Dies to Removal

man it's almost like they wanted these eldrazi to possibly be playable without them printing absurd ramp or all the kiddies dying on turn four to red.

I really disagree. The cards and play area of Hearthstone looks absolutely terrible, whereas that's the only part of MTGO that looks pretty decent.

I think you are the only person I've ever seen say that the HS play field is terrible.

NEW HEARTHSTONE CARDS, CHOO CHOO MOTHERFUCKERS! KIBLER CONVINCED THE HS DEVS TO ADD REAL DRAGONS TO THE GAME.





They figured out that having no defensive cards for a tribe in a game with a 'DOME YOU' button is bad. Now they just need Atarka in HS and we're all set.

shut them all down.

jsilv - is CFB really out of stock on Ensoul Artifact or did you guys pull your stock away in anticipation of a price increase?

I'm not asking to demonize, I just want to know if there is a buyout going on. You guys, TCGPlayer, eBay, and SCG are all out.

Sold out. TBF, it's not like we were sitting on a thousand of the things, we only had 80 at the start of the PT. People saw a sweet deck that they could put together on the cheap if they had Hangarbacks and bought us out*. We may put up more, but those will purely be from buys that we already received that we finished processing / store buys / already in the GP San Diego inventory.

*To clarify, no orders were placed for more than a playset of these.

Mad Max was great.

What the fuck is happening, it's ruined, RUINED I SAY!

Lucas Siow and PV win GP's? Best weekend of Magic coverage. <3

And PV wins his local GP, because a deck he's a master with is finally good again.

I'd assume it's either monstore or pack warz?

A store called Gameology. It's the one I talked about few weeks back about fixing the winner for Game Day. No one goes there without a bad experience.

Today they had a PPTQ and my Facebook feed is flooded with people that went and talking about all the shit that went down. Stuff like massive amounts of game losses and questionable DQs for nothing, judges telling players to figure stuff out themselves, officials and store owners cussing out customers, and what was just put to light: entering people into the event that had not only never played the game, they had no intention of playing just so the store can get to the 50 players for support from Wizards. One friend found out his first round opponent doesn't know how to play and his decklist was listed as 60 Forests.

Did these people play / can we verify this stuff happened? That store is 100% getting it's sanctioned pulled and a TO getting banned if the DCI fraud part is legit.

*Also so I can make sure this store gets it's sanctioning pulled.

How else are you going to profitably block literally nothing in Standard?

lol

hay, look, they didn't reprint birds of paradise. nothing i can do.

How much do you guys think the reprinting of goblin guide will affect its price? I want to buy them but not sure if it worth waiting to see if they will drop 40-50%

I think 50% is ambitious if MM2015 is similarly limited as MM1 (and still suspect even with a less limited release). It would mark the cards third printing, so I definitely think it's safe to wait and see.

to give you some idea, I have an allocation event-wise to run drafts for nearly 600 people + MM prizes (MM1 we ran a 200 player draft w/ no MM prizes). this is not counting at all how much CFB is selling pre-Vegas. Other stores that ran 50-100 man draft events before running out are now advertising caps of 300-400 players. There's a whole lot more floating around ATM even without exact allocations being known.

Tried GerryT's Whip deck, thought Atarka was cute, but not particularly better than anything else. Deck felt soft to Esper Dragons and light on action if it didn't have a Sidisi or Whip going. Jamming a full-on Deathmist Raptor package against midrange and Stratus Dancer to gain some points back against Esper while not being dead elsewhere. Satyr + Sidisi do a pretty good job of free wins when you flip a pair of Deathmist into the grave early and you jam any other morph. Abzan Aggro is a little dicey g1 depending on if you have Deathmists and if they have Anafenza. G2/3 you just use Wound / Execution / Assassin and aggressive trades to not get run over. You just want to stall until Pharika or Hornet Queen hits, at which point the rest of the game is a formality.

[deck]Sidisi Whip with Bear Punching[/deck]

Need to decide whether any # of Courser is good over improving the curve, since right now the three spot is completely glutted. Also I've given up a bunch of points in the red match to dominate midrange / control post-board, so that could be an issue if red comes back strong.

til something about bears. thanks Starbucks!

Actually, Atarka Red is well positioned against Esper Dragons, while not autodying to Abzan Control and Abzan Megamorphs.
Did I get the matchups incorrectly?

I would say none of those are favorable for red, which kind of kills a lot of reason to play it. The g2/3 of Esper vs. Red is pretty favorable for the Esper player if they have Drown and quad Foul-Tongue to recover life.

Most interesting deck at our RPTQ, also T4'd and Q'd.

[deck]24 lands

4 Frontier Bivouac
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Forest
2 Mountain
2 Temple of Abandon
1 Temple of Mystery
2 Temple of Epiphany
3 Shivan Reef
4 Yavimaya Coast

15 creatures
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Hornet Nest
3 Satyr Wayfinder
2 Savage Knuckleblade
1 Dragonlord Atarka
1 Den Protector

16 other spells
4 Anger of the Gods
4 Roast
4 Anticipate
3 Dig Through Time
1 Lightning Strike

5 planeswalkers
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
4 Sarkhan Unbroken

SIdeboard
4 Disdainful Stroke
2 Negate
2 Gainsay
2 Savage Knuckleblade
1 Dragonlord Atarka
1 Dig Through Time
2 Seismic Rupture
1 Display of Dominance[/deck]

did the last modern masters inflate prices or bring them down? Obviously it should bring them down some, but goyf is still at an unreasonable price.

The majority of the rares permanently dropped, any of the chase uncommons that gor reprinted lost min. 50% of their value. Mythics dropped for about a month and then went right back up as people starting buying into Modern in droves.

FWIW, decks that beat Esper:
GW / GR Collected Company decks
Old Mardu decks that took out Chained to the Rocks and realized the rest of their deck is still scary vs. control and runs four Outpost Siege while they have 0 Vault.
BR Control that are basically Mardu, but with more Dragons and less horrendous mana.
Den Protector / Deathmist Raptor / X 3rd value creature - Esper can beat this deck, but none of them are configured properly to do so. So unless your opponents are actually good they aren't going to figure out winning lines against a never-ending horde of FoS'ers being thrown at them.

There is a whole lot of shit on the pile for this, not just "wah we have to pay for games." I hate the prevailing opinion in gaming where people should just accept getting fucked over because "fuck you, you entitled consumer."

I mean, valve has been shitty for a while now, but this is just the cherry on a shit sundae for them.

Valve CS is some of the worst in the business.

[deck]Mardu Tokens[/deck]

Chapin/Flores special from their podcast, seems like it could be pretty sweet against Esper Dragons.

The new tech is to take your old Mardu deck, swap Chained for pretty much anything else and then realize Outpost Siege forces Esper players to Ojutai you or die. Surprised they don't maindeck discard, but MARDU CHARRRRRRRRRM!

Magic should be a living card game.

Why do you hate having a thriving tournament scene?

Are the fakes still insanely glossy?

They are still glossy, less so, but still noticeable on some. Also the fakes quality from set to set vary wildly with some really stupid errors on certain cards, somebody tried to send us a set of noticeably miscut Ulamog and Emrakuls. Which is dumb already considering, 'oh, yeah, maybe someone will wonder how we got a playset of these particular miscuts'.

do they make standard chinese proxies? I could use some

They haven't started doing any of the Standard stuff yet, outside of fetches. It's also v. unlikely they'll start on Standard stuff since it'd mean updating the presses and doing a bunch of waves w/ the new holo sticker. Better margins to stick with older stuff, even with the increased scrutiny.

FWIW, the newest wave is actually difficult to tell if you don't handle tons of cards or have any buyer/grader training. They still fail the light test or a $3 jeweler's loupe. In the next year or two I fully expect Loupes to be used by pretty much every dealer for cards over $10. All the old waves are dogshit and you can tell via touch or just staring at them until your eyes bleed. They are pretty much the same in sleeves though.

That estimate seems suspect.

For MODO? It's pretty much a lock barring a massive correction at the RPTQ's this weekend or some bot dealer undercutting everyone.

I meant IRL. Also, aren't MODO tix not 1-to-1 in USD? Something like 70 cents on the dollar or ?

.95 is the usual rate for tickets. IRL there's a lot more product open, but on the flip side CFB can't keep Ojutai's in stock at $30. So that's probably going up at least to $35.

That estimate seems suspect.

For MODO? It's pretty much a lock barring a massive correction at the RPTQ's this weekend or some bot dealer undercutting everyone.

Dragonlord Ojutai has gone up 10tix to 40 on MODO in the past 3 days. Ugh. It's gonna be a 50 dollar mythic in Standard for a bit at this rate.

here's a modern article about dragons: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles ... in-modern/

I miss Rev/pack rat standard.

This standard is fine, but it doesn't make me FEEL things.

Quick runthrough of Standards I actually remember:
Tempest Block + Urza's Block + 6th = Wow, I can play Oath? Masticore Blue with 4 Counterspell, Mana Leak and Treachery? Wildifre? As it turned out anything involving the broken stuff was the best, but hey we played Stompy and liked it!

Urza's Block + Mercadian Block + 6th = Everything did fucked up things. This is pretty fun. Except Tangle Wire. Fuck Tangle Wire and fuck Plow Under. Losing on turn three to Rofellos powered mana screw into Deranged Hermit was not fun. Also Tinker was legal, though the best things we could get were Mishra's Helix, Phyrexian Processor and Phyrexian Colossus. Still that deck was pretty messed up and could always t3 Morphling as a backup sideboard plan. Though Replenish put Tinker decks to shame in terms of comboing out, since you could Parallax away lands and creatures, buy them back on turn 5/6 with Replenish and kill them in one swing.

Masques + Invasion + 6th = Rebels was way too good at grinding out the fair decks with all the combo shit gone. If people dislike creatures now, at least the games end some time this year. Back in the day you just died miserably to Ramosian Sergeant finding Lin-Sivvi and then dying to a dozen random 2/2's. Also the control decks had 4 FoF, 4 Counterspell and 4 Accumulated Knowledge and still had to maindeck Massacre because they couldn't win a fucking game. The win condition for those decks until Psychatog saved America was Air Elemental and Nether Spirit. Yes, Air Elemental, for serious.

Eventually the Japanese figured out the end game of the format was Nether Spirit + Jokulhaups / Obliterate. The internet was a new and scary thing though, so the odds you ever saw this deck locally were basically non-existent.

Invasion Block + Mercadian Block + 7th = Opposition + Static Orb was legal. Let us never speak of this format again. Fires of Yavimaya + Blastoderm + FTK + Saproling Burst also dominated, but that was in part because of how bad we were at building strategies to counter creatures without insanely broken spells to bail us out and FTK killed every non-green creature in the format.

more tom.

And now you're saying you hate my favorite sports team? You wanna take this outside?

And yeah that forum embraces to a fault a "we can change the world" mentality while being nitpicky "um, actually..." spergs.

anyway, I know what this thread is for and I'm being too much of a twat about things, so here's some pictures.

I copied that to sirlin's boards because I agreed with it. Got a problem?

First off, what is the bolded even supposed to represent in a message board context? It sounds like something a drunk would say right before he takes a swing at you for insulting his favorite sports team.

Second, the reason I mention the tone is because it fits very well over there. For those who have never visited the Sirlin boards, it's very head up own ass on most of the threads. There are some great points (which is why I read them) made by users, but the inherent smugness whenever people start really delving into subjects is impossible to overlook. Sirlin himself is massively guilty of this even when dealing with other people who are very experienced in his field of games. As a result people who want to discuss things, but not necessarily argue with people looking to score sarcasm points end up leaving, which only leaves the ego people (some smart, some not).

Standard is best with three to four clearly tier 1 decks with room for some sideboard tech. That way, technical skill matters more than the deck you decided to sleeve up the night before the tournament.

oh. you post on the sirlin design boards. I get where the tone comes from now.

god damn the circlejerking is strong tonight.

Warrior is shit tier. Think Avacyn black, but with even worse rarity disparities to fuck you over. Warlock has also steadily gotten worse as people have adjusted to a more aggressive and tempo based Arena. It went from middle of the road to pretty bad because the class cards are 2/3rds bad, 1/3 great and you can't just jam the draw cards button half as much as you could in Classic.

This is my basic Hearthstone guide for MTG players.

This is my Arena guide updated at GvG. I'll probably revisit after Blackrock in the next month.

I scrubbed out of Game Day so hard. Turns out when you meta for aggro and everyone brings control you do poorly... who knew?

I have taken apart all my decks except for EDH in preparation for selling. I still haven't decided for sure. I do think I might prefer a stack of money over a stack of cards I have no time / desire to play... these are dark days.

If you want to bail on Standard until rotation, then now is the time to do so. Cards are only going to start dropping once we hit June and smart money is going to start dumping pretty soon.

[deck]Creature (29)
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Fleecemane Lion
4 Den Protector
1 Stratus Dancer
4 Deathmist Raptor
3 Courser of Kruphix
2 Surrak, the Hunt Caller
3 Dragonlord Ojutai
Instant (5)
2 Disdainful Stroke
3 Valorous Stance
Enchantment (2)
2 Mastery of the Unseen
Land (24)
4 Forest
2 Plains
1 Island
4 Windswept Heath
4 Temple of Plenty
3 Flooded Strand
2 Mana Confluence
4 Yavimaya Coast
60 Cards
Sideboard (15)
2 Dromoka's Command
1 Valorous Stance
2 Glare of Heresy
2 Disdainful Stroke
2 Stratus Dancer
1 Negate
2 Arashin Cleric
3 Encase in Ice[/deck]

btw if I had a tournament tomorrow and could pick a deck, I'd probably pick this. Main problem I have with Esper Dragons is other than the Esper mirror I can't play the deck that well.

Dragon Whisperer was pretty awful when I tried her and Murderous Cut does solve one of the biggest issues the deck had. I dislike Evolving Wilds in here for sure, but I don't mind swapping out Whisperer for sure. Additionally, the extra speed doesn't matter as much now. Now that Ojutai is out of the bag, I'd say the top four decks to beat are Esper Control, Bant Aggro, Red and Abzan Control. Of those, the only deck trying to stomp your nuts early is red. Abzan Aggro is guess is popular enough to also be a concern, but again, you have time against that deck.

i mean this is just following simple guidelines of how tournaments work

My friend and I drew into top 8 for Game Day both of us being 3-0, only for the store owner to tell us there is no cut to top 8 so it let that store's regular to be the only undefeated to win the mat. So not only was there not five rounds for the 18 people playing, there was no top 8.

that lgs sounds like a winner