Magic: The Gathering C/D

no, I was the guy you beat in the final round

I felt real cheap miracling the Bonfire off the Yavimaya Elder, that was really my old out. I screwed up in Game 2, I should have played Winter Orb to cap your mana because at that point all I wanted was for Tooth and Nail to not resolve. Unfortunately I forgot about Coalition Relic adding another mana. I thought it was that RTR artifact that made all your lands go for any color. Also forgot FTK was a "may" trigger

Ah yeah, Winter Orb would have been brutal against me. And I was amused by the Bonfire draw, I always find it funny when they get drawn on the opponent's turn. Those were good games!

they were, I was just kicking myself afterwards because I was thinking "well Tooth and Nail really screws me here but he can get at most 8 mana here so I'm in the clear"...whoops. it's pretty easy to misplay in Cube I'm finding. sadly I know Coalition Relic well, just spaced out there.

well I just pulled the ol' Mana Crypt/Mox/Metalworker into turn 2 Blightsteel Collosus (he Mana Leaked it, no fair)

okay one more post - this is the most insane draft deck I've ever gotten

http://imgur.com/AX5oo

Dunno if I should splash white for Blessing...it hardly seems worth it at this point. Believe it or not those 3 duals were all passed to me, as was the Troll and a Golaith.

okay I mostly unilaterally decided on stronghold as our next set
(next week's option is open...someone pick it)

http://imgur.com/a/7sJgR
order in reference to above page
1. iatee 2. lamp 3. gravel 4. cider 5. frog 6. vinnie

I'll type them out later

about to play this ridiculous 11-round mocs event instead of finishing my christmas shopping

dead at 2-2, embarrassingly timed myself out thinking i was on a game 3 and could use the rest of my clock when it was actually game 2 and i decked myself with a minute left on timer

yo lamp, you are in toronto right? do you know which stores do weekday drafts? i'm at my parents' for the holidays; me and my old friend are reconnecting over our mutual rediscovery of magic. apparently 401 does sunday sealed but sealed is gross. i also kinda feel like a huge nerd playing magic in a city i don't live in... i'm telling myself that there are people out there who travel for tournaments.

Ha! I was wondering the same thing about Indianapolis, where I'm staying for the week. Unfortunately got here a day too late to try my hand at GP Indy, but I'm sure there must be other stuff going on later on the week.

Sorry, haven't even built my deck yet, let alone played games against you all. Will try harder this week.

do you know which stores do weekday drafts?

dueling grounds has a weekly swiss draft for $15($10 packs/$5 prize pool) on thursdays @ 6:30. its just west of dufferin station

401 games has a swiss draft for $13 ($10 packs/$3 prize) for fnm. starts around 6. they also have single elim drafts on sundays @ 4 for like $10 - prize structure of these has varied seemingly every time ive played one. oh they're on yonge st. just north of gerrard.

you can also try harry t north and/or heavy support - ive never been to either since theyre p far from where i live/work but i know they have weekly drafts and heavy support is supposed to have the best singles prices in the city

stronghold packs

iatee:
Mindwarper
Constant Mists
Stronghold Taskmaster
Fanning the Flames
Mob Justice
Mogg Flunkies
Cloud Spirit
Brush with Death
Crossbow Ambush
Spined Wurm
Spirit en-Kor
Overgrowth
Spindrift Drake
Shock
Honor Guard

lamp:
Jinxed Ring
Flame Wave
Scapegoat
Hibernation Sliver
Rabid Rats
Youthful Knight
Mind Games
Foul Imp
Mob Justice
Venerable Monk
Skyshroud Archer
Cloud Spirit
Lowland Basilisk
Brush with Death
Endangered Armodon

gravel:
Pursuit of Knowledge
Bullwhip
Wall of Essence
Ransack
Honor Guard
Morgue Thrull
Flowstone Blade
Endangered Armodon
Lowland Basilisk
Spike Colony
Dungeon Shade
Craven Giant
Rabid Rats
Tidal Warrior
Mana Leak

cider:
Grave Pact
Mask of the Mimic
Crystalline Sliver
Mind Peel
Brush with Death
Crossbow Ambush
Lab Rats
Cloud Spirit
Honor Guard
Mlch
Skyshroud Falcon
Tidal Warrior
Hammerhead Shark
Samite Blessing
Change of Heart

frog:
Spitting Hydra
Mind Peel
Crystalline Sliver
Corrupting Licid
Leap
Hammerhead Shark
Dungeon Shade
Fling
Morgue Thrull
Mob Justice
Tortured Existence
Skyshroud Falcon
Crossbow Ambush
Dream Prowler
Spike Colony

vinnie:
Hidden Retreat
Flame Wave
Bottomless Pit
Temper
Bandage
Provoke
Crossbow Ambush
Spike Worker
Mind Games
Youthful Knight
Cannabalize
Contempt
Flowstone Shambler
Spirit en-Kor
Duct Crawler

Looks like the Simic mechanic is Evolve:

Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, if that creature has greater power or toughness than this creature, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.

seems kinda underpowered tho I guess it depends on what they put that on

seems quite strong to me especially if it's on any cheaper creatures. having your early plays grow over the course of the game is a huge deal.

I guess it all depends on what they're putting it on. like a 2/2 for 3 wouldn't be that great. I guess a 1/1 for 1 is prob inevitable and I guess that's pretty playable on your first turn.

even just a 1/1 for 1G with this ability seems like it'd be a high pick in limited

1/1 for 1 mana would be champion of the parish territory, and champion is arguably the best 1-drop in standard right now

yeah and if its g/u even higher

Evolve mechanic seems like an awful lot of fun. The fact that it's power OR toughness is quite interesting. So something like Hover Barrier (a 0/6 wall) would trigger evolve. Meaning Simic decks in draft probably could use some walls. Also the two spoiled cards both do something with the +1/+1 counters. The challenge is going to be building a deck that balances Evolve with bigger creatures to evolve from as a deck that's full of 1/1 or 2/2 guys with Evolve is going to be useless.

Two other mechanics were spoiled though they don't look as interesting. Boros has a mechanic that triggers if you attack with three creatures. I would imagine this would be very susceptible to removal but getting a bunch of these creatures together is going to be massive. Gruul seems to be discard for a temporary p/t boost, kind of the opposite of Scavange. It's interesting but seems real frustrating to play against, knowing your opponent could be full of combat tricks like that.

yeah i'm a bit disappointed that gruul got a pretty straightforward pump mechanic again, that spoiled borborygmos was giving me hope that there would be some sort of land subtheme this time around to give the guild more mechanical depth than 'big creatures smashing'. hopefully there still is.

I have the feeling it's not going to appear on a whole lot of cards for Limited reasons. RTR really had a divide there, some guilds were really based around their keyword like Populate and Unleash, while others like Overload and Detain tied into the guild's identity, but weren't real "build around" mechanics. I think the Gruul mechanic will be like that, while I would imagine a good portion of Simic's cards are based around making Evolve work.

the boros card they showed today is a home run though i think, it's in that sweet spot of not super powerful but still cool.

orzhov tomorrow presumably, which was the weirdest/most unique guild mechanically in the old rav block so i'm hoping they came up with something interesting this time too

Here's where I brag that I may have created the Evolve mechanic. WotC had a contest a couple years back where they would hire the winner as a card designer. For the first round of the contest, one of the finalists needed mechanics that involved evolution, and I pitched a mechanic to him that he ended up heavily using for the rest of the contest. He won the whole thing and worked on Gatecrash, which suspiciously has that same mechanic, name and everything. Only difference is that the one I made (and the one used in the contest) only checked power, not toughness. Very possible that WotC came up with it independently, but I prefer to think of this as my 15 minutes of uh self-recognized fame.

Boros mechanic looks very fun, but the Gruul one seems annoying to play against. Whether it's a "build-around" mechanic or not doesn't change how often it will show up, right? As a guild mechanic, we should see at least 3-4 commons that have it.

Interested to see the last two because Orzhov and Dimir weren't straightforward strategies in original RAV.

yeah if you're talking about Ethan Fleischer, this is confirmed to intentionally be his GDS mechanic, tweaked. do you know him irl or was this just an internet thing? pretty neat either way

i suspect dimir will get the requisite instant/sorcery mechanic, but who knows

overload was lifted from the older GDS contest, as well. they're definitely not shy about using/reusing good ideas, which is good i think

ilx is magic famous

Yep, Ethan. Don't know him personally, but helped out him and a couple of the other finalists via the Wizards site during the beginning of the contest.

Actually, come to think of it, the Boros mechanic showed up in the GDS as well. Totally forgot about that. Guess they are Amanda Palmering sets from now on.

well this is kind of a feelgood traditional block so straightforward/familiar mechanics work well. innistrad had some left-field mechanics like the double-faced cards and miracle, and i suspect they'll go back in that direction next year.

I think Overload was Ken Nagle's idea, who was one of the winners, so it makes sense that it showed up in what I believe was his first design lead. Still the Great Designer Search is kind of a dubious idea since I'm guessing all the contestants were getting help from outside sources. I know if I had tried it and made it that far I'd be asking every Magic player I know to help me think of a good mechanic. Either way, congrats!

I read Maro's tumblr from time to time and he admits they are using or plan to use a decent amount of the GDS submissions they got. Also that some suggestions from tumblr will make their way into future sets. Like cider says I think this is a good thing.

there is sorta a limit to the # of mechanics that can even be suggested / exist w/o the game falling apart

yeah i'm convinced that there are a lot of really cool ideas left for individual cards but actual mechanics seem like a tough design area. that's why I didn't get so many people's hatred of Unleash when it was spoiled, to me that was a great design.

xp I'm sure pretty much every mechanic WotC has made in the past decade has been thought up by someone outside the company before. There's so many wannabe designers out there. The real skill is just sifting through all the crap to figure out what's fun to play, which I think they've admitted. In that sense, the GDS was a fine way to test people since that's what the finalists had to do. I'm all for WotC using whatever ideas they see fit to use.

i dunno about that. the innistrad block stuff i mentioned before, double sided cards and miracles, do start to fuck with the rules a bit and feel a bit more invasive for that reason, but all the new ravnica ones have been pretty low-key and narrow in comparison. populate is the only one so far that feels like a new thing rather than just a variant on old ideas

there's sorta a spectrum where you can think of abilities that are very native to magic (ie draw a card), something that is mostly native to magic (create a token), something that is a little stretching it (idk..dredge?) and something that is realllly stretching it (double sided cards)

the 'a little stretching it' category seems like the most obvious spot to build a set around, but it seems to produce the most misfires of any spot on the spectrum - infect, soulbond, the untap symbol, dredge would all fall around there i think and none of them played particularly great. meanwhile, most of the really stretchy things have worked out fine.

haha I hate the really stretchy things but you can understand why they'd work better, cause there is more flexibility / design space when you don't have limitations

They're gonna need to keep stretching every now and then to keep players excited, but man, I didn't like double-faced cards and straight up hated Miracles. The less-stretchy stuff you mentioned, cider, I'm indifferent to. The stuff that's gotten me most excited in recent years are individual high-flavor cards like Endless Ranks of the Dead.

basically i just want more sets like zendikar/ROE that are based around completely new aspects of the game rather than one-upping an older block from years ago. i think there's a good chance that next year will be one though since they've hit on all their major go-to's in the past few years already if you count the tribal sub-themes in innistrad as hitting on tribal

The real skill is just sifting through all the crap to figure out what's fun to play

This is the area they've improved so much in lately - look at the original design of poison to Scars block and how much more dynamic and playable it became. Also the "snow land" concept in Ice Age vs. Coldsnap (and how it actually made sense in the end). I remember reading about Ranger en-Vec (the 1GW with First Strike and Regenerate) and how it made R&D learn that just mixing and matching different things is not good design. It seems like all the real "innovation" comes from mechanics that are either confusing (like Madness), broken (Dredge, Affinity, Storm), or things that they said they'd never do (Miracles, double-sided cards), all of which are good and bad for different reasons.

won another draft w/ a 4 doorkeeper (+1 hover) deck.

<3 doorkeeper

orzhov mechanic is Extort (whenever you cast a spell, you may pay {B/W}. If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain that much life)

this is sufficiently weird and it should be hilarious to stack them in limited and drain life your opponent for a bunch every time you cast something late-game

I like that one

i hope there's a wall with it at common so there can be another doorkeeper style deck where you kill them with walls

i like the orzhov mechanic the best, p into soul net the ability

fennel are you gonna draft tomorrow night? i have to work but my intention is to draft and get a last chance at another gitaxian probe promo

Dimir mechanic is Cipher and it appears to be Instant and Sorcery only. It's like a new twist on Imprint; after you cast the spell you attach it to a creature, and if that creature hits your opponent you get to cast it again for free. Previewed card is a 2UB Windfall with this ability, seems pretty good. Like Overload I predict it only shows up on like 8 or 9 actual cards but there's a lot of neat things possible with this.

yeah this mechanic is super cool, was hoping there would be a more creative one in the set and there it is

lamp, i got stomach flu or something so i am basically bedridden. was intending to draft tonight but that's not happening. but i intend to draft at some point next week. we're probably gonna check out dueling grounds. my friend thinks the hairy t people are creepy conspiracy dudes, and checking out their website i have to agree.

designing cards is so fun. i've been actually working on crafting a set of my own. i'm like 20 cards deep or so, but have the main mechanics and flavor worked out. i like the MaRo idea of starting with flavor and then working that into mechanics, although i've strayed from my original flavor idea somewhat. my idea is loosely based on cronenberg body horror. basically, desperate people tap into a forbidden kinda ~~mystic power~~ and turn the world into horrifying fleshy things. so, i have one card in mind:

Orphanage Matron
3WW - Rare
Creature - Human

When Orphanage Matron enters the battlefield, put 3 white 1/1 Orphan tokens into play under your control.
As long as Orphanage Matron is untapped, Orphan tokens you control are indestructible.

1/2

in set 2, i intend to create a card that's basically the baby-eating mother from the brood. i'll call it "fleshbrood matron" or something and the intention is to have similar card art. whether i get to set 2 or not is a big question, but so far i find this a fun enough pastime that i can realistically see myself completing set 1.