But we got Liliana and Garruk in black last year, so who knows what could happen.
Seems odd to say we got Garruk "in black" when the Innistrad Garruk didn't have black in his casting cost. Is a card really black just because the frame says so? As per the rules, sure, it is. But if you don't need a source of black mana to cast it, and there's no benefit to using swamps with it or what not... it's just hard to say he's "truly" a green/black Planeswalker right?
I'm hoping both are two-color Planeswalkers, maybe an Izzet aligned Jace and a green/white female walker. Can't wait to find out!
This is a neat mechanic for an aggro guild, which fits. My only wish is that it was templated as "Unleash X" where the number determined the number of 1/1 counters. Adding a number to the template would allow for some big demon with "Unleash 3" at mythic, or something along those lines. Trading the ability to block for a power boost is cool, I just with they'd made it a tiny bit less narrow. Even if only one or two cards took advantage of using a number greater than one, it seems like it would be better to me. Thoughts?
You had some interesting thoughts sprinkled around, but the entire article was largely incoherent. It almost seemed as though you started typing with an idea, but no clear picture of what you were trying to say. Then you had more ideas, and went in new directions multiple times as you were writing.
I wish you'd organized it better or broken it into two articles. As it is, I feel like you shared a lot of random thoughts about youthful ambition, color pies, enchantments, and whatever else came to your mind.
im pretty sure the 4 versions of the urza lands is a cover up and the power 9 are totally in those spots, thats even why they leaked it, to cover it all up, pretty easy imo. throw out the list to show theoriest that its not in there, but it really IS!
This is a really fun theory, for sure. The inclusion of the power 9 would give players online the chance to play real type 1, and that'd be a lot of fun. Also, one might say that when they announced the number of rares and uncommons, they didn't say a number of mythic rares (whether zero or nine), so if they are in, it wouldn't have been "lying" per se.
On the other hand, I for one am hesitant believe this as a possibility. As fun as it would be, it seems more likely that WotC would release just part of the power nine, maybe the moxen, then do the power blue and lotus in separate sets to "milk it" a little more.
Maybe my cynicism will prove unfounded and MTGO players will finally get to have power! Here's hoping!
I'm dying to know what the promo's will be for playing Phyrexian or Mirran decks! This may seem like a gimmick, but it seems to me like a fun gimmick none the less.
Q: What happens when my opponent has Eldrazi Monument on the battlefield and I cast Planar Cleansing? Does the Monument just get destroyed or does everything go poof because it would all be destroyed at the same time?
A: As a one-shot effect, everything but lands are destroyed. The Monument is destroyed, enchantments are destroyed, his creatures are destroyed, your creatures... are not destroyed because they cannot be. This all happens at once, so your creatures will survive while your monument explodes.
The question states that the player's opponent has the monument and the answer states that the player's creatures will survive. The opponent's creatures would survive. Might be confusing.
Should read: "...your creatures are destroyed, his creatures... are not... his creatures will survive while his monument explodes."
This is news to me... Maybe they are tracking whether or not you receive a promo at any FNM events you attend? Or perhaps they will be mailing out promos now, rather than giving them to TO's to prevent some of the corruption that takes place with them not reaching the players and making it to ebay instead?
Could be the start of a whole new system they're putting into place, or it could just be a new way to track the way things are already done... Either way, very interesting.
Great article, lots of good information. I had one question related to the War Monk being illegally played early in the game and how the "rewind" would work.
I had a similar situation where my opponent played two spells, then passed the turn to me. I untapped, and as I was doing my upkeep and assessing game-state I noticed that I had an Aura of Silence in play, and as such he didn't have enough mana for his two spells, due to their 'artifactishness.' We were both a little unsure how to correct the game state. This was an unsanctioned tournament, so it kind of mattered but we didn't have a judge handy. My thought was to rewind game state to just before he played the spells, but I had drawn a card during my upkeep, further complicating matters.
I guess my ultimate question is whether or not there is some kind of hard rule for how to undo these kinds of mistakes and how long you have to do so. In the War Monk scenario, clearly the other player could have caught it during the next turn and said something. What about the turn after that, when it attacked for the first time? How long do you have to catch it if your opponent does something illegal that gives him or her an advantage? Also, where is the line drawn between "I honestly tapped three for my guy not thinking about the colors, sorry..." vs. "I wonder if my opponent will notice that I don't have the right mana..." Isn't there some penalty for the guy that played the War Monk for the wrong mana?
Thanks for the Cranial Insertion. Keep 'em coming!
I enjoyed your article a lot. I suppose I'm guilty of being too much of a Spike at times because I said to myself as I read "why the hell would you want to play a deck that didn't win?" But I read on, and I pondered your words... I think I might be too aggressive of a player to fully soak them in yet.
For example: The group I play with is trying something new this weekend in the spirit of the holidays called "White Christmas" format, where the only rule is that your deck can only run card that can be cast with white mana, lands that produce white, colorless, or nomana, or snow lands. Kind of a fun way to challenge everyone to build something different then what they usually play, and as the rules were told to the group I heard murmurs of "Kithkin will dominate," and "Wrath of God will destroy the Kithkinhordes!" Me, being the guy I am, thought "I can play four copies of Balance, at last!"
But I suppose the question your article raises in my mind is whether or not making a deck that breaks this fun format in half is really the best way to go. Will I win games by playing first turn COP:White, thanks to a full load of moxes? Certainly I'll be hard to kill in an all white format... Is that the most fun way to go? We do play games for fun, right? My playset of Eight-and-a-half-Tails will be a funny win condition, but will it be a fun one?
Anyway, thanks for the casual point of view. It certainly gives me something to consider. And maybe... just maybe... it will lead to me having more fun.
Many of my friends go out of their way to attend to as many events as possible to achieve the good rewards....
I have to agree with you're thought on this one... My wife went out of her way to attend additional tournaments when Damnation was brand new, knowing that a new foil promo would be coming soon and wanting to get it the first time it went out. Not only did she not receive the foil she was supposed to get, she didn't get anything at all. WotC customer service went back and forth with us a lot on it, and she didn't ever get it, nor did she get her promo the next time around, then they said it might have been sent and lost... It was pretty frustrating.
I understand the statement "Don't complain because it is free." But it is unfair and drains the fun from an incentive program when some people are getting the promised promos and others aren't getting them after attending the same events.
If they decide to do away with MPR, that is their choice. But as long as they are still going to run the program, wouldn't it be nice if they ran it right?
*edit* forgot I have a scanner at work! (I don't know how to link it to a smaller picture)
Your DCI number is on the back of the card you scanned. Not that it is a huge deal, but it might be better to keep that number private. Hundreds of people on MTG Salvation might use it to enter events, thereby scrapping your DCI rating. On the upside, you'd get tons of rewards because you'd participate in more events than any other man alive. :-P
Nice looking card though, I like the art on the front. Hopefully my wife and I will each get one of these, because our DCI numbers are starting to rub off from our old cards pretty bad.
...is it the one they are putting in fat packs? How many pages is it? Can we compare that with the "bigger" version to tell what kind of value loss we're to expect?
These are my big concerns as well, mostly. I don't want to get it for free via rips and scans (although a teaser is always nice), but I also don't want to feel ripped off when I order a copy and then crack open a fat pack and find... A second copy? Does anyone know for sure what will come in the fatpack, and whether or not this is worth the buy?
What I am wondering is why the mutavault would still be a 2/2 as the character defining text after it's been activated would be replaced by the text of what ever creature was being copied. As in the Cloudthresher question. Mutavault is a land, becomes a 2/2, then Mirrorweave makes it a copy, which means it loses it's previous rules text, and character defining text of being a 2/2, and gets the cloudthresher text, and pwr/toughness. Can anyone clarify that?
Thanks
This Mutavault issue baffles me as well. If you turn it into a copy of some other creature until end of turn, surely it would gain the power and toughness of that creature, along with the other characteristics? It wouldn't go back to being a 2/2 until the effect wore off, and then only for the briefest of moments because it would revert back to a land in short order, since both effects last until end of turn.
Am I off on this one, or missing something fundamental? The Mutavault should become a Cloudthresher, right? Assuming the Mutavault was activated and Cloudthresher was targeted by Mirrorweave.
Does anyone have a link to the card image? I'm not seeing it in the first post for some reason.
As far as playability goes, this is probably the worst card this year, but they can't all be winners, or the good ones would fail to impress... Then again, if you're going to do 12 FNM cards a year, and there are three or four sets coming out a year, it seems like you'd come up with a cooler card than Resurrection, honestly. They should have thrown something crazy like a Kitchen Finks, or at least something decent from 10th.
And really, isn't the point of these promos to make desirable FNM cards to get people to come out and play? Foil Eternal Witness brought people out of the wood-works... This, not so much.
Seems odd to say we got Garruk "in black" when the Innistrad Garruk didn't have black in his casting cost. Is a card really black just because the frame says so? As per the rules, sure, it is. But if you don't need a source of black mana to cast it, and there's no benefit to using swamps with it or what not... it's just hard to say he's "truly" a green/black Planeswalker right?
I'm hoping both are two-color Planeswalkers, maybe an Izzet aligned Jace and a green/white female walker. Can't wait to find out!
I wish you'd organized it better or broken it into two articles. As it is, I feel like you shared a lot of random thoughts about youthful ambition, color pies, enchantments, and whatever else came to your mind.
--Chantry
This is a really fun theory, for sure. The inclusion of the power 9 would give players online the chance to play real type 1, and that'd be a lot of fun. Also, one might say that when they announced the number of rares and uncommons, they didn't say a number of mythic rares (whether zero or nine), so if they are in, it wouldn't have been "lying" per se.
On the other hand, I for one am hesitant believe this as a possibility. As fun as it would be, it seems more likely that WotC would release just part of the power nine, maybe the moxen, then do the power blue and lotus in separate sets to "milk it" a little more.
Maybe my cynicism will prove unfounded and MTGO players will finally get to have power! Here's hoping!
--Chantry
Looking forward to game day!
--Chantry
The question states that the player's opponent has the monument and the answer states that the player's creatures will survive. The opponent's creatures would survive. Might be confusing.
Should read: "...your creatures are destroyed, his creatures... are not... his creatures will survive while his monument explodes."
Could be the start of a whole new system they're putting into place, or it could just be a new way to track the way things are already done... Either way, very interesting.
I had a similar situation where my opponent played two spells, then passed the turn to me. I untapped, and as I was doing my upkeep and assessing game-state I noticed that I had an Aura of Silence in play, and as such he didn't have enough mana for his two spells, due to their 'artifactishness.' We were both a little unsure how to correct the game state. This was an unsanctioned tournament, so it kind of mattered but we didn't have a judge handy. My thought was to rewind game state to just before he played the spells, but I had drawn a card during my upkeep, further complicating matters.
I guess my ultimate question is whether or not there is some kind of hard rule for how to undo these kinds of mistakes and how long you have to do so. In the War Monk scenario, clearly the other player could have caught it during the next turn and said something. What about the turn after that, when it attacked for the first time? How long do you have to catch it if your opponent does something illegal that gives him or her an advantage? Also, where is the line drawn between "I honestly tapped three for my guy not thinking about the colors, sorry..." vs. "I wonder if my opponent will notice that I don't have the right mana..." Isn't there some penalty for the guy that played the War Monk for the wrong mana?
Thanks for the Cranial Insertion. Keep 'em coming!
--Chantry
For example: The group I play with is trying something new this weekend in the spirit of the holidays called "White Christmas" format, where the only rule is that your deck can only run card that can be cast with white mana, lands that produce white, colorless, or no mana, or snow lands. Kind of a fun way to challenge everyone to build something different then what they usually play, and as the rules were told to the group I heard murmurs of "Kithkin will dominate," and "Wrath of God will destroy the Kithkin hordes!" Me, being the guy I am, thought "I can play four copies of Balance, at last!"
But I suppose the question your article raises in my mind is whether or not making a deck that breaks this fun format in half is really the best way to go. Will I win games by playing first turn COP:White, thanks to a full load of moxes? Certainly I'll be hard to kill in an all white format... Is that the most fun way to go? We do play games for fun, right? My playset of Eight-and-a-half-Tails will be a funny win condition, but will it be a fun one?
Anyway, thanks for the casual point of view. It certainly gives me something to consider. And maybe... just maybe... it will lead to me having more fun.
--Chantry
I have to agree with you're thought on this one... My wife went out of her way to attend additional tournaments when Damnation was brand new, knowing that a new foil promo would be coming soon and wanting to get it the first time it went out. Not only did she not receive the foil she was supposed to get, she didn't get anything at all. WotC customer service went back and forth with us a lot on it, and she didn't ever get it, nor did she get her promo the next time around, then they said it might have been sent and lost... It was pretty frustrating.
I understand the statement "Don't complain because it is free." But it is unfair and drains the fun from an incentive program when some people are getting the promised promos and others aren't getting them after attending the same events.
If they decide to do away with MPR, that is their choice. But as long as they are still going to run the program, wouldn't it be nice if they ran it right?
--Chantry
Your DCI number is on the back of the card you scanned. Not that it is a huge deal, but it might be better to keep that number private. Hundreds of people on MTG Salvation might use it to enter events, thereby scrapping your DCI rating. On the upside, you'd get tons of rewards because you'd participate in more events than any other man alive. :-P
Nice looking card though, I like the art on the front. Hopefully my wife and I will each get one of these, because our DCI numbers are starting to rub off from our old cards pretty bad.
--Chantry
These are my big concerns as well, mostly. I don't want to get it for free via rips and scans (although a teaser is always nice), but I also don't want to feel ripped off when I order a copy and then crack open a fat pack and find... A second copy? Does anyone know for sure what will come in the fatpack, and whether or not this is worth the buy?
This Mutavault issue baffles me as well. If you turn it into a copy of some other creature until end of turn, surely it would gain the power and toughness of that creature, along with the other characteristics? It wouldn't go back to being a 2/2 until the effect wore off, and then only for the briefest of moments because it would revert back to a land in short order, since both effects last until end of turn.
Am I off on this one, or missing something fundamental? The Mutavault should become a Cloudthresher, right? Assuming the Mutavault was activated and Cloudthresher was targeted by Mirrorweave.
--Chantry
As far as playability goes, this is probably the worst card this year, but they can't all be winners, or the good ones would fail to impress... Then again, if you're going to do 12 FNM cards a year, and there are three or four sets coming out a year, it seems like you'd come up with a cooler card than Resurrection, honestly. They should have thrown something crazy like a Kitchen Finks, or at least something decent from 10th.
And really, isn't the point of these promos to make desirable FNM cards to get people to come out and play? Foil Eternal Witness brought people out of the wood-works... This, not so much.
This is really the wrong place for this post...
And now it'll go to the right place. —Rax