Magic: The Gathering (Spoiler-free)

Anyone up for a few rounds?

Required reading: HUGE changes coming to the structure of set releases, blocks and Standard.

Well, that sure is something. I need some time to think on that.

Crossposting what I said in the Spoiler Thread since I suppose it fits better to discuss it here:

Here is a handy little graphic to explain what the new block/Rotation structure will look like, for the people too lazy to read the article.◊

Basically:

• No more Core Sets after M16
• Blocks shrunk down to 2 sets instead of 3 sets per Block
• Now we have two Blocks per year, the second one consisting of the Spring and Summer sets (the slots that used to be the Third Set of a Block and the following Core Set, respectively)
• New Standard will consist of the three most recent blocks, with the first set of each new block rotating out the oldest block.◊

edited 25th Aug '14 8:32:58 AM by LeChuck4

AW FUCK, they did it again.

That thing with the codenames, I mean. We all thought it was Blood-Sweat-Tears and Lock-Stock-Barrel but it's Blood-Sweat, Tears-Fears, Lock-Stock and Barrel-???. HA. That's a good one. It must have been hard to find names that could fit both patterns.

I don't know much about how this will change formats, honestly. Hopefully, the hype will stop dying before the last sets are released and etc. Haven't read the article either.

Monkeys. The codename for the set after Barrel is Monkeys.

edited 25th Aug '14 8:35:26 AM by LeChuck4

Okay, that's clever.

As for the question "What is replacing Core Sets as the go-to option for new players?"

(Hee hee, I love it when Maro answers my questions)

edited 25th Aug '14 8:45:33 AM by LeChuck4

The most terrifying thing about this announcement is that Sally's response has overall been very positive.

They also pointed out that the 2016 spring-autumn Standard is going to be pretty crazy: Louie, M16, Blood, Sweat, Tears and Fears will all be legal then.

Well, I want to believe that Salvation just saw that all of the changes seem pretty sane and look like they're going to solve some problems everyone could see about Standard.

But we all know that can't be the case.

We're screwed.

I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, the new Standard format looks like it will be very good for encouraging diversity among deck builds due to the way different blocks have different design paradigms.

On the other hand, it also means the demise of core sets. Identity issues aside, they tend to be very interesting compared to expansion sets in the way that they manage to have their own unique feel without delving into the complex mechanics of other sets, and they tend to produce really interesting cards.

Well, he wasn't kidding when he said it would be big news, but I doubt many people actually expected that.

Anyone up for a few rounds?

I'm not sure what to think of the changes, either. I see both pros and cons to it. On the one hand, speeding up the pace of the overall Magic story is something I feel is something that needs to be done. For example, the Eldrazi made their first appearance right before I started playing the game, but, four years later, they're still rampaging across Zendikar.

But on the other hand, the 3-set model mapped pretty nicely to the classic Three-Act Structure, and losing that might cause the stories of the individual blocks to suffer. We'll just have to wait and see.

As for gameplay, I'm not really that big on Tournament Play, but having rotations happen more often should have the desired effect of keeping Standard fresh, and having the number of cards in the format be more consistent. As it is now, Standard has anywhere from 5 to 8 sets, depending on the time of year. Under the new system, there will be 5 to 6 sets legal in Standard at any given time.

But on the other hand, it does mean I'll have to reorganize my rare/mythic binders and common/uncommon boxes twice a year instead of once a year. I keep them sorted primarily by format. Secondary sorting is by rarity, then color, then alphabetical.

I guess if you are organizing them by format it shouldn't be too much of a problem switching to a block-based order. I'm not sure how you do that, though, if you are using a single binder for "Standard" and take out the cards whenever they rotate out it's certainly going to be a bitch.

The only bad thing I can think of about these changes is that rotating Standard more often means spending money on keeping decks up to date more often. However, I kinda hope that, since cards will stay in Standard for less time, people won't be willing to pay for them as much as they do now^{Please note} I don't have the slightest idea of how economy actually works^* Neither does anyone else, so it doesn't really matter, so this could mean an overall price reduction in the secondary market for Standard-legal product.

edited 26th Aug '14 5:12:41 PM by 2Zak

Eh, the three-act structure is not the end-all and be-all of storytelling. I'm sure they'll manage to fit the block stories into the smaller blocks just fine.

I doubt that people will pay less for Standard cards, since they'll still need them just as much. At least, the super-competitive people who I'd think would be the driver of said prices will still pay as much. And as long as they're paying that much, I'm guessing that standard prices will still stay up there.

On the other hand, for people who don't play standard as much, I'm guessing they'll be able to get the cards they want for kicks and giggles at a lower price sooner than they would have before.

The cards will lose their value (to Standard players) quicker, so there should be no reason for anyone to pay as much as they do now. If I know my new car will stop working in 3/4 of the time my last car worked, I won't pay the full price for it.

But since economy is just a lie that only works as long as nobody thinks too hard about it, anything could happen.

edited 26th Aug '14 6:26:44 PM by 2Zak

They may loose their primary value quicker, but that may not matter since for right now, the cards are still valuable and important to those who want them for competitive purposes. Standard is all about the short-term as it is. I don't think slicing a few months off how long they're important pieces to winning is going to take much a bite out of their value for people who want them them most.

Frankly, I think your car comparison is really off the mark.

I agree that it would be nice if the price for standard cards went down, and I certainly hope that I'm wrong, but I'm not going to count on it.

I have a Ruric Thar EDH deck (here's the deck list, if you're interested) that I recently did some surgery on, and today I went to my LGS to test it out. When I got there I found out that today, instead of multiplayer, we'd be playing a few rounds of Duel Commander. So, I had to scramble to make sure my deck was legal for one-on-one play. Luckily, I only had to switch out one card, but I went in not expecting much out of my deck, since 1) I built it with multiplayer in mind and 2) it was still pretty untested.

My deck defied my expectations. I only lost one round, and that was to a guy who managed to kill me twice on the third turn (he was using Varolz, and both times he scavenged something big onto something nasty). I'm going to go back next week and hopefully test it out in a multiplayer environment, though something tells me this thing gets better the fewer people there are. Either way, it's certainly become my go-to deck for smaller EDH games.

I have discovered that I can't stop at redesigning one deck. I sat down to do a bit of work on a land destruction deck, because I am an asshole, and before I knew it I was restructuring my saboteur deck to be more consistent in its approach, building an entirely new saboteur deck that approached it from the opposite direction in order to use the stuff I had to remove from the first one, and even planning more splitting because I have plans for a discard deck that may need to yoink a few things from my Bolas deck; I plan to fortify my bedroom in the process just in case he takes umbrage at this.

I have a rules question about Two-Headed Giant. How do effects that trigger off of you being dealt damage work? For example, if I control Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker and an opponent attacks my team or throws a Lava Axe at us, is he forced to sacrifice something, or can he simply choose to damage my partner in order to avoid doing so?

The latter, I believe.

Yeah, you're two different players that happen to share the same life total. That's why effects like Exsanguinate are cool for 2HG.

And you can block for your teammate, don't forget that part.

Yeah, I was a bit confused because I knew creatures attack as a team, which allows effects like Propaganda to work), yet things like Exsanguinate affect each player individually.

Would anyone be up for a game?