A functional reprint means that the entire text of the card is copied, as well as mana cost, but the card's name and possibly creature type are different. Such as Balduvian Bears = Barbary Apes = Bear Cub = Cylian Elf =Forest Bear = Grizzly Bears.
Hmmm. I see someone coming up with something that abuses Flash and big critters... and by that, I mean that Flashing in a Symbiotic Wurm gives you all sorts of fun stuff if you have anything in play to begin with.... but I'll let someone else come up with that.
Here's my take on things. I must say, I do love Altar of Dementia, so I had to use it as my win condition.
What does this thing even do, you say? Well, we're going to use Altar of Dementia along with its friends the Dreadnought and Lifeline to deck our opponent. You can sacrifice the Dreadnought to the Altar with its come-into-play trigger on the stack, so you don't have to actually sacrifice 12 power worth of critters. As long as another creature is in play (anywhere!), it comes back at the end of turn to die another terrible death.
Trinket Mage gathers the Dreadnought, while card-drawing like Thirst for Knowledge gets the rest. Critters like Myr Servitor stick around with or without Lifeline - this makes sure that the Dreadnought keeps coming back over and over. They also are nice chump-blockers! The mana artifacts are there to power out the Lifeline and other artifacts quickly.
You know, now that I think about it... Tezzeret would be great at tutoring out most of these low-power artifacts. -1, grab a Dreadnought, deck you for 12!
Talon, I can't even afford $15 to draft a week, all I do is go to FMNs ($5) and occasionally buy some junk rares. The only reason I have a collection is that I've been doing it for years, so I have a decent amount of stuff.
You have *no* place to tell people that they shouldn't play Magic just because they are poor. You have *no* place to tell people that they basically *must* have a top-tier deck or not go to the tournaments to "annoy you."
Certainly people can voice opinions, but you manage to do so in an insulting and derogatory way, just to get the attention and responses.
*Almost* 20? There seem to be many decks playing 100% nonbasics. What's the point of basics anymore? Seems like there should be a downside to having perfect mana every game.
I play for fun. Winning is fun too, but I like to win while playing a *fun* deck, a deck *I* have built.
Sure, I would probably win FNM quite a bit if I played Faeries every week - the other players know I have skill, but that I don't play the "good" decks. But it's not as fun to win with some netdeck as it is to win with my own creation. It's a Pyrrhic victory - sure I've won, but at what cost to my ideals?
I know some people don't have those ideals. They don't have fun except when they're winning. I'm sure the author is one of those, by his rant against "bad players" (who are bad simply because they don't play the best deck). I don't like playing against those people - they really suck the fun out of the game. And this is a game, remember. At the end of the night, there is only one winner, so if everyone had this attitude, the vast majority of people will be unhappy. Thankfully there are plenty of people who play to have fun, at least for now. They make the game far more enjoyable to everyone.
I played Naya, went 4-1 and ended up in 2nd place. My friend also played Naya, had crazy amounts of good commons (3 Wild Nacatl, 3 Druid of the Anama, plenty of removal and good stuff), and went 4-0-1 (beating me in the last round!) and got 1st. Combined we took 20 packs (12 for him, 8 for me).
Makes up for the fact that I got *zero* good rares. Oooh, dragons get +3/+3. Blech.
Best play: Opponant cycled the red burn spell to kill my 5/5 critter. In response, I cycled the green pump spell to give it +6/+6 and saving it... and killing a blocker of his. Heh. Unexpected!
The common and uncommon lands make it very easy to make a limited deck with great colorfixing. I only had mana problems one game the whole night.
Tri-colored cards? Realm Razor just strikes me as strange. Now, I love (love!) armageddon effects (having played red-white control + land destruction in TS/Lorwyn standard), but the Razor just doesn't even have the flavor of its shard. I mean, Naya is all about having 5-power beasts. Why does the Razor, a beast itself, have only 4? At six mana, even, and with anything-can-kill-by-chumping 2 toughness. Just a strange disconnect there.
How I taught Magic to a new player: This is a pretty recent story, I'm still teaching my friend to play as it is.
When I moved here to Lansing, I lost my old playgroup of casual players. Even here, I didn't really know anyone to play with personally - sure I went to FNM and all, but I didn't really know any of those people outside of that place and time. However, a new friend of mine who didn't play Magic wondered where I was always going on Friday nights. So I figured I would introduce him to Magic!
I started off thinking that it would be a good idea to intoduce him to the "themes" of each of the colors, so I made up a mono-color deck of each color. I figured that if we traded off and he got a good idea of what each color had in terms of types of cards, he might figure out what sort of deck he would like to play. It would also give him a good idea of the rules - we'd play with basic low-power cards first, then move up from there.
Well, that didn't work so well.
I'm a Johnny and, I like to play to play the game, not simply to win. My friend, of course, is pure unadultured Spike. We start playing with my casual decks, and he's like... "Are these what people are winning tournaments with? Why aren't we playing with those?" and I'm all "......" Great. I hate netdeckers and my friend is one before he even knows what it is.
Of course, I don't have any tournament-quality decks on hand because I'm poor. So my friend tells me I should just order him the cards for the best one and he'll pay for them. Of course, I'm also cheap, so I *don't* go out and buy all the faerie cards because it'd be like $400, and I don't even want *him* playing that, especially as someone brand new to the game. So I take (his) $80 and get him a fully decked out kithkin deck, Figures and all (got them $5 each at the release event). Besides, for a beginner, Kithkin is a fairly decent deck.
Teaching actually went really well, and he picked up the game quickly. However, there were still plenty of things that took a while to hammer into him, like... "Don't play your land before you pick up your card for the turn" and "No, you can't play anything but instants during combat" (as he was fond of trying to Oblivion Ring things mid-combat). Mirrorweave was also hard - which target to choose? When? - but he got the hang of it.
We played a lot of open-hand matches. He would tell me what he wanted to do and why, and I'd tell him if that was the correct play or if there was a better option. He'd also give me advice on what to play from my hand, so he could see the matchups from both sides of the table. I think these open-hand teaching sessions really work wonders, and helped him learn quite quick.
Anyway, he started going with me to FNM pretty quick. He still needed a lot of help, but the people there are (fairly) friendly and helped him out and took things slow. Being very experienced with one deck (kithkin) but not experienced with any other one meant he had to read a lot of cards. That's the way to learn, though!
Now, I've been playing Magic for about 8 years, mostly casually. And been playing FNM for a year. I've never won any, either - we have large FNMs, and quite a few "hardcore" players who play nothing but fully tricked out netdecks like the Fae and 'Lark. Gotten close, but always out of my grasp.
Of course, that means that at his third FNM, he gets first. First! Oh boy, did he have some things to say to me about that!
He still has plenty of things to learn (protection always screws him up), but he's learning fast. Definitely the best way to teach someone Magic is just to play games with them a lot. Eventually you'll go over just about everything!
"If a creature would be put into play under an opponent's control this turn, put it into play under your control instead."
Mutavault is not coming into play - it's been in play the whole time. Therefore, you will not gain control of it. Simply adding the creature type to the card does not mean it is coming into play as a new card.
Moonlight Bargain *is* an instant, and at the same cost... and wasn't played.
I'm mixed on this - seems like you'd want it in a low-cost deck, but five mana is a lot for that. If you start revealing high-cost win conditions, though, you're going to end up with one card for five mana and a bunch of life.
Cannonist is great for U/W control. You play a spell, I Cryptic it and tap your creatures... you can't play anything, can't attack... my turn now?
On my turn, neo-affinity out a threat, save back any one counterspell, you do nothing for the rest of the game.
Great against other control decks too. First one to blink loses, except you have the advantage in playing mostly artifacts for threats. You want to counter my spell? Well, I counter yours, and you can't counter mine back. Too bad.
Mana-fixing has been pretty clearly included in Alara in the three cycles of mana-fixers. That's 15 cards in the set devoted to mana fixing - I don't think we'll have *too* much of a problem with making sure we have the right colors in Draft.
I really loved Ravinca draft, and I imagine Alara will be similar. The uncommon tap lands and other fixers will need to be drafted high, because they certainly will not be coming back to you (unless you are playing against people who are going to have bad mana-bases!). It seems like there are a ton of multi-colored cards, so it will be hard to impossible to create a mono-colored deck, as opposed to the Lorwyn megablock where hybrid mana made it actually pretty *easy* to go mono. With the multicolored cards so far, you *will* want to play multiple colors anyway.
People complaining about how multicolor is terrible for draft... well, *I* certainly don't believe it. If they can balance it out as well as Ravnica (and we'll definitely be getting way more ways to fix mana, that's for sure!), it'll be just fine. Skill-testing, sure, but isn't that the way you want it to be? (Instead of force-red, red red red win like a certain format I could name.)
No, they said they wouldn't be 4-of staples.
Planeswalkers are always going to be mythic, it seems. No big deal, really. You never run 4.
Except that isn't true. Never say never, as "they" say.
You run 4 Sarkhans. Why? You definitely want one out 3rd turn (off of acceleration) so that 5th turn you can make 5 4/4 dragons, drop a second Sarkhan, and beat face for 25. You can't really have too many of them because you're always going to be "using them up" one way or another.
Welcome to $30+ dollar rare territory. Just makes me more unhappy about Mythics. There better be some sort of foil to these things in Alara...
So it would be:
Goblin Outlander=Thunderscape Apprentice
Nacatl Outlander=Thornscape Apprentice
Valeron Outlander=Sunscape Apprentice
Vedalkin Outlander=Stormscape Apprentice
Zombie Outlander=Nightscape Apprentice
Of course, it could also be the other common cycle (of protection critters)...
Here's my take on things. I must say, I do love Altar of Dementia, so I had to use it as my win condition.
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Silver Myr
4 Trinket Mage
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Altar Of Dementia
4 Guardian Idol
4 Lifeline
4 Worn Powerstone
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Blasted Landscape
2 City of Traitors
6 Island
2 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
4 Forbidden Orchard
What does this thing even do, you say? Well, we're going to use Altar of Dementia along with its friends the Dreadnought and Lifeline to deck our opponent. You can sacrifice the Dreadnought to the Altar with its come-into-play trigger on the stack, so you don't have to actually sacrifice 12 power worth of critters. As long as another creature is in play (anywhere!), it comes back at the end of turn to die another terrible death.
Trinket Mage gathers the Dreadnought, while card-drawing like Thirst for Knowledge gets the rest. Critters like Myr Servitor stick around with or without Lifeline - this makes sure that the Dreadnought keeps coming back over and over. They also are nice chump-blockers! The mana artifacts are there to power out the Lifeline and other artifacts quickly.
You know, now that I think about it... Tezzeret would be great at tutoring out most of these low-power artifacts. -1, grab a Dreadnought, deck you for 12!
Ok, ok.... second attempt:
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Silver Myr
4 Trinket Mage
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Altar Of Dementia
4 Guardian Idol
3 Lifeline
3 Worn Powerstone
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Blasted Landscape
2 City of Traitors
2 Forbidden Orchard
4 Seat of the Synod
2 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
4 Tezzeret the Seeker
2 Island
Seems exciting to me!
You have *no* place to tell people that they shouldn't play Magic just because they are poor. You have *no* place to tell people that they basically *must* have a top-tier deck or not go to the tournaments to "annoy you."
Certainly people can voice opinions, but you manage to do so in an insulting and derogatory way, just to get the attention and responses.
And Wasteland.
... can 5C-everything die now?
Sure, I would probably win FNM quite a bit if I played Faeries every week - the other players know I have skill, but that I don't play the "good" decks. But it's not as fun to win with some netdeck as it is to win with my own creation. It's a Pyrrhic victory - sure I've won, but at what cost to my ideals?
I know some people don't have those ideals. They don't have fun except when they're winning. I'm sure the author is one of those, by his rant against "bad players" (who are bad simply because they don't play the best deck). I don't like playing against those people - they really suck the fun out of the game. And this is a game, remember. At the end of the night, there is only one winner, so if everyone had this attitude, the vast majority of people will be unhappy. Thankfully there are plenty of people who play to have fun, at least for now. They make the game far more enjoyable to everyone.
Makes up for the fact that I got *zero* good rares. Oooh, dragons get +3/+3. Blech.
Best play: Opponant cycled the red burn spell to kill my 5/5 critter. In response, I cycled the green pump spell to give it +6/+6 and saving it... and killing a blocker of his. Heh. Unexpected!
The common and uncommon lands make it very easy to make a limited deck with great colorfixing. I only had mana problems one game the whole night.
How I taught Magic to a new player: This is a pretty recent story, I'm still teaching my friend to play as it is.
When I moved here to Lansing, I lost my old playgroup of casual players. Even here, I didn't really know anyone to play with personally - sure I went to FNM and all, but I didn't really know any of those people outside of that place and time. However, a new friend of mine who didn't play Magic wondered where I was always going on Friday nights. So I figured I would introduce him to Magic!
I started off thinking that it would be a good idea to intoduce him to the "themes" of each of the colors, so I made up a mono-color deck of each color. I figured that if we traded off and he got a good idea of what each color had in terms of types of cards, he might figure out what sort of deck he would like to play. It would also give him a good idea of the rules - we'd play with basic low-power cards first, then move up from there.
Well, that didn't work so well.
I'm a Johnny and, I like to play to play the game, not simply to win. My friend, of course, is pure unadultured Spike. We start playing with my casual decks, and he's like... "Are these what people are winning tournaments with? Why aren't we playing with those?" and I'm all "......" Great. I hate netdeckers and my friend is one before he even knows what it is.
Of course, I don't have any tournament-quality decks on hand because I'm poor. So my friend tells me I should just order him the cards for the best one and he'll pay for them. Of course, I'm also cheap, so I *don't* go out and buy all the faerie cards because it'd be like $400, and I don't even want *him* playing that, especially as someone brand new to the game. So I take (his) $80 and get him a fully decked out kithkin deck, Figures and all (got them $5 each at the release event). Besides, for a beginner, Kithkin is a fairly decent deck.
Teaching actually went really well, and he picked up the game quickly. However, there were still plenty of things that took a while to hammer into him, like... "Don't play your land before you pick up your card for the turn" and "No, you can't play anything but instants during combat" (as he was fond of trying to Oblivion Ring things mid-combat). Mirrorweave was also hard - which target to choose? When? - but he got the hang of it.
We played a lot of open-hand matches. He would tell me what he wanted to do and why, and I'd tell him if that was the correct play or if there was a better option. He'd also give me advice on what to play from my hand, so he could see the matchups from both sides of the table. I think these open-hand teaching sessions really work wonders, and helped him learn quite quick.
Anyway, he started going with me to FNM pretty quick. He still needed a lot of help, but the people there are (fairly) friendly and helped him out and took things slow. Being very experienced with one deck (kithkin) but not experienced with any other one meant he had to read a lot of cards. That's the way to learn, though!
Now, I've been playing Magic for about 8 years, mostly casually. And been playing FNM for a year. I've never won any, either - we have large FNMs, and quite a few "hardcore" players who play nothing but fully tricked out netdecks like the Fae and 'Lark. Gotten close, but always out of my grasp.
Of course, that means that at his third FNM, he gets first. First! Oh boy, did he have some things to say to me about that!
He still has plenty of things to learn (protection always screws him up), but he's learning fast. Definitely the best way to teach someone Magic is just to play games with them a lot. Eventually you'll go over just about everything!
Mutavault is not coming into play - it's been in play the whole time. Therefore, you will not gain control of it. Simply adding the creature type to the card does not mean it is coming into play as a new card.
I'm mixed on this - seems like you'd want it in a low-cost deck, but five mana is a lot for that. If you start revealing high-cost win conditions, though, you're going to end up with one card for five mana and a bunch of life.
On my turn, neo-affinity out a threat, save back any one counterspell, you do nothing for the rest of the game.
Great against other control decks too. First one to blink loses, except you have the advantage in playing mostly artifacts for threats. You want to counter my spell? Well, I counter yours, and you can't counter mine back. Too bad.
I really loved Ravinca draft, and I imagine Alara will be similar. The uncommon tap lands and other fixers will need to be drafted high, because they certainly will not be coming back to you (unless you are playing against people who are going to have bad mana-bases!). It seems like there are a ton of multi-colored cards, so it will be hard to impossible to create a mono-colored deck, as opposed to the Lorwyn megablock where hybrid mana made it actually pretty *easy* to go mono. With the multicolored cards so far, you *will* want to play multiple colors anyway.
People complaining about how multicolor is terrible for draft... well, *I* certainly don't believe it. If they can balance it out as well as Ravnica (and we'll definitely be getting way more ways to fix mana, that's for sure!), it'll be just fine. Skill-testing, sure, but isn't that the way you want it to be? (Instead of force-red, red red red win like a certain format I could name.)
Except that isn't true. Never say never, as "they" say.
You run 4 Sarkhans. Why? You definitely want one out 3rd turn (off of acceleration) so that 5th turn you can make 5 4/4 dragons, drop a second Sarkhan, and beat face for 25. You can't really have too many of them because you're always going to be "using them up" one way or another.
Welcome to $30+ dollar rare territory. Just makes me more unhappy about Mythics. There better be some sort of foil to these things in Alara...