Magic: The Gathering C/D

yeah Lamp i'm going through the exact same thing right now. haven't cashed a standard daily in about a month and i've played lots of them. stuck on 5 QPs when i've put in as much time as i did the month i got 30 QPs. hate GTC limited now because there's no room for personal preference, you either draft the deck that's correct for your seat or lose, and i don't want to lose when i'm at less than 15 QP.

on the bright side, DGM preview weeks start tonight. i love preview weeks.

the one thing i've learned about standard during this though is that there are no good decks, so you should just pick a non-terrible one that you like and master it. i haven't figured out what that deck is for myself yet, before GTC it was xMiMx humans for sure but i'm really souring on the post-burning-tree version of it.

are you playing his new version of humans? at some point he was like 12-0 in dailies with it.

i thought the izzet general was a fake off /tg/? i saw the scan last night and had no opionion either way but iirc it was a 2/2 unblockable electrolyze which seems... better... than the officially spoiled gruul champion at least.

if its real it's gonna result in some lame games in limited

that was my first thought too. there are plenty of ways to take care of a 2/2 in both sets, but if you don't have one it'll be real dumb. if its a fake it's a damn good one..scan looked good to me

yeah i have no real basis for judging but that seemed to be the consensus. it is seriously nuts in limited although i'm not sure how good he is in constructed rn.

that card image that was going around was very clearly photoshopped to my eyes, the lightning and perspective were all off and the typeface on the card looked like it had been resized digitally to get the angle right for the perspective

re: xmimx, i was running the build he top 4ed the ptq and premier event with last weekend. it's okay but you get so many awkward draws and he's cut back on the huntmasters/restos which makes it more difficult to play from behind. i get that it's a necessary evil to have a chance vs the reanimator and UWR decks that are popular, but i feel like it's lost its status as the aggro deck that crushes the aggro mirror which is what i liked about it in the first place.

lightning = lighting

also yeah it looked like it was just a 3 mana soft-lock in limited which is not something they would likely do at regular rare

oh man I was just assuming it was mythic. at rare it would be a huge mistake.

humph. the guy who posted it just deleted it. so perhaps y'all are right. doesn't feel like a soft-lock to me though - you can still target him!

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=10013462#post10013462

thank god

xp the guild champions are presumably all rares, since the gruul one they previewed at pax was regular rare and it would be weird to not balance rarity across such a high profile cycle. also ral zarek is pretty much confirmed as the izzet mythic

i think making the guild champions rare is a really good idea fwiw just in terms of growing the game but it does mean that none of them will be too busted

is ral zarek the u/r planeswalker from the comic books or novels or w/e?

no thats dack fayden

ral zarek was in last year's DotP game but nothing else until now

he's featured in all the dgm promo art so yeah you'd think it's a done deal

Ral Zarek just got spoiled (officially), plus the actual Melek (way more expensive and gimmicky). Ral looks pretty good!!

oh wow those new split cards

Yeah, I'm psyched for fuse, definitely a very cool idea!

ral's +1 ability is really hard to evaluate - it looks kind of unimpressive but ajani vengeant's looked similarly unimpressive on first glance and ended up being quite strong.

my first thought is that it works best in a tempo deck where you play a couple threats on turns 1-3 then drop him on turn 4 and tap your opponent's blocker while untapping your island for an unsummon or whatnot. i feel like 90% of the time you're going to be using him as a double-bolt though in current standard.

yeah i really like the card although i thought of a bunch of 'blue' + abilities that i'd rather have than tapping permanents. the ultimate is suitably terrible and the - ability seems fair. its the first planeswalker in a long time that i was excited to use so theres that

looking over the spoilers the card that i most want to play is the u/w common tho, i feel like i am going to first pick that a bunch

So excited about all these cards - Beck/Call joining the Whispering Madness club of 'print a banned card for 1 extra different-coloured mana' too. Is there anything for elves in blue? Coiling Oracle?

I also dig the u/w common feel like the right deck is gonna be v v happy to see that

it's interesting how the fake spoiler the other day had the real art *conspiracy*

yeah i really like the card although i thought of a bunch of 'blue' + abilities that i'd rather have than tapping permanents. the ultimate is suitably terrible and the - ability seems fair. its the first planeswalker in a long time that i was excited to use so theres that

Ultimate seems good to me! You average between 2 and 3 extra turns, how does that not win you the game? Plus it's an extra card for my coinflip commander deck. I would guess this often is going to come out, bolt a creature, and maybe build up from there? Its playability depends entirely on how many X/3s it's going to take out (and obviously isn't very good vs. Boros Reckoner).

there are always potential combos with 'untap target permanent'

2 and 3 extra turns can sometimes just mean 2 or 3 extra cards

plus 2 or 3 more activations of Ral, if you leave a counter on it

I question what kind of deck wouldn't be able to do anything with 2 extra turns!

it's not *bad* but if you're behind on board it might be more of a stabilize than win

you generally don't get to ultimate a planeswalker when you're behind on board

pretty sure ral fits best in an aggressive/tempo deck anyway, with a slight nod to control decks who will just use the +1 to add a card to their sphinx's revelations

you generally dont cast Revelation on your turn though do you?

you do if it's going to give you an extra card!

alternately, you can do like...t4 play this, bolt their guy, then t5 you can wrath and still leave 2 mana up for a counter/removal for their follow-up play

the more i think about it, i think he's going to be one of the best walkers in standard

that sequence of plays makes no sense though, forget i posited it

i hope Beck is good enough to make elf combo a deck in modern, though if it is it might just get banned

I've heard some people complaining about fuse as being basically entwine, but if both halves have different casting costs and power levels (like Beck and Call does) it's really kind of different isn't it? I'm a fan just for the goofy frame, I love when they modify the look of the cards like that.

yeah it's just another variant on modal spells, like 50 other mechanics are

So excited about all these cards - Beck/Call joining the Whispering Madness club of 'print a banned card for 1 extra different-coloured mana' too. Is there anything for elves in blue? Coiling Oracle?

Y'know Beck is actually different than Glimpse of Nature in that it triggers any time a creature enters play, which means that A) it works for token producers like Saproling Cluster and B) it triggers if your opponent gets creatures too (so it's good with the Hunted creature cycle). It's the first point though (and the fact that Glimpse was crazy good to begin with) that tells me this should be a combo piece in something; will the one extra mana/blue splash nerf it?

i feel confident saying that Beck will see play in both standard and modern in combo decks. what the standard ones look like i'm not sure yet

it'll be fun in older formats with Empty the Warrens! (or is that banned?)

empty's only banned in pauper

beck + mana creatures + village bell-ringer is the first thing that comes to mind for standard uses - basically bant elf-ball. a few people were playing this last year with primeval titan and soul of the harvest already.

i had forgotten about that village bell-ringer combo - it won an scg open or something iirc maybe last summer? decks that can abuse beck dont appeal to me at all but i was surprised that they printed this considering glimpse is banned in modern (i think?). the idea that adding a blue mana to the cost of glimpse but making it work for tokens/your opponents creatures/blink effects is one the whole still less powerful is interesting to me.

I've heard some people complaining about fuse as being basically entwine, but if both halves have different casting costs and power levels (like Beck and Call does) it's really kind of different isn't it?

One of the judges in my MTG-London facebook group was having an absolute meltdown over Fuse. He said that Entwine was just a standard trigger, as opposed to fuse literally "casting both" as some sort of complete new confusing thing - like, it's confusing enough just whether you can counterspell*, let alone when snapcaster gets involved.

*: I just realised that this is what Counterflux's overload is for! Well, that and grapeshot, anyway.

I imagine it's just gonna be you cast one then the other

fuse cards are 1 spell no matter which of the 3 modes you cast. the spell's colors change depending on which mode though. also note that you can't snapcaster-fuse, you can only cast one half from a zone other than your hand

Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine it's worse than miracle, so I kinda surprised at his virulence - any judges here?

weird