Magic isn't all about the most powerful cards. It is about the community, and what brings them out to play. I built a fun $25 standard deck to play in a budget league at one of my more competitive stores. That deck gets horribly trounced by most competitive decks; yet I can bring that deck to my less competitive stores and sweep the FNM easily.
The game has great flexibility. You can have a high powered duel with vintage cards. Or you can play limited where you play what a deck you can cobble together from packs in various ways. You can invent your own formats. I play strange budget specific formats like $50 EDH and $25 standard. The main part of doing these silly events is to have people willing to play with you. In that way it's not that different from any other multiplayer game.
My EDH group has started to look down on players who "aren't fun to play with" which is social pressure to change playstyles.
I agree that Mind Sieze was a mistake. I think wizards should have known better than to put two expensive cards (Baleful Strix and True-Name Nemesis) in the same deck. They should have distributed either distributed a strong money card in each box so they would sell well by the hardcore initially, triggering more print runs and eventually the casual market could get them with multiple print runs. Or remove all huge value and keep them as a place for casual players to grab strong EDH cards in one swoop with lots of medium value cards. With one deck leaps and bounds ahead of the others in value, multiple print runs become less likely because the other 4 decks linger on the shelves; making the problem worse over time rather than better.
The border is important to maintain because you slightly see the top part of a card. This is why many alters are not allowed because you can pick the card out when you look at your cards from the open end of your sleeves.
Visibility is a large issue. If you can't make out the card unless you stand at particular angles, the game is definitely worse for having the foils. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Una4x1D5q1U
Here's a video of the holographic Dragon Whelp, which highlights the visibility issue. The card art is very important to card identification.
I think it's a fine practice so long as you do it quickly and it doesn't break the pace of the game. Being a competitive player and being unfriendly are not directly correlated. Some of the best players in the game are well known to be great people.
The friendliest people in a tournament are usually the very top tables and those at the bottom playing for fun. The people right on the bubble of getting prize are by far the least friendly.
Let me say a few things as a pharmacist now:
Anti-depressants aren't "happy-pills" They don't kick in and make you wondrously happy out of nowhere. It tries to correct the chemical imbalance and attack the problem from a particular angle. You can't swallow your first pill of Prozac and suddenly your depression is gone. All people are different, and it may take time to find a medication that works for you. I know patients who have jumped 5-6 times between antidepressants before they found the right one.
Many of the medications, including SSRI won't have any effect at all on a healthy person except giving them a placebo boost and give them side effects. So taking the medication to bypass coping mechanisms doesn't really work at all unless it's completely placebo because you aren't removing any problems. By the way, a good psychiatrist will periodically and gradually pull you off your antidepressant to see if you still need it anymore.
I think therapy is great, but the problem is many insurance plans don't pay for it. With healthcare costs skyrocketing, I think mental health is taking a huge hit. I know psychiatrists who would love to see their patients for more than 15 minutes at a time, but the insurance company won't pay for it. They have to pass them over to therapists and read the therapist's notes to follow up on their patients.
Depression has to be separated from grief. When bad things happen in your life, you are going to get sad. That is perfectly natural. If you lose a loved one, you are going to be off balanced emotionally for some period of time Note, grieving can take quite a while to get over and depends on the person and can lead to a depression.
Depression is different. It is constant regardless of your life circumstances. You can be a high school student with straight As, Prom King and football quarterback and still be depressed.
I agree our society has a fundamental problem speaking about mental health. The US spent millions to place people with mental health issues into asylums where they were horribly mistreated to push those persons away from society. The US spends way too little on mental health issues today, which I believe leads to a higher homeless rate and a higher crime rate.
We try to pretend problems don't exist, which isolates the person and makes it much worse. Speaking about it is a step towards a better future, and the least we can do as a society is shut our mouths and listen.
Let's say you cast Epic Experiment for 2 and you flipped Beck // Call.
Epic experiment asks, is your CMC less than 2? Beck//Call says "yes" and "no". Epic Experiment only hears "yes" and says you can cast the card without paying the mana cost. It doesn't specify what side you can cast, so you are free to cast either side; so you can still cast Call. You still can't fuse it because you cast it from exile and you can only fuse if you cast it from your hand.
It's Wizard's fault for not making a block that highlights the wedges and names them. Ravnica and Alara both gave rise to some huge resonant names, and the wedges don't have that.
(To my fellow, Apocalypse cycle crew, Raka Disciple, Raka Sanctuary and Rakavolver are not enough to carry our cause. It is slightly elitist to use the name from a vertical/horizontal cycle from 2001, so having it catch on is rather tough)
It's the path of least resistance. When people play magic, they want to have a good time...and that usually comes through winning. So they look up what deck is winning and play it. They probably don't know the nuances of the deck, but for many of them they don't have to know them and will learn most of them by playing the deck enough.
Brewing your own deck from scratch takes alot of time to make and even more time to test. So in an attempt to be competitive, how do you compete against someone who spends alot more time on magic than you do? If you both brew, the one who tests more will win. He'll continue to win because he tests when the meta shifts and your deck lags behind.
So when you don't have time, you "netdeck" because you bank on the creators and the collective people who play and post about the deck to test for you. Hopefully, you contribute your own two cents to the pile as well.
Some view this as a lack of thinking or a lack of the will to improve, others view it as an economical use of your time: to each their own.
We discussed this at FNM this past weekend.
This is the 4th time they have used Scry in a set. (Mirrodin, Future Sight, M11, Theros) so they are much more versed with it than usual.
Wizards has set that cheap blue cantrips are something that must be vigorously tested as they are deceptively powerful.
We said that Preordain was far too powerful at Scry 2, Draw a card. It's arguably close to "draw two cards" for 1 mana. We argued that they could reprint Opt as "Scry 1, Draw a card", which may be the top end of modern U cantrip power. Mind you Opt sees little Legacy or Vintage play, so we can have an idea that it's not incredibly powerful.
In order to resolve Living Wish, you must select a card you own that's outside the game. "You own" is in a magic rules sense, no in a normal legal sense. So if your card you legally own is being played by a friend, you can't wish for it because he owns the card as it started in his library at the start of his game. This still holds if your friend is your opponent.
Now if you are playing a magic subgame due to Shahrazad you can wish for the cards you own in the main game from the subgame as you are the owner in both games.
Creatures by nature are far more interactive than Instant/Sorceries. All colors can interact with creatures on some dimension; partly because almost all creatures interact with other creatures. Blue is the only color that can really interact with spells outside of fringe cards.
Wizards pushes more interactivity and pulls back on anything that "doesn't allow the other player to play the game" this includes prison decks, land destruction, very fast combos and strong counterspells.
Overall creature can be removed cheaply which means they have less staying power. Wizard selectively pushes a few spells every few sets that trickles down to Legacy. Recently, Lingering Souls and Abrupt Decay are key examples. Those cards have lasting power, and will probably stick around modern and legacy for years.
Lotus is banned in Legacy already and restricted in Vintage. That won't change with reprinting. Commander has a ban on it as well. Reprinting doesn't change legality.
Modern will quickly ban it as well. It's +3 mana for no cost, and Seething Song is banned for storm already.
Standard will ban it eventually as it will warp the format around the card. It will come down to mulligan to a lotus and a card to play off lotus. The meta will become stale, tournament turnout will drop and it will get banned.
The price will drop like a rock. The price was driven by rarity more than anything else. Not many people play vintage, so the demand for lotuses aren't that high.
So oddly the only format it will really change is casual play, which such a toxic card will probably be casually banned in groups.
Black Lotus is a toxic card. It is only kinda balanced in vintage with other toxic cards and other cards to keep it in check like Force of Will.
The game has great flexibility. You can have a high powered duel with vintage cards. Or you can play limited where you play what a deck you can cobble together from packs in various ways. You can invent your own formats. I play strange budget specific formats like $50 EDH and $25 standard. The main part of doing these silly events is to have people willing to play with you. In that way it's not that different from any other multiplayer game.
My EDH group has started to look down on players who "aren't fun to play with" which is social pressure to change playstyles.
I agree that Mind Sieze was a mistake. I think wizards should have known better than to put two expensive cards (Baleful Strix and True-Name Nemesis) in the same deck. They should have distributed either distributed a strong money card in each box so they would sell well by the hardcore initially, triggering more print runs and eventually the casual market could get them with multiple print runs. Or remove all huge value and keep them as a place for casual players to grab strong EDH cards in one swoop with lots of medium value cards. With one deck leaps and bounds ahead of the others in value, multiple print runs become less likely because the other 4 decks linger on the shelves; making the problem worse over time rather than better.
Visibility is a large issue. If you can't make out the card unless you stand at particular angles, the game is definitely worse for having the foils.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Una4x1D5q1U
Here's a video of the holographic Dragon Whelp, which highlights the visibility issue. The card art is very important to card identification.
The friendliest people in a tournament are usually the very top tables and those at the bottom playing for fun. The people right on the bubble of getting prize are by far the least friendly.
Anti-depressants aren't "happy-pills" They don't kick in and make you wondrously happy out of nowhere. It tries to correct the chemical imbalance and attack the problem from a particular angle. You can't swallow your first pill of Prozac and suddenly your depression is gone. All people are different, and it may take time to find a medication that works for you. I know patients who have jumped 5-6 times between antidepressants before they found the right one.
Many of the medications, including SSRI won't have any effect at all on a healthy person except giving them a placebo boost and give them side effects. So taking the medication to bypass coping mechanisms doesn't really work at all unless it's completely placebo because you aren't removing any problems. By the way, a good psychiatrist will periodically and gradually pull you off your antidepressant to see if you still need it anymore.
I think therapy is great, but the problem is many insurance plans don't pay for it. With healthcare costs skyrocketing, I think mental health is taking a huge hit. I know psychiatrists who would love to see their patients for more than 15 minutes at a time, but the insurance company won't pay for it. They have to pass them over to therapists and read the therapist's notes to follow up on their patients.
Depression is different. It is constant regardless of your life circumstances. You can be a high school student with straight As, Prom King and football quarterback and still be depressed.
I agree our society has a fundamental problem speaking about mental health. The US spent millions to place people with mental health issues into asylums where they were horribly mistreated to push those persons away from society. The US spends way too little on mental health issues today, which I believe leads to a higher homeless rate and a higher crime rate.
We try to pretend problems don't exist, which isolates the person and makes it much worse. Speaking about it is a step towards a better future, and the least we can do as a society is shut our mouths and listen.
Epic experiment asks, is your CMC less than 2? Beck//Call says "yes" and "no". Epic Experiment only hears "yes" and says you can cast the card without paying the mana cost. It doesn't specify what side you can cast, so you are free to cast either side; so you can still cast Call. You still can't fuse it because you cast it from exile and you can only fuse if you cast it from your hand.
Then again, they said that other art in cards like Rakish Heir are meant to have an appeal to gay players.
(To my fellow, Apocalypse cycle crew, Raka Disciple, Raka Sanctuary and Rakavolver are not enough to carry our cause. It is slightly elitist to use the name from a vertical/horizontal cycle from 2001, so having it catch on is rather tough)
Brewing your own deck from scratch takes alot of time to make and even more time to test. So in an attempt to be competitive, how do you compete against someone who spends alot more time on magic than you do? If you both brew, the one who tests more will win. He'll continue to win because he tests when the meta shifts and your deck lags behind.
So when you don't have time, you "netdeck" because you bank on the creators and the collective people who play and post about the deck to test for you. Hopefully, you contribute your own two cents to the pile as well.
Some view this as a lack of thinking or a lack of the will to improve, others view it as an economical use of your time: to each their own.
This is the 4th time they have used Scry in a set. (Mirrodin, Future Sight, M11, Theros) so they are much more versed with it than usual.
Wizards has set that cheap blue cantrips are something that must be vigorously tested as they are deceptively powerful.
We said that Preordain was far too powerful at Scry 2, Draw a card. It's arguably close to "draw two cards" for 1 mana. We argued that they could reprint Opt as "Scry 1, Draw a card", which may be the top end of modern U cantrip power. Mind you Opt sees little Legacy or Vintage play, so we can have an idea that it's not incredibly powerful.
Now if you are playing a magic subgame due to Shahrazad you can wish for the cards you own in the main game from the subgame as you are the owner in both games.
Wizards pushes more interactivity and pulls back on anything that "doesn't allow the other player to play the game" this includes prison decks, land destruction, very fast combos and strong counterspells.
Overall creature can be removed cheaply which means they have less staying power. Wizard selectively pushes a few spells every few sets that trickles down to Legacy. Recently, Lingering Souls and Abrupt Decay are key examples. Those cards have lasting power, and will probably stick around modern and legacy for years.
Modern will quickly ban it as well. It's +3 mana for no cost, and Seething Song is banned for storm already.
Standard will ban it eventually as it will warp the format around the card. It will come down to mulligan to a lotus and a card to play off lotus. The meta will become stale, tournament turnout will drop and it will get banned.
The price will drop like a rock. The price was driven by rarity more than anything else. Not many people play vintage, so the demand for lotuses aren't that high.
So oddly the only format it will really change is casual play, which such a toxic card will probably be casually banned in groups.
Black Lotus is a toxic card. It is only kinda balanced in vintage with other toxic cards and other cards to keep it in check like Force of Will.