MTG thread

No banlist changes, which makes sense (and is preferrably to them knee-capping another 3-4 cards again). Amonkhet is 5 weeks away, and they've got Modern Masters Release Hype followed by Amonkhet Spoiler Season Hype to try to carry them to Amonkhet hopefully shaking things up.

That's fine really. FNM level constructed isn't anywhere near as streamlined as the PT so you'll run in to a few mardu decks sure, but for the most part you can jam whatever you want there still.

My only real concern is the next 2 years just being completely dictated by the saheeli combo. What are the odds that amhonkhet prints anything powerful enough to drive saheeli out of standard? I'm guessing 0.

They'll ban Saheeli once she's not a marquee card if it comes to that. And we can expect to never, ever get a flicker any permanent effect again.

Saffron Olive's article yesterday was spot on. The issue isn't powerful cards, it's a lack of equivalently powerful answers. 3 mana counters, 5 mana wraths, and every single removal spell having some kind of shit ass drawback isn't going to cut it anymore.

You know what would have kept Emrakul legal? Rest in Peace pre-Marvel, and Stony Silence post-Marvel. Shocking how INN-RTR, one of the best loved standards in years, had both.
Frankly, Saheeli would be less scary if Copter came off the banlist, and Copter wouldn't be scary if we had fucking Lightning Strike, nevermind Bolt. Or, again, Stony Silence.

There are a million ways to keep these decks from getting out of hand, and reasonable hate cards are part of the balance.

#MakeDoomBladeGreatAgain

Heylel said:

They'll ban Saheeli once she's not a marquee card if it comes to that. And we can expect to never, ever get a flicker any permanent effect again.

Saffron Olive's article yesterday was spot on. The issue isn't powerful cards, it's a lack of equivalently powerful answers. 3 mana counters, 5 mana wraths, and every single removal spell having some kind of shit ass drawback isn't going to cut it anymore.

You know what would have kept Emrakul legal? Rest in Peace pre-Marvel, and Stony Silence post-Marvel. Shocking how INN-RTR, one of the best loved standards in years, had both.
Frankly, Saheeli would be less scary if Copter came off the banlist, and Copter wouldn't be scary if we had fucking Lightning Strike, nevermind Bolt. Or, again, Stony Silence.

There are a million ways to keep these decks from getting out of hand, and reasonable hate cards are part of the balance.

#MakeDoomBladeGreatAgain

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Ronne and I have been talking about this for a while now and this is what I'm always bitching about. There just aren't punishes available. In Ye Old Days if you were getting rocked by something you could go to the card pool and find ways to tackle it. That isn't the case right now. There's real way of punishing vehicles, there's no good way of tackling the graveyard, the board clears are expensive and don't actually clear the board, planeswalkers are a big pain in the ass to deal with, etc.

In part I blame this on the lack of a solid core set. That was traditionally one of the places were color/strategy/card type hosers existed. When Copter was everywhere I went through the entirety of the Standard card pool multiple times to try and identify what was good against it. There options were horrible and none of them were actual punishes. At best you spend one mana to blow up a card that your opponent spent two on. With a card as powerful as Copter that's pathetic.

Modern has been growing on me for a while now. It better resembles the kind of Magic I like even if it is a wee bit too fast at times. Decks are powerful but so are the answers to them. If I ever want to play a game that is 100% playing efficient threats on curve there's always Hearthstone.

Yup. We need 4 mana wraths back, things like Creeping Corrosion, etc. Even a playable Vindicate would be fine (and no, paying 3 life for one after the Copter has already hit you once plus looted isn't sufficient). I want the old 3 block paradigm back badly.

It makes fuck all difference to me because I haven't played standard since Theros was legal, but I'm tired of annoying hyper efficient creatures sneaking into my vintage games. Get fucked, Thought-Knot Seer.

4 Mana Wraths, Non-Basic Land Hate so that it isn't so insufferably easy to play hyper-greedy 4+ color manabases, and solid sideboard-dwelling hate cards are all things I'd love to have back.

Ghost Quarter, Pithing Needle, the middle-aged core set cycle of color-hate cards (Flash Freeze, Deathmark, Celestial Purge, Combust, Autumn's Veil) and Day of Judgment/Languish could probably be Evergreen without particular sorrow.

I want sinkhole back, but then again I hate fun.

ronne said:

I want sinkhole back, but then again I hate fun.

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No chance of that. They won't even reprint Stone Rain.

I know, the pussification of magic is just sad.

Plow Under'ing immediately after your opponent's Turn 3 was good times.

A 2 mana, non-basic sinkhole in Rakdos would be sweet.

Plow Under not being good enough for modern makes me sad every time I think about it.

Yeah, plowing 3 lands against a deck whose mana curve ends at 2 feels bad.

Modern is just awful. I know people think it's in a good place these days, but I can't stand it. It's the diet coke of eternal formats.

(Legacy is coke classic. Vintage is original formula coke with the cocaine.)

Modern is fine, but would be better if they banned fetches so people had to play honest land bases.

Legacy is mostly fine (aside from miracles being awful) but is hamstrung by a needless pricetag.

Vintage is uhh, thar be dragons. All like 1200 of you across the world can all have fun with your mental misstep/force of will battles and workshops bullshit.

Banning fetches+blood moon after reprinting them in Modern Masters would be the supreme troll move.

They make the spectator (lol, MtG spectators) experience pretty shit. Every match is the following - both players shuffle a bunch, look at their hands, one or both players decided to shuffle more, game starts, player 1 shuffles his deck, player 2 shuffles his deck, player 1 shuffles his deck, player 2, shuffles his deck, player 1 shuffles his deck, player 2 shuffles his deck, the game ends. Players look at their sideboards and shuffle their deck for game 2.

ronne said:

Modern is fine, but would be better if they banned fetches so people had to play honest land bases.

Legacy is mostly fine (aside from miracles being awful) but is hamstrung by a needless pricetag.

Vintage is uhh, thar be dragons. All like 1200 of you across the world can all have fun with your mental misstep/force of will battles and workshops bullshit.

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People don't really want non-fetchland Magic. It just leads to much higher variance in games with power levels exceeding Standard. If you want to know what modern would look like without fetches, look at old school. The other format with no fetchlands or cantrips.

And I'd be fine with every phyrexian mana spell in vintage being restricted.

Modern Masters drafts were fun. R/G Tokens, and to a lesser extent B/R Sacrifice feel like traps unless you aggressively hate draft away Cower in Fear. Watched those decks just roll over and die every time they ran into anyone who drafted what essentially amounts to 3-mana cost, COMMON, Wrath of God against them. Vithian Stinger was also particularly brutal. Doesn't help that an environment with bountiful signets is biased against aggro to start with.

My favorite draft deck was Seance+Populate. It was wonderful. In another draft I first picked Cruel Ultimatum and built around it for shits n grins.

Grixis control all day. Agony warp and auger spree are fucking bonkers removal, plus whatever random izzet charms and terminates you can pick up. Sedraxis spectre at uncommon is just dumb. Dinrova horror often just says removal on him by the time he comes down, grixis slavedriver is pure value town, etc. White splash is pretty free as well if you see something awesome like sphinxs rev or wall of denial.

Vanish in to memory is surprisingly playable if you're in the colors. So many random tokens floating around to get massive value off or, or strangely lopsided creatures to just bounce.