They're two totally different things. Limited almost always refers to limited play, which means you're not building a deck from your collection. Instead everyone gets a pool of sealed packs and builds something from them to play with (see the next question). Unlimited is a magic set from very early in the game. It went Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised. Note that sometimes Alpha and Beta are referred to as Unlimited, but very very rarely.
- What is draft / sealed?
Sealed is where each player gets six sealed booster packs, opens them and then builds a deck from the contents. Draft is where players sit around a table. They each open one pack, take out one card, and then pass the remainder of that pack to their left, and keep taking cards and passing them until there are none left. They do this until there are no packs left.
- When you play a land card, are there cards your opponent can use to remove them?
Yes. Stone Rain, Strip Mine, Wasteland, and hundreds of others. They have been printing them less and less over the years because players typically don't like to play against resource-denial stratgies.
- Can you play more than one land card per turn?
There are cards that let you do that, but not typically.
- What does scry (spry? skry?) mean?
Scry [number] means look at the top [number] cards of your deck, and put any of them on the top or bottom of your deck in any order. Scry 1 means look at the top card of your deck, and put it back on the top or bottom, for example. It makes it easier to draw the cards you need, when you need them.
- What does splash mean?
It usually refers to splashing a color in your deck, which means playing a certain color just for a few cards. For example, if you're playing a deck that could really use some black "kill" spells, you might just play a few of them and a few swamps.
- What does shock mean?
It depends. Shock is a card that does two damage to a creature or player for one red mana. People refer to most effects that deal two damage as "shocks" because the card is so basic. "Shock-lands" for example, are the set of lands that often deal 2 damage to you when they come into play.
- I understand that you have to "tap" land cards in order to cast a spell, but say you cast a creature spell. Do you have to "re-tap" your land cards in order for that creature to attack?
No. Only when you cast the creature.
- I'm having trouble building a deck. Is it a good idea to run one color only, or is it better to have 2 or more colors in a deck?
It depends. A lot of good decks using the latest few sets are single-color. If you have a lot of lands that produce more than one color of mana, building multicolored decks is easier.
- I was under the impression that a deck consisted of 60 cards. Watching pack openings online, I keep hearing of 40 card decks. Which is the actual minimum deck size?
For limited (draft and sealed) you can have 40 card decks. For constructed, where you bring your own deck, the minimum is 60. For EDH/Commander it's 99+1 special card.
- I have come to learn that the odd looking cards, named "soldier," "spirit," etc.. are tokens. I understand that some cards "spawn" tokens on the battle field. How are they useful when they do not have an attack or defense? Do you have to have a token card in order to have a token? Or can you use a placeholder? Are tokens part of your deck size or part of a side deck?
You can just use a placeholder, dice, pieces of paper, etc. It's just easier to visualize that a card made a soldier token when you actually have a designated piece of paper that represents a soldier. They are not required and do not count towards the number of cards in your deck.
- What are the cards, that are printed in "landscape" with two pictures of cards on them? for instance, I have one that reads "protect" and then the other card next to is reads "serve." What are these and how are they used?
These are split cards. You can play it as either half. If it says "fuse" across the bottom of the card, you have the option to play both halves by paying the total cost of the two parts.
If there was a point where the card should have been illegal, it would have been 2-3 years ago when it was in standard. It was good then, but not broken (colorless land taking up a land slot, is awful against any aggro deck, you also lose the land) so my answer is no. It should not be banned, not even close. On the list of cards that I could see being banned in modern, this isn't even in the top 100.
Dozens of times in my magic playing my opponent and I have had different life totals down. You can almost always say something like "I have your life total going 19, 17, 14, 16, 15, 10, 12, 6" because you wrote it down and can figure out where the error was.
It's a cool idea, and one of the better life counters that's not pen and paper, but pen and paper is still the best. I play many competitive events a month and probably spend a total of $3 a year on small notebooks, so this would have to last me years before it made up for the cost.
It's also just less convenient if i ever have to write down notes - in that case, i need an entire separate device to do so, whereas with pen and paper, it's all in front of me.
Playing at competitive/professional REL the majority of the time I'm in the habit of always shuffling my opponent's decks.
I occasionally split my opponent's sleeves, usually because people complain about riffling, so the only real way to do it is mash-shuffling, which tends to break edges with cheaper sleeves like ultra pros or pretty much any sleeve with a picture-back.
I VERY rarely split my own sleeves, so obviously my technique works, but I've split several sleeves with a single mash before just because they were poorly produced. Sometimes you even get bad batches of dragon shields that are very prone to splitting.
We knew what devotion was before the card got that absurd - we could have done it, too.
I picked up about 40 specters for a quarter each the day devotion was spoiled. It was good at the last PT, and it was good with the new mechanic, so it was an obvious pickup. That purchase is funding every PTQ I plan to attend this season.
Maro spent an hour talking about this in his podcast. People don't want a game where you win or lose based on skill alone. The skill barrier to start playing is too high, people actually get more frustrated because they don't win a game for the first few weeks, etc.
He also accurately pointed out that people love having an excuse for why they lose, so that they can pretend all their wins are from skill and their losses from luck.
The game would be much more boring. I would never play at my local store because I'd never lose and I'd never play at a GP because I'd never win. Shrug.
I live in Iowa and travel within about six hours for PTQ. Ours are typically $25-$30 for constructed, and $30-$40 for limited.
They usually pay out at least a box for top8 (Green Bay pays out multiple boxes as you move up in the top8) and then additional packs for x-2 or top16, sometimes as much as half a box. A few places even pay out for top32.
Before anyone comments on Iowa events being tiny, our PTQs probably average about 150 people, but the most recent one in Iowa was exactly 228. They're usually a little bigger as we go east (towards chicago) and a little smaller to the west (towards nebraska).
That's because it's not listed. If it was on the page I would be.
Anyway, it seems like that was the problem. Issue solved. I posted a comment on that page and got no response, and after a few hours i posted here. I'm not calling them out for anything here, i just wanted an explanation.
I'm not saying its no longer good. It's just no longer 20+ dollars good in Modern, at least.
Legacy, on the other hand... it shows up from time to time I believe?
Grove is a four-of in both kiki pod and tron. Kiki pod has been an outlier deck for a while, but tron has always been a big player.
Canopy and Grove are worth more than the others because they do things better than anything else.
Canopy draws a card when you have too many land. It's better than savannah in a few cases, especially when you don't care about your life so much but can't risk flooding out.
Grove is occasionally better than stomping grounds in modern - when you really really care about your own life total, but your opponent's not so much.
The others are usually just worse than the other dual options.
They're two totally different things. Limited almost always refers to limited play, which means you're not building a deck from your collection. Instead everyone gets a pool of sealed packs and builds something from them to play with (see the next question). Unlimited is a magic set from very early in the game. It went Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised. Note that sometimes Alpha and Beta are referred to as Unlimited, but very very rarely.
- What is draft / sealed?
Sealed is where each player gets six sealed booster packs, opens them and then builds a deck from the contents. Draft is where players sit around a table. They each open one pack, take out one card, and then pass the remainder of that pack to their left, and keep taking cards and passing them until there are none left. They do this until there are no packs left.
- When you play a land card, are there cards your opponent can use to remove them?
Yes. Stone Rain, Strip Mine, Wasteland, and hundreds of others. They have been printing them less and less over the years because players typically don't like to play against resource-denial stratgies.
- Can you play more than one land card per turn?
There are cards that let you do that, but not typically.
- What does scry (spry? skry?) mean?
Scry [number] means look at the top [number] cards of your deck, and put any of them on the top or bottom of your deck in any order. Scry 1 means look at the top card of your deck, and put it back on the top or bottom, for example. It makes it easier to draw the cards you need, when you need them.
- What does splash mean?
It usually refers to splashing a color in your deck, which means playing a certain color just for a few cards. For example, if you're playing a deck that could really use some black "kill" spells, you might just play a few of them and a few swamps.
- What does shock mean?
It depends. Shock is a card that does two damage to a creature or player for one red mana. People refer to most effects that deal two damage as "shocks" because the card is so basic. "Shock-lands" for example, are the set of lands that often deal 2 damage to you when they come into play.
- I understand that you have to "tap" land cards in order to cast a spell, but say you cast a creature spell. Do you have to "re-tap" your land cards in order for that creature to attack?
No. Only when you cast the creature.
- I'm having trouble building a deck. Is it a good idea to run one color only, or is it better to have 2 or more colors in a deck?
It depends. A lot of good decks using the latest few sets are single-color. If you have a lot of lands that produce more than one color of mana, building multicolored decks is easier.
- I was under the impression that a deck consisted of 60 cards. Watching pack openings online, I keep hearing of 40 card decks. Which is the actual minimum deck size?
For limited (draft and sealed) you can have 40 card decks. For constructed, where you bring your own deck, the minimum is 60. For EDH/Commander it's 99+1 special card.
- I have come to learn that the odd looking cards, named "soldier," "spirit," etc.. are tokens. I understand that some cards "spawn" tokens on the battle field. How are they useful when they do not have an attack or defense? Do you have to have a token card in order to have a token? Or can you use a placeholder? Are tokens part of your deck size or part of a side deck?
You can just use a placeholder, dice, pieces of paper, etc. It's just easier to visualize that a card made a soldier token when you actually have a designated piece of paper that represents a soldier. They are not required and do not count towards the number of cards in your deck.
- What are the cards, that are printed in "landscape" with two pictures of cards on them? for instance, I have one that reads "protect" and then the other card next to is reads "serve." What are these and how are they used?
These are split cards. You can play it as either half. If it says "fuse" across the bottom of the card, you have the option to play both halves by paying the total cost of the two parts.
http://www.mtgotraders.com/
It's a cool idea, and one of the better life counters that's not pen and paper, but pen and paper is still the best. I play many competitive events a month and probably spend a total of $3 a year on small notebooks, so this would have to last me years before it made up for the cost.
It's also just less convenient if i ever have to write down notes - in that case, i need an entire separate device to do so, whereas with pen and paper, it's all in front of me.
I occasionally split my opponent's sleeves, usually because people complain about riffling, so the only real way to do it is mash-shuffling, which tends to break edges with cheaper sleeves like ultra pros or pretty much any sleeve with a picture-back.
I VERY rarely split my own sleeves, so obviously my technique works, but I've split several sleeves with a single mash before just because they were poorly produced. Sometimes you even get bad batches of dragon shields that are very prone to splitting.
Sounds like an isolated incident to me.
I picked up about 40 specters for a quarter each the day devotion was spoiled. It was good at the last PT, and it was good with the new mechanic, so it was an obvious pickup. That purchase is funding every PTQ I plan to attend this season.
He also accurately pointed out that people love having an excuse for why they lose, so that they can pretend all their wins are from skill and their losses from luck.
The game would be much more boring. I would never play at my local store because I'd never lose and I'd never play at a GP because I'd never win. Shrug.
They usually pay out at least a box for top8 (Green Bay pays out multiple boxes as you move up in the top8) and then additional packs for x-2 or top16, sometimes as much as half a box. A few places even pay out for top32.
Before anyone comments on Iowa events being tiny, our PTQs probably average about 150 people, but the most recent one in Iowa was exactly 228. They're usually a little bigger as we go east (towards chicago) and a little smaller to the west (towards nebraska).
That's because it's not listed. If it was on the page I would be.
Anyway, it seems like that was the problem. Issue solved. I posted a comment on that page and got no response, and after a few hours i posted here. I'm not calling them out for anything here, i just wanted an explanation.
Grove is a four-of in both kiki pod and tron. Kiki pod has been an outlier deck for a while, but tron has always been a big player.
Canopy draws a card when you have too many land. It's better than savannah in a few cases, especially when you don't care about your life so much but can't risk flooding out.
Grove is occasionally better than stomping grounds in modern - when you really really care about your own life total, but your opponent's not so much.
The others are usually just worse than the other dual options.
This makes the most sense by far. It would be sweet to get a confirmation though. Pretty awkward to forget something like that.
There's no ambiguity about what 50k means. They call it the "TCGplayer.com $50,000 Championship" all over the place.