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[Imperfected]

I mean, if Vamps weren't viable in Gatewatch -> Shadows Over Innistrad, it seems pretty unlikely they're going to become viable anytime soon.

I'd rather have Kalitas and Drana than all the B/W bloodsuckers they've added, though I'll admit a lot of them are (sadly, for SoI) more enticing than the vampires in Innistrad 2.0.

 

[Angry Grimace]

It drives me crazy that WOTC knows that nobody likes punisher cards but they make them constantly in every set.

I mean, if Vamps weren't viable in Gatewatch -> Shadows Over Innistrad, it seems pretty unlikely they're going to become viable anytime soon.

I'd rather have Kalitas and Drana than all the B/W bloodsuckers they've added, though I'll admit a lot of them are (sadly, for SoI) more enticing than the vampires in Innistrad 2.0.

The tribal Vampire synergy was never particularly good to begin with in SOI. I don't think it seems that great even now.

 

[Imperfected]

The tribal Vampire synergy was never particularly good to begin with in SOI. I don't think it seems that great even now.

Yeah, the decision to make the Innistrad Vampires a grab bag mix of Madness synergies that don't really link in to the broader tribe as a whole pretty much killed any chance of them becoming a "thing". The result is that all the workaday position players in a Vampire deck are overcosted if you aren't in a Madness/Discard strategy, and only one of the stars (and even calling her that is kind of a stretch) is actually synergistic with that, Olivia 2.0.

So you've got this small group of decent to good vampire cards (Kalitas, Drana, Yahenni, Vampire Nightwalk) and no way to build up a core of decent on-curve Vamps to go with them unless you go into a deck theme that doesn't actually work with them at all.

Now Ixalan is actually adding the basic decent cost-to-value vamps with a theme that's at least somewhat synergistic with the good cards (lifegain/token generation), but all the fatboys are rotating out...

 

[StrategyFan]

i don't mind the concept of punisher cards, but the way they're making them they will either be too strong or too weak (so i guess they err on the side of too weak)

they should change it to 3 choices. you veto one. opponent vetoes one. then the remaining choice is the one that happens

 

[Ri'Orius]

It drives me crazy that WOTC knows that nobody likes punisher cards but they make them constantly in every set.

They're very interactive. It's a great concept, just hard to pull off in an appropriately powerful way.

That said, all three Torment cards in HOU were playable in limited (including Torment of Scarabs, which surprised a lot of people).

 

[Imperfected]

The Torment cards seem like sort of a different paradigm given they're not, "Accept this punishment or I get a thing," they're, "Accept this punishment or this different punishment."

 

[Ashodin]

I'm working on WB Vampire Tokens myself

got something real good going on

 

[barbecube]

I'll never not support this

Same here pls give us boardshorts Jace

 

[red13th]

I put Brainstorm below Ponder and Preordain in Cube unless I have more than a couple shuffle effects.

Yeah I'll never pick Brainstorm over Ponder and Preordain unless it's like pack 3 and I have a large amount of fetches. Ponder and Preordain rarely go unpicked anyway so it's probably an early pick too... idk.

 

[Justin]

I'm working on WB Vampire Tokens myself

got something real good going on

Can you post what you have so far?

 

[Justin]

Admiral Beckett in standard??? She is only around 2.50 right now and I was thinking maybe evasive pirates could be a fun FNM level deck.

 

[Boogiepop]

Okay, so: Fleetfoot Panther. Giving this guy a look for my Commander Cats deck. I was obviously an idiot back in the day, because I always looked at him as a pure creature with a drawback (and don't think I ever got use out of his Flash, even).

So the obvious utilities I see are returning a ETB card to reuse its effect, and saving something from a destruction effect bouncing it (and if that effect is targeted, it fizzles, yeah?) There are two things I'm less clear on though. Firstly... what happens if there aren't any creatures on your field and you try to play it? Does it just bounce itself back, or get out without the "drawback"? Also... can you declare a blocker and then bounce said blocker with it, effectively fizzling the damage/attack, or would that not work?

And I guess any other uses I'm missing? Or just in general... is this a good card? I'm so used to thinking of it as a bad card because of stupid narrow thinking, but now it's kind of like a decent body attached to a decent enough instant in a way, and I'm reevaluating...

 

[Firemind]

Here it is:

Pretty good in control mirrors or slow matchups.

This card is so hard to flip lol

 

[divisionbyzorro]

This card is so hard to flip lol

That's good and bad. Bad because it's hard to flip. Good because you can play a second after you flip the first.

 

[Giant Panda]

That's good and bad. Bad because it's hard to flip. Good because you can play a second after you flip the first.

You'll never be able to flip the first though.

 

[Crocodile]

Okay, so: Fleetfoot Panther. Giving this guy a look for my Commander Cats deck. I was obviously an idiot back in the day, because I always looked at him as a pure creature with a drawback (and don't think I ever got use out of his Flash, even).

So the obvious utilities I see are returning a ETB card to reuse its effect, and saving something from a destruction effect bouncing it (and if that effect is targeted, it fizzles, yeah?) There are two things I'm less clear on though. Firstly... what happens if there aren't any creatures on your field and you try to play it? Does it just bounce itself back, or get out without the "drawback"? Also... can you declare a blocker and then bounce said blocker with it, effectively fizzling the damage/attack, or would that not work?

And I guess any other uses I'm missing? Or just in general... is this a good card? I'm so used to thinking of it as a bad card because of stupid narrow thinking, but now it's kind of like a decent body attached to a decent enough instant in a way, and I'm reevaluating...

A) If there are no other eligible creatures on your side then Panther will return itself to your hand

B) If you declare a creature as a blocker and then bounce it back with Panther then the block still stands and damage is avoided to the creature. If the creature that was blocked has trample though, it will just deal all its damage to you.

Panther isn't so much a good/bad card as it is one with specific uses and functions. If your deck has a lot of ETB creatures then its a fine card to use. Otherwise not so much.

 

[Boogiepop]

A) If there are no other eligible creatures on your side then Panther will return itself to your hand

B) If you declare a creature as a blocker and then bounce it back with Panther then the block still stands and damage is avoided to the creature. If the creature that was blocked has trample though, it will just deal all its damage to you.

Panther isn't so much a good/bad card as it is one with specific uses and functions. If your deck has a lot of ETB creatures then its a fine card to use. Otherwise not so much.

Awesome, thanks for this.

 

[DrArchon]

Admiral Beckett in standard??? She is only around 2.50 right now and I was thinking maybe evasive pirates could be a fun FNM level deck.

As an anthem you could do worse, but I dunno. She looks hard as hell to cast and she's small enough to get got by Lightning Strike, Abrade, etc. And if you hit someone with three creatures in a single turn you shouldn't need to steal anything to close out the game. That just feels win-more at that point.

But you're right, she's cheap as hell, so might as well go for it. What's the worst that can happen?

I'm working on WB Vampire Tokens myself

got something real good going on

Are you leaning more towards Vamps, more towards tokens, or more towards lifegain? Because I want to see how good Crested Sunmare can get with some of the new lifegain Vamps in this set.

 

[Justin]

 

[Justin]

 

[Justin]

 

[Angry Grimace]

I assume the full set spoiler is up.

 

[Justin]

 

[Simply Sarah]

Dude, just post a link to the full spoiler list instead of posting every single remaining card.

 

[Justin]

Dude, just post a link to the full spoiler list instead of posting every single remaining card.

Its not all, just a few...

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/ixalan-release-notes-2017-09-15

 

[Crocodile]

Here's the full spoiler!

 

[Simply Sarah]

Lol. Build your own Vampire Serra Angel. This is kind of insultingly bad.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Serra Angel still laughing at 2017 cards

Edit: ^^^ great minds think alike I guess

 

[Muskieratboi]

Went 2-1 (their way) all three rounds at FNM tonight. A new record!

Also managed to score an Alt-art Sunken Hollow since they had some spare. A good night, imo!

 

[charlequin]

vamps and merfolk seemingly aren't meant to be viable tribal deck (not talking about the individual strenght of the cards, just tribal synergy). It's a bit of an odd design choice that I don't really like either. We're looking at a potential dinosaur and pirate deck for standard, and then a bunch of decks that might use the odd vampire or merfolk here and there like any other creature

Vampires are a bit more uncertain, but there'll almost certainly be a bunch of merfolk in Dominaria and Core 2019, so whether or not it works out for them I think it's very plausible that they want dinos and pirates to work from this block alone while the other two tribes get stronger later in the Standard format.

 

[Santiako]

The basic lands are gorgeous wow

 

[DrArchon]

Hadn't seen this one before. Looks alright. I mean it's technically a do-nothing enchantment, but it's only 1 mana and anything that puts opponents off from killing your dudes can't be a bad thing.

 

[Justin]

The basic lands are gorgeous wow

I love the pastel looking ones

 

[bigkrev]

This does not seem very common

 

[charlequin]

This does not seem very common

Are you talking about the effect or is this a joke about it being a trilobite

 

[A Serious Man]

The basic lands are gorgeous wow

No joke, damn.

And forget Opt, Air Elemental is back.

 

[bigkrev]

Play design article on answers in Standard https://magic.wizards.com/en/articl...counter-play-finding-right-answers-2017-09-15

The goal is to reach a world where removal is balanced well against the threats in the format. Removal spells these days are not as flexible as Doom Blade and to be honest have been a bit too narrow over the past few years. As a result, we have seen powerful creatures (and planeswalkers) rise up to a point where they dominated their Standard formats and were frustrating to play against. Emrakul, the Promised End is an example of one of our powerful creatures that we intentionally made very strong for flavor reasons. That this creature was over the line and the answers in the format did not line up well with it resulted in its Standard ban. Felidar Guardian had a similar problem. Most of our removal was either sorcery-speed or capped at killing 3-toughness creatures. We didn't have enough answers to the Felidar combo, so that card was banned as well. Since our Standard bans, we have been working on finding the right balance between strong threats and efficient answers.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

The first merfolk that actually does something.

Vialing it in is not worth a slot in any fish deck but if it were better statted or iced them one could make a case for it imo. Icing them would be too good actually.

 

[OnPoint]

This seems good somehow...

 

[Justin]

The art in this set is amazing.

 

[aidan]

This seems good somehow...

That was spoiled earlier. But, yeah, massive blowout against certain decks, especially if you're a turn away from a win.

 

[Santiako]

I like that they fully commited to the tribal colour pairings and didn't print a UW or GB gold uncommon.

 

[darkside31337]

I love this set. Been a while since I've enjoyed seeing a set this much. Limited looks really interesting, some cards that really want you to build a control deck.

 

[SigmasonicX]

* There are fewer enrage cards than I expected.

* Steadfast Armasaur in white is a neat effect I don't think we've seen before.
* There aren't actually that many life payment cards.

* First non-core printing of Air Elemental in a while, I believe.
* Explore cards are mostly pretty boring.
* Tempest Caller in blue seems pretty good.

* Black has a bat imp.
* Contract Killing is a neat common kill spell.
* Costly Plunder seems good with so many treasure tokens.
* Fathom Fleet Cutthroat is a neat "not raid" effect here.
* I like Grim Captain's Calling. Funny how with this and March of the Drowned, we're back to Disentomb effects being flavored the same as reanimation.
* Mark of the Vampire is a cute reprint here.
* I like the art on Vanquish the Weak.

* Glad we got Demolish instead of Craterize like I was sort of fearing.
* Dual Shot for double enrage!
* Fiery Cannonade seems good, especially in a pirate deck.
* Headstrong Brute uses "can't block" instead of "attacks if able".
* Hijack is a nice returning card.
* Nest Robber's art is unexpected on a red card.
* Nice to see Rummaging Goblin again.
* Surprised to see the name Swashbuckling used on a simple effect that they'd likely want to reprint.

* Boost effects in green seem pretty good.
* Is New Horizons the first land enchantment to put a counter on a creature on ETB? If so, I'm surprised they hadn't done that before.
* Pounce is a nice use of a simple name for a card they expect to reprint a lot.
* Verdant Rebirth is interesting. I wonder if they might want to position "rebirth" as a new keyword.

* The artifact Elaborate Firecannon doesn't seem worth the effort.
* Prying Blade seems decent.
* Unknown Shores is a really flavorful land reprint.

 

[Ashodin]

Prying blade is better than you think

 

[Angry Grimace]

That was spoiled earlier. But, yeah, massive blowout against certain decks, especially if you're a turn away from a win.

I think the intended use of the card is to mass attack with little guys and get all of the land out of your deck. I mean, it certainly "works" as a big mass Path.

I think a lot of people don't realize just how much Path's drawback sucks. Path is a good card because it's instant and one mana. Path doesn't get reprinted mostly because it's out of flavor to give white instant speed unconditional exile; I'm not entirely certain it's necessarily an inherently overpowered card.

 

[kirblar]

It's not flavor, it's power level.

 

[shrapnelmagnet]

Has anyone else had issues with magiccards.info lately? I get a lot of "This site can’t be reached - The connection was reset." errors when using it the last couple weeks. Could be my browser / corporate connection, though. It's annoying.

PS: I'm not sure who runs the site but there have been a lot of mistakes lately, I've noticed, with new cards. Blue cards in searches that exclude Blue, etc. Also, their scans have been dropping in quality.

 

[Justin]

Has anyone else had issues with magiccards.info lately? I get a lot of "This site can’t be reached - The connection was reset." errors when using it the last couple weeks. Could be my browser / corporate connection, though. It's annoying.

PS: I'm not sure who runs the site but there have been a lot of mistakes lately, I've noticed, with new cards. Blue cards in searches that exclude Blue, etc. Also, their scans have been dropping in quality.

Is there a reason to use that site over another like scryfall?

 

[Supast4r]

There are male captains referenced in the story and flavor text. Not sure if any are pirate captains though.

Captain storm????????