Magic: The Gathering C/D

u guys are making me want to start playing mtgo

do we have enough people for an ilxor clan on mtgo

maybeeeee

What do clans even do, they seem like a yoga flame pointless invention for the ages.

Help request: a friend is learning the game, he likes it when I give him stack-based rules questions (e.g. "How does Kiki-Jiki interact with Phyrexian Dreadnought"). Can anyone think of any more puzzles like this? I'm looking interesting stack-based interactions, not layer-based ones (so no Opalescence-on-Humility stuff).

Okay - both players have four of these puppies on the board:

http://static.starcitygames.com/sales/cardscans/MAGPRO/rhystic_cave.jpg

One of them tries to tap one for mana and the other player tries to stop him, who gets what?

(alright, maybe it's not that hardest rules question I can think of, but it may be the most obnoxious)

neither player gets anything.

first player taps for 1, second player taps for 1 to block it.
(end of first round = no net gain for anyone.)

first player taps to block second player's response, but second player taps to block that, too.
(end of second round = no net gain for anyone.)

etc...
(every round ends in stalemate with no gain, so long as both players have the same number of caves.)

if the first player had four and the second only three, then s/he'd be able to break the chain and get 1 manna.

yeah. it's not hard if you don't think of it as 8 triggers going on the stack at once. its just an obnoxious question.

if you really want to give your buddy a fun puzzle to talk about, how about telling him how you can stack Fiend Hunter and Cloudshift to permanently exile something (I have a deck that does this and I hate having to explain this to newer players...I feel like they think I am making up rules)

maybeeeee

What do clans even do, they seem like a yoga flame pointless invention for the ages.

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:19 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xp using Redirect (or any similar redirection spell) to counter a counterspell is an interesting one - because of the wording of Redirect you don't need to choose the new target for the spell until Redirect resolves, but Redirect is still on the stack when it resolves so you can change the counterspell to target Redirect even though Redirect is in the process of resolving already and thus can't be countered anymore (the net effect being that their counterspell is countered due to illegal targets)

I remember seeing people use Misdirection as a counterspell to counter other counterspells and always thought they were Misdirecting the Counterspells to counter itself because the alternative didn't make sense. I've had this conversation many times.."wait, if the Misdirection is countered, then how did the.....whatever"

Another weird one is Caged Sun which has the "if a land would add a mana to your mana pool, add an additional mana" wording, which means that if you can somehow turn Caged Sun into a land and tapped it, it would literally add infinity mana to your mana pool.

wouldn't that create an infinite loop and draw the game though? it's not a 'may' ability and doesn't use the stack, so you can never stop it.

I think the solution is to try to set this up on Magic Online and see what happens. Perhaps it could crash MTGO's servers.

i've seen the triple oblivion ring loop happen on mtgo and it's pretty hilarious - if both players F6, then after about 100 iterations, the game crashes, and then it attempts to reconstruct the game by playing it out again from the start, reaches the loop again, crashes again, then declares a draw

another one i can think of is if you somehow make a token copy of Garruk Relentless, then get it to 1 or 2 loyalty, its triggered ability will just happen infinitely because it can't transform

i'm not actually sure whether there's any sequence of plays that can make a token Garruk though

yeah im trying to think of noncreature token permanents and cant think of any

well the issue is more how to copy it without the original garruk being on the battlefield, because they'd die from the planeswalker uniqueness rule. if not for that you could just liquimetal coating + phyrexian metamorph it

the most insane MTG puzzle i've figured out without help was the turn 1 kill on the play in Scars of Mirrodin Block Constructed

Let's see - you'd have to use Liquimetal Coating to make it an artifact, March of the Machines to make it a creature, then Cackling Counterpart to make a token.

Caged Sun is even weirder, you have to do March, then play Life and Limb and make the Caged Sun into a Saporling/Forest with Xenograft or Unnatural Selection

none of those cards remove the planeswalker type or Garruk subtype though so it doesn't work

okay in that case I don't think it's possible to do this unless there's some weird old card that can remove a subtype

planeswalkers hate this one weird old card

ok i think you can do it with Mirrorworks, if you do liquimetal + metamorph with Mirrorworks in play then the Mirrorworks token will use last-known values for the Metamorph and make a Garruk artifact

and that artifact wouldn't have the subtypes? wouldn't it make a "planeswalker artifact" or am I misreading section 403 a) i. iii. iv. ?

no, the metamorph would copy garruk, trigger, mirrorworks, then garruk and metamorphed garruk would die, allowing the mirrorworks token garruk to be the only garruk when it comes into play

Okay. I may be confused as to how that rule works. I thought that the Planeswalker rule didn't use the stack; as in, you couldn't respond to it, similar to being at 0 life and losing. Either way, I'd like to see how MTGO handles it; I can't imagine what their background coding looks like at this point. It's insane how complex MTG's rules are when you really break them down.

thomp u live in london right? (i have asked you this like 8 times I think). Come along to dark sphere or something!

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Monday, 13 August 2012 12:57 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah i'm in oxford innit. i might end up going to london to fulfil these nerd inclinations i'm getting though. don't shit where you eat and all that.

otoh the last fifty posts i keep trying to read and it's like a blast of white noise overruling any attempt to make sense of it so:

Yeah, this conversation makes me think I'm not really ready to take on local competition

don't worry we're discussing weird rules corner cases that will never turn up in an actual game

Okay. I may be confused as to how that rule works. I thought that the Planeswalker rule didn't use the stack; as in, you couldn't respond to it, similar to being at 0 life and losing. Either way, I'd like to see how MTGO handles it; I can't imagine what their background coding looks like at this point. It's insane how complex MTG's rules are when you really break them down.

― frogbs, Tuesday, August 14, 2012 3:23 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bravo

Thinking of trying out mtgo. May be a less intimidating option than going straight to irl competition.

OK, got my account started up, now trying to figure out what to do next to establish some decent cards. Should I sell off my booster and use the cash to buy up some commons and uncommons instead?

iatee

depends if you wanna play constructed or limited

i do believe new accounts get to do some "phantom" drafts...as in you can play and i think win prizes but you don't get to keep what you draft

I guess I'd like to figure out the best way to start accruing some passable card so I don't just get killed constantly

The quickest way: Look at the decks that are winning daily events, and then buy all of the cards you need to make one of those (this will be costly unless you concentrate on relatively inexpensive formats, like block or pauper. Even then you should be prepared to pay a fair amount)

The cheapest way: Take note of the most expensive cards in a given format, and then try to make a deck using none of those cards. The Magic economy is usually set up such that the ten or so chase rares are worth heaps, but then everything else is five cents or less. Obviously the expensive cards are the most powerful, but you can still have fun trying out tier two options, especially if you stick to casual (i.e. non-tournament event) games. If you go this route you might want to lean heavily on the cards in M13; almost everything in that set is pretty cheap at the moment.

The most fun way: Start playing limited (sealed or draft) events, and build decks with the cards you get.

Oh, also there are some bots on MTGO that give away free commons, and if you know anyone on MTGO they will probably be willing to give you a bunch of commons/uncommons, since having more than four copies of a single card is pointless and selling them to bots generally nets you a small fraction of a cent.

i've got shitloads of innistrad commons/uncommons if you need any of those, since i did dozens of triple innistrad drafts last fall. might have some excess stock of core set cards and other recent sets too.

my MTGO username is smh

I really wish that you could trade away more than 75 cards at once. My client freezes sometimes when I even try to do that many.

xpost

Thanks! I'll look you up.

Is it ever worthwhile to buy cards from bots or does it make more sense to just try to win them in competition.

How much does a deck have to rely on super expensive mythics in order to win in Constructed online? Or is it viable to pull something together on a budget and still compete?

what format are you looking at playing? there are a couple cheap Standard decks, BW tokens and mono-green infect come to mind. those still need some rares to function properly but not as many as other decks. Tokens is probably the most scalable in terms of being playable without all the rares, while infect absolutely needs the 4 Inkmoth Nexus (~7 tickets each) but the rest of the deck is cheap

though on second thought i don't think i'd recommend buying into infect decks right now since those cards are all rotating out of standard in a couple months

Mostly interested in standard or innistrad block. Working on building a bw exalted deck.

It also depends how competitive you intend on being. If you want to enter daily events or 2-man queues (i.e. put up some entry money and play for prizes), then you are probably going to have to cough up some money - giving up a significant number of percentage points of winning in order to save a few bucks just doesn't really make sense from an EV standpoint. However, if you just want to play casually, there are always people who either also can't afford to spend a billion dollars on mythics or who just prefer to play strategies off the beaten path, and there's no reason why you can't have a tonne of fun playing a deck you built around a junky rare in the casual room.

If you're just looking to acquire cards, buying individual cards from bots is always better than cracking packs - the expected value of cards in a pack is significantly lower than what a pack actually costs. The only reason to acquire packs is to play limited, wherein you have a bunch of fun and end up with cards at the end of it.

Also, even if you're buying packs I would suggest buying packs from bots - they typically sell packs at a discount to the MTGO store (I think a pack of M13 is around 3.3-3.5 tix as opposed to $4), since heaps of people are continually selling all their prize packs to bots in order to cash out.

Thanks for the tips, and thanks to ciderpress for the cards!

The deck is starting to take shape now. My plan is to use some of the affordable legendaries like nefarox and odric rather than raiding my son's college fund to buy sublime archangel, avacyn, and a couple silver blade paladins.

keep in mind odric has anti-synergy with exalted since he wants you to attack with everything (though his ability is much more powerful than exalted in constructed)

like the best way to compete in constructed on a budget is generally to play a bunch of cheap efficient creatures, keep smashing them with everything, and hope they don't have a wrath of god effect or large blocker in time

I hear what you're saying. I suppose the strategy I'm shooting for is more of a hybrid exalted/soldiers. The idea is to score a bunch of early damage with small exalted creatures and then flood the board with soldiers and cards like crusader of odric. This gives the option of hitting with a whole bunch of creatures at once or with a single powerful creature like crusader who gets amped up by both soldiers and exalted. With Odric, Master Tactician in the mix I can force some mismatched combat or just keep the other player from blocking.

It may turn out that this is not focused enough to actually work, but I'm going to try it out and see what happens.