thatpinguino

Nice write up sir! The world needs more Chrono Trigger appreciation pieces.

@owlhead: Good question! You would prefer a fetch-land over something like terramorphic expanse in almost every situation because fetch-lands put lands into play untapped. Putting a land into play tapped is a very significant tempo hit in the early game since you have to wait a full turn to take advantage of that new land. That makes terramorphic expanse basically unusable in any sort of aggressive deck. Also fetch-lands can fetch any land that has a matching land type to the two listed on the card, not just basic lands. So Flooded Strand can fetch any island or plains, including dual lands like hollowed fountain, stream vents, and tropical island. That allows fetchlands to be super powered mana fixers in formats like modern and legacy. Terramorphic expanse is a great limited mana fixer, but only putting basic lands into play tapped is a death knell in many competitive decks due to the tempo loss and the weakness of the mana fixing.

@bollard: Sure, but morphs eat almost every form of removal in the format, they expose otherwise strong creatures to weak removal, and they require two separate mana investments. If you happen to get a bunch of creatures that are good with or without morphing then by all means play them; but, I think focusing on morph is a trap unless you get some of the morph specific enchantments or ghostfire blade.

Hey @zombiepie why do two of my posts have (By: Ibid) next to them? They link to my profile so does that mean I have a new nickname I am not privy to? Thanks for the shoutout as always good sir!

@bollard: That looks like a solid Mardu pool! It seemed like every Mardu player I saw had a copy of ponyback brigade somehow and your deck continues the trend. Not a bad removal suite either. Morphs are going to be very important in this format considering a few of the color combos are really lacking good low mana drops other than morphed creatures. Morph is always a real skill tester.

@atlas: Yeah Khans has a whole lot more going on than Theros did. You are going to need to balance three or more colors and all 6 mechanics during every draft. On top of that Khans has much better removal and much more hidden information in the form of morph creatures. The sum of all of that is a format that favors experienced players even more than the last few limited formats. In Theros you could basically resolve one or two monsters and let them carry you because your opponent just couldn't do anything to profitably kill them. That is no longer the case in Khans. Learning how to balance all 5 factions and how to play around morphed creatures will be a real skill tester.

You should stick with it though! I came up by playing original Ravnica block limited and Timespiral limited and those formats were even more punishing. You learn much more about drafting, constructing decks, and playing well during tough, interactive environments than during relatively bomby formats like Theros.

@bollard: Hope you did well at the prerelease! I won mine with Temur and a nice beefcake to removal ratio. We had a 32 player field which was a new record at my LGS so the store bumped up to the next level of WOTC support. I managed to open a foil polluted delta too in my prize packs. All in all it was a pretty darn successful prerelease. Khans limited looks like it is going to be very fun and varied which is a nice improvement after Theros block.

@ekajarmstro: Yeah the fetches are even more bonkers in any format but Standard (and I guess block constructed if anyone plays that).

@bisonhero: Good point. We've had wrestling coverage and a wrestling podcast. Where are the Warhammer people? Where are the card game guys and/or gals?

@sinusoidal: That is certainly a nasty combo if you can pull it off. I like locking my opponent out of the game entirely with isochron scepter + silence or boomerang on turn 1. Most people don't have ways to great around the turn 1 lockdown. Of course the combo only really works on turns 1 and 2, but when it does...

@Levius: Yeah I have been pining for counterburn since Keranos, magma jet, and satyr firedancer were printed. I might make the deck American just to get Jeskai ascendancy in there for bigger hi-jinks. I've played with Courser since it was printed and it really feels like cheating when it is working properly. You can't really go wrong with it in play.

@bisonhero: I would like if Rorie was able to showcase more of the tabletop games he is into. Although I know his community management stuff doesn't really allow for him to be a content creator all the time, he provides a perspective that the rest of the crew lacks. We have 2 wrestling editors and no tabletop editors and that is a bummer.

@atlas: Yeah most rare lands don't really shine in limited simply because you won't build your deck around having a fancy land. It is highly likely that you will open an off-color land and you won't have any way to use it. If you can use a fetch in limited it does do a lot of work though since deck thinning is much more potent in a 40 card deck, especially given the uneven power level of most cards in a limited deck. I think g/w/u has the potential for a really fun +1/+1 counter deck in the coming standard. Not necessarily a super powerful deck, but very fun.

Also, nice to see some more MtG fans on Giant Bomb. I kinda feel like the general approach of the staff and the community is to be extremely dismissive of it; I cannot tell you how much it hurt my soul to hear Dan Ryckert say "I played Pogs, not Magic, because I'm not a dork" and nobody call him out on it (you could almost hear Jeff nodding in silent agreement, and he doesn't even like Pogs).

Yeah that wounded me as well, but then again half of the things Dan says feel like affronts to my soul so I mostly try to let it go. Also I think stupid and dork are like 90% of Dan's go-to critical vocabulary so you can't take that stuff too hard.

@sinusoidal: Yeah MTG is not the cheapest hobby. I find that if you can win enough events it can become mostly self-sustaining if you stick to limited and one consistent constructed deck.

@Levius: I'll miss mutavault and its ability to single handedly win games. I think the deck thinning of the fetches will be a huge boon to mono and dual color decks, especially ones that can run Courser of Kruphix. It is going to be very interesting to see which new decks shake out. I'm personally planning on playing RUG chord and UR counter burn. I love me some toolbox decks.

@starvinggamer: Packrat is rotating and the new set is wedge themed (RUG,WRB,BUG,WGB,WUR). The meta hasn't been defined yet, but mono green devotion, mono blue devotion, and mono red devotion look feasible. The blue deck is a tempo/ aggro deck. The green deck is straight ramp. And the red deck is aggro. Mono green looks like the cheapest option and the most fun. Khans look like it is going to be a blast to draft and I think it is going to really shake up standard.