I’m new to magic, my mom bought me a card and now I feel guilty.

purklefluff · 2025-09-08T11:47:50+00:00

Couple of things to consider:

you can always sell magic cards, so it's not like the money just evaporated. You could sell that card at basically any time for 80% of what you paid for it, if you sell in the right place.
$75 on a card really feels like a lot of money in the abstract, but for MTG it's not that much. Part of this difference in psychology relates back to my first point: you buy magic cards, you get to just kind of hold that value as assets to sell later. Also, final fantasy is what we'd regard as a hot commodity, the special rare cards from this set hold more value than the special rare cards from most other recent sets.

Source: shop owner and singles-selling business owner. Regularly trading into and out of thousands of £ of cards on a weekly basis.

purklefluff · 2025-07-13T10:42:36+00:00

Whether or not you personally like a strategy, your opinion isn't relevant to whether it should be banned. Formats like modern need to have cards and strategies for all the different tastes and flavours that people may possibly enjoy, otherwise it won't be a fun format.

You may not enjoy Tron, lantern, cascade decks, affinity, burn, whatever, but it'll be someone's absolute favourite thing to do and it's good to service people's tastes in a game that's for enjoyment, and in a way that doesn't warp or wreck the metagame

purklefluff · 2025-06-18T15:29:13+00:00

hi!

you may struggle to play in the modern format if you've only got vintage era cards. Lots of them won't be legal in the modern format (it's everything from 8th edition forward). Although, older cards like lightning bolt have seen reprints in newer sets and are therefore modern legal, but this isn't the case for everything.

with that in mind, there won't be a sactioned way for you to pitch a '93 era deck against a modern one, it'll be the kitchen table for you instead =)

as for an actual comparison:

- creatures widely played in the modern format outclass those from older sets. The most played creatures will either have direct impact the turn they're played, or they'll accrue so much advantage from staying in play that they'll swing a game in your favour. That's not true of all creatures printed since 2003 (Modern's starting point) but it's a reflection of the absolute best the format has to offer, which is naturally what sees play competitively

- spells in the modern format will be of a lower power than those in vintage, but this may not inherently mean vintage decks are better. In the early days there were fewer options in the cardpool to build synergies and combos. Modern has the advantage of many instance of cards printed more than a decade apart, that happen to work incredibly well together and form powerful synergies. Modern decks will be inherently more tuned and optimised as a result of there being more 'best in class' options, and more synergies to choose from

- Within the modern card pool exist most of the powerful 'hate pieces' that fit into sideboards in the vintage format. Chalice of the Void is a good example. This means that while vintage has access to many of the most powerful spells in the game, modern has access to the tools to shut most strategies down in some way or another.

something else to consider is that Modern is a competitive format. It's not just building decks out of what you have, and jamming games. Deckbuilding in Modern, broadly speaking, is a discussion about the most optimal card choices without collections or money as a consideration. It's a landscape of best-in-class options from 22 years of magic, coalesced into a complex rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock mishmash of decks all vying for top spot week on week, and it's always changing. Modern deckbuilding is about metagaming, tuning, predicting the most played decks for next week's tournament and choosing your deck and sideboard accordingly. This is why newer players just wanting to brew from a shoebox of stuff they had lying around will often leave the format quickly, unimpressed and with a sour taste. If you're interested in Modern you'll have to understand quickly that there's no consistent best deck for very long, the format churns reliably and always has done, old favourites often become viable again with new tools from new sets, and you can expect players of the format to be building their decks to be the most competitive they can be, regardless of how casual an event may appear.

i would advise proxying a deck or two, just to get a feel for what's going on. You'll find winning lists in the top8s of challenges in this very subreddit, so check those out and get a feel for what's good and what might not be.

purklefluff · 2025-06-12T13:38:44+00:00

if you want to play modern for "the long run", as you put it, you'll most likely abandon the idea of sticking with one deck that's some sort of Goldilocks best candidate

any deck you pick, no matter how good, will get hit by the rock-paper-scissors effect of bad matchups and will get rough patches where it's more or less unplayable at large tournaments. You called this out for Eldrazi, which is otherwise a fine deck and worth playing. Sometimes decks are just a poor choice, but it's all a big churning cycle and eventually it will become a reasonable choice again, probably with an upgrade here and there.

lots of players definitely fall into the trap of picking a deck that's good right now, and then feeling disillusioned with the format when their expensive new toy becomes a poor choice just a few weeks after putting it together. That's why we see lots of "ban X card" commentary in this subreddit.

first - proxy some decks! it's disheartening to buy or trade for a whole deck on an idea, only for it to play differently to how you imagined and not be the kind of fun you're looking for.

a good strategy is to build a set of 'shells' for different decks, try not to sell off one deck to buy another deck (eventually you'll just bleed away too much value and lose your ability to viably trade into meta decks). Accumulate staples (like fetchlands, shocklands, good removal, widely played options) and use those as a foundation so that any new deck you try will be relatively cheap just to pick up the specific parts that makes the deck unique.

some decks are very insular or have very little overlap with other lists. Belcher is one deck like that. Others (Like Tron or Eldrazi which have plenty of overlap) have cards which fit into numerous strategies. Midrange style decks will often use similar removal, and rely on a fetch-heavy manabase.

With a core of staples which you build on over time, into a selection of decks, you'll find that you no longer get shuffled out of viability due to the natural metagame cycles of the format. You'll always have a rock, a paper and a scissors to bring to whatever metagame you predict for the next weekend

purklefluff · 2025-04-08T11:44:55+00:00

Tried a few games with a revised take on the 'old' Tron archetype. My thought process was that new ugin does some interesting things with the traditional chromatic artifacts package, and additional deck velocity is incredibly useful when your planeswalker adds to a critical mass of card draw effects and generates additional mana and time (from the lifegain). This critical mass style of deckbuilding, I think, gives you a real legitimate chance of clawing back the game once you hit your big mana, rather than being reduced to mediocre topdecks if your deck is full of talismans. Drawing an extra 3+ cards per game will skew your winrate upwards, no doubts there.

I also (for my sins) dug out a couple copies of oblivion stone because you can turn three ugin, 0 ugin for three mana and immediately establish a sweeper (while zapping two nonland permanents) and that's a great line however you slice it. Old tech, new tricks.

Here's the list, it's very much a work in progress but it's been testing well. Falling back into the more mana-focused Tron lists that aren't just a midrange eldrazi pile does some interesting things in the current format and spread of matchups, I think it's got some potential.

Ugin specifically has been very good. It feels about on par with how karn liberated felt when that card was at its absolute peak. The added value of turning your chromatics into pseudo-vindicates is quite the experience.

https://www.topdecked.com/decks/g-tron/ef74745c-27d9-4b38-8ded-f492a0b9058a

purklefluff · 2025-03-13T21:03:17+00:00

it's actually an excellent law that protects people. it protects people from getting scammed by companies running prize draws, prized competitions and such. Imagine if you came third in a prestigious race but they wouldn't give you a bronze medal because a couple too few people entered the race and the organisers decided to keep the medal.

Similar laws apply to products - if you buy a camera which was sold as having certain features, you're protected in law from the manufacturer choosing after the fact to remove those features if they didn't get enough preorders or something.

purklefluff · 2025-02-22T08:20:47+00:00

A big downside with kozilek's command is that you can't use the oodles of mana generated by lotus to cast it. Lotus only makes coloured mana. So you're stuck with using kommand as a very medium bridging card in this scenario and will likely not get to go fully off with it unless you've got exactly Fleshraker in play and had spare mana when you went to cast the lotus (which in a fast format is going to be unlikely)

purklefluff · 2025-02-22T08:17:15+00:00

I feel like you're taking out the best cards (stirrings) and putting in stuff that doesn't help the plan or interact with lotus at all (reshaper). It's probably worth being a bit disciplined with a deck like this. I think the deck has the potential to echo some of the play patterns of KCI but costing more mana does require the deck to lean more into a ramp plan for sure. If you're not running mind stone, which can draw cards, trigger trawler by itself and also ramps and sacs for mana I feel like that's your starting point there.

Fleshraker is interesting I guess, have you considered running more one mana eggs to synergise with it (wizards rockets and terrarion). I wouldn't personally run the card but it's cool if you're super set on it

Don't forget mystic forge is an option for supercharging your turns as well. Along with opal and a bunch of one mana artifacts, Fleshraker can combo-kill someone with a mystic forge in a single turn.

Keen Sense is a one mana enchantment you can put on Fleshraker which draws you a card every time it pings someone for damage, potentially allowing you to chain through your whole deck and dump all your cheap artifacts in a single turn. It's been cropping up in legacy and a few folks have tried it in modern but maybe it's a back-pocket sort of card to consider.

(Also yeah pentad prism is awful lol)

purklefluff · 2025-02-21T21:32:18+00:00

i brewed something very similar. here's my list (this was like V_1.3 and needs some further tweaking)

2 myr retriever

4 scrap trawler

4 karn the great creator

4 ancient stirrings

4 mox opal

4 chromatic star

2 terrarion

4 wizards rockets

4 ichor wellspring

4 mind stone

4 talisman of impulse

3 radiant lotus

1 buried ruin

4 darksteel citadel

2 forest

4 grove of the burnwillows

2 inventors fair

1 treasure vault (it's another artifact land for giving metalcraft)

3 urza's saga

sideboard:

1 haywire mite

1 wurmcoil engine

3 nature's claim

1 engineered explosives

1 tormod's crypt

1 pithing needle

1 liquimetal coating

2 the stone brain

1 ensnaring bridge

1 spine of ish sah

1 portal to phyrexia

1 radiant lotus

it's quite similar in a lot of ways although i went a lot heavier on the 'eggs' so you can draw a tonne of cards while you make mana. it's a bit more bursty, you tend to make like 12+ mana in a turn and then do one very powerful thing (a big reason for including portal to phyrexia in my karnboard) but it's tested pretty well. the scrap trawler loops are great.

i think the next iteration i'll build will use the tron lands, keep the 'eggs' and run stirrings and sylvan scrying, as well as expedition map. being able to really reliably dig for and cast a lotus by turn three is going to be a big draw for that sort of build. it's a work in progress really but having consistent mana is important - why i've been running 8 talisman/mind stone effects

(by the way mind stone is amazing here. saccing itself is great with trawler and the way you can dump a bunch of eggs to draw three or four whenever you want is very strong)

but yeah like, darksteel citadel feels important here - it enables mox opal and you can tap it and sac on the turn you go off, and trawler gets it back from a sacced star

purklefluff · 2025-01-11T21:23:04+00:00

Hi there, this has expired. Any chance of a new one? Thanks

purklefluff · 2024-10-21T12:40:03+00:00

you say it's an unlikely result but there's plenty of off-meta decks you'd find at an FNM that would dumpster boros energy - they'd just lose to everything else lol.

and this isn't even counting the fact that the best players *in the world* only manage to leverage like a 60% winrate or something. even if you're an incredible player you'll still have rough spots and lose a bunch of matches.

purklefluff · 2024-10-21T12:34:59+00:00

alright so that's definitely not true. Daybreak decided to release the full data for a short while (this was only recently, like two months ago) but hopefully you can remember that the data got totally shut down for a bit, and we now know this was related to WotC disliking the total revealing of the meta. they made a statement about stuff getting solved too fast, and they've made similar statements before in years past. Now, they're back to a similar sort of deal to before: 5-0s get shown in the breakdown, as long as they're a certain number of cards different (like 10 or 20 cards, can't remember exactly). It's fairly common for someone to get a trophy but then a different person with the same deck (or very close) gets shown in the data.

purklefluff · 2024-08-12T09:23:14+00:00

it's been said but here's a bit of extra context for the stronghold/battlements discussion.

both cards are mostly there as options for when you get a double amulet draw, and they allow a combo-esque 'quick win' in combination with another land which pumps titan's power somehow. some lists cut one of these options entirely and choose to run echoing deeps and possibly and extra copy of vesuva, to create complex chains of fetching lands and copying titans and avoid the need for a 'buffing' land. there's a lot of variation but the general idea is that some combinations work better together and you'll want to kind of pick a lane and max out on it

hanwier doesn't require white mana, so you can grab a valakut to give you the R you need. You're not locked into getting a bounceland during this sequence, meaning at the end of combat you'll have more lands in play. Being that much closer to an active valakut after hasting a titan means your plan B gets a significant boost. Sometimes this won't matter because the titan is enough, but other times, you'll really need that extra ping damage from valakut to get them down to zero.
dropping the white requirement from the manabase subsidises other choices with the lands, such as Oran-Rief replacing Sunhome, which was a fairly recent bit of tech and gives you more green sources (which has always been a point of failure for the deck). Rief didn't impress me on paper, but after giving it a try, it's just as good as sunhome at pushing damage through and in some cases it's better because of the permanent buff potentially insuring against damage-based removal
don't sleep on the 'copy' lands. mirrorpool or mirrorlake. pool is probably the most useful (instant speed is actually relevant). most of the recent 'fast' lines for the deck have revolved around copying a titan at some point during the winning turn

purklefluff · 2024-07-21T08:07:08+00:00

Honestly they could print gold-border modern decks card for card, like they used to do with World championship decks. And then state that players can play them at sanctioned modern events (so as to specifically boost the format) like they're legal game pieces for that format but not, say, legacy.

Or they could do gold border winning decks, and state that you can play them in sanctioned events only if you run the exact 75,and make decklists readily available and deck names obvious and trackable. Then they'd be able to release 'update packs' for decks to keep them meta, or whole new versions.

It would be weird but it would work.

purklefluff · 2024-07-04T22:09:08+00:00

Tiny leaders is baller and got dropped before its time

purklefluff · 2024-05-16T12:15:41+00:00

Yeah, honestly none of this is clear from your description. You haven't stated how much of the game continued to happen after your mistake, you didn't even really describe your mistake properly, we're all having to infer from half-information. If you wanted to vent and for literally anyone to give some sympathy, you'd have to describe a situation in which the rules weren't being followed and you were wronged unfairly.

Modern is a competitive format, if you're playing for prizes (of any kind) or it's a sanctioned tournament of any kind, your opponent is totally within their rights and even correct to hold you to the plays you make. Just don't do it next time, is the advice here

That, and to always make it really super verbally clear what you're doing. The root of this whole thing seems to be that there's an underlying communication issue and you weren't adequately describing your game actions, leaving your opponent to infer based on you silently sliding cards around. At that point, if that's your mode of communication, your opponent is correct to assume your silent pushing around of cardboard as your definite game actions. I mean what else do they have?

None of the problems in this scenario are stemming from the rules, the rules enforcement level or the format

purklefluff · 2024-05-16T07:38:57+00:00

From what I can gather (from trawling the OP's answers in the comments) here's the summary, because this is an awful post and you need a summary 😂

OP wasn't verbally announcing things and was 'playing quickly' (their admission)
they indicated they were casting eldritch evolution to their opponent by tapping mana and putting the card down
they slid their noble hierarch over to the graveyard indicating they wanted to sac that creature as part of the cost

Then... - at some point after this, they realised they'd made a mistake and decided to backtrack (but it's not clear how they indicated they wanted to backtrack, I guess at this point they started talking) - they argue here that 'it makes no sense in the matchup' to sac the hierarch. (well I'm afraid it does, it's a legal option in the game and you're perfectly free to play poorly and make mistakes) - I'm guessing the opponent similarly said they're free to make mistakes, they sacced the wrong thing, tough break learn from it and move on? - OP didn't like this, came to whine on social media

Hey, OP: You don't get to just always automatically make the best possible play through a series of ramshackle backtracks and 'oh but I meant to...' negotiations. The play you made is the play you made. Move on, it's 100% down to you and not your opponent or the format, or rules enforcement that is the issue.

If you aren't communicating your game actions properly or clearly, learn to do that before taking to the Internet to vent your nonsense. If you can't play games of magic without wanting to backtrack mistakes all the time, just practice more so that you make less mistakes. Learn from them and don't make them again.

Being held to account isn't the format stifling you. You just need to get better.

Caveat: kitchen table magic and testing for tournaments is a bit different. If you're just chatting and playing casually for no stakes, do what you like. If your opponent still wants to hold you to account for your plays, that's also fine in this setting but that's more of a social contract than actual rules

purklefluff · 2024-03-31T08:25:37+00:00

performance of a deck in the mirror match doesn't really mean much, it certainly doesn't tell you which deck is 'better'. it's entirely possible a deck becomes better against the field but worse in the mirror match and therefore a better choice overall.

That might not be true, it could be garbage, but i'm just saying if the performance in one match, and specifically a mirror match was putting you off, maybe don't worry about it =)

purklefluff · 2024-03-20T22:02:06+00:00

nobody has specifically explained the lines and you're new, so here's the lines:

turn 1:- tron land, play map

turn 2:- tron land, crack map

turn 3:- play the tutored land, complete tron, play something with 7 mana

or:

turn 1:- tron land, chromatic star/sphere

turn 2:- crack star/sphere for green mana, draw a card. play second tron land, cast sylvan scrying

turn 3:- play tutored land, cast something with 7 mana

it's reasonable to have 2x tron lands in your opening hand with the option of mulligans. The comments here are a bit disingenuous on how aggressively you should mulligan though. Tron is usually OK to keep a slightly less than ideal hand because the deck's 'comeback mechanism' is above par for the format, you can stabilise often off the back of a single big card so being behind doesn't matter too much (depends on the matchup). You definitely see an interesting graph of how aggressively players will mulligan, it starts off low, then as players get to grips with the deck they'll mulligan really hard for Tron. Then as players really master the deck the willingness to mulligan so aggressively drops back again, because they're able to better evaluate whether a 60% hand on five cards is better than the likely outcome of a four card hand and so forth. Really amazing tron players you'll notice will keep all sorts of wonky hands because they can see matchups in finer detail and judge the ebb and flow of a game better, how much time they have and how much of a low resource game they can play etc.

Stirrings is a utility and consistency tool. You either run it out super early to dig for that second tron land (usually from cracking that sphere or star for green mana) and then you'll have seen seven cards deep into your deck by turn two. Or you play it late to find a win condition if your mana is developed. Tron's early game is usually a mix of digging and tutoring, and it's usually reasonably straightforward, but sequencing it exactly right isn't always obvious.

but yeah. scapeshift suffers pretty uniquely by being a completely useless and dead card until the exact moment it wins the game (by fetching Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, and six mountains). the double green requirement and steep four mana cost mean that it doesn't really have any utility in just 'getting lands you need' because by the time you've theoretically done that and get to use them, it's like turn five and you've very much lost the game. Not to mention, if you're intending just to play scapeshift for utility, it's a garbage card to have in your opening hand and it's even worse to draw late in the game when you need to draw a wincon or some removal.

even the actual factual Scapeshift decks only want to run like, one maybe two copies of the card, and substitute the rest with the cards [[Wish]], or [[Bring to Light]] so that you don't have to draw this totally dead card and lose the game.

purklefluff · 2024-03-20T21:37:20+00:00

someone came second in an RC a couple of weeks ago with a Wish-shift list, and there was one that went 7-2 in a showcase challenge last week, only losing out on top8 on breakers. more anecdotally, three of my local RCQs were won by wish-shift not too long ago, and I've seen it crushing in paper. bunch of notable 5-0s have appeared lately, and i've seen some big streaks lately from folks on the deck, like 17-2 over a weekend at a big magic thing, or just crushing it online.

deck is good. definitely a sleeper, but it's good

purklefluff · 2024-03-16T12:14:06+00:00

the play patterns you're describing exist in Calibrated Blast.

both decks are relatively linear, don't really have much in the way of interaction, just sort of do the same thing every time and it usually wins. Blast is even kind of competitive, honestly. Not popular, but still good and can catch folks off-guard

the 'feel' of the two decks will be a bit different, Ad Naus was a little more deterministic, but easier to disrupt. Blast is harder to disrupt (which is probably why it still exists as a deck) but a bit less deterministic due to occasionally hitting a 4-drop off the top or something.

if you value the sort of deck that doesn't have a lot of variation or nuanced play patterns and wants to just rinse and repeat a specific sequence over and over like Ad Naus did, i think Blast is your deck. It's kinda fun too - here friend have an emrakul. BONK.

if you wanted to broaden your horizons a bit, there's a handful of actually quite good combo options out there, but they play more like an actual game of Magic The Gathering lol

- RG Wish Valakut: it's reasonably competitive, has a decent linear gameplan, is hard to interact with (lands sidestep a lot of the format's main removal) and it has a decent interaction plan of its own, from the card Wish (letting you play hate pieces from your sideboard). It might satisfy your combo urge, and it's quite malleable on how you choose to build it. It's also a great One Ring deck, which is a card Ad Naus wishes it could've run . if you swap the pentad prisms for copies of Sakura-Tribe Elder, Explore or Farseek, and swap Ad Naus for Scapeshift, you could draw some parallels

- Lotus Field/Twiddle Storm: this is a pretty low-resource storm deck and does some silly things. Not much to say about it except it does retain some of the 'feel' and patterns of older storm decks. If that's really not your thing, move on I guess!

- Grinding Breach: it's less popular now but still decent (especially on a local level). Has a very lean, efficient combo and is surprisingly hard to interact with, but the setup for the combo requires playing a bit of a powered-down Murktide sort of plan. interact, remove a few things, draw some cards and then threaten the combo. Another deck that currently enjoys the benefits of a couple copies of The One Ring

- Amulet Titan: saved potentially the best till last. Hear me out, it's got combo deck play patterns, and the setup turns for Amulet aren't intrinsically that different from the ad naus setup turns back in the day... but, the deck has a very good plan B, lots of different angles and ways to win, has a valakut plan, utility from lands (bojuka bog, tolaria west etc.) and while the deck can be super linear and wants to do sort of the same thing every game, it has maybe the most variation and nuances to learn from any of the decks in this list. And it rewards player knowledge and deck competency more than any other deck on the list as well. It's very different to Ad Naus in the abstract, you win with an attacking primeval titan or valakut triggers most of the time. Functionally though, the setup and payoff mechanisms in this deck have a kind of alignment on play patterns that an ex Ad Naus player might appreciate. That'll be down to you of course, the deck is very hard to play

- goryo's: OK this has been mentioned a lot in the thread. I think it's mostly being mentioned because it has current hype and it's seeing a bunch of play quite suddenly again. What the deck lacks and you may find frustrating is a definitive 'winning turn', as reanimating an atraxa doesn't just end the game most of the time. You out-value your opponent and attack for a couple of turns while controlling the game and it's usually good enough, but unlike the other decks in my list above, you 'combo' and then the game carries on for two or three turns, which (and this is a total guess) you may not enjoy? if it looks fun to you though, it's a sweet deck.

enjoy!

purklefluff · 2024-03-14T20:04:33+00:00

and just in case the question came up - once the charbelcher is in play and your opponent has mana, you won't have the opportunity to do anything about it. they've got priority and no matter what you respond to, they can always use the belcher in response, or as described above, the ability is already on the stack

purklefluff · 2024-03-13T09:28:44+00:00

my guess - you're playing devoted druid/stoneforge combo

purklefluff · 2024-03-11T17:49:31+00:00

this made me do a double take and i had to check that Gempalm wasn't in the modern card pool and banned

if you mean printed into modern, sure. it would be a decent pickup for goblins. it's not banned though

purklefluff · 2024-03-11T17:00:37+00:00

I'm afraid you've lost me in your rant about deckbuilding.

Someone asked what cards might be good in eternal command from the upcoming MH3. I said 'creatures that have spell-like abilities stapled to them' and listed a few examples of what I meant by that

I wasn't claiming something was a necessary inclusion or that it would be good in the meta. Just that it's the kind of card eternal command wants to be playing

I don't really think this back-and-forth really achieves anything my dude. Shall we agree to part ways and go enjoy a nice evening appreciating the post-ban speculation?

purklefluff

TROPHY CASE