I recommend taking the Jace's Erasures and Howling Mines out of your Jace deck, along with all the Muses, Entrancers, Brokers, braingeyser effects and other gimmick cards. Jace has a fantastic set of stall cards that will work against any fast opening, including unsummon, counterspell, crippling chill, into the roil, aether adept, etc. as well as fast 1U filter cards that help along with mind sculpt to get to the magic 10 that turn on the super fast Jace's Phantasm and give food to your graveyard win cards. Clones and Body Doubles can hand you the win with whatever advantage you have on board. It could be that you clone a crab for a quick mill win or to activate a 15 damage swing with phantasms. It could be that you body double their baneslayer angel that you milled away. Maybe you get the phantasms going and duplicate them. Maybe you drop chancellor and goblin grenade Krenko for the win with the extra goblins from the siege gang commander you duplicated. Jace sets himself up for so many simultaneous win conditions so fast that the opponent is seemingly still trying to recast their opening hand before it's all over.
Any one that would beat him. Yeah, I got smoked the times I tried to use liliana. That's how I ended up getting him. I got lucky and for once he did NOT use the card that gives all of his creatures +1/+1. That means I could wipe out large number of creatures doing 1 damage to the field. He wasn't a challenge until I hit the revenge campaign on Planeswalker difficulty. Then it was like hitting a brick wall. Overwhelmed is definitely the right word. I would get maybe 1-2 creatures out and they would be outnumbered 3 to 1.
I agree with this sentiment about Jace. Re-tool the deck to be a control deck and you really have a lot of options. I find it to be the most versatile of the decks available.
Unacceptable. Magic is an elite title, everything about the app should be top notch. Locally saved games is horrible. What if I want to play on another device? What if I buy a new iPad? What if my iPad needs to be restored? I've seen apps add cloud/server side saved data after the fact, please look into it. I refuse to play most games that are locally saved. Most of the best titles have cloud/server saves though.
When I've bought a new phone or bought an iPad when I restored from an iTunes backup my progress in games (offline single player) was also retained. This was before iCloud was available.
Wow, talk about entitlement. "Unacceptable." lol It would be nice, but by no means required. If you're worried about gave saves, just be sure to do your backups. I think you can even do wifi backups automatically every time you plug your ipad to the charger, so that's easy.
Need some clarification please. My opponent is using Yeva deck with a Pelakka Wurm in play with me playing Liliana with Griselbrand in play. He attacks with the wurm and I blocked with my griselband. He paused it and cast Beast Within. Is his creature supposed to be considered blocked before beast within taking effect? Because what happened is that my griselband died, turned into 3/3 and his wurm dealed all 7 damage. Since I already declared blocker, I believe it should be blocked first, deal the damage then turned into a 3/3. Another incident is when I was pumping my Liliana's Shade after him declaring blockers, I paused it to pump my creature, but for some strange reason, he cast beast within (saw it come out of my screen like suntail hawk effect) then the card went back to his hand and my pumping stage canceled. Thanks in advance for the clarification.
Beast Within doesn't actually transform your creature into a 3/3, even though that's kind of the flavor of the card. It actually works on any permanent, including things other than creatures, and it destroys them. Then you get a new 3/3 creature from the card. When you get a new creature it follows all the rules for new creatures so it's not blocking anything, has summoning sickness, etc. that's why a trampling worm can get through... There's no longer anything blocking it! (note this only works for creatures with trample). As for your second example, if you saw a card flying around without being cast, it usually means it's being revealed on the way to their hand or graveyard or somewhere else. I can't think of an effect in Yeva's deck offhand that does that with Beast Within. Edit: Did your opponent have the enchantment Lurking Predators in play? In this case every time you cast a spell the top card of their library would be revealed and if it's a creature it would come into play. The Beast Within is an instant, not a creature, so it would be revealed and go back on top of their library with that animation similar to squadron hawk.
Hi Plynx, thanks for the reply. For the first issue, the only thing bothering me is that I already declared my blocker. I am assuming trample creature can by pass this then? Allow me to give a different scenario with a different instant. 1/1 vs 1/1. He attacks, I block, he cast lightning bolt on my 1/1. If I am not mistaken, the 1/1 would steal deal damage before it actually dying from the bolt, since it was blocked and both 1/1 should die. Am I right? For the second issue. I don't think so, for some strange reason, it was somehow shown to me, then back to his hand, I assumed he did cast it, but then was probably canceled? (card went back to his hand), and my pumping phase just ended, actually, damage dealt immediately followed, hence dealing just 1 damage to his creature.
The simplest way to think of it, at least for me, is this: if you declare a blocker and then your opponent removes your blocker via an instant or some other ability, the creature that would have been blocked is still considered to be blocked, but by a 0 toughness creature. For non-tramplers, that means the damage doesn't get through, but for tramplers, that means all the damage gets through. Hope that helps!
That's not right. Technically there are 5 steps to combat: begin combat, declare attackers, declare blockers, combat damage, end combat. Now between each of those steps you can play spells and effects (technically at the end of the step). So if you shoot the lightning bolt after blocking but before combat damage the blocker will not deal damage. Now, there was a time in Magic where what you said did work (sort of). It was between Tempest and the 2010 rules changes. At that time the combat damage went on the stack itself and you could respond to the combat damage with a lightning bolt. In this way you could both deal damage and still do something with your creature like sacrifice it. That was really confusing people so they changed it back to the way it was before. In any event, even under those rules, you could also simply cast the lightning bolt before the combat damage step, which has always been allowed. Also ktern is right about how to think of trample, there is even a whole rule for this circumstance: 702.18c If an attacking creature with trample is blocked, but there are no creatures blocking it when damage is assigned, all its damage is assigned to the player or planeswalker itÂ’s attacking. My guess is that something happened to you that often happens to me, which is that the timer ran out on you while it showed you a card which distracted you. The game will show you cards like from a millstone or discard or reveal but will not stop the timer while doing so. Many times I have watched the card and lost my chance to respond because I didn't realize the timer was also running down.
@ktern Thanks for the reply. That did clear things up. @Plynx I played from 95-99, and was used to 'fast effect' thingy and old rules. Guess that explains it. I used to kill 2/2 creature with my Mogg Fanatic, would assume now it wont work? Either deal your 1/1 damage or deal your 1 damage from sacrificing it? Again, thanks for the clarifications!
That's right, the Mogg Fanatic is back to the old way, one or the other. There's even an example of the Mogg Fanatic in the rules changes. This page would be really useful to welcome you back to Magic and get up to speed with the most important changes: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/42a
A few scenarios that I've come up with it to further help me understand combat phase. Comments and Confirmations is very much appreciated. Thanks! Scenario 1 Two 1/1 creature attacking. I blocked one with Fume Spitter, sacrificed it to ping the other 1/1. RESULT: 1/1 is considered block, no damage dealt, other 1/1 is dead. Right or Wrong? Scenario 2 Two 2/2 creature attacks. I blocked one with Avatar of Woe, I tapped and activated it's ability, and destroy the other attacking 2/2. RESULT: The first 2/2 is considered blocked, no damage dealt, and other 2/2 is dead. Right or Wrong? Scenario 3 Two 2/2 creature attacks, one with trample. I block the one with trample with Avatar of Woe, I tapped and activated it's ability, and destroy the other attacking 2/2. RESULT: The damage of the blocked 2/2 with trample will still push through. The other 2/2 is dead. Right or Wrong? Scenario 4 A 2/2 creature attacks. I blocked with Avatar of Woe. He cast Giant Growth, I tapped and activated it's ability. RESULT: Creature is destroyed, no damage will be dealt. Right or Wrong? Scenario 5 A 1/1 creature attacks. I blocked with my 1/1 creature. He cast Giant Growth, I slip in my Lightning Bolt to his 1/1. RESULT: 1/1 attacking creature will die first because of bolt, Giant Growth will be useless (no target), no damage done, my 1/1 still alive. Right or Wrong? Thanks so much in advance!
Right, and good strategy to save yourself a point of damage True. I don't know how far back your Magic rules go, but it used to be that tapped blockers dealt no damage. But that hasn't been true for a long time, so both of the attacking 2/2 creatures will die. Wrong in this case, the avatar of woe is a 6/5 creature and will take 2 damage from the trampling 2/2 and deliver 6 damage back in return. You take no damage. Right, the creature is destroyed before the giant growth is resolved. Right.
Hi Plynx, I guess it is safe to assume that, as long as my creature is in the battlefield for the duration of the whole combat phase, be it tapped or untapped, it will deal damage if I block a creature. As for trample, as long as the blocking creature is not on the battlefield anymore during the duration of the combat phase, the damage will slip pass through and to me. In anyway, thank you for all the help Plynx.
There's a notable exception to that, which is that a creature that has just regenerated is removed from combat although it remains on the battlefield. If you block a 2/2 trampling creature with a 1/1 regenerator, and you put a regeneration "shield" on the creature and they lightning bolt your creature in response, there are two interesting things: (1) you have to put a regeneration shield on your creature again to make sure it will be there before the lightning bolt lands and (2) in regenerating from the lightning bolt it will be removed from combat and tapped, so now the 2 damage from the trampling creature will get through even though the creature that blocked is still alive and on the battlefield.
