MTG Salvation

The dream lives on! Shivan Hellkite, and Glacial Chasm out for Fork, and Reverberate!

Quote from whocansay »

Quote from Kaiyla Han »

Here's how I see it...

Standard, a playground full of kids.

Modern, it's sort of like boxing.

Legacy, is far more stable. I'll say fencing.

Vintage.... You have two master duelists with live steel.

'How you see it' huh.

Modern:

I agree with Zygous the slow wheels are really bad, there aren't many other options but I'd avoid playing them if I could, I ran Magus for a while, but I also had plenty of haste enablers as well, so he just became a bad reforge soul.

I ran Blinkmoth Urn in my Karn deck, even in such a broken set up it was usually bad, the reason is artifacts are so prevalent in edh that you're most likely going to give some one a boost from your investment, worse yet they get that benefit before you do. There aren't many ways to tap down the Urn other wise it would be half way decent.

Thats SCG, you can still get them for around 15 on TCG, so you still have some time. I don't think they'll drop anytime soon.

Before Kahns Polluted Delta was $130, and ended up sub ten for a bit, if Zen fetches were printed in another standard set they'll be around ten per good one. And their prices will only go crazy if there were some mechanic making sets of fetches mandatory in standard.

LEH: There was an article on here about reprint equity, it was a really good article, and is exactly what you're talking about, I don't believe fetches will be printed in a supplemental set. What I think will happen is right now we are in the midst of power creep in standard, so Wizards will have to cut the power back in the next set or two, and after the lull and sales are down they will release Fetches to entice players to come back to standard.

The more I play with it the more I believe that SDT belongs in the deck, how many is the question.

Fire craft is nice, but I usually bring it in against miracles, control heavy decks, not delver, where I would bring in blast against delver.

Depending on how you like to play, I would actually play red elemental blast over pyro blast, because pyro blast can only target blue stuff it can't be messed with via misdirection tricks, but pyroblast can, but in a pinch you can play pyroblast from your hand to feed lavamancer, you only run one lavamancer so that doesn't seem necessary.

I try to keep my curve down, so I would cut a firecraft, and add another red blast, but this is getting into personal taste. What you have is fine.

You're running a strong mana base, I might cut back 1 fireblast as well since any more than one per game feels bad.
With out knowing what you're playing against its really hard for us to give input on sideboard, like I said your list looks good for a blind meta.

Seems like a solid list, three price is a strong number, if you want to run the fourth then cut a land, we can safely run 18. Your side board looks good for a blind meta.

What deck would you bring in grave hate for that would run stifle? As far as the discard I also see it in a different way, if you go up against reanimator, or other black based combo they run duress to save on the life loss, so they would hit crypt if they go first, before you get to play it. Therapy will hit both so in that case your point is legit.
a 2/2 split is good.

I'd cut 1 fircraft for 1 more smash. There are alot of relevant artifacts that you need to deal with, tromod's crypt is also better as a broad grave hate then Leyeline, since any Leyline's that aren't in your opening hand becomes dead cards. If you decide to go with crypt instead of Leylines, you can also cut one out for another red blast which is very relevant against delver/blue decks. These recommendations are for unknown metas, so take it with a grain of salt.

Good luck and welcome to Legacy!

Why would we want to play Cannons ovsr Chandra? She deals damage when we hit lands and can add mana, and kill creatures no problem. The land side of this doesn't matter because we play Blood Moon, and while being more resilient once we flip this it never changes back; we lose the card advantage this brings. I honestly think Chandra is the better card, and we also can't play lands with it.

Dalton don't take it to heart. Let me tell you a true story.
Shortly after Goyf was printed I went to Dallas regionals. You know how many goyfs were at the tournament? 4. My 4. I placed 9th with a vexing sphinx goyf beat down deck. Only losing to dragonstorm in the 2nd round and round 5 ID with a friend I rode up there with. He placed 2nd to the same dragonstorm deck that beat him in round 4.
What's the point of this? Play the cards people haven't caught on to yet. Sometimes you are just ahead of the curve.

Funny that you bring up baseball cards. In the 80s and early 90s there was a craze of people buying baseball cards because there were some very old ones that are worth a lot of money. Surely a 1991 Upper Deck MLB 800 card set is worth a lot now, right? People surely bought them in 1991 like they would be, and even called them "investments" because those old baseball cards are worth a lot of money. It turns out that you can buy a factory sealed 1991 Upper Deck MLB 800 card set on Amazon for $16 with free shipping.

Your example really highlights the point I'm trying to make: reserved list cards (scarce cards that won't appear again) are worth a lot and some of them are truly investments. A card printed in a recent set is analogous to that mass produced 1991 Upper Deck sealed set.

but I know the argument, you despise me because you think I'm driving up the card prices, you are wrong and off the mark.

No. My personal perception of you as a person has nothing to do with it, nor do I think that speculators are evil, horrible people keeping the little guys from playing the game. I'm simply stating a fact that MTG cards are not investments and correctly stating that it is an unsound financial decision to regard them as investments. Proctor & Gamble stock is an investment. US Treasury Bonds are investments. Graded Power is an investment, though it lacks liquidity. Goblin Guides are not investments.

People said the same thing that you're saying about Goblin Guide about BFZ Fatpacks: "They'll just go up because of full-art lands!!! Original ZEN full-arts are like $5!!!" And then full-arts were announced in OGW and they're in fatpacks too. Now Amonkhet will have some full-arts, too. People banked on full-arts being an "investment" and they're not. People hoarded EMA "Look at the value! A lot of these won't be printed again!!!", and they "invested" in sealed boxes, and then WotC released more EMA last fall and SCG recently put sealed boxes on sale for ~$170 down from $200 if I'm remembering right. People who bought them for more than $200 and still have the sealed box thought they were "investing", and now they've lost at least 15% on it. There simply are no investment opportunities on cards that aren't on the Reserved List.

I'm just not going to put up with being accused of personally attacking you, or being motivated by some dislike for you, when that is not remotely the case. That's the last I'm going to say about it, because this is the Burn thread.

It depends on how you look at investment.

12 years ago I needed to buy a used car; so I sold my Ancestral Recall (beta), Time Walk (Unlimited) and Timetwister (beta)

I specifically said "especially not ones that can be reprinted at any time." and you bring up 3 Reserve List cards and then a 4th one later (Tabernacle), which are all cards that cannot be printed again (if you believe WotC will never abolish the RL).

I bought 4 goblin guides at 5 dollars each and if I decided to sell them I'm getting 20 to 30 dollars each (at one time almost 50 dollars)... That's an investment.

That's not an investment, it's a potential profit and it's solely based on hindsight and anyone who buys into such cards is speculating rather than investing. You haven't made an "investment" when you buy something that can have its value tanked at the will of WotC whenever they choose to print more of them. The best you can do is hope that you can cash in before that reprint happens and you generally don't have any warning of a reprint and could easily wait too long. An investment is something that one can reasonably expect to increase in value in a stable manner. With Magic cards, that leaves you with Power 9 since those are the only things that steadily increase in value annually. Even if you do choose to invest in P9, liquidity is low. There's not much of a reason to invest in a $5000 magic card when you could invest $5000 in blue chip stock.

Bringing up Guide is like saying "oh yeah, I invested in 100 Nightveil Specters the summer before Theros came out. HUGE return on investment!" No, that was speculation that led to a huge short term gain and it was something that really couldn't have been predicted.

Magic isn't an investment. It's just an expensive hobby that has speculation opportunities.

I rarely use TCG mid to judge a card's instantaneous price. It's excellent for tracking price trends over time (since so many sites aggregate the data for viewing and searching), but I find a much more immediate way is to just check eBay, Buy It Now, Lowest Price + Shipping. That usually tells us the true floor price of a card; especially when checking recently-completed pricing in addition to looking at all current listings. It's a lot more work because it needs to be done individually per card, but it really tells you what the card is actually selling for.

It was funny, because as soon as I heard about these spikes, the first thing I did was check eBay to see how many are listed and how much the cheapest ones are going for. When checking some of the spikes in the last few days, most of them were "oddly low price" on eBay, which caused me hesitation to buy into any of them. False spikes can be double checked using an alternate pricing source. Although, even if the spikes were artificial system errors, that spike may have caused people to want to buy, which compounds the fake spike with a small real spike. Markets be complex and stuff. The small spikes may maintain price memory, but the large ones should come back down unless still driven by huge demand.

Quote from gethinsite »

It's powerful, but not overly powerful.

This has been my impression, from the Derevi decks I have played so far. I agree that she is high tier, but I don't feel that she is broken.
If your deck is not tuned to play against competitive decks, or unable to compete with stax then you obviously aren't going to do very well.
But there are other things out there like Ad Nauseam and Druid, that you would probably hate too.

Quote from cyberium_neo »

Derevi is also capable of generating infinite mana with a sac outlet, by untapping mana sources that could then recast her.

Yes, but then what do you do with the infinite mana? Bounce everyone's lands?
That takes time to set up, can be easily disrupted, and requires multiple combo pieces.
I was actually interested in building Derevi because I like the idea of a general you can cast frequently, but the combos available in her colors leave much to be desired imo.

I feel like everyone enjoys different kinds of decks. If you don't like a certain playstyle no ones forcing you to play against it.
Personally, I like challenging decks. I love having the right answer at the right time, and when I don't I like the puzzle it provides. When something unexpected comes up which forces me to go back and tinker with my deck, I love being innovative and squeezing a solution into the 99. I understand my personal preferences will keep me from being competitive against the most highly tuned decks in the format, but I enjoy seeing those decks and playing against them from time to time. Really, those players are just like me, tuning and tinkering in response to other decks in their meta.

It's powerful, but not overly powerful.

Ultimately Magic is a game of resources. You try to assemble yours while denying your opponents.

When we're battling over resources, mana is one of the most important.

Stax is the best strategy for tying up mana resources, and can lead to game states where opponents are locked out of the game.

Derevi is exceptionally efficient at making a good stax strategy stronger by helping break the symmetry of many of the cards already mentioned.

On her own she's ok, but I'll be the first to admit that I saw her and visions of Stasis floated in my head. Stasis where the upkeep is paid by my opponents delicious tears.

Quote from rogue_LOVE »

While the median price has only gone up about $5, Eternal Masters Jace, the Mind Sculptor went up about $10 low on TCGplayer and ebay over the last week or two, with the FTV 20 foil picking up about the same amount on ebay. Think people are moving on unban speculation, or just a hiccup? I don't think we're seeing Eternal Masters drying up yet, are we?

We're seeing people blindly spec on a card they think will be unbanned in Modern. But honestly, I've lost enough money speccing on possible unbans in the past that I don't think it's worth it. For a $2 Preordain or a $10 SFM? Sure. But a $50-60 JTMS? No thanks.

Quote from Antiantiserum »

Quote from AnImAr_ »

Quote from Turinn »

Quote from Antiantiserum »

T1 Dreadnought, T2 Dreadnaught, T3 Peacekeeper, T4 attack for 14? Is this good?

T4 Start Your Engines, I'd say.

Turn 4 win in standard. Fun.

I'm going to build Uncrewed Vehicles this standard. Maybe this now actually is a funny budget deck.

Well, since start your engines makes your dreadnaughts 9/11s I'm thinking the deck should be called "Inside Job".

The takeaway I get from this thread as a whole is the following, at least as far as the January Announcement goes:

1. No changes to modern would be terrible in the eyes of virtually everyone.

2. Unbans: If one happens, most people *want* preordain first, and equally, most people *agree* that stoneforge mystic is more likely.

3. Bans: If one happens, most people would be extremely unhappy if it weren't a card from dredge. If multiple bans happen, most people agree that the format confidence will take a huge hit, and that the multiple bans will hit dredge AND one of the ubiquitous spells for all of the fast linear decks (gitaxian probe, mutagenic growth, become immense being the likely candidates).

Does anyone disagree with this general assessment of the feelings going on here?