People go to multiple prereleases when there are multiple boxes to get. They're never going back because they're making significantly more money this way simply on repeat players.
If you're in red and you're worried about your tokens, throw a Shock or some other instant speed burn at the token in response to the Bile Blight. If you kill the token in response, their Bile Blight will be countered by the game rules for not having a valid target, so the rest of your tokens will survive. This is the easiest way to address it while running spells you probably want to run anyway. Sac outlets also work but probably take more effort.
It was the worst prerelease I've ever experienced, and this is coming from someone who played in two DMZ prereleases and won the second one.
My gripe is simply that the Dragon's Maze set didn't feature enough of the guild mechanics to properly support them when it makes up 2/3rds of your pool. If you were Selesnya, you needed a -lot- of token production in your single guild pack in order to make the populate work at all. Your two guild packs heavily influenced your options given DMZ is filled with support cards that don't have much to support. So many of the slots in the small set were devoted to fixing that you ended up with a lot less stuff to win the game with, so a bad guild pack leaves you with very few ways to win and even fewer removal options.
I'm sure the draft format will be much better, but this just didn't work for sealed. The actual maze concept was also flawed because it served more to reward people for picking the popular guild rather than for anything else. Our store handicapped the guilds with more people to make it a little more fair but even then the two most popular ones hit the finish line in record time.
Player A taps five mountains and a Cavern of Souls (with Giant named), specifies red, and casts Inferno Titan.
Player B taps two islands and says "Mana Leak the Titan".
Player A points out that by specifying red with the land, he's using the Cavern ability that makes the Titan uncounterable.
Player B acknowledges this and one of three things happens:
Outcome 1: Player B untaps his lands and puts the Mana Leak back in his hand, as the spell could not legally be cast with no target to begin with. A little information is given up but no real game action has occurred and both players acknowledge that lands may be untapped and mana removed from the pool so long as no game action has occurred.
Outcome 2: Player B puts the Mana Leak back in his hand and the lands stay tapped, as mana was added to their pool (which is a legal game action).
Outcome 3: Player B's Mana Leak has no legal target and is countered.
In the seven years I've been playing, I and everyone I've ever known has gone with Outcome 1. Aside from being simple and fair, I think the rules support the idea that the spell isn't cast before legal targets are named so it can't be countered by anything at this point. Likewise, people tap and untap their lands all the time without being forced to stick with it (you can even do this on MTGO unless you do something with the mana or some other ability).
I'd like a bit of confirmation on this, however, in light of the likelihood that people will ask me what happens when they forget Cavern's ability at FNM and other such events in the coming months.
Well, if they printed a U instant that simply said "Target artifact gains shroud until end of turn.", you'd have it. I don't think they're going to, but it would work. At 1U with a card draw attached it would be pretty solid.
That only works if they control a golem. Because their creatures would not become golems until after the spell resolves, and precursor triggers on cast, you wouldn't be able to turn their guys into a golem then have all your own creatures get the bonus like you're thinking.
You could also just target yourself and they'll survive fine. There is no need to target your opponent.
edit: After reading shields again and reading what you wrote, it doesn't even make sense. Shields targets an player, not creatures. You're dumb.
At what point did I say it targets a creature or that my creatures would get a bonus? If I was going to try to pump my own guys, I'd just use any given pump spell. You read what I wrote twice and didn't actually pay attention to what would happen in the scenario at all, so cut the insults.
Bolt goes on the stack.
Golem copy ability goes on stack.
Shields of Velis Vel goes on the stack.
Shields of Velis Vel resolves, causing the targeted player (your opponent)'s creatures to get +0/+1 and Changeling (Golem).
Golem copy ability resolves, checking for all Golems. Each of your opponent's creature is a Golem, so they each take 3 damage (2 net, as their toughness is 1 higher). Your Golem tokens also take 3 damage and die.
Original Bolt resolves, killing your original Golem.
Net effect: you have no Golems, your opponent's creatures all take 2 net damage. Pretty sucky, but it illustrated the mechanic.
View the same scenario with Unsummon. You've just bounced all of their creatures and you'll get your Golems back next turn. With Terminate, you'd kill all of their creatures. With Fling, well, everybody dies?
Doom Blade probably won't do much (given they're likely running black if they're Dooming you), but it's a great way to respond to the annoying red deck burn shenanigans. Less good against artifact hate (unless they're also running artifact creatures), but like I said, casual fun. If anything, it makes for an awesome response to Unsummon.
If they really did plan on combatting -1/-1 with +1/+1, then it'd be sweet to see them bust out the Modular. Sunburst would be ideal (although it would have been better to bring back in Conflux), but Modular would make for fun combat choices.
And I'm a little surprised that this is an almost complete obsolescence of wither. Though I suppose that creatures with Infect will be smaller than average, so it works out I guess.
Wither creatures can deal combat damage to players, which might matter a little more than poison counters since your non-infected creatures will be dealing it as well.
Wither can also be placed on non-creature spells. Infected specifies creatures-only.
It also appears in a few other articles on the website.
Given the reasoning from last time, i think it's a safe bet Scars of Mirrodin won't have any +1/+1 counters. For that matter, the presence of Poison and its "Doesn't kill you until you get 10" might actually lead to "no blocks" decisions when infected charge the board.
Didn't read all of it, but Quest for the Gravelord anyone? If you wait until turn 3 to use it, you can drop an island, a Quest for the Gravelord, and have the ability to get your demon, a big 5/5 zombie as a fallback, and have mana leak mana open to defend your big demon when someone tries to eat it. If anything, it gives you the option of running blue (which you can't really do if you feasibly want this thing out on turn 2 each game), whose bounce spells make the pairing infinitely superior to monoblack when you need to get rid of those pesky O-rings/Journeys/Pacify effects.
My gripe is simply that the Dragon's Maze set didn't feature enough of the guild mechanics to properly support them when it makes up 2/3rds of your pool. If you were Selesnya, you needed a -lot- of token production in your single guild pack in order to make the populate work at all. Your two guild packs heavily influenced your options given DMZ is filled with support cards that don't have much to support. So many of the slots in the small set were devoted to fixing that you ended up with a lot less stuff to win the game with, so a bad guild pack leaves you with very few ways to win and even fewer removal options.
I'm sure the draft format will be much better, but this just didn't work for sealed. The actual maze concept was also flawed because it served more to reward people for picking the popular guild rather than for anything else. Our store handicapped the guilds with more people to make it a little more fair but even then the two most popular ones hit the finish line in record time.
Player A taps five mountains and a Cavern of Souls (with Giant named), specifies red, and casts Inferno Titan.
Player B taps two islands and says "Mana Leak the Titan".
Player A points out that by specifying red with the land, he's using the Cavern ability that makes the Titan uncounterable.
Player B acknowledges this and one of three things happens:
Outcome 1: Player B untaps his lands and puts the Mana Leak back in his hand, as the spell could not legally be cast with no target to begin with. A little information is given up but no real game action has occurred and both players acknowledge that lands may be untapped and mana removed from the pool so long as no game action has occurred.
Outcome 2: Player B puts the Mana Leak back in his hand and the lands stay tapped, as mana was added to their pool (which is a legal game action).
Outcome 3: Player B's Mana Leak has no legal target and is countered.
In the seven years I've been playing, I and everyone I've ever known has gone with Outcome 1. Aside from being simple and fair, I think the rules support the idea that the spell isn't cast before legal targets are named so it can't be countered by anything at this point. Likewise, people tap and untap their lands all the time without being forced to stick with it (you can even do this on MTGO unless you do something with the mana or some other ability).
I'd like a bit of confirmation on this, however, in light of the likelihood that people will ask me what happens when they forget Cavern's ability at FNM and other such events in the coming months.
Please use cardtags in the future. ~parinoid
Stuffy doll laughs from beyond.
Ooze is not amused.
At what point did I say it targets a creature or that my creatures would get a bonus? If I was going to try to pump my own guys, I'd just use any given pump spell. You read what I wrote twice and didn't actually pay attention to what would happen in the scenario at all, so cut the insults.
Bolt goes on the stack.
Golem copy ability goes on stack.
Shields of Velis Vel goes on the stack.
Shields of Velis Vel resolves, causing the targeted player (your opponent)'s creatures to get +0/+1 and Changeling (Golem).
Golem copy ability resolves, checking for all Golems. Each of your opponent's creature is a Golem, so they each take 3 damage (2 net, as their toughness is 1 higher). Your Golem tokens also take 3 damage and die.
Original Bolt resolves, killing your original Golem.
Net effect: you have no Golems, your opponent's creatures all take 2 net damage. Pretty sucky, but it illustrated the mechanic.
View the same scenario with Unsummon. You've just bounced all of their creatures and you'll get your Golems back next turn. With Terminate, you'd kill all of their creatures. With Fling, well, everybody dies?
What part of casual did you miss?
Turn 6, you tap 5 lands to play Precursor Golem and leave W open.
Your opponent casts Lightning Bolt (or really any targeted damage/removal spell), targeting your Golem.
You respond with Shields of Velis Vel, targeting your opponent.
Doom Blade probably won't do much (given they're likely running black if they're Dooming you), but it's a great way to respond to the annoying red deck burn shenanigans. Less good against artifact hate (unless they're also running artifact creatures), but like I said, casual fun. If anything, it makes for an awesome response to Unsummon.
Wither creatures can deal combat damage to players, which might matter a little more than poison counters since your non-infected creatures will be dealing it as well.
Wither can also be placed on non-creature spells. Infected specifies creatures-only.
Given the reasoning from last time, i think it's a safe bet Scars of Mirrodin won't have any +1/+1 counters. For that matter, the presence of Poison and its "Doesn't kill you until you get 10" might actually lead to "no blocks" decisions when infected charge the board.