MTG thread

Uhh.. seriously? living death would like a word with you.

edit: err sorry, Living End.

Hypergenesis cascade was pretty silly during proto-modern

Maelstrom Wanderer does his best to shit all over the fun of any EDH group he wanders into.

That restore balance deck is annoying as fuck too (not that it's very good or anything, but still).

enzie_sl said:

Uhh.. seriously? living death would like a word with you.

edit: err sorry, Living End.

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My bad, not quite what I meant when I wrote that. Was thinking more along the line of a standard curve up, with most/all the cards in the deck having cascade. So you start getting 1+0, 2+1+0, 3+2+1+0 action turn after turn.

But the card base (not even counting colors needed, just pure number of cards) isn't there.

Seismic Swans was alright for the three months it existed.

Ninen_sl said:

My bad, not quite what I meant when I wrote that. Was thinking more along the line of a standard curve up, with most/all the cards in the deck having cascade. So you start getting 1+0, 2+1+0, 3+2+1+0 action turn after turn.

But the card base (not even counting colors needed, just pure number of cards) isn't there.

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Yea, they purposefully designed the cascade cards to not work that way. They split them up among all the colors, made the effects down the chain do different things, etc.. It's the first idea that pops into most people's mind when they see the mechanic, so they made sure it wasn't broken in that manner. It still ended up being a powerful, some would argue broken, mechanic. I remember reading the R&D articles say that an interesting thing happened with cascade, where the more mana they made a spell, the better it often got, which made balancing them a bit difficult. They would have a 2 drop cascade spell be too good, make it 3 mana and it was still just as good cause it could cascade into better spells. They'd up it to 4 mana, and after changing the decklist to compensate, it was even better. You get the idea..

But, in standard there was a time where people designed decks so that cascade always hit a certain thing. They'd have a 2 drop removal spell as their only sub-3 mana play (they had those 3 mana artifacts that you could play turn 1 if you bounced a land and a few other 'cheats' to do things before turn 3), and then they knew any time they cascaded it was guaranteed to also be a removal spell. That's the closest thing I can think of that specifically took advantage of the cascade engine, other then Living End combo and Bloodbraid elf value decks.

Down the rabbit hole we go!

MTGDeepthroat on Twitter:

If it involves any of the big three (albeit Passtimes isn't in the same league of CFB/SCG), nothing will come of this in public. I'd guess SCG is involved, since they've got a Special Relationship with Wizards.

If Tarmogoyf is anything to go by, don't.

Kuro_sl said:

If it involves any of the big three (albeit Passtimes isn't in the same league of CFB/SCG), nothing will come of this in public. I'd guess SCG is involved, since they've got a Special Relationship with Wizards.

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I wouldn't be surprised if SCG is involved. During their holiday sale they were selling NM Forces of Wills for $75. I thought that was an exceptional deal since the going price was $90+. If I had deeper pockets I may have been inclined to pick up several copies. Part of me had just thought that was SCG's response to Legacy being less supported overall as a format, but now something inside feels like this was a little more sinister.

I'm just trying to figure out what I should with my Judge Promo Imperial Recruiters or my Imperial Seal. None of these are on the reserved list, so I have no idea how safe they are....

SCG has always been rock solid for me. I have no question at all spending my money with them. Bought half my power there.

You can pretty much count on Imperial Recruiter being reprinted. Imperial Seal isn't safe, but if they put a tutor in EMA then Demonic Tutor seems like the obvious first choice. I'd much rather it be Seal. I've been tempted to get one for over a month.

What exactly do people think the conspiracy is here? That wotc is printing off runs of old cards like original FoW and selling them directly to stores for resales?

a_skeleton_03_sl said:

No that big card resellers are being leaked information early so they can offload expensive cards before a sell off.

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And also use that information to buy up cards that will spike once the announcement is made public. People on reddit are claiming their SCG went around buying up a ton of duals at higher than normal prices over the past week.

Did Modern Masters get people interested in Modern and drive up some prices? This is a Vintage/Legacy oriented reprint set so maybe they are thinking that if people open up cards for those formats they'll start working on putting a deck together and those decks need duals. All of the dual lands are on the reserved list so there wasn't really any chance they were going to show up anyway.

Yea, buying up duals in response to the announcement of the set is mtg finance 101. That is hardly damning evidence.
I'm not saying they don't have inside information, just that specific example doesn't indicate anything one way or another.

The problem is SCG was buying up duels before the set's announcement. A company doesn't go spending a few hundred thousand dollars based on a rumour. Beyond the drama though, the set is pretty meh to me. Due to the reserved list, it's not going to make legacy more affordable since all of the value will just transfer into cards on the reserved list. I really do think this set will live or die by its draftability.

The one thing I am interested in seeing is if Liliana of the Veil is in Eternal Masters. If she is, then that means she won't be in Shadows Over Innistrad, which will really make me lose a lot of faith in WotC when it comes to reprinting cards.

Oh, and apparently Aether is the first vendor to get nailed for the leaks?