Finally something I can agree with! I played Zur's Weirding for as long as I could in Standard, in two of my favourite decks ever.

My favorite part about Weirding is that it forces people to think.

And people are really bad at thinking, see: Fact or Fiction.

Currently my 100 card singleton deck is built around it, which is pretty ******ed, but awesome when I actually get it or the E. Tutor to fetch it out.

My weirding decks:

U/B shadow beatdown
U/W Life gain
U/G/R Stormbind (hilarious story below)
U/G Tradewind control

The reason it's my favorite card is this:

I was playing U/G/R stormbind (only blue card was weirding). It was a pretty typical Kird Ape type build, lots of burn, and Stormbind for the lock. Well, I get myself into a situation where the game is close, and the next turn or two is going to decide it. I've got a couple burn spells in my hand, so I drop weirding. He's got a counterspell, a removal piece for my creature (negating my board advantage), and something that I can kill with one of my burn spells. So this plays out, the board is totally empty, and I think I'm up like 12-10. At this point it's going to be a top deck war, which is ok because that's what my deck does. You gonna let me draw bolt or incinerate? Of course not.

Anyway, the turn after weirding is in play, I draw Stormbind. And I almost scream, because if I had waited one more turn, I could have had it locked up. I sigh, and my opponent reads it.

Him: "No cards in hand?"

Me: "No cards."

Him: "You can have it."

It wasn't until I drew a Mountain next turn that he realized what he had done.

Ironically, that was also the tournament that started me judging.

I had weirding in play, and no way to win the game. He's got board advantage, and I'm going to die next turn. (I'm at 4, he's at 7) The only thing for me to do is Earthquake for 7 and force the draw.

The judge rules that I lose the match because I am "more dead".

Why are you even talking about? Tarmogoyf/Stoneforge/Spellstutter were and still are houses. To compare those cards in comparision to Brittle Effigy / Emrakul/Bligthsteel is HILARIOUS.

Except boros won't put in brittle effigy.

Clearly you don't remember the 3 months before Tarmagoyf showed up in big name tournaments. The card was literally $2 for months. Did it suddenly get better, or did people just realize that it was already good?

Then they can lose. I don't give a ****.

I didn't play in the time when tarmogoyf was around (was taking a break from magic), I do hear stories about that. But months might be stretching it, because I hear it was only 1 or 2.

Stoneforge was always an absurd card. The problem with it is that there was no real decks it went into at that time (until it found naya) and now because there are more decks that utilizes it, it shows up all over the place.

Stoneforge is kinda like Jace. Jace was $30-40 at one time instead of the $80-100 it is now. Jace just didnt see that much play in standard because there was no deck that played heavy blue and hence, it didn't have a deck to go into. Now it has several and is now sporting a heavy price tag. Everyone knew Jace was nuts.

Stoneforge was $3 for the longest time. It was only when you got this version of Jitte that it became such a powerhouse. This is an instance of a card actually getting better because of a future card, which obviously happens all the time.

There's plenty of other examples of Magic cards that are severly under-rated at the time that they come out (Who would play Necropotance, anyway??). Just because it gets ignored now doesn't mean it won't be proven to be extremely good. And of course there's the opposite, when cards like Time Reversal pre-sell for $30 when it's obvious to anybody with a brain that that card is terrible. This is the Tarmogoyf effect. Nobody wants to be 'wrong' about the next huge dollar card, so they overvalue just about everything pre-release.

Tom strikes me as one of my friends who plays casually but then builds a deck like valakut but puts in these janky cards like fireball and "all is dust" and refuses to change it when given countless points on why other card is better

Tom, I know stoneforge was $3 for the longest time.. It was for about 3-4 months before naya came around, then it was $6-7, and now with the new swords and the new format (jund being gone) it skyrocketed.

Doesn't change the fact that people still thought the card was nuts.

Card value =! People's opinion.

And I had to google time reversal. There are several reasons why that card isn't a lot. Namely for the fact that it doesn't untap your lands (and is blue), so you just spent 5 mana to either replace the 7 you have in your hand (because you are blue and let's be honest, unless you're a form of beatdown deck, you're going to have at least 5 cards on turn 5) and you give your opponent to draw more cards.

If time reversal was red, it'd be $100. And boros/mono-red would be the deck to beat.



I mean, you can't just use general consecous as the end-all/be-all. You talk about sites like "the dojo". I was fortunate that I started early enough to remember dojo and the articles in provided. I wouldn't say that things were better back then, because there was still net-deckers. IMO, you could create an analogy to magic today is like poker today. Magic ten years ago was super easy because the large % were fish but now there is so many articles and videos and coverage and tournaments, people know what's good so now it's infinitely hard. Just like poker.



When magic started, people were like, why play with lotuses and moxes. I'll play my craw wurm and my shivan dragon. And necro.. people were like why would i hurt myself to draw cards when I draw cards anyways.

Irony, as your whole argument is "LOL that's not good, nobody plays it."

But way to totally miss the point. Of COURSE Time Reversal is terrible. But that didn't stop it from being a $30 pre-sell. Why? Because people THOUGHT it would be amazing.

Hey Tom I think your criticism has been true for a long time, I think what changes thing now as opposed to 5 or so years ago is that nowadays there is too much information. I don't think any random scrub can download a deck and plan to do well competitively without actually having some playtesting. There was a recent article on starcity where brad Nelson had nothin to write about because he was so overwhelmed with information he couldn't make a coherent argument. And when you play constructed online lots of people show up with net decks, by they are so untuned because these terrible players try to cram a bunch of stuff into them, so much that they lose their consistency.

Did you say your store was in Vancouver? Talking about fnm makes me miss the days of slinging spells at a store on a regular basis.

It was $30 for 3 reasons:

1. People thought it'd be like time spiral
2. It's mythic
3. People are morons.

Only #3 is my point. People are just as wrong about cards now as they were then. Discounting cards just because they aren't currently T1 is shortsighted.

There's no doubt there's much more information these days, and bad players will still get crushed regardless of the decks that they use. And bad players will add things to decks that make them worse. But Magic is a game of synergy and card interactions. And to think that all possible things have been thought of already.....I just don't see it.

Indeed. I enjoy big tournaments as well, but only limited. The deck building aspect to me is too important to leave off.

I'm sorry Tom but netdecks are the future of constructed magic. I don't see this as a problem as there are a ton a decisions to be made in most games and better players still have a big advantage. There is a disadvantage to picking up a netdeck and not understanding the reason behind card choices. Netdecking sideboards also doesn't really work and I think is one of the most interesting parts of constructed magic.

Also, I don't really buy your argument about rogue decks. The above cards are not played because they are bad. Stoneforge mystic wasn't a hidden gem pre MBS. It became much better with the new sword and is now played more because it is good, not because a pro wrote an article about it. There are a ton of janky decks Kibler and Co have been writing about lately that haven't caught on.

I don't disagree with anything you said. But every deck is a rouge deck until somebody wins with it. If you're just a follower, that's fine. Most people are. But the people who can build to beat the **** people are playing are the ones with the advantage.

To put it another way: Caw Go was a good deck since M11 came out. Why did it take 6 months before people knew it?

And in that case, everybody even KNEW that all the cards were good! People have used Brainstorm/Scroll Rack/Land Tax with Fetchlands since basically the beginning of time for card advantage. It was obvious as soon as M11 came out that Jace/Hawk was amazing card advantage, but "nobody" played it until Kibler 6 months later.

Right after M11 came out, would you mock somebody for playing Caw Go? I think many of you would.

Sword of Feast and Famine is what launched that deck into the stratosphere if that's what you're asking.

Clearly.