Magic: The Gathering,GO TEAM MS!

[NabakovNabakov]

Attacking with a 3/5 Faithmender into a 4/4 is a perfectly reasonable play even without a trick. That's 6 life gained (3 from the lifelink plus 3 from the Faithmender's ability) per swing. You can either keep your blocker up and eat it or start a race you will surely lose. When your opponent's best play is already attacking every turn, it's kind of hard to see that trick coming.

[NabakovNabakov]

Gatecrash drafting is nice because you can get some very strong signals from other players early on. If you see a gold card (that isn't total crap) go all the way around, it's a fair bet nobody's in that guild, and you can start grabbing mono-colored cards in your guild with a reasonable expectation that your gold cards will come back. My last draft, this happened to an Orzhov Charm, and that immediately swung me into pure Orzhov from a potential black/white/blue build. I came in second to the Dimir player, and everyone else made a mess of things in the Boros/Gruul/Simic continuum. (Note, the best Dimir decks I've seen in limited are actually quite aggro. This guy came at me fast with Deathcult Rouge, Call of the Nightwing, and Hands of Binding, and he finished me off with Shadow Slice. It broke my stall/extort deck wide open in a way a couple of mediocre Boros and Gruul decks could not.)

[NabakovNabakov]

This, however, is a perfect illustration of Soul Ransom's usefulness as a card (at least for the time being). Its text is such a grammatical clusterfuck that for people who aren't already familiar with its effect, seeing it on the board is going to be disorienting and potentially even lead them to play based on a misconception (like the idea that 'paying the ransom' kills the creature, when it really gives it back). If your deck is supposed to be a mindfuck, there's a lot to be said for playing a card your opponent has to read twice, then boarding it out.

I mean, what's wrong with: "Discard two cards: Soul Ransom's controller draws two cards, then sacrifices Soul Ransom."? The opponents only clause isn't really necessary. If I want to give my opponent their creature back in exchange for a shitty double-looter, I should be able to.

[NabakovNabakov]

I don't think I've ever disagreed with magic analysis quite as much as I disagree with what Nabnab just said. Strategies such as the one he is describing only have utility at a very base level. If I am taking such a deck to a tournament, and my decks power relies on my opponents not understanding the interactions well enough to play correctly, then I will beat bad opponents some large percentage of the time and I will lose to good opponents some large percentage of the time. However, if I am playing tight, with a deck with a reasonable power level without any absolutely horrendously bad matchups and a solid side board plan for those matchups which are unfavorable, I will also beat the bad players some large percentage of the time, without having to resort to smoke and mirrors, and, I will by the same token have vastly improved my matchups against the good players.

Since I am, I think, pretty good at magic, I would much rather the barrier for beating me be "Play magic better than I do" instead of "see through my gimmicks."

Your way of playing Magic sounds like less fun. After all, the only level of utility that counts is the base level.

Also, we now have a ton of evidence that Soul Ransom causes legitimate confusion not just in a "This is new, and I don't know how to optimally respond to it" type of way, but in a "I got a pronoun mixed up when reading this card and actually thought it did something completely different" type of way. Ultimately, my comment wasn't about how awesome it was to catch people off-guard with Soul Ransom, it was about how stupid the wording was that Nuwen was able to go through an entire tournament playing the card wrong.

[NabakovNabakov]

Abyssal Persecutor + Platinum Angel say that simultaneously not winning AND not losing is the

most

fun.

[NabakovNabakov]

If I had the disposable income, I

would

run that Persecutor/Angel combo just to get it on the field and (attempt to) protect it to the bitter end. It's not a draw, and so long as you're not playing in a time-limited format, you end up with an eternal game. Even after everyone draws their last card, walks away, and (eventually) dies, the game is still going. Forever. And that is

awesome

.

I'd also like to run an 'architecture' deck composed entirely of gates, walls, and the Door to Nothingness. Can it win? Yes, technically. Will it win? Probably not. But I'll still get to play my dumb little deck and laugh my ass off, and my opponent gets to win. So in a sense, win-win. But I don't even need fancy cards or decks to enjoy myself while losing. I'll discard a 7-card hand to a Barbarian Bully, just to see the look on my roommate's face. I'll play Manabarbs whenever, wherever, because that card is

hilarious

. If I played enough Catan, I'm sure I'd end up being that guy who only wants to make his roads into smiley face or gathers sheep to the exclusion of all other resources (because seriously? Sheep?).

In short, as much as Magic is a game, it can also just be a toy.

[NabakovNabakov]

Another awesome interaction with nuwen's deck has been found:

Shadow Slice+Guttersnipe.

If she has a dragon out (ok we're stretching into win-more, but this comes more often than you might think against midrange):

Swing with dragon. They don't block cause its only 4 damage and they don't want to lose their resto angel:

INSTANT SPEEED CIPHER BITCH. TAKE 14.

huehuheuheuheuheuheuheuheuheuheuhue

Hold the phone. While I think Shadow Slice is a surprisingly effective card and combos well with Guttersnipe, it's a sorcery, so I don't see how you're playing it between blocks and combat damage. (But yeah, any cipher + Guttersnipe can be a killer combo if you have the creatures for it. Nuwen's deck would probably need some serious restructuring to make that work well.)

Also, built-in Madcap Skills is worse than plain old Madcaps. When played on your 1 or 2 drop, Madcap Skills is often good for some sick, essentially unblockable damage (I once had an opponent Duress out an Assemble the Legion over Madcap Skills. He paid dearly for his foolishness). But by the time you're on your sixth land, the effectiveness of that ability is much smaller, and there are plenty of other auras I'd prefer come baked into my creatures.

[NabakovNabakov]

I'd rather him have HASTE+reach though

what is this vigilance shit in my colors

Vigilance + Reach does go well with the 'unbowed' flavor. Also, Reach would be useless without Vigilance when you factor in the 'attacks every turn if able' bit.

[NabakovNabakov]

I like the idea of using Geist's angel triggers to evolve your weenies, but (like all Simic decks) it really depends on being right on-curve. Some way to pick up mid/late game card advantage might be useful for games against control or where you just stall out. Augur of Bolas has good stats to trigger your evolves and has synergy with Restoration Angel. Zameck Guildmage or Fathom Mage are more straightforward ways to turn counters into cards. Consider subbing out some of the one-drops. They're excellent cards to have in your opening hand but not so great later on and total blanks when you're topdecking.

[NabakovNabakov]

I understand that, but 8 slots seems like a little much to devote to 1-drops, especially when you won't be happy to see them later on. I would just experiment with having 6 or 7 instead.

[NabakovNabakov]

The relevant probability density function is concave, so removing the 8th card does less to hurt your chances than removing the 7th card, etc. So yes, taking out one-drops reduces your chances of drawing a one-drop, but it's less painful when you're already sitting at 8, and that might be enough to make some other card worthwhile.

Also, consider the fact that a hand w/o one-drops in a deck that has 8 is

worse

than a hand w/o one-drops in a deck that has 6 as you're more likely to draw a shit card later in the game. A hand with multiple one-drops (while not terrible, it's not great if your goal is pure curve) is also more likely. Basically, more one-drops increases the mean hand quality but it also increases the variance of that quality. Whether you're OK with that is a matter of taste.

[NabakovNabakov]

Think Twice just feels like a bad card.

/
What is it that you THINK Think Twice should be doing, but isn't?

It should cost 1 less and draw 2 more cards.

[NabakovNabakov]

Had some fun making a stupid deck. Recommended play environment is a big, silly multiplayer game with friends who won't mind that you just massively complicated/fucked-up the board.

[NabakovNabakov]

Wish list for split card names:
Sugar/Spice
Discipline/Punish
Gin/Tonic

[NabakovNabakov]

this new tuning fork thing is scary

It's a super-Johnny card. So many possibilities! There has to be at least one infinite combo lurking somewhere.

I want to add it to my Phage deck. It's a no-brainer with the kill player and destroy creature abilities. I might need an outside ruling on the last one, but I imagine that if I get her "kills you if you cheat her onto the battlefield" ability to trigger, then copy that trigger to my opponent, then they will lose before I do. Not really sure if it counts as "a triggered ability I control".

[NabakovNabakov]

Dramonic was suggesting that your strategy is not tournament viable because someone will just simply attack you with small creatures and kill you on turn 4 or 5 before you get to do any of the cool stuff you mentioned.

Well, that, and Legion Loyalist's battalion trigger makes your creatures unblockable by tokens. Alternatively, Ratchet Bomb with 0 counters.

[NabakovNabakov]

Or Rakdos Charm if you really want to go for the throat. It's a particularly karmic counter to Storm Herd.

[NabakovNabakov]

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/issues/ ... amond1.htm
An interesting counterpoint - being a market where artificially high valuations are propped up by convincing people

not

to resell them.

But seriously, I'm having a hard time understanding how the counterfeiters intended to make any money off their operation if they were selling the cards just slightly above cost (even if they were selling in bulk). If people are willing to pay $100 for one Polluted Delta, you don't turn around and sell them 1000 Polluted Deltas for $10. Not only is it leaving rent on the table, it's rushing the market towards a state where all you

can

do is sell at cost.

Smart counterfeiters (which they appeared to be before this incident) want the same thing Wizards wants: a healthy market from which to skim a steady stream of profits. Their participation would alleviate supply shocks caused by the fact that Wizards rarely supplies cards in quantities relative to their demand (good) and generally cut into profits elsewhere in the Magic world (bad, if you believe the sob story about tanking LGSs and starving R&D). I suspect in this case, they knew the jig was up and tried to dump their stock, either to squeeze the last few pennies out of the operation or just out of spite.

[NabakovNabakov]

To be fair, I sympathize with the point (which I think was missed) that it generally costs money to build a good deck, and two people with equal skill in deckmaking but different budgets could easily end up mismatched at a tournament. In an ideal competitive environment that focused only on the game, this would not be the case.

Granted, this can lead to some interesting constrained optimization: 'what's the best I can do for $20?' or my preferred mode 'what's the best I can do with the cards I already own?' But if that's really what you want, play Limited (like me!). For tournaments, the fact still remains that people with fewer constraints on their production set are more likely to have access to the (locally) optimal deck.

[NabakovNabakov]

The game wouldn't exist in its current form, but it certainly wouldn't go away. Worst case scenario: Wizards goes belly up, and the game freezes at 20 years worth of cards. Best case: the development work that is currently done by a few hundred professionals gets spread over a few thousand hobbyists, organized on open-source principles. The main challenge will not be developing new and interesting cards (or even balanced sets and mechanics) but getting everyone to accept and adhere to the new regime.

[NabakovNabakov]

Ain't nobody selling pawns at chess tournaments. Ain't nobody selling vowels at spelling bees. There are probably people selling balls at football games, but that's beside the point. If you want to compete, you can compete. If you want to organize a tournament, all you need is some space and some flyers, and maybe a sponsor (Mountain Dew?). You're probably not going to sell out convention centers on the regular, but there will always be people who care about the game and want to play it with you, just like there were before Star City Games came along. Hell, all you people who like putting cash on the line could even organize your own high-stakes events.

I dunno, maybe you leave the game when the secondary market crashes because there are fewer tournaments, but I have plenty of friends who would get (back) into Magic if it were cheaper and easier to get high-quality proxies/counterfeits, and as someone who likes playing Magic with friends much more than in tournaments, I have to be selfish and say that maybe a crash in the secondary market isn't that bad. The one thing that holds me back is the potential damage to the future of the game.