Yeah the turnaround time was a little late. You're forgiven. : )
MED II will be the bees knees. I already told my wife under no cirumstances would I not be spending my extra money on it. Nuts to the 2nd child, right?!
Sorry Danger, it had been confirmed to my satisfaction after the article was writting, and I should probably edit that section. Yes, all 10 duals have been confirmed to be printed, and what not, and I'm planning on spending lots on MEDII drafts because of this. Pulse of the Fields is pretty good, although I went a different route (maybe worse). Tombstalker is BOMB, and I run 2 MD nowadays. I've yet to take a Flip8, although I'm sure I have one coming someday.
"This will change as duals are printed in MED2, but I wonder if all ten duals will be ran out in that set, or maybe just allied colors... "
How many times does worth have to confirm this for you? All 10 Dual Lands wil be in MED II
As for Tombstalker - he is a bomb, eh? :) Just about as broken as Tarmogoyf, and great against it too. I depeding on your number or your usef of SDT, you might be able to put it in without taking Bob out.
And Pulse of the Fields, for the most part, RDW just scoops to. I watched it happen twice on the 6th. RDW needs to come up with some tech for that.
Thanks for reading and making a comment. I agree that Peppersmoke is a very good card - especially in a UB deck with Dreamspoiler Witches. I am not committed enough to Faeries at Pick 4 to take Peppersmoke over Ghostly Changeling - or are you suggesting that is the correct pick there?
And then I don't see the next Peppersmoke until Pack 36 and at that point I only have one Dreamspoiler Witch. I can't justify taking the other one with the small number of instants that I have drafted to that point.
So I recently I was playing my new take on mono black aggro (mono snow aggro) and I was matched up against Sonic Boom. No big deal. I've seen the deck a million times, but I've noticed that b/c of aggro Sonic Boom drops a lot of its counters early and has a troublesome time getting teferi and guile down. With this knowledge I decided to build my own version of Sonic Boom in UG (putting things in like Garruk, Fertile Ground, Mystic Snake, Birds of Paradise, and Yavimaya Coasts). I've only been play testing this deck for the past 3 hours and I've only played against Doran Aggro, Skred Red, Reanimator, and Mannequin but I've won all of those matches (I also keep Trickbind in SB for Storm). But b/c I am so new at deck building I wanted a neutral party opinion on my build of this deck.
So I recently I was playing my new take on mono black aggro (mono snow aggro) and I was matched up against Sonic Boom. No big deal. I've seen the deck a million times, but I've noticed that b/c of aggro Sonic Boom drops a lot of its counters early and has a troublesome time getting teferi and guile down. With this knowledge I decided to build my own version of Sonic Boom in UG (putting things in like Garruk, Fertile Ground, Mystic Snake, Birds of Paradise, and Yavimaya Coasts). I've only been play testing this deck for the past 3 hours and I've only played against Doran Aggro, Skred Red, Reanimator, and Mannequin but I've won all of those matches (I also keep Trickbind in SB for Storm). But b/c I am so new at deck building I wanted a neutral party opinion on my build of this deck.
"Fact or Fiction is, quite simply, the best card advantage card of all time."
But I feel you are overrating Fact or Fiction. It's nowhere near as good as Ancestrall Recall. It is after all 1 mana for three cards now opposed to 4 mana for 1-4 cards now (and rest perhaps later). Besides cards like Yawgmoth's Will generate card advantage too. ;)
nice interview, outsider, or 006.5 as we like to call him in spy world has a nice build here. I think he took that fish and fed it to fats and fats liked it. Anyway i had fun reading this article . good job!
I've played Heartbeat combo once in Singleton and didn't do very well. The problem is its not very consistant. Sometimes you have a good draw, other times you draw all your card draw spells and no combo peices, or all your mana acceleration and no card draw, etc. I found it to be a turn 4-6 win goldfishing which doesn't beat aggro consistantly. You need to consider that while people can only run 1x of hate cards you can only run 1x of combo cards. This reduces the combos you can go for pretty drasticly. The Wish cards are also very weak in Singleton which hurts your tutoring options.
If you have a combo deck you think can compete in the PEs I'd be more than happy to take a look at it and consider playing it. If you do send it to me at timpskowski[AT]gmail.com and thanks.
They have said before that the Ravnica lands are more likely to be reprinted in the future.. they are templated better then the pain lands and are better than the pain lands in many respects.. so I would expect them within the next 2 or 3 years reprint the ravnica lands quite possibly as early as 11th edition.. the ravnica lands are very popular not just in extended they were great for standard (better than the pain lands) and sit at a good power level
considering all 10 dual lands will be in one small set.. there is an "easier" chance at hitting a dual land (if there are 60 rares.. thats 1/6 chance.. better than getting foil commons and almost as good of odds of hitting any uncommon) they will probably sell for around 10 bucks while they are in print.. possibly less considering how many are really going to be out there.
I didn't find any of the cards of MED to be prohibitively expensive (while they were in print.. as a matter of fact.. the MAJORITY of cards from the set has held roughly the same value only FOW has jumped enormously in price and for good reason)
They never said they would never "print these cards again" .. expect MED tournaments like the IPA tournaments to come out.. but I would not expect them to reprint cards from any MED set for a WHILE .. at least the rares.. the uncommons I don't care too much about but they have to make a commitment to their paper players (ones who feel their cards will lose value) and their online players (ones who fully backed MED with their wallets and their support) just printing Force of Will in every set would not make for a very good collectable game (and honestly that IS what we are really talking about) .. I've spent HUNDREDs of dollars on the long term classic potential.. its my favorite format offline.. and its increasingly becoming my favorite set online..
I don't think the dual lands will reach Force of Will prices right away but they will be saught after and out of stock in online stores for a while, but its more incentive to crack open boosters especially of a smaller set when you know you can easily get a "draft ticket" 1 in 6 usually.. come on.. drafts for this and leagues will probably easily fill up more then the last MED set..
Personally though.. I hope Portal 3 kingdoms cards are in this set.. that is one set that I never seen boosters for.
ok.. with that out of the way.. great job on the article Hamtastic.. you should link to your V3 article in your V3 section (you talk about it but since the other article is live you should link to it.. )
I understand your concern for Classic. I really do. Looking at it from a playing perspective having such a card (FoW) at a high price makes it seem like it's not going to be accessible to new or budget players.
I don't really have much to say about that at the moment. I know that there are some who actually want that for the format. They want a hard to get into format for those without the funds to do so.
I may have to do some thinking on some of the impacts of having ultra high cost cards in an eternal format. There's probably a lot of good things to think about there.
Something to consider though, is that the price of the cards will only reflect what people are willing to spend on them. One of the reason that the Power 9 fetch such high prices is power. The other is collectibility. The low supply and high demand help push those up to the heights they are. I just don't see that happening, even with Force of Will. It will get expensive for sure. But only so far as people are willing to pay for them. I think... :)
What happened to the price of Force of Will is why I am not looking forward to dual lands in MED 2. If the current policy of reprinting staple eternal cards only once continues, the dual lands from MED 2 are going to be astronomically expensive. Dual lands appeal to both casual and tournament players, and are useful in all types of decks. At the moment, with MTGO not having dual lands, there is a nice difference between paper and online eternal formats. Furthermore, the printing of dual lands will further decrease the usefulness of the Ravnica lands. I spent hundreds of dollars on those lands, like many others, and sold some of them off before Ravnica rotated. I would be disappointed if the lands lost their eternal value and became Extended only lands.
I'd like Wizards to either be consistent in their making Magic a collectible card game, in that they don't haphazardly reprint cards, or to deemphasize the collectibility by reprinting important cards until their prices reach reasonable prices. Intentially creating a new Vintage-like environment where key cards are prohibitively expensive would be incredibly shortsighted.
Tarmotog, I had a pretty hellish (at least it seemed like it) control deck built a while back, duress, thoughtseize, therapy, counterspells, etc, and singleton heartbeat blew me out almost every time we played. It was a very durable and resiliant deck. I'm not sure why it doesn't do well at PEs.
It's sad to see singleton consisting of aggro, control and aggro control.. It's not like combo decks are weak in singleton.. The current meta is like watching t2 from a few years back.. Singleton definitely has more potential than these results show. Plus the fact that people have a more difficult time hating cards unlike spammed 4x leylines + tormod crypts. I don't play in the pe cos it's not convinient for me so it's not fair for me to make comments on the pes but I personally find it strange that all this time no one could just play combo and win given the significant tools available to make them work and to protect them. The power level of singleton isn't at this level.
I like the rogue deck articles.. that Traumatize deck is pretty interesting.. and the reanimator deck I thought would take some hits when Ravnica left seemed to never really go away.. good article
Yeah the turnaround time was a little late. You're forgiven. : )
MED II will be the bees knees. I already told my wife under no cirumstances would I not be spending my extra money on it. Nuts to the 2nd child, right?!
Sorry Danger, it had been confirmed to my satisfaction after the article was writting, and I should probably edit that section. Yes, all 10 duals have been confirmed to be printed, and what not, and I'm planning on spending lots on MEDII drafts because of this. Pulse of the Fields is pretty good, although I went a different route (maybe worse). Tombstalker is BOMB, and I run 2 MD nowadays. I've yet to take a Flip8, although I'm sure I have one coming someday.
"This will change as duals are printed in MED2, but I wonder if all ten duals will be ran out in that set, or maybe just allied colors... "
How many times does worth have to confirm this for you? All 10 Dual Lands wil be in MED II
As for Tombstalker - he is a bomb, eh? :) Just about as broken as Tarmogoyf, and great against it too. I depeding on your number or your usef of SDT, you might be able to put it in without taking Bob out.
And Pulse of the Fields, for the most part, RDW just scoops to. I watched it happen twice on the 6th. RDW needs to come up with some tech for that.
great article.. seems like a deck i would enjoy playing...
p4 Angler>G. Changling in dedicated Merfolk Deck
p6 I hate draft Hostility
p9 Spellstutter over Tideshaper
p11 Stinger over Stinkdrinker
p16 Clique even if just on ticket worth
p17 Extract over T. Sprite-where is your removal?!?
p21 or take Ponder as you have seen very little good White
p22 Stinger>Harbinger>elite Why not go for the nuts farie draw rather than the useless hate?
p31 Soooooooooo many Bombs. Take Mulldrifter if fairies, C. ranger if merfolk
p33 judge makes merfolk work
p35 Witches is better and draws removal
p36 Peppersmoke as stated before me
p37 R. Stlagtite is good in Fairies and Merfolk
p43 Gift!
Bulid:
I would probally fit in the Wiskergill, likely over Necter Fairie.
In general a pretty weak showing with very little removal. better luck next time.
Regards,
___helper_monkey on MTGO
To clarify:
I can't justify taking the other one (Dreamspoiler Witch) with the small number of instants that I have drafted to that point.
And with only one Dreamspoiler Witch, I still think the color fixing is more important that one Peppersmoke.
Good article!
Thanks for reading and making a comment. I agree that Peppersmoke is a very good card - especially in a UB deck with Dreamspoiler Witches. I am not committed enough to Faeries at Pick 4 to take Peppersmoke over Ghostly Changeling - or are you suggesting that is the correct pick there?
And then I don't see the next Peppersmoke until Pack 36 and at that point I only have one Dreamspoiler Witch. I can't justify taking the other one with the small number of instants that I have drafted to that point.
Thanks,
88spartans88
I don't think you respect Peppersmoke enough. I think that you should have drafted a UB deck with double witches, double peppersmoke.
So I recently I was playing my new take on mono black aggro (mono snow aggro) and I was matched up against Sonic Boom. No big deal. I've seen the deck a million times, but I've noticed that b/c of aggro Sonic Boom drops a lot of its counters early and has a troublesome time getting teferi and guile down. With this knowledge I decided to build my own version of Sonic Boom in UG (putting things in like Garruk, Fertile Ground, Mystic Snake, Birds of Paradise, and Yavimaya Coasts). I've only been play testing this deck for the past 3 hours and I've only played against Doran Aggro, Skred Red, Reanimator, and Mannequin but I've won all of those matches (I also keep Trickbind in SB for Storm). But b/c I am so new at deck building I wanted a neutral party opinion on my build of this deck.
So I recently I was playing my new take on mono black aggro (mono snow aggro) and I was matched up against Sonic Boom. No big deal. I've seen the deck a million times, but I've noticed that b/c of aggro Sonic Boom drops a lot of its counters early and has a troublesome time getting teferi and guile down. With this knowledge I decided to build my own version of Sonic Boom in UG (putting things in like Garruk, Fertile Ground, Mystic Snake, Birds of Paradise, and Yavimaya Coasts). I've only been play testing this deck for the past 3 hours and I've only played against Doran Aggro, Skred Red, Reanimator, and Mannequin but I've won all of those matches (I also keep Trickbind in SB for Storm). But b/c I am so new at deck building I wanted a neutral party opinion on my build of this deck.
Awww thats no fair, he gets an interview?
Good article. It's very informative.
"Fact or Fiction is, quite simply, the best card advantage card of all time."
But I feel you are overrating Fact or Fiction. It's nowhere near as good as Ancestrall Recall. It is after all 1 mana for three cards now opposed to 4 mana for 1-4 cards now (and rest perhaps later). Besides cards like Yawgmoth's Will generate card advantage too. ;)
nice interview, outsider, or 006.5 as we like to call him in spy world has a nice build here. I think he took that fish and fed it to fats and fats liked it. Anyway i had fun reading this article . good job!
I've played Heartbeat combo once in Singleton and didn't do very well. The problem is its not very consistant. Sometimes you have a good draw, other times you draw all your card draw spells and no combo peices, or all your mana acceleration and no card draw, etc. I found it to be a turn 4-6 win goldfishing which doesn't beat aggro consistantly. You need to consider that while people can only run 1x of hate cards you can only run 1x of combo cards. This reduces the combos you can go for pretty drasticly. The Wish cards are also very weak in Singleton which hurts your tutoring options.
If you have a combo deck you think can compete in the PEs I'd be more than happy to take a look at it and consider playing it. If you do send it to me at timpskowski[AT]gmail.com and thanks.
@ Umii
They have said before that the Ravnica lands are more likely to be reprinted in the future.. they are templated better then the pain lands and are better than the pain lands in many respects.. so I would expect them within the next 2 or 3 years reprint the ravnica lands quite possibly as early as 11th edition.. the ravnica lands are very popular not just in extended they were great for standard (better than the pain lands) and sit at a good power level
considering all 10 dual lands will be in one small set.. there is an "easier" chance at hitting a dual land (if there are 60 rares.. thats 1/6 chance.. better than getting foil commons and almost as good of odds of hitting any uncommon) they will probably sell for around 10 bucks while they are in print.. possibly less considering how many are really going to be out there.
I didn't find any of the cards of MED to be prohibitively expensive (while they were in print.. as a matter of fact.. the MAJORITY of cards from the set has held roughly the same value only FOW has jumped enormously in price and for good reason)
They never said they would never "print these cards again" .. expect MED tournaments like the IPA tournaments to come out.. but I would not expect them to reprint cards from any MED set for a WHILE .. at least the rares.. the uncommons I don't care too much about but they have to make a commitment to their paper players (ones who feel their cards will lose value) and their online players (ones who fully backed MED with their wallets and their support) just printing Force of Will in every set would not make for a very good collectable game (and honestly that IS what we are really talking about) .. I've spent HUNDREDs of dollars on the long term classic potential.. its my favorite format offline.. and its increasingly becoming my favorite set online..
I don't think the dual lands will reach Force of Will prices right away but they will be saught after and out of stock in online stores for a while, but its more incentive to crack open boosters especially of a smaller set when you know you can easily get a "draft ticket" 1 in 6 usually.. come on.. drafts for this and leagues will probably easily fill up more then the last MED set..
Personally though.. I hope Portal 3 kingdoms cards are in this set.. that is one set that I never seen boosters for.
ok.. with that out of the way.. great job on the article Hamtastic.. you should link to your V3 article in your V3 section (you talk about it but since the other article is live you should link to it.. )
I understand your concern for Classic. I really do. Looking at it from a playing perspective having such a card (FoW) at a high price makes it seem like it's not going to be accessible to new or budget players.
I don't really have much to say about that at the moment. I know that there are some who actually want that for the format. They want a hard to get into format for those without the funds to do so.
I may have to do some thinking on some of the impacts of having ultra high cost cards in an eternal format. There's probably a lot of good things to think about there.
Something to consider though, is that the price of the cards will only reflect what people are willing to spend on them. One of the reason that the Power 9 fetch such high prices is power. The other is collectibility. The low supply and high demand help push those up to the heights they are. I just don't see that happening, even with Force of Will. It will get expensive for sure. But only so far as people are willing to pay for them. I think... :)
~Erik
What happened to the price of Force of Will is why I am not looking forward to dual lands in MED 2. If the current policy of reprinting staple eternal cards only once continues, the dual lands from MED 2 are going to be astronomically expensive. Dual lands appeal to both casual and tournament players, and are useful in all types of decks. At the moment, with MTGO not having dual lands, there is a nice difference between paper and online eternal formats. Furthermore, the printing of dual lands will further decrease the usefulness of the Ravnica lands. I spent hundreds of dollars on those lands, like many others, and sold some of them off before Ravnica rotated. I would be disappointed if the lands lost their eternal value and became Extended only lands.
I'd like Wizards to either be consistent in their making Magic a collectible card game, in that they don't haphazardly reprint cards, or to deemphasize the collectibility by reprinting important cards until their prices reach reasonable prices. Intentially creating a new Vintage-like environment where key cards are prohibitively expensive would be incredibly shortsighted.
3rd, not 4th.
Hm, it seems the reply-buttom is borked with firefox again.
....
Did you actually read the 2nd and 4rd paragraph? Just wondering.
Otherwise I always like it when people have to say something. =)
Tarmotog, I had a pretty hellish (at least it seemed like it) control deck built a while back, duress, thoughtseize, therapy, counterspells, etc, and singleton heartbeat blew me out almost every time we played. It was a very durable and resiliant deck. I'm not sure why it doesn't do well at PEs.
It's sad to see singleton consisting of aggro, control and aggro control.. It's not like combo decks are weak in singleton.. The current meta is like watching t2 from a few years back.. Singleton definitely has more potential than these results show. Plus the fact that people have a more difficult time hating cards unlike spammed 4x leylines + tormod crypts. I don't play in the pe cos it's not convinient for me so it's not fair for me to make comments on the pes but I personally find it strange that all this time no one could just play combo and win given the significant tools available to make them work and to protect them. The power level of singleton isn't at this level.
Yeah, I've tried to fix it as well, I'm not having any better luck than you are. :(
I like the rogue deck articles.. that Traumatize deck is pretty interesting.. and the reanimator deck I thought would take some hits when Ravnica left seemed to never really go away.. good article
To say that the automagical article editor hates this article is an understatement... I've redone the spaces and breaks at least a half dozen times.
*grumble*
I'll see if I can get it them to play nicely tonight.