Magic: The Gathering (Spoiler-free)

If it were a midrange deck, do you think the activated ability would get used more? Because that sounds like it could be a good finisher. My first thought was, as you mentioned, just having all your opponents' creatures block one of yours so everything else gets through.

Probably. I'm mostly just running it for the drain effect, though the blocking ability is pretty cool. Activating it means that you can force them to declare no blocks, which is often game over.

Wait, really? I thought they had to block something, or did you mean they're basically not declaring blocks if you make them put it all on one thing?

Sorry, technically you can't make them not block. However, when they're quadruple blocking your Bloodsoaked Champion it's basically the same thing.

edited 17th Jan '15 10:51:38 PM by Funden

Brutal Hordechief can become pretty mean in a Warriors deck. During the Pre-Release, my brother got one out on curve with two Shadowspears already in play, and that just hurts.

Wizzards seems to really push for a warrior tribal this block. I opened my Mardu box and the seeded pack was set up for a B/W warrior tribal. The only red card in it was a Mardu Charm. So one card of the main colour, three if you count the tri-land and banner. But who cares for those?

Sam Stoddard mentioned in his article that Development was trying to give Warriors some contstructed playability. There's just so much power in them lately, which is why I've been brewing up a list.

I went Mardu for the prerelease yesterday.

Brutal Hordechief was my promo. And I got a bunch of other good on-color rares (Archfiend of Depravity, Dragonscale General Mardu Ascendancy), and generally good mardu cards, so I did mardu aggro, and went 2/3, which while it didn't win me anything, was a lot of fun. Fate Reforged seems really powerful in general. Not as many throwaway cards in it. While my deck was extremely powerful, everyone else's seemed to be too.

Also the Ugin's Fate thing turned out to be a bit disappointing. I was expecting a full pack of alt-art cards rather than 2 and the chance of maybe getting one card that's absurdly expensive... but then it's just gravy on top of the regular pre-release stuff so I can't really complain. (I also wish we could use those cards too, but.... eh)

So, I won the 2HG prerelease, and then my Ugin's Fate booster contained an alternate art Ugin, which I have been told goes for more than 150 euros already.

My deck was Jeskai removal and annoyances while my brother set up a massive Abzan force with three legendary dragons, a citadel siege and whisperwood elemental. It worked like a charm, went undefeated the entire tournament.

Then we completely whiffed out on the second tournament, no wins. Guess I used up my luck on that sweet sweet Ugin.

Better sell now. They go for $95ish now and are only going to drop.

I opened exceptionally bad fixing and lost more games to bad mana than I'd like.

In other words, you could probably get away with selling your copy, trying to buy another one later, and still potentially manage to make a profit off of it.

Pretty much. I know a few people that sold their playsets of Noble Hierarch and Cryptic Command in the wake of Modern Masters 2 (as most of them never used the cards since they switched decks). They'll probably just rebuy them later, assuming they're in the set. If they're not, who cares? They weren't using them anyways. A win/win in my book.

Though I'm still kicking myself over not picking up a playset of Crux of Fate and then reselling. I could have made $15 if I actually went for it

Pod, Cruise and Dig banned in modern, Golgari Grave-Troll unbanned.

Cruise banned in legacy, Worldgorger Dragon unbanned.

Cruise restricted in vintage, Gifts Ungiven unrestricted.

Cruise being banned in legacy is somewhat suprising to me. All it seemed to do was make already great decks only slightly better but I guess that was too much.

That Birthing Pod ban basically kicks an entire deck style out of Modern, doesn't it?

(Reads the ban announcement to see that's exactly the point.)

Does the banning of Treasure Cruise in those various formats mean it's banned in pauper too or is that a completely separate thing?

Pauper has a separate banned list.

To be honest, I'm kind of glad to see it go. It was seriously oppressive and boring to play against. It'll be nice to see the decks that got oppressed by this rise back up (Hooray for Storm and Twin!)

Edit: As for Legacy, I'm not surprised. UR/RUG/UWR Delver/Stoneblade has been pretty consistently good for the past little while. You basically had to play Delver, ANT or Reanimator to do well at all.

edited 19th Jan '15 11:28:51 AM by Funden

A little late, but my prerelease experience went thusly:

I went with Abzan. The seeded pack gave me some useable cards, though the rare (Rally the Ancestors) quickly proved itself to be dead weight. The rest of my box was pretty spread out in terms of colors, and the number of good off-color cards I ended up with (Shaman of the Great Hunt, Villainous Wealth, Flamewake Phoenix to name a few) really tempted me to abandon my colors. This was not helped by the fact that the new mechanic I wanted to play around with, I only got one card for.

In the end, I stayed in my colors, and I quickly learned a couple things: I severely underestimated the one good on-color bomb I pulled (Citadel Siege), and I also underestimated the quality of my removal. Citadel Siege won me every game I drew it in, and I ended the day 2-0-2, only losing a single game. And those two draws I was pretty darn close to winning, in one case by a measly one point of life. Needless to say, I had a great time.

Hey guys, I've got something I was hoping to get some thoughts on.

A long time ago I was reading an article about different kinds of worlds Magic goes to and there was a throw away line about the possibility of a plane existing that was just discovering magic for the first time. For some reason the idea intrigued me. I found a fan comic that seems to have died out about our world suddenly being flooded with mana and magic suddenly becoming a thing but I've often wondered, what would happen if there were a world in the multiverse that was just starting to get magic and understand it. Then recently that Librarians show deals with magic returning to the world and Tarkir proves that MTG is willing to do stories about a world without something suddenly getting it or getting back something lost. That brings me to my question:

What would that world look like? How would it suddenly be getting magic and what kind of story could you tell in such a world? So I ask the rest of the forums: What do you think a world that's been without magic for a long time would be like and what kind of hypothetical story could you tell over the course of a block?

Any thoughts?

Isn't this the premise of Shadowrun?

I think the difficulty with such a world would be that players in Magic are constantly doing magic (even artifacts are supposed to be magically created). Either there would need to be a mechanic that represents non-magical things, or the set would have to start when magic starts to be used frequently, rather than before the discovery. As for what the world was like, probably more technologically advanced due to the lack of magic, though wotc is averse to sci-fi things in magic, so perhaps not. It could also be a "prehistoric" thing.

edited 20th Jan '15 10:07:21 AM by ImperialSunlight

Apparently it is similar to something called Shadowrun but it's well before my time. And yea, I was thinking the block would have to take place after magic has been around for at least a short while. I was thinking the story could in some ways deal with the struggle between magic and technology and be similar in some ways to the enlightenment period on earth. Where you have lots of clubs and societies studying magic and trying to work out what it can and can't do, it's limitations etc.

From here:

More Jeskai-Ugin support, I guess...? (In terms of color identity and what he was before he became colorless, obvs)

edited 20th Jan '15 10:16:13 AM by ImperialSunlight

So I've encountered what I think is a bug in Magic DotP 2015.

I've got 75% of the Ravnica cards unlocked, but Explore Ravnica doesn't reward any boosters. Now I don't know what to do.

Opened my first run of FRF boosters. Loot included Yasova, Shu Yun, Crux of Fate and UGIN HIMSELF.

Today's /r/magicTCG facepalm of the day, brought to you by SLEEVES. Know how to shuffle your damn deck!