Favourite MtG cards?

[Mr. President]

How do you shuffle a deck that small?

Did anyone read the article on MagicTheGathering.com about reminder text for creature abilities?

Maybe the answer is just to cut out some - lots - of keywords. Flying and First Strike are flavorful, so I'd say they can stay. But is the world really a better place with landwalk abilities? They rarely use them anyway.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Bah.

Why waste your time with useless cards?

The unbeatable deck:

Will likely have Brain Freeze and Shrieking Drake.

[Immortal Wombat]

ouch

[Urban Ranger]

You cheaters. You cannot have more than 1 Black Lotus in a deck.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Mr. President
Maybe the answer is just to cut out some - lots - of keywords. Flying and First Strike are flavorful, so I'd say they can stay. But is the world really a better place with landwalk abilities? They rarely use them anyway.

The game is in one big mess anyway.

[SnowFire]

1) Rewind sucks. The Free mechanic is powerful, yes, but it's powerful for "going off" by repeatedly casting Free spells with a High Tide, Academy, Gaea's Cradle, or some other way of making lands produce lots of mana when untapped. You quickly go through your deck to find a kill card that uses all that mana you've generated (Stroke of Genius, Fireball, etc.). The best cards for this are card-drawing cards- like Frantic Search and Time Spiral. Rewind is conditional, requires a spell for your opponent to work, and if countering on your opponent's turn, you won't have any use for all the mana you've just created with your Academy.

2) Channel is broken, but not in Type I. Simple answer: Force of Will & Misdirection. You've just spent almost all your life to Fireball... yourself. Ah, the glory of pitch counters.

3) Keywords are fun! Don't cut them!

4) Yawgmoth's Bargain is abusable for combo decks. Suppose I have 3 cards that, when I draw them all and cast them all (uncountered), I set up a situation where it's virtually impossible for me to lose the game. A good modern example would be Wirewood Channeler (Tap: Add X mana to your pool of any color, where X is the number of elves in play), Pemmin's Aura (one of the abilities it gives a creature is U: untap it), and Read the Runes (UX: Draw X cards, then sacrifice Y permenants and discard X-Y cards. You choose Y.). Assuming 2 elves in play, the Channeler enchanted with the Aura produces infinite mana (make 2 blue. Use 1 to untap it. Repeat. Then start adding whatever color you need, and use frivolous untaps to burn any extra mana). Read the Runes allows you to draw your entire deck, sacrifice one permenant, and keep 1 of the cards you drew- say, something like Flamewave Invoker, so you can turn all that extra mana into damage for your opponent. That said, you need to have all 3 cards for your super-combo. Getting just 2 is useless and you'll lose. The probabilities of getting all 3, even with 4 in your deck, are 16% on Turn 5. That's pretty bad.
Yawgmoth's Bargain allows you to spend 15 life to functionally advance to Turn 20, where your chances of having drawn at least one of each of the three substantially improve.
Now imagine if it was a two card combo...

[Ben Kenobi]

Anorther 3 card combo:

Sliver Queen
Ashnod's Altar
Heart stone

Pay 1 mana to create a sliver token.
Sacrifice the Sliver token for 2 mana.
Repeat...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by SnowFire
1) Rewind sucks. The Free mechanic is powerful, yes, but it's powerful for "going off" by repeatedly casting Free spells with a High Tide, Academy, Gaea's Cradle, or some other way of making lands produce lots of mana when untapped. You quickly go through your deck to find a kill card that uses all that mana you've generated (Stroke of Genius, Fireball, etc.). The best cards for this are card-drawing cards- like Frantic Search and Time Spiral. Rewind is conditional, requires a spell for your opponent to work, and if countering on your opponent's turn, you won't have any use for all the mana you've just created with your Academy.

Not necessarily. It works well enough as a normal counter, but is really great when you have something like Winter Orb or Stasis sitting around.

Originally posted by SnowFire
2) Channel is broken, but not in Type I. Simple answer: Force of Will & Misdirection. You've just spent almost all your life to Fireball... yourself. Ah, the glory of pitch counters.

For Type I, the best answer is a counter followed by Fork. The Fork goes off first, creating a copy of his fireball (or whatever offensive spell he has), and then the counter zaps his original.

Originally posted by SnowFire
4) Yawgmoth's Bargain is abusable for combo decks.

That just looks like Necropotence to me.

[DinoDoc]

Can someone explain the value of Bladewing to me and if it would be worth making a deck around him? Or should I just try to trade the card for something else?

[SnowFire]

Yawgmoth's Bargain is an attempt at a "fixed" Necropotence. On the bright side, it now costs 6 mana instead of 3, so it'll take a bit to get out. On the downside, instead of having to wait until your discard phase (and having to spend an indeterminate amount of life, since you're guessing when you'll find what you want), the Bargain gives you a card immediately for 1 life. Meaning you can pay precisely the amount of life required and not "overspend" like you can with Necro.

Needless to say, R&D soon found that they goofed, and the Bargain was soon on the Restricted list.

Here's another fun combo:
Prodigal Sorceror (or anything that can tap to deal damage).
Curiosity ("Whenever enchanted creature deals damage to a player, draw a card").
Mind over Matter ("Discard a card from your hand: Tap or untap target permenant")

So if you have a Curious Sorceror, you can deal an amount of damage equal to the cards in your deck, basically. Tap, do damage, draw a card, toss card to untap Sorceror, repeat.

You guys see the 8th edition spoiler that's out now? They're giving Blue & Green a giant kick in the teeth as far as I can tell, but White & Black both got huge gains. Savannah Lions, Story Circle, Royal Assassin, Phyrexian Arena, Underworld Dreams... White & Black only lost Disenchant, Duress, & Corrupt as far as I can tell. Maenwhile, Green loses everything good below 4 mana except Birds of Paradise (no more Elvish Archers, Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth, etc.), and Blue loses Counterspell and all sorts of its utility spells.

[Mr. President]

It was true about Savannah Lions and Royal Assassin?



I'd be glad to see Counterspell go if it means a little less focus on counter-magic.

[Mr. President]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Can someone explain the value of Bladewing to me and if it would be worth making a deck around him? Or should I just try to trade the card for something else?

If you can get lots of Dragons, Bladewing is cool. Otherwise, he's just in your deck for his nifty artwork.

[DinoDoc]

What would a dragon deck look like? It sounds like it would be expensive.

[SnowFire]

Well, it depends on your collection. If you're just starting, yeah, a Dragon deck is probably out of reach. That said, he's perfectly fine as just a large creature in an early casual deck.

Hmm, looking at this more, Green REALLY got hosed. They lost freakin' everything! They don't even have Fog! Nor Seeker of Skybreak! Or Hurricane! At least Blue got a few scraps to make up for the loss of virtually all its good cards- Mana Leak, Curiosity, Merchant Scroll, Coastal Piracy are all good cards. Green keeps Bird of Paradise & Giant Growth as good early plays. The thing is, large creatures are a dime a dozen (Even if some of them are good), but totally hosing the lesser ones... Not to mention that in terms of color hosers, White got the good black one in classic Karma, while Green loses Compost.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Mr. President
I'd be glad to see Counterspell go if it means a little less focus on counter-magic.

That's what blue supposed to do best, control over magic.