MTG Salvation

Anyone else experiencing major slowdowns in receiving? I've received maybe 1 envelope in the past 2 months. I think future site may have done some major damage to the userbase.

Similar to when this site was bought out by curse. My sales thread used to do 2-3 sales a week, now I'm lucky if I do 1 a month. I still miss the old MTGS layout and function.

Just checking casually on tcgplayer, looks like IoK is back above 9.00 for all printings (low, nm, shipped). Guess that price dip from the reprint didn't last very long. (I saw them at $6 earlier in the week). I see them back above $10 soon, they really should have printed it as an uncommon instead of a rare.

Quote from Shale WarBringer »

Is it just me or the send package displays wrong figures as the total amount of point in a given package?

I see people wanting for 3000 worth of PP, then when I open the package, I realize they only have like 320 points worth of cards.

I'm having the exact same issue now. None of the packages at the top (I organize by pp) show up as the advertised pp amount when i click them, it's much less. They need to address this as it's making the package send (the only real benefit right now) worthless.

Quote from BauerBoss »

How does it help the player base to have the product for new players get snatched up by enfranchised players? The product you are looking for is Modern Masters. Commander decks are not the product for value reprints of highly sought after cards. If you believe otherwise, it is because that is what you want to believe, not because of anything that WotC has led you to believe.

You do realize they print commander products to demand right? Look what happened to TNN after they flooded the market with Mind Seize decks. $15 tcgplayer low, and you can get Mind Seize decks for MSRP for almost the last year. Supply > Demand = Price Drops

As for Modern Masters, not sure how $12 / pack for a chance at getting a modern staple is good for new players vs $35 for a modern staple plus extra stuff (if C15 had the fetches)

Karellos,

Right now in terms of raw value, the Modern Event deck is worth it. It clocks in at about $90 tcgplayer "low", and is the base for a strong BW tokens deck. You can find copies on ebay for around $55 shipped.

Or you can try Zephyr Scarlet's list as well, it's solid. Or just get the Event Deck, and make tweaks based on Zephyr's deck. Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions! Welcome to Modern!

***NEW DECK COMING BY THIS FRIDAY!***

Quote from Galspanic »

Local game shops will finally realize that jacking up the prices to anything over $40 will result is lost sales since Target/WalMart/etc still have these at MSRP months after the release and never actually ran out.

Quoted for the truth.

Also, all fifteen decks over three releases have been awesome (yes, even marath, I liked that deck) I was just playing the stock Derevi deck at work and had a lot of fun even against constructed decks.

Commander has always been a quality release, and I can't wait to see what 2015 has in store.

The best part about watching the twitch stream was all the Spinter Twin players getting into a panic when dan won because they don't want their deck to be banned.

That has to say something about the health of this format wotc has micro managed so heavily.

Can you blame them though? Twin just put away back to back major events.

Quote from Valanarch »

I don't see why he can't see that there is a problem with only one interactive deck existing in Modern, especially since that deck costs more than most players can afford.

It's because pro players don't pay for their cards. They get sponsored and just have channel fireball send them whatever deck they want.

If I could wear a shirt with a brand on it and get my deck for free I wouldn't care about pod or delver being banned out of the format. They ban my deck, I send it back and get another one.

I don't know why I even bothered getting into modern.

I did it to escape standard, and they keep banning cards that kill decks. so it's just like rotation. Back to the drawing board now I have to build a new modern deck.

Quote from clan_iraq »

Wizards need to drop the modern archetype entirely if this is their route. They force change-ups in the top deck by banning in the instrumental cards, cards that weren't inherently broken, for the sole purpose of introducing more variety. In standard you get that inherent to a rotating format with fresh card pools rolling in and out, but modern is just getting more and more clumped since extended was replaced. And to make it less stagnant, they're going to unpredictably ax the top decks? This isn't a healthy way to spice up the game. Their only other method of shaking up modern is to print new modern relevant cards, cards with legacy impact from new sets, like.... treasure cruise. Which they just banned. Even dig through time, which wasn't all that busted. So they give us nice new tools to change the meta, then snatch them right back, then try to micromanage the metagame with this hands on approach.

maybe now that they're changing up the standard format and block rotations, they should just think about overhauling how modern works

This is my thoughts exactly. They are micromanaging the format. At this rate, what deck is next?

Quote from jturphy »

Your entire theory is premised upon the fact that MM1 was a complete mess. Since that premise is false, your theory falls apart. Your original premise is only an opinion. MM1 was largely successful for the stated purposes, which was increasing the card pool and making Modern more accessible. Almost every card from MM1 is cheaper, and all but a couple were cheaper for the first month. Sorry you missed the boat on those cards, but that only means it sucks for you, it doesn't make MM1 a mess.

I stated an opinion just like everyone else is doing here including you. Even if you increase the card pool, increasing the price of key format staples does not make a format more accessible when price was a barrier to entry from the very beginning.

You come off very condescending by the way. Sucks for you that people actually want access to cards to they can play your precious game. See? I can make assumptions too. Read my sig, I'm a budget casual player, I was never trying to catch the boat in the first place.

Quote from Shale WarBringer »

Train is still running full speed for me. Waiting some 22k worth of cards.

Well, yeah, you're offering 20% bounty. The problem is the elimination of the nonpremium members because of bounties.

Well, a playset of Restoration Angels is a bit more than a playset of Fountains, and a bit less than a playset of Strands. With those choices, I'd sooner start pivoting into UW add angels to the mono-W list.

The play is correct as you have written it. The game doesn't advance to the declare blockers step until all players pass priority in a row on an empty stack (C.R. 500.2), in case that was the point of contention.

I am not a Magic judge (and there are probably many other non-judge users who can answer the same way), but this should be a correct response.

As you want a concrete answer I will use heavy references to the CR.

Firstly:

116.4. If all players pass in succession (that is, if all players pass without taking any actions in between passing), the spell or ability on top of the stack resolves or, if the stack is empty, the phase or step ends.

Only if all players pass in succession without taking any actions and the stack is empty will the phase or step end.
Next:

116.3. Which player has priority is determined by the following rules:

116.3a. The active player receives priority at the beginning of most steps and phases, after any turn-based actions (such as drawing a card during the draw step; see rule 703) have been dealt with and abilities that trigger at the beginning of that phase or step have been put on the stack. No player receives priority during the untap step. Players usually don't get priority during the cleanup step (see rule 514.3).
116.3b. The active player receives priority after a spell or ability (other than a mana ability) resolves.
116.3c. If a player has priority when he or she casts a spell, activates an ability, or takes a special action, that player receives priority afterward.

The active player gets priority first after any spell or ability resolves as long as it is not a mana ability.

With these two things in mind, the declare attackers phase begins and sun titan is declared. Its triggered ability is put onto the stack and priority is given to both players because an action has been taken, active first (113.6c).
If both players pass, the ability resolves and both players get priority, active first (116.3b). As the active player gets priority they may activate the ability of the spellbomb (116.1b).
The ability is put onto the stack and players receive priority, active first (116.3c).
If both players pass, the ability resolves bouncing the token, state based actions are checked before both players get priority, and the token is removed from the game, then players get priority, active first (116.3b)
Now if both players pass, no action has been taken and the stack is empty, so the conditions are met to move to the next step.
Move to declare blockers, the token has been removed and so is unable to block.

The latter. After a spell or ability that uses the stack resolves, the active player gets priority (C.R. 116.3b) and can use spells and abilities right then. If a cost of that spell or ability involves sacrificing a permanent or otherwise removing it from the battlefield (in this case, when Æther Spellbomb is sacrificed using its own ability), that permanent will leave the battlefield even before any other player gets priority. (Note that Æther Spellbomb has no triggered abilities.)

A couple things:

Please use proper card tags: [card]Sun Titan[/card] = Sun Titan.

Also, not being a judge does not preclude someone from answering your question correctly. That, and the fact that you can't really tell who is and isn't a judge, means you shouldn't ask for a certain level judge.

As to your question, you played it out as it should be played out and for the reasons you mentioned. Æther Spellbomb will enter the battlefield before blockers are declared and you can use its ability while still in the Declare Attackers step.

You got lucky as well. Turn 4 Ugin can be answered quite effectively by Sphere. Karn is much harder to deal with, as he can start ripping answers out of your hand, while gaining enough that counterattacks aren't enough.

I've gone up to 4 Negate in the main. If I have Negate in hand, I'll just play draw-go as long as possible without activating GQ. The longer this goes on, the closer you get to Titan mana, and if you need to activate GQ, you have more information about which part of the Tron triad is most vulnerable (ie: if they have 2 Towers, you're going to want to hit a PP or Mine).

This match gets easier game 2 & 3 if you pack Spreading Seas. There isn't really good countermagic for it, but 4 Seas + 4 GQ + 4 Negate is usually enough to carry you through until Titan starts. Just keep hammering the same 1-2 elements of the Tron triad as long as possible.

-----

I found another counterspell that can do what Negate does for us (thanks, Merfolk thread). Disdainful Stroke. Honestly, I can't think of many spells we really fear resolving which cost less than 4 mana. It answers Scapeshift, most problematic PWs (save LotV), CoCo... I think in the situations that I want 6 Negates, 2 of these will fit the bill nicely.

The following decklist represents my current perspective on the sort of switching strategy we have to play.



The main deck is much the same as ever. The key difference is the sideboard. In games 2 and 3, we can turn into a permission deck. Swan Song and Disdainful Stroke counter almost any threat we could reasonably care about. In these situations (pure combo, Tron), we basically just play draw-go (focusing on amassing blue mana, given the choice) until either they are forced to commit and we stop and kill them, or we can throw a Titan or something down and still have multiple counterspells ready. We can even throw down an early Flickerwisp or something and just leave it as pressure. Delver decks do that all the time and while Flickerwisp is no Delver, sometimes one 3-power flier is as good as any other.



* Edited several times to fix typos, double posts, reformulate into something sensible, and post a more current decklist as a reference point.

Quote from Tolsiimir »

Not that i expected much after MM2, but this is seriously dissapointing. First of all, this won't get new players into legacy. That's just a fact. Opening a random staple or two with 40 useless cards won't get anyone's legacy career started. And prices won't drop for most of the cards, considering the effects of MM2. Not to mention that the landbase is still ridiculously expensive and will never get reprinted.

So this set is not for people trying to get into legacy. But then for whom is it?

Is it for the draft enthusiasts? I doubt it. There has been a lot of rarity shifts upwards(''because of limited''), but what about down? Why isn't Fow an uncommon again? Counterspells are not that good in draft, especially ones that make you lose card advantage. Argothian enchantress and worldgorger dragon at mythic? Would they really break the format at rare? And of course, Shardless agent is a rare with BB elf in the same set at uncommon. Also why are these packs more expensive if they are just made for drafting? Innistrad was also made for drafting and is not that expensive. Let's not kid ourselves, Wotc clearly put secondary market prices before limited. So while people might certainly enjoy drafting this set, Wotc seems to have had a different group of people as their priority.

So the set was not made for people wanting to get into legacy, and the limited environment took a backseat to the secondary market. This set is just another lottery. Only people who are already deeply invested into the game will intentionally buy it, in hopes of opening that big lottery ticket, while at the same time covering up their gambling problem with ''if I don't get anything i will atleast get a fun draft'', even though there are better and cheaper ways of doing that. This is another rip-off and everyone who buys it will just enable further money-grabbing by Wotc.

This set was made to increase Hasbro's revenues by providing a lottery product with artificial scarcity for Magic players to consume. End of story.

Comment Hidden

Another voice for Puca - the cards I want are either unavailable locally OR I have nothing the owner of the desired cards wants, making them effectively unavailable. The time involved in face-to-face trading is also something I lack. Pucatrade makes it so it doesn't matter if both parties have cards of like value that the other wants, and can be taken care of in minutes.

Sometimes it takes time to get cards, be it due to demand or obscurity (few people list commons and low-point value uncommons, it seems), but I'm in no hurry; if I need a card today, I can always pay a premium in cash to a store to have it overnight shipped.

Pucatrade does seem to be skewed towards US-centric shipping, shipping that does add up. Still, it works for me.

Cheers!