I personally prefer the more casual toned down side of tournament play (I rarely, if ever, allow a friendly mulligan though). I would never play competitively if I were constantly having to deal with strict DCI BS. It's ok for higher level tourneys with bigger prizes at stake, but for FNMs, Pre-releases, and weekend drafts, there is no need for a rule monger hovering around ruining the fun.
Umm, as soon as it is a tournament you ply by the OFFICIAL rules or you are CHEATING. At lower level events the penalties are lesser, and a "rule monger" will not be able to cause a problem if you actually know how the game works, unless by "ruining the fun" you mean not letting you take back miss plays and forcing the consequences you of in game actions on you. Or do you mean not letting you cheat (intentionally or unintentionally)? If you are allowing "friendly" mulligsns in tournament play then you are either enabling cheating at best or a cheater yourself at worst and both are severely bad types of players. If you do not want to play the game by the rules then do not go to tournaments.
I can understand your point if the owner isn't good with rulings and the shop is full of dimwits that can't understand how Magic works (the game is not as complicated as people make it out to be), but honestly, it would be a dick move to report the shop for it.
The game is very simple at its core, and to any players never open the rule book to see the core. But if a shop is not even trying to follow the games rules, then it is not a dick move to report them. It is never a dick move to report cheaters. It is the TO's RESPONSIBILITY to make sure the rules are followed, if they do not know the rules they are supposed to make sure someone is there who does, or learn them.
If you want constant rule enforcement become a pro and go on the pro tour/grand prix circuit. Have fun getting DQ'd because one of your sleeves was slightly bent.
You might want to lok at the tournament rules, mostly the part about rules enforcement levels. But if a single sleeve is bent at the start of a tournament then that means you have a MARKED card in your deck which is a MAJOR no-no for anyone who is not a CHEATING BASTARD.
You have no idea what proper rules enforcement is, and do not seem to understand why it is needed. If I take a trip an come into a shop for a sanctioned event I expect (rightly and properly) for the organizer to be following the rules as closely as possible (including sportsmanship). If not it just makes me think poorly of the shop, and lose respect for the DCI. There is a difference between a casual game and a tournament game. I do not let my opponents cheat, and never intentionally cheat myself. It is about professionalism and maturity.
or to counter that strat, you run 3-4 maindeck chancellors of your own, and then mulligan till you get one, so that you always survive with 2 life. then you win however you want with your remaining cards...
seems fair to me honestly, considering how gimmicky that kinda deck would be
The deck ALWAYS chooses to go second, so your triggers above your opponents triggers....
Druid is not safe, period.
There are several cards that will never be safe unless there are MAJOR changes to the mata-game, Hermit Druid, Flash, Bazaar of Baghdad, etc. None of these are even worth considering unbanning.
I own all the cards for oops, and spent a month goldfishing it, It is a true glass cannon, with allot of power and allot of fragility, Druid kills 1 turn later, but is easier to drop since you only need 2 mana, and can run lands, and has enough cards left in the deck for protection and card selection effects.
I was searching my cards a while back and there were several cards I remembered having and did not remember trading away(or having reason to trade) that I could not find including my goblin welders, dark confidants, chord of calling, and others.
Sufficive to say I was not happy, and think a box got lost in a move.
oh wow you made a magical Christmas land hand scenario to justify keeping Black Vise banned
With Petals, mox diamond, chrome mox, Spirit Guides, ritual, SOL Lands, etc the odds of drawing 2 vices out of 4 and the mana to cast it is to easy to qualify as christmass land.
The white bordered sets were also non-tournament legal (at the time) intro sets or reprint only sets and other then chronicles the reprint sets were all core sets.
This would also have afected their sales numbers. unfortunatly wizards only made 1 reprint only core set after deciding to abandon white borders, so there is not allot of dats, but I am curious how sale of 10th vs Lorwyn and Time Spiral block compare to sales of 7th vs Invasion/Oddysey or even 9th vs kamigawa/ravinca.
I suspect that the sales were not that much different since the next core set they went to the NWO model of 50% new cards, and a new core set each year.
Do you ever think they will reprint white bordered cards in the future?
Hopefully, but I doubt it any time soon. white bordered re-prints would be one of the few ways they could re-print a card in decent quantities without tanking the price of the origionals. Eventually if they keep being scared of droping the price of chase cards but want to keep supporting modern then they will need to do something like this.
I would love for Wotc to do an extravaganza article series where they just have a group of people who were involved with the banning of cards just go through the list again for each of the formats and offer the reasons for each card's banning.
That would just be awesome...
Every card should have to be re-justified each year, just to remind people why it is not safe.
I would suggest something like the invitational where they get a bunch of Pro-players, put the banned list into a hat (other then certain obvious never remove me cards), and have thm each pull out one, then they get a month to build a deck where they are allowed to use that banned card (but have to respect the rest of the list) and thrown against a gauntlet of the present 8-10 top decks in the format, with prizes based on how much of the gauntlet they beat. The results are then used to determine if the card is safe to unban, or if they do too well not safe to consider un-banning until there is a major meta-shift (and removed from consideration for the next few years).
Communication is just as important as threat assessment. You can't sit there quiet and attack the combo player without giving reason just because you want to be Ninja Brian. Let people know he's the combo player! People will identify. Sometimes they don't see it!
From my experience if your play group can not read the table themselves, then they probably will not believe or listen to you is you try to say things like "He is a turn or 2 away from comboing off".
In the Rav-Inn Standard wasteland would have been really nice. It would have given a reason to actually play basics and not just play 3 color piles of 4-7 drops.
Inn-Rav std had way to many 3-color good card.decks in it, and modern has to much of the same.
For a format to be truely healthy and diverse we need something to keep people form just assembling a mana base that has enough fetches and shocks/duals to be able to trivialy cast anything, with less then 3 coloured mana symbols in its casting cost.
Wasteland is one of the few cards that punishes these mana bases, but barely phases basic heavy 1-2 color decks and can be put in enough deck lists to make a difference.
If it causes problems then there is something wrong with the rest of the card pool and meta-game, not wasteland itself, If is one of the most fair pieces of land D that they have ever printed, strong enough to be playable, but not so over powered that it can lock your oppoent out of the game.
Heck, most new players are runnign so many basics that it barely even affects them. So it does not even scare players away from the game.
I am the only one that's starting to feel that the issue here is that some people are bad losers, and some people are bad winners, and every now and then the rest of us has to play one of them?
That is defintly a part of it.
There are also to many people who do not want to adapt or improve their game, and claim that any deck that is not a similar game style and power lebel is bad/wrong/unfun (usually using terms like "un-fair" or "non-interactive" as a mask for "It beats my scrub deck")
The game is very simple at its core, and to any players never open the rule book to see the core. But if a shop is not even trying to follow the games rules, then it is not a dick move to report them. It is never a dick move to report cheaters. It is the TO's RESPONSIBILITY to make sure the rules are followed, if they do not know the rules they are supposed to make sure someone is there who does, or learn them.
You might want to lok at the tournament rules, mostly the part about rules enforcement levels. But if a single sleeve is bent at the start of a tournament then that means you have a MARKED card in your deck which is a MAJOR no-no for anyone who is not a CHEATING BASTARD.
You have no idea what proper rules enforcement is, and do not seem to understand why it is needed. If I take a trip an come into a shop for a sanctioned event I expect (rightly and properly) for the organizer to be following the rules as closely as possible (including sportsmanship). If not it just makes me think poorly of the shop, and lose respect for the DCI. There is a difference between a casual game and a tournament game. I do not let my opponents cheat, and never intentionally cheat myself. It is about professionalism and maturity.
It seems like any time any deck that is not put creature cards (pulral, not just 1 big guy) into play, attack... wins someone complains.
60 chancellor of the Dross.deck
There are several cards that will never be safe unless there are MAJOR changes to the mata-game, Hermit Druid, Flash, Bazaar of Baghdad, etc. None of these are even worth considering unbanning.
I own all the cards for oops, and spent a month goldfishing it, It is a true glass cannon, with allot of power and allot of fragility, Druid kills 1 turn later, but is easier to drop since you only need 2 mana, and can run lands, and has enough cards left in the deck for protection and card selection effects.
Sufficive to say I was not happy, and think a box got lost in a move.
This would also have afected their sales numbers. unfortunatly wizards only made 1 reprint only core set after deciding to abandon white borders, so there is not allot of dats, but I am curious how sale of 10th vs Lorwyn and Time Spiral block compare to sales of 7th vs Invasion/Oddysey or even 9th vs kamigawa/ravinca.
I suspect that the sales were not that much different since the next core set they went to the NWO model of 50% new cards, and a new core set each year.
Hopefully, but I doubt it any time soon. white bordered re-prints would be one of the few ways they could re-print a card in decent quantities without tanking the price of the origionals. Eventually if they keep being scared of droping the price of chase cards but want to keep supporting modern then they will need to do something like this.
My plan is to just but 3 cases IF I can find someone willing to sell me a set of 5 at a decent price (pre-ordered 1 set at $165 with tax and shipping)
I would suggest something like the invitational where they get a bunch of Pro-players, put the banned list into a hat (other then certain obvious never remove me cards), and have thm each pull out one, then they get a month to build a deck where they are allowed to use that banned card (but have to respect the rest of the list) and thrown against a gauntlet of the present 8-10 top decks in the format, with prizes based on how much of the gauntlet they beat. The results are then used to determine if the card is safe to unban, or if they do too well not safe to consider un-banning until there is a major meta-shift (and removed from consideration for the next few years).
For a format to be truely healthy and diverse we need something to keep people form just assembling a mana base that has enough fetches and shocks/duals to be able to trivialy cast anything, with less then 3 coloured mana symbols in its casting cost.
Wasteland is one of the few cards that punishes these mana bases, but barely phases basic heavy 1-2 color decks and can be put in enough deck lists to make a difference.
If it causes problems then there is something wrong with the rest of the card pool and meta-game, not wasteland itself, If is one of the most fair pieces of land D that they have ever printed, strong enough to be playable, but not so over powered that it can lock your oppoent out of the game.
Heck, most new players are runnign so many basics that it barely even affects them. So it does not even scare players away from the game.
There are also to many people who do not want to adapt or improve their game, and claim that any deck that is not a similar game style and power lebel is bad/wrong/unfun (usually using terms like "un-fair" or "non-interactive" as a mask for "It beats my scrub deck")