MTG Salvation

The design of this card is just fine for it's purpose... which is to be spoiled the same day as a standard-staple two-drop printed at a money-grabbing mythic rarity in order to focus the hatred of spikes to this random uncommon instead.

Well played Wizards, well played.

Obviously Johnny's card are obvious.

1. Spoiled by MaRo.
2. A 3-mana zero-power flyer.
3. By itself would backfire badly too many times.

This card is meant for casual deck tinkerers. Pair one or two with BFF Elgaud shieldmate and go to town. Mmmm, no wait, hexproof doesn help, it needs total shroud. Which card grant shroud? Almost none, I can't think of a single one.

Mmmm. I guess you need anthem effects then. I wonder if they could have worded somehow that would make it work positively with hexproof. Maybe an inelegant '... without hexproof' clause? Oh well. I guess you need to give pro-red or or-blue to everything you control?

Quote from Sene

"Gain 7" is far from worthless. Incidental lifegain is sweet, and seven life is a LOT.

The real test is how high would you pick this in the first pack? Without double-gates it's a vanilla 2/4 for 4 in green. I don't see me picking this before 12th pick at best. All other gatekeepers have an upside big enough and a body large enough for the color to be worth a pick earlier. Free removal, act of treason, card or extra 2/2 are enough upside. I don't value this as a free 7 life, but as a wasted early pick. The pack would have to be really bad to make me pick this. I'd rather pick a playable sideboard card.

I know it's a rare, but when I saw the unleashed haste-granting witch (the Rakdos champion), I couldn't thinking "so much for slowing down the environment!" Somewhat fortunately, the only guild granting +1/+1 counters in GTC is the mostly incompatible color-wise Simic, so it should not get out of hand too much in limited.

I also was quite taken aback by the green gatekeeper. Green should get something better than a 2/4 for 4 and yet it's the one with teh most worthless ability. I wish its ability was 'put two +1/+1 counters on target creature' or something... I guess G (well mostly GW) already got some candies from DGM.

There's an error in the "How much does it cost" section where it says that GTC and later set now cost $5 instead of the new higher price. (25? 35?)

Sin collector will be a high pick. At the worst, you get to peek at their end and get to know they don't have any combat trick nor removal. At best, it's a two-for-one, taking away their best spell. I'd buy that for 1WB dollar.

The wurm is... annoying. since we're drafting in DMG/GTC/RTR order, first picking this preps you to take every populate cards that will pass in the 3rd pack. It will be hard to lose if you got him in your hand with a populate card on turn 4. (i.e EOT wurm, SOT populate or anytime you like.) There won't be that many people on the populate plan, unlike in pure RtR, so grabbing some won't be a problem, I would think.

Master of cruelty is nice, but not over-powered. About the same level as the flying demon for 4 that made you sac a creature each turn, probably even a little worse since he has to attack alone, does not fly, cwmaller body, etc.

Nice that they announce that the format will be slower. It was already obvious from the structure, but they could have provided enough low-cost mono-coloured cards to make a fast two-colours deck possible. Hopefully, they really did succeed in preventing this.

The spoiled cards so far align with this: not undercosted, nothing too cheap, and the only fast low-cost card so far, the flash 2/2, is gold in a slow guild.

Is the Ruric thar / Melek pattern of 6 CMC champion a pattern? Maybe all champions will have a CMC of 6? It would be unfair to other guilds if a champion had a head-start after all...

Aren't the guild boosters only filled with guild cards? That means many of those combos won't be available at the pre-release. For example korozda guuldmage + ivy-lane citizen, the citizen is not in any guild.

Otherwise, awesome! Makes one look forward to post-release limited!

A. Every set has its shared of crazy plays.

B. There's already a stickied "PWND" thread for this.

C. Ever heard of AVR? You know dealing 100 pts of damage in a single swing or gaining a few hundred of lifelinked points?

There is never a good reason to force. You can skew your picks a bit, but forcing for a single card isn't worth it statistically.

That being said, these two examples are in the guilds that can support the most players, so your chances are higher to get an acceptable deck nonetheless if you force it.

One look at what stayed late and it's obvious the other drafters were not very good and were not reading signals. It looks like orzhov was massively overdrafted while Simic/Gruul/Boros was underdrafted. Martial glory and halberdiers shouldn't stay so late, nor disciple of old ways, shambleshark, simic charm, swine, etc...

Quote from Sephiran

I highly doubt starcitygames would endorse Magic nearly as much as they do without a reserved list. ... Especially if a set like MM was produced en masse.

* pierrebai check how many Tarmogoyf SCG has in stock. * pierrebai see zero. /me thinks your argument doesn't hold water.

The appeal was:

- Unknown format (at least when I joined early).
- Never-before played card pool.

I did lack enough time to build, expecially since I lost 5 minutes to bed-time story reading! I had to drop at 2-1 because the event was taking more time than I anticipated (and I didn't know they added more tournament with a more flexible schedule. Had I known, I would have joined the 8PM one instead of 9PM.)

My deck had no bomb. At least half my rares were entirely unplayable. The one I did play were the 4/5 kamigawa sage that draws a card when you play a creature, the 5/4 mutant elf that shuffle creature when it dies, epic proportion (i.e. flash +6/+6 trample aura) and the sunburst goblet that gain life. Had some white flyers, some green fatties, elvish pioneer, veteram armorer, stuff of that (weak) caliber. Lost two games to overrun, for the record / .

I could see myself playing it a couple more times, but it's not a format for the long haul.

Deck building time was definitely short. I ended-up playing WG splashing red for removal. I even forgot to include my 5/4 rare mutant elf that I had to side in every game, due to the short deck-building time. Unfortunately, I didn't realize each round would take so much time so I ended-up dropping at 2-1 because it was past midnight and the 3rd round was not yet finished. Was kinda fun to see the weird decks. My first round opp had a powerful UR deck with tons of removal, combo and pingers which devastated my deck full of early 1/1. Then I won the next two matches. Lost one game I was winning to a 'oops I-win' overrun. (Strangely enough, my opp, having won one game with overrun, sided into a UB deck instead and lost the two following game. I supposed he thought his black removal suite would just win the game?!?)

I hope someone playing in an early one will report the details. I'm in the 9PM EST one.