MTG thread

Mist_sl said:

Aggro is going to be the only strategy after rotation unless Theros has some serious shit to make up for what's missing in the core set. Farseek leaving is a big deal for midrange and control decks, so is Think Twice/Thoughtscour. That's how control decks hit their land drops consistently and get to their big spells. Add to that the manabarbs for nonbasics and we'll be seeing a lot of linear mono or almost-mono colored decks next season. UWR doesn't use Farseek but it loses Pillar for dealing with Voice, and again, not having access to Think Twice or Thoughtscour is a big deal.

Green actually loses all of it's mana fixing in m14. Elf that only produces green, and no rampant growth, farseek, wild growth, etc.

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Hopefully the low amount of mana fixing atm means they can finally reprint birds.

Wizards recently posted a bit article about mana fixing in standard:http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazin...g/daily/ld/254Short answer is: Don't expect mana fixing to be this good in standard for a long time, if ever.

The pre-release went ok for me. Didn't win big but managed to pull a whole bunch of mythics and a scavenging ooze.

Xalara_sl said:

Short answer is: Don't expect mana fixing to be this good in standard for a long time, if ever.

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That's not really what he said.. R&D makes mana fixing good when they do a heavy gold commitment to sets. Whenever they do a heavy gold component, they swing things back the other way for awhile afterwards. If everything was gold all the time, it would lose it's appeal.

Since they needed people to be able to cast the fun multi-colored spells in Ravnica, they had made sure that between M13, Innistrad and Ravnica, you had enough mana fixing. They made the risk/reward very low so people could play 2-3 color decks easily and would enjoy Ravnica. They want to start swinging things back the other way, so the allied dual lands are out for now. He even said Theros will have a cycle of dual lands, to replace the m13 ones that will rotate out, but they didn't want to have that many sets of dual lands at once. This way, you can still play the Ravnica cards while they are legal in standard, but they are working towards an actual risk/reward to playing enough mana fixing to play 3+ color decks.

It's exactly how they've always done it, and obviously mana fixing won't be as good once Ravnica and the shocklands rotate out. But, you won't have as many gold/hybrid cards to play with either. It's the same thing that happened with Alara block, and the original Ravnica block.

I don't really buy the multicolor fatigue angle. Other than the ever-present mono-red player that we all know, I can't think of anyone who enjoys fewer deck options from less mana fixing. Being able to play 3 colors has been great, and has led to the most vibrant and diverse Standard format in years. I am not looking forward to having to dial back to 1/2 colors again, but that's life and I guess there's always Modern.

As for the aggro/control argument, Mist is right. The current dev team has such a hate on for control that it's getting out of hand. The best "control" decks in Standard right now are really just midrange variants, and only incidentally blue (traditionally the control color). I know their focus groups suggest that people hate not having their spells resolve, but we need some effective counters again. Cavern rotating will help, but a good cantrip is vitally important to control strategies working. Quicken *might* see play, but it doesn't dig like blue really needs, and right now red outshines it with Faithless Looting.

At a minimum, we need Serum Visions back, and Remand couldn't hurt.

What's an Unlimited Mox Sapphire go for these days?

Depends on condition, but a lot. If it's mint/near mint, effectively you can name your price given that the market for them is incredibly small.

Heylel_sl said:

I don't really buy the multicolor fatigue angle. Other than the ever-present mono-red player that we all know, I can't think of anyone who enjoys fewer deck options from less mana fixing. Being able to play 3 colors has been great, and has led to the most vibrant and diverse Standard format in years. I am not looking forward to having to dial back to 1/2 colors again, but that's life and I guess there's always Modern.

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It's fun because it's different then the norm. But, as he says in the article, they prefer to reward players for playing less colors then punish for playing more. However, with so much fixing available at once, there was practically no reason to play mono color decks. The 3 color decks could play the same 'reward' cards the 1-2 color decks were being given.

Taken to the extreme, you have all those 5cc decks that were playing Cloudthresher (2GGGG) alongside Cryptic Command (1UUU), and Cruel Ultimatum (UUBBBRR) during Lorwyn/Alara. Color of mana meant practically nothing in that environment. Might as well have printed everything colorless. It's fun for a time, but it's not necessarily 'more options' for deck building as everyone literally plays the best cards from each color if you give them enough fixing. The decklists become very similar.

People also love tribal, but they don't make every set tribal for a similar reason. They have added a slightly higher tribal component to every set for the last few years, but it's still not a tribal focus every year/block, it's every 2-5 years they have a set with a specific tribal focus.

It's just a design principle that gives them designer space for developing cards by adding/removing focuses to a card pool. Having a balance between a risky manabase, but more powerful cards and a consistent manabase, but slightly weaker cards, is one of the backbones of magic. They play around with those rules from time to time though, making one better and the other worse.

We are hardly at Lorwyn/Alara levels of color saturation. Yeah, you can reliably play 3 color decks, but the colors available in your early turns absolutely dictate what you can play because we're a 4 turn format now. If you can't stabilize or sweep by turn 4, you die. You really can't even afford a dead draw vs. a solid aggro deck. If a spell costs 4+ mana and doesn't immediately impact the board, it isn't playable. If anything, they need to *slow things down*, rather than push us towards monocolor decks which naturally have to rely on speed more than power because every color inevitably has blind spots that are more likely to crop up in longer games.

Sometimes you can play a bunch of colors. Sometimes you can't. I find the speed and consistency of aggro to be a much bigger deal than the current configurations of mana bases in standard.

Standard has been a turn 4 format for awhile now. That's the turn blitz kills you now, that's the turn Primeval titan was ramped out last two standards, that's the turn Splinter twin killed you etc etc. Hell, Tempered Steel and infect were turn 3 decks in standard last year.

Heylel_sl said:

We are hardly at Lorwyn/Alara levels of color saturation.

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?? Yes.. I know, that's not what I said. *IF* taken to the extreme, you have Lorwyn/Alara. They were happy with the current amount of fixing considering the higher amount of gold/hybrid cards in Ravnica, but they don't want to add any more significant fixing to avoid getting to the Lorwyn/Alara point. They are going to gradually bring it down a little bit.

Not including duals in m14 just means that they can print whatever kind they are doing in Theros. If we had the m13 duals in m14, we wouldn't have gotten any in Theros as they want one less cycle of mana fixing lands in Standard. When Theros comes out, the Innistrad ones will rotate away, which appears to be exactly how much fixing (in their minds) will be needed for Ravnica/Theros Standard environment to balance risk/reward for playing multiple colors

valishar_sl said:

Standard has been a turn 4 format for awhile now. That's the turn blitz kills you now, that's the turn Primeval titan was ramped out last two standards, that's the turn Splinter twin killed you etc etc. Hell, Tempered Steel and infect were turn 3 decks in standard last year.

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Yeah, and I am not a fan. I want that sweet, sweet Kamigawa/Ravinica action back.

Kam/Rav block action? yeah i loved Tooth&Nail
Or Rising waters back then

Yeah, no. I was not a fan of Mirrodin block at all. That shit was nuts.

Welp, my m14 box sucked. My best pull was a Mutavault, and then nothing else over $10. Mythics were Lili, Ajani, Ring of Three Wishes and Devout Invocation.

Garruk?

The quality of the entire set is very, very low.