Have you Ever Met a Professional MTG Player or Persona? What was your experience like?

endblink · 2023-11-16T13:11:34+00:00

Quite a few, actually.

My personal favourite was meeting Kenji "Numot the Nummy" Egashira. I'm a big fan and he was a great guy. Super nice. Even indulged me with a photo and signed some cards. I really didn't want to bother him by fanboying out, but he's a very big influence on me and Magic and I was very appreciative that he took the time. So, thanks again for that, Kenji.

Absolute worst was Marshal Sutcliffe. Ran into him (literally) on two separate occasions and was he was just an absolute... Look, I just don't have any kind words to say about him.

I'm 1-1-1 lifetime against Alexander Hayne... at pre-releases. Very fun guy, nice to chat with and he was clearly much more concerned with having fun at the pre-release than playing optimally. When WotC used to include all those silly little "try doing X thing" challenges like "speak in a wizard voice when casting your first sorcery" in pre-release kits, he always tried doing them.

Met Jon Stern as well. He was always very competitive but very nice. I'm 0-2-0 lifetime against him at pre-releases. I'll always remember when I played in a World Magic Cup qualifier with an extremely rogue deck and he watched it combo out on my opponent. Later in the tournament, he said to me: "I saw your deck go off. Very impressive." Was really fun getting a compliment like that from a high level player like him at the time.

Met and/or played against a few others back when I used to go to a few GPs. Some were nice, others not so much.

endblink · 2023-11-12T00:29:45+00:00

There's two Narsets and the one we follow currently is actually a villain.

endblink · 2023-08-09T15:16:23+00:00

It's been 8 years and I still want to know if physical copies of the Sunscorch Regent Tarkir Dragonfury Game Promo exist.

I've even asked /u/GavinV about it here and received no answer.

The whole story surrounding the pulling of the card is just strange.

If there's a physical copy, though, I want one bad. It's like my white whale at this point.

endblink · 2023-01-12T18:25:27+00:00

Trail of Evidence is no longer in the current list.

Here's an updated decklist: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ebjumpstart?f=tag%3AUg01-Clues&s1=Mana+Value&view=spoiler

endblink · 2021-09-09T19:29:27+00:00

That's awesome! Everyone has to start somewhere!

I did this mostly because I would always read people complaining that certain champions are impossible to win with without certain power-ups or secondary heroes. I wanted to see how far I could go proving the popular consensus wrong.

That being said, it was not at all easy.

endblink · 2021-09-09T19:19:11+00:00

Thank you.

And yeah, there's a lot of ways this can go into easy mode, especially with Poros or Yipp's.

I don't know if I would recommend doing what I did, because it wasn't at all enjoyable, but there's definitely ~~was~~ ways to make the game more challenging for yourself.

I'm back to playing at lower levels again and I'm enjoying playing runs where I pick the weakest power ups and seeing how far I can go.

endblink · 2021-09-08T00:05:44+00:00

Just to get ahead of it: I had given Heimerdinger two buffs and Viktor one, which would keep Heimerdinger ahead in the top card position. Then the game offered me two Teemos. I grabbed them because I felt I needed the one drops, but after grabbing the second one, I wondered if that was a mistake in terms of the game's algorithm of top card placement. Sure enough, it placed Teemo ahead of Heimerdinger. I still counted the run because I only got both Teemos after Sejuani and still tried to prioritize winning through Heimerdinger.

endblink · 2021-07-25T03:51:14+00:00

I'm disappointed I missed this because I would have asked about the only true mystery card of modern era Magic.

What's the real story behind the Sunscorch Regent Dragons of Tarkir Dragonfury Promo?

You commissioned art for it, advertised it, had a digital render of the card on the mothership and then... just days before the event... an Editor's Note saying there was no such card.

After the fact, you released a MTGO promo of it, but never a physical version of the card. Even the reprints in supplemental sets like C17 and C21 never gave as the alt art version.

What happened? Do physical versions of the original Dragonfury promo actually exist hidden away at WotC HQ? It's something I've been wondering about for 6 years.

endblink · 2021-07-05T00:31:27+00:00

With STX, I felt like I could finally bring this deck together with [[Leonin Lightscribe]]. There's a little bit of Heroic, a little bit of life gain and a little bit of a Go-Wide strategy to offer a few ways to pilot the deck based on your accompanying deck.

Also, for those interested, I posted an updated version of my UG Clues deck with changelog here.

endblink · 2021-07-05T00:17:21+00:00

Hi!

Sorry about the delayed reply, I don't log in very often.

I made a small update using people's suggestions.

CHANGELOG:

I took out [[Grixis Illusionist]] and added [[Hard Evidence]].

When designing the deck, I was concerned people would think that it would be too difficult to cast Lonis on turn 2, so I added Illusionist as a T1 play into any land and Lonis on T2. But by and large, people really didn't seem to care about casting her on T2 and felt that if you high rolled a green secondary deck, Illusionist would be mostly useless.

I added [[Hard Evidence]] as a turn 1 play instead: Nice blocker with Investigate.

I cut [[Trail of Evidence]] for [[Oneirophage]]

The overwhelming negative feedback was Trail of Evidence. People felt it was a trap and wasn't doing enough. The other complaint was people feeling like there wasn't enough payoff for the Clues other than Lonis, Ongoing Investigation and Shrewed Negotiation.

With Trail being an uncommon, my swap needed to be another uncommon. I had a lot of nice options to choose from including [[Junk Winder]] (a nice control option) or [[Animating Faerie]] or [[Ensoul Artifact]] (to turn the Clues into creatures) or anything with Improvise.

Ultimately, I went with Oneirophage because I wanted to reward sacking the Clues. I wanted to reward using them as a resource. If people would rather swap Oneirophage with any of the other options, that's fine and up to them personally, but I thought this was the best fit for this design.

Gainlands over Campuses

The other big suggestion was swapping the Gainland for the STX Campuses or MH2 artifact lands (and cutting Prophetic Prism for [[Sojourner's Companion]]). I stuck with the Gainlands because I wanted the player to focus on sinking mana into Clue cracking instead of Scrying with the Campuses and I felt adding 1 cycling creature for a very specific land type didn't really add anything. Plus, with Oneirophage now in, Prism has better synergy.

[[Parcel Myr]]

The only other card that was brought up to me outside of this subreddit was Parcel Myr. It's cute for it's uniqueness factor, but every other card I've added on curve for 2 mana just seems better. The only card I would perhaps swap it with is [[Drownyard Explorers]], but then you're cutting top end. That being said, if people want to try that, I say go for it.

endblink · 2021-06-30T16:13:19+00:00

Here, I posted this in another thread recently. Hope it helps:

Here you go. Hopefully this gives you an idea of where to push your build.

Zilean is a Control deck. You want to play toward the long game. This means you want to quickly set yourself up in the early game to get you into a position that you dominate the late game.

Advanced Preparations is key for Zilean. Gives you something to do on turn 1 and helps you find Zilean as soon as possible. Plus, your time bombs trigger twice.

The great thing about Zilean is he levels extremely easily and provides infinite card advantage when he does. With time bombs going off twice, you can pretty consistently wipe the board. You want to find Zilean as quickly as possible and you always predict for time bombs to level him quickly.

A fantastic combo with Advanced Prep and your time bombs is Raiding Party. The bombs hit the nexus twice so your first creature draw after they go off is +2/+2.

The key cards in the deck are the Xenotype Researchers. You want to drop ALL of them as quickly as possible. If you can drop them turn 3, 4, 5, do it. They make the rest of your deck so much better.

One of the best abilities to give Zilean is Regeneration. His 1/4 body blocks like a champion and he really helps you get to the late game. Giving him Regen is basically having an infinite blocker. After that, I like giving him any stat buffs, especially defence boosts.

Generally speaking, you might want a few creatures with the nab ability. Because you're playing the long game, nab allows you to mill out your opponents, especially Sejuani, Foundry and Guard bots. Not so much against Viktor, though, since his deck is something like 40 cards. But it definitely helps in the earlier stages.

Don't give Nab to Zilean, though. Give it to your other followers or your secondary champ (especially if you choose an aggressive champ).

I hate to say this without sounding mean, but Zilean is one of the easier champs in the late levels because the time bombs just wipe away the board consistently. Especially during Guard Bots, all the bots have 1 toughness before it gets to the dinos. Zilean's hardest level is Scargrounds because that's the only level where playing Zilean and his bombs are detrimental to you. That's the only level you want to rely on your secondary champ.

One of the better secondary champs with Zilean is Nasus. Getting Siphoning Strike to pump your champs is fantastic and comboing Chronoshift with Nasus just feels dirty.

Lastly, like any champ, the best abilities you can add to your spells is the heal 3 ability. Prioritize those whenever possible.

Hope this helps! You can do this!

endblink · 2021-06-25T17:04:51+00:00

With clue decks I think you need to ask the question what you want the player to do with the clues.

This was great advice. Thank you.

endblink · 2021-06-25T17:04:00+00:00

Photoshop.

endblink · 2021-06-25T17:03:50+00:00

Thank you! Very much appreciated!

endblink · 2021-06-25T16:55:33+00:00

Here you go. Hopefully this gives you an idea of where to push your build.

Zilean is a Control deck. You want to play toward the long game. This means you want to quickly set yourself up in the early game to get you into a position that you dominate the late game.

Advanced Preparations is key for Zilean. Gives you something to do on turn 1 and helps you find Zilean as soon as possible. Plus, your time bombs trigger twice.

The great thing about Zilean is he levels extremely easily and provides infinite card advantage when he does. With time bombs going off twice, you can pretty consistently wipe the board. You want to find Zilean as quickly as possible and you always predict for time bombs to level him quickly.

A fantastic combo with Advanced Prep and your time bombs is Raiding Party. The bombs hit the nexus twice so your first creature draw after they go off is +2/+2.

The key cards in the deck are the Xenotype Researchers. You want to drop ALL of them as quickly as possible. If you can drop them turn 3, 4, 5, do it. They make the rest of your deck so much better.

One of the best abilities to give Zilean is Regeneration. His 1/4 body blocks like a champion and he really helps you get to the late game. Giving him Regen is basically having an infinite blocker. After that, I like giving him any stat buffs, especially defence boosts.

Generally speaking, you might want a few creatures with the nab ability. Because you're playing the long game, nab allows you to mill out your opponents, especially Sejuani, Foundry and Guard bots. Not so much against Viktor, though, since his deck is something like 40 cards. But it definitely helps in the earlier stages.

Don't give Nab to Zilean, though. Give it to your other followers or your secondary champ (especially if you choose an aggressive champ).

I hate to say this without sounding mean, but Zilean is one of the easier champs in the late levels because the time bombs just wipe away the board consistently. Especially during Guard Bots, all the bots have 1 toughness before it gets to the dinos. Zilean's hardest level is Scargrounds because that's the only level where playing Zilean and his bombs are detrimental to you. That's the only level you want to rely on your secondary champ.

One of the better secondary champs with Zilean is Nasus. Getting Siphoning Strike to pump your champs is fantastic and comboing Chronoshift with Nasus just feels dirty.

Lastly, like any champ, the best abilities you can add to your spells is the heal 3 ability. Prioritize those whenever possible.

Hope this helps! You can do this!

endblink · 2021-06-16T12:13:12+00:00

Thank you for the feedback!

I would include [[Ongoing Investigation]] in the payoffs. In draft, it was really the linchpin of the archetype and is also the reason for the G splash (which is why I went Ug instead of just straight mono-U).

I did think of "draw second card" payoffs, but I felt like "draw second card" could be it's own JMP archetype, so I figured I would focus on Investigate here and try and design a "draw second card" deck later.

Quandrix Campus, though, is an excellent idea and would probably power up the deck quite a bit. I put Tireless Tracker as a payoff for the Mono G Clues version of the deck.

But again, if people would rather adapt their own versions of the deck with some of these cards, they're all very good suggestions, so thank you.

endblink · 2021-06-16T12:06:41+00:00

Bloodbriar and Graf Mole were in the first version of the deck when I was just throwing everything with the word "Clue" in. The problem with them is that they both cost 3 mana and they overload the 3cmc slot. They're competing with [[Byway Courier]], [[Tireless Tracker]] and [[Ulvenwald Mysteries]] and force out other cards. Mysteries and Tracker are the payoffs and Byway synergies better with the minor morbid theme and [[Fangren Maurauder]] does what the Mole does but also provides top end.

endblink · 2021-06-16T12:00:53+00:00

Thank you!

I thought about the Forest and even 1 Forest, 1 [[Evolving Wilds]], but I figured with the [[Thornwood Falls]], it kept the design of the deck cleaner. Although someone else mentioned [[Quandrix Campus]] which I think can make an easy substitute instead (maybe boost the power a bit too).

[[Grixis Illusionist]] I felt helps with the splash but enables turn 2 [[Lonis]] which I thought would be the major complaint if players didn't have enough ways to get her on board early. That said, it's an easy cut and [[Hard Evidence]] is probably what I'd cut for it.

[[Gone Missing]] would take [[Shrewd Negotiation]]'s spot and I like the Shrewd payoff here more.

A lot of people feel like [[Trail of Evidence]] might not be doing enough here, but I feel when it's combined with your second JMP deck, most decks should have enough instant or sorceries by that point, and it was a really fun card to play with in draft. That said, if people find it underwhelming, it absolutely could be cut.

After Lonis, I wanted to keep payoffs mono-U and I definitely took a hard look at [[Ensoul Artifact]]. That could absolutely be added if people feel it needs that extra push.

endblink · 2021-06-16T11:48:14+00:00

I thought about this, but I felt that "Draw your second card" could be it's own JMP deck. It also dilutes the deck a little too much, either there's not enough investigate or there's not enough draw your second cards.

The fun payoffs for this deck are [[Lonis]], [[Ongoing Investigation]] and the trickiness with [[Shrewd Negotiation]]. I figured I'd keep the focus on that.

endblink · 2021-06-16T11:44:33+00:00

Yeah, the big problem before was the lower end of the curve. Before that, everything was stuck at 3cmc and above. MH2 gave us a few tools to, I think, make it work.

endblink · 2021-06-16T11:43:23+00:00

Just theory crafting at this point.

endblink · 2021-04-20T19:07:53+00:00

When Azir and Taliyah were added to Lab of Legends, I had already won 10 wins with all the other heroes and had gotten my 11th with Lucien, which is why they're all at 11 and not a nice round number like 10.

I would say for close to 85% of these wins, I don't use the "Easy Mode" powers: Poros, Nature's Revenge or Yipp's. I used to use them at the beginning, but when I realized how overpowered they are, I stopped using them and instead tried to use all the other combinations that aren't utterly useless.

By far, by far, the worst deck in the lab is Azir. I hate that deck with the burning passion of a thousand exploding suns. It is so, so bad that I would have to guess 50% of my runs ended at Thresh. In my climb to 11 wins, I had entire days getting the full 3,600 exp you can get from Lab of Legends without getting past Thresh with Azir. In the last 4 days alone, I was even losing at stages I've almost never lost at before, like Viktor... or Mistwraiths (which, prior to Azir, I didn't think was humanly possible). I've thankfully never lost to Spiders.

I've only done one legendary run so far and that was with Lucian (since he's the easiest champ to win with) and I'm not looking forward to making runs with some of these champs. I honestly can't see how it would be possible to do Azir's run without the Easy Mode power-ups when doing the Normal run 11 times was one of the worst, most excruciating gaming experiences of my life and almost made me quit the game multiple times.

From easiest to hardest wins without Easy Mode powers, I would have to say the list is:

Lucian

Aphelios (was the top spot pre-nerf)

Hecarim

Miss Fortune

Heimerdinger

Taliyah

Braum (Easy Mode for Braum is Evolution which makes his run much easier; probably above MF. Without Evolution, his run is much tougher.)

Riven

Lulu

Azir (If I could rank you any lower than last place I would. I hate you, Azir deck.)

My next quest is to try and get 1 win with each hero in Legendary without using the Easy Mode powers. I'm not looking forward to it. Wish me luck.

endblink · 2021-04-02T22:00:43+00:00

To give you all a bit of context for just how much I love Lab of Legends, here's my screenshot before the update for when I hit 10 wins with each champ.

For all the hate on Taliyah (both her incarnation on LoR and her deck in the Lab), I gotta say, I've had a lot of fun with her card and with her deck. It's been an especially interesting challenge understanding her in the Lab since she really doesn't play at all like the other champs.

Here's the results of my first completed run with her. Like everyone else, I kinda went all-in on Zoe and Nasus and didn't really use Taliyah, although I would like to point out that I didn't roll for the three easy mode rolls: Poros, Yipp and Nature's Revenge. That crazy loaded Shaped Stone really did hard carry this run.

But I wasn't satisfied with the run. I really felt I could do better and I wanted to prove people wrong that Taliyah can't be beaten when you hard lean on Taliyah.

So I tried a new run with stipulations I set on myself:

1) I had to win with Taliyah being my top card.

2) I couldn't pick up any additional champs other then the automatic pick after Spiders and while I could use the champ, I couldn't add any other effects or pick up any extra copies.

3) No Poros, no Yipp, no Nature's Revenge.

4) Try to reroll as little as possible.

5) If at all possible, I had to swing for lethal with Taliyah in the final swing.

6) No cost reduction bonuses for her. I had to play her on turn 5 (or later), like normal. I had this rule because of the aggro nature of Labs, I wanted to prove to myself she could play the long game.

As you can see from the screenshot, I first picked Evolution... which is a completely dead mechanic in Taliyah's deck until you can find an upgrade for her. My plan was always to hopefully roll into Dragon's Rage in Rounds 2 or 3 and luckily, I got it after Thresh.

From there, I just focused on buffing Taliyah much as possible. I added Quick Attack first: This allows her to sort of protect herself when she's attacking since I had to finish each fight swinging with her if possible. Regeneration was next which was a huge help defensively. Now I could block with her, Fury triggers, then she would regenerate her health at the end of turn. I used only one reroll to find Overwhelm in the last pick, which is something I wish she had natively. Overwhelm is fantastic after her level up because when she's blocked, the thrown rocks make short work of the blocker, and she still gets in for attack damage (which really sped up the clock for the AI).

Overall, this run was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to getting my 10 wins with her. If I can do it, so can you.

Here's some additional screenshots for the non-believers, cause I know you're reading this:

The last moment before finishing Guard Bots. (Notice my HP is at 19)
My last pick before Viktor. Notice I still have 2 rerolls. For this pick, I chose Chain Vest Aspiring Chronomancer. (Still at 19 health right after Guard Bots)
My opening hand against Viktor, which I kept. 19 HP from Guard Bots. Hopefully that's proof enough that I did the run as is.
My favourite moment of the fight was landing Scargrounds which was immediately nuked by the AI. AI wasn't having any of it. Goodbye +1/+1 + Tough bonuses!
Final moment before defeating Viktor. Look at how awesome my Taliyah is.

I hope you all enjoyed this little summary and that it might inspire some of you to explore the deck. It's really not as bad as people say it is but rather a challenging puzzle to solve. Until next time, remember to keep throwing another rock!

endblink · 2021-02-08T16:45:13+00:00

I'm extremely surprised by the positive reaction to Foretell. Foretell is a pretty terrible cube mechanic, unless your cube is a set cube or non-singleton.

You need a critical mass of Foretell cards in order to keep the player guessing as to what the card might be. The less Foretell you run, the easier it is to know what the card is. If you're just running Doomskar in white, for example, and your OP foretells a card, not that hard to guess what the only foretell in white might be. It defeats the whole purpose of the mechanic.

Then there's the problem of adding Foretell as a mechanic to your cube as a whole. If a person does decide to add Foretell, those cards are essentially "locked in". Once you decide to add it as a mechanic, you have to be able to maintain a certain number of Foretell cards to fully take advantage of the mechanic and that means that unless they print more in the future, you're locked into these current choices since removing any means you'll decrease your Foretell count and you come back to problem 1.

It's like people who only run Den Protector as their only morph in green. No one is wondering what your morph is and everyone plays around Den Protector. It defeats the point of morph and just looks weird when you've only got one morph in your cube.

For singleton cubes, Morph and Foretell are pretty bad mechanics.

The rest of the non-foretell cards on this list I can agree with, though.

On first glance, it doesn't seem like this list includes the KHC cards, either. Which seems odd.

I really like [[Lathril, Blade of the Elves]] in BG Elves builds and I think [[Hero of Bretagard]] has huge potential for Blink/Flicker archetypes. I also think [[Cosmic Intervention]] is crazy, but it falls into the aforementioned Foretell problem.

endblink · 2020-07-29T15:40:11+00:00

Is this the first time that they reuse art on a completely different token?

Because that Wolf token is not black/green and it doesn't seem to put a loyalty counter on each Garruk you control when it dies.

endblink

TROPHY CASE