MTG Salvation

Turntimber Grove comes to mind, as forgettable as it was. It only gives the +1/+1 once, but it always works. Cathedral requires a creature to attack alone. Grove taps for colored mana instead of colorless, and was an unplayable common, even though it was legal in Standard alongside infect. I'm struggling to see how Cathedral is even as good as Grove, let alone better.

Looks like Cathedral of War helped a deck achieve top seed in the World Magic Cup. Turntimber Grove never did anything that grand. CoW is a real card.

Turntimber Grove comes to mind, as forgettable as it was. It only gives the +1/+1 once, but it always works. Cathedral requires a creature to attack alone. Grove taps for colored mana instead of colorless, and was an unplayable common. I'm struggling to see how Cathedral is even as good as Grove, let alone better.

You should read today's MaRo article about exalted. It plays much better than it looks, RE.

only an extreme minority of us actually got to see something "awesome" by anyone's standards.

*cough* your standards. By my standards it was awesome, without premium and super-awesome with. People really can't engage in this discussion without speaking for the 'majority' or 'most' of magic players despite them having 0 data about what such a group does in fact find to be awesome.

Who ever said you needed to put thousands of dollars of judge foils in every helvault. If instead of putting $5000 worth of cards in 5% of helvault they had put $250 worth of cards in 100% of helvualts most people would have been happy.

If it was $5000 in 5% or $0 extra in 100% of helvaults, what would you rather have? You have to concede that logistically its cheaper to add something to 5% of a product than to add something to 100% of them.

That's like if you bought a car from a dealership then after you drove it off the lot the tires pop and the engine exploded then when you complained they said "the tires and engine were free with the purchase of the car, don't wine about free things you're so spoiled."

You keep making these analogies, so I have to keep refuting them. Ok, last one I promise.

But NO, that is not a good analogy. The helvault promised to be Awesome, a subjective quality which you obviously feel it did not fulfill. For you. Personally. Other people thought it was awesome (see also: other people in this thread).

If the car dealership promised you an awesome ride home and you didn't have one because for you, personally, new cars aren't that awesome, then that is a correct analogy. But you KNEW YOU WERE BUYING A CAR just like YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO A PRERELEASE.

So why is it you aggro "elitists" can have YOUR fun but counterspell players can't have THEIR fun?

I am so sick of this "you blue players are no fun to play against elitists"

Guess what? You "I need to drop my titan and smash your face in bullies" are just as not fun to play against.

So here's a novel concept. How about we each play our respective games and you aggro people stop *****ing about game mechanics that have been in existence since 1993.

I'm tired of this whole thread already because it's nothing but sour grapes.

Counterspell players can have fun, playing decks with, ya know, counters! You just cant play a deck that plans on COUNTERING EVERYTHING. There are competitive decks with as few as 4 creatures in them as recent as last year.

And ramp will die when the titans rotate, there will be something new to replace it. Unlike vintage/legacy, where it will always be all about countering and combo. Have fun!

All you are doing is saying stop crying you crybaby, this is actually gonna end up being a huge mess for wizards to deal with. 1000s of players will want to know why they didn't deserve the promos. Judges will ask why random players get cards reserved for judges who earned them. Stores will have to ask tons of questions and deal with angered customers asking them if they removed the judge promos before opening.

There would be a mess if they had released something to the effect of:

"ATTENTION MAGIC PLAYERS
At the next prerelease there will be a special promotion! You will each receive a very valuable foil card just for attending! We won't tell you which one but we GUARANTEE each and every person that attends will receive one. Supplies are virtually unlimited! We just had some extra stuff lying around and thought we would give it to you for free! Isn't Wizards a great company? Now you'll have to buy even less booster packs than you would have because we basically gave you free money to trade/buy new cards you want!"

As usual its a big deal on the internet, but not so much in real life. You want to see outrage? Check out what happened with the ending of Mass Effect 3. This is nothing.

Most competitive players do hate mythics.

Most people agree with me about most things. /sarcasm

You have to be blind to not see the multitued of issues arrising from the premium vaults.

Again can you guys discuss without personal attacks? Check out Helene's twitter, Im surprised how much positive feedback there is, and not nearly as much whining as this thread.

https://twitter.com/#!/HeleneBergeot

Quote from itachiitachi

What are you talking about??
I'm referring to the contents of the helvualt obviously.

The contents of the helvault were never specified except to be 'AWESOME'. How do you interpret that as anything more than free stuff? Every helvault had free stuff.

If you can read then should be aware of the fact that most peoples expectations where "cards they could play magic with" most helvualt fail to meet those rather low expectations.

You of all people should know that you dont speak for 'most' people, re: mythic rares.

And where in the advertisements did it say your helvault will probably suck unless you go to the right store?

Why did it suck? I went to a prerelease without a helvault. I still got to play in the PR. I had lots of fun. If you think free stuff is sucky, well why are you still playing?

Can you not read? If you look at any of the threads the expectation was for more than free garbage.

I can read. Dont make this personal. In fact, if youre the type of player that was so amped for the helvault that what the VALUE of it contained hinged on your ENJOYMENT of it, you probably read that someone opened one and it was a bunch of oversized cards and tokens. So again your EXPECTATIONS should have been low, not high.

Where on the booster pack does it say the contents will be awesome?

It would be like opening a booster and only getting commons.

People that went out of their way to go to a helvault prerelease still got the contents of the helvault. Some helvaults were better than others. Just as some cards, some packs, some boxes, some cases, etc are better.

The helvault had no expectations except "EXTRA FREE STUFF FOR GOING TO THE PR". Everyone who opened one got that. Some people are jealous they didn't get stuff as good as other people, just like some people are always jealous that someone got a better rare, fatpack, whatever.

It is NOT like opening a booster and getting only commons. You got something extra for free. Youre mad because other people got more awesome free stuff than you.

Consider this scenario. Your parents task you and your sibling each with a job to complete. If done well, you are each promised an awesome reward. You both accomplish your tasks equally well. Your parents hand you a candy bar as your "awesome prize." Your sibling, OTOH, is handed a $100 bill. How would this make you feel?

Consider this scenario. You and your sibling have $4 to spend on magic cards, a hobby you both enjoy. You each buy one pack. You got a junk rare, your sibling pulled a mythic and a foil mythic. How would this make you feel?

All archetypes should be represented...like it USED to be.

mid-range was never a good deck in the days when "all" the archetypes were represented. You had lightning fast aggro, heavy-permission control, or lightning-fast combo.

Those are some of the least interactive games you can possibly play, with each deck basically playing solitaire.

Today you can build whatever kind of creature-deck you want, at a couple different speeds (ramp-titan, fast-aggro, mid-range fatties) and compete without just dying to the non-interactive decks that countered everything, destroyed all your lands, or just won through a 2-card combo.

Take off the rose-colored shades, you weren't having fun when your lands were in the graveyard and you were waiting to play your first spell, or you didn't manage to resolve a single threat and were waiting for the permission deck to play its solitary threat (or they were just waiting for you to concede).

For me its simple:

1-mana very narrow counters
2-mana narrow soft counters
3-mana hard counters
4-mana narrow or soft counters with upside, hard counters with small +
5+ whatever, probably unplayable, but any combination of Cryptic Command

Again, take a look at all the dominant decks in our history and let me know how many mono blue, or mono blue ANYTHING you find.

It doesn't matter that blue isn't winning alone. Monocolor decks are not as powerful as multicolor decks. Period. There are rarely enough incentives to build a monocolor deck, and even when there are they aren't good enough.

Again, the most dominant decks of the last few years have had blue in them (except Jund). Blue's card selection, counters, and lately even its creatures have been the backbone of those dominant decks and their success. I'm speaking of as far back as Dralnu and Pickles with Time Spiral/Ravnica, as well as Faeries in Lorwyn, Caw-Blade in Zendikar/Scars, and most recently to the rise of the Delver decks (which are the least 'dominant' because the correct delver list hasn't been found yet or perhaps there are enough proper metagame controls so one deck can't dominate as hard as Caw-Blade did).

Blue has received what will be remembered as one of the best 1-drops of all time and can fundamentally do things other colors cannot. Yes white can 'deal' with everything, but it cannot stop a spell from going on the stack. And most of its preventitive measures (Gadock Teeg, Grand Abolisher, Rule of Law can be broken by killing the creature/enchantment). Blue does not suffer that limitation. Short of a spell being uncounterable, it can stop anything you try to do, before you do it! This is a gigantic fundamental advantage when deckbuilding and it almost necessitates itself in order to fight other decks.

TL;dr : Is blue a dominant color because it can counter spells, manipulate libraries and generate card advantage? Yes. If you take those away will blue be a dominant color? No.

Do we want blue to be a dominant color?

I think cards like Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm are too cheap for what effect they give. They need to balance the amount of manipulation blue can get for a single U, much like how you must balance how much damage a singe R can do.

I also think 2-mana counters are too strong if they are not-situational. Would a Leak that stopped non-creatures see play? Yes. A leak that ONLY stopped creatures? Yes.

Especially now that we have cards like Delver and Snapcaster, you will be seeing blue decks competitively for the next year and 6 months.