MTG Salvation

I just like to play. If I had the time and enough money to have every standard tier one deck, I'd have them. I firmly believe that anyone on the 'pretty good' side of competitive magic with 5 or 6 peers with which to playtest full time, completely independent of the internet, given a week or so, they would come up with the top decks in standard, as well as many good quality 'rouge' decks. I just don't have the time to do that, so if I wanted to play competitively, I would find a good list online and build it to my playstyle.

I also believe that any 'homebrew' decks that do decent at FNM exist online somewhere, with fewer than a difference of 5 card choices. Millions of people play this game. Someone else is going to think of the same combination of cards.

Go for it and do it as often as possible. Great quote from Ira Glass, the host of the weekly radio show "This American Life":

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

nobody-tells-this-to-people-who-are-beginners

So if you added Restoration Angel to the mix, you'd get to keep Obzedat? And he'd exile from his own ability at EOT because he's a "new" version?

So I'm wondering if I did the right thing at the prerelease. Before the first game, I didn't pay attention so much, but it seems my opponent was doing the '8 pile' shuffle. It seemed a little weird as he would scoop up 4 cards in each hand and plop them down every so often. After that first game (I lost, not important). I paid closer attention. He separated his lands into one pile, and non lands into another (as far as I could tell, at least). Then he would 'deal' the non land cards one at a time onto the 8 piles, then scoop up 8 lands, 4 in each hand, and plop them down on the piles, and then repeated: deal, plop, deal, plop. When he was done, he stacked them on top of each other one at a time and pushed his deck over to me for cutting. I said something like 'Uh, those aren't really randomized', to which he replied, 'Uh, ok' and did the two handed 'merging shuffle' thing 2 or 3 times. When he slid his deck for me to cut again, I 'merged shuffled' them some more.

Was I right in that his deck was not sufficiently randomized? I know it was just the prerelease, but we were both 2-0 and the winner got a box. Was there a better way I should have handled it?

Not that it matters to this question, but he went on to win the whole thing, going undefeated, 2-0 for each round except for that second game of our match, when he was mana screwed. (Never got a mountain in a 3 color deck)

Quote from Yamikiri

3. You assign lethal damage to the blocker, regardless of if the damage actually would kill it. A creature with Trample still spills over damage.

Just to clarify, you can assign more than one damage to the blocker if you wanted to for some reason. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure at least one exists. So you can assign 1 to the blocker and have 3 trample over, 2 to the blocker and 2 trample over, 3 to the blocker and 1 trample over and 4 to the blocker and 0 trample over.

Quote from AntiC7

I've added my original source file to the thread here.
Hope that helps.

Awesome! Thanks!

Before I go through the effort and compile it myself, does anyone know if there is a good breakdown of the Theros set by removal, combat tricks, hero enablers, etc? I want to be better prepared for the prerelease. For example, when I attack, I want to know what card could be played by my opponent with the available mana.

Quote from Lithl

The card was a creature card in your hand.

Yeah, I suppose so, even though how many times do we hear something to the effect of "a creature card isn't the same as a creature"

Quote from Psychomagus

This was discussed here.

Uh, it actually wasn't. I'm not worried about any 2 for 1 shenanigans, I just want to know why they say "again."

And they use it casually in a paragraph here:

The Mechanics of Theros

While it's enchanting a creature, an Aura with bestow grants the creature the bonuses listed in its text box. If the creature it's enchanting leaves the battlefield for any reason, the Aura immediately becomes an enchantment creature again rather than being put in the graveyard like other Auras.

Okay, its just reminder text:

If you cast this card for its bestow cost, it's an Aura spell with enchant creature. It becomes a creature again if it's not attached to a creature.

but why does its use the word "again"? If you play it for its bestow cost, it was never a creature to begin with. It would work just fine by leaving 'again' off.

Quote from spectre-9

I don't push things like that. If it's purely casual, I let them play how they want to. If they ask me, for example, why I keep my decks at 60 cards, I'll explain to them why I do it, and why it's better (or, why I think it's better, if I want to be political), but I'll leave it at that.

If someone came to me with an 80-something card deck and specifically wanted my help/advice to be a better deckbuilder and player, then I'd happily teach them everything I know. But I won't go out of my way and be like, "You know what you could do to be better at Magic?"

Exactly. Play to the best of your ability and any one of them who wants to get 'better' will ask for your help. Otherwise you run the risk of sounding douchy.

Let's see. Early 2000s maybe? Playing Psychatog against one of the top players, who was also a level 2 judge, at a FNM type event. He's playing White/Red something, maybe with blue with "Wonder Woman" (LIghtning Angel) or something. I drop Shadowmage Infiltrator and he drops an Urza's Rage on it. I say "Hold on" and he says "Dude! Uncouterable!" And I play Divert on it killing his 2/2 out. Still love that card today.

I always thought the idea of two graveyards interacting would be cool. A second 'undead' battle field or something.

Do you think they could release a set where all the cards are the same rarity? Limited would be very different, if not unplayable.

My boys, 11 and 7 play. The 11 year old could be good (he's scary smart), but he's got to spread his time between magic, minecraft, wii u, and being the game master for the neighborhood role players. Oh yeah, and school, he's got that too. I think in a couple of years i'll start bringing him to some tournaments. Just wish I could get them to pick up a damn guitar.

I've got 80+ pre fourth edition unholy strengths, with the pentagram they took out in fourth.