MTG Salvation

Quote from KarnTerrier »

Considering that guy's profile just disappeared and all his posts vanished, I'm guessing he wasn't legit after all. Sad!

I find it interesting that you concluded that instead of considering the possibility that he was saying too much.

Quote from OKandrew »

Sorry, but you all must be extremely poor to say that "Standard" isn't affordable, or what have you. Cards are at their cheapest they've ever been, aside from Multi-Format All-Stars like Karn, Teferi, etc. So, yeah, I am glad those cards are $30+ dollars, because otherwise, the game would be completely worthless from a collectors point of view. Especially someone who is buying Boxes at $90+ a pop. You people who can't afford to play with that cost basis, really shouldn't be playing Magic at all, and should maybe re-evaluate your lives, and possibly consider getting a better job/second job, because Magic is clearly NOT what you should be doing with your spare time, if that's the way you look at it in your budget...

This comes across as needlessly condescending. What I took away from this thread is that Brawl allows people to play the game using the Standard card pool without having to spend money on the more expensive Standard cards.

Quote from Legend »

Quote from Etherium Sage »

Tezzeret's Etherium Arm 1UU (R)
Legendary Artifact
T: Create a colorless artifact token named Etherium Cell with "T, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color."
1, T: Create a 1/1 blue Thopter artifact creature token with flying. Activate this ability only if you control three or more artifacts.
2, T: Another target artifact becomes a 5/5 artifact creature. Activate this ability only if you control three or more artifacts.

Love this. Seems like each activation cost should be increased by 1. Also, Metalcraft doesn't seem necessary (especially if costs increased).

So I removed the Metalcraft, upped the activation cost of each by 1, and added a fourth activated ability to give it Trading Post-like utility.

Tezzeret's Etherium Arm 1UU (R)
Legendary Artifact
1, T: Create a colorless artifact token named Etherium Cell with "T, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color."
2, T: Create a 1/1 blue Thopter artifact creature token with flying.
3, T: Another target artifact becomes a 5/5 artifact creature.
4, T: Put an artifact card from your hand onto the battlefield.

Just to add to the other complaints, post-Oath of the Gatewatch, 1 is strictly the symbol for one generic mana in a mana cost ("generic mana" meaning you can pay mana of any color or colorless mana).

The land taps for one colorless mana, and the symbol for colorless mana post-Oath of the Gatewatch is C. So the land should really say "T: Add C."

Where was this when Energy was in full-swing?

In Commander, it can remove experience counters too, for whatever that's worth.

Quote from pierrebai »

A mythic, a planeswalker, ... and can be totally unplayable in limited. That's quite the feat. You need a minimum count of playable zombies in your deck, otherwise she does literally nothing. At all. A planeswalker so narrow does not feel like aplaneswalker to me.

Edit: for the comparison with Sarkhan: his first ability works without dragons and his ultimates not only works but wins you the game in limited.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that by making planeswalkers like this one more restricted to a specific theme, it extends the already limited design space that planeswalkers have. If you keep making generic Lilianas, you'll quickly run out of design choices for the cards that won't end up looking pretty much the same as previous incarnations.

Quote from Tears of Tomorrow »

Quote from Etherium Sage »

So how likely is it that Bolas and Ugin are two halves of what was supposed to be a single dragon? That would explain why they're smaller than usual, weren't born with full names, and their personalities are so radically different, right?

If so, is it possible that they could "fuse" Dragonball Z Piccolo and Kami-style later on in the overarching plot?

Two dragons of opposing moral alignments being two halves of a single entity, and being involved in a fusion plot in the sequel? Someone must have played the Gen 5 Pokemon games recently

But I'm serious though. This story has given me the idea that a Nicol Ugin character might actually form from the twins in the future.

Quote from Perkunas687 »

I think Ugin is likely to start Jeskai, and then flip colorless. I could see them sharing draconic red, thoughtful strategizing blue, and then opposites with white and black. Ugin's seeming sense of order could be white, and he is on the white side of blue more than the red side. Also, Arcades card just spoiled, and he's Bant. Doubt they'll double up on Bant. And all the elder dragons thus far have been tricolor. What if what's-his-face and his cronies are Tarkir tricolors? Was that Asmadi who was doing his own thing? But Asmadi had a card that wasn't Tarkir colors.

Either way, my sense is Ugin will be Jeskai to make a good/evil dichotomy with white and black the only things separating Ugin and Bolas.

Just because Arcades is Bant doesn't mean Ugin couldn't be, especially because this connection he has with Bolas seems to go even deeper than we realized. Also I don't know where you were going with Asmadi, because you seemed to get confused there.

>Defender commander

Oh my word. OH MY WORD! I didn't even know I wanted this, but I want this!

*Calms down*

Well anyway, Arcades will make a very interesting general. I hope the folks who were complaining about Palladia and Chromium not being commander material will respect this one.

Ajani: https://twitter.com/ChannelFireball/status/1007869480775700480

Bolas: https://twitter.com/ChannelFireball/status/1007871387049046016 / https://twitter.com/ChannelFireball/status/1007871387049046016

And Tezzeret. Card will be previewd next week.

Quote from DudeFromDenmark »

Any fun combo wirh Desecrated Tomb?

Tortured Existence was the first card that came to mind for me. It's an oldie but a goodie. As long as you have a creature in your graveyard and a creature in hand, you can loop them for B and get a Bat token out of the deal.

Cast with Jodah, Archmage Eternal --> Profit!

Quote from Colt47 »

Think of it this way: how many more boxes would WoTC sell if every pack of battlebond had a full art foil of a random card from the set? Full art foil Land Tax is attractive from a financial point of view, but full arts of even the commons and uncommons would be heavily sought out. Plus, imagine if they said every 6 packs in a booster box had a full art, border-less basic land and one of those lands would be a foil?

Yet when Wizards puts things like Masterpieces in sets, the MTGS crowd calls them "lottery cards" and gets angry that they exist and accuses Wizards of wanting to cash in...

Also the idea that Magic artwork is bad is... utterly ridiculous. Magic players are insanely spoiled for art. Magic art is a who's who of the best fantasy illustrators and consistently shows up in stuff like Spectrum. Most fantasy games would be lucky to get one illustration from someone like Seb McKinnon, last year magic got nine. There's a lot of stuff where Magic lags behind other CCGs but the quality of the art is basically unparalleled.

Quote from Lord_Mektar »

Let's be real here. It's the return of Core sets that's the problem. We could have gotten two sets on Dominaria AND three on Ravinca were that not the case. But of course WotC has to support the sinking ship that is Standard above all else, so we Vorthos-es are out of luck.

Yah why support the sinking ship that drives the vast majority of their sales? Just let the game die here so no one ever has to play standard again.

Wait, that sounds stupid. Thank God magic isn't designed by it's fans but by a group of people who each make mistakes but would never make the game killing mistakes it's fans would.

If I would live on Grixis and be barefoot like she is, the first skill as a mage, that I would learn, is flying.

Quote from SilverWolf_27 »

We could use some real consequence.

The Gatewatch nearly disbanded after their defeat, and we got our first case of someone leaving the roster. The confidence of everyone involved was severely shaken, and it took Gideon several chapters to recover from his injuries. And that's just the immediate consequences. Jace's advenure on Ixalan happened because of the Gatewatch's defeat, which in turn lead to Jace recovering his memories, and might've affected whether or not Tezzeret was able to snag the Immortal Sun. Failing to kill Bolas before killing the last of Liliana's demons leads to her having to work for Bolas, making the Gatewatch's next attempt that much harder. And I'm sure there's more I've forgotten, or that hasn't been revealed yet.

Death is not the only possible "real consequence" in a story. Any writer who thinks it is is a terrible writer. It's alarming how many people on these forums don't realize this. Nobody dies in The Empire Strikes Back, for example, but it'd be ridiculous to claim that it had no "real consequences".

Quote from Perkunas687 »

Was it discussed somewhere by Wizards why, on the 25th anniversary and on the most prominent plane in Magic history, they decided to only do a one set block? A lot of our issues with representation of other Dominaria things and the rushed story could have been solved by having more than one set. Seems strange to me. I mean, we're still having four sets a year, right? They couldn't dedicate at least two for such a big anniversary? Shrug.

MaRo said that the 2-set paradigm was kind of a fail, so that's part of why they switched to one big set at a time.
HOWEVER, he also said that Creative was no longer beholden to the "New block, new plane" standard. so they do have the freedom to have back-to-back big sets on the same plane, if the storyline dictates. So there is a possibility, however slim, that the next set will still be on Dominaria.

Karn: "Now kiss and make up!"