Messages

1

General Magic / Re: Easter Eggs

« on: September 14, 2023, 08:27:37 pm »

Holy shit, that Lou Ferrigno resemblance is uncanny.

2

Commander Discussion / Re: R.I.P. Godfather

« on: September 08, 2023, 05:19:04 pm »

While I didn't agree with every decision made around the philosophy of commander, I've never seen a single person have something bad to say about him as a person. Everyone says he was a kind, thoughtful and considerate man.

Every death means something to someone, and Sheldon was by all accounts a good man. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones today. RIP.

3

General Magic / Re: LotR Cube: ideas welcome

« on: September 02, 2023, 10:14:57 pm »

Yes, it has!

The first game was very successful actually. Much like a game of EDH, it was self balancing by virtue of multiplayer.

The One Ring was, as expected, very powerful, but when a player had it, they became public enemy number one and so were kept in check by that.

The game came down to the wire and any player had the potential to win. Interestingly, the player that did end up winning was the one that never claimed The One Ring.

Hoping to get in a few more games with it soon so will report back more when these have happened, but early signs point to a successful and fun format.

4

General Magic / Re: LotR Cube: ideas welcome

« on: August 26, 2023, 09:56:34 am »

That's a cool idea, I like it a lot.

Thank you for the suggestion.

5

General Magic / LotR Cube: ideas welcome

« on: August 24, 2023, 10:41:30 am »

If there are two things I love, they're building themed cubes and Lord of the Rings.

So naturally I am building a Lord of the Rings cube.

The draftable card pool is:

1 of each of the main set LotR cards (sans The One Ring and the non rare lands).
The 4 of the 5 Jumpstart exclusive rares (sans Eleanor Gardner)
The 9 of the 10 rares/mythics from the starter decks (sans Bilbo's Ring)

This results in a 270 card cube.

Draft:

Because the fixing is kinda bad, you don't draft the non rare lands. Every player has the option to include one Shire Terrace, one Great Hall of the Citadel, one Grey Havens and one Evolving Wilds. I know when to draft and prioritise lands and fixing is part of drafting, but I don't care. I have other cubes for that authentic draft experience. I just want good game play and for people to feel that stretching to 3+ colours isn't out of the question.

The cube is either drafted or played as sealed. My playgroup typically has between 3 and 6 players, so the 270 card pool works out nicely.

Gameplay:

Games are multiplayer.

20 starting life.

The One Ring starts in the middle. Any player can claim The One Ring by attacking it. When they do, any player can block to prevent that player claiming it. When the first person "deals combat damage" to The One Ring, that player picks one of the creatures that dealt the damage become the ring bearer. They also now have control of The One Ring and can activate its abilities (they don't get the protection ability). The Ring does not tempt them at this point.

There can be only one Ring Bearer at a time.

If a player controls the Ring Bearer, the Ring tempts them on their upkeep. If a player is tempted by the ring while they control the Ring Bearer, the ring tempts them as normal and they progress along the ring temptation chain.

If a player who does not control the ring is tempted by the ring, the current "Ring Tempts You" state is reduced by one instead. This is kind of weird thematically but is good for balancing.

If the Ring Bearer dies in combat, the creature that beat it (assuming it survives) becomes the Ring Bearer. If the Ring Bearer dies/is exiled outside of combat, or there are no surviving creatures to become the Ring Bearer in combat, the ring is "dropped" and returns to the middle of the table, to be claimed by the same method as the start of the game.

Every time the Ring changes hands or is dropped, the Ring Tempts You state and the burden counters on The One Ring are reset. If The One Ring would be put anywhere other than the battlefield (bounced to hand, exiled etc.), it is instead put into the middle and reset.

If a Ring Bearer reaches the end of the Ring Tempts You chain and is tempted again (so tempted for a 5th time), they are corrupted and become a "Dark Lord".

A "Dark Lord" has Double Strike, Trample and Ward X, where X is their power.



That's what I'm working with so far. First proper play test will be next week and I will report back on how it goes.

If anyone has any ideas, insight or suggestions for things that I may have overlooked, cool thematic additions that could be made to the rules, that kind of thing, please do share. Always happy to hear other peoples ideas on this kind of thing.

6

General Magic / Re: Curse of Misfortunes rules/functioning

« on: July 04, 2023, 03:13:36 pm »

Hey culo,

With Curse of Misfortunes, you do not need to pay the mana cost for the curses you search for. Putting it straight on to the battlefield means you don't pay any costs (this is generally true of anything that is put straight on to the battlefield in magic, not just for this card. See Aether Vial as another example).

Note though that putting it straight on to the battlefield also doesn't count as "casting" the spell for any cards that care about that kind of thing (you wouldn't draw a card from Enchantress's Presence, for example). If a card specifically says "without paying its mana cost", it will be referring to casting that spell for free, which is different from putting something straight on to the battlefield in many ways when it comes to rules (like whether or not it can be countered by counterspells. Yes if cast for free, no if put on to the battlefield), but still ultimately results in no mana being spent to do it.

Curse of Misfortunes says to attach it to target player simply because curses require being attached to a player, so it is just closing that loop in the rules when the curse comes in to play.

I hope this helps. And don't worry about asking questions. We were all new once and magic is a nuanced and, at times, complicated game. There is no such thing as a dumb question, and asking is the best way to learn.

7

Commander Discussion / Re: It came from planet glurg - Legal or not?

« on: July 01, 2023, 01:45:08 pm »

I echo what Morganator said...

I'll take that as a compliment.

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Commander Discussion / Re: It came from planet glurg - Legal or not?

« on: July 01, 2023, 12:12:18 pm »

The official line with the unfinity cards is that anything with the acorn logo in the center bottom of the card is NOT legal in eternal formats.

Compare this to Saw in half from the same set and hopefully you'll see what I mean. The icon is the standard circle on Saw in Half, so legal. Acorn on Planet Glurg, so not legal

That said, the only thing that determines legality when it comes to kitchen table is the people sat around the table. If your playgroup is cool with it, then it should he totally fine to play. As long as everyone is on the same page, you're good to go.

Card is really cool too. Personally I'd be fine if you sat across the table from me and wanted to play that deck. Always worth a conversation before hand, but generally speaking the casual commander community tend to be pretty chill with being flexible about this kind of thing.

9

General Magic / Re: Games you've enjoyed

« on: June 17, 2023, 01:21:15 pm »

My buddies and I like to split a box when a new set comes out, do a night of sealed and winner gets the buy a box promo.

Box for LotR arrived yesterday so we played. I built a WB token deck with a ring tempts you sub theme.

Went 3-1, won the promo.

Foil Party Tree (The Great Henge).

Absolutely buzzing. Didn't even realise the party tree was a great henge, just love the art on it so much.

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Commander Discussion / Re: About Galadriel of Lothlórien...

« on: June 13, 2023, 10:42:35 am »

Did someone say lore?

You are absolutely right, Galadriel of Lothlórien has a lot of lore to unpack. Buckle up, we're going for a ride.

"If you choose a creature other than Galadriel". This is a reference to a significant plot point. When the Fellowship are in Lothlórien, Frodo, feeling out of his depth and recognising Galadriel's power and wisdom, offers her the one ring, thinking she would be a more suitable ring bearer. Being wise and powerful, Galadriel refuses, recognising (much like Gandalf) that even she wouldn't be beyond the rings ability to corrupt, and while she would have the best intentions, through her the ring would have the power to do great evil. Eventually she would succumb to the power of the ring and simply replace Sauron as the big evil.

In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!

She "passes the test" (see her flavour text) and resists the temptation to take the ring. We see this effect on some other cards throughout the set for other characters who resisted the temptation to take the ring for themselves, most notable Gandalf, Friend of the Shire and Faramir, Field Commander.

The scry for Galadriel (and many elves in the set) refers to the Elves gift of foresight that is prevalent for Tolkien elves. It's not something every elf can do, and is often vague and open to interpretation, but for Galadriel it comes in the form of the Mirror of Galadriel. She allows Frodo and Sam to peer in to the Mirror and they see potential futures (most notably, the Scouring of the Shire).

The putting lands in to play is probably a reference to powers supporting and sustaining and repelling evil from Lothlórien, but also more specifically refers to her gift to Samwise. When the Fellowship leave Lothlórien, Galadriel gives each of them a gift. To Samwise, who is a keen gardener, she gave a Mallorn seed and a box of earth (Mallorn being the trees is Lothlórien with the golden leaves. I won't bore you with the history of those or we'd be here all day), which he later uses to replace the Party tree in the Shire after the scouring. It was the only Mallorn tree in Middle Earth outside of Lothlórien and helped restore the Shire to become even more beautiful than it had been before.



I love this set so much.

11

Commander Discussion / Re: LOTR Precons

« on: June 11, 2023, 08:40:30 am »

I'll be getting all of them.

LotR is the only thing that I'm more nerdy for than magic. When they announced the set, I immediately resolved to own the whole set; something I've never done for any previous set.

Luckily for me, they've nailed it, so my resolve is doubled.

For the precons specifically, I'm most excited for the Abzan hobbit one. The flavour they put into it with the cards and art is phenomenal. The parts of the book in the Shire were always my favourite. I love epic battles and legendary swords and reluctant heroes and good vs evil and big ass spiders as much as the next guy, but something about the Shire always got me. I guess it's because of how relatable it is. It really is just like the Midlands of England in so many ways.

I have never been more hype for a Magic set.

12

Commander Discussion / Re: Urza's Saga

« on: June 07, 2023, 02:09:12 pm »

I honestly think Sol Ring is enough, Saga is just that good.

Being a land is good.
Being an enchantment is good.
Making Karnstructs is good.
Putting itself in the bin is good.
Tutoring Sol Ring or Skullclamp or Shadowspear or Top is good.

It's just a ridiculously good card and offers so much value in such a variety of decks.

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Commander Discussion / Re: Is amass as bad as we think it is?

« on: June 06, 2023, 09:28:16 pm »

Amass is pretty bad in commander and it is kinda just meant for limited where it is fairly decent (or at least was in War of the Spark and probably will be in LotR), but there are definite things that can be done with it in EDH.

Fling and all of its variants are always good when going tall. Things like The Ozolith (and most anything that cares about +1/+1 counters) can make use of the counters.

Things like Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun can force through a lot of damage from a tall token.

Repeatable Amass sources like Dreadhorde Invasion are pretty good in Aristocrats. If you're getting rid of the body anyway it kind of doesn't matter if it goes tall as it will get reset every time anyway. Still not as good as Bitterblossom, but at a fraction of the price, it does a decent enough job for a budget replacement.

But yeah, all in all it's not great for EDH. Lot of fun in limited though.

14

General Magic / Re: Brewing a Battle cube - ideas welcome.

« on: May 22, 2023, 05:39:09 pm »

Had the first go of the battle cube over the weekend. Reporting back with my initial findings.

- Concept was very fun.
- Battles always felt worth going for.
- Was interesting to have another axis to win on outside of combat damage.

Some observations and improvements I'm looking to make ahead of next time.

- Originally worked on the idea that winning 5 battles out of 9 was a victory. Quickly realised that was easy to make mathematically impossible so dropped it down to 4.

- Originally started the 9 battles on their normal starting counters. Next time will start them a little higher (probably base +2) and make it more difficult to add counters on (especially across multiple battles at a time) to help balance cards like Render Inert. One player played Render Inert on turn three and immediately claimed one "victory point" (the colloquial name we gave to winning a battle, 4 "victory points" = a win) and had a Serra Angel ready to go on turn 4. Partly this is because winning 4 battles is roughly the equivalent to doing 20 damage (as most start around 5) but unlike attacking life points directly, you get a tremendous amount of advantage for winning a battle compared to doing 5 or so damage to an opponent. This was somewhat negated by the nature of multiplayer, but starting the battles a little higher should help too. Which leads me on to:

- Needs more incentive to attack life totals too. Winning a battle or doing 5 to an opponent are basically the same for the attacker (short of the potential for more blockers), but the outcome is hugely different to the game state. Going to add in the cycle of curses that promote attacking opponents for upside (Curse of Disturbance et al) and add in some more effects that drain life totals when things happen. My life total was the only one that got into single figures (thanks to Prickle Faeries) and only then did people consider attacking me rather than battles. More incidental life loss could put in work.

- Burn was VERY strong. Need to limit this to less efficient burn spells. Probably just the ones that reference battles specifically.

- Proliferate was good. Repeatable proliferate on a stick where the only cost was mana was too good. Very easy to put battles out of reach. Will be limiting proliferate to one shot effects from spells or things where the cost is steep such as Plaguemaw Beast.

- Less gimmick creatures. I had originally included 4 copies of things like Medicine Runner and Quarry Hauler. These are fine, especially when I sure up whites Blink theme, but actually some decent utility creatures or just big dumb idiots with trample would probably be preferable. Colossal Dreadmaw can attack a battle pretty effectively and over the course of a game, is going to be more impactful than the one counter Quarry Hauler manipulated. I got too cute. Need to get less cute.

- More synergy with the back sides of the battles. One of the battles that was randomly selected cared about Transformed permanents. One card about creatures sharing creature types. These two got no interest what so ever. One that wasn't selected but could have been cares about number of artifacts, of which there weren't that many. Going back to the previous point, it's far more important to create synergies rather than cuteness. Deeper themes across the colours to ensure all battles have the potential to be good.


All of these take aways are fairly minor (and things I probably would have smoothed out better had I had more time before we had chance to try it the first time). The draft and gameplay was still super fun. It was really interesting to have a different axis to play the game on. Might even add in a few more axis like Mill and Poison if I can work them in without compromising the above points.

Once I've made the tweaks I want to make, I'll put together a proper list and share it here for those who are interested to take a look at and maybe suggest some ideas. If you like cubes / drafting, I'd recommend this "Battle cube" format. It was a lot of fun.

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Commander Discussion / Re: Cards that are no longer staples.

« on: May 12, 2023, 08:29:51 am »

Damn, you guys are just listing cards I keep slamming into decks without a second thought 

* insert Skinner meme asking if I'm out of touch but deciding no, it's the format that is wrong *