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Stream of Consciousness #3

Most of the talk this week has been about Theros, as you might expect. The biggest concern for me right now is how red and black are going to be able to deal with God cards. Black has no big -X/-X effects after rotation, losing Mutilate and Death Wind, and red just has nothing period. Keep your eyes peeled for the answers here, because without them these two colours will be marginalised.

Sounds like Wizards R&D has already issued errata for Heliod. The new text? “As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Heliod isn’t a creature unless your name is Craig Wescoe.”

Scry lands are fine at rare. New Benalia was an uncommon and only made one colour of mana. We’re just spoiled with the easy mode land base we have now.

Monstrosity continues to underwhelm, though Fleecemane Lion seems absurd. One thing I will say is that there are a lot of dudes with 5 toughness kicking around, making Mizzium Mortars a little less dangerous.

Resolving Opportunity feels like cheating. Just ask the folks at Good Gamery:

I missed this last week, but I saw Brian Kibler complaining about Sealed GPs on Twitter just after GP Oakland, with Chapin backing him up. Kibler said he wouldn’t be traveling to them any more. I don’t get this. Sealed GPs have just as many (if not more) name-filled top 8s as the constructed ones do, and the format is more rewarding of skill than constructed. I fight this battle a lot with local players, so seeing it come from such a respected name was saddening.

Also on Twitter this week, LSV and Chris Pikula were lamenting the fact that there will be two SCG Opens in the post-rotation Standard format before PT Dublin, saying it hurts the excitement of the Pro Tour. Pikula wanted to stop the Opens from being Standard or not let the cards see Standard play before the PT, Kibler pointed out both options are horrible. It’s not a great situation and I can see both sides of the argument, but letting people work with at least the bones of a meta probably makes for better decks at the Pro Tour, right?

Starting a season with a Pro Tour might lead to issues with card availability, lead to huge advantages for bigger teams and leave the average player with nowhere to play their new cards for two weeks. It does mean that every deck on camera will be an innovation and reward the best deckbuilders and testers.

Todd Anderson has said some dumb things. He also likes to say “Roll Tide” a lot. You know what he doesn’t deserve? Disrespect. Making fun of his comments is one thing. Acting like he is a terrible person because of those comments is something quite different and not necessary.

That said, pros ARE the MTG equivalent of rock stars and WILL be in the spotlight, and as a result have to understand an increased level of scrutiny. It might not be fair or right but when you have thousands of people watching your every action on camera and reading every word you write on Twitter and in articles, that extra attention and reach on your actions and comments is unavoidable.

In his second Scars of Mirrodin design podcast (Drive to Work 49), MaRo mentions that Affinity was originally meant to be in that block. Bullet…DODGED. I have a lot of faith in the ability of R&D to avoid breaking the game these days, but just the word Affinity carries a lot of negative emotion with it.

These Drive to Work podcasts are often excellent but I still find myself saying “yeah but what about X, Y and Z?” He tells so many great stories and yet there are so many left untold that I really want to hear. A lot of them don’t get told because Mark himself was not involved in them which, while understandable, makes me wish everyone in R&D did a podcast. Or at least hitched a ride with Mark.

Related: someone on the Development side of R&D needs to do what MaRo does. He has said in the past that Sam Stoddard, who writes the dev articles, is not the Head Developer so we don’t get the same perspective. Aside from the easy fix of just promoting Sam, can we not have the Head Developer (I think Erik Lauer?) write an article now and then?

So many articles about tilt, so few approaching it from the psychology side. Paging Jackie Lee, Natasha Lewis-Harrington or anyone else with a psych background! The pro perspective tends to be “don’t tilt” but what I want to see is why it happens, how to recognise it and how to stop it.

Apparently it’s poor form to offer a handshake if you won a match? And/or to say “good game” to someone who was mana screwed or roflstomped? And here I thought it was just good manners. Listen folks, we can’t ever lose sight of the fact that this is a GAME. No matter how badly you get beaten, be gracious. If you’re not having fun any more, you’re doing it wrong.

Before rotation, I really need to discard an [card]Omniscience[/card] to [card]Blast of Genius[/card], then bring it back with [card]Obzedat’s Aid[/card]. Is that so wrong? I can include Nicol Bolas, maybe a [card]Breaking // Entering[/card], some ramp, some removal…

Just thinking about the RTR Block…does anyone else feel like it just faded away? With all the releases this summer and the fact that the storyline’s climax was never really made clear, it’s kind of like getting to the top of the big hill on a roller coaster, then being taken down by a crane.

Heard about a guy today who paid a friend to help him sort his cards. I won’t name names but he is a self-confessed pack-cracking idiot. They were at it for 14 hours, didn’t finish even then, and found over 4000 basic lands, 1000 plus advertising cards and ZERO money cards. Value. Donate your bulk, kids!

The GP schedule was released this past Thursday, and there was some good and bad news for those of us north of the border. Three GPs! GP Ottawa, finally! Sadly only one of them, Vancouver in January, is a constructed GP. And as if to show that they haven’t learned yet, the three events are in January, March and November. Montreal in March…GP Hoth Redux?

I will say that the events seem to be well spread out this time around. No more double North American GP weekends stealing players from each other and very few three-week stretches with a GP each weekend. Best of all, the entire year has been announced up front. Letting pro players and grinders alike make their travel plans so far in advance is a great service to them and lets them decide which events they can hit up when.

Perhaps the most welcome and overdue news was that prizes for GPs will now scale with attendance. With Las Vegas showing what is possible with a Magic event, I guess Wizards finally realised it was lunacy to pay the same amount to a 700-person field as you do to a 2700-person one. Details on the new structure, as well as the changes to Team Sealed GPs, can be seen here.

That’s my Stream of Consciousness this week. Thanks for stopping by!

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