But If I can cast a sorcery at any time. that means i can use the ability at anytime??
ussually i can only cast sorceries on my turn, and not adding on a stack. but with the leyline I can cast it whenever. therefore " I can cast a sorcery at anytime." And the cards in question state " anytime YOU could cast a sorcery" If i can cast a sorcery at anytime, wouldn't i beable to use the ability at any time??
"Anytime you can cast a sorcery" just means during the Pre-Combat Main Phase or Post-Combat Main Phase of your own turn while there's nothing on the stack. This is a static definition that is just referencing when sorceries can normally be played, it doesn't actually matter if you have something that modifies when sorcery cards can be played for you.
Hearthstone isn't really competing with MTG. It's a game that is meant to be simple and easy to pick up and play, all while being fully playable from a tablet. Despite this, it's actually fairly well balanced and fun to play overall. It is hugely popular with some of the bigger streamers out there and is getting far more mainstream exposure than I have ever seen MTG get.
As others have said, hopefully Hearthstone will get more people interested in TCGs in general and hopefully some of them will try out MTG when they want a more complex game.
I played WoW for the better part of 3 years. Trust me, Hearthstone is not even a fly at Magic's picnic. WoW won't even be around in the next 10 years but Magic will be.
And the Warcraft Franchise has been alive and well since 1994 when Warcraft 1 was released - I really have no clue why you seem to think MTG has some insane lasting power that Warcraft couldn't dream of, MTG has only been around for 1 year longer.
Both MTG and Warcraft are fantastic games in their respective genres. Both are very healthy currently and both will continue to do well for the foreseeable future.
Warrior's Lesson, G
Instant
Until end of turn, up to two target creatures you control each gain "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, draw a card."
Surely that has to see play somewhere right? It's a conditional divination but it should be pretty easy to hit that condition in the right deck and it's potentially 2 cards for 1 mana without any super crazy restrictions.
Am I overvaluing it? It seems like a pretty solid card to help make sure you don't run out of gas.
The only problem with this swan, is that it has flying. Wouldnt it have flying then it would be great in modern merfolk!
We can easily kill it with most of our creatures being mostly 4/4 or bigger and they cant block with it, cause we always use islandwalk!
But the way it is now i would clearly prefer Negate over this card!
Swan song isn't a main deck counterspell but it is absolutely a sideboard counterspell. You don't cast it turn 1 to counter a serum visions or any other random mostly non-crucial spell - that would just be stupid. The power of swan song is it can unconditionally counter the important spells your opponent plays (splinter twin, scapeshift, living end, etc.) with only requiring you keep 1 mana untapped.
Negate isn't even on the same level as this card in Fish because we run a deck where we often top out at 3 lands and we're a tempo deck. An ideal play for us is dropping a lord and keeping 1 mana open to disrupt the opponent - do you really want to skip lord drops to keep negate mana open all the time? I mean, in a perfect world we'll be keeping all our mana open because we're just cheating guys into play with the Vial but as we all know, sometimes the Vial doesn't happen and we're left hardcasting dudes. Or sometimes we have 3 mana open and we want to be swinging with our Mutavault which only leaves us 1 mana open for disruption. There's lots of cases where a hard counter for 1 mana would be miles better than a hard counter for 2 mana in a deck like Fish.
I'll be doing a lot of testing with swan song in the sideboard. I have high hopes for it.
I don't believe so. Pretty sure that you target your Image with Echoing Truth, the Image insta-dies, and Echoing Truth fizzles out.
Though I'm bad at MTG and could be totally wrong, so I need someone to back me up on this.
You're right. When you cast echoing truth on your own Image, the Image's trigger will go on the stack just above the echoing truth and the clone will be dead before it can resolve.
Thoughts on swan song when spell pierce already doesn't see much play at all?
Sorry if this has already been answered - you guys are hard to keep up with sometimes
Swan song is a super powerful counterspell - it unconditionally counters a lot of important spells for just 1 mana - but it is only situationally good.
If you can use it to protect a combo that will kill immediately - who cares if you're giving them a 2/2 flyer? Conversely, if it counters a combo that is going to kill you immediately, who cares if they get a 2/2 flier?
I'm going to be testing it out heavily in my Fish deck as a sideboard option against Living End/Scapeshift/Splinter Twin/etc. I also want to test it out and see how it does against G(r) Tron which is a pretty all or nothing deck. I would much rather they get a 2/2 flyer than their 3rd land, especially because they don't really do anything at all until they combo off, it's not like the 2/2 flyer is going to let them achieve critical mass for their army.
Swan song might also see some play in a deck that can reliably nuke the field shortly after using it. If you know a pyroclasm or fallout or something like that is happening next turn, the drawback is minimized pretty quickly.
The scariest part of these god awful lands is a quote in the article itself:
I'm just happy we didn't get the "balanced" versions.
At this point, my hope is that Theros design represents a scaling back in power level for all subsequent sets, and not just a widespread design failure that has afflicted the entire company. Because the design of these cards, and a disproportionate number of others in the set, is alarmingly out of touch with competitive constructed Magic.
I think we did get the "balanced" versions. My guess is these used to be Scry 2 and they toned them down because they thought Scry 2 would be too good.
There's no way they started like this... nobody takes a guildgate, adds Scry 1 and thinks "we may have gone too far..."
So I built and have been using a "budget" version of fish on MTGO lately (entire deck including the board cost me under 100 tickets). It's been performing better than I expected and I just 4-0'd a Modern Daily with it (and 3 of the guys I beat went 3-1, so it looks like I beat fairly decent competition). My plan for the deck is I would like to try to upgrade the deck slowly with any winnings and I'd love some feedback on what I should be investing in next. From the 4-0 I have about 20 tickets to spend and enough left over to cover my next 3 dailies - just need to decide how to spend the 20.
Notes - No spellskites yet because they cost 11-12 tickets each, but I'm considering buying a few very strongly. The other glaring omission is that my sideboard is a complete mess right now, threads of disloyalty and hurkyl's recall would be amazing, but they cost 12-15 each.
Any advice on what I should be looking to buy next or any other feedback on the shell would be greatly appreciated.
FIRST I READ - GP VANCOUVER IN 2014
THEN - GET A NEW AWSOME FAVOURITE 'WALKER WHO IS BASICALLY BABY JACE! (well, except that she doesn't actually do anything. ever. still cool)
best day ever
-KRG
Kind random, where did you read about GP Vancouver in 2014?
This. It's a shame master of waves was 4cmc though. I would have preferred UUU for the purposes of modern folk possibly getting a better top-curve guy.
The difference between 3U and UUU casting cost would be absolutely enormous, though. For starters, it doubles the minimum power he puts on the board to 8 and secondly it would curve out way too perfectly in Fish to the point where he would be an auto include 4-of in every single list. And I'm sure some other decks would find a home for him as well.
If you could consistently roll out something like Cursecatcher -> Lord -> Master, Fish would be a top tier deck. He'd be worth stacking the Vial up to 3 so you could cheat him in while keeping counter mana up - a surprise 8-14 power would be unbelievable and most likely unstoppable given you would never need to tap out after T1.
How is aquitect's will worse than spreading sea? It's cheaper, draws you a card and can't be removed once succeeded.
Spreading Seas can lock someone out of a colour pretty easily, or lock them out of being able to play everything they want to play in a given turn. It's basically a massive headache for some decks (especially if it cost them 3 life to fetch out that Overgrown Tomb that now only taps for U). It also has unconditional draw - you'll never miss out on the draw if they cast removal in response or if you want to drop a T2 Seas after the T1 Vial without any fish on the field yet.
Master of Waves3U Creature - Merfolk Wizard
Protection from red
Elemental creatures you control get +1/+1.
When Master of Waves enters the battlefield, put a number of 1/0 blue Elemental creature tokens onto the battlefield equal to your devotion to blue.
2/1
This guy has a lot going for him, even with his casting cost. 4 mana cards need to pull a lot of weight in Modern, but the Master fits that bill. This card needs to be answered the turn it hits or the opponent is probably going to lose. That's especially true because Master will, on average, drop probably five 2/1 tokens when he hits. So yeah, he's on the pricier side, but for 4 mana he's winning the game on the next turn, so I'm fine with that price tag.
The real killer on this card is the pro red. That means no Bolt, no Helix, no Electrolyze, no Galvanic Blast, and no Pyroclasm. UWR can hit him with Wrath, Verdict, and Path. Other decks really have Path and that's about it. Dismember hits him too, but that's an uncommon one. The real killer is the 4 CMC here, which puts him out of Decay range. The vast majority of decks are going to have no way of dealing with this card when he hits, and that's a huge plus for Merfolk.
Overall, this is a very exciting creature that is definitely going to add to Merfolk. He's a great top of the curve threat for that deck. Some people might allege that he is win-more, but he can rapidly turn games around when dropped on turn 4 even if the Merfolk player has subpar board position. With just 2 Merfolk, Master is probably making 4 Elementals and threatening 10+ damage on the next turn. That's a lot of presence, a lot of finishing power, and a generally awesome tool for Merfolk.
Don't see him getting played in Fish as it currently is, he quite simply doesn't work with the deck. Costing 4 is a huge problem when your entire deck costs 2 mana (or less) except for 3-4 reejereys.
He might be part of a new incarnation of Fish but he doesn't work in the current version.
Article seemed to imply that he thinks Master of Waves works in Modern Fish. I'm not sure I agree, but between this and Thassa there is certainly a lot of testing to be done. This card would definitely slot into merfolk if it was 3cmc, but at four it's pushing an average merfolk deck's curve.
For standard, it's just a shame his trigger is so opposite to Young Pyromancer's.
He should still have a chance of seeing play in a UW tempo deck though
Yeah, I'm not sure if he has a home in Modern Fish. There's just better cards available that I don't see him beating out for a spot. If I need a mana sink/finisher, I'd much rather run Coralhelm Commander which I can Vial in and level up at my convenience. With the Master you're either going to need to tap out to cast him or wait until your Vial has 4 counters - meaning you can't vial in anything else in your deck for the rest of the game. Neither option seems better than keeping some leak/remand mana open while having 2 counters on the Vial.
Master of Waves also makes you want to run 22 lands - I'd also much rather just cut down the lands to 20 and fit in a few Spellskites maindeck.
Maybe he'll be part of a new Fish deck but I don't see him fitting in the current version at all.
Erebos, God of the Underworld 3B
Legendary Enchantment Creature — God (M)
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to black is less than five, Erebos isn't a creature. (Each B in the mana costs of permanents you control counts towards your devotion to black.)
Whenever an opponent draws a card, Erebos deals 1 damage to him or her.
(2)(B)(B): Target player draws two cards and loses 2 life.
5/5
But all gods have abilities related to combat
A repeatable instant 4 mana draw 2 for 2 life would be absurdly broken.
I think you pretty much said it.
Play boros... WW splashing red or like... kithkins is fun.
RW Lockout is fun...
My only hangup with picking Boros back up is it doesn't look very competitive any more. Please tell me I'm wrong and it's still a reasonably good deck, but I don't want to be dumping a couple hundred dollars into something that can't hold it's own.
Favorite Playstyle (Aggro, Midrange, Control, Combo): I love weenie rush/burn and I love combo How Competitive (For Fun, Local Tournament, MTGO, PTQ/GP): I want a competitive deck I can build and slowly deck out (i.e. upgrading the mana base 1 fetchland at a time). In addition to a regular full-powered deck with real cards, I'm also looking for a budget Modern deck for MTGO. Favorite Cards/Colors: I love RW aggro/burn and I love all combos. Lightning Helix and Figure of Destiny are two of my favourite cards. Budget: I have enough tradable cards lying around I can acquire pretty much anything. For the MTGO deck, I'd like it as cheap as possible while remaining competitive. Staples Owned: 2 Confidants, 2 Arid Mesa, 20+ Shocks, lots of random stuff.
To add a few more words, I used to play Boros in standard a few years ago and loved the deck but it doesn't seem to be very competitive in Modern right now. I was looking into moving slightly closer into a midrange Boros build with Reckoners but I haven't seen any lists successfully do that (if you have a link to some that work I'd love to see it).
I also used to run an extended Cephalid Breakfast deck years and years ago and I absolutely loved it to bits. It wasn't the greatest combo deck in the world but it was crazy fun. Self-milling myself to bring out a hasted 30/30 Sutured Ghoul to trample over the opponent on T2 with Pact of Negation up to protect it was just awesome.
Any suggestions (I do not know the format very well at all but am willing to read up on anything if pointed in the right direction) are greatly appreciated.
"Anytime you can cast a sorcery" just means during the Pre-Combat Main Phase or Post-Combat Main Phase of your own turn while there's nothing on the stack. This is a static definition that is just referencing when sorceries can normally be played, it doesn't actually matter if you have something that modifies when sorcery cards can be played for you.
The other answer you already got was correct.
As others have said, hopefully Hearthstone will get more people interested in TCGs in general and hopefully some of them will try out MTG when they want a more complex game.
It's called a homage, it's used all the time in everything. It's an obvious nod to MTG, it's not an attempt to copy them or rip off their ideas.
And the Warcraft Franchise has been alive and well since 1994 when Warcraft 1 was released - I really have no clue why you seem to think MTG has some insane lasting power that Warcraft couldn't dream of, MTG has only been around for 1 year longer.
Both MTG and Warcraft are fantastic games in their respective genres. Both are very healthy currently and both will continue to do well for the foreseeable future.
Instant
Until end of turn, up to two target creatures you control each gain "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, draw a card."
Surely that has to see play somewhere right? It's a conditional divination but it should be pretty easy to hit that condition in the right deck and it's potentially 2 cards for 1 mana without any super crazy restrictions.
Am I overvaluing it? It seems like a pretty solid card to help make sure you don't run out of gas.
Swan song isn't a main deck counterspell but it is absolutely a sideboard counterspell. You don't cast it turn 1 to counter a serum visions or any other random mostly non-crucial spell - that would just be stupid. The power of swan song is it can unconditionally counter the important spells your opponent plays (splinter twin, scapeshift, living end, etc.) with only requiring you keep 1 mana untapped.
Negate isn't even on the same level as this card in Fish because we run a deck where we often top out at 3 lands and we're a tempo deck. An ideal play for us is dropping a lord and keeping 1 mana open to disrupt the opponent - do you really want to skip lord drops to keep negate mana open all the time? I mean, in a perfect world we'll be keeping all our mana open because we're just cheating guys into play with the Vial but as we all know, sometimes the Vial doesn't happen and we're left hardcasting dudes. Or sometimes we have 3 mana open and we want to be swinging with our Mutavault which only leaves us 1 mana open for disruption. There's lots of cases where a hard counter for 1 mana would be miles better than a hard counter for 2 mana in a deck like Fish.
I'll be doing a lot of testing with swan song in the sideboard. I have high hopes for it.
You're right. When you cast echoing truth on your own Image, the Image's trigger will go on the stack just above the echoing truth and the clone will be dead before it can resolve.
Swan song is a super powerful counterspell - it unconditionally counters a lot of important spells for just 1 mana - but it is only situationally good.
If you can use it to protect a combo that will kill immediately - who cares if you're giving them a 2/2 flyer? Conversely, if it counters a combo that is going to kill you immediately, who cares if they get a 2/2 flier?
I'm going to be testing it out heavily in my Fish deck as a sideboard option against Living End/Scapeshift/Splinter Twin/etc. I also want to test it out and see how it does against G(r) Tron which is a pretty all or nothing deck. I would much rather they get a 2/2 flyer than their 3rd land, especially because they don't really do anything at all until they combo off, it's not like the 2/2 flyer is going to let them achieve critical mass for their army.
Swan song might also see some play in a deck that can reliably nuke the field shortly after using it. If you know a pyroclasm or fallout or something like that is happening next turn, the drawback is minimized pretty quickly.
I think we did get the "balanced" versions. My guess is these used to be Scry 2 and they toned them down because they thought Scry 2 would be too good.
There's no way they started like this... nobody takes a guildgate, adds Scry 1 and thinks "we may have gone too far..."
15 Island
3 Mutavault
2 Cavern of Souls
Creatures (27)
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Coralhelm Commander
3 Merrow Reejerey
3 Phantasmal Image
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
3 Remand
3 Mana Leak
4 AEther Vial
3 Spreading Seas
3 Steel Sabotage
2 Dispel
1 Spreading Seas
1 Mana Leak
1 Merrow Reejerey
2 Negate
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
1 Phyrexian Revoker
Notes - No spellskites yet because they cost 11-12 tickets each, but I'm considering buying a few very strongly. The other glaring omission is that my sideboard is a complete mess right now, threads of disloyalty and hurkyl's recall would be amazing, but they cost 12-15 each.
Any advice on what I should be looking to buy next or any other feedback on the shell would be greatly appreciated.
Kind random, where did you read about GP Vancouver in 2014?
The difference between 3U and UUU casting cost would be absolutely enormous, though. For starters, it doubles the minimum power he puts on the board to 8 and secondly it would curve out way too perfectly in Fish to the point where he would be an auto include 4-of in every single list. And I'm sure some other decks would find a home for him as well.
If you could consistently roll out something like Cursecatcher -> Lord -> Master, Fish would be a top tier deck. He'd be worth stacking the Vial up to 3 so you could cheat him in while keeping counter mana up - a surprise 8-14 power would be unbelievable and most likely unstoppable given you would never need to tap out after T1.
Spreading Seas can lock someone out of a colour pretty easily, or lock them out of being able to play everything they want to play in a given turn. It's basically a massive headache for some decks (especially if it cost them 3 life to fetch out that Overgrown Tomb that now only taps for U). It also has unconditional draw - you'll never miss out on the draw if they cast removal in response or if you want to drop a T2 Seas after the T1 Vial without any fish on the field yet.
Don't see him getting played in Fish as it currently is, he quite simply doesn't work with the deck. Costing 4 is a huge problem when your entire deck costs 2 mana (or less) except for 3-4 reejereys.
He might be part of a new incarnation of Fish but he doesn't work in the current version.
Yeah, I'm not sure if he has a home in Modern Fish. There's just better cards available that I don't see him beating out for a spot. If I need a mana sink/finisher, I'd much rather run Coralhelm Commander which I can Vial in and level up at my convenience. With the Master you're either going to need to tap out to cast him or wait until your Vial has 4 counters - meaning you can't vial in anything else in your deck for the rest of the game. Neither option seems better than keeping some leak/remand mana open while having 2 counters on the Vial.
Master of Waves also makes you want to run 22 lands - I'd also much rather just cut down the lands to 20 and fit in a few Spellskites maindeck.
Maybe he'll be part of a new Fish deck but I don't see him fitting in the current version at all.
A repeatable instant 4 mana draw 2 for 2 life would be absurdly broken.
My only hangup with picking Boros back up is it doesn't look very competitive any more. Please tell me I'm wrong and it's still a reasonably good deck, but I don't want to be dumping a couple hundred dollars into something that can't hold it's own.
How Competitive (For Fun, Local Tournament, MTGO, PTQ/GP): I want a competitive deck I can build and slowly deck out (i.e. upgrading the mana base 1 fetchland at a time). In addition to a regular full-powered deck with real cards, I'm also looking for a budget Modern deck for MTGO.
Favorite Cards/Colors: I love RW aggro/burn and I love all combos. Lightning Helix and Figure of Destiny are two of my favourite cards.
Budget: I have enough tradable cards lying around I can acquire pretty much anything. For the MTGO deck, I'd like it as cheap as possible while remaining competitive.
Staples Owned: 2 Confidants, 2 Arid Mesa, 20+ Shocks, lots of random stuff.
To add a few more words, I used to play Boros in standard a few years ago and loved the deck but it doesn't seem to be very competitive in Modern right now. I was looking into moving slightly closer into a midrange Boros build with Reckoners but I haven't seen any lists successfully do that (if you have a link to some that work I'd love to see it).
I also used to run an extended Cephalid Breakfast deck years and years ago and I absolutely loved it to bits. It wasn't the greatest combo deck in the world but it was crazy fun. Self-milling myself to bring out a hasted 30/30 Sutured Ghoul to trample over the opponent on T2 with Pact of Negation up to protect it was just awesome.
Any suggestions (I do not know the format very well at all but am willing to read up on anything if pointed in the right direction) are greatly appreciated.