I'm sorry you have been offended by a post, I'm fairly certain that flipper's didn't intend it to be offensive.
I'm going to admit my ignorance of Extended and have to agree that there are a lot of really good things about it as a middle-ground between Classic and Standard.
In fact, I'd bet that this site could use some Extended articles, and it looks like you have the passion and ability to write about them.
Things like good decks, changes, metagames, etc would be awesome to see discussed by someone who loves the format and has a grasp on it.
The amount of work to 'break' Arboria would essentially allow you to 'break' any number of currently unbanned cards. I just don't see it being THAT overpowered compared to the plethora of other build around me cards we have access to.
This post upset me. Not because of the poster himself but more the topics being addressed.
Extended is a great format to actually play.
1. All deck types are present(aggro, control, and combo) and they have all been well represented at the top levels of play throughout last season.
2. Clearly imbalanced cards are not present. I am sorry eternal players but there are many old cards that are inherently far to powerful. I like following eternal formats but they are too expensive and too degenerate.(I realize affinity borders on this yet is still not well represented.)
3. There is a respectable card pool. One of the things I really dislike about standard is the extremely small card pool. Sure, this can be an advantage to new players etc but 2 blocks is really not a lot. This is compounded by the lorwyn block which has tribal themes which present only a number of viable decks(primarily one).
The feeling of designing your own deck(even through minor modifications) is a rewarding aspect of magic and one unique compared to other games. I don't like the feeling that WOTC has designed my deck. That is how I frequently feel about standard and especially decks like faeries.
The comment about faeries dominating extended really upset me. Firstly because faeries was such a terrible mistake. I can understand the desire to tone down counterspells. But to print cards like spellstutter sprite at the same time is just offensive.
Secondly living through faeries is exactly what standard has been since lorwyn was released. Why is it only going to affect extended? At least extended has a larger card pool to combat the menace. You will notice that at least faeries in extended doesn't even use bitterblossom.
Extended is a great format and faeries is a mistake for magic.
The real problem for not registering is lack of federal financial aid for school. This happened to my cousin. He can't afford to go to college since he never registered.
My understanding is that every male of a certain age (the ages vary with time) must register for the draft, and is eligible to be drafted, and if I'm reading this correctly this is still true today. However, certain conditions, like being a student, or (between 1963 and 1965) being married can exempt you from the draft.
Between 1948 and 1973, new recruits were drafted constantly, but until the vietnam war this didn't cause much trouble - despite there being more people drafted in each of 1951, 1952 and 1953 than any given year during the vietnam war.
Since 1973 nobody has gotten drafted, but males of a certain age must still be registered and could get drafted if conscription was reinstated. You can get fined and imprisoned for not being registered, but those are rarely (if ever) enforced, according to wikipedia.
Arboria favors non-interaqctive decks where your board position is developable from permanents that give you creatures (Vitu-Ghazi, Garruk, Centaur Glade) or other effects, and which do not allow you to make creatures. Your PWs can still be attacked, though. Where in a tribal deck do you not drop lands or play fetch spells to develop some combo with your creatures, if you go that route to "break" it? If anything, this is a moat effect that hurts your opponent, so it seems intuitive to look at it in light of Tribal ... but the hoops you must go through, or rather the things you cannot do, to enable Arboria for you seems overly useless to ban, especially when if you have a position that requires an attack, your opponent can just not play anything and prevent any sort of alpha strike.
I'm going to address the Arboria issue my next article. Bear in mind the restrictions are 'on your own turn'. Now, what do you think a flash-based tribe like faeries, cats or wizards could do with that? Heck, just sit behind it and throw instant-speed burn at your opponent, or channeled, cycled or triggered efects. it's very, very abusable, as much as Moat or Ensnaring Bridge. Trust me on this.
Not to put too fine a point on this: Some people learn the ropes via Casual play. They are not necessarily good players and often times their card interactions are something they don't entirely have the skills to handle yet. This is why people play in casual first even if they have a netdecky list. I think it is OK that such people exist as when I run into a nice deck that the player doesn't know how to play I get a win. (Usually :P I can be a dense player at times myself.)
I mean I see tourney quality cards in casual all the time and I play with some of them myself. My decks tend to be a bit roguish but that is preference mainly. The interesting thing is if a person is piloting a well known deck archetype but they don't know it themselves, they are setting themselves up for a beating and they may decide that the deck is really more jank than it actually is, just because they lose to their own misplays and their opponent's capitalization of those misplays.
Luck also plays a part. A person can be a complete novice with a good deck and still win against a veteran player. It doesn't happen that often but it does happen.
Sideboarding in general is very different in this format to many others. Im going to cover sideboarding plans in my follow up as i feel its something that too many people don't consider properly when playing the format.
re Matchups: i actually think elves is favored in pretty much every matchup because it puts so much pressure on so fast that even the slightest stumble is lethal.
I mean sure you can lose games due to opposing god hands, and the reanimator matchup wasn't the greatest (before i added any sideboard options it was about a 50/50 matchup.Im also finding a spot for Elvish Skysweeper which just kills nearly every single big threat they can throw at you, whilst also wrecking baneslayers, exalteds and sowers alike. Which in turn should make it much better.)
Against most of the aggro decks they have to kill you before you can establish a board pressence because there are so many individual cards that most aggro decks just cannot beat (wellwisher and packmaster being the biggest two, but theres also a bunch of combinations that just stop their gameplan dead)and what with nearly every single one running green its only a matter of living long enough to forestwalk them into the ground.
RDW is about the same speed as elves, but without life gain or strong synergies. Even just forcing a burn spell on a wellwisher or essence warden (before you can gain life off either) puts you so far ahead that you pretty much cannot lose with any reasonable hand.
Control has problems with the speed, mana production (nigh impossible to counter everything relevent), oops wins (garruk, geddon, ravages) and volume of threats (one sweeper is rarely enough).
Greedy 5c is a dream matchup as their mana is horrible despite all those duals/fetches increasing the number of slower starts (or at least messing about fixing their mana) whilst also giving you a free route through with forests and having similar issues to the aggro decks (cant beat established board positions).
Now, if I had only had the time to proof the thing (I was running late for lunch). Apologies for the scores of typos, grammatical faux pas, and syntactical atrocities. But more importantly, a slight revision. If you think you have a skill edge over most of your competitors in a draft, Rise is not, as I asserted above, a "terrible" pick over Essence Scatter (sorry, into the flow of the argument and hyperbole crept in). Again, it is a pretty close call in my book. It is just that I think Rise is sub-optimal in that situation.
Looking forward to seeing where Guru Godot weighs in on this!
Here’s a thought for you regarding the power nine, if you take away the $ value they have in paper and introduced them into a online set would they still be the same power nine you know in the paper world.
I think the answer is no the set they would be in would be drafted to affinity and as they would be auto restricted even at mythic they would be worth, I don’t know $10 on average for the Moxe’s 15 for Lotus.
People base the cards on what they already know the paper worlds $ value and rarity, online these cards won’t have either of those.
I think MED 4 will be the last in the series as they would struggle for rares to fill further sets.
You've pretty much got it, but the main point most people miss is that *CARDS THAT WILL BE RESTRICTED ARE POOR AT SELLING A SET*. You essentially have to have 4 good restricted cards for every one good unrestricted card.
To put some math behind it, for MED4 to be as good as MED3 in terms of providing quality tourney rares (which as Hammy pointed out, have proven to be essential to MED set sales along with healthy nostalgia), it would need to have:
Mishra's Workshop (a wash with Bazaar in MED3)
Something for Drain and the 5 duals.
Since the only good cards that are of the caliber of Duals or Drain that are left for MED releases are restricted (sorry Sinkhole, Stasis et all - you aren't duals or Drain), you would need 24 of them! Check the vintage restricted list - there aren't that many left. And that includes P9.
So here are the options
1) Make an MED4 and MED5 (or however many you think there should be) without any reprints and watch sales thin out as the 2nd market prices rise for whatever few good cards you put in there, because there simply aren't enough left to keep the frequency to make opening packs/drafting worth anyone's time.
2) Don't worry about the P9, make MED4 and get done with it.
3) Start reprinting former MED cards (like duals) to stretch out how many more MEDs you can get. You can put P9 in here or not - more duals will always sell the sets.
4) Get all the remaining useful cards into MED4
Option 1 sucks. Even with P9, there aren't enough cards left to make two good sets with what's left.
Option 2 sucks if you want P9 because I really don't see an online exclusive FTV: P9 ever happening.
Option 3 is OK, but only if you are into the reapperance of duals . I personally don't like it as much as option 4.
Option 4 is realistically not going to happen without making all the restricted cards Mythics. Which I've spoken about many times and won't get into here.
There is an article and a good thread on CQ (see the article Too Much is Not Enough). I just don't want to have to reiterate all the points I've made there.
Are you sure? The wikipedia page on Vietnam war conscription is quite horrible, having no exact dates anywhere, but it does state that Richard Nixon campaigned in 1968 with a platform to stop the draft - which would be kinda weird if the draft started in 1969. I know there was a draft lottery in 1969, but was that really the beginning of the draft?
My (rather vague) knowledge of the vietnam war tells me that the war really escalated during the Johnson administration, and that Nixon started pulling troops in the 70s. I've found a timeline indicating that CORE (a racial equality group) and MLK spoke against the draft in 1966 and 1967, because it allegedly targetted african-americans predominantly. So obviously people were being drafted before the lottery.
I think this page compiles the number of draftees every year - and as you can see, a whole lot more were drafted before 1970 than after.
Yes, I do, or to put it more accurately, you lot live across the pond. American accents are occasionally a source of amusement over here, but I wouldn't get your hopes up. Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it.
Essentially, even *if* they put a piece of power into a MED set for the next ten years, they'd run out of *other* cards to include in like, two years, maybe three. And that's if they include complete and utter garbage (worse than MED2's garbage, no less).
Which means that, at most, we have two or three more MED sets.
I've heard (unofficially of course) that they don't really even want to go past one more MED set.
Which means that, well, for those who want the power to be on MTGO that MED4 is likely their last bastion of hope.
The interesting thing, if you look at it, is what's left rare wise for MED4?
Duals are done.
A lot of the uber-Powerful cards are done. Bazaar, Drain, etc.
They'll need to have about 10+ cards to drive the sale of a MED4 set, and there's really not that many strong sellers left in the old sets. Dangerlinto has done a ton more correlation and thought than I have on the subject. IIRC, his general consensus is that the even remotely playable cards will be pretty much taken care of by MED4. (Danger, please set me straight if I'm wrong!)
So, to make a short story long, that's why. :)
(Or, in summary: people really want power. The most likely chance to get power is in MED4, based on what is likely to be the last, or almost last, MED set).
Why does "the possibility of the power nine in MED4" keep popping up? I can't imagine them ever releasing those cards and IF they did, they certainly wouldn't give them all out in one set. They'd put one or two in each Master's Edition for the next 10 years and people would buy each set up.
I have no idea how the Legacy/Classic split is going to affect things but is it possible Legacy could be the next duff format like Extended is turning out to be out of paper season.
As a mainly casual player I’d probably stick with Classic (Vintage) as you will be able to play all the cards you own some may be restricted but none banned. I do play Std and block but Extended doesn’t do much for me as a format, what will happen to the format once Mirrodin rotates will it be ruled by faeries?
How far away do we think the split is? Urza’s Saga is due out early next year with the possibility of the power nine in MED4 this time next year and whatever From the Vault sets in between.
In regards to FTV: Exiled will we see Balance and Strip Mine in MED4 it would be the right power level of a set for them, is it worth waiting until then to see how the formats shape out or should we take the risk and buy now?
I did indeed misread (fun to say that phrase), but what it does is actually even more nonsensical to ban.
"Creatures can't attack a player unless that player cast a spell or put a nontoken permanent onto the battlefield during his or her last turn."
So, I play this, and next turn I can be attacked. Now, assuming I don't play any spells or put a non-token creature into play, or even a LAND into the battlefield... I'm un-attack-able?
I really don't see that as being ban worthy.
How is that, in any reasonable way, worse than Wrath of God, Damnation, or Solitary Confinement, or even Moat? Humilty is probably even better than this card, and more disruptive.
All of those cards are so much more damaging to an opposing creature strategy than Arboria ever could dream of being.
Unless I'm missing something crucial here?
I mean, you could, in theory, build a deck around arboria that would punish anyone who couldn't run a Disenchant/Naturalize effect. I get that.
But for that much work, you could build a deck around a much more damaging four CMC card of your choice, all of which are unbanned.
It still just strikes me as a weird ban for the format.
These are always fascinating to read; I don't play Classic (or the looming Legacy) online, but it's interesting to watch the trends anyway. One suggestion: I think the relative movement charts would be a lot more useful with some minimum price cutoff (25c? 50c?) for the considered cards. If you take it as a given that there's at least 2-3c of 'noise' in the system then that noise totally washes out any movement trends for cards under a dime or so. Nobody cares if Viashino Slaughtermaster or Crystallization moved a couple of cents, and honestly having those cards on the list is just polluting the charts and masking useful data. Yes, sometimes you get actual trends (Kaleidostone is undoubtedly rising on the back of Time Sieve's nascent popularity), but I'd guess more often than not there's no meaning to the movement of anything under about a quarter.
I'm sorry you have been offended by a post, I'm fairly certain that flipper's didn't intend it to be offensive.
I'm going to admit my ignorance of Extended and have to agree that there are a lot of really good things about it as a middle-ground between Classic and Standard.
In fact, I'd bet that this site could use some Extended articles, and it looks like you have the passion and ability to write about them.
Things like good decks, changes, metagames, etc would be awesome to see discussed by someone who loves the format and has a grasp on it.
Exactly, and well put, JA!
The amount of work to 'break' Arboria would essentially allow you to 'break' any number of currently unbanned cards. I just don't see it being THAT overpowered compared to the plethora of other build around me cards we have access to.
This post upset me. Not because of the poster himself but more the topics being addressed.
Extended is a great format to actually play.
1. All deck types are present(aggro, control, and combo) and they have all been well represented at the top levels of play throughout last season.
2. Clearly imbalanced cards are not present. I am sorry eternal players but there are many old cards that are inherently far to powerful. I like following eternal formats but they are too expensive and too degenerate.(I realize affinity borders on this yet is still not well represented.)
3. There is a respectable card pool. One of the things I really dislike about standard is the extremely small card pool. Sure, this can be an advantage to new players etc but 2 blocks is really not a lot. This is compounded by the lorwyn block which has tribal themes which present only a number of viable decks(primarily one).
The feeling of designing your own deck(even through minor modifications) is a rewarding aspect of magic and one unique compared to other games. I don't like the feeling that WOTC has designed my deck. That is how I frequently feel about standard and especially decks like faeries.
The comment about faeries dominating extended really upset me. Firstly because faeries was such a terrible mistake. I can understand the desire to tone down counterspells. But to print cards like spellstutter sprite at the same time is just offensive.
Secondly living through faeries is exactly what standard has been since lorwyn was released. Why is it only going to affect extended? At least extended has a larger card pool to combat the menace. You will notice that at least faeries in extended doesn't even use bitterblossom.
Extended is a great format and faeries is a mistake for magic.
The real problem for not registering is lack of federal financial aid for school. This happened to my cousin. He can't afford to go to college since he never registered.
My understanding is that every male of a certain age (the ages vary with time) must register for the draft, and is eligible to be drafted, and if I'm reading this correctly this is still true today. However, certain conditions, like being a student, or (between 1963 and 1965) being married can exempt you from the draft.
Between 1948 and 1973, new recruits were drafted constantly, but until the vietnam war this didn't cause much trouble - despite there being more people drafted in each of 1951, 1952 and 1953 than any given year during the vietnam war.
Since 1973 nobody has gotten drafted, but males of a certain age must still be registered and could get drafted if conscription was reinstated. You can get fined and imprisoned for not being registered, but those are rarely (if ever) enforced, according to wikipedia.
Arboria favors non-interaqctive decks where your board position is developable from permanents that give you creatures (Vitu-Ghazi, Garruk, Centaur Glade) or other effects, and which do not allow you to make creatures. Your PWs can still be attacked, though. Where in a tribal deck do you not drop lands or play fetch spells to develop some combo with your creatures, if you go that route to "break" it? If anything, this is a moat effect that hurts your opponent, so it seems intuitive to look at it in light of Tribal ... but the hoops you must go through, or rather the things you cannot do, to enable Arboria for you seems overly useless to ban, especially when if you have a position that requires an attack, your opponent can just not play anything and prevent any sort of alpha strike.
I'm going to address the Arboria issue my next article. Bear in mind the restrictions are 'on your own turn'. Now, what do you think a flash-based tribe like faeries, cats or wizards could do with that? Heck, just sit behind it and throw instant-speed burn at your opponent, or channeled, cycled or triggered efects. it's very, very abusable, as much as Moat or Ensnaring Bridge. Trust me on this.
Not to put too fine a point on this: Some people learn the ropes via Casual play. They are not necessarily good players and often times their card interactions are something they don't entirely have the skills to handle yet. This is why people play in casual first even if they have a netdecky list. I think it is OK that such people exist as when I run into a nice deck that the player doesn't know how to play I get a win. (Usually :P I can be a dense player at times myself.)
I mean I see tourney quality cards in casual all the time and I play with some of them myself. My decks tend to be a bit roguish but that is preference mainly. The interesting thing is if a person is piloting a well known deck archetype but they don't know it themselves, they are setting themselves up for a beating and they may decide that the deck is really more jank than it actually is, just because they lose to their own misplays and their opponent's capitalization of those misplays.
Luck also plays a part. A person can be a complete novice with a good deck and still win against a veteran player. It doesn't happen that often but it does happen.
1960s to mid 70s in fact
Sideboarding in general is very different in this format to many others. Im going to cover sideboarding plans in my follow up as i feel its something that too many people don't consider properly when playing the format.
re Matchups: i actually think elves is favored in pretty much every matchup because it puts so much pressure on so fast that even the slightest stumble is lethal.
I mean sure you can lose games due to opposing god hands, and the reanimator matchup wasn't the greatest (before i added any sideboard options it was about a 50/50 matchup.Im also finding a spot for Elvish Skysweeper which just kills nearly every single big threat they can throw at you, whilst also wrecking baneslayers, exalteds and sowers alike. Which in turn should make it much better.)
Against most of the aggro decks they have to kill you before you can establish a board pressence because there are so many individual cards that most aggro decks just cannot beat (wellwisher and packmaster being the biggest two, but theres also a bunch of combinations that just stop their gameplan dead)and what with nearly every single one running green its only a matter of living long enough to forestwalk them into the ground.
RDW is about the same speed as elves, but without life gain or strong synergies. Even just forcing a burn spell on a wellwisher or essence warden (before you can gain life off either) puts you so far ahead that you pretty much cannot lose with any reasonable hand.
Control has problems with the speed, mana production (nigh impossible to counter everything relevent), oops wins (garruk, geddon, ravages) and volume of threats (one sweeper is rarely enough).
Greedy 5c is a dream matchup as their mana is horrible despite all those duals/fetches increasing the number of slower starts (or at least messing about fixing their mana) whilst also giving you a free route through with forests and having similar issues to the aggro decks (cant beat established board positions).
Im seriously a pretty terrible player, the only games i've lost with this deck have been the ones i've gifted away via mistakes and misclicks (pacting into the lose vs savagebeatdown being the most notable one see here http://lol.goodgamery.com/index.php?showtopic=2142&view=findpost&p=3024614)
Obviously once MED3 hits things will change massively because tabernacle is the stone cold nuts against the wee green folk.
Now, if I had only had the time to proof the thing (I was running late for lunch). Apologies for the scores of typos, grammatical faux pas, and syntactical atrocities. But more importantly, a slight revision. If you think you have a skill edge over most of your competitors in a draft, Rise is not, as I asserted above, a "terrible" pick over Essence Scatter (sorry, into the flow of the argument and hyperbole crept in). Again, it is a pretty close call in my book. It is just that I think Rise is sub-optimal in that situation.
Looking forward to seeing where Guru Godot weighs in on this!
Cheers,
Mark
I stand corrected. How exactly did they pick people before the lottery?
nevermind they showed up AFTER I posted this.
NO images on this end. Not sure whats up with that.
Here’s a thought for you regarding the power nine, if you take away the $ value they have in paper and introduced them into a online set would they still be the same power nine you know in the paper world.
I think the answer is no the set they would be in would be drafted to affinity and as they would be auto restricted even at mythic they would be worth, I don’t know $10 on average for the Moxe’s 15 for Lotus.
People base the cards on what they already know the paper worlds $ value and rarity, online these cards won’t have either of those.
I think MED 4 will be the last in the series as they would struggle for rares to fill further sets.
You've pretty much got it, but the main point most people miss is that *CARDS THAT WILL BE RESTRICTED ARE POOR AT SELLING A SET*. You essentially have to have 4 good restricted cards for every one good unrestricted card.
To put some math behind it, for MED4 to be as good as MED3 in terms of providing quality tourney rares (which as Hammy pointed out, have proven to be essential to MED set sales along with healthy nostalgia), it would need to have:
Mishra's Workshop (a wash with Bazaar in MED3)
Something for Drain and the 5 duals.
Since the only good cards that are of the caliber of Duals or Drain that are left for MED releases are restricted (sorry Sinkhole, Stasis et all - you aren't duals or Drain), you would need 24 of them! Check the vintage restricted list - there aren't that many left. And that includes P9.
So here are the options
1) Make an MED4 and MED5 (or however many you think there should be) without any reprints and watch sales thin out as the 2nd market prices rise for whatever few good cards you put in there, because there simply aren't enough left to keep the frequency to make opening packs/drafting worth anyone's time.
2) Don't worry about the P9, make MED4 and get done with it.
3) Start reprinting former MED cards (like duals) to stretch out how many more MEDs you can get. You can put P9 in here or not - more duals will always sell the sets.
4) Get all the remaining useful cards into MED4
Option 1 sucks. Even with P9, there aren't enough cards left to make two good sets with what's left.
Option 2 sucks if you want P9 because I really don't see an online exclusive FTV: P9 ever happening.
Option 3 is OK, but only if you are into the reapperance of duals . I personally don't like it as much as option 4.
Option 4 is realistically not going to happen without making all the restricted cards Mythics. Which I've spoken about many times and won't get into here.
There is an article and a good thread on CQ (see the article Too Much is Not Enough). I just don't want to have to reiterate all the points I've made there.
Are you sure? The wikipedia page on Vietnam war conscription is quite horrible, having no exact dates anywhere, but it does state that Richard Nixon campaigned in 1968 with a platform to stop the draft - which would be kinda weird if the draft started in 1969. I know there was a draft lottery in 1969, but was that really the beginning of the draft?
My (rather vague) knowledge of the vietnam war tells me that the war really escalated during the Johnson administration, and that Nixon started pulling troops in the 70s. I've found a timeline indicating that CORE (a racial equality group) and MLK spoke against the draft in 1966 and 1967, because it allegedly targetted african-americans predominantly. So obviously people were being drafted before the lottery.
I think this page compiles the number of draftees every year - and as you can see, a whole lot more were drafted before 1970 than after.
Oddly enough, that's one of my goals also. ;)
Yes, I do, or to put it more accurately, you lot live across the pond. American accents are occasionally a source of amusement over here, but I wouldn't get your hopes up. Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it.
This is a very good question!
Essentially, even *if* they put a piece of power into a MED set for the next ten years, they'd run out of *other* cards to include in like, two years, maybe three. And that's if they include complete and utter garbage (worse than MED2's garbage, no less).
Which means that, at most, we have two or three more MED sets.
I've heard (unofficially of course) that they don't really even want to go past one more MED set.
Which means that, well, for those who want the power to be on MTGO that MED4 is likely their last bastion of hope.
The interesting thing, if you look at it, is what's left rare wise for MED4?
Duals are done.
A lot of the uber-Powerful cards are done. Bazaar, Drain, etc.
They'll need to have about 10+ cards to drive the sale of a MED4 set, and there's really not that many strong sellers left in the old sets. Dangerlinto has done a ton more correlation and thought than I have on the subject. IIRC, his general consensus is that the even remotely playable cards will be pretty much taken care of by MED4. (Danger, please set me straight if I'm wrong!)
So, to make a short story long, that's why. :)
(Or, in summary: people really want power. The most likely chance to get power is in MED4, based on what is likely to be the last, or almost last, MED set).
Why does "the possibility of the power nine in MED4" keep popping up? I can't imagine them ever releasing those cards and IF they did, they certainly wouldn't give them all out in one set. They'd put one or two in each Master's Edition for the next 10 years and people would buy each set up.
However, the draft did not start until Dec 1969, so 70's is pretty accurate.
I have no idea how the Legacy/Classic split is going to affect things but is it possible Legacy could be the next duff format like Extended is turning out to be out of paper season.
As a mainly casual player I’d probably stick with Classic (Vintage) as you will be able to play all the cards you own some may be restricted but none banned. I do play Std and block but Extended doesn’t do much for me as a format, what will happen to the format once Mirrodin rotates will it be ruled by faeries?
How far away do we think the split is? Urza’s Saga is due out early next year with the possibility of the power nine in MED4 this time next year and whatever From the Vault sets in between.
In regards to FTV: Exiled will we see Balance and Strip Mine in MED4 it would be the right power level of a set for them, is it worth waiting until then to see how the formats shape out or should we take the risk and buy now?
"Wasn't the Vietnam war in the 60s?"
Yes and no? It started in 1956 and ended in 1975. So technically it was in the 60s, but also the 50s and the 70s.
Direct US involvement was from 1962-1975.
Misread?
I did indeed misread (fun to say that phrase), but what it does is actually even more nonsensical to ban.
"Creatures can't attack a player unless that player cast a spell or put a nontoken permanent onto the battlefield during his or her last turn."
So, I play this, and next turn I can be attacked. Now, assuming I don't play any spells or put a non-token creature into play, or even a LAND into the battlefield... I'm un-attack-able?
I really don't see that as being ban worthy.
How is that, in any reasonable way, worse than Wrath of God, Damnation, or Solitary Confinement, or even Moat? Humilty is probably even better than this card, and more disruptive.
All of those cards are so much more damaging to an opposing creature strategy than Arboria ever could dream of being.
Unless I'm missing something crucial here?
I mean, you could, in theory, build a deck around arboria that would punish anyone who couldn't run a Disenchant/Naturalize effect. I get that.
But for that much work, you could build a deck around a much more damaging four CMC card of your choice, all of which are unbanned.
It still just strikes me as a weird ban for the format.
These are always fascinating to read; I don't play Classic (or the looming Legacy) online, but it's interesting to watch the trends anyway. One suggestion: I think the relative movement charts would be a lot more useful with some minimum price cutoff (25c? 50c?) for the considered cards. If you take it as a given that there's at least 2-3c of 'noise' in the system then that noise totally washes out any movement trends for cards under a dime or so. Nobody cares if Viashino Slaughtermaster or Crystallization moved a couple of cents, and honestly having those cards on the list is just polluting the charts and masking useful data. Yes, sometimes you get actual trends (Kaleidostone is undoubtedly rising on the back of Time Sieve's nascent popularity), but I'd guess more often than not there's no meaning to the movement of anything under about a quarter.