Hello everyone, MG here.

I'm playing Group Hug featuring Veteran Explorer, Collective Voyage, and Minds Aglow. My current hand doesn't have any of these cards, so I'm going to mulligan until I find one or hit 4 cards. I would love to play an untapped land and resolve one of the Join Forces cards to get us all off to a quicker start, so please refrain from casting spells until I see what cards Artanis deals me.

On the 0/X creatures debate, I'm running Axebane Guardians and Overgrown Battlements for the purpose of fueling group card drawing effects. My reasoning is that, as the town outnumbers scum quite heavily, accelerating everyone will be of net benefit to the town. The mafia creature really isn't that much better than a CMC 6-8 creature, so getting everyone into that position will be my top priority for the first few turns. These creatures will be tapped for mana for the vast majority of the time, so it shouldn't impact your reads on blockers

Cheers,
MG

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:24 GMT

#269

EBWOP: Artanis just dealt me a hand with Island and Minds Aglow. How would everyone be for drawing a bunch of cards? :D

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:25 GMT

#271

It must have been him, I just got back from class.

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:28 GMT

#273

How long do people have to contribute mana for Join Forces effects?

I'll be leaving in an hour and a half. If fewer than 5 other players have voiced an opinion on Minds Aglow by then, I'm going to hold onto it for now until everyone is aware of it.

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:37 GMT

#279

Alternatively, I can mulligan again and hope to find Collective Voyage, which I'd argue is a much stronger turn 1 play. I'm not sure what the odds on that would be, but I think it's

1 - ((4 ncr 0)(56 ncr 5))/(60 ncr 5) ~= 30% of hitting one or more copies.

MG

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:38 GMT

#281

Because if I use it turn 1, I can hope to find Collective Voyage for turn 2 :D

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:39 GMT

#283

Everyone will draw the combined X value, so everyone's looking at drawing 10+ cards this turn.

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:41 GMT

#289

So let me rephrase my two lines of play:

1) Cast Minds Aglow T1, hope to hit Collective Voyage (very high odds if we do all draw ~10 cards), Collective Voyage T2, everyone has ~20 lands in play for T3.

2) Mulligan, hope to draw Collective Voyage (30%, I checked the math), everyone has ~10 lands in play for T2.

I like the first one - it's much safer, and leaves us all in a much stronger position on T3. Thoughts, everyone?

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:45 GMT

#293

To further expand on plan 1)

Cast Minds Aglow T1, hope to hit Collective Voyage (77% if we do all draw ~10 cards), Collective Voyage T2, everyone has ~20 lands in play for T3.

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:52 GMT

#295

No, you get the combined X of cards, so 18 :D

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:52 GMT

#296

EBWOP: 17, because I would only have one untapped land after casting it.

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 00:59 GMT

#300

Yes, but the subsequent line of play would be Collective Voyage from me on T2, so you could discard all of your low-impact cards with the virtual guarantee that you'd be able to resolve almost anything on T3. I mean, apart from the all-nonbasics deck, but I wasn't expecting that here.

I personally think that this is the best thing that the town can expect to do on the first few turns, and I'm only waiting for more people to post and acknowledge the plan before playing my Island and casting Minds Aglow.

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 01:10 GMT

#304

On January 29 2013 10:07 Aperture Science wrote:
So, Mind's Aglow looks completely useless. Awesome.

Scumhunting is in Flavor. Magic Discussion is not.

It's an investment for turn 3 - the details are on the last page, if you didn't catch them. What else would you be doing this turn, anyways?

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 01:15 GMT

#307

That's rather evasive. You can scumhunt independently of casting spells, and I say everyone should be scumhunting by default.

Let me rephrase my question - what else would you be doing with your mana this turn?

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 01:27 GMT

#310

Players who don't contribute mana don't get the effect. We'd definitely want everyone in on it, both because it increases the bonus for everyone, and because the entire point of this line of play is to get everyone to an equally stronger position by T3. It would be actively bad to have a few players left out of it.

BinOnFire

Laos123 Posts

January 29 2013 01:32 GMT

#314

Hold on a sec, iGrok. I'm going to assume that you've misread the card and my line of reasoning, and not that you're deliberately attempting to create confusion.

Here are the possible outcomes of Minds Aglow:

A) Everyone pays 2 mana. Everyone draws 17 cards.
B) Some players pay 2 mana. The players who paid, and only the players who paid, draw some number of cards. The other players get nothing.

There is no way for everyone to draw a small number of cards. If everyone pays only 1 mana for some reason, we'd all still be drawing 9 cards. The only other alternative is to exclude some players from drawing cards, and this early in the game, I see absolutely no reason to do that.