My experience so far with the deck today is that it doesn't have enough strong draws. Maybe it's just my luck but I have just been hitting land after cultivate after rampant growth after land. Once and a while I will hit an ancient stirrings or beast hunt of nothing and have just drop lands while my opponent beats my face. Like I said... could just be my luck, more testing is required. Infect is a tough match up for me because they just eat my walls while I build up. I was thinking maybe putting a couple of copies of Choking Vines in the sideboard to deal with the relatively low toughness of the common infect guys and give me something to do with my mana while I build. Thoughts?
Doubt there is any connection at all. They're not even the same object (Sword vs a pen), and the sword sounds legendary, whereas Bloodletter Quill was nothing special.
They should just go for the quill, after all the pen is mightier than the sword.
The deck goldfishes well but I have had bad luck playing it online. If I play it in the casual room my opponents often concede because it is too competitive and if I play it in the tournament practice room they quit because it isn't a tier 1 deck. If they do play I either get mana screwed or mana flooded.... there is no middle ground it seems. Thoughts on this list?
Talked to my LGS owner on Fri, and hesaid he heard about this, and thought it was ridiculous, and he bvasiclaly said "Not in my store". He's already pissed because of the confusion DFC's and checklist cards will cause a lot of our younger, inexperienced players, and he said he's not going to do anythign to make drafting more confusing for them. 1/2 the group can't even pass packs correctly, making them rember to handle DFC's differently is another hassle. He's not even going to mention this "rule" to players, and let people draft the way they want
I also find it funning that during the GDS2, somoene who tried to print a new basic land type got slammed because of the supposed cost for printing a new type of card an distributing it to players and people in tourneys. And then they go and invetn checklist cards, which do the exact same thing.
Well, to be fair, you don't need 20 of these is a deck of 60 cards to make them work and you can pretty much 1 for 1 them with the DFCs where as adding a new basic land you need A LOT of to become playable. They would basically have to not give us any basics of the current 5 colors for an entire block or two and then go to a method of giving us all 6 basics and that would hopefully fix the problem. This is a little different in scale. (Imagine trying to play the color in EDH, the basics would be so expensive on the secondary market.)
EDIT: Additionally, some people will use the checklist for the DFCs... some people won't. In the end you won't need them as much as you would a new basic land.
why would you possibly want to mislead other players by taking a DFC outside of your own colors? In draft, you generally want your neighbors to know your colors, so they will choose different colors.
And there are easily enough DFCs (and powerful ones, too), to make signaling / reading signals significantly easier.
They do make a great difference.
I don't know who you are drafting with, but the people I draft with clearly aren't as kind. If someone pegs me as being in a certain color and they see a card before me that they know is going to be a massive bomb when they hand it to me, I am not getting that card. It just isn't going to happen. This is the case everywhere I play and so we are VERY secretive about what colors we are playing and have to try and garner as much information from packs as we can. If there isn't an overwhelmingly better option in a pack it's possible I may take an off color DFC (and of course make a big deal about it while still trying to maintain the illusion of subtlety) to throw off my opponent before they start passing me cards in the next pack. That way I may get something I want.
Doing Pro Tour Philadelphia, judges had a seminar about DFC, and it included actual DFC bring to them by the Rules Manager of WotC himself...
Believe me, after three drafts you'll stop paying attention to DFC, because how less informations they give you about other people's picks and strategy.
This seems to be the case. Unless one guy is clearly taking every DFC that comes to him, in which case you know what he is playing, they same overall like they will have next to no impact. We are talking about 1 card out of 15. If everyone takes an average of 3 per draft you are talking about an astronomically low amount of their card pool.
In other words....Nice Garruk man, that's the last good green card you're going to see this draft if I can help it. This is awful....at least being able to conceal it, while admittedly stupid would provide some protection to your picks. I don't even care if you can try to fake out others, it's just bad
Maybe depending on the rest of the pack this makes Garruk not as highly picked in limited as other planeswalkers have been. I see nothing wrong with this.
This is misleading. What it means is players who are more skilled in a certain aspect of the game are going to be more likely to win, but it takes out the skill of reading signals. This is also a skill and to ignore this difference is as ridiculous as to flip into "RAGE RAR DFCS RAR".
On that note, please stop accusing all people who dislike DFCs in draft as being anti all change. I certainly enjoy the idea of playing with some of them in constructed. However, my skill at reading signals is pretty high, in that I usually end up in the correct colours and archetype when I draft, based on the cards I get and the cards I pass. The fact is in playskill I'm not as sharp as players who have played for longer and with more time to invest in it, and this reduces the advantage I had over them. If I wanted to Rochester draft (which we do, on occasion), I would. If I want to draft, it's a different experience.
I would agree if more of the cards were visible and available for viewing... most of these are going to be green or red so it doesn't really change much in terms of signaling. People could take a single DFC as a feint... if you are good enough you won't fall for it. The bottom line is that signaling isn't gone with the advent of DFCs... it's changed... and slightly at that.
Maybe they should have talked to these people before issuing what is almost a last-minute rules change. When changing the game in such a radical nature, you would think that the first thing they would do would be talk to the people currently running major tournaments and get their input.
Granted, if they had done that we probably wouldn't be worrying about double sided cards at all.
My guess is that this input came from TOs, Judges, and Pro-Level players. Not one of whom Wizards of the Coast should be sharing this kind of information with ahead of time if they want to keep things fair or secretive. Showing these people what's coming down the line so they can tell only who they wish to does not breed competitive or fair game play. They probably got feedback from everyone they could trust with the secrecy of the set, when the word got out they could start getting more feedback and they changed the decision. How is this a bad thing? They have changed it to a way that is clearly more desirable to a large portion of the community.
About the DFCs in general, these are the worst thing to happen to magic since the last worst thing that happened to magic... bringing poison back. And the last worst thing that happened to magic before that... colorless creatures and level up guys. And the worst thing before that, trap cards... and the worst thing before that colored artifacts... etc. etc. etc. for as long as anyone can remember. Here's the bottom line: They need to do thing new and different all the time. There is no taboo that they cannot and should not break unless you want the next 15 years of magic to be about as exciting as Masques block was. And when the were wolves come out you will either play with them or you won't and a year from now a new set will be coming out and they will hardly even be relevant anymore. Sure... one or two MIGHT MAYBE show up in a constructed deck, but we'll be on to the new worst thing to happen to magic and double faced cards will disappear for 8 years until they come back as a fan-favorite like split cards (one of the worst things to happen to magic).
really, sign in blood is the biggest travesty. The lack of 1 mana discard hurts, but Distress isn't terrible and Lilliana fills a disruption role well too. Tezz's Gambit could fill that role, but we REALLY need another black draw spell... I was really hoping for a night's whisper reprint but no such luck... without the card draw I am afraid you could be right. And really, Lilliana is the only thing going in post-rotation so far imo
I have two problems with the colorblindness argument coming from a family full of color blindness.
1) all of the backgrounds on the different colored cards are different. A red card has a different background then a red card. If you don't have color to rely on to identify a card or, say, a token (zomg, colorblind people dont't know what color tokens are!!1!) you will pick up on these other subtlties and be just fine.
2) a colorblind person can very easily turn to a friend and say "what color is this?" problem solved. It's not like he has no memory. He's just colorblind, he'll cope. This argument is a bad thing to get up in arms about.
This thread is totally BS, anybody could come here and say the invented Tundra, FoW and Tarmogoyf. Yes I know everybody says "In my version it had bla bla" but still, this is ridiculous. Yes, someone might be telling the truth, but I bet 95% of posts in this thread are full of lies. Im not calling anybody a liar, no no, Im just saying, this is as good of a thread as the one where ppl brag on what cards they got from boosters. But then again, if you think of it that way, ALL threads on every single forum in the internet are total BS, 'cos ppl can be whoever they want to and say whatever they want to on the internet, which makes my post totally stupid and whiney. Whatever.
EDIT: The pimp thread makes sense, since you can post pics to prove yourself. Whereas no one can proof that they invented this and that.
Unless of course they posted it somewhere In the set I have linked in my sig that I worked on ages ago I had a version of Turn Aside that was different only in name. Someone in the thread told me it was busted beyond belief and Wizards would never print it
I guess I don't understand everyone's reaction to this. "Whenever ~ enters the graveyard from the battlefield" becoming "Whenever ~ dies" takes up so much less space on a card. This means we can get more flavor text, or larger font size so it can be read from across the table. It doesn't change anything else. I don't understand still how this is a bad thing.
Mill will not be strongly hated by our player base because of the level of understanding we have of the game. MANY players with less understanding of the game HATE mill because it feels like losing the game without playing the game. Sitting down to a game of magic is supposed to be about who can deal 20 damage to their opponent first; for these players, losing the game with 20 life feels like they have been cheated out of the game. It doesn't feel fair or fun. This is why most people hate mill.
The print run of Worldwake wasn't really that small. Considering the fact that Wizards has had to print more of a set since the introduction of mythics and low Future Sight sales, there's probably somewhere near as many Jace 2.0 as there are Tarmogoyf, despite the 1:60 vs 1:80 thing. Of course, Goyf is in a lot more eternal decks and often as a 4 of, so I'd assume it'll end up being the more expensive, once Jace exits extended.
It was, however, a short draft/sealed run. With RoE right after it replacing the limited scene you find a lot less world wake stuff hanging around because it had such a short play time. At least future sight would have been drafted through until Lorwyn block (since core sets at the time were a joke.)
My favorite card has always been Iridescent Angel. In my halcyon days of magic I was floored by the power this card had to have with all that protection. It still has a special place in my heart (as my decade old avatar should suggest.)
4x Khalni Garden
18x Forest
Creatures (24)
4x Devoted Druid
4x Krosan Tusker
4x Vine Trellis
4x Traproot Kami
4x Overgrown Battlement
4x Ulamog's Crusher
4x Ancient Stirrings
2x Beast Hunt
4x Cultivate
4x Rampant Growth
4x Mold Shambler
4x Plummet
4x Lignify
3x Sylvok Replica
My experience so far with the deck today is that it doesn't have enough strong draws. Maybe it's just my luck but I have just been hitting land after cultivate after rampant growth after land. Once and a while I will hit an ancient stirrings or beast hunt of nothing and have just drop lands while my opponent beats my face. Like I said... could just be my luck, more testing is required. Infect is a tough match up for me because they just eat my walls while I build up. I was thinking maybe putting a couple of copies of Choking Vines in the sideboard to deal with the relatively low toughness of the common infect guys and give me something to do with my mana while I build. Thoughts?
EDIT: May also try Squadron Hawk's big brother: Aurochs Herd
They should just go for the quill, after all the pen is mightier than the sword.
4x Khalni Garden
16x Forest
Creatures (26)
4x Llanowar Elves
2x Viridian Emissary
4x Krosan Restorer
4x Vine Trellis
4x Traproot Kami
4x Overgrown Battlement
4x Ulamog's Crusher
4x Ancient Stirrings
2x Beast Hunt
4x Cultivate
4x Rampant Growth
4x Naturalize
4x Plummet
4x Thallid Shell-Dweller
3x Harrow
The deck goldfishes well but I have had bad luck playing it online. If I play it in the casual room my opponents often concede because it is too competitive and if I play it in the tournament practice room they quit because it isn't a tier 1 deck. If they do play I either get mana screwed or mana flooded.... there is no middle ground it seems. Thoughts on this list?
Yeah, like equipment! Artifacts that act like auras?!? That's just too far.
Well, to be fair, you don't need 20 of these is a deck of 60 cards to make them work and you can pretty much 1 for 1 them with the DFCs where as adding a new basic land you need A LOT of to become playable. They would basically have to not give us any basics of the current 5 colors for an entire block or two and then go to a method of giving us all 6 basics and that would hopefully fix the problem. This is a little different in scale. (Imagine trying to play the color in EDH, the basics would be so expensive on the secondary market.)
EDIT: Additionally, some people will use the checklist for the DFCs... some people won't. In the end you won't need them as much as you would a new basic land.
I don't know who you are drafting with, but the people I draft with clearly aren't as kind. If someone pegs me as being in a certain color and they see a card before me that they know is going to be a massive bomb when they hand it to me, I am not getting that card. It just isn't going to happen. This is the case everywhere I play and so we are VERY secretive about what colors we are playing and have to try and garner as much information from packs as we can. If there isn't an overwhelmingly better option in a pack it's possible I may take an off color DFC (and of course make a big deal about it while still trying to maintain the illusion of subtlety) to throw off my opponent before they start passing me cards in the next pack. That way I may get something I want.
This seems to be the case. Unless one guy is clearly taking every DFC that comes to him, in which case you know what he is playing, they same overall like they will have next to no impact. We are talking about 1 card out of 15. If everyone takes an average of 3 per draft you are talking about an astronomically low amount of their card pool.
Maybe depending on the rest of the pack this makes Garruk not as highly picked in limited as other planeswalkers have been. I see nothing wrong with this.
I would agree if more of the cards were visible and available for viewing... most of these are going to be green or red so it doesn't really change much in terms of signaling. People could take a single DFC as a feint... if you are good enough you won't fall for it. The bottom line is that signaling isn't gone with the advent of DFCs... it's changed... and slightly at that.
My guess is that this input came from TOs, Judges, and Pro-Level players. Not one of whom Wizards of the Coast should be sharing this kind of information with ahead of time if they want to keep things fair or secretive. Showing these people what's coming down the line so they can tell only who they wish to does not breed competitive or fair game play. They probably got feedback from everyone they could trust with the secrecy of the set, when the word got out they could start getting more feedback and they changed the decision. How is this a bad thing? They have changed it to a way that is clearly more desirable to a large portion of the community.
About the DFCs in general, these are the worst thing to happen to magic since the last worst thing that happened to magic... bringing poison back. And the last worst thing that happened to magic before that... colorless creatures and level up guys. And the worst thing before that, trap cards... and the worst thing before that colored artifacts... etc. etc. etc. for as long as anyone can remember. Here's the bottom line: They need to do thing new and different all the time. There is no taboo that they cannot and should not break unless you want the next 15 years of magic to be about as exciting as Masques block was. And when the were wolves come out you will either play with them or you won't and a year from now a new set will be coming out and they will hardly even be relevant anymore. Sure... one or two MIGHT MAYBE show up in a constructed deck, but we'll be on to the new worst thing to happen to magic and double faced cards will disappear for 8 years until they come back as a fan-favorite like split cards (one of the worst things to happen to magic).
1) all of the backgrounds on the different colored cards are different. A red card has a different background then a red card. If you don't have color to rely on to identify a card or, say, a token (zomg, colorblind people dont't know what color tokens are!!1!) you will pick up on these other subtlties and be just fine.
2) a colorblind person can very easily turn to a friend and say "what color is this?" problem solved. It's not like he has no memory. He's just colorblind, he'll cope. This argument is a bad thing to get up in arms about.
4x Goblin Guide
4x Plated Geopede
4x Steppe Lynx
4x Grim Lavamancer
3x Mirran Crusader
1x Jotun Grunt
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
4x Lightning Helix
4x Magma Jet (Is there a reason people play shard voley over this? Is the 1 damage that worth it? Is it to activate Flagstones?)
Land:
4x Flagstones of Trokair
4x Sacred Foundry
4x Ghost Quarter
4x Arid Mesa
2x Scalding Tarn
2x Marsh Flats
3x Mountain
1x Plains
I have no idea what to do with the sideboard. Thoughts on the deck? Sideboard? Anything?
Unless of course they posted it somewhere
It was, however, a short draft/sealed run. With RoE right after it replacing the limited scene you find a lot less world wake stuff hanging around because it had such a short play time. At least future sight would have been drafted through until Lorwyn block (since core sets at the time were a joke.)