There's one in Camarillo as well apparently. I've been making a list of LGS's in SoCal that do Eternal Formats regularly and they both popped up on the search.
So far what I like about Modern is that it's an eternal format like,Legacy (My favorite format) and its a different and less expensive meta. Often in Legacy what and how many decks you can make are dictated by what staples you have or can easily/afford to acquire to build another deck, the staples of modern are much easier to get a hold of and more reasonably priced than Legacy.
It does feel slower though, and not as friendly to control or pure burn. But that can give one the freedom to be more flexible in their deck building.
Welcome, I'm new here as well myself, hailing from Santa Monica. Been playing on and off since way back too and big into Legacy and starting to get into Modern. I often day day trips to Santa Barbara on the train during the weekend, lovely city. Are there good places to play MTG up there? If so I may have to stop in some time...
I for one prefer to trade down from single high value cards to mid value cards (it's an easy way to trade for a full play set of cards). Most people that I trade with though I find are not willing to do this, they feel that they are being ripped off somehow when they trade a bunch of $5-$10 cards for one or two $50 cards. They always ask for me to throw in some other cards tipping the financial scales in their favor, I'm usually fine with throwing in some sub 50 cent commons/uncommons they need but not much else.
This is mostly the case with newer players though, and by newer I mean been playing for 5 years or less. With older players who have higher value cards or just been trading longer it's not an issue.
...
I would add though that as an Eternal format player, I don't normally value cards that are hot in standard at equal value when compared to Legacy staples. As the standard cards will often drop greatly in value when they rotate while the Legacy cards will not. But I generally trade for Legacy, Vintage and now Modern stuff anyway.
All right, this is a weird one and I don't know of an answer off hand nor was I able to find one while searching.
A while back I was playing against someone who was playing an equipment deck. He liked to place his equipment and enchantments behind his lands, and his creatures in front of his lands. I've run across this once before, years ago, but couldn't remember if I ever found out the ruling if any on it. Anyway, so his side of the battlefield looked like this...
Now of course when he attached an equipment to his creature he put it under the creature it was attached to. The problem was he held his hand over his equipment and enchantment cards in that back row. This made it hard to see what card he had on that back row (Not such a big deal for land, but important for equipment and enchantments). I asked him repeatedly to play with those cards forward so I could easily see what they are, and he obliged at first but he kept reverting back.
Ultimately I won the match against him but there were a few times where I lost track of what he was playing or couldn't clearly see it enough to make exactly what card it was (Again because he held his hands right over his back row of cards). Like I thought it was one card, but it was in fact another. I don't think he was playing this way to gain advantage, I just think it's the way he played...
Still I have to wonder, is there a rule on how you place your cards onto the battlefield? I'm so used to having lands in the back and then everything else in front of them. Is that just the common habits of people or are you in fact supposed to play this way?
It was a sanctioned event if that matters, so it was under tournament rules not a casual game.
Thanks, that's a nice primer. I've made a few changes since your last post based on your recommendation and searching the card database. That primer gave me some good ideas too on how to improve the deck further. I ended putting in Curse of Exhaustion in the deck instead of Rule of law, a new DKA card that does the same thing as Rule of Law but for 1 more mana. If it ends up being too slow I can switch it out, but I like the versatility of still being able to play multiple spells myself.
I also took out the Serra Avenger as while it's a nice beater it sucks to get it too early and Wall of Omens (From the primer) gives nice card advantage. It does mean I am down three flyers, but I put in a third Wrath of God and I still have three Path to Exiles.
I also dropped in another new DKA card, Saving Grasp as it works well with my Wrath + Lightning Angel combo (Expensive but nice if I can pull it off mid to late game) plus it combos nice with Fiend Hunter (See this article on Channel Fireball).
I had already put Ghostly Prison into the sideboard which is also recommended by the primer, very nice card that and it only effects my opponents. Which is what I am trying to do, not slow down myself and my opponent, just my opponent as much as I can without hurting myself too much. Finally I dropped Martyr of Sands into the side board though I prefer Surgical Extraction (We'll see how it plays), and messed with the mana base a bit.
That's it for the major changes, everything else is just a +1 or a -1 on a card here and there. I'll play with it a bit more on Cockatrice to see how it handles and if the mana base is stable.
It would be tempting to work Duress into the deck somehow, it has enough multicolor land that it could pay the hard black. Maybe drop the Spellskites to main deck it. Or just go down one Saving Grasp, one Grand Abolisher and one Wrath of God.
Tan Thor Jen, author of Decked builder for iOS and MacOSX has blogged that he has been threatened with legal action by WOTC. So he is disabling deck creation with his next update.
I don't know how many of you use this software, but on iPad, it is the most glorious, usable, and wonderful deck building software I've ever seen.
Kiss it goodbye, a casualty of WOTC's new MTG tools app. If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em.
Yah he said he's going to release a DKA update, then the one to follow that will disable deck building functionality. So it looks like DKA will be the last update I get for this app, it's just too awesome and makes it so easy to research cards and build decks. Deck building and collection tracking is at the core of what the app does, it's not just a big oracle reference.
From my own experience (And sure there can be some exceptions). A good way to build competitive decks at a lower cost is to build block constructed. Using, of course a block that has rotated out. True it's not going to be a standard, extended, modern or legacy deck per se, but if you play against other block decks it can be quite good without being too costly.
These sorts of people I tend to look through their binder once, see if I can trade anything, then never look through their cards again. I got nothing against collecting, I collect myself but leave those cards at home or in a different binder please. If it's just a handful of cards you haven't taken out yet or are on the fence about using then fine. It's even cool to have a second binder of cards that you want to keep but might trade for the right deal (Obviously these being cards that are harder to trade for) so long as you make that fact clear, but sometimes it gets rediculous.
We had one guy last week who had 6, yes 6 large binders of 90% singles, and he was only willing to trade a card if thus had at least two copies, so he could keep one of course. I did get something good off him but I mean come on, your just wasting my time and yours at that point.
I know some people use it as a strat to get people to trade for less whe they are disappointed but I am just not gonna do that. If I need the card or it interests me because I think it's neat or I can re-trade it then we'll talk. But I'm not gonna settle for your ****ty rares because you tried to razzle dazzle with high value cards you won't trade.
Oh neat, I was wondering if there were enough Gargoyles to make a deck out of. When I saw Warden of the Wall in DKA I thought it might be possible to create a fun casual deck around it.
I've been tempted to put my Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead combo into my EDH deck (I have a Vintage deck based around it atm). But my play group is still mostly casual and I'm not looking to be hated that badly. Also works well with Wrath of God or Apocalypse if you have the mana for it, or just use Insurrection by itself.
There are probably other infinite combos you can use, Sliver Queen and Mana Echoes is another. But I'm sure others will have suggestions as well. Affinity anything would be big as well, you have access to Vintage stuff and Urza's saga both with a ban list less stringent than Legacy...
There's one in Camarillo as well apparently. I've been making a list of LGS's in SoCal that do Eternal Formats regularly and they both popped up on the search.
Cool, I'll look for it when I'm next in town.
It does feel slower though, and not as friendly to control or pure burn. But that can give one the freedom to be more flexible in their deck building.
This is mostly the case with newer players though, and by newer I mean been playing for 5 years or less. With older players who have higher value cards or just been trading longer it's not an issue.
...
I would add though that as an Eternal format player, I don't normally value cards that are hot in standard at equal value when compared to Legacy staples. As the standard cards will often drop greatly in value when they rotate while the Legacy cards will not. But I generally trade for Legacy, Vintage and now Modern stuff anyway.
A while back I was playing against someone who was playing an equipment deck. He liked to place his equipment and enchantments behind his lands, and his creatures in front of his lands. I've run across this once before, years ago, but couldn't remember if I ever found out the ruling if any on it. Anyway, so his side of the battlefield looked like this...
<Creature>
<Land> <Land> <Land>
<Equipment> <Enchantment>
Now of course when he attached an equipment to his creature he put it under the creature it was attached to. The problem was he held his hand over his equipment and enchantment cards in that back row. This made it hard to see what card he had on that back row (Not such a big deal for land, but important for equipment and enchantments). I asked him repeatedly to play with those cards forward so I could easily see what they are, and he obliged at first but he kept reverting back.
Ultimately I won the match against him but there were a few times where I lost track of what he was playing or couldn't clearly see it enough to make exactly what card it was (Again because he held his hands right over his back row of cards). Like I thought it was one card, but it was in fact another. I don't think he was playing this way to gain advantage, I just think it's the way he played...
Still I have to wonder, is there a rule on how you place your cards onto the battlefield? I'm so used to having lands in the back and then everything else in front of them. Is that just the common habits of people or are you in fact supposed to play this way?
It was a sanctioned event if that matters, so it was under tournament rules not a casual game.
I also took out the Serra Avenger as while it's a nice beater it sucks to get it too early and Wall of Omens (From the primer) gives nice card advantage. It does mean I am down three flyers, but I put in a third Wrath of God and I still have three Path to Exiles.
I also dropped in another new DKA card, Saving Grasp as it works well with my Wrath + Lightning Angel combo (Expensive but nice if I can pull it off mid to late game) plus it combos nice with Fiend Hunter (See this article on Channel Fireball).
I had already put Ghostly Prison into the sideboard which is also recommended by the primer, very nice card that and it only effects my opponents. Which is what I am trying to do, not slow down myself and my opponent, just my opponent as much as I can without hurting myself too much. Finally I dropped Martyr of Sands into the side board though I prefer Surgical Extraction (We'll see how it plays), and messed with the mana base a bit.
That's it for the major changes, everything else is just a +1 or a -1 on a card here and there. I'll play with it a bit more on Cockatrice to see how it handles and if the mana base is stable.
Here is the updated deck list...
Modern Denial Of Faith
Main Deck
22 Creatures
16 Spells
22 Lands
Sideboard
EDIT:
It would be tempting to work Duress into the deck somehow, it has enough multicolor land that it could pay the hard black. Maybe drop the Spellskites to main deck it. Or just go down one Saving Grasp, one Grand Abolisher and one Wrath of God.
Very interesting, I did not know about that card. Thank you.
Yah he said he's going to release a DKA update, then the one to follow that will disable deck building functionality. So it looks like DKA will be the last update I get for this app, it's just too awesome and makes it so easy to research cards and build decks. Deck building and collection tracking is at the core of what the app does, it's not just a big oracle reference.
So this will sadly kill the app.
We had one guy last week who had 6, yes 6 large binders of 90% singles, and he was only willing to trade a card if thus had at least two copies, so he could keep one of course. I did get something good off him but I mean come on, your just wasting my time and yours at that point.
I know some people use it as a strat to get people to trade for less whe they are disappointed but I am just not gonna do that. If I need the card or it interests me because I think it's neat or I can re-trade it then we'll talk. But I'm not gonna settle for your ****ty rares because you tried to razzle dazzle with high value cards you won't trade.
There are probably other infinite combos you can use, Sliver Queen and Mana Echoes is another. But I'm sure others will have suggestions as well. Affinity anything would be big as well, you have access to Vintage stuff and Urza's saga both with a ban list less stringent than Legacy...