MTG Salvation

Quote from Rezzahan »

And in the case of an instant or a card with flash, you won't be able to snatch it period even if it's not a main phase or the stack isn't empty.

Excepting of course that Mulfrotha doesn't let you play instants

Splintering Wind is a blast in my enrage deck. Every time I play the deck and make people afraid of what should be a legitimately bad card is a good game.

But 2G: ping a creature, make a flying blocker, then later trigger all of my enrage creatures and take a damage is so good in that deck.

I really hope I can get foil copies of Infernal Spawn of Evil and Infernius Spawnington III, Esq.

The whole family fits thematically in my Christmas deck, but Unglued didn't have foils and I've made the deck strictly 100% foil. I've got a foil Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil in the deck right now, but he misses his dad.

Quote from soleil19 »

newer cards are stronger than older cards?

In fact, Shock was first printed in Stronghold (March 1998), while Lightning Bolt was first printed in Alpha (August 1993)

Quote from soleil19 »

Why would anyone have it in a deck?

One reason to have the weaker card in a deck is because the weaker card is legal in the format you're playing and the stronger one isn't. For example, Shock is currently legal in Standard format (most recently printed in a Standard-legal set in M20, released July 2019), while Lightning Bolt isn't (most recently printed in a Standard-legal set in M11, released July 2010).

Or maybe you're playing in a Limited event, and the worse card of the two is in the set you're playing with while the better one isn't.

Another reason to have the weaker card in a deck is because you already have 4 copies (or 1 copy in a singleton format like EDH/Commander) of the stronger card, and want more. If you have 4 Lightning Bolts in your deck, you aren't allowed to have a 5th. But you could add 4 Shocks, which, while not as good as Lightning Bolt, may be more useful to what your deck is trying to do than any other alternative.

Sometimes, it is the case that a strictly-better card is printed, and you don't want 5-8 copies of the effect in a deck, so the worse card stops seeing play. That's okay. The game is nearly 27 years old, and there have always been cards that don't see competitive play, even without strictly better versions available. Time marches ever onwards, and things change. Without change, the game would become boring.

Wizards does attempt to keep things in balance, but that doesn't mean keeping everything the same.

Quote from Onering »

Chronic misanthropic contrarian yells at cloud, the thread, part 27: "knowing how to build decks ruins the game" edition.

Indeed. I feel like this thread should be exhibit A on adding downvotes to the forum.

Quote from FlossedBeaver »

Under the right conditions that could be an obscene amount of mana

The right conditions, like.. having it on the battlefield?

Quote from willdice »

The rules don't have a concept of "about to be destroyed".

Actually, Equinox looks forward in time to see whether the targeted spell will destroy a land you control.

Yesterday, I was playing my silver-bordered Happy Holiday deck, which I recently added the Ponies: the Galloping charity cards to.

Princess Twilight Sparkle's activated ability wants you to "control" the rest of the Mane Six, not control "cards named" or "creatures named".

Mishra's Toy Workshop requires using toys to represent the tokens created by a spell/ability cast/activated with its mana.

I think you know where I'm going with this.

I cast a kicked Rite of Replication with Toy Workshop mana, and started pulling a series of Pony toys out of my pocket; the table started laughing, since I hadn't used them at all earlier in the day (I had never drawn Rarity, and previous uses of Toy Workshop I had used a Barrel of Monkeys). I didn't also have the mana to activate Twilight's ability on the same turn, but the RoR had targeted an Ulvenwald Hydra, so it was a good play even if I got board-wiped.

The goblin tribal player had a Sulfuric Vortex out, and was able to knock me down to 1 life on his turn. Of course, Twilight's ability can be activated in response to the Vortex upkeep trigger. Everypony wins!

(Side note: I have so far cast Nightmare Moon with this deck three times. Every single time, she dies before I even untap with her. )

It also makes the point of mass land destruction -- resource denial -- useless.

So your suggestion ruins the strategy you're trying to make acceptable, opens up exploits you've acknowledged already exist, and likely gets tangentially related cards banned that are critical in other strategies, effectively cutting those strategies down to size, as well.

Why would anyone want to implement this, again?

Quote from FunkyDragon »

Quote from Carthage »

to me, this card is so glaringly obviously designed exactly for zada and nothing else it annoys the crap out of me.

Yep. Couldn't possibly have been designed for Feather, the Redeemed, which came out much closer to the release of Fists of Flame. It was for Zada and Zada alone, despite Zada having been printed four years earlier.

Nor could it have possibly been designed to encourage storm decks, which often play a plethora of cheap cantrips, to use combat as a wincon.

Quote from Melkor »

damn these people. none of the bans actually matter to me, but they just keep banning and banning. remember when they used to UNBAN stuff? the most common thing used to be to ease the sting by giving something back, now they just take.

And this is why I'm glad Wizards doesn't control Commander.

Zedruu. Cast Paradox Haze enchanting yourself, then donate it to another player and go from there.

I don't agree with many of the professors opinions in that video. Some of the legendaries he commented on used to be playable before newer/better cards were printed (unspeakable and isao). Anthousa is a very playable commander for anti-sorcery speed removal boards, notably making an army out of coat of arms or beastmaster ascension, and is nearly immune to cyclonic rifts. Also, while rare, grandeur does work in edh and can be made into a very fun esper shell combo deck. Also more personally he pokes fun at two of my favorite commanders (rorix, who is a very playable voltron beater, and latulla who is an infinite mana win-con commander).

My main point of disappointed in the video is due to the amount of time he spends advertising. 16 minutes is not a short video, and it doesn't actually start until 5 minutes in, and has another 60 seconds of outro. With the quality of information he talks about in the video it makes me wonder just how much research he invested. There are obviously better "worse" options as we've all talked about here. It feels like a generic video he needed to post just to keep his numbers going.

My second main point of disappointment is the absolute lack of commentary on the potential of using sub-optimal commanders for a more fun environment and experience. A video like that can nudge a newer player into the "must play optimal 100% of the time" headspace, and limit experimental and more fun designs lest they become judged by peers.

Another comment that needed to be made was the actual use of a commander to a decks function. One of my first competitive decks ran sivitri scarzam in a time sieve combo. The deck didn't need a commander, just a color identity, yet my playgroup still talks about how strong Sivitri can be. While not overly important, it is worth noting that a commander can be completely useless trash but a deck can still dominate.

What an entitled, toxic mindset. I'm glad you don't play EDH.

Quote from ReapThaWhirlwind »

The great Achilles'. Man, this was yet another poor name choice. Should have been like Akelets. They are getting too old for this.

Anyways, Haktos the Unscarred. Kind of a mind-boggling ability, huh? Well, not to despair. I'm going to teach you how to not only easily choose the value at random, but also how to do it in a way that puts the odds in your favor.

The jist is simple: You flip three coins. Label each one heads, two heads, or three heads result a number. The one you want most label as the two heads result, and your best backup label as the one heads result. These are the two most probable results. The one you want least, label as the three heads result.

And there you will easily be able to choose this effect at random and will have the best odds in your best favor.

I don't... I can't even begin to explain how little sense this makes.

You think that "probability" = "random"?

Sure. Why not. Fine.

What I don't get, though, is why you're bothering with coins at all? You seem to insist that the individual pieces of calculating that random value have to have even weight (such as dividing a d6 three ways) and stacking them in a way that creates uneven outcomes but that seems utterly unnecessary if your only guiding force is that "probability = random". Why not skip the "middle man" altogether, in that case?

"Let's roll a D20. If I roll a 1, it's *unwanted value 1*. If I roll a 2, it's *unwanted value 2*. Otherwise, it's *wanted value*"

Bam! Just upped the probability from 75% to 90%.

Why stop there, though. There are plenty of random number generators available online. Why not roll a digital d100? A d1,000?

Everyone MTG player on the face of the earth must be incredibly silly to see the word random and not immediately ignore it when a random number generator can give me a 99.9% chance (or better) of getting exactly what I want. I mean, it's a total mystery why Wizards even prints that word "random" on cards when anyone with a brain would just pull out an RNG app.

From where I am standing, the only difference between your coin-flipping method and my RNG method is that an inexperienced player may not notice what's happening with your method... which shouldn't bother you as you're not doing anything illegal. It's not like a judge will lay out ad-hoc rulings right there at the table based on their own feelings and disqualify you, right?

Is there any difference between the coin-flips and the RNG method that I'm not seeing? I mean, there are multiple possible options and one of them is chosen by random means. That meets all of the hallmarks of probability, which we all know = random.

Most of the never-to-be-surpassed cards existed at the format’s inception. It’s always just been a question of how much power you’re willing to sacrifice for innovation, and vice versa.

To me, it sounds like you’ve found a formula you think is best, refuse to move off of it, and then blame the format for your own stubbornness.

To be more constructive: I tend to think of some plan that I want to enact, and then build the deck to maximise my ability to execute that plan. If your plan is always just “win” then that’s probably why you don’t see much variety in your lists.

When you choose a number at random the possible outcomes are supposed to be equally likely. This is cheating.



EDIT: Not to mention the probability of getting one head is the same as the probability of getting one tail which is the same as the probability of getting two heads, so this isn't even clever.

Quote from Lithl »

Quote from Onering »

Chronic misanthropic contrarian yells at cloud, the thread, part 27: "knowing how to build decks ruins the game" edition.

Indeed. I feel like this thread should be exhibit A on adding downvotes to the forum.

I concur.

would rather have amber prison