"Creature Bond (...) Not a lot of cards have better art than this one."
Uh? What's so great about that art? Looks pretty mediocre to me, which perfectly fits the "old time feel", art-wise (I'm really nostalgia-free). Especially when you look at it next to stuff like Power Leak or Twiddle. Now, those were artists. Drew Tucker was so out-of-place in Alpha. He was an art exhibition guy amongst cheap indie fantasy comic book stuff. Expressionistic oil paintings amongst crude 4-color characters. And Rob Alexander is just, well, Rob Alexander. He's more of a fantasy illustrator, but a pretty great fantasy illustrator (and Twiddle looks like something by De Chirico more than by Jeff Easley). You add maybe Tedin (but he's very hit-and-miss, like Jesper Myrfors) and Quinton Hoover (who has plenty of style), and that's pretty much the only original MTG artists I can appreciate to this day. (They were 25, btw. The Wiki page hasn't been updated since Alara, but it's still interesting).
Unrelated: the flavor text of the returning Lightning Bolt in M10 might be my favorite ever. It moves me (whereas for other meta-texts like Time Warp -- including the original one, when considered towards Time Walk -- they went for jokes. Although the Rocky Horror triple entendre of the Tempest one is pretty great. It's all MaRo, I bet).
With 3k+ cards you are very likely to draw lots and lots of terrible hands and you may not get the volume needed to combo off until your hand is too small. I would be a little less ambitious and make the numbers a lot lower.
I was actually thinking about that but I am still sure that the guy will be very useful in STDSB. Mono white or a selesnya deck will be using the priest because of angelic accord. I am actually brewing on a deck where angelic accord will be very productive.
I don't think Young Pyromancer by itself can lead to a winning strategy in a control shell. It's a little slow and will certainly be an auto-kill when it resolves. I see it best in a storm shell where you can produce mass amounts of tokens on one turn and go nuts with a Goblin Bushwacker.
As for Shadowborn Apostle, it seems very unlikely that it'll actually work, seeing as I dont believe all 6 Apostles will live long enough to tutor for a card, and even then you sacrifice your entire board to get 1 5/5 flier. I'm open to being wrong, but I don't think it's an actual deck.
One thing to note is that Banisher Priest is a "fixed" Fiend hunter and slightly worse for it. If you sac the Priest with the trigger on the stack the other creature remains.
I look forward to reading the solution for #3, because I admit it has my stumped. If only Master of Cruelties had haste! The best I could figure out was 30 dmg to the opponent. Too bad he has 98 life.
I'm looking for other interesting interactions with Rune-Scarred Demon and cards we probably don't have in our library anyway, like Rude Awakening. Can't quite get there, though. :)
Thanks! It is good to be back. No more of that silly real life holding me back from that important thins in life =D
Yeah, SR seems like it will be quite the headache for local judges, esp at the more casual events. Hopefully it won't break MTGO too badly early on, though I suspect that it will be a card that will have several bugs for years to come.
I agree with this fetches and shocks are the base from which you can build on in Modern. It's difficult to say exactly what to spend your $200 on as it's going to depend heavily on what kind of deck you want to play and if you want to build just one very good deck or multiple decks for variation. There are a number of a cards which are staples across multiple decks, like Path to Exile, Lightning Bolt, Kitchen Finks, Cryptic Command etc. You just need to figure out a path based on what you feel like you want to play and take it.
If you want to go the cheap route then decks like RDW, Soul Sisters, Living End are relatively cheap to build decks that I can think off the top of my head.
based on having no collection Id probably load up on the fetches and shocklands as Keya said and then fill in gaps with things that allow use in multiple formats/decks. Tarmo is great but it is very narrow in some ways.
Garruk's emblem is actually a strictly better wild pair, because the tutor is unrestricted (rather than requiring a match of the sum of p/t). if wild pair had actually said what his emblem does, you can almost guarantee it would have seen play, it's an incredible effect.
re strionic resonator, another other fun one is oblivion ring. I think you end up getting to exile two permanents, but i think it's currently unclear and I'm not sure if they both return. The more relevant interraction than isochron specter is elite arcanist, which is basicaly scepter on a stick and is actually in M14 so this is going to come up. And the one which has got the rules community completely baffled is duplicant, which without some specific ruling looks like it could have multiple p/t values simultaenously which is a rules nightmare :). Fun card is fun.
I really enjoyed these. Took me a good think to figure out #s 1 and 2; just challenging enough to be enjoyable, like an easy Sudoku. Gatherer is down right now, so I'm not taking a stab at #3. Sadly, I don't know ALL the modern-legal demons and changelings off the top of my head. I'll work on that. ;)
Nice! I would reallly love to get at least 15 qp's for a season. But reading your article it seems I would really need to spent a lot of time and money to do it and my real life is just not permitting me to do that. Anyway I hope you get more luck this season. I heard the PRM card is a sweet Plateu
You may know this already, but your local library probably also has ebooks you can check out and read on your Nook. I know there are "other" ways to get them, but as a Magic-playing librarian it's my duty to raise the banner when I can. :)
AJ, how do they get past the Leyline of Sanctity (you have shroud)? And even more to the point, even if I had missed the contingency, the type of puzzle is a fun one and can be adapted in any number of ways. Another way of addressing the burn issue instead of Leyline would have been to simply state that "you didn't include a single burn spell in your deck..." in the problem.
Edit: one potential out is that depending on the number of cards in the opponent's hand, a Vise-like effect could also win. Given that uncertainty, let's say opponent is known to have three basic lands in hand.
Edit2: I guess I need to change the wall to Angelic Wall to prevent a few flying blue shroud creatures from also being solutions. These include Aven Fleetwing, Zephid, Sphinx of Jwar Isle, Soratami Rainshaper, Advanced Hoverguard, and Frost Raptor. Cephalid Inkshrouder can be tapped by the Bola in response to his ability.
I read a ton, I just use my Nook. Traveling of any sort is just bad for me, I started to exercise more with my free time, so I know there is plenty to do besides magic :D
"Creature Bond (...) Not a lot of cards have better art than this one."
Uh? What's so great about that art? Looks pretty mediocre to me, which perfectly fits the "old time feel", art-wise (I'm really nostalgia-free). Especially when you look at it next to stuff like Power Leak or Twiddle. Now, those were artists. Drew Tucker was so out-of-place in Alpha. He was an art exhibition guy amongst cheap indie fantasy comic book stuff. Expressionistic oil paintings amongst crude 4-color characters. And Rob Alexander is just, well, Rob Alexander. He's more of a fantasy illustrator, but a pretty great fantasy illustrator (and Twiddle looks like something by De Chirico more than by Jeff Easley). You add maybe Tedin (but he's very hit-and-miss, like Jesper Myrfors) and Quinton Hoover (who has plenty of style), and that's pretty much the only original MTG artists I can appreciate to this day. (They were 25, btw. The Wiki page hasn't been updated since Alara, but it's still interesting).
Unrelated: the flavor text of the returning Lightning Bolt in M10 might be my favorite ever. It moves me (whereas for other meta-texts like Time Warp -- including the original one, when considered towards Time Walk -- they went for jokes. Although the Rocky Horror triple entendre of the Tempest one is pretty great. It's all MaRo, I bet).
With 3k+ cards you are very likely to draw lots and lots of terrible hands and you may not get the volume needed to combo off until your hand is too small. I would be a little less ambitious and make the numbers a lot lower.
I was actually thinking about that but I am still sure that the guy will be very useful in STDSB. Mono white or a selesnya deck will be using the priest because of angelic accord. I am actually brewing on a deck where angelic accord will be very productive.
I don't think Young Pyromancer by itself can lead to a winning strategy in a control shell. It's a little slow and will certainly be an auto-kill when it resolves. I see it best in a storm shell where you can produce mass amounts of tokens on one turn and go nuts with a Goblin Bushwacker.
As for Shadowborn Apostle, it seems very unlikely that it'll actually work, seeing as I dont believe all 6 Apostles will live long enough to tutor for a card, and even then you sacrifice your entire board to get 1 5/5 flier. I'm open to being wrong, but I don't think it's an actual deck.
One thing to note is that Banisher Priest is a "fixed" Fiend hunter and slightly worse for it. If you sac the Priest with the trigger on the stack the other creature remains.
Enlightened Tutor is likely the best card in the format, and easily fits in his deck.
This was a great read :)
I dunno......is it foil alt art dryer lint......cause that is def gonna go up in value over time.
I look forward to reading the solution for #3, because I admit it has my stumped. If only Master of Cruelties had haste! The best I could figure out was 30 dmg to the opponent. Too bad he has 98 life.
I'm looking for other interesting interactions with Rune-Scarred Demon and cards we probably don't have in our library anyway, like Rude Awakening. Can't quite get there, though. :)
Thanks! It is good to be back. No more of that silly real life holding me back from that important thins in life =D
Yeah, SR seems like it will be quite the headache for local judges, esp at the more casual events. Hopefully it won't break MTGO too badly early on, though I suspect that it will be a card that will have several bugs for years to come.
I find it funny that Magic and Real Estate have so much in common sometimes. Location, Location, Location.
I agree with this fetches and shocks are the base from which you can build on in Modern. It's difficult to say exactly what to spend your $200 on as it's going to depend heavily on what kind of deck you want to play and if you want to build just one very good deck or multiple decks for variation. There are a number of a cards which are staples across multiple decks, like Path to Exile, Lightning Bolt, Kitchen Finks, Cryptic Command etc. You just need to figure out a path based on what you feel like you want to play and take it.
If you want to go the cheap route then decks like RDW, Soul Sisters, Living End are relatively cheap to build decks that I can think off the top of my head.
based on having no collection Id probably load up on the fetches and shocklands as Keya said and then fill in gaps with things that allow use in multiple formats/decks. Tarmo is great but it is very narrow in some ways.
Cool ep, nice to see (hear) keya back.
Garruk's emblem is actually a strictly better wild pair, because the tutor is unrestricted (rather than requiring a match of the sum of p/t). if wild pair had actually said what his emblem does, you can almost guarantee it would have seen play, it's an incredible effect.
re strionic resonator, another other fun one is oblivion ring. I think you end up getting to exile two permanents, but i think it's currently unclear and I'm not sure if they both return. The more relevant interraction than isochron specter is elite arcanist, which is basicaly scepter on a stick and is actually in M14 so this is going to come up. And the one which has got the rules community completely baffled is duplicant, which without some specific ruling looks like it could have multiple p/t values simultaenously which is a rules nightmare :). Fun card is fun.
i need to get a new library card!
I believe you can borrow from any library networked to yours. So with ebooks since its online you don't have to travel to get them. :D
I disagree, i think his slide list is fine, it's just not a very good deck for the format.
i was able to balance it pretty well, just had to find reasons to not be online like if my son was over :D
that I actually did not know, I had heard it in a quiet rumor, so I will see if my local library does that.
I really enjoyed these. Took me a good think to figure out #s 1 and 2; just challenging enough to be enjoyable, like an easy Sudoku. Gatherer is down right now, so I'm not taking a stab at #3. Sadly, I don't know ALL the modern-legal demons and changelings off the top of my head. I'll work on that. ;)
Nice! I would reallly love to get at least 15 qp's for a season. But reading your article it seems I would really need to spent a lot of time and money to do it and my real life is just not permitting me to do that. Anyway I hope you get more luck this season. I heard the PRM card is a sweet Plateu
You may know this already, but your local library probably also has ebooks you can check out and read on your Nook. I know there are "other" ways to get them, but as a Magic-playing librarian it's my duty to raise the banner when I can. :)
AJ, how do they get past the Leyline of Sanctity (you have shroud)? And even more to the point, even if I had missed the contingency, the type of puzzle is a fun one and can be adapted in any number of ways. Another way of addressing the burn issue instead of Leyline would have been to simply state that "you didn't include a single burn spell in your deck..." in the problem.
Edit: one potential out is that depending on the number of cards in the opponent's hand, a Vise-like effect could also win. Given that uncertainty, let's say opponent is known to have three basic lands in hand.
Edit2: I guess I need to change the wall to Angelic Wall to prevent a few flying blue shroud creatures from also being solutions. These include Aven Fleetwing, Zephid, Sphinx of Jwar Isle, Soratami Rainshaper, Advanced Hoverguard, and Frost Raptor. Cephalid Inkshrouder can be tapped by the Bola in response to his ability.
I read a ton, I just use my Nook. Traveling of any sort is just bad for me, I started to exercise more with my free time, so I know there is plenty to do besides magic :D
I want to know the answers now. I couldn't even figure out Puzzle #1. I was always one point of damage short.
My answer is Tinker -> Blightsteel -> win. That's why I play Classic. :)