MTG Salvation

Quote from jar75 »

Decks evolve all of the time. FRF and DTK made Grixis Control a viable archetype for a while, until Eldrazi came through and burned down the building. The Eldrazi deck is predominantly built from BFZ-OGW cards.

Infect isn't built that way because it's a less efficient way of doing the same thing. Why use a Gudul Lurker and have to use another card to give him infect when you can just play Blighted Agent instead?

That is the primary reason I don't play Modern. Just because I can afford $40 for Noble Hierarch doesn't meant that I am going to spend that money. If I don't buy the deck as the professionals play it then I will wind up wasting both time and money as I sit there and lose to decks which have been honed to near-perfection over a decade of play. This is like going to the casino--I don't mind sitting down at the regular table and throwing in a $1 ante per hand but I am not going to sit at the table with considerably higher rewards where the ante is $25 or $50 per hand. The buy-in cost is too high, even for me.

So turn 2 Vessel of Volatility then turn 3 Goldnight Castigator, yes? Sounds good, especially if you follow it up with a turn 4 Goldnight Castigator. Caveat: sure, by the time your turn 4 second main phase occurs you have done 12 damage to your opponent but you have to be very careful that they don't have 5 damage being presented next turn or you are dead. If they don't, then you truly are a red player who likes to Act on Impulse and you will deal lethal on turn 5. Truthfully, that sounds like an excellent plan for game 1, especially if they aren't boarding Ultimate Price or Clip Wings. Play a little more cautiously on game 2 and hold back mana for something like Encircling Fissure or Vine Snare.

Why do people see only the negatives when they see new cards?

There will be 11 posters in all. If you count the cryptoliths on Drownyard Temple you will see that there are 22 of them, which cannot be a coincidence. As far as I can tell, Tamiyo's Journal says one of two things, either "there is more to Avacyn's madness" and "the madness of Avacyn is hiding something" (which could also be "Avacyn's madness is hiding something"). I tried using a simple place-based cypher but hit only dead ends; for example, the 2nd letter of "there is more to Avacyn's madness" is "h", the 4th is r, etc. None of the 4-letter words made sense, even when I transposed them through the English alphabet both forward and backward.

I tried looking only at the slope of the cryptoliths, ignoring the direction they were pointing, as well. This gives only 5 positions--level, slightly down to the right, sharply down to the right, slightly down to the left, and sharply down to the left--and calling those "position 1", "position 2", etc. This would make the English version come out as 3, 2, 2, 4. Now, from here it appears that the second and third letters should be the same and this would give us possibilities such as "moon" or "seek" or even "http" but this didn't work out with any satisfactory results, either.

However they have this puzzle built, it looks like it will definitely require all 11 posters to have full information and cannot be too terribly complex--it won't reference the flavor text on cards like I examined and it won't require advanced knowledge of number theory, cyphers, and/or codes.

Still...Jace says that all the cryptoliths point to the Drownyard Temple and we know that they are responsible for the Warped Landscape. Perhaps there is something in that card's flavor text about cryptoliths twisting the plane's mana...but twisting it how?

Given the nature of the shadowlands--they come in to play untapped if you reveal one of two different types of basic lands--the manabase won't be as bad as many have predicted. Prairie Stream would let you satisfy the untapped etb condition for Choked Estuary, Port Town, and Fortified Village. A 24-land BUW base could be 3x Prairie Stream, 3x Sunken Hollow, 4x Swamp, 2x Island, 4x Plains, 3x Choked Estuary, 3x Port Town and either 2x Caves of Koilos or 2x Forsaken Sanctuary. This gives 12B, 14U, and 12W sources with a pretty good chance of having even a shadowland in play untapped on turn 1 as well as a reasonably high chance of being able to access all 3 colors by turn 3.

Any creature or effect which gives all your other creatures an ability like hexproof is always worth having. Play only humans and Reflector Mage becomes nothing more than a minor annoyance because it has a toughness of 3. Giving yourself hexproof is an ability I find many players underestimate. Not that it happens often, but the ultimate for Jace, Vryn's Prodigy targets an opponent. Thought-Knot Seer becomes a generic colorless 4/4. No more edicts like Duress.

Jace, Unraveler of Secrets getting to ultimate with Eidolon of Rhetoric seems like so much fun that I probably wouldn't even mind someone using that combination against me.

In upcoming Standard, though, the aggravating UW players are going to play this card, then -2 to bounce their Reflector Mage then resummon it. Every. Single. Turn.

The people who spent BB1 for Hero's Downfall or BRW for Crackling Doom won't bat an eye at spending BW1 for Anguished Unmaking. The latter spell outperforms either of the two former ones.

If you played Nahiri, the Harbinger then you are already using red/white so you might as well play Eldrazi Displacer the turn after her. Once she ultimates and your large, mostly-game-winning threat hits the battlefield, displace it so that it doesn't bounce back to your hand at the next end step. The turn after that should net you your victory.

Quote from Morphling »

I have always wished for a Nekrataal that had Deathtouch instead of First Strike.

Or even one with Deathtouch that has some conditional trigger that allows it to also temporarily gain First Strike in some cute fashion..

Xathrid Slyblade, perhaps?

How about the difficult-to-use-but-always-fun Ankle Shanker?

So Squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel, and Baloth are safe,
but Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Kozilek, the Great Distortion, and The Ur-Dragon
have all perished.

I will stand my ground on this one, should I ever own this and be called on it. It doesn't have "arbitrarily large" power, it has literally INFINITE power. It goes beyond numbers. That means if you slap lifelink on this thing and hit a chump blocker, no "infinite combo" from black-bordered magic can kill you. Your opponent can declare that they are going to loop their Breya, Etherium Shaper combo to make 100,000,000,000 thopter tokens, beat you in the face with every one of them, and sac them all to deal 150,000,000,000 damage to you, but your life total will still be "infinity".

Quote from Courier7 »

Quote from SCDL »

If you subtract infinity from infinity you get a complete and unresolvable mess unless we strictly define the sorts of infinity we're working with.

We should probably stick to the simplest form of infinity: if k is a positive integer then let x = infinity so that x - k = x regardless of the value of k. The equates to k = 0 regardless of the actual value of k and we can define all instances of "infinity" to have the same value. Thus, the demon couldn't drain the token by -infinity/-infinity (this process increments by integers) but if the token hits you and you have infinite life then you die since x - x = 0.

In general, though, it is true that there are several types of infinities and some of them are more infinite than others.

And some are more mind-numbingly convoluted than others!

Chandra's Ignition. You're all welcome.

Fling it

Quote from Courier7 »

Darksteel Myr. Stalemate.

Stuffy Doll. Checkmate.

Mythic Vanilla (edit: as promised)

Hey. Hey psst! C'mere kid. I got some premium product for yas.