No pics in this post, but I'm after pimp opinions and this seems better than starting a thread for the question. I'm foiling out a Bant enchantress list (currently Estrid, the Masked, but I may jump to Tuvasa the Sunlit depending on mood/desired grindiness). I'm sticking to just the on-color fetches in the list due to personal preference and usually go for original printings where possible when foiling. The fact that I'll end up with mismatched borders doing that (ZEN Misty, ONS Heath/Strand) has me wondering if the judge promo printings of Heath and Strand are a better choice - still the original art, but matching borders across the fetches.
Acknowledging that pimping out a deck is largely down to personal tastes, anyone have any thoughts?
Originally printings, always. Especially when some of them are old frame. Old frame is so much better than any other frame that it far, far outweighs any other considerations, like the frames across fetches matching, or being foil, or anything.
As for Gilded Lotus, the new art is the best of them but the frame disqualifies it. FTV is also out by definition, so the only usable option is the original foil.
I have a foiled out mono red goblin deck commanded by purphoros god of the forge and I love this deck not only because it smashes face but because I opened the foil purphoros from a single pack along with a erebos god of death. My deck is sweet and it wins around turn five each time.
You can look up the prices of the cards on a site that sells cards like tcgplayer. Fair warning that most of them, like most of the cards in any booster, are worthless.
Full art for sure on that one. Actually, on basically EVERY possible full-art card except for the absurdly bad-looking Dryad Militant.
Most full arts are pretty bad compared to their normal versions. I'm thinking of stuff like Ponder, Bolt (vs. the original Bolt), Cryptic Command, etc. The Game Day-type full arts like Abrade are often nice though. The Languish, for example.
For Abrade I think it's a toss-up. I think the promo has nicer art, but I strongly value original printings.
OG Sundering Titan and it isn't close. Masterpiece frame looks bad, the foiling looks very bad, and the art on the Masterpiece isn't even especially interesting.
BBE: Argyle's art is the best one, but the only foil version of it that exists is unusable because of the big ugly FNM stamp. EMA art is also nice, but has the ugly new frame. So pack foil is the only option here. Art isn't the greatest, but it gets many bonus points for being the original.
Its arguably worse in a lot of situations than Brittle Effigy but has its upsides as well. I might try to find a way to run both yet! Thanks for reminding me of that card.
It's worse if you use it once, obviously, but I intend to use it many times.
I don't know if Duelling Grounds has fixed this, but their prices were so outrageous that I felt morally obligated to stop going there. Most people I know have done the same.
Face to Face Games is probably the best LGS in Toronto at this point, and they do EDH on Mondays at 7pm. I've never gone, but I hear they get a nice variety of decks and that most people have a few decks to tailor their competitiveness to the pod.
They use the same foiling as expeditions, which is a single layer rainbow foiling process. FTV is a double layer, which is why the card seems thicker.
In the gif, you can see that they look very much like FTV foils and not like Expeditions at all. They have those characteristic moving vertical lines in the foil.
Originally printings, always. Especially when some of them are old frame. Old frame is so much better than any other frame that it far, far outweighs any other considerations, like the frames across fetches matching, or being foil, or anything.
As for Gilded Lotus, the new art is the best of them but the frame disqualifies it. FTV is also out by definition, so the only usable option is the original foil.
Post pictures of it.
Does your ever-tightening build happen to be anywhere online? I haven't looked through every page of this thread, but I'm curious to see it.
Most full arts are pretty bad compared to their normal versions. I'm thinking of stuff like Ponder, Bolt (vs. the original Bolt), Cryptic Command, etc. The Game Day-type full arts like Abrade are often nice though. The Languish, for example.
For Abrade I think it's a toss-up. I think the promo has nicer art, but I strongly value original printings.
BBE: Argyle's art is the best one, but the only foil version of it that exists is unusable because of the big ugly FNM stamp. EMA art is also nice, but has the ugly new frame. So pack foil is the only option here. Art isn't the greatest, but it gets many bonus points for being the original.
It's worse if you use it once, obviously, but I intend to use it many times.
Anything without the original art is obviously disqualified immediately, which only leaves the Judge foil and that looks awful.
Beta or CE is the only way to go.
Face to Face Games is probably the best LGS in Toronto at this point, and they do EDH on Mondays at 7pm. I've never gone, but I hear they get a nice variety of decks and that most people have a few decks to tailor their competitiveness to the pod.
In the gif, you can see that they look very much like FTV foils and not like Expeditions at all. They have those characteristic moving vertical lines in the foil.
Since I posted this, I've read seen some confirmation from Trick that they lookjust like FTVs (which we could already see) but don't use exactly the same process. Hopefully this means they won't curl as badly.