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I'm down with the Blade part, but the Bloom connection seems tenuous at best.
"The blue Doom Blade" as a reference to that spider they called "The green Doom Blade" is probably what I'm going with.

I wouldn't say that Reality Shift is STRICTLY better than Doom Blade, because during the pre-release, I ended up Reality Shift-ing my opponent's guys into scarier creatures like Kolaghan. Twice.

The ban list is finally upon us: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/banned-and-restricted-announcement-2015-01-19

Farewell, Treasure Cruise. Your GP San Jose playmat will live on in your honor. Also Birthing Pod as the Modern king has finally been toppled.

Looks like the format's about to get Junded out.

Damn, today's Uncharted Realms was pretty strong. Nice character piece of Sarkhan too.

I'm really curious what happens now, though. Is this version of Sarkhan simply 'dead'? And what does this mean for the other planes? Have they effectively changed everything that happened before? Because I really hope that's not the case.

It does seem that he's paradoxed himself out of existence. Still, if that is the end of Sarkhan Vol, it is at least a fitting end. I can't say I ever much liked him - he was a violent idiot lacking introspection, with a bizarre adulation of deadly apex predators.

I had a theory which seems to have been proven wrong now, that Sarkhan's Planeswalker spark was actually Ugin's, lent to him by Ugin's spirit so that Sarkhan could travel back in time and prevent Ugin's death.

Really what I want to know now is what Sorin's doing. Also, I was sad to see Narset die. I had thought that maybe Sorin could turn or resurrect her - making her Vampire Narset - but since Sarkhan's made that never happen, who knows.

I do wonder what the place of humans will be in Dragons of Tarkir.

I doubt that Sarkhan is dead. I think that he's going to come back in the 'fixed' present. I'm not sure if he's going to be an entirely new person or not though. Or even a planeswalker. We'll just have to see what happens.

Also, Narset coming back as a vampire won't happen. Things are going to have changed enough that she's not going to be dead. Sorin will likely have just come back and be the one who awakens Ugin.

Went to release draft tonight. I ended up junding everyone out and going 4-0. Apparently, getting passed 4 Breath of Dragonfire is really good. I also opened the card that wrecked me at prerelease, Brutal Hordechief, and used him to help me win a land-screw game. Overall, it went pretty well.

Did a 4-person KTK-FRF-FRF release draft on Friday. Went 3-0 (6-3) with a BUG deck, pulled Tasigur, blue 4/4 dragon, lots of cheap dudes and basically won by clogging the ground and grinding out with value. Buttfight is very good in this deck. M3G3 I was whittling my opponent down despite him having two sky captains and a citadel siege out, he act of treason'd my 4/4 dragon and took me to 1 after I chumped with a sultai scavenger, swung back to take him to ~3, passed the turn with no blockers up and Icy Blast'd him. I haven't seen a shatter pause like that before... poor guy.

Played in my first ever legacy tournament (aside from 3 casual games 6 months ago.) Played merfolk. Got crushed by dredge in the first round - fortunately he went on to be top seed after swiss and my 3 wins against MUD, hate bears and Sneak and Show were enough to ID into top 8. QF G1 on the draw against MUD resulted in us both at -17 and frantically top decking for answers with a Platinum Angel copied by a Phantasmal Image. He found a targeted spell before I drew anything of use. G2 I won with TNN+jitte beats. G3 was heartbreaking. I kept him off any action with counters, had him on 1 before he top decked a platinum angel and had just enough mana to cast it when I was out of answers. I drew a Daze next turn. Couldn't find a dismember before Ugin wiped my board and Angel killed me.

That's Magic.

On Sarkahn, in the Khans trailer he does say "I was never born at all" I don't know if that means he wasn't born because of his meddling, or he means metaphorically born, because Tarkir never had dragons. Sarkhan has grown on me as a character so it'll be really interesting to see how this pans out in DTK.

Is this the right thread to post stories? I'll try to keep it short.

Penny Arcade fan led to watching Strip Search led to following Graham on Twitter led to Lava Bears led to watching Friday Nights videos led to LRRMTG stream archives led to "man, I should play MTG again."

I played a little on and off since going to FNM during original Ravnica. Every year or two, I start to play a little, inevitably tilt out blowing $100 on online drafting in a weekend and realize I better quit before it gets out of hand. I know the basics but a lot of games, even when my deck curved out, I'd find myself a card short or a draw short of winning. I was just getting outplayed.

They joke about not being pros and such on the stream, but I felt like I learned a lot. I really noticed how often someone in the chat would say "X card is better!" and Graham would explain how it was in a vacuum, but it didn't fit in the deck being built. Building a coherent deck working toward a single win condition was something I was missing.

I finally had a free evening this weekend and prepared my credit card for another beating. I like the core sets, so I start with M15 swiss. WB tempo evasion with some very well-timed Resolute Angels took me to WWL and enough packs+value to get me into another draft. I took a shot at 8-4 because it was firing soonest and finished second with UB control.

Rolled into another 8-4, and that's where the real fun began. My computer glitched and the program froze twice during the draft, causing me to miss the first three picks of both packs one and two. I just tried to take the best cards I could with the other picks, blue seemed to be pretty open and I had a couple of cards in each other color. I figured I could decide on a second color in pack three.

Pack 3 I open a Nissa. Well, at least that covers the cost of the draft. Then I get passed Garruk. Sure, why not? The end result deck could only be described as Blue control + artifacts + splashing for Nissa and Garruk. It was the jankiest thing I've ever run. But at least it has a plan: Use defense and counterspells to stall and hope the Planeswalkers can win the game.

Won the first two rounds, which I'm pretty sure is the first time I've ever final'd two 8-4s in a row. Went to game 3 in the third round and put up a fight trying to keep the board stable against a good red midrange deck. Ended up one draw short and lost around turn 18.

So I had one of the funnest nights of MTG I've had since college and my credit card was relieved that the beating never came. Some of it was luck, but some of it was the stuff I learned watching the LRRMTG videos. If I understand correctly, their preferred expression of gratitude is sending them a Homelands box to draft.

See you all in a week when I've tilted out $100 again.

Awesome story. For future reference, we do have a "Limited" thread, which might be a better place for this type of story since it deals with drafting, but it's also fine here.

Glad to hear you did so well, and glad to hear you're back into Magic. We do a LRR Fandraft every Saturday at 6 PM PST, if you're interested in drafting on MtGO with some of the other Runners.

Today's Uncharted Realms! WotC are just doing all the right things these days, aren't they?

Link, for those who aren't following it.

Also: Yes. Very yes.

Really liked it. Very well done by the writer, delighted at how WotC continues to move toward diversity.

Wow, yes. I was not expecting that, I think that's the ... third transgender character I've run across in two decades of reading fantasy? (The others were in Dragon Soul by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett, and in Ilario: The Lion's Eye by Mary Gentle).

It's worth noting that the last fantasy universe I really immersed myself in was (and that's a definite past tense) World of Warcraft, whose creators can't seem to bring themselves to admit that homosexuality exists, let alone transgender issues. It makes me happy that MTG's writers are so much less ostritch-like (and much more talented - they're actually writing characters I don't hate!).

So, thanks to Twitch Chat, I've been look up some cards, these are the ones I think are kind of neat (although they may be utter toilets, I think they look nice!)




I'm not sure if I really grasp the tactics of this game yet...I'm just too interested in the artwork!

I think I'm going to start some kind of campaign: "Print Brago, King Eternal in a Modern legal set"

Card is so fun but is too weak for legacy. -_-

Valkyrie-Lemons wrote:So, thanks to Twitch Chat, I've been look up some cards, these are the ones I think are kind of neat (although they may be utter toilets, I think they look nice!)

Click to Expand

I'm not sure if I really grasp the tactics of this game yet...I'm just too interested in the artwork!

Though I've been playing (on and off) for quite a while, I still can't put art I don't like into my decks - even when the card is hugely synergistic with it. But if you find a group of people to play with that are happy enough at casual kitchen table level, then it doesn't matter how powerful the cards you like actually are.

I'd be hard pressed to tell you what the art looks like on any of my cards. I could quote the text, though.

I feel like there was a Friday Nights with this conversation...

For some reason the art on Dragonscale General always makes her look like she's some kind of towering colossus who's like 50 feet tall or something.

So I made this.

Man why is entering a GP so expensive? I was excited to play in GP Vancouver but $60? I feel like that is way too much, especially when this isn't limited so there aren't packs to pay for.

Wizards stopped providing judge foils to tournament organizers because TOs were using the foils as part of the GP compensation package (they're intended as gifts from Wizards; not compensation), so the TOs have to offer actual compensation to judges now. As a result, tournament costs (at GPs) have gone up somewhat.

So in the past two Uncharted Realms we've seen Tasigur supplicate before Silumgar and Daghatar ally himself with Dromoka.

The Tasigur one kinda disappointed me - from his appearances and flavour text Tasigur seemed like basically Loki, a magnificently cunning bastard. Turns out he's a total wuss.

The Daghatar one seemed quite explicit in that the Abzan are renouncing the black part of their wedge and going straight Selesnya - which makes sense considering that Dromoka is white/green. Wizards has said that Dragons of Tarkir won't be about the clans, so I suspect we'll see instead the five ally-coloured dragon Broods - Dromoka's white/green, Ojutai's white/blue, Silumgar's blue/black, Kolaghan's red/black, and Atarka's red/green.

This makes sense, but I'm not sure how much I like it - I think I just prefer the enemy-coloured pairs (Izzet, Orzhov, Golgari, Simic, Boros).

I'll further predict that the mechanics in Dragons of Tarkir will be Bolster, Dash, and something(s) new replacing Delve, Prowess, and Ferocious - plus Manifest and/or Morph.

It does seem that the Fate Reforged Khans are ... less developed, or have less impact, than the Khans Khans. I'm really looking forward to seeing Narset again in Dragons. If we see Narset again. I hope we do!