A Planeswalker's Guide to SPPf (Magic: the Gathering)

[the3rdH0kage]

Wouldn't Sublime Archangel be threatened by those cards also?

[Kamotz]

Yes, But the turn Sublime Archangel comes in you can attack and get her exalted bonus. Avacyn comes in and doesn't immediately effect the board state. You're usually tapping out for Avacyn (at 8 cmc). Sublime Archangel is half of that, meaning you can get her out much earlier and your opponent has fewer turns to go through their decks and have answers to your attacks. There's a reason Avacyn is $10 and Sublime Archangel is $24.

[the3rdH0kage]

StarCity has Sublime at $30 but I can probably get one cheaper then that. There is a guy at my local shop that buys Legacy stuff and I have a bunch of Legacy cards.

[Kamotz]

Starcity really inflates their prices for a lot of things, especially the stuff that's in-demand. The reason Jace, the Mind Sculptor jumped to ~$90 is because StarCity started pricing him that way (just because of a RUMOR that he might be unbanned in Modern). I prefer TCGPlayer's price listing. Because you can get the average price things are selling at.

[the3rdH0kage]

aahhh. ok didnt know that thx.

I have something we can talk about that I've been wondering about here latley.

When your building/editing a deck, and you want to add a card if you have an older version of the card do you put the newer one in or the older one.

I personally prefer the older cards I think the art is cooler. Like my Mind Rot is from 7th Edition, all of my Plains are from Ravnica: City of Guilds except for my Full-Portrait one from Zendikar, and all of my Swamps are either Full-portrait or older (Shadowmoor with a few from R:CoG).

[Kamotz]

I personally like to go with uniformity. If most of my cards are in the modern frame, I'll use the modern frame. I don't like seeing the old stuff sticking out like a sore thumb. And I ONLY use full-art Zendikar basics, but that's just a personal preference. A lot of the time, however, it depends on the art difference. I prefer the M13 Mutilate over the old one. I prefer the Tenth Edition Kamahl, Pit-Fighter over the Odyssey one. But on the other hand, I prefer the Invasion Reya, Dawnbringer over the Tenth Edition one.

Additionally, I just posted a Tournament Report Thread here in Alt. Card Discussion. It's a place where we can report and discuss tournamets (FNM, Buy-a-Box, etc) that we participate in.

[the3rdH0kage]

There is one Mountain I would use in every deck if I could. My Unhinged Mountain. and for Legacy/Commander I use any Unlimited cards that go well in the deck. I have a Unlimited Dark Ritual in the deck and it is awesome. I would go to all Full-Portrait Zendikar lands if I could find enough lands. atm I have 1 Plains, 1 Swamp, 1 Island, and 1 Forest That are Full-Portrait. I also have a origanal Lorwyn Obilivion Ring in my deck. My 7th Edition Mind Rot. 1 really like the Lorwyn lands they are really cheerful and colorful I like using those also. I have a bunch of Timeshift Swamps I use in Mono-Black decks. I really like the origanal Pacifism art. It looked cool and had a different flavour text then the one we have now. I'll probably post in the Tournament thread soon. Next time I go to FNM or something.

[niedude]

Subscribbing.

Nothing to add as of yet, except I just now took a look at the new Gatecrash cards in magicspoilers.

MY GOD Aurelia, you're gonna be a staple in every deck that can run you. And Borborighnasif too, since there's that Green golgari aligned card that could fetch a heck of lands from the grave which he could use. Or was that from the original Ravnican set?

Wait, it had Delve right? So it's original...
Still, he's kind of a beast... right?

[Kamotz]

Yeah, that's Life from the Loam, and it's from Original Ravnica (Dredge).

Eh. If those cards are real then they're still pretty expensive for their effects. Boborygmos will probably see more of a home in 4-color-reanimator. But they'd still probably rather be running Angel of Serenity, Griselbrand, and Craterhoof Behemoth in that high-costing spot. Maybe he's more of a Jund finisher. Not many of the Guild Leaders from RtR see much play. Trostani and Niv are probably it.

As for Aurelia. There are some shenanigans you could pull off with her and Cloudshift to attack 3 times in a single turn. But that would require playing Cloudshift, which isn't really a constructed-playable card. Still, she could fit pretty well in a Naya build.

[Phlogiston]

Yeah, Life from the Loam was in the original Ravnica and probably will never ever come back outside a one-off in a Commander/Planechase/Archenemy/Duel Decks product (PDS was retired due to, iirc, low demand -- which may have SOMETHING to do with the bollocks price point of thirty-five dollars and the fact that the foils tend to warp if you BREATHE on them!). The reason for this being that, outside of Time Spiral Block (which screams of foisting playtesting on the players (which is at least still tons of fun)), mechanics are not generally printed as one-offs in sets.

[Kamotz]

PDS?

Well, Dredge was just too powerful. It still has a huge presence in Modern...and it can hardly be called Magic. It's almost a different game altogether, kinda like Storm in a way.

[the3rdH0kage]

So that R/G PW was legit. MTGMint confired it and posted a pic on Facebook.

[Kamotz]

Ew. That's kinda awful. Well...maybe not. It depends on how the rest of the meta changes come gatecrash.

[Phlogiston]

PDS?

Premium Deck Series. i.e. 60-card pre-con but all foils. The pre-cons were all themed (Slivers, burn, reanimator), and mostly decent (subject to typical pre-con constraints such as one of a rare each, mind you). Used an alternate foiling process which, in my opinion, made them stand out much more, but also made the cards warp a lot (kind of like what happens to From the Vault boxes -- I've yet to check out Realms, but I've owned at least one card from each of the others and knew many folks who had them, and none of them had them in non-warped condition). That, and the contents are usually not worth $35 even when foiled, especially since once the big reason to buy them (e.g. Chain Lightning, Entomb) gets announced, prices tended to drop like stones.

[Kamotz]

Oh, okay. Yeah. A friend of mine uses some of those (Graveborn, Fire/Lightning) in his Cube. They're nice art.

I like the limited release sets. I won a FTV: Realms and as long as you keep the cards protected they don't warp. Mine are in a binder (for now) and are in perfect shape.

[the3rdH0kage]

I had a Hellkite Overlord from the FTVragons and it wasn't warped at all.

[Phlogiston]

Haven't really had a chance to investigate any Realms stuff, but I remember Exiled and especially Relics, at least among people I know, warping pretty quickly. A fair few of the Fire and Lightning cards (since I bought that and Graveborn) seemed to get a little of it fairly quickly after being unpacked. Could be bad runs, or something. That or I just don't put them in a more secure place fast enough.

Actually, a lot of the foils in general have been a little different. The last few from AVR I got had a bit of... I guess Gaussian blur? around the text -- the ink looked very lightly smudged, I guess. I think my foil Talrand (that I'd gotten at the pre-release) had this problem, too, actually. There's no real downturn in the quality on the card, but they have that weird effect to them. Actually, it looks pretty cool, in a way.

[the3rdH0kage]

I don't have any cards like that.

Anybody go to FMN tonight, I was going to go but decided I'd rather chill at a friends place. So I'm going to help him make a deck (the one he has now is a R/W/B deck that is very different). He runs 2 Angel of Glory Rise and a shiz ton a Black Zombies (kinda weird right). But anyway after we fix it I will post it up here for rating.

[Kamotz]

I've started posting Deck Primers in the RMD sub-forum. Each one examines and breaks down a different deck in the current Standard Environment. Here's a list of planned/finished Primers I've got ready.

Bant Control (posted)
Grixis Control (posted)
Jund Midrange (coming soon)
Red Deck Wins/Rakdos Deck Wins (coming soon)
Naya Midrange (coming soon)
Four Color Control (coming soon)
Azorius Aggro (coming soon)
Selesnya Aggro (coming soon)

What I'm essentially doing is breaking down the deck by card choices and the strategies that accompany them.

Additionally, aside from the above-listed decks (which are the ones I've made and worked with since the new Standard season), I can also analyze requested deck archtypes that I haven't put up there for people who are interested. So if you want to take a look at Esper Tokens, Junk Tokens, Junk Reanimator, 4 Color Reanimator, or any other sort of archtype, I can do that as well.

[the3rdH0kage]

So I'm thinking of building a new deck. I'll build a R/G deck. I'll test tomorrow at school. Then post the deck

Im going to make it R/U/G, while splashing in the other 2 color's courtesy of Druid's Repositiory and Transguild Promenade