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  • posted a message on Checking on if this nest a scarabs infinite works or not
    While the loop you propose does indeed work, and will mill your opponents out, it is important to note that if you have The Scorpion God on the battlefield during that process you will also draw a card each time a 1/1 dies (the draw trigger is not a "may"), so you would need to end the loop before you run out of cards in your library. Otherwise taking that process through a functionally infinite number of repetitions kills you first.
    Posted in: Magic Rulings
  • posted a message on Limited Resources spoiler: Uncommon Desert Cycle
    So... you didn't read the article I cited (and are still stuck on the nimble maze tangent), or you would know I glean what the definition of a completed dual land cycle is directly from the articles members of the development team post on the membership. A cycle of lands that generate two different colors of mana is a complete cycle if it has 10 cards, because there are 10 color pairs in the game of Magic (unless it's something like River of Tears, where completing the cycle would take 20 cards because there could be 2 different functional cards per color pair).

    You are debating basic semantics to argue that WotC is sticking to their word, but what you are arguing is nonsense because the example you keep returning to was a 1-off exception that, at the time players were told to expect more complete cycles in blocks, was from a set that came out 6 years prior. If they were talking about Nimbus Maze, there would not have been a reason to say anything in the first place: they were already not repeating that scenario, and had been for the better part of a decade.

    Releasing 4 to 5 new ally color dual land types for every 1 cycle they complete, usually years later (if ever), for the enemy color pairs has pretty much been the pattern for most of Magic's history, you are arguing that 4 years ago the players were told to expect exactly that going forward, and got excited. That does not make any sense.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on 3x Commons & 1x Uncommons spoiled by PasteMagazine (Zombie Camel!)
    Quote from entombedhydra »
    I hate Dutiful Servants so much it's not even funny. You know Wizards did this on purpose. And poorly designed zombie camel aside, this may be the insult that breaks my back. It's a poorly designed vanilla, with art and flavor purposely designed to trick you to confuse it for another card in the same block. This is the sort of thing that leads to entirely preventable gameplay mistakes in limited. And somehow MaRo said "Print it."

    Well, I'm sorry MaRo, but peddle your joke cards elsewhere. And I'm sorry piss-poor designers, but PAY ATTENTION to what you do.
    Fun fact - design doesn't come up with the card names (at least not finalized versions) and they most certainly don't pick the art. Blaming Mark Rosewater for this is silly, it's Development you have an issue with (and the art director).

    As ridiculous as most of the things you complain about are (like suggesting WotC should have made Rhonas' Last Stand go from questionable to straight out garbage by costing it at 3 CMC, presumably because it offended your sense of symmetry by costing less than the other 2 cards in the cycle that were spoiled at the time), almost NONE of those things are indicative of bad design. In point of fact, almost all of the complaints everyone makes about cards on this forum can be blamed on Development. Why does this card cost so much, it would be so much better if it didn't have this clause, etc etc... odds are the version Design handed off did cost less, and didn't have those riders that render it basically unplayable. It may also have been horrendously broken and cause no end of complaint for entirely different reasons if Development passed it through unchanged, no way to know for sure unless they release an M-Files article on it.

    MaRo is responsible for a lot of stuff, but gets blamed for even more.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on SBMTG Spoiler - Abandoned Sarcophagus
    Quote from Ryperior74 »
    Reminds me of yawgmoth's agenda but better in a way

    I don't see me using it too much only useful with creature stuff

    Oh unless if wheel of sun and moon can counter the exile part though.
    It can, what would happen is you would have 2 replacement effects trying to apply to the same event, so you would choose which happens first... and then there's nothing for the other replacement effect to modify because the actions they have you perform are mutually exclusive.

    It's also worth pointing out that while wheel of the sun and moon does negate the downside of exiling cards with cycling if they would go to your graveyard for reasons other than being cycled there, it also totally hoses your ability to cast cycling cards from your graveyard (the reason you would run this artifactin the first place) by preventing you from putting cards into it at all. Mixing a form of graveyard recursion with a card that turns your graveyard off strikes me as something of a nonbo.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on Limited Resources spoiler: Uncommon Desert Cycle
    Quote from dLANCER »
    The entire point is to not do Nimbus Maze again. Yes we want enemy pairs too, but it isn't the requirement.
    Not sure what evidence you have to suggest otherwise, but I would love to read it.
    For the life of me I can't find the original article on the Mothership that gave us the impression WotC was moving towards printing complete cycles of lands in blocks (not going back and "finishing" the future sight cycles, that's something that people often request but is emphatically NOT what this is about and never has been, I don't know how you got that impression), but I did turn up this article by Sam Stoddard that refers back to it (aggravatingly without actually linking to it, he just say "when I talked about this last year...") - magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-mana-2014-06-27.

    They followed that article up with a complete cycle of new taplands in Khans block, so when the BFZ duals were revealed many players were expecting them to complete the cycle for the enemy color pairs... but they didn't. I'm sure there's some post somewhere on social media where they backtrack such that we arrive back here, where it's business as usual and land cycles might get completed a mere 5 years later (if ever), but before BFZ happened, expecting that stuff like the Temples from Theros, where we got all of them across the course of the block, expecting that cycles like that were what we would see in new blocks as the rule and not an exception, well that wasn't an unreasonable expectation because they literally told us exactly that on the mothership.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on Limited Resources spoiler: Uncommon Desert Cycle
    Quote from dLANCER »
    Take a step back and ask yourself, did they complete a cycle of 5 for a particular group? If yes, then the promise to complete cycles is fulfilled.
    Not all Land cycles come in 10. We still haven't got 10 Snow tap-dual.
    That's not even remotely what the "commitment to complete land cycles" was supposed to mean and you know it - the entire point is that they had been releasing partial (aka, ally colors only) cycles of lands for decades, and rarely ever got around to making versions for the enemy color pairs. Claiming that, when they told us they were going to stop making incomplete cycles, what they actually meant was "continue exactly as they always have and change nothing", is absurd.

    It's what they still ended up doing of course, but that's not WotC living up to their promise, it's them going back on it.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on Mothership Spoilers 6/27 Impending doom Rampant Growth+
    Quote from Crispen_Smith »
    Quote from Bradipo322 »
    Quote from pierrebai »
    Quote from Bradipo322 »
    As a rule of thumb when resolving a spell or an ability read trought the entire card and resolve one card before resolving the others, normally cards don't offer the possibility of half-resolving.


    It's hard to tell if you're disagreeing or condescending. If the later, then please make sure you're right before pontifying.

    The first part ("Whenever you cast a spell with converted mana cost equal to the number of doom counter on ~") is a triggered ability. It triggers on cast and goes on the stack. You cast the second lightning bolt in response, so it triggers again. It works.

    The only issue is the confused wording, it's unclear if "that much damage" refer to the number of doom counters or the CMC of the spell.

    You are absolutely right, i was just saying that for whoever was dubious about the rules.

    Isnt this a static triggered ability that check both when it goes on the stack and when it resolves? If so the ability should fail on resolution as the number of counters is no longer equsl to the cc of the spell.
    There's no intervening if clause for this ability, so it would only check to see whether or not it would trigger, the condition does not have to be true when it resolves.

    If it had been worded "Whenever you cast a spell, if its CMC is equal to the number of doom counters on [cardname], do [effect], then put a doom counter on [cardname]", then it would work like how you are suggesting, because performing the action is tied to the triggering condition still being true as the triggered ability resolves.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on Chinglish.tv Spoilers - Five Uncommon Exert Cards
    Quote from Kabirum »
    Why the need for the tap symbol on these, it just makes it confusing when u exert, since by exerting you are on declaring attacks and by attacking you are going to tap.
    Exerting doesn't have anything to do with attacking directly, you only think it does because all the creatures that had exert in Amonkhet tied choosing whether or not to exert to being declared as attackers, but the Exert ability just means "this won't untap on your next untap step". You actually can't exert these creatures as you declare them as attackers ordinarily, because their exert abilities also have tapping as a cost and you can't pay for two different costs with the same action (tapping them to attack means you can't also tap them to use their ability). They are worded the way they are to make exert an actual downside (without tying exert to an action that also taps the creature, it would effectively do nothing), and so you can activate their abilities without attacking.

    You still can attack and also exert these in the same turn, but you need vigilance or an untap effect to accomplish that.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on Sinuous Striker and Proven Combatant
    Quote from HurleyV »
    Quote from idSurge »
    If that 1 drop had prowess I would totally play that.


    If Eternalize wasnt so painfully overcosted, I'd be on board.


    Why is it "overcosted"? Sure you're paying 5/6 mana for a 4/4 (usually with an ability), but in limited you force your opp. to have answers for both. This 3 drop can hit for 3 or trade early and later become a potential 7 dmg attacker. If you build a sealed or draft deck around this you can force a lot of 2 for 1s.
    They were talking about the 1 drop though. 6 mana to get a vanilla 4/4, even if it doesn't require spending a card in your hand, is painfully overcosted, and that effect being stapled onto a 1/1 for 1 means that the real cost is putting a vanilla 1 drop in your deck in the first place (even in limited that by itself is terrible).

    The 3 drop is a fine limited card, the 1 drop is just garbage.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on Claim//Fame (Masters of Modern preview)
    Quote from drakeavril »
    So if you "Claim" a Snapcaster Mage, can it target the original claim to flash it back to bring back another snapcaster?
    By the time you put Snapcaster's EBT trigger on the stack, Claim is finished resolving and in your graveyard, so that should work just fine.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on 6/21 Mothership Spoilers - Hour of Glory + PW Deck Cards


    Also, it's kind of a shame that Hour of Glory is just instant speed Oblivion Strike. It's not that glorious.
    Well to put things in perspective, in mono-black there are only 3 instant or sorcery cards that exile a creature for less than 4 mana (reliably, Nemesis Trap can situationally cost less but generally costs more and is far more limited): Ashes to Ashes, which exiles 2 creatures but they have to be non-artifacts and you take 5 damage, at sorcery for 3 CMC, Cannibalize, which requires you to target 2 creatures but they both have to be controlled by the same player and you only exile 1 of them and put counters on the other, another sorcery at 2 CMC, and the far more recently printed Complete Disregard, which is an instant for 3 CMC but only exiles creatures with power 3 or less.

    This effect in black basically always costs at least 4 mana and it's usually at sorcery speed, and it's ridiculously uncommon for the color (I believe this brings us to 12 examples in total) - of the tiny subset that can target anything at instant, this is arguably the best (Silence the Believers is the same CMC but has heavier black requirements).
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on MTGGoldfish spoilers: Hate cards
    Quote from Shaka »
    Is it for sure that Solemnity stops replacement effects such as on Tendo Ice Bridge?
    I suppose it's possible the rules might change, but yeah, as of the current rule set it is 100% for sure, things that would enter with counters enter with none instead. Unless they are planeswalkers.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on 6/21 Mothership Spoilers - Hour of Glory + PW Deck Cards
    Quote from Hawk7915 »
    Talk about a disappointing rare; that's a lot of trinket text for two rarity leaps up from Oblivion Strike.
    To be fair, that wasn't an instant.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on Driven 2 Despair via ArsTechnika
    Quote from justavictim82 »
    Quote from DemilichKodin »
    I will take this in my Dredge 75. 1B to usually clean out your hand on Turn 3 is something I will gladly sign up for.


    Except that does not work. You cannot just cast the Aftermath piece outside of the grave yard. You need to cast Driven first.
    Given they mentioned playing it in Dredge, I would imagine it got put into a graveyard directly from the library. Because Dredge.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
  • posted a message on MTGGoldfish spoilers: Hate cards
    Quote from retizen »
    but if the auramancers are sacrificed without a vanishing counter, you get the enchantment tutor. so auramancers with a way to sac them works hopefully
    There's no hopefully about it, that's exactly how they work, it's one of the card rulings on Gatherer; the second ability doesn't care why they went to the graveyard, just that they didn't have any time counters on them when they did.
    Posted in: The Rumor Mill
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