Board 8 > Trdl answers any questions about Magic the Gathering

(+) Yeah! (+)

pick a rat
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Pack
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Pack Rat. So much money won from that card. It is basically responsible for half my board games.
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Do you think the new Archenemy with Nicol Bolas is worth the money?
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Waluigi1 posted...

Do you think the new Archenemy with Nicol Bolas is worth the money?

For the cards within? No, definitely not. To treat as a MtG board game with friends? Yeah, especially if you can get it at a discount.
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trdl23 posted...

Waluigi1 posted...

Do you think the new Archenemy with Nicol Bolas is worth the money?

For the cards within? No, definitely not. To treat as a MtG board game with friends? Yeah, especially if you can get it at a discount.

Amazon has it for like 43 something so that seems like a pretty good deal.
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Waluigi1 posted...

trdl23 posted...

Waluigi1 posted...

Do you think the new Archenemy with Nicol Bolas is worth the money?

For the cards within? No, definitely not. To treat as a MtG board game with friends? Yeah, especially if you can get it at a discount.

Amazon has it for like 43 something so that seems like a pretty good deal.

Yeah, I'd buy it for that.
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Up
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I actually thought of one I've been curious about for a while now. What is the single most powerful entity in MtG? Is it emrakul? or something else?
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Whew. Oh boy. Are we talking throughout the entire timeline, or currently?

If it's the entire timeline, we have a few finalists:

Urza
Yawgmoth
Emrakul
Ugin
Maybe Karona?
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How powerful is Bolas in comparison to guys like those? Pretty weaksauce I'm guessing?
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Yeah I was talking timeline. I thought bolas was more powerful than Ugin though, since they fought and bolas won? Unless Ugin is more powerful after the tarkir shift or something?
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Emeraldegg posted...

Yeah I was talking timeline. I thought bolas was more powerful than Ugin though, since they fought and bolas won? Unless Ugin is more powerful after the tarkir shift or something?

I think that has been slightly retconned. Based on Dragons of Tarkir, Bolas didn't fight Ugin directly, but used intermediaries on Tarkir to cripple him. I would guess they are on the same power.
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Ahh, gotcha.
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Waluigi1 posted...

How powerful is Bolas in comparison to guys like those? Pretty weaksauce I'm guessing?

Depends. Old, pre-Mending Bolas was superpowered just like all Planeswalkers back then. He even made his own artificial semi-plane for meditation and increasing his power, though it was his downfall when he got punked by Tetsuo Umezawa while his mind was still in there. Aside from that, his feats were all ???? aside from ruling his kingdom with an iron claw.

Current Bolas is definitely weaksauce compared to the old days, but he's still the Big Bad of Magic for a reason. Dude lost his power but not his intellect, which is just as scary. He's still strong enough to raze the entire plane of Amonkhet and retcon its whole history and culture to worship him, even defeating and basically rewriting the gods of the plane. And he's desperate to find a way to return to his old power -- especially now that none of the current Planeswalkers could check him except maybe Ugin.
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Does Bolas die and/or get "defeated" in the return to Dominaria block?
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scarletspeed7 posted...

Does Bolas die and/or get "defeated" in the return to Dominaria block?

If you mean Time Spiral, then no, he actually comes back to life during that block due to timeline shenanigans and the actions of Leshrac Nightwalker, who brought Bolas back to physical form in order to seize his power. (It, uh, didn't go well for Leshrac.)

In the upcoming return to Dominaria set? Very unlikely. Bolas is the bad guy for the long haul, folks. He's not going down anytime soon.
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I was kind of hoping we'd be able to revisit or meet some other villains soon. And quite honestly a Return to Dominaria block (upcoming one) is where I was hoping we'd see Phyrexians again.
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I would love a massive battle royale between bolas, the gatewatch, phyrexians, eldrazi, and slivers for the heck of it. ALL THE HORDES
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Emeraldegg posted...

I would love a massive battle royale between bolas, the gatewatch, phyrexians, eldrazi, and slivers for the heck of it. ALL THE HORDES

The fight raged on for a century
Many lives were claimed, but eventually
The champion stood, the rest saw their better:
Norin the Wary in a bloodstained sweater.
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TomNook posted...

Emeraldegg posted...

I would love a massive battle royale between bolas, the gatewatch, phyrexians, eldrazi, and slivers for the heck of it. ALL THE HORDES

The fight raged on for a century
Many lives were claimed, but eventually
The champion stood, the rest saw their better:
Norin the Wary in a bloodstained sweater.

"I have a baaad feeling about this."

Anyway, we should note that return to Dominaria is just one set. There are no more blocks after Ixalan.

I, too, am looking forward to seeing the Phyrexians again. They're one of the most fascinating and terrifying "villain races" (if you can call them that) I've ever seen.
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Hey, Squee is still alive, right?
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scarletspeed7 posted...

Hey, Squee is still alive, right?

He's supposedly immortal, so I sure hope we see him again!
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Best and worst of the tri-color Ravnica guilds?
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Uh... "tri-color" Ravnica guilds? What?
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The guilds from Return to Ravnica.
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Ok, apparently what I meant were actually 'clans' from 'Tarkir.'

I mean, it made sense to my brain that this would be a thing from Return to Ravnica but APPARENTLY NOT :/

I guess this is what I get for not playing since Timespiral :/
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Yeah, the RTR guilds were the same as old Ravnica, just with a fresh paint job.

To answer your question:

trdl23 posted...

Logicblade posted...

Favourite Tarkir Clan?

The Abzan. Even before they revealed Siege Rhino. Irish roots, so devotion to family and clan is a big part of my life.

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Worst?
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Probably the Sultai. They think they're so clever and sneaky, but really they're just sadistic assholes with no actual gameplan, and they sabotage each other so often that they're constantly in decline. They're crabs in a barrel. Each time they try to do something meaningful, members of their own clan bring them down so they can try to move one step closer to being at the top of a pile of crabs. Why be so obsessed with power when you have nothing to do with it?

Plus, they make deals with Cat Demons. I'm pretty sure that creature type is redundant, but still. Given that cats are already assholes, why would you make a deal with a cat that's also a demon?!
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Approve or Disapprove: The common practice of naming any two or three color deck after its respective Ravnica or Tarkir faction, even if the deck contains no cards from said faction or is actually a standard deck where those blocks have long since rotated out?
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Approve. It's very useful shorthand. However, I do dislike people using silly things like "Dark Jeskai" to mean WUBR. Just say 4-color and let people see the deck. There's either a term for it or there isn't.
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moist jund is the best 4-color combo
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redrocket_pub posted...

Approve or Disapprove: The common practice of naming any two or three color deck after its respective Ravnica or Tarkir faction, even if the deck contains no cards from said faction or is actually a standard deck where those blocks have long since rotated out?

I always thought it was dumb
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To be fair, the vast majority of those decks use the clan/etc. as simply an identifier (e.g. Temur Energy, Grixis Control, Boros Before Hoes).

The only deck I can think of where it's just one word is Jund. That's okay because the deck has become so iconic that there really isn't another word to describe it, nor does there need to be.
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What are your pet cards?

Either cards you collect a bunch of for no real reason, or cards that you love to use and include in many decks that you never see anyone else ever use.
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Bump
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Up
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As someone who doesn't play MtG or CCG in general, I've always been curious what the consensus was on Magic Duels, the F2P online version available on Steam. If you have the experience, how would you say the game is at 1) being fun and 2) being a good representative of the MtG playing and deck building experience? If somebody was looking to get the slightest bit interesting in Magic the Gathering, would you recommend this as a casual introduction?
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I think it's ok.

I liked the Duels of the Planeswalkers games on PS3/360, and this is basically like those but with a more complete deck building experience.
I wouldn't say it accurately represents "real" deck building, since you can't buy secondhand market singles, but it's fun and cheap and teaches you how to play pretty well.

Note I only really dabbled in Duels. My laptop is a piece of shit that can barely play that well so I haven't really delved into it or since it first came out.
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Keep in mind that Duels is a dead product now. You won't be able to play with any of the sets released from here on.
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Oh shit yeah just looked that up and it's not going to be supported anymore looks like.

No wonder they never came out with that PS4 version!
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Why are they dropping support anyway? I thought it was supposed to be the definitive MtG game from when it came out and onwards instead of the yearly releases they had been doing before?
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It was, but lol WotC and digital products.

WotC is good at one thing, and that is designing Magic, all our player griping aside.
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Duels is however a good way to explain the basics of rules and mechanics honestly so if you can get it on your laptop or xbox one or w/e and have a friend who knows nothing about it, it'd be a good way to show them "hey so this is the basics of magic" then you can teach them more outside it.
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WoIfOfLight posted...

Duels is however a good way to explain the basics of rules and mechanics honestly so if you can get it on your laptop or xbox one or w/e and have a friend who knows nothing about it, it'd be a good way to show them "hey so this is the basics of magic" then you can teach them more outside it.

That's actually exactly how I taught a couple friends to play and how I learned myself.
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Waluigi1 posted...

Why are they dropping support anyway? I thought it was supposed to be the definitive MtG game from when it came out and onwards instead of the yearly releases they had been doing before?

Theoretically. The new definitive MtG game would I guess be this Magic Digital Next, whatever that really is. But it's not clear at all when that would be released.
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What is the worst condition card that you use in a deck? (specifically a single card, how bad it looks)
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TomNook posted...

What is the worst condition card that you use in a deck? (specifically a single card, how bad it looks)

I have a warped Treachery in my Cube from smoke damage when one of my local places burned down. (Thankfully they were mostly moved to a new location by then so the losses weren't too bad, and their insurance covered most of it.) I could get a new one but A) that card is expensive and B) it's a memento of the place.
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how do you recommend storing cards? specifically, the mountains of commons and uncommons that inevitably accumulate

i've recently unearthed a few old shoeboxes that need to be replaced...
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