Cantrips are powerful and fun. "Mystery Box" ones are merely reasonable, but we do have some of those in the form of cycling cards. Ones that let you choose the card, like ponder, are extremely dangerous. In general though, we've kept most of the card draw in our auction block at moderate power level - or require jumping through hoops (like Ordeal of Thassa). This is because we like to mostly have control over the auction, so that each player has a chance to buy the game-winning cards. With a lot of card draw, you get fun surprises that can feel awesome - but you lose control over the skill-based experience.
That said, we love the card draw effects and always try to snap them up. It just depends on the experience you're looking for. I have a hunch we'll be making a second auction block that plays very differently from the one in the article too.
As for going to 0, yes - it's super dangerous. You can afford to do it when bidding on a creature (because the auction ends after a creature is purchased and you'll get 3 gold at the start of the next turn, before the next auction) but if you do it while it's not your turn and bidding on a non-creature, your opponent can pick free cards off the top of the deck. If you do it while it's your turn, they only have to pay 1 gold per card (because they still have to raise your bid of zero). It's an added layer of risk/reward strategy.
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May 6, 2015Stairc posted a message on High Stakes Magic - A New Way to Play15% means that answers are rather rare. You usually only get 1 or 2 each game. Our auction block is built around that, with few creatures being must-kill targets. If you run a higher power block, or just one with higher variance of power (more must-kill creatures compared to the other ones in the block), 25% could absolutely be the correct number.Posted in: Articles
Also, yes, if you run out of cards in the auction block you shuffle both graveyards in and use them as the new pile. -
May 6, 2015Stairc posted a message on High Stakes Magic - A New Way to PlayWhy don'y you give it a try and let us know how it goes? I'd be interested to find out.Posted in: Articles
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May 5, 2015Stairc posted a message on High Stakes Magic - A New Way to PlayYou're correct. I'll see if I can get an editor to change it.Posted in: Articles
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May 4, 2015Stairc posted a message on High Stakes Magic - A New Way to PlayAbsolutely, there are lots of great things to discuss here.Posted in: Articles
The situation where all players have 0 gold while the auction is continuing has not ever showed up in testing but it does need an answer. The reason it almost never happens is because when one player is at 0 gold, the other player only has to spend 1 gold to buy each card that shows up. The auction is probably going to end before one player runs out of gold.
The current rules about neither player bidding, which say to auction again, are designed as a safety valve so that if a designer includes a useless card in his block - players have an inbuilt way to say "let's not play with this card". However, it does create problems when both players have 0 gold. I'd either suggest either immediately ending the auction if both players are at 0 gold, or change the rules so that bidding "0" is a legitimate first bid - and that if no one raises the bid the player that bid "0" gold gets the card for free. Both would solve the problem, though the second is more elegant (since it just tweaks an existing rule rather than adds a brand new rule).
For constructing an auction block, there are no limits whatsoever. You can build a block however you like. You can build it singleton, like Commander, or you can put in 10 copies of a card you like. You can also shuffle several booster packs together and try playing with their contents. The only limits are what you think will make the best experience for your players. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
How would you define correct libertarianism?
While loss aversion is significant, I don't see an appreciable difference. I'm still comparing the experience of not existing to existing now. While I'd rather continue existing at present (put me in a bad enough situation and non-existence will become preferable), I don't view the experience of future non-existence to be terrifying.
It's also not really correct to think in terms of what you lose, because you aren't existing consciously in a state of nothingness. You aren't conscious either, you can't be aware of a sense of loss to begin with. Or a sense of boredom.
Fortunately, there is no compelling reason to believe that an afterlife exists. All our experience indicates that a person's mind and identity is dependent on and determined by their physical brain. You don't exist before your brain develops. Taking brain damage can radically change a personality. You can lose a limb and keep on living, but destroy the brain and it's all gone.
We're pretty clearly software and the brains are our hardware. Destroy the hard drive of a computer and ask if the data that lived on it goes to an afterlife. Obviously there's no reason to think so, and it would invalidate our understanding of how things work.
This shouldn't be troubling, unless you live in terror of your memories of how it felt to not exist for billions and billions of years. I personally don't remember that experience as being too troubling.
Submit Your Decks by Sunday 7pm EST (send me a private message with your decklist). We run them for you against all other decks and report the results. You don't have to show up anywhere.
Format Rules
1)Your deck must have exactly 60 cards in it.
2) Pick 2 cards. Your deck can contain only copies of those cards and basic lands. The 4 card limit does not apply. If you want to make a deck of 50 Black Lotus and 10 Progenitus, you can.
3) Your deck cannot be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn against an opponent that has a deck comprised of 60 grizzly bears. Why 60 grizzly bears? The goal is to prevent the most absurd fast decks like Chancellor of the Dross. Previous versions of this rule said, “Your deck can’t be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn”, but some players cleverly abused that by killing themselves, forcing their opponents to ‘win’ early and therefore be disqualified. We’ve found this “against 60 grizzly bears” restriction solves both problems.
4) Wishes are banned.
Tournament Procedure
1) We pilot all submitted decks for the participants, then report the results of the highest finishers.
2) Decks will be played going first and second against each opponent. If your deck wins only one of the two games, the decks will be rematched until one deck wins both games or until 10 total games are played. If 10 games are played this way the match is considered a draw.
3) The games are played with hands and decklists revealed. This makes it easier to determine the optimal play for each player, so your deck won’t get sabotaged by a less skilled pilot running it for you.
EDIT - We previously said that we planned to play all decks against all other submitted decks (as we usually do in these events). However, due to overwhelming submissions on day 1 that's not going to be feasible. We plan to split the submissions into smaller randomized pods and play each deck against all the others in its pod. The best records will advance and be played against one another until the top finishers are crowned.
Complete List of Submitted Decks and Pods
What Happened
64 Entrants were randomly broken into 8 pods. Each deck was played as directed against each other deck in that pod, until it claimed two victories in a row. The finisher with the best record advanced to the Pod of Champions. In the event of a tie for the best record in a pod, both decks were advanced. This happened once.
Pod 1 Champion
from sadisticmystic1
39 Chancellor of the Forge, 21 Leyline of the Meek
Pod 2 Champion
from corran132
20 x Sire of Insanity 40 x Black Lotus
Pod 3 Champion
from DunSkivuli
30 Force of Will, 30 Surgical Extraction
Pod 4 Champion
from Ston3notS
40 Force of Will 20 Surgical Extraction
Pod 5 Champion
from LightsOutAce1
40x Black Lotus 20x Frost Titan
Pod 6 Champion
from nomorepghtrash
12 x Cabal Therapy 25 x Bloodghast 23 x Swamp
Pod 7 Champions
from benbuzz790
42x Chancellor of the Forge 18x Leyline of the Meek
from Amps2Eleven
20x Plains 28x Angel's Grace 12x Isochron Scepter
Pod 8 Champion
from cobaqua
17x Leyline of the Meek 43x Chancellor of the Forge
Final Results
9th - corran132
The combo of Black Lotus and Sire of Insanity was formidable turn 1 disruption, but couldn't survive in the final pod. Chancellor of the Forge acts before turn 1, while Force of Will and Surgical Extraction would disrupt and dismantle the deck. What with Bloodghast enjoying discard and Frost Titan being a more dangerous threat overall, Lotus Insanity wasn't able to rack up many wins in the pod of champions.
8th - nomorepghtrash
Cabal Therapy is powerful turn 1 disruption, and being able to use therapy on yourself to accelerate bloodghasts with landfall is a powerful option. However, this deck also fell to the Forceful Extraction and Forgeline decks. The slower clock and lack of blocking also gave the edge to other early pressure decks.
7th - LightsOutAce1
Black Lotus and Frost Titan are a potent combo, able to lock down a lot of the competition. However, while many of the games were close it ultimately lost out against the Forgeline decks in our testing and naturally couldn't handle Forceful Extraction.
6th - Amps2Eleven
Angel's Grace + Isochron Scepter actually managed to beat Forgeline in our testing, which earned it a lot of points (as Forgeline was a very common deck among the finalists). The deck wins by setting up an Isochron Scepter with Angel's Grace and waiting for your opponent to draw their whole deck (while Angel's Grace prevents you losing to mill). Unfortunately, Angel Grace's use of Split Second didn't protect it from Surgical Extraction once in the graveyard, and the deck also lost out to disruptive decks with a fast clock.
5th - DunSkivuli
Surgical Extraction + Force of Will was one of the most commonly submitted decks. The deck attacks at a wicked angle, countering whatever your opponent plays and immediately extracting it. If your opponent refuses to play a card, they just wait for you to discard to hand size. Eventually they win by milling because your deck is gone. However, Chancellor of the Forge + Leyline of the Meek never gives the opponent a spell to counter. While they do discard to hand size, their clock is much faster than an opponent trying to extract their deck the slow way.
4th - Ston3notS
In Forceful Extraction mirrors, the first player to get a Surgical Extraction in their graveyard for any reason generally loses. This is because the deck has no reasonable way of stopping an opponent from extracting their extraction once it’s in the grave. You can counter the first extraction, but it’s an instant - they’ll just put another on the stack on top of it. Trading 2 for 1 with forces to extractions each time isn’t sustainable with 7 card hands. Extracting your own extraction to fizzle your opponent is a possibility, but it forces you to play defense with your extractions instead of offense. This means that players take turns discarding copies of Force of Will until one player has 8 Surgical Extractions in hand and is forced to discard one of them. Then they usually lose. This means the deck with more Surgical Extractions is actually at a disadvantage, because they consistently draw 8 copies before their opponent. Because Ston3notS had only 20 surgical extractions in comparison to DunSkivuli’s 30, he won the mirror.
3rd - sadisticmystic1
Chancellor of the Forge + Leyline of the Meek was a vicious uncounterable combo with a 2 turn clock (in most cases). Because this deck does its thing before turn 1 it also proved to be immune to most disruption. Forgeline dominated the Pod of Champions, with only Angelic Scepter beating it cleanly. Frost Lotus gave it a serious fight, but was far more likely to get significantly awkward draws than Forgeline, and inevitably stumbled first in our testing.
2nd - benbuzz790
In Forgeline mirrors, the deck with more tokens generally wins (as the Leyline buffs all tokens on the board, including your opponents). benbuzz790's list ultimately blinked first in the playoff against cobaqua's own list. Cobaqua noted that he chose a slightly more Chancellor-heavy list specifically for this reason.
1st - cobaqua
Our double trouble champion. I'd like to use this space to note the sheer dominance of this archetype. Only three decks in the archetype were submitted. Each took one of the top 3 slots in the tournament.
Final Thoughts
Congratulations to the 3 creators of the Forgeline deck. I'd also like to mention some of the quirks of the meta. Surging Flame was a popular threat, but not nearly as popular as the copies of Mindbreak Trap and Leyline of Sanctity included to answer it. While uncounterable threats, counterspells, hand disruption and leyline of sanctity were all common sights, not a single copy of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or Blightsteel Colossus was played (both cards I expected to perform well, as Blightsteel Colossus never actually enters the graveyard and Tabernacle seriously disrupts both swarm and lotus+threat decks). This allowed Forgeline and mill strategies to run rampant.
Additionally, while 6 distinct players mentioned how well their list was positioned against Chalice of the Void, only one player actually brought a Chalice of the Void to the tournament.
All in all, this was a lot of fun. If you'd like to see another of these events or have suggestions for the format, let me know in the comments.
Submit Your Decks by Sunday 7pm EST (send me a private message with your decklist). We run them for you against all other decks and report the results. You don't have to show up anywhere.
Format Rules
1)Your deck must have exactly 60 cards in it.
2) Pick 2 cards. Your deck can contain only copies of those cards and basic lands. The 4 card limit does not apply. If you want to make a deck of 50 Black Lotus and 10 Progenitus, you can.
3) Your deck cannot be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn against an opponent that has a deck comprised of 60 grizzly bears. Why 60 grizzly bears? The goal is to prevent the most absurd fast decks like Chancellor of the Dross. Previous versions of this rule said, “Your deck can’t be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn”, but some players cleverly abused that by killing themselves, forcing their opponents to ‘win’ early and therefore be disqualified. We’ve found this “against 60 grizzly bears” restriction solves both problems.
4) Wishes are banned.
Tournament Procedure
1) We pilot all submitted decks for the participants, then report the results of the highest finishers.
2) Decks will be played going first and second against each opponent. If your deck wins only one of the two games, the decks will be rematched until one deck wins both games or until 10 total games are played. If 10 games are played this way the match is considered a draw.
3) The games are played with hands and decklists revealed. This makes it easier to determine the optimal play for each player, so your deck won’t get sabotaged by a less skilled pilot running it for you.
EDIT - We previously said that we planned to play all decks against all other submitted decks (as we usually do in these events). However, due to overwhelming submissions on day 1 that's not going to be feasible. We plan to split the submissions into smaller randomized pods and play each deck against all the others in its pod. The best records will advance and be played against one another until the top finishers are crowned.
Complete List of Submitted Decks and Pods
What Happened
64 Entrants were randomly broken into 8 pods. Each deck was played as directed against each other deck in that pod, until it claimed two victories in a row. The finisher with the best record advanced to the Pod of Champions. In the event of a tie for the best record in a pod, both decks were advanced. This happened once.
Pod 1 Champion
from sadisticmystic1
39 Chancellor of the Forge, 21 Leyline of the Meek
Pod 2 Champion
from corran132
20 x Sire of Insanity 40 x Black Lotus
Pod 3 Champion
from DunSkivuli
30 Force of Will, 30 Surgical Extraction
Pod 4 Champion
from Ston3notS
40 Force of Will 20 Surgical Extraction
Pod 5 Champion
from LightsOutAce1
40x Black Lotus 20x Frost Titan
Pod 6 Champion
from nomorepghtrash
12 x Cabal Therapy 25 x Bloodghast 23 x Swamp
Pod 7 Champions
from benbuzz790
42x Chancellor of the Forge 18x Leyline of the Meek
from Amps2Eleven
20x Plains 28x Angel's Grace 12x Isochron Scepter
Pod 8 Champion
from cobaqua
17x Leyline of the Meek 43x Chancellor of the Forge
Final Results
9th - corran132
The combo of Black Lotus and Sire of Insanity was formidable turn 1 disruption, but couldn't survive in the final pod. Chancellor of the Forge acts before turn 1, while Force of Will and Surgical Extraction would disrupt and dismantle the deck. What with Bloodghast enjoying discard and Frost Titan being a more dangerous threat overall, Lotus Insanity wasn't able to rack up many wins in the pod of champions.
8th - nomorepghtrash
Cabal Therapy is powerful turn 1 disruption, and being able to use therapy on yourself to accelerate bloodghasts with landfall is a powerful option. However, this deck also fell to the Forceful Extraction and Forgeline decks. The slower clock and lack of blocking also gave the edge to other early pressure decks.
7th - LightsOutAce1
Black Lotus and Frost Titan are a potent combo, able to lock down a lot of the competition. However, while many of the games were close it ultimately lost out against the Forgeline decks in our testing and naturally couldn't handle Forceful Extraction.
6th - Amps2Eleven
Angel's Grace + Isochron Scepter actually managed to beat Forgeline in our testing, which earned it a lot of points (as Forgeline was a very common deck among the finalists). The deck wins by setting up an Isochron Scepter with Angel's Grace and waiting for your opponent to draw their whole deck (while Angel's Grace prevents you losing to mill). Unfortunately, Angel Grace's use of Split Second didn't protect it from Surgical Extraction once in the graveyard, and the deck also lost out to disruptive decks with a fast clock.
5th - DunSkivuli
Surgical Extraction + Force of Will was one of the most commonly submitted decks. The deck attacks at a wicked angle, countering whatever your opponent plays and immediately extracting it. If your opponent refuses to play a card, they just wait for you to discard to hand size. Eventually they win by milling because your deck is gone. However, Chancellor of the Forge + Leyline of the Meek never gives the opponent a spell to counter. While they do discard to hand size, their clock is much faster than an opponent trying to extract their deck the slow way.
4th - Ston3notS
In Forceful Extraction mirrors, the first player to get a Surgical Extraction in their graveyard for any reason generally loses. This is because the deck has no reasonable way of stopping an opponent from extracting their extraction once it’s in the grave. You can counter the first extraction, but it’s an instant - they’ll just put another on the stack on top of it. Trading 2 for 1 with forces to extractions each time isn’t sustainable with 7 card hands. Extracting your own extraction to fizzle your opponent is a possibility, but it forces you to play defense with your extractions instead of offense. This means that players take turns discarding copies of Force of Will until one player has 8 Surgical Extractions in hand and is forced to discard one of them. Then they usually lose. This means the deck with more Surgical Extractions is actually at a disadvantage, because they consistently draw 8 copies before their opponent. Because Ston3notS had only 20 surgical extractions in comparison to DunSkivuli’s 30, he won the mirror.
3rd - sadisticmystic1
Chancellor of the Forge + Leyline of the Meek was a vicious uncounterable combo with a 2 turn clock (in most cases). Because this deck does its thing before turn 1 it also proved to be immune to most disruption. Forgeline dominated the Pod of Champions, with only Angelic Scepter beating it cleanly. Frost Lotus gave it a serious fight, but was far more likely to get significantly awkward draws than Forgeline, and inevitably stumbled first in our testing.
2nd - benbuzz790
In Forgeline mirrors, the deck with more tokens generally wins (as the Leyline buffs all tokens on the board, including your opponents). benbuzz790's list ultimately blinked first in the playoff against cobaqua's own list. Cobaqua noted that he chose a slightly more Chancellor-heavy list specifically for this reason.
1st - cobaqua
Our double trouble champion. I'd like to use this space to note the sheer dominance of this archetype. Only three decks in the archetype were submitted. Each took one of the top 3 slots in the tournament.
Final Thoughts
Congratulations to the 3 creators of the Forgeline deck. I'd also like to mention some of the quirks of the meta. Surging Flame was a popular threat, but not nearly as popular as the copies of Mindbreak Trap and Leyline of Sanctity included to answer it. While uncounterable threats, counterspells, hand disruption and leyline of sanctity were all common sights, not a single copy of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or Blightsteel Colossus was played (both cards I expected to perform well, as Blightsteel Colossus never actually enters the graveyard and Tabernacle seriously disrupts both swarm and lotus+threat decks). This allowed Forgeline and mill strategies to run rampant.
Additionally, while 6 distinct players mentioned how well their list was positioned against Chalice of the Void, only one player actually brought a Chalice of the Void to the tournament.
All in all, this was a lot of fun. If you'd like to see another of these events or have suggestions for the format, let me know in the comments.
"Assume that the nazi policies were positive for society. However, nazi policies were negative for society. Contradiction!"
No. Seriously, this is just crazytown.
This is a new level of facepalm.
1) Your deck must have exactly 60 cards in it.
2) Pick 2 cards. Your deck can contain only those cards and basic lands. The 4 card limit does not apply.
3) Your deck cannot be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn against an opponent that has a deck comprised of 60 grizzly bears. Why 60 grizzly bears? The goal is to prevent the most absurd fast decks like Chancellor of the Dross. Previous versions of this rule said, “Your deck can’t be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn”, but some players cleverly abused that by killing themselves, forcing their opponents to ‘win’ early and therefore be disqualified. We’ve found this “against 60 grizzly bears” restriction solves both problems.
4) Wishes are banned.
Tournament Procedure
1) We pilot all submitted decks for the participants, then report the results. All decks are played against all other decks. They are ranked according to their overall win record.
2) Decks will be played going first and second against each opponent. If your deck wins only one of the two games, the decks will be rematched until one deck wins both games or until 10 total games are played. If 10 games are played this way the match is considered a draw.
3) The games are played with hands and decklists revealed. This makes it easier to determine the optimal play for each player, so your deck won’t get sabotaged by a less skilled pilot running it for you.
Deadline
Submit Your Decks by Sunday 7pm EST (PM me). We run them for you against all other decks and report the results..
Still don't see an example backing up your claim about people being executed as punishment for tax evasion. Since you've failed to demonstrate this repeatedly now, I'll assume you're incapable of coming up with an example and are tactfully surrendering the point.
Speaking of examples, I'd still love to get some examples of people being executed in modern Australia for the crime of tax evasion.
That assumes that we should pay some attention to the argument itself, rather than just dismissing the claim entirely because the source was wrong about something once. There seems to be little room for this in the post I was quoting.
Doesn't matter. They got something wrong once. It seems that Warghoul (who's just repeating Trump's twitter feed of course), is implying that means we shouldn't take this report seriously either.
Remember when Naturalnews wrote that vaccines were causing the cancer epidemic?
Relevant quote: