A colorless and uncounterable silver bullet that completely destroys the Narset deck that I've JUST built, and it doesn't even require its own card, it's stapled on a land that doesn't even ETBT. First Deicide and now this? This is the last time I'll build an entire deck around a new card or mechanic, because it seems that a backbreaking hoser could always be just around the corner.
I understand that Narset is very powerful and requires a countermeasure, but this is just ridiculous. How about an artifact at least? Couldn't it at least require a card slot to hose my entire deck?
You are vastly overreacting to what this card does. It really doesn't hose entire decks. In fact, it does absolutely nothing on its own. If anything, WotC is just finally starting to provide a couple more narrow answers to horrifically uninterative mechanics. I doubt the majority of people will even bother to run this thing anyway, since even land slots are valuable. What it does do is provide people who play against hexproof all the time to have another decent way of interacting. Pretty reasonable if you ask me.
I think WotC does care very much about how fun the game is to the players, so yes, it is their responsibility to try their best to emphasize the most fun elements of the game and to de-emphasize the least fun elements. After all, this will almost certainly impact sales, which they can't ignore, obviously (this has always been true and I doubt Hasbro caused any kind of crazy change in this regard). The key problem here is that WotC's definitions of "fun" and "unfun" are going to be (or at least try to be) much more in sync with the aggregate opinions of the general community and not any particular person or group. It's not really about whether a card is "overpowered", but more about the general way people feel about things. If the majority of the population utterly despises land destruction then, if we consider the overall aggregate opinion, it is correct to de-emphasize land destruction in order to make the game more "fun", even if said land destruction would be reasonable to print in terms of power level.
Also, WotC still takes risks with their card designs, so in my opinion the game remains interesting despite the constantly shifting definitions of "fun" and "unfun".
Rabblemaster is really good, but I think most people realize that his recent price surge is perhaps a bit over the top. Thragtusk is probably a decent comparison as a ubiquitously played core set rare, and even when it was completely dominating Standard it still couldn't maintain the $20+ price tag for very long, so I wouldn't be too surprised if the Rabblemaster situation ends up being similar (plus Rabblemaster probably doesn't even go in as many decks as Thragtusk did).
This Facebook stuff that's being posted is pretty telling. I can't believe he would be so arrogant as to blame the MTG community for his cheating and so delusional as to think he is the victim. I suppose he expects everyone to write him thank you letters, shower him in money, and praise him for being such a hero. I'd wager that whatever respect the majority of the community had left for him is gone at this point. In any case, it sounds like he'll be gone for a long time, which is just fine in my book.
I feel like you guys are going off in ten different directions at once without realizing that Humphries' case is so much simpler - the man is a practiced cheat. That's all there is to it - he's not an addict, isn't suffering from a mental illness, and the general nature of the human condition isn't to blame either. Trevor Humphries stacks decks at Magic tournaments in order to give himself the best possible chance to win. End of story.
Very few people are arguing that he is not guilty- I certainly believe he is, the tangent is whether a person who is officially sanctioned/punished the first time for this offense should be given a lifetime ban as opposed to a finite ban dependent on the DCI deeming the person has made an effort to change.
Ultimately, I don't think it matters very much either way. He blatantly cheated. On camera. Many people are now acutely aware of this fact. And just like Bertoncini, his reputation in the competitive MTG community has already been ruined. Members of the MTG community who know even an inkling about his past behavior won't trust him and will be much more wary of anything questionable that he does. Punishments will be much more harsh if he gets caught again. This is completely independent from the length of his ban. I think even if he went back to playing competitive MTG next week, all this would still be true. Unless he is truly a grandmaster of sleight of hand, then there is simply no way he'll be able to cheat his way through another large tournament without getting caught again.
My point is that either way his cheating won't be able to continue, so the problem essentially solves itself. The broader cheating problem in general is another story, unfortunately, since there are potentially thousands of habitual cheaters who have yet to be put under the same scrutiny.
It appears as though Conspiracy isn't on the list of sets that can be downloaded. I checked and although Conspiracy is on both magiccards.info and the Gatherer, for some reason it does not actually show up in the list of sets on the Gatherer. Could it be that this is causing problems?
I'm amused that Nissa Worldwaker's "Untap four forests" ability was met with such excitement,and now, just a few weeks later we see... "Untap four permanents". Pretty insane.
I´m a bit confused by the "Whenever is dealt damage put that many" Is it equal to the damage it gets like if someone gives it 3 damage you get three 1/1 tokens? What will happend if it gets destroyed by a "Destroy Target Creature spell" ? How many tokens will pe put out?
You unfortunately do not get any tokens if the Nest is destroyed, exiled, bounced, put into the library, or leaves play in any way that does not involve actual damage. That means only combat damage or damage dealt by a spell or ability will allow the Nest to produce Hornets.
Flavorfully, it probably should make Hornets when disturbed for any reason, but then it would probably be too good.
so now i can use this with Mycosynth Lattice to make my jace beatdown strategy possible. i also like the idea of this on a equipment that is attached to something and they both attack. he hits you and the sword hits you. what are the rules if i try to equip a 5/5 bonesplitter to itself?
While the rules and flavor of MTG don't always obey common sense, this is one such case where they do. So no, what you're suggesting doesn't actually work.
301.5c: An Equipment that’s also a creature can’t equip a creature. An Equipment that loses the subtype “Equipment” can’t equip a creature. An Equipment can’t equip itself. An Equipment that equips an illegal or nonexistent permanent becomes unattached from that permanent but remains on the battlefield.
Liliana kills her self with her -3 that is why she sucks Jace doesnt kill himself. He isnt that bad. Lilianas ult does nothing. Jaces wins you the game. Their plus abilities aren't even on the same level. Her's eventually becomes completely useless. He can take those crappy lands and shove them to the bottom as the game goes.
Sure, you can look at it that way. However, he still doesn't generate any card advantage, while LotDR can (even if it's just swamps). His -3 is also not hard removal, where LotDR's -3 usually is.
He just doesn't have much going for him aside from his -8. But it's never right to judge a walker on their ultimate alone, hence the badness.
I think the most comparable walker to Jace 5.0 is Liliana of the Dark Realms. In both cases the -3 is pretty bad, but borderline respectable in a very narrow range of circumstances. Jace 5.0 has a mostly worse +1 and two additional starting loyalty. He also has a better ultimate, although its unlikely he'll ever reach it in all but the most pointless win-more scenarios. In fact, it really seems that the only scenario he is good in is one where the opponent has nothing in play, or maybe just one really expensive, bad card that can be bounced.
Overall verdict: Slightly better (ish?) than LotDR ... So in other words, not good. (Super Timetwister ultimate is cool though)
I'm not familiar with Luttwak, though I can understand his position. There's no real strategy when there's always one correct answer. I suppose its mostly a semantic argument. Personally I don't prefer the type of strategy that is either a race to the bottom ("Everyone act weak until the game is over!") or a crap shoot ("Oh no, I went weak when you all went strong which I couldn't have predicted so now I'm out.")
I do think one strategic issue with Conspiracy is the tendency to either ignore someone, or take them out in a single turn. I was playing a game this weekend and someone resolved Magister of Worth. The vote went 2-2 so we got the Wrath of God effect. I had Predator's Howl so I resolved that and got 3 tokens, then I dropped my Pelakka Wurm with Haste thanks to a Conspiracy. I had 13 power and 2 opponents with no blockers.
I didn't really want to kill one of these opponents. I wanted to take out the guy with the Angel, but he was out of reach with his life total -- meaning I could attack him and lose a token, but the other players couldn't finish him off before he untapped. He wasn't in that commanding of a position that I really need 2 partners to take him out, so I randomly killed one of the other guys at the table.
Was there much strategy to this? Yes, definitely. There were a ton of considerations to make. Did I make the right choice? I have no idea. I ended up losing, but not to the guy who resolved the Angel. In my decision to take out one of 2 players with empty boards, I presumably chose the wrong one.
It's all about what type of strategy you enjoy. I would argue that Magic's strength is 1-on-1 strategy, and that it doesn't work as well as many other games in a free for all situation. It might very well be more "strategic" in the free for all, just because you've drastically increased the complexity of the board state, but it doesn't mean the game is well suited for that type of strategy. The fact that people are reporting findings like "I've never seen so many people leave a Magic game visibly angry at someone else" tells me it's not the healthiest form of Magic out there.
Yea, I find it interesting that some people seem to have had a somewhat similar experience to mine when playing Conspiracy. I actually think it's great in the same way EDH is great: Just playing for the fun, wacky experience, not caring at all if you lose. Unfortunately, when money is being paid to play and contribute to a prize pool, people will naturally want to win; thus when people lose in the totally ridiculous, unfair ways that inevitably occur in multiplayer games, it feels bad. Oddly, I've felt that this effect is even worse when playing with friends than with strangers, since feeling like you have to backstab your friend to win is just... awkward. Anyway, that's why I prefer to play reactively. It is my pick for the best play style for avoiding the "feel bad" experience, as hilariously weird as that sounds.
I've found that playing reactive decks based around various reactive cards can be very powerful, although not blatantly so. My favorite strategy thus far (which I have succeeded in drafting and winning with on multiple occasions) is building red based control around Volcanic Fallout and Brimstone Volley, most commonly with a white and/or black splash for more removal/blockers/bombs. While I'm sure most drafters know that Volley and Fallout are good cards (although I got a 13th pick Volley in the first draft I did, surprisingly), they both become better in this format because they allow for the game to be played very reactively, which is pretty much the only way I know to not draw hate from the entire table and thus guarantee yourself an extremely frustrating loss. The single best draft experience I had with this method was when I had four Volley and two Double Stroke naming Volley... Basically you sit there for the whole game acting as if you are just barely scraping by and then you just nuke the first person to attack/threaten you for 9 to 15 damage. Quite satisfying.
On a secondary note, playing a reactive deck lets you play the politics game a little bit better and who are we kidding... that's really how games are won and lost in multiplayer. Having an insane deck and playing it "perfectly" will likely just result in a dismal loss if you aren't playing the political side of things as well. Perhaps yet another aspect of this is that it makes the people attacking you look like jerks, since ideally your side of the field will be totally non-threatening. This can often pit the other players against one another, which helps bring down their life totals into "nuke" range. It generally feels bad when you are the one who has to BE the jerk (and thus be heavily punished and colluded against) so I decided that instead of attacking I would just sit there and do nothing while secretly plotting to nuke everyone to death once their life totals got low enough.
Honestly though, I don't actually like the format that much. It has felt like every interesting deck that tries to play a proactive ("normal") game gets immediately annihilated regardless of its resilience and strength. In order to have a chance at winning you have to act like you are totally harmless or manipulate/lie to the other players better than everyone else. Both of these often lead to really unbalanced, unfair games. Most of the games have been badly marred with one or more people getting annoyed or outright mad at being blatantly ganged up on. I had a particularly bad experience where one player simply played kingmaker for another to the point of causing his own loss. I just asked myself, "Why am I even playing?" It just doesn't make for fun games especially in a quasi-competitive environment where people are playing for prizes (even if it is within the rules and even if the prizes are fairly small). Even ignoring the prize aspect, I've never played so many games of magic in a short period of time that led to so many bad feelings for so many people. It's unlikely that I'll draft Conspiracy any more for this reason.
But anyway, that's just my little comment on the format. Keep in mind it is just my personal experience/opinion.
You are vastly overreacting to what this card does. It really doesn't hose entire decks. In fact, it does absolutely nothing on its own. If anything, WotC is just finally starting to provide a couple more narrow answers to horrifically uninterative mechanics. I doubt the majority of people will even bother to run this thing anyway, since even land slots are valuable. What it does do is provide people who play against hexproof all the time to have another decent way of interacting. Pretty reasonable if you ask me.
I just don't understand the complaining.
Also, WotC still takes risks with their card designs, so in my opinion the game remains interesting despite the constantly shifting definitions of "fun" and "unfun".
Ultimately, I don't think it matters very much either way. He blatantly cheated. On camera. Many people are now acutely aware of this fact. And just like Bertoncini, his reputation in the competitive MTG community has already been ruined. Members of the MTG community who know even an inkling about his past behavior won't trust him and will be much more wary of anything questionable that he does. Punishments will be much more harsh if he gets caught again. This is completely independent from the length of his ban. I think even if he went back to playing competitive MTG next week, all this would still be true. Unless he is truly a grandmaster of sleight of hand, then there is simply no way he'll be able to cheat his way through another large tournament without getting caught again.
My point is that either way his cheating won't be able to continue, so the problem essentially solves itself. The broader cheating problem in general is another story, unfortunately, since there are potentially thousands of habitual cheaters who have yet to be put under the same scrutiny.
You unfortunately do not get any tokens if the Nest is destroyed, exiled, bounced, put into the library, or leaves play in any way that does not involve actual damage. That means only combat damage or damage dealt by a spell or ability will allow the Nest to produce Hornets.
Flavorfully, it probably should make Hornets when disturbed for any reason, but then it would probably be too good.
While the rules and flavor of MTG don't always obey common sense, this is one such case where they do. So no, what you're suggesting doesn't actually work.
301.5c: An Equipment that’s also a creature can’t equip a creature. An Equipment that loses the subtype “Equipment” can’t equip a creature. An Equipment can’t equip itself. An Equipment that equips an illegal or nonexistent permanent becomes unattached from that permanent but remains on the battlefield.
I think the great thing is that they actually work pretty well together.
Sure, you can look at it that way. However, he still doesn't generate any card advantage, while LotDR can (even if it's just swamps). His -3 is also not hard removal, where LotDR's -3 usually is.
He just doesn't have much going for him aside from his -8. But it's never right to judge a walker on their ultimate alone, hence the badness.
Overall verdict: Slightly better (ish?) than LotDR ... So in other words, not good. (Super Timetwister ultimate is cool though)
Yea, I find it interesting that some people seem to have had a somewhat similar experience to mine when playing Conspiracy. I actually think it's great in the same way EDH is great: Just playing for the fun, wacky experience, not caring at all if you lose. Unfortunately, when money is being paid to play and contribute to a prize pool, people will naturally want to win; thus when people lose in the totally ridiculous, unfair ways that inevitably occur in multiplayer games, it feels bad. Oddly, I've felt that this effect is even worse when playing with friends than with strangers, since feeling like you have to backstab your friend to win is just... awkward. Anyway, that's why I prefer to play reactively. It is my pick for the best play style for avoiding the "feel bad" experience, as hilariously weird as that sounds.
On a secondary note, playing a reactive deck lets you play the politics game a little bit better and who are we kidding... that's really how games are won and lost in multiplayer. Having an insane deck and playing it "perfectly" will likely just result in a dismal loss if you aren't playing the political side of things as well. Perhaps yet another aspect of this is that it makes the people attacking you look like jerks, since ideally your side of the field will be totally non-threatening. This can often pit the other players against one another, which helps bring down their life totals into "nuke" range. It generally feels bad when you are the one who has to BE the jerk (and thus be heavily punished and colluded against) so I decided that instead of attacking I would just sit there and do nothing while secretly plotting to nuke everyone to death once their life totals got low enough.
Honestly though, I don't actually like the format that much. It has felt like every interesting deck that tries to play a proactive ("normal") game gets immediately annihilated regardless of its resilience and strength. In order to have a chance at winning you have to act like you are totally harmless or manipulate/lie to the other players better than everyone else. Both of these often lead to really unbalanced, unfair games. Most of the games have been badly marred with one or more people getting annoyed or outright mad at being blatantly ganged up on. I had a particularly bad experience where one player simply played kingmaker for another to the point of causing his own loss. I just asked myself, "Why am I even playing?" It just doesn't make for fun games especially in a quasi-competitive environment where people are playing for prizes (even if it is within the rules and even if the prizes are fairly small). Even ignoring the prize aspect, I've never played so many games of magic in a short period of time that led to so many bad feelings for so many people. It's unlikely that I'll draft Conspiracy any more for this reason.
But anyway, that's just my little comment on the format. Keep in mind it is just my personal experience/opinion.