The General Magic: The Gathering Thread

[tamaness]

The guys at my LGS keep on telling me that as soon as I stop trying to build flavorful decks, I might start winning. I'm not sure whether that means that I'm playing well, but with substandard decks, or that they just don't value flavor wins as highly as I do.

[jkefka]

Don't let anyone tell you what kind of deck to build. I'm a straight-up Timmy, and I wanted to build a standard deck built around ramp and X-costed hydras and spells. Turns out, thanks to Mistcutter Hydra, that works pretty well. It will never top-8 any major event, but bigods there's no "winning" deck that feels as good as dumping out a Zhur-Taa Ancient using creature-based mana sources and then using all my land to ram in with a 9/9 Mistcutter.

[Duckay]

I understand why they do it and that they don't mean any harm by it but sometimes it grates on me a little that a lot of the guys from my LGS make fun of me for my deck-building preferences. Sometimes it's funny, like at a prerelease event when the guy announcing results mentioned that I had obviously done poorly because I was suffering from withdrawals having not played my preferred colour all day, but when people continually go on about it, it starts to get tired.

Yes, I am mono-red girl. I am playing other colours right now. Get over it.

[guidance]

Does anyone know if cardkingdom is doing any sales? I'm to late to get their email so I have no idea.

[Kapol]

I managed to go 3-0-1 with my Simic evolve deck. I'm glad I remembered to put the Kalonian Hydra in the deck before I started. It did a ton of work for me, as did the G/U untap Prophet.

[Narcuru]

Graham said on his current stream that they have a cyber monday sale. not sure what's on sale though.

[Lurkon]

My opponent in game three of the Tempest draft I just did learned a valuable lesson today (or thought I didn't know about it).

He targeted my Thalakos Mistfolk with Fanning the Flames, X is 1 and Buyback. However, I activated Thalakos Mistfolk's ability which puts it on top of my deck, robbing Fanning the Flames of it's target. Since it no longer had a target, it was countered. This means that Buyback doesn't resolve and he lost his card and then the game.

[TomBrend]

Rule 601.2c, game returns to right before you cast the spell, I think.

[guidance]

Graham said on his current stream that they have a cyber monday sale. not sure what's on sale though.

Sweet, maybe I can finally try to get my modern deck.

[TomBrend]

I was at least partly wrong. 601.2 takes place between "I PLAY ____" and it hitting the stack. It's actually a rule 608 issue. I think it technically resolves, just with zero targets. Because it's a separate sentence/clause I think it might return to hand?

[Utilitarian]

I managed to go 3-0-1 with my Simic evolve deck. I'm glad I remembered to put the Kalonian Hydra in the deck before I started. It did a ton of work for me, as did the G/U untap Prophet.

Darn it Kapol, there ain't room for TWO Simic players on this here forum!

...

Which as it turns out is okay cuz I decided to try an aggressive mono-green version of my deck tonight and went 4/0 with it. ^_^

[Prospero101]

...oh. Should I put away the dueling pistols, then?

[Kapol]

No, being straight countered is the correct way the situation would be handled due to it not having a legal target, specifically under rule 608.2b.

[TomBrend]

WHOOPS. Dunno how I totally missed that language right there in the middle of that rule. Clearly I shouldn't try to rules in the middle of the night.

[Kapol]

Honestly, I just remember that ruling since I had to look it up due to an argument I had during an FNM. One guy was convinced that because he sac'd one of my targets for an Angel of Serenity, the entire ability fizzled. He was so convinced due to the fact he was SURE Decimate would be countered if even one of it's targets went away after being cast that he fumed for the rest of the match (which I won) after the store owner ruled on my side. Bad times, and I wanted to be sure I was right.

[Del]

To be honest, Angel's wording includes MAY and UP TO so that one isn't even really that close...

[Kapol]

To be fair, Decimate isn't even close either. It has to have legal targets to be cast, but once it is, it will resolve unless every target goes away.

I think the guy was just a sore loser. He seemed to think he was better than me when we started. He was playing a pre-rotation aristocrats and I was playing my naya homebrew. He even began the match by saying that 'You deserve to be here' (we were at the last table, having both lost the first match of the night), as if to say he didn't. So I'm pretty sure the guy was just an ass who wanted to win and was pissed when his 'trick' to save himself didn't work.

[Duckay]

Some people are dicks.

Also, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and I think we'd be well advised to keep an eye on Prophet of Kruphix. It's an amazing card that looks very well positioned to become A Thing if/when it gets more support in Born of the Gods and Journey into Nyx.

[TomBrend]

That card seems broken as all hell.

[Duckay]

The card is in and of itself amazing. It's not really my style of card so I never thought too much about it, but if I had to guess why it doesn't see more competitive play, I'd have to guess that it doesn't have enough support to stand up to the other top-tier decks. I want to stress, that doesn't mean anyone is wrong to like it, or anything like that, or that it being in a top tier deck is a sign of its quality. I'm just personally anticipating that it will see more tournament play in the next couple of sets, and correspondingly go up a lot in price.

[Lurkon]

That card really needs to be in my Simic Commander deck. Alas, one day.

[Kapol]

I think the problem is that it's very easy to get rid of. Lightning Strike, Mizzium Mortars, Doom Blade, Hero's Downfall, any bounce, and you've just wasted turn five (without ramp). It's really easy to get rid of. And the fact they can just get rid of it EoT can become a blowout if you needed the untap/flash.

That said, I think there's a green/blue midrange/control deck that could use it pretty well I think.

[Duckay]

All that is true, but I still have a feeling it will have more potential in the future. Whether that's cards that abuse the ability (and so outweigh its fragility), or more reliable ways to protect it or make it less fragile, I'm not sure.

[Kapol]

It's a really good card, don't get me wrong. I actually need to get a few more. I'm just not sure how much serious play it will see. I will say that it did a ton of work though. I think of my four matches, I went 'turn five, prophet, untap on your turn, flash in a Kalonian Hydra at your end step' at least 4-5 times.

It's also a card that you don't want multiples of though. Since it isn't a trigger, you can't abuse it's ability if you have more than one. I ran into that problem at one point. Three of them in my hand didn't do that much.

[Duckay]

I could easily be wrong on this, of course. Just something about it makes me think that it's a card to keep an eye on coming into a new set, because it has potential that maybe Theros can't make best use of.