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Magic: the Gathering - Shadows over Innistrad |OT| Blue's Clues

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N

noquarter

Member
Angry Grimace said:
I just had a hand of:

Land
Land
Land
Land
Secure the Wastes
Oath of Nissa

so I kept it because I figured I could get a PW or a creature with the Oath.

First turn: Play a land ---> Oath, seeing: Forest, Forest, Westvale Abbey. So I take Abbey.

Then next turn I draw a land for turn, then play a land. Then I repeat that sequence until I reach turn 6 and die.
Click to expand...
Magic can be so fun sometimes. /s

Had a have similar to this last FNM. Figured I would draw a land in one of the first three turns (16 lands left with 33 cards left) and then could play Fork In The Road and I would curve out well and didn't get a land for six turns. Then I lost.
 
H

hermit7

Member
Got all my pieces for burn to take to FNM tomorrow.

Running a pretty standard naya list, but I am eager to see how it goes.

Last week I ran goblins and had a mirror match where I drew poorly, and then played uw and got slaughtered when I was wrathed on turn 4 and they threw down Gideon and wall of omens. Hopefully I fare a little better this week.
 
B

Bandini

Member
Just got blown up on my UB Reanimator Vintage Cube deck when I only found Shallow Grave to bring stuff out of the graveyard. Along the way I got Griselbrand, Sphinx, Inferno Titan, Buried Alive, Vampiric Tutor, and Elesh Norn.

Ended up playing UR with too few playables, running 19 lands, 2 signets, and a Mox Ruby

Still won though, blue is pretty good
 
A

Ashodin

Member
After Game Day I edited the deck to a more reasonable position to take advantage of Stone Haven Outfitter. Plus 4x Always Watching is beast

brX3RJO.png


Oh and it also has sideboard tech vs. GB Sac and G/W Tokens
 
P

pelicansurf

Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
Ashodin said:
After Game Day I edited the deck to a more reasonable position to take advantage of Stone Haven Outfitter. Plus 4x Always Watching is beast

brX3RJO.png


Oh and it also has sideboard tech vs. GB Sac and G/W Tokens
Click to expand...
Seems sweet. However the one of declaration in stone seems in the board seems random.
 
A

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
noquarter said:
Magic can be so fun sometimes. /s

Had a have similar to this last FNM. Figured I would draw a land in one of the first three turns (16 lands left with 33 cards left) and then could play Fork In The Road and I would curve out well and didn't get a land for six turns. Then I lost.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing I've lost literally hundreds of dollars simply dropping games with land issues. I don't want to play games where I get no land ever, I just quit. It's one of those problems they overlooked forever and then they started making creatures more and more powerful to the point you almost always lose if you miss a land drop and your opponent doesn't.
 
M

manipulate

Member
Angry Grimace said:
I'm guessing I've lost literally hundreds of dollars simply dropping games with land issues. I don't want to play games where I get no land ever, I just quit. It's one of those problems they overlooked forever and then they started making creatures more and more powerful to the point you almost always lose if you miss a land drop and your opponent doesn't.
Click to expand...

What's there to do? It seems like an inescapable flaw of the game. Resource/spells variance has surely to be one of the biggest reasons why people leave Magic
 
P

pelicansurf

Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";202766927]I've sold two Modern and two Legacy decks to keep up with Standard without increasing my investment.[/QUOTE]
I need to start doing this. I've only spent money. Feels bad.
 
A

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I feel like there's a disproportionate amount of games in this standard that's just one guy running over the other. Maybe its just anecdotal evidence but I've had like one or two good games in the last few weeks.
 
S

shrapnelmagnet

Member
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";202766927]I've sold two Modern and two Legacy decks to keep up with Standard without increasing my investment.[/QUOTE]

I'm glad that this is your experience, because from a purely casual (AKA my own) point of view, I do not do this. I only buy cards. I don't trade or resell or anything. I buy cards, in playsets, that I want to make weird decks with.

There's no turnover. The game is very expensive if you do not min-max and even more expensive if you do not interact with with weird subculture of buy lists and trade binders.

(No real point, just saying that it's not as simple as you make it out to be)
 
G

"God's Beard!"

Member
shrapnelmagnet said:
I'm glad that this is your experience, because from a purely casual (AKA my own) point of view, I do not do this. I only buy cards. I don't trade or resell or anything. I buy cards, in playsets, that I want to make weird decks with.

There's no turnover. The game is very expensive if you do not min-max and even more expensive if you do not interact with with weird subculture of buy lists and trade binders.

(No real point, just saying that it's not as simple as you make it out to be)
Click to expand...

Yeah, my entire collection of MTG cards is a deckbox with my Standard deck, a half-assed colorless commander deck that doesn't even have the basics, a half-full holiday giftbox with a random assortment of common/uncommon playables and a hardcase filled with my signed cards and artist proofs. My entire collection would fit in the holiday gift box and still have space left over.

Whereas my roommate doesn't play competitively and he has like 40 fatpacks in a big box filled with all kinds of random cards from the past 3-4 years.
 
A

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!";202770009]Yeah, my entire collection of MTG cards is a deckbox with my Standard deck, a half-assed colorless commander deck that doesn't even have the basics, a half-full holiday giftbox with a random assortment of common/uncommon playables and a hardcase filled with my signed cards and artist proofs. My entire collection would fit in the holiday gift box and still have space left over.

Whereas my roommate doesn't play competitively and he has like 40 fatpacks in a big box filled with all kinds of random cards from the past 3-4 years.[/QUOTE]
How is it possible you only have half a holiday box of cards when you win booster boxes at every draft
 
K

keeblerdrow

Member
Is creature ramp viable at the moment? Something like:
3 Deathcap Cultivator
3 Beastcaller Savant
3 Shaman of the Forgotten Ways
4 Sylvan Advocate
2 Surrak Hunt Caller
4 Duskwatch Recruiter
1 Ulvenwald Hydra
4 Thunderbreak Regent
3 Gaea's Revenge
2 Dragonlord Atarka
2 Dragonlord Dromoka
3 Woodland Bellower
2 Nahiri
2 Nissa's Revelation

Nahiri getting Bellower getting Duskwatch recruiter seems like a good line on turn 5 or 6.
 
G

"God's Beard!"

Member
Angry Grimace said:
How is it possible you only have half a holiday box of cards when you win booster boxes at every draft
Click to expand...

I haven't entered an actual draft at a store in around a year. The last one I did was a top 8 draft at a PPTQ a couple months ago. ...and yes, I did win a booster box that time. Before that the last limited event I entered was... BFZ prerelease? I only won a third of a box that time, though.

More to the point, I always gave away my non-money cards to new players or whoever wanted them. If nobody wanted them, I tended to throw away anything I couldn't stick in a sideboard down the line. Or if the prize was big enough, I took store credit over product most of the time.
 
A

Ashodin

Member
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";202772955]Going medium is pretty good. Or maybe I'm just biased because I keep having games where I play three Thought-Knot Seers.[/QUOTE]

medium is pretty good.
 
F

Familienoberhauptvogel

Banned
Glad I got my Nahiri a couple weeks ago but what exactly made her spike so hard right now? She's been used before a lot and it didn't affect the price.

Still kicking myself for not getting Chandra when she was cheap af.
 
S

Son1x

Member
Familienoberhauptvogel said:
Glad I got my Nahiri a couple weeks ago but what exactly made her spike so hard right now? She's been used before a lot and it didn't affect the price.

Still kicking myself for not getting Chandra when she was cheap af.
Click to expand...

I believe people have been trying her in legacy miracles and this uwr control deck with Emrakul.
 
P

pelicansurf

Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
Seems that if you like any of the planeswalkers, even a tiny little bit, it's best to buy them right after release, when they're dirt cheap. They always end up spiking to 15+
 
K

kirblar

Member
Familienoberhauptvogel said:
I checked on reddit and apparently it's a buyout, always thought she's awesome. Trying a Mardu list right now playing both Bob and Emrakul, the feelbads are gonna be awesome.

I hate Tron.
Click to expand...
I would agree with this being a buyout, she's not being played in Standard enough right now to warrant the price.
 
C

CoconutTank

Member
Would it be overpowered/broken if each player could start with 1 land of their choice from their deck in play, before shuffling and drawing?
 
G

Giant Panda

Member
The whole land system that magic has both causes a lot of issues of straight up un-fun games, but it also makes the game much more interesting in many ways. Evaluating the chance that you happen to draw the right lands is what makes choosing your deck's colors such a deep and interesting decision. I guess the choice on the number of lands works along the same lines, but I think that decision is fundamentally much less interesting. If there were a way to make the color restrictions still matter, such that players were generally rewarded for playing color stream-lined decks, without the use of a land mechanic, than I think that would be the best of both worlds. So basically, a way to prevent land screw but still allow color screw.

The unfortunate thing is that magic as a game has been built around lands since the beginning, so I'm not sure that there's much that could be done without an entirely new game.
 
O

OceanBlue

Member
Giant Panda said:
The whole land system that magic has both causes a lot of issues of straight up un-fun games, but it also makes the game much more interesting in many ways. Evaluating the chance that you happen to draw the right lands is what makes choosing your deck's colors such a deep and interesting decision. I guess the choice on the number of lands works along the same lines, but I think that decision is fundamentally much less interesting. If there were a way to make the color restrictions still matter, such that players were generally rewarded for playing color stream-lined decks, without the use of a land mechanic, than I think that would be the best of both worlds. So basically, a way to prevent land screw but still allow color screw.

The unfortunate thing is that magic as a game has been built around lands since the beginning, so I'm not sure that there's much that could be done without an entirely new game.
Click to expand...

Something like Force of Will? In that game you get lands from a separate deck once per turn.
 
F

Familienoberhauptvogel

Banned
I prefer the way magic works with lands to all TCGs and CCGs I played, which is a fair amount.
If you aren't gonna be mana or colour screwed you're still gonna be screwed by curving out properly etc.

I stopped counting how often I complained about not drawing any answer īn hearthstone or how mulliganing 6 drops makes me draw 8 drops.

The only annoying thing about the land system is that it makes land bases exorbitantly expensive.
 
S

SigmasonicX

Member
OceanBlue said:
Something like Force of Will? In that game you get lands from a separate deck once per turn.
Click to expand...

A big issue with that is that it makes your deck play out in a very similar way every game, if you know you're guaranteed a land when you need one. Duel Masters allows you to use any card as a "land", and Mark Rosewater claims that this made the games repetitive after a while. Hearthstone gives you "lands" every turn, and in order to make sure each game isn't the same, it vastly increased the amount of randomness present in the card effects themselves.

Though I wonder if one way to minimize the land problem would be to give players an emblem like this:
"Pay 2 life, sacrifice this emblem: Search your library for a basic land card and put it on the battlefield tapped. You can't play lands this turn. Activate this ability only if you played no lands this turn, and only as a sorcery."
 
G

Giant Panda

Member
OceanBlue said:
Something like Force of Will? In that game you get lands from a separate deck once per turn.
Click to expand...
Yes, something like that. I want to try that game, but its art style is really off-putting and only a few people actually play it at my LGSs.
Familienoberhauptvogel said:
I prefer the way magic works with lands to all TCGs and CCGs I played, which is a fair amount.
If you aren't gonna be mana or colour screwed you're still gonna be screwed by curving out properly etc.

I stopped counting how often I complained about not drawing any answer īn hearthstone or how mulliganing 6 drops makes me draw 8 drops.

The only annoying thing about the land system is that it makes land bases exorbitantly expensive.
Click to expand...
I find games that are only curving out screwed are still much more fun and competitive than games that are land screwed though. I don't have a ton of experience with other TCGs, but the land system seems like a pretty big flaw to me.
SigmasonicX said:
A big issue with that is that it makes your deck play out in a very similar way every game, if you know you're guaranteed a land when you need one. Duel Masters allows you to use any card as a "land", and Mark Rosewater claims that this made the games repetitive after a while. Hearthstone gives you "lands" every turn, and in order to make sure each game isn't the same, it vastly increased the amount of randomness present in the card effects themselves.
Click to expand...

Couldn't this be somewhat counter-acted by requiring higher card counts for decks, which would mean drawing a certain card would be much less likely? To me that sounds like it would reduce repetitiveness. Like if your deck is 60 non-land cards, that already would introduce some variety in decks over the 34-40 non-land cards we have now. If needed to that could even be bumped up to 80.
 
O

OceanBlue

Member
SigmasonicX said:
A big issue with that is that it makes your deck play out in a very similar way every game, if you know you're guaranteed a land when you need one. Duel Masters allows you to use any card as a "land", and Mark Rosewater claims that this made the games repetitive after a while. Hearthstone gives you "lands" every turn, and in order to make sure each game isn't the same, it vastly increased the amount of randomness present in the card effects themselves.

Though I wonder if one way to minimize the land problem would be to give players an emblem like this:
"Pay 2 life, sacrifice this emblem: Search your library for a basic land card and put it on the battlefield tapped. You can't play lands this turn. Activate this ability only if you played no lands this turn, and only as a sorcery."
Click to expand...
I'm new to card games so I might be missing something, but I'm surprised people would want more variance in a card game. It's not like drawing no lands or too many is an interesting choice in game. Don't you just end up with dead cards you can't play?

Anyway in FoW you draw 5 cards so I think they hoped to offset drawing lands and increase variance that way. There's so much tutoring though lol.
 
A

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Familienoberhauptvogel said:
Glad I got my Nahiri a couple weeks ago but what exactly made her spike so hard right now? She's been used before a lot and it didn't affect the price.

Still kicking myself for not getting Chandra when she was cheap af.
Click to expand...

Joe Lossett played her in miracles; Jeff Hoogland played her in Kiki-Chord. Caused greed-based buyout.
 
Y

Yeef

Member
OceanBlue said:
I'm new to card games so I might be missing something, but I'm surprised people would want more variance in a card game. It's not like drawing no lands or too many is an interesting choice in game. Don't you just end up with dead cards you can't play?
Click to expand...
It's about hitting the sweet spot for variance. Too much and it just feels like a coin flip. Too little and it makes things dull and predictable, which also means that the best players win a lot more frequently.

The way to mitigate mana screw and mana flood mainly comes down to design and deckbuilding. From a design standpoint, you want card-smoothing mechanics in every set, like Investigate, Scry and cycling. You also want mana sinks late in the game so that people have things to do with their mana even if they're getting flooded.

From a deckbuilding standpoint, you want to make sure that your curve is tight, so even if you get screwed, you still have things you can do. You also want mana sinks and utility lands, like Duskwatch Recruiter and Shambling Vent so that you still have things to do with your mana even if you're just drawing lands.
 
O

OceanBlue

Member
Yeef said:
It's about hitting the sweet spot for variance. Too much and it just feels like a coin flip. Too little and it makes things dull and predictable, which also means that the best players win a lot more frequently.

The way to mitigate mana screw and mana flood mainly comes down to design and deckbuilding. From a design standpoint, you want card-smoothing mechanics in every set, like Investigate, Scry and cycling. You also want mana sinks late in the game so that people have things to do with their mana even if they're getting flooded.

From a deckbuilding standpoint, you want to make sure that your curve is tight, so even if you get screwed, you still have things you can do. You also want mana sinks and utility lands, like Duskwatch Recruiter and Shambling Vent so that you still have things to do with your mana even if you're just drawing lands.
Click to expand...
Other games are way more predictable than card games and are still entertaining. It just sucks that, in a matchup with almost evenly skilled players, a win or a loss can come down to not being able to play anything. Watching the Toronto Grand Prix finals and seeing Jon Stern mill down to 5 and play 3 lands in like 7 turns makes me question if this is really the best way to approach things. Did he need more lands in deck? I don't think so. He just got screwed by shuffling.
 
C

charlequin

Banned
CoconutTank said:
Would it be overpowered/broken if each player could start with 1 land of their choice from their deck in play, before shuffling and drawing?
Click to expand...

If this is in addition to the turn one land drop then the answer is "extremely so," so I'll assume this is in place of the land drop. I'll also assume it's basic land, because if it isn't the answer is "extremely so" again.

If it is basically playing one basic from your deck on turn one... that's a good question. The biggest thing is that this mechanic actually would have pretty different effects on different types of decks. The biggest beneficiaries would probably be ultra-low curve aggro decks (which can dramatically reduce their total land count if they get a free land turn one) and hacky 3+ color decks (which can massively improve their color fixing if they can plug a color hole with a land of their choice on turn one.)

SigmasonicX said:
"Pay 2 life, sacrifice this emblem: Search your library for a basic land card and put it on the battlefield tapped. You can't play lands this turn. Activate this ability only if you played no lands this turn, and only as a sorcery."
Click to expand...

This is kinda complicated, and anything that involves searching/shuffling should be automatically vetoed IMO.

Giant Panda said:
I don't have a ton of experience with other TCGs, but the land system seems like a pretty big flaw to me.
Click to expand...

Everyone thinks this upfront, but I think games like Hearthstone have shown pretty decisively how bad it would be to take it out of Magic.

Couldn't this be somewhat counter-acted by requiring higher card counts for decks, which would mean drawing a certain card would be much less likely?
Click to expand...

At this point the ways this would modify game balance would be so extreme we're kind of not talking about the same game anymore.
 
A

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The fact that 25% of games aren't actually competitive games is worse than entrenched players believe it is.
 
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