I'd bet on Nimbus Maze. Like Grove of the Burnwillows, River of Tears is too specific to the particular colors; I don't expect it to ever get turned into a cycle. (There's also the symmetry issue -- the colors in the pair aren't treated symmetrically, so trying to make it into a cycle would also be awkward for that reason.) It's basically just too weird and specialized.
I`d guess that if they`d ever do a full cycle of it, it`d be Tainted Isle style, ie other than U -> Landfall -> B we`d get W -> Landfall -> B, R -> Landfall -> B and G -> Landfall -> B
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
As an IT professional myself, I can tell you that you don't get warning about an outage like this, and, you very often don't even get notice that it is happening.
If it had been a huge Denial of Service attack, like Anonymous does to the government servers from time to time, all kinds of bells and whistles go off alerting everyone involved to the attack. This is not what happened.
IT professionals that are tasked to work on getting systems back up can't do their job unless they are AWARE that the systems are down. If the server is returning a code that suggests the system is up, and they are working on other systems that are indeed getting the code of down, then, well, it is like you are dealing with your kid that is screaming their head off for a sprained ankle and your other kid is in the bathroom with a broken wrist but not making a peep. You generally are assisting the one that is screaming the loudest.
Suffice it to say that as soon as they discovered the problem, they were on it, and they got our system back up and running.
For that, we thank them. Could there be a way of letting the alerts go directly to their mailbox? That is for the administrators of MTGS and the server administrators to determine. It is really not generally standard practice for the customers (we, the members of MTGS) of the client (MTGS) to directly contact the contractor (Curse) for technical support issues. It is industry standard practice for the client to do that kind of contact, as the client is the one that has contracted with the agent to handle that aspect of business.
So, just because MTGS didn't get back up in an amount of time acceptable to US does not mean that anybody did anything wrong. Sometimes, in this day and age of instant gratification, we lose sight of the fact that sometimes, things take time to address.
What happened is like, your house is burning, and you call the fire department
They come, extinguish the fire, tell you that the fire is out, then leave
..
and 15 mins after they leave, your building lights up anew - because the fire dept people missed a fire, and it flared up again.
And thats definitely not okay.
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
That's really not fair. Folks have to sleep. Look, mistakes happen & sh** happens. Just be thankful that the right measures are underway to make sure it won't happen again, and maybe a way to let everyone know another way (another page, facebook, etc...) that what needs to be done is being done.
It really should not be that hard to go to forums.mtgsalvation.com to double check, takes like 15 seconds. Duh.
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
Yeah, but for most of the time, they didn't know/think it was down. The automated systems said it was up. The tech team, dealing with who knows how many sites believed the pingbot, and thought everything was fine. It wasn't.
Honestly, this seems really strange all around, but meh.
Like other people pointed out, it was completely unnoticed (which is still unacceptable, really). Otherwise yes, we'd have provided information on what's happening, but yeah the whole thing was a combination of multiple things that made it really bad.
Really, it was more than obvious that the site was down, but, apparently, techs are too arrogant to double-check their work by simply typing in the website`s url and try to fetch it.
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
What exactly is the reason that the shiny new spoiled cards are forbidden in the rulings forum, anyways?
Also, what do with the scard after each season? They`d be pretty useless once the spoiler rotates, and there will certainly be discussions that`ll last longer than a spoiler season.
Is it possible to parse a posts date of creation and then use it to determine whether an scard will actually lead to the spoiler, or to magiccards.info/gatherer?
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
The most realistic scenario?
Helix gonna get reprinted in DGM, as well as some other stuff.
It`ll not break the pattern they`ve followed till now, and that`s more likely to happen, and as we saw no reprints in RTR, we`ll most likely not see any of them in GTC.
DGM, however, is unknown land.
It`ll also reduce the overhead time where Helix is better than Spear.
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
From a mind-games perspective I`d use identical lands, that means, if I`d use 5 Islands in my deck, they`d be all from the same edition with the same art, and if possible, from the same print run.
That`s in case a land gets bounced or w/e, so that you`ll let your opponent keep guessing whether you just played a new land or just re-played the one that just got bounced.
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
That would be freaking terrible to play with or against. In addition to ending up with less net cards than EtI alone would give you, it would take an abysmally long time to resolve, as you have to count the cards in your library and then do Sage's effect for each one.
I`m pretty sure you`re allowed to short-cut this by simply revealing everything and putting all creature cards into your hand.
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
The lifeloss isn`t irrelevant, it never is and should be, bar some extreme corner cases.
What you describe is the benefits of fixing/filling GY/thinning/w/e outweighting the drawback of the lost lives.
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
No, the reason you don`t want to run fetches for deck thinning is that while a single fetch will thin your deck by 1/50 or so, you pay with 1/20 of your life.
You might win, lets say (numbers arbitrary), 1% of extra games due to drawing gas 1% more often due to thinning, but at the same time, lose 3% of games due to hitting 0 life sooner than expected.
Fetches thin your deck - yes. If you have any other reason to run them (fixing mana), by all means, do it. The thinning is just an added bonus.
You don`t run fetches solely for thinning, that`s it.
Because the price you pay for that thinning is much higher than it`d be worth it
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"Petals within petals within petals, tadpole. The truth lurks below an opulence of illusion."
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
The only big mistake as of late would be Skullclamp, then, because that`s the only card post-invasion that got itself banned from Legacy, if my memory serves me right.
I`d guess that if they`d ever do a full cycle of it, it`d be Tainted Isle style, ie other than U -> Landfall -> B we`d get W -> Landfall -> B, R -> Landfall -> B and G -> Landfall -> B
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
What happened is like, your house is burning, and you call the fire department
They come, extinguish the fire, tell you that the fire is out, then leave
..
and 15 mins after they leave, your building lights up anew - because the fire dept people missed a fire, and it flared up again.
And thats definitely not okay.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
It really should not be that hard to go to forums.mtgsalvation.com to double check, takes like 15 seconds. Duh.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
Really, it was more than obvious that the site was down, but, apparently, techs are too arrogant to double-check their work by simply typing in the website`s url and try to fetch it.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
Also, what do with the scard after each season? They`d be pretty useless once the spoiler rotates, and there will certainly be discussions that`ll last longer than a spoiler season.
Is it possible to parse a posts date of creation and then use it to determine whether an scard will actually lead to the spoiler, or to magiccards.info/gatherer?
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
Helix gonna get reprinted in DGM, as well as some other stuff.
It`ll not break the pattern they`ve followed till now, and that`s more likely to happen, and as we saw no reprints in RTR, we`ll most likely not see any of them in GTC.
DGM, however, is unknown land.
It`ll also reduce the overhead time where Helix is better than Spear.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
That`s in case a land gets bounced or w/e, so that you`ll let your opponent keep guessing whether you just played a new land or just re-played the one that just got bounced.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
The tags solved that problem.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
I`m pretty sure you`re allowed to short-cut this by simply revealing everything and putting all creature cards into your hand.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
What you describe is the benefits of fixing/filling GY/thinning/w/e outweighting the drawback of the lost lives.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
You might win, lets say (numbers arbitrary), 1% of extra games due to drawing gas 1% more often due to thinning, but at the same time, lose 3% of games due to hitting 0 life sooner than expected.
Fetches thin your deck - yes. If you have any other reason to run them (fixing mana), by all means, do it. The thinning is just an added bonus.
You don`t run fetches solely for thinning, that`s it.
Because the price you pay for that thinning is much higher than it`d be worth it
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
meh.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage
€ Oh, and Mental Misstep.
—Neerdiv, fallowsage