On Nov 16, 2004, at 8:04 PM, Jim Sharkey wrote:
Legacy weapons? Weapons? Plural? Ooo, you're Spikey.
Spikey?
Yes, Spikelike. Even one of those things is a pain. Having more than one would be a very Spike thing to do.
Blarf. You'd be pariah'd in moments out here... ;)My curent favorite "casual" deck is a B/G/U "remove all your cards from the game" deck.
Why? It's not *that* killer, though maybe the metagame here in new Jersey is a little nastier. Besides, I'd take the hate as a compliment. :)
Mmm, until you got burned from every game. "Remove from game" is not the most popular play format here; there are several folks who rely heavily on graveyard recursion. My night soil and scrabbling claws are not always looked upon with favor...
Have you ever played "Mental Magic?"
Er, ah, um, not in public?
Mm. Around here we usually don't play direct player burn (hit the creatures instead; direct player assault is considered unsportsmanlike), but we make exceptions for things like the above.
Your group has all manner of unwritten rules, doesn't it? :)
It might seem so, but not really. (See below.)
Yeah, the blue mages learn fast too that denial decks are not popular. They get directly hosed as well.
Why the blue hate? Just the annoyingness of spell counters, or what?
No -- it's simply a question of being in the game. Bouncing every summon or countering every spell keeps your opponent from getting anything in play and is, basically, masturbation (you're only playing with yourself). Kicking every creature or permanent off the field is not strategy. It is cowardice. It doesn't take any skill at all to pack a deck with blue bounce cards. It does, however, take skill and not a little strategy to develop a deck that lets your opponent get critters out *and* play against them.
That's why we're not fond of direct player burn either. It's not sporting. Of course sometimes it's absolutely necessary; a player with four Darksteel Colossus in play is just asking to be charred to a cinder, live and in person. (Can't always Altar's Light the buggers, so remove the player instead.)
I mentioned earlier having a Serra Avatar/warhammer combo that I took apart. I won, yeah, but my opponents were not in the game, and that's a shabby way to play and a shabby experience for them. Since I'm in it to make and keep friends, I don't need to win every hand -- I get maybe a third -- and I don't need to be a total yutz about winning. I mean, I don't need to have 10,000 life or whatever. And I dang sure don't need to win in three plays, as I've heard some boast. (Those people almost never find anyone who wants to go against them either, and seem -- always -- a little hurt to be so rejected, hurt and bewildered.)
Most of the rest of us feel that way too -- among the experienced players, anyway. The newbies in the group appreciate it because they can actually play; it's the ones with 1-2 years' experience that need the most schooling about sportsmanlike conduct, and every once in a while one of us will play a serious butt-head deck that keeps them so totally out of the game they end up sputtering in frustration. (It is childishly satisfying to watch someone like that carefully develop a dozen little schemes, get ready to launch, and then pop a Pernicious Deed on 'em.)
They come back next week with much more reasonable decks, too, and discover that the game, played from a perspective of strategy and challenge rather than domination and control, is considerably more interesting.
So it's not really about hating blue. For spot removal it's great. But if it keeps your opponent from even getting in the game, why are you playing at all?
Or threshold: 7+ cards in your graveyard and the card you're playing gets punched up somehow.
Kamigawa has a lot of graveyard tricks, but it seems they learned a little something from Odyssey and Kamigawa has a bunch of anti- graveyard cards.
I must have missed those, unless you mean the red nasties that talk about "remove from game instead" -- I've seen a lot of soulshift, which is kinda groovy.
There's also echo, where you pay a card's costs again at the next upkeep. Nice way to get something on credit, as it were.
Urza's Saga brought us echo, which is a cool ability. But it's my understanding that a lot of people considered it overpowered.
Depends how much mana you've got out. ;)
I believe the Tenderfoot has to damage a creature and have it go to the graveyard to flip.
Yahwhoops, that's right.
I think Stabwhiskers the Odious and Nighteyes the Desecrator are the nastiest flippers, though the Bodukan Gardener is a cool, especially if you're a Timmy. :)
Haven't seen those yet. This is a pretty rural area, alas.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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