should i be trading away thalias/ash zealots/silverblade paladins or will they not see a price decrease?
Thalia and the Zealot will not move from their spot till they rotate, the paladin may go down since the Boros Reckoner is pretty sure to take his place in Boros Sligh, but if humans stay competitive and popular he wont go lower than $8.
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If the store owner says that I can't trade in the premises, I'll just go outside. If he says that I can't trade within 10m of his premises, I'll go to 11 meters. If he says that he doesn't want to see me trading, I will put a basket over his head and continue trading.
Yes, he's a local legend. He's only known to take his clothes off before he goes into the Ladies' Lockerroom. Nobody knows what he does in there because he's invisible, but it's almost certainly tons of masturbating.
If the store owner says that I can't trade in the premises, I'll just go outside. If he says that I can't trade within 10m of his premises, I'll go to 11 meters. If he says that he doesn't want to see me trading, I will put a basket over his head and continue trading.
Yes, he's a local legend. He's only known to take his clothes off before he goes into the Ladies' Lockerroom. Nobody knows what he does in there because he's invisible, but it's almost certainly tons of masturbating.
There is a niche of people who actually buy Intro Packs, keep them and play them against other people with their Intro Packs. Yes I believe it is a waste of money since in most cases Intro Decks are full of crap rares [with one of the few exceptions being (Blade Splicer and Jitte in their respective standards.) but... there seems to be a market for that.
Given the click rate for our precon-centric site, I think interest in precons is largely underestimated.
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
Take another look at the Simic deck.
First off, it doesn't need Hinterland Harbor. The thing has mana fixing all over the place! I count 12 mana fixers!
Second, stop thinking of the deck as an Evolve deck, and look at it as a combo-ramp deck. You can quickly get to 6 mana with a lot of cards in hand. If you bind Deadeye Navigator to any of the upper drops, you are totally unstoppable. The red splash is totally realistic and effective - see the aforementioned 12 fixers.
This is a strong and fun blue-green deck. It might be run over by the Boros deck, but with a little bit of good blocking, it will reach an impregnable board state and mop the Boros deck all over the floor.
This deck isn't about max dollar value, its about being fun and effective. Enjoy your Firefist Strikers while we are over here playing Mist Ravens and blinking Sphinx of Uthuun.
I just noticed it now, but the deck doesn't have simic charm, while the Boros, Golgari, and Rakdos event deck has the charms.
It is obvious that it has to be that they posted the wrong lists. There is just no way that is the actual deck.
Or somebody just couldn't wait for April 1st, and had to fool us now.
I don't know what's worse, Thrive and Thrash, or Wolfenstein 2009's multiplayer.
I bet, the reaction to the simic deck would be so much different if the big simic tree and the gatecrash logos aren't pasted on the packaging. If it just said, Event Deck, then people would have a different say.
People expect this to be Simic Synthesis 2.0, because it has a huge simic logo on it, and is based on experiences with the RTR event decks.
Wrack and Rage felt like Rakdos Rage 2.0
Creep and Conquer felt like Golgari Growth 2.0
Rally and Rout seems to feel like Boros Batallion 2.0
How about Thrive and Thrash? It feels more like Gruul with a splash of blue, than Simic with a splash of red. The feel and flavor of the deck is more Gruul than Simic. The idea of the simic is to take small creatures, and make them big by +1/+1 counters. This deck isn't doing that. The other 3 event decks, from GTC and RTR seems to have the same strategies that the guilds represent.
Honestly, I would rather have the event decks like this, where we have some mish mash of themes, not related to the flavor of the set. If people want to buy flavor driven precons from that set, get intro packs. I just think the whole flavor driven guild logos and set logos should go away, and event decks need to become side products. Perhaps make the set logo smaller to tell players that it is an event deck that is standard legal in the Gatecrash season. Gatecrash season means that ISD, DKA, AVR, M13, RTR, and GTC are standard legal, and a season changes when the sets legal in standard changes. So Dragon's Maze season is a change in season, because it adds a standard legal set.
So all I ask, is to make the event decks say, EVENT DECK, with gatecrash or dragon's maze being a sublogo, with the deck names, like Rally and Rout be the smallest font of the 3.
Intro packs would be GATECRASH intro pack, because the focus is on the set.
Event decks would be EVENT DECK gatecrash, because the focus is on the event.
The packaging for the event decks could still share the same design colors of the main set, but it has to be in such a way that people don't associate Gatecrash or Dragon's maze with the event deck, and associate the Standard season with the event deck. Right now, with all that is happening, people are still associating Gatecrash with the event decks, and that WOTC doesn't have free reign to make a deck that has more Innistrad block cards, and a couple of Gatecrash cards. They did it so far, but the packaging leads people to believe that it is a Gatecrash product, which in reality, it is not.
As I said before, the deck making department is trying to make any deck using the standard legal sets. Just any deck. Take Thrive and Thrash for example, it's just a simple green blue deck, that is meh. Now the marketing department, decides to make event decks as intro packs 2.0, or Thrive and Thrash is Simic Synthesis 2.0.
Either 1 of 2 things.
Either the deck makers built the worst simic deck ever, with no simic themes, or
the marketing department sees green and blue, and slaps a simic logo on the packaging.
That's all I see. This could have been fixed if Event decks weren't associated with a set. I don't see how Gatecrash has anything to do with these event decks. Tell me something about these event decks that feel more like Gatecrash than any other set, because they don't. As long as the packaging stays as is, people are going to view event decks as intro packs that are competitive. Intro packs are built to explore the set they represent, hence the mechanical themed decks, or tribal theme decks. Event decks are meant to be competitive, but yet, they try to force the flavor theme on it. The people building the deck doesn't think so, they are out to built what's good. The marketing department is at fault I believe. They force the whole flavor thing on its packaging, while they don't realize we already have intro packs for that.
If people want to buy a competitive precon, buy an event deck. They don't care about flavor, well some do, but they care more about winning.
If people want to explore the flavor of the set, they buy intro packs. They just want to explore the mechanics, and storyline of the set, and feel like they are the characters in the set. Why spend tons of money on a better deck, if a more basic deck achieves the same purpose?
I buy intro packs every set, because it is the best way to explore the themes of the set without going out to spend a ton, and "wasting time" building multiple themed decks that are roughly balanced against each other.
The best precon to explore the simic would be Simic Synthesis intro pack, not Thrive and Thrash. Even the better deck to explore boros would be Boros Battallion, and not Rally and Rout, but so long as the packaging for event decks is the way it is, Thrive and Thrash would just be Simic Synthesis 2.0 to many people who look at it.
Event decks should be built without flavor restrictions, and the packaging should reflect that.
Take another look at the Simic deck.
First off, it doesn't need Hinterland Harbor. The thing has mana fixing all over the place! I count 12 mana fixers!
Second, stop thinking of the deck as an Evolve deck, and look at it as a combo-ramp deck. You can quickly get to 6 mana with a lot of cards in hand. If you bind Deadeye Navigator to any of the upper drops, you are totally unstoppable. The red splash is totally realistic and effective - see the aforementioned 12 fixers.
This is a strong and fun blue-green deck. It might be run over by the Boros deck, but with a little bit of good blocking, it will reach an impregnable board state and mop the Boros deck all over the floor.
This deck isn't about max dollar value, its about being fun and effective. Enjoy your Firefist Strikers while we are over here playing Mist Ravens and blinking Sphinx of Uthuun.
It has no Simic flavor and would get absolutely WIPED by any of the other event decks in this block thus far. This one clearly got away from them.
The more I read over that Simic decklist the more I think, "Is this a joke?" Because seriously, I'm not even sure the person who designed it knows how to play Magic.
One Mountain and two red cards? The crappiest of crap blue rares from Innistrad block? What?
@signofzeta: I really enjoy your humor sometimes. Keep up the good work.
It's not hard to design an on theme event deck that would be pretty competitive for FNM along the same lines of the decks they are producing right now. The decklist posted earlier is totally playable.
Remember the AVR event deck Humanities Revenge? The U/W one? A friend picked up that list brought it to work and did extremely well, right outta the box with light mods from the sideboard. I looked it over and it was very well done.
Compare that to the simic event deck, and I am at a loss for words. The Boros one came out looking good, what the heck happened? You want people not to buy them to part out, don't put the stinking Thragtusk in there, and instead make it a thematic, competitive simic deck. In fact, that's even better for the target audience (for people to be able to purchase at msrp, with intentions to play with it) because it will get sold for $5 under msrp due to lack of $$$ cards, but play extremely fun and well, and be purchased by mentioned audience.
Seriously, it's not rocket science. WoTC could have emailed me, and I would have drafted them a decklist for FREE. They paid someone wages to produce this chaff.
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@signofzeta: I really enjoy your humor sometimes. Keep up the good work.
It's not hard to design an on theme event deck that would be pretty competitive for FNM along the same lines of the decks they are producing right now. The decklist posted earlier is totally playable.
Remember the AVR event deck Humanities Revenge? The U/W one? A friend picked up that list brought it to work and did extremely well, right outta the box with light mods from the sideboard. I looked it over and it was very well done.
Compare that to the simic event deck, and I am at a loss for words. The Boros one came out looking good, what the heck happened? You want people not to buy them to part out, don't put the stinking Thragtusk in there, and instead make it a thematic, competitive simic deck. In fact, that's even better for the target audience (for people to be able to purchase at msrp, with intentions to play with it) because it will get sold for $5 under msrp due to lack of $$$ cards, but play extremely fun and well, and be purchased by mentioned audience.
Seriously, it's not rocket science. WoTC could have emailed me, and I would have drafted them a decklist for FREE. They paid someone wages to produce this chaff.
This is the reason why I prefer intro packs over event decks. Intro packs may be worse in power level, but at least they are the best decks when it comes to the themes and flavor of the set they represent.
I personally think, like I said many times, that event decks should NOT have themes and flavor of the set they represent. They should be decently competitive deck based on the standard sets that are out at the time. I don't know why Event decks have to fulfill the same shoes as intro packs, because they shouldn't.
Intro packs are for set exploration. You don't need a top tier deck to explore a set.
Event decks are competitive precons. You are limiting yourself if you try to make a flavor based competitive deck. Just for that, the set logos and flavor of that set should not exist on the packaging, if anything, the logo should change in such a way that it makes sure that people know that Event Decks aren't Intro packs 2.0, a deck that has more value that explores that specific set. Event decks should tell the customer that it is a deck that explores the standard environment, which changes 4 times a year, with each new set and each new rotation.
The simic deck is playable, but it isn't simic. There is nothing wrong with making a deck that has tons of ISD block cards and a few GTC cards. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think the deck builders should have free reign based on the standard card pool they have. The problem is the marketing. Why market this as a Gatecrash, and even a simic deck, when it obviously is not. They already have 5 precons that advertise the set. They are called intro packs.
Like I said before, the deckbuilders aren't trying to make Event Decks as Intro Packs 2.0. The marketing department seems to do so. Do you know how many ISD block based themes that they could have used with RTR block support? They seemed to have done that with Thrive and Thrash, or at least I think they did, but nope, that marketing department.
Marketing department:
"Let's slap a simic logo and the gatecrash logo to sell the gatecrash set, even though the deck has nothing to do with simic and gatecrash."
"Simic is cool, let's milk the guild"
If people really want a Gatecrash precon, buy intro packs. When people build a competitive deck, they look at the cards themselves, and not what set they are from. If a card is good, then they should use it.
i rather have this simic deck, than what a lot of you guys are asking for.
if this wasnt the simic deck, you better believe it would be a deck full of "meh i lose to any deck that just doesnt play guys and swings".
It would have experiment ones, young wolves, guildmages, a few strangegeist, and a couple of other cute cards that interact with counters, and guess what? it would be garbage.
Thalia and the Zealot will not move from their spot till they rotate, the paladin may go down since the Boros Reckoner is pretty sure to take his place in Boros Sligh, but if humans stay competitive and popular he wont go lower than $8.
I do like the Boros one. It is not an optimal build by any means, but at least it has a goal. Moreover, it has a lot of cards that make a good starting point to build a Boros deck (Clifftop Retreat, Ash Zealot, Champion of the Parish, Silverblade Paladin, Spark Trooper, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Boros Charm, Skullcrack...).
Yeah, someone screwed up with that. How on earth did Hinterland Harbor not make it into the deck?
+1
Agreed on this point.
Given the click rate for our precon-centric site, I think interest in precons is largely underestimated.
I'm hoping I can find a place to get both of these for $40.
SCG frequently discounts them when you buy the pair,
but they still want $50... no thank you
Reprint Stasis!
Control needs more love.
EDH:
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm
WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW
WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
This is a deck I would actually play with, too.
Besides taking out a Dungeon Geist for a Hinterland Harbor I would as well.
I'm not WotC material, but I can answer you: They were thinking of "Not-Simic".
The deck feels stupid, and I quite hated the card choices.
(Give your LGS judge a hug. He deserves it.)
First off, it doesn't need Hinterland Harbor. The thing has mana fixing all over the place! I count 12 mana fixers!
Second, stop thinking of the deck as an Evolve deck, and look at it as a combo-ramp deck. You can quickly get to 6 mana with a lot of cards in hand. If you bind Deadeye Navigator to any of the upper drops, you are totally unstoppable. The red splash is totally realistic and effective - see the aforementioned 12 fixers.
This is a strong and fun blue-green deck. It might be run over by the Boros deck, but with a little bit of good blocking, it will reach an impregnable board state and mop the Boros deck all over the floor.
This deck isn't about max dollar value, its about being fun and effective. Enjoy your Firefist Strikers while we are over here playing Mist Ravens and blinking Sphinx of Uthuun.
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Currently playing Knight of the Reliquary - Retreat to Coralhelm Combo
It is obvious that it has to be that they posted the wrong lists. There is just no way that is the actual deck.
Or somebody just couldn't wait for April 1st, and had to fool us now.
I don't know what's worse, Thrive and Thrash, or Wolfenstein 2009's multiplayer.
I bet, the reaction to the simic deck would be so much different if the big simic tree and the gatecrash logos aren't pasted on the packaging. If it just said, Event Deck, then people would have a different say.
People expect this to be Simic Synthesis 2.0, because it has a huge simic logo on it, and is based on experiences with the RTR event decks.
Wrack and Rage felt like Rakdos Rage 2.0
Creep and Conquer felt like Golgari Growth 2.0
Rally and Rout seems to feel like Boros Batallion 2.0
How about Thrive and Thrash? It feels more like Gruul with a splash of blue, than Simic with a splash of red. The feel and flavor of the deck is more Gruul than Simic. The idea of the simic is to take small creatures, and make them big by +1/+1 counters. This deck isn't doing that. The other 3 event decks, from GTC and RTR seems to have the same strategies that the guilds represent.
Honestly, I would rather have the event decks like this, where we have some mish mash of themes, not related to the flavor of the set. If people want to buy flavor driven precons from that set, get intro packs. I just think the whole flavor driven guild logos and set logos should go away, and event decks need to become side products. Perhaps make the set logo smaller to tell players that it is an event deck that is standard legal in the Gatecrash season. Gatecrash season means that ISD, DKA, AVR, M13, RTR, and GTC are standard legal, and a season changes when the sets legal in standard changes. So Dragon's Maze season is a change in season, because it adds a standard legal set.
So all I ask, is to make the event decks say, EVENT DECK, with gatecrash or dragon's maze being a sublogo, with the deck names, like Rally and Rout be the smallest font of the 3.
Intro packs would be GATECRASH intro pack, because the focus is on the set.
Event decks would be EVENT DECK gatecrash, because the focus is on the event.
The packaging for the event decks could still share the same design colors of the main set, but it has to be in such a way that people don't associate Gatecrash or Dragon's maze with the event deck, and associate the Standard season with the event deck. Right now, with all that is happening, people are still associating Gatecrash with the event decks, and that WOTC doesn't have free reign to make a deck that has more Innistrad block cards, and a couple of Gatecrash cards. They did it so far, but the packaging leads people to believe that it is a Gatecrash product, which in reality, it is not.
As I said before, the deck making department is trying to make any deck using the standard legal sets. Just any deck. Take Thrive and Thrash for example, it's just a simple green blue deck, that is meh. Now the marketing department, decides to make event decks as intro packs 2.0, or Thrive and Thrash is Simic Synthesis 2.0.
Either 1 of 2 things.
Either the deck makers built the worst simic deck ever, with no simic themes, or
the marketing department sees green and blue, and slaps a simic logo on the packaging.
That's all I see. This could have been fixed if Event decks weren't associated with a set. I don't see how Gatecrash has anything to do with these event decks. Tell me something about these event decks that feel more like Gatecrash than any other set, because they don't. As long as the packaging stays as is, people are going to view event decks as intro packs that are competitive. Intro packs are built to explore the set they represent, hence the mechanical themed decks, or tribal theme decks. Event decks are meant to be competitive, but yet, they try to force the flavor theme on it. The people building the deck doesn't think so, they are out to built what's good. The marketing department is at fault I believe. They force the whole flavor thing on its packaging, while they don't realize we already have intro packs for that.
If people want to buy a competitive precon, buy an event deck. They don't care about flavor, well some do, but they care more about winning.
If people want to explore the flavor of the set, they buy intro packs. They just want to explore the mechanics, and storyline of the set, and feel like they are the characters in the set. Why spend tons of money on a better deck, if a more basic deck achieves the same purpose?
I buy intro packs every set, because it is the best way to explore the themes of the set without going out to spend a ton, and "wasting time" building multiple themed decks that are roughly balanced against each other.
The best precon to explore the simic would be Simic Synthesis intro pack, not Thrive and Thrash. Even the better deck to explore boros would be Boros Battallion, and not Rally and Rout, but so long as the packaging for event decks is the way it is, Thrive and Thrash would just be Simic Synthesis 2.0 to many people who look at it.
Event decks should be built without flavor restrictions, and the packaging should reflect that.
It has no Simic flavor and would get absolutely WIPED by any of the other event decks in this block thus far. This one clearly got away from them.
One Mountain and two red cards? The crappiest of crap blue rares from Innistrad block? What?
WUR Geist Midrange WUR
Commander
W Nahiri's Celestial Foundry W
WB Orzhov Inquisition (Cleric Tribal) WB
WUBRG Progenitus's Prismatic Domain WUBRG
WURG Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis Love You WURG
WUG Rafiq of the Many Auracrafting WUG
WRG Hazezon Tamar Overrun WRG
G Seton's Druid Ramp G
I have a better quote from myself.
How about,
"The decklists for Thrive and Thrash is the worst decision since, since, uh, the Phoenix Coyotes", yeah, that's right.
Thrive and Thrash's strategy = hockey
Simic = desert
It's not hard to design an on theme event deck that would be pretty competitive for FNM along the same lines of the decks they are producing right now. The decklist posted earlier is totally playable.
Remember the AVR event deck Humanities Revenge? The U/W one? A friend picked up that list brought it to work and did extremely well, right outta the box with light mods from the sideboard. I looked it over and it was very well done.
Compare that to the simic event deck, and I am at a loss for words. The Boros one came out looking good, what the heck happened? You want people not to buy them to part out, don't put the stinking Thragtusk in there, and instead make it a thematic, competitive simic deck. In fact, that's even better for the target audience (for people to be able to purchase at msrp, with intentions to play with it) because it will get sold for $5 under msrp due to lack of $$$ cards, but play extremely fun and well, and be purchased by mentioned audience.
Seriously, it's not rocket science. WoTC could have emailed me, and I would have drafted them a decklist for FREE. They paid someone wages to produce this chaff.
BUDGET DECK BUILDER SINCE 93'
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This is the reason why I prefer intro packs over event decks. Intro packs may be worse in power level, but at least they are the best decks when it comes to the themes and flavor of the set they represent.
I personally think, like I said many times, that event decks should NOT have themes and flavor of the set they represent. They should be decently competitive deck based on the standard sets that are out at the time. I don't know why Event decks have to fulfill the same shoes as intro packs, because they shouldn't.
Intro packs are for set exploration. You don't need a top tier deck to explore a set.
Event decks are competitive precons. You are limiting yourself if you try to make a flavor based competitive deck. Just for that, the set logos and flavor of that set should not exist on the packaging, if anything, the logo should change in such a way that it makes sure that people know that Event Decks aren't Intro packs 2.0, a deck that has more value that explores that specific set. Event decks should tell the customer that it is a deck that explores the standard environment, which changes 4 times a year, with each new set and each new rotation.
The simic deck is playable, but it isn't simic. There is nothing wrong with making a deck that has tons of ISD block cards and a few GTC cards. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think the deck builders should have free reign based on the standard card pool they have. The problem is the marketing. Why market this as a Gatecrash, and even a simic deck, when it obviously is not. They already have 5 precons that advertise the set. They are called intro packs.
Like I said before, the deckbuilders aren't trying to make Event Decks as Intro Packs 2.0. The marketing department seems to do so. Do you know how many ISD block based themes that they could have used with RTR block support? They seemed to have done that with Thrive and Thrash, or at least I think they did, but nope, that marketing department.
Marketing department:
"Let's slap a simic logo and the gatecrash logo to sell the gatecrash set, even though the deck has nothing to do with simic and gatecrash."
"Simic is cool, let's milk the guild"
If people really want a Gatecrash precon, buy intro packs. When people build a competitive deck, they look at the cards themselves, and not what set they are from. If a card is good, then they should use it.
Not that I don't agree it's price is too high and it needs more volume in distribution.
I also agree that they shouldn't call it a "Simic" deck when it doesn't embrace the current/new Simic design.
if this wasnt the simic deck, you better believe it would be a deck full of "meh i lose to any deck that just doesnt play guys and swings".
It would have experiment ones, young wolves, guildmages, a few strangegeist, and a couple of other cute cards that interact with counters, and guess what? it would be garbage.
and what you have there is a deck that would get dominated even at the FNM level.