It makes limited so much better.
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Magic: the Gathering |OT8| Eldritch Moon - It's only a paper (and digital) moon
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
- Start date
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Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Does it? Removal and creatures are still priority in drafting for recent sets. In sealed even more so.
Yes, it does. Removal and creatures will always be what limited is about. What they've changed is that the answers are no longer better than the threats. It makes for much more interesting drafting/deck-building decisions.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
They just printed rabid bite at common. OGW had Nissa's Judgement, the enchantment and oblivion strike.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
I do not like it, therefore it is bad
divisionbyzorro
Member
Making it so that common removal doesn't also give you a tempo advantage makes games play out better. But I would agree that they haven't always gotten the mix just right. Its one of the keys to a good draft set, and IMO it's one of the reasons KTKx3 was so good.
Keru_Shiri
Member
You're correct. I was thinking in terms of RDW which might like having multiple 1-mana spells to deal with blockers, but decks will want one or the other and Impulse will probably still be the go-to until it rotates.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Oh good, they're learning
Hey guys, sorry if this isn't the thread for it. I read the OP and it stated new users are encouraged.
My brother and I just bought our first intro decks last weekend. I picked up Vampiric Thirst and he picked up Ghostly Tide. We played a couple games and I think we're starting to get the hang of it. He destroyed me everytime though. I think this is mostly due to me not knowing how to use Madness so I just skipped it.
So, here's my questions: should I now starting buying more boosters or buy another older intro deck that uses the same mana? Also, where can I find a good explanation on how to properly use Madness?
I don't want to pick up a deck builder yet as that's a bit move money than I want to spend right now. Thank you for any help!
My brother and I just bought our first intro decks last weekend. I picked up Vampiric Thirst and he picked up Ghostly Tide. We played a couple games and I think we're starting to get the hang of it. He destroyed me everytime though. I think this is mostly due to me not knowing how to use Madness so I just skipped it.
So, here's my questions: should I now starting buying more boosters or buy another older intro deck that uses the same mana? Also, where can I find a good explanation on how to properly use Madness?
I don't want to pick up a deck builder yet as that's a bit move money than I want to spend right now. Thank you for any help!
Rabid bite requires a threat of your own and can open you up to a 2-for-1. That's not to say it's not strong, but it's not as strong as something like Doom Blade or Lightning Bolt.
As an aside, I'm not really a big fan of Rabid Bite, design-wise. It doesn't feel like a mono-green card. It's either a burn spell or "Fight + First Strike." Either way, it'd make more sense in mono-red, red-green or green-white.
For the most part I liked Oath of the Gatewatch, but one of my biggest peeves with the format was that Natural State couldn't hit Isolation Zone, which menat the best answer to Isolation Zone was another Isolation Zone. That said, Oblivion Strike and Isolation Zone were amazing at dealing with individual threats, but the format was very much about going wide, so they weren't as egregious as they might have been in other formats.
This I can agree with. The removal suite in Khans felt just about perfect for the format.
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
Big fan of this set so far. Love the throwbacks to old stuff, fixed Accumulated Knowledge is pretty neat.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I'm sad that the 50 zombies one wasn't real.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
New art LoTV would be GOAT and possibly not even too bad with tokens already being the strongest deck and thopters on the horizon.
If you're looking to modify your deck,
There's a video here on the basics of madness.
Just know that "Discard" always means put into your graveyard from your hand. If something going to the graveyard from anywhere but your hand isn't considered discarding.
Basically, Madness allows you to play a card immediately after discarding it for its madness cost. So instead of going to your graveyard, you get to play it like normal. This is good with cards like Reckless Scholar, Mad Prophet or Heir of Falkenrath. Normally, discarding on these cards is a bit of a downside, but Madness turns it to an upside.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The intro decks aren't really good value, so if you just want more cards casually, sure, buy a couple of boosters at target.
Madness is an ability that means if something causes you to you discard the card, you can then cast it for its Madness cost instead of just discarding it.
What I like is looking online for ultra budget decks, and then buying some online singles from sites like CoolStuffInc. They provide you with great synergy in your deck and make the deck a lot of fun to play. Boosters are just not worth it, it costs more money to get good cards and most of the cards don't fit together well. You can have playable decks for like 20 dollar already, just make sure the deck you buy is beginner friendly. Some deck strategies rely on too complex interaction between certain cards.
As for madness, it comes into effect when a spell or ability says you have to discard it. You can't discard it yourself without some help of some sort. Than you can pay the madness cost and cast it instead of just going to the graveyard.
SigmasonicX
Member
You gotta hand it to that guy. I keep thinking he's completely lost his ability to do anything but skitter around, but then he gets right back to work.
Nice to see Galvanic Bombardment, though it's disappointing that apparently only red and blue are getting these cards. Unless others are spoiling the others later.
Lone Rider has an interesting transformation trigger. Grizzled Angler is hilarious, though I don't see much Eldrazi in that fish.
Out of the intro pack rares, I like Assembled Alphas and Noosegraf Mob. Both are interesting effects. I'm surprised red would get a block trigger like that.
If you aren't too familiar with the rules, I recommend downloading Magic Duels. It's F2P (and you can get away with not spending money to get in-game cards), and allows you to practice against a computer. This may also expose you to cards that you'd want to spend money to get in the paper game.
As for how madness works, when you discard a card with madness from your hand, it is instead put into the exile zone. There, you have the opportunity to cast it for its madness cost, or else it's immediately put into the graveyard. You can only discard a card if something causes you to, such as a creature you control that has discarding a card as a cost for one of its abilities.
Yes and No
Yes
-Overall WOTC is better at developing Limited formats than they were in the past. They don't often put out stinkers (though they haven't eliminated stinkers completely).
No
-Losing because you can't draw your fifth land to cast your Throttle, your 5 mana removal spell can't kill their dragon, you need to play two removal spells in on turn to live and you can't draw that extra land are all super unfun ways to lose
-Any decently designed Cube (Pauper, Peasant, Regular, etc.) is way more fun than any retail limited format and removal is almost always hyper efficient in them (so are the creatures to be fair).
"Tell us on the doll where the Blue mage touched you"
Oh, I didn't realize deck builders were only a bit more. I must have misremebered them being more expensive. Thank you for your help!
Thanks to the both of you! So in general it's better to buy a deck builder to start and buy specific cards as you learn the game?
Thank you! I just downloaded duels last night and played a bit of the story mode. I've already found out a few things I was doing wrong just by doing that.
Thank you to everyone helping explain madness, it makes a lot more sense now. I appreciate it!
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I'm mostly just saying that I don't feel like the Eldrazi are a good or natural fit on Innistrad. It feels like the bad guys from the last block showed up on this block.
I don't know, the idea behind the whole Cthulu Mythos they were aping in Shadows Over Innistrad isn't really Cthulu flying around wrecking shit and sending out little minion dudes to eat everyone. That just feels like Battle For Zendikar.
I don't know, the idea behind the whole Cthulu Mythos they were aping in Shadows Over Innistrad isn't really Cthulu flying around wrecking shit and sending out little minion dudes to eat everyone. That just feels like Battle For Zendikar.
Madness reads pretty complicated, but isn't too bad in practice. If you have to discard a madness card for any reason, you can cast it instead by paying its madness cost.
So, in your intro deck - you have Ravenous Bloodseeker, who has the ability "Discard a card: Ravenous Bloodseeker gets +2/-2 until end of turn". You can activate this ability any time, and as many times as you want (in this case, your BloodSeeker will die if you activate it twice in one turn, but you can still do it if you want). If you activate this ability, and choose to discard, say, Twins of Maurer Estate, you can then pay 2B to just play the Twins instead of discarding them. So you get the BloodSeeker bonus, and also get the Twins. There are all kinds of tricks you can engage in by doing this.
* This is a way to play your Twins for cheap.
* Since you can use the Bloodseeker's ability any time, this is a way to play the Twins during your opponent's turn. This is super useful to set up an ambush; say he attacks with a 2/2 guy, you can activate the ability, play the Twins, and use them to block the 2/2 guy.
* With some of your other cards (like Tormenting Voice), this is a source of card advantage. If you play Tormenting Voice normally, you play the Voice, and discard a card, then draw two cards, netting you zero cards. If you discard Twins, and play them for their Madness cost, you still get to keep the twins, and draw to cards, putting you up one card.
Another deckbuilding option for you: You could just buy another copy of the deck you already have; the intro decks only include 1-2 copies of any given card. You are allowed to run up to 4 copies of any card that's not a basic land. Having two copies of the deck would let you cut the weakest cards and double up on the best cards.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
Do you want more cards in general or just ones that will benefit the one deck you currently own?
Options if the former:
- Many local game stores that stock Magic product will have 30 card sample decks that they are supposed to give out for free. Some might also have "bulk" cards (cards that fetch about as much on the secondary market as the raw cardboard they're printed on) that they'll either give away or sell to you for very cheap.
- Dollar Tree sells repackaged booster packs of bulk.
- Target / WalMart sell sets of unopened boosters from old sets at a slight discount. Sometimes they'll also throw in a foil promo rare for good measure.
SigmasonicX
Member
Using Intro Packs the way you did, to get a sense of the paper game and play with a friend/relative, is the best way to use them. But yeah, the contents usually aren't of good value. There's a reason why they're being replaced starting with the fall set.
Keru_Shiri
Member
*Points to Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise"Tell us on the doll where the Blue mage touched you"
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
Looking at Amazon, the deck builders toolkits for the two most recent sets (Shadows over Innistrad , Magic Origins) will run you $20. Ones from older sets are more expensive for who knows what reason.
Technomancer never struck me as the type of guy who played a lot of Eternal formats competitively. Those cards were both great and fun outside those contexts. Also there is a lot of room for draw spells between those and whatever the hell is in Standard right now or this Accumulated Knowledge redux that had a baseball taken to both its kneecaps
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I honestly think Fat Packs are better value than Deck Builders Toolkits. DBT don't really have anything in them you need other than land, and Fat Packs have land too.
The thing that usually gets people hooked on the game is opening cool rares to add to their decks.
The thing that usually gets people hooked on the game is opening cool rares to add to their decks.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Deck Builder's Toolkits used to have Bolts
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
I went and reread the Planeswalker Deck article, and MaRo specifically mentions deck building as one of the most intimidating aspects for beginners to learn. I think the audience for each product is different. DBTs have boosters in them too.
charlequin
Banned
Yes, but characters aren't all equivalent in a vacuum. Tamiyo is a library nerd archetype, she's a clumsy girl with glasses who trips a lot. Making that type of character the protagonist requires warping the narrative pretty significantly, which is fine if you're writing an indie comic book or whatever but isn't viable in the limited storytelling space of a card set.
Among other things, notice the difference between how she's situated in SOI vs. how Jace is. Jace is coming in ignorant, not having any idea what's happening, and having to investigate after screwed-up stuff has already started happening. That's where we want things to be, because this is the player's viewport into the set, which by definition needs to be after the weird stuff is already occurring.
Tamiyo, on the other hand, is investigating Innistrad while it's still chill -- she came here to look at the moon back when Avacyn was doing her thing, and she's so knowledgeable about what's happening now specifically because she was able to observe and record the entire change. Without that type of role filled (and a Macguffin like her journal) it's much harder to string a mystery plot like this through a set this way.
This very visibly wouldn't be as good a plot angle, though. There's no history or tension to the Tamiyo/Liliana relationship and you have to burn screentime explaining how anyone else from the Gatewatch even gets there in set two.
Note that this not only doesn't go anywhere and isn't reflected in the set, but is actually pretty much completely at odds with the current characterization.
Yeah, a limited environment where you have to consider the tactical value of different removal options and weigh them against the field is a lot better that old formats where it was just pick all the doomblades.
Keru_Shiri
Member
Treasure Cruise was okay in Standard, but Dig was absolutely miserable to play against in any format. Besides, I think printing something like Jace, Vryn's Prodigy shows they're still willing to push blue's card drawing at least somewhat. Out of curiosity, what would you consider a fair card drawing spell? Something like Think Twice?
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
That's what I'm saying: DBTs don't have decks in them, they just have random cards. would think it would help him a lot more if he happened to open cool rares that went in the Intro Decks he already has. That's how all of my Commander decks exist: they're just random cards I own added into the mono-color EDH decks from 2015 smushed together to make 2 color decks.
@Dig Through Time chat: most "At your end step I draw a lot of cards" decks are kind of miserable to play against. Dig was worse because the likelihood they'd brick on finding what they needed was so low. Dig is like Avacyn but worse because its generically good in every format its legal in. It's the kind of card that seems like it would be neat in a random EDH deck that wasn't going for INFINITE COMBO! but busted in everything else.
Good.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
This reads like a pretty big weakness of pivoting sets around the Jacetice League brand more than anything tbh
The non-randomized product in DBTs are themed, though. You also already have existing decks to work new booster product into while beginners only have one or two.
SigmasonicX
Member
I think the issue is that he doesn't want the Eldrazi creature type to appear at all.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Horror is about dread and fear, not just having giant monsters overrun the plane; that feels like a Zendikar thing to me. I don't feel like they should have gone farther than Emrakul itself, and even then I think it would have been better as a flip card that gets revealed as the solution to the insanity on the plane.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
I mean this is exactly what everybody was afraid would happen last year when Emrakul being the big bad was rumored
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
So you're saying Tamiyo is moe? This argument is ludicrous as if certain types of characters are only viable for certain types of media. Whether you can write suiting a character that had next to no prior characterization past being a scholar is up to the writers.
Just how we are situated, we've been to Innistrad before we even revisited it in multiple core sets. When Jace went there it was a "what happened", with Tamiyo it'd have been a "what's happening". It'd be a mystery either way.
I mean they have to burn screentime on how the rest of the Gatewatch gets there anyway so that wouldn't be much different. And it's not like the "will they won't they" of Lili Jace interactions is that essential. The lack of something doesn't mean you can't build them.
Back then their narrative was told through comics among other things and PWs didn't get a spotlight throughout all of a set yet. They got their PW card and maybe one or two flavour texts.
That their characters aren't consistent is a whole nother issue.
If you want the most economic option and play with the cards you like, buying specific cards is the way to go. It can be daunting at first to know which cards you want (and you'll be surprised how much some cards go for), so that's why many people stick to boosters packs.
They aren't really bad, and it can be nice to open a cool rare and you'll get lots of random cards that you can use to experiment with. That's why even I buy a couple of boosters from time to time. But it can get expensive really fast if you just want a specific cool card and often times you are stuck with duplicates of the same cards you don't like in the common rarity. So my advice is, buy a couple of boosters to see if you really like the game, and once you understand more of the rules, ask someone for advice on building a cheap, but consistent deck. I had fun with friends with cheap decks, as long as the decks you play against are matched. The decks most of the experienced players play with can easily cost above $1000, but you don't have the spend even a fraction of that to play the game.
You basically just don't want Eldrazi. You're conceding that Emrakul would be fine if only for story purposes, but everything else should be left alone.
You're that guy that goes "HEEEY YOU GOT YOUR PEANUT BUTTER IN MY CHOCOLATE"
without realizing that it actually could taste good
I understand by saying this you'll take offense because everyone's always trying to change your opinion (when it's usually set in stone), but honestly this is how it appears to me. Eldrazi + Horror = yum yum good?
Anyway, onto the card discussion and analysis for MARSHAL JUSTICE.DEC
This card seems reeeeeeeeeally good. Like the stats on the back are insane for 2 mana. Gaining 3 life is NOT a big deal, because you can drop this on Turn 3 + Chaplain's Blessing.
Or you can Blessed Alliance EOT their turn (or during their attack on their turn for sac value) to gain 4 life and go ham next turn. Shit seems good.
4/4 first strike trample lifelink is some gud ass power. LIKE REAL GOOD B
Imma try it in my deck I think.
SigmasonicX
Member
This is a problem with the format itself. You can't do "subtle" in a card game if you want people to actually know what's going on.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Moe lost most of its meaning long ago and clumsy now falls among that, just like shounen, seinen, shojou, etc. are constantly misused.
Apparently she's the clumsy trips over her own shoes cute type that's usually also a megane. With Chandra the tomboy, Lili the dominatrix we're only missing an osananajimi to have a harem.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
"Tell us on the doll where the Blue mage touched you"
He told me he wanted to...cruise for treasure, and I didn't know what that meant
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