Thrun, the Last Troll and Invisible Stalker are two of the least fun cards to play against in standard history, so far as I can remember. Regardless of how good they are, they are extremely unfun to play against. Cards like this, and Geist of Saint Traft gets an honorable mention, are so stupidly non-interactive and unfun to play against that it pisses me off whenever they're played. Creatures are supposed to be creatures, they're not supposed to be Curse of the Pierced Heart that can be equipped. The fact is, when you play against a card like Thrun that is neigh impossible to kill, that's the least fun feeling in the world. "I'm the control deck, I get to control the game!" you think, until they drop the most stupidly impossible to deal with hoser. Have fun feeling like a blue/black mage now, when that stupid troll never dies.
Make more cards like Doomed Traveler . It's hard to deal with and it's a creature worth playing, but atleast it isn't madenningly non interactive. I'd prefer, when playing magic, to not just be goldfishing with an added clock.
3,000th post: September 5, 2010 4,000th post: March 24, 2012
Winner of the YMTC Ravnica War of the Guilds contest as guild Dimir.
While I don't disagree with you, I think the bigger problem right now (and has been for awhile) are the swords. Before Stalker and Geist there were some birds that were the biggest nuisance in Standard. Geist is fine by itself, and does lead to some interesting decisions by both players in terms of blocking, etc... Thrun is pretty stupid though as a card.
But without things like thrun in the meta, certain controll styles seem to like stomping all over anything else that is played. Which then makes control less interactive to aggro decks. With thrun now control has to actually play against aggro and not just inevitable out their win con.
But I'll fully agree it is the swords that make things like squad, geist and stalker unfun. Feast and famine is very abusive when you cant even kill the creature or block the creature without jumping thru loads of hoops. War and peace I think is fine, but since the meta went into a hard white flavor its starting to be pretty dangerous.
I agree with Suudsu2200. Can't counter, can't target, can't block... it would be nice if they took a more creative, and yes, interactive approach. Undying is much more interesting design, and will be more interesting to play against, although it too will be pretty frustrating (and pretty much done before, but still).
I don't think the problem is the swords, I think it is the creatures. And I'm afraid that forcing players to play creatures and race is what they want for the future of the game.
I'm sorry that they can't find a better way to balance control so that it doesn't dominate, while still giving it a fair chance, and allowing players that viable option.
This all-tempo format makes opening hands so important, makes you lose if your deck stumbles, if you have to mulligan a couple of times... it makes the game feel shallow to me, like it hasn't in the past. Lack of interactivity is part of that. I haven't been looking for a reason to stop playing, not at all, but it looks like its probably gonna come to that.
All are possible of beating those creatures. Also tighter play and good planning and deckbuilding allow for victories as well
Most of these doesn't work for Thrun. Day? Just regenerate. Dispense Justice? Let's hope they don't have any other creatures. Marrow Shards? Forget it.
If you're playing U/W, even with phy-mana, the only thing you can do about him is clones. That's pretty frustrating. Even if you wanted to side something against him, you couldn't.
Yeah... Until next game, where it'll be right back.
Seriously, there's no way to deal with Rancor in any format. It should be banned, except Gleemax is a lobbyist for the Rancor party, so that'll never happen.
You can't ban rancor, it just returns to your deck.
You might want to actually talk to the Flavor & Storyline Board people... since, you know, our whole reason for playing Magic is the flavor. I'm willing to bet you'll get a lot more interest there than in General.
Indeed, both posters down there would be thrilled.
When talks about banning Jace first started, I was thinking that I would see him banned come June 20th. But as I think more about it, I don't really think that Jace is the problem anymore. Sure his power level leaves very little to the imagination (opening Jace is like opening a refrigerator box with a naked girl on the inside), and sure his price does have a strong impact on what players choose to play (playing Jace is like being intimate with a woman and she doesn't charge you in the morning), but it is not the source of all the problems in Standard.
How do people think saving room to print more abilities on cards is dumbing down the game?
Do you really think, say, Akroma would ever be printed if she said, "Akroma can block by creatures with this ability and cannot be blocked by creatures without this ability. If a creature without this ability would deal combat damage by Akroma would be destroyed, prevent all combat damage that creature would deal to Akroma this combat. Attacking does not cause Akroma to tap. If Akroma is blocked and deals lethal damage, it deals the remainder of its damage to the defending player. Akroma may attack and use abilities that require tapping in the casting cost the turn it enters the battlefield. Akroma cannot be damaged, enchanted, equipped, blocked or targeted by black or red sources" rather than her "dumbed down" wording she has? No freaking way. Keywording and shorthand allows them to make complicated cards easy to play with, allowing them to be printed in the first place.
1. cast frankie peanuts 2. ask opponent "will you concede the game this turn"? if they say yes, you win; if they say no, play a staying power 3. subsequently ask "will you attack this turn"? and "will you cast a spell this turn"? (using a Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir for the second question if necessary) to ensure they can't disrupt the combo 4. donate them a platinum angel 5. play a mox lotus and braingeyser them for every card in their library. play an opalescence and donate them a glorious anthem and a blacker lotus , then play enchanted evening . play and activate a mindslaver and then donate them a fastbond and the mox lotus (returning one of the donates to your hand with eternal witness or whatever) 6. during their turn, play every permanent in their hand (playing lands with fastbond) then (as yourself) cast mirrorweave on the blacker lotus, so every permanent becomes a copy of it. proceed to tear up every card they control, and hopefully do it before they notice that they aren't bound by staying power's ability anymore and can concede
Dark Ritual being overpowered is determined more by what is done with it than the card itself.
True, but the fact that it enables so many ridiculous things is pretty telling. It's like, sure I can use a shotgun as a bludgeoning instrument, but that doesn't make it not a shotgun.
Shortly before Serra died, she transferred her spark into an angel whose full name was Asha Avacyn Bolas. Her dragon father groomed her for her positions in Alara and Innistrad, and she's also been getting help from her uncle Ugin in the form of Urza, who was resurrected as Marit Lage to be the avatar as which she projects herself into material realms. Grieslbrand is a split personality who sometimes wanders the planes disguised as a human woman named Liliana Vess.
Everyone's life would be easier if players would, instead of coming to the 'net for help with a deck, just netdeck and be done with it. And I'm not talking about some Top 8 lists, for the Casualists, too, can benefit from netdecking. I've netdecked plenty of decks from the Casual Play forums from users such as Mown, Raedien, Floopfoot, and a few others. I snatched straight the heck out of my web browser. Yes, people, your original idea fell victim to a savage netdecker. You have been assimiliated.
Suppose I wanted a Zombie deck. Why on earth would I spend time searching Gatherer for a decent list of Zombie cards when Raedien already did it for me? Taking time to be creative or waiting on people on the forums to tell you why your deck sucks or 'go to Casual forums' is a disasterous waste of time (to me).
That being said, Magic was ruined back in Alpha when they added all that rules and cards [Debutantes avert your eyes]. My friends and I still like playing it the "pure" way (Basically we go into the woods and hit eachother with wiffle bats while shouting made up obscenities. You know, the way Garfield wanted it to be played).
Don't worry about it. I've come up with a list of changes to fix EDH.
-First off, there's no commander. -The minimum deck size is 60 cards, and each deck can have up to four of each card, save basic lands and relentless rats. Also decks have no color identity. -Starting life total is 20.
Here's a clever play you can try yourself: -Convince friend to run relentless rats.dec in legacy tournament -Get a deck with lots of mill, yixlid jailer, and humility -Drop humility and jailer, wait for him to dump his hand, mill him out -All his rats now have no abilities. Call a judge because he's playing an illegal deck with more than 4 of a single card. -Get him/her banned from competitive magic play
L, is for the leather gloves you weaaaar. O, is for the organs that guy could spaaaare. V, is very very, extraordinay. E, is for every vagrant i butchered in a wine cellar befooooore.
The outer layer of the Magic: the Gathering box, the carton, or crust, is fairly thin and light, and contains largely aluminosilcates.
Within that lies the middle layer, consisting of the familiar booster pack. Although solid, the booster packs' high temperatures allow them to acutally move around within the booster box. This flow, sometimes called convection, is cited by frustrated box mappers as one of WOTC's most genious uses of thermodynamics since the Ravnica block.
No one knows what lies at the core of the booster box, but scientists theorize that it must be especially dense in order to make up for the large amount of fluff distributed amongst the booster packs.
I imagine [Ajani 3's] second ability involves him hurling the creature at your opponent Brion Stoutarm style, then the guy is just like "Okay, that may have worked, but don't- GOD DAMN IT!" as he does it again because cats don't give a **** :33.
Its like that one time Elves broke out in a field of Jund. Elves became a resurgent hit, then died off again once Jund adapted to the rest of the field of G/W that it required mass removal that inherently pooped on Elves too.
Submit to the menace. Delver can, and will blot out the sun.
"I remember my days as a youth at Tolarian Academy ." "Wow, small multiverse, I actually went there too." "WAIT, DON'T- Well ****, there's $200,000 in student loans well spent."
And flavor goes out the window when you cast a second copy of a planeswalker right after the first one dies, so...
"Hey Nissa, I need a favor." "You just asked me for a 'favor' like thirty seconds ago, and it turned out to be having Sarkhan Transmogrify my only follower into a dragon like 5 times -which dickery aside also violates some laws of causality - and then you let me get beaten over the head by that hedron crab." "...I'll give you " "...Well all right then."
GM, I don't think Dill is better than you. I KNOW it. Even if he wakes up every morning, clubs a baby seal, steals all the TV remotes from within a block's radius of his house and then robs hungry orphans of their food he'd be better than you, for the simple reason that he learns from his mistakes.
What would they have to fight about? Like, all I can think of now is Gideon going "Hey, long-ears! I'm gathering a group of 'Walkers together to fight some tentacle monsters.....you want in?" and Tamiyo going "Ew! Hentai no bakka Gideon-desu desu!" and flying away.
I open 4 packs just to be on the safe side. Not only do I get more cards than everyone else, but I also get to spend the rest of the night off. Win Win.
MaRo has a thing for people opening boosters with bad cards. But since he can only get so many bad cards printed in each set, he has found a devious way of getting more bad cards into circulation: He makes entire print sheets with just bad rares, then puts them onto the assembly line. He proceeds to wring his hands and twirl his evil mustache that he grew for twirling purposes as a lightning bolt strikes in the background. Afterwards, he goes to make sure that the good cards are only opened by everyone's friends, and that we all only get to open bad cards. He does this by memorising each booster, than switching them around accordingly. Whenever someone complains about a card, he immediately jumps out from behind a chair to yell "WELL, IT'S NOT FOR YOU!" before merging back into the shadows in order to devise new ways in which he can screw over players, then claim that he has valid reasons for doing so.
Mark Rosewater is sitting in a seemingly innocuous cable TV van, outside of Bankaimastery's house. Sitting nearby are two hardened criminal hackers, fresh out of prison, and filled with resentment at their lack of physical fitness. "Have you managed to hack his brainwaves yet? The set deadline's coming up fast." "We're almost through. It should be coming up on the screen any second." The hacker presses a button, and Kevin's thoughts flash onto the screen. Mark and the hackers stare in amazement at the sheer beauty, the elegance, and the raw truth of what they see. It's like the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Brilliant light shines across the screen, the truth of existence is made clear to them, and they despair at their own foolishness, their own ignorance, their own inadequacy. And then they steal his ideas. As they return back to R&D, Mark sneers at a haggard old man chained to a cast-iron sphere. The man looks up from his laborious task of breaking rocks in the dungeon of Wizards of the Coast headquarters, and asks a question: "Kevin, my greatest student. He - he's all right, isn't he? You didn't hurt him?" Mark deals him a weighty blow with his boot. "Know your place, Richard. Get back to work."
I'm only opposed to it because it bears so little relation to how people actually play the game. The example of Miracles is actually a much better one then the Clone example I was trying to use.
From the game's perspective, the card can move instantly from face down in the library to revealed in the hand and that's fine for the rules. But in real life, we can't actually do that, so the card spends a good bit of time in locations that are neither where that player's library is nor where that player's hand is. And that's fine for real life. What I don't want is the disconnect to be explicitly codified. Along the lines of
183664.697 A game of Magic as laid out by these rules exists only as a pure Platonic ideal, utterly unrealizable by fallible mortals limited by the confines of physicality and the ravages of evil and sin.
183664.698 The cake is a lie, too.
I know it's true, but I don't want the rules to actually straight-up tell me that.
Pfft this cant be serious can it? If it is please delete your account OP. Its not even close to ban worthy, considering what JTMS and stoneforge had to accomplish to get banned i see the WotC selling magic to aquire Pokemon before that ever happens.
I'm trying to imagine sorin markov as a gym leader in one of those pokemon games which you have to beat him to get his badge... somehow I imagine that he would stab you in the chest with his sword before giving you the badge, even if you beat his pokemon....
Personally, I'd be fine with tea time but then I'm not gonna waste the mana summoning Emrakul, the Aeons Torn . He always takes all the sugar, drinks the whole pot of Earl Grey and doesn't even say thank you. SO. RUDE.
Break the Card is a regular thread in the Cards and Combo Forum. Quite simply, the participants are given a Johnnystatic card (e.g. Xenograft ) and are asked to build a deck around it. The winner and honorable mentions are sigged below. Get brewing!
This week's Break the Card was based around Xenograft . Thread : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27681049/Break_the_card_:_Xenograft?pg=1
Winner : Axterix with his Vampdrazi deck. Finalist : Vektor480 with his Ally/Golem/Plant deck. Honorable mentions : Zammm for the Turntimber Ranger combo and TinGorilla for suggesting Sarkhan the Mad .
Here's the link to the Mindlock Orb contest : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27697565/Break_the_Card_:_Mindlock_Orb?sdb=1&pg=last#497536269
Here's the link to Break the Card : Bludgeon Brawl : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27715169/Break_the_Card_:_Bludgeon_Brawl?sdb=1&pg=last#498208797
Winner : Vektor and his Grab the World deck. Finalist : Crandor with his Awesome Aliteration deck. Honorable mentions : RP Jesus with his Wat deck and Zix200 with his Signet Renewal deck.
This week was Followed Footsteps : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27748677/Break_the_Card_:_Followed_Footsteps?pg=1
Winner : Tevish_Szat with his Exponential Growth deck. Honorable mentions : Zix with his Carbon Copies deck and Escef with his Fungus of Speed and Time deck.
This week's card was Jace's Archivist : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/28063377/Break_the_Card_:_Jaces_Archivist.
Finalists : Jentaru with his "Consecration of the Draw" deck and HereticSmitty with his "ADHD: The deck" deck. Winner : JaxsonBateman with his "The Archives Are Endless!" deck.
I disagree/agree with comments made here. Hexproof needed to be signifigant and it isn't like we will see these heavy concentrations in the future. I'm primarily a control player and I've had my share of games getting Dungroved, Thrun'd, and all other manner of untargetable stupid coming my way. I've lost more than a few of these matches and I'll say, I've never felt any anger over the loss or that the design was poor. I've spent years killing and countering player's attempts to just play proactively and that is equally (if not more) frustrating to many players.
The current meta environment is very healthy and I think Hexproof, as it is, contributes to that success. We've still got plenty of sweepers and options to address these untargetables. Why do you think they printed Liliana of the Veil and Phantasmal Image anyway?
Crusader can't stop thrun. Where did you learn math?
Anyways, there are currently only 5 ways for u/b control to deal with thrun:
1: hand disruption pros: works, is pretty mana-inexpensive. cons: Those spells are duds lategame and against topdecks.
2: BSZ pros: can be relevant against other things too cons: You need 6 mana, which generally requires you to tap out.
3: sac effects pros: can help with other creatures too, pretty cheap cons: Only work if they have no other creatures out.
4: clone effects pros: can also be effective without thrun being on the board cons: Not as effective vs decks which run thrun at the top of the curve and only midgets below him, also sucks vs dungrove and invis. stalker.
5: bigger creatures: pros: can smash face too, relevant without thrun. Cons: you can't attack with them because you need them to block, you need to tap out to play them, they can be removed.
Anyways, here's an anecdote: -playing on (program name) -despise opponent -see 2 thruns, take 1 -snapcaster to take his other -guy topdecks a thrun next turn, proceeds to kill me with it
1000th post November 26, 2010. Where Islands gets his decks: Spoiler:Show
It was revealed to me in a dream. All the cards were in my dream except for three slots which I plugged in as Vault Skirge.
FULL DISCLOSURE: The dream was post AVR so there was a copy of Slayer's Stronghold. I decided to keep it pre AVR in my post here.
EDIT: I just remembered. The Skirges might have been 2x Whipflare and 1x something else, probably War and Peace.
EDIT2: Currently 4-0 in my first four games with this. My opponents have been very angry. I fought off a Wurmcoil from Grixis for six turns before I found my second Dispatch. Jeez, I can do a lot of damage.
EDIT3: Streak broken. Lost to an unexpected Overrun. Cracking a Shrine for 10 wasn't enough.
i'm 99.9% sure the Crusader was meant to be Phyrexian Metamorph , which does do a lot better against thrun. i dont know ive never had a problem with thrun, so maybe i dont see the complaint.
I like fun, but competitive decks. So I might not play what is optimal but they have normally been tested to have a 2/3 winrate.
: Regenerate.
Cracking a Shrine for 10 wasn't enough. 
