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We're all just here for the deep Urza lore - Talking about Magic: The Gathering!

I thought I'd replied to this already but apparently I didn't, so here's what I thought I'd said: no matter how you feel about UB, I think everyone can agree that seven standard sets in one year is absolutely absurd. It's bad for players and it's bad for the designers.
 
I could be convinced to draft it over LCI or IKO, maybe MKM, but anything else in the past... 5 years? Pass.
 
I have only been caring about it for Standard deck-building. I have not drafted it and likely never will, barely watched any streamers draft it, did not go to pre-release.
lincolnic said:
I thought I'd replied to this already but apparently I didn't, so here's what I thought I'd said: no matter how you feel about UB, I think everyone can agree that seven standard sets in one year is absolutely absurd. It's bad for players and it's bad for the designers.
Click to expand...
My partner got into Magic with Bloomburrow, and the release schedule at the time was already too fast for her. There's pretty much no way to ease someone new into this game with how fast things come out and how many things come out.
 
So CubeCon happened last week. I've never actually played Cube before, but there's one thing I've always wanted to know: how do the logistics of setting up a paper cube actually work? How do people collate or sort the "packs" that get "opened" in a cube? Is there like a shuffling machine that makes it all easy to do??
 
YangusKhan said:
So CubeCon happened last week. I've never actually played Cube before, but there's one thing I've always wanted to know: how do the logistics of setting up a paper cube actually work? How do people collate or sort the "packs" that get "opened" in a cube? Is there like a shuffling machine that makes it all easy to do??
Click to expand...
Oh god, there are infinite methodologies. Some folks i know just grab the whole stack, shuffle, and dole out in packs of fifteen, other people have a specific method of three of these to five of these, and sometimes its truly bananas.
 
Man, speaking of, the Arena Powered Cube is gonna be a reason for me to finally log back in for the first time in months. I've always wanted to play Vintage Cube and I'm beyond thrilled that this is happening in an accessible way for me.
 
YangusKhan said:
So CubeCon happened last week. I've never actually played Cube before, but there's one thing I've always wanted to know: how do the logistics of setting up a paper cube actually work? How do people collate or sort the "packs" that get "opened" in a cube? Is there like a shuffling machine that makes it all easy to do??
Click to expand...
luckypaper.co

The Shuffler Really is Broken: Finding the Best Method for Shuffling Cubes — Lucky Paper

The conventional Cube wisdom may be to shuffle a cube as a group, exchanging piles randomly around the table, but in this case the shuffler is in fact broken! Here's why and how to shuffle your cube the way you deserve.
luckypaper.co luckypaper.co
 
scryfall.com

Leaves from the Vine

{1}{G} • Enchantment — Saga • (As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after III.) I — Mill three cards, then create a Food token. (It's an artifact with "{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this token: You gain 3 life.") II — Put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to two target...
scryfall.com scryfall.com

Cripes. At uncommon it's going to be a 50-50 chance that any given Avatar draft is going to make me misty eyed at some point.
 
Mr Bean said:
scryfall.com

Leaves from the Vine

{1}{G} • Enchantment — Saga • (As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after III.) I — Mill three cards, then create a Food token. (It's an artifact with "{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this token: You gain 3 life.") II — Put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to two target...
scryfall.com scryfall.com

Cripes. At uncommon it's going to be a 50-50 chance that any given Avatar draft is going to make me misty eyed at some point.
Click to expand...
d08fbd18-faee-4f87-b4d4-1f43b2d73e56.jpg
 
For someone who doesn't know anything about Avatar, that is an incredibly unflavorful name for a Magic card. Feels like they had that as the working title and just forgot to put an actual name on it.
 
It's that and also something of a catchphrase for one of the main characters. And it's a Jumpstart card, which is probably the only context you would see it being played.

Speaking of! I've been trying to brainstorm what and how much Avatar stuff to buy to play with my partner, and I'm thinking some amount of Jumpstart boosters and Play boosters are the way to go. Since they aren't making Commander decks for this set there aren't any fully built pre-cons for it, and I really think pre-cons are the best starting point for her, but the problem is I don't want a whole-ass Jumpstart box with 24 of them lol. The Beginner Box is probably what I should get, but man, it comes with so much extra paper crap that's gonna end up being trash anyway lol (first world problems, I know).

Also when I look over all the Avatar cards I wanna keep in mind if there's any synergy between them and Bloomburrow stuff, because I think that would be a really cute gift for her, either as a Commander deck or something else that has lots of both Avatar and Bloomburrow.
 
I did preface my statement with "For someone who doesn't know anything about Avatar". Mark Rosewater just posted an article about how UB sets also have to also work for people who aren't knowledgeable about the IP, and I think this is an example of that failing.
 
lincolnic said:
I did preface my statement with "For someone who doesn't know anything about Avatar". Mark Rosewater just posted an article about how UB sets also have to also work for people who aren't knowledgeable about the IP, and I think this is an example of that failing.
Click to expand...
As someone who doesn't know anything about Avatar, that card title made me laugh.
 
Yeah I can see where on its own out of context it would sound like nonsense at first, but after you read the flavor text at the bottom it makes more sense.
 
I always read the flavor text! But I didn't say anything about whether or not the name made sense. I said it was unflavorful, as in it doesn't feel like it should be on a Magic card at all. It's right up there with Rent Is Due and the fucking bagel from Spider-Man.

I sincerely hope everyone who likes Avatar has fun with the set. I'll be over here waiting for Lorwyn previews.
 
Again I want to reiterate that it's a Jumpstart card, and from what I've seen none of the cards in the main set have unflavorful names.
 
Jumpstart cards are still Magic cards.

I don't feel like this is a productive discussion for anybody anymore. Let's just move on.
 
i fucking love the name. it's both super flavorful and a great meme response card, right up there with You Are Already Dead and Garbage Fire.
 
Actually to elaborate even more: at the start of the current RCQ season, I fully intended to try and play a lot of Standard RCQs because I thought it would be fun. I bought a Mono-Black deck, which was relatively cheap as far as Standard goes, and I played in 1 RCQ, after which I realized what an uphill battle my matchup would be against the Vivi Cauldron deck and just decided to nope out of that for 2-3 months instead.
 
Finally played my first match of $30 Value Vintage after work today and had a blast. Turns out doing super busted stuff is really fun, who knew? I was on Rhinos against my friend playing Burn. I thought he was going to play some kind of Standstill control deck (he's been a control player as long as I've known him), but I was pleasantly surprised when his first game action was to drop a mountain and suspend a Rift Bolt. I'm pretty sure my response was "Hell yeah."

I won our match 2-0, but both games were close. They were also fast as hell, so we played a third, which he won. I think we would've had a full second match but neither of us had the time. We're slowly getting some other folks in our office interested, so maybe my dream of an office league will come true sometime in the near future.
 
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