Magic: The Gathering C/D

I'm FB friends with the dude who did the LED and Moat buyouts, used to see him a lot at PTQs. He's gotten SO much hate for buying like 40 copies of these cards, and I think maybe 0.5% of the complainers had any intention to buy these cards, if that. He not only got comparisons to Shkreli, but Hitler as well. And death threats. I'm finding it pretty hilarious and I think he is too. Now that the real Shkreli is involved I can't wait to see what happens

40 copies, really? That's all it takes to move the price that much?

There's not a ton on the tcgplayer market at any one time so if you buy that many people see them 'sold out' and panic

really feel like I ought to sell out right now, Library of Alexandria is hitting a grand

i've been trying to downsize my collection for a while but a big chunk of it is old standard staples that are marginal in modern and thus have low demand, i've found a lot of these cards aren't actually worth nearly the amount they're supposedly selling for when you look at tcgplayer price. e.g. restoration angel is $12 median currently but no one actually needs them.

yeah that's the issue I'm gonna have to. my collection is supposedly worth like 20k or something according to these websites but I can't imagine anyone giving me more than 5k or 6k in a single shot. like someone is telling me "SELL YOUR CRADLES NOW!" which I get, it's over $200 now, but is there really any liquidity at that price?

you could look at the major vendor online buylist prices or do it at the next big event near you

i'd like to go down to 1 deck per format but ever since the birthing pod ban i haven't been able to figure out the 1 modern deck that i'd be happy running forever. i was playing scapeshift for a while but the emergence of infect as a popular deck has made that kind of frustrating

i've been waiting for someone to come up with a good thopter foundry list since i love thirst for knowledge decks but that doesn't seem to be happening

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-image-gallery/eldritch-moon

first thing i noticed is common removal is total garbage. murder and exile lightning strike at uncommon feel like bombs

also, the missing zombies from SOI have arrived

i just want to kill people with Stensia Banquet, that concept is really funny to me

xp yeah he's only buying from tcgplayer, not eBay, so yeah 40 copies is everything available

i'm playing dredge in Modern and this deck should not exist. highly recommended

I have yet to see modern dredge in action...how fast does it goldfish? I hate dredge btw

its pretty wildly variant depending on how many prized amalgams you hit off your first couple dredges but it's enough to overwhelm all the fair decks

also i play burning inquiry in my list which is a card that will sometimes just make your opponent concede on turn 1

ha that's pretty mean

a typical start might look something like t1 insolent neonate, discard and dredge a stinkweed imp or grave troll, t2 dredge something and play a land returning 1-2 bloodghasts and 1-2 prized amalgams, maybe you have a narcomoeba in play too, if your draw is real good you can maybe even get some more stuff into play off a faithless looting but the point is you're putting as much as 10 power into play on turn 2 and it's mostly guys that will come right back turn 3 if they get removed

Interesting changes announced for the next year, especially the change to top 8 bracket. What do y'all think?

Top 8 bracket for PTs, specifically

I think that style of bracket only serves to emphasize how dumb the tiebreaker + hard cut system is

at some point there's gonna be a PT where seeds 2 thru 5 have the same number of match points and it will look really silly for 2 people who performed equally in the swiss to have dramatically different chances in the top 8

after a couple weeks of complaints & despair about bant company being unbeatable, having the PT standard rounds open with t1 vessel of nascency on both sides in a non-mirror-match was a pretty great/weird moment

just finished my second sealed league. some quick observations: Blue is way more playable, White seems a bit worse. there are so many good instant/sorcery triggers that even the U/R deck that's usually poison actually winds up being quite good. B/G self-mill is a lot of fun to play but decking yourself is a very real threat. Emerge seems...not worth it. The cost reduction is clunky and there aren't enough sac triggers to make it work - punting tokens doesn't help either, usually it plays like the Champion mechanic from Lorwyn but the creatures aren't quite as good. you could probably draft something out of it I guess.

emerge has been good in my experience, the blue common one is one of the better commons. overall, red is strong, white is kinda weak because theres so many cards that punish x/1s and white relies on x/1s. blue is better than usual as a base color since the 2s and 3s are good. green is deep but low ceiling like usual. not sure about black yet

yeah emerge is very strong in draft at least, where you can set it up with good enablers.

strong in constructed too if this PT is any indication

PT top 8 is happening right now fyi due to insane time difference

so that dredge deck eh? I have a suspicion there will be a card banned within a year...

probably just send GGT back to the banlist, the deck isn't super out of line right now just very good

in theory everyone can pack a ton of gravehate, but modern sbs are already so taxed. it makes the 'which fast linear deck have you decided not to lose to' problem even worse.

http://static.starcitygames.com/www/images/article/16August2016Preview01.png

only relevant for legacy, but I'm excited

i was trying to think of the most relevant things you can get with that but not imperial recruiter, all i've got so far is true name nemesis, plus the good value creatures like vendilion clique and flickerwisp and such. not sure it opens up any combos of the same degree as painters servant or the aluren chain

that plus flickerwisp is degenerate enough. not sure there's a cute infinite combo, but yeah, it's mostly a value card. too bad it's not modern legal, though it would potentially be a little too busted?

http://227rsi2stdr53e3wto2skssd7xe.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Sanctum-Prelate_EN.png

http://media.wizards.com/2016/azetllnwjpxztp2b_CN2/en_mGqRiQAwg3.png

this seems p mental. look forward to seeing it in cube

I was shocked to see Show and Tell reprinted because I was 100% sure it was on the reserve list. Guess it wasn't because it was a garbage rate at the time the Reserve List was created? If so, lol

Garbage rare*

yeah something like that. the logic of what went on that list is not always clear though, lion's eye diamond was similarly considered pointless at the time and it's on there

Oh yeah good point. I remember LED was a joke among my friends back in the day - we'd give it to each other as a gag gift. Crazy to think what it's worth now. Really curious how the Reserve List was decided, then

at one point all rares that had never had a reprint went on the list after a certain point (3 years?). when they stopped adding to the reserved list in like 2002 they exempted a bunch of rares that hadnt been reprinted yet that they thought they might want to reprint in core sets or w/e in the future. thats why all the shitty homelands rares are on the list but stuff like show & tell is not

I actually remember the previews of Mirage and Visions - "A 12/12 for 1 mana!" "A card that's just like Black Lotus, but with one extra line!" Dreadnought was fun to figure out - I actually figured out a 4-card combo that let you cast it on turn 4. When LED was released we were all sorely disappointed. "So this thing is unusable then?" Looking back that was the first Future Sight-style joke card, of course if we knew then how long Magic would stick around we might have figured out this thing would one day be useful.

Of course the very next set brought Lotus Vale which in some sense DID function like a Black Lotus, thanks to some rules loophole. Good times.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/magic-online-leagues-circle-complete-2016-08-24

draft leagues coming early sept. 3 rounds of games but not within the draft pod, but matchmaking at same record only. replacing swiss queues entirely, and only 8-4s remain as traditional in-pod tournaments. no change to entry and prizes.

love draft leagues, love the league leaderboards

this is prob my favorite feature add since before V4 release

i've very much got my mtg spark back in the past month or 2, if kaladesh is any good at all i will draft the he** out of it

i made the decision during SOI to switch from 8-4s back to swiss and was v pleased by the addition of the current format 6-2-2-2s recently so my first reaction to the news was to be a bit bummed to be losing the "pure" experience for swiss but realizing that i have played sealed league more than draft this format because it has been hard to get the necessary block of time i think i should and will be glad about this development.

the change definitely makes sense in terms of helping people manage their time better without locking them into multi-hour blocks of game time, but it is a little weird to me to play against people outside of the original pod, it will take some getting used to.

this is prob my favorite feature add since before V4 release

Absolutely. I love drafting but I'm kind of a quick player and often times I'd finish a match in 15 minutes and have to wait nearly 40 minutes for the next round to start. It's frustrating to me since I have a kid now and if I'm playing it's usually at like 9:30-10 PM, so if there's just one slow guy in the pod I might not make it to bed until 12:30. Playing decks outside the pod is kinda weird but I doubt I'll even notice, if anything it just means I don't have to defensive draft

defensive drafting is bad anyway unless there's nothing in the pack in your colors at all