Fake Card: Nether Faerie

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
DarthFerret said:
What I meant, cause I know I was not very clear, is that the boundries that were set by "first edition" have never been surpased. This is a good thing, because people like me who do not buy very many of the newer cards, still have a really good chance in a casual magic game. (Not so much in tournaments, because it is hard to build a deck that is legal to play, consisting entirely of older card stock.)
But some of what might be termed boundaries HAVE been surpassed. The best example I can think of is the Counterspell one. Mana Drain was printed in a later set. The quality of a straight counter with UU for the cost was surpassed in Legends.

Most other examples I can think of do have some technicality. Morphling is better than Air Elemental--but if you have no mana available, then Air Elemental is of course better.

Frozen Shade is strictly worse than Looming Shade. There's another example. Frozen Shade was never one of the truly feared cards from the original set, but I guess if you define "boundary" as "that which has not ever been surpassed" then none of the boundaries will be surpassed, although you would be using a tautology...
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
I am using the word "boundry" to define mana limits (power of critter/effect vs. casting cost) and speed (like dual lands....nothing yet reprinted that is faster as a stand-alone card). I cannot see anything getting better than a 3 point burn for one mana (lightning bolt), or an instant that says: Target creature gains trample and gets +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is its power. (Berserk) The Mana Drain may be one exception, although there can be a drawback to it, if you have no way to spend that mana (rare but could happen) you get burned. But the casting cost was still UU. I dobut we will see a straight counterspell for less than UU without some kind of drawback.

I guess i never really saw Frozen Shade as a "limit defining" card, because, although it only has one colored mana in the cost, for WWW I can play a 2/1 that gets +1/+1 for every W tapped (Savana Lion, Blessing). I don't think we will see any mana generator better than Dark Ritual (B to get BBB), and I do not think there will ever be anything as good as Black Lotus and the Moxes.

Edit: for anyone who does not know, Berserk only cost G.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
DarthFerret said:
I am using the word "boundry" to define mana limits (power of critter/effect vs. casting cost) and speed (like dual lands....nothing yet reprinted that is faster as a stand-alone card).
Yes, but you are excluding the bad cards in the original set and only applying "boundary" to the very best cards. It makes perfect sense that the cards which were found to be too good when the game was new are not being improved upon. The ones that sucked or were merely mediocre, you choose not to consider to be "boundaries."

Why isn't Basalt Monolith considered a boundary? Rod of Ruin? Fog? Scathe Zombies? Grizzly Bears? Celestial Prism? Twiddle?

The same principle applies to any set, really. We won't be seeing a better Survival of the Fittest or Masticore. Or we probably won't. There could be exceptions. I wouldn't have thought we'd see a new version of Dream Halls and Mind's Desire was printed and was even more broken...
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
Oversoul said:
Yes, but you are excluding the bad cards in the original set and only applying "boundary" to the very best cards. It makes perfect sense that the cards which were found to be too good when the game was new are not being improved upon. The ones that sucked or were merely mediocre, you choose not to consider to be "boundaries."

Why isn't Basalt Monolith considered a boundary? Rod of Ruin? Fog? Scathe Zombies? Grizzly Bears? Celestial Prism? Twiddle?

Actually, all of those cards either define a boundry, OR are within the boundry. Fog? well, I do not think you can get much faster than 1 mana and not be totally broken. Most of the others lie somewhere in the middle. It is the 'outstanding' cards that I am talking about. The ones that border on (and sometimes cross into) brokeness.

I had a cool analogy to put here, but it does not sound qute right, so I will leave it out. :D
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
DarthFerret said:
Actually, all of those cards either define a boundry, OR are within the boundry. Fog? well, I do not think you can get much faster than 1 mana and not be totally broken. Most of the others lie somewhere in the middle. It is the 'outstanding' cards that I am talking about. The ones that border on (and sometimes cross into) brokeness.
I picked those cards because we've seen better versions of them. The better Fog is called Undergrowth. It's the same as Fog except for a bonus if you are playing with red creatures and have some mana to spare...

Okay, so the outstanding cards from the original set have not since been exceeded (with rare exceptions like Mana Drain). I guess I can agree with that. But you could apply the same to any set.

It's just common sense not to make better versions or even rough equivalents of the cards that have proven to be too good. Sometimes common sense goes on vacation or something like that, because long after it became clear that Wheel of Fortune was broken, it was painted blue, tweaked a bit, and made into Windfall.
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
Oversoul said:
Sometimes common sense goes on vacation or something like that, because long after it became clear that Wheel of Fortune was broken, it was painted blue, tweaked a bit, and made into Windfall.

Common sense has a tendency to do just that occasionally even to the best of us. I honestly think Wheel of Fortune should have been blue to begin with, but then I am generally predisposed to blue since that is the color I started learning to play with first. And blue is still the color that I collect the heaviest. Cest la vie!
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Hey, it's not bad to be a blue player. You won't make many friends doing it, but you'll win more games than players with the other colors will (except white, because people who actually play white are crazy and will Orim's Chant you and beat you down with Pegasus tokens or something). Oh sure, they'll say something like, "green can actually be really good if you do it right" but then when you win, they'll say, "counterspell is broken" or "Islands should be banned" or something... :p

I kid. The best decks tend to be two or three colors really, or that's what it seems like to me. Blue is usually one of those colors...
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
Yup, black and blue seem to be very good. A long time ago, I had a nemesis Magic player. She played green...almost exclusively. Oh I remeber the first time she played Tsunami....and the look on her face when I hacked it to forests! <insert Maniacal Laugh here> :D
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Ouch. That's almost as bad as the guy who played Balance in a tournament, and let his opponent sacrifice lands to Zuran Orb, then Arcane Denialed his own Balance...
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Oversoul said:
Ouch. That's almost as bad as the guy who played Balance in a tournament, and let his opponent sacrifice lands to Zuran Orb, then Arcane Denialed his own Balance...
Was the pre-6th or post-6th rules?
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
Would that really matter. Either way the balance never went off. The person just sac'ed all of his land to make the player of balance go to 0 lands, so that player countered his own spell in response. Doesn't seem illegal in either format to me.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
It does matter. You can't do it pre-6th. Once an effect started resolving, the window for Interrupts is closed and you resolve it all the way through.

The Duelist used it as an example of explaing LIFO way back when.
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
but, the question would be, does the balance even start resolving before it is countered? It seems that the player who sacked his lands, did that as a fast-effect in response to the person playing the balance. (Since balance does not kill all the lands, it just evens the score so to speak).
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
If the opponent has started sacking lands and the Balance player has let him, that means the time to Interrupt the Balance has passed. I believe it went:

Spell is cast.
Players have opportunity to cast Interrupts
Interrupts are resolved
Players have opportunity to cast/use instants.

I don't think you can Interrupt an instant ability. Spell, yes. A good example would have been Stifle though, since it counters an instant ability. I can't think of one pre-6th though.
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
I don't think countering instant abilities was even a possibility pre 6th.
From what i understood, it would have been...

Spell (balance) is cast.
Any fast effect is used.
Spell resolves.

An interrupt can be played between any of these stages, yet cannot be played within a stage.

I could be wrong, I never got a look at the comprehensive rules back then.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I'm pretty sure an Interrupt could only have been played after a spell is initially cast. Maybe we should ask in the Rules section and someone there might remember :)
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
It was post 6th. edition rules anyway, but I'd still like a definitive answer on this one, since I am totally not remembering which one of you would be right...
 
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