Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Magic: the Gathering: Cardboard Crack
Posts
DropBox invite link - get 250MB extra free.
The point people make about the card is that it will never do what you need to do at that moment to win the game. Early game when the opponent has 20 life, you won't get a 4/3 and the opponent will just go from 20-16. Late game when the user is at 1 life and you're top decking everything, they will let the creature land, and will have blockers for it.
I think it's a great card, but I get what people are saying about it.
Viewed in a vacuum, you're right.
But if you're thinking of things like Noxious Revival, Mimic Vat, Undying Evil, and so forth, there's ways to make it put the screws to your opponent regardless of his or her decisions. I mean with Noxious Revival, the question isn't "is it worth it to start the game at 20-16?" It's "is it worth it to start the game at 18-12?" Shit gets out of control pretty quickly.
Come to think of it, with the proper non-basic lands, it can even be 20-12. For turn 2, that's...not bad.
You're still not framing the question correctly though: "Is it worth it to start the game down 6 life up 3 cards? Heck yes it is!" Devil, 4 life, 1 card, Revival, 1 card, and Devil again, 4 life, 1 card. In fact, since it's turn two when you are going to replay the Devil, I'll probably allow you to play him the second time (so I'm only down 16-18 on life but up 2 cards) and start trading removal for your dude. You're getting kind of a bum deal at that point. I think he's an OKAY rdw card, but I don't really see him as much better than current red 1drops.
TylerJ on League of Legends (it's free and fun!)
I can understand the points being made, but I think the Devil>Undying is the way to go. They can either take 8 or deal with a 4/3, and even on turn 2 that's not terrible.
Disciple of Griselbrand + Demonic Rising.
End Turn, Summon Demon.
Next turn, Attack with Demon, Sacrifice demon for 5 life, Summon another demon.
Honestly, this isn't rocket science. If you play it early, it's Lava Spike +1. If you play it in the late game, it's Wild Nacatl +1, which, if you've been playing zoo, is not the worst as a 4/3 is still a significant threat.
I'm saying I would like a late game vexing devil if I had something else to waste mana on like the w/r land + moonsilver spear already on the field.
ding ding ding ding ding we has a winner
And if you have that R/W land it can be a 6/3 with Haste and Vigilance and you can wait to see if they take the 4 before you grant it.
I did end up with a ton of soulbonders though and was able to stall games out late. I had two of the deathtouch soulbonder, two of the 3/5 reach, one of the 2/5 vigilance and a +2/+2 bonder. 3/5 reach creatures with deathtouch are ridiculous and stalled practically all my games out till I drew into my big guys.
I had misread Defang and thought it prevent all damage to and from the enchanted creature. That card and the two cost green enchantment that prevents their fliers from blocking your creatures were my MVPs, I was able to just send in the 2/1 flying geist that can spend four to prevent all combat damage to beat them to death with. Gisela was just filthy though in the games she made it out.
My friend who came fourth I played in the first round and managed to dole out 9 damage on the third turn one of the games. Super quick R/W humans worked really well for him, he won every round within ten minutes and stood around watching the others. He had multiple games where he played the one drop Ashmouth Hound into Kruin Striker into the threedrop haste that prevents a creature from blocking for the turn. He had two of the death touch two drop and one of our games soulbonded it to the one drop, so that as soon as a creature would block it it would take the one point and die.
Green has just such amazing soulbonders. The three drop white geist that can prevent combat damage won me several games just by blocking their soulbonded lifelinkers and preventing damage.
vast majority of games were spent staring each other down on stalled boards, i had the 3/4 flash angel and 4/3 boar as my big hitters :oops:
we had 48 players and i could only find 1 person playing black
I had fun though, it was cool getting to see a bunch of new cards. And I got a bunch of helvault bits (our store has two helvaults for two events, and only 24 players per event, so there was plenty to go around lol).
Overall opinion of the set is positive. It's got nice bombs that really add drama to the table (Malignus always got a groan out of my opponent), and the Miracle cards are really fun to draw; more than once I popped Reforge the Soul when I really needed to pull a rabbit out of my hat. It only actually saved me once, but it was still fun to be like "okay, I'm dead next turn if I don't figure something out now" and then drew the Miracle.
There is a distinct lack of mana fixing in the cards I saw though, will make Limited interesting.
And I don't care what anyone else says, Vexing Devil is a beast. If nothing else, it works amazingly as a psych move to throw your opponent off balance.
I had a really crappy pool, the only colors that had a decent number of creatures were Green and Blue, so I didn't really have much of a choice. But I had a TON of creature bouncing and damage nullification and other stuff that annoys opponents, so that let me stand a fighting chance.
Final match, me and my opponent each have one win. Other guy is playing a Blue/White flyers deck. Which is kind of terrible for me because I have no flyers in green or blue, not even in my sideboard. I'm slowly wearing him down though, he's at 9 life and I'm at 15.
He gets an Infinite Reflection and turns all of his creatures into Restoration Angels, and swings all except for the creature he played that turn. I am brought down to one life. I also have no cards in my hand. Shit is looking pretty grim.
I draw Vanishment. I play it for its miracle cost and bounce his one untapped Restoration Angel. I swing in with all my creatures, but it's only going to do 6 damage... Until I activate Yew Spirit's card text to give it +3/+3. He has nothing to block with, and so he takes 9 damage to the face and I win the game thanks to a miracle card with one life left. Miracle was definitely named appropriately, and suddenly I was the only one in the joint who wasn't talking about how much miracles suck.
Also, in one of my two prize boosters?
Yeah, definitely a good way to break back into Magic.
Oh, the deck I cobbled together, if anyone cares:
1 Amass the Components
1 Captain of the Mists (this guy saved my ass SO MUCH)
1 Nightshade Peddler
1 Diregraf Escort (the only 1-drop in my whole 6 booster packs)
1 Tandem Lookout
1 Druid's Familiar
1 Lone Revenant
1 Elgaud Shieldmate
1 Trusted Forcemage
1 Galvanic Alchemist
1 Yew Spirit
1 Haunted Guardian
1 Vanguard's Shield
1 Spectral Prison
1 Crippling Chill
2 Terrifying Presence
1 Vanishment
1 Sheltering Word
2 Peel from Reality
1 Abundant Growth
2 Fleeting Distraction
7 Islands
7 Forests
Had a nice R/B deck with lots of synergies, and Homicidal Seclusion is ridiculous. Had Tibalt too, and while he wasn't remotely as nuts as PWs usually are, he was still useful.
Definitely a slow as molasses format with tons of board stalls. Doubt I'll play much more AVR sealed, but it should be a sweet draft format.
It's funny, I don't find the format slow at all.
sealed 2: lose, win, win, win. lost with a shitty green/blue deck. changed to w/b. basically anything that said "flying" i played. 2 cmc zombie + bone splinters. yum. then emancipation angel, return zombie to hand and recast. fun fun fun.
He ended up running to time a couple of times, which prevented him from being in final contention but he sat through several games where he was floating around 90 life while he was waiting to hit Avacyn.
I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaate that thing.
Game three... my opponent leads off with the rare blue tapping guy, then follows up with the soulbond hexproof chick. Not a good start for my deck full of loners. Then he enchants the non-tapper with the enchantment that spits out a human token every turn, amassing a small army while ensuring that I have absolutely no good attacks. Then that angel comes down and he gains like 12 life; that gets followed up by a Cloudshift for an additional 12 or 14. I kill the thing and he casts Grave Exchange to get it back in his hand, casting it the next turn for some absurd amount of life. I kill it again... and he has Defy Death. >_< He ended that game at 76 life.
Every time that angel got cast against me, I lost. Every. Time.
Been a mix so far. Mediocre pools resulted in 2-2 and 3-2, and a ridiculously kill-tastic pool last night earned a 3-1 (flood for the loss in G3). One more event to go today.
Gaming Unplugged columnist and video game reviewer at Snackbar Games
You can play Bruna, enchant her with it from the GY or hand, then any other enchantments you had on hand. If they kill her, she comes back into play and the enchantment comes back out of the graveyard and reattaches, essentially giving you an unkillable Bruna.
Maybe a W/U/R deck with Thought Scour, Ponder, Faithless Looting and Wheel of Fortune to cycle through as many Spirit Mantles and Spectral Flights as possible until you can cast her.
Rares that made it in were Ulvenwald Tracker (never got to really abuse him, but his forced fight ability did prove highly useful, even if it just meant sacrificing him as removal against a weak blocker), Harvester of Souls (with the amount of creature shenanigans in limited, this guy proved to be massive card advantage, as expected) and Killing Wave (I know, cards that your opponent gets to choose the least bad option aren't generally great, but at least twice I managed to get to a point where they couldn't pay the life required to save a creature, making it a somewhat more expensive wrath of god).
Didn't pull anything terribly valuable for my pool, but in my prize packs I snagged an Entreat the Angels ($8-10'ish at the moment?) and another mythic (where were you when I was deck building!?). I did see a guy crack a foil Temporal Mastery in his pool.
I enjoyed the tournament, and look forward to M13 in the summer. I think in general I may just go to the Big Set prereleases, I like getting 6 packs of one set to toy with. Getting 3 packs of the new set and 3 of the older one that I probably already have everything I want from just isn't that great a deal.
Of course, that said, I am a sucker for little events like the Helvault thing. To make things simple they basically just laid out the tokens, dice, oversized cards and a pile of random old pre-release and promo cards, and we got to pick a total of 5. Snagged a promo Decree of Justice, the spindown die and 3 of the foil demon/angel tokens (the other promos were just Glissa the Traitor, whom I already have one of, and I don't actually use any of the oversized cards).
The reason I ask is that we had that exact situation except with the Double Strike soulbonder, and it was determined that the creature still dealt normal damage in addition to first strike damage.
Dude already dealt damage so he's disqualified unless he picks up double strike.
DropBox invite link - get 250MB extra free.
In combat, after priority is passed from all players in the declare blockers step, first strike damage is dealt. There is a new 'declare blockers' priority between first strike and normal damage. When priority is passed from all players again, creatures with double strike and creatures that did not deal first strike damage deal combat damage.
Deadeye Navigator was definitly my best card. He lets you do so many comabt tricks; it's disgusting it he's paired with a creature with an ETB effect. Bounce a creature that was tapped and attacking, have it block his big fatty, then bounce it out of combat. Even better if it was a Gryff Vanguard or the owl that lets you return opponent's creatures to their hand.
The only thing I didn't understand (and still have my doubts about) is that apparently Infinite Reflection doesn't override preexisting pairing relationships, such that even if everything you control becomes a copy of Herald of War and there are no more instances of soulbond under your control, paired creatures are still considered paired. This was a judge's ruling that allowed a player to Joint Assault for exactsies. Of course, Infinite Reflection might be the real culprit there.
The static abilities that make the bond actually do anything, however…
DropBox invite link - get 250MB extra free.
As someone who primarily plays online, I don't naturally recognize triggers. So, while watching this game happen, I was looking at it from the perspective that without the line "they remain paired as long you control both of them" no longer technically existing, there was nothing defining the relationship. But I get what you're saying, that that line is part of the trigger at the time of pairing, and thus defines the paired cards for as long as they remain on board.