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Magic: The Gathering |OT3| Enchantment Under the Siege

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Firemind

Member
pdOVjRm.png

Doing it.
 
What am I supposed to cut? :lol

Cloudfin Raptor seems like an easy cut. Other than that...uhhh...probably the tokens? Your mana also isn't good enough for Teferi/Cryptic and Kiki-Jiki. Believe it or not, I think you cut the triple-blue cards (am I seriously suggesting that you cut Cryptic - I must be crazy).
 

Firemind

Member
I cut most of the red cards in the end besides Kiki-Jiki and the durdly blue creatures. There's no way I'm cutting Cryptic Command and Teferi seems good with Master of Waves and to protect the combo. I only really need the third mountain in the late game anyway when I can protect the combo. Just won both games in round two with Teferi and the combo in play. Thank God my opponent conceded immediately, because I don't want to go into the motion of creating ten faerie tokens. :lol

edit: I should have shut my mouth. some tit really f6'd me in the second round, making me go through the combo twenty times because of exarch. :lol
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
lol I am so bad at Cube but these are awesome cards

I ended up with Grixis Durdle Suck.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Hint: Grixis Durdle is not viable. It did however, remind of my Cube on MTGO is fucking dumb - because Phantom events cost about three times more than they should.

I need you to think about this: a game of Magic with cards that do not actually exist (even in MTGO terms where there are no physical cards you own) costs 10 dollars. That's right, 10 US standard currency units to play a game with cards that have no value because you can't keep them.

The prize structure seems terrible too. Coming in second in a Single Elim does not provide enough Phantom Points to play another Cube - you have to actually win the 8-man.

You get a Vintage Masters pack but that cannot be converted into more Phantom Points. Instead you have to pay another ~5 dollars + sell your pack to reenter and hope you get at least another 4 PP to enter another Cube. This is called Insane Troll Economics.
 

Firemind

Member
Well, that was hilariously broken. My opponents had Sylvan Library, Mulldrifter, JTMS, Karn, resolved a reanimated Griselbrand, resolved a Sphinx's Revelation for five, and still lost. As LSV would have exclaimed: *yaaaaaawn*

I'm fairly sure it was a one-time only event though. Disregarding the combo pieces, it got so ridiculous at one point that Remand, Vendilion Clique and Venser wheeled. Now I'm no cube builder, but I'm pretty sure those cards aren't supposed to wheel! I'll take it though!
 
Hint: Grixis Durdle is not viable. It did however, remind of my Cube on MTGO is fucking dumb - because Phantom events cost about three times more than they should.

I need you to think about this: a game of Magic with cards that do not actually exist (even in MTGO terms where there are no physical cards you own) costs 10 dollars. That's right, 10 US standard currency units to play a game with cards that have no value because you can't keep them.

The prize structure seems terrible too. Coming in second in a Single Elim does not provide enough Phantom Points to play another Cube - you have to actually win the 8-man.

You get a Vintage Masters pack but that cannot be converted into more Phantom Points. Instead you have to pay another ~5 dollars + sell your pack to reenter and hope you get at least another 4 PP to enter another Cube. This is called Insane Troll Economics.

Swiss Cube, on the other hand, is remarkably good EV (in terms of getting drafts). I literally haven't put money into Cube drafts since they moved to this current structure (I think it was almost 2 years ago now). 2-1 gets you enough PP to draft again, and 3-0 gets you basically 1.5 drafts. Going "infinite" in Swiss Cube is actually quite easy to attain as long as you're in the upper 50% of the Swiss Queue (which honestly isn't that hard to do).
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Swiss Cube, on the other hand, is remarkably good EV (in terms of getting drafts). I literally haven't put money into Cube drafts since they moved to this current structure (I think it was almost 2 years ago now). 2-1 gets you enough PP to draft again, and 3-0 gets you basically 1.5 drafts. Going "infinite" in Swiss Cube is actually quite easy to attain as long as you're in the upper 50% of the Swiss Queue (which honestly isn't that hard to do).

I'll give it a try, but the last time I looked at my limited rating I lol'd pretty good.
 

Firemind

Member
Dream big and 8-4 breh. And who knows? Those VMA packs light lead you to a black lotus! One time I opened MMA packs because they're worth nothing and pulled out a goyf. True story.

but if you're bad at limited then swiss might have better prospects yeah.
 
Dream big and 8-4 breh. And who knows? Those VMA packs light lead you to a black lotus! One time I opened MMA packs because they're worth nothing and pulled out a goyf. True story.

but if you're bad at limited then swiss might have better prospects yeah.

Cube exercises a different part of the brain and attracts different types of players than regular draft. While it's certainly valid to jump in a cube with a "draft whatever wins" strategy, it's also just a place to play with sweet cards and try to build sweet decks. That's why I love it - you don't have to be super competitive about it to have fun and do well.

In other words, there are plenty of valid reasons to play Cube Swiss other than being "bad at limited" ;). The forgiving prize structure lets you stretch your legs and just enjoy it.
 
That South Park episode was terrible. Pretty disappointing. They could've substituted basically any board or card (or even video) game in for Magic and the episode would've been completely the same.
 

Yeef

Member
That South Park episode was terrible. Pretty disappointing. They could've substituted basically any board or card (or even video) game in for Magic and the episode would've been completely the same.
Nope. You'd lose the Cock Magic pun subplot, which was the best part of the episode.

As a Magic player, sure, it didn't have much to do with actual MTG, but it was a hilarious episode.
 
Looking through the South Park topic reminded me of something odd that I also noticed in other Magic topics here. We know for a fact that Magic is more popular now than it has ever been, but it doesn't feel like that at all on this board. In the South Park topic and others like the one for the movie announcement and the topic about the Alpha booster pack with great pulls, a large number of people were those who played Magic years ago and comment that they're surprised that it's still popular and such. Why is there this discrepancy? Is it really the case that despite all of the teenagers that NeoGAF draws, there are somehow still more old players of Magic here than current players?
 

kirblar

Member
Looking through the South Park topic reminded me of something odd that I also noticed in other Magic topics here. We know for a fact that Magic is more popular now than it has ever been, but it doesn't feel like that at all on this board. In the South Park topic and others like the one for the movie announcement and the topic about the Alpha booster pack with great pulls, a large number of people were those who played Magic years ago and comment that they're surprised that it's still popular and such. Why is there this discrepancy? Is it really the case that despite all of the teenagers that NeoGAF draws, there are somehow still more old players of Magic here than current players?
Because they're not in the same social circles anymore. It's why they made all the changes to emphasize LGSes over the past 7 years.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Dream big and 8-4 breh. And who knows? Those VMA packs light lead you to a black lotus! One time I opened MMA packs because they're worth nothing and pulled out a goyf. True story.

but if you're bad at limited then swiss might have better prospects yeah.

Swiss sucks too because you have to play with your miserable poorly drafted deck for 3 hours. I'm going to just not play limited anymore. Its just too hard.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";139643422]Once I have good internet I'll record some drafts and teach you ^_^

Until then no MTGO for me.[/QUOTE]

Not interested. That shit is for suckers with more money than sense.
 

ElyrionX

Member
Hint: Grixis Durdle is not viable. It did however, remind of my Cube on MTGO is fucking dumb - because Phantom events cost about three times more than they should.

I need you to think about this: a game of Magic with cards that do not actually exist (even in MTGO terms where there are no physical cards you own) costs 10 dollars. That's right, 10 US standard currency units to play a game with cards that have no value because you can't keep them.

The prize structure seems terrible too. Coming in second in a Single Elim does not provide enough Phantom Points to play another Cube - you have to actually win the 8-man.

You get a Vintage Masters pack but that cannot be converted into more Phantom Points. Instead you have to pay another ~5 dollars + sell your pack to reenter and hope you get at least another 4 PP to enter another Cube. This is called Insane Troll Economics.

This is something I don't understand as well.

In fact, I don't even understand having to pay for daily events on MTGO. I mean FNM type events are necessary at LGSes because shops need the revenue but I don't see why this is the case for MTGO. They should just reduce or cut the prizes completely and make it free to play. It's not as if people aren't already spending tonnes of money on products and singles. It's quite ridiculous really.
 

Kerrinck

Member
This is something I don't understand as well.

In fact, I don't even understand having to pay for daily events on MTGO. I mean FNM type events are necessary at LGSes because shops need the revenue but I don't see why this is the case for MTGO. They should just reduce or cut the prizes completely and make it free to play. It's not as if people aren't already spending tonnes of money on products and singles. It's quite ridiculous really.
If there are no prizes, there is no incentive to actually play well and with real decks. It'd just be the casual room but in daily form.
I'm sure most people would have no reason to spend money on singles without any kind of tangible reward. I'd probalby stop playing myself so hopefully it never goes free to play.
 

Firemind

Member
This is something I don't understand as well.

In fact, I don't even understand having to pay for daily events on MTGO. I mean FNM type events are necessary at LGSes because shops need the revenue but I don't see why this is the case for MTGO. They should just reduce or cut the prizes completely and make it free to play. It's not as if people aren't already spending tonnes of money on products and singles. It's quite ridiculous really.
The entree fee is for the prize structure. As with LGS stores, they're not going to hand out prizes for free. I agree some of the entry fees are a bit ridiculous, like cube phantom events and VMA limited, but prizes are necessary for a lot of people as a way to compete. If you want to play without prizes, there's a way for you to do that, with the exception of limited.

Personally, I rationalize it like going to a theatre. They charge about $10 for a 1.5-3 hour long film. MTGO cubes charge $10 for 1-3 hours of entertainment with a shot at prizes. Even with zero wins, both 8-4 and swiss cube drafts award phantom points, which is nice even if it's minimal. Last night I received 3 VMA packs and 18 phantom points for first prize, which is okay. VMA packs go for 6.67 tix (20 tix). KTK packs go for 3.14 tix now, so winning an 8-4 gets you 25 tix. Minus three packs since you need it to draft again, it's 15.7. Unlike cube, KTK has EV though. One pack has about 3.38 EV so three packs are about 10 tix worth of cards. In the end, it's more profitable to do KTK drafts assuming a 50% win percentage, but cube is just so much fun!
 

ElyrionX

Member
If there are no prizes, there is no incentive to actually play well and with real decks. It'd just be the casual room but in daily form.
I'm sure most people would have no reason to spend money on singles without any kind of tangible reward. I'd probalby stop playing myself so hopefully it never goes free to play.

The entree fee is for the prize structure. As with LGS stores, they're not going to hand out prizes for free. I agree some of the entry fees are a bit ridiculous, like cube phantom events and VMA limited, but prizes are necessary for a lot of people as a way to compete. If you want to play without prizes, there's a way for you to do that, with the exception of limited.

Personally, I rationalize it like going to a theatre. They charge about $10 for a 1.5-3 hour long film. MTGO cubes charge $10 for 1-3 hours of entertainment with a shot at prizes. Even with zero wins, both 8-4 and swiss cube drafts award phantom points, which is nice even if it's minimal. Last night I received 3 VMA packs and 18 phantom points for first prize, which is okay. VMA packs go for 6.67 tix (20 tix). KTK packs go for 3.14 tix now, so winning an 8-4 gets you 25 tix. Minus three packs since you need it to draft again, it's 15.7. Unlike cube, KTK has EV though. One pack has about 3.38 EV so three packs are about 10 tix worth of cards. In the end, it's more profitable to do KTK drafts assuming a 50% win percentage, but cube is just so much fun!

I get why there is an entry fee. I'm saying that there doesn't need to be one if they just get rid of the prize structure. They already have a rating system in place. When there's a rating system, people *will* play competitively and seriously enough to climb the ranks. Just look at the countless number of competitive games out there that are played for free. There's no entry fee to play a game of Starcraft 2 (beyond the cost of the game itself) or Dota 2. And yet the games are fiercely competitive because people care about their rankings. It's just ridiculous that so many people actually think that a monetary-based tournament structure is required to find serious and competitive games. The only reason the current structure exists is because Wizards make a shitton of money off it and people are so used to it that they don't realize the system is a giant ripoff or they have too much money to care.
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
But DOTA is free and you pay for Starcraft once. It's vastly different than Magic, where a competitive deck (assuming you're not CFB or SCG affiliated) can cost thousands of dollars.
 

Firemind

Member
Rankings are meaningless in Magic. In v3 and prior, the client showed ratings which, unless I missed something, did precisely nothing. Now they abolished ratings in real life Magic, so it's even more irrelevant.

What the current structure for competitive play entails is they want you to play more and more events to earn QPs and qualify for the seasonal championship. That's how they make the bulk of their profits.

They can change it to free-to-play like Hearthstone, but it's Hasbro.
 

Exokell

Banned
Built a kiki jiki deck on mtgo legacy swiss. Went 3-0 with just deciever in my deck, was pissed I passed restoration angel. Awesome deck. Had much fun.
 

Kerrinck

Member
Rankings are meaningless in Magic. In v3 and prior, the client showed ratings which, unless I missed something, did precisely nothing. Now they abolished ratings in real life Magic, so it's even more irrelevant.

What the current structure for competitive play entails is they want you to play more and more events to earn QPs and qualify for the seasonal championship. That's how they make the bulk of their profits.

They can change it to free-to-play like Hearthstone, but it's Hasbro.
Ranking only served for sore losers that always tried to humiliate the opponent saying they were a crappy 1600 so yeah, totally useless.
 
I just went T5 Grave Titan -> T6 Hornet Queen -> T7 Craterhoof Behemoth. Wall of Roots blocking like a champ, and Murderous Cut doing work to get me there since I found the Queen off of a Tracker's Instincts.

I love cube.

EDIT: Game two, my opponent curves Kami of Ancient Law into Courser of Kruphix into Obstinate Baloth. I played Llanowar Elves, Overgrown Battlement, Sylvan Caryatid, then Wall of Roots and Hornet Queen together on Turn 4. Turn five Liliana Vess, go fetch Craterhoof. Welcome to Cube, buddy.

EDIT2: I guess I got to go to school in the second match. I had to mulligan a hand of all lands in the first game, and a Thoughtseize stripped my only threat from the six-card hand and I drew air for the rest of the match. Game two I had a sick hand that could spit out a T3 Grave Titan, but got hit with T1 Thoughtseize into T2 Hymn to Tourach, and despite managing to come back and build a superior board, my opponent had an Ashiok go unchecked for long enough to mill me out thanks to him targeting me with Deep Analysis and Compulsive Researches on the final turn.

Mini-rant: Generally I think Thoughtseize is an extremely poor choice for a Cube deck, because you can only put one in your deck and it gets exponentially worse as the game goes long. The exception is reanimator; I'll sometimes play it in that deck because in a pinch it can also discard a fatty from my hand. Of course, when you have it in your opener and you get to strip your opponent's Animate Dead that almost certainly would have killed you, it looks really good.
minor salt

EDIT3: Match three was the battle of busted ramp decks. In game one, I pushed out threats faster than he did and won fairly easily with an early Grave Titan followed by Liliana finding a Craterhoof Behemoth. In game two, he ramped like crazy with piles of Rampant Growths, Searches, etc, and ended up landing Mirari's Wake followed by Avenger of Zendikar and a Polukranos. Onto game three, where I finally got the busted start I was hoping for when I drafted the deck. T1 Entomb, T2 Animate Dead on Grave Titan. Easy win in game three.

Two straight 2-1s. I had another one last night that was a really boring UB Tempo Deck that beat the deck it was supposed to beat, then went 1-1 against bad matchups (I lost to the Mirran Crusader deck, but managed to beat the Mother of Runes White Weenie deck).

EDIT4: The deck: http://i.imgur.com/p9XNm4A.png
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
It that's real it seems kind of bad. I mean, Vraska can just destroy any non-land permanent and she costs 5 CMC.

The entree fee is for the prize structure. As with LGS stores, they're not going to hand out prizes for free. I agree some of the entry fees are a bit ridiculous, like cube phantom events and VMA limited, but prizes are necessary for a lot of people as a way to compete. If you want to play without prizes, there's a way for you to do that, with the exception of limited.

Personally, I rationalize it like going to a theatre. They charge about $10 for a 1.5-3 hour long film. MTGO cubes charge $10 for 1-3 hours of entertainment with a shot at prizes. Even with zero wins, both 8-4 and swiss cube drafts award phantom points, which is nice even if it's minimal. Last night I received 3 VMA packs and 18 phantom points for first prize, which is okay. VMA packs go for 6.67 tix (20 tix). KTK packs go for 3.14 tix now, so winning an 8-4 gets you 25 tix. Minus three packs since you need it to draft again, it's 15.7. Unlike cube, KTK has EV though. One pack has about 3.38 EV so three packs are about 10 tix worth of cards. In the end, it's more profitable to do KTK drafts assuming a 50% win percentage, but cube is just so much fun!

Yeah, but I can play in a KTK draft for less money period and I actually have a lot of packs online since I win them in constructed.
 
The convincing arguments I've seen about that being fake are:
1. The placement of the colons in the loyalty abilities is off. Compare to Chandra, Pyromaster:
Image.ashx

2. Also looking at Chandra, Pyromaster, note how her first ability uses the full name of the card, and other planeswalker cards shorten it only after the first use. In contrast, this fake spoiler uses the shortened name from the start.
3. The second ability causes huge rules issues, and they would almost surely have reminder text to explain them. There is also the issue that it doesn't specify non-token; I don't even know what happens when you turn a token face-down. Ixidron is already confusing, and that doesn't affect tokens.
Image.ashx


And also, for the record, that art of Ugin has already been available.
635518366824275857.jpg
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The convincing arguments I've seen about that being fake are:
1. The placement of the colons in the loyalty ability is off. Compare to Chandra, Pyromaster:
Image.ashx

2. Also looking at Chandra, Pyromaster, note how her first ability uses the full name of the card before shortening it later. In contrast, this fake spoiler uses the shortened name from the start.
3. The second ability causes huge rules issues, and they would almost surely have reminder text to explain them. There is also the issue that it doesn't specify non-token; I don't even know what happens when you turn a token face-down. Ixidron is already confusing, and that doesn't effect tokens.
Image.ashx


And also, for the record, that art of Ugin has already been available.

I mean, the art on Sarkhan was available before it came out. I'm hoping its not real because it a) not good for 9 CMC and b) is too boring for a Planeswalker. And they would put reminder text on "put [anything] face down]" because people who off the tops of their heads understand that rule are probably in the minority.

Its on a design level similar to the original Lorwyn-walkers where the things they did were just super simple easy to understand stuff. Most PW these days have lots of text and splashy abilities.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Yeah ugin is horrible for 9 mana. Garruk at 7 is much more powerful.

Not to mention Karn at 7 colorless being dramatically better is the biggest issue to me.

For 9 CMC, the plus would have to be like dealing 5 or more damage - the concept that a 9 mana card couldn't deal with Courser of Kruphix is pretty absurd.

Really, whoever mocked this up just stapled on the only 2 abilities we know to exist on colorless cards - Ghostfire and Morph, although they couldn't print "turn thing face down" without reminder text anyways.
 
Man I love legacy. My opponent casts a Null Rod on me when I have two Sensei's Divining Tops out.

In response, spin Top.
In response to the spin, crack Top.
In response, spin Top.
In response to the spin, crack top.

I draw a card and put Top on top. In response to the spin, fetch. Look at top three, draw a card then put Top on top. In response to the spin, fetch. I reorder the top three cards of my library. Null Rod resolves.



Also, I'm testing Tom Ross' Infect list, and this is an opening hand:


  1. Tropical Island
  2. Glistener Elf
  3. Daze
  4. Gitaxian Probe
  5. Force of Will
  6. Invigorate
  7. Berserk

Turn two kill with double counter backup? I'll take it.
 

Firemind

Member
I have to say, the prospect of turning Emrakul into a morph creature is hilarious. Too bad most people try to sneak it in on t3-5. Plus it's banned in commander.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";139705129]Man I love legacy. My opponent casts a Null Rod on me when I have two Sensei's Divining Tops out.

In response, spin Top.
In response to the spin, crack Top.
In response, spin Top.
In response to the spin, crack top.

I draw a card and put Top on top. In response to the spin, fetch. Look at top three, draw a card then put Top on top. In response to the spin, fetch. I reorder the top three cards of my library. Null Rod resolves.



Also, I'm testing Tom Ross' Infect list, and this is an opening hand:


  1. Tropical Island
  2. Glistener Elf
  3. Daze
  4. Gitaxian Probe
  5. Force of Will
  6. Invigorate
  7. Berserk

Turn two kill with double counter backup? I'll take it.[/QUOTE]

Legacy, the cute version of Vintage. We don't have that problem since we just Mental Misstep your Top in the first place :smug:
 
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