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Magic: The Gathering |OT| Throne of Eldraine - Will and Rowan's Excellent Adventure
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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So my brother and I jumped in with the the Chandra and Sorin 2020 starter sets and we got some other boxes. We have been having a lot of fun but I still have about a million and a half questions. My big questions are:
1. Is there a rule book somewhere that just teaches you how to play and what everything does? It is fucking crazy I am having to go to google for so much stuff. The videos on the Magic website don't really give very much information, unless I missed something huge.
2. Does double strike make you attack twice? I understand how it works when it hits a blocking creature, but does if it hits the other player directly does it also hit twice?
3. Can you activate a creatures ability as soon as it is summoned, or is that also affected by "summoning sickness"? For example, with Pyroclastic Elemental, if I have 8 mana out can I spend five to summon them and 3 to use their ability on the same turn?
4. Can you use a Planeswalker ability on the first turn it is summoned or is it also affected by "summoning sickness"?
5. With Sorin, his +1 ability causes 1 creature to get +2 attack until the end of the turn. If you have no creatures, can you still use it to get the plus one? Can you use it on an opponents creature?
OP
OP
1. There are official rules, but I don't recommend using them to clear up beginner confusion. You should ask here. You could also watch Spellslingers if you want to see walkthroughs of matches for beginners.
2. You know first strike? Where creatures deal damage before creatures without first strike? Well with double strike, the creature first deals first strike damage, and then deals normal combat damage.
You attack with a 1/1 double strike creature. An opponent blocks with a 4/1 creature. The opponent's creature dies and yours survives due to the 1 first strike damage.
An opponent blocks with a 1/2 creature instead. Your creature deals 1 first strike damage, and then both creatures deal 1 damage to each other during normal combat damage. They both die.
If your creature isn't blocked, it deals 1 first strike damage to your opponent or opponent's planeswalker, then another 1 damage during normal combat damage, for 2 damage total.
3. In the case of Pyroclastic Elemental, yes, you can activate it right away. However, if an ability requires you to tap the creature with the tap symbol, then it's affected by summoning sickness.
4. Planeswalkers don't tap, so yes, you can use loyalty abilities right away.
5. Sorin's ability says "up to one", meaning zero is an option. So yes, you can use it with no creatures on the battlefield, or if there are creatures but none you want to use it on. You can use the ability on your opponent's creatures.
You can find the basic rules here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/magic-gameplay
You can find the comprehensive rules here, but be warned that they're not designed to be read front to back. They're meant to be used as a reference like an encyclopedia. https://media.wizards.com/2019/downloads/MagicCompRules 20191004.txt
Double strike just means that the creature deals both First Strike combat damage and normal combat damage. In combat, whenever there are creatures with first strike and/or double strike, those creatures will deal damage before creatures without those abilities. For example, if my 2/1 with first strike blocks your 2/2, my first striker deals damage first, killing your 2/2, then your 2/2 isn't around to deal damage back to my 2/1.
In the case of double strike if you block my 2/2 double striker with a 4/4, first my double striker will deal 2 damage to your 4/4 during the first strike step, then my double striker will deal 2 damage again during the normal damage step and your 4/4 will deal 4 damage, so both creatures will die.
Summoning sickness affects only creatures and only attacking and abilities that use the tap symbol.
Only creatures are affected by summoning sickness. Regardless, since only tap abilities are affected, you can still use loyalty abilities of planeswalkers immediately even if they're creatures. See Gideon Blackblade as an example.
Magic is very particular when it comes to targeting. In the case of Sorin, his ability says "up to one target creature." Up to means 0 or more targets, so you can choose 0 targets when you activate the ability. target creature means any creature, if you could only target creatures you control it would say "target creatures you control."
One thing to keep in mind is that spells and abilities that target will check the targeting restrictions when they're first added to the stack and again when they resolve. For example, if target you 2/2 creature with Reave Soul and in response you cast Giant Growth on it, it will no longer be a legal target for Reave Soul. So when Reave Soul tries to resolve it'll see that it has no legal targets and just go to the graveyard without any effect.
MTG card edits are among my favorite things and my friend sent me this absolute gem of a simple but effective esit
I bought one pack of Ice Age, Fallen Empires, and Homelands out of historical curiosity. Now I can't decide whether to open them or keep 'em for awhile.
DarthOrange I'm right there with you, though I have played a few months in the past (1993/4 and again in 2017). All the bookmarked sites on my phone are Magic rules. It gets more comprehensible, but there is always some wrinkle that makes you feel like a dumbass when playing. lol
DarthOrange I'm right there with you, though I have played a few months in the past (1993/4 and again in 2017). All the bookmarked sites on my phone are Magic rules. It gets more comprehensible, but there is always some wrinkle that makes you feel like a dumbass when playing. lol
OP
OP
23 Bant Golos
11 UG Food
5 Golos Fires
5 Bant Ramp
6 Golgari Adventure
4 Gruul Aggro
3 Bant Food
3 Mardu Knights
3 Selesnya Adventure
1 Rakdos Aristocrats
1 Jund Aggro
1 Jeskai Fires
1 Cavalclade
1 4c Golos
Field is definitely getting banned.
Of course it's 0% it will,
It doesn't mean it's incorrect that it should. It's wholly correct.
33 of those decks have Oko. 19 are almost based on him. And that's with half the field playing Golos.
Oko's going to need a ban anyway, might as well get rid of it now. Also please publish the internal discussion about the amount of loyalty counters it should have and its abilities should cost.
I love that Cavalcade deck. Probably gets crushed, right?
I am real sick of playing a Golos Field deck in half my matches, so hopefully Field of the Dead gets banned. Its just not fun to play against because you can't interact with it.
Oko should be banned because its insanely hard to interact with, and thus not fun to play against. I honestly have no idea what they were thinking when they made turn any creature into a 3/3 elk a plus ability... I mean, what the hell are you supposed to do when you see a goose into Oko on turn 2? Cry?
Oko should be banned because its insanely hard to interact with, and thus not fun to play against. I honestly have no idea what they were thinking when they made turn any creature into a 3/3 elk a plus ability... I mean, what the hell are you supposed to do when you see a goose into Oko on turn 2? Cry?
OP
OP
Gilden Goose brings him out turn 2, and he can then keep providing food for the Goose to make into mana.
Any creature or artifact with an ability is useless against him, once he turns it into an elk, and doing this makes him go up in loyalty.
He can turn the food he creates into 3/3 elks that effectively have haste.
Like you mentioned, Fry can't take him out the turn he's cast.
Ahh, okay, yeah...that does sound really dumb and extremely linear gameplay. Yikes.
Because he's very, very hard to deal with turn 3. Turn 2, he's basically impossible to deal with without the perfect answers. He wins games by himself and the shell that supports him is pretty decent even without him.
Oh, and pretty much all the hate cards that can kill him can't kill him quickly enough except Noxious Grasp, a sideboard-only card in a single color.
Eldraine survey is up.
I tried to highlight how bullshit it is to spend $30 on a Collector Booster and get a fucking Planeswalker Deck rare in one of the slots, plus not including Arena codes in the Brawl decks. Honestly love everything else about the set.
I tried to highlight how bullshit it is to spend $30 on a Collector Booster and get a fucking Planeswalker Deck rare in one of the slots, plus not including Arena codes in the Brawl decks. Honestly love everything else about the set.
Funniest damn thing about Eldraine remains that they released Questing Beast with this fancy two pronged PW hate and then 3 Planeswalkers the fucking thing can't kill even with Haste and an anti-planeswalker effect.
Okay, so I was just playing ranked eldraine draft on 5 wins/2 losses and after a long, drawn out game suddenly there was a connection error right as I was attacking to win. Now it's stuck and won't move forward. And I just know if I close and reopen it will have made me lose somehow.
I looked it up–specifically eldraine ranked draft in the past few days–and there's a mtga thread with people talking about hacking, but I don't know if that's just people joking and it's really just that arena is unstable. The timing of my network error felt pretty suspicious to me, but maybe I'm just paranoid. Anybody else had this issue?
Either way, fucking annoying.
I looked it up–specifically eldraine ranked draft in the past few days–and there's a mtga thread with people talking about hacking, but I don't know if that's just people joking and it's really just that arena is unstable. The timing of my network error felt pretty suspicious to me, but maybe I'm just paranoid. Anybody else had this issue?
Either way, fucking annoying.
Surprising considering every other dude drops turn 6 garruk vs me
Yup. Brawl is an online-only thing for me anyway, just go whole hog on Arena with it and let the paper scene grow more organically while still releasing annual Brawl decks...just like EDH.
Apples and oranges. Legacy and Modern are competitive formats. Commander and Brawl are casual formats.
No Brawl as an eternal format sheds a lot of what makes commander unfun and/or removes a huge monetary barrier to compete.
My playgroup has tried a lot of things recently to curtail our out of control power level and it has helped but we've explored further options like building budget decks. The problem is you don't often get together 4 people that all follow the same house banlist or have all built budget decks, which makes for quite the power imbalance.
The most infuriating EDH shit I've seen lately was a guy playing an OG Sisay deck that was ENTIRELY home printer proxies. Like even full art BfZ basics. Dude was a total douche too.
I'm fine with proxies for reserve list stuff but damn, why even play paper if you don't want the actual cards? Be awful on MTGO instead.
I'm fine with proxies for reserve list stuff but damn, why even play paper if you don't want the actual cards? Be awful on MTGO instead.
I know it'll take a while, but doesn't Brawl as an eternal format inevitably have a similar monetary issue as Commander over time?
As someone who doesn't care at all about EDH or Brawl, why not put Brawl on an old extended rotation (ie, rotates every 2-4 years?). It allows people to invest in the decks they are making- I can't fathom why someone would invest money to pimp their deck with alt-arts/foils/promos/foreign cards when it rotates on an annual basis, and WOTC has moved all-in on that stuff with collectors boosters for every set.
Place your bets.
Imo it's once upon a time+ field of the dead that get the ban hammer.
How does that matter? The point is that different eternal formats, even with similar (identical) deck restrictions, create different metagames and can be worth having. There just needs to be enough difference.
Any eternal format would. But not to that extent. You need fewer cards and nothing on the reserve list. That helps a lot.
Eventually but to a lesser degree if we never get fetchlands and because there are no reserved list cards
Maybe Grazer is just too good in the world where they can't stop printing three mana planeswalkers that immediately replace themselves then take over the game unanswered
Now you're in the endgame, maybe they should stop pushing mythics to sell product
I always liked the idea that Mythics should be bomby, powerful cards that aren't really all that competitive. They should really reduce pushed standard cards to rare.
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