wickeddarkman

No alchemy commons ?

You might want to play a few of the blue creatures that allow you to discard cards.
Just in case.

Hmm, do you think there will be alchemy commander one day ?
Most of the arena people seem to look positively at alchemy despite the meta seeming to be more or less dragons vs clerics.

Try out glacial grasp compared with pilfered plans.
It draws 1 less card but stops an attacker several turns.

I like "867456" or whatever the number is, and land down under is my absolute favorite.
Theres also the asmo-song which is really well sung, it like to sing the name if I ever cast it.

Among the sketches my favourite is elite vanguard vs volcanic Island/birds of paradise.

Theres a lot of fun in his videos :)

Makes you want to build decks around the songs.

I once loved a girl who looked a bit like [[bird maiden]] when she was happy and [[elves of deep shadow]] when she was in a bad mood.
The love was unreturned but eventually that was a good thing cause she turned more or less into a hag in the end.

After I saw "ship it" by mtgremy on youtube I've been wanting to build a deck designed to teach new players when to mulligan/ship it. It would be cool to make it a deck filled with ships.

You'd play a mirror match where both players have to "ship it" playing the deck.

Show them the video first to set up the mood.

Speaking of mood, does any of you set up a play-mood with music ?
You could play certain CDs to set the mood for different levels of play to train the players to be serious business when you bring out the big guns.

A group I was in loved to have "dracula" on the cd player, and sometimes the music would get us to do stuff when the musical drama reached a crescendo, especially in groupplay situations.

I think having 2 aerial and 2 griffin are a lesson in itself, learning the difference between 2w and 1ww is very educational. It might have been an intentional split.

I've become rather fond of forsake the worldly.
Having hatred that is never useless is pretty good.
That card teaches the player about how flexible cards are often the most usefull.

Theres a good number of cards that hit two card types out there.
It might become a theme of its own.

I usually throw my "students" into the deep end of the pool by proxying the modern meta.
If they flap around helplessly I then shift to swimming wings decks.

I'd add something to deal with artifacts, enchantments and planeswalkers in the sideboard.
Feed the swarm and Disenchant or something like it.

It's better to talk to OTHER people.

So, what's your take on alchemy ?
It sort of create a frontline, where you either support, arena only or a paper friendly version of arena.

Will you be balancing your work on both sides of the divide, or will you eventually pick one or the other ?

I think it will cause a horrible ugly situation in mtgvault as fans of both versions will clash.

Play wise I'm with the paper format, but I have been airing the thoughts of figuring out how to make translations between paper and online, by working out the algorithm on arena.

That will still be a possible goal, but as this frontline picks up speed it might end up as a brick wall.

Lots of cards will be functionally different.

I can mimic most of the digital abilities by using paperstrips, so I can research the digital format while playing paper versions, but a lot of it will get lost in translation in the future.

Your description is fine, but this is one of those new "stackhead" abilities that have become more dominant in the game because wotc is also supporting arena by printing cards that need computers or stackheads to be played.
It's both cool and annoying at the same time.
In a live game I'd use colored tokens to represent the effects and the -1/-1 counters to help both the opponent and myself to visualise the whole thing. If players have a hard time getting it, call a judge over to view the process.

This might be the explanation for why commander/edh hasn't been broken in the way other formats have broken their decks.

I'm a little unsure of what to name the theory. Overlap theory, bridge theory or gap theory are my current picks, and "gap theory" has the most "umph" so far. Because there isn't an overlap before you design one, and bridge carries too many concepts with it already, and again, it would have to be built first. "gap theory" brings several other emotions in play, it feels like the name of the theory is a warning, which it sort of is, and a gap is something you have to work around, so it's the better name for the theory, but there might be other more appropriate words

It's certainly a project I'm diving into, because it reveals a lot about the game that you wouldn't notice otherwise.

Consider modern versions of infect, they are sort of halfdecks on their own, but without bridging its own halves. You got the creature half, which is incredible crap on it's own, and then there's the booster half, which would only be good if it got coupled with a creature deck. The overlap between the two halves is extremely minimal, which may be the very reason why the deck is only a success when the meta isn't to heavy into removal.

It's a gap in the deckdesign that is not really noticed, or people would have begun to fix it.

When playing with halfdecks on a regular basis, you start to see this gap. When you draw a hand and start playing, there will be a number of times where you draw an overweight of one half, compared to the number of times you draw a solid blend of both.

These events will make you realise that you somehow need an overlap between those two halves for when the situation occurs.

In 2018 infect was attending this gap by playing spellskite and dryad arbor, but they could also have opted to search for a card that boosts and gives infect, because, sure, the majority of your deck is having infect, but closing the gap will make the deck much more resilient.

The ultimate creature card in this scenario is cheap, has infect, and somehow boosts other creatures, and would be cool with flash, I don't think it's printed, but perhaps there are cards that somehow bring both halves together somehow.

And concluding that the average players aren't having any thoughts in this direction it does provoke some thoughts into how it would ever be possible to overlap themes in a format like commander/edh where the gap will be more of a chasm.

I think there's the basis for creating an "overlap theory", because if two themes of thirty cards each are having a regular problem at embracing each other, then there must be a perfect quantity to fix it.

This might explain why decks evolved into three color setups and why brainstorm, ponder, sleight of hand and similar cards have such an important role.

But there's a second solution, natural thematic overlap. For a two deckhalves like my bolt and first strike,an overlap would be a first striker that bolts.

So seeking out decks seen from a halfdeck point of view allows you to track down cards that creates that overlap and bring much more synergy to the table.

So I'd say the halfdeck concept is worth revisiting a little more :)

Bridging them all with a graveyard theme is not a bad start, and you will learn some of the mechanics that actually makes normal decks work, as they are usually overlapped by a common theme.

The real interesting things start to happen when you start making each half as solo as possible, but also tries to somehow avoid a too large gap to form between designs.

Think of it like this, if you base one half on interaction with the graveyard, and the other half on something completely random, and you face a deck with graveyard hatred you will only be vulnerable to the hatred by 50%

On the other hand, if you face a deck that's weak against graveyard interaction then your deck will be a 100%

The better strategy is to design so that a deck is more powerfull when it's theme works with another theme, but neither must be dependant on them.

You people already tried that approach before.
Anyways sure, we can ignore each other here, because in the end the picture I'll paint outside of mtgvault will carry much more personal satisfaction. If you really isn't any of those real life guys I'm investigating, then you will obviously never be part of a police investigation :)

To everyone else...

The code word that identifies this spammers is "ious"
He's been changing from calling himself "anda" to use ious, and typically the group of thieves uses a transition where the rest of the group gets to see his new "keyword"
Which is why he used the account: andarious
Lately he's been behind nubtorious performing lots of spam.

But his real name is now known to me, thanx for the screwup :)

Could also be because you guys are back at trawling the old posts for information.
Right and11, or should I call you andreas ???

Ah, I get it.
You suggested skycat sovereign as a new code card, I see how you guys have used it a lot in the past.
The 20 other decks were just covering for your suggestion, but I sort of read them all you know...

I could also call you anda brun.
Keep up your little treasure hunts, and try to be less hostile, I would have missed this one if you had responded with a "woops, didn't see the date there" instead your anger issues gave me more info...

Well, you are responding to a post from 2013 that someones just been upvoting. About 20 recent decks been splashed over the site this way, exactly with the purpose of getting people to comment on "nothing".

What?
For telling you that you are talking with noone ?
What an odd reaction...

Heh, if you haven't noticed, someones been necroing old posts.
I (almost) always read the date of the last comment to avoid being the first one to comment on an old conversation
:)