f13.net

All from here, obviously. (http://www.wizards.com/magic/welcome.asp)

(http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/fcpics/serious/aa234_b6ystlowyj6t8x95.jpg)(http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/fcpics/features/343_7aakja3ab3iahp8i.jpg)(http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/fcpics/taste/mc45_q89o71zs679hrikd.jpg)

Other cards this week so far are a pitch wrath of god and a rejig of FTK which inlcudes a blinking spirit mechanic.

The selecting 10th edition promotion is also going on, if you feel so inclined this week you can vote to choose between Troll Ascetic, Ravenous Baloth or Erham Djinn in 10th.

Dark Depths plus Aether Snap = 20/20 in one turn for 5 mana rather than 30...

Xilren

Indestructible, flying 20/20.  Wheeeeee

So um...you basically need to drop a pacify or something on it the turn after it is summoned or you lose pretty much, right?

At least it doesn't have Trample, hehe.

Any bounce will kill it, and with the land gone, you can't get it back. 

Jesus. Marit Lage. You can actually summon him. Wasn't he first mentioned in flavor text in Antiquities?

I wonder what the MTG:O graphic for the token will be?

I'm still playing Kamigawa block stuff.  I can never catch up.  I'll be able to talk about these cards in a year and a half.

Wasn't it Fallen Empires that Marit Lage was the flavor text king?  I'm too lazy to go look it up.  I think it was FE though.

Just looked it up in Gatherer. First set was Ice Age. I was thinking of Lat-Nam. Which first showed up on Drafna’s Restoration in Antiquities.

Like the art, hate the card. (For the land) I hate cards that induce a lot of book-keeping. (Over though I play only online now)

In general I'm not feeling the whole snow thing...

I will defnitely vote for 10th ed cards, for 9th the community basically selected the worst choice at each turn.

The 9th ed votes showed the mtg.com communities unerring sense of crap design at it's best.

I have little doubt Troll Ascetic will win this vote, because it's one of the least fun least skill testing creatures ever to grace a card.

It never seems to occur to people when voting that the other guy gets these cards too.


Another card revealed today...

(http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/arcana1000/1111_qpgs3jsmzkl3xhe0.jpg)

I love Ravenous Baloth.

Troll will win.  Because it's stupidly broken and fucks up the metagame and color wheel.

GREEN SHOULD HAVE EFFICIENT LARGE CREATURES, SOMETIMES WITH A CRAPPY ABILITY.

Untargetable is a blue ability. 

I have mixed feelings about the card selection in general.

I feel you need two things:

1: Cards that are interesting.

2: Cards that will see play outside of sealed deck.

To me Earthquake is better than Hurricane because of 2, and Paladin En-vec is better than Auriok for the same reason. However EQ and Hurricane are basically the same card, whereas Auriok is actually more interesting than En-vec.

Troll Ascetic is clearly the best card our of the three most recent choices, but people eloquently describe it as "non-interactive". You can't kill it or do anything about it. It's not interesting. One of the things that made 9th suck and Rav (at least the first set, that's all I've really played) interesting is that in Rav there was a lot of interaction, a lot of abilities, etc.

Baloth is interesting and good enough to see play, so that is my vote. Ernam is also interesting but won't see play outside of sealed or 10th draft. It certainly won't show up in any type-2 or extended decks I would imagine.

In Selecting 9th a lot of people chose cards that were interesting but would never see play. For example Yawgmoth Demon. (I think that was the one, the sac artifacts each turn black dude) With Mirrodin rotating out there were no artifacts to sac, I've NEVER seen Yawg in play even in sealed. No matter how interesting the card is it doesn't matter if it is never played, but on the other hand pure power doesn't really matter, as long as it is good enough to get use.

Looking at some more spoiler cards:

Sunscour (Sorcery, 5WW)

You may remove two white cards in your hand from the game rather than pay Sunscour's mana cost.
Destroy all creatures.

Alternate costing casts?  Eeeep!  Have to be careful here.  Alternate casting costs can be massively broken.

Ohran Viper (Creature 1/3, 1GG)

Whenever Ohran Viper deals combat damage to a creature, destroy that creature at the end of combat.
Whenever Ohran Viper deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card.

Ummmm????  Magpie is green now?


Some pretty powerful stuff in there.  Lot's of fodder for combo decks if people can figure out how to break things.

Wow....Sunscour is uber. Cheapass WoG.

(http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/fcpics/serious/aa235_uyle4cmp87gia3le.jpg)

Wizards certainly seem to be pushing enchantments these days.

Heh, Ravnica makes that card a lot easier to play.

Hmmm....

That guy isn't going to fly with this environment.  He's fodder for any one of the dozen very good targeted removal spells.  It might be interesting once Rav rotates out,  if Coldsnap doesn't go with Rav.  Lots of pros have started putting finishers like Meloku as being sub-par because s/he dies so easily to everything.

Part of the reason there's been a resurgence in using the dragons (Keiga, especially) as finishers.  They don't die to Char/burn,  and if you Mortify/Putrefy/etc they have leave game effects that are fairly useful.

The problem with alternate casting cost spells is they too often have bad synergy with other things Wizards puts out.  A blue/white deck using lots of card drawing can now Wrath for free, while keeping mana open for counters. 

A counter/board clearing lock is the 2nd most boring situation in Magic behind efficient Land D decks.

I don't mind a clever land destruction deck with creature support. As for most boring, well, Affinity really raised the bar for how shitty MtG can be. The game may never be the same again for me. I mean, even now, I have money I could spend on MtG but the last few (new) sets have been so meh, that. I dunno. They always start out nice, but the burnout effect settles in quick when you start playing the same shit over and over again.

(http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/fcpics/features/10e_week3_winner_9fpoj5k3ck.jpg)

le sigh

Hey, I paid good money for my Ascetics, damnit.

Damn it, I am so sick of that damn troll! He's an annoying card that doesn't interact with anything around him at all. Stupid troll!

Grrr....

Anyway, the alternate casting cost of discarding cards is scary in that you can play a bunch of situational cards, and if you don't need them pitch them. For example cards that are only good in the first few turns, or in the last few. Cards you don't need more than one of in your hand, etc.

If you are stuck with say 2 force-spikes in your hand at mid-game discarding them isn't really a cost at all, because they weren't doing anything in your hand anyway.

Exactly!

I wouldn't be surprised to see a new version of Force of Will, actually.  Wizards has been trying to fix Classic/Vintage by reissuing close approximations of the old power cards, which now cost waaaaaay too much money.

My old Tundras and Volcanic Islands are practically investments now. 

New dual lands replace old duals.  Chrome Mox for the other moxen.  A Force of Will that was freely available would go a long way to making Vintage/Classic a playable format for alot of people.

I think Magic Online rereleasing old sets is part of move to set up Open as a "fun" play anything environment.

Land D decks now are fine.  They never run more than 8ish or so Land D spells/creatures.  Monored control from Mirrodin/Onslaught, for instance.

Massively efficient Land D is a horror to play against.  Used to play against a kid when I was a camp counselor who had bout 16 good land d spells (stone rain, sinkhole, etc), Black Vises, and some Black Knights for beats.  Was brutal, when you can drop a Vise, Dark Ritual a Sinkhole turn two, Stone Rain turn 3, terror/make you sac a creature you finally played, and the Vise is counting down your life.

I used to run a green land destruction deck. Also ran Green/Black and Green/White AND Green/Red, but straight green always worked best. And ya, it was positively disgusting. I sort of miss the old days. Things were simpler back then.

The Ohran viper is like having a miniature Sosuke/Seshiro combo (without the pump effects). Kind of neat for 3 mana. Along with Coiling Oracle from Dissension, one of the cooler non-Kamigawa snakes.

I suspect the viper will push snakes over the top to be the number 1 deck in tribal standard, at least till Kamigawa rotates out in september.

Something like...

4 STE
3 Leafcaller
3 Oracle
4 Viper
2 Springcaller
4 Sachii
1 Sosuke
3 Seshiro

(24 Snakes)

4 Sosuke's Summons
4 Time of Need
3 Jitte

3 UG *legendary* win conditions of your choice, probably including Meloku and Keiga.

4 Breeding Pool
4 Island
16 Forest

Probably need to add naturalises and boomerangs, possibly some giant growths according to the tribal meta that I know nothing about.

It's a damn shame that Oracle isn't also a shaman.

Nooooo!

3/4ths of my online cards are Kamigawa.  I'll get lumped in with the extended folks in gen pop!

Extended in the casual room is more casual than standard, so I wouldn't worry too much.

I have a deck like that, eldaec (minus the coldsnap stuff, which is not online). Also a Tribal Extended UG deck that has both Orochi Eggwatcher and Day of the Dragons as win conditions (with a few doubling seasons and sosuke's summons it is a fun come-from behind deck).

I take that back. I don't use any Jittes and I don't have that many dual lands, just bounce lands.

(http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/arcana1000/1119_maritlagetoken.jpg)

Nifty.

Jesus. I want the art from that. That's like Lovecraft goes blue.

Turns out Jitte is banned in tribal anyway.

And if you are just looking for casual play - the 9th edition pain lands are practically as good as shock lands as well as being much much cheaper.

Why is Jitte banned in tribal? Because tribal is more creature based and Jitte is anti-creature?

No real reason was ever given.

Most tribal decks that actually attack with creatures would run it, and nobody likes playing against it, I guess that's all.

The given reason for banning anything:

When a card becomes format defining,  it should be banned.  The format becomes decadent, devolving into two types of decks:  decks that use the card,  and decks that are based around beating the decks that use the card.

In Urza's (didn't play, but followed the discussions when Ravager was up for banning),  Tolarian Academy decks flourished.  They could have near infinite mana on turn 2,  with the easy Urza's card drawing and other cards.  There were decks that were completely designed around beating Academy.  Tolarian Academy is still banned in Urza Block and restricted in whatever they call Type 1 now.

Skull Clamp.  If you ran more then 12 creatures, you ran it.  No question.  Upwards of 80% of decks that would top 8 in pro events would have skull clamp in them.  Banned.

If Jitte is legal in a format,  you need to maindeck ways to get rid of it or deal with it.  It's that powerful a card.  Tribal is supposed to be a more relaxed and casual friendly environment.  Leaving in Jitte means that most creature heavy decks would have to shell out the ~20-30 tix just to compete.

Not counting tix for things like pithing needle that are the only mana efficient way to deal with jitte.

It's like banning tutors in prismatic:  It breaks what is supposed to be casual and fun play.  That's why the black Bringer, Gifts, etc etc are all banned in Prismatic,  even if they're fine in Type 2, Extended, etc.

In extended, jitte isn't much of an issue.  It's a little too slow there,  and you have lots and lots of good ways to deal with it efficiently.  Especially since Ravager Affinity is still legal,  you'll always have some anti-artifact tech main or side.

Even in Standard...  Sure, Jitte is powerful.  It's singlehandedly lost or won me games.  But there are a million ways to deal with it in Standard.

Faith's Fetters is a common.  Pithing Needle is widely played.  Putrefy is everywhere.  Etc.

Blah, rambled last post.  Two sentence summary:

If the vast majority of decks in a format will always run a card,  there are going to be bannings.  All tribal decks should run a Jitte, therefore it should be banned in tribal.

Jitte was a lot harder to deal with before Ravnica, and that's why I stuck to 8th/9th stuff.

You are right ofc, but it's worth adding that unfortunately to be competitive you need to shell out 50-100 tix before you buy a single spell in any format right now.

Shocklands @ Rare = teh suck.

At least Jitte was locked at 11 tix because of the precon.

Going to a cardboard release tourney tomorrow.  I'll try and post some impressions on Coldsnap.

Impressions of Coldsnap limited.  Played sealed,  make a deck from 5 boosters:

- Snow lands and creatures are important.  Quite a few decent cards are dependent on snow mana to be used.

- Much less power then Rav Block.  Seemed to be "hold till you draw a bomb" type play

- There are some real bombs.  I had the Vamp legend,  (hasty 5/5, flying, draw a card when deals damage to a player) and it whooped up on people

Only played 3 rounds and went home.  The thing had been going on for 5 1/2 hours at that point, I was 1 and 2 (stupid play mistakes cost me 2 close matches). 

Sealed will be alot different play from draft, but....   Seems like it has limited appeal.  It's not as bad as drafting one of the small sets (like a DDD), but it's not nearly as good as drafting one of the big sets (like a RRR).