Board and Card Games

I assumed that meant that they occupy the foil mythic slot

Since they were comparing the frequency to foil mythic rares

And they are foil mythic rares

Is the foil mythic slot the one behind the regular mythic slot?

(And sheesh, these things are going to be expensive. Or valuable, from an owner's perspective.)

I mean, each pack has some probability of getting a foil, and that foil has some probability of being a mythic

I'm guessing that that mythic foil has about a 50/50 chance of being one of those lands

But you're right, it could also replace a different card, but still occupy that slot in the probability distribution

4:01 AM

I am finding that ironically the best and worst part of a commander deck is the commander part.

You mean your search problem?

5:11 AM

(suddenly pulled away for an hour)

Not that part, that part's manageable.

If I have a colour combination I'm very interested in though (e.g. Abzan or Jeskai) and an idea of what I want the deck to be like, it will probably be unrelated to the commander, or the commander will place different demands on me.

e.g. Jeskai has four commanders: a dragon who destroys lands, a goat who is based around you kindly giving your stuff to other people (unless it's Aggressive Mining or Akroan Horse), one who attacks a random person each turn, and Narset who kinda demands your deck be full of noncreature cards so it's going to carry something like 20-ish token generators.

Of those, Narset is awesome. But if I have a Jeskai gameplay plan I want to try out that doesn't make heavy use of one of those offerings, it's probably going to involve making my commander not that relevant.

5:29 AM

In an Abzan deck my choices are limited, but Karador or Ghave both seem OK.

The two Tarkir commanders I'm not sure how I'd put to strong use in a Commander environment.

If I have a specific commander I adore and want to realize them - like Surrak Dragonclaw or Narset - things get a lot easier, but it's harder to bring specific gameplay goals involving X colour combination and Y strategy to the table and have commander who will be relevant and enjoyable.

(Otherwise I just go with the type of deck where I never actually summon my commander.)

6:14 AM

This is probably mostly Commander growing pains though as I figure out my way around the format. There are definitely some decks and commanders I am going to enjoy a lot, and the C13 Oloro deck is a blast.

Rainbolt

1:06 PM

@murgatroid99 I think it would be neat if someone wrote a function that took in "color identity" and output "color identity minus subset identities" in a form that MagicCards.info could understand.

And potentially wrapped it in some JavaScript that appended an extra textbox to the search page. Then saved that in a bookmarklet.

1:16 PM

@doppelgreener For Jeskai don't forget the Legend from Fate Reforged, Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest. But yeah, in general the wedges don't have the best support when it comes to legends, they are slowly working on giving us more choices though. Since before the first commander decks there were the 5 Planar Chaos dragons and Doran.

@diego That's true, there is that one as well. (I wish Soulfire Grand Master were legendary.)

@diego Ahh, that would be the five dragons they included in the first Commander set, such as Numot, wouldn't it?

Yeah, those dragons

Soul Fire Grand Master would be kinda fun, but it pushes very hard towards combo and repetitive gameplay. And I don't mind combo, but Soulfire will go infinite with enough lands and Turnabout and I already did that deck with Riku and got bored of it.

Oh right. I didn't even think of the fact she could go infinite. O_O

1:33 PM

I mean, I don't mind combo (even infinite ones) but in EDH I find 2 card 'Oops I Win' combos to be boring. I prefer ones that require 4+ pieces and are somewhat easy to disrupt.

2:05 PM

@Rainbolt Possible alternative: it could comprehend when you've entered a colour identity filter into magiccards.info, and offer "hit this key / button and we'll add in subset eliminations."

3:38 PM

@doppelgreener Or, since the exclamation mark currently seems to do nothing, make ci!rug search for exactly that color identity

Though, that would be a little weird, because it would have to do under-the-hood client side rewriting and you'd end up on a search page with a different search than you typed in

3:58 PM

Yeah, messing with what a user's trying to do like that without their deliberate action and you telling them that's what you're doing is a recipe for a poor experience.

Could work decently though if the user's aware enough.

I mean, it would still be a bookmarklet, so there is some explicit user interaction

That could do it. "Convert this syntax into this other syntax"

But I'm actually thinking the best solution would be to have it add a "Commander" search box, that does the transformation and adds `t:legendary t:creature"

Plus, that's something that can more reasonably be turned into a browser extension

That sounds useful. :D

search box or just a WUBRG + Colorless series of checkboxes.

That could work too

4:06 PM

Oh hey, new BFZ spoilers. I think it was....... Retreat to Emeria, Breaker of Armies, Skitterskin, Coastal Discovery, Nissa's Renewal.

Ooh, ally landfall

We're getting a lot of Eldrazi with a new tentacle-faced aesthetic that I think wasn't there before. It's either an Ulamog variant, or an all-new Eldrazi we're not seeing yet.

It's showing up in these cards: Incubator Drone, Breaker of Armies, Radiant Flames, Dominator Drone. Then Oblivion Sower might maybe count as an extremely mutated version.

Or some kind of Emrakul spawn, 'cause he is totally down with having a whole lot of tentacles.

(The closest thing is probably Emrakul's Hatcher, so perhaps these are Emrakul's spawn.)

Meaning Emrakul might show up in set #2 and might be ultra smoten as well.

@doppelgreener Well, we got a new Ulamog

And from what I understand, the other two have left Zendikar

But their spawn can't travel between worlds, which is why Emrakul's hatcher is still there

Oh hey, Coastal Discovery is something I've been wondering about since they revealed Awaken: it doesn't target in its normal state. Which means that if you cast it for it's Awaken cost, the entire spell can be countered by destroying the land it's targeting

4:26 PM

@murgatroid99 Actually from commentary on panels from Pax it seems that Kozilek may still be around, but is doing something inside of Zendikar. The flavor text on Kozilek's Channeler mentions 'something horrible' growing in dark places, and them being more numerous that expected

@diego headcanon: Kozilek is producing a new Eldrazi from a mix of Ulamog and Emrakul, and maybe itself.