Magic: The Gathering C/D

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

right and after Mirrodin (THE artifact block) you kinda figured they were running out of broad themes to explore. but yeah at the time it was all pretty exciting. I guess a big difference is that online Magic hadn't really ramped up yet so you couldn't just do 15 drafts in a week like you can now. back in the days of Theros I'd play online and then do the weekly drafts at the store & just clean up because I knew exactly what was good and what wasn't. I forgot how long it usually takes to figure that out!

in retrospect it's kind of fun to see the power level rules they used to have in place when it came to creatures - everything seems so underpowered. and then there will randomly be a card like Quicksilver Dagger which can ruin an entire game. at least it's not like Urza's block where a 2/1 with protection can win by attacking 10 times

i'd consider the eras of limited design to be like

Alpha thru Alliances - sets are non-functional in limited
Mirage block thru Masques block - sets are draftable but not fun or interesting, only a few cards are good enough to matter
Invasion block thru Mirrodin block - limited plays alright now but there's not a lot of interesting deckbuilding choices yet
Kamigawa block thru Innistrad block - there are now some color pair archetypes as we think of them today and deckbuilding choices become interesting but there's still a lot of unplayable cards
RTR block thru present - set structure becomes more rigid to ensure that most cards are playable and that color pair archetypes are well defined and supported, often heavy-handedly

I think MaRo wrote some article a while back where he split them up in roughly the same way

still remember when Coldsnap came out and stores tried to do the "Ice Age Block" draft. and you'd basically just wind up playing as many Coldsnap cards as you possibly could.

we also did an Ice Agex3 draft way back when. just stunningly unplayable even though most of us remembered Ice Age as the first "good" set. the MVP was like, the 3/3 Swampwalker for 3B

this actually made me laugh out loud

http://mythicspoiler.com/CAP/cards/witnessprotection.html

This card seems like a bad idea

http://mythicspoiler.com/CAP/cards/quezaaugurofagonies.html

seems fine to me

KO combo with griselbrand, probably some other stuff too but not a big deal its an understatted creature

that costs 4 i should say

My first instinct is also that it looks acceptable, but I don't have a great track record at spotting broken cards

well I can't break it offhand but it feels like one of those cards that may eat an emergency ban in like Commander or something

http://mythicspoiler.com/CAP/cards/lagrellathemagpie.html

God this takes me back to the old days where you’d have to read a card 5 times to figure out what it does

I’m pretty sure this was not intended to be a one-sided wrath so I’m wondering why they didn’t just write it as “for each player”

yeah that is a genuine disaster of templating. it exiles one creature per player

When I read it the first time I also thought "wow, all the creatures come back under your control?"

I remember when we did the first Apocalypse draft and people were half-jokingly suggesting that Dead Ringers should be banned until we figured out what the hell it was supposed to do

that card just seemed like a too-clever wording, this one almost seems designed to be as confusing as possible

Jewel Thief and Inspiring Overseer feel like two of the best commons we've seen in ages

this new set looks kind of fun, almost makes me want to get back in

getting gatecrash vibes. multicolor set but all the 2-drop commons are good and all the 4+ drop commons aren't

https://tappedout.net/mtg-card/tainted-indulgence/

another really weirdly worded one, it's very easy to interpret this in two ways and I think the most intuitive interpretation is actually the wrong one

What are the two ways? I only see one (and think I'm right?)

one way is "5 different mana values" and another is "5 cards WITH mana values"

the former is how I interpret it but the latter makes more sense b/c it's incredibly hard to trigger otherwise AND the set does have a "discard a non land" mechanic

anyway I bumped this because they did a Secret Lair: Pride release which includes this incredible Bearscape

A LGBT+ Pride secret lair, sold starting in May, with 8 cards, partly for charity! More previews at https://t.co/9ly5HdRCtG #MTGSLD

Source: https://t.co/EytCk3lOeX
🎨: @winonanelson,@rbessaaa pic.twitter.com/GCCr8viB91

— MTGGoldfish (@MTGGoldfish) May 2, 2022

Ah I see your point now about Tainted Indulgence, it is a little unclear. My interpreting it correctly is probably more a side effect of knowing how they'd word it if they wanted it the other way

Surprised I am able to read that article here in Vietnam - WotC is getting some heat for blocking the Secret Lair: Pride article in countries that are not... receptive to the concept

okay so it appears to be you actually do need 5 different mana values. that mechanic seems kinda bad then, though I wonder if lands count as CMC: 0? idk I've never actually gotten it to trigger.

not sure if I'm supposed to be playing focused 2 color decks or splashy 4 color ones. there's a lot of fixing - two land cycles, plus a bunch of treasure tokens. but there aren't quite enough commons/uncommons you'd necessarily want to splash for. in Sealed I'm just playing the greediest possible decks and generally doing okay, which is funny because that's what a lot of Limited formats turn into after a couple months. this one may wind up being the opposite.

lands definitely count as 0

after some practice I think splashy 4-5 color is the way to go. my best performing decks just shove as many sac/dual lands in as possible, plus whatever treasure stuff you got, and seeks to play 5-6 rares & whatever great uncommons you got. the unfortunate thing is other players are starting to realize this as well and so the format is quickly devolving into whoever's got the most bombs. a big part of the problem is there aren't really good aggressive decks, in Sealed you cant get enough good blitz cards to make B/R work and the format is really low on good 2 drops. in fact at common the 2/1 1W with connive is really the only one.

also appears to be a lot of sweepers in this set - be wary, don't overextend

I've been pretty busy lately and have only got in one draft so far, but the games did seem pretty slow, which makes sense when there's so many lands etb tapped. I tempo'd out one opponent but all the other games were grindy. Two came down to decking

anyone wanna explain why Ledger Shredder is currently trading at 48 tix on MTGO right now? what format is this good in?

looks like UR spell decks in both modern and pioneer

https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=36304&d=473111&f=MO
https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=36305&d=473115&f=PI

oooh wow, a lotta cards in those decks I had missed. those decks look like a lotta fun.

anyway I've been having fun w/ this format and generally getting good results but I'll probably be sick of it soon...since the format is so 4-5 color friendly you wind up seeing the same cards over and over and over again. always a turn 3 Jewel Thief or Overseer. way too much time spent figuring out if you tapped your lands right. I do dig getting 6 of the sac lands and gradually thinning your deck of lands though

i havent played it but it looks like the exact sort of gold soup format i hate. due to the new release schedule apparently this is the draft format until september which, i get why they did it to give these cards more time in standard but for limited it's ???

presumably on arena they will run back some older format over the summer to change it up?

Whoa I forgot there wouldn't be another Standard set till Sept. I think I've complained a bit about the window between sets sometimes being too short, but five months seems like an eternity. Any chance we get a remastered set? They usually announce those well in advance, right?

i consulted with my friends who are paying more attention and apparently they're putting up an arena-specific variation of the baldurs gate commander set this summer so that'll be the draft format for a couple months

Been having good success with two-color decks that curve out. Had BR two times and an aggro deck is def viable there - so many of my opponents spent their early turns with taplands and so a well-placed removal spell or Plasma Jockey on their big blocker was enough to win. UW fliers also worked well

Disclipined Duelist and Illuminator Virtuoso pretty much ruined what was otherwise an enjoyable format for me. One of those plus Majestic Metamorphosis or Revelation of Power is often game, and you run into that combo all the time. I lethaled someone out of nowhere with a double trick on a Virtuoso the other day

the Virtuoso isn't that big a deal IMO - 2 mana double strikers are annoying but it's not too difficult to kill and the fact that you have to discard nonlands makes it hard to just run away with it. Duelist on the other hand is just stupid, if you don't have Call in a Professional or the -3/-3 instant then you have to 2-for-1 yourself and pray they don't have a combat trick. giving a 3 mana double striker a shield counter seems like a development mistake

IMO the real problem is that WUG Ascendancy which gives your creatures a +1/+1 counter every turn. even if you have enchantment removal you still wind up behind because it triggers end of turn instead of upkeep as these cards usually do. I guess the fact that it's rare makes it much less of a format ruiner but I still seem to see it constantly

Ascendancy is probably worse, I'll agree - I've never beaten it but I've also only played against it twice. Once I hit Diamond, it felt like I was playing against Brokers or UW nearly half the time, which would explain why I ran into that combo so much - I'm not sure if that's a function of players solving the format over time or the higher-ranked players figuring out that Brokers is the best tribe

I also ended up in Brokers about half the time myself, and often had no removal for either creature. The other tribes have an easier time removing Virtuoso, you're right

a big part of that is the Jewel Thief & Inspiring Overseer are so good, being able to play both is a big advantage. for that matter I think cards like Brokers Initiate and High-Rise Skyjack (?) are better than they look because they can stymie them.

one weird thing about this format is there are a bunch of Connive cards, but no cards you really want to discard to them? the 1/1 fishy dude is pretty much it

the connive guys are pretty aggressively costed for creatures that come with a loot so i don't think thats an oversight the loot is just supposed to be good enough without synergy