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Hey nice work! I knew a guy who used to make these, but never knew how. I understand you have to remove the art from another card and place it onto the land, but not sure how to go about it. I've made foil proxies in the past but would love to make some of these for my edh. Any tips?

I'm going to assume we're talking about Standard/Modern constructed here. Naturally, limited is an entirely different beast. This guide goes for all deck types that I can think of. If there are any glaring omissions, please let me know. If you're running only one colour, there is no reason to run any non-basic land, aside from the strange ones with specific effects. The main purpose of a dual land is to provide more efficient access to any of the colours you may need in your deck. In Modern, arguably the best cycle of dual lands are the Ravnica "Shock Lands". This is because they can enter the field untapped with very little downside, making them an absolute must for any multi-coloured deck. While they aren't in standard any more, you should run at least a play-set in most modern decks. In Modern, and now Standard, the "Fetch lands" are a massively useful tool. Since the Shock Lands have subtypes such as "Plains" and "Swamp", you can search for them with Fetch Lands, you aren't just restricted to basic lands. Even in standard, searching for that one land you need, only at the moment you need it, is incredibly useful. Remember, you don't even need to be exactly in a fetch lands colours to be able to run it. You may be running a U/R deck, but it can still be a good idea to run a Polluted Delta or two, even if you only activate it for islands. In standard, the Theros "Scry Lands" (and by extension, Khans' "Recluse Lands") present an interesting choice. You are able to get access to the colour you need, as well as a small upside, at the expense of an entire turn. In my opinion, these are to be added very sparingly. In that turn where you're waiting for your fourth land drop to become effective, they could do anything that would spell bad news for you. An inopportune [[Siege Rhino]] could enter the field while you weren't ready, because you didn't have the mana you needed to play your cards. Sometimes the Scry can be useful, but the single life-gain is rarely worth the entire turn you paid for it. Be sparing when adding these to your deck. Pain lands are good. They enter untapped, give you the mana you need, and have minimal downside. You cannot, however, fetch them. This makes them very luck-of-the-draw, and possibly unreliable. Another problem is that standard currently only has 5 of the 10-card cycle. It's up to you whether or not to run the play-set.

I got passed a polluted delta and a clever impersonator packs 1&3 by the same person. Pack 1 he had a foil mythic (roc I think) and pack 3 he wasn't playing blue. If we include MMA drafting, I had a dark confidant passed to me, guy opened a foil clique.

The best are theros and khans block. Modern masters too. They are by far the easiest to blank. Avacyn restored works but takes a little more time and effort. Inn block and rtr won't work at all... Like you stated they turn white. Mirrodin besieged and new phyrexia both don't work and for some reason about 75% of scars will. I think maybe they changed the process during the print run. Lorowyn block foils can be blanked though they will about an hour per card and I don't recommend it. Older foils like urza and masks can be blanked but are also waaaay to difficult to be worth it.

I don't know about the first one. The second one I can answer. When your friend plays the Goblin spell, you are given a chance to respond. You can counter the Goblin spell, but you can't destroy the Goblin creature at this point because it isn't technically in play. When you choose not to counter the Goblin spell, you pass priority back to your friend and the Goblin spell resolves and the Goblin comes into play. At this point your friend still has priority. At this point, he can play Goblin Grenade. As part of the cost he taps his lands and pays the mana, and sacrifices the creature. At this point he still has priority, as the cost is paid before the spell goes on the stack and thus before priority is passed to you.

For the first course, I'd prepare a salad from the finest leafs of [Doran]( Then, I'd prepare a nice [chicken]( stew prepared in this here [pot]( As my guests are waiting, I'd bring them some [drinks]( For the main course, [Chicken a la King]( with some [flower petals]( for flavor For dessert, a [pie]( filled with [berries](

When combat damage is dealt two things happen: soul seizer triggers and undying triggers. Soul seizer's trigger needs a target, and on resolution the player may decide whether to actually transform the card or not. As the creature with undying is in the graveyard at that moment, still waiting to be resurrected, it is not a legal target at that moment. Active player (so the one who attacked) his triggers go on the stack first, then the non-active player. Creature with undying returns before soul seizer his ability resolves. As the target needs to be chosen at the time that it is put on the stack means that, even though the creature will be back, you can not attach it to that creature.

Im not the best at deck building, but I know this from experience with playing mono red with 20 lands, on a typical game I will get 3-4 lands by the end of the game, given I play heavy burn and cheap creatures so this isn't a problem. But I see you have some five drops and on a typical game unless it goes 10+ turns you will unlikely get them into play. Given they are nice cards, but for the most part you are running small creatures so swapping them out for honor of the pures or even a hero of bladehold would help a bit. As far as equipment goes maybe try to take some of them out and swap in some mortarpods and maybe a sword of war/peace or feast/famine. Having lots of creatures at your disposal would make mortarpod a good way to deal damage when needed to kill a key target or player. Rebuke may be able to be swapped with O-rings so you have control in more of a variety, because it isn't always the creature that is attacking that is dangerous. The deck seems like it would be alright in a drawn out game, but like you said if it hits a speed bump the game could end before it starts.

This entire subthread has absolutely nothing to do with the original subject of the discussion; and a 2-person drama over small-scale theft of a single card, while certainly troublesome, pales in comparison to the massive theft that happened to Lotus Guardian. The drama about who's fucking who behind each other's back is even less related, and frankly, this isn't the place for it. While the parent post would ordinarily be fine, I'm removing it and all the posts underneath it in an attempt to clean up this thread -- it's not as though those of us on the internet have any way of knowing which one of the two is lying and which one isn't.

So true. So true about the only people taking it seriously... Still, this overall post was needed on this subreddit. I have seen some threads here where people are complaining about their competitors playing known type 2 decks...one I recall recently was a poster getting upset that someone would dare bring a tempered steel deck to FMN. That post made me pause; tempered steel isn't that great right now and the poster was asking if playing that deck was unfair.

Thank you for this. I competed in standard for the first time at FNM a couple weeks ago, and some of my sideboard got mixed in with the normal deck, and vice versa. In short, I ended up with like a 20 card sideboard. Yea, it was my mistake, but I played a game with it like that and actually won, then realized it and started fixing it. The guy who I was playing (who was only like 13, he annoyed the shit out of me, he's the hyper-competitive guy at the LGS) got all pissy and called a judge. The judge is the owner, who just straight up asked who won the last game. I said I did, he said "well, you're doing something right" and walked off.

I'm not even an RA, lol. I would think the difference is the intention behind the action. Repeating a trivial action over and over in an attempt to stall the game out is completely different than repeating an action over and over if the action has a random outcome that could result in a victory for you if performed enough times. This is where the complication comes in, because obviously the person performing the action will want to repeat the action as many times as possible until they've been given game advantage by the random factor. So, under a normal game with no leonin elder, the game would obviously end in a win for him. However, this action could only be broken through trial, not through estimation and foresight. The first time, the wirefly player needs to succeed in getting 6 heads in a row, a little bit higher than a 1.5% chance. If they fail, they'll try again, except now they need to hit more heads in a row, and the chances are lower that they'll hit that many heads in a row. And, while the chance of winning reduces each time, the fact of the matter is a chance does still exist, even if it's inconceivably low. Thus it's a different thing entirely than fiend huntering a fiend hunter that's been fiend huntered(If you've seen the LSV breaks MODO video on the front page, where he forces a triple O. Ring loop, the reason that worked was because Oblivion Ring has to exile another nonland permanent if it can. Fiend Hunter's ability is only a may trigger, and thus is not mandatory. Trying a triple fiend hunter loop would be a stalling violation, because it's not mandatory, and no actions are being made to alter the game board, such as if you had a soul warden out and gained an infinite amount of life.)

As a newly minted (AVR Pre-release) Level 1 Judge, how do I go about establishing a reputation with DCI Family and Tournament Organizers in order to work their events? I know the organizers for a few Grand Prix later this year and hope to work those, but as someone who has taken your love of the game as far as you have, what would you recommend to someone who wants the same?

You'd need to win the flip 5 times in a row, 3 to get lethal for the original 6 damage, and 2 to overcome his life gain. Assuming the coin is 50/50, the odds are 1/32. But again, every time you fail he still gains a certain amount of life dependent on when you failed. If you fail on the nth flip, he gains (n-1) life and you have to start again. But this time you have to win 5+((n-1)/2) times. If you fail again, this time at k flips, you must now win 5+((n-1)/2) + (k-1)/2 times, consecutively. This is all in the exponent to the denominator of a fraction, meaning the denominator goes infinite, and your probability of winning on each consecutive try goes to zero. Lim f(n)-->infinity 1/2^f(n) = 0 But really, you COULD win. Your original odds are 1 in 32, and things only get worse from there. The total system is something like an infinite sum of terms dependent on whole number values of f(n), where f(n) is the exponent of the denominator. Also, every time you incrementally increased n you would have to integrate the function. However, because an infinite number of nonzero, nonnegative terms cannot sum to zero, the whole thing goes to 1.

Because I have seen poison decks able to deal 10 points of poison in 3 turns in standard, one deck almost consistently, and though commander is a much slower format, poison becomes over powered when it doesn't take one half the damage to kill you, but one fourth, and there are only a few cards in magic that remove poison counters, most of which would be omitted from your commander deck.

Well, everyone knows that Mono Black's real general is Cabal Coffers, and Drana is a good outlet of copious amounts of mana. With the amount of mana that Coffers + Urborg + Deserted Temple + Vesuva can make, it's not too hard to put 19 mana into one activation of her ability and 1-shot people while eating their only flying blocker with 21 General damage. Even if you're not 1-shotting people, I's not hard to use her mainly as recurrable removal when you cast her and then immediately use the rest of your mana to eat all of your opponent's creatures.

No, the rules really don't work that way. One, "faking" is cheating -- misrepresenting information to a judge is Fraud, full stop. Two, a huge part of the reason Jackie was disqualified is that the player wrote down the life total changes and Jackie saw him do so. Another major factor is that the discrepancy persisted over multiple turns.

Her mistake is a common one when dealing with authorities (such as police and lawyers) and why we have the 5th amendment in legal affairs. [This link explains it more]( She admitted to knowing that he was writing down life totals to the judge, thereby stating she knew the trigger was going on, he was reacting to it, and she just deciding not to write it down. She should have said they both missed the triggers, not just her. Specifically, that she saw him scribble with his pen at times, but there was nothing said while he was doing whatever it was. However, this is misleading to the judges because SHE WAS aware of it. Edit: I'm not endorsing lying to a judge under ANY circumstances. My point is that if she is going to attempt to angle advantage by purposefully dodging triggers even though she knows he didn't miss, then she should have committed to the actions fully, not back out halfway. Telling the judge she saw him scribbling something is NOT lying. The devil is in the details and which is what hung her out, if it happened the way she said it did. If the judge pushed to ask what she saw him write then she'd have to admit it.

Well, what happens when the card touches your hand is the same as any lapsed trigger. Miracle is a static ability linked to a triggered ability - one that triggers upon drawing the card, where you must immediately reveal it. It touching your hand signifies you have chosen not to respond to the trigger, or missed the trigger, and so Miracle is no longer an option. Same as if you fail to gain life or deal damage off of a triggered ability. Even if it's still obvious which card was drawn, the trigger has passed.

Start by finding people to play with. This is absolutely number one. Building a Commander deck can be expensive and you will feel very silly if you spend $100+ on an awesome Commander deck only to find out none of the people you play Magic with play Commander. After that, try to get a feel for the level they're playing Commander at. Some Commander groups run decks that can go infinite or totally ruin everybody else's gameplay if left unchecked. Other groups tend to derp around for fifteen turns before anything actually happens. Know your group before you get started. Next, if you don't have a preference, I'd find out what Commanders are in use in that group. You'll want to avoid having an overlapping Commander with somebody else. You may want to avoid having overlapping colors, depending on how general the group is. (How many Grixis Goodstuff Commander decks does one group really need?) Alright, now that you've done all that, it's time to build your deck. If you've been following along so far, you have now gotten to know your local Commander group. Talk to them. Discuss with them. Ask them about their favorite cards, ideas they've wanted to try, and all of that. They should be able to get you on track to building a good Commander deck that works for you. Ultimately, Commander is a very social format and if you can build your deck with the help of your local social group you'll get far more out of it then you will by trying to grab suggestions from Reddit.

Rares aren't printed for Limited. Crusher is Rare because it's on or below the curve, can be built around powerfully, and has rules text aimed specifically at non-new players. Forfeiting all your land drops is not an intuitive bonus for a new player, and under [New World Order]( cards like that are typically printed at Rare. As for Limited, you seem to have it backwards. Cards are not printed at Rare because they are Limited bombs; cards are printed at Rare specifically so that they don't affect the Limited environment too much. Rares tend to be powerful, and therefore they often happen to be Limited bombs, but that's just a side effect. Crusher was originally printed at Rare, which means they would only drop it down to Uncommon if they specifically wanted it to have a bigger impact on Limited (or if it were old enough that it no longer matched the game's overall power level, which is not the case). More specifically, as an Uncommon it have to be able to fairly reliably pop up in people's decks. But Crusher is obviously not that kind of card; it's a build-around-me card that requires specific deck strategies to work. Thus, it's better at Rare.

I see this sort of argument a lot, here and IRL, and I've never found it particularly convincing. In fact, it just plain pisses me off. Just because Aspel doesn't value a box of MM at $300+ doesn't mean that he doesn't value it at all. Let's say that you, like millions of other people, really like the Elder Scrolls series (Oblivion, Skyrim, etc, in case you don't actually care about them). Standard price for a retail game is $60. Now let's say that Bethesda has announced a new Elder Scrolls game, all new engine, tons of awesome features. Great, right? Now let's say that they set the retail price to $75. Eh, kind of sucks, but it's worth it for a great game, right? BUT, then they say that they're only releasing 50,000 copies FOREVER, and they aren't going to enforce recommended retail price. Suddenly the next Elder Scrolls game costs $200, and you have to choose between buying Elder Scrolls and getting your son/daughter/SO/parent that birthday gift they've wanted forever. And if you don't get it as soon as possible but you want to play it later, you have to shell out $500-$600 to get it from a collector, because its rare as fuck. That sucks. That sucks big hairy Cloudgoat Ranger balls. Now, I know all the arguments about card value and the secondary market (I used to play high-level yugioh, y'all ain't got nothing on cutthroat secondary markets), but casual or semi-casual players don't give a shit about that. All they see is a really fun, cool product with all those cards they want and THEY AREN'T ALLOWED TO HAVE IT, because they aren't "hardcore" enough to waste three weeks of groceries to buy a box of cardboard. As for it being "worth it" because of money pulls, again, doesn't mean shit to most players. They can make trades and maybe sell some off to scalpers, but your average player doesn't know shit about flipping a goyf and a bunch of bulk rares for profit. At best they'll probably make back a third of their investment, which is pretty shitty when you're talking about literally hundreds of dollars. And to be clear, when I say casual and semi-casual, I'm not talking about your wide-eyed noobs still suckling at the intro packs, I'm talking people who play regularly, enjoy the game, but don't have to time or money to really invest in "serious" play. "Learner friendly" core sets that focus more on "engaging creatures" (new slivers- with faces!) and fancy commercials don't mean shit to these players, because they already pretty much know what's up. I'm not trying to talk shit about core sets in general, just saying that they aren't anything special to your average player. Which with MM makes two sets in a row with really little for them to do. Conclusion/

Started in April. My uncle was/is an avid Magic player and even played for the top team in Guam. After he moved out he left behind his commons and uncommons. At first I wasn't too interested, but then I learned that Card Wars from Adventure Time was a parody/shout-out of MTG. Instant interest.

Well, I think it's a bit much to say that using a particular word or phrase in an insulting manner somehow contributes to a system of oppression, real or imagined. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what word someone uses or what their intentions are. What matters is how you react to it and by overreacting and trying to censor language, at best nothing will be accomplished because people who insult others generally don't really care about the feelings of the people they insult. But more importantly, such an effort can actually backfire and do damage to the people that are trying to be protected. First, by trying to block out a word from usage, you're essentially signaling that you believe that you or others are too emotionally fragile to deal with hearing such a word, and I'm not sure if you've ever dealt with bullies, but if you say you never want to hear a certain word, what word do you think they're going to cling to? And second, even if the words 'retard' or 'fag' are outlawed, people will just make up another word to use as an insult, and rather than stand up for yourself and brush off those previous insults, you've run away and haven't developed the coping skills for dealing with those kinds of people. You're actually in a worse position than you were because of the efforts to scrub a language.

I think we need a replacement to pillar of flame, cheap exile for voice or G/W will get out of hand. Incinerate is too expensive and easy to play around in bant. Also, a hexproof aura for bant to make up for geist and invisible stalker rotating (as this is an aura block id at least hope so). People who are saying thoughtseize are on the right track . but i see thoughtseize AND doom blade being too strong in standard for black... Maybe thats just me. I like midrange but also the amount of beaters is gross. I think B/R/W (dega) decks will be viable after seeing how alot of things are interacting post rotation. Something to deal with aetherling will be pretty important if the game transfers to mid range.

Having seen land prices change since enemy fetches. And having latched on to modern at its start I can say from experience allied fetches will not ruin modern or create god like mana. With tech edge and path to exile seeing tons of play in modern in virtually every deck that can run them the need alone for basics is hinders mana bases we saw in standard in inn-rtr. Most modern decks of three and four colors don't run all the fetches they could right now. Allied lands will give two colored decks some duel sided fetchers and give the three plus color a lot more variation in mana base not create some greedy mana bases though some will try. As for price, we can look at other modern cards like thoughtsieze and while this cards is much cheaper than pre theros price was, it is in print right now thus helping the lower price. Its old price was commanded by its limited availability. Looking at other modern cards from mm we see that while some are cheaper many are more expensive now than before mm was released. By increasing the supply wizards fed a demand already there. And even created more demand. As with goyf people though wizards would never reprint it yet they did and in a way a lot of people came to accept and enjoy. The allied fetches I believe would be reprinted with the enemies in the same block but likely at a time after rtr departs maybe next block but I doubt it.

To most Netdecking is playing the absolute best version of whatever deck you originally wanted to run anyways. What's wrong with skipping a few steps and taking the easy way out? As long as you know how to play the deck and why certain cards are included, there's no point in trying to reinvent the wheel. Competitive Magic is more about skill and less about deckbuilding. You've already gotten the best version of a deck, now it comes down to who can pilot it better. It also wakes you up to realize why certain cards are good or bad. What if you spent a week compiling the absolute best deck you've ever made and it turns out that people were already playing a version of it a month ago? There would have been no point in wasting so much time on it other than self gratification.

Competitive Magic is more about skill and less about deckbuilding. I wouldn't say it's not about deckbuilding, but rather it's about the fine adjustments that allow you to better hit a certain meta than it is complete choices. If you're running Esper, you're running Elspeth and Jace, but the rest of the calls are what show your skill: Do you run one AEtherling? Do you run none? What is your card draw? Have your worst matchups changed since last week? A skilled pilot can take the top Standard deck from a month ago and win without any modifications at FNM, but at higher levels even decks that look identical at first glance can change quite a bit from week to week just on the ancillary cards and those can make the difference in who wins.

This card should not be used in the same deck as lightning bolts, I don't think. Lightning Bolt is red, whereas this card can be paid for with any color mana. This can also do much more damage than lightning bolt since you only cast this card 1 time, and it's effect is repeatable. Basically, if you want to kill someone with a single lightning bolt, you need something like Isochron Scepter or Djinn Illuminatus, whereas if you want to kill someone with a single Rod of Ruin, you need to either stall/lock them for 20 turns, or find a way to combo with the Rod (using something like Voltaic Key or Training Grounds). Basically, the big difference here is that Rod of Ruin is a single card with a repeatable effect that lacks a color requirement, whereas Lightning Bolt requires red mana and isn't repeatable. One would be used in a combo deck, whereas the other would most likely be used in a straight up burn deck.

I think the biggest thing we need to examine here is 'what exactly are the reasons you need a high devotion count in this deck' The structure of your deck makes this central question an issue in 2 ways: 1) Only two things in the deck, for a total of six cards, care about devotion - your two-of god and Nykthos. The other devotion decks make use of their devotion in ways other than just turning on Gods. G/R monsters uses it to ramp into huge creatures with a combination of Xenagos and Nykthos. Black uses it to power a big Gray Merchant, as the red decks do with Fanatic of Mogis and blue decks do for Master of Waves. So it doesn't look like your devotion does anything other than turning on a god and making big mana with Nykthos, which brings us to part 2... 2) What are you going to do with all that Nykthos mana? There is nothing in your deck you can't do with 4 mana (no abilities, no spells, no bestow cost is greater than 4 mana), with one exception: 2 copies of Elspeth. I can see it being doable, and even reasonably easy, to go T1 Soldier T2 Captain T3 Reckoner T4 Nkythos -> Elspeth. HOWEVER, that seems to be the only think you want to do with Nykthos. I suppose it also enables you to drop a couple of 3-drops in one turn. After goldfishing the deck on TappedOut, I think Ephara slows you down and doesn't give you the card advantage that Black and Blue devotion decks seem to be able to muster. White Weenie seems the way to go - keep the curve down, get rid of the devotion and just make it all-pressure all the time.

I play standard R/G and a good thing to keep in mind with R/G is that there's a hella lot of ramp that can be added, and as far as mana costs go, there are some cards that are flexible like mistcutter hydra revenant hunter for devotion. Ruric thar is a great addition, but tends to be too high mana cost for more than one. You could add a play set of elvish mystic, sylvan caryatid, or nykthos if you wanted. On the budget side of things, there's not really a replacement for nykthos, but zhur taa Druid can replace sylvan caryatid easily enough. Xenagos is also another excellent source for ramp. With a play set of elvish mystic, temple of abandon, and revenant hunter, and thragtusker, I've found myself in control of an 11/11 monster by turn 4 or 5 which can be devastating to an opponent.

This is a horrible idea. This sub, and other magic subs, are already fractured. Splitting them yet again is a worse plan. Splitting them when you admit you have zero experience running a community is a recipe for failure. Even if you see newbie questions get downvoted, the best thing you can do is help the questioner and up vote. Move on. Don't whine about downvotes.

Yep. Mutavault's dominance is more of a product of the Standard environment around it than it is of Mutavault itself. I never see it in Legacy or Modern outside of the occasional Merfolk deck (and even then, Legacy folk doesn't run it all the time). It's not that oppressive in a vaccum, it just thrives in an environment where there is really no downside to playing it. I have a gut feeling the JOU meta is going to lead to more people experimenting with 3 color aggro again (like the Naya blitz/hexproof lists that have been popping up recently, or maybe some kind of Junk bears setup based around the Orzhov god). Mana Confluence opens up manabases in a way that will wean some aggro off running Mutavault as a playset or even entirely. At any rate, Mutavault aside, Mana Confluence alone will cause a shift towards a slightly heavier aggro metagame anyway: the ability for Red decks to splash for Chains easier, or for aggro add in a third color splash or shit like that without just having to accept that your manabase is awful is gonna increase the popularity (and viability?) of turning dudes sideways for 2.

longtime casual player, newly competitive player. look, man, I dig what you're talking about. you play for the same reason I do - the satisfaction you get from winning with a pile of jank you shuffled together without advice from the internet. however, you have to understand, every single deck out there slots itself into a certain archetype, and these archetypes happen to've been around for most of the time Magic has been around. - example: the weekend Dragon's Maze hit, I went out, bought a handful of boosters, and hit Ral Zarek and four Nivix Cyclops. right there in the card shop, I sat down with my pile of standard-legal usables along with the cards I'd just opened, and basically built Izzet Blitz. you have to understand, I did this, by myself, in a card shop in Columbus, Ohio, the night after Dragon's Maze came out. I believe Travis Woo posted his version of the deck by the next weekend - of the notable cards, I only really lacked Faithless Looting, but the decks, aside from that, were very nearly identical. he, of course, had the deck a little more pimped out then I did, but, again, close enough. well, that deck I made all by myself the first night I could've after the cards dropped? already had been made by other deckbuilders, and considered fringe - at best - by competitive players the world over. all before I even considered optimizing my 'lol unheard-of Cyclops brew'. - you're certainly allowed to love your creations. you are. you, however, have to understand that you take complete ownership for a brew when you do this. no fair taking jank to FNM and bitching when the Jund Midrange deck crushes your petty shit. that's the thing that a lot of deckbuilders don't do - they assume the fault lies in the lack of originality their opponents' deck sports. it's actually easier, imo, to play a stock netdeck list, do poorly, and blame yourself, rather than play your own list and still blame yourself. look, really, here's what it boils down to. there are, at any given points in time, "the best fucking card in the format for color/strategy/archetype." why? because the cards are fucking useful. do you know why so many decks get drawn into those known archetypes? because they need the cards that deal with real problem cards in the format. people, accordingly, pile all this value into the same deck. they win with it, people see the list, they add their own twist, and so on. - we're past 'metagame/netdeck' at this point. there is no more secret tech, there is no more 'rogue deck' status. you're either playing competitive cards, or you're putting your money where your mouth is. you know how many standard matches I won with Izzet Blitz? none. I won one game with it once, ever. if you're not familiar with Izzet Blitz, the entire point of the deck was playing a Cyclops on turn 3, and then casting a flurry of cheap spells on turn 4, the last of which was usually Artful Dodge after a Ready //, and you swung in with an 11/5 unblockable double-striker. gg lol sorry about your luck, right? ...right? no. allow me to introduce you to almost literally any kill/exile/bounce/fog effect at instant speed. the deck blew its' load turn 4, and if they had at least one mana up on their turn or just fucking removed your Cyclops on their turn, the deck had absolutely nothing left in the tank - you dumped a bit of your deck right into the graveyard just digging for the combo, and had no real way of recurring any of it at relevant speeds. well, let's take this deck to the drawing board. I have this combo, needs a creature to hit the board, live a turn, swing in. if I leave it as is, well, I lose to anyone who watches me get away with this game 1. that's the truth. if I start subbing out cards? well, there we go. I'm fucking metagaming whether I want to or not. I realize I have this jank combo deck that really has no options for game 2. every card in the deck pretty much makes the combo happen, or gives me a desperate attempt at a second chance if needed. I can go a little further in on the burn, giving me a Red Deck Wins feel with a blue splash for the Cyclops hilarity. but, see? Metagaming. on my own fucking deck that I fucking brewed without help. I'm sitting here wondering whether or not I streamline it into jank RDW/blue splash, or maybe protect the combo with some counter-magic and shit like Mizzium Skin, giving me a potential late-game finisher in a blue tempo deck. you know what happens? you set the deck down, because you realize that your pile of jank has a cute idea, and the core is so awesome... but, it's totally not worth building a deck around. there are much better cards I could be playing in blue or red that don't require as much all-in as a Nivix Cyclops. well, so, what do you run in your controlly-tempo deck with a red splash as a real finisher? well, how about Aetherling? you only need one. and soon enough, you're looking at stock U/W control and realizing you should just be playing Jace/Elspeth/Rev/Verdict/D-Spheres. I mean, why the fuck not play the absolute best cards out there? - so, playing standard these days, my price of admission is this: find a deck I like check out stock-list reference card collection, find obscure timmy-cards that fit build MY OWN version of an archetype. currently, I'm on R/G Monsters. I have, say, 70% of stock list, and my own twists, tweaks and substitutions make up the rest of it. I make room for Pyxis of Pandemonium - in fact, my deck is more tweaked around fucking Pyxis rather than Domri Rade - and, well, it's my pile of semi-successful jank. a huge part of the joy I've taken from Magic this year has been watching this little brew surprise stock R/G lists and even the meta decks aren't terrible matchups, like monoU/B, U/W Control - shit, I feel like my match win% against U/W is about %100 - and, well, shit, winning is a good feeling, man. sometimes, I even get to make 40 mana in a turn or activate a fucking Pyxis, and that shit makes the deck 'worf'.

I didn't realize that you were wondering which sites are legitimate; I thought you just just looking for sites, period. That is something that you could have included for clarification. There are probably 3 kinds of sites: The first are sites selling the cards, such as starcitygames.com or trollandtoad.com. There are lots of sites selling cards, so the prices are competitive and thereby similar. The other kind of site is like an ebay for Magic, of which TCGplayer.com is the most notable. These prices will be slightly lower than selling-for-$ sites, but will be close enough to get the idea of value. The last kind of site is ones that people set up to talk about or monitor trends or prices. These sites almost always pull prices from TCGplayer or from a site that sells cards, so the price will be the same.

Absolute keeper. Bought me a bitchin ass road bike cause I used to ride to work (reason I'm not currently riding coming up.) Her and i had been planning our wedding for april for over a year now and in march I was diagnosed with stage 4 Melanoma because I had a tumor growing in my neck. We still got hitched right after I'd finished my 3rd week of radiation and since my chemo makes me super sensitive to sunlight (I'm a ginger already but I now get sunburns in under 30 minutes) she'd been trying to help keep my mind occupied outside of work and it just so happened that my co-worker helped re-pique my interest in MTG. She's also bought about 10 booster packs, a deck builders kit, and the Sorin Vs. TIbalt Dual Deck set. For herself ;)

Alright. I'm fairly new to magic and will be playing in my first Star City tournament on Aug 2nd. I'm torn between building a net deck (which just isn't fun to me) or building a deck of my own but I really am new to deck building. I played in the m15 prerelease and did fairly well for my first time playing magic. I got 7th the first night out of about 60 people. Any recommendations on a solid build or should I just net deck it?

I always try to find the current prices (usually use the free version of MTGTracker from Google Play store, and its trade function) before I complete the trade. For example, a LGS that I frequent (was my first LGS, but moved to different town, went to my first LGS for FRF Pre), one of the clerks is a fanatic Foil collector. I had some common and uncommon foils he was missing from his collection, and nothing jumped out at me from his trade binder except a March of the Machines (I have been wanting to build a JudgeBreaker EDH for awhile, mainly to test myself). I checked the prices, and yeah it was lopsided in his favor by about a dollar, but the "want" factor for me helped even out the prices.

I set down my blue control/combo shenanigans and recently picked up Endrek Sahr in EDH. My friend wanted to playtest his new nasty mono-black combo deck that looked absolutely brutal - I thought I was going to get blown out of the water. Turns out, I beat him in both games we played because Endrek is absolutely brutal once you get him on board with the right cards in hand. To be fair, game 1 he was trying to make his Mindcrank + Bloodchief Ascension combo work when he could've easily tutored for Exquisite Blood (he had sanguine bond in hand). Game 2 I had him dead to rights though.

It isn't "strictly" better, but if I was going to run a draw spell, Think Twice has a lot more utility. First, it's Instant, which is very important on a blue draw spell. Let's say you have an opening hand of 3 Island, Mana Leak, Mana Leak, Forbidden Alchemy and <draw spell X>. Here, Think Twice is far better than Divination, as you can leave your Mana Leak mana up, draw your first card on turn two if you don't use Leak, and even if you don't draw anything else, you can hold countermana up while generating card advantage for a long time. The second reason is because this is a graveyard based set. If you cast Forbidden Alchemy or Armored Skaab, which would you rather reveal going to your graveyard? Obviously the card with flashback.

When I first started really getting into magic, the top-tier of my Playgroup said "Sit down, pick any of your decks. I'll use this." Then I got to know what it feels like to lose to a Dralnu+Tefferi UBcontrol. Playing against hard control for your first game can put hair on your chest. EDIT:

Troll and Toad has always been awesome to me too! I'm glad we feel the same way about them. Another great site, that really hooks you up on random goodies, is coolstuffinc.com. I've been ordering between the two sites for a long time now and both are great. The thing that sets coolstuff a little bit ahead, IMO, is that when you make an order there they ALWAYS send a couple extra random foils/rares and they even size up with the dollar amount you order. The thing is they even put slightly damaged or altered cards in their same "random extras" cue... On big orders I've received some pretty legit foreign and signed stuff.

This is not true. No where in the game rules does it say that. Of course in casual magic you can decide to combine yu gi oh cards too for that matter. It's just that casual magic is not designed to have sideboards. The wishes were actually designed for casual players and the issue with limits came about in testing when the realized they were too strong not to be played in constructed, also limited was of concern, so they made a caveat for sanctioned games; wishes are only allowed to search your sideboard (this used to include any card that started in your 75 that was not currently in your hand, gy, or deck, but since the rules change to exile actually being a zone this now only applies to your SB)

Cards in Magic tend to do exactly what the rules text says. In this case: >Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from green and from blue. >Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, you put a 2/2 green Wolf creature token onto the battlefield and that player puts the top ten cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard. The first part is easy >"Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from green and from blue." The Equipped creature can't be targeted, dealt damage by, enchanted, or blocked by a green or blue source. The second part reads >"Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, you put a 2/2 green Wolf creature token onto the battlefield and that player puts the top ten cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard." So, if your creature deals combat damage, > "you put a 2/2 green Wolf creature token onto the battlefield". I don't actually know if you can put it under the control of any player, but more often then not, you will want the wolf on your side of the field. Then >"that player puts the top ten cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard." That player is referencing the player that was dealt damage by the sword equipped creature ("Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player ... that player puts the top ten cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard"). So,

I'd say that lowering the prize support for the top 1-4 and spreading it out over the top 8-16 would discourage the sharks who are trying to "go infinite" with paper magic, while at the same time it would encourage people who do not realistically expect to be Top 4. Also, if the maximum amount you can win is lower, people will relax more. This is really speculative, but maybe in order to keep the sharks happy and give everyone else something fun to spectate, you could set up an invitational tournament (or even an open but give them byes) for your repeated top 1-4 players that has a modest bounty. Sounds like you have a large enough player base to support this.

whoever spends the most money wins is simply not true. there are powerful decks that can be assembled cheaply, but more importantly my store is mostly adults who don't really have a problem assembling decks. Costs less than drinking anyway. Calling standard uncreative is really lame, I feel like you must really not understand it. If we just look at the zombies deck alone, there is tons of creativity. There are tons of variations, people play blue, green, even sometimes red as a second color. But with M13 coming out we are probably going to start seeing mono black more often as well. But beyond that there are tons of ways that people customize decks to suit their playstyle and what they think is strongest. If you ever read an article from "Top Decks" on the magic the gathering website, you'll see that tournament magic is much more than copying whatever deck is popular and crossing your fingers.

I saw the decklist on the internet so I bought those cards and now I play them and win." that isn't how standard is. Maybe at your local FNM that is how it is, but among tournament players and even semi-competitive players there is a lot more going on there. The basic idea of a deck is often not the impressive part. I was talking about Solar Flare with my friend before Innistrad even actually came out, but that doesn't mean that I'm a good deck builder. For most decks that you can imagine, someone else has probably thought of the same idea at some point or another, especially if the deck is any good. Sometimes weird revolutionary stuff pops up and it is awesome, but you don't have to do something weird and revolutionary to be a good deckbuilder. The much more often relevant skill of deckbuilding is refining a deck to make it as powerful as possible, and altering it to better handle the expected meta. More know-how and talent goes into the last eight cards maindeck and the sideboard than goes into the rest, I feel. Beyond that, deckbuilding is simply not a skill that some player's want to focus on or spend time on. Some decks in magic are straightforward to play, but as far as competitive decks go most of them have quite high skill ceilings. Some players prefer to spend most of their effort perfecting their piloting ability rather than their deckbuilding ability. I myself play a deck called Eggs in Modern, it is not a deck that you can just pick up and play. To even understand how that deck is supposed to work requires around five games, to play it perfectly would take years of experience.

Any chance you could give us the

I cast X spell targeting Phantasmal Dragon: Phantasmal Dragon's ability goes on the stack. If you cast Mana Leak countering X spell Mana Leak goes on the stack, it resolves, that spell is countered, then the ability resolves, and the Dragon is sacrificed. If you don't cast Mana Leak, the Dragon sacrifice occurs first, and the X spell is still countered.

I made production at work earlier this week, and am bored out of my mind, so I wrote this. Had to be sort of short because I doubt my boss appreciates me wasting so much time, lol. It's for my U/B zombie deck. I don't have time to include links, but I included my key card names like gravepurge, moan of the unhallowed, and unbreathing horde. It should not have come to this. I have done things no man should do, though I cannot stop. He tells me to keep casting... I cannot argue. I must tell what I can while he has wandered off for some purpose I do not know. I write now so that if people find this book when I am gone, they will know to be done with it. I would destroy it if I could, but I am weaker than him now. I leave this place, I do not deserve to go somewhere better. I found the book in a swamp. There was an old cellar door standing in the middle of it. It led to a small mausoleum that contained this strange tome. It had spells of all sorts, standard ones that could dissipate spells or redirect them. But there were darker ones, ones that could purge graves. At first I thought I would use it for a noble cause. The dead do little when they are in the ground, but the book could put these... things to work. The voice said it would work wonderfully, and the town would be oh so happy. The elves in the forest nearby were growing angry at our trespasses into their territory for wood. I felt I could rectify this with the walking dead. As the night filled with the moans of the unhallowed and the endless ranks of dead advanced upon the small elf tribes nearby, I began to feel guilt about what was to happen. He, however, assured me that it was all okay, and that the town would thank me, and treat me as a hero. They did not. My fellow men were appalled at what I had done. I thought they would understand, but they did not. My guilt grew, I did not know what to do, what could I do? But he began to whisper that I could make it right. My new friends could make all my problems go away. The unbreathing horde spread through the city and it was quieted. The humans could put up no fight against the terrors I had wrought upon them. The town's wizards attempted to stop me, but I had control over their effects. As the one-sided battle neared its end I could hear him laughing in my head. Laughing. Laughing. I wanted it to stop. Why had I done this? Why? Maybe I didn't want it to stop. Maybe I liked it, the laughter was contagious. He has taken leave of me, but I can feel him coming back. Things need to be done before the laughter overtakes me again. This needs to end now. If you find the book, do what I could not.

Horsemanship was actually limited to Portal, which was supposed to be a different game. It wasn't intended to be played next to cards from Arabian Nights or other sets, even though it shares a card back. This, combined with a limited print run, meant people didn't play Portal, instead opting for regular Magic: the Gathering cards. Until a few years ago, Portal wasn't even legal in Legacy tournaments IIRC.

Alternative hypothesis: "grok" is not as obscure of a word as you believe it to be. In addition to its proliferation through sci-fi / fantasy fandom, it's quite prevalent in tech circles (particularly computer science). In fact, I'd say many programmers use the word in their regular vocabulary but have no knowledge of its origin. See e.g.

while yes you can do it in modern i feel that it would be better in a little slower enviorment, this is the perfect combo for standard, and by extension extended, modern i would imagine this would work but having so many pod chains (you need both a 3 and a 4 in play with a 5 in the grave) is slower than just running something like kiki-pod which is also only a 2 card combo and not a 3 card combo like this pod deck would be extended would be the perfect enviorment to make something like this work because it would probably be one of the few combos available where as we are looking at a format where there are multiple aggressive decks which have a faster clock than combo, mutiple combo decks which are more efficient and midrange decks appear dominant

OK, I've got it. I'll play a deck of 51 Basic Plains and/or Swamps 4 Elvish Spirit Guide, 4 Simian Spirit Guide, 4 Elemental Reverence, 4 Evershrike and 4 Eldrazi Conscription, 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn +some other stuff to make a deck of 60 cards. You can start with the above board state. We're gonna assume you have no cards in hand and will simply pass the turn and force me to draw a card each turn. I'll play land until I have 6 Spirit Guides in hand, discarding any Evershrikes I draw. 10 in play.Then, the next turn I will pass turn discarding Evershrike. I will then use his ability (which exists as long as he's in the graveyard) to return himself to play and put and Eldrazi Conscription Elemendtal Resonance on him from my hand. Next, I'll need another Spirit Guide and Elemental Resonance in hand and another Evershrike in the yard. When I have that, I'll use the Spirit Guide to make the 6th mana I need to reanimate the second Evershrike with another Resonance. Next, I need a third Evershrike and an Eldrazi Conscription. I'll discard the Evershrike then reaminate him using the mana from the 2 Elemental Resonances and put an Eldrazi Conscription on him. Because the Conscription is not a creature, and enters the battlefield after Humility, it will have a newer timestamp and add the abilities trample and Annihilator 2 to Evershrike after its innate abilities are removed by Humility. I will then attack, forcing you to sacrifice 2 permananets. I'll do this each turn until you sacrifice either Humility or Solitary Confinement. If you sac Humility first, I will cast Emrakul, if I have it, speeding up the process considerably. If you dawdle and my library is low, I'll pitch Emrakul in my cleanup step.

Basically no chance he gets banned. Huge CC wincons like that rarely do. There are other sick reanimate targets that are almost as powerful that haven't caused issues. The DCI bans cards because they enable decks that dominate the metagame and make it stale. It's unlikely that a reanimator deck has a good matchup againat most of the tier 1 decks in the format.

Not exactly. Emrakul has an anti reanimation clause that would prevent him from being cheated out, and there isn't really anything at the same power level. I could see a storm-reanimator deck that wins the turn it sticks a Grisselbrand, or the pitch various spell variants (either Soul Spike or Fury of the Horde) which also win the turn it comes out getting a big boost from a future printing, but I don't really expect it to be the case.

I got back into Standard playing Selesnya, and I'm really excited about going Naya. The big takeaway for me here is that I have a lot of options to think about when adding red to my deck, and I can't wait to try them out. I managed to trade for some Boros charms at the pre-release, so they're going in. My next step will be to strip out the populate cards and fill the vacuum with Boros/Gruul beaters. Frontline Medic was awesome at the pre-release. He definitely earned an invite to my Naya spring training camp.

I dont know of i included it here, but they tend to speak very poorly of other players and other store owners, and have a very ellitest attitude. And they tend to think that they are better then everyone else beause they play at that particular store. I have played there a few times and it was about the only thing negative about the store. I started playing there when i was a new player, and alot of the people there have no intrest in helping you, and if you arnt really friends with them already they dont talk to you at all. So its just an atmosphere thats horrible for new players, especially FNM. So i wouldnt bother bringing my friends there, since i know they will most likely get told rude things that ive heard said at the same place before.

what other cards seem like they will go up? Well making a profit seems to be the point of this thread. Tried to give you some advice, I hope you read past the first sentence of my post :\ But there are 54,212 subscribed users at the time of this post, even more users who aren't registered, and yet even more who hear news from this sub from friends/acquaintances/chatting at their lgs. And then there are people on this sub who also frequent other mtg forums. This amounts to a lot of people and a large flow of information. Which means if there was a majority opinion that a certain card would become expensive, a large amount of users who frequent pretty much any mtg forum will find out and then that card won't start out relatively cheap and then rise over time, it would start out expensive, as in, already be an expensive pre-order. Which is right now, not a month or two from now. You can still try and speculate on cards you think might rise or have an unexpected impact on the format, but asking a large forum which cards you should invest in probably not the greatest idea, playtesting and thinking over cards in interesting ways would probably give you a better chance. >Good to see the mtg subreddit is full of dicks lol Yeah you're quite charming yourself.

So, I got back into the game around seven months ago, when I discovered that my (defunct) collection was full of Modern staples from the Ravnica, Future Sight, and Lorwyn blocks. I put together what I feel was a good Modern deck (R/G Tron), and, it did well, but it wasn't satisfying to play. It was, assemble the Tron, play huge threats, play a 15-cmc finisher... not at all the "assemble the Tron" endgame that Tron was back when it was a standard deck with [Tooth and Nail]( I put together American Midrange. Didn't have fun. Put together Death Cloud 'insisted upon itself'... or more accurately, the modern staples within the deck insisted themselves upon the deck, to the point that I wasn't really playing a 'Death Cloud' deck, I was playing a red-less Jund deck with ramp and Death Cloud. One of the things I've noticed, while playing Modern, and in the very short amount of time that I've played Standard lately, is that the number of unique deck strategies have dwindled. Standard is literally a format consisting of ramp, reanimate, or stall into great creatures with great utility, or play an aggro deck with varying levels of power, speed, and creature utility. That's it. There was a brief moment that Mill existed as a win condition for a control shell, but that moment is gone, and we are so far removed from having a viable permission or resource denial shell that they don't even rightfully exist in Modern (D&T notwithstanding), let alone come close to existing in Standard. It seems to me that this is the future that Wizards has wrought for Magic, and I feel as though many people are okay great with the direction that the game is heading in. Personally, I think they print some really great stuff, but they are purposefully leaving out some really great stuff as well. They printed Delver, but they didn't print a one-mana terror. They printed Geist, but they haven't printed a creature sweep that prevents leave the battlefield effects. They printed Deathrite Shaman, but they haven't printed a Sol Land for almost 15 years. Another of my gripes is that they are very, very good at coming up with novel, fresh, interesting, powerful card ideas, and then costing the cards into mediocrity. I took one look at Goblin Test Pilot , and instead they make a bear at 2 cmc that spits out tokens that mirror a relatively unplayable (but good) 3cmc creature. Instead they make a 1cmc elf that is part graveyard control, part Birds of Paradise, part Grim Lavamancer, part Spike Weaver.

tiny violin I think we'd all be better off if people whining about Wizards making money on the game would leave. Mythics are fine. They're overwhelmingly either bad or EDH-only, with the occasional high power level one. None of them has ever been "necessary" to compete, save perhaps for Mind Sculpter. I like them because they make room for crazier effects that might otherwise unhinge the Limited Format if they were just rare. I seriously do not care about the secondary market, and Wizards doesn't, either. People will charge whatever other people will pay for cards. That's the way it's always been. Reprinting high-demand cards is better done in small measures (Modern Masters) than in mass (Chronicles) because the latter is one of the best ways to expel your player base. Within two years we'll have another reprint set just like it. No one NEEDS FTV sets. They're all reprints available more cheaply elsewhere. It's a premium product to reward the stores that have kept the game alive for two decades, not a product for kids just getting into the game. I have no idea what you're talking about with the "kept cards intentionally lower in price" nonsense. Prices have risen because more people are playing, and the market has grown much larger than it used to be. Add in the explosive growth of Modern as a format and the increasing usage of the internet to buy and sell cards, and you get higher prices. So,

Chronicles was also a huge mistake, if you'll remember. That's why I said "intentionally" told the secondary market to go fuck itself, because when Wizards did it, it was purely accidental. Also, it's not that the secondary market is unfair to ME. It's not about just me. It's about format and game/brand health and how to get more people engaged, interested and spending the appropriate amount of money to keep said formats healthy and afloat. If you'd actually read my comment and take to heart the massive amount of the community that would agree with me, rather than looking for things to attack me on, I'm sure you'd see that most of my grievances are absolutely appropriate. And my comment was about how big the metagame was before versus now. The meta has shifted to an intentionally smaller one, with rares and mythics becoming staples across the board. With that in mind and the Mythic Rarity in the game, prices have soared. Your point is flat out 100% wrong. True, more people are playing the game, but when you couple that with all things I've already said, THAT'S why the prices are so high. I've seen the game grow exponentially in 20 years, and just because there's a surge of new players, it doesn't immediately mean card prices go up in price. When you do stupid shit like make staple cards have a rarer chance to be pulled, that's when prices go up. Supply and demand was never an issue in competitive, current MTG until Mythic Rarity. Period.

My story isn't that bad or intense, but I was smoking a lot of weed, doing a lot of mushrooms and drinking like a fish; eventually, I got into Vintage magic, and started to really enjoy the people more than the game. So now I play as a way to hang out with some of my best friends.

When I hear large event, I think competitive like a scg event, or something larger then a FNM prerelease. At a large event such as a qualifier or something, some people may look down on you and or treat you like shit. But, they don't mind an easy opponent. At a prerelease, release, or fnm, new players are a part of the culture. You may run into a douchebag, every LGS has then. Best to ignore them, or return the slights. The trolls tend to congregate together, so if you have several stores nearby, ask around, reach out on Facebook, drop by.

You should 100% go to the Theros Pre-Release. Wizards has as of late been trying to make Pre-Releases more accessible to new players, and while there are always going to be some grumps, most of us veterans love to have new players show up (free wins!). I'm kidding about the free wins part, I love when new people show up because I love seeing new people get into the game. In lieu of going out to the bars (I know you're 14, but this is what happens when you're older) I had my friends celebrate my birthday with me by coming to the Dragon's Maze Pre-Release. We had a blast, and for a couple of my friends it was their first tournament ever. In summary, Wizards wants you to go, I want you to go, and most other veterans are excited to see the game grow. A prerelease is a perfect time for a new player, as even players with 10+ years of experience will be taking their time and reading every card because everything is brand new.

Too cheap for such a masterpiece... I've seen shittier piece in a gallery that sells for at least three times that price.

You can't really make a Gruul aggro deck. It kind of has to be more midrange. White has better aggro options than green, so Gruul's best plan is to slow down a bit and use cards like PolyK and Arbor Colossus. But then you run into mono-blue devotion, and they use a Tidebinder Mage to tap down your big threats and just swarm around your tiny mana dorks with their efficient flyers and multitude of Master of Waves tokens.

The number of Tarmogoyfs is relatively low: He was printed in a third expansion set of a block - the third set is the least drafted set, so the supply is lower than other cards. They reprinted him in Modern Masters, but MMA was printed in such low numbers that some argued that the demand for Tarmogoyf outpaced how many copies were out there, so that he really didn't see a dramatic drop. The demand for Tarmogoyf is high: Although he's not Standard legal, he is a staple in many Legacy and Modern decks. These formats allow for splashes pretty easily, with fetchlands and duals/shocklands. So, if you're running a U/R tempo deck, it's not very hard to simply splash green with Tropical Island and shoehorn in a playset of Tarmogoyfs - hence [RUG Delver]( In the decks where you want him, he's not something like a slow, high-cost finisher where you only want one or two copies; you want four in any deck you run him in. He's really powerful: Some people who aren't familiar with older formats look at him with the view that there are tons of green creatures, many who are bigger or better, but Tarmogoyf is played in much faster formats and graveyards fill up very quickly. A game can quickly progress like this: Player1: Island, Delver of Secrets Player2: Scalding Tarn, sacrifice to get Volcanic Island, Lightning Bolt Delver of Secrets. Player1: Misty Rainforest, Ponder. Player2: Tropical Island, Tarmogoyf. Player1 casts Daze. Player2 casts Force of Will. Tarmogoyf resolves. There is a Ponder, Lightning Bolt, Delver of Secrets, and Scalding Tarn in their graveyards. He's a 4/5 right now. A single Lightning Bolt isn't going to stop him and every other creature that the other player can play right now can't trade with Tarmogoyf. His opponent has 5 turns or less to deal with Tarmogoyf and he may not have many ways to deal with him that don't involve throwing multiple cards to try to take him down, at which point Tarmogoyf's controller can just play another threat.

For #2: if you presented a mana-weaved deck where you specifically put a land every other card, but didn't shuffle it any more afterwards, it would be easy to cut the deck by un-mana weaving the deck. I did this once at a pre-release. The guy handed me his mana-weaved deck, I asked him if he was going to shuffle it more and he said no, so I took his deck, dealt it into two piles and put one pile on top of the other. Depending on the order it would be mana screwed or mana flood...

I've played casually with friends for about 2 years. We pretty much tapped and untapped stuff at any point in our turns and we didn't really take care to follow the exact sequence of steps down to the last detail. The only time we would even take care to think about these things was when one of us called another one out when they seemingly broke some rule or blatantly misused an ability. However, I recently started playing Legacy at my LGS, and while I did okay, it's difficult for me to play mtg like they do after ignoring all the intricacies for so long if that makes sense... Basically, is there a source of info that can instruct me in moving from casual to competitive play?

You might be right, but the explanation is lacking: CR 609.1 > An effect is something that happens in the game as a result of a spell or ability. When a spell, activated ability, or triggered ability resolves, it may create one or more one-shot or continuous effects. Static abilities may create one or more continuous effects. Text itself is never an effect. First, ignore "spells" here. We don't care about spells. Of course they have effects when they resolve. Let's boil this down some more: CR 609.1 abridged > 609.1. An effect is something that happens in the game as a result of a ...ability. When a ... activated ability, or triggered ability resolves, it may create one or more one-shot or continuous effects. Static abilities may create one or more continuous effects. Text itself is never an effect. Did you notice something? Oh, that's right! Some abilities use the stack... and some don't. Let's look at it one more time, only ignoring for a moment the thing about abilities that use the stack. We know how those work. We're interested in abilities that don't use the stack, like the one on Vivid Creek. CR 609.1 abridged abridged > 609.1. An effect is something that happens in the game as a result of a[n] ... ability. ... Static abilities may create one or more continuous effects. Text itself is never an effect. Weh-eh-eh-ellll, lookie here: > Static abilities may create one or more continuous effects. That's kinda hiding back there, but abilities that use the stack aren't the only ones that have effects! Some Static abilities have them, too. Do you know what the bit "Vivid Creek enters the battlefield tapped with two charge counters on it." is? That's a static ability. But, what about when we play the land as a special action? Not as part of another spell or effect? Well, number one, Primeval Titan's ability puts the lands onto the battlefield as part of its effect, but it's not the effect of Primeval Titan's ability that..."would place one or more counters on a permanent you control" (to quote Doubling Season's text). It is the effect of Vivid Creek's static ability that puts them there. Now, what kind of effect is that? Is that an effect all by its lonesome? First, consider this: CR 614.1c. > Effects that read "[This permanent] enters the battlefield with . . . are replacement effects. Now that wording is a little loose. It means, " > Abilities that read "[This permanent] enters the battlefield with . . . generate replacement effects. But, moving along. Where were we? Oh yeah, in CR 614. Let's just jump on up to the top of that rule. CR 614.1 > Some continuous effects are replacement effects. Did I read that right? CR 614.1 > Some continuous effects are replacement effects. Looks like it. I assume this means "all replacement effects are continuous effects." Yes, I know it doesn't say that, but look... it's talking about a sub-set of continuous effects, and this whole thing is set up very systematically. Give me a counterexample if you think I'm wrong with my leap of logic. So, Static abilities are a kind of ability. (609.1 and [glossary]( The results of an ability are its effect. (609.1) Static abilities result in Continuous effects. (609.1) Replacement effects are a type of Continuous effect. (614.1) "enters the battlefield with" signifies an ability which generates a replacement effect (614.1c) Vivid Creek says "Vivid Creek enters the battlefield tapped with two charge counters on it." Vivid Creek's text is an ability. (from 5 as well as 112.1a. ) Abilities generate effects (112.1a.) (it is notable here that 112.1a is defining one of two types of abilities. The other type of abilities are those that use the stack. So there is NO QUESTION, based on 112.1a, that abilities which do not use the stack can generate effects.) Doubling Season is looking for effects. Specifically, Doubling Season is looking for effects which would add counters. Vivid Creek's ability generates an effect. (from 8) This effect would add charge counters to it. (from 6) So CLEARLY: Doubling Season does not apply to Vivid Creek unless its ability generates an effect during the resolution of another ability (or spell) which uses the stack. WAAAAAAAAIT a minute...that's not what I'd conclude from the above reading of the Comp Rules AT ALL. It actually DOES look like Vivid Creek's ability ought to generate an effect which satisfies Doubling Season's replacement conditions, whether it's entering the battlefield due to a special action of due to a spell or ability (because the effect in question...the REPLACEMENT EFFECT, applies in either situation.) /u/bearrosaurus's explanation fails to hit bedrock on just what the distinction is here. Why is it that we can apply Vivid Creek's Static Ability and let it generate a replacement effect during a special action...but we can't let Doubling Season touch that effect? There's got to be something on that, right? EDIT:

0. Fix MODO Provide draft queues for all modern-legal sets in MODO, either constantly or on a set schedule (e.g. this week, Mirrodin Block, next week, Kamigawa...etc.) Reinstate set redemption for all modern-legal sets. This ties reprints to demand for sets; when the EV is low, players draft the set less. When it's high, they draft it more. Those correspond to the value of what's in the set, which corresponds to supply/demand mismatches. Set redemption gets the cards out into paper via a mechanism that doesn't print so many cards at once that it tanks their value overnight, but it does so in a continuous fashion, so it ought to bring them down over time. (unlike Modern Masters, which tanked the decently-priced uncommons, but was, for the format bottlenecks, more like [David's nose](

I've been a huge proponent of the Modern Format for some time now so chances are if you've played modern in the PDX area I may have spoken with you. CCG house in Vancouver, WA has TWO weekly firing Modern events. Living in Portland I've been to everyone's modern nights and I've only seen red castle's fire, albeit rarely, so needless to say I was really excited when I popped into this random shop in Vancouver. At first I elatedly tried explaining to them how cool it was that they had firing sanctioned events while no one else does, so far as I can tell its just par for the coarse for them. Coolest part is Thursday night modern events are free to enter and there is still prizes! Decent ones at that. Also, for the record, the shop is pretty cool too. Good prices on singles, though I still buy from red castle mostly, cool community, pop-punk music all night, good meta.

Ok so lets look at the actual stats rather than a "herp derp its bad because supersize me" A big mac has 550 calories, a typical male should be consuming 2500 calories per day with a healthy lifestyle [here]( so in terms of calorific intake it's the equivalent to 1/5th, bear in mind this is supposed to be a dinner so that is looking fine so far. Next fat intake, with 26g of fat and 12g of that being saturated we are looking at around 50% of your fat being in the burger, this isn't great. Lean mince typically has around 5g of fat for the equivalent weight, again however, cereals shouldnt have much fat in, nor should your lunch so as long as you are having some veg instead of fries were looking fine still. Salt accounts for about 40% of your daily intake which is pretty high, most people however, don't have the recommended amount of salt per day anyway unless you are snacking on crisps/chips, chocolate, incredibly unhealthy snacks. And again, the recommended daily intake is on average, going above or below on any one day is pretty normal, even for perfect lifestyles focused on balanced diets and not weight change struggle to hit 100% exactly on everything. Carbs, bread is bread, its about as much as normal bread has carbs, moving on. Sugar is the only thing there is far too much of, at 8% for a savoury food product it seems quite high, this is mostly because mcdonalds sweeten the bun which does baffle me. So yes overall, if you arent eating the fries (this doubles your calorific and fat intake with fries having more fat than the burger) and full fat coke (100% of your daily sugar intake is silly) then mc donalds isnt bad. The burgers are fast food that you can cook more healthily yourself but for a treat there is literally nothing in the burgers that is excessive. Don't talk garbage when i specifically stated the burgers were fine you absolute tool.

I love to deck build, so the discovery of net decks was a though pill for me to swallow. The truth of the matter is that in any limited card pool some cards are better than others. This means some strategies are stronger than others. You could test every card in legacy, but since you are a mortal with a life outside magic it is useful to shortcut this process by trusting the findings of the millions of other magic players. Many of these players are better at magic than you are. Many have a better knowledge of the cards available. Like I said, this was a tough pill for my inner brewmeister. I resolved this by playing formats that emphasise deck building and card evaluation. I haven't put together a serious constructed deck in years. I play draft. I play cube. You can't net deck a draft pool. There are very few resources to improve your cube drafting skills. Net decking is the only logical solution if your goal is to build the best standard deck. If you want to win you will have an easier time if you are playing a quality list that has been played and tweaked by a million players.

I made my first day 2 of a GP at Pittsburgh in 2013. Super exited to draft. Managed to draft a sweet Boros deck that ultimately went 2-1. In the second round of the day I was paired against Harry Corvese. In game two I attack with four creatures, including a Daring Skyjek while Harry is at 3 or less. We go to blocks and he attempts to block my Skyjek, when I politely tell him his block is illegal because of battalion. Harry calls a judge, which I think is fine because trigger rules have been changing a lot recently and he might not have heard. The judge comes over and informs him that the block is illegal because of the new trigger rules that require you to only announce triggers that would affect the board or life totals. He then precedes to appeal the ruling to the head judge. Now this I find very strange, he was just told the ruling based on the new trigger rules. It gets stranger when as we are waiting for the head judge to come over he tells me that he knows the current rules, but doesn't believe they are correct and wants to get them changed during the tournament so that he can win our match. Thankfully the head judge comes over, hears what it going on and immediately informs Harry that he is wrong based on the current rules. Harry then tries to argue with the judge claiming to have talked to other judges the night before about the new rule. These arguments go no where and I get to deal my three flying damage. Sadly I got no hug.

am finishing now... ...do not rely on a single interaction, a limited number of cards (read: a specific number that is not "the whole deck"), or even any specific execution. You can play any of the creatures in the deck, stack on any of the enchantments you draw, and go to town. Sure, the decks are finely tuned, as noted by u/NoIHavent235, to help insure a large measure of consistency; but that does not mean they are a combo deck. There is no set play pattern (other than play a creature --> make it bigger, like a lot of decks) that defines it as a "True Combo" deck. Melira Pod, it can be argued, does rely on a distinct quality (Melira, Sylvok Outcast + Viscera Seer + Murderous Redcap) in order to win. However, the way it gets there (a specific execution) varies from game to game. The Melira Pod deck does not actually need Birthing Pod in order to win. You can just straight up curve out your creatures into its distinct quality; or even just win through attacking with other creatures. Contrast that with Kiki/Twin decks that need to land their namesake card in order to win. (Yes, I know of instances where a Kiki/Twin deck has won off of 15-some-odd attacks with an evasive creature, but (from what I've seen) aren't most of those matches where a control player has robbed them of their combo pieces and failed to land a responsive threat? Wouldn't that be comparable to calling an Aggro deck Midrange because it could only land 1 creature when they didn't draw more than 1 land that game?) In conclusion: (

What's stopping Wizards from simply saying, "these cards are fine alone, but not together?" What do you mean, together? Do you mean in the same deck? That seems easy enough for one interaction, but for ten? Thirty? Deck checks get pretty darn complicated. WotC tried something like this once by making Stoneforge Mystic legal for play only in the decklist that matched a preconstructed deck. It was... messy. Do you mean on the battlefield at the same time? That's simple enough for something like the Hexmage Depths combo, where the interaction is a proactive activated ability. But what about something automated, like Melira? Should you be prohibited from pumping a Melira with a Kitchen Finks on the table in case your opponent casts an Elesh Norn? And even with an activated ability, should you be disallowed from Hexmaging your opponent's planeswalker in case they redirect the ability with something like Willbender?

Went 4-1 with Mardu. Butcher of the Horde as promo (he's damn near unstoppable in limited). Also opened an Ankle Shanker. But my favorite combinations were a turn 3 Hordeling Outburst in to turn 4 Butcher. Or having a Butcher in play and using Act of Treason to steal a creature, swing with it and sac it to my Butcher on main phase 2. Highlight game was when I was losing 18-1 and then topdecked Butcher and he brought me back from the brink to a victory.

Opened some great cards with Temur, including Surrak Dragonclaw as my promo, Savage Knuckleblade, Crater's Claws, and Ashcloud Phoenix. Also got a foil Butcher of the Horde which was cool... especially while sitting in my sideboard. I thought my deck was good; I thought it was really good, but either I was overestimating or just didn't pilot it right. Coupled it up with some stall-cards like Monastery Flock, bounce spells and Embodiment of Spring for ramp until I'd draw a bomb. Had decent removal too in Bring Low. I think my poor performance was mostly due to crap luck though. Lots of mulligans. Eventually decided to go on the draw and it helped, but still ended up 2-4. Won a cool playmat as part of a raffle however, which was awesome! Also noticed a hilarious interaction: stealing an opponent's Meandering Towershell with Act of Treason is a permanent theft! Overall spent roughly 10 hours playing Magic and had a lot of fun. Thanks SAG Miami!

Went 3-1 with Mardu tonight. Promo was utter end. Also pulled a bloodstained mire. From one of my 6 prize packs I pulled a foil. Polluted. Delta.

I guess I understand, however, It sounds to me like the issue is the marketplace, not the software. There must be tons of people doing exactly what you're doing (grinding for packs to sell) thus increasing the supply and creating more competition. So what you're asking WotC to do is manipulate the online marketplace so you're making more money from your packs. They could probably set a minimum selling price for a pack, but doing so means you buy less tickets. I'm sure they probably make more money from selling tickets then they do boosters. They probably have more motivation for the price on the open market to swing lower than they do to keep the price higher. They're counting on the fact that a lot of players are basically addicted to playing and despite complaining aren't going to quit. Actually, losing a few grinders who are breaking even, or even staying ahead, by selling packs could probably help the overall economy for them and the other players.

Exactly this. Deathtouch only takes effect if that creature does damage. So if I'm swinging with [Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer] ( and you are blocking with [Typhoid Rats,]( your Deathtouch means nothing because my First Strike damage kills you before your Deathtouch damage even happens.

Oh man did these came out amazing! I’m going to be searching for nothing but basics for the next few weeks! I always enjoyed the Kamigawa basic land panoramas and how Chippy and John did this [mountain]( this [plains]( and this [island]( I especially like the sky in these lands so I asked if it were possible to get something inspired by these done, and boy did Scourge deliver! I love how he managed to incorporate the snowcapped mountains, and the sand strewn plains, and the clouds from the island and yet still managed to capture the starry sky I love so much while giving the piece so much color with the sunset and trees.

How about having an actual tower of cards, where each point of damage to the tower mills the top card of it. Cards milled will be the "rubble" of the tower (aka its graveyard). And then the topmost card of the rubble by the end of the turn will do stuff (Sorceries, instants, and enchantments will cast as normal. If it's a creature, it's cast with haste and immediately attacks the player whose turn just ended; this makes it more strategic in that you can't just go all out and tap all your creatures to attack). If the top card of the tower's graveyard is a basic land (you can only put up to 2 of each basic land in the tower's deck), then it does global things depending on the results of a dice roll (Forest - human players have to destroy X permanents; Swamp - all human players lose X life; Mountain - the tower deals X damage to all human players' creatures; Plains - the tower gains X life; Island - the tower places X random cards back to the top of the tower's deck). Since people can kill each others Planeswalkers, the tower is only concerned with killing the actual players. When players' lives hit zero, they become zombies or get controlled by the tower for 2 turns, helping it to stave off other players. But they can only do one action per turn when they are zombies. This in turn allows the "dead" players to redeem themselves when they have "respawned" with a new hand of cards, deck, etc as people below have suggested. The creatures that the tower has cast will just stay there. They cannot block, but players cannot damage the tower until all the tower's creatures die. Or maybe someone else has a better idea for the tower's creatures work. Maybe the player to the right can choose how to block (since it's in each player's interest to beat the tower first). In this way, towers can be customizable (feel like playing against a tower that keeps booming the field? Or a tower that reanimates the creatures it mills (the choices of reanimations will be the best possible creature to bring out.. or the player to the right will choose), etc.

This is a hobby of mine - making decks that may not be competitive at the highest level, but are still fun to play/easy to understand. First, my decks are usually structured the same 24 lands, more likely than not monocolor 36 spells - specifically, 4of 9 types of cards that work well together, maybe some 2ofs Usually tribal, with cards that cater to one I don't mind so much about evergreen keywords At most only one or two (if they synergize together) ability words to be built around so it's more interesting than summon and swing. A decent mana curve Expanding on some points below For a beginner, I think Red, Green and maybe White give the easiest win-cons to explain. Either do direct damage via burn spells, or summon lots of/big monsters. Once they are comfortable with mechanics, multicolor decks allow more depth. But monocolor decks give them a single aim/focus to strive for. The reason I do only 9-12 types of cards is so that they have fewer things to consider when making decisions, as well as having a fairly consistent deck in terms of what you'll draw. If there's time, I usually lay out the deck, grouping the cards by type so that they can see them all and how they might interact. Tribal is also useful because if you use cards that reward you for focusing on a type of card, it also allows them to see/learn about synergies. Keyword wise, I know some focus on vanilla decks with only sorceries, but I feel that it shouldn't be too difficult to explain what to do with your decks, especially when you only have 9 different cards to think about (see above point). So for an example, here is my Mono-Green Beginner Centaur deck 4x [[Swordwise Centaur]] 4x [[Centaur Courser]] 4x [[Nessian Courser]] 4x [[Pheres Band Warchief]] 4x [[Centaur Battlemaster]] 4x [[Pheres Band Thunderhoof]] 2x [[Giant Growth]] 2x [[Rangers Guile]] 2x [[Mortal's Resolve]] 2x [[Savage Surge]] 2x [[Colossal Heroics]] 2x [[Fated Intervention]] The CMCs curve more or less nicely (4 1CMC; 8 2CMC; 10 3CMC; 4 4CMC; 10 5CMC) - The two big points of this deck are 1) Heroic your larger centaurs with the Instants as battle tricks (Giant Growth to get over a wall/Mortal Resolve to survive while blocking); 2) Use the Warchief to reward them for playing lots of centaurs. That's fairly simple enough to explain to new players, and easy enough for them to learn the mechanics. Other good beginner decks that I use MonoRed Burn deck (lots of Lightning Strikes/burn spells, threw in a few of Mardu's Goblins (Heelcutter especially) to make sure they learned about Creatures, and possibly trigger Raid on Howl of the Horde. Thinking about adding a Chandra in there MonoWhite Solider Token deck - Based off of the Elsepth duel deck, plus other cards I had around. Basically make them swarm the field with lots of weenie tokens For more intermediate players I use UG Kiora Kraken deck - take out most of the multicolor cards except Kiora, throw in extra Krakens/Leviathans I had lying around, use the Green to ramp, and summon big blue beasties with Islandwalk MonoGreen Hydra - not the cheapest, but explaining to them how mana dorks like Elvish Mystic/Voyaging Satyr/Courser/Karametra's Acolyte in a Devotion deck allows you to get big monsters out quicker is super fun. If your friend is a Timmy, this is the way to go. Not sure if this decklist is right 100% but 4x [[Elvish Mystic]] 4x [[Llanowar Elves]] 4x [[Voyaging Satyr]] 2x [[Courser of Kruphix]] 2x [[Karametra's Acolyte]] 4x [[Heroes Bane]] 4x [[Genesis Hydra]] 4x [[Hydra Broodmaster]] 4x [[Nessian Wilds Ravager]] 4x [[Mistcutter Hydra]] 2x [[Nykthos]]

405. Stack >405.1. When a spell is cast, the physical card is put on the stack (see rule 601.2a). When an ability is activated or triggers, it goes on top of the stack without any card associated with it (see rules 602.2a and 603.3). >405.2. The stack keeps track of the order that spells and/or abilities were added to it. Each time an object is put on the stack, it's put on top of all objects already there. >405.3. If an effect puts two or more objects on the stack at the same time, those controlled by the active player are put on lowest, followed by each other player's objects in APNAP order (see rule 101.4). If a player controls more than one of these objects, that player chooses their relative order on the stack. >405.4. Each spell has all the characteristics of the card associated with it. Each activated or triggered ability that's on the stack has the text of the ability that created it and no other characteristics. The controller of a spell is the person who cast it. The controller of an activated ability is the player who activated it. The controller of a triggered ability is the player who controlled the ability's source when it triggered, unless it's a delayed triggered ability. To determine the controller of a delayed triggered ability, see rules 603.7d-f. >405.5. When all players pass in succession, the top (last-added) spell or ability on the stack resolves. If the stack is empty when all players pass, the current step or phase ends and the next begins. >405.6. Some things that happen during the game don't use the stack. >405.6a Effects don't go on the stack; they're the result of spells and abilities resolving. Effects may create delayed triggered abilities, however, and these may go on the stack when they trigger (see rule 603.7). >405.6b Static abilities continuously generate effects and don't go on the stack. (See rule 604, "Handling Static Abilities.") This includes characteristic-defining abilities such as "[This object] is red" (see rule 604.3). >405.6c Mana abilities resolve immediately. If a mana ability both produces mana and has another effect, the mana is produced and the other effect happens immediately. If a player had priority before a mana ability was activated, that player gets priority after it resolves. (See rule 605, "Mana Abilities.") >405.6d Special actions don't use the stack; they happen immediately. See rule 114, "Special Actions." >405.6e Turn-based actions don't use the stack; they happen automatically when certain steps or phases begin. They're dealt with before a player would receive priority (see rule 115.3a). Turn-based actions also happen automatically when each step and phase ends; no player receives priority afterward. See rule 703. >405.6f State-based actions don't use the stack; they happen automatically when certain conditions are met. See rule 704. They are dealt with before a player would receive priority. See rule 115.5. >405.6g A player may concede the game at any time. That player leaves the game immediately. See rule 104.3a. >405.6h If a player leaves a multiplayer game, objects may leave the game, cease to exist, change control, or be exiled as a result. These actions happen immediately. See rule 800.4a.

The closest/most recent thing we have to the first ability is [Deathless Angel]( More toughness, but ability is only one target creature. [Eldrazi Monument]( requires sacrifices. For the second ability, we've got [Seht's Tiger]( a 4 drop 3/3 with an enter the battlefield effect.

The sacrifice is not an ability. It is a cost. Paying a cost doesn't use the stack. If you activate Yavimaya Elder's ability, you would announce that you are activating the ability, put the ability on the stack, and then pay the cost of the ability (mana and sacrifice). The sacrifice causes Yavimaya Elder's first ability to trigger, but that doesn't go on the stack until the next time a player would receive priority, which is right after you're done activating Yavimaya Elder's second ability. By that time, the activate ability is already on the stack. So the land search goes on top of the draw, and therefore resolves first.

Playing Karador vs. Godo. Godo has out an early Hellkite Charger + Sword of Feast and Famine, but not enough lands to make it infinite yet (used Grim Monolith to accel it out). He beats me down with the Hellkite several turns, I have no white removal and nothing to get rid of the sword (even if I did, I would still have to deal with the dragon, which was a problem), I discard a Saffi Eriksdotter, Corpse Connoisseur, and irrelevant stuff to the sword over a few turns. If I can't win in the next two turns, I'm out. I have a Knight of the Reliquary and an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth out, allowing my to search up Cabal Coffers to put me up at 6 mana (bounceland and strip mine hurt me). I cast Buried Alive, searching for Reveillark, Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter, and Karmic Guide, then cast Karador. Get hit again. One turn left. My last turn: Using Karador, evoke Reveillark from the grave (I have exactly 6 mana). Return Karmic Guide and Saffi Eriksdotter. Karmic Guide returns Vish Kal. Sac Saffi targeting Karmic Guide. Sac Karmic Guide to Vish Kal, Guide returns due to Saffi's effect. Guide returns Reveillark. Sac Guide, Reveillark to Vish Kal. Reveillark returns Guide and Saffi, Guide returns Reveillark. I have the loop on the field now and make an arbitrarily large Vish Kal, but I still need to win this turn or I'm in trouble. My loop, because it uses both Karmic Guide and Saffi, has an extra revival trigger if I want. I notice I have the Corpse Connoisseur in my grave. All of a sudden, every creature in my deck is on the field and I'm looping Archon of Justice on ALL THE THINGS.

You're not exactly the first genius to come up with this plan. It shows up basically never in competitive play because of a few serious issues. The odds that any given 4-of shows up in your opening hand, even if you are willing to mulligan once and even if you're willing to keep ANY hand, even a 0-lander, as long as it has this card, is just 61% . The deck still doesn't do anything at all unless you have an infect granter. You can go 8-of on that (Phyresis + Tainted Strike), or even 16-of (4 Phyresis, 4 Tainted Strike, 4 Assault Strobe, 4 Fling) - but even if we take it as read that you WILL draw one of those, you're looking at ~45%+ odds of basically just auto-scooping right away. The odds that you draw it later and before your opponent has an answer ready is very small as you get maybe 3 turns tops to get the combo rolling or you're just going to run into removal. You could try and mix blue in to add ponder and the like to give you a shot when he's not in your opening hand, but now you're increasing the odds you have to mull due to missing the right lands. Even if the combo goes off without a hitch there's WAY too much that will stop it, and once somebody manages to stop your combo, you just killed yourself. Mana Leak and Doom Blade, both very popular cards, can do it unless you're on the play and you're 'going off' in your turn 2, and Dismember ( very popular) will always just kill you. Matches are best of 3. If you win the opening game, which is relatively easy if you win the roll but harder if you don't (you REALLY want to be on the play with this kind of deck), you'll probably auto-lose game 2 because you'll be on the draw and your opponent can (A) sideboard in a playset of dismembers and (B) can mulligan all the way down to 3 cards or so, as long as it contains 1 land and a dismember / blade / etc. This significantly beats the odds that you draw a combo-able hand. You then start the final match but your opponent can still mull a lot if he has dismembers.

I had one faithful hour card, the thraben doomsayer. He won me the first game of the finals and played a big part of my subsequent victory. Here's how: I was playing against a black green, splashing white beat down deck. He was playing a lot of decent size bodies, and anything with trample. He deck quickly out tempoed me to the point that I considered scooping. However I had played the Doomsayer the previous turn and I knew I could start using him to build up a defense if I could only survive on more swing! I ended up drawing the "removal spell" that I needed to make it happen. I played my ghostly possession on his flier, and passed back to him. He still had lethal on the board, but I had one more trick up my sleeve. He thought he could swing out and force me to block with the Doomslayer, guaranteeing his victory, but I had a moment of heroism in my hand. I generated a token to block with and pumped it with moment of heroism. The damage looked lethal, but the pump+lifelink left me at 4, with active Fateful Hour. I believe my token traded with his guy leaving the board state much more even. After that it was just a few more turns of advancing boardstate. He scooped when I dropped my bloodline keeper. Game two ended in his favor after another deathly battle with fateful hour. I had the doomsayer once more, but I could not create tokens because he slapped a curse of death's hold on me. =/ I managed to get two silverclaw griffins to stick, allowing me to double block one of his guys, but his swing put me at 3 life this time. At EOT I made a token and we had to call the judge to see whether or not they lived or died. 1/1 tokens with -1/-1 and +2/+2 was actually a pretty unique interaction and I believe it came down to timestamp order of the abilities in question. Even in the end they were unsure but it seemed that the consensus was that the tokens were 2/2. So now I had some more blocked and my birdies were both 4/3! I thought I might be able to swing this one like I did last time. However I forgot to mention that the guy the birds double blocked last turn was a vorapede! He attacked with everything and I tried using my tribute to hunger but it wasn't enough. I had to declare blocks first or he could have just sacced a bigger guy and killed my tokens due to losing Fateful Hour. The gained life and one less swing wasn't enough to stop the trampling death. The final game to decide the victor did not involve fateful hour at all, but was still down to the wire. In the end we hit turns with me on a two swing clock and him with a Gatstaf Howler with a +1/+1 counter on it and equipped with avacyn's collar. I had been swinging with my skaab goliath, and after his last block had put him to 6. He attacked and dropped me to 5. Every turn I had been pitching cards to the yard with deranged assistant to hopefully dredge up some sort of out, since he would get the last turn swing. On EOT of turn three I finally hit my saving grace. Grasp of phantoms hit the yard and a smile swept over my face. Tap out to flash back grasp, attack with my 1/1 spirit, my skaab, and my 1/1 deranged assistant for exactly lethal after his only blocker went under the skaab. This was one of my best played games of my life and I was really glad that my desperate pitching to the yard paid off. He obviously didn't get his aggro draw, but I still had to play incredibly tight to win against his in my opinion superior deck. He was a great sport about the whole thing (even during my slower turns). We shook hands after the match and I took my hard earned packs home feeling on top of the world. EDIT:

One of my games yesterday I was in control of the game for most of the beginning. I get my opponent to 1 life, I'm still around 18 or so. He's started to develop more of a board, but I have a group of large skaabs and some flyers and decide to just keep sending in all the troops. My opponent had a plains and a mountain untapped, so with rebuke out of the picture I figured if I didn't win this turn, it was only a matter of time. Totally my fault for forgetting about [Break of Day]( It totally blindsided me, but the +1/+1 was only enough to kill a few of my creatures, so I thought I'd still be okay. My opponent's next turn he played [Charmbreaker Devils]( and brought the break back a couple times on his way to smashing me into the ground.

The card itself isn't a 'promo' persay, but the card you get is always promotional. You're buying three packs at less-than-normal retail cost and get a promotional card with it (the card itself being promotional because you wouldnt get it any other way outside of the original purchases, i.e. the sliver, m10, foil lands, etc). Yes it's not considered a 'promo card', but the card itself is a promotional idea, and it's working well.

I remember that one being higher priced back then because standard vampires was a major thing in FNM back when Zendikar was just released. A lot of budget concious players snatched up that specific intro deck because it contained most of the staples for a decent vampire deck. All you'd need to do to get a good super aggressive vampire deck would be to round out the totals of your Nighthawks, Add some lacerators and get your hands on 4 Vampire Nocturnus'/Bloodghasts. In my specific group of players we all bought at least one copy to get us started with the new breed of vampirs Wizards published. local shops in my area were selling the intro pack for something like $15 or something like that.

Let me sit you right down and spin you a story tale. Last time I opened workstation it crashed, but here the thing. It crashed with such intensity and ferocity that it overheated my CPU, and since it was an experimental nuclear processor Unit it crashed hard. Heating up to the temperature of a burning white giant (AKA assly big star) I knew I had a moment or two before BlamBloomwopdoobity pZOW. I used my last moment to use my body to shield my actual cards of course, then after that I tried to call my girlfriend. After the explosion my body was ravaged with shrapnel and unable to play magic anymore....this was before I discovered cockatrice. While using my pet monkey, Poopy Joe, I was having him stroll through there good old internet and whatya know cockatrice I have found. After having Joe download and install it A bright light engulfed me and gave me the power to play magic again without the assistance of Poopy.

It shows you the triggers and makes practicing an incorrect play impossible. And how does playing improperly irl make practicing the right way online incorrect? And who said all they said should play is modo? If you play in constructed dailies or premiers, the level of play is, for the most part, very high after the first round (or rounds in a premier). In all formats there are players (some pros) who consistently are seen in the winning decklists, which shows that if you win your first 1-2 rounds consistantly then you will consistantly play against high level opponents. The level of skill does not "vary as highly as anything else". Potentially true to a certain extent, but misses the point of what I was saying. MODO is not the best format to test a specific deck for a specific tournament with a known meta different from that online, but the original post and my post seem to be about being a better overall player which modo is just as valid for testing for. Having the ability to determine best plays, adjust problems in deck, etc. are not meta dependant. Also, once again I never said that all I do or all one should do is modo, please learn to read.

Fixing mana-base is generally not about replacing guildegates with shocks. Most mana problems I see here are about land numbers and trying to have too many colored costs. Even new guys realize that they should upgrade the lands if they. A lot don't know that running Ash Zealot, Precinct Captain and Garruk, Primal Hunter is too much of a stretch on the mana base. Also, don't go buy 4 of every land that comes out. For duals that is fine, most utility lands that is not necessary though (occasionally something like Inkmoth comes along). Mostly agree but what you were giving for the numbers of each card I disagree with. Unless you have a way to dig or tutor (something fairly hard to do in standard right now) having 1 or 2 of a card loses a lot of potency. When you need it, the chances of having it will be extremely low. Unless the deck is going to go long game these are very hard to justify unless they will always be useful or further the decks strategy (IE o-ring or win-con) No. For one, SCG does not always have the highest quality of players (especially when there is a USA GP or PT) and many of the decks are not optimized or tuned. It is often just people who run lucky and made a lucky guess on an unknown meta. Look at SCG for tech, deck ideas and basic guidelines then modify them for your uses. Most shops have a known metagame quickly. Tune to that, not what randomly did good on SCG. Yes, some such as Gerry Thompson or Caleb Durward likely knows better but only know better for a metagame they expect, not yours and even then they are often wrong. Generally agree. Should be changed to don't crack packs UNLESS it is for drafting or sealed. Both of which are great formats to build skill and become a better player overall. Also, you preach saving money by buying singles and then saying they should pimp out their cards at the same time? Real bad message considering the previous points and since the vast majority of foils become marked cards fairly easily (since spikes will focus primarily on tournaments having marked cards is useless unless they will try to cheat.

There are certain times where playing 61 is actually correct. The mana base ratios are all a bit different when you play with 61 cards compared to 60 and sometimes that little difference is exactly what you need. For example, a 60 card deck: 23 lands: 38.333% of the deck is lands 24 lands: 40.000% of the deck is lands 25 lands: 41.666% of the deck is lands Compared to a 61 card deck: 23 lands: 37.705% of the deck is lands 24 lands: 39.344% of the deck is lands 25 lands: 40.983% of the deck is lands I would always start with 60, as it's the right number for almost all decks. But after playtesting a lot of matches you may come to realize that playing 61 cards gives you the exact ratio of lands to spells that you want, without diluting the overall consistency of the deck too much (as you might with 62+ cards).

This is not true for a few reasons. Modo isn't actually a particularily good way to practice for irl tournaments. In tournaments you can (and will) miss triggers, fail to do things at the right time and generally be thrown off your game if all you've ever played is modo. Your oponnant is not going to point out your triggers and helpfully ask you if you want to activate them. Modo's level of play varies just about as highly as anything else. Cards are cheaper, so you see more decks running (for example) the manabase they should be running but that tells you very little about the skill of the pilot. You also see a lot more pilots running net decks and loosing consistently because they have no bloody idea how the decks are supposed to run. 3 it's a different meta. Competitive play is very meta dependant. If all you do is modo to"play against the best" all you'll be exposed to is the modo meta and you'll be in for something of a shock when you run into decks you've never seen before at your first ptq/gpt