Agreed. Tournament play always intensifies people's reactions, but I'm always amazed at the people I see even in tournament practice rooms. It is always better to take the high road no matter what the situation. Thanks for reading!
Yes, it is annoying to get called a luck sack (or worse) when I win a tournament match. Fortunately it doesn't happen too often, but it always detracts from the experience.
Assault/Loam has been around for quite a while, pretty much since Loam got printed. I remember playing against them in the old INV block and forward Extended. They used ONS cycling lands to turn Loam into a ridiculous card advantage engine in the mid game, before using them to recur Loam and dome you out for 10-14 in a single turn. It's been long enough that I don't remember the ins and outs of the deck, but I do remember it being quite successful against anything that wasn't Affinity. But then, nothing was really successful against affinity at that time.
The prices are from Wednesday, before the promos were distributed. I basically pull the data and start this Wednesday am, finish, with luck, Thursday, and Joshua get to post it Friday. Prices always lag a bit.
From what I've seen on recent promos, you can often buy them for about half of whatever the retail price on the non promo was if you are there ready to go right after MTGO comes back online the day they are handed out.
On this note, this is common with all the high price promos. When it first comes out, often bots aren't buying it at all yet, and those that are usually are offering a low ball price. If you search the classifieds right after the promos drop, you can usually buy them direct from the person who won them for much cheaper than a bot will sell them.
I wouldn't be too surprised, pretty much the same thing happened with the Batterskull promo, the price on the original stuck for a while after the promo dropped.
Yeah, I found this strange. Even for Swiss drafts, a 1-2 record would pay a Theros pack, where in the past I believe it was always a pack from the small (more recent) set.
The previous payouts gave out more Theros than necessary. It was part of the reason Born of the Gods is probably the first second set to be more expensive than the first set during only 2 sets.
Magnificent. I love those moments when a deck idea just hits you, some unforeseen synergy makes you realise that the stone that was overlooked can become the capstone. Also, 'Just another drop of water in the ocean' is a perfect summation of why innovating is such a key part of the game.
Honestly if you want to put some pressure on the ridiculous modern mana bases it would just take the reprint of a single card: Price of Progress. Decks would either have to be much more conscious of their non-basics or accept folding to a lot of red decks. It wouldn't push anything out completely but it would cause some reimagining of mana bases.
I honestly don't think most of those big mana lands would have made my top 10 anyway. City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb, while good cards in their own right, are more often than not used as Workshops #5-12. Tron, Cloudposts, and Coffers at least had their own decks built around them, but none of them ever dominated their respective formats. On the other hand, Tolarian Academy outright dominated every format it wasn't banned or restricted in. Mishra's Workshop, along with Mana Drain and Bazaar, is considered one of the pillars of Vintage; if you aren't running 4 copies of one of those cards, you're probably running some sort of hate deck with them directly in your sights.
I do agree with most of the other choices though, and I think my personal Top 10 (12?) would have cut Karakas and lumped Port in with Wasteland/Strip Mine, putting Academy at #1 and Workshop at #2.
gruul blitz is fairly miserable at the moment, with the amount of bile blight and det spehre at the moment, your best draws (multiple BTEs) actively destroy you. No flinthoof boar anymore also really hurts, it means that your possible 3-power 2-drops aren't castable off BTE.
Burn was really good to me this season, as well. :) I played the turbo-cheap version with one-drops and no Mutavaults. I felt favored versus every deck that did not run Courser of Kruphix.
I'm interested in trying out a gruul blitz version if the amount of black removal in the meta declines.
tap: destroy target non basic land with a non-mana ability or effect.
With that wording, it doesn't kill Valakut or Grove of the Burnwillows or especially Urzatron. :)
It seems hard to find the correct template to have it do what you meant for it to do, except through a very complicate or clumsy wording, like "T, sacrifice ModernWasteland: Choose target land. If that land has a rule text other than a mana ability, destroy it."
You might say, "Destroy target land with no basic types", but that would just make the shocklands even better.
.........Luck Sack.
Agreed. Tournament play always intensifies people's reactions, but I'm always amazed at the people I see even in tournament practice rooms. It is always better to take the high road no matter what the situation. Thanks for reading!
Yes, it is annoying to get called a luck sack (or worse) when I win a tournament match. Fortunately it doesn't happen too often, but it always detracts from the experience.
In other words, "it's nice to be nice!"
Don't forget stormbind :)
Which in itself is a replay of the, older yet, Land Tax/Land's Edge decks circa 4th Ed. period
Assault/Loam has been around for quite a while, pretty much since Loam got printed. I remember playing against them in the old INV block and forward Extended. They used ONS cycling lands to turn Loam into a ridiculous card advantage engine in the mid game, before using them to recur Loam and dome you out for 10-14 in a single turn. It's been long enough that I don't remember the ins and outs of the deck, but I do remember it being quite successful against anything that wasn't Affinity. But then, nothing was really successful against affinity at that time.
The prices are from Wednesday, before the promos were distributed. I basically pull the data and start this Wednesday am, finish, with luck, Thursday, and Joshua get to post it Friday. Prices always lag a bit.
got my led promos day of release for 50 per, it was a long process of checking the classified.
No problem.
From what I've seen on recent promos, you can often buy them for about half of whatever the retail price on the non promo was if you are there ready to go right after MTGO comes back online the day they are handed out.
Thanks for the info.
On this note, this is common with all the high price promos. When it first comes out, often bots aren't buying it at all yet, and those that are usually are offering a low ball price. If you search the classifieds right after the promos drop, you can usually buy them direct from the person who won them for much cheaper than a bot will sell them.
I wouldn't be too surprised, pretty much the same thing happened with the Batterskull promo, the price on the original stuck for a while after the promo dropped.
You can't get that price from a bot, but it's easy enough to find it doing a search of the classifieds for a human selling their promo.
Presence of Gond combos with Midnight Guard
I'd love to see where you saw that. I'm not disbelieving you, mind you, it's just that I can not find that price with my usual bots.
Thanks for a great article, as always. Including the trip down memory lane!
Promo LEDs can be had for 60 tickets. I can't imagine any site is selling the MI ones for 110.
Yeah, I found this strange. Even for Swiss drafts, a 1-2 record would pay a Theros pack, where in the past I believe it was always a pack from the small (more recent) set.
The previous payouts gave out more Theros than necessary. It was part of the reason Born of the Gods is probably the first second set to be more expensive than the first set during only 2 sets.
Magnificent. I love those moments when a deck idea just hits you, some unforeseen synergy makes you realise that the stone that was overlooked can become the capstone. Also, 'Just another drop of water in the ocean' is a perfect summation of why innovating is such a key part of the game.
Honestly if you want to put some pressure on the ridiculous modern mana bases it would just take the reprint of a single card: Price of Progress. Decks would either have to be much more conscious of their non-basics or accept folding to a lot of red decks. It wouldn't push anything out completely but it would cause some reimagining of mana bases.
I honestly don't think most of those big mana lands would have made my top 10 anyway. City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb, while good cards in their own right, are more often than not used as Workshops #5-12. Tron, Cloudposts, and Coffers at least had their own decks built around them, but none of them ever dominated their respective formats. On the other hand, Tolarian Academy outright dominated every format it wasn't banned or restricted in. Mishra's Workshop, along with Mana Drain and Bazaar, is considered one of the pillars of Vintage; if you aren't running 4 copies of one of those cards, you're probably running some sort of hate deck with them directly in your sights.
I do agree with most of the other choices though, and I think my personal Top 10 (12?) would have cut Karakas and lumped Port in with Wasteland/Strip Mine, putting Academy at #1 and Workshop at #2.
gruul blitz is fairly miserable at the moment, with the amount of bile blight and det spehre at the moment, your best draws (multiple BTEs) actively destroy you. No flinthoof boar anymore also really hurts, it means that your possible 3-power 2-drops aren't castable off BTE.
Burn was really good to me this season, as well. :) I played the turbo-cheap version with one-drops and no Mutavaults. I felt favored versus every deck that did not run Courser of Kruphix.
I'm interested in trying out a gruul blitz version if the amount of black removal in the meta declines.
tap: destroy target non basic land with a non-mana ability or effect.
With that wording, it doesn't kill Valakut or Grove of the Burnwillows or especially Urzatron. :)
It seems hard to find the correct template to have it do what you meant for it to do, except through a very complicate or clumsy wording, like "T, sacrifice ModernWasteland: Choose target land. If that land has a rule text other than a mana ability, destroy it."
You might say, "Destroy target land with no basic types", but that would just make the shocklands even better.