Scapeshift walks a fine line between having things to protect the combo and having things to enable the combo. Spell Snare is a good card, but most of the time Scapeshift wants either something to get more lands into play to combo faster, something to find Scapeshift, or a more general purpose piece of protection (Cryptic Command, Dispel). Spell Snare does hit Remand/Mana Leak, but often times shift has enough mana to just pay or recast it.
After a few moments of deliberation the judge explained that this was not my opponent’s first offense on this particular infraction and issued a game loss to my opponent. Game three, I did not just cut my opponents deck, I riffle shuffled 8 times. My opponent got stuck on 2 mana and I won handily.
Did the judge think that your opponent was drawing extra cards by mistake or something? If he was cheating, that's not a game loss, it's a DQ and a report to the DCI. Doesn't matter if it's FNM or the Pro Tour.
Why do you suspect mana weaving? Curving out happens, that doesn't necessarily mean mana weaving.
The judge presumably thought he did it on accident. If the player has been warned before and repeats the same unwanted action they should be warned that the next infraction will result in a game loss which is probably what this is. If he did it on purpose then yes a DQ is the correct response. Unfortunately without the player actually admitting it there is no real way to say he did it on purpose.
So I've recently picked up Esper Stoneblade online as my first non-budget legacy deck. I'm curious what sort of sideboard people would build for an online meta where decks like Burn and Miracles are everywhere.
I thought civil litigation trials didn't use a jury.
Both parties can waive their right to a jury trial, but the 7th amendment guarantees you a trial by jury in civil cases if the amount exceeds $20.
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law
You cannot flash it in and get the effect either way. Once a player starts casting a spell no one gets a chance to do anything until after it is fully cast. Once it is cast it is too late to try and get the trigger as it occurs only at the actual moment a spell is finished being cast.
Does this mean they've functionally changed the card?
Essentially yes. Previously it would allow future creatures to have functional shroud because the way it was worded it was not an ability, it just alters the rules of the game.
You cannot. When you cast a spell or activate an ability that requires a target you must name a legal target at the time of casting. In this case if you flipped over only Reiterate and Quicken your only choice would be to either target the resolving Epic Experiment spell with Reiterate (which would mean reiterate would never resolve since when it goes to resolve there is nothing to copy) or you can cast Quicken first and then Reiterate targetting it.
Depending on exactly how you want to build the deck you can try something like the Tooth and Nail versions of a few seasons past. They are quite similar to what you have only with 4x Tooth and Nail 1x Flamekin Zealout 4x Primeval Titan. It's a bit slow today compared with Twin, but it is on par with Scapeshift.
Decks that top 32 in a field of 2,400 players are viable. By viable I mean a good pilot and reasonably expect to 4-0 a daily event with the deck. Whether or not these other control decks are objectively better than UWR is another question entirely, but a good player can take a blue based control deck and win with it.
How is it helping control? It gives control a deck they have a decent chance against assuming the draw isn't complete *****. I don't think control needs anymore help or anything need to turn the format into a blue format.
I just would like it if more Control decks like WUR and Blue Moon did better. Burn being good against BGx is another good thing about it because it helps the metagame cope with that shell.
Blue based control doesn't need anymore help. Its already got the second best combination of colors (mostly being UR) in the format. Nothing, not agro, not combo, not control, nothing needs any sort of special attention or unbannings. Everything is finally good balanced. Not to mention if blue based decks did better then people would switch the meta to a heavier GB/x shell to combat this which would make the format resemble pre-M14 modern.
Good point.
How does aggro not need help? There are only two viable aggro decks, Affinity and Fish, and Fish doesn't even come close to consistently placing like Affinity does. Aggro needs help, but help won't come until Wizards gravitates back to "synergy based" aggro decks.
Also, about Blue control decks ... UWR is the only tier 1 Blue control deck. Esper and Grixis might one day be viable but they suffer from manabase issues. Those mana issues won't be solved until Onslaught fetchlands are reprinted, then we will be able to better judge what kind of power they hold in the format, until then we have only 1 tier 1 Blue-based control deck with maybe a tier 1.5 control deck in the form of Blue Moon.
We don't have to wait to judge their power level. Esper and a UB control list made top 32 at Boston. The decks are viable, but they aren't popular enough to put up the kind of results to be tier. It's a catch-22. If no one plays a deck then everyone says it's not a good deck because no one plays it.
The judge presumably thought he did it on accident. If the player has been warned before and repeats the same unwanted action they should be warned that the next infraction will result in a game loss which is probably what this is. If he did it on purpose then yes a DQ is the correct response. Unfortunately without the player actually admitting it there is no real way to say he did it on purpose.
Both parties can waive their right to a jury trial, but the 7th amendment guarantees you a trial by jury in civil cases if the amount exceeds $20.
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law
Essentially yes. Previously it would allow future creatures to have functional shroud because the way it was worded it was not an ability, it just alters the rules of the game.
We don't have to wait to judge their power level. Esper and a UB control list made top 32 at Boston. The decks are viable, but they aren't popular enough to put up the kind of results to be tier. It's a catch-22. If no one plays a deck then everyone says it's not a good deck because no one plays it.