God knows I still want the Judge Maze because the art is better than the dark's and Realms (even though the Realms artwork, while still beautiful is just a rehash of the Judge version).
(emphasis mine)
This just made me realize that Liliana of the Dark Realms was a clear hint not towards RtR shocklands, but towards FTV Maze of Ith.
On the one hand, I'm very unhappy because the judge art is far and away the best of the three, and I really was hoping we'd get that instead of new art. On the other hand, that's much outweighed by my happiness at getting a foil Maze with art that isn't straight terrible, so I can actually play it in EDH.
First, I use italic text for sorcery, instant, and enchantment spells, but not for creatures, planeswalkers, artifact, or lands (or at least not usually). Second, the reason that I do that is because they are "special" words. In my years of life, I have learned that the names of works of fiction, whether they are illustrations, books, movies, television series, songs, or video games, need to be written in italic text to display that they are names of works of art; for example, one of each category: The Scream, A Game of Thrones, The Empire Strikes Back, The Big Bang Theory, Master of Puppets, and Commander Keen. I also use italic text for foreign words in my writing: i.e., "¡Buenos dias, señor!" or "Ohayo, oji-san!"; for names of spells, techniques, or abilities when referring to fictional works: i.e., fireball (the Dungeons & Dragons spell), kage bunshin no jutsu (from Naruto), or ki (the Japanese word for "energy"); or for items or vehicles: i.e., Zanpakutō (from Bleach) or the starship Enterprise. Therefore, by that logic, I would italicize the word "battleship" when referring to the board game of that name, but not when referring to an actual vehicle (although I would italicize the name of a specific battleship: i.e., the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy), and I would italicize "Flames of the Firebrand" but not "Chandra, the Firebrand."
Is that answer satisfactory, I hope?
The point of that convention is to identify to the reader the fact that the italicized words are a title for a given work, and in some contexts the type of work. With that understanding, why would you need to do that when the underline and blue text provided by the card links already clearly mark that you've named a card? There's also no reason to identify certain subsets of cards alone in this manner, since you're the only one that knows the pattern. Any relevant information about the card is easily obtained by clicking the link.
Well, at least this isn't a "must buy" for exclusive promo cards in the way that literally every other special product coming out this fall/winter is- Oh, wait. Hope the promo isn't constructed playable...
On the plus side, I'm sure I'll be buying packs anyway, so I'm fine paying a few dollars more for a nice box and some useful dividers.
Utopia Vow will let you attack past her, at least.
Liquimetal Coating + Splinter works, and if you happen to draw them before the player can cast Avacyn, you can exile every Plains from their deck instead to preemptively stop her (if they're playing monowhite, of course).
I have always found it to be odd that M:tG cards use contractions (i.e., "can't be countered" or "can't be regenerated"), especially when they use proper grammar in nearly every other aspect of their cards (for example, they capitalize only important words in card names, such as Flames of the Firebrand, in which the words "of" and "the" are not capitalized). Why is that? Would it not be far more proper to say "cannot be countered" or "cannot be regenerated" instead? Plus, the full word is only two characters longer than its contraction, so I cannot imagine that printing it would use any significantly greater amount of ink, and thus not cost WotC any significantly greater amount of money.
What does everyone else have to say on this subject? Can someone here offer insight into this subject that I find to be unusual?
"Cannot" reads much more awkwardly to the majority of English speakers (American English, at least) than "can't" does, simply because the latter is much more commonly used. Both are grammatically correct, so there's no reason to be unnecessarily formal when it doesn't add any value to the text.
On a somewhat-related note, why do you italicize card names when the card tag you also use differentiates them from normal text anyway? Much like "can't vs. cannot", the additional text decoration simply makes the eye pause awkwardly rather than adding any extra clarity.
T1 Island crypt counter the crypt removal T2 something degenerate (infinite mana or super ramp.)
If you're playing Mana Crypt on turn one just to have enough mana to counter removal for it before your second turn, you're doing it wrong.
As for Kiki-Jiki, I'd say he's degenerate enough to ban. Not because he's the most broken creature in the format, but because he's basically impossible to use "fairly". Even without combos, he generates absurd amounts of value very quickly, and for essentially no cost once he hits play. Imo, he meets the accidental degeneracy requirement just by being in a deck with creatures, since the only decks running only creatures that don't have EtB effects are the few that run Torpor Orb (and even then he's still good just for making extra bodies to abuse).
I play him in Radha, and even though I don't run Conscripts, he's still always the first T'n'N target. The other creature is usually Primeval Titan, Regal Force, or Craterhoof Behemoth, so the blame isn't entirely on him, but even pairing him with Mindclaw Shaman or Acidic Slime is incredibly strong. Even with no combos, Kiki-Jiki is still very likely the strongest creature in the deck. I only cut him from other red decks that I play because he doesn't fit the theme or because he's too hard to reliably cast, because from a pure power perspective he'd be in all of them in a heartbeat.
I assume the Kiki-Jiki rule is to allow people to still use him without those combos. In that case, I'd totally run Donate and Pestermite in every blue deck I had.
I wanted to try something a bit different from my usual deckbuilding style, something that would be fun to play and would make for a decent deck to loan out to new EDH players. I've been wanting to build monoblack aggro for a while, but it needed some kind of twist to really hook people into the format when they played it. It also needed some kind of gimmick to distract them from realizing there are zero tutors, since nothing slows down the game more than the guy who casts Demonic Tutor and has to read 50 cards he's never seen before.
Obviously I need to work on finding a good "sarcasm font" to use for jokes.
(emphasis mine)
This just made me realize that Liliana of the Dark Realms was a clear hint not towards RtR shocklands, but towards FTV Maze of Ith.
The point of that convention is to identify to the reader the fact that the italicized words are a title for a given work, and in some contexts the type of work. With that understanding, why would you need to do that when the underline and blue text provided by the card links already clearly mark that you've named a card? There's also no reason to identify certain subsets of cards alone in this manner, since you're the only one that knows the pattern. Any relevant information about the card is easily obtained by clicking the link.
On the plus side, I'm sure I'll be buying packs anyway, so I'm fine paying a few dollars more for a nice box and some useful dividers.
Liquimetal Coating + Splinter works, and if you happen to draw them before the player can cast Avacyn, you can exile every Plains from their deck instead to preemptively stop her (if they're playing monowhite, of course).
Willow Satyr is probably the best answer of all.
"Cannot" reads much more awkwardly to the majority of English speakers (American English, at least) than "can't" does, simply because the latter is much more commonly used. Both are grammatically correct, so there's no reason to be unnecessarily formal when it doesn't add any value to the text.
On a somewhat-related note, why do you italicize card names when the card tag you also use differentiates them from normal text anyway? Much like "can't vs. cannot", the additional text decoration simply makes the eye pause awkwardly rather than adding any extra clarity.
If you're playing Mana Crypt on turn one just to have enough mana to counter removal for it before your second turn, you're doing it wrong.
As for Kiki-Jiki, I'd say he's degenerate enough to ban. Not because he's the most broken creature in the format, but because he's basically impossible to use "fairly". Even without combos, he generates absurd amounts of value very quickly, and for essentially no cost once he hits play. Imo, he meets the accidental degeneracy requirement just by being in a deck with creatures, since the only decks running only creatures that don't have EtB effects are the few that run Torpor Orb (and even then he's still good just for making extra bodies to abuse).
I play him in Radha, and even though I don't run Conscripts, he's still always the first T'n'N target. The other creature is usually Primeval Titan, Regal Force, or Craterhoof Behemoth, so the blame isn't entirely on him, but even pairing him with Mindclaw Shaman or Acidic Slime is incredibly strong. Even with no combos, Kiki-Jiki is still very likely the strongest creature in the deck. I only cut him from other red decks that I play because he doesn't fit the theme or because he's too hard to reliably cast, because from a pure power perspective he'd be in all of them in a heartbeat.
I wonder if it got chosen before Cloudpost was banned?
Alternatively, there's the Kiki-Jiki-as-commander deck that has the main wincon of cast Kiki-Jiki, cast Bazaar Trader, copy Bazaar Trader to get a hasty copy, donate Kiki-Jiki, cast Zealous Conscripts, untap Bazaar Trader, and donate the Zealous Conscripts for the kill.
After sadly cutting Divinity of Pride and Deathbringer Liege from my Vish Kal deck and wishing I had somewhere else to play them, I knew I had my answer. Monoblack aggro...Reaper King.
1 Reaper King
Creatures (37)
1 Guul Draz Assassin
1 Tormented Soul
1 Viscera Seer
1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
1 Vampire Hexmage
1 Withered Wretch
1 Needle Specter
1 Stalker Hag
1 Stillmoon Cavalier
1 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Creakwood Liege
1 Disciple of Bolas
1 Glen Elendra Liege
1 Graveborn Muse
1 Noxious Hatchling
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Phyrexian Obliterator
1 Vampire Nocturnus
1 Voracious Hatchling
1 Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
1 Bloodgift Demon
1 Bloodlord of Vaasgoth
1 Cairn Wanderer
1 Deathbringer Liege
1 Divinity of Pride
1 Ghastlord of Fugue
1 Kulrath Knight
1 Malakir Bloodwitch
1 Gleancrawler
1 Massacre Wurm
1 Midnight Banshee
1 Nirkana Revenant
1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
1 Avatar of Woe
1 Reiver Demon
1 Phyrexian Reclamation
1 Bad Moon
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Spiteful Visions
1 Exquisite Blood
1 Debtors' Knell
Artifacts (9)
1 Explorer's Scope
1 Sol Ring
1 Charcoal Diamond
1 Jet Medallion
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Lashwrithe
1 Gauntlet of Power
1 Caged Sun
Instants (9)
1 Apostle's Blessing
1 Dark Ritual
1 Withering Boon
1 Dismember
1 Sudden Death
1 Unmake
1 Snuff Out
1 Tendrils of Corruption
Sorceries (4)
1 Promise of Power
1 Blood Tribute
1 Decree of Pain
1 Din of the Fireherd
1 Arena
1 Barren Moor
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Crypt of Agadeem
1 Leechridden Swamp
1 Phyrexian Tower
29 Swamp
Ashenmoor Liege
Doomgape
[CARD]
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth[/CARD]