Magic: The Gathering C/D

original goblin guide is one of the rare triple threat cards (good card, good art, good flavor text)

my exposure to the idea that the goblin guide art might be beloved for some reason comes from just reading someone speculating that the new art might be on purpose to maintain the price of the original, and now here.

i wish the damnation reprint had really terrible new art, that would've been hilarious.

meanwhile, if i had a deck with terminates, i would go out of my way to get this exact version, in japanese:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5uHAz5U0AA35PJ.png

i dont understand that art but i like it anyway. the original with the volcano is good too tho

Snapcaster Mage in at mythic

xp both the other versions (that i know anyway) are good actually, but i do really like this one. also the flavour text is apparently 'the sun always sets' in a p cool riposte to sun titan text.

the one thing i know about shards of alara was that the fixing sucked in limited, so it is going to be pretty sweet actually being able to cast those 3/4 mana shard uncommons.

i think i have managed to not put any money on mtgo so far this year so i am v excited to use that as an excuse to piss away a small fortune on this set.

yeah shards was weird, they made a big deal about doing a 3 color set and then just way undershot on the amount of fixing you need to play 3 colors in limited. full block fixed it with landcycling and borderposts and armillary sphere and such but in the first set you had to just play 2 colors with a small splash

new stony silence art also v good imo
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5xj9aTWYAA-rt0.png

that reminds me of this plains art http://media.wizards.com/2016/images/daily/V9pr1xWOgp_KW_Plains.jpg

ok, im doing my part to get this shit banned http://imgur.com/a/ursDc

so the new modern masters is looking pretty absurd. I've seen some speculation that this is wotc's move to cash out of modern, don't know if there's any truth to that.

this seems like a rare case where buying boxes might actually be good value. is $225 per box worth it or just crazy?

what does "cash out of modern" mean?

basically dump out all the high demand cards in this set and then stop or ramp down their support for modern as a format going forward

interesting. i don't even know what kind of resources they actually commit to modern anymore outside of the masters sets.

LOTV. they really have put everything in this.

modern is popular and not going anywhere. they took it off of the pro tour because it doesn't hype/advertise the current set in the same way as standard does. it will continue to be a GP and PTQ format.

craterhoof too, that card was quietly getting pretty pricey. can finally pick one up for my cube maybe.

don't forget Liliana!

that's what LOTV is

oops missed that post

burning tree emissary at common, look out pauper

also def makes me want to draft this set even more

I don't think wizards will 'cash out of modern' but they're going to run out of exciting modern cards to reprint pretty soon. and by pretty soon I mean 'right now'. not really sure what their plan is for keeping these sets popular.

theres always more modern cards to reprint, next one will go thru khans block which has plenty of stuff to hit. and by then they can start hitting some of the ones from the first MM and they'll be exciting again.

like chalice of the void and engineered explosives could be pushing $80 if theyre not in this one

just to demonstrate, there's still a shitload of relevant cards that haven't gotten a modern masters or other wide reprint, without even adding in Theros and Khans as the next MM will likely do. Obviously a few of these are likely to show up in this set but not all of them:

Ancestral Vision
Scapeshift
Mishra's Bauble
Time Warp
Inkmoth Nexus
Through the Breach
Goryo's Vengeance
Huntmaster of the Fells (& all other double faced cards, i suspect they're trying to wait until both innistrad blocks + origins are within the modern masters window before they do these?)
Tamiyo the Moon Sage
the 'filter lands'
the scars of mirrodin 'fastlands'
Ensnaring Bridge
Thrun, the Last Troll
Consecrated Sphinx
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Steel Overseer
Oracle of Mul Daya
Koth of the Hammer
Ajani Vengeant
Batterskull
Phyrexian Obliterator
the scars block swords
Platinum Emperion
Wurmcoil Engine
Threads of Disloyalty
Runed Halo
Glimpse the Unthinkable
etc

and theres way more if you include cards that are money cards via casual formats like Bloom Tender or Master Transmuter or whatever (though i could also see them hitting these in some sort of Commander Masters set during a MM offyear, with a multiplayer draft format and all). i think there's easily enough for 1-2 more modern masters sets before they have to start doing heavier recycling (by which point the earlier reprints will have been out of print for many years again anyway)

tarmogoyf again, cavern of souls. the hits keep coming. blood moon yesterday too.

yeah this is the strongest masters set for sure now

the only big holes at this point really are ancestral vision, noble hierarch (which was in the last one but still needs another printing pretty badly), and the janky artifacts that are worth a ton now like explosives and chalice

this is bonkers

I've never felt any urge to buy a box of mtg packs, this is making me consider it

with signets now on top of land based fixing cycles at common, uncommon and rare, it is going to be interesting to see if the synergies will be strong enough to prevent everyone going balls out 5 colour every time. suspect that the success as a limited format might hinge on that dynamic.

glad that signets are uncommon, they are stupid strong in draft

yeah different times etc but it is lunatic that they were common. also just weird inclusions for a supposedly 2 colour format.

even the mana myrs in scars of mirrodin were format warping in limited, a lot of the 2 and 3-drops in that set were garbage since your opponent was going like t2 gold myr t3 4-drop in such a large portion of games since they were 5 commons.

one of the worst things abt the MM2015 limited format was the superiority of 5c decks. none of the 2c archetypes were all that developed w/ maybe the exception of affinity and it made drafts really same-y and tedious not to mention how shitty it made the sealed format. i generally dont like formats with heavy fixing and am worried this is going to be another rares + rocks format

imo if you drafted any cards that weren't g/w/b you were doing mm2015 wrong. online either a convoke/tokens or spirits deck was wide open every time. my win% was through the roof on that format, 74% or something nuts.

i probably did less than 20 drafts in that format fwiw but i just remember feeling like it was very easy to slide into green-based ramp decks that splashed for all the good cards you cld get. and then having a really hard time drafting because there were no real signals or lanes, it was just 5+ ppl drafting the same basic deck

i did really like every other masters format limited (with VMA being my all time favorite draft format) so im hopeful for this one

i do feel weird though because i have no connection to/interest in the secondary price of cards really since i either already own or have no interest in owning any of these cards

damn this set really feels like it'll be the last MM, huh? nothing is being held back. (not actually saying this will be the last one.)

hadn't realized signets were moved to uncommon - a good move for limited I think

full card gallery is up

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-image-gallery/modern-masters-2017-edition?true

lot of AVR cards in here, a bold attempt at rehabilitating some of the good bits of that set

though thunderous wrath at common is maybe a bit overeager

i think this does look like it'll be a 4/5c goodstuff format. there are some clear themes but they don't seem pushed, and there's so many powerful gold cards.

the UW blink theme seems well developed but the other pairs don't really come through as particularly strong to me just scanning the card list

UB is supposed to be mystical teachings control apparently but there's no good instants to get with it. they chose grisly spectacle for the doom blade slot (??) and rewind is the only hard counterspell and a lot of the other good spells in UB are sorceries. theres basically no archetype payoff there

there does seem to be a wide variety of strategies available in 3 color decks though, i assume that is intended as the default in this set.

right, i noticed there is a lot of bleed off 2 colour themes that would encourage a 3rd colour. but even with the blink stuff, if you got say a strong themed bant deck together you are getting a couple 'free' 3/3s and occasionally bouncing things? at the minimum it's short like a mulldrifter at common or something. there's sort of go wide with some anthems but no overrun kind of haymakers that really push that, the sacrifice/regrowth stuff looks pretty sketchy and i don't know if something like blood artist would even make it enticing. seems to me, on first viewing anyway, that they're all at least a strong common short of being where i hoped they'd be.

anyway, that is a lot of complaining but in truth i am still extreme hype to actually play this thing. i really hope it comes together, so much goodness.

separate but related, this modern cube on mtgo seems like really weird timing. idk if it is supposed to whet the appetite for mm17 but i don't think the timing will be particularly beneficial to the success of either it or mm17.

yeah i just said the same thing elsewhere, it feels like they step on the toes of each other pretty badly

also i realized mystical teachings is probably pretty good if youre grixis and not just straight UB since red has 3 instant burn spells at common and theres also augur spree. its just weird for it to be so lightly supported on-color, compared to white where if you look at the commons almost every single one is in the service of either populate or blink.

it feels like aether revolt has been out forever but its still got almost 2 months left. i'll probably draft both the modern cube and mm3 a bunch just because theyre new