MTG Salvation

Quote from AJFred2_Electric_Boogaloo »

Quote from JuiceBOX »

This account smells like a MTG designer casually explaining to everyone why the snow mechanic wouldn't be in the set... lol

I wish! I would love to be a professional game designer. I'm just long time player (a friend bought a starter set back in '94 and we'd play all the time as kids) who really loves the flavor of the game. Oddly, not much for following story outside of the Wiki summary sections, though.

Frankly, I wish it was in the set; I love the idea of mana having different qualities and wish it was used more (also, would love to see more than just Snow and Phyrexian mana), but I would get why they didn't include it.

• Account started today
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• Hefty knowledge of snow in MTG
• You used a semicolon and sufficient punctuation on the internet.

Gig is up my man, lol.

Quote from AJFred2_Electric_Boogaloo »

To my understanding, the point of the Snow supertype was to denote entities or magics that were permeated by the magic of the Ice Age. Of course, the Ice Age was started by the Sylex blast, which shifted the weather patterns, but the magics of the blast created The Shard and permeated the planes, creating the ice Age. Originally (in the Ice Age set) it was just the Snow Covered Lands, and then mechanics referencing those, but with the retcon created by Coldsnap I believe the intent was that things birthed of the Ice Age, and the magics that kept it going a supernaturally prolonged time, had the quality of being imbued with the magic of ice, cold, and Snow. Even the retconned mechanical flavor of mana having the quality of Snow plays into this. The idea that the mana itself is warped and chilled by the magics of the Ice Age and is now able to fuel those magics and perpetuate them is very flavorfully aligned with the idea that the Snow supertype no longer denotes something simply covered in snow, but something that's been thoroughly steeped in the magics of frost, rhyme, and pure cold.

I mean, with 10 realms, it would be cool for the frost giants to be from a Snow fueled plain, but then you'd need Snow Lands aligned with just that realm, which is logistically daunting. I mean, they do frequently do art for different lands that each tie to a realm (when they have different nations, shards, etc.), but to have just 1, maybe 2, islands with the Surtland artwork have the Snow supertype would be a nightmare in draft (and I say this as someone who espouses the idea that Magic should be made for the home players first, and tournament and collector considerations should be a distant 97th place)(also totally guessing that the 10 realms may tie to the different tribes, which each appear to be two color, so each realm will likely feature on 1 land of each of the appropriate types, but that is very unfounded conjecture). I would not be surprised if they considered Snow, and then ran into these logistical issues and sidelined it. Also possible is that they did in fact fully support Snow, but it is for only 1 (or maybe a few) realms and it just isn't that large a component of the set and we've yet to see it.

Edit - Just adding a though. Maybe now that we are thoroughly in the 1 Set Block, with a new plane almost every set design ethos (at least I recall this being a set that from start to finish was part of that, as were the last few since Dominaria if I am indeed remembering correctly), Kaldheim may be designed with a "Return to Kaldheim" in mind already and we'll only see a few of the Realms this visit. It's possible we'll see a different mix of a few Realms each visit and on a future visit to Kaldheim we'll get the Snow Realms.

This account smells like a MTG designer casually explaining to everyone why the snow mechanic wouldn't be in the set... lol

Quote from WarMachinePrime »

There is, ever hear of a glacier?

Glaciers exist all over the world, hell the state I live in sees snow 3 months out of the year and has 25 different glaciers in the park not even 50 miles away... Nobody thinks of my state as a snow state... It is a state of cattle, wheat farms, and grizzly bears.

Glaciers are not snow, they are ice, and they exist in tons of places around the world where the is not a hell of a lot of snow.

This thread cracks me up.

There isn't always snow in Iceland, Norway, or the rest of Scandinavia. This isn't an Ice Age, or anything else for snow to necessarily be an auto include mechanically. This is a set about bringing aspects of a culture to the forefront: Tribalism, pantheons, combat, and mysticism...

It doesn't need snow to feel incredibly similar to older Scandinavian flavor.

Anyways...

I suspect Runes will be artifact tokens that allow you to foretell. Perhaps a variant of scrying where you exile the card and draw it the following turn if you pay like 1 or something, otherwise it goes to the bottom of your library or graveyard?

I used to play Damia, Sage of Stone back in 2011 when it first released. Recently, I have been wanting to build Damia once again. However, in 2020, the format is radically different than it was almost a decade ago. There are a few problems that I am even facing as a seasoned player of the format. Nowadays, most commanders play significant roles in winning the game by enabling you to do something. Damia's ability is pretty archaic in this sense, because all it really does is draw you cards. This is why you are seeing old and outdated lists, time has not been kind to these generic Commanders that don't inherently offer you a way to win a game, written in their textbox.

Establishing your Endgame
The first thing I would do, is establish how you are going to win - is it a combo? Commander damage? Regular combat damage? Is your intention to even win, or just group hug it? This is probably, at least in my opinion, the most important part of building your deck. You want the deck to be coherent regardless of what direction you take it. Consistency and redundancy is key.

Achieving your Endgame
Once you have an idea of how you want to win, work out how you are going to get there. When I have too many cards to pick from, I will reduce this part to deciding if I want the deck to be completely streamlined or if I want it to be splashy and exciting. The latter means cards like Praetor's Counsel and Rune-Scarred Demon are on the table. The former means that I will instead have to think about tutor cards that are lower to the ground and avoid anything over 2 mana and maybe fudge for a Grim Tutor, but also running creatures of significance at your top-end. If you are scraping together what you have and making do with that, you are probably in the camp to the latter... and honestly I think that is where most the fun is anyways.

The other important part here, is that having a grasp on what your endgame is means you can determine if cards like Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun are even going to be impactful or not. I view Damia as being best when you are playing more of a passive game and grinding out a win using classic control fundamentals, so something like Growing Rites of Itlimoc isn't going to do much for me when I flip it. That does not mean you cannot make a creature heavy version of Damia, Sage of Stone though.

Finally...
If you are going to take the goodstuff approach in Commander, it is important not to get trapped evaluating a card simply on it own value but rather the value it provides to everything else within the deck. As I said before, consistency is key in commander and redundancy is your best bet of getting the deck to function as intended. Random Shardless Agents and Cryptoplasms should generally be avoided unless you deck is constructed around similar things.

For reference, my Mimeoplasm deck which is a midrange/control deck uses:

Creatures (18)
8 utility creatures, 10 fatty win conditions
Spells (35)
9 tutor effects, 8 counter spells, 6 recursion cards, 5 spot removal spells, 2 sweeper spells, then some card draw/selection
Artifacts (9)
5 mana rocks, 1 sweeper, 1 card draw, 2 utility
Enchantments (3)
2 card draw/selection, 1 recursion effect
Lands (34)
7 utility lands

The Mimeoplasm is a very different card than Damia, Sage of Stone, but I would structure the skeleton pretty similar. I want to be drawing cards, playing bombs, and keeping mana up while I recur some of those bombs over the long game - since Damia doesn't inherently offer a way to win the game otherwise. If you don't want to use the recursion stuff, take those slots and turn them into additional creatures for toolboxing, or even planeswalkers that can help provide a board through sweeper or removal effects. Anyways, those are just my thoughts as someone who has once played Damia, and is looking to rebuild her in 2020/2021

Quote from rowanalpha »

Quote from leslak »

Well prety powerfull card. Maybe better or equal to her AoR (3cmc) card.

Because of the ultimate it is probably an auto include in superfriends. +1 is good with creatures with ETB effects (probably can see play with Yorion + Charming Prince)

The only problem in superfriends is that the +1 does almost nothing (mine only has like two creatures in it), though I guess it could be used politically. I do like the -3 for utility though.

She is in black where you have a lot of tutors for redundancy to utilize the few creatures you do run, particularly Arena Rector, but you can also target creatures other player's control which gives you a bit of a political angle while strapping a token for yourself onto any deals. I wouldn't say she is particularly insane or anything, but I like her for Atraxa, Praetors' Voice since you can hit various green creatures like Eternal Witness, Evolution Sage and a handful of others. The ultimate is significant, which isn't a common feature of many of these newer planeswalker cards.

I have not gotten around to it, I have had a lot on my plate lately and had planned to try and jump back into it mid to late January once I clear the holidays and everything off the docket.

Card Duplicates
I find card duplicates interesting. The second pack I had been working on was Tezzeret and as I was sifting through some options I had noticed that there are cards I wanted to possibly overlap with other packs because they had a similar theme or played into the flavor in some way. My initial concern was that duplicates could possibly double up creating huge variance based simply on luck. I kind of realized that the introduction Planechase should theoretically reduce that. Which leads me to my next note...

The Testing Process
This is something I really wanted to figure out. I did not want to end up having a huge JS Cube and have to run it through the wringer all at once to try and balance things. I had planned to build a second pack and just loosely run it against the Nissa pack and see if it felt like it was on par and entertaining. This was to help me try and balance as I went so I didn't immediately turn players off of it, which is an initial concern. Not that anyone needs to do the same, but I figured I would share that tidbit just incase.

Draft-Free Deckbuilding
I get the appeal of just being able to smash packs together. I have not really fleshed out how to work around my current system short of adding an additional add-on. But it is something I had planned on working out at some point so my players could also indulge should they so choose.

People in my group don’t really proxy. I am probably the only one who does, and I have known rules for when I do.

1. Proxy with the intent to purchase.

2. Proxy duplicates to avoid Mass card swapping between decks and games.

Example 1: I am fleshing out a new commander like Rikku and know I am going to want an Imperial Recruiter. I will proxy for a session or two while it is on order. If I don’t intend on buying it (for whatever reason) I don’t proxy it in the first place.


Example 2: Time Spirals are difficult to find, and expensive. I own a copy already and intend to buy another one months down the road. I will proxy it to save time swapping cards from one deck to another between games.

Generally my group has never really had an issue with this as they know I tend to only have the proxy for a play session or two. Way back when, this was how my initial group handled things as well, proxies were never meant to be a permanent thing. If someone wanted and Underground Sea but had no intention of purchasing one, they just never proxied it. There is something about being prideful about the curation and ownership of a Commander deck, that many players silently acknowledge and want others to aspire to. If you genuinely feel like you cannot keep up because you don’t want to shell out for a Cradle - then you need to have an honest conversation with your group and with yourself, about what you want from commander. If it is getting out of control in your group, you should all agree to some basic rules, either like mine above, or cap the number of proxies. I personally find that half of the fun is actually collecting the cards to play with them.

All that being said, I think most people who have played the format long enough, probably just don’t care if you proxy or not.

Quote from DirkGently »

I think we still disagree.

I think you think I disagree with you, but really I am adding depth to what your argument (at least to me) appears to be, which is that "a player should work to round out their skills in order to grow."

Lesson 3 is about: if you are weak at aggro, find something else. When you find what you are not as weak at, mold it and fine tune it before moving on to the next thing. I am not saying a new player should jam something until they are good at it or understand it.

My opinion is that, ultimately, your goal should be to not have any "strengths". Not just to not focus on reanimator specifically, but not to focus on toolboxing more generally, or any other thing you might imagine. You should strive to do do EVERYTHING. There's no reason you can't be good at everything magic has to offer, and knowing more about every piece of it will make you a better overall player because you'll be able to apply lessons from one area to another, and to see enemy lines better and play around them.

Players like Reid Duke, Patrick Chapin, Mike Flores, Raphael Levy, Craig Wesoe, etc, are not where they are because the worked on learning everything and mastering nothing. Having worked with large tournament prep teams for constructed events, myself, it has never been because I am good at a vast amount of things - it has been because I excel in one or two things. Your goal should be to find what you are good at, and work with it until you are ready to move on to the next thing. If you are not good at something but want to be good at it, then work on it more than you work on something else.

...insert some motivational statement about ten thousand hours...

Whenever someone asks me "what colors do you play?" or "what kinds of decks do you play?", that's a hint to me that they're either new or a weak player. Magic is not a game about finding your niche and burrowing in, that's how you stagnate. It's about constantly finding new territory to conquer.

I don't know what those questions have to do with growth. Sure, Reid Duke plays a lot of different things, but if you ask anyone what colors he plays or what kind of decks he plays, they will have an answer for you - and for good reason.

You don't need to play an aggro deck to understand why your control deck is losing to aggro. You merely need to have an honest conversation with yourself. No, playing only control decks will not help you learn to play an aggro deck, but that isn't the point of lesson 3. The point of lesson 3 is that you need to put in the effort, and being the jack of all trades and master of none... isn't going to help you secure more wins or quash a losing streak. Good examples of this lesson, are actually in games that use a ladder system. You don't climb a ladder by swapping out into a bunch of different decks you have not mastered and are pulling off sub 50% win rates, you climb the ladder by mastering a deck one at a time and keeping them above 50% win rates.

Anyways, I think I know where any conversation with you is going to lead, so I am just gonna duck out now. I said my peace, imparted wisdom, and will leave it at that.

I will preface this with: I don't often go on losing streaks. Typically, I am the player who manages to weasel my way out of scenarios where I am almost certain to lose. Having lost count of how many games I have won at 1 life against better and worse decks, I have learned a few things along the way:

1. Remember that Commander is best enjoyed when you keep in mind that it is about the journey, not the destination.
2. Losing is going to improve your game more than winning.
3. Sometimes, it is better to stick with what you know, leverage your strengths rather than explore something new.

The final point is particularly important. Having spent a lot of my time in MTG over the last 24 years playing toolbox decks, I typically try to work that angle with whatever Commander I play. I love Graveyard strategies because they play into this somewhat, but when I initially picked up The Mimeoplasm in 2013, it was a pretty basic reanimator deck. In fact, most of the lists I see run it as such. I really leaned into the toolboxing aspect of the game and turned what was a pretty poor Sultai deck into something I can win games that are generally unwinnable, simply because I have leveraged my strengths - oddly enough in a format where I don't get to use Gifts Ungiven, the most played card in my MTG career.

I don't mean to sound like I am puffing my chest or anything, but I had to slog through an unfathomable amount of losses in my life in order to come out ahead more often than not. Try not to let the losses get to you, and make sure that you are trying to make each game as enjoyable as possible in ways that you can control.

Finally, level with yourself more, and have honest conversations about where you may be coming up short. Are you letting others talk you into things that maybe are not the best for you? Are you not trying to metagame the table enough on your own to mitigate heat on yourself? Are you perhaps playing a Commander that simply appeals to you that you might not really understand in a way that plays to your own strengths as a player?

The coolest cards are always BUG.

Another one I'm on the fence about. I like having the redundancy at the Natural Order slot, but I'm not sold on the card itself being great. We'll see I guess.

Huh, haven't considered that...

If cards like this keep coming along, we may need to create an "honorary reserved list".

We have such, and the results are an exercise in the practical differences in balancing for competition and balancing for fun. Your banned list would strive to set an equal playing field. Their banned list strives to baby-proof the house where baby Timmies are growing up. Keeping the tide pods on a high shelf won't stop an adult from having a bad day if one so chooses, but it'll stop a kid from thinking its candy. That's how the current banlist works - or my impression of it. They'll never make commander unbreakable, so they don't try. Think of the children.

Some more thoughts on the matter:

- The 'you get both' aspect of manlands and utility lands continues to be significantly undervalued, imo. These cards are often actual sources of card advantage because you don't have to choose (see Shelldock Isle). You make land drops, trade resources with the opponent, and parity is eventually broken because your lands still do something relevant. These new dual types can only mirror part of that, making them significantly worse in a lot of scenarios.

- I think most would agree that save a few exceptions, the spell sides of these dual type cards aren't really cubable because they are not powerful enough (and obviously not the land part by itself either). Thus the power present in the card comes solely from the flexibility, the increase in keepable hands, the mitigating the risk of flooding out. But will including cards like these in your deck lead to more wins? Not necessarily. You'll keep more hands, and also play more monocolored tapped lands and overcosted spells, which are real costs well proven to lose games.

- There is actual precedent for these cards (or pretty damn close to it), and I don't really understand the aversion to compare the two. Lonely Sandbar is either a tapped Island, or a Reach Through Mists. Yes, you lose Island synergy and it doesn't count as a spell, which makes it a little worse (though you do get the actually great Loam interaction). Reach Through Mists is overcosted by 1 to be cubable, a tax I've seen here advertised as reasonable. Who runs Lonely Sandbar? I actually really like the card, but a tapped Island instead of an untapped one is such a huge liability that they don't make it.

- This part comes more down to how you look at Cube as a format. I think of my Cube as a way of drafting things that look like Constructed decks, where others have described Cube as closer to retail Limited with nothing but Bombs. I just can't see these cards making waves in the formats I mirror my Cube to, Modern and Legacy. Decks are crazy consistent, and efficiency is king. This is what I want for my Cube, and I know others don't want that, but it explains why these double types will likely never make it in my Cube (save those where the spell side is Constructed worthy by itself). They simply can't play an essential role in the decks I try to draft, these slick Constructed-like killing machines.

- Similar to my last point, in Limited consistency is worth a lot. In Constructed I feel you have to actually do something powerful, and games end way more often with one player holding a bunch of irrelevant cards. I've found especially in recent years that board advantage is crucial in Cube (power creep and especially planeswalkers have contributed to this), and to get board advantage you need to be fast, or strong. These cards are neither, as they are always slow (tapped or overcosted) and the spell side is weak by design.

I've found this whole discussion somewhat frustrating as I seem pretty fully convinced of my side of it, and it looks like the other side feels the same way. Maybe my Cube (and how I think about Cube in general) has evolved in a completely different direction, and therefore I operate with a different set of values. Nonetheless I think there's some value in trying to explain why I think these cards aren't nearly as good as advertised by some, simply because it's the opposite viewpoint compared to that shared by many.

Quote from ryansaxe »

Quote from Marl Karx »

Quote from dschumm »

To me this card is the real teat. A powerful card for a reasonable mana cost, that is situational bad/excellent. But I like it more than the combat trick ones because you get to sculpt a plan with it. They effect is also usually better late, when you dont need land. So if excellent i may try more flip catds

Personally I don't think the upside of the land in the early game is much of an "upside" since etb tapped is so horrible.

You know what is also absolutely horrible? Every single mode on Izzet Charm. In fact, I would rather have an extra colored tapland in my deck over UR: any single mode of Izzet charm. Zero of those individual modes would make a 2000 sized cube. However, the card is fantastic and a lower-sized-izzet-section-staple because it provide full coverage: a set of options such that one is always useful. I view MDFCs in a very similar light.

The modes on Izzet charm are individually subpar because they are each situational. So there is an additive effect having a number of them available on one card. A etb mono-colored tapped land is horrible because it is horrible.

A lot of people conflate the format's success with the RC's involvement, which is an understandable logical leap, but there's really no evidence of such. If anything, the format is popular because of WotC's involvement, as there have been incredibly sharp jumps after every Commander set release.

Sheldon took the idea from Adam Staley who created the format up in Alaska, brought it to the rest of the US, and the populace took it and ran with it because it was a good idea. The RC's involvement since then has had a neutral to slightly negative effect on the format, while WotC has smartly thrown their weight behind it and exploded its popularity via constant support.

Quote from wtwlf123 »

True enough dschumm, there's definitely a cost with the real estate it takes up. Hard to find room in a super small cube, for sure. I just want to experiment with all these mythic ones, because there seems to be so much potential for such a low cost. But I'm 100% on board with tiny cubes struggling to find cuts. Even in my large cube, whatever the cut winds up being will almost assuredly be hard. I just want to test it out to see if that difficult cut might still be the correct one.

reminds me of the triomes in a way. I think they are awesome. I was determined to test them. I did. I liked them. Then I cut them. I think a lot of the flip lands will be the same for me. I can always make room in white though.

Haters gonna hate.

Didn't read. Not interested. Don't like Polymorph. I lied.