magic: the gathering poll

"the metagame" aka the phrase that makes reading mtg message boards too horrible to actually do

basically, control decks are traditionally weak to fast starts, especially good 1-cost spells, since they don't have counterspell mana up yet on the first turn, which means they have to let the 1-drop resolve or use force of will on it which puts them behind on cards. mental misstep gave control decks a way to fill this hole in their defense, which made them too good in older formats.

and yeah innistrad is very good in limited. it's def the best example yet of their new design strategy to make simple cards that interact in complex ways rather than just make the cards themselves complex

there have been a lot of cool draft formats lately. they've really gotten good with making cool interactions, sometimes in very subtle ways. for example a card like Altar's Reap (1B, sac a creature: draw two cards) can be useful in many different ways b/c a lot of creatures have death triggers and a lot of cards get more powerful when you have creatures in your graveyard, plus there are the "Morbid" triggers. in other sets the card would be kinda generic. I prefer that style of design to the whole "metalcraft" or "threshold" things where you just tried to get 3 artifacts out which forced you to play subpar cards in order to trigger other effects.

Illusions Of Grandeur + Donate = LOL

just starting reading the Mark Rosewater columns on the official site again thanks to this thread, it's incredible how much goes into the design of these cards now. you see a card like Think Twice (1U Instant - Draw a Card - Flashback 2U) and you think "well, that was popular the first time, so that's why they brought it back", when the real reason was "blue is supposed to be good against red and green, so we wanted a lot of cheap instants so you could "un-transform" the red and green Werewolves, and Think Twice can be played twice in the same turn"

yeah -- like a lot of u guys (i assume) i have tons of nostalgia for the game i played in 4th-6th grade (pretty much 'the dark' up to 'ice age') but the new stuff is really meticulously tested and designed and a lot of fun...

there's something to be said for the innocence of that era tho, back when they were still just trying to make cards cause they thought they were cool and really weren't thinking about what the effect on the game would be. as frogbs pointed out upthread necropotence was probably the turning point.

I think Cadaverous Bloom was when the game "officially" lost its innocence

haha i just noticed the closing date for this poll

mayan end times, sorcery WW3

hey anyone up for playing some innistrad-only decks on cockatrice? try to get decks together for the beginning of next week?

haha mordy msgd me about wanting to play that earlier, so I'm guessing he is. I guess I'd be up for it, but are there planeswalkers? I don't want to play w/ any god damn planeswalkers.

any limits on the decks? or drafting options?

planeswalkers are just enchantments w/ three abilities

ya three abilities like 'basically win the game'

yeah i'd say no planeswalkers cause i'm not dealing with that shit--no deck restrictions other than being innistrad-only. here's a visual spoiler: http://www.planeswalkerslibrary.com/innistrad_visual_spoiler to get a feel for the cards if u haven't looked yet.

as an addendum i'd be up for some kind of draft tho as we discussed previously i don't know how to easily do one

I think sealed deck is more feasible than draft, draft is fun but getting a bunch of people online at the same time would be a lot of trouble

also I would play someone later tonight if anyone's up

oh yeah i think i meant sealed deck (i was typing draft and thinking "this is not...the word....i want")--i would be up for that but don't know how to do it easily.

cant play tonite btw

I am at a show but will be home later really want to play

rad I can stay up pretty late tonight, msg me

tip for innistrad decks: Snapcaster Mage is literally the best creature ever printed

I'm reading the text and it's like I'm reading a foreign language

what is flash and what is flashback

flash = can be played as an instant

flashback is an ability on instants and sorceries that lets you re-cast them once from the graveyard and then they're removed from game. it's been around for like 10+ years i guess you never made it that far your first time around

its not a broken card in theory because it's only as good as the other cards in your deck, but being able to double up on all your counterspells and removal is just insane in practice

wau @ $31 for that card

31 is overpriced it's actually like $20-25 but thats the most expensive a regular rare's gotten to since they started mythic rares. the card has been out for only a couple months and its already a staple card in legacy and vintage

its especially crazy to think about it in vintage where you can use it to get a second ancestral recall or time walk

yeah it would be tremendous in those formats

haha I sorta want to be a vintage player (when did they stop calling it type 1?) w/ a $5000 deck

i think they named vintage and legacy when they split them off from each other a while back but the names took a while to stick

i would def be up for some innistrad on cockatrice btw, either block constructed or sealed (i'll look for a good sealed generator)

this one time I was playing in a local tournament (I was ~9) and actually doing really well and then the guy who I was playing against, who would talk to me about how did he heroin and was and sorta off the hinge, claimed that the thawing glaciers in my deck wasn't allowed in type 2 and for some reason we looked it up and it looked like it was banned? so I was disqualified. but then when I got home I looked it up again and it was only banned in type 1.5 for some reason. anyway...tragic childhood memory.

it was fairly difficult for me to be a competitive player on a $5 a week allowance

^^^real talk from youth

did you guys read the duelist or inquest or scrye?

oh yeah the duelist was great, the other ones I looked at once in a while

I loved the puzzles

Ok let's play tonight should be home by 12

great!

yeah i never played in tournaments when i was a kid, we just played during recess at school

I loved the puzzles

― iatee, Thursday, December 15, 2011 10:02 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Permalink

yes! this was the coolest feature!

i got a spirit of the night in my first mirage booster and i was like completely overjoyed, and then someone stole it at school a few days later. i never did figure out who

man it is eerie how many specific booster backs I can remember opening, I should write an 'a la recherche du temps perdu' type book about my childhood and mtg

here's the mechanics info for anyone who wants to venture into innistrad:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/157a

i'm reading about recent vintage tournament decks now. these things are wacky.

it seems like it's badass power blue deck w/ every good card ever vs badass power blue deck w/ every good card ever vs. badass power blue deck w/ every good card ever

i'm down for some type 2 if anyones got it. i have a good deck built that's almost block but it has some m12 in it. otherwise i can just sub the cards out