Took 15 mins to go from $3 to $8, and another 15 mins to go from $8 to $13. Managed to snag 2 from StrikeZoneOnline for $3 apiece.
EDIT: well, I HAD purchased 2 copies at $3 from StrikeZoneOnline, before they cancelled on my as "out of stock". Last time I buy from them. Pissed me off too, I didn't buy these to flip, but to use. Also, at the time I could have bought from other sellers at $6 but didn't, now that ship has sailed.
I'm sure it doesn't make you feel any better, but from what I understand talking to some friends who run LGS's and sell through Crystal Commerce (which SZO does iirc), they have very poor inventory coordination mechanisms which causes issues like this to happen with some degree of regularity when things spike. The orders end up canceled automatically later on when Crystal Commerce reconciles the inventory. I know a few owners who get frustrated because they get hate mail from people accusing them of canceling because of the spike.
Not saying no owners do that and not saying it's definitely a Crystal Commerce issue in this case, but knowing that made me more forgiving about this kind of thing.
Using software that you know doesn't take these issues into account, and not paying attention to your inventory on ban day is not an excuse for poor business practices. In fact, those are poor business practices, which they compound by then cancelling orders because of their own poor business practices. They deserve every bit of bad publicity that comes doing this, and no one should understand or feel sorry for them.
You're totally right, every small LGS should write their own distributed transaction system that can synchronize inventory across multiple third parties that have mixed modes of item reservation in real time under heavy load.
Crystal Commerce is the biggest game in town when it comes to this. Also, how many resources do you legitimately expect stores to expend to hedge against ban announcements? Like anyone saw the Hulk unban coming.
It's not poor business practice, it's a small store with limited resources using the major player in the market for their logistics.
See, it's not poor business practice to just use cheap software. You missed the AND part of my post, and the bolded part behind the and. There are 8 ban days a year. It's not that hard to pay attention to your inventory 8 days a year and pull 3-5 cards that will see a spike as a result some unbannings immediately after they are announced. You know its coming weeks/months in advance. You have no excuse. You are either dumb or you are an ass. There's no in between.
(This does not apply to emergency bannings that stores could not see coming)
I won't buy into this set like the other overprice master sets. We need these iconic and powerfull cards in normal blocks not these suplemental ones.
Yeah. It's not like Standard suffers when there hyper efficient creatures and broken combos.
There have been hyper efficient creatures and broken combos in standard for well over a decade now. They are only a problem when they dont print answers to them like now.
What were the broken combos during Champions/Ravnica standard again? How about during Innistrad/RTR?
Those are widely considered two of the best standard formats.
Edit: Also Ravnica/Time Spiral. They had a combo deck (Dragonstorm), but no where near broken levels. Lorwyn/Shards standard was also widely loved, and guess what, no combo decks at all.
Your nitpicking is factually wrong. CHK/RAV had Enduring Ideal combo, and Lorwyn/Shards had the Seismic Swans combo. While it's true that Innistrad/RTR had no combos on it, it was more because their active decision to not allow combo on Standard. It's the lack of answers that is a problem, not the proficiency of threats.
Combo ~= Broken Combo.
My argument remains the same.
Edit: Also, Enduring Ideal wasn't a combo deck. It was a ramp deck. You didn't combo Ideal with anything. You just cast it and searched for other enchantments based on the game state. It's similar to Scapeshift or Standard Valakut. There's a small argument they are "combo" decks, but in reality, they are just ramp decks with different win conditions.
I won't buy into this set like the other overprice master sets. We need these iconic and powerfull cards in normal blocks not these suplemental ones.
Yeah. It's not like Standard suffers when there hyper efficient creatures and broken combos.
Thats incopetence. Nothing to do with what i said.
You want powerful cards in normal blocks, which would mean Standard. How does my response not have anything to do with what you said. We already know from history that Standards with overly powerful cards and broken combos are horrendous and have horrible attendance (Mirrodin, CawBlade/Splinter Twin/Valakut Standard and current Standard).
You want to be able to buy cards for cheap no matter what it does to the game.
I won't buy into this set like the other overprice master sets. We need these iconic and powerfull cards in normal blocks not these suplemental ones.
Yeah. It's not like Standard suffers when there hyper efficient creatures and broken combos.
There have been hyper efficient creatures and broken combos in standard for well over a decade now. They are only a problem when they dont print answers to them like now.
What were the broken combos during Champions/Ravnica standard again? How about during Innistrad/RTR?
Those are widely considered two of the best standard formats.
Edit: Also Ravnica/Time Spiral. They had a combo deck (Dragonstorm), but no where near broken levels. Lorwyn/Shards standard was also widely loved, and guess what, no combo decks at all.
Took 15 mins to go from $3 to $8, and another 15 mins to go from $8 to $13. Managed to snag 2 from StrikeZoneOnline for $3 apiece.
EDIT: well, I HAD purchased 2 copies at $3 from StrikeZoneOnline, before they cancelled on my as "out of stock". Last time I buy from them. Pissed me off too, I didn't buy these to flip, but to use. Also, at the time I could have bought from other sellers at $6 but didn't, now that ship has sailed.
I'm sure it doesn't make you feel any better, but from what I understand talking to some friends who run LGS's and sell through Crystal Commerce (which SZO does iirc), they have very poor inventory coordination mechanisms which causes issues like this to happen with some degree of regularity when things spike. The orders end up canceled automatically later on when Crystal Commerce reconciles the inventory. I know a few owners who get frustrated because they get hate mail from people accusing them of canceling because of the spike.
Not saying no owners do that and not saying it's definitely a Crystal Commerce issue in this case, but knowing that made me more forgiving about this kind of thing.
Using software that you know doesn't take these issues into account, and not paying attention to your inventory on ban day is not an excuse for poor business practices. In fact, those are poor business practices, which they compound by then cancelling orders because of their own poor business practices. They deserve every bit of bad publicity that comes doing this, and no one should understand or feel sorry for them.
Almost everyone on this site called Jace, Vryn's Prodigy completely unplayable when it was spoiled.
I refuse to believe that Amonkhet won't affect the meta game whatsoever.
Oh, it will. There's enough main-deckable artifact hate in Amonkhet to put Mardu Vehicles in its place. Still doesn't really change the Copycat combo's oppressiveness. The deck can straight up win out of nowhere unless you have an active answer on the board or in hand to stop it.
I think the real question is whether a green deck can come into existence. Maybe there's enough extra Delirium enablers that Manglehorn can be the safety valve the format needs. I don't see any other cards that can do enough to hurt Copy Cat.
Everybody talking about this card being bad in Modern because it dies to Lightning Bolt or Doom Blade or whatever: That's why you pump it up and protect it. A lot of creatures die to Bolt and Blade, that's why they see play in competitive formats (and I would argue are detrimental because they warp what kinds of creatures get to see regular play at competitive levels). Bolt can easily be worked around using a simple anthem effect like Hall of Triumph or Metallic Mimic. As for the straight destroy and exile effects, you can give Champion hexproof and haste using good ol' Lightning Greaves. Don't forget that Prowling Serpopard counteracts permission.
What really irritates me about "bad in Modern" comments is how these cards are always judged as though they aren't being played with any kind of support, as though someone was just trying to fit them into an existing archtype instead of, I dunno, creating a new archtype around the card? Square pegs don't fit into round holes, folks. You need to find a square hole.
As for me, this is a new auto-include in pretty much any green aggro commander deck ever. Give 'em Haste, Hexproof, and Indestructible and watch your opponents pull their hair out at your nigh-implacable cheatstick.
Ok. Let me ask you the same thing I asked the other person. How many cards are you putting in your deck just to protect this creature for a full turn? How many cards are you putting in to give it haste?
How does it work when you have to assemble the Champion, protection for the champion, a fatty (that will have to survive an entire turn), and a way to give it haste. You need 4 cards in your scenario (at a minimum, opposed may have additional removal spells). All the while, you're still a turn 4 deck, so hopefully you're alive to even attack.
And again, no one is saying it's a bad Commander card or a bad casual card. It's a fun card. It's just not a competitive card unless you live in Magical Christmas Land.
Those are both very good. Or they could be at least. You can't go infinite like you could with Elixir of Immortality, but we have a Sphinx's Revelation imposter and an Elixir imposter, maybe it's the start of a control deck.
Ramp with upside is always welcome. Probably fits in that deck as well as a Farseek imposter.
why just target player? Why not target player, Planeswalker or creature?
WRT damage, target player and planeswalker is pretty much the same. Your Sunscorched Deserts though are not the answer to Leyline of Sanctity, however.
Well... regardless, why not creatures? You're trading away your landfall, card advantage and mana for a measly 1 point. At least make it flexible.
Wait what? My Scorched Desert? I don't want it.
You're trading nothing. You still get your land drop and mana, it just produces colorless mana instead of colored mana. You're not giving up card advantage, you're gaining card advantage. You get to keep a card in play, while killing an opponents creature. The only possible thing you lose, and more often than not you won't lose it, is tempo. That will only happen if you want to kill their creature with your land drop, and because of the land being colorless, it prevents you from casting a spell another land would have allowed you to cast.
This is the same problem that Desert had, just on a smaller scale, and it was discussed at length as to how Desert can warp both a limited and standard environment in this thread.
Why are we talking about Modern? These cards are for Standard.
ACTUALLY these kind of statements are so wrong on such a level. New cards from a product from WotC are always analyzed for:
Standard
Limited
Sealed
Block
Duel Commander
Multiplayer Commander
Pauper
Pauper Highlander
Pauper Commander
Peasant
Peasant Highlander
Peasant Commander
Horde
Tiny Leader
Frontier
Modern
Legacy
Vintage
Two-Headed Giant
Emperor
Cube
Casual
Because every time new cards are added to the pool of preexisting cards, they will be judged for every format. So anyone who is like "But modern is not relevant to the discussion" is frankly dead wrong on the subject matter and doesn't understand that designing cards for only one format is one of the most ludicrous and laughable things in the entire thing that is MTG if its not a set like Conspiracy or the Commander products which both also have cards for other formats.
Next thing to beat into submission is: the Drake Haven argument. Everyone who states its "U: 2/2 flying drake. Draw a card." is frankly wrong. It actually is "1U: 2/2 flying drake. Discard a card, then draw a card". Meaning it costs you one mana more and the card draw is a +0 gain. The only gain to be had is that it makes, for a +1 bonus, is the drake.
Third thing to nip in the bud: To those that actually defend this counterspell in standard, this is the worst counterspell in the format right now. Its only saving grace is that you would cycle it. As it might as well not have the 1U mana cost, instant typing, or couterspell text. Seriously whats next? A non-cycling version of Spell Snip?
Fourth argument to destroy: That counterspells should be. Frankly this line of thinking is so awful and unwanted that it spread into other design/development sections of how MTG functions. Seriously. Has anyone noticed the fact that in the T2/Standard that we have right now that there is no instant/flash-speed artifact removal for red. That there seems to be a massive lacking of Mass Artifact removal in standard? Its why Fatal Push is as good as it is right now because WotC has been so staunchly against making good removal spells in order to not ruin the "newcomer's fun" that it ruins the fun for eveyone else and we are in the situation right now where Shock is considered great for the sole purpose of dealing with Saheeli and her 9001 cats, SHOCK of all things that is normally seen as a weaker burn spell is getting praise because we are in such a drought of good counter/removal spells. I am totally that advocate who at this point would absolutely love even something like a Granulate, Meltdown, or even a Fracturing Gust at sorcery speed, because T2 is suffering this badly. This is the reason we have "fun police" cards to ensure a healthy format and such a format also needs a careful amount of such cards but also strong so they can ensure that certain decks don't get out of hand.
Also just as a disclamier: I don't like blue. I'm a red+green player. But you know what? I will defend it because I can feel the ripple effects of it getting nerfed into this sorry state when my artifact, creature,enchantment and land removal is this weak as well in the format.
This is just wrong. They frequently design cards for specific formats, including Standard. They also rarely test newer cards in older formats. They test some for Modern, and have printed cards specifically for Modern, but if it wasn't designed with Modern in mind, they do very little testing for it. Nearly all of their time is spent on Standard and Limited, and for other formats, it is largely based on theory crafting.
Yeah they design for specific formats, But everything is ANALYZED for every possible format. Its still laughable within this very thread that statements of "Modern does not matter to the discussion" when in fact it does.
Example: Even if everything was designed for limited only, if even one card fit into a competitive Commander, Legacy, Modern or Vintage deck then it becomes that much more valuable and possibly ban-worthy.
Remember True-Name Nemesis? That card that was designed for Commander and that ended up being a hit in Legacy Fish to such an extent that you couldn't find the UBR deck anywhere that didn't already have the True-Name Nemesis gutted from it?
Dack Fayden became a huge hit in Vintage and he came from the original Conspiracy set. A set that was designed for limited.
Like remember when they printed Mental Misstep and Gitaxian Probe? Oh boy those two were so good in Modern that they both eventually had to be banned because of how they warped the format. Those two cards came from a set that was designed specifically for Standard and Limited. Same with Treasure Cruise for that matter.
The excuse that "Its for X format only, Y format doesn't matter" is such a wrong statement. As I've shown with just a few examples that it doesn't matter if only one format was considered if the rippling effect it has on other formats gives cause for concern and consideration for it.
True-Name was designed for Legacy.
I stopped reading after that because if you didn't know that, nothing else you said mattered.
Why are we talking about Modern? These cards are for Standard.
ACTUALLY these kind of statements are so wrong on such a level. New cards from a product from WotC are always analyzed for:
Standard
Limited
Sealed
Block
Duel Commander
Multiplayer Commander
Pauper
Pauper Highlander
Pauper Commander
Peasant
Peasant Highlander
Peasant Commander
Horde
Tiny Leader
Frontier
Modern
Legacy
Vintage
Two-Headed Giant
Emperor
Cube
Casual
Because every time new cards are added to the pool of preexisting cards, they will be judged for every format. So anyone who is like "But modern is not relevant to the discussion" is frankly dead wrong on the subject matter and doesn't understand that designing cards for only one format is one of the most ludicrous and laughable things in the entire thing that is MTG if its not a set like Conspiracy or the Commander products which both also have cards for other formats.
Next thing to beat into submission is: the Drake Haven argument. Everyone who states its "U: 2/2 flying drake. Draw a card." is frankly wrong. It actually is "1U: 2/2 flying drake. Discard a card, then draw a card". Meaning it costs you one mana more and the card draw is a +0 gain. The only gain to be had is that it makes, for a +1 bonus, is the drake.
Third thing to nip in the bud: To those that actually defend this counterspell in standard, this is the worst counterspell in the format right now. Its only saving grace is that you would cycle it. As it might as well not have the 1U mana cost, instant typing, or couterspell text. Seriously whats next? A non-cycling version of Spell Snip?
Fourth argument to destroy: That counterspells should be. Frankly this line of thinking is so awful and unwanted that it spread into other design/development sections of how MTG functions. Seriously. Has anyone noticed the fact that in the T2/Standard that we have right now that there is no instant/flash-speed artifact removal for red. That there seems to be a massive lacking of Mass Artifact removal in standard? Its why Fatal Push is as good as it is right now because WotC has been so staunchly against making good removal spells in order to not ruin the "newcomer's fun" that it ruins the fun for eveyone else and we are in the situation right now where Shock is considered great for the sole purpose of dealing with Saheeli and her 9001 cats, SHOCK of all things that is normally seen as a weaker burn spell is getting praise because we are in such a drought of good counter/removal spells. I am totally that advocate who at this point would absolutely love even something like a Granulate, Meltdown, or even a Fracturing Gust at sorcery speed, because T2 is suffering this badly. This is the reason we have "fun police" cards to ensure a healthy format and such a format also needs a careful amount of such cards but also strong so they can ensure that certain decks don't get out of hand.
Also just as a disclamier: I don't like blue. I'm a red+green player. But you know what? I will defend it because I can feel the ripple effects of it getting nerfed into this sorry state when my artifact, creature,enchantment and land removal is this weak as well in the format.
This is just wrong. They frequently design cards for specific formats, including Standard. They also rarely test newer cards in older formats. They test some for Modern, and have printed cards specifically for Modern, but if it wasn't designed with Modern in mind, they do very little testing for it. Nearly all of their time is spent on Standard and Limited, and for other formats, it is largely based on theory crafting.
See, it's not poor business practice to just use cheap software. You missed the AND part of my post, and the bolded part behind the and. There are 8 ban days a year. It's not that hard to pay attention to your inventory 8 days a year and pull 3-5 cards that will see a spike as a result some unbannings immediately after they are announced. You know its coming weeks/months in advance. You have no excuse. You are either dumb or you are an ass. There's no in between.
(This does not apply to emergency bannings that stores could not see coming)
Combo ~= Broken Combo.
My argument remains the same.
Edit: Also, Enduring Ideal wasn't a combo deck. It was a ramp deck. You didn't combo Ideal with anything. You just cast it and searched for other enchantments based on the game state. It's similar to Scapeshift or Standard Valakut. There's a small argument they are "combo" decks, but in reality, they are just ramp decks with different win conditions.
You want powerful cards in normal blocks, which would mean Standard. How does my response not have anything to do with what you said. We already know from history that Standards with overly powerful cards and broken combos are horrendous and have horrible attendance (Mirrodin, CawBlade/Splinter Twin/Valakut Standard and current Standard).
You want to be able to buy cards for cheap no matter what it does to the game.
What were the broken combos during Champions/Ravnica standard again? How about during Innistrad/RTR?
Those are widely considered two of the best standard formats.
Edit: Also Ravnica/Time Spiral. They had a combo deck (Dragonstorm), but no where near broken levels. Lorwyn/Shards standard was also widely loved, and guess what, no combo decks at all.
Yeah. It's not like Standard suffers when there hyper efficient creatures and broken combos.
Using software that you know doesn't take these issues into account, and not paying attention to your inventory on ban day is not an excuse for poor business practices. In fact, those are poor business practices, which they compound by then cancelling orders because of their own poor business practices. They deserve every bit of bad publicity that comes doing this, and no one should understand or feel sorry for them.
I think the real question is whether a green deck can come into existence. Maybe there's enough extra Delirium enablers that Manglehorn can be the safety valve the format needs. I don't see any other cards that can do enough to hurt Copy Cat.
Ok. Let me ask you the same thing I asked the other person. How many cards are you putting in your deck just to protect this creature for a full turn? How many cards are you putting in to give it haste?
How does it work when you have to assemble the Champion, protection for the champion, a fatty (that will have to survive an entire turn), and a way to give it haste. You need 4 cards in your scenario (at a minimum, opposed may have additional removal spells). All the while, you're still a turn 4 deck, so hopefully you're alive to even attack.
And again, no one is saying it's a bad Commander card or a bad casual card. It's a fun card. It's just not a competitive card unless you live in Magical Christmas Land.
That was my thought. This is the most Mythic card I've seen in a long time. It's a better version of Final Fortune.
Ramp with upside is always welcome. Probably fits in that deck as well as a Farseek imposter.
You're trading nothing. You still get your land drop and mana, it just produces colorless mana instead of colored mana. You're not giving up card advantage, you're gaining card advantage. You get to keep a card in play, while killing an opponents creature. The only possible thing you lose, and more often than not you won't lose it, is tempo. That will only happen if you want to kill their creature with your land drop, and because of the land being colorless, it prevents you from casting a spell another land would have allowed you to cast.
This is the same problem that Desert had, just on a smaller scale, and it was discussed at length as to how Desert can warp both a limited and standard environment in this thread.
True-Name was designed for Legacy.
I stopped reading after that because if you didn't know that, nothing else you said mattered.
This is just wrong. They frequently design cards for specific formats, including Standard. They also rarely test newer cards in older formats. They test some for Modern, and have printed cards specifically for Modern, but if it wasn't designed with Modern in mind, they do very little testing for it. Nearly all of their time is spent on Standard and Limited, and for other formats, it is largely based on theory crafting.