I've been opening a bunch of errors lately starting with Conspiracy, not just M15. The big white blotches on the backs (as mentioned a couple posts up) and many packs with the cards crimped.
Doesn't even have to be a box. I called about a booster pack I opened once that the pack sealer had ruined all the cards in, and they replaced that with nothing more than an e-mailed picture. WotC customer Support is really good in this area.
When I first read that I thought you meant they replaced your bad pack by emailing you a picture, making your praise sound sarcastic. English... LOL.
Soul of EDH 1WUBRG
6/6
Legendary landwalk WUBRG: Search your library for a land or creature, an artifact or enchantment, and an instant or sorcery. Reveal them, then put one artifact, creature, enchantment, or land from among them onto the battlefield and put the rest in our hand. WUBRG, Exile Soul of EDH from your graveyard: Search your library for a land or creature, an artifact or enchantment, and an instant or sorcery. Reveal them, then put one artifact, creature, enchantment, or land from among them onto the battlefield and put the rest in our hand.
The Unhinged set had a theme regarding artwork and their illustrators, and to play on that theme the cards Blast from the Past and Old Fogey have Douglas Shuler's name misspelled "Schuler" just as it was originally erroneously spelled on his Alpha/Beta/Unlimited cards.
I can't stand the legends in these products specifically designed to be commanders. They're all so mindless and their builds are obvious, canned, and predictable (i.e. boring). I want new wedge legends as much as the next guy, but I want them to come from a standard rotation set and require some clever and unique builds to make them useful as commanders. As for this product, I just want some more good new mono-color spells.
The only thing I wish they had done differently is instead of the colored border curling off into the text box they should have made it fade to black. The color transition is a bit blunt and sudden the way it is. Otherwise, I am good with both changes.
What makes Vhati a good poison general? I feel like there's plenty of better legends for it, and the Mimeoplasm really eclipses Vhati for the role simply because you get to play a general that has infect.
It's not so much the poison that makes him useful as it is the -1/-1 counters. I don't know about the OP but my Vhati deck runs both infect and wither as well as a myriad of other spells to compliment that approach. Though he does have his infect specific uses. On the topic of Blightsteel, if you manage to attack with it and your opponent can (say if someone had a Silent Arbiter out) or without thinking only chooses to block it with one creature, then you can reduce their toughness to 1 so you trample over for lethal. Or hell, if you have a Thornbite Staff on Vhati and a Blowfly Infestation in play, all you need is one -1/-1 counter on a critter to wipe the board of everything you can target. And if you happen to have a Necroskitter out as well, gg. All I know is Vhati = good times.
I also have a Vhati infect deck that I've run for some time now. My play group knows exactly what it is and typically hates me out ASAP, but no one has ever complained about the poison limit being too low. Even if I have nothing on the board they know I can drop just about anything and Berserk or Hatred it for the win. If they consider you such a threat, it's on them to take care of it. Complaining about a single powerful card is one thing, but denouncing a particular play style or alternate win condition they don't subscribe to and declaring it unfit for play in their group or in need of modification or reservation is petty in my opinion.
Here is my approximate deck breakdown by environment:
EDH: 9 built (another 5 about to begin construction).
Standard: 5 built (about 8 others close to completion).
Modern: 1 built (no others yet under construction).
Legacy: 0 technically built to be true legacy decks (though some below could count) (1 currently under construction).
Vintage: Same as legacy.
Old Standard/Block: About 100 built (and another 120+ under construction). This is my bread and butter.
For all intents and purposes I basically collect decks. My quirk is a somewhat financially unhealthy fascination with never breaking down my standard decks after rotation as well as maintaining all historically important decks for every standard/block environment (starting in '95 with Fallen-4th-Ice Age through today). I have built, or under construction, approximately 8-12 decks from each of those environments usually including the most predominant archetypes of that period plus a couple of my own homebrews. I also build all the decks with their contemporary cards and refuse to use newer or older copies. And I absolutely never swap cards between decks. The decks are essentially nothing more that posterity pieces since I can rarely find anyone to play them against.
But, when the opportunity arises, there is no feeling of nostolgia like pulling out and playing an old pre-ban Academy or Replenish, Tinker, Ankh Tide, Vise Tax, Necro, ErnieGeddon, RecSur, Pros Bloom (my favorite deck ever), or any of the countless others I have then seeing other long-timers at the shop say, "Hey! I remember that deck. Wow!"
I had a pretty bad one recently. After numerous games with numerous veteran players, including myself, we discovered that Altar of Bone is a sorcery... not an enchantment. During it's short run as essentially an extra Survival of the Fittest I couldn't believe how little it was worth and was amazed that it wasn't being played in every G/W deck. But, after about the fifth game or so where I used it to great effect, one of the other players picked up the card and pointed out the word "Sorcery". I just scooped, because the game would have been over long before had I not abused it.
Avalanche Riders - It was part of my first successful deck and the reason LD is my favorite archetype (RIP). Cadaverous Bloom - Pros Bloom has and always will be my favorite deck. I still have the Mirage-5th-Tempest standard version of the deck together. Scalpelexis - The endgame of my final standard deck before I quit playing (for 10 years) as I left for college. That deck and Pros Bloom were the only two decks I played with for those 10 years, hence my fixation.
There is a lot of design space available with banding as it is and I would love to see it return in full force. This is just a sampling of ways they could bolster it:
Have all of the creatures in a band rally to enhance each other with abilities such as "Each creature in a band with ~ gains +1/+0 until end of turn" (the only existing creatures with similar abilities are Camel, Icatian Skirmishers, and Urza's Engine);
Have one creature be a beacon or leader who feeds off his followers with abilities such as "For each creature in a band with ~, ~ gains your choice of flying, double strike, trample, or +1/+1 until end of turn";
Or have each creature attack in concert with enchantment abilities such as "If a creature in a band you control has horsemanship, all creatures in a band with that creature gain horsemanship until end of turn".
It's too bad that every one of these arts have an overtly centralized focus. It would have been nice if something was off-center at least a tad in one of those. That annoyance aside, the new art for Rout and Decimate is nice. The others however, not so much. I love too that people rag on the original Rout art. Back in the day no one would dare criticize anything done by Ron Spencer, because if he wasn't your favorite artist, you were ostracized.
Perhaps the oft requested colorless basic land. People have been asking for that from an audience of crickets since the beginning of time. And though its application quite narrow, I know I would have a little giddigasm if it materialized.
When I first read that I thought you meant they replaced your bad pack by emailing you a picture, making your praise sound sarcastic. English... LOL.
1WUBRG
6/6
Legendary landwalk
WUBRG: Search your library for a land or creature, an artifact or enchantment, and an instant or sorcery. Reveal them, then put one artifact, creature, enchantment, or land from among them onto the battlefield and put the rest in our hand.
WUBRG, Exile Soul of EDH from your graveyard: Search your library for a land or creature, an artifact or enchantment, and an instant or sorcery. Reveal them, then put one artifact, creature, enchantment, or land from among them onto the battlefield and put the rest in our hand.
And perhaps a Wasteland in every deck.
It's not so much the poison that makes him useful as it is the -1/-1 counters. I don't know about the OP but my Vhati deck runs both infect and wither as well as a myriad of other spells to compliment that approach. Though he does have his infect specific uses. On the topic of Blightsteel, if you manage to attack with it and your opponent can (say if someone had a Silent Arbiter out) or without thinking only chooses to block it with one creature, then you can reduce their toughness to 1 so you trample over for lethal. Or hell, if you have a Thornbite Staff on Vhati and a Blowfly Infestation in play, all you need is one -1/-1 counter on a critter to wipe the board of everything you can target. And if you happen to have a Necroskitter out as well, gg. All I know is Vhati = good times.
EDH: 9 built (another 5 about to begin construction).
Standard: 5 built (about 8 others close to completion).
Modern: 1 built (no others yet under construction).
Legacy: 0 technically built to be true legacy decks (though some below could count) (1 currently under construction).
Vintage: Same as legacy.
Old Standard/Block: About 100 built (and another 120+ under construction). This is my bread and butter.
For all intents and purposes I basically collect decks. My quirk is a somewhat financially unhealthy fascination with never breaking down my standard decks after rotation as well as maintaining all historically important decks for every standard/block environment (starting in '95 with Fallen-4th-Ice Age through today). I have built, or under construction, approximately 8-12 decks from each of those environments usually including the most predominant archetypes of that period plus a couple of my own homebrews. I also build all the decks with their contemporary cards and refuse to use newer or older copies. And I absolutely never swap cards between decks. The decks are essentially nothing more that posterity pieces since I can rarely find anyone to play them against.
But, when the opportunity arises, there is no feeling of nostolgia like pulling out and playing an old pre-ban Academy or Replenish, Tinker, Ankh Tide, Vise Tax, Necro, ErnieGeddon, RecSur, Pros Bloom (my favorite deck ever), or any of the countless others I have then seeing other long-timers at the shop say, "Hey! I remember that deck. Wow!"
Cadaverous Bloom - Pros Bloom has and always will be my favorite deck. I still have the Mirage-5th-Tempest standard version of the deck together.
Scalpelexis - The endgame of my final standard deck before I quit playing (for 10 years) as I left for college. That deck and Pros Bloom were the only two decks I played with for those 10 years, hence my fixation.
Have all of the creatures in a band rally to enhance each other with abilities such as "Each creature in a band with ~ gains +1/+0 until end of turn" (the only existing creatures with similar abilities are Camel, Icatian Skirmishers, and Urza's Engine);
Have one creature be a beacon or leader who feeds off his followers with abilities such as "For each creature in a band with ~, ~ gains your choice of flying, double strike, trample, or +1/+1 until end of turn";
Or have each creature attack in concert with enchantment abilities such as "If a creature in a band you control has horsemanship, all creatures in a band with that creature gain horsemanship until end of turn".
Warstorm Surge
Zodiac Dragon
Phyrexian Altar
Sneak Attack