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Phoenixes generally need higher rarities because of their self recursion. Can be oppressive in limited, especially with multiple copies.

That was a funny joke but as someone who also dislikes phoenixes (and other archetypes of cards you've exhausted the design space for), could you at least acknowledge our concerns?

Let’s do a little market research. We do one or two Phoenixes most blocks. Pick how you feel:

A) Too many Phoenixes.B) Just the right amount of Phoenixes.C) Not enough Phoenixes.

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I love it

It’s less efficient than Eternal Witness, but redundancy is never a bad thing in Commander.

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Magic: the Gathering - Attack on PAX

A very kewl Battle for Zendikar installation at PAX Prime 2015 in Seattle showing an Eldrazi busker raging out on the Five-0.

WotC minion MTG Global Content and Community Manager posted the very trendy ‘straight outta’ meme which delivered the LuLz - BUT - we will award our buddies the Koros Reckoners from Orangeville, here in Ontario with ONE INTERNET for today’s Top MTG Twitter Post …

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What? No. The Spark and the Phyrexian Oil are mutually exclusive. That's why Karn could be cleansed by taking on Venser's spark.

The Phyrexians are much more likely to start building portals to other planes than to ever get a planeswalker. It makes better story sense (because a Phyrexian planeswalker would just hop to a plane, infect a few things and leave, while portals take time to develop and mean we could focus on the plane being invaded at the time) and it just so happens we now have a dead portal researcher on New Phyrexia ripe for some compleation.

Wait how did they die? And how is elspeth dead but no one actually knows?

Venser gave his spark and life to cleanse Karn of the Phyrexian Oil.Nissa and Emmara aren’t dead just outside of my Grixis color identity.A lot of rumors, or fan theories at least, floating around with Elspeth coming back somehow

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Shout out to my Blue one-drop crew.

#delver of secrets #blue #mtg #Magic the gathering #merfolk #and friends

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Constructed playability is not an indicator of in-pieness, I agree. However, it does help point to the viability of complaints.

Hornet Sting is one card. Desert Twister is one card. A single blue card that said "Destroy target creature, it's controller puts a 2/2 green boar token into play. Return that token to its owners hand." would be out of pie.

But individually, both polymorphing (sometimes into a token) and unsummoning are in pie. That you want to flood tons of mana into two cards that are both at rare, in different sets, made for different environments, to show that blue is somehow breaking the color pie is silly.

Most colors can use two or three card combos to get around weaknesses. And many of those loop-hole decks see casual play (the liquid metal coating + shatter deck was a personal favorite of mine). But everyone else is just going to splash the color that can do what they need instead of trying to devote resources into forcing weird combos.

What is one aspect of magic people fight you on saying it's out of colour? (But it is actually in coolour)

Delver of Secrets.

I’ve got to stop poking the bear. : )

#you know your blue hate is getting intense #when you start resorting to BUT CURSE OF SWINE

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#delversquad2k15

#really though I hate playing against delver decks #it just isn't a color pie violation #just cause you don't like something doesn't mean it's suddenly against the color pie

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Lack of a tool is absolutely a type of weakness, especially when every other color gets it. They're two sides of the same coin. For example, one of red's weakness is enchantments. That's because it lacks the tool of enchantment removal.

Direct damage is one of the most versatile tools in Magic, able to impact the board by killing creatures or Planeswalkers and also a type of "evasion" able to go over opponents' creatures.

In constructed, all colors get powerful creatures. That's what constructed is--the most powerful cards available to make the best decks available. Creatures are the most important part of the game, and all colors need access to strong creatures and ways to interact with them.

Committing that amount of mana to Curse of Swine and Displacement Wave means 1UUUU to remove one creature with two sorceries while putting your own tokens and cards at risk, still putting blue significantly behind removal-centered colors. It's not a good commitment (you have to draw both and survive with dead cards in your hand until they're useful, at 3UUUU to do better than break even) and sees little standard usage. A near mint Curse of Swine, though currently in Standard, will only cost you 18 cents. Great for Johnny, but Spike is unimpressed.

What is one aspect of magic people fight you on saying it's out of colour? (But it is actually in coolour)

Delver of Secrets.

I’ve got to stop poking the bear. : )

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No, it is a developmental mistake, but not against the color pie. Ancestral Recall is another example of something that would be a developmental mistake, but not against the color pie.

Your gotcha moment here is really just a strawman, sorry.

What is one aspect of magic people fight you on saying it's out of colour? (But it is actually in coolour)

Delver of Secrets.

I’ve got to stop poking the bear. : )

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Blue's "specific weaknesses" are not that it cannot occasionally aggressively costed creature that benefits from spells. Blue's specific weaknesses include: • Trouble completely removing resolved permanents of *all* types (it can turn creatures into other creatures and lands into islands, unsummon permanents, and reduce power instead of direct removal, and sometimes at rare will get a mind control effect typically answerable with enchantment removal) • Tempo loss for the removal it does have (all of the above is typically negative card advantage--mind control being the rare exception--, blue must leave mana untapped for counterspells) • Less creatures available in limited • Creatures that are available are weaker, on average, than other colors in limited and generally in constructed • Slower, on average, than the other colors, especially because of the reactivity of its spells and especially in limited • Little mana ramp (with a few exceptions where blue makes colorless mana, usually for artifacts) or color fixing • No direct damage

Creatures are the most important part of the game. All colors need access to strong creatures and ways to interact with creatures, even blue. Blue just gets strong creatures less often, both intentionally on R&D's part and as a side effect of having less creatures printed in each set. Delver, as a flying creature that rewards you for playing spells in the primary spell color and primary flying color, is in-pie. It just should have been a 2/2 or a 2/1 on the back face, developmentally.

What is one aspect of magic people fight you on saying it's out of colour? (But it is actually in coolour)

Delver of Secrets.

I’ve got to stop poking the bear. : )

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First of all love your work. Secondly: Any chance for new full art lands in battle for zendikar or the other 5 fetches?

I’ve beengetting these two questions about Battlefor Zendikar quite a bit, so I think it’s time I finally answered them.

First, yes, Battle for Zendikar will be the returnof full-art lands.  I’ve seen them andyou’re all in for a real treat.

Second, Battle for Zendikar does have a coolrare cycle of dual lands, but they’re brand new designs and not the Zendikar fetch lands.

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Delver is common because it is weak in limited. It really is. I'm not sure why you're even complaining about seeing it in limited, to be honest.

No one is saying that development did not make a mistake (Innistrad standard was widely written about by development and how they would judged blue cards going forward) but creatures that reward you for playing instants and sorceries--even aggressive creatures--can fit into blue within the color pie.

Polymorph (and similar effects) as removal is card disadvantage and fits perfectly within blue's color pie. It is not strong removal and sees little play. Phyrexian Ingester is what you should be mad about, not polymorph effects, if you're concerned about out-of-color blue removal.

Blue weaknesses include completely removing any resolved permanents, from enchantments to artifacts to creatures and lands. I have not heard of any successful mono-blue delver decks recently, but maybe you can enlighten me. Delver is not an Agro deck without red, and even then it is burn with delver, not creature-based Agro like Wild Nacatl decks. Standard delver was most definitely reactive and tempo. You resolved a delver and then protected it while trying to gain a slight edge in card advantage through the game.

Green gets the weakest fliers, and typically doesn't get any fliers in a set. All 4 other colors do. Hornet queen was the rare green flier, and proved to be a top tournament card./Blue gets the weakest creatures, and typically does not get any "aggressive weenies" in a set. Typically, all 4 other colors do. Delver of secrets was the rare blue aggressive weenie, and proved to be a top tournament card./One is your most hated card on blogatog, the other you defend every week. It seems biased.

The difference is Blue is allowed to have tournament-level creatures. Creatures are the most fundamental element of the game. Blue gets to be the weakest in this category and still have some good ones. Delver, in particular, is good only if you are jumping through a very Blue-themed hoop.

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Color Pie Friday: Lithomancy

A bunch of talk sprouted up last week concerning the color pie legitimacy of Nahiri being a lithomancer. “Rocks are Red’s thing!” was the basic argument, especially considering we have Koth as a geomancer. Some even said it was OK for Nahiri to break the color pie because she’s a pre-Mending planeswalker and basically a god.

But we don’t really need to make excuses for her. Nahiri isn’t breaking any rules with her lithomancy. Today I’m going to go over the reasons why it’s perfectly fine for lithomancy to show up in mono-White.

Rocky Definitions

Plains

Lithomancy is rock magic, but that simple statement really doesn’t get to the core of what lithomancy is. It’s time to get etymological, folks. Litho- comes from the Ancient Greek lithos, meaning stone. The suffix -mancy comes from the Ancient Greek manteia, meaning divination. Thus, the annotation (direct meaning) of lithomancy is divining the future using stones.

Of course, we can’t stop at annotation here. Academic English has borrowed all sorts of ancient words and given them new connotations (implied meanings) over the years. Pyromancy is about diving using fire anymore; fantasy stories have rebranded pyromancy as the magical control of fire. So let’s refine our definition of lithomancy to be the magical control of stones.

But let’s go even deeper. Lots of English words have come to use the litho- prefix as well as the suffix -lith. Monolith. Macrolith. Microlith. Paleolithic. You may have already noticed a trend here; archeology has latched onto this Ancient Greek word and attached it to many of its technical terms. Monoliths are large, uniform stones used for sculpting. Macroliths are constructions built with large stones. Microliths are stone tools. Paleolithic refers to the periods of human history before we used stone tools. Even the medical terms for things like kidney stones use the -lith suffix, and those rocks are also built up. In every use of the root, the word connotes construction.

So for now, let’s go ahead with this working definition of lithomancy: the magical power to construct things from stone.

Constructing Nature

Stoneforge Mystic

So if lithomancy is about constructing things from stone, what makes that mono-White? The answer lies in White’s alliance with Blue and its conflict with Green.

White is the color of civilization. It wants everyone to be safe and secure as one community. Like Blue, White sees technology as a powerful way to achieve its goals. While Blue will use it for individual endeavors, White uses technology in order to help structure its idealized society. It builds roads to facilitate transit. Walls protect the cities it build to bring people together.

This is one of the conflicts between Green and White. While Green sees nature as already perfect, White sees nature as a wild and uncontrolled force. It seeks to sculpt nature, figuratively and literally, into an orderly, peaceful form. Nature is a raw material to White, who aims to control it and contain it.

Lithomancy, as the magic of reshaping stones into tools and structures, is absolutely White in this way. Nahiri takes the very earth and extracts the metals needed to forge a sword. She can reshape a statue of Ulamog into a brand-new hedron. She’s even using lithomancy for her mono-White goal of peace in the Multiverse.

Geological History

Sandblast

In case you weren’t convinced that lithomancy can be mono-White yet, here’s the long history of White having rock/ground flavored spells.

We just left the plane of Tarkir, where the Dromoka clan is filled with sand-shaping magic. Sand is just teeny tiny rocks (mostly quartz), so there’s no difference between manipulating a grain of sand a boulder.

Salt is similar to sand and was a part of White’s flavor in the Time Spiral block.

Gargoyles, when they’re not being artifacts, tend to show up in White as well. They are beings made of stone, but still play into White’s protective and defensive nature.

White can tutor up Plains every now and then, usually when it controls fewer lands than someone else. White also features spells that protect land, sometimes making them indestructible.

Rolling Stones is notable for being a mono-White card that lets rocks get up and walk around like any other regular normal magical Wall thing.

And last, but certainly very far from least, is White’s interaction with artifacts. Remember, metal comes from the ground. It has to be extracted from ore and purified so that it can be worked into tools and weapons and vehicles and whatever else White wants to do with it. The color has had this association with technology since Antiquities, one of the earliest sets in the game. One of Nahiri’s powers is the ability to extract metal directly from rock and form it into a sword. Metalworking is essentially a subset of lithomancy.

The Powers That Be

As you can see, lithomancy is perfectly acceptable in mono-White. It’s the magic of creating from stone, a practice that is both White in philosophy and flavor. Nahiri’s well-trained in the Kor art of stoneforging, the process of creating finished blades out of raw stone. It’s a tradition that has been passed down through the ages, with Kor still practicing it today. If that isn’t mono-White, then nothing is.

Until next time, planeswalkers, may the gifts of your ancestors bring you blessings today.

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Custom Format: Blind Eternities

About 4 years ago I started designing a custom MtG format for me and my friends to play. I posted about it on the MTGS forums but I never actually finished fine tuning the format. I am looking to pick it back up and try to finalize the rules, any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

The idea of the format is to make Commander into a board game via the Planechase cards.

Read More

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It's happening in this block; Nicol Bolas is depicted in Crux of Fate but does not receive a card in this block.

Are you guys allowed to have Planeswalkers be in a block's story/card-arts and not have their own card?

Yes, we are allowed to do that.

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One land, three destinies.

#DTK #mtg #magic the gathering #dragons of tarkir #Ugin #Tarkir

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Hi everyone! So this is a bit different than my usual long blocks of rambling text, but this is something I would love to do, so instead of my usual commander, this is how to build an EDH cube. *music plays like this is a podcast*

So first thing’s first, you need generals. Typically, a cube has 4ish (haven’t done a cube in a while, sorry) packs of 15 cards passed around, so each player can build a decent deck from their 60ish cards. Already there’s a problem with the low number because nobody could build an edh deck out of that.

To fix this problem you can either modify the rules, or add packs, which has to be done anyways.

The first round of packs should be generals. Exclusively legendaries who aren’t vanilla. Vanilla generals tend to be boring, although some cards like Isamaru would be fine simply because they aren’t completely useless.

The first draft should contain interesting (probably expensive, you can’t cube EDH if you aren’t willing to dish out a few hundred dollars, sorry) generals. These first packs can be less than 15 cards, but should be no less than 7.

The first round of generals should be comprised mainly of multi-colored legenaries. Cards like Sharuum and Krond are excellent as they allow for more of your drafted cards to be used and while Elesh Norn is a great card and a great commander, she isn’t necessarily good to just draft or a deck could end up being 50+ lands and not good or interesting.

This brings us to the next point: the packs should be filled mostly with single color cards, and colorless cards.

While multi color cards are fun, and fine if used sparingly; a primarily multi colored draft won’t be usable. (sorry chromanticore) instead, an EDH draft should be comprised of exceptional mono colored cards like Tarmogoyf, Baneslayer Angel, and other incredibly creatures.

Creatures should compose of 40-50% of your innitial draft. While creatures are boring and underowered compared to a lot of other things like artifacts and instants and sorceries, they make games interesting and not just a battle of wits (horrible card to put in a draft btw) The creatures in draft typically shouldn’t be anything less than a rare, but there are exceptions like Dross Scorpion or Gilder Bairn. The primary concern with putting creatures in draft is that you avoid vanilla at all costs (Static abilities are not vanilla, so feel free to put in storm crow, but this could cause a major power imbalance so be warned.)

Next is the matter of instants and sorceries (and interupts, for you geezers)

Instants and Sorceries were for a long time (and really, still are) the backbone of magic the gathering. However, when EDH is concerned, you really need to change the formula. For instance, a lightning bolt is good in any format, but is lacking in EDH and something like Crater’s Claws or Urza’s Rage would be better, because they are more utility, they can do more.

Further more, counterspells can be good, but it really depends on what you want from your playgroup. Obviously there should be some counterspells like counterspell or desertion, but too many can cause an imbalance where players will dictate the entire game.

Typical other good spells are things like Tooth and Nail and Archangel’s Light. These cards are good for obvious reasons and it is important to consider graveyard renewal so Elixir of Immortlity is also excellent.

Next you should address tribal, themes and colors.

Themes in magic are a very huge part of any successful deck. For example, a blue creatures deck probably wouldn’t work, but a blue green creature deck would be excellent! This, as you can guess can cause problems when you need certain cards that synergize with certain colors. To fix this  you’ll have to look at your generals and select cards that work with one or more of them. If one of the commanders is the Mimeoplasm you should look at good creatures like True-name Nemesis and good spells to get it into the graveyard like Glimpse the Unthinkable. While little things like this won’t seem relivent, a lot of little synergies with a lot of commanders will make the cube much more interesting.

Tribal is possible in EDH cube, but not reccomended. If you want tribal anything, it has to be a big tribal with lots of creatures like slivers, merfolk or faeries. I do not reccomend this though, so I won’t go into more detail than that.

Next we should re-examine commanders

Now that you’ve done a bit more, you should look at your commanders for any possible troublemakers. Do you have Zur the Enchanter in your commander list and nothing he can search for? that could be a problem and you’ll either have to add enchantments or drop him as a general.

Now that you’ve gotten an idea for more of what you want, you should look at the rest (enchantments, artifacts and land)

Land, for starters is incredibly important to decks. Tri color, any color dual and shock lands are all improtant and can be at the end of 15 card packs, or replace rares and uncommons as usual. Lands have to be carefully considered though, because you won’t have enough for 1 each pack and could give some players a disinct edge, or you could just be running no uncommons/commons and insert them randomly. But make sure they have a chance to be evenly distributed.

Artifacts are often overpowered, so you have to be careful with them. Mycosynth Lattice is excellent, but can lead to game ending combos which you will either purposely want to avoid, or challenge players to use, as this is draft in a singleton format. Other things like Chromatic latern and Sol Ring are incredible additions to any deck so should be added. Just be careful about anything too degenerate.

Lastly, enchantments can be excellent additions to decks. Always include things like Prismatic Omen and Greater Auramancy. things like Necropotence or really any good enchantments should be shoved into a cube at any opportunity.

So really what it comes down to is personal preferance. A last note is that you can always change rules as necessary like the number of cards in a deck, or the color restrictions of generals! Have fun!