Magic: The Gathering

[CryptRat]

That's only 40 cards? Is that some special kind of tournament deck count?

You play 40 cards minimum in tournaments where you build your deck from cards given during the tournament : they are especially two kind of these tournaments :
1- you are given 5 or 6 boosters packs and every basic land you want to construct your deck.

2- In the particular case of Muty, it's a draft : you are 8 players around a table that will simultaneously open a booster pack pick a card and pass the booster to the left neighbours then pick a card from the given booster and pass the booster to the left neighbour, etc... until there is no cards left.
You repeat the processus for 3 booster packs all in all.
Then you build your deck with the cards you want from the picked cards and every basic land you need.

 

[Jaesun]

OK thanks!

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19

Spoiler

Modern:

Dig Through Time, Treasure Cruise, and Birthing Pod are banned.

Golgari Grave-Troll is no longer banned.

Legacy:

Treasure Cruise is banned.

Worldgorger Dragon is no longer banned.

Vintage:

Treasure Cruise is restricted.

Gifts Ungiven is no longer restricted.

The complete list of all banned and restricted cards, by format, is here.

Huh, turns out Ancestral Recall, a long as you have Threshold, is pretty broken. At least Wizards had the decency to remove this shitty mistake of theirs from non-rotating formats. Now if only Delver, True-Name Nemesis, Terminus, Griselbrand, and the like would similarly get the axe.

Also have to love their haphazard unbans...welp, time to force draws with Worldderper Dragon.

 

[Jaedar]

I should have thought most people would be happy pod is banned. Their stated reasoning on worldgorger unban was... flimsy to say the least.

 

[Ulminati]

I sold 4x dig through time to someone else last week.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

It's unsurprising that a lot of folks would be upset by a Pod ban. It was one of the most represented decks in Modern, and a great way to buy in to a Tier-1 deck that didn't require ludicrously expensive cards like Goyf, Lili, Bob, and the like (Pod could afford to skimp on things like Noble Hierarch and even the manabase and still be competitive). Obviously, the eradication of the archetype, even if it was good for the metagame as a whole, is going to leave some individuals a bit miffed.

While a hawkish approach to bans isn't necessarily a bad thing (I sure wish they'd be more aggressive in Legacy), it's hamstrung by Wizards complete inability to keep rising secondary market prices in check. People would be a lot less butthurt about potential archetypes being swept away if switching costs were lower, instead of "Lol, hope you have 700 bucks for Goyfs!". Maybe Hearthstone will light a fire under Wizard's asses, but I won't be surprised if Modern Masters 2 is another anemic effort, with a high MSRP and most expensive cards relegated to Mythic status (Clique, Goyf, and Bob at Mythic in MM1 was preposterous).

 

[Jaedar]

Is champions of kamigawa a fun format to draft? Talking triple champions.

 

[Dim]

https://www.humblebundle.com/
Magic 2015 - Duels of the Planeswalkers Special Edition
means what exactly? should i buy it?

 

[Phage]

https://www.humblebundle.com/
Magic 2015 - Duels of the Planeswalkers Special Edition
means what exactly? should i buy it?

no

 

[Grunker]

Is champions of kamigawa a fun format to draft? Talking triple champions.

Avoid at all cost

 

[Jaedar]

Avoid at all cost

Really? I've heard other people say it's supposed to be pretty good.

 

[Jaedar]

https://www.humblebundle.com/
Magic 2015 - Duels of the Planeswalkers Special Edition
means what exactly? should i buy it?

If you want a digital magic game that isn't MTGO, get one of the earlier ones. They're way better.

 

[Grunker]

Avoid at all cost

Sorry, brainfart. Read 'Champions' as 'Saviours'. That format was utter crap IMO. Triple Champions was, IIRC, all about tempo. To the point where drafting insane bombs like Keiga really wasn't that effective if your deck didn't have proper curve and defences. Drafting plenty of two-drops was essential both for aggressive and defensive decks.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but I recall it being sort of like Onslaught, which can't be a bad thing. I was terrible at the game back then though.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Is champions of kamigawa a fun format to draft? Talking triple champions.

No. It's like Theros with worse creatures and more hard removal at common. If you ignore soulshift (which allows crappy creatures to resurrect cheaper crappy creatures) you might as well be playing with a core set.

 

[Jaedar]

Hmm, alright then, let me ask you this. Was lorwyn cool? We'd probably be playing with only commons and uncommons and making our own boosters.

 

[Grunker]

Lorwyn is the most bomb-driven format I've played, but it's also really fun, and the tribal interactions are great.

Edit: only commons and unco mons? Hard to say then

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I didn't play much back then, but Lorwyn was pretty cool from what I remember. Very heavy on tribal and rather high power level in general. I remember blue being kinda broken with Merfolk/Fairy tribal and commons like Mulldrifter, but everyone would draft it and it's not like the other tribes were weak and so it evened out.

 

[Ulminati]

https://www.humblebundle.com/
Magic 2015 - Duels of the Planeswalkers Special Edition
means what exactly? should i buy it?

If you want a digital magic game that isn't MTGO, get one of the earlier ones. They're way better.

Ignore Jaedar. He's retarded. 2015 is the least shitty of the planeswalkers games because it's the only one that lets you construct your own deck rather than "tweaking" an archetype deck. If you're getting a Duels of the Planeswalkers game, get Magic 2015. The earlier ones are worse.

That said, all the planeswalker games are essentially "Babys first Magic". If you've never played MTG, they're a good starting point. But if you know what you're doing you're probably better off playing MTGO, XMage or Forge dependng on whether you're after SP or MP.

The main crime of Magic 2015 is that half the cards in the game are locked in AI-only decks. Even when you've unlocked everything in the game, there's 3-400 cards in the game with art and rules implemented that you're not allowed to bring to multiplayer.

 

[Grunker]

2015 is broadly recognized as the worst incarnation of Duels. It's fine that you disagree, but calling Jaedar retarded because he holds a broadly accepted opinion is pretty... edgy. Especially when your explanation for disagreeing with that opinion is insufficient:

The reason 2015 is considered worse is the fact that it's a horrible abomination caught between 'real' Magic and baby's first Magic. Duels was historically pretty good at being baby's first Magic, and offering an experience more structured around puzzles and challenges. 2015 has all the trappings of normal Magic but is still caught in the limitations of the Duels-structure. Being reduced to one fully customed deck for most of that experience, in the awkward world of microtransactions to boot, is really sucky.

In other words: a veteran Magic player might not like earlier Duels because of the restrictions, but no one should enjoy 2015 since it's basically Worst of Both Worlds.

(also, you are overstating the 'baby's first' thing of the older Duels... the version that has Archenemy in it has you solve way, way, waaaaaaaaaay more complex board states than I've ever encountered in all my time on MTGO)

 

[Ulminati]

They removed the premium stuff when the first expansion hit Grunker. You get them from playing multiplayer now, so there's no more microtransactions. You're also allowed to construct new decks earlier (after you finish innistrad iirc), so you're not trapped in one deck for ages anymore.

Also, I roflstomped all the magic 2015 opponents (Except Liliana and the Slivers.. Needed a blue denial deck because my self-heal is slow to get started) with a self healz deck running angelic accord (get a 4/4 white flyer token if you heal for 4+ in a round), sanguine bond (enemy takes damage equal to damage you heal) the Black+White mage that copies sanguine bonds effect and gives lifelink as abilities, faithmender that doubles health gained and then every single lifelink/self heal ability I could cram into it. That felt way more satisfying to use than someone elses preconstructed deck where I got to swap out 4-5 cards.

 

[Grunker]

Personally, I think it's a disgrace that they haven't made a modern version of Shandalar

 

[Ulminati]

We can agree on that. There's adventure mode in Forge, but it's just not the same. I also have to admit I sort of like the Duels format better than Forge because you're working with a more limited card pool. I spend half my time in Forge duels looking up obscure keywords from the AI decks.

 

[Caim]

Couldn't they do something like take a core set or three and make a game with all those cards? Or would that cost too much M:TGO money?

 

[Telemetry]

If you try to make sense of Wizards' business decisions your head will explode. At least, that's what happened to mine.

Nowadays all I can think is 'why?'
why have the reserved list in the first place?
why not remove it and reprint some very essential cards?
why are there apologists that approve of the list?
why make a big deal of modern masters but then making it a limited run which ends up raising the prices of goyfs cliques and bobs instead of lowering them?

why?
and don't get me started on mtgo. why are there varying prices on digital cards? couldn't they make it subscription based?
what the fuck ever

that's why I print proxies or draft.

 

[Grunker]

If you try to make sense of Wizards' business decisions your head will explode.

Totally. It's not like Magic is more popular and making more money than ever in the history of the game.

why have the reserved list in the first place?

Nobody with a brain defends it from a health-of-the-game standpoint, but as long as core shops and audience rely on an idiot promise made by Wizards when they weren't as wise, it's probably a bad idea to double back on it. From a business
standpoint.

and don't get me started on mtgo

If you're actually interested and not just asking rhetorical questions, I recommend you listen to Marshall Sutcliffe's interview of Jon Loucks after he stopped working for Wizards. As with anything, there exists a good explanation for why MTGO is such a shitty product, and it has a lot to do with the old decision to do internal development. As long as that remains the case, it probably won't change, and Hasbro isn't likely to allow Wizards to outsource the client now that they just financed a new one.