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[Magic: The Gathering] - Clearly, the thread is Golgari-aligned.
Shadowen
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
There is a game. It is called Magic: The Gathering.
This game was invented in 1994 by Dr. Robert Garfield, an hilariously fat cat with an honorary degree in tormenting mice. His understanding of nature’s unforgiving savagery lent him unique insights he fashioned into the initial design of the game. Like many cats, though, he soon grew bored and wandered off to do other things.
Since then, the game has come under the direction of the MaRo, a hideous beast that delights in torturing people after they give him money, and its erstwhile "owners", Sorcerers by the Sea. However, their perch is precarious. At the age of eighteen the game is now legal, but in the intervening time it has become a self-aware monster, its tentacles spreading to all corners of the globe, and now rather than the other way around it is busy fucking us to get at that sweet, sweet cash. They tend it carefully, lest they become its next victims.
But what is the game about, you may ask?
In order to facilitate addiction, the Sorcerers have enacted a policy of regular releases, so just when one is shaking the cardboard monkey off the cardboard back, another leaps on and sinks its fangs deep.
There are people who play this game for money, more cards, or money and more cards. They are called gamblers, and their filthy perversion of a fun game into a moneymaking criminal cartel goes unpunished, for reasons unknown. Truly, the end times are upon us.
Shuffle 'em if ya got 'em!
...you want a real primer? Fine. Stolen shamelessly from multiple MtG OPs and edited:
The basics of the game are (very) broadly as described above. If you want to get a closer look at the rules, check out this link and click on “New to Magic”.
There is also a game called Duels of the Planeswalkers (there are three games right now: the original, 2012, and 2013), and you can get the demo for any of the three versions for free on X-Box Live, Playstation Network, or Steam. They have tutorials built in! Isn’t that thoughtful?
...you’re having trouble finding players? Fair enough. You know the store where you got those cards? Ask them if they have any events. Typically they will have a thing called Friday Night Magic. There’s meet and greets, mini-tourneys, casual play, trades, anonymous group sex (but they will deny it if asked), the works.
Also, don’t worry about the lore. Do you need to care about the story in Risk? No, you just conquer all the other motherfuckers. If you want, you can look into it, but it doesn't need to distract you from enjoying the game.
The Colors
There are five colors of magic and over niiiiiiiiiiine thousaaaaaaaaaaaand individual cards between them, but basically they have the following style. (Some cards step out of these for various reasons, but this is a good rule of thumb.)
White: Small efficient armies of creatures. Healing. Permanent status effects. “Good guy” magic.
Blue: Countermagic. Locking down the board. Mind control. Card advantage through drawing more cards than an opponent. “Dick” magic.
Black: Creature killing. Creature punishment. Player punishment (and not just opponents). Card advantage through forcing an opponent to discard. “Sociopath” magic.
Red: Direct damage hitting creatures and players. Fast creatures with drawbacks. Dragons. “Psychopath” magic.
Green: Enormous creatures, hard to kill creatures, magical energy generated by creatures, and anti-air that would make an SR-71 nervous. “Forest path” magic.
Stolen even more blatantly from the last OP, here’s some awesome stuff to help you once you're past babby's first Human Soldier deck.
Off you go!
MTGO
Magic: The Gathering Online? Oh, yes. That is a fing, isn't it. ...I don't play it. But here's some things held down and bloodily ripped off from the G&T thread.
Go. Play.
This game was invented in 1994 by Dr. Robert Garfield, an hilariously fat cat with an honorary degree in tormenting mice. His understanding of nature’s unforgiving savagery lent him unique insights he fashioned into the initial design of the game. Like many cats, though, he soon grew bored and wandered off to do other things.
Since then, the game has come under the direction of the MaRo, a hideous beast that delights in torturing people after they give him money, and its erstwhile "owners", Sorcerers by the Sea. However, their perch is precarious. At the age of eighteen the game is now legal, but in the intervening time it has become a self-aware monster, its tentacles spreading to all corners of the globe, and now rather than the other way around it is busy fucking us to get at that sweet, sweet cash. They tend it carefully, lest they become its next victims.
But what is the game about, you may ask?
Spoiler:
In order to facilitate addiction, the Sorcerers have enacted a policy of regular releases, so just when one is shaking the cardboard monkey off the cardboard back, another leaps on and sinks its fangs deep.
Spoiler:
There are people who play this game for money, more cards, or money and more cards. They are called gamblers, and their filthy perversion of a fun game into a moneymaking criminal cartel goes unpunished, for reasons unknown. Truly, the end times are upon us.
Shuffle 'em if ya got 'em!
...you want a real primer? Fine. Stolen shamelessly from multiple MtG OPs and edited:
The basics of the game are (very) broadly as described above. If you want to get a closer look at the rules, check out this link and click on “New to Magic”.
There is also a game called Duels of the Planeswalkers (there are three games right now: the original, 2012, and 2013), and you can get the demo for any of the three versions for free on X-Box Live, Playstation Network, or Steam. They have tutorials built in! Isn’t that thoughtful?
...you’re having trouble finding players? Fair enough. You know the store where you got those cards? Ask them if they have any events. Typically they will have a thing called Friday Night Magic. There’s meet and greets, mini-tourneys, casual play, trades, anonymous group sex (but they will deny it if asked), the works.
Also, don’t worry about the lore. Do you need to care about the story in Risk? No, you just conquer all the other motherfuckers. If you want, you can look into it, but it doesn't need to distract you from enjoying the game.
The Colors
There are five colors of magic and over niiiiiiiiiiine thousaaaaaaaaaaaand individual cards between them, but basically they have the following style. (Some cards step out of these for various reasons, but this is a good rule of thumb.)
White: Small efficient armies of creatures. Healing. Permanent status effects. “Good guy” magic.
Blue: Countermagic. Locking down the board. Mind control. Card advantage through drawing more cards than an opponent. “Dick” magic.
Black: Creature killing. Creature punishment. Player punishment (and not just opponents). Card advantage through forcing an opponent to discard. “Sociopath” magic.
Red: Direct damage hitting creatures and players. Fast creatures with drawbacks. Dragons. “Psychopath” magic.
Green: Enormous creatures, hard to kill creatures, magical energy generated by creatures, and anti-air that would make an SR-71 nervous. “Forest path” magic.
Stolen even more blatantly from the last OP, here’s some awesome stuff to help you once you're past babby's first Human Soldier deck.
Spoiler:
Off you go!
MTGO
Magic: The Gathering Online? Oh, yes. That is a fing, isn't it. ...I don't play it. But here's some things held down and bloodily ripped off from the G&T thread.
Spoiler:
Go. Play.
Shadowen on
Bored in the Morning
Posts
Pokemon Black 2: 0519-5108-3139
Even when you're playing against it?
i always liked playing against control, tbh
playing against aggro/burn irritates me the most
i hate red so, so much
My Band "The Wicked Girls" http://soundcloud.com/the-wicked-girls/sets
i'm really not sold on it, myself.
there are some decent counters, but they're all really situational.
i guess it doesn't ever get as good as counterspell/mana leak/remand again.
wizards is pushing blue into not being the best color :<
mainly by not making universal-target counterspells at 2cmc, and pushing them into 3cmc.
i mean, syncopate is force spike for the price of mana leak, and pretty much mana leak for the price of cancel.
are you going to run anything in this set over dissipate, when it comes to counters?
Control v. control is like those scenes in old chop socky films where the guys stay in one pose for like ten hours before anyone makes their first attack.
...which is admittedly kind of neat.
Spoken as someone who was never a judge at an Extended PTQ featuring seven Faeries decks in the Top 8.
Gaming Unplugged columnist and video game reviewer at Snackbar Games
Counter wars are the best.
I'm going to miss them.
Anyway, I ordered a play set of Temporal Mastery, Terminus, Entreat the Angels and Tamiyo. I have a suspicion the format will slow down now that Delver won't be the menace it used to be post rotation and RtR has all these expensive cards. Zombies will be a force I reckon, which is why I think Terminus will be better most of the time than Supreme Verdict. I figure I might as well get Entreat the Angels for $13 a piece before they have a chance to get to Bonfire levels. Tamiyo at $16 is a bargain too I think. Hallowed Fountains still going strong at $23. Oddly, the RtR version is going for $15.
Also shut your face on Duel Decks, they're fun! Also cheap ways to get access to really good and often expensive cards (Izzet vs Golgari has several cards worth $5-10 in it)
Last two cards got spoiled:
Rakdos Ringleader 4BR uncommon
Skeleton Warrior
3/1 with First strike and B: regenerate
Whenever it deals combat damage to a player that player discards a card at random.
Conjured Currency 5U Rare Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may exchange control of Conjured Currency and target permanent you neither own or control.
So you can't get back things other people steal from you with it.
MaRo et. al. have acknowledged many times that one of the most disappointing things in Magic is not getting to cast your cards, whether it's because of counters or discard or mana denial. So it wouldn't surprise me if we're seeing a conscious attempt by design & development to push a control archetype that de-emphasizes counterspells in favor of on-board control.
It concerns me, however, because for years blue has been "balanced" around the fact that it has counterspells. Blue is the weakest of all the colors at permanently getting rid of something that's hit the field.
I'm betting that Syncopate will be better than most people think. But if they really are pushing blue away from counterspells, I hope it's given something to compensate. I'd love to see Pongify in a Core Set, for example.
So the casual room on MTGO has influenced design! No counters, discard, LD, indeed.
Well, I dunno for sure. I'm just hypothesizing.
I love stuff like Pongify.
I'm ok with it.
You mean Swords to Monkeyshares.
Path to Ape-zile.
WangWurm:Armada Wurm 2GGWW
Creature - Wurm (Mythic Rare)
Trample
When Armada Wurm enters the battlefield, put a 5/5 Wurm token with trample onto the battlefield.
5/5
I remain somewhat concerned that not having Snapcasters is going to make the deck unplayable, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
There are seriously a great amount of board wiping effects in this Standard, many of them highly playable.
Restoration Angel's new best friend. Well... second-best, after Thragtusk.
Gaming Unplugged columnist and video game reviewer at Snackbar Games
oh mannnnn.
now i've gotta play with a card that looks like a wang.
:C
28 mono-colored cards of each color
- White has 3 Azorius and 4 Selesnya cards
- Blue has 4 Izzet and 4 Azorius cards
- Black has 4 Rakdos and 3 Golgari cards
- Red has 4 Rakdos and 6 Izzet
- Green has 4 Golgari and 2 Selesnya
14 gold cards of each guild, with the exception of Selesnya, who has a land with a gold activate ability.
15 hybrid mana cards, 3 for each guild, 1 at each rarity.
12 artifacts, with 1 cycle of guild artifacts (Keystones)
13 lands, with 2 cycles of guild lands (Gates and shocklands). The 13th land is, as mentioned above, basically a gold spell for Selesnya.
25 basic lands
Not sure about the mono-colored cards not having the same amount of guild cards per color. Seems like clumsy design, especially since they love love love cycles (who doesn't?).
Ape-or Snag
Love that flavor text: "Some spellcrafting mistakes go on to become spells of their own."
Arguably some of the mono-colored cards could be reasonably be considered to belong to a guild that they don't have the watermark for, as the watermark only shows up on cards that are multi-colored in the guild's colors or have the guild's keyword on them.
Probably due to cards being designed (or included, in the case of reprints) specifically for a guild but not actually being labeled as such (Arrest = Azorius comes to mind). Sometimes that design might just be flavorful as well.
What is more odd to me is the imbalance between total cards per guild, although that probably has the same solution.
Gaming Unplugged columnist and video game reviewer at Snackbar Games
Mono-colored cards with an off color activation cost also get watermarks, I believe. There's only one card of those in each color, anyway, which strikes me as odd, since they could have reversed the colors as well (i.e. White card with a Green ability and vice versa, when only the former exists).
Unstable Mut-ape-shun