White and Black may not be strictly good/evil (Although in Innistrad it was specifically stated they were both on cards and from official spokespeople) but it's a lot easier to find white cards which represent things generally considered 'good' and black cards which represent things generally considered 'evil' than it is to do the opposite.
Yes, you can reach justifications where Mutilate and Murder are somehow a-okay, but you have to do a good bit of reaching. Angelic Benediction could likewise somehow be twisted into something terrible, but you'd have to try. White is the color of mercy and healers , while black is the color of demons and public execution s.
To put it another way: When a white character such as Konda is evil, it is viewed as a twisting of white's principles. When a black character such as Phage is evil, it's viewed as completely ordinary.
White did have one curse, and Liliana ended up saving the day (even if that wasn't her intention) but it was explicitly stated that red was good in Scars of Mirrodin, but we have red Phyrexians. (Granted, they're not as evil, but still...) And there were some white heroes in Kamigawa. Blue was the villain in the original Ravnica block, but not every blue character was evil, and Savra was black/green. The Weatherlight saga made black evil, but we got evil white , evil red , evil green , and evil blue .
...? Am I missing something or is this just intentional nonsense?
I'm saying that massacring a bunch of soldiers who are trying to fell me is justified, especially when they are puny mortals and I'm like a god (white might back me up on this one, it has Day of Judgment after all).
The problem with using specific cards as examples is that they are more representitive of the spells supposedly cast by the characters present in their sets than of their color as a whole.
"Explicitely Evil", yes, exactly. Black is more explicitely evil, we have way more examples of evil black than evil white.
In black, you get common things such as murder, inflicting horrors on someone else's mind, mutilating people, raising the dead, pacts with demon, power at all costs, sacrifices, etc. Common things in white are exiling, community-caring thingies and Day of Judgment . One color is far more explicitely evil than the other, even though both are as evil. What looks more evil? The guy who acts oinly for himself, using atrocious means to gain any advantage he can get? Or the government insisting that their decree is for your own protection? Both are as evil, but one of them is waymore explicitely evil.
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'm somewhat confused here. If one looks at the colors (as a whole) throughout the entirety of Magic, Black very directly falls more on the evil side, while White has the same for good. One just needs to look at Alara for an example of one color dominating the area and... I imagine for the majority of rational people they'd rather live in Bant than Grixis. Ravnica all the guilds are rather sucky, so not quite as good a direct comparison, though I imagine the day to day average members of a guild in the White-aligned section to do more good for people than the ones in the Black section (Golgari probably being the noteworthy exception, as they do tend to be positive). Ultimately speaking, all colors are capable of performing good/evil, I don't think anyone denies that. But Black is the color most prone to doing evil. Much like you don't have to be an evil Necromancer, but if you're a Necromancer, chances are you're evil. Just kind of how things work out.
Though, I would say that even if Black mana is just a tool, I think the goals and desires that Black expresses itself (as much so as it can through the articles) tend to be the most negative for people as a whole. Which yes, tends to be evil. It's one thing to think of yourself enough to better yourself, it's another to view everyone around you as tools to use for your own purposes. Even if those goals are positive, you're in an ends justify the means kind of thing which isn't particularly positive still.
Path to Exile and Dismember both depict creatures either getting vaporized or torn asunder. Mechanically Path brings forth new land, and mechanically Dismember supports any graveyard feeders. Path has no flavor text to justify its action, apparently just annoying a white Planeswalker is already putting you on the Path to Exile. While the justification given by Phyrexia is that it owns the creature and needs its body for Phyrexia's plan. Neither is good or even okay in my opinion, but the interpretation of evilness is left up to the player.
And I gotta say, Day of Judgment is worse than Mutilate . Day kills all creatures, Mutilate only kills the weak (which makes it pretty good with ). Now the flavor text for Mutilate is pretty twisted, but Day of Judgment doesn't need flavor text to convey its twistedness. With Day you are destroying your own comrades who are loyal to you, you are also acting as if you are a divine authority and are committing no atrocities, where Liliana at least seems to acknowledge that the act is somewhat cruel and that the perpetrator (herself) is just a sadist.
Once again. The aspects of good and evil are subjective. Black is admittedly selfish, often times black will admit to doing things for itself. But whether or not that is wrong is up to the player. Remember that the goal of Magic is to kill your opponent, no matter how you achieve that could be considered wrong. All the colors have aspects that are generally considered evil. Modern societies impose laws that attempt eliminate the brutality of natural order (green), recklessness (red), negligence (blue), and self proposed authority (white).
One just needs to look at Alara for an example of one color dominating the area and... I imagine for the majority of rational people they'd rather live in Bant than Grixis.
Actually Esper and Bant kinda disgust me, which is odd because I really like bluie. I'd highly prefer to live in Naya. After that I'd go with Jund. You're right about Grixis being repulsive, but only because I'm a human, it has nothing to do with its evilness. As a human the rot and boneheaps would be repulsive.
Ravnica all the guilds are rather sucky, so not quite as good a direct comparison, though I imagine the day to day average members of a guild in the White-aligned section to do more good for people than the ones in the Black section (Golgari probably being the noteworthy exception, as they do tend to be positive).
Personally I'd hate to be a part of Azorious, Boros, Golgari, Selesnya, or Simic. Three of those are white and only one is black. I'd be fine with Dimir, Rakdos, Izzet, or Orzhov. Three of those are black and only one is white.
Much like you don't have to be an evil Necromancer, but if you're a Necromancer, chances are you're evil. Just kind of how things work out.
Hey, that's racist! I mean, I see what you're saying. In a roguelike I play the arch lich wants you to kill the innocent while the god of clerics only wants you to kill in self defense. But these are merely characters. Is there something inherently evil about raising the dead? Some religious might think so, but that's only because they regard the body as sacred and aknowledge the soul as having the ability to journey to the afterlife.
The problem with using specific cards as examples is that they are more representitive of the spells supposedly cast by the characters present in their sets than of their color as a whole. And yes, Innistrad block has a heavy gothic horror theme so its not exactly a balanced perspective. Throughout many sets in MTG, black has the most evil elements because the big enemy was always Phyrexia. Phyrexia being ruled by Yawgmoth. If they'd made Yawgmoth red or white then that would have been the evil color of those sets.
Yes. They did make Yawgmoth (And all of Phyrexia until NPH) black. They specifically chose black as the color for the greatest evil Magic saw for many many years. You may choose to believe that's a coincidence if you wish, but you'll have to excuse me if I think you're being silly for doing so.
They made a conscience decision of what color to put Phyrexians in. They didn't spin a wheel or throw darts at a dartboard to decide. Out of all colors available to them, they chose black again and again and again .
Yes, they could have chosen to put Phyrexia in Red or Green or White. But they didn't. That means something.
The point remains that there is nothing innately evil about being a wizard who spent time in a swamp. At the most basic level thats literally what color means in MTG. Its based on what land you draw memories from to power your spells. Hence why playing lands is mechanically important.
Uh... We can argue based on lands, but that seems somewhat silly. Obviously a patch of ground with no active thought processes is neither good nor evil. Lands are important flavorwise because they are important mechnically, not the other way around.
The word 'evil' shouldnt be thrown around unless its being used to describe the specific intent of a person or character. A sword is not evil, an individual using that sword to kill innocent children could be either evil or dellusional. Note that even in an extreme case they are not just automatically evil. Actions are not evil absent the evil intent of an individual commiting them.
And this is where it all comes to a head: Based on the idea that a person can only be evil if they believe themselves to be so we are left with no true villains except those we can find in 80s childrens cartoons. Under your reasoning it's not at all evil to massacre an orphanage as long as the person responsible was really drunk at the time.
My ultimate point is not that black has to be evil, but that black has consistently been portrayed as the evil and most villainous color. Yes, I am arguing from cards, because that's what matters most when it comes to general flavor. White contains cards such as Avatar of Hope . Black gets Abandon Hope . White gets Angel of Mercy . Black gets No Mercy . White gets Breath of Life . Black gets Drain Life .
There are white cards which are obviously evil and black cards which are obviously good, but white is generally shorthand for good and black is generally shorthand for evil. See: Elves in Lorwyn were black green and evil. In Shadowmoor they became white green and good.
If you want to prove that white is just as malicious as black you'll have to match white and black card for card on benevolent/malicious cards (Since you seem to believe good/evil isn't the right terminology) in a core set. (Core set because that is the one place in Magic where you have the pure essence of colors without the odd quirks that sometimes come from expansions.
If you want to prove that white is just as malicious as black you'll have to match white and black card for card on benevolent/malicious cards
This is problematic because of both subjectivity and generalization. Could you say that chocolate is a better flavor of ice cream factually if more people enjoyed it? No, not really. Could you say that Inca is bad because the majority of Incans committed an act that you find disturbing? These are two flaws in that line of thinking.
Path to Exile and Dismember both depict creatures either getting vaporized or torn asunder. Mechanically Path brings forth new land, and mechanically Dismember supports any graveyard feeders. Path has no flavor text to justify its action, apparently just annoying a white Planeswalker is already putting you on the Path to Exile. While the justification given by Phyrexia is that it owns the creature and needs its body for Phyrexia's plan. Neither is good or even okay in my opinion, but the interpretation of evilness is left up to the player.
Path depicts a creature being banned form this realm and sent back from where it came from. Dismember depicts a guy being torn to shreds because his "pieces would best be used elsewhere".
And I gotta say, Day of Judgment is worse than Mutilate . Day kills all creatures, Mutilate only kills the weak (which makes it pretty good with ). Now the flavor text for Mutilate is pretty twisted, but Day of Judgment doesn't need flavor text to convey its twistedness. With Day you are destroying your own comrades who are loyal to you, you are also acting as if you are a divine authority and are committing no atrocities, where Liliana at least seems to acknowledge that the act is somewhat cruel and that the perpetrator (herself) is just a sadist.
You're kidding, right? Just making people explode is worse than mutilating them atrociously?
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.
This is problematic because of both subjectivity and generalization. Could you say that chocolate is a better flavor of ice cream factually if more people enjoyed it? No, not really. Could you say that Inca is bad because the majority of Incans committed an act that you find disturbing? These are two flaws in that line of thinking.
At the chocolate/vanilla: No, but you COULD factually state that more people like chocolate than like vanilla. Similarly, you would be able to state that black has more cards of malicious intent than white does (or vice versa) if you crunched the numbers.
As for the second one: Yes, I could. If you're going to treat good/evil as subjective, than you have to allow for an individual to make such a statement. If you don't allow a thing to be definitively considered evil and you won't allow a specific individual to condemn a thing as evil, then why even have the word evil in the first place? I am personally condemn ing the acts of mutilation , murder , and mental destruction while at the same time praising the ideals of mercy , healing , and pacifism . This is a stand I'm willing to make.
You may claim to avoid connecting morals to actions, but I have a hunch there's very few (if any) acts of mutilation you'd find better than excessive retribution, and most would be worse than that.
: Regenerate.
