Board 8 > Trdl answers any questions about Magic the Gathering

(+) Yeah! (+)

MWC is banned yet again, so I'm here for all your niche-market trivia needs.

Game, lore, history, who cares, go for it.
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What kind of person should play a blue deck?
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How can I cut down the popularity at local card shops so people will want to play my niche card game instead?
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What should I do if someone brings a blue deck to the table?
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BowserCuffs posted...

What kind of person should play a blue deck?

Do you like crushing people's hopes and dreams? Do you like 5D chess while trolling? Do you like slowing your opponent to a crawl? Then is blue the color for you.

More seriously, most players begin by hating blue because it's so powerful and frustrating when piloted well. Then they learn they hate being combo'd even worse, and blue is a good way to stop most combo nonsense.

Menji posted...

How can I cut down the popularity at local card shops so people will want to play my niche card game instead?

Have 8 of your friends play Temur Marvel at every Standard event for a full month. It'll be a barren wasteland.
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who is a cool planeswalker that's blue that isn't jace?
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BowserCuffs posted...

What should I do if someone brings a blue deck to the table?

Sassy answer: Prepare your anus.
Real answer: Just punch them in the dick before they get their defenses up, then bait their counters.
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Is it called Magic the Gathering because the cards secretly contain a spell that draws people together to play it and it's all just a satanic conspiracy to make people pay loads of money for what is essentially art on a smaller scale with write ups and a risk of paper cuts?
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greengravy294 posted...

who is a cool planeswalker that's blue that isn't jace?

For straight-up mono-blue planeswalkers, Tamiyo's original version is good stuff, and the character is solid to boot. Tezzeret is good too but very niche to artifacts and also a huge dick in the story.
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What is the best color and why is it black?
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MenuWars posted...

Is it called Magic the Gathering because the cards secretly contain a spell that draws people together to play it and it's all just a satanic conspiracy to make people pay loads of money for what is essentially art on a smaller scale with write ups and a risk of paper cuts?

Oh please, give the Satanic conspiracy theories a rest. We all know Wizards just uses its patented Addictive Ink.
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Sceptilesolar posted...

What is the best color and why is it black?

To be honest, I don't even know what my favorite color is anymore. It used to be Red, but my guild is Orzhov, and I play lots of green decks and blue decks, so ??????

Black is great! Control the board of any dudes, emulate almost any color (for a price of course), rip apart people's hands, deliver ultimatums to your opponent (cruel or otherwise), get exactly what you need right when you need it... it's a great color!
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What happens when you Incendiary Flow an opponents creature when you have a Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet on your side of the board? Do you get a token or not?
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Logicblade posted...

What happens when you Incendiary Flow an opponents creature when you have a Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet on your side of the board? Do you get a token or not?

When two replacement effects would apply to the same permanent in question (your opponent's dude), the permanent's controller chooses which one to apply.

Unless your opponent is on some kind of crazy plan, they will probably pick Incendiary Flow's effect apply, so no zombie for you.
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do you think we'll get a "Post-Modern" format?

I'm kinda hoping since I got into MTG post Origins but Standard's already becoming a pain to keep up with.
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pjbasis posted...

do you think we'll get a "Post-Modern" format?

I'm kinda hoping since I got into MTG post Origins but Standard's already becoming a pain to keep up with.

Eventually? Sure. Anytime soon? Unlikely, given the complete flop and death of Frontier (fan-made format from M15 forward.)

Main problem with Standard and Frontier is that the formats currently have way too many powerful threats/strategies, but they lack answers on remotely the same power levels. Actually, Modern has this too, though Jund keeps things somewhat in check.
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so how much money would i have to spend to play a """" good """"" deck

is it even worth spending money to have a """" good """" deck?
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How do I win grand prix Vegas? I'll settle for any one of the three, I'm not greedy.
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What is the most degenerate Vintage deck in your opinion? Not necessarily the strongest (long.dec almost certainly was the one before it got banned), but the one that most warped the game, IYO.
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I spent weeks trying to optimize a red-black burn-by-discarding deck.
How silly am I?
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What's the most interesting character backstory-wise?
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So a couple of my friends started MtG the last couple months so I know (very) little from them.

I know there are colors in play and they have different playstyles, but how pervasive it is in one's deck? Can you have like 90% blue cards then one or two reds/greens whose effects play off the rest of the deck? Is that not how it goes? Is the mana colored too? Don't you use them to summon cards?
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How do you find which color(s) to main? I'd generally want a deck that's fairly versatile
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What are the cards that have the +5/-1/-10 stuff on them, and did these not exist until relatively recently?
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LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

I spent weeks trying to optimize a red-black burn-by-discarding deck.
How silly am I?

Actually, I forgot.
It burns through drawing as well.

My inspiration was thinking that Burning Inquiry was the coolest of cards.
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/cards-are-bad/

Once again, how silly am I?
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So what is the overarching metaplot now? I notice the same group of planeswalkers keep showing up in each new block and for some reason working together to solve that world's problems. But like, why? Is this group of planeswalkers the card game equivalent of a jrpg party that is stuck traveling from one shitty village to the next and solving their problems while waiting for the actual plot to start? Is this the fantasy equivalent of Lost in Space?
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what should I have played differently in my RDW PTQ deck in extended from years ago


22 LANDS
18 Mountain
4 Teetering Peaks
20 CREATURES
4 Ball Lightning
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Goblin Guide
4 Hell's Thunder
4 Hellspark Elemental
18 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Burst Lightning
4 Flame Javelin
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Shard Volley
4 Volcanic Fallout
SIDEBOARD
3 Dragon's Claw
2 Earthquake
3 Kargan Dragonlord
4 Leyline of Punishment
2 Mark of Mutiny
1 Searing Blaze
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Mayonesa posted...

What are the cards that have the +5/-1/-10 stuff on them, and did these not exist until relatively recently?

You mean like these?

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/wwk/31.jpg

Those are Planeswalkers, and they're indeed a new type of card that was introduced not that many sets ago. They're special cards that provide you with a bunch of themed effects and are generally structured in a way that you have a basic effect, a power effect, and a 'wincon' effect that you get if you gain points ('loyalty') via the basic effect for long enough while uninterrupted. Trdl can explain better, but that's a very brief gist of what they are.
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at Kanz's request, what are your thoughts on this PTQ top8 deck:

23 LANDS
4 Arid Mesa
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
6 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Tectonic Edge
3 Teetering Peaks
19 CREATURES
3 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Ember Hauler
4 Furnace Scamp
4 Goblin Guide
4 Grim Lavamancer
14 INSTANTS and SORC.
3 Burst Lightning
2 Dismember
2 Incinerate
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Searing Blaze
4 OTHER SPELLS
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
SIDEBOARD
3 Act of Aggression
4 Arc Trail
1 Dismember
3 Manic Vandal
1 Staggershock
3 Vulshok Refugee


note: Tectonic Edge was never good and was only actively bad once =(
note2: why do I hate searing blaze so much in both of these decks, that card is gas
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note3: do you ever think about why you used your shrine of burning rage w/ 7 counters to kill a grave titan in game 3 of top 8 with two act of aggressions in your hand (for the life of me I cannot remember why I boarded that in against blue black control) instead of building up counters to dome your opponent when they were at 13 life?
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KanzarisKelshen posted...

What is the most degenerate Vintage deck in your opinion? Not necessarily the strongest (long.dec almost certainly was the one before it got banned), but the one that most warped the game, IYO.

bazaar, imo
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If my friend is borrowing my deck, and I overload a Cyclonic Rift, do the creatures he controls go to my hand since I'm the owner?
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You control them but you do not own them, so no.
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greengravy294 posted...

so how much money would i have to spend to play a """" good """"" deck

is it even worth spending money to have a """" good """" deck?

Depends on the format, really. You can get into Standard for probably ~$120 on mono-black Zombies, which is tier 1.5. Modern's going to cost you significantly more (I think my Elves deck is ~$200 in value, and that's one of the cheapest "real decks" in the format). Lol Legacy. Double Lol Vintage.

Leo3L posted...

How do I win grand prix Vegas? I'll settle for any one of the three, I'm not greedy.

Sealed: Open 6 Glorybringers. Play all of them.
Modern: When in doubt, Jund 'em out.
Legacy: I hear Leovold is a fair and balanced Magic card

KanzarisKelshen posted...

What is the most degenerate Vintage deck in your opinion? Not necessarily the strongest (long.dec almost certainly was the one before it got banned), but the one that most warped the game, IYO.

Sweet Jesus, Shops. 3 mana from one land, really? The deck just kinda autopilots (as much as a Vintage deck can autopilot anyway), and while artifacts have always been broken in that format, Shops is a special kind of dumb because it functions as a one-sided prison deck that also trololols with giant artifacts they can cast because their lands make THREE ****ING MANA. They can play through hate like no tomorrow because their lock pieces come down so quick.

LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

I spent weeks trying to optimize a red-black burn-by-discarding deck.
How silly am I?

Pretty silly, considering your opponent will eventually run out of cards to discard. Better to just cut the middleman and send the burn right to their dome.
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Anagram posted...

What's the most interesting character backstory-wise?

From the modern cast, probably Liliana. She wasn't always an evil bitch; she originally turned to the darker side in order to save her brother, who was wounded in battle and on death's door. But she accidentally turned him into a zombie instead, and after that decided it was just going to be her "thing." Plus there's the Raven Man, the demonic pact she entered to retain her pre-Mending powers, et cetera, et cetera.

From the old stuff? Geez, so many good choices... but probably Gerrard, the original hero of the game.

Raka_Putra posted...

So a couple of my friends started MtG the last couple months so I know (very) little from them.

I know there are colors in play and they have different playstyles, but how pervasive it is in one's deck? Can you have like 90% blue cards then one or two reds/greens whose effects play off the rest of the deck? Is that not how it goes? Is the mana colored too? Don't you use them to summon cards?

Colors are everything in this game. Every color has its own strengths and weaknesses, and while you can certainly play different colors for synergy or to shore up those weaknesses, what you gain in power you risk losing in consistency.

For example, "splashing" a couple of red or green cards can be a problem in a blue deck because you need to adjust your mana base to compensate. You still want the majority of the lands to be blue, but either you need to play a bunch of non-basic land (with the usual associated downsides; they tend to be much slower) or you plays basics and hope you actually draw them in order to cast your red/green spells and not have them be dead in your hand.

NowItsAngeTime posted...

How do you find which color(s) to main? I'd generally want a deck that's fairly versatile

Practice and experiment, really. I started as a Red player, then I moved over to Green and Black, now I'll play almost anything you put in front of me.

If you're starting out, there's a thing I used to tell my customers back when this was my job in college. I'll post it at lunch or after work today.

Mayonesa posted...

What are the cards that have the +5/-1/-10 stuff on them, and did these not exist until relatively recently?

Those are Planeswalkers, and each of those are basically one-shot sorcery effects you can use once per turn by adding or removing the correct number of counters. Your opponent can also attack and burn them as if they were a separate player, removing the associated number of counters until they reach 0, at which point they die.

LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

I spent weeks trying to optimize a red-black burn-by-discarding deck.
How silly am I?

Actually, I forgot.
It burns through drawing as well.

My inspiration was thinking that Burning Inquiry was the coolest of cards.
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/cards-are-bad/

Once again, how silly am I?

Oh, okay, it's one of these. Yeah, I've seen this deck a million times, and it's hilarious when it goes off, but it's wildly inconsistent and often ends up just doing nothing until it's dead.
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I have a buddy who loves magic and a brother that loves card games but hasnt given magic a try. Id like to try playing with them both, and even have a low level deck the friend gavee me.

Whats the quickest and cheapest way for me to get an amazing deck so i can stomp my friend and get my brother into giving it a try.
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Thanks for your explanation!

Have you played similar card games and how do they stack up (*rimshot*) to Magic?
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why is standard awful and will wizards ever fix it
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redrocket_pub posted...

So what is the overarching metaplot now? I notice the same group of planeswalkers keep showing up in each new block and for some reason working together to solve that world's problems. But like, why? Is this group of planeswalkers the card game equivalent of a jrpg party that is stuck traveling from one shitty village to the next and solving their problems while waiting for the actual plot to start? Is this the fantasy equivalent of Lost in Space?

Yeah, they're basically a self-styled Justice League (or Jace-tice League har har). It's to give more casual players a consistent reference to familiar characters in each block. I hear they're moving away from it next block.
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What do you think the announcement will be today? Return of core sets? Return to the 3-block structure? Something else?
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I am not trdl but my hot take on this is they'll end up splitting the difference and alternating years between two 2-set blocks one year, and then a 3-set block + core set the next year.
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MajinZidane posted...

what should I have played differently in my RDW PTQ deck in extended from years ago


22 LANDS
18 Mountain
4 Teetering Peaks
20 CREATURES
4 Ball Lightning
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Goblin Guide
4 Hell's Thunder
4 Hellspark Elemental
18 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Burst Lightning
4 Flame Javelin
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Shard Volley
4 Volcanic Fallout
SIDEBOARD
3 Dragon's Claw
2 Earthquake
3 Kargan Dragonlord
4 Leyline of Punishment
2 Mark of Mutiny
1 Searing Blaze

-4 jank +4 goyf

(Seriously, Ball Lightning? Wtf? Play searing blaze!)

MajinZidane posted...

at Kanz's request, what are your thoughts on this PTQ top8 deck:

23 LANDS
4 Arid Mesa
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
6 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Tectonic Edge
3 Teetering Peaks
19 CREATURES
3 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Ember Hauler
4 Furnace Scamp
4 Goblin Guide
4 Grim Lavamancer
14 INSTANTS and SORC.
3 Burst Lightning
2 Dismember
2 Incinerate
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Searing Blaze
4 OTHER SPELLS
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
SIDEBOARD
3 Act of Aggression
4 Arc Trail
1 Dismember
3 Manic Vandal
1 Staggershock
3 Vulshok Refugee


note: Tectonic Edge was never good and was only actively bad once =(
note2: why do I hate searing blaze so much in both of these decks, that card is gas

I remember dying to this deck a lot.
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Here is the answer:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/metamorphosis-2-0-2017-06-12

rip small sets

(sorry to hijack the topic)
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What

Is the capitol of Magic Assyria?
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TomNook posted...

If my friend is borrowing my deck, and I overload a Cyclonic Rift, do the creatures he controls go to my hand since I'm the owner?

Cute. But no. "Own" in Magic means "which player started with this in their deck/pool/sideboard."

imthestuntman posted...

I have a buddy who loves magic and a brother that loves card games but hasnt given magic a try. Id like to try playing with them both, and even have a low level deck the friend gavee me.

Whats the quickest and cheapest way for me to get an amazing deck so i can stomp my friend and get my brother into giving it a try.

"Quickest and cheapest" to get an amazing in Magic?


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What is your opinion on eldrazi, power wise? Do you think they're op? Are the new iteration of them with wastes any better than the old versions?
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MajinZidane posted...

note3: do you ever think about why you used your shrine of burning rage w/ 7 counters to kill a grave titan in game 3 of top 8 with two act of aggressions in your hand (for the life of me I cannot remember why I boarded that in against blue black control) instead of building up counters to dome your opponent when they were at 13 life?

No, I don't.

Raka_Putra posted...

Thanks for your explanation!

Have you played similar card games and how do they stack up (*rimshot*) to Magic?

I have played a LOT of card games. Here's the breakdown:

Yu-Gi-Oh: Absolute cancer, but when it came out, I was right in the target market. Card design quickly devolved, and players got archetypes shoved down their throats. It became clear very quickly that Konami didn't even playtest their sets before print, and they relied on banning cards after everyone spent money acquiring the busted cards to remain competitive. To say nothing about how Konami treats its players and the secondary market like an abusive boyfriend. Fuck Konami and fuck this game.
Vanguard: Do you like professional dice rolling? Man, do I have a game for you. The game had a lot of potential marred by awful design at every turn. Power creep came way too fast (you'll notice this a lot), and the trigger mechanic was just totally unfun. Get double crit triggered and power split to the other rearguard? Yeah, fuck off.
Netrunner: This game is simply amazing, but it had no marketing behind it, and the essence of Living Card Games means there's no secondary market to speak of. This makes people hesitant to invest because there's no way to sell out once you're in. As a result, the game has been on life support for years, and that's a damn shame because it has the most interesting counter play and decision trees I've ever experienced.
Force of Will: Weeb Magic, it tries to improve upon the original by preventing mana screw. That's pretty cool, but that also limits design space. The color system never felt as smoothly defined as Magic. They ran into power creep problems way too quickly, and their print runs were way too high compared to marketing budgets, tanking the market. I think they've learned according to my friends who still play, but in this market, probably too little, too late.
Final Fantasy: The new kid in town, this is actually pretty innovative. It has a similar trigger system to Vanguard but only on defense, which is the best way to approach it. It's also the only Japanese game on this list to realize that combat is way more fun when the structure favors the defender. I have high hopes for this one.
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The Mana Sword posted...

why is standard awful and will wizards ever fix it

Wizards had their heads up their asses ever since Khans block, basically. Siege Rhino was the start of darkness because it caused so much monotony in the meta. This new structure might help, especially with the dedicated "test for Standard" team.
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Well trdl I would like to play Blue because Jace is awesome


Now what do I do?
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Like standard is the most normal format right? Vintage is the beta and alpha shit that you can't find anywhere and stuff.
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