MTG Salvation

Quote from fzian

My argument was actually in response to Raining Frogs who explicitly conceded that "Artifacts may be faster and more explosive than creatures but dudes will win the long game" (citation below).

But for the sake of argument, how are you getting fast mana with Gaea's Cradle (say, within Turn 2ish)?

With Tolarian Academy, we were seeing explosive starts to the extent of a fairly consistent: -
Turn 1: Land, Sol Ring and maybe a Sensei's Divining Top to check the top 3 (Note that this can be a little worse if this was say, Mind Stone instead of Sensei's Divining Top and the first land drop was a Seat of the Synod)
Turn 2: Tolarian Academy for 2UUU, probably sufficient for an early Bribery or Tezzeret (or whatever board-impacting spell which you can quite readily find at 5 drops) or the player could sit on that mana for an end of turn Fact or Fiction (or counterspell, if needs be).

Note that the above scenario is not even the Magical Christmasland version of it -- that is actually the watered down version of the more broken plays. I suspect that the Magic Christmasland version would likely have the first land as a Seat of the Synod and include a Mana Crypt somewhere for a cool 10 mana by turn 2 (Turn 1: Seat of Synod, Sol Ring, Mind Stone; Turn 2: Mana Crypt, Tolarian Academy for U++++UUUU=5UUUUU for, oh-I-don't-know, maybe an Omniscience?

Contrast this with Gaea's Cradle. Just theorycrafting, what would your most likely play (up to turn 2) assuming that you already have a Gaea's Cradle in hand?

You are likely going to consistently get a similarly high amount of mana after, say, Turn 4 at the earliest. Mind you, Green getting lots of mana can be pretty daunting too but this is nothing close to the explosive start we mentioned earlier and honestly, green ramping to lots of mana by turn 4 isn't exactly the most exciting news. Heck, with Green, a theoretical: -
Turn 1: Forest, Green Sun's Zenith for Dryad Arbor
Turn 2: Forest, Azusa, Forest, Forest, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Turn 3: GGGGGGGGGGwithout even playing a land on turn 3 sans Gaea's Cradle

Note that, while these lands are superficially similar, it is also worth noting that Gaea's Cradle is easier to disrupt; statistically, creature removals / sweepers are more likely to be played than artifact removals / sweepers.

Quote from FieryBalrog

That's pretty unintuitive and dumb from a rules perspective. I mean, I don't see any reason at all why "exchange" is disallowed when one of the objects is no longer in the right zone, but it's allowed when both of the objects are controlled by the same player.

In fact, more than that, it really should be limited to situations where each party controls the respective object. If you need to make two opponents exchange things, simple: "you may have those players exchange [objects]." The idea that I can exchange something I don't control is a failure of the rules.

Quote from somanarga

Sylvan Primordial is noncreature permanents, guys, not "target land". you can hit artifacts and enchantments before you even need to consider hitting lands.

if you have someone playing primordial simply to blow up peoples manabases and not as an efficient noncreature removal spell, something that green has ALWAYS HAD, by the way, thats a degenerate PLAYER, not a degenerate CARD.

learn the difference, it could save your life.

Quote from Galspanic

I haven't seen homeward path more than twice since it came out. Chimera isn't that good on its own and Homeward Path is trash 98% of the time, so if people start running these cards together that will make their decks worse.... That doesn't sound like anything the RC needs to be involved in.

Quote from nope.avi

I will probably be sick of seeing chimera+homeward path awfully quickly especially with seedborn muse or prophet.