Timewaster's Guide Archive
Games => CCGs => Topic started by: Fellfrosch on September 01, 2003, 07:19:17 PM
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No big surprise there, since most of us assumed as much. Anyway, it sounds really cool and the first preview is right here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr87
Remember, all of you in Utah, TWG is taking a little trip to the Mirrodin prerelease on September 20. Everyone is welcome.
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I finally got confirmation that my request for that day off actually worked. I'm in. Artifacts ho!
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I was thinking a little about the Morridin prerelease today, and the thought occurred to me that enough of us go, we might be able to take the Morridin cards we get/win (assuming we do well) and use them for a Sealed league/tournament we could carry over through the rest of the block.
It sounds fun to me. :) Get everyone playing Limited Morridin decks, and allow trading within the Sealed environment so we could have good Constructed decks within the Sealed environment. If nothing else, it sounds like a great way to get a taste of Morridin.
How many boosters would we have to get/win in order to form our own little Sealed league? Three per person is the standard isn't it?
In the meantime, I'm groovin over the new storyline Legends that Wizards revealed for the Morridin block.
(http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/articles/ElfLegendGolemLegend.jpg)
An efficient first-striking Legend with a solid ability thrown in? I gotta like that. Green doesn't have enough first strike anyway. Bosh is pretty cool too, though a little less managable with his high cost and artifact-sucking ability.
Anyone else think that 'amount of mana in your pool' line might be a block mechanic? It seems too odd to be alone by itself.
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It is interesting that they used "equal to" instead of language that indicates you can have more mana than the artifact cost.
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Yes, that does make the ability a little bit more tricky, if that's the way it works. I somewhat suspect the equal to may mean equal to or over, but we'll leave that for Rune Horvik to explain, I guess. Either way, unless one is using a massive mana generator of some kind (Wirewood Channeler or the Urzatron lands maybe), that typically won't be much of a problem. It's easy enough to generate the right amount before you go higher in the average case.
The similarity between her ability and the recent Scourge 'equal to the converted mana cost of the highest pernament you control' theme is striking though, and it makes me suspicious that we'll see more of it in Morridin. Just kinda inside-out backwards from what Scourge did.
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I suspect that this mechanic is unique to this particular legend--Legends don't tend to share their abilities with others very much. I can see one or two cards in the block, but nothing as big as a theme.
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Likely you're right. My instincts about the contents of unreleased sets have never been very good. On the other hand, I wouldn't say so on the basis of the argument you presented.
I see a good number of Legends that share block themes and mechanics with other Legends. The Invasion dragon legends all based their triggered abilities on colors, and both Kangee, Aerie Keeper and Verdeloth the Ancient had kicker abilities. More recently, Karona and Ixidor both concerned themselves intensely with block mechanics and themes.
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Karona and Ixidor are related to block themes, but their personal mechanics are their own. If Ixidor could morph himself then we'd have a precedent, but since all he does is interact with morph creatures (the way Karon interacts with tribes and Glissa interacts with artifacts), it seems like the trend holds.
But enough petty squabbling. We're going to the prerelease a week from tomorrow, and I want to know who is going, who's driving, and who's riding with who. Prometheus, what time do you think we should get there and how long do you think we'll stay?
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Too bad. Petty Squabbling is fun sometimes. ;)
As for the prerelease, the last time I showed up I got there about 10 min late, and I made it onto the sixth flight or something absurd like that. It's in my article if I goofed on the stats, but the point is the same. It's best to show up before it starts if you want to get into an early flight. If you don't want to do a second flight and don't have any time restrictions for the day, that won't matter as much. They are, however, going to be holding a Team Sealed tournament at some point during the prerelease, and that might be a blast to join as well as a normal flight. Not sure how much everyone wants to play.
Flights run quite a while, but they changed the way they ran them between Legions & Scourge, so I hesitate to guess on how long a flight will last. The two I've been in have averaged around 7-8 hours, but that's only two data points, so it doesn't mean much statistically. They vary by the number and severity of late-running matches too. I do know that the organization running the show is pretty lenient about allowing late matches to continue past the time alloted in the tournament rules, so things like that are hard to guess & that getting into an early flight helps a lot if you want to go quickly & get into a second event---typically the flight should be shorter.
How long are we going to stay? I don't know. One flight is typically enough for me, but that Team Sealed match sounds fun. Throw in some card trading time, and ... ? Beats me.
I might be able to drive. My brother has been letting me use his car again, but that can change quickly.
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I don't think I can afford a second flight, but I would like to do some trading. And I can probably drive. And you and I are probably the only ones who read this thread.
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Sounds good. Want me to help call people up to find out if they're going?
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Found what appears to be a full (or nearly so) Mirrodin spoiler. Kinda hate these in a way, but, whatever...
http://www.mtgnews.com/tracing/mirrodin/
I've been analysing the commons and gamebusting uncommons to see what the environment will look like. Destruction of anything other than artifacts seems to be at a premium and green + red seem to be the only decent colors at artifact busting. I don't remember seeing any cards that suggested that keeping the opponent's artifacts around was worthwhile, so red or green is a fairly good recommendation to start with.
I also noticed that most creatures tended to be rather small, particularly on the toughness side of things, so Equipment or +1/+1 counters will likely be the way to win the ground war.
Overall, the one card I'd recommend the most (non-Rare, anyway, but we're not likely to see those Rares much) is Isochron Scepter. There's more than a dozen instants that would lock up the game in one fashion or another with that sort of repeatability, including Raise the Alarm, Annul, Electrostatic Bolt, Shrapnel Blast, and Predator's Strike among the best of 'em. If your opponent doesn't already have the game bought and they aren't playing red or green, they're most likely done for if you slap any of those combos down. Interestingly enough, I wouldn't recommend Terror for this environment. Very strange.
You've probably already heard it before, but 40-card 2-color max with 17 land minimum, and focus on the creatures.
Any other thoughts, Fell? Strategic, organizational, or otherwise? If we only want to do one flight, the importance of the departure/arrival time plummets, but I'd still recommend arriving by 10 AM at the latest, just to make sure the finish time doesn't get too awfully drawn out.
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I'd still like to get there before 8:30, so that a) it doesn't take the entire day, and b) we have our options open if we decide to do a team flight (which I'm warming up to).
As for strategy, I've read most of that same spoiler and I agree with your analysis. Green hates artifacts, so it will destroy them very nicely, but it doesn't really gain as much by using them as the other colors do. It looks to me like the ideal deck is going to be blue/green, so you can kill the other guy's artifacts while taking maximum advantage of your own, but obviously that's going to depend on the cards we pull. And for some reason I thought that Isochron Scepter was rare, probably because it's so powerful, so thanks for pointing out that it's uncommon.
I still like red because of it's speed, and because it can blow up artifacts and use them at the same time. I also like white a lot, since they've got some incredibly efficient weenies, but that might be hard to pull together in a non-constructed deck. The color I don't really have my mind around yet is black. What's its strength in this set?
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Ooh, how about the Neurok Spy? He's a 2/2 for 3 mana who's unblockable if your opponent controls an artifact. Given the environment, I suspect he'll be unblockable in almost every game you play at the prerelease, and with some good equipment he could be very deadly.
And he's common. I forgot to mention that.
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Okay, I've gone through the list more thoroughly this time (my kids are asleep), and these are my conclusions.
1) Given the huge number of artifacts, especially common artifact creatures, you could build a very nice mono-color deck without sacrificing card quality.
2) Given the prevalence of Myrs and Talismans, two cycles of artifacts that give cross-color mana, you could possibly (depending on what you get) build a very stable mana base for a three color deck. I'm not saying that it's likely, just that we should keep our eyes open for the possibility.
3) Given 1 and 2 together, they kind of cancel each other out in most situations.
4) The two colors with the most immediately obvious artifact interaction, at least at the common level, are white and black. I expect that a lot of people will play these types of decks simply because they are so obvious.
5) On second glance, red has better artifact destruction than green does (in this set, at least), and it also benefits more from having artifacts in play. Green will receive obvious benefits from your equipment, of course, but it can't do things with artifacts the way the other colors can.
6) Having not played the set (obviously) I predict that black is the weakest color, followed by green, followed by white, red, and blue in a clump--I can't pick which is better or worse at this point.
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I couldn't tell the rarity of the Neurok Spy when I was looking at it, so he largely got ignored. If he's common, blue looks a lot better. I also noticed that the fear evasion ability is largely useless in this block. Everyone will have artifact creatures in their deck. Honestly, they'd have to TRY not to.
I'm still skeptical of the effectiveness of the Myr mana dudes at making 3 colors playable, and I tried to figure out what I'd do for a single color deck, so I'm theoretically staying two-color. The rares we come up with will be a big factor, as always, but planning for rares in Sealed is worthless.
As far as black...they're supposed to get stronger and stronger for each artifact you've got out, but their creatures have absolutely pathetic toughness, making them largely useless outside of the regenerators. That said, their regenerators, particularly the Flayed Nim, could be extremely efficient if you keep em on the offensive & slap an Equipment on em.
The existence of the common Neurok Hoversail will reduce the value of flying as well. I've been having trouble finding a reliable source of evasion, given the artifacts they've got in the set. Trample gets my vote, I think. There are some nice sources of it, (I'm a fan of the Loxodon Warhammer. Throw that one one of the Nim powermongers or regenerators and you've got a nice creature.) and adding power/toughness to a creature doesn't seem all that hard in the environment.
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That's a good point, though the best plan is usually to have as many flyers as possible--if they have so many flyers that you can't get damage through, then you'll need all your flyers as defense anyway.
You're right about the regenerators, but they seem expensive. I suppose we'll see. The problem with black is that they usually can't hurt black or artifacts. Fear and Terror are two of the best abilities for the price, but in this environment they'll be next to useless (as you pointed out).
My plan at this point is to get as much removal as I can, which probably means red, backed by the best artifact team I can muster, which probably means white or blue.
What I'd really like to identify is a killer common--something like a Goblin Sparksmith or a Zombie Cutthroat that's an incredible value for the price and amazing in limited. I'm tempted to call the Neurok Spy our killer, but I'm not sure. He's not really amazing by himself, only when he's supported by equipment.
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In this environment, I don't see Neurok Spy limited at all. Who isn't going to have an artifact down every single game? Even if someone does manage that feat, they're giving up half the cards they had available to them as well as the bonuses artifacts give Morridin colored cards. If Neurok Spy doesn't work at the Prerelease, you won't have anything to fear from your opponent anyway.
Aside from the Neurok Spy, my favorite common so far is the Skyhunter Cub. With the prevalence of common and very cheap equipment, you can attack with a 3/3 + equipment flyer easily on turn 4. Keep that one on the offensive all game long, and your opponent will have difficulty keeping up, despite the prevalence of flying in the environment. As a side note, I'm really glad to see knights make it back onto the mainboard, especially since they have a very small amount of Tribal effect going on with the Auriok Steelshaper.
I have Wednesday off. Do you/anyone else who happens to look at this thread in time want to get a Constructed game together? We need to test our Scourge decks if nothing else. ;)
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I'll probably be available, but any decks I could make would just prove to be fodder for your wrath.
If you arrange something outside the board, email me (see profile) or send me a private message with a phone # I can call to get in on it.
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Wednesdays are bad for me, unfortunately, but I would like to play sometime.
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Well I'm getting off work at 4:30 for the rest of the week. Wednesday and Saturday are off. Pick a time. Hopefully sometime when we'll be able to get at least 3-4 people out.
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Well, black and green are both better than I thought. And it turns out you were right about Glissa--her exact mechanic is unique, but green does have a strong artifact destruction theme that requires mana without actually using mana. In addition to her there are two spells that destroy artifacts and then replace their own mana. Could be very interesting, because they allow you to blow up artifacts early on without missing any creature drops.
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True there. I noticed that green's artifact destroyers didn't consume any total mana, but didn't really think of it in the way of the mana curve like you pointed out---just that the ability was quite impressive overall. Keeping the artifact count low until you can gain field advantage will be significant though.
Black, despite its shortcomings in toughness and the absolute worthlessness of fear in Mirrodin Limited, has a solid number of tricks, too. It's still the best at killing creatures, which will factor into the games quite well I expect. Irradiate, Contaminated Bond, and Relic Bane (if you can get it) would all make a large difference in the games. Add to that the most variety we've seen for regeneration in a while, and black starts looking pretty good. I could see Wail of the Nim playing a big part in a game too.
Do we have plans for Saturday yet? Do we even know who's going? I remember Chris and Kristy saying they were interested, but aside from you and I that's all I know of.
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As far as I know, you and I and Spriggan and EUOL are all driving down together. EUOL was going to call SPriggan to ask him about it last night, but I don't know if he did. In addition to us, Chris and Kristy and Megan and JT are going.
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Our trip to the prerelease was a great success. Despite opening crap and being forced into a larger-than-preferable three color deck, I went undefeated in all five rounds--though I gave my final opponent a draw so that we both got 12 packs instead of one getting 15 and one getting 9.
EUOL built a killer green deck that carried him to a 4-1 record, earning 9 packs (his only loss was to a guy with a massive flying doublestrike creature). Prometheus had a great deck as well, going 3-2 and earning 2 packs.
In all that gives us 23 packs, which will make for a highly pleasant draft game one day in the very near future. Mirrodin is a very unique environment and a blast to play, and I literally can't wait to play again. I've told my wife so much about the tournament she's ready to sell me to the gypsies. So instead of bothering her, I'll put up a tournament report and bother you.
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Yes, pester, please. I was going to ask how it all went.
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When should we have our game summaries in by?
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As soon as possible. I'm probably going to do them as separate articles, since mine is turning out to be huge.
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What do you want me to do with the pictures I took? I was thinking of just throwing them up on MSS with thumbnails and letting you choose the ones you wanted to use that way. Or I can just send a zip file with them in it (there's about 7-10 decent ones).
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Sure, send a zip file.
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ok, consider it done.
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Let's do that booster draft. When's good for people?
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I'm good to play most any night, but I doubt we could pull it off this week, time is too short. Next week is General Conference week...the Cottontree is usually busy then?
Also, are we dividing the cards up differently this time, given the way we obtained them? You and Fell got most of the winnings for us, but at the same time, that was under TWG funds, I guess. Don't know how you two want to do that.
Have we talked to Chris/Kristy and Megan/J.T. about the Sealed games since the tournament?
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We are doing a draft game tonight at the Cottontree at 9:30, or shortly thereafter, with a much smaller group than normal (mostly because we don't have enough cards for the normal group and we're too excited to wait until the set comes out so we can buy more). Prometheus, make sure you come, and we'll try to contact Kije and Lovebasket as well. We can do seven people, and I imagine we'll probably have about that many.
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Roger Roger. I might be able to scrounge up another player if we end up short, too.
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We can do more, thanks to certain tranzas I intend to pull (ie, recombining my prerelease cards into pack-like groups).
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I asked already in the Superdeck thread, and I don't want to be a pain, but are we still planning on doing that Sealed League thing? If so, I'd like to meet sometime to trade and start getting our Sealed decks in shape to bash each other over the head with. If not, I'd like to know so I can use my Sealed cards elsewhere.
I'm actually thinking about changing my deck up entirely and going with a red/white build focusing on equipment. I'll probably have a third color, which will likely be green, as red destroys its own artifacts and doesn't play all that well with either blue or black, who need as many of those as possible.
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I can't say I'm terribly excited about a sealed league (mostly because it remains poorly defiend in my mind). I've already broken up my Mirrodin and built some new decks, so go ahead and do the same.
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re: prerelease articles.
It's really a problem with all three articles, but uh... I know how to play magic. And it would have been helpful to know even vaguely what a card does so that I could understand anything about your descriptions of the matches. I can't imagine what it's like for someone unfamiliar with the game.
If I have to go look at another source to learn that (especially one I have to search for myself), then I really don't need to read about the matches. Just a thought.
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True, I guess. We tried to get them out quickly, however, and putting that Autocard code in can be a real pain. At the same time, though, the purpose of the articles wasn't really to explain the game or the new cards, it was to report on our trip. We could've made it more user-friendly, but we'll have other articles out before long to explain more about what was going on.
The big annoyance I have with my article is that somehow the '+1/+1 counters' mentioned on the Wurmskin Forger explanation at the end somehow became '1 / 1 counters' during the transition, which is a significantly different matter, unless you have a Pentavus.
In the short term, though, I have a few two-color decklists from the Legions/Scourge era that have yet to be strutted across the stage. Is my new copy of Whispering Winds readable Fell?
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Thanks for posting Forged Dawn for me, Fell. Somewhere in translation though Bosh had triplets and the card count got all messy.
20 lands + 28 creatures + 11 non-creature artifacts = 59 cards
Not a big deal, but also not my fault. I checked. ;D
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Yes, I intended to ask you about that. The version you sent me had only one Bosh and the same 11 non-creature spells, leaving you 4 cards shy of a legal constructed deck. I added some Boshes but didn't know what to do with the spells. How would you like me to change it?
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:-[
What do you know, you're right...I checked the number of Bosh's last night, but made assumptions about the card count overall...
I must've been pretty tired last night not to notice that changing it back would take too many cards away. For survivability, let's take a pair of Skeleton Shards, and for pure abusiveness with the Brass Herald let's go with two Soul Foundry on top of that. Unless you have a different cool idea that would work thematically. You caught my error. Any thoughts?
Oops. Scratch that. The problem was mine in typing it out to send to you. I missed the quad of Malachite Golems. Add those instead. It was right in the initial plans. :P Sorry about the trouble.
On a different note, did anyone have any thoughts about Forged Dawn or the other decks I've had posted recently? I haven't gotten a lot of feedback.
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no one gets much feedback on specific articles anymore.
I don't have the time to look at all the cards, i'm either on an incredibly slow computer (no, really, you can't comprehend unless you sit at it and wait the 3 minutes for it to open a new IE window. I do not exaggerate) or a very slow internet connection (where I also have so many things to do. So i'm not sure what all the cards do, though the links to them is very nice.