The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Magic: The Gathering- Punch a baby get an Eldrazi
SF_Dhalsim
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Shamelessly stolen from the last OP.
Welcome to the CF Magic: the Gathering Thread!
SO M:TG this is what it is, from a reputable source of course.
Magic: The Gathering (colloquially "Magic", "MTG", or "Magic Cards") is a collectible card game created by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Magic is the first example of the modern collectible card game genre and still thrives today, with an estimated six million players in over seventy countries. Magic can be played by two or more players each using a deck of printed cards or a deck of virtual cards through the Internet-based Magic: The Gathering Online or third-party programs.
Each game represents a battle between powerful wizards who use the magical spells, items, and fantastic creatures depicted on individual Magic cards to defeat their opponents. Although the original concept of the game drew heavily from the motifs of traditional fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, the gameplay of Magic bears little resemblance to pencil-and-paper adventure games, while having substantially more cards and more complex rules than many other card games. (Wikipedia)
That's Magic like most of us you are going to dump a good chunk of cash and time into this so get comfortable 8-)
A little run down on some FAQ:
Here's some awesome places to visit if you're bored at work and wanna work on your game:
Magicthegathering.com - This is the Magic mothership! You can find all sorts of goodies here, including article series that cover the many facets of magic from both a player and designer perspective. I'm pretty partial to Making Magic, Building on a Budget, and Limited Information!
Gatherer, the Magic Card Database - This is Wizards' official database. You search for cards using some different parameters (color, cost, artist, to name a few)
Starcity Games - This is probably the next biggest Magic site next to the mothership; it has its own database alongside its own daily columns. As an added bonus, Starcity is a very reputable Magic retailer, and is a good place to look if you want a price reference for certain cards.
The Magic Academy - This is a series at the magic web site that was written purely as a tool for new players to get themselves familiar with the game. While it doesn't talk about the BASIC BASICS, it does explain to beginner players the philosophies behind certain cards, when to play them, when to attack, how to block correctly, and other helpful topics.
Essentialmagic.com - This is another very helpful magic site that allows you to construct decks and post them online for critique. It also has a comprehensive list of formats and what sets are legal in each of them.
Five Rules for Avoiding Manascrew - This is an article I think is indispensable for any player as it teaches how to devise a solid mana base for any deck in a few easy steps.
Deckbuilding 101: Five Tips for Better Deckbuilding - This is another article I consider to be a must-read for any Magic player. It doesn't really discuss specific strategy, but certain fundamentals that every Magic player should absorb right into his bone marrow. Yes it is that important.
The Magic Rules page - This is where you can find the comprehensive rules alongside a list of every keyword in magic.
[URL="http://"www.mtgsalvation.com/"]MTGSalvation[/URL] - This is another great website dedicated to Magic. Their forums are extremely helpful in terms of pretty much anything Magic related (trading, deckbuilding, spoiling cards, news, etc.).
Current Magic News
Rise of the Eldrazi spoiler
this set will officially release this Friday 4/25 get you some RoE draft on son.
If you don't know where a store is I'm pretty sure the magic main site can help you out.
So what're you waiting for go crack some packs!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGtylPqqdRo
Welcome to the CF Magic: the Gathering Thread!
SO M:TG this is what it is, from a reputable source of course.
Magic: The Gathering (colloquially "Magic", "MTG", or "Magic Cards") is a collectible card game created by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Magic is the first example of the modern collectible card game genre and still thrives today, with an estimated six million players in over seventy countries. Magic can be played by two or more players each using a deck of printed cards or a deck of virtual cards through the Internet-based Magic: The Gathering Online or third-party programs.
Each game represents a battle between powerful wizards who use the magical spells, items, and fantastic creatures depicted on individual Magic cards to defeat their opponents. Although the original concept of the game drew heavily from the motifs of traditional fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, the gameplay of Magic bears little resemblance to pencil-and-paper adventure games, while having substantially more cards and more complex rules than many other card games. (Wikipedia)
That's Magic like most of us you are going to dump a good chunk of cash and time into this so get comfortable 8-)
A little run down on some FAQ:
Q: So I bought some of these here Magical Cards. They've got funny symbols on them and numbers and are different colors. Help!
A: Magic is a pretty complex game, but the basics are easy to get the hang of. Magic cards generally come in one of five colors that each specialize in different things. White, Blue, Black, Red, and finally Green. By laying down lands of appropriate colors you can add mana to your mana pool and 'cast' these cards into play, with the goal of driving your opponent's life total down from 20 to 0! For a more detailed explanation, see the resources at the end of the post.
Q: I keep hearing about 'Type 2' and 'Type 1.5' and 'Standard' and all sorts of crazy stuff. What the hell are those?
A: In sanctioned Magic (that's tourney play), there are what are called 'formats', that may have different rules and different legal card pools. Standard and Extended are the most common 'Constructed' (played using pre-built 60 card decks with 15 card sideboards) formats. Limited is a different animal altogether.
You can find a list of formats HERE.
Q: Okay, that makes sense. I think I get it. You mentioned Limited... what's that?
A: Limited formats are the other side of the Tournament Magic coin. When playing limited Magic, you usually have a restricted pool of cards, usually from freshly opened product, that you must build a 40 card deck from. Standard Magical rules apply otherwise. The two most common Limited formats are Sealed Deck and Draft.
Q: What do you do when you play Sealed Deck or Draft, then?
A: Sealed Deck is very simple: you take a Tournament Pack and two boosters (sanctioned formats tend to use the newest block, for us that's the newly released Shards of Alara), rip 'em open and build your deck. Draft works a little differently; everyone has three packs. Everyone opens one, takes a card they like, and passes it to the next person. When all the cards are 'drafted', you build 40 card decks and play. In both cases, basic lands are provided by the tournament organizer.
A: Magic is a pretty complex game, but the basics are easy to get the hang of. Magic cards generally come in one of five colors that each specialize in different things. White, Blue, Black, Red, and finally Green. By laying down lands of appropriate colors you can add mana to your mana pool and 'cast' these cards into play, with the goal of driving your opponent's life total down from 20 to 0! For a more detailed explanation, see the resources at the end of the post.
Q: I keep hearing about 'Type 2' and 'Type 1.5' and 'Standard' and all sorts of crazy stuff. What the hell are those?
A: In sanctioned Magic (that's tourney play), there are what are called 'formats', that may have different rules and different legal card pools. Standard and Extended are the most common 'Constructed' (played using pre-built 60 card decks with 15 card sideboards) formats. Limited is a different animal altogether.
You can find a list of formats HERE.
Q: Okay, that makes sense. I think I get it. You mentioned Limited... what's that?
A: Limited formats are the other side of the Tournament Magic coin. When playing limited Magic, you usually have a restricted pool of cards, usually from freshly opened product, that you must build a 40 card deck from. Standard Magical rules apply otherwise. The two most common Limited formats are Sealed Deck and Draft.
Q: What do you do when you play Sealed Deck or Draft, then?
A: Sealed Deck is very simple: you take a Tournament Pack and two boosters (sanctioned formats tend to use the newest block, for us that's the newly released Shards of Alara), rip 'em open and build your deck. Draft works a little differently; everyone has three packs. Everyone opens one, takes a card they like, and passes it to the next person. When all the cards are 'drafted', you build 40 card decks and play. In both cases, basic lands are provided by the tournament organizer.
Here's some awesome places to visit if you're bored at work and wanna work on your game:
Magicthegathering.com - This is the Magic mothership! You can find all sorts of goodies here, including article series that cover the many facets of magic from both a player and designer perspective. I'm pretty partial to Making Magic, Building on a Budget, and Limited Information!
Gatherer, the Magic Card Database - This is Wizards' official database. You search for cards using some different parameters (color, cost, artist, to name a few)
Starcity Games - This is probably the next biggest Magic site next to the mothership; it has its own database alongside its own daily columns. As an added bonus, Starcity is a very reputable Magic retailer, and is a good place to look if you want a price reference for certain cards.
The Magic Academy - This is a series at the magic web site that was written purely as a tool for new players to get themselves familiar with the game. While it doesn't talk about the BASIC BASICS, it does explain to beginner players the philosophies behind certain cards, when to play them, when to attack, how to block correctly, and other helpful topics.
Essentialmagic.com - This is another very helpful magic site that allows you to construct decks and post them online for critique. It also has a comprehensive list of formats and what sets are legal in each of them.
Five Rules for Avoiding Manascrew - This is an article I think is indispensable for any player as it teaches how to devise a solid mana base for any deck in a few easy steps.
Deckbuilding 101: Five Tips for Better Deckbuilding - This is another article I consider to be a must-read for any Magic player. It doesn't really discuss specific strategy, but certain fundamentals that every Magic player should absorb right into his bone marrow. Yes it is that important.
The Magic Rules page - This is where you can find the comprehensive rules alongside a list of every keyword in magic.
[URL="http://"www.mtgsalvation.com/"]MTGSalvation[/URL] - This is another great website dedicated to Magic. Their forums are extremely helpful in terms of pretty much anything Magic related (trading, deckbuilding, spoiling cards, news, etc.).
Current Magic News
this set will officially release this Friday 4/25 get you some RoE draft on son.
If you don't know where a store is I'm pretty sure the magic main site can help you out.
So what're you waiting for go crack some packs!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGtylPqqdRo
SC2: XxKhrushchev.539
SF_Dhalsim on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Under construction. Suggestions welcome.
I'm going to use this for format discussion. All formats are game here. Standard, extended, EDH, cube, etc... I am not well versed in all these formats, though, so if you would like to write up something post it here or PM it to me.
Right now I'm thinking of what to add in each of these so go ahead and start making suggestions what you think needs to be in here for new players and veterans alike. I want this to be where someone would go for info on what is in a certain format, top tier decks, as well as anything else.
Standard:
Extended:
Block:
Vintage:
Legacy:
EDH:
No, it's much more than that. It's a casual format that is best played with multiple players.
Ok, that still doesn't tell me much, but I'm interested. How do I play? Well first off you need a general. Your general can be any legendary creature in the game. Then you build your deck using 99 other cards and you cannot have more than one copy of a card in your deck save basic lands. There is a small banned list, though. Official rules.
So what makes this format so much fun? Well you use cards you would normally never consider because of its strict limitations on multiples.
Whoa! Some of these decks use dual lands. Those are expensive. So I have to make a good deck with really expensive cards to have fun? Well yes and no. For me, I don't give a shit about actually owning the card so a lot of my decks have proxies in them. Why? Because I can't just have one deck to play with. I gotta have multiples. And I'm constantly getting tired of decks and replacing them, so there's no point in buying a card that costs 50 dollars that I will only use in a casual format. Some people will mind, though. But if you wanna start a group with your friends, I recommend using proxies.
Drafting:
You basically try and make a 40 card deck, this includes lands, out of the cards that are passed.
A pretty good magic player actually has some of his MTGO drafts up on youtube.
Sealed:
Cube:
Two Headed Giant:
SC2: XxKhrushchev.539
Mini combo:
+
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Hopefully I do better at a release party. I went over my Sealed pool from the pre and realized I really should have been playing WUb flyers, as I had 10 flying creatures (including Dawnglare Invoker and Linvala) between 2 and 5cc. I'm not really sure why I didn't notice that fact the first time through the pool, but I think I was turned off by the fact that I had no removal in either U or W and was wary of splashing for all my black removal.
i did a bunch of drafts/sealed in triple roe online and had no trouble splashing for a third color in any deck
narcolepsy + the flying blue untapper guy keeps an attacker tapped forever
Verily, your prophetic visions are as a gift to us all.
My girlfriend calls me the Gigantomancer.
Also if you get gigantomancer out and have time to actually gigant some stuff... you either have way too many elves and a joraga treespeaker or the game is already over.
SC2: XxKhrushchev.539
I hope you are right. I really do. It may be just a, you know, tad early to be ruling on the success of RoE as a limited format.
Are we talking about our various efforts at prognostication?
@Spawnbroker: Visual Spoiler will help.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
I'd definitely kind of scout around your area ask what other people are doing either do a fast spawn bombardment or a evasive flyers deck in sealed, and in draft play it by ear, and for the love of god check all your cards before you pass.
An idiot friend of mine passed Gideon the other day, 'bout broke my damn heart.
SC2: XxKhrushchev.539
Edit: Also, wtf is up with that 15/15 that is basically like an "I win" button? Go go combo decks, I guess?
SC2: XxKhrushchev.539
I'm jus' saying, the way people been talking lines up pretty darn well with what I done said.
But of course Dawnglare.dek might become the scourge of Triple-ROE and we will all be sad as hell.
Also, why are people talking about goofy CCGdecks drafts and the like as though they have accurate packs? Them shits are crazy busted.
which shits
what?
or a zangief binder?
heck i'd use a zangief card game play mat
That said, I'd like to get a bunch of sleeves to facilitate playing with a few proxies. All I really want are cheap sleeves in 100-packs (or 50-packs, I suppose; I mostly play EDH) that have opaque backs. Recommendations on brands/places to buy?
Then my manager goes and schedules an hour long meeting right in the middle of the release party.
This hour long meeting is going to entail her yelling at us because she is a terrible manager.
Should I weasel out?
If you're planning on playing for a while I would always sleeve anyway. M:tG cards are the worst quality playing cards I've ever played with, and go sticky very quickly, making them difficult to shuffle.
I use the standard solid colour UltraPro sleeves, and have never had a problem with them.
Way easier to mix them up and not nick the edges into oblivion
And that claiming they do is therefore silliness, of the goosish sort.
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
helo 2nd turn emrakul (haste too if I 1 drop llanowar, 2nd turn drop mountain for burst of speed)
but really who needs haste, the free 2nd turn's annihilator will be enough to clear their side of the table
I was am also now interested in doing this, it looks solid enough to work if played right, and God knows I love playing weird finesse decklists.
So as of now here we are:
Creatures: 20
x4 Goblin Bushwhacker
x4 Brood Warden
x4 Emrakul's Hatcher
X4 Kozilek's Predator
X4 Nest Invader
Spells: 16
x4 Brood Birthing
X3 Staggershock
x3 Burst Lightning
x3 Raid Bombardment
x2 Comet Storm
x1 Skittering Invasion
Lands:
x4 Rootbound Crag
x4 Kazandu Refuge
x8 Mountains
x8 Forest
SB:
X1 Skittering Invasion
x4 Bloodbraid Elf
x2 Prey's Vengeance
x2 Surreal Memoir
x3 Unstable Footing
x2 Punishing Fire
x1 Raid Bombardment
That's what I'm looking at right now, definitely needs some tuning and if it looks good enough I might run this at my states qualifiers. BTW broke 100 on the top 100 in my region from this last pre-release.
SC2: XxKhrushchev.539
Maybe consider Eldrazi Monument? I dunno.
There's a good chance I just might leave alot of red mana up in the hopes he does drop it so I can sac the Spawns and dish out as many multikicked Lightnings and Staggershocks I can on him.
I mean even just to immediately Staggershock twice leaves him at 8 life and me untouched.
I'll test it tonight against my White Weenie to see if it can go the distance which I think it can.
SC2: XxKhrushchev.539
Also, Artisan of Kozilek is the best uncommon in the set in limited. Yes, better than Corpsehatch, even.
You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
I'm thinking of taking some stuff out of my WW, and going White/Red. Raid Bombardment tickles me in the sub-cockles of my heart, and Staggershock is just fun.
Yes. Obviously he hadn't thought his play through properly. I'm wondering if people would tell him to take it back, let him take it back but only if he asked, hold him to his play, or some fourth option. On one hand, prizes are at stake, on the other hand it's a pre-release and he's obviously not very good.
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
Maybe I'm just too overly nice, but I don't see a pre-release prize pool as much of something to rules lawyer over. It's not like it's a PTQ or a Grand Prix.
i know
that was an "i am stunned at how ridiculous your claims are" what, not an "i don't understand" what
Secondly, yea the pre-release prize pool isn't huge or anything but its still enough to make the $25-30 entry worth it and actually kinda worth it.
Next Eldrazi bomb deck, I tried R/W but all the creatures ended up getting too big for the bombardment to make it really worth it, which really hampers the mechanic. I mean getting at least a kicked burst lightning in before combat damage and for free is pretty big, particularly after putting a kicked Bushwhacker on the board with 6 tokens in play.
As stated below I tested against my WW deck and then proxied some stuff from Wescoe's of course updating some stuff like Lynx's -> Students etc. I came back so much faster than they did. I mean turn after 3+ tokens and a bombardment, or a kicked bushwhacker and 6/10 times dealing lethal dmg.
The deck has so much removal that it can properly deal with about every threat, the "biggest" threat is actually 2/3 fliers so I'm thinking Leaf Arrow is going to make a place for itself somewhere in the deck, because who doesn't love tapping one mana to take out a Vampire Nighthawk.
SC2: XxKhrushchev.539
I'm thinking about just putting a few chump creatures in there for the first few turns, a few burn spells, and the rest of my spells focused on buffing my creatures and huge bombs. It seems like that's the way to go with Eldrazi released, but I'm not sure. I think if almost any of those Totem Armor spells are in your color, they should be playable because of the way the set is worked.
What are you guys' thoughts?
For Eldrazi Bomb decks R/B or R/G so Consume the Meek, Flame Slash, Emrakul's Hatcher, Nest Invader, Brood Birthing keep your eyes peeled for those, since they're amazing. Hand of Emrakul is definitely needed for this to work. But be weary of getting your Eldrazi Smiteded.
SC2: XxKhrushchev.539
I really like that they're basically reprinting Counterspell, except with caveats like 'return a land you control' in addition to the mana cost. Especially with cards in the same block that get abilities when you drop lands.
Edit: Can anyone who went to a pre-release tell me how Skittering Invasion played in their decks? It seems like a good setup to drop a really good bomb the next turn.