Thanks for posting a spoiler! I don't know of any other site doing a partial spoiler for MED4. Hopefully these cards can get added to the spoiler soon:
Strip Mine
Lich
Sinkhole
Maze of Ith
Sol Ring
Ebon Dragon
Ali from Cairo
Library of Alexandria
Mana Vault
Regrowth
Time Vault
Urza's Mine
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Tower
If the site is being taken down mainly for the WPN change, it seems like a huge overreaction to me. It's also somewhat baffling for a site that's been around for over ten years. Anyone who follows the game for more than a year should have realized that WotC is always changing their policies and programs to try to improve. A couple years ago there wasn't anything like the WPN to begin with. My guess would be that WotC will try to correct the change to the WPN in the future (if it was actually working well and the people complaining now aren't actually a really small but vocal minority). It's not like you can't run unsanctioned tournaments on your own....
If his decision is also based on other negative encounters with WotC (like the draftsim thing), I guess that's more understandable. If I became disenchanted with a game enough to quit playing, I would take my fan site down too.
After my TO stopped requiring deck registration at pre-releases (with Lorwyn), I won my flight twice, including the Conflux one (so people could be sneaking in Shards cards). I've missed the last 3 pre-releases. So that's 2 out of 9 that I've won, and I'm not a particularly good player (I usually scrub out of PTQs in the first few rounds).
Personally, the fact that people get upset about opening bombs that they have to pass during pool registration really offends me as a rational human being. It's still a good policy for the pre-release though. The stakes are low at the pre-release and many casual players play. Logistically, it's just not worth the effort to put everyone through the pool registration procedure. Organizers should still take precautions to discourage cheating, but pool registration is really overkill.
^^ Go back to the link. They've updated it to clarify that the cards in the packs are actually *different* (except for foils).
Playtesting actually isn't necessary for balancing these two factions. Because this promotion is only for the pre-release, what needs to be balanced is players' perceptions of the two factions, and that requires market research rather than playtesting. By the time people figure out which faction is really more powerful, the prerelease will probably be over.
EDIT: also of note, the updated post states that "Mirrodin Besieged was divided into two halves. Cards with the Mirran watermarks appear only in Mirran boosters, and cards with Phyrexian watermarks appear only in Phyrexian boosters," which confirms that the set is a straight 50/50 split (the 155th card aside). Not sure if that was confirmed before or not.
Since this thread is here, I'll just pipe up and say that I'm another lurker (for the most part) who primarily keeps up with the new cards via the spoiler rather than the forum threads. I guess I was pretty spoiled by Seds. In past seasons, I would just quickly check the RSS feed of the spoiler each morning and get all new cards right away. This season I have had to scroll through the forums looking for cards, which is a lot less convenient. I know you guys have got your own priorities, but I just wanted to add another voice to let you know that there are really people out there that don't comb the rumor mill much but do pay attention to the spoiler, so efforts to keep it up to date are appreciated (though that appreciation could stand to be expressed more vocally).
Wow, after reading this thread I'm really interested to see how Ratchet Bomb does in Standard. My initial reaction to today's spoilers was that the ooze was going to provide a lot of casual fun with various Johnny combos and possibly have some kind of impact in Constructed due to its raw potential in some kind of Dredge deck (with Dread Return and Narcomoeba, dredging your whole deck should give you access to this with some kind of crazy combo in the yard -- that's probably not better than the usual Bridge from Below version of Dredge but who knows what people will come up with).
So I was pretty excited about the ooze, but the bomb doesn't really do much for me. It seems really slow. The potential to destroy enchantments in black and red is interesting. And in a glacially slow control deck it acts like a cheaper Oblivion Ring that has the potential to hit multiple permanents. But for the most part, it just seems too clunky to be effective. If certain cards are dominating Standard, like Jace, I guess I could see dropping it turn 2, ramping it up to 4, and then just having it waiting there for Jace. I'm eager to see how it plays out.
Actually, you're the one that missed my point. You said that this wouldn't see play in standard, and I'm saying it can enable a Mox Opal you can use on turn 1.
I think you missed Jack's point. When he said this wouldn't see play in Standard, he meant competitive Standard. Playing multiple underpowered vanilla creatures so that you can get one extra land drop is not competitive. You'd be better off playing a Llanowar Elf than playing a Memnite and a 1 mana Chimeric Mass just to turn on your mox.
I wouldn't totally rule this thing out for Standard though. An X/X for X is underpowered by itself, but this card just needs something like a Trinket Mage to make it playable as a 1-of.
Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this ... it seems like the RSS feed is a little messed up. Could someone clean this up? I like getting real time updates : )
Hrmm, at this point, most of my immediate reactions have already been voiced, but since there are so many opinions being espoused here I'll try to reinforce the ones I like.
From the moment of WotC's announcement about the Reserve List, I have been hoping that this format would be created so I hope this rumor turns out to be true. I personally find Extended to be a lame format -- it has a wide card pool which is attractive but it rotates every year which means that most decks need at least small tweaks each year. I personally see any format bigger than Standard as having an "I can keep my pet deck together for years" appeal (while the smaller formats have the "it's a new format every three months!" appeal), so Extended's rotation policy is a major detractor. As far as I can tell, the main point of Extended from WotC's perspective is to give players more incentive to invest in expensive Standard staples without worrying that their prices will drop within one to two years. I think this format would do a better job of that.
I also hope we get a CYOS, but the deckbuilding restrictions on that format are a little too complex for it to be a widely popular format. It's a nice idea which I hope gets support, but what WotC needs more immediately is a big, open format which it can fully support at a high level and a more casual (like FNM) level (Legacy and Vintage are out with the reaffirmation of the RL), both in terms of running big tournaments/tournament series and in terms of the kinds of extra products it's been releasing recently (Planechase, FTV, duel decks, etc.).
Wow, the art in part 3 is really sweet. I particularly like the image of Chandra standing over Jace. To make up for the good art, part 3 was one of the most incoherent, poorly written comics Creative has put out (there is a lot of competition for this distinction though). Like Skibo already mentioned, I really had no idea what was going on during the action parts and the actual workings of the magic involved was also a mystery, and the the dialogue was a notch below its usually poor level.
It is pretty hard to reconcile this being mythic while Lavalanche is a much more epic spell at rare.
Still, this spell does have some mythic "wow" factor to it. It's possibly the only X spell that can hit multiple targets at instant speed. Also, ignoring stuff like Earthquake and Lavalanche that don't target, it's the first X spells that does X to each target rather than dividing X among the targets (which only gets good when you put a lot of mana into it).
Personally, I'm not all that excited by this card, but it's still a respectable card and not some Lich's Mirror.
You've hit the nail on the head. Even if putting it in the set at 2B was originally a typo (and MaRo might have been exaggerating or misspeaking there), development liked it there and actually actively defended it against MaRo's attempts to kill it.
Face-to-face conversation with him at the Seattle prerelease.
Might as well add this multiverse comment from Ken Nagle (via Twitter) to the thread:
KEN 10/20/2008: I think I like this card *better* at 2B than 1B. It fits the idiot Zombie motif.
Exactly. All shops I have ever known have a similar policy of not allowing buying/selling of cards for cash between players, especially if the shop has the same product available for sale. Trading is of course fine, but cash sales are a whole different thing.
Our shop policy is that you are not allowed to sell cards/product for cash at the shop if we have the product available for sale. If we dont, then I dont view it as competition for us, so I'll usually be okay with it then. Trading of any kind of cards for cards or what not is always fine, we always reccomend people try trading to get what they want to try to maximize what they can get for their cards. I simply tell them that I have the stock and low prices and if they want to trade or sell to the shop Im here and available but I always reccomend trading with other people first if at all possible. As stated though cash sales while at the shop are a no-no for our customers, unless its something we dont have.
I'd add that I don't think $10 for a dual is that bad of a deal. It depends on the condition of the card for one thing. Even with a mint dual land though, it's pretty common for a store to buy cards at 25% to 50% of the price that they sell it at. Call it gouging if you want, but it seems to be pretty common practice amongst the stores I've been to in different regions of the country, so it might just be the case that that's the margin you need to make a profit dealing cards. It's not like the store can immediately turn around and sell it to someone. A lot of inventory just sits around in the display plus the store needs to pay someone to keep track of the card inventory and to stand behind the counter selling stuff.
It's still painful to watch a kid sell a dual land for $10 though. I remember back during Ravnica watching kids sell Ravnica duals for $3 or $4 and just biting my tongue because I couldn't stop the kid and give him twice that much for each land.
10 all dual lands
15 all moxen
mox diamond
sinkhole
cyclopean tomb
mana vault
20 mana crypt
time twister
black lotus
phyrexian dreadnought
grindstone
25 sliver queen
tolarian academy
lich
candelabra of tawnos
library of alexandria
30 mahamoti djinn
serendib djinn
time vault
gaea's cradle
lion's eye diamond
35 drop of honey
bazaar of baghdad
ancestrall recall
shahrazad
island of wak-wak
40 chaos orb
gauntlet of might
mishra's workshop
ali from cairo
mana drain
45 the abyss
diamond valley
Old Man of the Sea
Time Walk
Elephant Graveyard
50 Illusionary Mask
Savannah Lions
Force of Will
Jihad
Swords to Plowshares
55 Serendib Efreet
46 cards just by looking through the thread so far. I assume there were probably some Time Walks in some packs too. I wonder what else.
EDIT: added some more cards people pointed out. Very interesting list so far.
Strip Mine
Lich
Sinkhole
Maze of Ith
Sol Ring
Ebon Dragon
Ali from Cairo
Library of Alexandria
Mana Vault
Regrowth
Time Vault
Urza's Mine
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Tower
If his decision is also based on other negative encounters with WotC (like the draftsim thing), I guess that's more understandable. If I became disenchanted with a game enough to quit playing, I would take my fan site down too.
Personally, the fact that people get upset about opening bombs that they have to pass during pool registration really offends me as a rational human being. It's still a good policy for the pre-release though. The stakes are low at the pre-release and many casual players play. Logistically, it's just not worth the effort to put everyone through the pool registration procedure. Organizers should still take precautions to discourage cheating, but pool registration is really overkill.
Playtesting actually isn't necessary for balancing these two factions. Because this promotion is only for the pre-release, what needs to be balanced is players' perceptions of the two factions, and that requires market research rather than playtesting. By the time people figure out which faction is really more powerful, the prerelease will probably be over.
EDIT: also of note, the updated post states that "Mirrodin Besieged was divided into two halves. Cards with the Mirran watermarks appear only in Mirran boosters, and cards with Phyrexian watermarks appear only in Phyrexian boosters," which confirms that the set is a straight 50/50 split (the 155th card aside). Not sure if that was confirmed before or not.
So I was pretty excited about the ooze, but the bomb doesn't really do much for me. It seems really slow. The potential to destroy enchantments in black and red is interesting. And in a glacially slow control deck it acts like a cheaper Oblivion Ring that has the potential to hit multiple permanents. But for the most part, it just seems too clunky to be effective. If certain cards are dominating Standard, like Jace, I guess I could see dropping it turn 2, ramping it up to 4, and then just having it waiting there for Jace. I'm eager to see how it plays out.
I think you missed Jack's point. When he said this wouldn't see play in Standard, he meant competitive Standard. Playing multiple underpowered vanilla creatures so that you can get one extra land drop is not competitive. You'd be better off playing a Llanowar Elf than playing a Memnite and a 1 mana Chimeric Mass just to turn on your mox.
I wouldn't totally rule this thing out for Standard though. An X/X for X is underpowered by itself, but this card just needs something like a Trinket Mage to make it playable as a 1-of.
From the moment of WotC's announcement about the Reserve List, I have been hoping that this format would be created so I hope this rumor turns out to be true. I personally find Extended to be a lame format -- it has a wide card pool which is attractive but it rotates every year which means that most decks need at least small tweaks each year. I personally see any format bigger than Standard as having an "I can keep my pet deck together for years" appeal (while the smaller formats have the "it's a new format every three months!" appeal), so Extended's rotation policy is a major detractor. As far as I can tell, the main point of Extended from WotC's perspective is to give players more incentive to invest in expensive Standard staples without worrying that their prices will drop within one to two years. I think this format would do a better job of that.
I also hope we get a CYOS, but the deckbuilding restrictions on that format are a little too complex for it to be a widely popular format. It's a nice idea which I hope gets support, but what WotC needs more immediately is a big, open format which it can fully support at a high level and a more casual (like FNM) level (Legacy and Vintage are out with the reaffirmation of the RL), both in terms of running big tournaments/tournament series and in terms of the kinds of extra products it's been releasing recently (Planechase, FTV, duel decks, etc.).
Still, this spell does have some mythic "wow" factor to it. It's possibly the only X spell that can hit multiple targets at instant speed. Also, ignoring stuff like Earthquake and Lavalanche that don't target, it's the first X spells that does X to each target rather than dividing X among the targets (which only gets good when you put a lot of mana into it).
Personally, I'm not all that excited by this card, but it's still a respectable card and not some Lich's Mirror.
Might as well add this multiverse comment from Ken Nagle (via Twitter) to the thread:
I'd add that I don't think $10 for a dual is that bad of a deal. It depends on the condition of the card for one thing. Even with a mint dual land though, it's pretty common for a store to buy cards at 25% to 50% of the price that they sell it at. Call it gouging if you want, but it seems to be pretty common practice amongst the stores I've been to in different regions of the country, so it might just be the case that that's the margin you need to make a profit dealing cards. It's not like the store can immediately turn around and sell it to someone. A lot of inventory just sits around in the display plus the store needs to pay someone to keep track of the card inventory and to stand behind the counter selling stuff.
It's still painful to watch a kid sell a dual land for $10 though. I remember back during Ravnica watching kids sell Ravnica duals for $3 or $4 and just biting my tongue because I couldn't stop the kid and give him twice that much for each land.
10 all dual lands
15 all moxen
mox diamond
sinkhole
cyclopean tomb
mana vault
20 mana crypt
time twister
black lotus
phyrexian dreadnought
grindstone
25 sliver queen
tolarian academy
lich
candelabra of tawnos
library of alexandria
30 mahamoti djinn
serendib djinn
time vault
gaea's cradle
lion's eye diamond
35 drop of honey
bazaar of baghdad
ancestrall recall
shahrazad
island of wak-wak
40 chaos orb
gauntlet of might
mishra's workshop
ali from cairo
mana drain
45 the abyss
diamond valley
Old Man of the Sea
Time Walk
Elephant Graveyard
50 Illusionary Mask
Savannah Lions
Force of Will
Jihad
Swords to Plowshares
55 Serendib Efreet
46 cards just by looking through the thread so far. I assume there were probably some Time Walks in some packs too. I wonder what else.
EDIT: added some more cards people pointed out. Very interesting list so far.