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Jan 31, 2011 -- 2:47AM, Lil2Wkd wrote:

I'm hoping that someone can clarify to me what exactly red does within the colour pie. I can totally understand the justification of Creeping Corrosion, being anti-tech and pro-nature and the main artifact destruction colour... so what does red do besides burn these days?

Red also does haste. It's the color of impulse.

The odd part of Creeping Corrosion being justified because green is the color of anti-tech is that Back to Nature shows that green is even better at enchantment destruction yet that neither gets much of an explanation nor raises a cry among players. I guess no-one cares about enchantments.

Jan 31, 2011 -- 4:28AM, TobyornotToby wrote:

White has the broadest answers in the sense that there is no subset that it's unable to deal with but that its answers have answers.

Isn't white, together with blue, supposed to have trouble with lands?

I think lands don't count because Wizards of the Coast makes most lands harmless mana sources to avoid encouraging using answers to land. The few lands with other abilities are either animated ( Inkmoth Nexus ) so that they can be destroyed as creatures or have other weaknesses, such as Contested War Zone changing controllers or Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle requiring five Mountains before it becomes active.

So Mark Rosewater's "no subset that it's unable to deal with" includes cards that can be dealt with by ignoring them or by winning before they matter.

Jan 30, 2011 -- 11:28PM, mlanier131 wrote:

As a Actuarial science major I agree that probability of pulling a rare is  slightly less than it used to be, making rares "rarer".

As the holder of an M. Sc. in Nuclear Physics, I will try to explain what I was talking about.

You are right, in a way. Now, there are less rares to go around. You spend $32 or so on eight boosters, and you get seven rares on average, instead of eight rares. So rares, as an aggregate group of cards, are rarer.

However, this isn't what I was talking about, or what Mark Rosewater was talking about... or what has relevance for people who play Magic.

Let's go back to the time before Mythics to make this simple.

In Set A, over at Cartamundi, they print 121 different cards on a big sheet of card stock, and chop it up to make the rares that go one per pack.

In Set B, they print 60 different cards twice, chop the sheet up, and throw the blank card away. One still gets one rare per pack.

If Chase Rare appears in Set A, you will get one copy of Chase Rare, on average, after buying 121 boosters of Set A. If it appears in Set B, you will get one copy of Chase Rare, on average, after buying 60 boosters of Set B.

In the case of Set A, then, one takes 121 times $4 and divides up that pile of money between all the rares in the set, based on the relative demand for those cards, and gets the secondary market price for the cards. While Set A is in print and in Standard.

When they're not making any more of Set A, the price of cards could go through the roof, but when it rotates out of Standard, demand could fall through the floor. So anything could happen afterwards.

In Set B, the pile of money is 60 times $4.

Now, what happened in real life when Mythics came along?

There used to be, in a small set, 60 different rare cards. 60 times $4, split 60 ways.

Now, in a small set, there are 35 different rare cards, and 10 different mythic cards, and each rare appears twice as often as each mythic.

So it's 80 times $4, split 80 ways, between one copy each of the 10 mythics, and two copies each of the 35 rares.

The chance of picking up any one specific rare is what it would be if there were 40 different rares - it's half again as big as the chance back when there were 60 rares. Individual rare cards are less rare than they were before.

So, if a rare is good - it's easier to get, so it's not as expensive to obtain through buying boosters. So it won't be as expensive on the secondary market either.

Jan 31, 2011 -- 6:10AM, TerdragonMosaic wrote:

The odd part of Creeping Corrosion being justified because green is the color of anti-tech is that Back to Nature shows that green is even better at enchantment destruction yet that neither gets much of an explanation nor raises a cry among players. I guess no-one cares about enchantments.

I think the thing is, is that Green isnt (usually) supposed to kill creatures indirectly. Artifact creatures are far, far more common than Enchantment creatures. Against an Artifact Creature deck, Creeping Corrosion is a one-sided better-than-normal DoJ !! When was the last time that was true for a mass Enchantment-removal spell?

~ Tim