The Ratchet Bomb is good, but I prefer the "on your upkeep you may" rather than tap to add a counter. Nothing worse than seeing removal on the other side of the field and his board looks like:
Bird, Elf, Pridemage. You have 1 counter.
Old: During Upkeep Add a counter Triggers, he blows pridemage, you blow the keg and get a 3-1
New: EoT you tap Bomb to add a counter, he blows pridemage and you trade.
Sure it can take out PW, but are you really going to be able to keep this out for 5 turns while your opponent is running Jace or Koth?
Keg wipes on the turn it has the desired counter. You wipe on the turn after you have desired counters.
Will it see play? Yes, but all in all this "ratchet" design is weaker than it should be. It's what makes things like Grindclock from usable to sucky.
For that I'm disapointed.
This makes no sense. If you are tapping to add the 2nd counter, you are going after the pridemage anyway. And with a pridemage out, the pridemage can hit your powder keg EOT before your upkeep and have the exact same result as hitting the bomb.
Jace comes into play turn 4. Even if your opponent goes first, you should have 2 counters on the bomb by the time he hits. The metagame may change, but if you are playing against UWx control, you will probably want to sit on 3-4 counters. I'm betting 4. That way you can kill Jace immediately and be 1 bomb tap and untap step away from killing Gideon and Baneslayer.
It is similar, but it is a different card. It is a little more susceptible to instant removal when adding a counter (but that is only if you would have wanted to blow it up with 1 less counter), but it has possible interactions with cards like votaic key.
Pili-Pala plus Architect. Its not great, but its something cool to do.
Not Great? It is a 2 card infinite mana combo. Filter all the colorless mana that can only be used for artifacts into colored mana. It goes off turn 3 just dropping lands. That is insane.
A win is a win I don't care who it is against if you want tie breakers then have the people who are in a tie play a game, almost makes sense because that's how they do it in every other sporting/game event.
No, actually that is not how it is done in most sporting events. Most leagues look at W-L-T first obviously, but then they start looking at divisional records, head to head, opponents wins, ect. Most do NOT play tie breaker games because of the difficulty in scheduling. Magic would have the exact sampe problem. They are not about to add at least 1 hour in between the end of swiss and the start of the top 8 to play tie breaker rounds.
I'm fine with this. It is probbly the closest equivalent to home field advantage in sports. The person who played the best gets a small advantage (that someone must have) that doesn't automatically decide the game.
What I'm not understanding is why you are worrying about buying it if the person is offering to send pictures of the opened product. He will only do this after you pay?
Of course he will only do it if you pay. If someone else wins it, they may not want it opened befor he ships. He can't open it up for some random person on here. Its not his/her property, it is the winning bidders property.
He has gone to bed for the night. Been talking to him for a while. Had me explain what was so important about it. I honestly think he didn't realise what he had.
He sent me a pic of the back. Looks real enough to me.
Can you ask him to type out what it says about deadspread(?), or the whole back if possible?
This is an interesting quote. If he already had 4 poison counters, why would he suddenly "panicked" by a 1/1 infect creature? It would seem that this paltry 1/1 hasn't been attacking him for 4 turns, but rather he had poison counters from another source....himself. I think this line of thought lends credence to the idea that there are going to be spells that do beneficial things at a low cost but also add poison counters, like:
Sign in Poison - 1B
Sorcery
Draw two cards. ~ gives you 2 poison counters.
Personally, not sure how I feel about these. We can get some potentially really good spells in formats without poison (i.e. Legacy) as a defining mechanic, which would be cool.
I think it is just as likely he was afraid because a Might of Alara type card could kill him. Giant growth alone would put him at 8 counters.
I hope they succeed with making it not just another life counter. So far, to me it seems like it boils down to A) wither during creature combat or B) double strike when damaging a player.
I think it will be hard for them to walk the line between making the cards too cheap (for instance, we will not see a 1/1 infect for B) or too expensive. I have a feeling they will err on the side of too expensive to be safe.
Inferno titan sells a little at the shop and someone came in and scooped up the 8 playsets I had online for $28/set, so I dunno.
Someone spent $225 on 8 playsets of Inferno Titans?! Wow. I can't think of why anyone would do that unless they felt like the card was going to take off soon.
That said, I just opened a foil version in my recent case
Speaking of foils, what is the frequency of them now? I've played on and off, and when they first came out I want to say there was 1 in every 8 packs. Is that still true? Does that make today's common foils more rare than the than the rares (due to smaller sets)?
No doubt. I pulled this once on turn 2 and grabbed Nicol, and that effectively ended the game for someone as I just wiped out every land they played. They couldn't stop him from getting his ultimate on another player, and after that everyone just conceded and we tried again. I decided I would pull someone else if the same thing happened.
Yeah, it is one of those things that you kind of all laugh at the first time it happens because it is so rediculously powerful. If it keeps happening though, it is not that fun for everyone else.
You mean like 4-5 years ago (has it really been that long?..) when everyone played 6-12 shock lands at $15-20 each? I remember the big gripe being that you dropped over $100 before you got past lands.
Or jitte, cranial extraction, kokusho, and pithing needle went for 15-30? And every deck ran 4 needles and 2-4 jittes (Not to mention gifts and twin casat which were 10+ at the time)?
Time spiral block --> Goyf
Ravager alone put affinity decks at $80-100. That doesn't include blinkmoth or glimmervoid (or needle). Even Tooth and Nail with Colossus, Top, Witness, Chrome mox, random assorted rare searched creatures (and of course T&N) was over 80.
Hell, staples like Wrath of God and Birds of paradise have been $40 or more for playsets for at least 10 years.
It hass been a long time since the best T2 decks have been less than $80. Yes, you could build 'competive' decks for less, but you could just as easily build them now (AiR style decks, allies). They just aren't as reliable and are as likely to go 2-5 as they are 7-1.
If you are having trouble remembering that those cards were really that expensive, this site is pretty good to refresh your memory (not perfect of course): http://findmagiccards.com/Cards/SK/Twincast.html
I think maybe the biggest difference between now and the past is that there is a more concentratd set of mythics that are extremely high priced. You had to pay 100+ to build a deck, but you had options. It seems every top deck, regardless of strategy, plays some combination of at least 4-8 Jace and Gideon (and probably elspeth). The strategy and money seems to be very concentrated in a few planeswalkers (yeah, yeah, vengvine).
Here is a link to the top 8 decklists of that event. Notice how many planeswalkers my opponent in the finals was playing! They are devestating in that amount. I'm tossing around the idea of testing Pithing Needles.
I see that you played one Earthquake main. Do you wish you'd had more? Treasure hunt surprises me. I guess it does have good synergy with Jace. Were you dissapointed with it early game though?
What made you decide not to run blightning or bolts? I would think that both would help you against planeswalkers.
Did Bolas really help? No ruinblasters in the side?
This makes no sense. If you are tapping to add the 2nd counter, you are going after the pridemage anyway. And with a pridemage out, the pridemage can hit your powder keg EOT before your upkeep and have the exact same result as hitting the bomb.
Jace comes into play turn 4. Even if your opponent goes first, you should have 2 counters on the bomb by the time he hits. The metagame may change, but if you are playing against UWx control, you will probably want to sit on 3-4 counters. I'm betting 4. That way you can kill Jace immediately and be 1 bomb tap and untap step away from killing Gideon and Baneslayer.
It is similar, but it is a different card. It is a little more susceptible to instant removal when adding a counter (but that is only if you would have wanted to blow it up with 1 less counter), but it has possible interactions with cards like votaic key.
I would agree with that.
No, that is wrong. It is quite common to drop the title after the common.
Not Great? It is a 2 card infinite mana combo. Filter all the colorless mana that can only be used for artifacts into colored mana. It goes off turn 3 just dropping lands. That is insane.
No, actually that is not how it is done in most sporting events. Most leagues look at W-L-T first obviously, but then they start looking at divisional records, head to head, opponents wins, ect. Most do NOT play tie breaker games because of the difficulty in scheduling. Magic would have the exact sampe problem. They are not about to add at least 1 hour in between the end of swiss and the start of the top 8 to play tie breaker rounds.
I'm fine with this. It is probbly the closest equivalent to home field advantage in sports. The person who played the best gets a small advantage (that someone must have) that doesn't automatically decide the game.
Of course he will only do it if you pay. If someone else wins it, they may not want it opened befor he ships. He can't open it up for some random person on here. Its not his/her property, it is the winning bidders property.
Can you ask him to type out what it says about deadspread(?), or the whole back if possible?
I think it is just as likely he was afraid because a Might of Alara type card could kill him. Giant growth alone would put him at 8 counters.
I hope they succeed with making it not just another life counter. So far, to me it seems like it boils down to A) wither during creature combat or B) double strike when damaging a player.
I think it will be hard for them to walk the line between making the cards too cheap (for instance, we will not see a 1/1 infect for B) or too expensive. I have a feeling they will err on the side of too expensive to be safe.
Someone spent $225 on 8 playsets of Inferno Titans?! Wow. I can't think of why anyone would do that unless they felt like the card was going to take off soon.
Speaking of foils, what is the frequency of them now? I've played on and off, and when they first came out I want to say there was 1 in every 8 packs. Is that still true? Does that make today's common foils more rare than the than the rares (due to smaller sets)?
Yeah, it is one of those things that you kind of all laugh at the first time it happens because it is so rediculously powerful. If it keeps happening though, it is not that fun for everyone else.
You mean like 4-5 years ago (has it really been that long?..) when everyone played 6-12 shock lands at $15-20 each? I remember the big gripe being that you dropped over $100 before you got past lands.
Or jitte, cranial extraction, kokusho, and pithing needle went for 15-30? And every deck ran 4 needles and 2-4 jittes (Not to mention gifts and twin casat which were 10+ at the time)?
Time spiral block --> Goyf
Ravager alone put affinity decks at $80-100. That doesn't include blinkmoth or glimmervoid (or needle). Even Tooth and Nail with Colossus, Top, Witness, Chrome mox, random assorted rare searched creatures (and of course T&N) was over 80.
Hell, staples like Wrath of God and Birds of paradise have been $40 or more for playsets for at least 10 years.
It hass been a long time since the best T2 decks have been less than $80. Yes, you could build 'competive' decks for less, but you could just as easily build them now (AiR style decks, allies). They just aren't as reliable and are as likely to go 2-5 as they are 7-1.
If you are having trouble remembering that those cards were really that expensive, this site is pretty good to refresh your memory (not perfect of course):
http://findmagiccards.com/Cards/SK/Twincast.html
I think maybe the biggest difference between now and the past is that there is a more concentratd set of mythics that are extremely high priced. You had to pay 100+ to build a deck, but you had options. It seems every top deck, regardless of strategy, plays some combination of at least 4-8 Jace and Gideon (and probably elspeth). The strategy and money seems to be very concentrated in a few planeswalkers (yeah, yeah, vengvine).
You mean like how they printed the new fetch lands at mythic?... oh, wait. They were rare...
I see that you played one Earthquake main. Do you wish you'd had more? Treasure hunt surprises me. I guess it does have good synergy with Jace. Were you dissapointed with it early game though?
What made you decide not to run blightning or bolts? I would think that both would help you against planeswalkers.
Did Bolas really help? No ruinblasters in the side?
Thanks for letting me pick your brain.