I've always been fond of Birthing Pod; I've played it in Standard, I play it in Modern, and I'm working to build a list utilizing it that will be competitive in Legacy, although I'm not confident that that will end up as a Tier 1 deck.
I'm fond of the Pod because I've always had a fascination with utility creatures and toolbox-style decks, and I do like playing more creature-oriented lists that can gain incremental advantage over an opponent. I do have a particular fondness of using Birthing Pod to turn Geralf's Messenger into Phyrexian Metamorph, copying Geralf's Messenger and causing massive life-loss between such interactions and Blood Artist triggers. One of the many versatile applications that the 3-and-a-half (if you will) mana build-around-me card can perform.
There are separate game win points, but they only matter insofar as that affects the total percentage of game win points earned out of the total number possible for the purpose of determining third- and fourth-tiebreakers.
A match win gives 3 match points, whether that match win is 2-1, 2-0, 2-0-1, 2-1-1, 1-0-1, 1-0, or anything else. The game win points do not in any way, shape, or form, in any circumstance, change that a match win awards three match points.
The exact same holds for a draw, which gives 1 match point. It doesn't matter if you earned 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or any other number of game win points.
In short: Match win and game win points don't convert into one another. You can lose every match 2-1 and get 3 game win points each round. However, you will still have ZERO match win points.
0-0-1 (do not finish game 1) and 1-1-1 (do not finish game 3) both count as match ties and both award 1 match point. Again, they have different implications for game win% as far as third tiebreak is concerned, but do not differ as far as match points are concerned.
I don't actually need the second Trop since I already have three, but dual lands are the best sort of trade fodder.
Planar Clash 2WB
Enchantment (R)
As Planar Clash enters the battlefield, choose Angels or Demons.
* Angels - At the beginning of your upkeep, put two 1/1 white Spirit creature tokens with Flying onto the battlefield.
* Demons - At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 life and draw a card.
Counterstrike 1RW
Instant (U)
The next time damage is dealt to target creature you control this turn, prevent that damage. If damage is prevented that way, that creature deals damage equal to its power to target creature or player.
(Too similar to Deflecting Palm?)
Will definitely be a Modern powerhouse if WotC decides to take an approach re:ban list of "ban everything until Splinter Twin is best deck, then ban Splinter Twin". We'll see tomorrow morning.
Although one wonders why send them to me instead of someone else who wants them.
I wish it were double spaced. On the bright side, however, I have now taught the world something new and interesting.
I wish it were double spaced. On the bright side, however, I have now taught the world something new and interesting.
If you mean to say unlimited, though, and you have had it authenticated, you really can't do wrong if you have the cash (i.e are not taking out a loan to front the money). Short of Magic going belly-up, power prices are only going to drift and sometimes spike upward.
With that said, I can only see prices on FRF cards going down because of the fetchlands and because FRF will be drafted twice as much as DGM was - FRF being drafted as FKK and as DDF means packs will be opened for roughly six months instead of three, and fetchlands in the packs will ensure that people continue to want to crack packs at a higher clip than they would in their absence, meaning that prices on the actual FRF cards will have to go down that much lower to compensate.
In short, I expect pretty much every card in FRF except for maybe Ugin to take a 20-30% haircut in the next couple of months. Thankfully, the set isn't just an Ugin lottery, but if it does become that, expect prices to crash utterly. I think that's less likely because you can't jam 4 copies of an 8 drop in really any deck except maybe Modern Tron, and even then, Karn being 7 instead of 8 is something of a big deal as well.