Planechase 2 New Cards~

The details of Planechase 2 are all out in the open and here are all of the unique cards from the set:

Lets see...
Of the new cards, the clear standouts are the ninjas, cascade and the colored artifact creatures.

Being eternal legal is a tough barrier to break where playability is concerned. The likely winner would be Shardless Agent being a cascader that can chain down into Ancestral Vision or just a Noble Hierarch or maybe Brainstorm. Cascade has always been a powerful mechanic that eternal formats would not be able to handle effectively if only Bloodbraid Elf was played especially since the format is unable to react appropriately. Force of Will is just horrid vs Bb elf.

In any case, planechase 2 is about the planes... Although that would not prevent me from getting a playset.

Flipped?

Lets see... To follow up on the last post, I managed to sell 4x Temporal Mastery at slightly above 18 to a reputable buy bot so I made 4 tix just moving cards.

I played in a bunch of 4 rounds sealed release thingys but it was generally an awful experience when I get blown away by bombs in round 1. Very demoralizing. :(

I did find out that humans are quite sick if you have the few that just triggered to humans. Especially since the format has such a pathetic bunch of removals.

Hopefully I can make the effort to gather qps (4 at the moment) for promo stifle :) Standard looks quite similar to pre-avacyn restored so it might not be difficult to prepare a deck.

Today, I went down to a local comic book store to pick up the mtg comic that I had ordered.



The thing is, the 2nd issue, being a back order reprint, didn't come with the alternate art Faithless Looting. :(
(it is pretty much the only one of the lot that I wanted for its playability)



Story-wise, nothing much really happened. I would say that the 3rd and 4th issues ended rather fast and into a to be continued setting which is why I say nothing much happened since there weren''t any conclusions.

If you want to read them, they are available on iphone via the idw ap. They start out at 3.99 and drop to 1.99 (if I recall correctly) after some time.

Buy-an-overpriced-card ver 7/1u+1

During the prerelease week, it is usually fine to buy cards but you should offload your cards by Tuesday when the prices are at their peak.

I bought 4x Temporal Mastery (@17ea) for Classic and I was quite disappointed with them because they clog up your hand until you get your Brainstorms out. Maybe the optimal count is not 4.. But I wonder what is..

In any case, I'm going to unload them later when I get home. Let's see how much they go for today :)

I hope to pick up Griselbrand/s. I think it's a card worth playing for Classic for a control deck...

Super Sonic vs Metal Sonic

Haha! I managed to get all 7 Chaos Emeralds so I went back to kick Metal Sonic's head in :)

Waiting for June :)

I'm not in the position to have the luxury of gettin the most "in" diablo 3 given my horribly overworked schedule (not that I would have anyway). Now, I can't even afford a DE at night. :(

For the month of May, I do have plans to get Sonic 4 episode 2 on the iphone which should be coming out in a few hours.

Release events are also within my sights.

For the month of June, I am looking forward to Planechase 2 which should, as tradition, be released around my birthday. I liked planechase much more than archenemy in terms of the advertised product. Archenemy may be better in terms of its introduction of its legacy legal unique spells but archenemy simply was poorly implemented from the distribution portion whereby there would be redundancies when trying to get a full playset of schemes because your limit was 2x a scheme but there were some 1x, some 2x and some common schemes over the boxes which means one would have to get 2x a full set to have a playset. Planechase was much more direct. No repeats, 1 each. Simple.
1 set gets me all I need. That makes things easier on the buyers.

Here are a few of the planechase 1 planes:


Grixis (zombie land)



Naya (see big creature in the pic)



The Maelstrom where Ajani faced Nicol Bolas who wanted to eat the Maelstrom



The River of Tears plane, Lethe Lake



Pools of Becoming (the horns tell you the story behind the place)




Academy at Tolaria West (another time spiral reference)



Isle of Vesuva, as in the reflections in Vesuva the card

Bant, the place where knights don't wear armor on their back

Mokkusu 5

Alternate art moxen art by Volkan Baga in chronological order of release at vintage champs:

Starting with the "weakest mox"



Then the 2nd best mox



And tied for 3rd place..



And this which has definitely risen in gameplay value..



And finally, the unrivaled king of moxes:

A Miracle? Probably Not

It's definitely not surprising that someone who managed to go around all the "what if you have it in your opening hand" ideas of the miracle mechanic to jam pack a deck with big effect miracles and cantrips would win the ins blk con Pro Tour.

It sure is smart to think that if every other card is a miracle, you would probably get to cast a good number of miracles in your game, albeit less controllable than you would want it to be.

I wonder if wotc's future league had a deck like that. It's not that great if you consider how the deck can be timing dependant at times but we were definitely shown the raw power of the miracle mechanic.

I can't wait to be getting my hands on some miracleson mtgo :) and i think it wouldn't be a bad idea to redeem a few sets of Avacyn restored.

How to make good Duel Decks

DD: Izzet vs Golgari was recently announced and I hope it isn't as crappy as DD: Venser vs Koth.

DD: Venser vs Koth was bad for the following reasons:

1) No Koth art on any of the alternate art cards.
Alternate art Chartooth Cougar, Anger and Plated Geopede is fine and all (not really the first two) but where on earth is Koth?
Feels like they were too distracted having Path to Exile have Plated Geopede in it for them to remember poor Koth.
Preordain had Vensor. That was ok.
The card with alternate art needs to be playable too and not something people wouldn't ever consider for Commander.

2) Crappy decks
I don't see how difficult it is to get a decent deckbuilder to make decks people would enjoy playing. Balancing is one thing that they would actually require a good deckbuilder to do. Have you ever heard about what people feedbacked for DD: Divine vs Demonic or DD: Knights vs Dragons?
The first two DDs were probably the more balanced ones and I'm pretty sure no one grumbled about being on either side.

3) Crappy rares (see Koth's deck)
Some DDs are driven by the cards in them.
As long as people get their value for money from the two decks combined, they wouldn't mind paying. Sometimes, DDs become very good buys like in the case of Elspeth vs Tezzeret. Everyone was happy.

How to do things right:

1) Niv mizzet on Remand. Golgari dude on a playable card like Duress. Do not miss this.

2) Don't make alt art Stinkweed Imp again! New alternate art plz!

3) Don't give us replicas of old precons. Ie don't focus on replicate and dredge.

4) New Niv Mizzet to go with dredge guy.
(full art Niv Mizzet already exists)

5) Balanced decks
Not that I care but it links to the success of the product.





Used to think that Niv Mizzet became a planeswalker because he wasn't around for some time in the story... 2 new planeswalkers would be cool though :)

Ascension

Current high score for ascension :)

Luv d Arcana (Alt art dual lands)

Reposting the alternate art dual lands from the Mtgo Cube!

(ftv: lands? :D )

Tundra



Underground Sea



Badlands



Taiga



Savannah



Scrubland



Volcanic island



Bayou



Plateau



Tropical Island