MTG Salvation

Quote from SirPicaro »

Quote from spairy »

Also I like playing U/R tempo decks, and this combos quite nicely with Pester/Exarch.

How? Am I missing something here? It still can't attack if it's untapped if it attacked your opponent last turn.

It can attack, and could attack Planeswalkers if you so desired. This is a trigger that goes on the stack during the begin combat phase. You let the trigger resolve, it taps, you flash in Exarch/Pestermite untap it and attack where you want.

Quote from wtwlf123 »

Quote from Mergatroid_Jones »

To be fair, I think Progenitus is an awful card for cube: it's nigh impossible to hard-cast, it's narrow to cheat, and if it ever hits the battlefield, it's completely non-interactive. The strongest cubes have better options, and weaker cubes don't like untargetable, unblockable creatures.

Yup. And it's still the best 5-color option. Which is kinda our point.

Scuttlemutt isn't really a 5-color card. If you're classifying things that way, just put something like Coalition Relic in that slot. Or a card that actually cares about colors, like Engineered Explosives or even Crystalline Crawler...

Progenitus isn't really a 5 color card either, though. It's a green or blue card.

Holdout Settlement was actually quite good in that limited format, not that that matters for Cube. This card isn't bad per se, since it's pretty much impossible for a land that taps for mana and has additional abilities to be bad, but it's obviously well below replacement level in terms of options for cube.

This is much better than Undying Evil. There are two times you want to use Undying Evil. To reset an ETB creature like mulldrifter, or to save an important creature from removal. Your important creatures probably don't need a +1/+1 counter, while allowing your mulldrifter or snapcaster mage actually trade with something relevant is a big deal. Plus, the power boost will randomly allow you to pick off a planeswalker or just kill your opponent. As always, optionality is a huge deal, and this has it.

That being said, the overall power level probably isn't there to make it the best option for most cubes.

Quote from steve_man »

Quote from spairy »

Why does WOTC suck so bad at making God cards? They've made 20 of these mythic rares now and based entire blocks around them, which have been been barely playable in standard, with almost none of them breaking into cube either.

Designing a god is challenging since they're indestructible stat monsters (for their cost at least). They'd be able to push them more if they were printed in non-standard legal sets. For now, at least the gods will always have a home in EDH. My only wish for the gods was to have more pushed non-red 4-cmc gods, haha.

I get that it's challenging, but they just keep swinging and missing. Seems like they would have been better off designing these for EDH special products and pushing the power level a bit, rather than throwing in watered down versions that flame out in constructed and cube.

Quote from Goodking »

Quote from Salmo »

Quote from Goodking »

The Kiki combo was mentioned seven posts after OP where the card was spoiled, I am bemused that no-one spotted that.

It's a weird interaction, and it was the 4th post after by Steve Ice within less than an hour of the posting, so not really that crazy.

What I mean is that I was surprised that us cube forum goers were not (as a whole) aware of it since it was highlighted nearly immediately in the Rumor Mill. I didn't think of it until reading that, but I don't run Kiki so it kind of passed me by.

I try not to poison my brain with the card evaluations of people in the rumor mill.

Quote from steve_man »

Quote from spairy »

Quote from wtwlf123 »

However, embalm is an ability, unlike flashback. It cannot be countered when you play it from your graveyard. And FWIW, I think there are more cards in the cube that interact with the creature card type than sorcery card type.

True, but there are other downsides. If the creature is exiled, or shuffled into the library, you can't get the back half. And one of the biggest upsides of both Call of the Herd and Lingering Souls (the two cubable flashback token creators) was the fact that you could put multiple cards worth of creatures on the battle field at the same time and really pressure your opponent. Embalm creatures can't do that.

If my opponent wants to blow their Plow / O-Ring effects on my Duelist, be my guest.

Well, Duelist isn't cube playable, so arguing that he's so bad that you'd be happy your opponent removed it isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. The fact that exile effects blank the ability to get the back half of these cards is a serious strike against it when comparing it to flashback cards.

Keep in mind that this is nowhere near as good as call of the herd or any other creature with flashback, because you can cast the back half of those cards at any time. This has to die to have access to the embalmed creature, which makes it a lot closer to creatures with death triggers. The ability to get value of discard and mill is a nice upside, but I don't think flashback is the right comp with embalm.

This also lets you go infinite with Finks/Redcap and a sac outlet like Gargadon or Bombardment.

Worth Wollpert was a disaster. The guy was just incompetent, yet ran MTGO for a decade. That's insane, and cost Hasbro shareholders an outrageous amount of money. MTG is such a strong game they may be able to overcome this, but they blew a ton of value by not acting sooner.

Hey man he's only heralding the Anguish, handing out Anguish is undoubtedly work he delegates to his subordinates.

I think we need to do a Kickstarter to help Wizards secure the use of a PR firm. If they have one right now, they must be getting skewered

Being offensive is the new form of implicit censorship. Since it's illegal and unconstitutional to pass laws of explicit censorship, the cultural marxists, authoritarians, and self-righteous busybodies like to force and impose self-censorship onto others, thereby bypassing any hurdles and headaches of legal and government systems. Such tactics also pervades into private and personal communications and expressions, and allows them to control speech, writing, conversations, and arts under the guise of sin, trauma, incompassion, and immorality, and now offensiveness.

BTW Wizards should stop making Magic altogether, since 99% of the cards they make are offensive in some way. Fire and Lightning cards? Traumatic to those who have been in fires and hit by lightning. Horror and zombies? Traumatic to those who are afraid of the dark. Island? Traumatic to those who been stranded on a deserted island. Cards about violence and war? Traumatic to war veterans and victims of violence.

RGD is where it's really at in my opinion. I just start every draft assuming I'll be at least 4 colors, and it works great. The best fixers are also card advantage, so you feel fine first picking them, and the other fixers present in huge density provide ramp. All 3 packs have such efficient removal and so much card advantage that playables aren't a problem, and there isn't really an aggro deck that can punish you (except for RG 1 drop blitz, which is usually the best deck in the pod if the other 7 people are all following convention wisdom).

I wish all formats were 18-land formats. 18 land formats play so much better than 17 land formats, since fewer games are decided by mana screw and there are more ways to take advantage of mana flood. So it's a safe bet that I'll be trying out the format with 18 lands first, even if I have to eventually give in and start playing 17.

I'd say the existence of Clues is a pretty good indication that it is, but the commons with the mechanic so far are really low-impact. I'm not at all sure there's going to be a ton of Clues available on staple commons.

If art is too digital, people complain.
If art is too traditional, people complain.

Why not leave the portrait frame blank so people can draw their own damn art and complain about that. Be sure to include sticker sheets in boosters for the creatively challenged.

Link.

Synopsis: they'll run flashback drafts on Modo featuring all the draft formats from 8th Edition and on (including non-full block formats such as triple big set or big set-big set-small set), one week each, in chronological order. They will be single elimination queues, non-phantom, and entry fee is either 100 play points, 10 tickets, or packs + 2 tickets. Payout is 200 play points for 1st, 100 for 2nd, and 50 for 3rd and 4th.

I for one could not be more excited about this. I always love flashback drafts; we also get to experience our favorite modern-day draft formats, and it means that drafting on Magic Online won't get boring, as there will almost always be some old format around to explore or re-explore. I'll be playing a lot of these (though perhaps not the Coldsnap one...), and I hope these will be popular enough to make them keep doing this. I mean, they aren't phantom either, so they should also contribute to making Modern staples more accessible.

And remember that for these flashback drafts, if you want to try your hand at a new format, you could always post a thread soliciting advice from your fellow forumites who played that format back then!

For what it's worth, I think all the Awaken spells are fantastic, from Ruinous Path to Planar Outburst to this bad boy. They're winning me over in initial testing; this one is great as a Mystic Snake that doesn't have to be clunky if you don't need it to be.

Quote from TappingStones »

I don't think the people claiming Tragic Arrogance is better in a "limited" environment have ever played with Balance. Balance is a high pick even in powered Cube "limited" draft. Balance is a 2 mana wrath or 2 mana Mind Twist, etc. Sure you need to build around it but that's part of it's power.

This is not a close argument Balance is like a 9.5 out of 10 as far as powerful magic cards go. Tragic Arrogance is like 6ish.

IMO

I can assure you that isn't the case. I've been playing for 20 years, I played with it a lot back then and have played with it in Cube since.

What you don't seem to understand is that it is MUCH better in a powered Cube than it is in an environment like Origins limited. That's because a powered cube is full of low cost artifacts (and fast mana) that allow you to break this. You also have access to more and more powerful other ways to abuse it like enchantments and PW's.

Without that the 2-mana Wrath/Geddon/Twist bit is BALANCED by the fact that what you will gain in one area you will lose in another.

Quote from Looooooooo »

They don't want you to make money and they want to make more money. Nothing unusual here from a big company like Hasbro.
I quit the dream of making money with MODO months ago so not a big deal for me.
They want you, and i will, just play MTGO for the sake of playing a la Hearthstone so my concern are just on the server functionality and coolness. In this regard having a 2-mans queue that set in stone a 60% win rate in order to go infinite isn't that bad.

- L

Each actually infinite, profitable player is worth a lot to WotC. It's basic economics for raked games (which is what MTGO basically is, but with a higher rake than poker can get away with)

I was a profitable (very low limit) player on a reasonably well known poker site a while ago - I bought in with USD 50 and pulled out USD 220 some time later.

The house rake in hands I won, plus the tournament 'service fees' (the house cut) I paid in tournaments I entered, exceeded USD 500. I made USD 170 and the house made USD 500 out of me (minus the 50 they paid me as a signup bonus). And I referred them an RL friend.

Contrast this to Joe Scrub, who buys in with USD 50 and loses it quickly and never rebuys - the house only makes USD 5-10 or so out of them.

That's why I don't think these changes are in the long-term interests even of WotC. WotC's tournaments - whether the Pro Tour IRL, or the MTGO ones - sell the almost totally unattainable (but not totally unattainable) dream of making money out of a hobby. These changes sabotage that vision and make it further away.