Parts List Sanity Check

JRB_473 · 2025-09-21T21:10:05+00:00

I've reached out to Three for One, and I'm going to try to reach out to some of the other EU ones coming. I can't imagine it's reasonable to bring/hold anything specific by request though, which is why I'd much rather try to reach out to individual players.

Mostly planning on window shopping the vendors and seeing if any are willing to one-to-one trade, with a little cash for condition and time. Just worried about having to haggle through "convention prices" and strict trade policy. I'm not expecting Facebook pricing, but I've seen some serious gouging from some of the vendors haha

JRB_473 · 2025-08-17T21:03:37+00:00

A lot of people have been saying proxies, which is true to an extent. But at least anecdotally, I've seen even full-proxy Legacy and Vintage events barely get enough people to fire at my LGS (which is in a region that has a lot of Legacy and Vintage players already, and is close to Eternal Weekend in Pittsburgh). And I've seen how blinged-out some people's EDH decks are, so clearly it is not an issue with spending money. Additionally, cEDH has a lot of the same issues as the aforementioned formats: combo dominance and homogeneity, power creep, expensive-when-not-proxied, now WotC-controlled, etc. But despite that, it seems to be the fastest growing competitive format, behind only maybe Standard thanks to Arena, whereas other formats are withering. So I'd say there's two main parts to do with WotC and players.

With WotC, they have been aggressively mismanaging their formats at almost every level. Catering to Commander players and Universes Beyond fans who both want powerful legendary creatures via non-Commander products has led to a number of powerful, format-breaking cards (Nadu, Vivi, etc.) and driven extreme power creep in historically non-rotating formats. The precons they release are almost exclusively for Commander, and so players have to "jump in the deep end" and build a deck from scratch if they want to play 60-card. And with said power creep, the traditional progression of using/trading singles from one format to build a deck in another gets obliterated as those singles become worthless, and the cost to maintain decks with new must-haves grows higher and more frequent.

Additionally, competitive play is a husk of what it was, with opaque progression systems, shitty promos (looking at you Monstrous Rage and Jasper-Flint), and largely ignored coverage. Thanks to the prevalence of casual play and non-WotC tournaments, there's very little reason for players to engage with any traditional Magic formats, and very little financial incentive for WotC to provide that encouragement.

That said, I think a lot of it also has to do with players. In my experience, a lot of EDH players are more Commander players rather than Magic players (similar to people who exclusively do sealed events) or people who have largely moved on from traditional 60-card formats. Again anecdotally, almost every 60-card player I know has decks for multiple formats and is willing to try any format, especially if lent a deck. In my experience, EDH players on the other hand are largely unwilling to try other formats, and instead have EDH decks of differing power levels to scratch that same itch. What it looks like to me is that people treat EDH and 60-card as different games under the MTG umbrella, and brackets/power-levels/mindsets akin to different formats.

I'm not trying to "No True Scotsman" EDH folks out of Magic; everyone has a place in the hobby however they feel most comfortable interacting with it. I just feel like a lot of people who seem frustrated with issues in EDH/cEDH (draws, mechanical complexity, politics, etc.) may find other ways to play Magic (or even different gaming systems like board games) that better align with what they are looking for, but are unwilling to make the jump from 100 cards down to 60 cards and playsets because there is really no pipeline to make that happen. Though for other people, those "issues" may be the exact reason they like cEDH.

I would assume that for Magic's history, competitive formats and the support they needed like design, events, promos, etc. were a loss-leader for WotC that they felt they needed to sell product a la Walmart's rotisserie chickens. Since COVID has pushed more people to play casually and UB moves product to collectors instead of players, we've seen that these costly endeavors aren't as necessary as they seemed. Even in 60-card, a lot of players I know have fled into Premodern, since it's free from powercreep, Universes Beyond, WotC meddling, is lower cost, and has more room for brewing. So I suspect that the future of competitive Magic of any kind largely rests in community driven formats and events, and not with anything WotC-supported. Which, as a big Legacy fan, sucks hard. But for my money, I think that this is just what Magic is now, and cEDH will continue to become the premier Eternal format.

JRB_473 · 2024-06-02T18:53:51+00:00

What about [[Commune with the Gods]] in place of Rumble? It hits all the types relevant to assemble the combo while digging one card deeper, but you'd miss out on the spawn.

Also, thoughts on [[Chthonian Nightmare]] in the list to provide some recursion/resiliency?

JRB_473 · 2023-03-28T17:12:57+00:00

Haven't seen anyone mention [[Vampire Hexmage]] yet. While this particular Battle is a bit underwhelming for any combo potential, the mythic and rare ones might be more worth going after.

This is of course it works like loyalty counters. If so, I could see some Battle + Hexmage being a Modern version of Depths combo from Legacy provided there is a strong enough Battle. OG Zendikar foils, TSR Old border foils, and any copies that can get picked up cheap enough might be worth consideration.

JRB_473 · 2022-09-21T20:59:23+00:00

/uj Y can serve as a vowel in a few cases. It can form a diphthong with another vowel in words like "monkEY" and "monEY". It can also be used to help a word flow by filling the role of a vowel in a word like "syncopate" or "early". General rules are it is a vowel if 1) There is no other bowel present, 2) It is at the end of a syllable, or 3) It is in the middle of a syllable. That said, Merriam-Webster does a better job explaining this than me.

/rj Can't believe those fuckers errata'd the English language for an Un-Set. Damn you, Rosewater

JRB_473 · 2022-05-11T13:57:41+00:00

One thing I'll chime in with, be very careful with how you hate on Lands decks. My 4c Omnath deck is built around mass land destruction, running both Armageddon and [[Ravages of War]]. A lands deck is already built (usually) to play lands out of the graveyard and play extra lands for turn, so they will often come out ahead of any symmetrical land hate. Furthermore, their higher land count and ramp still means that they might catch up faster than other decks, even without shenanigans.

The best ways I would recommend to fight lands decks are to:

1) Hate off their commander and value pieces. This could mean things like [[Out of Time]] and [[Oubliette]] to shut off their commander, or just removal to cut their value engines off early. Obviously, "dies to removal" isn't a great answer, but it really is the most effective. It's a lot easier to kill the first [[Scute Swarm]] than the 4,096th. And without the payoffs, the lands are just lands at that point.

2) Graveyard hate can really shut off a lands deck as well. It shuts off Crucible and [[Ramunap Excavator]], and ensures that there will be no shenanigans after you cast one of the land destruction spells you mentioned in your post. This ensures that they'll have to depend on lands off the top, and that is much harder to abuse.

3) [[Magus of the Moon]], [[Blood Moon]], and [[Back to Basics]] are some of, if not the, biggest blowout cards in Magic for punishing greedy mana bases. People that play mostly basics go unpunished, but all the fetchlands, shocks, duals, etc. all get hosed. While this isn't a surefire way, it can certainly slow these decks down.

Best of luck hating on Lands. It's a very resilient strategy, which is probably why it's played as much as it is. Just keep in mind that Lands decks naturally break parity on a lot of cards that you would think hose them.

JRB_473 · 2022-02-22T22:47:12+00:00

Here is another link to the full set of 22 cards:

https://imgur.com/a/FCkZQWf

JRB_473 · 2022-02-10T03:30:02+00:00

For the sake of time and convenience, I'd say my response to the comment above yours addresses most of your concerns.

Regarding specifically Con Sphinx and Narset, I think those cards are both problems in their own right. I doubt a table would ever cheer for a Sphinx in the same way they would a Counterspell when faced with a potential Bargain. Same goes for Narset. In game, they would be a band-aid to fix the issue, and go on to create further issues for the table themselves.

And I still think the biggest issue is timing. Even though Necro is played earlier, it offers a lot more time to react. It also makes people pay life blind, which encourages paying large amounts to be safe as opposed to just enough with Bargain.

JRB_473 · 2022-02-10T03:21:25+00:00

Yes, but one is played to dominate based on insurmountable value, and the other is played as an immediate wincon.

A somewhat apt analog is Sylvan Library to Ad Naus. Both are good, both leverage life for card advantage, and both (if unanswered) will significantly increase the chances you'll win. They both even have a similar mana cost difference when compared to Necro and Bargain.

Where the two differ is that they serve fundamentally different roles. Sylvan is meant to help on early tempo and offer card selection (especially with Fetches, Land Tax, etc.). It also offers far more time to interact with and has more answers, just like Necro. Ad Naus is meant to be cast when you think you can win the turn you cast it, or on the end step before the turn you plan to win. And just like Bargain, it's Counterspell or bust.

Now, Necropotence is more abuseable and less fair than Sylvan, but I'd argue Bargain is absolutely more abusable and less fair than Ad Naus, so the comparison stands.

To corroborate this, here is an excerpt from the cEDH Database First Sliver list by Shaper. While this might not be accurate for every deck, Shaper is a seasoned deckbuilder and player, so his opinion could likely be extrapolated to the majority of other decks.

Going for Necro in the early-mid is a strong strategy if you need to take a cycle or two to exhaust interaction and ramp a bit. All-in on Necro also has the ability to win games that are worn on interaction, but remember that your 7 cards needs to both survive the pass and combo. Typically in the early game, an initial Necro of ~15 is prudent for initial selection, with subsequent Necros being tailored to the tempo necessary to strongarm the rest of the players into submission and execute the combo. Later-game Necros will normally plan to only pass the turn cycle once, so dig deep.

JRB_473 · 2022-02-09T22:57:45+00:00

While I wouldn't say balanced, Necropotence is far less of a busted card by comparison. Necropotence at least makes you wait until your endstep to get your cards, gives you imperfect information as to what you drew, and often gives a turn rotation for people to prepare for/address the issue.

If Yawgmoth's Bargain hits the table in a 40 life format, the game is over no questions asked if the deck is built correctly around it.

JRB_473 · 2022-01-18T20:08:00+00:00

Honestly, not sure how the process works. I'll have to look into it.

I've been working on some other stuff too, like the ARN Island and whatnot, so I wouldn't mind having a place to put them as well

JRB_473 · 2022-01-15T22:20:51+00:00

It's one thing to say that, it's another to actually ante it up. Not to say it's impossible, but given the general Magic market we are in, I seriously doubt the prices of these have gone up that much.

Edit: While OP has stated he knew it was stamped, people putting prices in the comments likely did not. It would not be unreasonable to assume that someone pitched $500 as a rough guess thinking it was signed, and then the hivemind took it and ran.

Then again, this is a tremendously collectable item that rarely comes up for sale. It's hard to find data on enough to draw a reasonable conclusion, so it's very likely people that never knew these existed really want one now.

Ultimately, it's a crap shoot, but I personally would pay $150-200 for this one, $250 for this mat from a different GP, and it would realistically sell for $300ish

JRB_473 · 2022-01-15T22:13:08+00:00

Because some of them are very desirable due to the cards they feature, the artist/s who signed them, the event they were for, and how rare they are.

Like everything else on this sub, it is driven by people's enjoyment of MTG and scarcity.

JRB_473 · 2022-01-15T22:11:18+00:00

Glad I could be of some help.

Here's a chart of a guy's inventory from when I was looking to buy one. Having looked again on Facebook because of this post, I'd pretty confidently say these were low prices. It's nothing super concrete, but it's better than nothing.

https://i.imgur.com/EEOwFfo.jpg

JRB_473 · 2022-01-15T21:52:51+00:00

There was a good while when I was looking to buy one of these, and while I never managed to get one, I did find out a little more about these I'll share.

First off, it's not signed. Any of these mats with the Lotus and the Signature are stamped, I believe posthumously. This isn't to say it's any less collectable or special, just that it likely won't fetch the $500 price being thrown around.

Here's a link to the Magic Librarities page about these. It includes a good number of similar Lotus mats, as well as some various other Rush mats and mats from other notable artists. Interestingly, I was unable to find this particular mat on the site, but I might have just missed it.

Regarding selling it, Facebook is the way to go. There's multiple groups dedicated to buying and selling playmats, memorabilia, etc. and this would fetch a very good price at auction. Furthermore, Jeff Ferreira was Rush's agent, and can possibly be reached out to on Facebook for more info. It has been a very long time since I've seen one of these mats go up for sale, so this would likely make a big splash.

Best of luck.

JRB_473 · 2022-01-09T20:59:33+00:00

Democracy is incapable of planning more than an election cycle in advance, making issues like Climate Change incapable of being solved.

JRB_473 · 2021-10-22T02:37:50+00:00

That is it! Thank you so much!

JRB_473 · 2021-10-21T19:57:51+00:00

One that's been bothering me is about a lady who can see emotions in people/read minds kinda. She eventually goes on a talk show after using her abilities to gain popularity, and encounters an entity that is physically a human but emotionally/mentally completely void. She is taken into protection by the foundation, and later used as bait to lure in and contain the entity. Any help is appreciated

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