These lands are fine. Not spectacular and perhaps they could have been uncommon, but they are still playable and Scry 1 is a good upside.
What actually is interesting about this cycle is the color distribution. There are two allied pair and three enemy pair lands in this set. Thehell? Something like this hasn't happened since Lorwyn and there it was because the duals were tied to a certain tribe who was in those colors. Here each color is on two lands, but its a warped cycle from what we usually get. Its just odd.
It also probably means that we get the rest of the cycle throughout the block. It would be really odd to not see the rest of these cards, particularly following a multicolor block and with the block itself having a pretty decently sized multicolor component.
Some time ago, I asked the users of this forum which card between shock and searing spear that they preferred, and most users chose searing spear for its higher damage, but I chose shock, for the reason that I believe that damage-to-mana ratio is more important than overall damage (shock has a DTM ratio of 2 to 1, while searing spear has a DTM ration of only 1.5 to 1).
Therefore, I wish to ask the other users of this forum which factor that they believe is more important on a card; overall damage or damage-to-mana ratio? I still maintain that damage-to-mana ratio is more important, since it is better to get more damage for as little mana as possible, plus, a card such as shock can be cast earlier, and more often, than can searing spear. There is a reason for which most players consider lightning bolt to be one of the best direct-damage spells in this game, and that is because of its unrivaled damage-to-mana ratio (3 to 1), and I believe that that ratio is relevant for other direct-damage cards, as well.
What does everyone else here say on this subject? Which is more important to you: overall damage or damage-to-mana ration, and why?
Another consideration is damage to card ratio, because in many situations your cards are an even more limited resource than mana, which is what makes searing spear/incinerate more effective.
Shock is more efficient with your mana, but answers many less threats/situations, making it less flexible and therefore less effective.
It's also below the damage:card ratio you need for a rdw/burn style deck, where each nonland card needs to contribute 3 damage minimum to be worthwhile.
"Lucy Ricardo you have some splainning to do!!!!" I am totally confused at this season schedule and need some one who is a rocket scientist to explain it to me. From what i see the Journey into nix season is starting right around Dec 2013 to March 2014. Does this mean that Journey into nix is coming out in Dec 2013? Season 2 has M2015 does this mean that somewhere in between the two dates m15 is coming out? And are the other two set huey dewey coming out at their dates too?
Seasons and set times are never synced. The PTQ season for PT Theros ends on Monday, but Theros isn't out yet.
Which is more competive, day two at a GP, or a PTQ? Kind of want to go play in my first one, but I'm kind of scared.
A ptq and day 1 of a GP are run at the same rules enforcement level (competitive REL), though the GP probably has a lower percentage of people who believe (right or wrong) that they could win the tournament.
Day 2 of a GP are run at professional REL, which is otherwise only used at Pro Tours and events like the World Cup and Players Championship.
Practice what you preach. Esper Control placed 2 decks in the top 8 of that tournament, one of which was the champion.
Seriously, if you're going to link tournament standings to play down blue, you gotta do better than that.
I play esper and I watch results closely. Since January, this is the only major event of any kind won by an esper deck. The win is an anomaly that happened the weekend a huge percentage if great players were at Las Vegas.
When people talk about how magic would be solvable like chess, they aren't talking about a best deck. The best magic decks have 60-70% win rates. In chess, board positions are solvable to 100% win rates.
Second, another virtue of the mana system is variable card value. It's another virtue governing how useful a card is: can you cast it? Sustained resources make cheaper cards worse by removing a major virtue: relevance not just early but even when you stall.
I agree with the other blue player and echo sam black's sentiment: voice war designed to hose blue decks end isn't great at it.. But it's so pushed it'd better against the decks it wasn't made to fight. It's amazing in creature mirrors and shuts down combat tricks. It's warping the format by being better vs others then it is vs blue flash. Sin collector, slime, restoration angel is what's pushing blue out of standard.
You can't compare block to standard. With an extra 4 sets to choose from decks get significantly better, meaning the mana has to get significantly better too or the games are miserable to play. Either that or people have to stop playing the powerful color intensive spells that Wizards printed. I'm pretty sure it is very bad for business if people can't play the cards that are printed.
Block was slower overall, but the manabases are functional.
Might it mean that your 3 color deck has to play Blood Baron over Obzedat because the color requirement is easier, but the orzhov deck can play Obzedat? It might.
That's probably completely OK, too.
No one's going to play with 12 gates, but it's really ok if mana gets a little worse than it is now.
TNGuys, block constructed had oodles of 3 color decks and many successful 2 color aggro strategies. In fact, one won the tournament! Shock/gate will make your 3rd color more of a splash, but the reaction is overblown. We could get no land in theros and be fine. Aggro gains at least as much from lands entering tapped and shock costs being paid more often on the other side of the table as it might lose. naya blitz will die but that whole deck is rotating.
EAtWhichIt's about the card pool. Modern decks are usually 3 color with shock/fetch because usually b you're able to find a strong synergistic deck. Exceptions are using all 5 for synergy ie tribal flames. In standard you have fewer cards and 20 or 25 are head and shoulders above. Right now our mana is great in 3 color and bad in 4 or 5. If we had fetches, the cards played would shrink further. There would not be synergy decks. Just the best 10 cards regardless of color.
Not sure if this is the right place to post a picture of my box, but it looks like others have so here.
Mythics were: Kiki-Jiki, Vedalken Shackles, Kokusho
Notable rares were: Engineered Explosives, Chalice of the Void, Tombstalker, Cryptic Command, Kira, Pact of Negation, Grand Arbiter, Doubling Season, Glimmervoid, and Academy Ruins
Notable foils were: Yosei, Path to Exile, and Lava Spike.
I don't think my box is amazing or anything, but for those who are hating on "you won't get your money back," I very much did so. And I don't mean hypothetical value based on TCG prices. I mean legitimate money that I already got. I bought my box at MSRP ($176 after tax) and immediately sold back *some* cards to the store. I received $130. I kept $50 in rares/mythics (Shackles, EE, Chalice, Pact, and Academy Ruins), my foils (~$35), and almost all of my uncommons and commons (lightning helix, eternal witness, trygon predator, etc.).
According to my math that works out to: $130 + $50 + $35 = $215 while basically getting the commons and uncommons for free.
Again, this isn't hypothetical value or after prices drop (which they will). This is what I already got from the store and again, I kept 5 money rares, foils and uncommon/commons. Also, I didn't open any of the three money mythics and yet I still got more real value than MSRP.
Lastly, and humorously, my friend also bought a box and cracked it side by side with me and he opened the identical box other than two cards (and the foils)! Even the commons and uncommons were identical. We noticed the trend when we started opening from the same side (leftmost) and seeing the same rares at the same locations. Once we noted this pattern from the left track, we began matching it in the center and right. Our predictions on the other person's rare were right every single time.
This leads me to believe that this set would be very easy to map. I've already seen pictures, videos, and saw a store owner crack a different box with the identical contents (not identical to mine, but identical to each other). If you're wondering it's the video of the MM box cracking in German posted here a few days ago. Our LGS store owner got the identical 3 mythics (Kiki, Elspeth, and Yosei) and I recall another user here posting the identical box. That would suggest at least two "types" of boxes that match and I imagine there are quite a few more that probably also match with others.
I understand that Wizards has tracks and it takes awhile for box mappers to map the set, but I think Wizards either forgot or didn't bother because the print run isn't as large and thus not worth it (I hear it costs non-trivial amounts of money). My guess is on the latter. I also realize MTGS doesn't like box mapping threads, but I intentionally did not post my map and hopefully I am not violating those rules by at least discussing what I thought was an interesting coincidence.
Also, the top rows tend to scramble pretty badly inside the box, and one of my boxes was entirely a jumble, in fact, one pack was partially open due to the assorted friction and pulling, despite being in WOTC shrinkwrap, due to how these packs are packaged, I think that would likely make mapping this set borderline impossible given the size of its print run.
Most of those $10 rares will be $5 by next weekend, but don't worry, at least Vial will be $5 too. And that's the only good thing about this crazy ride, if you have expensive rares you don't want and people willing to buy them on the spot, sell now, you'll get money to buy the ones you do want in a couple weeks, and make a buck.
The only cards that will stay expensive are Tarmo, Clique, Confidant and the swords, everything else will take a dip next week, another dip after Vegas, and only start creeping back a couple months onward.
Unless you're a store and buyers are coming to you, selling all that cardboard is gonna be effort. And only the guy pulling a foil and non foil goyf doubled their investment in "a few days", that if he gets buyers for those cards at those prices.
Being sensible about it (understanding that a lot of buyers aren't buying untill cards go down and that going out to sell and trade cards is effort and an investment of time) this is not as much as a business success as people are thinking, that guy claiming "this is not overvalued at all" a couple pages back is wrong and just riding on the opening day frenzy.
Calm the **** down and wait till the weekend's over, then you'll see what prices people will be paying for these singles.
My first box was pretty close to double. It had a Goyf but nothing else overwhelming (foil spell snare, cryptic were the only cards over 20 bucks). I bought it for 190+ tax and the $4+ cards totalled $350 by tcgplayer mid price.
My 2nd box was really bad. I got it for even less (175 with tax, or less than msrp), but my mythics were kokusho, double ryusei, it was pretty limited on good uncommons (no finks, no helix, one spell snare, one path), and overall only totaled $210 to tcgplayer midprice.
On the whole i think that the casual-market cards (read: mind funeral, doubling season, etc) will be soft, but the modern playable cards may dip in the short term (not in my area, because we have a Modern GP in a month) and rebound when modern PTQ season begins. There's a lot of this product, but not enough to drastically lower staple prices during a PTQ season. In the interim, you may be able to buy into modern for less, but its definitely the casual/commander cards who I think have the softest market, unless of course they're foil. MM foils are beautiful.
Unfortunately the closest store doing that is 90 minutes away. I may draft over the weekend if I can get away.
One of my local stores is midnight drafting and selling 40 of their boxes @ $190. Drafts are 28, 4 flights. I'll do one of these.
Another local store is selling their boxes tomorrow @ 175. Both are limit 1/household, so I think I will buy one from each, as I'm looking to get into modern and have next to zero even uncommon and common staple cards.
Being eternal also means that cards printed exclusively in supplemental products are legal. For example, Scavenging Ooze from Commander is legacy-legal, but won't be modern-legal until it's printed in M14 in a month and a half.
Can't you read? The article's pretty clear.
Another consideration is damage to card ratio, because in many situations your cards are an even more limited resource than mana, which is what makes searing spear/incinerate more effective.
Shock is more efficient with your mana, but answers many less threats/situations, making it less flexible and therefore less effective.
It's also below the damage:card ratio you need for a rdw/burn style deck, where each nonland card needs to contribute 3 damage minimum to be worthwhile.
If you bounce the target creature, the abiility will fizzle because it lacks a target.
if you bounce Olivia, the target will still take 1 damage, but you won't put a counter on Olivia because she isn't on the battlefield.
Seasons and set times are never synced. The PTQ season for PT Theros ends on Monday, but Theros isn't out yet.
A ptq and day 1 of a GP are run at the same rules enforcement level (competitive REL), though the GP probably has a lower percentage of people who believe (right or wrong) that they could win the tournament.
Day 2 of a GP are run at professional REL, which is otherwise only used at Pro Tours and events like the World Cup and Players Championship.
I play esper and I watch results closely. Since January, this is the only major event of any kind won by an esper deck. The win is an anomaly that happened the weekend a huge percentage if great players were at Las Vegas.
When people talk about how magic would be solvable like chess, they aren't talking about a best deck. The best magic decks have 60-70% win rates. In chess, board positions are solvable to 100% win rates.
Second, another virtue of the mana system is variable card value. It's another virtue governing how useful a card is: can you cast it? Sustained resources make cheaper cards worse by removing a major virtue: relevance not just early but even when you stall.
Block was slower overall, but the manabases are functional.
Might it mean that your 3 color deck has to play Blood Baron over Obzedat because the color requirement is easier, but the orzhov deck can play Obzedat? It might.
That's probably completely OK, too.
No one's going to play with 12 gates, but it's really ok if mana gets a little worse than it is now.
Also, the top rows tend to scramble pretty badly inside the box, and one of my boxes was entirely a jumble, in fact, one pack was partially open due to the assorted friction and pulling, despite being in WOTC shrinkwrap, due to how these packs are packaged, I think that would likely make mapping this set borderline impossible given the size of its print run.
My first box was pretty close to double. It had a Goyf but nothing else overwhelming (foil spell snare, cryptic were the only cards over 20 bucks). I bought it for 190+ tax and the $4+ cards totalled $350 by tcgplayer mid price.
My 2nd box was really bad. I got it for even less (175 with tax, or less than msrp), but my mythics were kokusho, double ryusei, it was pretty limited on good uncommons (no finks, no helix, one spell snare, one path), and overall only totaled $210 to tcgplayer midprice.
On the whole i think that the casual-market cards (read: mind funeral, doubling season, etc) will be soft, but the modern playable cards may dip in the short term (not in my area, because we have a Modern GP in a month) and rebound when modern PTQ season begins. There's a lot of this product, but not enough to drastically lower staple prices during a PTQ season. In the interim, you may be able to buy into modern for less, but its definitely the casual/commander cards who I think have the softest market, unless of course they're foil. MM foils are beautiful.
One of my local stores is midnight drafting and selling 40 of their boxes @ $190. Drafts are 28, 4 flights. I'll do one of these.
Another local store is selling their boxes tomorrow @ 175. Both are limit 1/household, so I think I will buy one from each, as I'm looking to get into modern and have next to zero even uncommon and common staple cards.