To get it straight...
L = Lands
C = Creatures
S = Sorceries
I = Instants
A = Artifacts
E = Enchantments
PW = Planes Walkers
Doesn't seem like all of them... not the ones that appeared throughout the history of Magic anyways. This link has a more precise list: http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Card_type
That way we don't get people proposing another silly Mana Source type again.
When you use TCG Player, look at the MARKET PRICE. That's why it is there; to avoid spikes based on speculation. The current market price is 19.25, That is absurd for a bauble, sure, but it ain't no Jace, the Mind Sculptor money.
Right, I tried to stick the "asking price" or whatever the sellers are asking for is called? Sellers price maybe? I really meant what's available from the sellers.
eBay is going crazy too. People seem to be asking roughly $35 a pop.
When does anyone think the price will settle (hopefully) down? I don't really want to sell a Force of Will to get a playset of baubles.
Ebay has a sold listing of a MP one today at 29 dollars.
What are people thinking? lol
They're thinking Suicide Zoo is the new format all star.
On a related note, that set I ordered at $10 a pop was actually delivered, in case any of you were worried about me.
We weren't
That said, TCGP is showing prices in the high forties to low sixties.
I'm a little irritated myself because I wanted to finally get a full Coldsnap set (not just baubles) to compliment my Ice Ages/Alliance sets. Asking prices are getting nudged up thanks to the speculators.
However, as the op stated, players will often attempt to shuffle decks in order to avoid mana screw. Whether this is intentional or not, it is still considered cheating. It is possible to shuffle a deck on an ordered deck X times and retain the ordering. There are Youtube videos explaining how. So unless you know the shuffling trick yourself, you would assume the deck is properly shuffled.
Interestingly, as the OP stated, this works "best" when the delta between lands is already maximized or very nearly so. So it seems that the OP is saying that if the deck is truly randomized, and he does his thing, the result should still be truly randomized.
Not excusing his cheating, but isn't the interweaver then equally as guilty of cheating? Whether he is aware of it or not?
The MtG market is almost bizarre in that respect. Signed (by relevant artists) cards lose enough value to be refused by most collectors and players but a I saw very nearly completely defaced Bazaar of Baghdad sell for a few points below the same as an LP/NM at the time.
Green and red are the common problem colors for colorblind. This is why green/red stop lights are spiked with blue/orange and are always oriented the same (red on top or left) with one exception.
I like the splatter but agree some adjustmets are in order to increase contrast.
Not sure if I agree with adding art to the plus side. No art is as much an indicator as full art in the right circumstance.
If you must a yellow sun or star might do. A heart even. That sunburst render you posted isn't quite what I had in mind.. too subtle.
I agree with Lithl. The principles are good, but in practice I don't trust society to be fair without a stronger form of centralized control that the people can decide through. Key point- I don't think the right to be selfish is a very important right.
Selfishness works both ways.
To pick on the poor, I encounter a depressing number of poor who willingly refuse to pick themselves up (theough work or some other means) because it's easier to be on welfare and it often pays better than a minimum wage job. The selfishness here is the unwillingness to get off of welfare.
Not to say all welfare recepients are strictly selfish in this manner. Some Wal*mart stores actually recommended their employees leverage welfare, foodbank and food donation programs last Thanksgiving because their employees weren't being paid enough. Is the selfishness here because the employees are "unwilling" to look for better work or Wal*Mart gouging employee pay because the employee can't work elsewhere? Hard to cast a net that wide.
Point is, there are selfish people on the receiving end as well.
I didn't take him to the LGS yet, couldn't get off work on time.
Good point with Distress, good way to teach him about threat assessment. It's more $$ (relatively speaking) but isn't Surgical Extraction better? Like a Jester's Cap on crank?
Oh wait... I get it now. Different animals.
He's hooked on the idea of milling my deck and grabbing beasts back from the graveyard. So I'll look at those cards too.
So, should he have made a new thread, so the whole discussion can start in circles once again?
As long as he links back to the "dead" thread I suppose.
Proxies and counterfeits is one of the reasons I stopped using eBay (and to a lesser degree Amazon). I have a hell of a time getting real stuff (not strictly MtG) sometimes because there are so many fakes floating around.
Those are a lot of good ideas and more than a few that I didn't think of like the discards and Collateral Damage. Tri-color lands would be interesting. I was thinking strictly duals, but tri colors could allow him to cast a wider color net and smooth out his mana needs. He tends to need black more than red in his deck since the majority of his red spells are less than 2CMC or X spells.
From what I can see, they're all within an 8 year olds budget.
I can tell he's not too crazy about wiping the board (one of my "teaching" decks is Jokulhaups. Obviously not one I play very often.) so if he can avoid the Disk, I think he would.
My eight year old loves Magic and Pokemon and he's quite proud of his B/R deck he tweaks once every two weeks or so with new cards bought with his allowance. One day, as he was testing out one of his newest builds, I decided to play a UW deck his sister owns that uses Suppression Bonds, Claustrophobia and Turn to Frog among others, most of the cards were chosen for their artwork rather than their function.
He played a great game, causing me to mill some key cards out of my deck, stealing then sacrificing my creatures or just reducing their PT. So I went into defensive mode, playing cards like Ox to block his creatures and Suppression and Claustrophobia to pin his key creatures down. I managed to finish him off (just barely) using a fairy.
He burst out crying. It was then that I took a step back and looked at the board state and realized just how much I locked him down without realizing it. He had milled nearly half my deck and killed or stolen all but my lone flyer and I had a full hand. Meanwhile, he had five of his biggest creatures locked with enchantments, nothing in his hand and a meager two creatures in his graveyard. Enchantments was very thing he had no answers for with his B/R deck.
I hadn't even considered it. I just steered the deck his sister owns without thinking about it. Needless to say, I felt super bad. I broke the "don't be a jerk" rule in a big way. An adult like me pummeling a kid like that? Poor kid told me he felt he had no chance at winning because of the casual way I played. Especially since he didn't have any answers for the enchantments I played.
So I thought long and hard how to find answers to deal with these enchantments without deviating too much from his BR colors.
So I came up with doing the obvious by adding Nevinyrral's Disk for the obvious destruction.
Then I was thinking of spiking his deck with dual BW and RW lands to give him access to Disenchant for a more flexible Shatter and Cloudshift to make creatures stolen with Act of Treason stick around longer and make Returned Centaur a real punch to the face.
Am I missing anything obvious here?
He really really liked Sigiled Starfish for the repeatable Scy, but I don't see anything in B, R, or W with similar function.
With a handful of exceptions (notably older sets such as those before Ice Age or standalones), sets (or expansions) are part of a block consisting of (usually) a core set and two expansions. As a general rule of thumb, basic lands are found in the core set and normally not in the expansions as they're usually intended to play with the core set.
This is why your Eldritch Moon (EMN) Intro box has Shadows Over Innistrad (SOI) cards. EMN is an expansion for SOI and hence, EMN doesn't have any basic lands and some of the cards work together with cards found in SOI.
There were "parallel" sets that were "Edition" sets such as 5th, 6th, 7th, and so on. These are usually complete standalone sets that are (admittedly, I haven't looked at them since about 4th edition) a hodgepodge of reprints of prior sets including basic lands. Though some do contain unique cards. I believe these were recently discontinued with Origins(?).
There are also special releases that look like sets but serve some function or another not really pertinent to the current question. Just onow they exist and they may or may not be playable.
As an aside, Intro decks are rather terrible and are difficult to get them mechanically working when tweaking, They introduce too many mechanics and incomplete combos that, without instruction from an experienced player, are not obvious or frustrating for the beginner player. They seem to be intended for average to experienced players to "taste" new expansions which don't make sense, as those players already know to buy singles, boosters or fat packs.
Are the other casual players pretty loose with their cards as well? What's the meta like that you're facing? I just want to get an idea of what's allowed here. There doesn't seem to be any limitations here.
The Puppeteer is a little weird to me. I probably would rather have Icy Manipulator for flexible tapping and use Mishra's Factory to poke the player. I can see his use in your combo, my playing style probably wouldn't favor it though.
Frozen Aether and Dream Tides with no Winter Orb? I have two decks that plays Winter Orb and a lot of recent players will just scoop when the Orb hits.
You talk about milling your opponent, like Forced Fruition but don't do much to punish them for their hand. Check out cards like Black Vise.
Gotta be a mistake. I have a handful of these cards and I have never seen anyone play them or even want them, with exception for collectors trying to complete sets.
L = Lands
C = Creatures
S = Sorceries
I = Instants
A = Artifacts
E = Enchantments
PW = Planes Walkers
Doesn't seem like all of them... not the ones that appeared throughout the history of Magic anyways. This link has a more precise list: http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Card_type
That way we don't get people proposing another silly Mana Source type again.
I have a few. Wish I got Moxes or Black Lotus instead, ces la vie
Right, I tried to stick the "asking price" or whatever the sellers are asking for is called? Sellers price maybe? I really meant what's available from the sellers.
eBay is going crazy too. People seem to be asking roughly $35 a pop.
When does anyone think the price will settle (hopefully) down? I don't really want to sell a Force of Will to get a playset of baubles.
We weren't
That said, TCGP is showing prices in the high forties to low sixties.
I'm a little irritated myself because I wanted to finally get a full Coldsnap set (not just baubles) to compliment my Ice Ages/Alliance sets. Asking prices are getting nudged up thanks to the speculators.
Interestingly, as the OP stated, this works "best" when the delta between lands is already maximized or very nearly so. So it seems that the OP is saying that if the deck is truly randomized, and he does his thing, the result should still be truly randomized.
Not excusing his cheating, but isn't the interweaver then equally as guilty of cheating? Whether he is aware of it or not?
I like the splatter but agree some adjustmets are in order to increase contrast.
Not sure if I agree with adding art to the plus side. No art is as much an indicator as full art in the right circumstance.
If you must a yellow sun or star might do. A heart even. That sunburst render you posted isn't quite what I had in mind.. too subtle.
Crazy value tokens would be awesome if Frankenstein's Monster was still a thing....
Selfishness works both ways.
To pick on the poor, I encounter a depressing number of poor who willingly refuse to pick themselves up (theough work or some other means) because it's easier to be on welfare and it often pays better than a minimum wage job. The selfishness here is the unwillingness to get off of welfare.
Not to say all welfare recepients are strictly selfish in this manner. Some Wal*mart stores actually recommended their employees leverage welfare, foodbank and food donation programs last Thanksgiving because their employees weren't being paid enough. Is the selfishness here because the employees are "unwilling" to look for better work or Wal*Mart gouging employee pay because the employee can't work elsewhere? Hard to cast a net that wide.
Point is, there are selfish people on the receiving end as well.
Good point with Distress, good way to teach him about threat assessment. It's more $$ (relatively speaking) but isn't Surgical Extraction better? Like a Jester's Cap on crank?
Oh wait... I get it now. Different animals.
He's hooked on the idea of milling my deck and grabbing beasts back from the graveyard. So I'll look at those cards too.
As long as he links back to the "dead" thread I suppose.
Proxies and counterfeits is one of the reasons I stopped using eBay (and to a lesser degree Amazon). I have a hell of a time getting real stuff (not strictly MtG) sometimes because there are so many fakes floating around.
From what I can see, they're all within an 8 year olds budget.
I can tell he's not too crazy about wiping the board (one of my "teaching" decks is Jokulhaups. Obviously not one I play very often.) so if he can avoid the Disk, I think he would.
I might take him to the LGS today.
He played a great game, causing me to mill some key cards out of my deck, stealing then sacrificing my creatures or just reducing their PT. So I went into defensive mode, playing cards like Ox to block his creatures and Suppression and Claustrophobia to pin his key creatures down. I managed to finish him off (just barely) using a fairy.
He burst out crying. It was then that I took a step back and looked at the board state and realized just how much I locked him down without realizing it. He had milled nearly half my deck and killed or stolen all but my lone flyer and I had a full hand. Meanwhile, he had five of his biggest creatures locked with enchantments, nothing in his hand and a meager two creatures in his graveyard. Enchantments was very thing he had no answers for with his B/R deck.
I hadn't even considered it. I just steered the deck his sister owns without thinking about it. Needless to say, I felt super bad. I broke the "don't be a jerk" rule in a big way.
So I thought long and hard how to find answers to deal with these enchantments without deviating too much from his BR colors.
So I came up with doing the obvious by adding Nevinyrral's Disk for the obvious destruction.
Then I was thinking of spiking his deck with dual BW and RW lands to give him access to
Disenchant for a more flexible Shatter and Cloudshift to make creatures stolen with Act of Treason stick around longer and make Returned Centaur a real punch to the face.
Am I missing anything obvious here?
He really really liked Sigiled Starfish for the repeatable Scy, but I don't see anything in B, R, or W with similar function.
With a handful of exceptions (notably older sets such as those before Ice Age or standalones), sets (or expansions) are part of a block consisting of (usually) a core set and two expansions. As a general rule of thumb, basic lands are found in the core set and normally not in the expansions as they're usually intended to play with the core set.
This is why your Eldritch Moon (EMN) Intro box has Shadows Over Innistrad (SOI) cards. EMN is an expansion for SOI and hence, EMN doesn't have any basic lands and some of the cards work together with cards found in SOI.
There were "parallel" sets that were "Edition" sets such as 5th, 6th, 7th, and so on. These are usually complete standalone sets that are (admittedly, I haven't looked at them since about 4th edition) a hodgepodge of reprints of prior sets including basic lands. Though some do contain unique cards. I believe these were recently discontinued with Origins(?).
There are also special releases that look like sets but serve some function or another not really pertinent to the current question. Just onow they exist and they may or may not be playable.
As an aside, Intro decks are rather terrible and are difficult to get them mechanically working when tweaking, They introduce too many mechanics and incomplete combos that, without instruction from an experienced player, are not obvious or frustrating for the beginner player. They seem to be intended for average to experienced players to "taste" new expansions which don't make sense, as those players already know to buy singles, boosters or fat packs.
In any case, welcome to Magic!
I would include Force of Will to give you first turn advantage. Reliquary Tower instead of Library of Leng, or 2x each if you want the discard feature.
The Puppeteer is a little weird to me. I probably would rather have Icy Manipulator for flexible tapping and use Mishra's Factory to poke the player. I can see his use in your combo, my playing style probably wouldn't favor it though.
Frozen Aether and Dream Tides with no Winter Orb? I have two decks that plays Winter Orb and a lot of recent players will just scoop when the Orb hits.
You talk about milling your opponent, like Forced Fruition but don't do much to punish them for their hand. Check out cards like Black Vise.