MTG Salvation

Quote from magicman »

0 chance of Jitte. They're conscious of limited.

The set has Mana Crypt. They aren't afraid to print utterly, completely unfair bombs at mythic in this Limited environment. JtMS isn't too far behind in power level either.

I played a lot of VMA limited and never saw a player lose after casting Mana Crypt or Sol Ring on turn 1, and only once did I see someone lose after a turn 1 Mox.

At least with Jitte, you can contain the damage it does by casting artifact removal. Card is still an insane bomb (better than JtMS) but it isn't like Mana Crypt or (in VMA) Skullclamp.

As I see it, four possibilities. From least likely to most likely:

1) Block Constructed.

Serves two purposes (selling the newest set and providing the most accessible Constructed format possible). But historically when it existed it was a mixed bag - original Ravnica block was phenomenal (one of the best Constructed formats ever), but original Mirrodin was terrible. So was Innistrad block.

The risk of it either being eclipsed by Standard, or splitting the Standard playerbase are probably too big to overcome, however. And why announce it now?

2) Something between Standard and Modern.

Modern is now about 15 years of cards, and Standard is 1.5. There's room between those two points, with something like RTR and up being viable as a format that would be more accessible than Modern and with more room for new cards to impact the game.

3) Pauper

This format has real legs on its own even if there's disputes over the finer points of the rules. Already popular on MTGO and EMA has a lot of support for it there.

4) Eternal (Legacy with all Reserve List cards banned, and a rebalanced banned list broadly similar to Legacy's but possibly with some cards added or removed)

This would make sense as something to push EMA, especially as the removal of a bunch of truly broken cards that are on the reserve list (LED, City of Traitors) would change the balance of a lot of decks in the format making it quite different to Legacy. Additionally the downgrade from Alpha duals to shocklands would add burn and possibly other aggro to the competitive decks in the format.

Angel is probably better than Thunderbreak Reagent or Avaricious Dragon if you are on an all-in aggro plan. Otherwise it's bad, but it does seem to have a niche.

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Hasbro's public financials indicate that they are not hurting for new players. Both player numbers and average spend are up over last year.

Strict colourless is just another new mana mechanic like hybrid, snow, mono-hybrid (Spectral Procession) or phyrexian mana. We get one every now and again. Nothing remarkable - hybrid was the one that truly broke new ground.

EMA leaks are a serious issue but Wizards are actually taking it seriously.

As for Modern prices - this is a consequence of Wizards being too conservative with reprints. I *think* this is starting to change now. We used to get one low quality reprint set per 2 years (old core sets). Then one low to medium quality half-new, half-reprint set per year. Now, we have a good deal more reprints coming out.

Wizards are likely quite concerned about the secondary market for their own reasons - counterfeiting. The higher prices get the more lucrative the MTG counterfeit market becomes to organised crime. We've not yet hit the point where counterfeiting ZEN fetches is a more lucrative business proposition to a criminal than importing meth - but we might, and that is something Wizards do not want to see, because once the criminals get every cent they can out of older cards, they'll start competing with Wizards on the newer ones.

Quote from asmallcat »

Is that even the standard practice for when you discover someone has taken two picks from one pack in a draft? Can a judge weigh in? Say it was a normal pack and there was a foil stuck to the back of the rare and I took both, and it got noticed 5 picks later - would you just put the foil back in the pack? Make the me forfeit the draft?

IANAJ, but reading from the Infraction Proceedure Guide.

I think it's just Tournament Error - Limited Proceedure Violation.

Even if the judge believed it was intentional cheating, seizing the Expedition is not acceptable conduct here. (The correct remedy there would be disqualification and a report to the DCI, with you keeping the already drafted cards, the sealed pack, and the cards you were selecting from).

It could be construed as Unsporting Conduct - Theft of Tournament Materials but again, that requires intent.

OP should definitely tell Wizards their side of the story.

Also worth taking note here that your contact with Wizards should clarify whether you believe the 5th player was in the wrong or not. If they are personal friends with the store employee handling it, that's relevant information. It doesn't sound like there was anything intentionally fishy here.

Quote from jar75 »

Quote from enollava »

Everybody is talking about shifting things to rare and mythic. At this rate, if Wizards did that, what is going to be common and uncommon? A few cards shifting is fine, but sheesh. If we only get 15 mythic slots, would you really think wasteland should be mythic in a set that wont have ABUR dual lands and cards like Gara's cradle? Unless the lands in the set are really good, it would be a terrible choice for mythic. In vintage masters they wamt it mythic because of the bad feels of likely seeing your tabernacle blown up often.

Would they really sell more packs if FOW were mythic? With all the great cards people are expecting, I dont think it matters what rarity it would be. They will have 0 problem moving boxes.

Wasteland and/or FoW at mythic would be nothing other than letting the price tag of a card dictate its rarity. There really isn't any gameplay justification for either to be at that rarity.

Tarmogoyf would like to have a word with you. It was printed in a set (MM2) at mythic where Scion of the Wild, a card of similar mechanics and complexity, was a common.

It was also printed in a set (MM1) at mythic where it would have played an interesting role in Limited at uncommon or common due to its potential to do serious work in the Dredge archetype.

The Modern Masters sets even had an explicit cycle at mythic of 'most expensive card, on the secondary market, in each colour, at the time of set selection'.

Sunscour is the one Wrath effect that's fast enough to matter against the various Eldrazi decks (and is far from blank against the rest of the field). Squadron Hawk helps cast it. Not sure what the exact shell should be.

As weird as it may seem, the various 1 mana deathtouch creatures work well against them too, but are almost blank against Affinity.

You will draw to 7 from the first Kozilek ability.

Then, you will have priority and the opportunity to use some of the cards drawn before the second ability resolves, which will refil you to seven.

For instance, if the first Kozilek ability draws you Lightning Bolt and you cast it, you will be at 6 cards when the second ability starts to resolve and so you'll draw back to 7.

Quote from TheAller »

I think Stoneforge Mystic should be unbanned. I don't see it being that dominant in current Modern. So many removal spells, so many good ways to deal with Batterskull. Jitte is banned. I don't see any of the current tier 1 deck using Mystic.

I see some decks that aren't currently Tier 1 using SFM and becoming Tier 1.

I don't see them going beyond that to problem levels.

Quote from sirgog »

Quote from osieorb18 »

Oh, no, I was wondering about Interdict.

I don't believe Interdict ever had the ability to counter a mana ability.

Quote from sirgog »

A variant of this wording would also work for Interdict, which would get considerably better with its original functionality restored.

Yeah, I see what you meant now.

Force of Anticipation
3UU
Instant
You may exile a blue card from your hand and pay 1 life instead of paying ~ mana cost.

Counter target spell.
Look at the top three cards of your Library, put one into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library.

Could people stop using the phrase "strictly worse" when they don't know what it means? Hint: it doesn't mean "a lot worse than."

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Follow-up questions:

What's the difference between the three reasons you just named about Sol Ring, and many people making the exact same arguments about Primeval Titan or Sylvan Primordial? Isn't it a major red flag that virtually every deck plays the same nonland card?

People love playing Primeval Titan and it was an attractor to the format. Primeval Titan was a huge enabler of degeneracy. If you played Primeval Titan, especially early game, it made you the target.

If you play early Primeval Titan, it doesn't matter if you have a target on your back because of the enormous, like I said earlier, tremendous advantage that feels like cheating. With Sol Ring we have turn 2 Thran Dynamo and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV among crazier flat out insane things.

Why isn't Sol Ring banned yet? It's a nonland card that's an auto include in virtually every deck, and if unanswered early game it offers such a tremendous advantage it feels like cheating. Everyone knows it's stupid. It's a card I don't want to play, but I have to because everyone else does.

You can say that it can be answered, but virtually anything can be answered (including banned cards), Sol Ring is obviously overpowered, and it does things like easily enable turn two Grand Arbiter Augustin IV among many other just insane plays.

Why is this constructed garbage in my draft format?

Quote from sirgog »

Time to delete the 'leaked' cards from the spoiler.

That's what we're doing right now.