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[kirblar]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";174445038]Meh. I'd rather have the most consistent gameplay than avoid buffing certain strategies.[/QUOTE]
Scrylands already are adding a metric ton of consistency right now. The issue is that curve-out consistency gets you into the VS System problem territory.

 

[blackflag]

I really hate getting back into standard during the double core-set period/right before a new block. Still just being cautious cause I don't want to invest in a bunch of decks that, from the looks of it, not be around in a few weeks.

I would love to play U/R Artifact but it looks like several of the core pieces just won't be here (Shrapnel Blast, Ornithopter, Ensoul) so I'm just waiting for BFZ to try my yearly "buy back in to standard and play for 0 weeks and then never play again" routine. I should really finish up my cube.

Actually what I should really do is give Cockatrice a spin. FF14 has me on a leash right now, though. Hardest part of playing magic consistently for me is just that I give video games more of my time and I only ever play cube draft with local friends nowadays.

This is the predicament I'm in. I just came back and want to play standard but I've just been drafting. After looking more though, I'm going to get and play R/U Tutelage. It's really cheap except for Jace and that isn't rotating.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Scrylands already are adding a metric ton of consistency right now. The issue is that curve-out consistency gets you into the VS System problem territory.

I'm not convinced. You and Ari Lax are the only people I've seen calling Scry Mulligans a net negative, and I'm not seeing it.

 

[kirblar]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";174448638]I'm not convinced. You and Ari Lax are the only people I've seen calling Scry Mulligans a net negative, and I'm not seeing it.[/QUOTE]
Do you know about the VS system history and why the game eventually cratered?

 

[blackflag]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";174448638]I'm not convinced. You and Ari Lax are the only people I've seen calling Scry Mulligans a net negative, and I'm not seeing it.[/QUOTE]

Yeah there's no way I can be convinced it's a net negative for aggressive decks after watching the PT.

Edit: misread; I actually agree with the others. It provides an advantage for those decks.

 

[A Serious Man]

Drafted a pretty boss W/R deck, it had all the best toys. Freeblades and Enshrouding Mists were falling to me pretty late in the packs, the colors were wide open and it was easily the best Origins deck I've drafted so far. So of course my internet goes down halfway through the second match.

I think it's a sign to stay away from Origins limited.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Don't get me wrong, I do agree that it helps aggro decks. I just don't think it's a detriment to the game.

Do you know about the VS system history and why the game eventually cratered?

Yeah, I think I read about it in Brian Tinsman's book.

 

[The Technomancer]

Do you know about the VS system history and why the game eventually cratered?

I do not and I'm curious. Is there a good summary anywhere?

 

[Yeef]

I do not and I'm curious. Is there a good summary anywhere?

If I remember correctly, VS. has a mana system similar to Duel Masters where you can basically play any card face down as a land. Since you never missed land drops, it made curving out much easier and made decks much more consistent, which meant each game played more or less the same.

 

[kirblar]

I do not and I'm curious. Is there a good summary anywhere?

tldr: Games with guaranteed resource systems have an incredibly big problem with "curve out" decks being the absolute best thing you can do at any given point (in addition to games playing out more similarly/better player winning most of the time)

This is why HS has introduced so much RNG- the absence of RNG in the resource system creates an enormous amount of pressure in the game to go 1-2-3-4-5 and hit all your drops. Traditional control doesn't work because of it.

In MTG's case- the new mulligan hugely improves the starting hands of decks with very linear starts - 0 cost artifact into Ensoul, 1 Drop, 2 Drop, 3 Drop aggro decks, Mana Dork into 3cc Mana Dork into Fattie, etc. This creates an enormous amount of forward pressure in the game and really hurts midrange/reactive/value strategies because those decks rely in part on the linear decks not just nutdrawing every game.

I think it was Ethan Fleischer who asked "At what point is a well-tuned Aggro list no longer discernable from a combo deck?" - that's the big danger- linearity being rewarded above all else.

 

[MjFrancis]

This is the predicament I'm in. I just came back and want to play standard but I've just been drafting. After looking more though, I'm going to get and play R/U Tutelage. It's really cheap except for Jace and that isn't rotating.

I've felt that about Standard since I've gotten back in for the Dragon's Maze prerelease. I have Abzan Aggro if I want to play Standard, but it hasn't been updated since Fate Reforged and I probably won't do much more with it anyways. The cards cost an awful lot for stuff that rotates so fast.

On the contrary, I'd love to be able to figure out a way to play Junk Rites or the Aristocrats from Innistrad/Return to Ravnica Standard. Those are both fun decks that cost under $200 now, even with 3 full playsets of shocklands in each deck. During Standard they seemed to cost more like $500-$750 since I didn't have anything to start out with.

 

["God's Beard!"]

I just think people are overstating just how much the new mulligan rule skews towards benefiting aggro, and how much that it strengthens the archetype in general. I would honestly be shocked if scry mulligans increased the mono-red deck's win rate by more than 5% overall. Bottoming the top card off a 6-card hand is not some insane power level jump.

 

[charlequin]

Scrylands already are adding a metric ton of consistency right now. The issue is that curve-out consistency gets you into the VS System problem territory.

This whole conversation is just funny to me in contrast to all the ones I've had to field since Duels Origins launched about how Magic would be so much better if you just got free land drops like Hearthstone.

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";174465519]I just think people are overstating just how much the new mulligan rule skews towards benefiting aggro[/QUOTE]

if only someone had recently run a large-scale competitive event and had used that as an opportunity to gather extensive data about the precise effect of this rule change

 

[kirblar]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";174465519]I just think people are overstating just how much the new mulligan rule skews towards benefiting aggro, and how much that it strengthens the archetype in general. I would honestly be shocked if scry mulligans increased the mono-red deck's win rate by more than 5% overall.[/QUOTE]
That's a big shift. Having all the linear curve-out decks go 5% up messes with a lot of how you approach the format.

 

["God's Beard!"]

That's a big shift.

I'm saying 5% more often. Like 55 to 57.25 gw%. And even that much would impress me. I mean, mulliganing to 6, bottoming the top card and having that be the difference between winning and losing when your opponent has access to the same rule seems to be a relatively small number of games. I'll grant you that in land-tight situations that scry could mean as much as a whole turn and that aggro decks are more likely to mull into that situation, but that's literally the problem scry mulligans are supposed to solve.

Of course, charlequin is right and it's hard to say for sure what effect the rule is having on the game.

 

[y2dvd]

Drafted a pretty boss W/R deck, it had all the best toys. Freeblades and Enshrouding Mists were falling to me pretty late in the packs, the colors were wide open and it was easily the best Origins deck I've drafted so far. So of course my internet goes down halfway through the second match.

I think it's a sign to stay away from Origins limited.

If Freeblades we're late pick ups, then your opponent ain't drafting properly. That's like the best common in the set!

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Scry mulligans don't just improve the quality of your six card hand. They also have this effect of improving the quality of your seven card hands by extension.

Your seven cards hands generally fall into one of five categories: Snap keep, keep, marginal, mull, and snap mull. With those marginal sevens, you're not only assessing how good the seven is, but the likelihood that the average six is better than the marginal seven. By improving the quality of the average six, you don't have to keep as many marginal sevens. You can spin the wheel again hoping for a good six since the scry means that you're likely not going to see a six worse than the marginal seven you're currently holding.

In other words, the first mulligan is very close to "free" for a deck that doesn't care about raw card advantage.

 

[SigmasonicX]

I wonder, would a better solution then be to start giving scrys only when you go down to five?

 

[Angry Grimace]

My guess is that the implementation of this rule was a feel thing where they wanted to see how pros felt about it. Doesn't sound great.

 

[kirblar]

My guess is that the implementation of this rule was a feel thing where they wanted to see how pros felt about it. Doesn't sound great.

Everyone was ecstatic about it in limited.

 

[darkside31337]

The struggles of control decks really don't have much to do with the scry mulligan rule. They simply do not have the tools to compete with the insanity red based aggro decks have over the next 2 months. Its not like these control decks are faring all that well anywhere outside of the PT either.

 

["God's Beard!"]

The struggles of control decks really don't have much to do with the scry mulligan rule. They simply do not have the tools to compete with the insanity red based aggro decks have over the next 2 months. Its not like these control decks are faring all that well anywhere outside of the PT either.

Reprint Supreme Verdict and Sphinx's Revelation and they'd do just fine.

 

[Angry Grimace]

The struggles of control decks really don't have much to do with the scry mulligan rule. They simply do not have the tools to compete with the insanity red based aggro decks have over the next 2 months. Its not like these control decks are faring all that well anywhere outside of the PT either.

Well the options in opposing decks are hyper-aggro, Hangarback Walker aggro (value aggro) and value-midrange decks.

 

[darkside31337]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";174470319]Reprint Supreme Verdict and Sphinx's Revelation and they'd do just fine.[/QUOTE]

Those cards wouldn't help at all honestly. Ensoul is a deck thats dead in 2 months though and we'll see how red in general fares in a few months considering how much of the deck is rotating out in general. Searing Blood is just stupid good right now and staples like Stoke and Strike are gone too. Can't imagine them -not- printing some cheap red burn in BFZ though, but there wasn't anything in Origins outside of Exquisite Firecraft so who knows really.

 

[blackflag]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";174465519]I just think people are overstating just how much the new mulligan rule skews towards benefiting aggro, and how much that it strengthens the archetype in general. I would honestly be shocked if scry mulligans increased the mono-red deck's win rate by more than 5% overall. Bottoming the top card off a 6-card hand is not some insane power level jump.[/QUOTE]

5% is an enormous amount when you are talking win rate average for decks.

edit: already addressed.

 

[Firemind]

Yep. I kind of don't even care how "nice" they are per Maro's description, it's still just more stupid hedrons.

But the best zen basics didn't have hedrons.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Everyone was ecstatic about it in limited.

The new rule is fantastic for limited. I wish it made sense to have separate mulligan rules for constructed vs limited.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Those cards wouldn't help at all honestly. Ensoul is a deck thats dead in 2 months though and we'll see how red in general fares in a few months considering how much of the deck is rotating out in general. Searing Blood is just stupid good right now and staples like Stoke and Strike are gone too. Can't imagine them -not- printing some cheap red burn in BFZ though, but there wasn't anything in Origins outside of Exquisite Firecraft so who knows really.

Strike will be back.

Unless Lightning Bolt is back.

 

[The Technomancer]

The new rule is fantastic for limited. I wish it made sense to have separate mulligan rules for constructed vs limited.

I mean, does it not? Limited already has its own format specific rules, like being able to run more than four copies of a card. If the data is that its great for limited but strangles constructed, why not?

 

[Angry Grimace]

Some dude just wrote the saltiest post about how shitty my LGS is on the local groups/reddit because the store's staff asked him to leave after he got DQ'd from a draft (he and opponent threw cards at each other over a blocker/damage dispute), offered to fight his opponent, and then waited outside for an hour for the opponent to come out (so he could fight him).

He legit doesn't understand why they were mad at him and thinks this is unfair because he spent $1000 at the store in his lifetime.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3g1piq/you_play_casual_mtg_draft_at_local_store_opponent/

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Not sure if it's been posted already: the Legendary Cube will in fact be the only way to get C15 cards on MTGO:

http://wizardsmtgo.tumblr.com/post/126027089709/will-legendary-cube-be-the-only-way-to-get

I mean, does it not? Limited already has its own format specific rules, like being able to run more than four copies of a card. If the data is that its great for limited but strangles constructed, why not?

I dunno. I see a lot of feel-bads from people accidentally scrying during constructed events because they get used to doing it limited, or vice versa.

 

[aidan]

Some dude just wrote the saltiest post about how shitty my LGS is on the local groups/reddit because the store's staff asked him to leave after he got DQ'd from a draft (he and opponent threw cards at each other over a blocker/damage dispute), offered to fight his opponent, and then waited outside for an hour for the opponent to come out (so he could fight him).

He legit doesn't understand why they were mad at him and thinks this is unfair because he spent $1000 at the store in his lifetime.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3g1piq/you_play_casual_mtg_draft_at_local_store_opponent/

This is response is gold: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/c...ual_mtg_draft_at_local_store_opponent/ctu0t83

 

[kirblar]

However, data shows that Magic Online players are less interested in buying fixed deck products and more interested in exciting new play experiences

You could at least make an effort to talk like a human being.

 

[Angry Grimace]

You could at least make an effort to talk like a human being.

Well, "nobody buys online decks for any reason other than that one Legacy playable card in the deck" sounded bad. They are completely right to do it. You can justify it with paper products because people legit buy Commander decks to play them unaltered.

This is response is gold: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/c...ual_mtg_draft_at_local_store_opponent/ctu0t83

His response to me and others telling him he sounds like a psycho: "I think I accomplished my mission tho. I was fully aware of how this kid would feel like inside and this was intended action to mentally punch back. I simply just had my enchantment casted outside."

So, uh

 

[kirblar]

I was referring to the "more interested in exciting new play experiences" - it's total, unabridged corporate-speak from marketing.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Well, "nobody buys online decks for any reason other than that one Legacy playable card in the deck" sounded bad. They are completely right to do it. You can justify it with paper products because people legit buy Commander decks to play them unaltered.

This is 100% true. Like I said when this first came up: the Commander precons are terrible EV. This could legit lower the price of singles from the decks.

His response to me and others telling him he sounds like a psycho: "I think I accomplished my mission tho. I was fully aware of how this kid would feel like inside and this was intended action to mentally punch back. I simply just had my enchantment casted outside."

So, uh

I'd archive this and send it to the store owner. It sounds like he's basically already banned from the store, but this should make it a permaban.

 

[Angry Grimace]

I was referring to the "more interested in exciting new play experiences" - it's total, unabridged corporate-speak from marketing.

I think they leave it up to Maro and others to explain stuff from a non-corporate speak standpoint. I mean, the actual answer is: "almost nobody buys this product and the ones that do are pissed off they have to buy it." Depending on what's in the prize packs, this seems like a win-win.

 

[Jhriad]

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3g1piq/you_play_casual_mtg_draft_at_local_store_opponent/

To be fair, if my opponent had thrown cards in my face I would be pretty angry as well but he handled the whole thing about as poorly as you can from the sound of things. I like how in his own recollection of the story they were never actually asked to go outside or kicked out of the store. Instead, he's the one that actually suggests they go outside and later on while he's waiting for the other guy to come out one of the store employees tells him that he wasn't kicked out of the store and he's surprised. Of course, I wasn't there and it's obvious that English isn't his first language so I won't pass judgement on the whole affair but seriously, throwing cards? People do that?

 

[Angry Grimace]

To be fair, if my opponent had thrown cards in my face I would be pretty angry as well but he handled the whole thing about as poorly as you can from the sound of things. I like how in his own recollection of the story they were never actually asked to go outside or kicked out of the store. Instead, he's the one that actually suggests they go outside and later on while he's waiting for the other guy to come out one of the store employees tells him that he wasn't kicked out of the store and he's surprised. Of course, I wasn't there and it's obvious that English isn't his first language so I won't pass judgement on the whole affair but seriously, throwing cards? People do that?

The other guy who was there said he straight-up asked the kid to fight him and then he said on FB that stood outside in order to intimidate the kid.

 

[blindrocket]

I don't think that we discussed this, but did any of you hear about it or follow the results?

http://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/3fp1t5/is_there_any_word_on_how_that_no_banned_list/

 

[Matriox]

Just in case anyone missed it. Hopefully it has a better quality than the khans holiday box.

 

[Hero]

That is gorgeous design but hopefully it's better quality than the khans box

 

[Yeef]

Just in case anyone missed it. Hopefully it has a better quality than the khans holiday box.

It's 5 packs in the box when the previous ones have been 4 packs in the box. That means it's the same price as just buying 5 packs outright. I wonder if they've further reduced the quality somehow or if they just decided they wanted to make it more appealing.

 

[red13th]

Just in case anyone missed it. Hopefully it has a better quality than the khans holiday box.

Wow, it's pretty!
I have bought every holiday box since Ravnica and this one might be the best looking one, might get one too for cube storage. Currently using the Theros box.

 

[Angry Grimace]

I don't think that we discussed this, but did any of you hear about it or follow the results?

http://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/3fp1t5/is_there_any_word_on_how_that_no_banned_list/

A no-banned list is just Hypergenesis vs. the field.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

I looked into this a few days ago. Young Pyromancer + Skullclamp won the tournament.

 

[darkside31337]

It's 5 packs in the box when the previous ones have been 4 packs in the box. That means it's the same price as just buying 5 packs outright. I wonder if they've further reduced the quality somehow or if they just decided they wanted to make it more appealing.

MSRP for the box is $24.99 now.

More disappointing was the fact that the lands that come in that box aren't full art lands.

 

[charlequin]

My guess is that the implementation of this rule was a feel thing where they wanted to see how pros felt about it. Doesn't sound great.

Kirblar and Ari Lax aside, the vast majority of the response was extremely positive. That doesn't prove it's doing what they want it to or that it's a good idea in the first place, but if you're going by the Pro Tour's vibe on it the change definitely wasn't a failure.

But the best zen basics didn't have hedrons.

So that makes this new set even worse!

You could at least make an effort to talk like a human being.

The MTGO Tumblr is being run by Lee Sharpe so I'm not sure he knows how?

Just in case anyone missed it. Hopefully it has a better quality than the khans holiday box.

Was the Khans box chintzy? I have the Ravnica one which I felt was pretty durable.

 

[Yeef]

MSRP for the box is $24.99 now.

More disappointing was the fact that the lands that come in that box aren't full art lands.

Well, that makes more sense. When I saw it this morning, it said $19.99, but it looks like that was an error.

 

[Matriox]

Was the Khans box chintzy? I have the Ravnica one which I felt was pretty durable.

The middle insert dividers are poor quality cardboard and aren't tied down at the bottom of the box so they bend and don't stabilize your cards nearly as well as the Ravnica or Theros one. (actually I don't remember if the Theros one has the problem too, I never got one.)

Edit: here's a random picture I found on the interwebs.