RB's Magic the Gathering Thread!

[TheHumanHydra]

I actually found that quite interesting, Cheater Hater. Actually, it was those three black 2/1s I'd been wanting to (and did yesterday) brew with the most. I see now the (in retrospect rather obvious) problem with the defensive power of popular creatures. Back to the drawing board ...

(Thanks for the suggestion, Cyneheard; it's sounding more and more like that's what it's going to have to be if I go with an established archetype.)

[yuris125]

The problem with black is that it does have three 2/1s for 1, but it doesn't have good 2-drops. Pain Seer, when all is said and done, is a bear. Spiteful Returned is a 1/1 for 2. That, plus a tier 1 deck going Courser of Kruphix into Siege Rhino into Wingmate Rock, is why monoblack aggro is not really a thing these days

[Cheater Hater]

I know Wizards is a commercial company, but the problem is that it feels like they're disguising a lot of the "we need to make money" decisions under other reasons. You'll notice I didn't complain about mythic rares, the decree that all planeswalkers are playable, or that most good duals are rare (they've even admitted the latter is almost purely for profit's sake).

Besides, they don't need to do all this nickel-and-diming to eek out profits--if they want profits, all they need to do is get Hasbro to let them invest in Magic Online, so it isn't an absolutely horrible experience (or worse; as I write this post events are actually down for an unknown reason, and have been for several hours)--let me know if anyone wants me to start ranting on Wizards' technical incompetence

Honestly, when was the last time black had an actually good 2-drop--Bob and Bitterblossom? I remember back when I was playing Zombies back in Innistrad T2 (I fell in love with that deck, especially when Blood Artist showed up in Avacyn Restored) there still wasn't really a good 2-drop without splashing another color, and the Courser-Caryatid problem intensifies that problem. That's not to say you can't try--my current real life deck is a BW Bestow deck, with stuff like Spiteful Returned, Herald of Torment, and Eidolon of Countless Battles along with Hero of Iroas, and while it can do powerful things (T1 1-drop, T2 Hero, T3 Bestow something is a powerful curve, especially when T4 Bestow Herald is added), I know it isn't that good (and is a relic from pre-rotation, where I had Ethereal Armor as the payoff for playing so many enchantments).

[yuris125]

"all planeswalkers are playable" - Tibalt and Liliana of the Dark Realms were released in the last 3 years

"when was the last time black had an actually good 2-drop" - Pack Rat was the torment of standard the whole last season

I agree they need to do something with Magic Online, that's a huge problem, and I don't know how the person responsible for Magic Online is still in charge. But I disagree with mostly everything else. Competitive constructed has always been an expensive format, and the price has not increased in recent years. We're not living in Jace the Mind Sculptor age, there are no cards costing more than $50 in standard. I was able to build a collection good enough for standard after half a year of drafting and trading. It is possible to borrow cards if your'e missing something. Magic is not as expensive as it looks - at least in my experience

[Cheater Hater]

Okay, so I forgot Tibalt (Liliana of the Dark Realms wasn't that bad in my opinion, it just got overshadowed by Liliana of the Veil, then all the other tools mono-black got in Theros block with devotion) and Pack Rat (wasn't fitting the model I was thinking of--I was thinking mainly of something that was pure efficient that goes in an aggro deck), but I stand by a lot of my points--granted, a lot of my problems come from not having anywhere to play nearby (the closest store running regular events is ~30 miles away--there was a place about half as far away, but it closed about 6 months ago) and thus I see little need to invest in something that I won't be using nearly as much as I want to. I mean, I'm trying to acquire cards (I actually bought a box of Born and Journey, and I get a decent amount of the fall sets from the holidays), but I still don't have enough to get a good deck. That's where Cockatrice comes in I guess

[TheHumanHydra]

^ I feel thy pain. Khans may be a better monetary investment than some sets, though, due to how much the fetches do and will continue to cost.

[Cheater Hater]

^ I feel thy pain. Khans may be a better monetary investment than some sets, though, due to how much the fetches do and will continue to cost.

Yeah--but it's staying in Standard for a shorter time thanks to the new 2-set paradigm (another thing I could have argued primarily serves to make Wizards money, but the positives far outweigh the negatives).

The problem is that Magic itself is such a good game, that we put up with all the problems surrounding it. For example, remember the MTGO problems I mentioned in my first post today? Turns out that they were database problems that took out not only MTGO but also Wizards Event Reporter (the software tournament organizers use to run events) and the Store/Event Locator on Wizards's website, and MTGO ended up being down for ~14 hours. In addition, the problem wasn't completely fixed (some people who were in events when they started crashing can't trade the cards they were using), and won't be fixed until the Wednesday downtime! The work that Maro, Aaron Forsythe, Erik Lauer, and other people in R&D do is so good, it's a shame that everything else Wizards does (especially anything technology related) is so horrible.

[yuris125]

Oh yeah, 34 people came for FNM draft last night, and our tournament organiser had to manually pair 4 draft pods. There's no argument that wizards are very bad with software. The new website is as terrible now as it was on the day they rolled it out. The new MTGO client.... I won't even discuss, especially as it doesn't support Windows XP, so I can't use it myself. I feel your pain of not being able to play in person, because I think that's where Magic is at its best, and it dodges all the software problems (unless WER crashes, of course). I don't know if I was still playing if it wasn't for the social aspect... I did stop playing Hearthstone after 2 months, after all

Liliana of the Dark Realms was not played when she was the only Liliana in standard, and there were powerful X-spells in Sphinx's Revelation and Rakdos's Return. If she did not see play in that standard, she is unplayable

[TheHumanHydra]

^ I feel thy pain. Khans may be a better monetary investment than some sets, though, due to how much the fetches do and will continue to cost.

Yeah--but it's staying in Standard for a shorter time thanks to the new 2-set paradigm (another thing I could have argued primarily serves to make Wizards money, but the positives far outweigh the negatives).

[strikethrough]They should continue to be valuable on account of Modern, though, right?[/strikethrough] Wow, I just looked it up, and there is an enormous price difference between the Zendikar ones and the new (old) ones in Khans. I wonder why? I expected the new ones to be worth more because they're in demand for Standard as well as Modern, and the old ones to be worth less but still a lot on account of Modern. Instead the old ones are worth $50.00 and the new ones $12.00. I guess it's the economics of supply working ...

Edit: Okay, that's not a forum tag ... whatever.

[yuris125]

The supply of new fetches is much much higher, they're printed at rare in a highly popular set. I'm surprised ZEN fetches didn't go down, as I think they're less necessary now that ONS/KTK ones are legal. Although Scalding Tarn was up to $100 at some point, so I guess they did go down somewhat