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Magic: the Gathering - Battle for Zendikar |OT| Lands matter (but nothing else does)
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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No, it's leagues better, I agree - I didn't mind drafting it, and I think we were doing 1xSHA 2x CON a lot too.
Loved it.
Yeah, I think we did that too at some point. All the protection bears! Also, Fusion Elemental was legit in 5c control.
In Jace's case (tee hee) he was already hated
He's not blue because of his mind-control abilities. He's blue because of his tears.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
I hated jace ever since they did that Bait and Switch in the book with him. Immediately put it down and never touched it again.
The bajillion versions of him don't help.
The bajillion versions of him don't help.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I want to see the market data showing Jace is the most popular
I don't doubt Rosewater on this one.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I own that book because they were literally selling copies at GenCon one year for $5. I don't think I've ever opened it
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
I borrowed the one from my friend he has every MtG book and the really old comics
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I just assume Jace is probably a fat neckbeard who uses illusion powers to make himself look more like a badass.
divisionbyzorro
Member
I'm pretty sure Jace has a Tumblr.
Bbbububu blue mana heroes are the face of the game
I mean, wotc wants them to be, but white mana heroes always take the spotlight, see Gerard and Gideon, holy shit two g's
Kamahl was always a favorite tho. The fucking Conan of Dominaria
A Serious Man
Member
Jace is popular with... the ladies. And I'm sure they're vocal about it on Rosewater's tumblr.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
It's biggest sin is being probably the single worst Limited format of the modern era of design. It has lots of individual interesting or powerful cards for many formats, its just really really junk taken as a whole
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
The worst limited format of all time.
(well since they started caring about limited about 15 years ago)
divisionbyzorro
Member
Fortunately M13 was superb - the best "vanilla" draft format they've ever made.
What is this referring to? (I didn't read the book, but am always looking for new Jace-hating ammunition.)
Daedardus said:
Avacyn was an AWFUL draft format. Unbelievably, shockingly godawful that they could mess up so badly in the modern era. Blue and green were so overpowered that half the table ended up playing it and still winning. Black was almost completely unplayable. There were like four viable archetypes in total. And the packs were full of garbage commons for story-telling purposes, like a 1/2 with "protection from vampires" even though almost all the vampires had evasion.
I thought it was a sweet set for constructed, though. Lots of powerful and fun cards like Griselbrand, Tamiyo, Restoration Angel, the Power Puff angels, Cavern of Souls... Miracles were divisive but I liked them. It was a very exciting set to open for constructed.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Kamahl was the OG, hated Jeska and the timespiral focus on her. Also Odyssey had a really great white is also evil theme. Well everything but green and red was, who just minded their own business.
In invasion I loved the whole Ixidor section and everything up till Karona and the focus on the shades which was garbage. Slapstick existential humour doesn't particularly fit MtG.
The book starts with an average joe in disguise hiding within the slums of Ravnica who's in a relationship with Liliana (?), don't perfectly remember the details, anyways turns out this whole identity was just a second personae Jace invented and placed within him to hide himself from some people I don't know why (infinite consortium? Tezzeret?) because I stopped reading at that point.
I hate bait and switches like that since I quickly get attached to characters.
There was a book where Tezzeret pretty much bitchslapped Jace though, that I enjoyed. We need another Tezzeret, Zendikar would have been interesting. Bolas could have Eldrazified him so he could move away halfway from the artifact synergy into a colorless synergy
Standard playersdid Mantis Rider just become the best creature? No replacements for Lightning Strike or Bile Blight in BFZ. The new "Hero's Downfall" is a sorcery. There are other ways to kill it but nothing as efficient or ubiquitous as those two were.
I know, I know, Siege Rhino is probably still #1, sigh...
Also, no u/r or r/w manland makes me sad. Am I going to have to play gainlands in my Jeskai deck?
I know, I know, Siege Rhino is probably still #1, sigh...
Also, no u/r or r/w manland makes me sad. Am I going to have to play gainlands in my Jeskai deck?
Wizards should just reprint Rise of Eldrazi one more time so we can enjoy the limited once again. Never had so much fun when playing draft or the prerelease, even though I sucked.
And I still like Jace, although more for the fact that he has a couple really good cards. I don't care for the story in the slightest. He could do without the punk haircuts though.
And I still like Jace, although more for the fact that he has a couple really good cards. I don't care for the story in the slightest. He could do without the punk haircuts though.
A) Even if you want to describe RTR as a faster format, that doesn't change the fact that Alara had a lot of aggressive draws. Because the mana is worse in Alara, you are more likely to fumble on colors and have cards stranded in hand. If your opponent opens with a good Exalted draw or went Plains, Mountain, Forest into Thoctar and you were still trying to fix your mana with Panoramas or Obelisks you wanted to kill yourself. That's one of the big reasons the fixing in the format was such a drawback.
Speaking of Woolly Thoctar (and Rhox War Monk, Tower Gargoyle, Fire-Field Ogre Sprouting Thrinax) - those cards all cost 3/4 mana. The corresponding cycle in Khan of Tarkir (Armament Corps, Warden of the Eye, Sultai Soothsayer, Mardu Roughrider and Bear's Companion) are also very powerful cards but cost 5 mana. This means the opposing player gets more time to settle their mana before these cards hit the battlefield and start wrecking shit. So the feel bad scenarios from Alara are reduced in frequency. This is one of many ways in which Khans of Tarkir is a better designed 3 color set than Shards of Alara.
B) We are comparing Shards of Alara (the set) to Return to Ravnica (the set) no? Anyway, even in Shards of Alara, Obelisks were marginal. You could play them but you hated yourself if you did more often than not.
Yeah, the problem with Mantis Rider is that Jeskai's mana base got worse while a lot of other color combinations' got better. With no Lightning Strike I'm really questioning whether it's still worth playing red at all, when Bant or Esper have such superior mana bases.
I wonder if Reave Soul is going to be a card now that Lightning Strike/Bile Blight is gone.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Mardu Dragon and BR Dragons both play Draconic Roar instead already.
I love dragons I hope that archtype gets a push with theros rotating out.
I really think the Shard color's are going to take over, or people are going to move to 4 color decks from abzan; I'm slowly starting to get better with the mana bases, its just real hard to put an off color fetch in your deck (lets say you run temur, and are forced to run 4 bloodstained mires) and just go "welp i can totally make this splash for murderous cut, or Silumgar the drifting death"
charlequin
Banned
Cascade is the AVR of mechanics -- fundamentally misguided, miserable in competitive constructed, bomby in limited, and not cool enough anywhere else to make up for it, but Rosewater ran D on it for years afterwards.
At least with Cascade they've softened on their insistence that it was a great idea over time, though Rosewater still seems to think it was a decent idea with developmental problems, instead of fundamentally ghastly.
They'll have to pay someone new to be relentlessly, sycophantically positive?
I hate it for a bunch of reasons, some of which are more debatable than others, but it's an atrocity of a draft format. Miserable bombs, zero removal, no entertaining or interesting archetypes to speak of...
that market data is called "look at the jackasses who go to any major magic event"
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
No. Charlequin just has a hate boner for it. It was a great set for constructed, flavorful for loremasters and was packed full of casual appeal without going full Dragons of Tarkir with it.
Its limited environment was one of the worst ever though, so if that is how you view Magic, there you go.
If my opponent can play a Woolly Thoctar on t3 then all the power to him/her. Magic is a game of variance after all and drawing two different basics and a panorama isn't that outlandish. The WGR restricion is very real, and it's an uncommon in a big set, so it shouldn't come up often. Alara draft might be tempo-based at times, but sealed certainly wasn't. Contrast that to RTR sealed where you can still be aggressive because of stupidly powerful cards like the Guildmages.Populate is extraordinary dumb. Either you have the token generators to make it work or you don't in which case it does completely nothing. And Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage does both. And don't get me started on Pack Rat. That should be a crime against good set design.
But I guess you've shifted it towards Khans now. :lol Khans had better uncommons, and morphs, but it still had unfair 3colour cards you could open with like Mantis Rider, Savage Knuckleblade, Butcher of the Horde, Siege Rhino, Anafenza. They might be rarer, but they're much more powerful than freaking Woolly Thoctar and Tower Drake. You also had the Charms and Ascendancies. My point is, Shards is still a good set despite the mana intensive cards. You do have influence on what you draft. And complaining about Exalted is a bit like complaining about Convoke in M15. Or tokens in MM2015. Or G/W in Innistrad. Or B/R in Zendikar. There will always be draft archetypes that are stronger than others.
Etrian Oddity
Member
Seriously, fuck you WotC and your shitty MtGO program that's just going downhill and glitches up and disconnects. Get on another level.
* Blocks opponent's Arbor Colossus with my Knuckleblade. Game won't let me activate +2/+2 pump. Knux dies.*
* Blocks opponent's Arbor Colossus with my Knuckleblade. Game won't let me activate +2/+2 pump. Knux dies.*
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
You can just wrangle it so that wedge mana is fine, you just have to fuck with it a lot.
For example, if you're Jeskai, run 4 Windswept Heath instead of 4 Flooded Strand. Why? Because you can fetch all three colors of mana with a Windswept Heath off of either a singleton Cinder Glade in your deck or if you want U or W you just fetch Prairie Stream. Its counter-intuitive, but you have to do weird stuff with these fetches and typed duals.
I just call him Ertai 2.0
I wasn't complaining about power level, I was complaining about it being inappropriately strong in a set that's supposedly designed for 3-color decks.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Swapped out Dragonlord Silumgar for a Feed the Clan in the board because I was expecting a lot of mono red at the pptq, got crushed going 1-2 against three GR devotion decks. Silumgar would have won me both games I lost 
The lesson is that nobody shows up with mono red this time of year because all the kids are starting school
The lesson is that nobody shows up with mono red this time of year because all the kids are starting school
But the exalted decks are still 3 colour? You can rarely draft two colours in Shards and Bant has a bunch of playable cards like the exalted bird.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
but reading up on the story of Ertai, his was tragic, Jace is just a dick.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Even though they aren't part of SCG? I thought Evan did them on his own. They're what got me into competitive magic
"God's Beard!"
Member
I like how the full spoiler is out and we didn't even last a day before we stopped talking about it lol
Well that's a relief. It's the only set review I care about.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
LSV's are interesting when you know his bent and what he's likely to under or overrate
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
As obvious as this I suspect this is going to be a very relevant quote in the next year
nilhir asked: It really does feel like BFZs greatest challenge was to fit everything that was beloved from a whole block into a single set. Kind of sad that only two colors got an invoker, but you take what you can get. Super thrilled for BFZ
One of the hardest parts of design was we were really trying to cram two completely different sets into one set.
A Serious Man
Member
I imagined the move to the two set stucture would be rocky and this just confirms it. Maybe BfZ block started out as three sets? That would explain a lot.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Partially that and partially just that they're trying to make this both a Return to Zendikar and a Return to Rise of the Eldrazi and those blocks just didn't overlap mechanically
If nothing else this has convinced me that "Plane X fights Plane Y" is a bad idea for a set and they shouldn't do it. It can maybe work as a block, see Scars of Mirrodin, but Scars very carefully made sure the first set was mostly Mirran and the third set was mostly Phyrexian
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Community cup BfZ is starting soon
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