MTG Salvation

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.

While buying a box gets you a bunch of cards, it's really bad value for your money. Most of the cards you get aren't going to be very good, so if you want to build a strong deck (and especially if you want to have a shot in a tournament) it's going to be more expensive than you need.

If you design (or copy) a deck and then buy cards (the route normally used when participating in tournaments, and even by some casual players), you can buy just the cards you need from the secondary market, and it will be much cheaper overall.

When you're just getting back into the game, though, you probably don't know exactly the deck you want to play. In that case, it's often wise to buy preconstructed decks because you know the cards in the deck are all going to go together already.

Quote from Mockingbird »

Did... did Wizards of the Coast just consciously give Eggs strategy players... an actual egg?

The name of the "eggs" archetype comes from Darkwater Egg, Mossfire Egg, Shadowblood Egg, Skycloud Egg, and Sungrass Egg.

I wouldn't have expected it, but I wish they had gone with "Eat some food", because that would make Yule Ooze more hilarious.

Quote from Drain Life »

I haven't seen commander damage be the reason somebody lost in over 10 years.

Whereas I see it weekly.

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

Quote from AnImAr_ »

You guys are complaining about a 4 CMC wipe that just gives them ONE card. If I am playing an aggro based deck and this is played on me, that one card I draw will not be enough for me to come back after 3-4 creatures get killed. Hell, I may not even draw off of it.

It'll be played in standard for that exact reason. They stopped 4 mana wrath’s because they oppressed aggro heavily. This will follow that lineage. But I’m commander it’s pretty meh just because of the wealth of options.

Quote from boombox_smk »

It's not often going to be card advantage unless you're using it to sweep 1 creature off a table. If they draw a card and you sweep 3 other creatures, you are still ahead. If you also drew, then you are farther ahead.

It's card advantage relative to you having played Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, etc. instead of this. The only way it doesn't compare unfavorably to those is if you have a 4-power creature and all of your opponents have lots of creatures smaller than that. I would never run this card, even in a deck with 20+ wraths.

Quote from Ryperior74 »

Why is it there users that never known about commander

Doesn’t matter whatever con new 4CMC wrath’s are like always staples in edh depending on the strategy

As someone who plays almost exclusively commander there’s no way in hell I'm playing this.

Quote from Mergatroid_Jones »

Interesting that it can't be one. No simple d4 roll for you.

Rolling a d3 is probably as easier, as most players already have d6's for counters.

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

Quote from Carthage »

What other strategies are made irellevant?

If your strategy doesn't include ramping up in mana, drawing a bunch of cards and using the broken tutors to fetch up the mistakes in magic's history, chances are you are going to lose to the decks that do.

They do to a certain extend and always be what I want to know is where you would draw the line to what that extent should be and what that would accomplish.

And Rosy also raised a point I'd like to add to and that is if you remove the "Autoincludes" other cards will just take their spot leaving you exactly where you started.

There are cards that are way, way to good at what they do that overcentralize the game.
Every blue deck I make has the same ramp package, the same draw package, the same tutor package.

If these cards weren't so standalone broken, I would have to start looking for different versions of the effects and other synergies instead of just mindlessly throwing in the busted cards. Like if my choice is diabolic tutor or another threat, suddenly I have options. Deck building becomes interesting again.

So... from what I'm gathering... you want every piece of interaction, card filtering, card advantage, and mana advantage to be so grossly inefficient and/or niche that which one you use (or whether you even use them) doesn't make a meaningful impact on your win/loss record. Am I finally getting this right?