LotusRing

From my experience of buying Legacy cards in February, I recommend players not to predict the price movement of a single card, instead they should buy a collection of all "unrestricted/unbanned" cards. The collection must exclude these cards: Mana Crypt Mystical Tutor Necropotence Vampiric Tutor Brainstorm Besides, I don't like cards reprinted for too many times: Jace, the Mind Sculptor Force of Will (this one is arguable, it's a safe choice) My plan is buying a number of all EMA cards from Tuesdays to Fridays til its promised limited event ending date. The reason for not buying all you need in one day is that: it's not sure if WOTC extends the period of EMA drafts and if they give out EMA packs as prizes for events. (It has happened in Vintage Masters marketing that they massively hold Vintage Masters limited events for a very long period.) The fear of loss must be overcome as now is the best chance to buy with the least risk.

After Eternal Masters released, I started to buy cards and review my trades in February. In February, I bought a lot of Legacy cards for today. Skipping the others, here I will write about the best trade and the worst. The best: Moat I bought it for 3 tix each. I hope my explanation sound: Though just 1 copy of moat has been seemed in a small number of legacy decks, Masters Edition is very rare. It's very surprising. The worst: Metalworker (Promo) The selling prices here are misleading: I paid 6-8 tix for one, have never got any chance to break even since buying.

Long time, as I'm busy and not in the mood to do testing, I am not going to write about new decks. Instead, I am picking the cards to buy in SOI. From the last set, I picked Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and Sylvan Advocate both which gained some profit(200% to 300%). I missed out Chandra, Flamecaller and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. Other pieces of GR ramp deck - World Breaker and Kozilek's Return just broke even. I think in SOI, we must be caution on both card buying choices and timings. It 's the first large set and usually the overall set price of such a set eventually, during a certain period, reach 60 - 70 tix. That means most cards in the set is lower than 1 tix with only 5-10 best cards ranked at the top level. I expect a significant drop will happen before the release of Eldrith Moon. The two most important cards I want to collect are Westvale Abbey and Archangel Avacyn. They are cards that can be in more than one kind of deck. The chance to rise for Abbey may l...

It's been a hard time for Ramp decks. But things are getting better with Joshua Dickerson's winning. His deck has made a new try and maneuvered the deck to a brand new direction. His list is very close to any Ramp decks except he used 4 Ulamogs. I think that's how the deck won over all the other decks. As the "Exile" ability is unpreventable, casting Ulamogs one by one generates huge advantage that wins the game. Even though the opponent exiles Ulamog with removals or counter it with spells, exiling two permanents every turn is deadly. And that's what other GR ramp players didn't try before. I think the deck can be further polished by adding Traverse the Ulvenwald. Some may say that opponent can sideboard in Infinite Obliteration and ruin the deck. I think at this moment of the new standard, in which white aggro decks dominates the meta, the fear of it is unnecessary. Try Dickerson's deck or build your own, feel the power of Ulamog. My list: ...

Many said and designed post rotation BW decks. I take the idea of hand disruption + Removals + Mid range creatures - the traditional black based control decks which dated back to the era of Fallen Empire and Ice Age (1995). The deck usually arrange card types in this way: 4 - 8 Hand Disruption 8 - 12 Removals 4 - 6 Draw Spells 8 -12 Creatures Transplanting to the coming Standard, it looks like: Hand Disruption: Transgress the Mind 3  Duress 3 Thought-Knot Seer 4 Removals: Grasp of Darkness  4   Spatial Contortion 4 Anguished Unmaking 3 Descend upon the Sinful 2 Declaration in Stone 2 Ruinous Path 3 Draw Spells: Sorin, Grim Nemesis  1 Ob Nixilis Reignited 1 Read the Bones 4 Creatures: Gideon, Ally of Zendikar 4 Archangel Avacyn 2 Mindwrack Demon 4 Even without testing, I can tell this kind of deck is very slow and vulnerable in the first few turns. No matter how good yo...

G(R) Ramp will probably dominate for a while in the meta post rotation. I will write about it later. This deck is about something I personally like - I have been playing UR decks since almost 20 years ago. I think the early stage of standard will be full of Vampire/ Zombie aggro decks. Maybe we need the World Breaker + Kozilek's Return package in this aggro deck. The goal of the deck is getting card drawing advantage through Abbot of Keral Keep and Sin Prodder, then recast the burn spells with Jace, Goblin Dark-Dwellers and World Breakers. 18 Creatures: Stormchaser Mage 4 Thing in the Ice 4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy 4 / Abbot of Keral Keep 4 Sin Prodder 4 World Breaker 2 /  Goblin Dark-Dwellers 2 12 Burn Spells: Fiery Impulse  3 Exquisite Firecraft 2 Fiery Temper  3 / Geistblast 3 Kozilek's Return 4 6 Other Spells: The selection of these 6 cards distinguishes top players from the crowd. What's your options? I have thought about:...

In a storm of bustle work, I still squeeze out time to write this review. This is just one of the proves of how much I love this game. 1. Consisting the world of competitive MTG decks: I never overlook the potential of cards that search for something. This one is great because Delirium in GR ramp is not really hard to achieve: we have nearly all card types - Evolving Wilds(land), Hangarback Walker(artifact and creature), Chandra, Flamecaller(Planeswalker), Ramp spells(Sorcery), Kozilek's Return(Instant).  It's good but limited to decks with a significant number of creatures. That means UW control won't use it.  If you have 4 mana, you may like a Utter End rather than this. But the cost of 3 life will be trivial if the meta speeds up so much that you aren't given the time to gather 4 mana and make a timely response to opponent's cards. In some extreme cases, a player never get 4 mana during the whole game.  Green and Red are strong colors in the new ...