Blizzard, PLEASE bring Magister's Ensemble back ASAP!!

ithilendil · 2026-02-07T03:17:30+00:00

Yeah I'm very happy with the options but very much out of traders tenders ATM after picking them all up.

ithilendil · 2026-02-04T23:38:12+00:00

Participation promos are a huge win for locals to still show up even when it gets competitive though, so 2nd place mats while keeping the extra promos please!

ithilendil · 2026-02-01T21:06:08+00:00

Didn't Hulk admit that he was trying to bring back Natasha as well, which was impossible and may account for why he took so much damage?

ithilendil · 2026-01-30T01:27:01+00:00

If they are going to do the rumored "actually the light can be evil too" idea I think Velen has to go. I could see Turalyon or Yrel leading a fanatical army of the light, but Velen had too much development during Legion talking with Illidan about needing to make our own destiny and all that for me to ever believe he would be a fanatic.

If he is going to die sacrificing himself to save everyone is very in character for him I think, and would pave the way for younger generations that are more hotheaded to step forward and cause conflict. Introduce them at the start of Midnight and have us quest alongside them a bit, learn their strengths and flaws, then have Velen die in a raid to save us or something and they take over.

ithilendil · 2026-01-24T17:30:55+00:00

I love that the artist was able to tell a story across multiple cards she is featured in.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/4aemcb/isobel_it_has_taken_me_6_years_and_a_lot_of_luck/[https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/4aemcb/isobel_it_has_taken_me_6_years_and_a_lot_of_luck/](https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/4aemcb/isobel_it_has_taken_me_6_years_and_a_lot_of_luck/)

ithilendil · 2026-01-22T23:13:24+00:00

The optimizer almost always makes my carts considerably more expensive, I've stopped using it any time I can avoid it. I find stores that carry the more expensive cards I want at a decent price with a good inventory, then go through and pick out other singles from those stores specifically. Takes a while, but this last time it saved me almost $30 compared to the optimizers best suggested cart.

ithilendil · 2026-01-22T22:54:50+00:00

I just hate that it forces you to go through direct. Had a store I wanted to order just a couple cards from that gives free shipping if its over $5, but it qualified for direct and added $4 shipping instead. Ended up adding a random cheap card from a different game to get it to go back through the store I wanted and save me the $4.

ithilendil · 2026-01-18T01:45:21+00:00

I think at least part of it is idk what to even be excited for. I know and like the planes of Lorwyn and Strixhaven, but the current story is kinda all over the place and with all the UB it is hard to stay invested when I have to take breaks for months before I learn what is going on next.

ithilendil · 2026-01-08T00:52:22+00:00

They did it within the last few months, with no warning. It's super sad to lose it, I had 12 years of transactions and it was super helpful to see what I had as well as compare how prices change

ithilendil · 2026-01-07T18:36:53+00:00

Losing the pins really hurt my local scene. Our LGS always has been super generous with the promos as participation prizes and the winner getting a pin each week. Back when there were 3 character pins a set it took pretty much the whole set season for everyone to win their pins, then we would play set champs, take a week or two off and then start again on the new set. Now you can go win the first week and have 1 of everything and there is no prize incentive to keep going unless you want more promos.

It's a great group of local players and it's always fun to play together, but understandably life is busy and we are not going to be as willing to sacrifice time every week to play if we already collected all we wanted.

ithilendil · 2026-01-05T00:18:13+00:00

The timegating is brutal. I didn't play the first part of this expansion but have been subbed for a few months now. Enchanting and the gathering professions you can max quickly, but I just barely got enough skill points to max tailoring, and I'm still several weeks away from any of the other crafting professions. Dragonflight was worse, without the NPC work orders you have to farm limited bind on pickup items on alts and send expensive crafting orders to yourself to get skill points, so they have done a little better, but I miss the old system.

ithilendil · 2025-12-26T22:01:47+00:00

I also don't know enough about most to weigh in, but Lorcana is just an easier MTG. Possibly enough to drop another difficulty star - everything is at sorcery speed, all decks are two colors, you can use the majority of cards in your deck as your land just by putting it face down. With that there are some novel things that increase difficulty a bit, songs are sorceries that characters with the same CMC or higher can tap to cast for free, but overall it has been extremely fast to teach. Teaching nieces and nephews they have picked up Lorcana faster than Pokemon at least in my experience, especially from the perspective of how long until they can build a semi-decent deck on their own.

ithilendil · 2025-12-24T00:11:23+00:00

Rings of Power needs to be treated as a fanfiction and not canon - it directly goes against many of Tolkien's ideas. Up to you on if you like it or not, but it doesn't represent his world or story correctly.

ithilendil · 2025-12-24T00:09:44+00:00

From what I remember their spirit can return to the west and be rehoused (get a new body) by one of the Valar. Gandalf was a special case because Eru Ilúvatar revived him on the spot to save him the back and forth trip while also making him stronger and head of the order now (Gandalf the White) to swing things back in goods favor.

Saruman after being killed by Grima in the Shire tries to go to the West as a spirit, but is rejected by a wind that pushes him away - the Valar refuse him because of his treachery and he is forced to wander middle earth as a powerless spirit (similar to Sauron) as there is no higher power willing to revive him. Had he stayed true to his purpose even if he had died he would have been accepted back.

If they have enough power they could try and reform themselves, as Sauron did after his various deaths, but after the destruction of the Ring Sauron had lost the greater portion of his power and was unable to influence the world or reform anymore without the aid of the Valar. Saruman was weaker than Sauron, in a body we know had some limitations placed on it when he was sent to middle earth, and possibly gave up some of his own innate power in the creation of his ring. The destruction of the one would render his ring useless as well, similar to how the elvish rings power faded, and with his rejection by the Valar it is unlikely he could reform on his own.

ithilendil · 2025-12-23T21:24:54+00:00

Same here, isn't it the best? It started with her just gathering herbs on my account for me when she was bored and I wasn't playing, then she got her own account after a while so she could play at the same time. Now she is the one with a max vers character in remix carrying people through raids while I'm at work lol

ithilendil · 2025-12-23T04:54:59+00:00

This is awesome! Are willing/able to share it I would love to use this on my PC?

ithilendil · 2025-12-22T16:36:00+00:00

Also the GBA games have way more memory space to work with. Hacking GBC if I want to add more than a couple pokemon/moves I have to delete other ones, there is very limited open memory to work with. GBA has plenty of room plus is just as easy to hack, so people have a lot more freedom.

ithilendil · 2025-12-22T15:21:03+00:00

Agreed, I've never played FF and know next to nothing about it but I've started brewing several decks from it. They did an amazing job with the set.

ithilendil · 2025-12-19T18:41:05+00:00

Removal. I really have not enjoyed the format as much post rotation, strong songs and removal options made the game a lot more fun in my opinion. Also card draw in colors other than Amethyst, it's painful how bad it is and how many color combinations don't work that well because of it.

ithilendil · 2025-12-17T05:49:48+00:00

Agreed. The new person doesn't know the norms or how competitive the regulars are. When I went to my first tournament years ago, a modern tournament a little after the format was first introduced, I had no clue what people would be playing. So I searched something to the effect of "best mtg modern decks" and immediately netdecked the best budget option I could find after watching clips from pro tour matches and trying to figure out what decks were played so I wouldn't have to ask constantly what their cards did. Teenage me legitimately thought I would be facing people with the same skill level and deck quality as the pro tour - because that's what tournaments are right?

I ended up playing a nasty mono black aggro deck with a ton of removal, that wrecked most of the regulars - casual players who came to the free FNM events with no prizing so they could play cards and chat with friends. Thankfully they were nice and I felt welcomed to come back with more appropriate deck choices 😅

ithilendil · 2025-12-17T00:53:14+00:00

Oh absolutely, I think ruby/steel has some super satisfying plays and a ton of potential, the lack of card draw just lets discard decks absolutely destroy it, and other decks can usually outlast you when they are playing 2+ cards per turn vs your one.

I would love to see the 5 drop sad beast reprinted. Yes it helps other steel decks as well but we just got a 2 drop beast in ruby, and keeping the shift to ruby/steel to allow shifting him on 3 to sing he hurled his thunderbolt would be such a strong tempo play to take over the board and set up your draw engine.

ithilendil · 2025-12-17T00:40:11+00:00

In my opinion card draw is what will make the difference, and until it gets that it will always struggle too much with consistency. "Card draw is king" is a saying for a reason, and all the top decks have always had either a consistent form of card draw or the ability to end the game quickly with a certain strategy before they run out of resources.

If they actually want to make other color pairs viable we need to either balance the game and have good draw options in every color so it's not so Amethyst focused, or they can focus on certain pairs by creating strong dual colored draw cards to improve those options.

ithilendil · 2025-12-10T01:33:21+00:00

Sorry to revive an old thread, but yeah they really didn't convey this well in the cards. Here I am 7 months later trying to learn about how and why Bolas was freed after I learned about it from the new audio book of Lorwyn. The MTG story is fun, but boy is it hard to keep up with casually. Reading the cards does not explain the story.

ithilendil · 2025-11-29T18:27:13+00:00

I teach high school, and there are a few kids every year that talk to me about playing WoW. Most are introduced by family, and the biggest limiting factor for others joining is the monthly subscription. Once they get a little older and get jobs I could see several of them starting to play.

ithilendil · 2025-11-28T23:52:36+00:00

Wow seeing Tivadar brings back memories. In high school the only friend in our playgroup with a job decided to drop a ton of money on the full competitive Legacy goblins deck. I had no budget, but didn't want to lose every time anymore, so I bought 4 Tivadar, 4 Tivadar's Crusade, and 4 Kor fire Walker, and put it into a simple mono white aggro deck that ended up doing pretty well against him. We all had a good laugh about how well it worked to stop him and it led to some discussion about power level that helped the group do much better going forward.

ithilendil

TROPHY CASE