how can you say its more balanced if you dont even play in mtg tournaments?
most people who play tournaments already know whats going on, since most the decks that win are posted on the net aka netdecks
That triple post, you obviously know how to use the edit button man lol
EDH/Commander is more of a multiplayer casual format than anything imo. Not everyone wants to play hardcore competitive magic (especially given the massive pay wall before you can put together anything thatās half decent) and this offers a nice alternative to that crowd. The fun of the format is in the multiplayer interactions and deck building around the given limitations (only singles, choosing a commander and limiting yourself to your commander colour). Hunting 4 copies of whatever chase mythic, the flavour of month happens to be isnāt exactly everyoneās idea of fun either.
And thatās the thing. These videos only cater to and are accessible to a niche within a niche, specific hardcore crowd. Thereās a reason why it aināt on ESPN anymore, no one else knows what the hell is going on. Stuff like Poker at least you see big amounts of money being exchanged and wagered around, same with fighting games and lifebars. Magic? Cards get tapped, put on the table and somehow one guy loses and the other wins.
I do watch and pay attention to tournaments, there just a little bit more variety in top level play, but not muchā¦
This current format, around 7 different decks do equally as wellā¦
A flood of responses incoming yo:
Before: with one Mox Opal in play, playing a second one would kill them both. This applies whether you or your opponent has the current Mox Opal. This means that when a Mox Opal is in play on the other side any Opals you draw turn into Strip Mines and when you have one in play and draw another itās useless unless you can sac the other one via Arcbound Ravager or something.
Now: legend rule only applies to your own stuff, so you and your opponent can each have a Mox Opal. If you have one and you play another, you choose one of them to keep and kill the other. This means that if you draw an extra Mox Opal it can still act kinda like a Lotus Petal. Just tap one for mana, play the other and put the tapped Mox in the graveyard.
Not going to the prerelease because I am heading out to Tokyo Game Show. Goblin Charbelcher decks are the same as ever. They play no lands and try to win on the first turn. Last I heard Belcher was up to 80%+ turn one combo when goldfishing, but it gets real iffy when the opponent is actively disrupting you. Also most of the time you need to settle for making 12 or 16 goblins on turn one instead of just killing the opponent with a big Belch.
Thatās really the nature of Legacy. Budget decks are just as powerful as the top tiers, and in some cases even more powerful, but they are all very vulnerable to hate. Itās not hopeless, though. Just frustrating. Sometimes the opponent doesnāt draw Leyline of the Void, and you get to make a 13/13 troll plus five 2/2 zombie tokens on turn two. Sometimes Leyline gets into play on turn zero and you get two Goblin Guides plus Flame Rifts and Keldon Marauders.
The more realistic win scenario is that no one plays Affinity/Burn/Dredge for a while and people neglect to pack hate for them, until suddenly there are four Dredge decks in top 8 and people reach for their Leylines, sending the budget decks into hibernation once more.
There is a variant of Counter-Top that uses the Land Tax/Scroll Rack card advantage engine. It has a really good match-up against storm decks, like all Counter-Top decks. Also does pretty well against mid-range stuff like BUG Cascade and Jund. So-so against aggro. Itās pretty bad against the more standard Miracle builds of Counter-Top, though. At least thatās how Iāve seen games with the deck play out.
Legacy is pretty big right now, but itās slowly dying. Card availability issues due to price and the reserved list are limiting the growth of the format.
I think Legacy might survive for a couple more years, but the release of Modern Masters plus the reprint of the Shock Lands has ignited interest in Modern (probably the biggest competitor to Legacy). Still not enough to dethrone Legacy as the eternal format of choice, but when Fetches are reprinted Standard people will suddenly find themselves able to play Modern but not Legacy (no duals, wastes, FoW, etc). When that happens Legacy might find itself in the same position that Vintage is in right now.
Man, you really chose a terrible time to make this statement. Standard has been a wide-open format for months. Every time the format looks solved, something else comes around to be the new king. Just off the top of my head:
- Naya midrange looked pretty good early on
- Then Sphinxās Revelation decks were unbeatable
- Then Naya Blitz was top dog
- Then R/g aggro was unbeatable
- Then Junk Rites was king of the hill for a while
- Then Bant Hexproof was king
- Then Naya midrange was at the top of the heap
- Then all of a sudden Jund was king
- Then Kiblerās RG aggro beat Jund for the top spot.
Even by late August, Delver decks and Junk Token decks were making top 8 at a GP. I do agree with your thoughts on Standard for the most part, just not right now. RtR is a multicolor block and those blocks tend to produce standard environments that are more open than usual. Standard should remain very playable for the next year, but once RtR rotates I fully expect it to get back to business as usual.
My thoughts on EDH: it looks like a ramp-based format where everyone just ramps into derpy cards. If I played it, I would probably throw every Geddon variant into a deck and see what happens.
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Maybe they play it cause its fun?? Seriously, i could easily get a combo elves deck and stomp every person i play on turn 2 forever but where the fuck is the fun in that?? EDH is a casual format that encourages creative deckbuilding, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Super ultra vintage level tournament worthy games in EDH?? No, but its fun! Im sorry bro, but you just gotta unclench your colon and smoke a joint lol
Burn isnāt dead, and Stasis used to be a solid tier 1/tier 2 deck. I donāt know why youād assume he was talking about Legacy anyway, since Legacy didnāt exist as a competitive format in 1995. It was called type 1.5, and nobody played it outside of small store tournaments.
Seems like Type 1.5/Legacy is like ST and Type 2/Standard is the latest version of a Street Fighter game, in this case SSFIVAE and Type 1/Vintage is like SF2WW ans such.
So basically the legend rule went back to the old legend rule when Legends came out. Same thing! Also, āsplit secondā are like interrupt cards. Why not just bring back the interrupt mechanic?
Split second is not like interrupt. Interrupts could be cast while other interrupts were on the stack. Split second prevents things from being put on the stack period.
I am surprised at the edh hate. In my experience it is definitely one of the most loved formats. I enjoy it a lot. Being limited to only one copy of a card isnāt that big of deal when you have access to some of the most powerful tutor effects. I often find myself having to cut cards whenever I build a new edh deck.
I am not really big into standard at the moment. My only standard deck is a more for fun jund reanimator deck the use Immortal servitude to grab a bunch of three drops and swing for high amounts of damage. I will try and build an American control deck that focuses on using assemble and the new red God. It Will be hard with the mana base being hit so hard post rotation. But it will mostly be for fun.
I am working on getting into modern though. I have a play set or two of most shocks and I am working on getting the enemy fetches. I have a play set of scaling tarns and verdant catacombs, two mistyās with a third on the way, then one each of the other two. Iāve also managed to get a hold of some filter lands, though I donāt know how much play they see in modern.
Jumped back in this recently after aā¦ 13 year hiatus? Last set I saw was Visions. Went to that sealed deck promotional tourney that happened earlier this month that was free. Figure Iāll be around a bit, built a dream White weenie deck for Standard, but missing a lot of shit in it yet, so thatās gonna remain a dream for some time (especially considering the costs of the 2 Archangel of Thunes and 4 Boros Reckoners I want for itā¦).
Seems quite likely, though that Sealed Deck tournies are the only ones Iād get into for a while, though. Modern goes back to 8th, right?
Yeah, 8th and up with a ban list.
This is a copy-pasta of a post I wrote on another forum:
WotC is pretty much 99.99% guaranteed to reprint all the fetches. Modern currently has only enemy colored fetches which is weird. They would want to complete that cycle somehow.
WotC probably wouldnāt want Standard to be full of goodstuff decks that have perfect mana for an entire year, but they do want players to embrace Modern as a format. This is why IMHO the most logical place to reprint fetches is M15. That would leave players with perfect mana-fixing in Standard, but only for a few months. This will prevent perfect mana from dominating Standard for too long. Afterwards, when the shocks rotate players will find themselves in possession of functional modern mana bases. At that point it would only be logical for them to keep getting value out of their investment by moving to modern.
Of course WotC might choose to wait longer to reprint fetches but if they do that players might sell off their shocks after RtR rotates, and the price of shocks might rise again. Then when fetches come out people still wonāt play modern because they donāt want to play high prices for shocks, which is the same problem as right now but in reverse.
This is all speculation on my end of course, but itās not hard to see that:
- WotC will reprint fetches at some point
- The most logical place to do it is in M15
IMHO you should hold off on significant investment in fetches until the inevitable reprint. Buy what you need, but you wouldnāt want to be like the guy who bought $90 Thoughtseize before Theros was spoiled and the market for it crashed.
My friend and I donāt see wotc printing fetches in standard soon. Itās possible, but we think that itās more likely they some will be reprinted in a special set like the new commander sets.
Luckily I was investing in the fetches before the spike, not that they were cheap (25 to 30 for tarn/misty violated to the 50 plus it is more). I also traded standard stuff for them mostly.
Screw it. WotC should have done a 20th anniversary edition where the āreserve listā is temporarily suspended. You get the ideaā¦
Or the 20th anniversary edition should have had all of the cards from the following sets:
Beta, Arabian Nights, The Dark, Legends, and Antiquities with all new artwork and the new card design, and, wait for itā¦ all cards tournament legal in all formats but use the banned/restricted list thatās used for Vintage.
Maybe they can do this for the 25th anniversary editionā¦
They would have to be reprinted in standard to be modern legal. WotC wants all fetch lands to be playable in the modern format, not just enemy color ones. To make that happen they need to make onslaught fetches legal in Standard first. Thatās why Scavenging Ooze was in M14. It was in a commander set so it was not legal to play in modern. They wanted it to be legal in modern so they had to make it legal in Standard.
I was talking with some guys at the Theros pre-release tonight about the fetch-lands being reprinted. Everybody is fairly convinced that down the line (maybe 5 years or so) there will be a reprint. Its good for the game. Places cards back into circulation, be it at a modest circulation.
My thoughts on Theros after the pre-release (forgive me, I havenāt slept and its 7:12am):
The Theros block as a whole is a LOT better than the community has been giving it credit for. It is very fast and mana fixing is a-plenty in limited.
Bestow is for real! What I thought would be a slow, somewhat āblahā, mechanic turned out to be anything but. The slight incremental edge you give your creatures over an opponent with a bestowed creature is insane. Even after spot removal, the ability to maintain board presence with a creature/enchantment that is a decent body (usually 2/2) with an ability like intimidate or scry x, creates VERY fast games.
Heroic is for real! I thought Heroic would be laughable, but with all of the battle tricks available at common and uncommon slots, Heroic creatures are surprisingly deadly and problematic! I canāt tell you the number of times I saw a 1/1 swing, have a cantrip resolve (giving + 0/ +2 for example), putting a +1/1 counter on said creature, and then resolving a bestowed enchantment the next turn, AGAIN triggering Heroic (adding another +1/+1 counter) and then the buff from the creature. If left unchecked things can get out of hand fast.
Monstrosity is amazingly fun and versatile. Monstrosity allows players to get so much value out of cards, you have to play with it to believe it. It isnāt as devastating as you would think (but like anything; it can be) but it adds an honest risk/reward factor to tapping out to try and get your guy huge. What I do like about the mechanic is that you are often rewarded for achieving monstrosity, enlarging your creature and changing the board state (be it by making everybody sacrifice lands, tapping down opposing creatures, etc). It seems like a better āscavengeā function.
Devotion seemedā¦kinda meh in limited. It could be that we werenāt utilizing the mechanic properly, but in all the games I didnāt hear people rave about Devotion too much. I found cards like Abhorrent Overlord to be surprisingly effective, even when cast at its 2 Devotion; the Harpies were amazingly effective chump blockers that allowed me to hold the board and swing the momentum in my favor.
Theros is a strange block; it goes against everything weāve ever been taught in magic: donāt use enchantments because your creatures get 2-for-1āed, ācantripā mechanics like Heroic are a worthless way to burn card advantage, and tapping out during your own turn is often a surefire way to sign your own death certificate. But in the land of Therosā¦it works.
As for my own personal night! I wasnāt very successful: I wenāt 1-3 overall with all but 1 match going 3 games. Often times I couldnāt get over the hump, and maybe once got truly mana screwed. My deck was good, I just got some bad breaks and could probably have made some smarter decisions. I had my own stormbreath dragon stolen from me with a nighthowler attached (putting it up to a 12/12) to swing at me for lethal with an army of red creatures . Another game my opponent was on a one turn clock; he then proceeded to plop an aqueous form on a hulky favored hoplite before giving him some cantrips to swing at me for lethal damage and win. Those stories were common place tonight. It was a lot of fun.
I got some good cards. Stormbreath Dragon, Foil G/U Scry land, and some others. Well, just had to say that Theros was a lot of fun and hopefully I can go get some drafts in soon.
Just finished my theros prerelease. Went 2-2. Other than bad mana fixing, G/R is sick. U/W is pretty neat with all the counters and what not. Standard looks like its gonna be fun again. Bestow is nice, didnt see much heroic at all. monstrosity has its moments, but i think bestow and scry are the winning mechanics. scrylands are hella useful. people dont sleep on savage summoningā¦
Did a day of pre-release for a friendās bday and went 4-0 and 4-0. I found I loved Burnished Hart, Underworld Cereberus, Sea Godās Revenge, and Read The Bones a lot. That white weapon (kill creature that dealt damage) also is brutal to play around.
edit: spear of heliod. He definitely had me stalled with it, but he should have kept stalling until he had enough to keep it open: instead he would cast spells, letting me get through. Spear is frightening. =]
Read the bones is pretty badass. Digging four deep for two cards? Yes-fucking-please!
Yeah i had someone stall me out too with it. 7 turns later, EXILE that ish! GG