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Jer joins Graham for a quick look at the recent Magic rules changes.

You know even with the new rules you wouldn't be able to have two Thruns on the same side of the battlefield

One thing you didn't get a chance to talk about was how the Legendary rule change affects Legendary lands, which is to say it makes them a lot better in most cases. Instead of having the second copy you draw be totally unplayable, now you can at least tap the first one for an effect, then play the second one and get the effect again. While this practically breaks Gaea's Cradlein Legacy, I'm hoping it means more legendary lands in Theros because legendary lands are neat.

I'd be okay if they were more playable than Maze's End though.

I was talking with a friend about the legendary change yesterday and he feared that because of it and through some odd plays you can get multiple +'s to plains-walkers.

Great TapTapConcede! I laughed before you even started at the double Thrun in the opening credits.

First off, kudos to finally having Jer on. He's a great presence and has some really great things to add to the discussion. I hope we get to see him in future episodes.

Man, was it fun to see you two open up The Dark. At one point, I could see Graham cracking up at the sheer lunacy of those old cards.

I hope you guys have an opportunity to discuss Modern Masters in an upcoming podscast, especially now that most of the set has been spoiled.

I think you guys are underrating Banshee in a limited environment. It's definitely not amazing or anything, but anything that can be used as repeatable removal is certainly worth talking about. With banshee out, for 4 mana and 2 life, you can take out a 2 toughness creature. It can rack up some card advantage if the format is slow enough. I'd definitely rate it higher than a falter effect (word of binding) or an inefficient vanilla creature (goblin hero).

I understand that the rule is going to change but I really dont like either the current rule or the upcoming rule on legendary creatures. From a flavor stand point I have always viewed Legendary creatures as "Napoleon" "Washington" "Sun Tzu" "Graham Stark" "Chuck Norris" there is only one of them and what they bring to the table is what they bring.

I get what they are trying to do but I just dont like it on legendary creatures. I like the old rule of "only one on the battlefield" so if you had one in play and your opponent drew one they didnt get to play it.

This doesnt apply to planewalkers in my mind as planewalkers are super powerful transdimensional beings having them shift from one plane to another plane and back on the opposite side of the battle is more plausible than two Avacyns waving at each other.

On the Flip side I dont like that clone is used to blow up ledgendarys but I also dont like that a clone is the same in the new rules. A clone isnt the original they are a copy so its reasonable to have 50 copies of the same person...

I really just dont like the flavor of this they are fundamentally shifting what a legendary creature and land are and trying to pass it off as "a fix to the flavor" when in reality its "we want to sell more cards" and the way to do that is to boost the secondary market especially with MM coming out being 10-20% legendary.

I get what Jer said about now they can make so many more things legendary but that doesnt make it better. If you say a mountain is any land form over 50 feet in height instead of 10,000 feet everything becomes a mountain the the term is next to meaningless.

I'm going to be very curious to see what this does around my area. On the one hand, I'm the only person in my group who owns a Thrun, the Last Troll or a Geist of Saint Traft (I opened both of them, and have them chilling in sixty card decks I don't play that often), but on the other hand, they are now MUCH harder to deal with.

The impact on the Commander format is the thing I'm most concerned/curious about, as that's most of what we play. I guess one of the biggest things we're going to see here is the devaluation of clone as removal. Of course, now we'll have clone working as intended when used that way... which in some cases might actually be better.

Need to get some play going, find that stuff out. I'd love to see you guys talk about the ramifications of this rule for Commander specifically sometime, if you guys manage to play a big game with the new rules, and notice a difference.

I dont think they really went far enough on clone "being fixed" because a clone still kills the original creature, it just only sees your section of the battlefield. I cant clone my own legend I can only clone my opponents.

Lord Hosk wrote:I dont think they really went far enough on clone "being fixed" because a clone still kills the original creature, it just only sees your section of the battlefield. I cant clone my own legend I can only clone my opponents.

I can see a LOT of fun little interactions with clone and legends that hae ETB or dies effects. Like, Jugan, the Rising Star. Now you can clone Jugan, keep the clone sacrificing the original Jugan, and put the 5 +1/+1 counters on the clone.

I agree that not being able to clone your own legends and keep both is bad from a flavor perspective, but I'm really excited at the prospect of being able to clone my opponents legends and get the benefits thereof, even though they retain those same benefits.

I don't know. I think I'd have to describe myself as being cautiously optimistic. I really can't wait to get back to America and play a few games.

Honestly, the only way to really "fix" the clone flavor issue is to make "clone" (or "doppelganger"?)a creature super-type, replacing all other supertypes, and errata all of the current clone cards to cause them to change all supertypes to "clone" on the new creature, or remove supertypes entirely. I'd be willing to wager that Wizards playetested their options carefully on this matter, and came to the best solution for the game, though.

Maybe I'm not into the hardcore strategy as most but I don't see this changing much. Maybe it's different now but back when I played 2 of the same legendary on opposite sides barely, if ever, came up.

Eric the Orange wrote:Maybe I'm not into the hardcore strategy as most but I don't see this changing much. Maybe it's different now but back when I played 2 of the same legendary on opposite sides barely, if ever, came up.

Well, Graham and Jer mentioned some approximate boardstates that are really common in Constructed. For example:

1) I cast Geist of Saint Traft. My opponent casts his own Geist, destroying my hexproof creature for three CMC.
2) I cast GoST. My opponent casts Clone, copying the geist, and instantly killing it.
3) I cast GoST. My opponent has no response, but in the next game he boards in a response to the geist (probably a Clone or his own geist).

So, yeah. In formats like Standard and Block Constructed, there's a finite number of decks that show up a lot. There's a finite number of creatures that show up a lot. Jer talks about Thragtusk because that's an M13 card that's super relevant and playable in the current metagame. One of the differences between casual players like you and I and pros like...I dunno, Travis Woo or whomever is the fact that we see every Magic deck as a special snowflake, whereas pros look at decks and only see archetypes.

Naya Aggro. Jund Control. Playing Magic with a pro is like cooking with Gordon Ramsay. He isn't going to be surprised by anything you do, and he'll usually be disappointed.

Oh, and as for casual players, this ruling fixes EDH/Commander in a way. Which is convenient.

Discussing the legend rule change with friends had mixed response. Most hated the change. I'm fine with it, stops clone killing my shit.

A lot of people I have talked about are just as if not more up in arms about the change in planeswalkers but to me that is less a flavor problem but thats just me.

I guess the problem I have with it currently is that it seems more motivated by strengthening the secondary market than about game play. As Graham said, when the rule was announced Jace price jumped.

I really think we won't know what their motivations really were until we get a look at Theros block. If this rules change means we get more, and more awesome legends, or even if it just means we get stuff they just couldn't do before, that will be awesome, I'm one hundred percent behind it.

I suspect this will mean more legends like the DGM stuff, situational usefulness.

It's really the change to planeswalkers that make this rule bothersome for me. I realize she's rotating out but for example, with the new rules for Planeswalkers you could

Play Liliana, minus her, then play another Liliana, keeping the new one, and minus that one as well. It's going to take a lot of the "management" of planeswalkers out of the equation

This rules change isn't nearly as bad as the "damage no longer uses the stack" travesty. The new sideboard rules are actually a positive change overall, and the new legend rule is still better than the original. I never like it when they remove cool tricks from the game, so I am not completely happy with clone nerf.

It's not as if they got rid of mana burn or anything.

what's that?

mana burn's no longer a "thing?"

THIS IS THE WORST EVAR!

*huff, huff, huff*

Mana burn is such an interesting thing to look back on, as someone who didn't get into Magic until WELL after it ceased to be a thing. I played the Shandalar game for the PC quite a bit a year ago, and it's interesting what that does to the game.

I think the legends and planeswalker rules changes make the game more fun, overall. They remove or lessen all of the situation where there is already one on the board, and you draw one, and can't play it, or play it, but it only kills your opponent's one (or your own, James). Not being able to play cards isn't fun.

Overall I think it also opens up more design space around both legends and clone-type cards also, and the "minus loyalty, play another planeswalker, minus loyalty" type stuff you can do now adds some interactivity to the game. What if he can kill the new one? Should you have saved it? Is the ability worth a card?

The whole point of "legendary" to me though is that they are super special unique creatures that add a spice of something special to the game. Now they are just "kinda different".

I can see the whole "this helps commander" idea that Jer was talking about but I dont like it.

To me every game is a battle being fought, a story unfolding on the table not "my X/X moves forward what does your Y/Y do?"

its a epic duel of two mythical magical beings summoning powerful spells and great beasts, calling allies for aid. Not "I turn my piece of cardboard, what do you want to do with your cardboard?"

Maybe thats why I hate netdecks so much because you arent creating your own story you are just trying to copy what some greater planeswalker did, to me anyone who net decks had their spark activated by mistake, they dont have the fire of a planewalker within them driving them to shift plane to plane.

Shit.
Part of my blue black white edh strategy was clones for removal.
Shit shit shit damn damn.