MTG thread

We want more female protagonists.

But they can't ever be put in peril or be seen to be overpowered by an enemy.

Punko said:

MTG did not become great by printing loads of shit product, or pringle-foil quality cards. It did not become great by catering to transgenders or fat feminists. Nor did it become great by banning strong cards, or through printing and banning selective cards to push other decks.

All that stuff is new, and its all terrible.

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No shit product? Fallen Empires didn't happen I guess. Banning strong cards? Neither did Urza or Mirrodin bans.

Stick to your redpill bullshit, you don't really understand MtG.

Uh, LED had no cards to use it with. It was a soggy biscuit rare pretty much until the invention of Dredge. The timing rules when it was printed were very different, and there was no way to use the mana prior to discarding your hand. Also, the graveyard sucked as a resource.

I probably tore 50 of those fuckers up during Mirage drafts because they weren't even worth keeping around.

Ill will? You got inside sources at WotC? Going to need some proof they are intentionally making bad Standards so they can sell more cards via banning?

Actually nevermind. You're dumb.

Yawg's Will is what pushed LED over the top to insanity.

Punko said:

you still can't use the mana before discarding your hand, you just hold priority while doing so and stack the top of your deck and a draw spell

unfortunately at the time noone considered brainstorm + vampiric tutor to be a viable combination

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Because it wasn't. Brainstorm is pretty meh without shuffle effects like fetches, and burning a whole card just to shuffle is a recipe for disaster. There's no good order of operations worth the hassle with those cards.

Vamp Tutor, stack top card, Brainstorm, hold priority sac LED... okay cool, now draw 3, return 2. You just discarded your hand, spent 3 cards, and a draw step to... what exactly? You're only up 1 mana over just untap and draw normally after spending U and B to Vamp Tutor and Brainstorm. What game winning spell is worth those hoops in that era? There's no storm, nothing to cast from the graveyard, no way to recoup the lost advantage. Best case, I guess you're finding and casting Animate Dead? On... maybe a Crimson Hellkite or a Deep Spawn?

ronne said:

We want more female protagonists.

But they can't ever be put in peril or be seen to be overpowered by an enemy.

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Nahiri kicking the shit out of Sorin was pretty amazing, but then they did build her up to be a powerful and likeable character.

Punko said:

doomsday, of course?

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Okay, so keep going. Build a win condition out of Doomsday in the Type 2 of its era. Or even Type 1. I don't know Doomsday decks as well as I know old standard, but I'm unaware of a Doomsday kill that predates Tendrils. Maybe Beacon of Destruction. There was nothing to do with Doomsday back in the day just like LED. It was just another junk rare.

My point is that the LED interaction with Infernal Tutor isn't some kind of late discovered tech. People knew how the stack worked back then even if the rules were a little different. There wasn't anything reliable to do with LED until Yawg Will, and it didn't really take off in terms of being a strong Lotus analog until Dredge and Storm, both of which pretty much exploited it in the same way as Will.

I'm digging through 95/96 content, and no one has bothered with LED at all. If anyone was going to find an old school / new tech application of LED, it would be that enthusiast community.

I almost feel like I'm missing a /s tag or something.

People were trying to break LED almost immediately. The first deck it saw use in was a combo deck called Reap Lace. You make your opponents shit black with prismatic lace, cast Reap to return LED + another Reap. This was popping up once Tempest was out.

Brainstorm is card that I don't think we would evaluate the same way in a second go around. Mirage fetches saw play here and there, Thawing Glaciers was a thing, Demonic Consultation, all the Mirage tutors, Vamp tutor, and Impuse work with it. Hell, there was a spot where Land Tax was unrestricted with Brainstorm in the format. Helps protect cards in hand vs Hymm and Specter too.

I played Brainstorm with Thawing Glaciers in block constructed and won my first PTQ with it, before Glaciers and Zuran Orb got banned. I mean on the whole decks were relatively untuned compared to now, but there's a lot of weird beliefs held by people. People talk about how long it took people to figure out Necropotence, but at the time the most popular deck was a Howling Mine/Black Vice deck with some land destruction. That's a very hostile environment for Necro. Once VIse got restricted in standard the first major event was PT1 and there was Necro and Land Tax decks everywhere.

Yeah, Brainstorm and Land Tax being legal together was certainly an epic miscalculation. This would have been about the same time as Necro though, and in that environment I'm not sure it would have mattered all that much.

People were also terrified of Underworld Dreams for some damn reason. I remember that card being a boogieman that never amounted to very much.

I'll say one thing: playing 94/95 is pretty fun. Stormbind is a hell of a card.

Sterling said:

I played Brainstorm with Thawing Glaciers in block constructed and won my first PTQ with it, before Glaciers and Zuran Orb got banned. I mean on the whole decks were relatively untuned compared to now, but there's a lot of weird beliefs held by people. People talk about how long it took people to figure out Necropotence, but at the time the most popular deck was a Howling Mine/Black Vice deck with some land destruction. That's a very hostile environment for Necro. Once Vise got restricted in standard the first major event was PT1 and there was Necro and Land Tax decks everywhere.

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There's just a world of difference between having a mature internet and not having a mature internet. Back forever ago there were local magic communities that not only were immediately on board the Necropotence train the instant that Black Vise was restricted but also developed Stasis based strategies that would later become Turbo Stasis. That information traveled at a snail's pace. It took someone doing well with the deck at an event and then coverage of that event making it into print media for information to gain any traction.

Now we're looking at the first decks to 5-0 an online event the same weekend a set comes out.

7000 applicants for this year's Great Design Search, up from 1100 last time.

I do not envy whoever's reading these essays, especially since they're all going to start "I've been playing Magic all my life and it's a huge part of everything I do!" with the writer actually believing their little nerdlet life story is somehow unique.