Magic: The Gathering C/D

I'm not gonna say it's the worst thing ever but it really doesn't feel "months away" - there are tons of little things that should be done, and not just subtle things to make the gameplay more intuitive, but like, big, glaring flaws, indicative of a company that's not Beta testing at all or just not listening to the people who are.

i do kind of wish they'd retained some of the look&feel of 90s PC RPGs that v3 kind of has going on as a stylistic choice, it was always pretty endearing & nostalgic

Cast into Darkness is the 6th lowest-ranked card in Journey on Gatherer - it is just me or is that one of the 10 best commons?

is that the -2/-0 cant block enchantment? cuz i agree that card is really solid

i just went through a very big move and bought a new computer and found out i can only run mtgo beta (v4?) on it so i havent really bothered installing it again. ive also had a tonne of non-magic stuff to do but was suddenly struck with the urge at work today to play, it was... potent

yeah. I did my first full block draft and went 4-0 thanks to that card (though more thanks to the 3 Gray Merchants I got) I had a difficult time convincing anyone else it was good but every time I played it it would up being more or less straight removal.

I had one of those in my king macar + 2 mastiffs, pain seer, eidelon of countless battles, herald of torment deck tonight

so Khans of Tarkir, a Mongol invasion block with lots of dragons? interesting...

I thought the deal was that dragons were extinct on the plane

that's true, but I suspect that you start out with lack of dragons leading right into a huge pile of dragons

it's basically edh

yeah you just know that 3rd set of the block is going to be 'AVR but for dragons instead of angels'

Or maybe Rise of the Eldrazi but for dragons instead of Eldrazi

The block structure for the Huey-Dewey-Louie block is confirmed to be large-small-large, with some sort of twist. Saw some people speculating that the draft format might be Triple Huey, then Dewey-Huey-Huey, then Louie-Louie-Dewey (or some permutation of that). I'm all in favor of shaking up the draft format more often.

I am very amused by this:
http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/avatars/58/49/635359304940832485.png

so...does the pack have to be Conspiracy? or can you just bring one with you?

all I know is that this set is gonna be a staple for the Crazy Drafts (where you can bring any 3 packs you want) - its kinda like fantasy Cube + new stuff that would only work in this format. can't wait to play it and kudos to WoTC for even trying something like this.

it doesn't have to be a pack of conspiracy, no.

though really this set works far enough outside the 'normal' rules of the game that you can just decide w/ the table how to interpret this stuff

I'm just hoping there are enough high-powered/money cards to make the set worth opening - without a decent amount of chase cards I can't see my LGS drafting this more than 2-3 times. Though I guess there's no real limit to what they can reprint here (Reserved List aside) so I would expect a few sought-after cards here.

Dack will be a chase card at the least

'conspiracy' will have foil swords to plowshares and foil brainstorms, so I imagine people will be pretty interested in opening boosters. curious to see what other vintage/legacy commons and uncommons they'll put in, foil bolts would also be nice and it would be sweet to have non-ftv foil hymns

feel like the ev will be pretty bad still w/ few to no standard/modern cards + no limits on the print run + lots of people who want to draft it but have little interest in the cards for legacy/commander

kinda just want to build a draft set (said everyone)

legacy and commander cards are a better pull than modern tbh, which (surprisingly) kinda feels like the most hardcore magic-nerd format going rn

although I didn't realize this would be an open printing, kinda figured they'd do it like mma but its nice to think they learned a lesson there

legacy players are willing to drop money for sure, but I think the supply will just overwhelm the demand by a good margin. like, how many people really need that new planeswalker?

is he even good? there are no viable legacy decks that could fit him in really, not that im an expert &c&c

like I said I think the big draw is reprints, particularly the existence of foil versions of duel deck/alternate art staples, they were pretty good about getting a lot of money uncommons into mma, i can easily imagine ponder, hymn, daze &c being in this set and that tends to make actually opening packs appealing to people

mostly though this just doesn't look like any fun to actually play, unlike mma

i've thought about building a recyclable draft set for innistrad but i'm not sure if it'd be more or less fun to have than just building a cube.

i haven't done the math on how many copies of each common or uncommon you need to make reasonably realistic packs. for rares you just need 2 of each regular rare and 1 of each mythic and you're fine, but uncommons are real important to get the ratios correct on so that stuff like burning vengeance shows up at the correct frequency for it to be draftable some % of the time.

haha it's not aimed at your demographic xp

cider do you know the breakdown of rarity for the dfc in innistrad? tbh if you have all the rares and mythics it shouldn't be that hard to get a playset of uncommons and a double playset of commons from isd (i don't know if those are the right numbers either, i think its probably more like 3/6 but) to round out the set

in some ways getting to do 'throwback' drafts is actually more appealing than cubing to me

somebody should start packaging draft sets and put them on ebay or something, I bet they would sell

then they should give me one for having the good idea

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ISD-Innistrad-Complete-Set-Factory-Sealed-W-Mythics-/271488035661?pt=Trading_Card_Games_US&hash=item3f35f2ab4d

jeez you could build a draft set for not much more than a box itself

I would imagine those foil prices would be insane. Foil Daze is still something like $120 even though it's a freakin' common. I'm positive I used to have a few too.

man i should redeem some of my full sets from wizards before they stop honoring them

damn m13 sets are pretty cheap maybe I should build one of those

i think 3x uncommons 6x commons would work fine but i wouldn't go lower, at least for recapturing innistrad it's real important to have the occasional draft where there are 3x rakish heirs or 5x delvers that all go to one person. the problem is that's close to 900 cards not including lands, which is a lot if you want to keep them sleeved.

the posts from 2003 in this thread are hilarious btw, less hilarious and more :/ is frogbs talking about selling underground seas for $15 or the ebay listing for an mp alpha black lotus (sold at $970)

I agonized over buying a single Savannah for $10 back in the day, but went for it. That was the most I'd ever spent on a single card. Of course I was young enough that $10 was way more meaningful than it is to me now

re: Dack, he might not be good enough for Legacy but he's still a three mana PW with some powerful abilities. Should have lots of appeal for casual players, and Cube and Commander. I think he'll be a chase card at least in the short-term

yeah all planeswalkers are chase-y for a while, I am sure he will be $20+ out of the gate..but he's kinda constrained the commander-demand by being two colors. he is a very strong turn 3 play in the format though.

exploration and misdirection are in conspiracy, there's your money cards frogbs

man, i think everyone kind of just assumed exploration was on the reserved list since it's never been reprinted to date even as a promo

while a lot of the "conspiracy" type cards have been kinda tame this one is incredibly amusing:
http://mythicspoiler.com/cpy/cards/worldknit.jpg

I wonder if they spent the time to balance that ability or just assumed it sucked but was funny.

Because correctly balancing that would have been a very odd experience.

I don't think it sucks at all! Basically it allows you to take the best card in every pack regardless of color, but it forces you to play all the 14th picks as well. I don't feel like there's going to be the same ratio of chaff cards that most drafting sets have so you probably won't be forced into too many unplayables but it may make some things much more unworkable. I'm not sure how they could "balance" it correctly - there aren't really any variables to play around with. Either way it's an awesomely designed card.

Sorry you're right, there's no balancing it because there's nothing they could change - I meant finding out if it IS balanced. My first thought was that it was broken actually, since it lets you take the best card in the pack for every single pack. Also greatly changes your draft based on when you open it. So I could either see them testing it a lot and deciding it was fair, or testing it a little and deciding it was bad but fun. If it was broken, it probably would have gotten cut.

If it was broken, it probably would have gotten cut.

I feel that even if they thought it was broken they'd probably let it slide, it's a casual draft-only format and it's on a card type that you can't play in constructed.

the card vinnie links also seems like it interacts well with drafting conspiracies, since those dont dilute yr deck but dont break the cards starting requirements

I would imagine the Conspiracies would go early, since they all are net positives and you can begin with as many as you got

i'm getting mildly excited by standard again now that some actual new decks have shown up. i like gerry t's new build of nykthos green and there's also a big naya list with the new ajani that i want to try.

meanwhile, modern feels super stagnant. after all the hype around the january changes, wild nacatl and bitterblossom have failed to crack 2% of the metagame while the same few decks continue to sit on top. i don't really know what the solution is here, but other than possibly splinter twin and birthing pod, i favor addition over subtraction at this point and i think part of the problem is that theros block by nature isn't likely to add staples/archetypes to the format. some new sets centered on something other than creature augmentation could help.

i'd like them to leave the banned list along right now tbh. modern isnt exciting right now but there are a decent collections of strong, interactive decks at the top of the metagame and range of less competitive but possibly more interesting decks that are viable. i think im happier than you are to just pilot boring but effective lists other people come up w/ tho, i can see being frustrated as a deck-builder.

also, w/o a fetchlands reprint i have a hard time taking modern seriously as an alternate to legacy - i think my legacy deck cost me less than modern jund did to build, and over half my fetches came from tournament wins. its boring to gripe about it so much, but i feel like the cost of modern staples is the biggest problem by far facing the format

yeah i mostly agree with you - what i was trying to say was that i'd rather see the format grow & develop via new sets rather than banlist curation. and there's absolutely still room for that to happen power-level-wise; RTR block put a lot of cards into the format.

aaron forsythe straight up admitted in an interview recently that R&D was blindsided by how fast modern prices inflated, and that because they work so far ahead we shouldn't necessarily expect much for a while but that they're getting stuff into the pipeline now.