Magic: The Gathering C/D

apparently clout of the dominus not cloud

this gearhulk cycle seems pretty pushed, i guess they wanted new titans?

yeah the blue one seems ridiculous, just an insanely ratcheted up Snapcaster (at 3x the mana cost, but whatever)

they seem to be playing fast n' loose with some of these effects. I've seen a lot of cards that let you bypass mana costs and a decent number of cards that seem to reward you for playing cards that are already good. Seems dangerous!!!

also lol @ Dwarf Nighthawk, looking forward to that total pain in the ass in Limited

http://magic.wizards.com/en/MTGO/articles/archive/magic-online/announcing-full-innistrad-sealed-league-2016-09-07

this sounds cool

they did something like that for ravnica and it only served to highlight just how much has changed since the older sets - you basically ended up playing the spells from the old block and the creatures from the new one. i'd expect something similar to happen here though not as drastic

interesting. that makes sense.

also obviously there's the issue where old innistrad has no discard outlets or payoffs and SOI has almost no sacrifice outlets so you're spread thin on some of the major mechanical themes

yeah it probably won't play the best but I love these weird limited formats so I'll do one or two

Pay 50 life: Aetherfux Reservoir deals 50 damage to target creature or player.

^^^^ now my favorite line of text on a Magic card

that card is a fun design. by my calc you can kill with a "storm count" of 8?

the "creature" bit is what makes it

yeah I'm really amused by that

I know where it comes from too. I remember MaRo saying the design team really wanted the wording "destroy target creature or player" on Door to Nothingness and were disappointed when the rules team told them it wouldn't work. So, here you go

the "creature" bit is what makes it

Boros Reckoner combo, innit

oh man draft leagues are here, time to get hopelessly addicted to MTGO again

anyway yeah so playing matches outside your draft pod is definitely a little odd. my first match was basically a mirror vs. someone who happened to have the exact same rares I had. haven't seen that before in a draft.

i've seen that in normal drafts, though due to collation it's certainly less likely IRL

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

― ciderpress, Tuesday, September 6, 2016 3:14 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Did this today and it was super fun! I wasted looooads of time on trarfvf jnir vagb 2k cherfgrry cnynqvaf vagb nppbeqre fuvryqf vagb fbzr fbeg bs gjvfgrq vzntr xvyy, naq nyfb nobhg inevbhf arpebgvp bbmr yvarf vaibyivat fbzr pbzovangvba bs fbyvgba, xhyqbgun sbetrznfgre, zbygrafgrry qentba naq vasrpg fbhy-rngre, but I couldn't quite make any of them work - I always seemed to be one card short. In the end the solution was more realistic!

I might try the masques block one now.

i'm now curious whether you came up with the same solution as mine or if there's another one out there

here's how i did it (spoilers): https://pastebin.mozilla.org/8908599

Oh wow, that's not mine at all! I didn't even find that card - I did:

https://pastebin.mozilla.org/8908612

there really seem to be a ton of great and interesting designs among these previews

yeah this set looks great, though as always its very hard to figure out how it will actually play until next friday when we see all the commons/uncommons that weren't exciting enough to preview

Energy in particular is really cool. It's hard for me to separate the fact that the set seems full of exciting cards from the fact that the power level seems, like, super crazy high.

the power level below mythic rare doesn't seem abnormally high to me other than Voltaic Brawler. but yeah those gearhulks and planeswalkers are all strong

So what stuff from current standard should we be hording for rotation?

finally a blue card that feels like it's trying: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CsKxu2-UEAAlPtX.png

uhhh what is this about Mana Crypt being back

it's part of "Kaladesh Inventions" which are basically the same thing as the zendikar expeditions but for artifacts instead of lands

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/masterpiece-series-2016-09-12

tldr: they're doing the ultra-rare special frame foils thing in every set going forward, each time with some new subset of cards that thematically fits the set. so for this block it's artifacts.

really awesome idea though sadly the presence of the Reserved List nerfs this a bit

54 seems like a lot. i have half a dozen expeditions sitting on my mtgo account but they are all the bottom of the rung $2 cards. maybe they will appreciate over time? seems like there isn't necessarily a premium market for quite all of the cards they are going to issue this way. i guess i am just hoping there is a run on sunken ruins at some point.

xp like always. but this is a really good thing for pretty much all players since it brings down the price of standard cards (in the article Maro lists this as a major driver of the decision to do these, i guess they liked what they saw in BFZ)

MTGO has separate issues from paper magic in this domain - people do not care about 'blinging' out decks on MTGO so foils aren't worth more than the regular versions of the cards even when they're a lot rarer. also MTGO has a much higher ratio of limited to constructed play than paper magic.

not sure if I quite get why it'll have a measurable impact on Standard - is it because people will buy more packs?

I can totally see a big gap between paper/online values of these though. These cards just look awesome and that doesn't really translate well to the computer screen.

e.g. paper sunken ruins expedition is selling for $40 even though it hasn't been played in any constructed deck on my radar in the past 4 years

eh that makes a lot of sense

I like having these in every set. It can be exciting to open them and give you some good value, but there isn't pressure to collect them since they aren't required for any deck. Taking the price burden off of Standard staples is definitely welcome.

ok can someone explain why it takes the price burden off Standard staples. does it have something to do with how the value of every card in the set times the frequency they get opened cannot exceed some number due to market forces or what

xp basically due to sets being printed to demand, the average value of cards in a booster box is fixed, which means adding a bunch of high value cards to the potential pool of opens brings everything else down

you see the effects of this pretty clearly in sets with high demand reprints like the fetchlands in khans - a lot of standard cards from those sets were close to bulk rares even during their run in standard, and a lot of the mythics that would normally have been $10+ were closer to $5 just because the fetchlands 'sucked up' so much of the set value from the other cards

you can see the effect in action right now actually:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/BFZ#paper
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/SOI#paper

BFZ paper card prices are about 30% cheaper overall

eldritch moon hasn't fully stabilized yet but the numbers for OGW vs. it are pretty similar to those as well

that's kinda crazy, I didn't think these would affect much since they're so rare. maybe I'm bitter because I never seem to pull any.

yeah i never opened an expedition, though i wasn't drafting that block as frequently as some

i played about a zillion drafts throughout BFZ & OGW and got exactly two of those expeditions, which, eh, okay i guess. it'll be nice if standard decks get a fair bit cheaper, though. maybe i'll end up playing standard after all.

A friend of mine bought all my loose BFZ prize packs specifically to open an Expedition and did (bastard)

as much as i detest the racecar-style designs, the artwork design for the set in general, and on these inventions in particular, is outstanding

Yeah, the artwork is very nice. They somehow managed to make a steampunk set not embarrassing.

full set is up http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-image-gallery/kaladesh

looks pretty good

so after practicing with it for a day I took my friend's modern dredge deck to the wmcq and t32d. I was in t8 contention until pretty late when I had to call a judge over cause I forgot to deboard and I mulled to oblivion, losing a g1 is pretty bad for the deck.

beat a very salty seth manfield who made a judge waste 5 minutes of our time because I played a gemstone mine and put 1 counter on it instead of 3 when I was about to kill him.

anyway the deck seems super busted and probably underplayed relative to how strong it is.

yeah i think its probably the most powerful modern deck but i didn't really enjoy playing it that much. it also gets a new card in kaladesh with the 1R discard 2, draw 3 spell.