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Magic: the Gathering |OT10| Aether Revolt - That shit that make your Soul Burn slow

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Wulfric

Member
You can pre-order MM2017 boxes on Ebay for $185... or about $55 below MSRP (24 times $10). That's the same discount that Aether Revolt boxes have on Ebay.

What the hell is going on?

I think people's expectations have been tempered by MM2015 and the second wave of EMA. These sets also aren't as limited as we originally thought they were going to be. The recent PPTQ and GP changes certainly aren't helping things; I'm not going to put $800 into a deck with no chance of playing in high profile events.
 
The Frontier train got rolling in September. At least we know now that outside of Japan the stupid format has gone the way of Tiny Leaders.

I really wish MTGGoldfish never added it to the site.

Also, the format annoys me for propping up cards that should be cheap. Hangarback Walker for example, should not be $6 US :(
 

ElyrionX

Member
Nobody likes having their cards banned. If they're going to ban cards they better have a really good reason. I'm not just going to take the loss and say "oh well, what other $1000 deck can I buy?". Only time it's reasonable is if a deck is clearly dominating every tournament and it's clear a ban is coming which they kind of alluded to with Eldrazi last year. Banning twin years into the format when it's not even close to dominant is just dumb. If WOTC made a mistake they should offer some kind of compensation to the players who otherwise have to eat their losses.

This.

I had 2/3s of Pod built when that got banned and I had a full Twin deck with virtually all SB options when that got banned. I got a fair bit of disposable income so the loss wasn't that bad for me but I can see how shit like this will make people quit the game.

Anyway I've lost interest in this game. Just thinking whether I should cash out on my collection. I have plenty of high-value stuff like duals and Crypts that I used for EDH.
 

GoutPatrol

Forgotten in his cell
Aside from the banned cards didn't all of the cards in those decks held value or went up by now? I guess deceiver exarch might have dropped but it's an uncommon.

Yeah the only thing that lost value was that and Twin itself, but Twin got super cheap after MM2 anyway. Everything in Pod also held value besides Pod itself and could easily have been ported into another T1 deck (while the Twin pieces probably only had room in a T2 Delver shell at the time.)
 

Santiako

Member
Affinity is really the biggest most common autopilot offender. Not saying there aren't decks that require some piloting in Modern, but a majority of them don't. On one hand that means there's less skill in the format. On the other it means you can build a well honed 'rogue' deck and spike a tournament. It's a double edged sword.

That's like the worst example, as soon as you drop a Ravager both players are

p91kHae.gif


all the time.
 

Supast4r

Junior Member
Sure but that doesn't mean they are vastly less prone to variance.
Heck Shardless plays all of these and cascades. When you see cascade in modern there is only 1 target, Shardless is a card that often just rolls the dice.

And even when there is less variance you still only have 4 FoWs.

In vintage it gets even worse because of mana crypt flips as well as the restricted lottery.
Shardless plays brainstorm, Jace tms and ponder so they can stack what the cascade hits.... Most shardless decks have abandoned agent for Leovold because he is a much better card.
 

Supast4r

Junior Member
This is why people often say that Modern has gotten worse over time. The format is just as matchup and sideboard driven as its always been, but as time goes on, the amount left to discover goes down. And it was that discovery and deckbuilding where the format held its charm.

Note, for example, that Twin didn't get banned until it won a PT years into the format. Once the same deck kept winning, it had to get banned to keep the format fresh. As much as some people might want Modern to mimic the behavior of Vintage or Legacy (with "format pillars" that eternally define the metagame), I think Wizards correctly recognizes that Modern is only good when it's fresh, and so bannings become necessary.
That is NOT why bans happen in modern. Bans happen because the police cards in modern suck ass. We have bolt and thoughtseize to police a format that dates back to 8th edition. We don't have a sustainable control deck to police the format. That is why we keep seeing bans. Another issue is that modern has bad police cards but great hoser cards. This makes many modern matchups after sideboarding play out badly if your deck has a commonly played ace that people play in the sideboard against it. I love modern and will continue to play it but grave troll/prove didn't get banned to "shake up modern." They got banned because they are unhealthy cards that created decks that we don't have police cards to adequately defend against.
 

Supast4r

Junior Member
Affinity is really the biggest most common autopilot offender. Not saying there aren't decks that require some piloting in Modern, but a majority of them don't. On one hand that means there's less skill in the format. On the other it means you can build a well honed 'rogue' deck and spike a tournament. It's a double edged sword.
Judging by this post I can tell that you have never played or played against affinity. It's very easy to tell how good someone is at playing affinity based on how they use ravager. The deck requires a lot of math and planning before sacing things via ravager. The "easy mode" decks that are top tier are just the ramp decks (tron/eldrazi/titanshift)
 

traveler

Not Wario
I was so confused in testing. So many people telling me to play affinity as someone new to modern because it's a "braindead aggro deck that can steal wins". While I have no doubt it can steal wins, in what universe is Affinity braindead? There's more math on going on in most affinity boardstates than pretty much any other modern deck can generate.
 

Tunoku

Member
I was so confused in testing. So many people telling me to play affinity as someone new to modern because it's a "braindead aggro deck that can steal wins". While I have no doubt it can steal wins, in what universe is Affinity braindead? There's more math on going on in most affinity boardstates than pretty much any other modern deck can generate.

People feel better about themselves if they pretend their Snapcaster or Rock deck is the only challenging deck to play.
 

Jhriad

Member
You can pre-order MM2017 boxes on Ebay for $185... or about $55 below MSRP (24 times $10). That's the same discount that Aether Revolt boxes have on Ebay.

What the hell is going on?

From what I've heard, distributors aren't putting restrictions on the supply vendors can get of the set and it's leading to fears among vendors/stores that the supply is going to be massive. Thus they're trying to cash in ASAP by flipping boxes rather than the slower burn more typical of the Masters products. This is the primary reason why it's preordering so low practically everywhere. If spoilers make the set look great we might see an uptick but Wizards has been rather weirdly mum about the set rather than hyping it out the ass like normal. There might be real reasons to be concerned about the set. Guess we'll see how big the supply actually is and whether or not the set is shit soon enough. There are stores on TCGPlayer listing 100+ boxes over $40 under MSRP if anyone is interested.
 

red13th

Member
Yeah I'm expecting MM17 to be complete ass. Do people remember MM15 spoiler season? They tried to get us excited by spoiling Ant Queen and shit, it was sad to see.
 

Rafy

Member
From what I've heard, distributors aren't putting restrictions on the supply vendors can get of the set and it's leading to fears among vendors/stores that the supply is going to be massive. Thus they're trying to cash in ASAP by flipping boxes rather than the slower burn more typical of the Masters products. This is the primary reason why it's preordering so low practically everywhere. If spoilers make the set look great we might see an uptick but Wizards has been rather weirdly mum about the set rather than hyping it out the ass like normal. There might be real reasons to be concerned about the set. Guess we'll see how big the supply actually is and whether or not the set is shit soon enough. There are stores on TCGPlayer listing 100+ boxes over $40 under MSRP if anyone is interested.

I don't know of if that is only in the US, but I was just at a store buying singles and they said that they were given a hard limit of 24 max. They run the PTQ or GPT for modern and specifically told me they wanted to order double that and they couldn't.
 

y2dvd

Member
I hate the secondary market at times like these. It's preventing the MM sets to throw in a bunch of bombs in fear that it will sell way past the MSRP. So they have to do this balance of giving us some expensive stables and including that many more junk on top.
 
Next week I get to play commander again, which means I finally get to sleeve up my K&T stax deck (a bunch of it proxied for now). I've done a few changes to it.
Code:
-1 Burning Earth	
-1 Myriad Landscape	
-1 Storm Cauldron	
-1 Thawing Glaciers	
+1 Abundance
+1 Bant Panorama
+1 Dark Depths
+1 Thespian's Stage
Myriad Landscape and Thawing Glaciers were too slow for my tastes and Storm Cauldron impacted myself too much. Dark Depths Should be a quicker wincon than burning earth considering I don't want my opponents to untap their nonbasics anyway, destroy all of them or make them mountains.

Still deliberating Price of Glory and whether I need more ramp.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Part of this is Wizards burning the secondary market multiple times recently. They dont wanna get screwed like with Conspiracy 2, Eternal Masters second release or Planechase Anthology. Game stores and traders make most of their money on the secondary and casuals and local magic needs those stores to stick around.
 
I was so confused in testing. So many people telling me to play affinity as someone new to modern because it's a "braindead aggro deck that can steal wins". While I have no doubt it can steal wins, in what universe is Affinity braindead? There's more math on going on in most affinity boardstates than pretty much any other modern deck can generate.

People have so much ridiculous pride tied up in the BS idea that aggro decks are all trivial to play and control decks are all hard that they tell lies like this. :p
 

bigkrev

Member
"Magic Digital Next" isn't a product, it's an umbrella term for Magic's digital presence
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-digital/magic-digital-next-2017-02-17

On Hasbro's earnings call last week, leadership spoke about the success of Pie Face, a future My Little Pony movie, and Magic's eighth consecutive year of growth, something of which we are all very proud at Wizards of the Coast! Also mentioned was something called "Magic Digital Next," which has been the subject of a lot of speculation and debate lately—so I'd like to provide some context for our fans.

Magic Digital Next—or "MDN"—is Wizards' internal umbrella term for the entire landscape for Magic: The Gathering experiences around digital games. Our evolving vision includes exciting work by our new digital groups to both bring great experiences to Magic players and to attract new fans to the amazing experience that is Magic. This includes, but is certainly not limited to:

Upgrading to state-of-the-art back-end technology and systems to sustain and constantly improve digital and tabletop experiences;
Improving and expanding the way you play the Magic trading card game digitally;
Dreams of delivering deep gameplay experiences in Magic worlds and fiction on diverse gaming platforms and genres.
You have seen early evidence of our forward ambitions with the addition and growth of Leagues in Magic Online and our recent announcement about the early release of new sets for Magic Online starting with Amonkhet this April.


We're excitedly digging into an ambitious slate of MDN projects, and we can't wait to be at the point where we have solid plans to share. We're in for an exciting ride!
 

ultron87

Member

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
MTGO would die if they turned it into Duels.

The simplistic interface is WHY MTG works on digital.
 

Supast4r

Junior Member
I don't see how the deck with (probably) the most lines is considered autopilot. How did you even come to that conclusion? lol



Nobody likes having their cards banned. If they're going to ban cards they better have a really good reason. I'm not just going to take the loss and say "oh well, what other $1000 deck can I buy?". Only time it's reasonable is if a deck is clearly dominating every tournament and it's clear a ban is coming which they kind of alluded to with Eldrazi last year. Banning twin years into the format when it's not even close to dominant is just dumb. If WOTC made a mistake they should offer some kind of compensation to the players who otherwise have to eat their losses.
Except twin was dominant. It won well over half of the big tournaments that year and had the top metagame share for over a year. Modern is better now that twin is gone.
 

ElyrionX

Member
I was so confused in testing. So many people telling me to play affinity as someone new to modern because it's a "braindead aggro deck that can steal wins". While I have no doubt it can steal wins, in what universe is Affinity braindead? There's more math on going on in most affinity boardstates than pretty much any other modern deck can generate.

I've never played Affinity myself but I am a control player and have played against Affinity plenty of times. I'd say it's possibly the hardest deck to pilot in Modern.
 
Latest Developments - Aether Revolt mailbag
* One reason no cards allowed you to remove an opponent's energy was concern about players who struggled to get the mechanic to work correctly. They didn't want moments where that player finally built up enough energy, only for it to be drained. This is similar to why land destruction is weak.
* Sam thinks that in retrospect, more vehicles should have been like Cultivator's Caravan. That is to say, more focus was placed on its ability than its stats. I expect that future vehicles will more often fit the play style of using an ability early on then attacking in the late game.
* Reconfirming that they know threats are too strong right now and removal should be improved. Some number of resilient threats is important, but they should come with a cost, and that cost has been too small recently. It will still take some time for this adjustment to be made.
* Increasing design/development teams beyond their current size leads to diminishing returns and even a net negative.
* It's hard to judge how balanced old Standard environments that were considered good actually are, since far less people played then and there were fewer big tournaments. The example used is Kamigawa-Ravnica.
* Weaker than expected cards include Savage Knuckleblade, Prophetic Flamespeaker, and new Drana. Call the Bloodline didn't originally restrict you to discarding once a turn.
* They are moving away from forcing story cards to be powerful. They just have to be interesting.
 
Judging by this post I can tell that you have never played or played against affinity. It's very easy to tell how good someone is at playing affinity based on how they use ravager. The deck requires a lot of math and planning before sacing things via ravager. The "easy mode" decks that are top tier are just the ramp decks (tron/eldrazi/titanshift)

In fact, I am the cool guy in the group who shares his opals so people can play their more fun decks because I get tired of the braindead malaise that is affinity.

Pointing out that Ravager gives the affinity deck some skill ceiling doesn't really make the case for it being a skill intensive deck. Because that tends to be the only decision point in the entire deck. What about all those games where you don't draw ravager? Its not going to show up every game after all.

Fighting game analogy: it's a flowchart ken situation. Just without the ability for the player to grow out of the flowchart. Follow the flowchart, play out your hand, your opponent can either deal with it or they can't. The strategy of the deck is to quickly overwhelm, after all.

When you play modern, you need to have a gameplan to beat affinity. If you don't you're not testing right. It is for this reason that I always opt to not play my affinity deck, because people know how to deal with the flowchart.

Which kindly circles around to my deck construction point. Deck construction is more important in modern than how you play.
 

darkside31337

Tomodachi wa Mahou
* Sam thinks that in retrospect, more vehicles should have been like Cultivator's Caravan. That is to say, more focus was placed on its ability than its stats. I expect that future vehicles will more often fit the play style of using an ability early on then attacking in the late game.

Vehicles were a huge mistake. I really hope they aren't evergreen in the slightest. They suck in every possible way.

Also took a survey today for AER... and this was one of the questions
C44gTkGVYAot-YG.jpg
.

They have no idea Magic Duels was canceled for the PS4 lol.
 

Supast4r

Junior Member
In fact, I am the cool guy in the group who shares his opals so people can play their more fun decks because I get tired of the braindead malaise that is affinity.

Pointing out that Ravager gives the affinity deck some skill ceiling doesn't really make the case for it being a skill intensive deck. Because that tends to be the only decision point in the entire deck. What about all those games where you don't draw ravager? Its not going to show up every game after all.

Fighting game analogy: it's a flowchart ken situation. Just without the ability for the player to grow out of the flowchart. Follow the flowchart, play out your hand, your opponent can either deal with it or they can't. The strategy of the deck is to quickly overwhelm, after all.

When you play modern, you need to have a gameplan to beat affinity. If you don't you're not testing right. It is for this reason that I always opt to not play my affinity deck, because people know how to deal with the flowchart.

Which kindly circles around to my deck construction point. Deck construction is more important in modern than how you play.
Fair. I'll retract my statement.
 

Supast4r

Junior Member
Vehicles were a huge mistake. I really hope they aren't evergreen in the slightest. They suck in every possible way.

Also took a survey today for AER... and this was one of the questions
C44gTkGVYAot-YG.jpg
.

They have no idea Magic Duels was canceled for the PS4 lol.
Why does gaf hate vechiles so much? Imho they are the best thing wizards have made in awhile. They fix a lot of the clunk that is equipment. I REALLY hope they are evergreen. Just because there are overpowered ones doesn't mean the mechanic is bad.
 

Santiako

Member
Why does gaf hate vechiles so much? Imho they are the best thing wizards have made in awhile. They fix a lot of the clunk that is equipment. I REALLY hope they are evergreen. Just because there are overpowered ones doesn't mean the mechanic is bad.

I like them too. I feel like they could easily become a fixture 1 or 2 per set, like Equipment.
 

Wulfric

Member
Nah. Reddit/Twitter say they showed this today at Toy Fair.
https://twitter.com/MishrasFotoshop/status/832612913454186496

WOTC President: "What gets them most excited is that this new platform is the full magic rules game with a radically expanded interface and platform that appeals to casual and hardcore player alike."

tn3xmp74tfgy.jpg

Hmm... I hope you can turn the animations off. But if MTGO looks like this, you bet I would draft more. The sleeves are a nice touch.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Because they're checkbox design that's annoying to interact with if they're even vaguely good.
 
Vehicles have been bad because the format has basically fuck all to interact with them. Add that to the undercosted nature(Flying 3/3 that loots in a set that has a bunch of 1/1 Token makers to power it) and you can see why they're disliked.

Again, the fact that Vehicles like Smuggler's Copter are "too strong" for Standard, but see 0 play is a failing on Wizard's part. If we had a Shatter, or even just Kolaghan's Command, you bet that we wouldn't see them running rampant.

I do think that Vehicles could find a role in Modern eventually, but that would basically need a Roleplayer(1/2 with a conditionally strong ETB/activated ability that makes artifact hate be worth the cost). Stoneforge Mystic can crew a Copter funnily enough.
 
Why does gaf hate vechiles so much? Imho they are the best thing wizards have made in awhile. They fix a lot of the clunk that is equipment. I REALLY hope they are evergreen. Just because there are overpowered ones doesn't mean the mechanic is bad.

It's a case of busted ones with minimal ways to interact. Low crew costs are awkward because even if you wipe the board it's easy to play out a 1-2 power creature once it's your turn again. Equipment is generally held back a turn due to summoning sickness and the mana cost to equip is an actual cost instead of tapping a creature you couldn't do anything with anyway.

The mechanic can probably work but it really needs the wrinkles worked out.
 

ironmang

Member
Except twin was dominant. It won well over half of the big tournaments that year and had the top metagame share for over a year. Modern is better now that twin is gone.

Which big tournaments? I'm seeing 2/9 GPs won by twin in the last set of GPs scheduled before it got banned as well as PT Fate Reforged. I didn't count the total number in top 8s but it was clearly not dominant.

It performed as well as it did because people had years of practice with an almost unchanging decklist and there were just more twin decks in the field than almost anything else (perhaps except affinity and burn). I'm like 10-1 lifetime against twin at big tournaments using affinity lol. Trust me, it's definitely not broken.
 

JZA

Member
Haven't played MTG in awhile, but always loved the concept and art. Just wanted to pop in the thread to say it's awesome to see an MTG/Nas reference in the title.
 
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