just gave me an idea of a mechanic where a card does something anytime it gets revealed. Think of the Courser combos!

Bolt of Omens 2R
Instant
Deal 3 damage to target creature or player.

Whenever Bolt of Omens is revealed from your hand or library you may pay R to have it deal 2 damage to target creature or player.

(It is extremely possible this kind of ability exists on some card already that I just don't know of.)

I am a fan of this sort of mechanic.

Maybe change the first ability to "if a spell or ability an opponent controls causes ~ to be revealed from your hand or library", to prevent nonsense with cards like Cursed Scroll, but still.


Stop all the Clocks - 4WU
Instant
End the turn.
If a spell or ability an opponent controls causes Stop All The Clocks to be revealed from a private zone, you may pay W. If you do, target player cannot cast spells this turn.

Would probably need errata to make "looked at" and "revealed" share a term, but I think it's a workable design space.

 

[kirblar]

.... then reprint fetches in M16. You have three months to enjoy your brainstorms.

Would be disastrous in terms of time management.

 

[SigmasonicX]

One of the submissions for The Great Designer Search 2 had a Western world that involved a lot of "when this card is revealed" cards and a showdown mechanic where you and an opponent each revealed a card from their hand. Playtesting showed that while it was conceptually interesting, after a while it led to miserable gameplay.

 

[Lucario]

Would be disastrous in terms of time management.

There's also some inherent problems with not printing shuffle effects for an entire year, then flooding the format with fetches Standard would be a disaster.

One of the submissions for The Great Designer Search 2 had a Western world that involved a lot of "when this card is revealed" cards and a showdown mechanic where you and an opponent each revealed a card from their hand. Playtesting showed that while it was conceptually interesting, after a while it led to miserable gameplay.

Huh. Got a link? Sounds interesting.

I think I can see how constantly revealing cards would upset gameplay. Making it too much of a focus would cause players to constantly be writing shit down and keeping track of how many cards the opponent is holding, but not making it enough of a focus would just turn it into obnoxiously specific hate. It'd be difficult to find a good balance there.

 

[OnPoint]

nofunallowed.jpg

That wouldn't work as a response to Thoughtseize anyway.

Word it so it does, I don't care how. I'm thinking you'd take the Loxodon Smiter vs Liliana of the Veil interaction to a whole new level.

Player 1 plays Thoughtseize targeting Player 2.

Player 2 responds by revealing Failsafe Spider.

Mindtrap Spider enters the battlefield.

Player 1 picks card from Player 2's hand.

Player 2 discards selected card.

Failsafe Spider 2GW

Spider

Reach, Deathtouch
Failsafe (if a player would play an effect that looks
at your hand, put Failsafe Spider onto the battlefield
at instant speed)

2/3

 

[The Technomancer]

There's also some inherent problems with not printing shuffle effects for an entire year, then flooding the format with fetches Standard would be a disaster.



Huh. Got a link? Sounds interesting.

I think I can see how constantly revealing cards would upset gameplay. Making it too much of a focus would cause players to constantly be writing shit down and keeping track of how many cards the opponent is holding, but not making it enough of a focus would just turn it into obnoxiously specific hate. It'd be difficult to find a good balance there.

It reminds me of Clash, which was...mediocre

 

[kirblar]

It reminds me of Clash, which was...mediocre

"Reveal" mechanics suck because they suck tension out of the game.

 

[ultron87]

I am a fan of this sort of mechanic.

Maybe change the first ability to "if a spell or ability an opponent controls causes ~ to be revealed from your hand or library", to prevent nonsense with cards like Cursed Scroll, but still.

I'd at least try it with any revealing since I'd want it to be a mechanic you can build around instead of just hoping your opponent is playing cards that might trigger it. Also, I'd want to play it with Courser or Future Sight or any of the other play with the top card of your library revealed cards.

Would probably need errata to make "looked at" and "revealed" share a term, but I think it's a workable design space.

They probably wouldn't do that because right now "look at" means that just the one player sees the stuff in the hidden zone, while "revealed" means the whole table sees it.

One of the submissions for The Great Designer Search 2 had a Western world that involved a lot of "when this card is revealed" cards and a showdown mechanic where you and an opponent each revealed a card from their hand. Playtesting showed that while it was conceptually interesting, after a while it led to miserable gameplay.

Interesting. Wasn't around during that stuff. Are all those pitches still around somewhere or have they been swept under the veil of Wizards secrecy/website revisions?

"Reveal" mechanics suck because they suck tension out of the game.

That is definitely the thing I dislike about Courser. You and your opponent both totally know that you're still winning and/or still dead after your next draw.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Here's the main page for The Great Designer Search 2. Daniel Williams made the Western world. I'll edit in relevant pages in a bit.

EDIT: Williams' submission that had the reveal mechanics. I could have sworn the judges later went into more detail about how the playtesting went, so I'll look for that.
EDIT 2: It's probably in the context of critiquing the work of one of the finalists, saying that he or she was making similar mistakes. It's getting to be too much effort, so I'll stop looking.

 

[kirblar]

Here's the main page for The Great Designer Search 2. Daniel Williams made the Western world. I'll edit in relevant pages in a bit.

I got Top 7 scores, bombed the written part.

 

[SigmasonicX]

For people looking through GDS2 for the first time, there are a lot of things you should look out for. I know for sure that the following are in it, but there may be other hints of the future if you look for them:
The evolve mechanic came from here
Red looting was first proposed here, in the essay section
Gold tokens came from here

Also, the battalion mechanic came from the first GDS.

 

[BlewHedgehog]

Resolution: play Kitchen Finks in every deck until these two annoying Burn players go away. I've been loving modern so much, but it seems like whatever you're playing has an auto-loss somewhere in the room that you can't have accounted for with sideboard slots. It's such a bummer getting Lava Spiked on turn 1 when you're playing Dark Confidants. I even drew my one-of Sword of War and Peace in game two and was dead before equipping it.

 

["God's Beard!"]

So you came around on my thinking about the Doom Blades after all.

Of course, I am always right about all things so this is no surprise to me.

How good are you at picking draft cards, again?

But yeah, dropping the two barons from my mainboard opened up my removal suite a bit. I'm much more comfortable with ultimate price when I have two last breath instead of one.

Thanks. I have been looking through this.

Ultimate Price over Doom Blade is an interesting choice. Did you pick that because of the strength of mono-Black in Standard right now?

Given what you have, cost is obviously not a factor when you did not pick Mutavault. Instead you went for two more shocklands. How is that working out for you?

EDIT: Also Thoughtseize doesn't seem to be too commonly used in the maindeck of Esper control. Any idea why?

Not being able to hit mutavault sucks, but Doom Blade can be annoying against the black decks when they don't hit mutavaults. The 1-2 mana removal suite is really precious to a control player. I also have two last breaths that hit 90% of the important threats that doom blade would have over ultimate price.

Mutavault is just a bad card in a 3-color deck that needs all three colors on time. This ties into the reason most esper decks don't run many thoughtseizes. A lot of the decks you see are just UW with a light black splash. The mana base in most decks doesn't allow for a consistent early thoughtseize and they're worried about hurting themselves too much. On top of that, the game plan is to go into a long game where Thoughtseize gets worse.

I'd rather start out at 16 health and get to sequence my plays properly as a control player than run terrible cards like Azorius Charm and Divination. With 16 scry sources you don't top deck thoughtseize much when it's useless anyway. And when it's useful, it's REALLY useful.

Also, thoughtseize is a lot better when you run a transformative sideboard like mine and you change plans to cards that need to be played on time, like Fiendslayer Paladin.

You can run Mutavault in Esper if you're only splashing black for something like Blood Baron that comes down late.

 

[WanderingWind]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";120052270]How good are you at picking draft cards, again?

But yeah, dropping the two barons from my mainboard opened up my removal suite a bit. I'm much more comfortable with ultimate price when I have two last breath instead of one.

[/QUOTE]

Lol! True. But tell you what, I'll keep you up to snuff on your constructed, you keep me from drafting 5 color aggro decks in limited.

EDIT: Also, based on the quick research I did, very few Esper decks don't run TS. Those that aren't seem to be one of meta calls.

 

[SigmasonicX]

M15 is on Gatherer now.

 

[Lucario]

For people looking through GDS2 for the first time, there are a lot of things you should look out for. I know for sure that the following are in it, but there may be other hints of the future if you look for them:
The evolve mechanic came from here
Red looting was first proposed here, in the essay section
Gold tokens came from here

Also, the battalion mechanic came from the first GDS.

Here's the main page for The Great Designer Search 2. Daniel Williams made the Western world. I'll edit in relevant pages in a bit.

EDIT: Williams' submission that had the reveal mechanics. I could have sworn the judges later went into more detail about how the playtesting went, so I'll look for that.
EDIT 2: It's probably in the context of critiquing the work of one of the finalists, saying that he or she was making similar mistakes. It's getting to be too much effort, so I'll stop looking.

Thanks for the links, I can't believe I haven't read through these before. Definitely interesting stuff.

 

[GamerKingFaiz]

I don't know if you guys know this or not, but TCG Player is upgraded some shipments to their new TCG Player Direct shipping.

I've been waiting for this feature to try it out and it was a really nice surprise to see that they're testing it out with what seems like select retailers so far.

I'm not sure if this is new or not, but I was pleasantly surprised. They only did this for 1 of my 17 packages from that order, so I'm assuming it's only certain shops that have this availble to them.

 

[The Technomancer]

M15 is on Gatherer now.

The fact that this doesn't happen at the same time as the set is revealed fully bugs the shit out of me. Makes looking up specific cards for about a week a pain

 

[GamerKingFaiz]

The fact that this doesn't happen at the same time as the set is revealed fully bugs the shit out of me. Makes looking up specific cards for about a week a pain

I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels that way! I use gatherer A LOT and I even dream of cards being available as soon as they're spoiled, but I think that will stay a dream.

 

[Gaming Truth]

The fact that this doesn't happen at the same time as the set is revealed fully bugs the shit out of me. Makes looking up specific cards for about a week a pain

At least Mythic Spoiler pulled it all out.

 

[Zocano]

Looking over the full spoiler list... I might actually make a artifact-focused deck for standard. I mean it might be "okay" at best given the current pool of cards but maybe Khans could put out some nice artifacts to use as well.

 

[ironmang]

Prices of legacy staples seem to be having significant drops since the SCG modern IQ announcement. Thought that'd mean modern prices would be moving upwards but they seem to be about the same with some cards like fetches even dropping. If this game wasn't breaking sales records with each new fall set then I'd be starting to get a little worried about my collection about now lol.

 

[Finn of Ooo]

If a card says

1 black mana: sacrifice six of these creatures to search your deck for a demon type then put it on the battlefield.

Can my opponent cancel the demon getting put out or would he have to stop the creature ability that let me bring him in? Friend has a control deck I'm trying to strategize against.

 

[bigkrev]

If a card says

1 black mana: sacrifice six of these creatures to search your deck for a demon type then put it on the battlefield.

Can my opponent cancel the demon getting put out or would he have to stop the creature ability that let me bring him in? Friend has a control deck I'm trying to strategize against.

You cannot use a counterspell-type effect on this, as you are not "casting" a spell, you are using an effect to put a card into play. You would need to use something like Stifle or Voidslime to counter this ability.

 

[WanderingWind]

Duels is out on iOS.

And apparently, they pulled down VMA drafts and Worth is having a meltdown on Twitter.

 

[bigkrev]

Duels is out on iOS.

And apparently, they pulled down VMA drafts and Worth is having a meltdown on Twitter.

YESSSSS will be downloading it when I get home, and hope my iPad Mini can handle it. If it can't, I can wait a week for the steam version.

Also, you mean to say something was unclear/confusing/ill-advised about Magic Online?

 

[WanderingWind]

All I'm saying is that Worth is skating close to getting fired. You can't treat a customer base like this and stick around for too long.

EDIT: Correction, they will be pulled down on the 25th. Time to jump on those legacy playables.

 

[SigmasonicX]

I don't know who Worth is.

 

[bigkrev]

I don't know who Worth is.

He's the public face of MTGO at Wizards, and a former Pro Player

 

[ultron87]

So you can still buy the VM packs till Khans drops, you just can't draft them in events. What "fun".

 

[WanderingWind]

I don't know who Worth is.

Public face of the MTGO team. Gets a lot of shit, some of it deserved, most of it probably not. He's the sacrificial lamb when shit goes wrong with MTGO, but he's also the dude who is in charge of it, so....

 

[ultron87]

Does anyone want to make a DOTP OT in gaming? I made the last two but the DLC shenanigans in this year's version made me not care enough to do it.

 

[WanderingWind]

Does anyone want to make a DOTP OT in gaming? I made the last two but the DLC shenanigans in this year's version made me not care enough to do it.

Mine would be bitter and full of hate. I went on record saying VMA was the best thing they've done for customers in years. Now this shit.

Fuck WotC. Fuck Worth. Fuck Stainless.

 

[bigkrev]

Any OP should probably wait a week when it comes out on Xbox/PC, as that's probably when most people would care about it.

 

[OnPoint]

Duels is out on iOS.

And apparently, they pulled down VMA drafts and Worth is having a meltdown on Twitter.

Why did they pull them down?

 

[Lucario]

All I'm saying is that Worth is skating close to getting fired. You can't treat a customer base like this and stick around for too long.

EDIT: Correction, they will be pulled down on the 25th. Time to jump on those legacy playables.

So you can still buy the VM packs till Khans drops, you just can't draft them in events. What "fun".

What the fuck? They very clearly announced that events would run until Khans, even confirmed it on the forums.

And now Worth is feuding on twitter, and effectively blaming the playerbase for misunderstanding.

Now I have two weeks to use up my VMA packs and say goodbye to the format? Well this was pretty sudden.

 

[WanderingWind]

Why did they pull them down?

Again, I read it wrong. They're pulling them down on the 25th. Alison said they were staying up until Khans, then corrected herself a week later. Worth is taking it sort of personal that the official word was mismanaged. Supposedly, internally it was always the plan to have the drafts stop on the 25th with packs still being sold until October, but as that makes no goddamn sense, I'm going to assume somebody is freaking out about cards being affordable to the dirty masses.

 

[Lucario]

 

[ultron87]

Edit: You posted the pic already.

It doesn't explicitly say that events will continue till that time, just "a period of time". It only says that they'd stay on sale til Khans. Of course most sane people would expect that those two statements are linked in some capacity. So dumb.

 

[WanderingWind]

I know y'all have gotten on me for being negative, but fucking hell. I was just ranting about how awesome VMA was for the fans and the MTGO community. This is some next level fuckery. Like, EA level "go fuck yourself fans" horseshit.

 

[OnPoint]

Guess I should probably draft those packs I'm sitting on