Magic: The Gathering C/D

rebuy your thragtusk and angel triggers

s0 boring though

yeah i mean i'm not gonna be playing it but i think it has a lot of potential in midrange decks

Eh, it's possible, but flicker effects have tended not to get used unless they do something good on their own (like Resto). Ghostway saw almost no play, for a slightly higher cost. Even pw Venser was barely played. The anthem effect doesn't really help the midrange decks that would want to blink their own creatures. Though I do think the environment for a mass flicker effect is better now than it was during Ghostway's time, with ridiculous shit like Thragtusk.

I like the card best in an aggro deck to dodge Wrath, but Boros Charm does that and more. If Terminus or Merciful Eviction raise in popularity, it looks better, and I guess if the aggro decks start adding more creatures with ETB effects, it gets even better.

boros charm also doesn't have to be in play annoucing that it's dodging the next wrath

announcment or no there's still no real substitute for a wrath effect

i really like the golgari mythic

Seance was my favorite card in Innistrad block so maybe this'll pull me back into Standard. I love how the "mill 10" effect both enables it and prevents it from being too degenerate.

Yeah Chant is my kind of card, love it. Has the possibility of getting broken, but it's just a really cool card on its own.

It definitely has the feeling of something that could be degenerate but I think in R&D's world if it costs 6 mana then it's not really a concern. In general cards like that have a clause like "whenever a card is put into your graveyard, exile it", but since this doesn't, something like Harvest Pyre + Time Warp would be an infinite combo. Oh wow I just realized that Harvest Pyre and Boros Reckoner are both legal in Standard right now.

did you not watch the last pro tour? in the very first standard feature match someone busted that combo out on camera and no one had seen it yet and there was a pretty great 'WTF' reaction

i don't think chant can get broken at 6cmc. i do think there's slight combo potential but a combo with a 6cmc piece isn't going to be 'broken' even in standard

spoiler season really brings home that there are so many magic cards i will never, ever cast

that's true for me for constructed, but i've cast almost every card released in the past 2 years in limited

yeah i meant it more re: standard although there are a lot of GTC cards i never cast. i got bored of GTC too fast and kinda gave up on it before i started exploring. i cast something like 85% of all cards in M13 and RTR though at least once. i think i still have a list of RTR cards i never cast on my computer at home and most of what i was missing were mythics i never managed to open

yeah i stopped keeping those lists, but i think i ended up hitting everything in rtr except armada wurm which i never opened. plus a few really trashy cards like racecourse fury and urban burgeoning

gatecrash i've probably played all the non-terrible commons/uncommons and most of the rares, but yeah i drafted it like half as much as the previous few formats

for some reason i'm more excited than usual about the retro draft week before new set release even though they haven't announced what set it is yet. i'm just praying it isn't old ravnica or onslaught again, they seem to love bringing back those two

notion thief is alright. still feel like this set is short one big chase card but maybe that's because i'm not used to small sets since it's been so long since the last one. i have absolutely no clue what to expect for the last remaining mythic (dimir) but i kind of hope it's a good card and not some sort of 7 mana giant milling monster so that people will shut up about dimir getting shafted.

we've also seen almost zero use of the guild mechanics so i guess that's all on commons/uncommons

well Notion Thief and Whispering Madness seems rather degenerate. not sure how sustainable that is but it's quite a hilarious combo.

i've really liked all the limited cards spoiled so far and have found all the constructed cards super underwhelming

totally agreed, I was expecting a lot of ridiculous "good thing this is only legal for 16 months" cards like the G/W mythic; instead it looks like we're getting a ton of 'build-around' cards based on the types of things that are generally bad constructed strategies

*not that I mind this kind of set at all

MTGO update notes are up. we get shadowmoor drafts this week! and lorwyn during the cube/new-set-not-out-yet period. this is sweet, that's the one remaining block i've never drafted before.

also 4-pack sealed is back

So, they collect 16 extra tix and give out one additional pack? Did they miss the reason why 4-pack was so popular in the first place?

excited for the lorwyn block actually

no, that's probably why they got rid of it in the first place, because it wasn't actually producing any revenue on its own by not consuming tickets

Lorwyn's one of my all-time favorite draft sets, gotta remember to get on mtgo during that time.

yeah i've heard lorwyn was kinda a jam and while i am certainly sick of all current limited formats i dont like cube enough to want to waste my money on it

what did the 4 pack sealed cost previously?

the old 4-pack queue just cost 4 packs, no tickets. this one adds the typical 2 ticket entry fee

o i c

i caved and put more money on my account and have been playing ISD drafts to get my last two (now one!) QPs. now i want to find a way to use angelic overseer as a finisher in a constructed deck even though i realize how terrible that is.

i played it back in december! it was okay until people started playing bonfire again and mizzium mortars which both kill it, awkwardly

haha i've been thinking it's time to go slightly bigger in the naya aggro shells and she seemed pretty good. i would also like to find a deck that could use emancipation angel but i don't think shes good enough either. bonfire showing up in more of the g/r and naya ramp decks is kinda annoying because i thought i might finally be able to run my thatcher's revolt deck to some success

no, that's probably why they got rid of it in the first place, because it wasn't actually producing any revenue on its own by not consuming tickets

― ciderpress, Tuesday, April 16, 2013 5:15 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not but it does take in 32 packs while only giving out 19. so there is a little profit, I guess

the "popularity" of the format was pretty much entirely based on the fact that you didn't have to pay tickets to enter. does anyone really prefer 4-pack to 6-pack, all things equal?

some people did

nothing quite as disheartening as being mana flooded through four or five turns and then having an opponent drop a balustrade spy that dumps your next dozen cards

notion thief gives me the distinct impression that while set skeletons are fleshed out far in advance, individual card design is very reactionary, almost even going last-minute. either r&d is really on top of their game or they are specifically designing cards to deal with annoying metagames (glaring spotlight, frontline medic, notion thief, the 3 GY hate cards in standard right now)

I'm not really sure what kind of deck wants Notion Thief though? Like, dispel costs one mana! If drawing a card is really important you can run Scatter Arc for the same mana and also counter every other noncreature spell not named Sphinx's Revelation. So the arguments for it come down to the 3/1 body, which is relevant for.... some sort of Duskmantle Seer aggro deck? But then you're playing an aggro deck that's leaving up 4 mana all the time, which doesn't sound very good.

Gravel you do realize it draws a card for every card your opponent would draw, right? so if they revelation for 10 you are drawing 10 instead.

also xp: i think they are just on top of their game right now in predicting what future standard will look like. the cards for a new set are all locked in at about 6 months before the set's released, so RTR was probably still just hitting the shelves when Notion Thief was finalized, and no one was actually playing sphinx's revelation yet in the real world.

though they do make mistakes still, i know they've said that internally they had more wolfir silverhearts than thragtusks in their midrange green decks

there's a 4 damage lightning helix for 2RW, apparently. i guess that's good for limited, i mean i wasn't expecting an actual helix nor did i want one.

Haha - I hadn't! But I actually still think it's too narrow, even given that it says 'counter targer Sphinx; win the game' - Negate really seems a ton better to me in the sideboarded Esper mirror as it hits Jace and Psychic Spiral, both of which are more important? Maybe I'm not talking into account that Drownyard will rotate soon. What deck do you think wants this card?

I had no idea what you guys were on about until I saw that Notion Thief had flash. That's pretty cool then!

i think the decks that want this card are UBx decks that are trying to do something else other than sphinx's revelation but don't want to lose to sphinx's revelation every time. i don't know if these decks will actually exist but there you go. also it combos with whispering madness to make your opponent discard their hand and you draw a bunch, so if you can find a deck that's okay playing whispering madness then that's good.

also a trusted source on legacy thinks that it will be at least fringe playable there despite the 4cmc because of how badly it fucks up brainstorm and jace

it's an awful lot like Plagiarism which is a card that everyone really wanted to make work in Legacy but IIRC it never really did. it was a real menace in 5-color though! (Contract from Below became B: Discard your hand. Ante another card. Your opponent draws 7 cards)

plagiarism doesn't stick around and prevent your opponent from digging for answers to it though

control decks in legacy lean on brainstorm really really hard, even to the point of playing too few land for a deck that can't brainstorm reliably, so anything that prevents that card from working is worth a look regardless of cmc. last time i played legacy i had chains of mephistopheles in my sideboard and resolving that vs control was often an instant-scoop from your opponent (if they actually understood what it did).

it's definitely better than Plagiarism. I really do like this whole genre of Magic card (flash creatures that can hose degenerate strategies, such as Aven Mindcensor)

That's really interesting about Brainstorm! Not a legacy player but I'd be fascinated if that happened. The brainstorming player still has to put two cards back, right? So brutal.

Hahaha did not consider Notion Thief against Brainstorm, that's insane! 7-for-1 card advantage, right?? They spend a card, put back two, you draw 3 and get a dude. Rogue will get played even in Standard, I think, it's very powerful. Note that it is Human, which means we might see Cavern of Souls forcing it through.