MTG Salvation

Quote from sperry

The reason I hate these articles (Zac Hill used to right them before Sam took over) is how they try to take the player base as fools.

It's okay to just say that people have an irrational hatred of getting their spells countered, so we're going to significantly tone down the power level of counterspells. It's not ideal, but Wizards is a business.

Let's ignore that the world championship, both team and individual, both in standard and modern formats, was littered with control decks, and was won by a control deck.

(You know, a bunch of counters, instant-speed card draw, some sweepers and a few finishers.)

Funny that. But go on, don't let reality mess with your views.

If it really is an enchantment block, including auras, then I would expect them to be slightly pushed. Now, is Wizards smart enough to realize that this also pushes hexproof creatures and avoid printing any in the block? If not, then blue or green might be a good choice since they're the one getting hexproof. Otherwise, you might aim at getting two-for-ones and choose black for removal of enchanted critters. White might be good to get the maximum of enchantment hate.

All this based on unfounded rumours, so, have a giant cube of salt while you're at it.

I'll echo one of the early replies and say that when I started playing, nobody constantly shuffled their cards. Mix them up after their draw to hide which card they just drew, yes, but nothing more.

I'm quite certain it's just a fad that people pick up, maybe unconsciously, at their LGS from seeing others do it.

I've never seen seen a bridge or poker player do that, and they have more at stake in their games. Judges made a bad precedent by allowing Kibler to go on and on on camera for all these years.

Quote from Vitezen

There's no point advertising the game to someone already opening the packs, and prospective players aren't going to go looking for new games to play in the trash can.

And, bang!, you've nailed it. The fault lies in players not meeting Wizards expection of being uncivilized. You're not supposed to throw them in the trash. You're supposed to throw them on the street, in the trains, in the bus and thus spread the word about Magic! Sheesh! the kids these days! They can't show no respect! (Literally.)

With the new legend rules, that land would be an automatic 1-of in every non-mono-colored decks forever more. I'd be surprised if Wizards would print it.

My bet is on delve since they changed how it works in the last rules update. Why revisit how the machanic of a single card works unless you're about to unleash a bunch of them?

Quote from bocephus

It was handled correctly. The player was warned.

Quote from bocephus

110% more logical response to what was done. Now I am not so down on SCG, they handled it completely correct.

What? Whaaaaaaaat? But you claimed his behavior was no aggressive or bad in any way? Why would it could be ever be help up against him? He was *not* aggressive at all! All normal, everyday, normal event behaviour!!!

Wow. what happened for you to turn your coat on that poor player who got abused by being talked to and threatened of possible future ban?!?! You let him own.

/sarcasm.

Seriously. You repeatedly claimed the guy did nothing wrong, now you claim a warning was warranted. The mind boggles.

Frankly, what's fascinating to me is your stubborn refusal of the fumes line of play and sticking to your guns about soul's ransom, even though it resulted in you losing! My own impression of playing fumes was a gut feeling without exact turn-by-turn analysis, but what's wrong with Than's analysis? He gives a good line of plays that could have you win the game. Your line of play definitely is bad because, oh gee, in reality that's what you played and lost.

I'm in a 4-packs sealed (remember this! It's important for the story.) I get another crappy pool (no fatty, my one removal is pulpit, almost no evasion. Gah.) I lose the first two rounds 1-2 each time. Two people dropped. So, instead of saying, "Hey, you got beat up badly, here's a free booster", Wizards despicably match me up to the remaining guy with a 1-1 record. Here's how the game went:

Turn two boros mastiff, turn three firefist striker, turn four firemane avenger, turn five tajic, blade of the legion, turn six daring skyjek plus warleader's helix. I conceded the *match*.

That's the matchup I get at 0-2. Sickening.

There is one important fact that has been left out of this thread: which store did he buy his deck from? And do they still have pilgrims in stock? Any compiled list of commons-to-rares upgrades? ;P

Wizards used to not deal in secndary market and reprints. Sure, you'd have reprints in pre-con decks, but they were always careful to fill them with cards they knew would not have much value. (The only time they failed is because they printed mistake cards, like jitte.)

The real solution would be to stop rigging the FTV products in a way to annoy players. Three easy steps:

1. Set MRSP a bit lower than current secondary market value. They've done this right for some FTV products, wrong for many others, like this one.

2. Don't do too-limited print run.

3. Announce right-away that if demands is high enough, they will print more.

Voila. The weird thing is this would make Wizards more money. Collector would still be able to get the product. Interested players would not be shut out.

(And for those suggesting to pre-order FTV when they're first announced "if you are so interested", it just shows how backward you have it. The *only* reason to buy it when announced is if you don't care one bit about the actual contents a just want to either buy it solely to collect every card ever printed or because you want to resell it. Actual players want to knwo what they buy before buying because... they want the cards to play, and as such only buy products containing cards they want. Otherwise, what? Order it with the view of reselling it if you're not interested? You're just compounding the hoarders problem...)

Well, I'm going to jump into the cage with the wolves and say that I, for one, like the differing sealed experience. I like trying different things. I play plenty enough of sealed decks online all season long and enjoy playing a different format at pre-release. I also like that I can look at the different promos and choose which one I like best and be sure to get it. If you're a spike, you can evaluate the different packs and colors and maximize your chances of winning, too.

(I have cards like the helm of kaldra promo that I've never used, always found the art horrible and would have liked to have a choice of other rare as promo instead. I only keep it because it has the promo date-mark, as a kind of keepsake.)

Ok, I'll bite.

p1p5: I'ver never played dragonshift. Seems like a mediocre combat trick, kinda like a weird pump spell. I'd rather reinforce my black and take abomination.
p1p6: I like mindstatic over a wall.
p1p8: You seemingly leave blast+shift for this. Give/take is a good card, but now you need to build around it.
p1p12+13: obviously, nobody likes green?

p2p1: not sure if oculus or denizen is the better card. I guess more spcies gorger shenanigans, but you got only one gorger.
p2p4: bane alley broker is better than the blue denizen, no?
p2p7: death's approach, especially since you took many mill cards.
p2p12: broker wheeled, what do I know?

p3: four guildgates back to back, nice trick!
p3p8: now that's just silly.
p3p9: toughtflare and crew both wheeled. I mean, crew is splashable, what did they pick? (looking back... oh was a nice pack! Still, no one in red it seems.)

Without games, it's hard to say, my guess is that you never got into mana issues nor deep mulligans.

Half-solution: require to redeem cards by their relative rarities. That is, redemption would need 1 of each mythic, 2 of each rares, 6 or each uncommon, and 20 of each commons. (Since commmon and uncommon are not really valueable, maybe limit each of them to 4-of).

That way, there would no more be such a distortion in value.

I really like the art style of the hero cards, which underlines just how much the art style of regular cards are all plopped from the same mold these days. I wish they'd use more diverse arts on cards and hope some real cards will have this style.