Magic: The Gathering C/D

Lol read that as vaporware and thought they never actually finishedthe set or something

The basic lands for this set look amazing. I love when they put out things that don't even really look like Magic cards. Can see those fetching a decent price in 10 years. Otherwise based on the ten or so spoiled cards it looks like a predictable set of returning mechanics - Ninjutsu and Channel are in, Sagas are back again, and there appears to be a 5-color theme. Also one of the spoiled cards has Bushido without actually having Bushido, lol. Guessing they're gonna ditch the Splice/Arcane stuff though I still think there's something interesting there.

nah arcane makes even less sense to do when its in 1 of 8 standard sets instead of 3 of 7. i wouldn't expect it to be a major part of the set if its even in there at all

Yeah I am pretty sure it won’t show up at all but the idea of chaining/combining spells is something they’ll probably revisit at some point

One interesting thing I noticed is that any creature that is enchanted, equipped, or has a counter on it is now called “modified”

they did splice onto instant in one of those modern horizons sets

I haven’t so much as glanced at the spoilers yet, but I did win two entries into the Arena Decathlon finals so there’s a chance I’ll win the full (Arena) set this weekend :D

the lands look awesome indeed

basics, I mean

there's a Supreme Vintage draft on MTGO right now, where you get 18 packs and two picks from each one. its absolutely insane, everyone plays crazy blue artifact decks and twice I've had someone play a Time Walk AND a Mind Twist before I even got to play my first turn. immensely dumb format but it's fun to play high powered Magic sometimes.

That is my kind of format.

it's definitely worth trying a couple times. I always found it interesting how every step from Regular Set -> Modern Masters -> Cube -> Vintage Cube you have to re-evaluate what types of cards are good and this is yet another level beyond even that. Like I think in this format the planeswalker that prevents your opponent from drawing more than one each turn may actually be better than Jace. From my very limited experience I think you really do want discard and hard counterspells. And Time Walk/Time Warp obviously. Half the games seem to come down to someone just saying fuck it and playing a Time Spiral. It rules.

(fwiw I haven't noticed any Storm cards in the pool because I suspect those would be insanely broken. I didn't see Force of Will either but who knows, that might be the top pick)

love the look of the lands in kamigawa.

playing MTGA like an absolute madman these days. I made Mythic in constructed again this month, after doing it for the first time last month. still absolutely stink at limited, even though I much, much prefer that. oh well.

semi-looking forward to double feature. although with such a large pool of cards it feels like making synergies happen will be more difficult? might be best just to look for the best cards when drafting?

I lost interest in it all of a sudden, I started getting inspired to work on music again and MtG had been acting as a replacement when I was burned out.

same thing happened to me, I just haven't had mental space for MTG for the last couple years

the constant parade of OP cards that get banned after months of feel bad play wasn't helping either, but I do miss in person booster drafts

I have a little crew I do drafts with every set or so. it's a lot of fun. was my introduction to magic a few years ago - in my mid 30s, maybe this is an odd time to start this up - but I'm addicted to MTGA. I suppose because is was a big gamer as a younger man and have really jettisoned that part of my life - own no consoles, don't have a computer that can play games on it (just a work laptop I can't download things on).

Kamigawa releases on Arena later today! I'm glad that red isn't seeming like the dominant colour for the first time in a while. I'm really looking forward to playing some irritating Dimir Ninjutsu and Azorius vehicle decks in limited.

I've been playing Magic Arena on and off for about a year now and I'm still quite bad at it. It still feels difficult to gauge early on in a set what the right things to invest in are, and by the time I've caught up, everyone has shifted focus... If I can make diamond in standard and platinum in limited this set, that will be enough.

the Pilot token does not look like something from Magic: the Gathering

XP to Jim: Very normal stuff. MTGA is SO addictive, by design and everything. And I accept that.

Maybe I will try a sealed tourney or two, today. Kamigawa looks like fun.

on my first sealed league, so far pretty fun, tons of synergy across the board and all the modular stuff will make this a high skill level format. feels nothing at all like the original Kamigawa which I'm guessing was on purpose

I've been watching a lot of streams of people playing with the new set and it finally sucked me back in after uninstalling a couple of months ago. It definitely looks like a complex and fun set to draft!

I've been quarantined, then on vacation, then sick so I've also only watched streams but this new set looks great and I can't wait to do some drafts

yeah it's great. one of those sets that makes it feel like a new game entirely. I particularly love the Sagas that turn into creatures, that's a pretty clever way to do Suspend/Planeswalker-type things on a whole new card type.

not sure how much I've figured limited out, seems like a format you can easily splash in (3-4 color decks are pretty common) so there are a ton of archetypes I've seen crop up. R/W Samurai/Warrior decks are pretty good and maybe what you should aim to start with if you don't know the format. Ninjutsu decks are decent but depend on a lot of good uncommons. Kappa Tech-Wrecker is probably the best Uncommon in the set, it's surprisingly tough to play around

Re: ease of splashing/mana-fixing in this format, last week I watched Jim Davis on Twitch get wrecked by his opponent ramping into a turn 5 Kami War (the 1WUBRG saga). Not every day you see that in Limited!

I'm still just playing Sealed while I get a feel for the cards. My coolest play so far came when I topdecked a Futurist Operative (uncommon ninja that's an unblockable 1/1 when tapped but can untap anytime for 2U), used it to crew my Mindlink Mech (rare vehicle, 4/3 flyer that gains the abilities of the creature that crews it) and attack past my opponent's giant Branch of Boseiju for the win.

there's a lot of neat ninjutsu stuff you can do with the 1/1 flyer for U that taps something when it enters play. I think the best Limited formats resemble Cube in how there are all sorts of cool plays that you kinda just discover on the fly. in Sealed playing 3-colors & just stuffing your deck with cool uncommons and rares seems to produce a lot of cool results.

Ecologist's Terrarium looks like the Farfinder of this set; junk at first glance but maybe one of the most important commons in the set. It fixes your mana, provides an artifact which you can use for a number of things, and gives you a +1/+1 counter which can be used to hit the "modified" triggers

Ninja's Kunai seems similarly underrated. It's a cheap artifact to play on turn 1, a cheap modified enabler, something to do with extra mana in the mid-to-late game, and unlike the Silent Dart variants we're used to seeing it can go face.

17lands data seems to think Black is the best color. the two best "win rate when in hand" cards are Virus Beetle, which I like, and Okiba Reckoner Raid, which I thought was pretty bad. It also likes Imperial Oath a lot, which is nice because I've wondered a lot about if that card is good or not.

Most underrated cards in draft seem to be: Imperial Oath, Searchlight Companion, Suit Up, Season of Renewal, Harmonious Emergence, and Tamiyo's Safekeeping. Overrated cards seem to be Kami's Flare (!), Greater Tanuki, Intercessor's Arrest, Wanderer's Intervention & Befriending the Moths. All those cards are obviously good but I think the implication is (unless I'm understanding this wrong) removal is not quite as good as it is in other formats.
.

reckoner raid is good, it does a huge amount of stuff for 1 mana

some more data: Blossom Prancer, Kappa Tech Wrecker & Behold the Unspeakable are the 3 best uncommons, on par with the best rares/mythics. Experimental Synthesizer also seems to be very underdrafted, even if red in general is overdrafted. B/G seems to be the best combo.

I think what people are maybe missing with Experimental Synthesizer is you can sac it in other ways besides paying the 2R

i don't put too much faith in the 17lands data but blossom prancer and behold the unspeakable are obviously "mythic uncommons"

synthesizer is at its best when it's being sacrificed to other stuff yeah. a slow 2/2 is simply the fallback option. the first time i read it i missed that it 'draws' a second card on exist

*on exit

Iron Apprentice seems to be another card that is playable along those lines

After 10 drafts or so, I'm loving this set. Most of the color combos seem viable and the mechanics are all fun. Many cool synergies and opportunities to outplay. The flavor is also great, a nice bonus. We'll see how I feel after another 10 drafts but this is comfortably better than the last three sets for me

I've been enjoying it a lot too, it seems to have a lot of legs. outside of the R/W deck what you see now is a lot different than what you got matched up against at the start. in Sealed I see a lot of 4-color decks that splash a lot of goofy shit. it helps that this format has a lot of cool individual cards that really make you think. I love the design of The Reality Chip, for instance.

my only complaints are 1) the Legendary Dragons are way too good (though at least you have Tamiyo's Compleation to deal with them) and 2) the board states get insanely complex sometimes. when both players have 7 creatures out and you have to keep track of which ones are artifacts and which ones are enchantments and which are "modified", not to mention all the Sagas which have goofy interactions...idk there are a lot of "whatever, lets see what happens" moments

The dragons were insane the first time around. Auto four-of for many decks.

dont often post SL pitches here but want to put this thought somewhere:

Fay Jones is a one-time MTG artist & Richard Garfield's aunt.
She illustrated "Stasis"

At 86, she still resides in the Pacific Northwest

although unlikely, i think a FJ Secret Lair could be very compelling pic.twitter.com/6YSYsoOrW3

— MTG HISTORY — Daily facts on the worlds best game (@MTGHistory) March 14, 2022

Would totally buy it if they ever decided to make something like this

I just checked what that card is going for even in heavily played condition and oh boy.

That card = Stasis

not much?

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Revised+Edition/Stasis#paper

unless you're looking at Alpha/Beta/Unlimited, where everything is expensive

god, I fucking hated that card. so many people built Stasis decks back in the day and it just felt like you weren't even playing Magic anymore. even beating them never felt good because they tended to just beat themselves. at the same time I kind of love the card too just for how deeply bizarre it is. my friends and I had many discussions in 5th grade about what the fuck the artwork was supposed to be

looking back it's amazing the game survived as long as it did back then, given how terrible some of the mechanics were. like Flying/First Strike/Trample were all great and are evergreen today but everything else was so dumb - either incredibly obnoxious like Protection or Regenerate or useless/confusing like Banding or Rampage. Even funnier that once the game had been out for a while they still couldn't seem to come up with better than shit like Cumulative Upkeep, Phasing, Shadow, or Buyback. I wonder what the first new mechanic was that actually worked well from a design perspective? Maybe Fading?

rampage worked fine though wasnt that interesting since double blocking doesnt happen a ton in the first place especially in old magic

flanking also worked fine if you dont like rampage

yeah both mechanics "worked" but Rampage was basically never relevant (outside of that one 2/3 with Rampage 2 that had to be blocked by 3 creatures? that was neat)

Flanking was neat but the fact that it instantly killed 1-toughness creatures was weird. also the fact that it didn't work against non-Flankers, people kept forgetting about that

the Flanking card I most remember is Knight of the Mists which set off a long debate at our store about whether it was a misprint or a developer getting too clever

unless you're looking at Alpha/Beta/Unlimited, where everything is expensive

My cards are in storage so i don’t remember which it is, but it’s one of those. I should probably unload all those.

Stasis plus Serra Angel was tournament tech in like 1995-96.

MTGO has Invasion drafts now, my god the game has come so far since then

Flagbearer mechanic might be the single most obnoxious mechanic ever printed. it's got so many pingers & cards that go from suck to overpowered if your opponent happens to have the right color creature in play. the drafts are set up to lead you down a dead end. even Kicker & the split cards, which felt like such cool mechanics at the time, now seem boring as hell - who gives a shit about modal cards if one of the modes is just Mons' Goblin Raiders?

that set was a big step up for limited design at the time, imagine that

I came back to Magic after a three-year break, just in time to catch the tailend of Invasion block. That block, Odyssey, and Onslaught excited me a lot from a design standpoint - it was the first time the mechanical themes of a set came through strongly imo, like Invasion was THE multicolored block, Odyssey THE graveyard block. for sure I had fun playing drafts of those sets at the time, but they seem flawed compared to modern sets. The mechanics were really cool but not always well-utilized in the cards, as frogbs illustrates