If your opponent attacks with a 4/4 and you block with two 2/2's, you are not allowed to assume he deals 4 dmg to one of them and 0 to the other. You are allowed to say "All dmg to him?" hoping your opponent thinks his creature is a 3/3.
If your opponennt attacks with a 6/6 trample and you block with a 5/5, you are not allowed to assume that he deals all 6 damage to the 5/5 without trampling. You are allowed to say "6 dmg to him?" hoping your opponent doesn't realize his creature has trample.
If you tap your master of the wild hunt together with a 3/3 and a 2/2 wolf targetting a 2/2, you are not allowed to assume your opponent deals damage to the 3/3. You are allowed to say "2 dmg to him?" hoping your opponent doesn't realize he can kill the 2/2. The only case where you can actually assume something with regards to Master of the Wild Hunt is if there is only one wolf. In this case there is no choice, all damage must be dealt to that wolf and it is assumed to have done so if nothing is said.
Note that this was not the case here. According to the judges both the 3/3 and 2/2 was tapped when activating MotWH's ability, and this meant that the opponent should have had to distribute the damage. If this was not how the situation was, he must have been very unclear about this to the judges. Note that his opponent probably got a warning for Failure to Maintain Game State, but since he didn't do it intentionally, didn't gain any advantage from it, and it wasn't his card, there is no reason to DQ him
Earthquake is _much_ better than pyroclasm against the Eldrazi decks. Firstly, pyroclasm doesn't even kill all of their creatures like Nissa's Chosen and Great Sable Stag, or if they have Oran-rief. Secondly, Earthquake will take out one of their planeswalkers at the same time. Earthquake is probably the best card in the deck against Eldrazi decks. One month ago it could have been possible to cut the Earthquakes but now it doesn't seem like an option, I'm considering having 4 after sideboard.
If we only look at the actual physical printing of the cards, I'm pretty sure the cost is a lot closer to $0.01 than $0.10. Could be even lower than that. Developing a set is probably very expensive though, seeing as how a lot of people work over a year to do it. Hosting Grand Prix and Pro Tour tournaments isn't cheap either. On top of this there is a lot of work involved in running the web site, and producing all of the promotional cards they give out for free. All of this has to be included in the price of boosters, since that's more or less their only source of income.
I never heard of a store in Sweden not having enough product though. My local store had over 50 boxes for the Zendikar prerelease. Also, for months after the initial release, Starcitygames were still selling "First Wave" booster boxes. The local shortages might have been a result of distributers not preordering enough and thus getting hit very hard when there turned out to be a shortage.
For people who failed to get the point: He didn't say they intentionally made blue bad, he just said they intentionally made blue _look_ bad, until you realized just how powerful cards like merfolk looter and mind control were. This was also in a limited context only. On this point I agree with him. Blue initially looked bad, but turned out to be decent or even good.
Blues weakness in constructed probably comes from a big reliance on cryptic command for the last few years, that card on it's own made blue viable for the last 2 years, now that it's gone there is nothing going for the color. Faeries, Reivellark, 5cc, all would have been pretty bad or unplayable without cryptic. Maybe they'll reprint it in M11 to restore balance...
Yup. When dealing with a leave play trigger, if all the objects leave simultaneously, they can all "see" the other objects for the purpose of triggering.
Just so we're clear, they don't actually leave play simultaneously. All the exile triggers trigger at the same time and is put onto the stack in the order you choose, then resolve one by one. You can still stack them in a good way, but the last 4 extractor demons will "only" get 3+2+1=6 triggers and not 3+3+3+3=12.
If you suspect your opponent is trying to cheat, you should NOT shuffle his deck. You should definitely call a judge and explain the situation. Note that the warning for insufficient randomization only applies if he didn't do it on purpose. If he stacked his deck on purpose to gain an advantage, a disqualification is the really the only option at a Competetive or Professional level event.
In case this was a very new player that simply didn't know this type of "shuffling" isn't allowed, at a casual level event the judge might just give him a warning, explain the rules, and shuffle his deck.
@MatsT: Here's a deck from earlier in the thread. They use Traumatize instead of Hedron Crabs.
The deck I played against also had Traumatize, but it seemed clunky and slow. Might be still worth it, not sure. What amazed me with the deck I played against was the redundancy of Hedron Crab/Fetch/Grim Discovery. This is the type of engine that can make it possible for a combo/synergy deck to come through, similiar to the Dark Depths deck in extended. As I mentioned earlier, Grim Discovery is also great against any type of land disruption. Rotting Rats is a card that could be great, but also could be bad. Depends on how many Extractor Demon-type cards that are useless in your hand you end up running, and also if you are trying to blank any of the opponents card he can use them anywy to discard.
The Gatekeepers I'm not sold on yet. Against jund, he might very well have Sprouting Thrinax to make it useless, and against control decks I don't think you run a great risk of losing to Jwar Jwar Sphinx anyway. Playing Gatekeeper targetting yourself just to get him to graveyard seems very ineffective.
I've been trying out this deck a bit in the constructed queues on MTGO (BR variant with gatekeepers) and I wasn't very impressed with the result. While I did win a few games against decks with little to no disruption and no lightning fast draws, I kept getting randomly screwed by cards that weren't put there to combat me, but still did. For example against jund decks, Blightning is a lot more trouble than you would think. While on a first glance you think you can just pitch creatures and be fine but what happens is that on say turn 6, you will normally have replaced all the creatures on your hand with other cards and be left with 13 cards that are a mix of lands, removals and x spells. Having just 11 of these will really hurt, as you will usually not have enough lands plus x spells to burn them out, and not enough removals to take care of all of their creatures. Post sideboard, this matchup is an absolute nightmare as they will bring in Duress, Jund Charm and Goblin Ruinblaster that are all serious problems.
Other decks than jund also kept beating me with assorted randomness. Pyromancer Ascension decks again with Blightning and by just "comboing" faster than I do. 5-color cascade by playing Deny Reality on crypt->Bloodbraid Elf->Esper Charm to make me discard two. This isn't even mentioning the times that I got slightly unlucky and didn't get a crypt, got several crypt but no x-spell or not enough creatures, etc etc.
Finally on the last try I got beaten by a very similiar deck that impressed me a lot more. It was the UB "self-mill" variant, playing Hedron Crabs along with fetch lands to mill yourself. Grim Discovery was an absolute monster, returning crabs and fetch lands, or even a milled crypt. Eventually he would with the help of crypt+unearthed Fatestitchers generate enough mana to unearth pretty much every creature in his deck, including Extractor Demons, Corpse Connoisseurs and Viscera Draggers, and then attacking me for 40ish. As I haven't played this deck myself against I can't really attest to it's consistency, maybe it just dies if it doesn't have a Hedron Crab... The deck does have a decent backup plan of going aggressive mill with Crabs and Demons, and can easily fit Negates in the maindeck to combat problematic cards. Anyone have a good starting decklist for this version?
Unplayable cards are cards that you should never include in your decks if you have any other choice, these are cards I haven't ever played in 20 sealeds and 20 drafts. Barely playable cards you really want to avoid, but circumstances might make it correct to include them. Terrible pools, weird deck synergies, very narrow sideboard cards.
This is just the commons, there are lots of unplayable uncommons and rares too.
Since the Shattering spree upped the storm count the number of Ignite memories resolving is actually 2. Only one of them will be cast and one of them created as a copy as a result of the storm trigger. Unfortunatly this doesn't make the combo any more viable.
If you are collecting the reflecting pools simply because you want to have them available in various casual decks, or if you are collecting them simply because you like having binders with complete sets, I doubt you are going to care much if a card falls from $5 to $4 or even $2. If you were collecting the reflecting pools in hope of becoming rich when their value went up... you could have sold them when they were $20 and bought them back when they were back to $4 and made more money than you would have ever made had they not been reprinted.
The reserve list have a purpose. People would be VERY conservative in buying expensive vintage cards as it was not only an investment and a possible loss of interest, but might actually end up costing you thousands of dollars. Similiarly, someone who collects a full arabian nights set for huge amounts of money would be devastated if half of the cards were included in a paper masters edition.
Personally I don't care much since there's such a huge amount of unexplored design space that they can use without ever going close to the reserved list. It's just weird that they would ever promise to not reprint a worthless card that no one has played with for 10 years and most people have never even seen.
Last point, some people doesn't seem to get the difference between standard legal tournament legal. They would obviously never reprint power in a standard legal set for power reasons, these cards should never have been printed in the first place. Reprinting them in a black-bordered special set is an entirely different story. Balance didn't become tournament legal just because it was in FtV: Exiled. Neither would Black Lotus if it was released in some kind of promo version.
The grace says IF you would lose life that would put your life total below zero, it becomes 1 instead
No, it only says if damage would reduce your life below one, it doesn't mention loss of life, meaning you would still go below zero and gain it back. (in case it would matter for some 4th combo piece that actually made you win)
Doesn't this also give you a very, very high life total?
Unfortunatly not. Angel's Grace doesn't stop you from going to a negative life total from life loss, so you would lose the game at the beginning of the next turn.
Edit: ehm, actually, you wouldn't lose since you get the life back, my point was that you wouldn't get a high life total.
If your opponent attacks with a 4/4 and you block with two 2/2's, you are not allowed to assume he deals 4 dmg to one of them and 0 to the other. You are allowed to say "All dmg to him?" hoping your opponent thinks his creature is a 3/3.
If your opponennt attacks with a 6/6 trample and you block with a 5/5, you are not allowed to assume that he deals all 6 damage to the 5/5 without trampling. You are allowed to say "6 dmg to him?" hoping your opponent doesn't realize his creature has trample.
If you tap your master of the wild hunt together with a 3/3 and a 2/2 wolf targetting a 2/2, you are not allowed to assume your opponent deals damage to the 3/3. You are allowed to say "2 dmg to him?" hoping your opponent doesn't realize he can kill the 2/2. The only case where you can actually assume something with regards to Master of the Wild Hunt is if there is only one wolf. In this case there is no choice, all damage must be dealt to that wolf and it is assumed to have done so if nothing is said.
Note that this was not the case here. According to the judges both the 3/3 and 2/2 was tapped when activating MotWH's ability, and this meant that the opponent should have had to distribute the damage. If this was not how the situation was, he must have been very unclear about this to the judges. Note that his opponent probably got a warning for Failure to Maintain Game State, but since he didn't do it intentionally, didn't gain any advantage from it, and it wasn't his card, there is no reason to DQ him
I never heard of a store in Sweden not having enough product though. My local store had over 50 boxes for the Zendikar prerelease. Also, for months after the initial release, Starcitygames were still selling "First Wave" booster boxes. The local shortages might have been a result of distributers not preordering enough and thus getting hit very hard when there turned out to be a shortage.
Blues weakness in constructed probably comes from a big reliance on cryptic command for the last few years, that card on it's own made blue viable for the last 2 years, now that it's gone there is nothing going for the color. Faeries, Reivellark, 5cc, all would have been pretty bad or unplayable without cryptic. Maybe they'll reprint it in M11 to restore balance...
Just so we're clear, they don't actually leave play simultaneously. All the exile triggers trigger at the same time and is put onto the stack in the order you choose, then resolve one by one. You can still stack them in a good way, but the last 4 extractor demons will "only" get 3+2+1=6 triggers and not 3+3+3+3=12.
In case this was a very new player that simply didn't know this type of "shuffling" isn't allowed, at a casual level event the judge might just give him a warning, explain the rules, and shuffle his deck.
The deck I played against also had Traumatize, but it seemed clunky and slow. Might be still worth it, not sure. What amazed me with the deck I played against was the redundancy of Hedron Crab/Fetch/Grim Discovery. This is the type of engine that can make it possible for a combo/synergy deck to come through, similiar to the Dark Depths deck in extended. As I mentioned earlier, Grim Discovery is also great against any type of land disruption. Rotting Rats is a card that could be great, but also could be bad. Depends on how many Extractor Demon-type cards that are useless in your hand you end up running, and also if you are trying to blank any of the opponents card he can use them anywy to discard.
The Gatekeepers I'm not sold on yet. Against jund, he might very well have Sprouting Thrinax to make it useless, and against control decks I don't think you run a great risk of losing to Jwar Jwar Sphinx anyway. Playing Gatekeeper targetting yourself just to get him to graveyard seems very ineffective.
Other decks than jund also kept beating me with assorted randomness. Pyromancer Ascension decks again with Blightning and by just "comboing" faster than I do. 5-color cascade by playing Deny Reality on crypt->Bloodbraid Elf->Esper Charm to make me discard two. This isn't even mentioning the times that I got slightly unlucky and didn't get a crypt, got several crypt but no x-spell or not enough creatures, etc etc.
Finally on the last try I got beaten by a very similiar deck that impressed me a lot more. It was the UB "self-mill" variant, playing Hedron Crabs along with fetch lands to mill yourself. Grim Discovery was an absolute monster, returning crabs and fetch lands, or even a milled crypt. Eventually he would with the help of crypt+unearthed Fatestitchers generate enough mana to unearth pretty much every creature in his deck, including Extractor Demons, Corpse Connoisseurs and Viscera Draggers, and then attacking me for 40ish. As I haven't played this deck myself against I can't really attest to it's consistency, maybe it just dies if it doesn't have a Hedron Crab... The deck does have a decent backup plan of going aggressive mill with Crabs and Demons, and can easily fit Negates in the maindeck to combat problematic cards. Anyone have a good starting decklist for this version?
This is just the commons, there are lots of unplayable uncommons and rares too.
Black:
Unplayable: Desecrated Earth, Mire Blight
Barely playable: Mindless Null
Blue:
Unplayable: Caller of Gales, Lethargy Trap, Trapfinder's Trick, Spell Pierce
Barely Playable: Spreading Seas, Shoal Serpent
Green:
Unplayable: Beast Hunt, Scythe Tiger, Relic Crush, Tanglesap
Red:
Unplayable: Demolish
Barely Playable: Seismic Shudder
White:
Unplayable: Sunspring Expedition
Barely playable: Noble Vestige, Bold Defense, Nimbus Wings, Shieldmate's Blessing
The reserve list have a purpose. People would be VERY conservative in buying expensive vintage cards as it was not only an investment and a possible loss of interest, but might actually end up costing you thousands of dollars. Similiarly, someone who collects a full arabian nights set for huge amounts of money would be devastated if half of the cards were included in a paper masters edition.
Personally I don't care much since there's such a huge amount of unexplored design space that they can use without ever going close to the reserved list. It's just weird that they would ever promise to not reprint a worthless card that no one has played with for 10 years and most people have never even seen.
Last point, some people doesn't seem to get the difference between standard legal tournament legal. They would obviously never reprint power in a standard legal set for power reasons, these cards should never have been printed in the first place. Reprinting them in a black-bordered special set is an entirely different story. Balance didn't become tournament legal just because it was in FtV: Exiled. Neither would Black Lotus if it was released in some kind of promo version.
No, it only says if damage would reduce your life below one, it doesn't mention loss of life, meaning you would still go below zero and gain it back. (in case it would matter for some 4th combo piece that actually made you win)
Unfortunatly not. Angel's Grace doesn't stop you from going to a negative life total from life loss, so you would lose the game at the beginning of the next turn.
Edit: ehm, actually, you wouldn't lose since you get the life back, my point was that you wouldn't get a high life total.