Quote from Squirtle_Squad »Do you think the print sizes are affecting the price? The BFZ and SOI blocks are/were being printed into oblivion. I dont know about KTK block however.
KTK had a fairly large print run because it was drafted as 3x for 3 months and then as 2x for another 3 months. Additionally, tons of people cracked it for the Fetchlands.
Dragons of Tarkir only had 3 months as a 2x set and was never drafted as a 3x set. It's also the only large set ever printed where this is the case - Avacyn Restored, Gatecrash, and Rise of the Eldrazi (the other non-Fall Large sets) were all drafted by themselves as 3x for at least three months. It has only a few staple Eternal cards, so its draw from the Eternal crowd was much smaller as well.
On top of this, Collected Company has been the cornerstone of one of the most dominant strategies in Standard, and has made a splash in Modern. So it's one of the most expensive non-Land, non-Mythic Rare cards in recent memory.
All that said, the set is one of the few standalone sets in standard, so there's lower intra-block synergy than with BFZ and SOI cards, and it has only three months left in Standard, which is why everything is starting to creep downwards.
Right, as you see there's a potentially printable card at that Wildfires at 7 mana and also has a mode with a relatively efficient body and some looting. The problem is that you've got a card that's 1RR 3/2, 2RR-4RR 3/2 loot 1-3 cards, 5RR 3/2 loot four and also full wildfire, 6RR+ 3/2 loot 5+ cards and wildfire. That's way too much flexibility for card whose seven mana "best" case is already fairly pushed and has a fallback case of still being a reasonable on-curve guy.
Urza does a lot but it's just got a single real mode, and its worst-case scenario is a 4-mana 1/4 + a Silver Myr with a long-game mana outlet. If Urza was a 3-mana 1/4 with kicker X, make X of those Construct tokens, it'd be too good because it'd be both playable earlier and insanely scaling into the late game.
Having the flexibility to be played as an on-curve body in the early game, scale up relevantly into the midgame, and be absolutely absurd in the late game has to come at a cost. When the lategame mode is pushed for a seven mana dude, that makes the early modes that much more egregious.
Also, as a final note, red only gets rummaging (discard, then draw), not looting (draw, then discard) these days, so it likely needs to be reworked anyways
This suffers from the problem where it does way too many things. A seven mana dude that Wildfires on ETB and survives would be cubeable as-is, even with a relatively middling body. Getting a loot four on top of that means this realistically would have to cost around nine mana. Getting the ability to also cast it as an okay on-curve body AND as a body with looting at every cost-point in between 3 and 7 means it's doing way too much in one package.
I could see maybe something like this:
Wildfire Diviner 1RR
Creature - Human Wizard
Kicker 4
When Wildfire Diviner enters the battlefield, discard a card, then draw a card.
When Wildfire Diviner enters the battlefield, if it was kicked, it deals 2 damage to each other creature and each player sacrifices two lands
3/2
Wizards is incredibly gun-shy on rituals these days, so this mana would probably have to be limited to casting creature spells only. You could maybe shave a mana and make it R to produce RR though.
Let's say you start from just two cards in hand: One Hawk, and one Brainstorm/Jace. You play the Hawk and get three more Hawks out of your deck. You then play the Brainstorm or Jace and +0, drawing three cards and putting two Hawks back. Finally, you play the fourth Hawk, getting the other two Hawks back out of your deck. You end up with five cards in hand, which is a pretty huge swing.
It gets even swingier when you start using Scroll Rack and ways to flicker our bounce your first Hawk. A setup of Squadron Hawk, Conjuror's Closet, and Scroll Rack means you can activate Rack to draw an additional three cards putting three Hawks back on your deck, then flicker the Hawk to re-find those same three Hawks, resulting in drawing three extra cards every single turn.
Other options for turning extra copies into "real" cards include discard outlets like Vivien's Arkbow, Survival of the Fittest, Fauna Shaman or looters like Merfolk Looter, Faithless Looting, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, etc. Wheel of Sun and Moon, Loaming Shaman, Battlefield Scrounger and others can recycle discarded copies into your deck to fetch again and again.
If you actually want to use them as a wincon without using equipment or auras, mass buffs like Cathars' Crusade or Beastmaster Ascension, Overrun effects, or tribal buffs like Kangee, Aerie Keeper/Soulcatcher's Aerie, any of the vampire or elf lords for Conquistador or Sentinel, any of the wolf tribal stuff for Howling Wolf, etc are going to be your best bet.
1) A 1->R mana cost change buys you a small amount of power. Rare->Mythic buys you a small amount of power. But Abbot is already a cube-worthy card, or at least very close, so you can't squeeze THAT much more power out of it with those changes.
2) You say this like it's a drawback, but the fact that it's a hybrid Rolling Thunder/Commune with Lava with a +2 to start AND a body attached is just... jeezy creezy. The card is beyond absurd.
3) As worded, it would not require him to be on the battlefield to deal the damage. It's part of a delayed trigger created by the initial trigger
Even ignoring the multikicker and ignoring the damage trigger, getting a Light up the Stage attached to a 2/1 for RR is 360-cubeable. The extra abilities on it are just insane, above and beyond what an even halfway reasonable card looks like.
That's a LOT of value in one small package.
Abbot of Keral Keep Impulse-draws you a single card with a good body for 2 mana, and it only draws the card until end of turn.
This gives you a full Light up the Stage with the cards lasting until your next turn. AND you can Impulse even more for every mana you spend. AND then on top of that it gives you a Rolling Thunder. There's no way this sees print as-is. Drop the two built-in cards and the burn and it might be printable.
Also that last ability needs to be worded as "At the end of your next turn, for each card that was exiled this way that wasn't played, ~ deals 1 damage to target creature or planeswalker"
You probably want to start with a basis including the following cards:
4 Pteramander
3 Cryptic Serpent
4 Ponder
4 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
3 Spell Snare
4 Vapor Snag
That gives you 49 slots for a total cost of just under $40 shipped from TCG Player, leaving you another 11 to work with. Squeeze in a couple copies of cards mentioned above, and mix and match on the remainder. 2 additional lands is probably called for, and if you can squeeze in some cheap fetches like Flooded Strand it will make your brainstorms better.
Other cards to fill out space with include:
Counterspell
Preordain
Dismember
Stifle
Based on what kind of decks you expect to see
I gave you the nonlatin bypass.
The announcement for the new site will definitely include much of this information when it comes.
The intent is for the new site to use most if not all of our current custom tags, but again check the announcement when it hits for full information. We are working as hard as we can to get everything set up in time and the exact list of features that will make it into the launch are not set in stone yet.
We (the senior staff) are working on a new community to take MTGS's place. Stay tuned as we get closer to closure.
We have received numerous offers of financial support, and we are exceptionally grateful. Fortunately, that is not a limiting factor at this time. The biggest thing we will need is people who are willing to contribute content (Primers, articles, etc) for the new site when it opens.
Look for another mainpage article and announcement here.
No plans to require social media logins.
We will definitely have a deck-building focus. I strongly agree that Reddit does not handle deck discussion well.
Most of the current staff is involved in the effort to build a replacement, so you should be happy with the result. The owners are leaving, but the staff that has been involved in all of the day-to-day is remaining.
Believe me when I say that we have explored the available options and that this is not possible.
As above, we have explored our available options and that is not a possibility. We already have a solution in place, it is just a matter of getting things ironed out before MTGS closes.
White->Blue: Unexpectedly Absent springs to mind. Since making that card they decided that putting things to the top of library is Blue and not White.
Blue->Black: Vendillion Clique always struck me as being out of place for blue, and would make a cool shift. Probably too good for an uncommon though. Maybe Body Double?
Red->Green: Well, Chaos Warp is super out of pie for red but it doesn't seem terribly green either.
Tazri is an auto-win once you've set up a Food Chain loop, since you can use her to tutor Kalastria Healer or something similar and then just cast her a thousand times and kill the board. Sisay finds part of the Food Chain loop, but given that you can't use her ability with Food Chain mana, she seems worse as a cEDH Food Chain general.