MTG thread

I usually snag a box of a new set, just because I'm able to trade around and get most of what I'd want quickly before prices stabilize. There's a fair number of $5 cards that I think will end up seeing play, and at least a handful of popular cards that will trade easily like Mutavault and Ooze. Unfortunately, my luck with pulling those cards was really bad, and I ended up with quite a few bulk rares. I very cheaply preordered a number of cards that have shot up into the $3-5 range, so I was hoping to snag extras to trade away, but oddly enough I pulled almost none of the cards I had preordered sets of. It's probably the unluckiest box of cards I've ever opened.

The good news is there's only a handful of cards remaining I actually want from the set. Hydras and Archangels are overheated right now and will almost certainly drop significantly, as will Chandra and Garruk. I really only want to finish sets of Mutavault, Lifebane Zombie and Fiendslayer Paladin and I'll be done for now. It's a set I want to make sure I have covered by rotation since new cards will almost certainly rise to the surface, but I just don't see myself playing a lot of Hydras or Archangels right now.

Mist_sl said:

Oh, yeah, I guess. 6 mana planeswalkers have never impressed previously.

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I think this Garruk has legs. He's expensive, but in green he's almost certain to come down much earlier than turn 6, and he can carve out really significant card advantage very fast. His +1 can net a ton of cards, and it also cycles your land away at a point in the game when you no longer need to draw it. He doesn't directly defend himself, which is a huge negative, but he'll be hitting play later than many of your creatures, he'll replace himself at minimum the turn he hits play, and in the worst case he can cheat something gigantic into play much earlier than normal.

He's a damn sight better than new Chandra. Talk about another huge letdown.

This is true but he has potential in the right deck. In terms of drafting this set has potential at least. Also there is Ratchet Bomb which will put some of the token heavy decks on notice but yes this set is relatively underwhelming.

Super happy to have Ratchet Bomb back.

You don't buy a box for singles. You either buy a case or two, or you just get the playsets you need with cash.

I suspect whatever set includes fetch lands will have a similar value. And of course MM boxes were a steal if you got them close to retail.

Core sets are just fucking boring, that's really all there is to it. There are inevitable sleeper hits, but generally speaking they're just not exciting in the way the yearly blocks are. I doubt Theros will be lower power, but they're definitely steering the ship in new directions by shrinking the multicolor focus.

Either way, this has been a phenomenal standard season.

Tenth Edition (not M10, which is bleh) will forever be for me the perfect core set. The design goal was to include at least one card from every set in the game's history and it'sawesome.We've got the full set of ten pain lands, Underworld Dreams, Birds of Paradise, Wrath of God, Abundance, cool legends like Ambassador Laquatus, Squee, Cho-Manno, fancy shit like Doubling Cube, Time Stretch, Legacy Weapon, Warp World, Phage the Untouchable, classics like Serra Angle, Mahamoti Djinn, Shivan Dragon, and Sengir Vampire, Royal Assassin, Nightmare, Pithing Needle, Story Circle, Hypnotic Specter, Troll Ascetic, and others. The uncommons have things like Tidings, Sylvan Scrying, Thieving Magpie, the baller Urza's Legacy man lands, Soul warden, Rain of Tears, Overrun, Mogg Fanatic, Mind Stone, and Icy Manipulator.

It was a great way of getting older cards into the hands of newer players and let geezers play with some of their old favorites in Standard again. I love this set.

M10 is where we see a bunch of "new" cards that are functional reprints or borderline functional reprints, a bunch of chaff, and maybe a couple new chase cards. Maybe. And boy, is there no need to do a big fancy reprint oriented core set when people are willing to shell out 14 dollars a pack for cards for a format they don't even play.

Young Pyromancer is my favorite card, not really interested in much else in M14.

Arbitrary_sl said:

M10 is where we see a bunch of "new" cards that are functional reprints or borderline functional reprints, a bunch of chaff, and maybe a couple new chase cards. Maybe. And boy, is there no need to do a big fancy reprint oriented core set when people are willing to shell out 14 dollars a pack for cards for a format they don't even play.

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You mean M14 here, right? And MM packs sold because people were interested in seeing old money cards reprinted, the packs were fun as hell to open, and it gave them hope of entering into Modern. I jumped into Modern more or less as a result of MM renewing interest, and not because of any specific reprint.

I know it's not intended to be a 20th anniversary product, but M14 feels pretty lame. It's painfully obvious that the B team was designing this one with an eye towards non-competitive play. Whereas M10 was fun for everyone, and M13 was just a damn good set with some decent tournament staples and a fun limited environment, M14 is neither. A couple neat commons came back like Brave the Elements, but overall it feels like a set that is waiting for Theros to make good on potential.

I thought they started to head in a better direction with m10, but they haven't continued forward with any progress. I get that the idea of a core set is to have something easier/simpler for newer players to get into.. but it's just fucking boring, and always under-powered versus expert level sets.

At the very least, I see no reason they can't make a concious effort to put simple, but powerful, cards in a core set to make it attractive to experienced players as well. If the experienced players, who the new players learn the game from, don't want to play or buy the core set, then less new players will either.

They did a great job with all the duel decks and stuff to create a launching point to getting players into the game. With those products around, I think it's time they re-thought their stance on core sets again.

Personally, I wish they'd just get rid of them, or not have it take up the slot of a normal set for 3 months of drafting at the very least. 3 months of drafting any core set is always boring. The first few weeks are fine, but the format gets figured out very quickly relative to expert expansions and there's rarely any reason to draft them for value, since there's never many money cards in the sets.

If they just released a core set every time Standard is going to rotate, with minimal changes, as an additional product rather then INSTEAD of a normal set release.. it'd be fine. Don't make too many changes so it doesn't take up a bunch of R&D time. Hell, fill it with all the cards that don't make it into the expansion sets due to technical reasons (too many common white creatures, for example) plus whatever staples they think we'll need in Standard for that time period.

Alternatively, if that won't work out, they need to up the 'difficulty' level of the core set to just below expert. Reusing mechanics to make it 'easier' to learn is fine on paper, but in reality a new player isn't familiar with that mechanic beforehand anyways.

Avoid overly wordy cards to eliminate complex rules interactions, that's fine, but up the power level of the core set at least. Especially at uncommon/rare. They throw some good mythics into core sets most of the time, and then those are the money cards due to their scarcity compared to expansion set mythics. Less people buy/draft core sets, so there is less of those cards in circulation, artificially driving their price up a bit higher then it should be.

To all of you bitching about the core sets and the simplicity of them you are missing the whole point of core sets. They aren't for you. Yes some of you said that they know that they are geared towards new players but then go on to bitch about them being simple and easy to figure out. Well no shit. Sure they put some decent standard cards in the set but that is not the main point.

Wizards, unlike other game companies like Games Workshop, know that the lifeblood of any hobby type game is getting new players and they wont be doing that by making sets that frustrate them and make them quit. The core sets are fine and are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

True, and worst case you can ask your game store to do side drafts of Ravnica or Modern Masters. I know a few game stores in Seattle do this.

Wuyley_sl said:

To all of you bitching about the core sets and the simplicity of them you are missing the whole point of core sets. They aren't for you.

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Tenth Edition was for me. Actually, a number of core sets were really decent. I'm not a fan of the current way they do core sets overall but among the "M" series I think M13 is pretty good. It's got some neat new cards and some interesting reprints and I can see reasons for players of different skill levels to choose to buy packs of that set.

I can't see any reason for anyone to buy M14. I can't see anyone recommending to a new player for them to buy M14. For most players the set boils down to two or three cards they *may* want play sets of. I can't see anyone wanting to draft it.

Someonehas to open the product for Scavenging Oozes? /shrug

I'd be curious how well core does as a "better for new players" thing. Everyone I know who was a new player in the past 18 months had a LOT more fun with the ravnica block cards than M13, and M13 was a hell of a lot better than M14. New != retarded. New != Timmy. New just means you are new to the game and have some things to learn, not that you need everything to be simple and boring so as not to be overwhelmed.

Mist_sl said:

It's not good for players new to standard when the cards sold to them as being 'core' cards rotate in less time than any other set. Imagine being a kid who started playing standard when m13 came out, you plopped down your allowance for some Thundermaws, and now they're gone within a year basically.

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This, and what caused it was the domination of titans for two product cycles. Since then they seem to think that they need to rotate mythics faster in core sets, which is just patently false. As much as I dread seeing Thundermaws hit the table against me, they should have stayed around for two years. I can see arguments for letting Thragtusk lapse after just one. It's a simple rare, and it was a herp derp over-correction to a problem that no longer exists. On the other hand, it would have lost a ton of power when Resto Angel leaves, so it could have just as well stayed.

They rotate the core set so quickly mostly for business reasons, imo. You won't sell much product if only 30% of a set rotates every year. Instead, it gets used to set a baseline for the next block, or to tweak the mechanics of that block in year 2.