Magic: The Gathering (Spoiler-free)

I have known cats to belong in every part of the colour wheel except white.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

....

Why not return with Kitsune, there already white and pretty cool, and well known?

Calling leonin cat-people is kind of obscuring the point. They are lion-people, and Magic generally puts lions in white (twice as many white lions as green ones).

Kitsune don't really fit generic Magic's predominantly Western fantasy inspirations.

You are dazzled by my array of very legal documents.

That, and making Kitsune White's characteristic race would give everyone even more argumentative fuel to demand a Return to Kamigawa. And WOTC can't have that.

Why not branch out into into other fantasy though?

There is a lot more to the worlds mythos then European ones, an Aztec themed block might also be cool.

The problem is that Kamigawa Block has shown that the majority of Magic's audience has a real hard time connecting with the flavor of accurately depicted non-western mythology elements. But on the other hand, making sure that the worlds would be based on what the western world percieves them as would be hella disrespectful to the source material. So WOTC is facing a bad dilemma there.

edited 11th Jul '14 4:30:32 PM by LeChuck4

Most people doesn't know what the shit a kitsune is, anyway. And I've never seen how "trickster spirit" fits into white, either. It seemed kinda arbitrary on Kamigawa.

They call it the Rumour Mill because every time one specific guy posts I definitely feel cards going from my library to my graveyard

This. I had no idea what they were and needed a friend to explain it.

And in other news, my local shopko has been stocking Innistrad packs. Just pulled a Snapcaster.

Ahahahaha. Saprise! Why couldn't they keep the name? :(

(I like the idea of dwarves becoming characteristically white, actually. It'd be an opportunity to avert Our Dwarves Are All the Same.)

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

So, I went to the M15 prerelease today. I chose white. My rares were:

• 1 Resolute Archangel (promo)
• 2 Hushwing Gryff
• 1 Preeminent Captain
• 1 Aggressive Mining
• 1 Hornet Queen
• 1 Yavimaya Coast

I made myself a Red/White deck out of my pool. I didn't do so well, going 1-3. The two Hushwing Gryffs nullified my Resolute Archangel's ability, which ended up being moot as I never even drew it in any of my games. And while the Preeminent Captain would've been nice, I only had four other soldiers in my entire pool, and two of them were Dauntless River Marshalls.

edited 12th Jul '14 5:52:12 PM by Lightblade

The Living Guildpact rules that coffee is an acceptable substitution for rest as specified in subsection … whatever.

So I managed to do spectacularly well with Mono-White today. Well, Mono-White with a single splashed Blue card. The deck initially started out as White with both Green and Blue splashed (again, a single blue card), which I pulled off a draw with in the first round, then dropped Green entirely and won every round after that for 3-0-1, which I think has been my best showing at a pre-release to date.

I think I might have been able to go 4-0 even had I avoided the temptation to use Green at start and tried to justify using the Soul of Zendikar I pulled. The single blue card, on the other hand, more than pulled its own weight, being that 'artifact becomes a 5/5 creature' thing which in one round near single-handedly won both games by making an Ornithopter super-dangerous.

I'm currently seriously tempted to try building a full-on deck around some kind of 'Aurathopter' theme.

The second time around didn't go quite so well, however. Picked Red, went Red-Green, final record came out to 1-3.

I went pretty well in my pre-release, going 2-2. I was going to drop the last round for two-headed giant, but then two-headed giant was pushed back half an hour to give everyone time - which is good, as I won that round 2-0. I ran a White/Black deck that used a lot of auras and three copies of Heliod's Pilgrim, along with a lot of lifegain related cards (Wall of Limbs, Blood Host, Wall of Essence, Divine Favor, Eternal Thirst, etc) which was lots of fun, but really inconsistent. It also dragged things out a lot because I spent a lot of time slowly gaining life and beefing up my monsters.

I pulled a few mythics in both my kits: The Chain Veil, Ajani, Chandra, Soul of Zendikar, and I also pulled Phytotitan from a booster who ended up being pretty cool in practice. Got a foil Avarice Amulet but it got a huge scratch on it from playing it, since I forgot to bring sleeves. Whoops.

Two headed giant I didn't do so well in, I ran Black/Green with some White splashed (Ajani + combat tricks). At first I ran 3 plains, 7 forests, and 5 swamps, Caves of Kolios (borrowed from my partner) and Urborg, Tomb of Urgoth but after losing the first round having drawn no forests and having a land full of Green cards, I swapped a Swamp for a Forest and faired much better, though my team still didn't win anything.

We got a bye for the next match, lost a fairly even casual against the first team we played, then lost a very long match against the winning team - who went undefeated all night. We nearly had them at one point (they were on 7 life and we were on 47) and then after I let Ajani die to get his Emblem we immediately learned that it doesn't do shit if they attack my teammate, at which point we started losing thanks to their Siege Wurm enchanted with Burning Anger and something that gave it lifelink. Then they pulled off a disgusting engine using two Quickling's and a bunch of Kapsho Kitefins to keep all my partner's blockers tapped down for the rest of the game.

I felt a bit bad because my partner was the only other person there who didn't already have a partner, and so got stuck with a noob like me. Especially when I did so poorly to begin with, and often got really terrible hands with not much to play. At least his deck was built with a lot of the cards I pulled, a Red/White/Artifact deck using Ensoul Artifact, Turn to Frog, Jalira, Illusory Angel (which nearly won us the game with receiving Ajani's +1 every turn), Chasm Skulker from my cards. He also pulled Darksteel Citadel which went super well with Ensoul Artefact.

Still, most of the games I didn't do much other than play lands and keep us healed through Staff of the Death Magus + Urborg, and do very well-time combat tricks and removal to keep us afloat. It actually seemed to work pretty well though, I think we did the best out of everyone who played the winning team.

I picked the black box both times because I didn't like the other promo cards. Glad to have pulled Phytotitan and seen how cool it can be, though.

edited 13th Jul '14 5:44:05 AM by Saiga

I mentioned mine on the spoiler thread since I wasn't sure where to...

Anyway, I was very amused by everyone playing Indulgent Tormentor (and there were a lot) since I Lightning Strike'd it immediately every time it came out. :3

And those are the moments that I am most happy to be in red. Well, that and dragons.

''The eternal question of reality, it still stands today.''

I don't think there were actually a great deal of Black players at the prereleases I was in. I think White may have been 'the' color to play where I was at.

I heard there was even one team in a THG tourney that went double white for double the angelic 'all that life you've taken away is now back' goodness.

I found Indulgent Tormentor to be a real pain when my opponents played it, mainly because my main removal was three Pillar of Light, and the Tormentor had only 3 toughness.

The Living Guildpact rules that coffee is an acceptable substitution for rest as specified in subsection … whatever.

I was about to go to a prerelease but I remembered when was told that I had to be there at 10:00 AM that I kinda had my share of not sleeping properly on Saturdays for this Summer. But the guy at the store told me that they had already ran out of Black packs, with White coming a close second.

I kinda regret not going though, not only because I didn't sleep properly anyway, but because I think it would have been fun and I have been a lot of time without my fix of cardboard. Pokémon TCG may be cheaper and less cut-throat, but it certainly isn't the same.

edited 13th Jul '14 11:07:43 AM by 2Zak

They call it the Rumour Mill because every time one specific guy posts I definitely feel cards going from my library to my graveyard

They ran out of Black and Green packs at my store (luckily I pre-registered ages ago and they set aside a Black pack for me).

Rocked with two Indulgent Tormentors (one of them the promo obviously), white auras (double Heliod-tutor), and two Garruk.

Still only went 2-2 (I blame that red aura that lets the enchanted creature tap for it's damage).

Note: In 2HG, one guy setting off a polymorpher's jest and the other following with a mass calcify is reason for the other team to fall dead silent for a minute or two. That was amusing, but I almost thought they were going to ragequit then and there. That is not fun, I caused that a few months ago on another player.

Did 4-1 at my prerelease yesterday. Picked white but went GR coz my whites were a bunch of 2 drops and then the angel. The only rare I played was the green treefolk which made a copy of itself and had power/toughness equal to number of forests. It was a deck of mostly ok 2cc and 4cc creatures with an excellent burn suite but no real bombs. Lightning strike, heat ray, stroke the flames, cone of flame, and 2x inferno fists. Inferno fists on Krenko's enforcer or belligerent sliver does a surprising amount of work.

edited 13th Jul '14 7:33:41 PM by nightwyrm_zero

I went... something. Our prerelease was 6 rounds: lost the first, then got a bye, lost the third, then went 0-1 in the fourth but timed out in the second game, won the fifth (after going to time), and finally went 1-0 before once again timing out in the second game. Somehow, I still managed to win a booster.

Anyway, I picked white. In the first three (well, two because of the bye) rounds I went with GW weenies, but it didn't really work so switched green out for black and apparently made a monster of a lifegain deck, featuring things like Resolute Archangel, Wall of Essence, Congregate, Spirit Bonds, Return to the Ranks, Eternal Thirst and a bunch of lifelinkers. Pretty sure I blocked more damage with my face than with creatures.\\ In fact, in the final game of the final round, I faced down a Spectra Warded Scuttling Doom Engine (in other words: an 8/8 with protection from all colors) on turn 7, realized my deck had absolutely nothing to deal with it, and simply took it all on the chin until time ran out and I still had 15-ish life left.

What I did learn is that M15 has very strong lifegain tools, but very little to give lifegain an endgame that capitalizes on it. An Unspeakable Symbol reprint wouldn't have been out of place, in my opinion.

"Everything is “we can’t do that” until we figure out a way to do it." - Mark Rosewater

Prerelease prize structures changed at some point, so that everyone gets a booster at the end of the day.

The prize for winning the whole thing got a lot smaller though.

Where I play, everybody wins two boosters at least. I think first place gets six, second five, and third place four.

Sweet. I think our top four gets something similar, and the remaining top 8 get 2 packs each.

Which is a far cry from when I won the Fifth Dawn prerelease and got a box.

Our store runs casual and serious events. In casual, everyone gets 2 boosters. In serious, you get zero boosters for 0-1 wins, two boosters for 2 wins, four for 3 wins and eight for 4 wins.

edited 14th Jul '14 5:21:12 PM by Yuanchosaan

"Doctor Who means never having to say you're kidding." - Bocaj

My store's usual prize structure for prerelease is 4 rounds, if you go 2-2 you get 1 pack, if you're 3-1 you get 4, Between 3-4 matches gets you 6, and the prize for 4-0 is 8 packs.

edited 14th Jul '14 10:32:39 PM by TheSpaceJawa