This idea comes from a budget deck I found made of green cards I owned back in high school. I've recently found it again and is enormously fun to play despite its obvious lack of real power. The deck seems to be around the Urza's Saga era and back. A friend of mine described it as the forest coming out in revolt to fight. Think Bambi or Snow White forest animal sort of deck. Anyway, this made me think of what "forest" animals are represented? What needs to be represented more? This is all the stuff I could think of. Results pulled from Gatherer:
*Beast and Insect are Wizards' catch-all for A LOT of things. The wide variety of animals types under these two headings is enormous, especially regarding insects. If you were thinking of making that caterpillar deck Wizards has long decided it won't support anything it can put under the umbrella of insect or beast.
So what can we learn from this list? Well, unicorns are not the rarest thing in the Multiverse. If you want to see rare go to Dominaria where it holds the two rarest sights, wombats and ferrets. Ferrets will require a meeting since Joven appears to have them as pets in the entirety of the planes and multiverse. Monkeys and Apes are collectively under "Ape" though they are not the same thing, "Gorilla" seems to be a type of Ape so gets a pass. Insect has far too many types under it: Caterpillar, mantis, ant, dragonfly, beetle, maggot, gnat, cockroach, and on and on. Beast covers just as much ground.
I thought this would fun to look at Why did I make this topic? Wizards, it's time I got to make that Ferret deck! I've been waiting since Homelands!
I've been using it in a casual Lantern build of mine. I find when I can both activate the Wreckage and play the card drawn it's very good. Decks that empty their hand quick and/or need to play around Ensnaring Bridge can use it well. Affinity, which just won the Open, could have used it to stay under the Bridge potentially. Lantern's ability to pick their card draw makes it really good there though.
"As Zendikar has bled, so will innistrad. As I have wept, so will Sorin."
-Nahiri
The very name of the card using Distortion suggests Kozilek lives. The flavor text, above, suggests Zendikar is gone and Sorin's Innistrad is next. The artwork on the card heavily suggests Kozilek or his brood as well.
So, should all this be true... Goodbye Zendikar, and thanks for all the fish!
Splinter Twin: A two card infinite combo? Its days were numbered the moment it was discovered. You can't tell me you didn't see this coming. Aside from the tournament results a two card instant win isn't the glowing endorsement for fun or fair play. It's about time it's gone, now those pros have to hijack/borrow another idea.
Summer Bloom: Having played since Visions this ban is hilarious to me. The card really isn't that good, at least in a vacuum. They took a cog out of a well oiled machine. Amulet Bloom is slightly slower, but still potent. It will put up results again once people realize that.
Overall, I think these bans are a good thing. don't listen to the Chicken Littles in the thread saying the sky is falling with the bans.
Why doesn't Whippoorwill fly? Look at the art.
Why isn't City of Solitude a land?
Why does it take 3 guys on Pikemen to equal 1 power and First Strike?
Do Elders run around in the wild?
Will we ever see Ferrets again?
If Ugin was dead when Sarkhan went back in time and didn't change history, how would the Modernwalkers have stopped Ulamog? (more a Story question)
Why haven't we seen this Elvish Ranger again? (I actually can't find a way to link to the other artwork. The infamous hot elf one)
Why do they look like Power Rangers?
I've been waiting for Liliana, Heretical Healer to go down Why did the pros also have to know that she was good? I'd say her next possible price down is when Origins rotates out of Standard, but she's good in basically every format, except Vintage perhaps.
Endless One. Eldrazi decks are thinking big when they should be thinking small. Come Oath of the Gatewatch this card's stock should go up, especially if they saved it to reprint Eldrazi Temple.
I opened 2 boxes. After opening the first one I noticed something that made me buy another to see if my distribution theory was correct. In the first box none of the rares repeated. So 36 different rares. On the second box I looked a bit closer at distribution. In that box I also got 36 rares that did not repeat. Both boxes had 4 Mythics.
Things seem to be very evenly distributed at other rarities but are at higher numbers, since you pull more commons than rares per box. I got at least 1 of each picture of land, and a balanced amount of uncommons and commons with one or two of each being "super" common or uncommon.
From the first box to the second box I estimated ~20% give or take a few points that there was overlap from any given card at any given rarity. Aside from Mythics the rest of the set could probably be completed in 2 and a half to 3 boxes. At that point, if all you're missing is the higher priced Mythics you're probably better putting your money to singles to fill it out.
Granted, 2 boxes is not a huge sample size to go on, but in my experience, it will change how I buy boxes going forward.
Deck list and article: http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gpcol16/legacy-lantern-with-zac-elsik-2016-06-12
Tweet: https://twitter.com/utdzac/status/742024037899997184
Can we get a thread developing this deck for Legacy?
Beast = 336
Bird = 199
Insect = 141
Cat = 136
Snake = 71
Wolf = 71
Hound = 67
Lizard = 49
Plant = 43
Spider = 42
Fungus = 33
Ape = 28
Boar = 28
Rhino = 26
Fox = 22
Bear = 21
Horse = 21
Frog = 19
Elk = 12
Unicorn = 12
Leech = 11
Ox = 10
Salamander = 9
Turtle = 8
Worm = 8
Antelope = 7
Goat = 7
Slug = 6
Wolverine = 6
Aurochs = 4
Badger = 4
Rabbit = 4
Mongoose = 3
Hyena = 2
Squirrel = 2
Ferrets = 1
Wombat = 1
*Beast and Insect are Wizards' catch-all for A LOT of things. The wide variety of animals types under these two headings is enormous, especially regarding insects. If you were thinking of making that caterpillar deck Wizards has long decided it won't support anything it can put under the umbrella of insect or beast.
So what can we learn from this list? Well, unicorns are not the rarest thing in the Multiverse. If you want to see rare go to Dominaria where it holds the two rarest sights, wombats and ferrets. Ferrets will require a meeting since Joven appears to have them as pets in the entirety of the planes and multiverse. Monkeys and Apes are collectively under "Ape" though they are not the same thing, "Gorilla" seems to be a type of Ape so gets a pass. Insect has far too many types under it: Caterpillar, mantis, ant, dragonfly, beetle, maggot, gnat, cockroach, and on and on. Beast covers just as much ground.
I thought this would fun to look at
The card in question is Structural Distortion
"As Zendikar has bled, so will innistrad. As I have wept, so will Sorin."
-Nahiri
The very name of the card using Distortion suggests Kozilek lives. The flavor text, above, suggests Zendikar is gone and Sorin's Innistrad is next. The artwork on the card heavily suggests Kozilek or his brood as well.
So, should all this be true... Goodbye Zendikar, and thanks for all the fish!
Summer Bloom: Having played since Visions this ban is hilarious to me. The card really isn't that good, at least in a vacuum. They took a cog out of a well oiled machine. Amulet Bloom is slightly slower, but still potent. It will put up results again once people realize that.
Overall, I think these bans are a good thing. don't listen to the Chicken Littles in the thread saying the sky is falling with the bans.
I'll start:
Why doesn't Whippoorwill fly? Look at the art.
Why isn't City of Solitude a land?
Why does it take 3 guys on Pikemen to equal 1 power and First Strike?
Do Elders run around in the wild?
Will we ever see Ferrets again?
If Ugin was dead when Sarkhan went back in time and didn't change history, how would the Modernwalkers have stopped Ulamog? (more a Story question)
Why haven't we seen this Elvish Ranger again? (I actually can't find a way to link to the other artwork. The infamous hot elf one)
Why do they look like Power Rangers?
Things seem to be very evenly distributed at other rarities but are at higher numbers, since you pull more commons than rares per box. I got at least 1 of each picture of land, and a balanced amount of uncommons and commons with one or two of each being "super" common or uncommon.
From the first box to the second box I estimated ~20% give or take a few points that there was overlap from any given card at any given rarity. Aside from Mythics the rest of the set could probably be completed in 2 and a half to 3 boxes. At that point, if all you're missing is the higher priced Mythics you're probably better putting your money to singles to fill it out.
Granted, 2 boxes is not a huge sample size to go on, but in my experience, it will change how I buy boxes going forward.