MTG Salvation

My suggestion is: it'd be really hard to buy him particular cards, without knowing what formats he plays. With that in mind, I'd consider buying him an accessory, like a nice deck box or play mat. With that, you don't need to know so much about the game as much as his personality and what he finds cool. Like, maybe he likes dragons or nature or ferrets or whatever (the Starcitygames Creature Collection is good for this!)

You can search through playmats on stores like Coolstuffinc or Amazon.

Other sources of nice playmats:

- Gamermats.com has some sweet art by Jason Engle and other artists.

- The artist Noah Bradley sells some amazing, striking playmats on his site.

- Originalmagicart.com has some playmats with licensed art that are a bit pricier (~$40).

- If you have a high resolution image, you could get a custom playmat on Inked Gaming...I know one guy who has a picture of his daughter on a playmat.

- You can also browse through playmats on eBay, though sometimes there you get unlicensed ones printed in China with less quality. Could be good if he's really into anime, though.

It's dangerous collecting all these links because now I want a new playmat myself...

Quote from lujo86 »

However, we've just recently figured out that certain things we thought weren't online-legal are in fact online legal due to some obscure set which gatherer doesn't list (some of us old farts got introduced to scryfall by the newbies just last week). There'll be brewing with Flood and Energy Tap in the coming weeks, and it'll take us a short while to pick the cards up once we're happy with the builds, but we expect a local metagame shift soon enough if it turns out we can break some of the stuff that we haven't even considered due to thinking it was not legal.

Energy Tap and Flood are both legal due to the MTGO Treasure Chests, which is one of those weird random quirks of MTGO Legality. It also gives us some unique cards like Drafna's Restoration, and the W/B/G Monarch cards which are already so format impacting (but not the U/R ones).

I've been fascinated for a long time by the idea of a "Big CMC" Affinity deck with Myr Enforcer, Gearseeker Serpent, etc, and Energy Tap + Rush of Knowledge.

Quote from lujo86 »

Because I'm not sure if all cards from the Masques block were actually printed on MTGO as they printed the block mashed up into one, like they did with Tempest block.

Both Masques and Tempest blocks were printed on MTGO in full. They just did the "Remastered" sets later as well.

I've experienced the same thing at my local meta...top tier decks like Delver being stomped by stuff like Naya Slivers, which went 4-0.

I think part of it is that most people are analyzing the Pauper meta purely based on the MTGO Challenges/Leagues, which is in some way an extremely insular meta. If the top players are only going to play Delver/Boros, then of course that's the only thing that's going to win.

Opinions on this vary in Pauper. To many people, it's a feature, not a bug. The weaker mana-fixing makes adding a color a legitimate cost, and makes 3-4 color goodstuff decks like in Legacy/Modern less of a thing.

IMHO the biggest real complain is that there aren't good color-fixing for multi-colored aggro decks, whereas control can deal with the tap restriction easier. If there were fast duals in Pauper, I feel like they should specifically be aimed towards aggro decks. Something like:

Scorched Mire
Land
When ~ enters the battlefield, you lose 3 life.
T: Add B or R.

As someone who does play Pauper a lot, it's also very important to make these lands not fetch basics or have basic subtypes, to avoid making Gush/Foil/Daze even more powerful.

4) RE: Blaster Mage that's an interesting idea, but I've found Faerie Macabre to be even better in that role of shutting down Ghostly Flicker loops. Just hold it in their hand until they put the Mnemonic Wall trigger on the stack, then bam, make it fizzle. The best part is it's just an activated ability, so they can't even counter it or remove it in any way. Unless they played chosen discard like Divest, but I've never seen any Tron deck do this.

It's also randomly good against other decks. Hose Reanimator decks...remove an opponent's Prismatic Strands during their end step so you can swing in for lethal...etc.

Is anyone else just slightly irked that it's not a take on Pestilence ala Pestilence Demon?

I vote uncommon. I'd reserve uncommon more for workhorse staples that can fit into many different archetypes, and rare for cards that are either very splashy or require a whole deck to be built around them. But that's just my philosophy.

Also Precedent: Terrain Generator. Feels a bit like Ghost Town, too.

How about

"Whenever X would die, instead, put it into your library 2nd (or 3rd) from the top."

I think that captures the "slowly regrowing" ability."

Another precursor would be Wayward Soul.

I was just thinking about the amount of unexplored design space in the game. For example, these are a bunch of Threaten variants I'm surprised haven't been printed yet. Maybe some of them have, since I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of recent sets.

Threaten Bounce
2UR
Sorcery
Untap target creature and gain control of it until end of turn. That creature gains haste until end of turn. At end of turn, return it to it's owner's hand.

Threaten Freeze
1UR
Sorcery
Untap target creature and gain control of it until end of turn. That creature gains haste until end of turn. That creature doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.

Threaten Shock
3R
Sorcery
Untap target creature and gain control of it until end of turn. That creature gains haste until end of turn. At end of turn, it deals 2 damage to itself.

Double Threaten
2RRR
Sorcery
Untap up to two target creatures and gain control of them until end of turn. Those creatures gain haste until end of turn.

As many potentially useful pauper-legal reprints from sets not published on MTGO as possible.

Oubliette , doooooh
Cemetery Gate
Goblin Grenade -maybe-
Hymn to Tourach -maybe-
Agent of Stromgald
Anti-Magic Aura
Ashes to Ashes
Ashnod's Altar
Desert
Breath of Life
Darkness
Equinox
Essence Filter
Gaea's Touch -maybe-
Gaze of Pain
Glyph of Destruction
Goblin War Drums
Initiates of the Ebon Hand
Kjeldoran Warrior
Lava Burst
Marsh Gas
Mystic Remora
Naf's Asp
Omen
Phyrexian Gremlins
Priest of Yawgmoth
Psychic Purge
Riptide
Rust
Sage of Lat-Nam
Sisters of the Flame
Soldevi Adnate
Soul Kiss
Spore Cloud
Stench of Decay
Stone-Throwing Devils
Sunken City
Transmutation
Undergrowth
Veteran's Voice
Wall of Earth
Whip Vine
Crown-Hunter Hireling

They wouldn't necessarily all be played, but it'd be nice to have them.

Quote from FreezingPoint »

Hmmmmm

Basic Check Land
Land
~ enters the battlefield tapped if you control an untapped mountain or forest. (double negative unless you don't is confusing)
T: Add G or R.

So it's always untapped if you run only non basics? The only downside is you can't have this land if you need 2 mana open for an instant on the opponent's turn. That makes it one of the best lands.

Frontline Encampment
Land
T: Add
Raid - T: Add one mana of any color. Spend this mana only to cast a creature spell. Activate this ability only if you attacked with a creature this turn.

A variant of Ancient Ziggurat.

Is this common-able? Not sure if it actually needed the word raid on it, but it IS raid, so...

Quote from ed06288 »

Gush and the cantrips probably should go. Inside out combo would be a side-casualty though.

Speaking of this, I just put together an Inside Out Combo deck to rent to the guys, but since noone rented it I went to give it a spin. And having this discussion on my mind I decided to try out a bit of a toolbox approach with Dizzy Spell and to try out Fathom Seer. Gush was always a pretty silly card and having the effect actually cost you something (but leave behind a dude!) seemed... more then fine.

I got second place at an 8-man tourney. Drew the first round vs. Burn, got a 2 - 1 win vs. Affinity and a 2 - 1 vs. Infect. I think the combo is fine enough that you could just go 4 Fathom Seer if, say, Gush is banned. This deck in particular doesn't care about the cost of gushing as long as it puts a lot of cards in its hand, and getting a chump-blocking / edict eating dude to go with your gush is quite easy to appreciate.

Also, I'm not even sure the deck needs Inside Out as such. A one-mana blue card which swaps power and toughness would be tutorable with Dizzy Spell, which means you could go for all of it, Tireless Tribe and Slip Through Space. And Dizzy Spell actually came in handy vs Infect, while all my million cantrips and digging couldn't find me an Inside Out in my second game vs. Affinity. On the other hand, drawing a card with Inside Out doesn't really matter as when it resolves the Tribe is almost always as pumped as it's going to be. (Even though I did use it to swap p/t on one of my Augurs and kill an infect dude, and once to flip-kill a Thermo-Alchemist).

Also, if you're not really going for speed, counting that you won't really have all the necessary combo pieces fast enough to profit from the quick kill potential (you do need 4 things - Tribe, swap, unblockable and gush), and go for Merfolk Thaumaturgist as swap effect backup... then Dizzy Spell doubles as proper removal.

So, um, there seems to be more than one way to build that deck.

Unfortunately, Eon Hub is a no-go for Dystopia, since its main benefit is an upkeep trigger as well. For that card in particular, I would recommend cards that let you remove age counters from permanents with cumulative upkeep, such as Power Conduit and Clockspinning, which will keep the life loss down to a manageable level.

One word to start:

Pauper

Won't cost you a lot and you can go from there.

1st -- needs "use this ability only when you can play an instant" (or similar) clause.

Well, strictly speaking you don't, but the effect is very different. Just keep in mind how spells are cast -- the fierst step is to put the spell on the stack, then you pay for it. Without the clause, the opponent can just name the card on the stack.

The text of the ability in question will, effectively, be changed to "Whenever a source deals damage to Lazav, the Multifarious, that source’s controller sacrifices that many permanents." A creature's name in its text is just shorthand for "this permanent" and Lazav keeping their name doesn't change how the rest of the copy effect works; see Quicksilver Elemental.

Tortured Existence is a must for any madness deck with black.

Gathan Raiders could also be very powerful with the right setup.

You definitely want all 4 Grave Scrabbler. This card makes Madness decks tick.

I don't really get why people play Olivia's Dragoon. It seems like there would be better options for discard. Putrid Imp comes to mind as a powerful 1-drop for the deck.