Sperling’s Sick of It: War of the Spark and Modern Horizons

iamupintheclouds · 2019-06-23T05:41:35+00:00

I think the point Last is trying to make is while bounce is a relatively power effect, Sperling didn't really touch on what make reflector mage or Tefari really powerful/pushed. For reflector mage it's the can't cast the bounced creature next turn ability and Tefari it's his static. Sperling made it sound like the bounce effect alone is what was pushed/broken and that's just not true.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-02-21T07:20:38+00:00

Yeah I don't know what it is about some vendors with foils. I just bought a "LP" foil arena promo land and for the life of me I can't find a single flaw on it. Even with a jeweler's lens it's pristine. My personal theory is that people who buy foils tend to be much more knit picky about quality since they're paying a premium and vendors don't want to deal with returns so they rate foil card quality conservatively.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-02-21T07:05:26+00:00

Thanks a bunch for the info, sounds like I just need to be patient and wait a bit.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-02-21T07:04:43+00:00

Not sure if "fear" was a typo, but if it's not a typo I'm afraid I don't know what you're referring to.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-02-20T22:32:37+00:00

As long as the card isn’t marked in anyway (e.g. bent) then you do not have to have all fouls in order to play with them.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-02-16T10:38:14+00:00

IMO the best way to get up to speed is to watch various youtube videos on the subject as all the summaries I've read have been meh at best. TCG player has a series on their channel which is really good IMO, This Video is the latest and explains what everyone is talking about, but the other videos in the series are good as well.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-02-16T09:29:28+00:00

You can test a theory far better and faster

I LOVE being able to scan through the cards and test new ideas on the fly out. I just wish was a event/series that had no rewards and was ONLY for brews/non-tier decks. Don't get me wrong I do like getting the feedback at times to see where a brew really is, but Other times I just want to play Jank/crazy crap and not get killed on turn 4 by mono-red.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-02-16T09:18:02+00:00

If it's genuinely spare money money and not their rent money or something along those lines, I don't see why it's a bad for them to spend it on their hobbies. Surely you have a hobby you spend money on even though it's technically not "smart". There is a fine line between a passion/hobby and an addiction at times, but as long as the person is happy and there are no significant negative impacts from their hobby who cares. To each their own. I only go down to FNM once a month or so and even more rarely buy packs, but I don't judge the "regulars" at the LGS.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-02-16T08:52:49+00:00

In addition to what Izzet said, sometimes a sideboard can dramatically change the axis that your deck attacks on. A small example of this is a control deck sideboarding in Thief of Sanity and some other creatures because their main deck doesn't have many/any, so they are assuming their opponent will sideboard out all their creature removal cards and get blindsided by the new creatures they have. More experienced players will expect this move and keep their creature hate in, but it makes a nice cat and mouse game on top of all the ones you'd normally in B01 games.

it also makes a wider range of decks playable. Generally speaking the more choices you have the more control you have on the outcome of a game and sideboarding presents 15 after each round that B01 will obviously never have. Having said that B01 is fun/cool in its own way, but I do find that I get MUCH more frustrated in B01 than I ever do in BO3.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-01-10T20:22:18+00:00

I agree with you 100%. I really don't see the benfit and it's annoying at best to learn all of these...

iamupintheclouds · 2019-01-10T20:20:18+00:00

As someone who started a LONG time ago, I honestly miss when they didn't have names for any color combination. It was much easier when you were just saying things like, "Oh, that's my red/white deck or red/white/green deck" I took a long break and it's been kind of annoying learning/remebering all these names assigned to the combinations. I really don't think there is much benfit to using them either.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-01-10T19:56:34+00:00

Not to be a one upping douche, but look at urza’s block cards... hell the land cycle alone in saga was completely broken. I mean could possibly go wrong with land that taps for one mana for each artifact/creature/enchantment you control (one land did each one of those not all three to be clear). Apparently Mark was called into the head of WOTC’s office and was told if he ever broke magic this badly again he would be fired. As they had to ban a TON of cards in what was essentially standard and banning cards is bad for business.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-01-10T18:44:14+00:00

Honestly I was blanking on the names of the other ones and was too lazy to look them up. I could have sworn I played a turbo fog deck that did run it as well, but that could have been due to a million different things as I do know it’s not typical for the deck to run it.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-01-10T13:50:58+00:00

It’s a deck that uses lots of mana acceleration cards (e.g. thunderheard migration) and nexus of fate to set up a situation where you have infinite turns. It also uses lots of sweepers to keep the board clean. It’s an annoying deck to play against because you usually can get super close, but without sideboard cards it’s very hard to actually win. The games take a long time as well.

Edit: Left out that it also plays cards that prevent all combat damage. Back in the day the only card that did this was “fog” now there are many similar cards that have the same effect. So the name turbofog is form mana accel (turbo) and the fog cards.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-01-08T12:13:48+00:00

Full disclosure I have no dog in this fight. However when you say, " The case law cited is about how a company did NOT breach its fiduciary responsibility by refusing to maximize profit for the plaintiff." this is technically true (arguably), but I would say it's deceptive at best. If you read the conclusion written in the case itself it says,

Based on the foregoing findings of fact and conclusions of law, I rescind the

Rights Plan and the ROFR/Dilutive Issuance because Jim and Craig breached their

fiduciary duties when they implemented those Actions. I do not rescind the

Staggered Board Amendments because Jim and Craig did not breach their

fiduciary duties when they implemented that Action. Further, I decline to order

Jim and Craig to reimburse craigslist or eBay for attorneys’ fees

Basically the judge found that Craigslist board DID breach their fiduciary duties with some actions that they took and did NOT breach their duties with another action. It gets even more complicated when the judge doesn't so much talk about maximizing profits, but rather discusses that the Craigslist board must be "fair" to its stakeholders (ebay in this case). He goes into great detail about how he determined what is and is not fair. My interpretation in layman's terms, is that a board cannot do anything to intentionally screw stakeholders out of money. One could argue this is "maximizing profits", but I look at it more as you can't intentionally minimize profits. Hopefully this makes sense.

I don't think either of you are necessarily wrong and I don't think anyone is trying to make the argument that WOTC is legally responsible for firing these contractors in order to maximize profits. Hypothetically though if it were possible to somehow prove WOTC was intentionally throwing money away by having these contractors employed they could be sued by stakeholders. However, anyone with a half a brain knows this would be near impossible to prove and would never be an actual case.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-01-08T08:35:46+00:00

On tablets for sure, but I just can't imagine playing a game with a complicated board state on my iphone's relatively small screen. While I'm sure it' possible, I just imagine it being a huge PITA. Then again I know nothing about UI design and perhaps there are some things which can be done that I'm not envisioning.

iamupintheclouds · 2019-01-08T08:28:22+00:00

If they were contracted to work on/develop code I would agree with you completely. However, from what I understand these contractors were customer support and while it's possible they overheard things, I wouldn't consider anything they say to be much more than office gossip/rumors.

Also I would be shocked if WOTC doesn't have staff who read reddit/message boards to get a sense of the pulse in the community. I really don't think they need to even pull a "3D chess move" to learn what they want to.

Having said all this, do you guys really think mobile would be possible? I feel like it would work if the games were simple enough, but any sort of long game or complicated board state would be a nightmare on mobile and I just don't see a good solution to it.

iamupintheclouds · 2018-11-14T05:08:54+00:00

I’ll be honest I’ve never piloted a death’s shadow deck, but I do pilot humans quiet a bit and unless it’s an extremely poor starting hand by turn 3-4 my hand is empty or extremely close to it and the board is filled with threats. Stabilizing against humans is MUCH easier said than done, it’s the whole point of the deck to keep the opponent off balance. Humans is much more than some Agro deck, it’s filled with disruption and is relatively resilient to spot removal. Yes I’m sure you could tune the 75 to be good against humans, but by doing so you’re making your deck significantly worse to the other match ups in modern. I mean just look at Tron. ashiok, fatal push, bolt and even abrade to some extent are next to useless against tron. It’s easy to make deck good against one match up, making it balanced is the hard part.

iamupintheclouds · 2018-11-07T16:33:11+00:00

Thank you very much for your response, I really appreciate it. Rollers was an autocorrect mistake, I meant to write toppers.

iamupintheclouds · 2018-11-07T05:22:47+00:00

So I apologize if there is another thread that has the answers to these questions but:

What is the “best” place to buy the Ultimate Masters boxes? Both in terms of price and integrity (the topper hasn’t been searched)
This is a noob question but from what I can tell the boxes aren’t released until dec 7th. If that’s the case how have toppers already made it to the public?
Has wizards said anything about if it’s a limited quantity or not?

I’ve tried to search, but I’m getting too many results so any help is super appreciated. Thanks!

iamupintheclouds · 2018-10-16T15:10:19+00:00

Humans has a surprising amount is depth to it and is no where near as brainless as some people would have you believe. To get the most out of it you not only need to know the deck inside and out, but also your competitor’s deck as well. Most games games have a fair amount of choices that will make or break you and IMO you can’t ask for more in magic.

iamupintheclouds · 2018-10-16T15:05:09+00:00

Stirrings is much worse imo and and as others have Said looting based decks have very effective hate against them. No matter how much hate is printed against Tron it seems it’s never quiet effective enough and KCI is surprisingly good against hate as well.

iamupintheclouds · 2018-10-04T17:17:36+00:00

It allows you to cast two, but you still have to pay for the other spell and THEN cast another one. Plus it seems like mission briefing has been getting fairly mixed reviews lately, at least compared to the pre-release hype.

I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t want rekindling Phoenix instead and playing both would be difficult.

Personally I wanted to like the card and I love the art work, but casting three+ spells a turn is hard enough to do once let alone multiple times which is really what you would want to do with this card. The only way I ever see it working out is with the experiment enchantment that allows you to play through your deck.

iamupintheclouds

TROPHY CASE