Its so hillarious that you guys talk about 1 mana artifacts with alternate universe and you dont talk about skullclamp Skullclamp in elves is almost like a glimpse -__-

KeySam

Ajani Vengeant’s are 100? More like 20 a set.
But the point stands, Magic is hella expensive right now. The best budget standard deck I have is a semi casual r/g warrior deck with 4 rares being Countryside Crusher. The deck clocks in at around 30, its okay, but is severely underpowered.
I love Pauper, and would be playing it on Magic Online if it wasn’t for this Mac in front of me.

Wouldn’t some mono red burn deck be great for for the Pauper format? There are a ton of bolt effects in the common slot (including the original itself) plus a ton of other quality common red spells.

Comments of Part 7, I already covered that one

I have a friend who just got back from China. She had told me about the toilets being holes in the ground. I almost lost it when BDM started trying to explain.

I love listening to your podcasts. I wanted to point out a few personal opinions as I have been playing the game for some time although there are many breaks far and wide in between.

I played in the beginning of 4th edition perhaps about a year within its release and left the game about 4 months after the release of tempest. I enjoyed playing with many cards that had power that were available at the common level. It promoted players to continue to buy into magic because when you bought a pack you knew you were gonna get something good like Mogg Fanatic (I personally call him Moog.) or Rogue Elephant, lotus petal. All of which are considered by todays standards to be ridiculous at the common level. Ok, but at the same time you had bonkers rares that were way way way more powerful than the available commons and uncommons. Birds of Paradise I think is the quintessential example of that. A bird in the time when I started playing (I was 9 at the time) was perhaps one of the more powerful cards up next to the duals or even Wrath. In a time when Wrath was perhaps to slow or only situational for certain decks. It was unreal. I remember reflecting pools too! I remember people just saying Meh to the reflecting pools. Or Dismiss? Or Capsize? Today, like 70% of the time I see cryptic command cast its just a dismiss. Sure its better because of the fact that it does other stuff, but why doesn’t wizards print the dismiss for everyone else? When I started playing again it was when they just released Lorwyn last year. I jumped into the extended format because so many of the older cards I had played with as a kid were still there just updated in different sets. Meekstone, the tron lands, new age dual lands, mana short, Wrath, counterspell, dingus egg. It was a great format. I ended up trying to play the most inexpensive extended deck that I actually liked and that turned out to be U/B tron. The largest investment I made in the deck was 60 dollars for the 3 damnations. I was only really willing to spend that much because I figured that they were in standard and I might be able to play something with them in standard format. The movement by Wizards Research and Development in changing they way they design new sets has created a linear format. Which, made me almost all but overlook standard this past season as a format for fools. I eventually was able to build a budget reveillark deck which I modified into a 5 color reveillark deck because I hardly owned all the super cool pain lands from apocalypse, nor any of the other dual lands. Instead I came to regionals this past year playing U/B/G/R/W Reveillark combo, with 1 venser, 4 Reveillark, 1 Body Double, 1 Gargadon, 4 makeshift mannequin, and 4 primal command (I had bought them when they were still a dollar back when lorwyn was released). I had to have been playing the least competitive deck in the entire room. I couldn’t afford many of the power cards and as such I had to get super creative with how I played my matches out. featuring such non-synergistic cards as thorn of amethyst and 8 mana elves. To me, the price of standard is so great that it destory’s the opportunity for magic to bring in more competitors. There is almost more fun in investing to play the almost ludicrous Vintage and Legacy formats because of the fact that I own many of the cards to play that format, but mostly because I can play whatever I really feel like as long as I come “packin’ ” the “hate” for other people’s strategy. Cards that are 10 cent junk rares have high value in eternal formats, aptly the restriction on ponder came as humorous to me. Since in the standard and extended format, ponder seems so harmless. I felt that way about alluren the first time I read the card when I cracked it in a pack. So I definitely agree that magic has become way to expensive to be competitive in unless you have been in the game for such a long time already. I’d like to see the magic I grew up with return, but that would require them to reprint necropotence and brainstorm and a bunch of super retarded cards at the common and uncommon level and then we’d all be pissed off when someone came to a tournament with a super secret hidden next level deck and owned us all (I’m sure you remember deadguy red or lauerpotence or Prosbloom …), but It would certainly motivate me to crack more packs and buy more cards in search of that next level deck that I could build from all the supplies I have lying around my house. And as far as the cheapest deck you can build in standard? 5 color control. Without reflecting pool. I piloted it to a 4-3-1 record at states this year. I played Rhox warmonk, alongside some 12 tri-lands from Shards of Alara, and some of the most ridiculous one of’s you’ve ever probably seen in a deck ever. But hey, I figured if you can play all these lands, you should be able to play a million one of’s cause any one of them should get you there! So perhaps I will just be relegated to drafting and playing extended for the next several years while I attempt to rebuild my collection since a $500 investment in a deck seems to be only worth it if there’s some serious power involved like sphere of resistance or 4th ed dual lands, or force of wills…

As far as the legacy deck that the japanese were playing. Everytime I play legacy I usually just see people scoop when it gets to the point where the stax player has smokestacks on 1 in play, magus, trinisphere, and wasteland either in play or in the graveyard.but if you have to win by attacking, it actually does come down to the Magus attacking over 10 turns…

Will the mythic rarity alleviate the rising cost of decks? The most expensive rares are pre-Shards, and how many mythics should we expect to be competitive? Right now, we have 5 at most? There aren’t really any Shards rares more than $10. Can we expect this to continue in Conflux and beyond, that only mythics will be restrictive financially?

Thanks for casting!