Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

eh I'll take a good offcolor uncommon vs. something that likely won't make my deck anyway, depending on the set of course. some sets like Origins had so many garbage commons that you'd struggle to get to 23.

i caught an episode of limited resources with chris fennell guesting a while back and that was the only time i can remember a pro player arguing in favour of proactively hatedrafting. he was saying as the draft goes on you have to realize there are certain cards your deck can never beat and you have to take them out of the game. the numbers go so hard against that though, it really doesn't make any sense. even so, however ill advised it might be, losing that element of the draft experience and that part of strategy is an actual cost. tracking the cards you pass so you know what your opponents might have is i think of a much smaller benefit, and more dubious, than ppl make out but again that is still a real thing. i'm just hoping stuff like this seems more important than it actually plays out.

yeah I mean when most people think of hatedrafting they think of first-picking a bomb rare they can't play in Pack 3 so no one else can get it, IMO that's pretty dumb, but if you're in say Pack 3 Pick 4 and you've got 20 playables I'm okay just picking the best card if there's nothing I want, knowing if nothing else there's a ton of deck filler coming my way

i tend to prefer to build up an on-colour sideboard even if i am good for my main playables. more often than you might think you can board in even some usually pretty bad cards to give you an edge in a specific match up.

yeah i have won lots of limited games via sideboarding in of cards that i picked up late in packs. if your opponent's deck is slow, bring in some of those mediocre draw spells or mind rots and crush them with card advantage. if they're trying to swarm you out with 2-drops, your 1/1 for 1 might be live and better than a decent 5-drop

I sometimes hate-draft later picks that are extremely good against my deck, e.g. Dual Shot if I'm playing lots of 1-toughness guys, over marginally useful cards for my own deck. But usually I prefer to add to my sideboard, like you guys are saying

next block after kaladesh is amonkhet, an egypt-like word ruled by nicol bolas. hmmm

also modern masters 3 is out in march, will go thru RTR block this time

i like the idea of egypt world. egyptian mythology is a bit too obscure i think to have the same depth of resonance as e.g. theros achieved but as long as they get the feel right it should go over well. at any rate, i personally am more interested in that than "steampunk" world.

I'm just happy to get two new worlds. I know they said that we're gonna have "return" blocks about half the time from now on, but doing 2 in a row has felt like a lot of returning. And that was with two blocks I mostly liked - can't imagine if it was blocks I didn't like

yeah i would prefer a much lower sequel rate than 50%. with all of RTR, BFZ, SOI i feel like they've somehow simultaneously whiffed on replicating the feel of the old sets and bringing enough new stuff to be exciting. i think scars of mirrodin was actually the best-executed sequel block despite being the first one that they did.

I dunno I've thought the sequel blocks have been pretty good - but the original ones have been better

http://mythicspoiler.com/kld/cards/ovalchasedragster.jpg

mechanically pretty interesting but

http://mythicspoiler.com/kld/cards/aetherworksmarvel.jpg

permanent mana is finally here

it's more like free-floating charge counters

i like these mechanics

yeah I guess we'll have to see more cards that use it, could be something interesting. I like that they've stumbled into the design space of Clues/Emblems/Whatever This Is

call me old school but I like the Arabian Nights-meets-Antiquities feel of this so far

and yeah the Dragster isn't that great a card but it does look really cool (the card itself). kinda glad we aren't still playing in the days where a card like this would have 5 lines of text about how the crew dies with the vehicle or w/e

I don't really understand the frame of the vehicle - it's, like, a door?

feel like i am not quite enfranchised enough to justify how much i viscerally hate that "dragster" and yet here i am

mythic vehicle looks very powerful, probably will live or die based on how easy it will be to keep 3 crew in play

'3 crew' could just be a 3 power creature, it's total power not # of creatures. seems like a low barrier

yeah that one looks really good. one thing I remember from Saga/Masques block is that lands/artifacts that periodically turn into creatures are better than they look because they survive Wraths and sorcery speed removal. ofc you still need something in play to pilot it but I wouldn't be surprised if this thing got a ton of play

kinda weird that spoilers have already started. maybe it's because I mostly play online but EMN still seems brand new to me

and yeah that card looks very good, getting the damage on etb in addition to attack compensates for the awkwardness of the mechanic in constructed

you can play a creature and tap it same turn too, giving a bit extra resiliency/consistency vs e.g. sweepers

we finally get dwarflord

yes vehicles seem good vs sweepers. essentially gives all your follow-up plays pseudo-haste

this set is the most excited I've been about the design and mechanics since... Scars of Mirrodin block? maybe even Time Spiral block? energy and vehicles are both pretty out there. hope it translates into fun gameplay

that's what I like about them doing two blocks a year, it's a lot easier to do something really out there. not saying this is gonna be that set but I like what I see so far

kinda weird that spoilers have already started. maybe it's because I mostly play online but EMN still seems brand new to me

It's always been a pretty short cycle between the base set and the next block (about 2 months) but base sets tend to play in a pretty basic way and have a lot of reprints so they don't hold interest for very long. Eldritch Moon has a lot going on and changes the draft and standard formats quite a bit. I'm still getting the hang of how to draft it, but Kaladesh is already taking my MTG attention away

Apparently you can use a vehicle to crew another vehicle

yeah the summer set has only a 2 month run since its historically been a core set, and they haven't changed up their release schedule much yet since that stopped being true

we've got the enemy versions of the seachrome coast cycle finally

I made this puzzle for my friends a week ago, and it's unexpected really fun!

"It is turn one. You draw a seven card hand, consisting of a land, an artifact, a white card, a blue card, a black card, a red card and a green card. It is possible that some of these cards are other things as well, for instance both your white and your green cards might be copies of Selesnya Charm, but the above must be a description of your hand.

You play all seven cards (playing the land in the conventional fashion, and casting the other six) and then attack for lethal damage.

A) using a vintage ban list, what were they?
B) using a vintage ban list, but playing them *in the given order* (ie L,A,W,U,B,R,G), what were they?
C) using a legacy ban list, what were they?
D) using a legacy ban list, and playing them *in the given order*, what were they? (I don't yet have a solution to this one, and it may be impossible)

You may not rely on randomness or the top of your deck."

I spent *hours* on C.

I must be old because my brain keeps going to some form of Ball Lightning + Berserk

btw the spoilers are really churning out now. the art direction on this seems amazing so far. There's a 1-mana "counter target colorless spell" card which seems very important

this seems potentially broken as well
http://mythicspoiler.com/kld/cards/panharmonicon.html

a lot of people upset at how busted this is gonna be in EDH. they're right but whatever, I love it when new cards shake up a casual format

for a:
lotus
ancient tomb
manamorphose (green)
reckless charge (red)
double cleave (white)
tainted strike (black)
fugitive wizard (blue)

guessing there's something similar that can be done for b, infect + haste + double strike is the easiest way to get a t1 creature win

I don't get iatee's solution - lotus + tomb is 5 mana, but charge,cleave,strike and fugitive is 6.

Wait, ignore that, no it isn't!

GOOD JOBBE

feel like there's a way to do iatee's solution with Lost Leonin for B but i haven't worked out the details yet

my favorite magic puzzle was the t1 kill using only cards from scars of mirrodin block (you can stack your deck)