MTG Salvation

Quote from Yebisu »

Quote from Flisch »

Also, everyone who thinks Magic has been much cheaper back in the day has just rose-tinted nostalgia goggles on.

Then you're new to magic. I remember when a rare for extended didn't go past the border of what is now 10-12 bucks.

The trick was that magic in the past did have much cheaper decks with more commons, right now they upgrade pretty much anything that is constructed relevant to rare or mythic rare.

Then we have the thing called "internet" , which highly pushed to market for prices, as players had a real source to buy cards for the set price at any given moment. In the past you just stranded among a shop or traded with friends, maybe someone had an Inquest or anything with prices listed and the card shops at Grand prix and bigger tournaments ; and booster prices where cheaper ... (especially in Europe, US maybe not so much).


In general you had much more casual players, far less tournaments addicts.

All of that combined, magic is by far more expensive right now, if you have to buy in a format, especially older ones , easily a factor of 10.

Quote from coyotemoon722 »

They are handy. I use the RTR one for my cube.

But that box was really good.

The quality was going down A LOT for the box itself.

I really wish they would go back to the RTR quality, or even better.
In that case i would buy a lot of them, otherwise they can burn in hell.

Quote from Oceanus »

Well, you'd have to do it before drawing anyway, during the upkeep. Once they draw, it moves directly to the precombat main phase where he gets the priority to play it before anything else anyway.

In paper magic you can act in the Draw-step.

Its Upkeep - Draw - PreCombat Mainphase

You let them draw a card in the draw step and then each player gets priority before it advances a step ; so you totally can use the discard effect before they get a chance to play it in the mainphase.


The comp game Magic Origin however doesnt allow for that as far as i can tell.

Comment Hidden

Why they dont simply make a free-mulligan is totally beyound me.

Instead we make a rule that benefits specific decks.

This is so non-sensical ...

If someone bothers you, call a judge and tell them to stop doing that.


Punching yourself seems completly random ... i just imagine ... its so out of my world ...

You cant really "kill" a Eldrazi Titan, just imprison them, as it was done in the past.

So its highly unlikely that they will truly defeat the Eldrazi at all.

They might just drive Ulamog away from Zendikar, which will just spell doomsday for another world.

Awaken plays well with sorcery speed.

Instant speed awaken would totally be too strong on that card (which means it would make it just downright better than heroes Downfall, which is allready a pushed Murder etc. so better balance a card and not just spiral into power-creep).


In general this card will be totally playable its allmost guaranteed to see play.
Awaken will do its job and probably kill some players.


I would have liked if they made a different card, and not this semi-reprint, i dont like the same cards in standard over and over again, just with some variation.

Quote from FuriousMarsupial »

Quote from Aazadan »

Two or three years later his son started showing up to the store to draft, and the store owner gave his son his dads deck (he kept it behind the counter since he's a nice guy) to return to him.

This is the greatest end to the story of any I've read here.

But he kept the car keys and the jacket ;P

this is the most dissapointing "MYTHIC" ever ...

I mean really ... really ...

Even if it sees play, i feel ashamed that this is a mythic ...

really ...

I have noticed this for a little bit, and chose to respond for the sake of others... firstly, judging others based on superficial projections, was something Christ advised against with good reason... look into your heart, before any such presumption... you have no idea of my life, and how some of my art enabled me to later have dozens of skinheads say I saved lives, for I always rejected racial hate and from my art they could relate... does this make me evil? That I did a card with back hands called Invoke Prejudice, clearly would not be the act of a person who felt racism was justified... that I in the Tempest expansion, deliberately chose to portray blacks, worrying that African American children were not represented, is not the way of an insensitive human... the highest path for mankind, is Empathy... in this, I have always felt for all living things... It is very important that people stop judging each other, throwing labels like during the McCarthy era... the only valid religion and path, is Love with Humility... I shall not likely visit this site again, but had to convey what seemed to be missing... just think twice, about judging others... and do not assume you understand fully another's path... I have saved more lives, with my weird balancing act, than most of you... nor do I judge you... I just had to respond, for the sake of those soulful among you, without hate or blame to anyone... your heart, is the compass for your soul... H.

Quote from Stevenus »

I know Harold personally and I can tell you he isn't racist. He is extremely intelligent and very intense. If you have questions about his art/process of creation I suggest e-mailing him directly. I do know that invoke prejudice was never intended to be a KKK reference. He has also done artwork for Vampire Jyhad and other games. Some of the artwork you mention from his website was done after his time with WOTC and has nothing to do with Magic or any other game. He's a very interesting person to converse with and will respond if you're respectful.

Ignoring Invoke Prejudice and some of the themes on his website, his artwork is extremely stylistic and iconic of the early era of Magic when the art was as much a collectible part of the card as the card itself was. There's a good reason why some of the earlier artists are known by name but not the more recent ones. Whether you like HMcN or dislike him, we should all be grateful for his contributions to the game which most likely helped the game become as big as it has.

I know Harold personally and I can tell you he isn't racist. He is extremely intelligent and very intense. If you have questions about his art/process of creation I suggest e-mailing him directly. I do know that invoke prejudice was never intended to be a KKK reference. He has also done artwork for Vampire Jyhad and other games. Some of the artwork you mention from his website was done after his time with WOTC and has nothing to do with Magic or any other game. He's a very interesting person to converse with and will respond if you're respectful.

Quote from Pigglebee »

Friend of mine plays in competitive settings a lot and he noticed that miscalculating your mana base tends to only work in one direction: People casting spells with less mana than necessary. Or wrong colored mana. Never the other way around: Not seeing you have enough mana or tapping too much mana.
"oops, sorry." Ya right.

This is an observational bias. If someone miscalculates and thinks they can't cast a spell, you won't notice, because the result is "not doing anything" (or doing something else). They're not generally going to announce "I want to cast a spell but I have insufficient mana." Meanwhile, casting a spell when they don't have enough mana is highly visible. This is further compounded by the natural tendency to remember errors "against" us more than errors "for" us.

Always be wary of anecdotal evidence, or of "natural" conclusions. Look at neutral statistics if you want a reliable conclusion.

Quote from sirgog »

If you go 6-0 in an 8 rounder then ID twice into T8, you have earned your place every bit as much as the person that goes win-lose-win-win-win-win-win-win.

Provably false, because of opponent win percentages. Your first round in random pairings, and as long as you keep winning, your opponents keep getting better: round 2 is against a 1-0, round 3 is against 3-0. the last 2 rounds are the ones most likely to provide you with an opponent on your level. These are coincidently the ones that IDs allow you to get a pass on. If you had to play those 2 rounds, against opponents who are themselves 6-0 and 7-0, and they beat you, then you didn't deserve the top spot. You gamed the system to AVOID your toughest matches, while someone who played them out and won earned those wins against tough opponents.

Quote from Shaka »

How about denying the opponent of any points? There are scenarios where a losing player will still make the cut with a zero points match but the opponent won't.

All this really means is that "sometimes zero points for a draw is just as bad as one point for a draw". I think it's well worth it to adopt a system that in the worst case is just as bad as the current one, but often is better.

Quote from Shaka »

Or it could happen even in the early rounds, you just want to see your opponent get zero. Why give someone that much control over the opponent?

The opponent already has a similar level of control. He can give you a one in the current system as surely as he can give you a zero in the alternative system. The differences are:

1. With respect to that round specifically, you are better off with one point than with zero
2. With respect to succeeding rounds, you are less likely to be put in a position of getting even more draws with zero points as opposed to one

So there is really no solving that problem either way. You either get one point and are put in the "draw bracket" or you get zero points but no "draw bracket" exists at all. Plus all this conjecture assumes that the player getting screwed is in fact legitimately more skilled than his opponent. Assuming that is the case, even if he gets screwed more mightily in a zero-point system, he would also have more rounds to make it up (no draw bracket, more rounds actually get played).

The art on Repentant Vampire and Gallantry are two parts of one picture, and are a reference to Buffy and Angel.

Liliana Vess is and anagram of "a villainess." Her creator swears this is a coincidence.

Gladecover Scout was printed in M15. On Festergloom.

Quote from Fluffy_Bunny »

Making draws 0 points instead of 1 point is going to punish more people than intentional draws possibly do.

It's not how many people get punished. It's what they get punished for. 1-point draws punish people based on who they get paired against and in what order (something they have no control over) and creates incentives to play slowly or even not play at all. 0-point draws punish players for not being able to complete their games (something they have some level of control over) and encourages players to play quickly and continue competing in the final round.

Hello all! First post here.

I just finished reading this thread fairly carefully so I don't think the following point I'm about to present has been said yet. If it has I do apologize for the redundant contribution.

Concerning opponents shuffling one another's decks, I am always adamant that my opponent shuffle my deck, even if he is reluctant to do so (I don't care if it's because he trusts me, is too lazy, or thinks my cards have AIDS). The reason being is if I get any kind of unreasonable or God draw from the first seven cards, I don't want any iota of suspicion to enter his mind that I may have stacked the deck. Sure some people here might say, "Sucks to his ass-mar, he should have shuffled then", and while perhaps when I was younger I would have felt the same, I don't any longer for two reasons.

Firstly, along the lines of what someone previously stated in this thread about sufficient randomization being the prerequisite to a pure form of playing magic, anytime someone stacks and benefits it doesn't hurt just the opponent but the entire integrity of Magic as a game.

Secondly, the personal suspicion will destroy his experience of playing magic at least for the duration of our match. Sure he is my opponent, but I don't wish for anybody I've ever played against for them to have a miserable time while doing so (especially while playing against my ever-formidable RDW brews =P ). Also, if they are bad at concealing their emotion, most intelligent people (and in my experience most adult magic players have higher than average IQ) will quickly pick up on the fact that their opponent is now suspicious or unhappy with them. Some may not be as sensitive as myself but this alone takes most if not all of the fun from the playing of the match for me. I am no psychologist or even well-read in the subject but I suspect a big but not entire reason for this is it destroys the innocence of the gaming experience that most matches without this kind of conflict have. Can anybody else help me think of any other reasons besides this?

I've enjoyed this thread immensely, both from reading the great advice about shuffling and randomization posted by theonlyone652089, the several moderators and all others who gave their input and from a complete master class in the art of trolling given by Alleyway Jack. Initially I believed he was 100% serious, but as the number of detailed posts began to accumulate, some employing laymen's language rather than statistics jargon, it become apparent to me that it was highly improbable someone could possibly be that dense. If he/she was completely serious than god help us all if any of us find ourselves sitting across from him in a future magic match.

Thank you all again!


Sincerely,

indiscipline242
Lansing, Michigan


Most Valuable Poster award for this thread definitely goes out to TheOnlyOne652089. Your posts were so comprehensive while remaining lucid, I will print them out and 3-ring punch for the inside of my binder for reference at the local MTG shop. It's not always easy explaining these concepts to the young, uneducated or the inexperienced, and this will definitely help. I don't mean to sound condescending of the three previously stated groups, nor do I believe anyone who posted trying to help behaved as such. It's the reality of the game of magic lately now that we have seen such a huge explosion in interest and in participation. It's no longer just the chess club and your former high school math teacher that we are encountering every Friday night for magic the gathering. Thank you again, everyone.