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[traveler]

I was actually wondering if Kozilek was viable in UR control as a sb card for the mirror. You pretty much always hit the necessary mana and the cast trigger alone could put you over the top. If the creature actually sticks, he's almost as indestructible as Ulamog, given that UR relies on dmg to kill and you'd be able to use his activated ability to repel lethal hits.

If Wizards hadn't already soured trust with the standard community, I think a Marvel ban would be perfectly reasonable. The card is obviously busted; it's just, in this environment, the idea of yet another ban seems insane. People speculate about Bolas adding to the deck, but given the lack of energy support in Grixis colors and the fact that Bolas won't have an oncast trigger, I don't think he'll be enough to make the deck feel so unfair once the Eldrazi rotate.

 

[Angry Grimace]

I was actually wondering if Kozilek was viable in UR control as a sb card for the mirror. You pretty much always hit the necessary mana and the cast trigger alone could put you over the top. If the creature actually sticks, he's almost as indestructible as Ulamog, given that UR relies on dmg to kill and you'd be able to use his activated ability to repel lethal hits.

If Wizards hadn't already soured trust with the standard community, I think a Marvel ban would be perfectly reasonable. The card is obviously busted; it's just, in this environment, the idea of yet another ban seems insane. People speculate about Bolas adding to the deck, but given the lack of energy support in Grixis colors and the fact that Bolas won't have an oncast trigger, I don't think he'll be enough to make the deck feel so unfair once the Eldrazi rotate.

Bolas would have to do some insane Ugin-like shit to actually be better than Sandwurm Convergence.

People forget that card because it's a Timmy card but all the Timmy cards are legit cards when Marvel is around.

Someone was asking me the other day why nobody has tried to Marvel into Aeons Torn in Modern. The answer is pretty obvious though: Stony Silence for one, but largely that the filler cards you have to put in a Marvel deck aren't good enough for Modern even though they are perfectly reasonable in standard.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

I don't agree. The effects are a lot more pushed than they ever have been in terms of just winning games. Cascade is the last big mechanic that worked that way but it wasn't nearly as dumb as Marvel is.

Cascade has literally spawned a modern and been a marquee component to a legacy deck as well as put a card on the banlist of modern. Cascade is much dumber than Marvel, especially since it's not parasitic.

Marvel requires cast to be able to pick anything not a land to play. Otherwise you'd get weird stuff like putting a creature on the stack or having to specify permanents and non permanents separately, permanents would be uncounterable to boot.

 

[traveler]

Marvel, as an individual card, feels far more busted to me than any of the cascade cards, but I do agree that the parasitic nature of energy vs. the standalone effectiveness of a Bloodbraid Elf/Shardless Agent means it will never have the eternal viability of that mechanic. There's also the matter of the weird suspend cards interaction making cascade stronger than it should be; shardless agent alone isn't super busted, but when you have a deck with ancestral visions in it, its value jumps dramatically. I don't know if it's fair to consider that a point towards Cascade "brokeness" over Marvel.

Some people are up in arms about Amaz getting invited to the next PT by WotC.

Is he playing or just attending? If he's playing, did he qualify?

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

He's playing and no.

I saw trick jarrett in his chat when amaz was drafting amonkhet a couple times and he voiced the desire to qualify for PT Kyoto since it's close. I presume Trick pitched it to marketing or something.

 

[traveler]

Well, I can certainly understand the anger then. For those of us who play in multiple qualifiers a week, devoting whole weekends to the game- hearing someone get an invite not just to attend, but to compete without earning it feels kind of unfair. It's not worth a high level of outrage, sure, but I think it looks mildly negative to the most devoted players.

 

[Ashodin]

It's ONE person. Getting an invite to make the game more visible to more audiences. It's fine.

 

[El Topo]

Getting angry over an invite seems laughable. If you want to complain about something, complain about the disappointing GP schedule and in particular the lack of a European Legacy GP.

 

[Tunoku]

People in the MtG community are really good at picking the wrong shit to complain about. If you're a pro and bothered about this, you should spend more time voicing your frustrations about the terrible prize support at Pro Tours these days, considering the payouts haven't really increased over the last 15 years.

I do wonder how effective inviting that Hearthstone pro as a promotional tool is going to be though. Will they make sure to have him on camera throughout the first day? I assume his audience alone is about as big as the entire MtG audience, but how many of them would actually bother to watch a Magic draft?

 

[El Topo]

Not sure if chasing this fever dream of getting the Hearthstone audience is reasonable. Then again, we'll see.

 

[DrArchon]

People speculate about Bolas adding to the deck, but given the lack of energy support in Grixis colors and the fact that Bolas won't have an oncast trigger, I don't think he'll be enough to make the deck feel so unfair once the Eldrazi rotate.

Not like it'll be hard to hardcast Bolas in something like Temur Marvel. You've already got 2 of the colors right there, plus Aether Hubs and maybe Servants. I 100% think that you could add Bolas to existing Marvel decks without changing too much.

Of course, this assumes he's good enough. If he was a copy of Ugin with another "-X: Exile a bunch of creatures" ability, then for sure decks will add him.

 

[traveler]

Edit: ^ That's definitely true. I was even thinking about the possibilities of just casting Bolas off aether hub in UR control if he turns out to be viable for control and it'd be far easier to do such a thing in Marvel.

I'm not angry over it; I just think it feels more negative to me than positive.

By all means, give these high viewer streamers from other games special invites and hook them up with the equipment to do streaming from the event- they'll actually get to show it to their viewers during the event that way. Someone playing in the tournament isn't going to be showing anywhere near the live coverage someone covering it would be, and marketing is what they want out of this right? That seems far more appropriate to me than handing an invite to someone like this over people that spend literally 10s of thousands of dollars on the game and hundreds of hours trying to qualify.

And it's perfectly fine to voice an opinion about both this and the lack of GPs in a region or the lack of prize support at the PT. Not sure why I need to arbitrarily limit myself to one opinion on Wizards tourney scheduling. I never understand this criticism- "if you're going to complain about x, why not complain about y instead?" What does this have to do with the discussion at hand at all?

 

[Ashodin]

Legendrule is being worked on- I have had a shortened week because of my wife having Tuesday off this week. So it's a little late.

Anyway, it's LUMBERKNOT

->

 

[bigkrev]

It's ONE person. Getting an invite to make the game more visible to more audiences. It's fine.

https://twitter.com/sickofit/status/867838917671768065

 

[charlequin]

Slivers make a ton of sense, except they probably don't want to reprint any of the ones with older templating, which would defeat the purpose of the deck.

I'd bet a decent amount that they won't do two different five-color decks, which pretty much puts Slivers out of the equation.

hmmm I wonder... is Marvel their attempt at creating RNG-style hearthstone cards in paper? I wonder if we'll see more of that creativity.

It's not a direct causal line from "HS has these RNG cards" to "we should print them." Hearthstone only has the RNG cards in the first place because not having a mana system makes the game miserable without additional randomness.

Rather, I think this is mostly a parallel evolution. The specific design goal in Hearthstone for these cards is twofold: 1) make strong cards that aren't completely consistent so the deck playing them has less guaranteed inevitability and 2) make it easier and faster to resolve effects that would involve careful consideration of a ton of options. Magic has two very similar needs: 1) to print competitive cards that have interesting and controllable variance as this leads to more format diversity and 2) to avoid effects like shuffling, searching big piles of cards for stuff, etc. that make games longer both through physical requirements and decision paralysis. Selection from a limited set of random choices fulfills both of these goals just as well as it does the two in Hearthstone, and in fact most places where Magic does stuff like this are actually pretty good -- like, nobody complains about Impulse effects that let you draw off a limited set of cards. The problem with CoCo and Marvel is just that letting you play the resulting cards for free makes it too swingy between a whiff and a hit.

It's ONE person. Getting an invite to make the game more visible to more audiences. It's fine.

What they need to do is actually formalize it. Just occasionally randomly inviting one person to the PT feels unseemly because they don't do it consistently or explain how it works. Instead, they just need to have a system: let's say there's 3-5 invite slots per PT, lifetime limit one per individual player, chosen by WotC to help grow and promote the game (so mostly community members or visible people from adjacent worlds like HS.) If it's a regular thing and you tell people upfront that they're qualifying for an event that will have some slots dedicated to this, people won't feel nearly as upset about it.

 

[Ashodin]

It's not a direct causal line from "HS has these RNG cards" to "we should print them." Hearthstone only has the RNG cards in the first place because not having a mana system makes the game miserable without additional randomness.

So both games are reaching the same conclusion. Got it.

What they need to do is actually formalize it. Just occasionally randomly inviting one person to the PT feels unseemly because they don't do it consistently or explain how it works. Instead, they just need to have a system: let's say there's 3-5 invite slots per PT, lifetime limit one per individual player, chosen by WotC to help grow and promote the game (so mostly community members or visible people from adjacent worlds like HS.) If it's a regular thing and you tell people upfront that they're qualifying for an event that will have some slots dedicated to this, people won't feel nearly as upset about it.

Yes this does feel kind of like "oh yeah and I'm also bringing this guy. He's really popular with this other game."

 

[traveler]

I guess the thing to me is that I don't understand why it's a competition invite. Offering free travel and accommodation + a special invite and setup for covering the PT makes perfect sense to me for both parties- Amaz gets to go to the event and Wizards gets a lot of exposure to the Hearthstone community. Amaz getting the competition invite not only rubs those who strive to qualify the wrong way; it arguably gets them less exposure as he'll be busy with the tourney instead of streaming. This is assuming Wizards doesn't try and shoehorn him into the coverage- if he's doing well, that's totally fair, but I don't want to see Amaz on cam over the pros that are actually competing at the highest levels. It'd be the equivalent of showing a celebrity pickup game on the night of the NBA finals instead.

 

[Santiako]

I guess the thing to me is that I don't understand why it's a competition invite. Offering free travel and accommodation + a special invite and setup for covering the PT makes perfect sense to me for both parties- Amaz gets to go to the event and Wizards gets a lot of exposure to the Hearthstone community. Amaz getting the competition invite not only rubs those who strive to qualify the wrong way; it arguably gets them less exposure as he'll be busy with the tourney instead of streaming. This is assuming Wizards doesn't try and shoehorn him into the coverage- if he's doing well, that's totally fair, but I don't want to see Amaz on cam over the pros that are actually competing at the highest levels. It'd be the equivalent of showing a celebrity pickup game on the night of the NBA finals instead.

When they did the same for Day9 (another popular streamer) they had him on camera frequently.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

They showed Kibler play RG energy missing all his triggers then laughing about throwing the game in an early round of PT KLD or AER. This type special invite is little different to the HoF, you can argue that was earned but that doesn't make any of the people using it players that are actually up to snuff.

 

[traveler]

I'm not entirely sure I agree with the HoF invites either, but that's another matter.

 

[SigmasonicX]

By the way, it's MaRo's birthday.

People have been wishing him well all day on Blogatog.

 

[TheBlackMarvel]

Is FNM usually a booster draft?

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Is FNM usually a booster draft?

Depends on the store. I'm going playing Commander FNM today for instance.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with the HoF invites either, but that's another matter.

Then that's fair enough, I think it's bad they get auto invites and moreso they can compete in the team standings with those invites.

 

[Ashodin]

Well sleeving up my own version of Marvel for FNM tomorrow.

Here's my list:

 

[TheBlackMarvel]

Depends on the store. I'm going playing Commander FNM today for instance.

Then that's fair enough, I think it's bad they get auto invites and moreso they can compete in the team standings with those invites.

Yeah, looks like my store is doing Archenemy and Draft, worked on these Standard decks for nothing.

 

[Imperfected]

People actually play Archenemy? That's rad. I always liked the idea of it, but I have literally never seen a (live, in person) game of it played, and most people I've played with have never even heard of it.

Or is this just a case where it got added to rotation recently because of the Archenemy: Nicol Bolas scheduling?

 

[TheBlackMarvel]

People actually play Archenemy? That's rad. I always liked the idea of it, but I have literally never seen a (live, in person) game of it played, and most people I've played with have never even heard of it.

Or is this just a case where it got added to rotation recently because of the Archenemy: Nicol Bolas scheduling?

Not a clue, I'll find out though.

 

[Tunoku]

Well sleeving up my own version of Marvel for FNM tomorrow.

Here's my list:

*snip*

Am I blind or are you not gonna run Aether Hub? Good luck, it's gonna be rough.

 

[TheBlackMarvel]

Since we're sharing, this is the deck I was going to take to FNM. Any tips? Particularly for the sideboard. I've got 4 copies of Drake Haven in there but I'm not sure what else I should add.

EDIT: WRT the cycling lands, those are the only copies I have.

 

[Tunoku]

My Hapatra is coming along nicely: http://imgur.com/a/LOFaC

Pretty happy with that foil Japanese Necoskitter I managed to get.

 

[Violet_0]

Well sleeving up my own version of Marvel for FNM tomorrow.

Here's my list:

Kozilek, The Great Distortion hits the table
it has no effect!

I'm going to assume you don't have 4 Ulamog
wait, Approach of the Second Sun?

 

[DrArchon]

My Hapatra is coming along nicely: http://imgur.com/a/LOFaC

Pretty happy with that foil Japanese Necoskitter I managed to get.

Oh look, it's Vraska, my second most disappointing planeswalker after Garruk, Apex Predator (I like BG, sue me).

 

[y2dvd]

Kozilek, The Great Distortion hits the table
it has no effect!

I'm going to assume you don't have 4 Ulamog
wait, Approach of the Second Sun?

Yeah seems like a random inclusion. Bite the bullet and make all of these Ulamogs. But if you're including W, Cast Out seems like an easy addition.

 

[Hero]

Not doing slivers when the commander theme is tribal would be such a terrible, dumb decision. Therefore, I wouldn't put it past Wizards at this point.

 

[DrArchon]

Not doing slivers when the commander theme is tribal would be such a terrible, dumb decision. Therefore, I wouldn't put it past Wizards at this point.

I'd love to see Slivers as much as the next guy, but I seriously doubt they'll be included. It'd be a mess with some cards having the old Sliver wording vs some having the new wording, plus that'd be two 5c decks.

Unless they were planning on printing brand new slivers that are just old versions + new wording, I don't see it happening. And if they did that, existing Sliver decks would be way too good because they'd have double the number of available Slivers.

 

[Ultimate_Trainer]

Im interested in building a Kytheon, Hero of Akros voltron deck, but when flipped to the planeswalker side, does it keep equipment equipped? Would I have to reequip them as Gideon?

 

[Angry Grimace]

Im interested in building a Kytheon, Hero of Akros voltron deck, but when flipped to the planeswalker side, does it keep equipment equipped? Would I have to reequip them as Gideon?

Nope. Kytheon gets exiled as part of the effect, removing all of them. They'd get removed even without that clause since Auras and Equipment can only be attached to creatures and Gideon is a Planeswalker.

 

[Firemind]

I'd love to see Slivers as much as the next guy, but I seriously doubt they'll be included. It'd be a mess with some cards having the old Sliver wording vs some having the new wording, plus that'd be two 5c decks.

Unless they were planning on printing brand new slivers that are just old versions + new wording, I don't see it happening. And if they did that, existing Sliver decks would be way too good because they'd have double the number of available Slivers.

Turning slivers into onesided lords was such a mistake.

 

[charlequin]

Not doing slivers when the commander theme is tribal would be such a terrible, dumb decision. Therefore, I wouldn't put it past Wizards at this point.

Above and beyond the 5-color thing, Slivers are a really bad choice for a deck like this because you really can't burn years of equity on printing three different brand-new Sliver legends in a single shot and any other new cards you design for the deck will be so narrow they won't ever get used by any other decks. Dragons are a much better choice for a 5-color theme IMO.

 

[Santiako]

It's also very hard to make 4 balanced tribal decks where the slivers don't just run away with the game every time.

 

[OnPoint]

Turning slivers into onesided lords was such a mistake.

Fewer things are truer than this.

 

[Ultimate_Trainer]

Nope. Kytheon gets exiled as part of the effect, removing all of them. They'd get removed even without that clause since Auras and Equipment can only be attached to creatures and Gideon is a Planeswalker.

I guess I'll never flip Kytheon until I have Puresteel Paladin out

 

[DrArchon]

Turning slivers into onesided lords was such a mistake.

Gotta dumb down stuff for new players. Can't have people getting confused over opposing Slivers interacting with each other in fun and unique ways.

Everything about the new Slivers is awful.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Amonkhet and Standard Mailbag
* Amonkhet wasn't intended to be a fast Draft environment. It was slow and grindy for most of development and they overcompensated with the power of early creatures.
* He agrees that they shouldn't have so many cards that get creatures for free from the library, and that Marvel should have been a bit weaker.
* Part of the problem with the complexity of recent sets is that they've been fitting in mechanics for an entire year into six months. They will cut down on mechanics.
* The Standard change came late in Hour of Devastation testing. Changes involved adding Manglehorn, and killing a card that was strong with Eldrazi Displacer. There was a lot of time to adjust Ixalan and beyond.
* They aren't going to push set themes as hard and will reduce parasitic mechanics that have to be powerful on their own.
* There's more to Play Design and the new testing process than what they revealed. They'll talk a lot more about it on July 12 and other times in early July.
* Blue can get 2 mana 1/3 prowess creatures, but red 2-drops have less design space, so red gets them more.
* A lot of red's color pie isn't fun and the only cards that see Standard play are burn and aggro, which aren't usually at mythic. That's why they don't bother with red's mythics.

 

[Hero]

Above and beyond the 5-color thing, Slivers are a really bad choice for a deck like this because you really can't burn years of equity on printing three different brand-new Sliver legends in a single shot and any other new cards you design for the deck will be so narrow they won't ever get used by any other decks. Dragons are a much better choice for a 5-color theme IMO.

I would much rather have two 5c decks than 5c dragons and no slivers, but I'm biased there. To your other point, outside of supplementary products, where else can slivers go? Return to Dominaria I would hope they would have them, but the last time we got slivers was in an M-core set.

* A lot of red's color pie isn't fun and the only cards that see Standard play are burn and aggro, which aren't usually at mythic. That's why they don't bother with red's mythics.

Cool, so red mythics are forever trash.

 

[kirblar]

Amonkhet and Standard Mailbag
* Amonkhet wasn't intended to be a fast Draft environment. It was slow and grindy for most of development and they overcompensated with the power of early creatures.
* He agrees that they shouldn't have so many cards that get creatures for free from the library, and that Marvel should have been a bit weaker.
* Part of the problem with the complexity of recent sets is that they've been fitting in mechanics for an entire year into six months. They will cut down on mechanics.
* The Standard change came late in Hour of Devastation testing. Changes involved adding Manglehorn, and killing a card that was strong with Eldrazi Displacer. There was a lot of time to adjust Ixalan and beyond.
* They aren't going to push set themes as hard and will reduce parasitic mechanics that have to be powerful on their own.
* There's more to Play Design and the new testing process than what they revealed. They'll talk a lot more about it on July 12 and other times in early July.
* Blue can get 2 mana 1/3 prowess creatures, but red 2-drops have less design space, so red gets them more.
* A lot of red's color pie isn't fun and the only cards that see Standard play are burn and aggro, which aren't usually at mythic. That's why they don't bother with red's mythics.

2-Block model is totally done. "Years worth of mechanics" means they're burning through mechanics too quickly, which is very hard not to do w/ the 2-block model.

 

[TheBlackMarvel]

Ugh, I would pick the one week there's no CNN to go to FNM. In other news, turns out it's draft one week out of the month and standard all the rest so at least that wasn't in vain.

 

[El Topo]

Whenever they talk about red I get the impression that they have no idea what to do with the color.

 

[bigkrev]

2-Block model is totally done. "Years worth of mechanics" means they're burning through mechanics too quickly, which is very hard not to do w/ the 2-block model.

Yeah, "Magic 25" set that was leaked for next year is a fine name for a Core Set.

I

 

[OnPoint]

Whenever they talk about red I get the impression that they have no idea what to do with the color.

You aren't alone in this feeling.