I read it as "set your opponent's life to 13" goes on the stack without a card ruling to say otherwise but I'll take your 2 guys' word for it on it. I think almost all abilities re-check conditions if possible at cast time. This is massively messed up btw. That card is horrifically broken.
Let's say you use Tree of Perdition's ability to change your opponent's life total to its toughness then on the stack use turn to frog so it becomes a 1/1. When the ability resolves does it re-check the toughness again or does it use the toughness at the time the ability was put on the stack? In other words, would it set the life total to to 13 or 1?
OMG Helix Pinacle is some seriously funny crap dude, loooool. That is so perfect! "If you get 100 counters just freaking end it already and btw, shroud" lol. It's even funnier when you realize what I titled this thread by sheer coincidence. That's definitely going in there. Blue Sun's Zenith looks perfect too. I still haven't finalized the deck list or colors. Green-red with devotion seems great, especially because of the always hated zhur-taa druid and burning-tree emissary. Throw in a few chained together tap manipulation effects and you get to 20 and can fry your opponent with banefire or burn from within. But that's a hit or miss glass cannon and there are no infinite combos. It's just ramp and burn.
There's another way I can build it with untapping loops and throw pristine talisman in and hope they forfeit. It has a glaring weakness in that isochron scepter can't have hidden strings put on it because it's a sorcery though. Every infinite tapping/untapping loop needs 3 cards but it's not very important which 3 so it might hold up against control. Almost every combo results in infinite green, blue, or colorless mana and your deck might as well be 20 cards big because you throw in Cerulean Wisps and Refocus and the other billion identical clones of them and basically draw until you hit the cards you need for the combo. I really like that one because it can have mana leak/deprive/negate in it too.
Or I can go extremely artifact heavy and try for more complicated loops with artifact-specific untapping and "artifact only" mana generation but it's slower and I can't find a decent win condition. Maybe razor tip whip? It's by far the most unstoppable though and I like astral cornucopia and everflowing chalice. There are some good artifact ETB triggers too.
I'll try and built one example of each deck concept and test them to see what's the best.
I know this sounds like a simple question but I'm making a deck that uses a combo or two to create either 20-30 mana or simply infinite mana and I want to keep black and red spells out of it. Preferably I'd be using a green or colorless spell to win the game since that's what color mana I'm making most of the time (karametra's acolyte/nykthos etc). The deck may also be blue for tap manipulation purposes. So is there a blue (x) spell I can spend the immense mana on to mill the opponent's entire library? Or any sort of green spell that would similarly end the game? I really don't want to resort to a red (x) damage spell or black drain (x) life clone because color fixing would become a problem but so far all I can find are hydras and they're easy to exile or kill. Hooded hydra is cool because it turns into snakes but path to exile is the most used nonland card in modern. So are there any obscure ways to use green, blue, or colorless spells or permanents to defeat the opponent if I'm sitting on an enormous pile of mana?
I'm pretty good at math but this particular one I can't figure out. Probability is so annoying.
Let's say a set has 5 mythics worth $15,$16,$17,$18, and $19
and it has 10 rares worth $1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9, and $10
If I want to calculate the estimated value of the average booster pack (disregarding foils and uncommons)
The average mythic cost would be $17 and the average rare would be $5.50. So since mythics are printed at half the amount on the sheet as rares, so the equation should be
(17 + (5.50 x 2)) / 3 so that rares are weighted double. So that'd be $9.33 average return per booster.
Except if I take the sequence of numbers 15,16,17,18,19,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and average it, I get $7.80.
Both methods appear to weigh rares as double and both seem correct. Obviously the difference in numbers is because there are 10 rares and 5 mythics and it would be the same number if there were 5 rares. So that's great except which method of calculating results in the actual, true expected value of a pack? It seems to come down to what WOTC actually means by mythics are twice as rare as rares. Do they mean for every Force of Will in eternal masters, there are two Isochron scepters? Or do they mean that for every general mythic slot on the sheet there are two general rare slots regardless of the individual card. I'm leaning towards the first one from what I know about sheet printing but please, someone that's good at this type of thing let me know
You know I've found plenty of cards that I wish would get sucked into a black hole and never be seen again but I've never found a rule like that...until now, because that's confusing and unnecessary and misplayed by everyone not using MTGO. I can name like 10 times people misplayed this at my LGS alone because they know the rule "X is always zero." Our judges even agreed with me that X was zero. Why don't they just change the rule?
I need to settle this once and for all. Can Disdainful Stroke cancel a spell like Windstorm if X is higher than 3? As far as I know "converted mana cost" refers to the amount printed on the card 100% of the time and X is always considered to be zero. It doesn't matter if I cast it for free, if I duplicated the spell, if I have conduit of ruin on the field, etc, it's ALWAYS the printed CMC. But another person says that choosing X prior to casting means the card now has a different converted mana cost. So please, someone tell me which way it is because both sound correct.
I was bored and I wanted to know if 100 commons thick was sufficient to stop at least some calibers of bullets. So I built a full vest out of about 2000 or so commons. Also I put Dazzling Reflection on the front to stop the most amount of attack power. Then we took it to my friend's house and shot it with almost every gun we owned Here's a link to the video:
In almost all cases, voidmage isn't used the turn he comes out. When there's 4 mana on the field, you throw him out there for aggro and use the remaining 2 on counterspells in your hand. If you know they have a remand or other counter, voidmage can't be cancelled (except by squelch and trickbind) so that's nice. Otherwise it's an emergency non-top decking thing. I just hate that all 4 mana are blue. There are slightly less effective versions of voidmage like grimoire thief and some other dude and stuff. Spellskite is nice too but zero attack, ugh! Good blocking though and free redirect.
Isochron is incredibly important for not top decking. Most games go about 20 rounds against this deck and if 1/3 of your deck is countering, you will top deck/lose eventually without infinite imprinted spells. Plus vapor snag on it wins and in the sideboard I leave nullify and psychic barrier for zoo and angel's grace and silence for if I absolutely cannot beat their deck. If either hits isochron, I win 99% of the time Yay emergency suck out combo lol.
Technically Splice Into Arcane is almost an activated ability on spells. It's actually more of a free triggered ability but whatever. I do consider kicker to be the closest though and they should totally bring that back. Or Overload or any of the other clones of it.
Splice is not an activated ability. It is a static ability that can alter the total cost of another spell.
Kicker is not an activated ability. It is a static ability that permits an additional cost for the spell it's on.
Overload is not an activated ability. It is two static abilities, one of which permits an alternate cost for the spell it's on, and the other which alters the text of the spell it's on.
However, if you're hoping to see Kicker again, you're probably in luck. Kicker is such a versatile ability that, despite the fact that it's not an "evergreen keyword", it gets used again and again. (In fact, there are a number of other keywords that could have been implemented as kickers, such as Buyback or Replicate. Doing so would have complicated the text of a large set of related cards, though.)
Yeah, and spells also don't have activated abilities because they're not permanents. Only permanents can have activated abilities. Thanks, take everything literally guy. That's why I said "almost" and "closest."
Expedition Wasteland has a wastes mana symbol in it? How else are these eldrazi players casting their thought knot seers? Unless I am missing something
you are missing something. its not a wastes mana symbol, its a colorless mana symbol. all they did was give it a symbol
That brings up an interesting point. They wanted a strong set but didn't want modern to just go Eldrazi crazy with automatic adoption into any color deck so they made colorless costs effectively its own color. And that did NOTHING to stop modern players
Technically Splice Into Arcane is almost an activated ability on spells. It's actually more of a free triggered ability but whatever. I do consider kicker to be the closest though and they should totally bring that back. Or Overload or any of the other clones of it.
Since apparently some people here have no sense of humor at all, I'm not going to even try to spring this on people like it's real. Here's a ridiculously over the top parody video I made making fun of people who like to over analyze the leaked cards, spoilers, artwork, press releases, etc to try and guess things about the new set. If you watch the entire thing without laughing, you may also have no pulse Hidden Info and Secrets in the Shadows and Eldritch Moon Graphics
Oh and here's a sneak peek of the massive seriousness of this video. I present to you the leaked artwork from the Jace Planeswalker card in Eldritch Moon: Space Jace.
The Eldrazi as creatures are too powerful and maybe might merit a ban but then again you don't see anyone playing Bearer of the Heavens for some reason. What I did notice is almost every eldrazi deck has nothing but 3 cost and up spells. That's INSANE in modern. It only works because of the lands and in my opinion they need to ban just 1 of the lands and the decks will be reasonable. Actually ban any land that taps for 2 under any circumstance. That's the definition of game-breaking. Anyway, 3 cost means 2-3 cost blue antimagic can actually make a comeback against the Eldrazi decks. My new mostly blue Beholder 3.0 Alpha deck shreds the crap out of Eldrazi top tier decks in testing. None of them online, in person, or driven by any level of player has been able to beat it in a 2 out of 3 round.
But since 1 and 2 cost heavy decks will beat blue counterspells, they need to power down the eldrazi by ditching one of the lands.
There's another way I can build it with untapping loops and throw pristine talisman in and hope they forfeit. It has a glaring weakness in that isochron scepter can't have hidden strings put on it because it's a sorcery though. Every infinite tapping/untapping loop needs 3 cards but it's not very important which 3 so it might hold up against control. Almost every combo results in infinite green, blue, or colorless mana and your deck might as well be 20 cards big because you throw in Cerulean Wisps and Refocus and the other billion identical clones of them and basically draw until you hit the cards you need for the combo. I really like that one because it can have mana leak/deprive/negate in it too.
Or I can go extremely artifact heavy and try for more complicated loops with artifact-specific untapping and "artifact only" mana generation but it's slower and I can't find a decent win condition. Maybe razor tip whip? It's by far the most unstoppable though and I like astral cornucopia and everflowing chalice. There are some good artifact ETB triggers too.
I'll try and built one example of each deck concept and test them to see what's the best.
Let's say a set has 5 mythics worth $15,$16,$17,$18, and $19
and it has 10 rares worth $1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9, and $10
If I want to calculate the estimated value of the average booster pack (disregarding foils and uncommons)
The average mythic cost would be $17 and the average rare would be $5.50. So since mythics are printed at half the amount on the sheet as rares, so the equation should be
(17 + (5.50 x 2)) / 3 so that rares are weighted double. So that'd be $9.33 average return per booster.
Except if I take the sequence of numbers 15,16,17,18,19,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and average it, I get $7.80.
Both methods appear to weigh rares as double and both seem correct. Obviously the difference in numbers is because there are 10 rares and 5 mythics and it would be the same number if there were 5 rares. So that's great except which method of calculating results in the actual, true expected value of a pack? It seems to come down to what WOTC actually means by mythics are twice as rare as rares. Do they mean for every Force of Will in eternal masters, there are two Isochron scepters? Or do they mean that for every general mythic slot on the sheet there are two general rare slots regardless of the individual card. I'm leaning towards the first one from what I know about sheet printing but please, someone that's good at this type of thing let me know
https://youtu.be/9-rpQMYe-y4
And here's the epic thumbnail I made for it
Isochron is incredibly important for not top decking. Most games go about 20 rounds against this deck and if 1/3 of your deck is countering, you will top deck/lose eventually without infinite imprinted spells. Plus vapor snag on it wins and in the sideboard I leave nullify and psychic barrier for zoo and angel's grace and silence for if I absolutely cannot beat their deck. If either hits isochron, I win 99% of the time
Yeah, and spells also don't have activated abilities because they're not permanents. Only permanents can have activated abilities. Thanks, take everything literally guy. That's why I said "almost" and "closest."
That brings up an interesting point. They wanted a strong set but didn't want modern to just go Eldrazi crazy with automatic adoption into any color deck so they made colorless costs effectively its own color. And that did NOTHING to stop modern players
Hidden Info and Secrets in the Shadows and Eldritch Moon Graphics
Oh and here's a sneak peek of the massive seriousness of this video. I present to you the leaked artwork from the Jace Planeswalker card in Eldritch Moon: Space Jace.
But since 1 and 2 cost heavy decks will beat blue counterspells, they need to power down the eldrazi by ditching one of the lands.