Or maybe I'm just senile and conflating it with Ancestral Vision which I was very annoyed about being banned. (I do tend to think of the two together.)
One thing to note with all of these MM cards is that most of them have already tanked HARD subsequent to them being confirmed as in the set, so their current prices may not be reflective of underlying demand for them if the extra supply from MM is lower than anticipated due to the very high prices.
The worst part was I fixed it last night, then the site had an error while I was working on articles, lost all the changes and I never thought to go back to and check to see if the saves took. That's on me and my apologies.
It is a card designed for Commander. The person who designed the mechanic only plays that format and oddly in that kind of format linear strategies like Liliana's Caress and Megrim don't do so well...
Which is why I felt the need to comment. I didn't just assume you were a bad speller. I figured perhaps like many others, you were getting them confused as interchangeable.
Yeah, it really is amazing to see that. Hardly any tournament winning deck uses Ports these days, so seeing it at $75+ is absurd. It's nearly 2x the price of Tangle Wire, and that is a card that is actually used in Classic as a 4-of, and of course, in Vintage too.
Clearly, it is speculators hoarding the card. There is no compelling reason for players to buy them these days, especially at the current price.
It's probably not relevant to you, but in formats where Dredge is a good deck, Revenge of the Necromancy (depending on it's casting cost) can completely nullify it.
That "you make the card" card seems terrible. D- to the community. If you're making your opponent discard lots of cards, wouldn't you rather just have Liliana's Caress or Megrim in play to kill the opponent and just win the game, instead of messing around? Caress is only 1B to cast, so even at B casting cost for "Revenge of Necromancy" it'll be unplayable (and that's kind of a bad title too). Come on!
Notion Thief has basically done nothing for me on the game board! I have yet to cast it in a league game, and in the practice games that I do cast it in response to something, my opponent usually concedes. So no interesting stories, besides the concessions I guess, but that's a pretty good ETB trigger...
I've tried the Bringer challenge at least once. The first time I played Bringers may have been when the Kirin challenge was still active - but I defnitely played them at least once during this challenge. I was using Celestial Dawn with them. I think I got to 5 lands in play only once the entire tournament last time I played with them - so I was never really able to do much except cast Wrath/Swords/Path/Terminus a few times over the course of the tournament. I had a few games where I ended the game with 7 Bringers in hand and 3-4 lands in play, but that was at least partially due to the number of lands I was playing.
Now I get what you were doing with the original "no token" rule (sorry about that, our publishing timing and different timezones didn't allow for better clarification before the article needed to be submitted.) I think this way is more of a challenge, and avoid to just run whatever plus 12 Wrath effects and 4 Gideon.
I think your challenges are great but an unwilling side effect has been that they diverted attention from my own little challenges. :) I mean, I had people trying the Elder challenge for two months straight (and the following ones were successful too), and now nobody ever tried the Bringer one, despite being a nice reanimation bait where you just use more creative targets. Or you can do it properly with stuff like Crystal Quarry. And I once had a great Natural Balance/Planar Birth/Squandered Resources deck with a few Bringers as finishers.
Correct: you are allowed to have up to 8 Changelings in tribes with only 3 available members (tribes with less than 3 members are just not tribes at all as far as TribAp is concerned). Here's the Underdog rule:
Only 4 Changelings are allowed (except for Homarid, Harpy, Mongoose, Squid, and Whale decks, which can have up to 8, and Shapeshifter decks, which can have any number.)
Check the Changeling section of the rule page for any other questions about Changelings. If something isn't there, please tell me so I can update it.
You'll notice that Mistform Ultimus is considered a Changeling. This means a Shapeshifter deck can effectively run 16 Shapeshifters and 4 Illusions. (Not that I think anybody would care, as Mistform Ultimus is essentially never played anymore. But just for the records.)
This deck seems like a lot of fun. Possibility Storm is such a crazy card.
Lotus Bloom has never been banned in Modern to my knowledge. Has been an important part of Eggs decks and once upon a time Ad Nauseam decks.
I didn't know there was a GP in Houston. I might have to find out where and take a look.
Or maybe I'm just senile and conflating it with Ancestral Vision which I was very annoyed about being banned. (I do tend to think of the two together.)
You could be right as I wasn't playing then, but I can't see it on the initial ban list of 21, although two others in the cycle were:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/155
Bloom was on the initial format banned list. I didn't hear about it being unbanned.
One thing to note with all of these MM cards is that most of them have already tanked HARD subsequent to them being confirmed as in the set, so their current prices may not be reflective of underlying demand for them if the extra supply from MM is lower than anticipated due to the very high prices.
No, they banned Second Sunrise not lotus bloom. Unless you're thinking about lotus petal which falls outside of modern legality entirely I believe.
Isn't lotus bloom still banned in Modern? Wonder why it is reprinted.
Possibility Storm in modern? I love it!
The worst part was I fixed it last night, then the site had an error while I was working on articles, lost all the changes and I never thought to go back to and check to see if the saves took. That's on me and my apologies.
They might change the mana cost, admittedly, but at 4 mana that thing will come down *after* Dredge has beaten you to death.
It is a card designed for Commander. The person who designed the mechanic only plays that format and oddly in that kind of format linear strategies like Liliana's Caress and Megrim don't do so well...
Which is why I felt the need to comment. I didn't just assume you were a bad speller. I figured perhaps like many others, you were getting them confused as interchangeable.
Sorry about that, the two words do get mixed up pretty often though.
Simic sounds Eastern European to me. I think it is interesting to have this kind of stack in our arsenal. - David Slone
The winning wennies is going to be awesome. They need to know how to use it anyway. - Brenda Lee Reed
Yeah, it really is amazing to see that. Hardly any tournament winning deck uses Ports these days, so seeing it at $75+ is absurd. It's nearly 2x the price of Tangle Wire, and that is a card that is actually used in Classic as a 4-of, and of course, in Vintage too.
Clearly, it is speculators hoarding the card. There is no compelling reason for players to buy them these days, especially at the current price.
It's probably not relevant to you, but in formats where Dredge is a good deck, Revenge of the Necromancy (depending on it's casting cost) can completely nullify it.
That "you make the card" card seems terrible. D- to the community. If you're making your opponent discard lots of cards, wouldn't you rather just have Liliana's Caress or Megrim in play to kill the opponent and just win the game, instead of messing around? Caress is only 1B to cast, so even at B casting cost for "Revenge of Necromancy" it'll be unplayable (and that's kind of a bad title too). Come on!
Notion Thief has basically done nothing for me on the game board! I have yet to cast it in a league game, and in the practice games that I do cast it in response to something, my opponent usually concedes. So no interesting stories, besides the concessions I guess, but that's a pretty good ETB trigger...
Small niggling detail: Than is a comparison between two nouns. Then is a sequential indicator.
"I'd rather have an apple than an orange."
"First this happened, then that happened."
I've tried the Bringer challenge at least once. The first time I played Bringers may have been when the Kirin challenge was still active - but I defnitely played them at least once during this challenge. I was using Celestial Dawn with them. I think I got to 5 lands in play only once the entire tournament last time I played with them - so I was never really able to do much except cast Wrath/Swords/Path/Terminus a few times over the course of the tournament. I had a few games where I ended the game with 7 Bringers in hand and 3-4 lands in play, but that was at least partially due to the number of lands I was playing.
Now I get what you were doing with the original "no token" rule (sorry about that, our publishing timing and different timezones didn't allow for better clarification before the article needed to be submitted.) I think this way is more of a challenge, and avoid to just run whatever plus 12 Wrath effects and 4 Gideon.
I think your challenges are great but an unwilling side effect has been that they diverted attention from my own little challenges. :) I mean, I had people trying the Elder challenge for two months straight (and the following ones were successful too), and now nobody ever tried the Bringer one, despite being a nice reanimation bait where you just use more creative targets. Or you can do it properly with stuff like Crystal Quarry. And I once had a great Natural Balance/Planar Birth/Squandered Resources deck with a few Bringers as finishers.
Correct: you are allowed to have up to 8 Changelings in tribes with only 3 available members (tribes with less than 3 members are just not tribes at all as far as TribAp is concerned). Here's the Underdog rule:
Only 4 Changelings are allowed (except for Homarid, Harpy, Mongoose, Squid, and Whale decks, which can have up to 8, and Shapeshifter decks, which can have any number.)
Check the Changeling section of the rule page for any other questions about Changelings. If something isn't there, please tell me so I can update it.
You'll notice that Mistform Ultimus is considered a Changeling. This means a Shapeshifter deck can effectively run 16 Shapeshifters and 4 Illusions. (Not that I think anybody would care, as Mistform Ultimus is essentially never played anymore. But just for the records.)