In the case of creatures with Undying, two uses a turn. So, with Geralf's messenger and a sacrifice outlet, they really don't have much time to work with.
The only reason it exists at all is because they wanted to design a set based on a real world setting, and the flavor of flying did not fit that set, while they still wanted the functional aspects of the mechanic. Horsemanship as a mechanic offers nothing at all in and of itself, it is merely flying that doesn't count as flying because it has been renamed.
The only way it ever gets done again is they find themselves under similar constraints, a set that requires flying, but for whatever reason, would prefer not to use flying for thematic reasons.
Comments only ordered by the sequence of appearance in my brain:
1) what happened to the end?
2) Horsemanship
3) Dragons too (there will always be some fliers) but why not both?
4) Timetwister is broken in the right deck. (Remember the deck that you inevitably built in Shandalar that ended with you twisting with 4 black vise and 4 copy artifact on the table?
5) They took a more than a month to return tribal. They suck at bringing things back. They excel at taking things away. Particularly things some portion of the population adores.
6) Prices crashing is not unexpected with reprinting of hot cards but the fact that Force dropped this much indicates a deflation following hoarders going into panic mode. Ditto for LED. [Expletive redacted] Hoarders. I probably should have waited a few more weeks but I got 2 fows when they dropped within range.
7) You guys had a great moment there that made me lol and probably had my gf wondering wtf.
8) I am still very bearish in general on the whole beta thing but to leave the dead horse in peace for a moment I am not terribly filled with confidence that the next cycle will be full of awesome when the options for bringing back an old mechanic are: Horsemanship, Flanking and Bushido. I hope for the first and dread the latter two.
I could understand being upset to losing unrealized gains and in my retirement portfolio it would be a different story, but in a game where we want a vibrant and healthy vintage format it is a different story. We just need to put things in perspective...
I am more upset at the long term prospects with Beta.
I could understand being upset to losing unrealized gains and in my retirement portfolio it would be a different story, but in a game where we want a vibrant and healthy vintage format it is a different story. We just need to put things in perspective...
I am more upset at the long term prospects with Beta than
You can not get any sort of infinite combo with this. She returns the creature at the beginning of the next end step, so the best you can get is one use a turn per creature.
I haven't had much success in this format at the LGS, but I have done pretty well in Sealed.
I am thinking the best strategy is to stay as open as possible in Pack 1 (more than usual), just to make sure that you get hooked up in the Theros pack. I have had trouble reading signals in JOU so far. In one draft I ended up in the exact same combination as my neighbor, and shared one the other time.
I can dig the concept of Tribute. I enjoy "choose your poison" cards like Fact or Fiction. The choices could've been more interesting though. Could be a nice mechanic to revisit except be more imaginative with.
Inspired was also.. fine. Not inspiring, but fine.
Heroic was appropriate for the set but not good as a standalone mechanic. I think that's alright.
Strive is lazy. Like you said, we already have Replicate. What's the point of Strive? Easier to understand than Replicate, maybe?
Bestow was my favorite in terms of mechanics. I REALLY like how it plays out in Limited, specifically how the dual casting option helps with the curve. It felt different enough too.
If you can convince anybody other than yourself that people who have 'lost unrealized capital gains but are really cash flow positive regardless' did not suffer a loss, then that would be ground breaking economics and you deserve a Nobel Prize. The market value of your portfolio is what matters not the amount of money you initially invested. You always do a mark-to-market.
Sometimes I hope the people you classify in group 2 and 3 would just quit the game and sell their collections. Then prices would decrease and the entry barrier for new players would be lower. Hence, once they quit we will get a lot of new players and maybe a positive atmosphere? Too much of the feedback from the V4-haters is non-constructive. But all the threats and screaming about quitting the game are most likely just empty threats in the end.
Am I correct in assuming that Act of Treason is preferred over Harness by Force because you're hoping you'll close out the game before you hit your sixth land? ;)
I agree with you Cownose in that they need to determine a strategy and stick to it but to a degree, I would expect any company to rethink any strategy and make changes to it over 10 years. I am not sure I agree with some of your other points though, like I certainly think VMA will significantly reduce the cost of playing eternal online. After around a month or so of VMA if we price any vintage deck to pre-VMA announced prices my bet it is MUCH lower (~30% to 50%). I also do not think MOCS promo's and flashback events did enough to lower the price, even with them prices were very high for new entrants.
In terms of the collectors, in VMA WOTC did alter the art in an effort to differentiate it from the prior releases. I think this is a smart strategy to give collectors unique cards while reprinting. So by changing the art the collectors still have a unique card for their collection and the only thing lost to most of them is unrealized capital gains. My opinion is the fact the VMA has many of the vintage cards, uses different art, will be in stores for a long time and by my estimation significantly reduce the cost of playing the format the vintage format will most likely end up a successful and vibrant format online (unlike classic). That said, as one of the people that purchased some newly reprinted cards and have lost value it does sting and upset me in the short term, although if I look at my whole collection I am cash flow positive.
I think the real VMA problem is that over the last 10 years or so WotC has changed their stance on the secondary market. Chronicles aside, WotC generally ignored secondary market prices in their products. Once in a while an expensive card would get reprinted (like Underworld Dreams) and lose value, but I never got the impression that those decisions were being made BASED on the secondary market value of the cards. Then, a few years back WotC started printing precon decks/sets (Commander, FTV, Premium Deck Series, Event Decks) where the entire makeup of the sets was based on their current secondary market values. The secondary market justified the MSRP all by itself. This, in my opinion, was a very dangerous road to go down that has led us to where we are today.
The secondary market is fickle and like it or not MTG has always been a COLLECTIBLE card game. The concept of reprinting cards specifically to try and control their secondary market value is both foolish (that is not how the market works) and damaging to the idea that Magic is a CCG. Vintage Masters is not going to significantly reduce the cost of playing eternal online. They hose players/collectors by reprinting a bunch of expensive stuff...and then anything they don't reprint will skyrocket in value. If enough people are willing to pay $3K to play online, then online decks will cost $3K--all WotC can do about that is to shift from one specific card being expensive to another (reprint Fow but not MisD? Now MisD is $100, reprinting duals but not fetchlands? Now ONS fetches are $60...). So they piss off the people who spend the most on their product while still having a significant cost barrier to entry to play the formats. Making reprint decisions based on a secondary market they cannot control is and always will be a mistake.
The solution is not to allow people to get priced out of formats, but to have prevented the formats from becoming so insanely expensive in the first place. WotC would have made buying into classic/legacy cheaper with more flashback drafts or more Master's Edition products, but they didn't. They let cards grow and grow in value for YEARS and then all of a sudden pulled the rug out from under anyone who dared to pay market value for the ability to play old formats. If Fow went from $30 to $25 nobody would care, but letting it climb to $110 and THEN dropping 2 promos and reprinting it down to $25 or $30 is a very different (and much worse) thing. It all boils down to the same problems shiny has experienced: no forward thinking vision, no planning, lack of a coherent policy, and lack of leadership. I am glad that VMA is going to make Vintage available to more people, but I wish it had been done properly instead of the format malpractice we got.
WOTC needs to decide: either you care about secondary market values or you don't. The not caring for years and then all of a sudden crashing the market thing is the absolute WORST possible way to go about managing your formats. It pisses people off (and rightfully so) and erodes trust in your ability to manage your product.
I might be misremembering, but I felt like the format was completely "solved" after last year's PT. Right now, I feel like the format is very open. Junk Midrange looks really strong, BUG Control might be the best deck overall, and even Naya (RG Elspeth) looks like its back. I am more excited about the Block format than ever. Can't wait to see what you have to say next week PB.
Well, it looks like i was right on one call with the enchantress shell - when building it, I ended up cutting whip because I didn't want to put in all of the good whip targets which turns out to have been the right call i think (only 2 decks that went 6-X or better played ashen rider maindeck). Elspeth was still the wincon of choice for those junk decks though, not ajani as I thought. I completely whiffed on the control shell though, BUG was the deck of choice which makes sense in retrospect. anyway, more on the pro tour next week!
I picked up 2 FOWs @38.5 and now expect them to drop further but I felt at the time they were worth grabbing in case of a boomerang. I saw promo LEDs going for a similar price too. The price sky is going to fall abit because of reprintings but also because of people bailing (as happened last November ever so briefly.) I expect lots of prices to crash for a while. Give them a year and they will be high again.
The rare/mythic/special print run will probably be 489 packs rather than 477. The 489 card print run breakdown would then look like this:
420 Rares (4 of each rare)
60 Mythics (2 of each mythic)
9 Special (1 of each P9)
I'm thinking it would work this way as it is similar to how the print run works for a regular large set (121 cards, 106 rares (2 of each) and 15 mythics (1 each))
Probably more of a nitpick, but it would add about $84 to the overall cost, minus pack winnings and sold cards.
Little update on the Plants vs. Zombies event: the off-tribe rule for the Plant decks now is just limited to Avenger of Zendikar alone (no need to complicate this part, Avenger of Zendikar is the only relevant card in any case, being their off-tribe lord). Remember Zombies don't have access to any off-tribe creature, and neither deck can use Changeling.
Sure to be in the ban list (probably already 95% of the list):
Circle of Protection: Black
Circle of Protection: Green
Deathgrip
Lifeforce
Perish
Reign of Terror
Hellfire
Cleanse
Major Teroh
Dream Tides
Light of Day
Call to the Grave
Karma
Acid Rain
For the rest, ban list as a Regular event.
Note: Grave Bramble will NOT be banned. It's the flavor that originates the duel (from the videogame Plants vs. Zombies). Similarly, Elephant Grass will also be allowed for flavor reasons, but it's also less destructive than Light of Day, doesn't prevent blocking and it wears off eventually.
Stuff that gives protection to one creature won't be banned (including Blazing Torch). Be wise and put something in your deck that can deal with those things and you'll be fine.
I don't know, I suspect it's just Maro being a smarta*censored*.
There seem to be few things he enjoys more than answering a question with a technically valid answer to the question as stated that completely fails to provide any actual information.
Ah, so there's some sort of enigma about Kruphix's gender, and MaRo's answer seems to confirm it's not known. Maybe it's something like with Ashiok (even if in that case, it was more clearly said: nobody knows.)
A search for flavor text returns two results (Agent of Horizons and Sigiled Starfish), but in both cases there aren't pronouns revealing Kruphix's gender.
And MTG Salvation has a back story page for most of the gods, but not Kruphix yet.
things seem to be checking out fine here now!
Thanks for pointing out the discrepancy: Looks like the final eleven minutes failed to upload. This has now been fixed.
Im really hedging there on horsemanship ;) if im right im gonna pass out lottery numbers
In the case of creatures with Undying, two uses a turn. So, with Geralf's messenger and a sacrifice outlet, they really don't have much time to work with.
Horsemanship is a functional reprint of flying.
The only reason it exists at all is because they wanted to design a set based on a real world setting, and the flavor of flying did not fit that set, while they still wanted the functional aspects of the mechanic. Horsemanship as a mechanic offers nothing at all in and of itself, it is merely flying that doesn't count as flying because it has been renamed.
The only way it ever gets done again is they find themselves under similar constraints, a set that requires flying, but for whatever reason, would prefer not to use flying for thematic reasons.
I got robbed in draft yesterday!!!! :)
Glad to see you back! It's been a while.
Hope you're planning to play & record a lot of Vintage Masters next month!
Comments only ordered by the sequence of appearance in my brain:
1) what happened to the end?
2) Horsemanship
3) Dragons too (there will always be some fliers) but why not both?
4) Timetwister is broken in the right deck. (Remember the deck that you inevitably built in Shandalar that ended with you twisting with 4 black vise and 4 copy artifact on the table?
5) They took a more than a month to return tribal. They suck at bringing things back. They excel at taking things away. Particularly things some portion of the population adores.
6) Prices crashing is not unexpected with reprinting of hot cards but the fact that Force dropped this much indicates a deflation following hoarders going into panic mode. Ditto for LED. [Expletive redacted] Hoarders. I probably should have waited a few more weeks but I got 2 fows when they dropped within range.
7) You guys had a great moment there that made me lol and probably had my gf wondering wtf.
8) I am still very bearish in general on the whole beta thing but to leave the dead horse in peace for a moment I am not terribly filled with confidence that the next cycle will be full of awesome when the options for bringing back an old mechanic are: Horsemanship, Flanking and Bushido. I hope for the first and dread the latter two.
I could understand being upset to losing unrealized gains and in my retirement portfolio it would be a different story, but in a game where we want a vibrant and healthy vintage format it is a different story. We just need to put things in perspective...
I am more upset at the long term prospects with Beta.
I could understand being upset to losing unrealized gains and in my retirement portfolio it would be a different story, but in a game where we want a vibrant and healthy vintage format it is a different story. We just need to put things in perspective...
I am more upset at the long term prospects with Beta than
You can not get any sort of infinite combo with this. She returns the creature at the beginning of the next end step, so the best you can get is one use a turn per creature.
Excellent draft!
I haven't had much success in this format at the LGS, but I have done pretty well in Sealed.
I am thinking the best strategy is to stay as open as possible in Pack 1 (more than usual), just to make sure that you get hooked up in the Theros pack. I have had trouble reading signals in JOU so far. In one draft I ended up in the exact same combination as my neighbor, and shared one the other time.
WOOF WOOF
I can dig the concept of Tribute. I enjoy "choose your poison" cards like Fact or Fiction. The choices could've been more interesting though. Could be a nice mechanic to revisit except be more imaginative with.
Inspired was also.. fine. Not inspiring, but fine.
Heroic was appropriate for the set but not good as a standalone mechanic. I think that's alright.
Strive is lazy. Like you said, we already have Replicate. What's the point of Strive? Easier to understand than Replicate, maybe?
Bestow was my favorite in terms of mechanics. I REALLY like how it plays out in Limited, specifically how the dual casting option helps with the curve. It felt different enough too.
If you can convince anybody other than yourself that people who have 'lost unrealized capital gains but are really cash flow positive regardless' did not suffer a loss, then that would be ground breaking economics and you deserve a Nobel Prize. The market value of your portfolio is what matters not the amount of money you initially invested. You always do a mark-to-market.
Sometimes I hope the people you classify in group 2 and 3 would just quit the game and sell their collections. Then prices would decrease and the entry barrier for new players would be lower. Hence, once they quit we will get a lot of new players and maybe a positive atmosphere? Too much of the feedback from the V4-haters is non-constructive. But all the threats and screaming about quitting the game are most likely just empty threats in the end.
Am I correct in assuming that Act of Treason is preferred over Harness by Force because you're hoping you'll close out the game before you hit your sixth land? ;)
I agree with you Cownose in that they need to determine a strategy and stick to it but to a degree, I would expect any company to rethink any strategy and make changes to it over 10 years. I am not sure I agree with some of your other points though, like I certainly think VMA will significantly reduce the cost of playing eternal online. After around a month or so of VMA if we price any vintage deck to pre-VMA announced prices my bet it is MUCH lower (~30% to 50%). I also do not think MOCS promo's and flashback events did enough to lower the price, even with them prices were very high for new entrants.
In terms of the collectors, in VMA WOTC did alter the art in an effort to differentiate it from the prior releases. I think this is a smart strategy to give collectors unique cards while reprinting. So by changing the art the collectors still have a unique card for their collection and the only thing lost to most of them is unrealized capital gains. My opinion is the fact the VMA has many of the vintage cards, uses different art, will be in stores for a long time and by my estimation significantly reduce the cost of playing the format the vintage format will most likely end up a successful and vibrant format online (unlike classic). That said, as one of the people that purchased some newly reprinted cards and have lost value it does sting and upset me in the short term, although if I look at my whole collection I am cash flow positive.
I think the real VMA problem is that over the last 10 years or so WotC has changed their stance on the secondary market. Chronicles aside, WotC generally ignored secondary market prices in their products. Once in a while an expensive card would get reprinted (like Underworld Dreams) and lose value, but I never got the impression that those decisions were being made BASED on the secondary market value of the cards. Then, a few years back WotC started printing precon decks/sets (Commander, FTV, Premium Deck Series, Event Decks) where the entire makeup of the sets was based on their current secondary market values. The secondary market justified the MSRP all by itself. This, in my opinion, was a very dangerous road to go down that has led us to where we are today.
The secondary market is fickle and like it or not MTG has always been a COLLECTIBLE card game. The concept of reprinting cards specifically to try and control their secondary market value is both foolish (that is not how the market works) and damaging to the idea that Magic is a CCG. Vintage Masters is not going to significantly reduce the cost of playing eternal online. They hose players/collectors by reprinting a bunch of expensive stuff...and then anything they don't reprint will skyrocket in value. If enough people are willing to pay $3K to play online, then online decks will cost $3K--all WotC can do about that is to shift from one specific card being expensive to another (reprint Fow but not MisD? Now MisD is $100, reprinting duals but not fetchlands? Now ONS fetches are $60...). So they piss off the people who spend the most on their product while still having a significant cost barrier to entry to play the formats. Making reprint decisions based on a secondary market they cannot control is and always will be a mistake.
The solution is not to allow people to get priced out of formats, but to have prevented the formats from becoming so insanely expensive in the first place. WotC would have made buying into classic/legacy cheaper with more flashback drafts or more Master's Edition products, but they didn't. They let cards grow and grow in value for YEARS and then all of a sudden pulled the rug out from under anyone who dared to pay market value for the ability to play old formats. If Fow went from $30 to $25 nobody would care, but letting it climb to $110 and THEN dropping 2 promos and reprinting it down to $25 or $30 is a very different (and much worse) thing. It all boils down to the same problems shiny has experienced: no forward thinking vision, no planning, lack of a coherent policy, and lack of leadership. I am glad that VMA is going to make Vintage available to more people, but I wish it had been done properly instead of the format malpractice we got.
WOTC needs to decide: either you care about secondary market values or you don't. The not caring for years and then all of a sudden crashing the market thing is the absolute WORST possible way to go about managing your formats. It pisses people off (and rightfully so) and erodes trust in your ability to manage your product.
I might be misremembering, but I felt like the format was completely "solved" after last year's PT. Right now, I feel like the format is very open. Junk Midrange looks really strong, BUG Control might be the best deck overall, and even Naya (RG Elspeth) looks like its back. I am more excited about the Block format than ever. Can't wait to see what you have to say next week PB.
Well, it looks like i was right on one call with the enchantress shell - when building it, I ended up cutting whip because I didn't want to put in all of the good whip targets which turns out to have been the right call i think (only 2 decks that went 6-X or better played ashen rider maindeck). Elspeth was still the wincon of choice for those junk decks though, not ajani as I thought. I completely whiffed on the control shell though, BUG was the deck of choice which makes sense in retrospect. anyway, more on the pro tour next week!
I picked up 2 FOWs @38.5 and now expect them to drop further but I felt at the time they were worth grabbing in case of a boomerang. I saw promo LEDs going for a similar price too. The price sky is going to fall abit because of reprintings but also because of people bailing (as happened last November ever so briefly.) I expect lots of prices to crash for a while. Give them a year and they will be high again.
The rare/mythic/special print run will probably be 489 packs rather than 477. The 489 card print run breakdown would then look like this:
420 Rares (4 of each rare)
60 Mythics (2 of each mythic)
9 Special (1 of each P9)
I'm thinking it would work this way as it is similar to how the print run works for a regular large set (121 cards, 106 rares (2 of each) and 15 mythics (1 each))
Probably more of a nitpick, but it would add about $84 to the overall cost, minus pack winnings and sold cards.
Little update on the Plants vs. Zombies event: the off-tribe rule for the Plant decks now is just limited to Avenger of Zendikar alone (no need to complicate this part, Avenger of Zendikar is the only relevant card in any case, being their off-tribe lord). Remember Zombies don't have access to any off-tribe creature, and neither deck can use Changeling.
Sure to be in the ban list (probably already 95% of the list):
Circle of Protection: Black
Circle of Protection: Green
Deathgrip
Lifeforce
Perish
Reign of Terror
Hellfire
Cleanse
Major Teroh
Dream Tides
Light of Day
Call to the Grave
Karma
Acid Rain
For the rest, ban list as a Regular event.
Note: Grave Bramble will NOT be banned. It's the flavor that originates the duel (from the videogame Plants vs. Zombies). Similarly, Elephant Grass will also be allowed for flavor reasons, but it's also less destructive than Light of Day, doesn't prevent blocking and it wears off eventually.
Stuff that gives protection to one creature won't be banned (including Blazing Torch). Be wise and put something in your deck that can deal with those things and you'll be fine.
I don't know, I suspect it's just Maro being a smarta*censored*.
There seem to be few things he enjoys more than answering a question with a technically valid answer to the question as stated that completely fails to provide any actual information.
Ah, so there's some sort of enigma about Kruphix's gender, and MaRo's answer seems to confirm it's not known. Maybe it's something like with Ashiok (even if in that case, it was more clearly said: nobody knows.)
A search for flavor text returns two results (Agent of Horizons and Sigiled Starfish), but in both cases there aren't pronouns revealing Kruphix's gender.
And MTG Salvation has a back story page for most of the gods, but not Kruphix yet.