Magic the Gathering XXII: Where Puns Go to Die

[Starwulf]

My LGS will not buy foils, so half my collection sticks around forever. They won't take legacy or modern cards either, so no unloading my cliques, deathrite shamans, death's shadows, hymn to tourachs, shock lands, fetches, my entire legacy goblin deck, etc. It is very irritating.

You can always try E-bay, though that will require you to type up an entire list of every card in the collection, which is definitely time consuming. They do sell pretty regularly on there, hell my buddy got into MTG about 2 years ago and ended up buying a few hundred dollars worth of cards off of Ebay(after consulting with me first, due to the fact that I've been an Ebayer(buyer and seller) for a decade+).

Now, if it was Yugioh cards, I'd say don't bother. Been trying to sell about $500 worth of Yugioh cards on there(and that's with each set of cards priced 1/3rd lower then they are worth) for 4 months and only sold one set, and a smaller value set at that ><.

Edit: Was wondering, are there any free MTG programs online that allow you to build decks with any card in existence and then play with other people? I remember about...12 years or so ago I used to play with a buddy of mine from North Carolina on a program called Apprentice, and it had every card in existence(he was constantly trolling me with these insane combinations, he was a long-time MTG player that knew basically every hack/forbidden combo ever. Funnily enough, it still wasn't always a curbstomp, I had a pretty powerful Sliver deck that could kill him 3 or 4 times out of 10 due to beating him before he got the few cards his troll combo needed) and would keep track of life totals and everything for ya.

Not sure if there's anything like that out there, but now that I'm getting back into it I'd like to play with a few people I know play in RL, but as I have no cards, something like the aforementioned Apprentice would be the only option.

[solidork]

I think the most commonly used one today is https://cockatrice.github.io/

I always used to use Magic Workstation.

[Svata]

My LGS will not buy foils, so half my collection sticks around forever. They won't take legacy or modern cards either, so no unloading my cliques, deathrite shamans, death's shadows, hymn to tourachs, shock lands, fetches, my entire legacy goblin deck, etc. It is very irritating.

Your LGS is weird. But online retailers will still buy your stuff.

[Starwulf]

I think the most commonly used one today is https://cockatrice.github.io/

I always used to use Magic Workstation.

Thank you!

Another question: I'm trying to fill out the entire card sets for each zone(Innistrad, Ravinca, Theros, etc), and it says I'm at 99% for Innistrad, but when I go through the entire card list, it shows that I have them all. What's going on? What am I missing? Is there a resource online(I've already spent an hour looking, my google-fu is weak) that can show me all of the cards available for each zone for MTG 2015: Duel of the Planeswalkers?(I have it on my tablet, not sure if there is a difference in cards between the various platforms the game is on). Driving me nuts, I can be a bit of a completionist at times, and being unable to see 100% is going to drive me nuts.

[Dhavaer]

So, I have this Standard Grixis deck, and I think it would be much improved with a pair of Glorybringers. I'm not sure what to drop, though. I'm thinking of just waiting until rotation, when I'll have to replace Kalitas, but I'm not certain.

[Gauntlet]

So, I have this Standard Grixis deck, and I think it would be much improved with a pair of Glorybringers. I'm not sure what to drop, though. I'm thinking of just waiting until rotation, when I'll have to replace Kalitas, but I'm not certain.

I'd go down to 1x Bolas and cut a Renegade Map. You don't need the ramp so much if you're running fewer 7-drops. Dreamstealer is the other card that seems like a possible cut.

[Svata]

Honestly? I'd cut Nicol Bolas. He's really expensive, and, while powerful, by the time you cast him, you're likely low enough on life they ignore him and kill you. Also, with U/R control being fairly popular, them Gearhulking a counter to it just puts you so far behind.

[solidork]

I've had a deck kicking around since original Innistrad that I've gotten to a place that I like. The original concept was to combine Skirsdag High Priest with Mogg War Marshal and Kathari Bomber to be able to make a 5/5 demon token without needing any other cards/creatures. Other cards from Time Spiral block that I love to brew with like Keldon Marauders fit quite nicely into that shell.

Recent cards like Alesha, Who Smiles at Death and Claim/Fame really improve it a lot. All in all, it plays a lot of pretty sweet cards that work well together. It's low on interaction and not fast enough to really get away with that, so it probably needs things like Inquisition and Fatal Push, but I wanted to keep the price point low.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/i-atent-dead-for-long/

[Shadow of the Sun]

I've had a deck kicking around since original Innistrad that I've gotten to a place that I like. The original concept was to combine Skirsdag High Priest with Mogg War Marshal and Kathari Bomber to be able to make a 5/5 demon token without needing any other cards/creatures. Other cards from Time Spiral block that I love to brew with like Keldon Marauders fit quite nicely into that shell.

Recent cards like Alesha, Who Smiles at Death and Claim/Fame really improve it a lot. All in all, it plays a lot of pretty sweet cards that work well together. It's low on interaction and not fast enough to really get away with that, so it probably needs things like Inquisition and Fatal Push, but I wanted to keep the price point low.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/i-atent-dead-for-long/

Some Westvale Abbey in the mana base may not go amiss, if you're making lots of tokens by bringing things back. Being able to go "lol 9/7 flying lifelink" and change is usually pretty good. They should be dropping in price a little, too, since they're rotating out of Standard once Ixalan drops. A one-or-two-of Siege-Gang Commander to go with Alesha might be good, too.

[Svata]

Lol 9/7 Flying Lifelink Indestructible Haste, even. Haste is relevant, cause you can hold it in hand until you're ready to use it, then play, activate, and attack with it all in the same turn. And indestructible is relevant cause indestructible is always relevant.

[solidork]

Both ideas seem pretty good! If I ever make this online or in real paper, I will probably chuck a Greater Gargadon or two in there as well, but I didn't here because I wanted to keep the price down. Bloodlust Inciter has turned out to be a pretty sweet one, since you can go Inciter -> Hasty Marauders -> Hasty Alesha -> Bring back Marauders with Alesha. Some kind of way to my guys harder to block, or some removal is probably in order if I'm going to expect to get more than one use out of Alesha. The older version of this deck used Unearth (since Claim/Fame wasn't around) and I'm wondering if maybe I should switch back to that, or run it over Undying Evil, since I would be able to bring back all of my guys with it.

Still, it's a casual deck so it doesn't need to be amazing.

[Grytorm]

I had an idea for a card.

~, Demon of the Wilds 3GB
Legendary Creature - Demon
Vigilance, Flying
Whenever a creature dealt damage this turn by ~ dies put a +1/+1 counter on ~ and draw a card.
RR, T: Deal 2 to target creature, that creature must attack this turn if able. You may not activate this ability if ~ is in combat.
2/5

Its not perfect, originally I started thinking about an animalistic Jund colored demon, and I ended up with this. I like the general idea, but I have a few mechanical ideas which could work, but I don't know how to combine them. Definitely something related to screwing around with combat.

[solidork]

We've got a thread for fantasy cards over in the Homebrew subforum, though it seems to have fallen off the first page: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...-Brainstorming

[solidork]

Everyone was just playing with the cards that they had at that point, or the series of mostly awful preconstructed decks they released in those days. Try to imagine a four player game where the only good card in any deck was Rancor.

I was going through Magic 2014 and just remembered that the first card that we collectively banned in our middle school metagame was Congregate.

[digiman619]

I was going through Magic 2014 and just remembered that the first card that we collectively banned in our middle school metagame was Congregate.

Dear God, that was OP in school games, especially since we played a variant with a 20 card opening hand (we wanted to get the most Magic out if Lunch as possible). Needless to say, 7 players playing 2-4 creatures in the opening turn or two made that effect insane.

[DMJack]

I think it was Commander 2016? It was just a random $4 booster pack and I got lucky haha.

I think it had to be a Kaladesh invention. Girlfriend cracked open one of those Wal-Mart mystery packs with Shadows, Magic Origins, Kaladesh and I think one other. She pulls an invention sword. Her luck astounds me at times.

[Bobby Baratheon]

This Sol Ring mystery just got a lot more intriguing - It definitely has the Commander 2013 symbol on it, but I also definitely got it in a booster pack (though I don't recall which). It's also an Uncommon rather than a rare, which I believe only ever happened in some of the very old sets and the Commander ones. It has the modern artwork of the Sol Ring (it is a silver ring floating above an altar with a purple and blue mystic mini galaxy inside of it). Hmmmm.

In other news, I'm trying to put together a deck for a local (casual) Master-and-Apprentice (read Two-Headed Giant) event. Though I'm hardly a master, I do want to get my younger sister into Magic and she has played a few times so I might take her over (she'll also get a free demo deck, so there's that). The format is apparently modern, but the store clerk emphasized to me that they don't want cheese or overly blatant powergaming as the main point is to ease the newbies into the game and give them someone else on their team to walk them through rounds. I'm thinking of giving either my nascent Gruul or Simic decks a spin and seeing where that gets me. I'll try and get the specific deck lists up later once I get a chance. Any thoughts?

Gruul

Spoiler

Show

I have it narrowed down to 47 non-land cards. Obviously I'd like to get under 60 total cards, and this deck does have several high mana heavy hitters so I will have to make some cuts from these to get a decent amount of mana. Many of the better cards (like Courser of Kruphix) are in limited quantities because that's how many I have of that card and not because I don't want more
These are the current 47 under consideration:
Creatures
x2 Tattermunge Witch
x2 Kalonian Tusker
x3 Zhur-Taa Druid
x1 Werebear
x2 Rattleclaw Mystic
x1 Courser of Kruphix
x3 Fanatic of Xenagos
x1 Khenra Charioteer
x2 Rubblebelt Raiders
x2 Polis Crusher
x2 Arborback Stomper
x1 Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
x4 Pelakka Worm
x1 Borborygmos
Non-creatures
x3 Giant Growth
x2 Crater's Claws
x2 Phytoburst
x1 Gruul Charm
x1 Clan Defiance
x1 Mighty Emergence
x3 Firewild Borderpost
x1 Fires of Yavimaya
x1 Mage Slayer
x2 Gift of Paradise
x2 Gruul War Chant
x1 Nissa's Expedition

The goal with this deck is (perhaps fittingly) unsubtle - build up a powerful mana base and steamroll through abundant sources of trample and big nasties. The Crater's Claws and Clan Defiance can double either as creature removal or (later in the game) do lots of damage to players.

Are there any obvious candidates for cuts? I'm thinking that I probably don't need 4 Pelakka Worms.

[tgva8889]

In general, if you're playing 2HG and trying to get someone else into the game, I would suggest making your deck largely defensive and supportive while making their deck have lots of the exciting things so that you can make sure they feel like they're important even if you're helping them make a lot of decisions. So I'd suggest cards for your deck that maybe protect your team, slow down the enemies, and allow your teammate to draw more cards or play more cards more easily. This, of course, leads me to suggest blue and white as colors you should definitely consider as they're the best at protecting yourself and your teammate, and obviously the best at drawing those delicious cards everyone wants at some point. I'd definitely tailor your second deck to whatever your sister likes, but make sure it's the one that's doing the direct winning.

[Bobby Baratheon]

Thanks! I hadn't thought of it from that angle. I don't have many u/w cards but I could probably throw something adequate together from pure u and w cards.

[9mm]

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles...alan-mechanics

Big rules announcement: Planeswalker Uniqueness rule scrapped, all planeswalkers are now just Legendary

Spoiler: TLDR:

Show

Returning mechanics:
Double face cards: note every one turns into lands appeantly
Vehicles
Raid

New mechanics
Enrage: triggers when creature is dealt damage
Explore: reveal top card, if land draw it, if nonland put a +1/+1 somewhere and decide to keep or bin it
Tresure: remember gild tokens? same thing.

[solidork]

I had always thought that one of the weirdest parts of contraptions was that it was a keyword action that the creature was taking and not the player. Explore does something similar and it aint no big thing, so I guess I was wrong about that being a major problem.

(I guess "Attack" works the same way.)

[tgva8889]

Thanks! I hadn't thought of it from that angle. I don't have many u/w cards but I could probably throw something adequate together from pure u and w cards.

Well it doesn't have to be pure blue and white. I would suggest at least one of those colors, though, as you really want the options from those colors to help your teammate and the other colors don't really have as many good options for doing that. I'd say either blue or white, and then a second color depending on what your sister likes. For example, if your sister likes angels, then I'd probably play blue and some other color so she can play white and all your sweet angel cards. Or if she likes sphinxes or wizards or merfolk, let her play all your blue cards and play white yourself. And then if she likes blowing things up with fire or giant green monsters then you can play both blue and white yourself if you want. Basically, it's more important that her deck is what she likes about the game, and your deck should help make sure she gets to do those things.

Remember, your objective isn't to win, your objective is for your sister to have fun so she'll want to play the game again and/or get more into it, so then you can start teaching her about other stuff she wasn't immediately inclined towards.

[Bobby Baratheon]

I believe she would like the Gruul deck quite a bit, but I think she has to use one of the store provided decks (which she gets to keep). I might just make a takes-all-comers b/u vehicle&extort deck or a u/w lifegain&counterspell deck.

[tgva8889]

Well you should maybe try to figure out which color of store-provided deck she's going to pick so you can make your deck work better with that deck.

[Tvtyrant]

Bragging time: I purchased a set of Yawgmoths Bargain before EDH became a thing, at the price of .50C each. With them getting unbanned in vintage they just spiked to over $25 each. Usually I am on the other side of that equation.

[Gastronomie]

ohai
This is my first post in this thread. Nice to meet you guys :3

So, I've been playing exclusively Holiday Cube Draft for about an year in my college gaming club (I know, it's probably not the most common way to get into MtG), and recently I've started to develop an interest in actually creating decks and playing in a certain format (Modern, Standard etc. Personally no Vintage, because it would be too similar to Holiday Cube Draft). Together with several friends, I plan to create my own deck.

I personally want to create a deck revolving around Nicol Bolas and/or Cruel Ultimatum, because I found those cards to be my favorites among all the cards in the Holiday Cube Draft pile. But here I have some questions:

• How viable are decks using Nicol Bolas and/or Cruel Ultimatum in each respective format? (It doesn't need to be tournament-competitive, but I do want it to be at least workable as a deck.) What do you think is the best format for creating such a deck?
• Am I right in thinking that in the current Standard cardpool, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Cruel Ultimatum are forbidden (due to being too old cards)? Though I have found that there's a new Nicol Bolas (God-Pharaoh) in the current Standard pile, so if I am to go Standard I would base my deck around that card.

Thanks~

[solidork]

You're right that the "originals" aren't allowed in Standard because they are too old. You can do a facsimile in standard with the God Pharaoh and Dark Intimations. Intimations is a very poor imitation of Cruel Ultimatum, though.

You can definitely slot a couple of Nicol Bolas and Cruel Ultimatums into a black, blue and red (that combination of colors is colloquially refereed to as Grixis, after the plane from Shards of Alara that only had black, red and blue cards) control deck and be more or less good to go for Modern. Cruel Ultimatum has maintained enough popularity/notoriety from when it was in Standard that control decks that include it are in their own category: "Cruel Control"

[Gastronomie]

You're right that the "originals" aren't allowed in Standard because they are too old. You can do a facsimile in standard with the God Pharaoh and Dark Intimations. Intimations is a very poor imitation of Cruel Ultimatum, though.

You can definitely slot a couple of Nicol Bolas and Cruel Ultimatums into a black, blue and red (that combination of colors is colloquially refereed to as Grixis, after the plane from Shards of Alara that only had black, red and blue cards) control deck and be more or less good to go for Modern. Cruel Ultimatum has maintained enough popularity/notoriety from when it was in Standard that control decks that include it are in their own category: "Cruel Control"

Thanks! Indeed, with research I was happy to know that Cruel Control was a powerful deck back in its days (well, come to think of it, it's in my Holiday Cube Draft for a reason...).

While I do like the idea of a Bolas-exclusive support card, Dark Intimations doesn't quite ring the bell for me as much as Cruel Ultimatum did. And it seems like it's difficult to build 3-color decks in Standard (am I right with this?)

I will probably first try a Modern Cruel Control-ish something. Thanks for the advice!

[Gauntlet]

How viable are decks using Nicol Bolas and/or Cruel Ultimatum in each respective format? (It doesn't need to be tournament-competitive, but I do want it to be at least workable as a deck.) What do you think is the best format for creating such a deck?

Thanks~

If you would consider Magic Online, then the Penny Dreadful custom format, while Bolas isn't legal in it, has a quite powerful deck which regularly places in tournaments, which is built around the combo of Cruel Ultimatum and Living Lore. Penny Dreadful is a format where the only legal cards are those that cost 0.01 tix (~$0.01) at the start of each season, so it's very cheap to get into. It is only really played on MTGO though, so if you want to play paper magic it won't be much help.

https://pennydreadfulmagic.com/about/

Example of a tournament winning Cruel Ultimatum list:

https://pennydreadfulmagic.com/decks/3852/

[Siosilvar]

This Sol Ring mystery just got a lot more intriguing - It definitely has the Commander 2013 symbol on it, but I also definitely got it in a booster pack (though I don't recall which). It's also an Uncommon rather than a rare, which I believe only ever happened in some of the very old sets and the Commander ones. It has the modern artwork of the Sol Ring (it is a silver ring floating above an altar with a purple and blue mystic mini galaxy inside of it). Hmmmm.

Sol Ring was printed at uncommon in every set except From the Vault, Kaladesh Inventions, and the MTGO Masters sets.