Ooh... Jace's -1 works nicely for that purpose... though I don't know that you want to necessarily use that ability on your own creatures all that often... but re-casting it to get a total of 5 golems on the board isn't bad either!
T3 - Cast Tezz
T4 - Cast Golem, turn a token into a 5/5.
T5 - Cast Jace, bounce golem, turn a token into a 5/5
T6 - Cast golem, bounce with Jace, turn a token into a 5/5
Nice.
-
- chadmart
- Registered User
-
Member for 14 years
Last active Tue, May, 26 2020 03:05:21
- 0 Followers
- 502 Total Posts
- 0 Thanks
You hear it time and time again. If you are looking for value then just buy the singles. You will almost NEVER get your value back out of opening packs. It doesn't matter which set you are drafting either.
As for INN, well, there are several mythics and rares that break the $10 barrier, and many in the $5-$6 range. On top of that, there is potential to hit up to 3 mythics/rares in a single pack! (for example, I opened 6 packs in my sealed and pulled 2 mythics and 6 rares.) I think there's plenty of chance to make your value in a draft or sealed, but just like the regular cracking of packs, you should never go into any limited format thinking that you are going to make back your value.
Your basis for a good or bad format is inversely proportional to how good you do? There are so many things that are different about a prerelease than any other limited format, that it can in no way be used to see how good or bad that format is. There are a LOT of new players, a largerngroup than usual, etc...
Anyway, I didn't think it was quite the same as you perceived it. My opponent had tons of removal, etc... And was able to take out my creatures pretty easily... Plus, isn't that what you want out of a set based on the horror theme? Lots of creatures that match that theme.
I truly enjoy this set and can't wait till next week to get my box.
My pool was ok. I pulled a Garruk as the only real money card, but that was worth it. I ended up with a G/U deck splashing red with the U/R dual land for 2 instant removal spells.
They started late, so round 1/6 didn't start until nearly 1:30. I lost 0/2 and it was too late so I bailed. Worst part was that I got Garruk in both games and he always had an answer for it!
Still given my pool, it was totally worth it!
His response was:
This pretty much confirms that they will at least keep the Dual Faced Cards going into the next set, if not through all three. Probably pretty safe bet to say that some forms of spirit will be included which I think is great as far as flavor is concerned.
Another cool thought would be to have an artifact that "traps" some evil spirit (i.e. the urn in The Frighteners) that would have some way to destroy it, then return it to the battlefield transformed.
There is a single DFC in every pack, and it can be of any rarity.
There might be a foil in any given pack, and it can be of any rarity.
There is a single rare or mythic rare in every pack regardless of the above.
This means that is is technically possible to get a total of 18 mythics in a sealed pool if you open a mythic, a foil mythic, and a DFC mythic in every pack. I know that this will not happen, but there is a minute chance of opening 3 mythics in a single pack! That's pretty cool. (this is coming from someone who has never opened a foil mythic... but it's still cool that it's possible!)
Has anyone figured out the odds of opening Garruk (or any mythic DFC)?
Also, on the site, how do I look at the back of a DFC card in either the draft or sealed viewer?
This isn't necessarily true. I saw someone land Chandra in multiple games and he lost. I agree that with such a small pool of cards, you do have to have some decent luck, but there is a lot to be said for being a good player as well. For example... in game 1 of my first match I get an Ice Cage on my opponent's Lightning Elemental, he attacks with a different creature and casts Titanic Growth on it. After he says "I probably should have cast that on the Elemental." And he was right. It would have completely changed the game. Game 2, the EXACT same thing happened, complete with the same "I probably should have cast that on the Elemental." and again, it would have completely changed the game.
I had some pretty good luck in my first pack. I got some removal as well as 2 griffins and a Belltower Sphinx so evasion didn't have much on me. My second pack I opened a Doom Blade so that was awesome, but my round 2 opponent had a Sun Titan and a Garruk, Primal Hunter, and a lot of other great answers for just about anything I came up with. So I lost round 2. He told me that he opened an Angelic Destiny out of his 3rd pack, but he lost round 3. I didn't hear how he did in round 4.
Round 3 I did pretty well and won 2-0, but I can't recall the details. In my 3rd pack I got a Cemetary Reaper and went to a primarily BG deck splashing all 3 other colors for a spell or 2 in each. I did very well in round 4 and was able to get a bloodthirsted Carnage Wurm with a whole board of support. 2-0 again. In my "prize" pack I opened a Grand Abolisher. My 4 rares were:
Dungrove Elder
Time Reversal
Cemetery Reaper
Grand Abolisher
Nothing money, but still I had a great time, all the cards were free, and I got to play Magic for about 5 hours, so I was pretty happy with the day!
Edit: Grand Abolisher and Dungrove Elder aren't too shabby value-wise! That makes the day that much better!
That said, I know that she doesn't like how much money I spend on the hobby... particularly when you have sets coming out every 3 months with other product coming out in-between (i.e. Duel Decks)... so it seems like I am constantly buying cards. But she's pretty cool about it. When Commander came out I told her that I could get a great deal on pre-ordering all 5, but in order to get free shipping I would have to spend another $70 on top of that, she went along with it... and that's how I got my unlimited Berserk!
I could see that if I let it completely take over, and started spending money that was earmarked for other things on it, then it would become a problem... but I'm past that point in my life, so I don't think it ever will.
I second www.deckbox.org. I really like the site. I'm not to sure on it's reliability as far as my library goes, as it seems to occasionally misrepresent if I own a particular card or not. I don't really keep up with it any more, except when I'm actively building a deck and I know I own a certain card, then I'll add it to my library. It can be a great help in putting together lists of cards that you need. For example, I collect dragons, so I maintain a "dragon" decklist that contains all of the dragons that I still need. As I obtain those cards I remove them from the deck. It also has a very nice advanced search engine that I personally find much easier to use than the Gatherer.
Another game, this time I'm playing my Cromat/Planeswalker deck against the same Progenitus deck as above, and a Sol'kanar the Swamp King control deck. I hit big money and drop both Doubling Season and Rings of Brighthearth. I was going to cast Ajani Vengeant but draw Sorin Markov So I cast him then use his ultimate and copy it to control both of my opponent's next turns. At the end of my turn I cast the Ajani and use it to keep something tapped... just to get that last loyalty to be able to ultimate next turn. My biggest problem is that Progenitus had recently used Riku of Two Reflections to copy his Magmatic Force and my board is taking the biggest hit from it. I didn't get to do much with the Swamp King's turn except waste a spell, but on Progenitus' turn I used the Magmatic Force to kill of one of them, so now I'm only taking 3 points per upkeep from the remaining one. I then get back to my turn and Progenitus uses his Magmatic Force to ping me for 3 when he should have hit Ajani... but he didn't so I ultimate Ajani and copy it to both opponents. It takes a few more turns but at this point I get Mana Reflection on the board, drop a Karn Liberated, take out a couple of items for a couple of turns, then drop a couple of Titans and Cromat. Both opponents had started to make a come-back, but it was just too much for them to handle and I won again! Had the Progenitus player hit Ajani with the Magmatic Force rather than me, it would have been a completely different game.
That deck didn't work great, so I re-vamped it and took out several PWs. I think I'm sitting at 18 out of the currently available 24. I also amped up the support creatures... and the deck is really nice now.
Typically I'll use PWs if they can be useful in the deck. Obviously, every red PW is going into a mono-red deck. There's just no reason not to... but I have an Animar deck that I'm pretty sure only has the 2 Garruks in it, though I could put in a Chandra or two, Jace, etc...
No in the case I'm talking about you just keep the opened games in the store and check them out to customers, etc... I've seen some stores that rent games out for $10 for 3 nights or something like that as well.
As for the FTV stuff you are talking about, the difference comes in the kind of store. I know a local comic shop that sells MTG but only packs, etc... They don't deal in singles. He has told me that when they get stuff like FTV they sell it at retail. When the last one came out as far as I know they never got it, and I called every day for a week. In the end, once they get the product, the shop has paid for it, and as such they can do whatever they like with it. It would seem silly to me to sell an FTV set at retail when the online stores have it hiked up in price. Things that you could do as a retailer to help... sell it at retail, but hold a drawing for the people that actually get to buy it, and limit each one to a single copy. This is probably the way I would sell them if I had a store. You could even tie it into a tournament, either offering the top 8 the option to buy the set at retail or offer the set as a prize, etc...
As a store owner, I wouldn't give a crap about Joe Shark, and I would take the steps above to either distribute at retail randomly or as prize support. I would probably also horde a few copies to put out at a later time at an increased price.