I'm new to Magic: the gathering and have questions

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Looking at them again and again I am becoming more and more enamoured with the new rules. I can't wait to get some friends together and test them out (not during a tournament though, we'll have to wait for that).

Here's my many cents:
1) Simultaneous mulligans
I really like this change.
2) Terminology
2a) Battlefield: this has been rumoured for some time and I must say I'm not a fan. I appreciate the way that it simplifies the terminology and is more flavourful but I don't like that it's more letters than "in play". I like templating and this is a weird change, but I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually.
2b) Cast, play, activate: Cast was confirmed some time ago and I liked it. However I didn't like the idea of casting activated abilities, so I am elated that they are activated, not cast.
2c) Exile: fantastic, much more flavourful, accurate and badass. Path to Exile is that much more awesome.
2d) "At the beginning of the end step": Fantastic, makes much more sense.
3) Mana
3a) Emptying at the end of steps: I've never encountered a time when the old way was relevant so this is a good change.
3b) Mana burn is gone: Braid of Fire is so much better now! I approve.
4) Token ownership: makes much more sense.
5) Combat
Now here is the one a lot of people have gotten upset about on Facebook. I like the way it works in the new rules but I can appreciate peoples anger. The new way much much more sense in terms of how interactions like Mogg Fanatic and Nantuko Husk work, though I know it will be sad to see them go. Farewell "Damage on", we will always remember you.
As for the new rules on damage allocation, I think this makes damage prevention effects much more shiny. You have a good idea where damage is going to go and it becomes slightly more deterministic, but once it's determined you can't do anything about it which makes stuff like regeneration more of a gamble than a sure thing ("Damage on, regenerate" lets you leave it to the last possible second).
6) Deathtouch
Much better. It wasn't very intuitive before. And they also get to do their old trick of "one to each blocker" even when gangblocked in the new rules, so I'm happy.
7) Lifelink
Makes it much better as you can survive attacks you wouldn't live through before. However I will miss having two instances of lifelink. One of my favourite "just for fun" designs was a 2/2 with lifelink, lifelink. Now that that's no longer any different from lifelink, I'll need to find a new way of templating that idea.

Okay, I'll check it out.

Okay, so I have been playing MagicTG and have learned more about it now. In fact, I played a game last night that lasted for two hours! My favorite cards so far are cho-manno, pariah, any cancel spell or return creature cards, wall of denial, anything with first strike, meddling mage, and ancestors chosen.

I have another question. If someone plays a creature that has an ability that brings another creature back from the graveyard pile into play, and that creature has the same ability and resurrects another creature like it, and etc.... is it legal to bring about 7 creatures back from the dead into play on one turn?
If it is legal, what is a good strategy against it?

Wall of Denial is awesome and I know another player who is obsessed with it.

As for that return to play situation, I don't know of many creatures that have an ability like "When [CARDNAME] comes into play, you may return target creature from your graveyard to play" but if we suppose that say two cards exist with that exact rules text, and you had 4 of one and 3 of the other in your graveyard, with the other in your hand, you could play the one in your hand, return one from graveyard to play, return one, etc.

Solutions include removing cards in graveyards from the game (especially with the first return ability on the stack) with cards like Shadowfeed or Relic of Progenitus. Or Just kill all of their creatures with mass removal spells (Wrath of God, Infest, etc.).

Wall of Denial is great, and it doesn't cost too much mana either.

Mass removal spells sound pretty fun! Looks like it's time for me to buy some booster packs.

Are Conflux booster packs pretty good?

Off-hand? Phyrexian Delver. Karmic Guide. Sure those would be pretty terrible to form a mass resurrection around, but of course it can still be done...given you have about 15 spare life to throw around. Heck, for the same starting mana you could get Living Death! One more and it becomes Twilight's Call!

Somewhat more successfully, there are casual decks that do something like this with double Sharuum the Hegemon, with the key fact being that this chain never runs out of creatures to bring back--after every other resurrection, both Sharuums find themselves right back in the grave. Granted that also means the creatures don't do anything on their own, but all you need is a Disciple of the Vault, Goblin Sharpshooter, or card of a similar vein and you get all the repeatable effects you want. This form of the combo also has the advantage that if your opponent doesn't have an instant-speed out right then (graveyard removal, or killing whatever creature is performing the resource conversion) they can't do anything at all about it. Wrath? Pointless.

Last edited by Anonycat on 15 Jun 2009, 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I will be honest that when I did a gatherer search I read a page or two then couldn't be bothered. But yes, the Sharuum-Sharuum-Hissing Iguanar/Disciple of the Vault/... combos are brilliant.

Also if you are trying to get hold of Wrath of God you might be better off buying singles as it's a rare in large sets and thus is tricky to get hold of. Unless of course you were going to get the packs anyway in which case you can take your chances. I am slightly concerned that Wizards might have decided to remove Wrath from Standard this year, as we know that the number of cards in M10 that have been in every previous core set is half the number from 10th Ed (8 instead of 16 IIRC) so I think that they may print a different mass removal spell to shake things up (possibly a new one, possibly a reprint of Damnation).

RE Conflux packs:
For the most part, it won't make much difference to a casual player which packs you buy unless you want particular cards. Conflux has some great cards in and was a generally interesting set IMO. For a player who wants to be more into the tournament scene (even if it's only FNMs) will have to keep Standard in mind and if they were only just starting it would be best right now to focus on Shards of Alara, Conflux and Alara Reborn, then get Magic 2010 packs when they come out.

So what packs you buy right now depends on whether you'll be going to Standard tournaments in the near future. If you won't be, you don't need to worry about what packs you buy at all unless you want specific cards.

Mass removal isn't gunna help you one bit against something like the sharuum combo & revillark/body double. However, a control deck like yours should still beat it. Just understand how the combo works & counter key parts of it. This should buy you enough time to either kill them or make the game unwinnable for them. If you really want to kill graveyard based decks, use relic of progenitus.

Wow, I looked up Relic of Progenitus and that's an awesome card.

Hmmm, where can I buy singles from. Do they sell them at places that hold tournaments? Do they sell them online?

There are often traders at large events, some shops sell singles and there are many websites that trade in singles. I know of starcitygames.com but as I'm in the UK I don't know many others in America.

Hey, does anyone have advice on how to make the cards last their longest. My cards are starting to get little black things on them. Is this from the oil on my hands, or is this from the cards rubbing against each other when I shuffle them? They are also sticking together more when I shuffle them. I already figured out that humidity is not good for them.

On another note I used my storm callers boon card for the first time last night. It gave seven of my creatures flying and I took my opponent down from 15 health to 1 health in one attack.

You need to invest in some card sleeves. Packs of 100 cost about $8. Get either ultrapro, dragon shield, or the Japanese brand (what everybody calls it). I know players who swear by each kind, so I won't get into the old debate about which is better.

My preference is the Japanese brand.

Cool. Sounds like it's just what I need.

If you ever plan on playing in any tournaments, make sure you only get mono colored sleeves. Yeah, there are cool designer sleeves with designs or pictures on the back, but they're not tournament legal.

You can get away with patterned sleeves most of the time, but some of them are very shiny and there is the possibility that one might take advantage of that so sleeves like that are not allowed. My preference is the Ultra Pro black sleeve but I also love the Magic back sleeve.

I will definitely have to get some sleeves.

I have another game play question. During my opponents turn, after he had attacked me and I had blocked ( our creatures were tapped), he plays a sorcery card that says "Untap all creatures that attacked this turn. After this main phase, there is an additional combat phase followed by an additional main phase". So he untaps his creatures and attacks again. My creatures are still tapped from blocking, so I can't block this time and all the damage gets through. This took me down from 20 to 7. After playing the sorcery card, he put it into his graveyard. This card also has the retrace ability, so after putting it in his graveyard he discarded a land and payed the mana cost to play it again. There were three combat phases in one turn and I could only block one of them. This of course killed me.

Is this the way this is supposed to work? Did we follow the rules? By the way, the name of the card is "Waves of Aggression".