Angels of Despair were servant, sentinel, assassin, and lover to the Orzhov Patriarchy. They usually came in mixed pairs and were utilized for all their functions until the patriarch was literal unable to use them. And Patriarchs tended to live several hundred years.
Now, if you had a really beautiful angel who'd do anything you wanted, most men would eventually try and fufil their biological imperative at some point. (apologies if that offends anyone)
I've had some conservative types take offense at less. For example, my desktop at work was changed from Thalia, Guardian of Thraben because it scared someone's kid. Okay, I am an intern, but still...
I just looked at the post that pointed out the new mythic dragon. Guess that card's going in my Scion deck!
I think that card is more tailor-made for Karrthus than Scion. Should have been 5/5 and put 5/5s into play tapped and attacking. 8D
As much as I despise the Rakdos (unfettered loyalty to Trostani and the Conclave here), I really like how they were depicted in today's Planeswalker's Guide.
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A mere ten days after the Mending, a young knight of Valeron and a young ranger of Eos made a discovery that would change Alara forever.
The Guides have been pretty good so far, that's for sure. Though the Azorius one was a little boring. Maybe that's the point.
I think they should've made the Azorius one go for at least another 30 pages. In the spirit of politics.
I'm pretty sure a couple of Orzhov Angels show up in the Guildpact novel for a (small) bit. They're not made to look glorious like the Boros Angels are though.
I'm pretty sure a couple of Orzhov Angels show up in the Guildpact novel for a (small) bit. They're not made to look glorious like the Boros Angels are though.
I suppose it's like the difference between Summer and Winter sidhe. Or to put it in another, less obscure, way: Like the difference between a supermodel (cold and beautiful) and a martial artist (very much alive, but not so stunningly beautiful).
I've had some conservative types take offense at less. For example, my desktop at work was changed from Thalia, Guardian of Thraben because it scared someone's kid. Okay, I am an intern, but still...
Meanwhile, my office computer wallpaper is Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius, and I had my computer hooked into the 70" conference room screen for a meeting with the CEO, the head of Engineering, and multiple managers (including my direct boss) week before last, and no one batted an eyelash.
Of course, I was drinking coffee out of an Empire Strikes Back mug, and my desk has a Boba Fett bobble head that says "Fett Up", so it's not like I'm in the closet about being a geek.
Well, I finally finished my legendary collection! I went 4-1 at the RtR prerelease while on vacation, won 18 packs, then traded those packs for all the old legends I still needed. I'm missing a few from 2012 (and all from RtR), but the collection is basically as done as it'll ever be!
I went Izzet and ended up running a UWR flying control deck that worked very well. Angel of Serenity, Martial Law and a few extra fliers gave me enough reason to make white more than just a splash. I was a bit greedy with the colours, but having both the relevant keyrunes helped a lot.
I unfortunately didn't get to go. I have yet to discover a good LGS for tournaments near my house. There's supposedly a newer store really close by, but looking at the map the address is in a really sketchy industrial park (the other nearby businesses are a brickyard and two trucking companies). I haven't worked up the nerve to check it out yet.
The second-nearest store that came up on the search on Wizards' site was about an hour away (assuming no traffic, and it was directly on the opposite side of Charlotte from me, so it would have probably taken more like an hour and a half).
I wouldn't worry about the industrial park place. Go check it out. Starting a store is a tough thing to do, so they probably just grabbed some property where they could.
I have a really close group of gaming friends that gets together twice a month. Once a month is usually Magic night with other card and board games mixed in, and the other monthly gathering is roleplaying, though we tend to whip out decks while we wait for everyone to get there and for whoever's GMing to get set up.
(I also play MTGO far more than I should, but it's not the same as sitting down with real people, especially for more "casual" formats like Commander.)
I'm the most "serious" Magic player in the group. No one else plays MTGO or reads DailyMTG/StarCity or visits forums or anything like that. Not to sound egotistical here, but I'm the best player in the group, which isn't saying much. I also put the most hours a week into Magic.
Here's how the group breaks down:
There are seven of us in the core group. Three of them (the guys--we'll call them A, B, and C) have been playing since Fallen Empires-ish, and their deckbuilding skills are...questionable.
A has a massive card collection, but they aren't necessarily *good* cards (though the phrase "Do you want a Demonic Tutor? I've got a box full." did come up last night). Before I came along, he was the best player in the group, and he's not happy that I know the rules better than him.
(The first night I ever played with them, we got into a huge fight over Book Burning of all cards--he was convinced that it was supposed to be played as "Unless a player has a card named Book Burning in his or her hand, CARDNAME deals six damage to that player, and that player puts the top six cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard." I tried my best to explain it was part of a cycle, you parse cards with standard English grammar, any number of arguments, even going as far as to pull up the Oracle wording in Gatherer AND magiccards.info as two independent sources, and he still got mad. The concept of Oracle wordings is lost of the whole group.)
B has been playing for just as long, and while he's got a decent understanding of the basic rules, his grasp of deckbuilding is tenuous at best. His two sons also play, but rarely at our Magic nights. (We schedule game days around A and B's custody schedules--both have ex-wives with similar custody arrangements.)
C also started playing back when he and A and B were in high school together, and he's a pretty decent player. He still doesn't get deck size or mana curves or anything like that, but I can only ask so much. He at least gets the rules for the most part.
A's girlfriend (we'll call her with D, and technically they're just friends-with-benefits) has been playing for about two years now. She's still very green, does not have any understanding of the stack or anything higher-level, and her decks are 120-card Timmy monstrosities. I have certain decks I refuse to use against her because it's like bringing a nuke to a knife fight. (I made the mistake of thinking my ultracasual UB Heidar, Rimewind Master bounce/snow deck would be a decent match for her...that deck is now banned from the group.)
C's fiance (we're on E now, right?) is actually the one who introduced me to the group--we work together in the same lab. She's been playing about a year and half. I actually taught her to play and built her first deck, so that she could surprise C and his boys.
That was a mistake.
E told me how long the group had been playing, so I used that to judge the power of her deck. I wanted to give her something fairly straight forward, so I build her a tribal Knights deck with Knight Exemplars...and it took three months before the rest of the group could beat it. I could regularly beat it, but no one else could work around the indestructible.
F, the sixth member of the group, is A's sister. She played when they were younger, and then picked it up again years later when she moved back home from Virginia. (We used to date--she ended it, and it's a long personal story.) She's a decent player, probably the best of the women in the group, but she doesn't get to play with us much because of her work schedule.
The one thing about the group I wish I could change is that they don't like multiplayer games. I've tried Archenemy with them (me being the Archenemy of course, since that's how it generally works out anyway), I've tried Planechase, I've tried Star, I've tried just doing open-season chaos, and they still all just want to pair off and duel. About once every four months I can convince them to play a multiplayer game of some sort, but it's like pulling teeth.
Multiplayer Magic is my passion. I love the politics of it, the extra time to build up board states, the crazy interactions that come when you've got six decks throwing down cards. I especially love commander, but I can't even convince my friends to try it. (I have at any given point six commander decks ready to roll, so they wouldn't even have to build decks.) I've taken to running my commander decks in regular games so I can at least justify the investment, which works great for Sharuum since I never really cast her, but was a fiasco for Kaalia. (I actually built the Sharuum deck to function as my Archenemy deck as well, so it was designed to function in a no-Command-zone environment. Two birds, one bird-lady-lion-thing.)
It's funny how some of the worst players have been playing the longest. It seriously took me a couple minutes to figure out that confusion with Book Burning. There's no comma there! C'mon!
I used to play MTGO, but Commander is my one true love, and like you say, playing online is just not the same. I'll go on Cockatrice every now and then if I'm bored, but sitting down and playing with real people is way more fun. I've been dueling a lot lately with my 12 year old foster son, and it does get boring after a while. I'm with you on that one too. Multiplayer is less "pure" or something, but it is more interesting.
My garsh, I've been out for long. What did I miss here?
Work's been very tough lately - beating deadlines, making tons of modules and training needs analysis. I even missed the entire RTR prerelease event, but it's all good.
So I recently opened three boosters and I'm nothing short of disappointed because I didn't even get a Legendary Creature. I guess the best rare I got was the dragon that produces a 6/6 dragon token whenever a dragon attacks. My office buddy got Jace.
Anyway, I've had this interest in creating a Rakdos guild deck lately, but our Lord of Riots did not appeal much to me. I'm going to wait for Massacre Girl and hope I won't get disappointed. While waiting, I was thinking of building a Jund-colored deck with Kresh as general. I was thinking of playing with the evoke, unleash and scavenge mechanics and just send my dudes in the red zone. My alternate win-con would be Havoc Festival and Wound Reflection combo. Suggestions would be most welcome.
Be careful with Hidetsugu and Wound Reflection--you need to have an odd-numbered life total before going off. If you're at 39, you take 19 damage, then Wound Reflection cuts you for another 19, leaving you with 1 life. That said, it's fun to kill everyone with an even life total in one fell swoop. Could be a total table kill if you play it just right.
Temporal Extortion is also fun with Havoc Festival--anyone who pays to stop it is now down at least 75% of their life total (half now, and half of what's left on their next upkeep).
Interesting story--in writing this post, I double-checked to make sure Hidetsugu wasn't banned (because you just never know when it comes to things that cause major life swings given that Sway of the Stars and Biorhythm are banned) and realized that Tinker is on the banlist. Totally have one in my Sharuum deck. Whoops. Probably should have caught that when I took Sundering Titan out two bannings ago.
Idk if it's just me, but how does Wound Reflection punish you if you're the controller of that enchantment? I read the rules text and it says "each opponent". I love the entire slice and dice interaction between this card and Heartless Hidetsugu.
I recently created yet another fun and flavorful deck out of Kangee, Aerie Keeper. It's just a lot of bird creatures, ramp into Kangee, True Conviction, smash face. Basic. I designed the deck as a tutorial deck, as a lot of newbies and old players are starting to notice me and a couple of colleagues play after office hours at the pantry. Any suggestions would be most welcome.
I assume you're playing Mirror Entity? He's pretty awesome with Kangee since Kangee's boost is added on top of the Entity's ability. Also, you're already ramping, so more mana is good for him too! Otherwise, that sounds like a pretty fun (but simple) deck to start some people out on. I've been playing Baru for a while, and he's sort of the same idea - nice and simple, but just beats people up.
I built a Rakdos deck last night too. Not the new one, though. Rakdos the Defiler. I think I mentioned Salvaging Station earlier in this thread, but my plan with this deck is to salvage back a bunch of artifacts to sac to Rakdos, then get them all back when Rakdos kills my opponent's creatures so I can do it all again! We'll see if it works. I suspect it might be awful.
My brother played a Rakdos deck for a while a long time ago, but he never really played his general. Sometimes to finish the game once it was down to 1v1, I guess, but once Oros was printed, Rakdos got shelved. That's the only one I've ever seen. Not surprising since Rakdos is obviously quite terrible for multiplayer, but that just sounds like a challenge to me!
Hopefully I can take it for a trial run this week.
When playing U/W birds be sure to play Aven Riftwatcher and some blink effects. Many birds have great ETB effects. Teferi's Moat is really good in my U/W Flying Rasputin deck.
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Thanks to SpiderBoy4 @ High-Light Studio's for the awesome banner
“I once had an entire race killed just to listen to the rattling of their dried bones as I waded through them.” —Volrath
I forgot about Moat! And Magus of the Moat! Maybe even Stormtide Leviathan? Those would be pretty killer. Your little tiny birds will need some help surviving against those giant wurms and such.
how does Wound Reflection punish you if you're the controller of that enchantment?
It doesn't; I misread the card as "each player".
As for Kangee, Pride of the Clouds is repeatable bird-age and/or a giant sky-cat, Jotun Owl Keeper fits with Kangee because they're both bird keepers, and both of those are great mana sinks since you've already got some ramp going.
I was organizing my cards over the weekend and found like 8 copies of Jotun Owl Keeper (which is what made me think of it) from when I bought a box of Coldsnap Theme Decks. They started me down the rabbit hole of a blue-white token deck (Owl Keepers, Intangible Virtue, Back from the Brink, Cackling Counterpart, Stitcher's Apprentice, various and sundry white token generators such as Doomed Traveler and Mausoleum Guard that would combo with the Apprentice), so I didn't get nearly as much organizing done as I'd hoped.
I pulled all my legendary creatures out into a separate box for commander purposes, which then lead me down the path of a Dralnu, Lich Lord commander deck with lots of instant/sorcery stealing like Spinal Embrace, Dominate, Ray of Command, Reins of Power, Blatant Thievery, Gruesome Encore, etc., backed up by a fairly mediocre countermagic/removal suite (this was all based on crap I already have in my boxes o'cards, and most of my good counters/removal are tied up in other decks). I haven't really tested it yet, but depending on how it seems to play I may invest actual money/cards in it.
You did read the spoiler? I'l repost it.
Now, if you had a really beautiful angel who'd do anything you wanted, most men would eventually try and fufil their biological imperative at some point. (apologies if that offends anyone)
Decks:GU Evolver, W Modern Knights
Apprentice of Spell Manipulation
Archester: Frontier of Steam
Decks:GU Evolver, W Modern Knights
Apprentice of Spell Manipulation
Archester: Frontier of Steam
I think that card is more tailor-made for Karrthus than Scion. Should have been 5/5 and put 5/5s into play tapped and attacking. 8D
As much as I despise the Rakdos (unfettered loyalty to Trostani and the Conclave here), I really like how they were depicted in today's Planeswalker's Guide.
Emille, Seven-Sting Dancer Shalin Nariya
I think they should've made the Azorius one go for at least another 30 pages. In the spirit of politics.
I'm pretty sure a couple of Orzhov Angels show up in the Guildpact novel for a (small) bit. They're not made to look glorious like the Boros Angels are though.
Doesn't mean they still aren't coldly beautiful.
Decks:GU Evolver, W Modern Knights
Apprentice of Spell Manipulation
Archester: Frontier of Steam
Meanwhile, my office computer wallpaper is Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius, and I had my computer hooked into the 70" conference room screen for a meeting with the CEO, the head of Engineering, and multiple managers (including my direct boss) week before last, and no one batted an eyelash.
Of course, I was drinking coffee out of an Empire Strikes Back mug, and my desk has a Boba Fett bobble head that says "Fett Up", so it's not like I'm in the closet about being a geek.
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!
Now onto P3K, I guess?
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!
Did you go? How did you do?
The second-nearest store that came up on the search on Wizards' site was about an hour away (assuming no traffic, and it was directly on the opposite side of Charlotte from me, so it would have probably taken more like an hour and a half).
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!
I wouldn't worry about the industrial park place. Go check it out. Starting a store is a tough thing to do, so they probably just grabbed some property where they could.
(I also play MTGO far more than I should, but it's not the same as sitting down with real people, especially for more "casual" formats like Commander.)
I'm the most "serious" Magic player in the group. No one else plays MTGO or reads DailyMTG/StarCity or visits forums or anything like that. Not to sound egotistical here, but I'm the best player in the group, which isn't saying much. I also put the most hours a week into Magic.
Here's how the group breaks down:
A has a massive card collection, but they aren't necessarily *good* cards (though the phrase "Do you want a Demonic Tutor? I've got a box full." did come up last night). Before I came along, he was the best player in the group, and he's not happy that I know the rules better than him.
(The first night I ever played with them, we got into a huge fight over Book Burning of all cards--he was convinced that it was supposed to be played as "Unless a player has a card named Book Burning in his or her hand, CARDNAME deals six damage to that player, and that player puts the top six cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard." I tried my best to explain it was part of a cycle, you parse cards with standard English grammar, any number of arguments, even going as far as to pull up the Oracle wording in Gatherer AND magiccards.info as two independent sources, and he still got mad. The concept of Oracle wordings is lost of the whole group.)
B has been playing for just as long, and while he's got a decent understanding of the basic rules, his grasp of deckbuilding is tenuous at best. His two sons also play, but rarely at our Magic nights. (We schedule game days around A and B's custody schedules--both have ex-wives with similar custody arrangements.)
C also started playing back when he and A and B were in high school together, and he's a pretty decent player. He still doesn't get deck size or mana curves or anything like that, but I can only ask so much. He at least gets the rules for the most part.
A's girlfriend (we'll call her with D, and technically they're just friends-with-benefits) has been playing for about two years now. She's still very green, does not have any understanding of the stack or anything higher-level, and her decks are 120-card Timmy monstrosities. I have certain decks I refuse to use against her because it's like bringing a nuke to a knife fight. (I made the mistake of thinking my ultracasual UB Heidar, Rimewind Master bounce/snow deck would be a decent match for her...that deck is now banned from the group.)
C's fiance (we're on E now, right?) is actually the one who introduced me to the group--we work together in the same lab. She's been playing about a year and half. I actually taught her to play and built her first deck, so that she could surprise C and his boys.
That was a mistake.
E told me how long the group had been playing, so I used that to judge the power of her deck. I wanted to give her something fairly straight forward, so I build her a tribal Knights deck with Knight Exemplars...and it took three months before the rest of the group could beat it. I could regularly beat it, but no one else could work around the indestructible.
F, the sixth member of the group, is A's sister. She played when they were younger, and then picked it up again years later when she moved back home from Virginia. (We used to date--she ended it, and it's a long personal story.) She's a decent player, probably the best of the women in the group, but she doesn't get to play with us much because of her work schedule.
Multiplayer Magic is my passion. I love the politics of it, the extra time to build up board states, the crazy interactions that come when you've got six decks throwing down cards. I especially love commander, but I can't even convince my friends to try it. (I have at any given point six commander decks ready to roll, so they wouldn't even have to build decks.) I've taken to running my commander decks in regular games so I can at least justify the investment, which works great for Sharuum since I never really cast her, but was a fiasco for Kaalia. (I actually built the Sharuum deck to function as my Archenemy deck as well, so it was designed to function in a no-Command-zone environment. Two birds, one bird-lady-lion-thing.)
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!
I used to play MTGO, but Commander is my one true love, and like you say, playing online is just not the same. I'll go on Cockatrice every now and then if I'm bored, but sitting down and playing with real people is way more fun. I've been dueling a lot lately with my 12 year old foster son, and it does get boring after a while. I'm with you on that one too. Multiplayer is less "pure" or something, but it is more interesting.
Work's been very tough lately - beating deadlines, making tons of modules and training needs analysis. I even missed the entire RTR prerelease event, but it's all good.
So I recently opened three boosters and I'm nothing short of disappointed because I didn't even get a Legendary Creature. I guess the best rare I got was the dragon that produces a 6/6 dragon token whenever a dragon attacks. My office buddy got Jace.
Anyway, I've had this interest in creating a Rakdos guild deck lately, but our Lord of Riots did not appeal much to me. I'm going to wait for Massacre Girl and hope I won't get disappointed. While waiting, I was thinking of building a Jund-colored deck with Kresh as general. I was thinking of playing with the evoke, unleash and scavenge mechanics and just send my dudes in the red zone. My alternate win-con would be Havoc Festival and Wound Reflection combo. Suggestions would be most welcome.
Glad to be posting again here
Be careful with Hidetsugu and Wound Reflection--you need to have an odd-numbered life total before going off. If you're at 39, you take 19 damage, then Wound Reflection cuts you for another 19, leaving you with 1 life. That said, it's fun to kill everyone with an even life total in one fell swoop. Could be a total table kill if you play it just right.
Temporal Extortion is also fun with Havoc Festival--anyone who pays to stop it is now down at least 75% of their life total (half now, and half of what's left on their next upkeep).
Interesting story--in writing this post, I double-checked to make sure Hidetsugu wasn't banned (because you just never know when it comes to things that cause major life swings given that Sway of the Stars and Biorhythm are banned) and realized that Tinker is on the banlist. Totally have one in my Sharuum deck. Whoops. Probably should have caught that when I took Sundering Titan out two bannings ago.
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!
Idk if it's just me, but how does Wound Reflection punish you if you're the controller of that enchantment? I read the rules text and it says "each opponent". I love the entire slice and dice interaction between this card and Heartless Hidetsugu.
I recently created yet another fun and flavorful deck out of Kangee, Aerie Keeper. It's just a lot of bird creatures, ramp into Kangee, True Conviction, smash face. Basic. I designed the deck as a tutorial deck, as a lot of newbies and old players are starting to notice me and a couple of colleagues play after office hours at the pantry. Any suggestions would be most welcome.
I built a Rakdos deck last night too. Not the new one, though. Rakdos the Defiler. I think I mentioned Salvaging Station earlier in this thread, but my plan with this deck is to salvage back a bunch of artifacts to sac to Rakdos, then get them all back when Rakdos kills my opponent's creatures so I can do it all again! We'll see if it works. I suspect it might be awful.
Let me know what happens to your Rakdos the Defiler project; I've actually never seen a build of it before.
Hopefully I can take it for a trial run this week.
“I once had an entire race killed just to listen to the rattling of their dried bones as I waded through them.”
—Volrath
EDIT: Man, Moat is $300!? Wow.
It doesn't; I misread the card as "each player".
As for Kangee, Pride of the Clouds is repeatable bird-age and/or a giant sky-cat, Jotun Owl Keeper fits with Kangee because they're both bird keepers, and both of those are great mana sinks since you've already got some ramp going.
I was organizing my cards over the weekend and found like 8 copies of Jotun Owl Keeper (which is what made me think of it) from when I bought a box of Coldsnap Theme Decks. They started me down the rabbit hole of a blue-white token deck (Owl Keepers, Intangible Virtue, Back from the Brink, Cackling Counterpart, Stitcher's Apprentice, various and sundry white token generators such as Doomed Traveler and Mausoleum Guard that would combo with the Apprentice), so I didn't get nearly as much organizing done as I'd hoped.
I pulled all my legendary creatures out into a separate box for commander purposes, which then lead me down the path of a Dralnu, Lich Lord commander deck with lots of instant/sorcery stealing like Spinal Embrace, Dominate, Ray of Command, Reins of Power, Blatant Thievery, Gruesome Encore, etc., backed up by a fairly mediocre countermagic/removal suite (this was all based on crap I already have in my boxes o'cards, and most of my good counters/removal are tied up in other decks). I haven't really tested it yet, but depending on how it seems to play I may invest actual money/cards in it.
@_kaburi_ on Twitter
Special thanks to Serrot_29 for Catbug'mrakul!