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[kirblar]

Why were the multicolor Gods "botches" at 7 devotion instead of 6? They of course would have been more powerful but a lot of them still saw moderate play and one less devotion needed wouldn't have saved the ones obviously not made with competition in mind (see Kruphix).

I will agree that Theros was the best set of that block and the follow ups on Monstrous and Devotion left a lot to be desired. Considering devotion stratgies were/have been doing well with pretty only Theros set with relevant cards there is an argument that the strategies may have become even more oppressive if good Devotion cards were printed in the last two sets.

Because the gold gods generally didn't see play, and when they did see play, they were barely able to turn into creatures in their games. Keranos sees play as a 1x SB card, but never activates. Pharika sees play as a 1-x mirror-breaker of sorts. The only two that really saw any decent play in multiples was Ephara, because her ability is nutty, and Xenagos back when R/G monsters was a thing. But even then both started disappearing from standard lists last season,.

I don't think Devotion needed the follow-up, it was clearly saturated well enough in the first two sets. The problem was with how everything else was handled-f or instance, BOTG clearly did not have enough mechanics playing in it, and JIN had too many.

 

[Xis]

Have any of you ever run into packaging errors (like all-rare packs or whatever). I've been playing since Revised, and ran into my first one recently - I opened a Theros booster that had ten uncommons and three commons.

 

[WanderingWind]

Who's excited about some DTK prereleases on MTGO?

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Who's excited about some DTK prereleases on MTGO?

I'm excited to watch streamers spew value on pre-release events.

I'm saving my tickets for next weekend to play in events with a more reasonable prize structure.

 

[WanderingWind]

I'm excited to watch streamers spew value on pre-release events.

I'm saving my tickets for next weekend to play in events with a more reasonable prize structure.

Ha. Same here. But like always, I'll get at least on PR in. Because I don't respect myself or my time.

 

[Firemind]

Ha. Same here. But like always, I'll get at least on PR in. Because I don't respect myself or my time.

I've actually never seen you online as your avatar still shows up as blank. Are you sure your handle is WanderingWind?

 

[WanderingWind]

I've actually never seen you online as your avatar still shows up as blank. Are you sure your handle is WanderingWind?

Quite sure. If you're on, I'll hop on to prove it to ya.

 

[Firemind]

Ah, guess we just have conflicting schedules. I think I'll join a few queues later tonight. Maybe I'll see you then.

 

[SigmasonicX]

How First Response was an overwhelming pillar of internal Standard until they nerfed it. In particular, Siege Rhino getting trample and changing from a 3-mana 3/4 to a 4-mana 4/5 was to make it better against First Response.

Is it bad that I never even realized that First Response could trigger off of the pain lands until now?

Also, 1000th Tales from the Pit comic

 

[kirblar]

The most important change on that card isn't even the mana cost, it's the move from End Step to Next Upkeep. That means no more psuedo-hasty attackers off of it.

 

[MjFrancis]

How First Response was an overwhelming pillar of internal Standard until they nerfed it. In particular, Siege Rhino getting trample and changing from a 3-mana 3/4 to a 4-mana 4/5 was to make it better against First Response.

Is it bad that I never even realized that First Response could trigger off of the pain lands until now?

I drafted M15 a good half-dozen times and I didn't even remember First Response was a card, lol.

It's amazing to read these kind of insights into R&D. Hindsight being 20/20 I'd also rather they went ahead and reprinted Liliana of the Veil, even if it did mean Monoblack Devotion would continue to run wild for a bit. Much like First Response they could have printed an answer in Khans, like Dreadbore or some other two-mana "screw your planeswalker" card. Especially after finding out that Siege Rhino was printed as-is to combat a metagame that never materialized! So they didn't reprint Lili because they were afraid the meta would warp around her and instead they print Siege Rhino... which warps Standard AND Modern around it instead.

And Lili is $90 now with no sign of being reprinted in the next two sets. I can only hope to see a reprint in Return to Zendikar.

 

[Yeef]

And Lili is $90 now with no sign of being reprinted in the next two sets. I can only hope to see a reprint in Return to Zendikar.

It seems unlikely that Liliana will be in Battle for Zendikar. I don't think she has any real ties to the storyline there. She could be in whatever block follows that one though. I wonder where they landed on reprinting planeswalkers (and mythics in general) in non-supplementary, non-core sets. Up until now, it's not something they've done.

 

[charlequin]

When he talks about development there's a subtle disparaging theme to his comments - 'our job is to make it fun, their job is to get the numbers right'.

Not that I disagree with your thesis overall, but let's be fair. Rosewater tells people really often that Development's job isn't just to tweak numbers and that they're vitally important to making quality sets. I think the disconnect there is more that he underplays how often Development rightly goes against one of his design rules in order to make a set better.

Was Skullclamp busted?

Does a blue player shit in the woods? I passed a pack of Darksteel with a Skullclamp in it once and got a look of unmitigated disgust from the guy sitting next to me. I passed it because I'd already taken a foil Skullclamp out of the same pack.

I wish they hadn't decided that because Lorwyn was poorly received that they can't do lighthearted stuff anymore.

Lorwyn is like waaaaaay out on the edge on that, though. I think there's a spot for a set that's light-hearted overall without being so much so that cards are, like, people throwing fish at each other.

Rosewater's talked about doing another fairy-tale set and I get the sense it'd just cover both sides instead of completely polarizing it into Lorwyn and Shadowmoor.

I wonder where they landed on reprinting planeswalkers (and mythics in general) in non-supplementary, non-core sets. Up until now, it's not something they've done.

Maro asked one of kirblar's favorite "How would you guys feel about this thing that we're already committed to doing?" questions about it around when Tears would have been in design.

 

[kirblar]

Fairy Tales are super-dark, and I wonder if that's one of the next 4 blocks since it's come up on Blogatog a lot, hence the weird Doug answer.

edit: Triumph - Whenever a creature dies while blocked by or blocking cardname, or dies during a fight with this creature, put a +1+1 counter on cardname.

Is this wording workable?

 

[SigmasonicX]

Fairy Tales are super-dark, and I wonder if that's one of the next 4 blocks since it's come up on Blogatog a lot, hence the weird Doug answer.

edit: Triumph - Whenever a creature dies while blocked by or blocking cardname, or dies during a fight with this creature, put a +1+1 counter on cardname.

Is this wording workable?

Maybe "whenever a creature dies during a combat phase" would be better. I don't think it's worth trying to work in fighting.
EDIT: Misread. Isn't this just the Sengir Vampire ability except in odd corner cases? Whenever a creature dealt damage by Sengir Vampire this turn dies, put a +1/+1 counter on Sengir Vampire.

 

[ultron87]

edit: Triumph - Whenever a creature dies while blocked by or blocking cardname, or dies during a fight with this creature, put a +1+1 counter on cardname.

Is this wording workable?

Doesn't really work because creatures don't die during fights. They die after fights when state based actions are checked.

 

[kirblar]

Maybe "whenever a creature dies during a combat phase" would be better. I don't think it's worth trying to work in fighting.
EDIT: Misread. Isn't this just the Sengir Vampire ability except in odd corner cases? Whenever a creature dealt damage by Sengir Vampire this turn dies, put a +1/+1 counter on Sengir Vampire.

Mistyped Tribute as Triumph, after correcting, thought "hey, this might be a neat way to "fix" the sengir ability in a future set."

 

[The Technomancer]

Lorwyn is like waaaaaay out on the edge on that, though. I think there's a spot for a set that's light-hearted overall without being so much so that cards are, like, people throwing fish at each other.

Rosewater's talked about doing another fairy-tale set and I get the sense it'd just cover both sides instead of completely polarizing it into Lorwyn and Shadowmoor.

Honestly I could really see it working for an almost Arthurian or french fantasy set. Think Disney Sleeping Beauty, whimsical fairies and 6-year-old-nightmare-inducing hell dragons

 

[kirblar]

Twilight:Innistrad::Frozen:Fairy-Tale Land

When they see previously niche things going mainstream, it's a cue for them that the water's safe.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Fairy Tales are super-dark, and I wonder if that's one of the next 4 blocks since it's come up on Blogatog a lot, hence the weird Doug answer.

edit: Triumph - Whenever a creature dies while blocked by or blocking cardname, or dies during a fight with this creature, put a +1+1 counter on cardname.

Is this wording workable?

That gave me an idea for a mythic :3

Ruthless Hedonist 1BB
(pictured: fat guy with fangs reaching across a table and grabbing your food with a fork)
Legendary Creature - Vampire

2BB - Destroy target creature an opponent controls, then put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME

At the beginning of each upkeep, draw cards equal to the amount of +1/+1 counters on CARDNAME, then lose twice that much life.
At the beginning of each end step, put +1/+1 counters on CARDNAME equal to double the amount of life you lost this turn.

1/4

 

[Yeef]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";158747014]That gave me an idea for a mythic :3

Ruthless Hedonist 1BB
(pictured: fat guy with fangs reaching across a table and grabbing your food with a fork)
Legendary Creature - Vampire

2BB - Destroy target creature an opponent controls, then put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME

At the beginning of each upkeep, draw cards equal to the amount of +1/+1 counters on CARDNAME, then lose twice that much life.
At the beginning of each end step, put +1/+1 counters on CARDNAME equal to double the amount of life you lost this turn.

1/4[/QUOTE]Seems like a prime target for pacifism. Once he has a single counter on him, his controller will die by the 3rd upkeep.

Upkeep 1: draw a card, lose 2 life
   End step: 4 counters (total 5)
Upkeep 2: draw 5 cards, lose 10 life
   End step: 20 counters (total 25)
Upkeep 3: draw 25 cards, lose 50 life
   End step: 100 counters (total 125)

 

[acheron_xl]

Fairy Tales are super-dark, and I wonder if that's one of the next 4 blocks since it's come up on Blogatog a lot, hence the weird Doug answer.

edit: Triumph - Whenever a creature dies while blocked by or blocking cardname, or dies during a fight with this creature, put a +1+1 counter on cardname.

Is this wording workable?

I'd word it: "Whenever a creature that blocked, was blocked by, or fought CARDNAME dies this turn, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME"

But that's just me. There's no current use of 'fought', but it seemed elegant.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Tying into the earlier discussion

cj-hobbes asked: have you seen killing a goldfish's review on you? i agree with some things disagree with others. you should read it and weigh in. just curious what your opinion was about it.

I’m a spokesperson. I’ve always been up front and honest about that. It’s my job to get you all excited for new sets. And guess what, I am legitimately excited. I’ve spent numerous years working on the set in question (usually) and I’m eager for you all to experience it and tell me what you think about it. Listen to my podcast. I am genuinely an enthusiastic person.

Do I focus on the positives? Absolutely! But they are things I truly believe are great things about the product. I never lie. And after the fact, I always go back (mostly through my State of Design articles but often in other things as well) and give as honest a criticism as I can about our past work. Note that I truly cannot know how something has performed until after I see it used by the public.

Now, is all my writing somehow dishonest because of the relationship I have with Wizards? I don’t think so. I go far beyond my role to do things like talk about game design and communications and creativity. I don’t understand how all those topics are tainted by the fact that I work in the field. I’m not giving false game design advice.

The reason I’m about to write my 700th article and my 220th podcast and just did my 1000th comic and am close to answering 50,000 questions on my blog is because I enjoy the act of explaining what it is we do and interacting with all of you and I have a passion to communicate.

Writing all of that off because I work for Wizards seems unfair to me. A big reason I’m able to create two million words a year about Magic and game design and communication and creativity and lots of other topics is because all that communication is part of my job (okay, I might also use a little bit of my own time).

Let me end by saying that I am a big believer in the freedom of speech and that I strongly feel that everyone has the right to their own opinion and has the freedom to share that opinion with the world. Part of being a public figure is that people get to have opinions about me and be public with them. Not everyone’s going to be a big fan of me and that’s okay.

I want people to understand what I do and what my motivations are. I am about as transparent as a human can be. I only ask that before dismissing me that you give me a fair evaluation.

Thanks.

And specifically addressing Avacyn Restored

thanos-caliban asked: I agree that overall you're not biased towards the company line, but I'd like to see a little more admitting of mistakes after they happen. I went into innistrad's state of design thinking we were going to talk about what a disaster avr was and it didn't happen. I can't recall anyone at wizards admitting avr had such huge problems.

Avacyn Restored had a horrible limited game. I’ve owned up to that as much as possible.

The angel theme was much beloved. The demon theme was much beloved. Miracles were polarizing but overall very adored. Soulbond has some complexity issues but scored highly in our market research nonetheless.

Was it our best design work? No, but it was far from our worst. Plus, and somehow I keep getting criticized for saying this - it sold a lot of packs. A lot! And I’m not just talking in the first month based on the popularity of Innistrad. It sold well the entire time it was on sale.

That means that someone out there liked it. In fact, a lot of someones liked it. And I refuse to call something a total failure that made such a large amount of our players happy.

In the State of Design article (2012 version) where people keep quoting where I say good things about Avacyn Restored, they seem to skip over the whole section where I criticize it. I gave it three paragraphs of praise and then five paragraphs of criticism. Here’s the link, if you’d like to read it:

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/210

Avacyn Restored did things wrong - we dialed down removal too much, we pushed the loner them too hard, we pushed synergy a little too hard, one of our main mechanics was more complex than it should have been. And I’ve publicly owned up to all of that in the very link above.

But the other side should also own up to the fact that even if they didn’t like it, a lot of Magic players did. Magic is many games for many players and Avacyn Restored, while not good for limited and full of some things that experienced players didn’t like (miracles, I’m looking at you), tapped into something that many players very much did enjoy.

It might not have been the set for you, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the set for anyone else.

 

[WanderingWind]

That idea is a really hard one for MtG fans to grasp. I loved Avacyn and you can check my post history on that, because I loved it well before any sort of backlash. And sales show that I'm not even close to being alone on that one. At some point, you have to have the ability to understand that just because you and your buddies don't like something, that doesn't mean you still can't be in the minority.

But I mean, everybody can be sure that they'll never put limited play so far down the give a shit list in the future. I feel as if they learned that lesson from Avacyn.

 

[Angry Grimace]

3-2 at FNM with Temur Dragons and holy fuck is dragons.dec popular. Played four straight GR ramp decks with Thunderbreak and Stormbreath.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Rosewater wants to make Magic as successful as possible (read: sell lots of pack) for as long as possible. The decisions he (and WoTC) have made have absolutely furthered this goal. I personally loved Lorwyn, but it sold poorly. I would rather Wizards produce sets that I like forever than produce sets that I love and flame out.

Edit: the Goldfish article actually made me kind of angry. Lots of spurious logic in it. Rosewater isn't revising history by originally saying a set is good and then later saying it was bad; instead he starts by saying "you will love this new set" and then later may say "turns out you didn't love the new set, and I believe the reasons are X, Y, and Z"

I don't even agree with the part where he calls Roseanne disposable art!

Honestly, its just kingcobweb being kind of a dick for no reason. Maro doing his job isn't a valid reason for that criticism.

Edit: whoops wrong forum, its "kill reviews guy."

 

[keeblerdrow]

My local and "home" LGS has been changing how it plays Standard FNM in the last couple weeks. They have always traditionally run Standard at 6:30 with 40 minute rounds and then a Draft FNM at 10:30. Their usual turnout was 8-12 people for Standard, but some work on some of the employees, our store judge and a few regulars has really upped the attendance. We usually get between 20 and 35 people for Standard now. It's been making it so people have to drop in rounds 4 or 5 to go play Draft and people spoke up about it. Now, Standard is run with 4 rounds, no matter the turn out with cut to payouts on top 8. Tonight was 9-9-5-5-2-2-2-2 in packs as an example. Prior to this, you could accrue 1 lost in 5 or 6 rounds and still expect to make it into a decent amount of packs. But now, like last week, I went 3-1 and took 7th, purely because of the limited rounds. It's frustrating and I don't draft, so I don't even get the upside to these changes.

How far should loyalty go to a store that helped both me and my girlfriend get back into magic? I have a couple other stores in the area I can go to but haven't been because my girl likes the place we've been going and the people there. I think she may be on board with a move, but I've got some loyalty nags on my conscience about this still.

What do you guys think?

 

["God's Beard!"]

Honestly, its just kingcobweb being kind of a dick for no reason. Maro doing his job isn't a valid reason for that criticism.

Edit: whoops wrong forum, its "kill reviews guy."

kill reviews guy is always a dick for no reason.

 

[MjFrancis]

Went "undefeated" in draft tonight, though my first game was a Game 3 draw. I knew he had something cool because he was giddy as a six year old school girl when opening his packs, and when he dropped one Ojutai I thought that was it. I Sandblasted it and in his second main he dropped a second one. Lost that game. Dude pulled two Ojutais, what could I say. I felt accomplished to have not went 0-2 against that deck, and I will never, ever play against a draft deck like that again.

I want to ask a question about a "keepable" hand, too. I mostly thought it was right, I ended up losing this game, but it was close in the end. I mulled a no-land hand to six. I keep the following hand:

Dromaka Warrior, Arashin Foremost, Artful Maneuver, Wild Slash, Wild Slash, Mountain

I was running 17 lands, Boros Warriors splash black for Blood Chin Rager (+ Duress). I have five black sources of mana and the rest is evenly split between red and white (including a Scoured Barrens and a Wind-Scarred Crag). I asked my opponent afterwards and he called it a snap-keep. On the pro side, I kill his T2 deathtouch and his T3 morph, but I consider myself lucky that I drew a plains T3. Even luckier to have drawn a second one T5 for Arashin Foremost. I know it's a game of variance but I thought it would be fun to see what you guys would do with that hand. Go like me and pray your opponent doesn't have 3 toughness creatures to drop early on?

 

["God's Beard!"]

No way in hell do I keep that hand unless I'm on the draw and know my opponent is on mono 2-drops. And even then probably not.

 

[keeblerdrow]

I want to ask a question about a "keepable" hand, too. I mostly thought it was right, I ended up losing this game, but it was close in the end. I mulled a no-land hand to six. I keep the following hand:

Dromaka Warrior, Arashin Foremost, Artful Maneuver, Wild Slash, Wild Slash, Mountain

I would ship it back. The wild slashes keep you a float for a while, sure, but having white cards, especially a double white, with no white mana visible is a big risk to take and I'd rather have 6 cards than run my odds on picking up a turn 2 or 3 plains and then further a SECOND plains just to play what's in my hand. But I'm also cautious on keeps and aggressively mulligan in limited.

 

[Firemind]

Open Citadel Siege in sealed pool. Proceed to never draw it. Maybe it's karma for not putting it on the busted list. :lol

I was surprised how fast the format actually was. Damn Ojutai's Breath! I only got one chance to cast Opportunity. The other times I had to keep casting stuff and keep looting to not stay behind on board. Never mind put counters on Myth Realized. What a bad card. :lol

One of my opponents had a sick U/B deck that used Palace Familiars and Festering Goblins to exploit for value. Also, he had Ojutai. I think I'll try to draft that next time.

 

[Maledict]

I think Maro does have a point in that AR sold really well, for a long time, so a large group of people honestly did love the set. I think the weakness in his argument (and where Killinggoldfish had a point) comes from the fact that commercial success is not a complete indicator of success. Mark somewhat acknowledges that with his flaws of AR points, but he's only critiscing the things that everyone agrees were broken.

He's not, for example, willing to say 'Miracles were really popular but actually we have come to realise they are bad for the game and inherently lead to unfun situations'. His criticisms of the set are all really low hanging targets that won't cause any controversy. 'We should haves more of the cards that everyone really loves' isn't exactly going to set the world on fire as a discussion point.

Ultimately the customer is not always right, and just because something sold a lot doesn't mean it was the right thing to do in the long run or healthy for the game.

Edit: post script, when I playtested heavily for another CCG, for a long time the best selling set was also the worse designed / developed. Some of the things in it had to be banned straight out, others we spent several sets undoing with counter cards. The mechanics of that set were intrinsically unfun, but because lots of players liked having overpowered things that let them win they stayed popular. Just because it was popular doesn't mean it was good.

 

[Jhriad]

What do you guys think?

Hard for me to say. Probably would depend on how much I liked the folks that came into that store and the store personnel. If it were me I'd probably stay but then I don't really play Standard FNM much, I'm usually drafting.

 

[ironmang]

My local and "home" LGS has been changing how it plays Standard FNM in the last couple weeks. They have always traditionally run Standard at 6:30 with 40 minute rounds and then a Draft FNM at 10:30. Their usual turnout was 8-12 people for Standard, but some work on some of the employees, our store judge and a few regulars has really upped the attendance. We usually get between 20 and 35 people for Standard now. It's been making it so people have to drop in rounds 4 or 5 to go play Draft and people spoke up about it. Now, Standard is run with 4 rounds, no matter the turn out with cut to payouts on top 8. Tonight was 9-9-5-5-2-2-2-2 in packs as an example. Prior to this, you could accrue 1 lost in 5 or 6 rounds and still expect to make it into a decent amount of packs. But now, like last week, I went 3-1 and took 7th, purely because of the limited rounds. It's frustrating and I don't draft, so I don't even get the upside to these changes.

How far should loyalty go to a store that helped both me and my girlfriend get back into magic? I have a couple other stores in the area I can go to but haven't been because my girl likes the place we've been going and the people there. I think she may be on board with a move, but I've got some loyalty nags on my conscience about this still.

What do you guys think?

Why don't they fire draft pods as they fill? Or if they're going to stay at 4 rounds they should mimic mtgo and make the prize gap a little closer between 4-0 and 3-1.

 

[ultron87]

How far should loyalty go to a store that helped both me and my girlfriend get back into magic? I have a couple other stores in the area I can go to but haven't been because my girl likes the place we've been going and the people there. I think she may be on board with a move, but I've got some loyalty nags on my conscience about this still.

What do you guys think?

I ended up dumping the store I started playing at a few months ago. It bummed me out because I liked the people and employees there, but their prize structure and prices were gradually pulling people to better stores that clearly cared more about Magic. Standard and draft stopped even firing on a weekly basis. The final straw was when they literally stopped doing Magic events for a month to use their back room for some other thing. The transition has been a bummer, but this new store is probably better in the end since I can do 2 or 3 drafts in a night or play standard against more competitive players, even if I'm still warming up to the people.

For something as low stakes as FNM prizes I'd almost always go with a place and people I like than the place with the biggest possible EV. That said, I'd probably talk with your store about your concerns on the new prize structure. 4 rounds for 30 people seems not enough to cut to top 8 for prizes since that probably screws a few X-1s on tie breakers every night, which is the absolute worst part of tournament Magic. So more people than you are probably annoyed about it. I'd maybe float the idea of changing it to paying by record (X-0s get 9 packs, X-1s get __ etc) at the end of swiss instead of place, since that is much fairer. In my experience most players will certainly be for that change and there should be a algorithm for the store to be giving out the same number of packs in the end.

 

[charlequin]

Thinking about the problem with Rosewater's AVR position again after he wrote that, what finally occurred to me is that it's too reductive. In a vacuum, a lot of people like crazy angel spells, or Soulbond, or Miracles. There are a bunch of places where you can look at some little piece of the set and go "yeah, that's cool."

The problem is that holistically, AVR comes out as a set that's awful in limited, that made Standard significantly worse, that contributed miserable fun-sucking cards to Commander, that left Legacy dumber, and that only really had Timmy wow-factor to show for it in the other direction.

Basically, I don't have a fundamental problem with appealing to the masses like Jesse does, but I think actual good game design has to go ahead of abstract appeal (this is something Rosewater himself says often), and AVR just doesn't play that well.

He's not, for example, willing to say 'Miracles were really popular but actually we have come to realise they are bad for the game and inherently lead to unfun situations'.

Right. Miracles are popular because it's the lucksack mechanic, but it doesn't actually play well or lead to better games.

Edit: post script, when I playtested heavily for another CCG, for a long time the best selling set was also the worse designed / developed. Some of the things in it had to be banned straight out, others we spent several sets undoing with counter cards. The mechanics of that set were intrinsically unfun, but because lots of players liked having overpowered things that let them win they stayed popular. Just because it was popular doesn't mean it was good.

This is true for Magic as well, since this describes almost precisely why Mirrodin was the best-selling set until Zendikar came out, despite being horrifically broken and wrecking up tournament attendance. (Of course, I think Mirrodin still plays a lot better overall than AVR.)

 

[Angry Grimace]

I ended up dumping the store I started playing at a few months ago. It bummed me out because I liked the people and employees there, but their prize structure and prices were gradually pulling people to better stores that clearly cared more about Magic. Standard and draft stopped even firing on a weekly basis. The final straw was when they literally stopped doing Magic events for a month to use their back room for some other thing. The transition has been a bummer, but this new store is probably better in the end since I can do 2 or 3 drafts in a night or play standard against more competitive players, even if I'm still warming up to the people.

For something as low stakes as FNM prizes I'd almost always go with a place and people I like than the place with the biggest possible EV. That said, I'd probably talk with your store about your concerns on the new prize structure. 4 rounds for 30 people seems not enough to cut to top 8 for prizes since that probably screws a few X-1s on tie breakers every night, which is the absolute worst part of tournament Magic. So more people than you are probably annoyed about it. I'd maybe float the idea of changing it to paying by record (X-0s get 9 packs, X-1s get __ etc) at the end of swiss instead of place, since that is much fairer. In my experience most players will certainly be for that change and there should be a algorithm for the store to be giving out the same number of packs in the end.

I'm often disappointed at how unfriendly Magic players are as a lot.

 

[SigmasonicX]

On Jeopardy Day at Blogatog, this appeared

frogmite asked: Okay, Question Marks, is that something you would like to see?

Have you ever thought of doing a world which is to fairy tales what Innistrad was to horror (aka more based on the genre and story tropes)?

The fact that he brought this up unprompted is pretty suspicious.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Isn't that just Lorwyn with more humans?

 

[SigmasonicX]

Isn't that just Lorwyn with more humans?

Lorwyn was more Celtic mythology in particular, I believe. We didn't get references to any fairy tales--no slippers that make you dance forever, few witches, no rapist princes.

 

[kirblar]

On Jeopardy Day at Blogatog, this appeared


The fact that he brought this up unprompted is pretty suspicious.

 

[Firemind]

oh my god

i play a two colour deck and haven of the spirit dragon fucks me over twice.

meanwhile my opponent plays three colours and has access to all three colours on turn three in all three games.

lesson learned. don't play haven of the spirit dragon.

at least i opened a sarkhan unbroken to dry the tears. too bad my mana couldn't support it.

 

[charlequin]

Isn't that just Lorwyn with more humans?

No, it's Disney The Set. Or probably more like Disney's Into The Woods The Set, really.

EDIT: Speaking of Jeopardy! day, on the Prowess-For-Evergreen train:

chris-law asked: Blue/red.

If you could add a new creature keyword, what two colors would you put it into?

 

[ultron87]

Woo Prowess wooooooo. I love Prowess.

 

[red13th]

On Jeopardy Day at Blogatog, this appeared


The fact that he brought this up unprompted is pretty suspicious.

That wouls bw amazing! It should have an enchantment theme too imo.

 

[Firemind]

Woo Prowess wooooooo. I love Prowess.

Beats Replicate and Overload.

Edit: holy shit i opened another sarkhan unbroken what are the odds?

 

[Angry Grimace]

The funny part to me is that they keyworded Prowess instead of just making it an ability word, which I somewhat suspect is so they could say it doesn't appear in Dragons of Tarkir despite the fact that it clearly still does appear in DTK, just with text that consistently explains what it does and with slightly different effects (e.g. Prowess as an ability would would just signify that when you cast a non-creature spell a good thing happens - that would cover both how it worked in KTK where its always +1/+1 and in DTK in which the effect you get varies).

 

[Etrian Oddity]

Think my Sidisi Whip deck needs to be retired. Sidisi is fun but man, she's so frail.

Gonna change things up and go Abzan Whip. Seems like it'd be a more durable midrange archetype for my personal style.

 

[Xis]

The funny part to me is that they keyworded Prowess instead of just making it an ability word, which I somewhat suspect is so they could say it doesn't appear in Dragons of Tarkir despite the fact that it clearly still does appear in DTK, just with text that consistently explains what it does and with slightly different effects.

At the very least, they should have keyworded it as "prowess x".