Magic: The Gathering (Spoiler-free)

Hey, remember how Treasure Cruise was a common?

How about Gray Merchant of Asphodel?

Heck, the last time they printed Lightning Bolt for Standard, it was at common.

Treasure Cruise was unintentionally broken and Lightning Bolt was shifted to an uncommon printing for Modern Masters.

Gray Merchant is good, but a tiny amount of decent commons doesn't change the clear design intention. Furthermore his body is inefficient for his cost, making his ability the reason he is good. Considering it was a new ability (based off devotion) I'd say it was underestimated and he fid better than intended.

It's also meant to balance the powerlevel in Limited Formats. Because in Draft and Sealed, the rarity of a card is indirectly a gameplay factor.

Uncharted Realms: Unkindness of Ravens.

Also, New Spellslingers.

EDIT: So, I've downloaded Magic Duels through Steam, but I haven't tried playing it yet since they're apparently having some issues with it which are being worked on. How bad are the "connectivity issues" and other problems right now? Are we talking Game-Breaking Bug or just minor inconvenience?

edited 31st Jul '15 4:04:35 PM by Lightblade

Minor inconvenience for me at this point. Seems mostly fixed.

Speaking of Duels, how much is it?

It's free with microtransactions if you want to buy booster packs faster. Doesn't feel obtrusive.

Actually, are we talking about Magic 2015? The one with Garruk? Because if so, I've got it already.

No, Magic Duels is different from that and barely a few-days old.

Today I went to the last of a series of sealed tournaments with the Origins sample decks.

Last year my LGS helped at some sort of board gaming festival where you got two M15 sample decks to play in a tournament. Apparently Wizards heard of that and sent some prizes, so they did that tournament again this year.

Week one was just the sample decks, one chosen and one random, week two added three packs for 7,50 Euro entry fee, week three added a draft for another 7,50.

I only attended the draft, and that was weird. You already went into the draft with a decent deck and that lead to a really weird environment. Most people where just trying to kill other decks, which was doable as we were only ten players. I was drafting for three different decks just because the packs changed wildly. I went into the draft with BG elves and only got 4 green cards, while no one around me actually played green.

I played a 50 card Jund deck, not the only one with that many cards. With that card pool you could get really consistent decks, I had 4-of Thornbow Archer, Reave Soul and Giant Growth.

Unfortunately I got really screwed in the first round. Game 1 one had me mulligan to 4, and I still had only one land. After going from 19 to 21 lands, I was flooded in game 2 and colour screwed.

I changed to a 40 card RG aggro deck, topping in Avaricious Dragon with some ramp for Terra Stomper and Hangarback Walker. I made some pretty explosive plays with Yeva's Forcemage, Call of the Full Moon and Titanic Growth. Went 2-1 for the day and second place because weird pairings, and scored 16/18 in the series, which is not really a surprise.

Prizes were also kinda weird. Each day had packs as prices as usual. The series had two Fifth Dawn t-shirts that had "Explore Columbus" on them for some reason, three notebooks and two sets of life total sheets. We also got three sets of the double-faced planeswalker posters at least some stores got for the pre-release. Everyone got to choose prizes in order of standing, and since not everyone attended the last event I could get a Gideon and a Liliana poster.

It was actually pretty fun, would be nice if there were more of those tournaments with whatever is supposed to replace the core sets.

So I downloaded Magic Duels and everything's pretty good... Except for a graphical glitch that turns the battlefield into a glitchy black mess. I can see decks and cards on the field fine, but the battlefield is this gross black shit and I'd prefer it be fixed somehow. Has this happened to anyone else, and if so, how did you fix it?

I haven't encountered that myself, but I have heard of other people doing so. The official word is this:

I had a lot of fun with Lilliana's final duel, though that's in part because killed and resurrected Gristlebrand's Indulgent Tormentor.

That battle is pretty cool, yes! I love how each of the demons will defend themselves to the end with desperate chump blocks, even if the next one will take over their board. It just fits so well.

That duel was hilarious because I got a ridiculous board presence vs Griselbrand and the other three demons couldn't do anything after that.

Honestly that deck's zombie lord is awesome. Once you have mana up you just keep saccing zombies and bringing them back.

Gahh, now you guys are making me want to play Liliana's story, but the servers are down for me. Damn you, Magic Duels!

I'm having trouble connecting now, too.

I really liked Lili's story because it didn't just retread her Origin on Uncharted Realms like Gideon's did.

I get the feeling that they didn't want the newer players to be confused by the idea of pre-mending planeswalkers, hence why it wasn't mentioned in Duels that Lili had gotten weaker due to the mending.

Yeah, but they still could have gotten away with just retrading the UR ground. Like, maybe each of Liliana's four duels after her spark ignites are just each demon, one by one.

Instead, we get to see her actually discover her powers on Zendikar, return to Dominaria and establish dominance over even the angels, and fight a duel with the Raven Man. We see Liliana's post-ignition growth in a way that Uncharted Realms completely skipped over.

And then the demon duel was so cool.

edited 3rd Aug '15 8:05:56 AM by TobiasDrake

I got third in Standard last month (mono-red), here's hoping I get top 3 again next Saturday.

Uncharted Realms: Offers to the Fire, or "What Would Jaya Do?"

Also, according to Doug, overwhelmingly positive emotional experiences can ignite sparks just as much as negative ones can, but don't make for interesting stories because those who ignite this way don't have much incentive to actually planeswalk.

Though in my opinion, having the happiest day of your life interrupted by getting launched through the Blind Eternities to another world would be a serious Moment Killer.

"Will you marry me?"

"-gasp- Abso-" -vworp-

"I missed the Kickstarter."
"Why?"
"I spent the entire month hiding from a dragon. Long story."

One storyline you could do with that is a planeswalker that due to injury, curse, etc. has little control over where they planeswalk to and seeks to go home.