MTG Salvation

Prophecy also has Avatar of Woe, while Homelands has such allstars as Mammoth Harness and Dwarven Pony AT RARE.

Let's random it up. Skipped Sol Ring since it is already being discussed in the other thread and got:
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Two-day No banlist Modern to be featured at the SCG open during SCGCON in june. I will be watching with great interest and great sympathy for those "playing".

EDIT: Lantern Control with Top is legal LOL.

Quote from Umaro »

If rolling thunder was instant this would be no issue.

I think that might potentially be an issue ; )

Let's keep it as is. The descriptions carry most of the information, even if inevitably there will be some discrepancies between a 2 that should been a 3 or 1 here and there. I don't like a whole different redundant section. First, we would need to do a lot of work to rate cards that most likely would not be played. Second, I think it is likely that such a section would remain largely unbrowsed anyway, so all that work would be to little avail.

If I were to suggest a quick fix, we could add qualifiers to cards that we feel are worth mentioning. Similar to how the Limited Resources guys gives cards grades with qualifiers "Build around C", "Sideboard B", we could have "Reduntant 3" or whatever. But we still have the issue that we don't agree on what is redundant. Mind Control and Skinrender aren't, but Volcanic Hammer is. There is a line somewhere between those cards. I don't know where it is, and I am fine with that.

Quote from calibretto »

I applaud what bacchus2 has done

Me too.

Who's Jhoira?

1/10, would not Christmas again.

The shuffle-back clause would be relevant and could perhaps be problematic in constructed formats where you can run it as a 4-of.

Quote from calibretto »

Quote from Leelue »

Calibretto
Sure you wont have manaplasm in most games
But in most games where you DO see manaplasm, it'll be by turn 3. Hence these are the games that matter.

Are you saying that the card is worse because it doesn't tutor itself to your hand? I don't understand the issue you're having with me talking about the majority of games that it shows up.

I think maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you're saying. If you're looking at the majority of games where it happens to be one of the ten random cards you see by turn three, and saying that in those games the card is typically good, then I can't really argue that. I've not played the card, I just think it has too much variance for my tastes. But if you're saying that when you see Manaplasm, it will be by turn three a majority of the time, that's simply not true. There's only like a 12% chance that you'll see any one specific card in your opening hand and a 16% chance you'll see any one specific card by turn three. Obviously you're seeing ten random cards, but there's no math that can support the claim that any of those cards will be Manaplasm specifically by turn three or that every time you do see Manaplasm it will be on or before turn three. You're just as likely for any of those ten random cards to be Manaplasm as you are for them to be any of the other 23 one-ofs in your deck.

He's not saying that in most games you will see Manaplasm by turn 3. He's saying that in games where you do see manaplasm, more often than not you will see it by turn three. This is just a function of how many cards you see before turn 3 in the typical game (9-10) versus how many cards you see between turn 4 and the end of the game (4-6?).

As an example: If you play 1000 games with manaplasm, most likely you will have it by turn 3 around 250 times, and you will draw it after turn 3 around 125 times. In 625 games you never saw manaplasm at all, so it never mattered that it was a bad top-deck.

I like this way of thinking.

Whatever else, Modern is the best format for coverage I feel. Am enjoying this very much this evening.

Quote from Raptorchan »

It doesn't say "turn face down" to work with morphed and double-faced cards? Very cryptic indeed.

I'd guess that it can both "turn face up" and "turn face down", depending on the current state of the card?

No, they didn't have to charge $10 a pack for masters sets. They could totally charge $4 and scale the reprints down accordingly.The reason they made them annual, though, is because when they were once every 2 years, speculators, staged buyouts on whatever wasn't in the set and was played heavily in modern. Assuming you go down to $4, they have to chop the chase cards down so speculators will probably stage more buyouts. If you go down to semi annual or more, were back to the same complaint as the first masters. Lets say, though, we do the $4 a pack. We want tarmogoyf, so if we add confidant or snapcaster, we've probably reached our reasonable limit for the set. We could instead add a few more cheaper cards, but the total expected value of a pack must be less than the price of a pack or people will open packs until that isn't the case. That means everything but the most valuable and desired cards will become bulk if it goes on too long. Assuming it happens, everything that became bulk is no longer longer able to sell a set for years. There are tweaks you can make to adjust a set, but probably not any that will make people happy long term. The$4 a pack probably also won't make as many people happy since, without new cards, the set is now worthless to you unless you want tarmogoyf or the handful of other cards they added for value.
Now, they could add new cards, but if you make them modern legal, they now have to test them, put them in a set called modern but ban them or put them on some kind of illegal list, make them weak,or inject untested cards into the format. Being its called modern, people are going to want new modern staples. In order to do that, you either have to hire more testers to test a niche product for a less played format, and commission new art for them on top or pull people away from standard testing.

As for masterpieces being highly desirable foils that aren't expensive, that really only applies to a handful of cards that aren't in foil/new border and that's also dipping into your judge foil pool.

As any reasonable person can see, all those solutions are going to cost money or make someone mad. That's just the reality of business.

Now, as for Mark rosewater, the face of all fallout, no one can possibly make a case he doesn't care about the game. He donates thousands of hours of his own time, uncompensated by the company he works for, communicating with the community and taking ***** over every perceived mistake his company makes. Sure he makes mistakes, but if he wasn't doing all his CHARITY work outside his job, wed probably have never had stuff like red "draw," popular cards like arixmethes, the possibility of taking kamigawa off the not a chance in hell list, wizard tribal in dorminaria, or anything else came out of his blogging, tweeting, podcasting, email reading, consistent article writing, or signing of items. Everyone that's benefited from his absurdly energetic enthusiasm for the game should really thank him instead of treating him like garbage.

Standard legal cards should always be in standard boosters isn't going to move anything because even at mythic, nexus nexus of fate is a $2 jank mythic if its in the set. It had a decent performance one day of one tournament where no one was ready for it. In order to make a card worthy of selling a box, you'd have to have a format defining mythic or a multi format all-star like an eldrazi titan or snapcaster mage. Now, they could make the card non foil, but that would piss off the people that want it in foil, the default standard for promos. A reasonable compromise would be abolishing the buy a box promo in favor of something else that will sell a box because we already know staple rare from the set didn't move the needle on box sales, even one designed to be the new permanent wrath of god. The whole point of having the promo or from the vault was to put cash in local game store's pockets because they can't possibly compete with online sellers who often sell cards out of their house and, therefore, have zero overhead. That's why a box buying boycott is completely stupid. It won't hurt wizards at all. They still sell product whether you buy singles or boxes. You just stick it to the stores that host your local tournaments.

The complaints about the masters sets are also unreasonable. Even if you up the value of the packs a little or drop the msrp, it HAS TO be a set of mostly modern irrelevant cards. There aren't even enough modern viable cards to even fill a set and if you cram them all in at once, and print to demand, you would destroy the price of every modern staple with the exception of possibly a couple of the most valuable cards. That's what happened with the sets like return to ravnica or khans of tarkir. It made everything besides the lands worth slightly more than toilet paper for years after people got done opening so much product. Unlike the regular standard sets, though, you're talking every modern staple you're doing it to. That's millions of dollars worth of cards people already own going from $20+ down to practically nothing for years. That's basically what happened with chronicles that led to the reserved list being implemented and it would also be a one and done sales spike because you've now destroyed the price of said cards. What do you do the next year when the parent company is expecting you to produce sales figures like that again? That's why the complaints are completely unrealistic.
Now, as for masterpieces, the idea was stupid and unsustainable just like making a masters set exclusively about modern staples. There simply aren't that many high dollar magic cards that exist unless you count cards that are only valuable because of scarcity but not play value. They used up most of them in zendikar and kaladesh. There really isn't anything you can possibly pick that can rival the lands theme from zendkiar and if you only do a few masterpieces per set, you're giving away all your masters pack sales for free as bonuses in standard boosters. You'll also have to repeat the same cards a lot because, like I said, there aren't a ton of them.

There are things they can do like the exclusive buy a box promo but pretty much everything people want to come up with is completely unrealistic because we're talking about busineses that must make money to pay their employees, benefits, the outside contractors, and everything else that goes into running a business. That's just the reality of how jobs work and a lot of people either don't understand that or are just being deliberately unreasonable. That doesn't mean game stores, wizards, online sellers, etc. Are mean or don't enjoy magic and hope it does well. They just have to be realistic about the reality of running a profitable business since all the stuff that goes into it can't realistically be done for free because too much and too many people have to go into its creation. I don't personally and have never made any money off of magic but other people make their living off of it. The game is how they make a lot or even all of their money to live on.

So, no one has a reasonable compromise? I doubt feedback era is about just constantly shooting everything wizards does down and claiming they're evil or incompetent. What you should reasonably do is find something sensible to ask Santa wizards for that they can do that will be popular and not just piss most people off. I've mostly seen *****ing and unreasonable stuff like bear tribal commander. Sure that could be cool but it's not going to be popular unless we get a bear tribal theme because there aren't enough good ones to scrape a halfway decent deck to go head to head with a precon. There might be a great time for them to do it, but if you want something like that, you'll probably be waiting quite a while. They're probably not going to do serra either until they have her or urza perfect because otherwise they'll get shouted down worse than ludevic. Now, if anyone thinks they have a good thing to replace the current buy a box promo with that will, you know, get people to buy boxes, and won't cause a bunch of drama, I'm sure they'd consider it but just shooting down from the vault, buy a box, and everything they try isn't helping. Of course, it might be a good idea to think about masters as well. The community asked for it but there's only so much they can reasonably do. Sure they could drop the msrp some or add a couple more $5 rares, but they certainly couldn't shove all the modern staples in, drop msrp to $4 and print to demand. That would make the have nots happy for a little bit but the haves would riot over their losses. Everyone would also take all their prizes in #masters broken cards exclusively until the set was so worthless you could wipe your ass with mindsculptors and then ***** because standard rare X is $40+ because no ones opening any standard packs and modern gets boring because they can't affect it that easily without breaking something. We already know it would happen just looking at zendkiar, return to ravnica, and khans of tarkir. They even reprinted goblin guide multiple times until people said they shouldn't anymore. Then, they didn't reprint it until people went off about how stupid wizards was for not reprinting it and letting it explode in price. There's only so many cards that can be good, though. Way back in the day, juzam djinn was a mega staple and so was savannah lions. Now, we regularly get far stronger and they go into the jank bin. Even if you power creep every card, there will still only be 2-3 top decks which means a maximum of 27 nonland cards will be top tier standard and realistically less than that.

My question is still open and out there.

To the non-reserve list people, should I just not sink 7-8k of my money into magic?

If my spending 7-8k of cash into the magic market is just going to raise card prices, then it makes it less financially accessible for the rest of you right?


Let's look at my spending when it comes to modern staples, because some of you have complained about that too? This is the logic I see.
1. Wizards reprints have not kept up with Modern demand and prices of entry still remains high.
2. If I'm not going to play, then I shouldn't buy staples because it's just going to jack up prices for everyone.

That's the absolute bottom line. End of story.
Non-players shouldn't buy magic. Period.

It makes the game more expensive for who magic was really meant for, the players.

That's the argument right? I used to a be a player. But now I'm in my 30s I dont have as much time to play.
It sounds like, I have no business buying magic cards, holding onto cards that I'm not playing with.

Quote from SecretInfiltrator »

Quote from Demonologo Uriel »

I never understood the "sue" point. Never existed a legally binding contract between WotC and any random RL card collector. From what laws a court should even listen the reasons of something that is founded by basically nothing?

You could read this very thread and stumble over the legal term "Promissory Estoppel" as an example how there can be legal relevance to a promise - a term you can look up to understand one example of how a promise can be legally more binding than you may be aware. From now on if you remain ununderstanding, youll be so by choice.

So, we can all sue our politicians over their electoral promises?

Continuation from Death And Taxes' Primer v.2

What is Death And Taxes?

“Death & Taxes (D&T) is a deck based loosely on the Legacy deck by the same name. It is a white based deck (originally strictly mono-white) that plays small creatures who provide some element of control on the battlefield. At its most basic form, the general idea is to out tempo the opponent through virtual card advantage, evasive/efficient beats, and creating dead cards in their hand utilizing taxes and an aggressive land destruction plan. Keep in mind this deck is a meta deck at heart, its power stems from that, not the intrinsic power of the cards themselves.”- Sheepz

Death And Taxes has continued to follow the core values that Sheepz addressed but has also begun to evolve in the Modern format. With the latest printings, Death And Taxes has grown to incorporate sub themes and color variations that were not previously supported. In example, during "Eldrazi Winter", we found ourselves with a new build titled, “Eldrazi And Taxes” taking the format by surprise. Eldrazi and Taxes took advantage of the powerhouse/aggressive Eldrazi printings and has continued to maintain promising performances and results.

(To continue educating yourself on the archetype, history, understanding DnT vs. Hatebears, key cards, and best practices, read the previous Death And Taxes' Primer v.2).
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Which variations have the most success?

As it currently stands, there are multiple list that could claim to be the "correct" build. Just like in Legacy, Death And Taxes has multiple builds that are performing well and potentially answer different areas of the meta game. With Modern having nearly fifteen different archetypes performing at any given moment, it makes sense that various versions of Death And Taxes would blossom from those resulting metas.


Variants In The Current Meta (Summer 2019):



Modern has gone through a wild ride since 2018! What started off as an expected midrange format, it quickly evolved with success of the Humans deck, Storm (and other combo) strategies and the eventual unbannings of Jace, the Mind Sculptor & Bloodbraid Elf. Many players thought this would lead to a more stabilized and slower format. In actuality, this increased the amount of pressure that aggro decks would apply and made combo decks focus on being less interactive. Modern officially became a hyper aggressive format. As the moniker goes, Death And Taxes continues to find its way. Settling back down into lower Tier 2 status due to players bing split on consensus of builds, splashing secondary colors are currently the only thing consistant in most DNT lists.

Eldrazi Taxes and Death & Staxes have been more popular than ever but this is not to say Mono-White and Red-White variants are completely absent. Normally, this section would break down the most popular variations but there is no major consensus at this time. There is a beacon of hope for consistency coming up in Magic’s Core 2019 set. Cards like Militia Bugler and Remorseful Cleric have the potential to make the baseline strategy come full circle. And if not, Core 2019 seems to bring a lot of tools to potential splash builds as well. Keep an eye for recent finishes here:
MTGTOP 8
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Why does the metagame affect Death And Taxes?

"Your tournament performance will be determined by more than just your skill in deck building and game play. In Magic, it's also important to predict what strategies your opponents will be using, and make an effort to counter them as effectively as possible. Understanding how other players think can give you a leg up on the competition." - Reid Duke

This deck is built on the axis of exploiting unfair strategies that the rest of the format is abusing. The problem that can occur is, Death And Taxes variants may be focusing on beating strategies that just aren't being played in the expected meta. Understanding the meta and what portions of the meta a variant struggles with, will help secure more victories and insure that underwhelming card choices are not being played in critical slots.

(To continue educating yourself on the meta and "winner circle's metagame", read article titled, "The Metagame" by Reid Duke).
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Are there videos to watch?

• Eldrazi And Taxes piloted by Pascal Maynard
• Eldrazi And Taxes piloted by Frank Lepore
• Eldrazi And Taxes piloted by Craig Wescoe
• Eldrazi And Taxes piloted by Craig Wescoe
• Eldrazi And Taxes piloted by Bava (MagicGatheringStrat)
• G/W Death And Taxes Deck Tech by Danny West
• G/W Death And Taxes Deck Tech by Craig Wescoe
• G/W Death And Taxes from Lantern Control's Perspective
• Mono-White Death And Taxes piloted by Tom Ross
• Mono-White Death And Taxes piloted by DeathandCatmix
• Mono-White Death And Taxes as described by PleasantKenobi
• Mono-White Death And Taxes as described by the Mana Source

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

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I would have to rate Blessings of Nature higher. There is a real difference between 4 and 6 counters, of course, but the same is true working with any number of creatures on your side of the board and requiring at least three unless you want to benefit the opponent. Plus, you know, Miracle.

Additionally, now there is also Strength of the Pack as an option. It costs one more mana and never gives a third counter but also works better with four or more creatures total and equals Incremental Growth at exactly three.

Would I ever play Incremental Growth? Maybe, at somewhat larger sizes and if I heavily supported counters as a theme. As things are, the options around it just have benefits which make them more palatable. In particular, Incremental Growth suffers from the same issue as all the cones: it requires some appropriate target for each value.

Incremental Blight is the only one I run - this must mean I like it the most. Cone of Flame's ability to also target the opponent when need be helps with the inherent limitation of requiring targets. However, unlike Incremental Blight, it does next to nothing to larger creatures without immediate support. Bestial Menace might be nice if I did not already have a fairly stacked slot for green 5's.

I can't believe it just clicked for me that Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma has power 4 matters abilities because she's from Temur territory.

Cavalry drillmaster is one of those cards that ends up being a worse card than it had to be in service of it being a more interesting design.

It coulda been a 3 drop 3/2 with the same etb, and it would have been a better card. Like yavimaya forcemage (sp?), which was great in its limited format.

But at 2, it makes you ask "how often do I have a 1 drop" or "how good is this on 3" which is the kind of cool card evaluation question they want people to ask.

"We´ve realized that we can´t be trusted with colorless. Sorry. Here, take this." -WotC

I wouldn´t look too deep for this card´s implications in upcoming Standard sets, I´m pretty sure this is tailored as a failsafe for Modern.