Board 8 > Magic the Gathering Topic: Go Big or Go Home

(+) Yeah! (+)

This is the first prerelease in like 7 years I'm thinking of willing skipping.

I might still try to hit one tomorrow but I dunno.
---

Just got back from my prerelease. Went 2-2.

Opened up Kefnet and a bunch of cool blue spells and removal so I went with a blue/white control deck. Honestly I didn't have much of a win condition but the plan was just to keep my opponent's creatures away with spells and then keep swinging in the air.

Got a Kaladesh fat pack in the raffle too, so overall good day.
---

Anyone else go to prerelease?
---

I ended up going today. Had a pretty fun Scarab God/Drake Haven deck with a ton of Cyclers. Pool had no removal though.
---

I opened a decent UR deck, mostly because my Amonkhet packs were very good to me, getting me two Emberhorn Minotaurs, two Angler Drakes, and a Curator of Mysteries. Hour was kinda there. Ended up going 4-0 but I was very lucky and didn't play against any true bombs.
---

I hear the insect gods are almost unbeatable. Yikes.
---

i'm sad i couldn't do any prereleases
---

I'm trading a bunch of jank to a casual friend for some real cards like Thoughtseizes and Blood Moon. Values are equal but I'm getting rid of stuff that's been in my binder for months.

I love having casual friends.
---

I have a ton of Blood Moons because coolstuffinc used to give them in the "bad rares" grab bags. I get why they're popular as a sideboard card but I'm confused why the price went up to begin with.

I should probably sell them
---

Because they wriggety wreck pretty much all Modern mana bases, and they haven't been printed very much.
---

I mean yeah but they've always done that?

I'm just kinda confused why they weren't always expensive.
---

There weren't originally many decks that could actually take advantage of Blood Moon without ruining themselves. As of a couple years ago, there were, and the Skred fad a while back made them shoot up again; they didn't fall back down until the MM17 reprint.
---

SDCC 2017 revealed

Jace, Unraveler of Secrets - http://mythicspoiler.com/fnm/cards/jaceunravelerofsecretspromo1.jpg
Liliana, Death's Majesty - http://mythicspoiler.com/fnm/cards/lilianadeathsmajestypromo.jpg
Nissa, Steward of Elements - http://mythicspoiler.com/fnm/cards/nissastewardofelementspromo.jpg
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - http://mythicspoiler.com/fnm/cards/chandratorchofdefiancepromo.jpg
Gideon of the Trials - http://mythicspoiler.com/fnm/cards/gideonofthetrialspromo.jpg
Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh - http://mythicspoiler.com/fnm/cards/nicolbolasgodpharaohpromo.jpg

I'm a fan of this Egyptian style (aside from Nicol Bolas who doesn't match at all).

I loves me some unique art style reminiscence of the olden days of Magic when it had interesting artists.
---

Nicol Bolas does 'match', or at least fit in. He's the one drawing the artwork of the other five.
---

Sceptilesolar posted...

Nicol Bolas does 'match', or at least fit in. He's the one drawing the artwork of the other five.

Yeah, but it's the same reason I didn't like Lilana's last year too.
---

I love those promos, so much better than last year's
---

Those promos look awesome.
---

Those promos are what the Invocations should've been
---

Scarab God is legit yo.
---

lol

Wizards is killing FNM promos with Ixalan and giving out foil tokens instead. how clueless.

game day is being eliminated and being replace with a 'store championship' event at the end of every set. this seems fine.

the FNM promo thing is baffling. the months with strong FNM promos were some of the most active. I really don't think people care about foil tokens. but what do I know.
---

That's quite a blunder. Jfc, WotC.
---

One of my previous customers just won the SCG Cincinatti Standard Classic. I remember selling him his intro deck.

Ah, how the time flies.
---

I wonder how long the "no FNM promos" thing will last until they go back to it.

But I said that about textless rewards too.
---

Who knows. It's hard to figure out the reasoning behind the change because they're so bad at communicating. It can't be a cost-cutting measure, because surely printing double-sided foil tokens is more of a burden than just running off sheets of regular FNM foils (unless they've been lying about about the difficulty of printing double-sided cards this whole time).

Even in the daily update today, where they tried to clarify, they ended up talking out of both sides of their mouth, saying they didn't want FNM promos to be the main reason people show up to FNM, while in the same paragraph claiming they have data that says that the quality of promos doesn't change FNM attendance (using a terrible example with no actual numbers in the process).

It's very frustrating. For the past two years or so they seems to be in "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" mode, and I'm not entirely sure what brought about that change. Things were going pretty well from about the time of the Jace/Stoneforge ban up through the end of Khans block, so they sudden shift to "we have to change everything!" is bizarre.
---

Well, Hearthstone picked up as a major competitor around that time. It has much higher accessibility, lower operating costs, lower overhead, and practically no barrier to entry.

Combine that with a stale and expensive Standard at the time thanks to BFZ being the worst block ever, and it's easy to see why they're panicking. But, as many people do when they panic, they're just flailing around without a cohesive plan.
---

textless promos are pretty dumb. i feel like they can work if the card is truly iconic and universally recognized, but they really overestimate that a lot of the time

recently looked at my collection and saw a textless 'flame javelin' and just kind of blinked and moved on. they're just bad for everyone that doesn't have the format memorized
---

The Professor just dissected everything wrong with WotC discontinuing FNM promos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N2XTYIQF2I
---

banananor posted...

textless promos are pretty dumb. i feel like they can work if the card is truly iconic and universally recognized, but they really overestimate that a lot of the time

excuse me are you trying to tell me that textless cryptic command wasn't a fantastic idea
---

Cryptic Command being textless is a cruel joke from someone who likes puns
---

yes, yes, very funny
---

trdl23 posted...

The Professor just dissected everything wrong with WotC discontinuing FNM promos.

the solution i've seen thrown around (i mean maybe it's too late now) is to create some kind of casual saturday for newbies, and keep FNM what it was

like i guess wizards' coal in all this is to have a smoother ladder climb for new players. Rather than going from casual, friends and prereleases straight to heads up drafts and tournaments against best player in your town, final destination. they want to add some steps there in the middle

and i can totally understand that. i wouldn't necessarily want to subsidize the local super tryhards with my money when i'm not even sure how seriously i'm going to be playing the game in the future

they just shouldn't disassemble the legacy and life traditions of FNM for that
---

wow, that post was an unfortunate grammar and vocabulary salad. i'm going to leave it as-is
---

HoD draft seems slower than Amonkhet.
---

HoD draft is boring as hell. And I liked Amonkhet a decent bit.
---

found an old bare bones info-only playtesting proxy of mine.

vaguely remember having a template for it, but it's long lost. was able to scan it in, but it's driving me nuts that i can't recreate the rounded rectangle shape on the bottom. broke the link up because it really doesn't deserve to blow up the page

http://i.imgur.com/ VUTXsMe.jpg
---

New Booster Box Game out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qosxg227yq8
---

Steamflogger Boss confirmed for Unstable.

Also contraptions.
---

I wish they were in black border, but still EXTREMELY hype.
---

The Mana Sword posted...

Steamflogger Boss confirmed for Unstable.

Also contraptions.

What's Unstable?
---

So i got lucky enough to get a ticket to the US nationals for the Final Fantasy card game. Is anybody good at the math for this? 200 people play 8 rounds in a swiss tournament to make a top 64. Then the 64 play 6 rounds to make a top 8. Assuming no ties or drop outs, how many rounds do you need to win at each phase to move on?
---

200 into a top 64? With 8 rounds?

Just a quick estimation says that some X-3 is in almost for sure, X-4 is iffy. Ties, of course, could throw this for a loop.
---

Yeah, 5-3 is safe for the first part.

You'll need 5-1 for the second phase to make top 8.
---

Sorry, second part is assuming records reset after the first phase. If not, you're looking at probably needing at least 11-3 overall I think.
---

Oh yeah, records reset after day one. The only impact they have is who you go against first the next day.
---

When is the tournament, Mayo?
---

September 16-17

Kind of annoying that it's so soon after Opus 3 comes out, especially since it got delayed 2 weeks. I'm planning on just using proxies for now and then buying the singles I'll need like a week before. That way i won't be committing to something and finding out the meta shifted to a hard counter.
---

That's generally the way to do it, yeah.

In Magic news, apparently UW Monument is the deck to beat. That certainly came out of nowhere.
---

I wish there was an active FFTCG community near me.

Or any community at all.
---

I built mine by buying a set of the starters and playing the starters against one another and getting people to realize "hey this game is actually kinda cool and not empty fanservice"

Depends how closely you know the people you play with-- I knew they were FF fans(ish, in the case of some-- one of the dudes I got to try it is making a FF1/FF4 deck OLD SCHOOL, since he hasn't played since FFVII) so it was less of a leap of faith to assume they'd give it a try.

Helps that the FFX, FFXIII, and FFVII starters are well constructed for exposing to a variety of the mechanics and have enough recognizable characters to be fun to play, and that they're fairly balanced.
---

Yeah, I mean I have a couple friends who I've done the same with (I'm the only one of us who owns any cards) and they're interested, but there's only like 3-4 of us, so it's harder to get them to commit to buying their own when what I have suffices for now.
---