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[SigmasonicX]

They've gone a bit too far towards power being concentrated in a few bomby cards the last few years, so I'm glad to see it being spread around a bit more. I haven't seen anything that screams at me like having Batterskull and Stoneforge in the same enviornment so far

Wasn't that one actually completely unintentional?

Anyway, while there are a lot of powerful cards each set, it isn't often that you'll get a card that can straight up replace another in an existing deck; and often the cards that are strictly better are just better than cards people didn't really care much about to begin with, like Tormenting Voice replacing Wild Guess and Drown in Sorrow replacing Infest. They tend to require new decks or heavy modifications to work properly. For example, you often see people comparing Monastery Mentor with Young Pyromancer, but not only is it a different color, but it costs one mana more, meaning the former probably won't straight up replace the latter.

 

[The Technomancer]

Wasn't that one actually completely unintentional?

Sure, I guess what I'm saying is that I don't see any one particular card in Khans or Fate so far really dominating any formats in a broken way (well, okay, Treasure Cruise). But you kind of hit the nail on the head: power creep becomes a problem when new product genuinely renders old product obsolete (as long as its legal)

 

[kirblar]

They've gone a bit too far towards power being concentrated in a few bomby cards the last few years, so I'm glad to see it being spread around a bit more. I haven't seen anything that screams at me like having Batterskull and Stoneforge in the same enviornment so far

Erik Lauer's been the only lead developer to get power level consistency at Rare/Mythic right. FRF looks a lot like an Erik Lauer set in that regard, and that's a good thing.

 

[SigmasonicX]

"Frost Walker"
1U
Creature - Elemental
When Frost Walker becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it.
4/1

I thought it was related to the Eldrazi at first.

 

[kirblar]

Uh, thats pretty good, lol.

 

[Haly]

Dies to non-removal.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

If something was going to target it in this format, it was going to kill it anyway (unless it's blue, but then if you have this, you're probably blue). The card is really good.

 

[Lucario]

Not bad! Definitely not enough to revive mono-blue devotion, but it's a solid card. I'm far less worried about the drawback than I am about the fact that it trades with tokens and Satyr Wayfinder. Having two strongly playable X/5s in the format in Siege Rhino and Tasigur is another potential issue.

Kind of a shame that you can't make it unblockable with Thassa.

 

[kirblar]

If something was going to target it in this format, it was going to kill it anyway (unless it's blue, but then if you have this, you're probably blue). The card is really good.

I wonder if this is actually a plant for control mirrors.

 

[Matriox]

Looks like alt art Ugin is possible in the ugin special prerelease pack

edit: found this from reddit, no clue on possible foil. Also just for info on the pack, also from reddit:

You get a basic land card (Kahns but set 1000 years before alternate art like Innistrad and Avacyns Restored basic lands), a token card and 2 random alternate art cards. They previewed one common, one uncommon and one rare. They said there is at least one mythic rare. You get the booster pack by completing the prerelease challenge like fight the hydra in Theros.

 

[Toxi]

Beastmaster is gonna be a first pick for some limited decks because holy shit Archer's Parapet into Beastmaster.

 

[Firemind]

That one is going to fetch a pretty penny. Can they be foil?

 

[Lucario]

Nobody tell grakl that there's an alt-art Ugin until prerelease hype dies down please

 

[Etrian Oddity]

So after a decade or more of not playing Magic, my roommate bought a deck for me and for him, so the floodgates have opened. XD

Think I'm gonna go to my old favorite and do a Modern Fish (U). Gonna use this as a building block and start from there, I think.

 

[Haly]

*takes decade break from Magic*
*gets back in and immediately drops $500 on a deck*

That card game life.

 

[bigkrev]

I wonder if this is actually a plant for control mirrors.

Why do I feel like I'm going to be playing U/B control on gameday?

 

[Etrian Oddity]

*takes decade break from Magic*
*gets back in and immediately drops $500 on a deck*

That card game life.

Lmao within reason mang.

now where do i get a playset of aether vial for under five dollah

 

[OnPoint]

Lmao within reason mang.

now where do i get a playset of aether vial for under five dollah

Follow Sarkhan's example and head back 8 years?

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Holy shit a NM playset of Aether Vial is going to set you back a hundo.

That card was friggin uncommon.

 

[kirblar]

Holy shit a NM playset of Aether Vial is going to set you back a hundo.

That card was friggin uncommon.

wuuuuuut?

That card isn't even good right now.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

wuuuuuut?

That card isn't even good right now.

Card Kingdom has a NM Darksteel Aether Vial at $24.99. Modern Masters and FTV:R versions are both more.

Some of the uncommons from that era have bizarre prize tags. Sensei's Divining Top is $34 NM, for goodness sakes.

 

[Etrian Oddity]

Holy shit a NM playset of Aether Vial is going to set you back a hundo.

That card was friggin uncommon.

Yea hence my comment. Totally crazy.

 

[kirblar]

Card Kingdom has a NM Darksteel Aether Vial at $24.99. Modern Masters and FTV:R versions are both more.

Some of the uncommons from that era have bizarre prize tags. Sensei's Divining Top is $34 NM, for goodness sakes.

It even got a reprint in MM1 at rare, no?

Top, because of it being near-unreprintable, makes much more sense.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

It even got a reprint in MM1 at rare, no?

Top, because of it being near-unreprintable, makes much more sense.

Yep, it's been reprinted in FTV:R (alongside Top) and MM1. Top hasn't been reprinted outside of FTV; it feels like it needs to be, but I can't imagine where you could put it other than in a Duel Deck.

 

[ElyrionX]

Yep, it's been reprinted in FTV:R (alongside Top) and MM1. Top hasn't been reprinted outside of FTV; it feels like it needs to be, but I can't imagine where you could put it other than in a Duel Deck.

They need some type of Commander product that is not just preconstructed decks. That's where they can sneak in a reprint of Force of Will too lol. I just bought one over the weekend. One hundred freaking dollars goddamn.

 

[Toxi]

Sensei's Divining Top needs a reprint in the commander precons, but the problem with that is that you're adding a card infamous for making games boring into a precon.

 

[OnPoint]

It even got a reprint in MM1 at rare, no?

Top, because of it being near-unreprintable, makes much more sense.

Merfolk!

Actually Death&Taxes. Still, it's been trending at over 20 for at least a year I believe.

 

[ElyrionX]

So preorder prices for Monastery Mentor and Soulfire Grand Maste are $30 and $25 respectively. That seems high. How likely is it that preordering those two cards at such prices will be a bad idea?

 

[charlequin]

There are two planeswalker cards in Dragons. He might be in it, but I wouldn't expect the story to have Ugin and Bolas fight again at this point. I say the non-Narset card is either going to be whoever Bolas had replace Sarkhan in this new reality (maybe Ramaz), or an Eldrazi-corrupted Nahiri the Lithomancer.

Rosewater was dropping some hints that definitely made me think it'll be Ramaz.

Erik Lauer's been the only lead developer to get power level consistency at Rare/Mythic right. FRF looks a lot like an Erik Lauer set in that regard, and that's a good thing.

I'm really curious whether we start to see a really big gap in quality between fall large sets that will probably continue to all be Rosewater/Lauer joints and spring large sets that will have a pretty wide range of leads.

So preorder prices for Monastery Mentor and Soulfire Grand Maste are $30 and $25 respectively. That seems high. How likely is it that preordering those two cards at such prices will be a bad idea?

Preordering cards that are already at high prices is almost always incorrect.

 

[kirblar]

So preorder prices for Monastery Mentor and Soulfire Grand Maste are $30 and $25 respectively. That seems high. How likely is it that preordering those two cards at such prices will be a bad idea?

Very, value is too spread out in the set.

 

[ThLunarian]

Yeah my personal feeling is that Soulfire Grandmaster isn't even that good so it will go way, way down.

Monastery Mentor is good, but not $30 good.

Definitely wait on both of them. If you open any Grandmasters, trade them for Mentors and buy back in after they crash.

 

[ElyrionX]

Thanks. I will have to reconsider it when the final preorder prices are out then.

 

[Grakl]

Nobody tell grakl that there's an alt-art Ugin until prerelease hype dies down please

Give

 

[red13th]

Yeah I was shocked two days ago when I bought my Aether Vial, paid like $25. At least the art is nice.

 

[Llyrwenne]

Summon the Ancestors
XWW
Instant
Return each creature card with converted mana cost X or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. Exile those creatures at the beginning of your next upkeep. Exile Summon the Ancestors.

Renowned Weaponsmith is certainly interesting. It will be interesting to see what Vial of Dragonfire will do. Maybe it has some sweet synergy with Heart-Piercer Bow? Mardu Woe-reaper is a 2/1 for 1 mana with a beneficial effect that slows Delve and messes with Whip; sure, I'll take that. On first glance I didn't even realise it triggered on any Warrior, not just on itself. I kind of want to build a warrior deck now, with Alesha, Mardu Woe-Reaper, Mardu Hordechief etc. Summon the Ancestors is kinda cool, but set up so that you don't get to attack with those creatures unless they have Haste. Still great for creating a nice horde of blockers when you need them and triggering all the ETB triggers, and if you have any Haste creatures among them and/or any global Haste effects up, it'll make this card even better.

 

[Matriox]

Renowned Weaponsmith is certainly interesting. It will be interesting to see what Vial of Dragonfire will do. Maybe it has some sweet synergy with Heart-Piercer Bow? Mardu Woe-reaper is a 2/1 for 1 mana with a beneficial effect that slows Delve and messes with Whip; sure, I'll take that. On first glance I didn't even realise it triggered on any Warrior, not just on itself. I kind of want to build a warrior deck now, with Alesha, Mardu Woe-Reaper, Mardu Hordechief etc. Summon the Ancestors is kinda cool, but set up so that you don't get to attack with those creatures unless they have Haste. Still great for creating a nice horde of blockers when you need them and triggering all the ETB triggers, and if you have any Haste creatures among them and/or any global Haste effects up, it'll make this card even better.

I was thinking a copy in Abzan Whip wasn't the worst idea. Late game desperate attempt to bring back Hornet Queens and Siege Rhinos at instant speed to block and ETB trigger.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Finally, another uncommon Savannah Lions!! With upside! Get into my cube!

 

[acheron_xl]

Weaponsmith really kind of makes Vedalken Engineer look like a piece of shit. That's what a rarity bump and different context will do, I guess.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Caleb Durwards latest article is one that any regular tournament-goer should read.

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/legacy-weapon-getting-dqd-in-ohio/

He's far more mature about this sort of thing than I would be. I'm pretty sure I would have been completely furious if this happened to me. Magic desperately needs to get its shit together when it comes to splitting prizes - the current rules are asinine.

What I think is so wrong about this is that you have a player who desperately wants to do the right thing, specifically asks the judges what he's allowed to do, tries to do the right thing as best he can, and still gets DQd. That's ridiculous. This comment kind of sums it up for me:

I see absolutely no reason why players and judges need to tiptoe around the issue so much. Everybody knows what's up but for some reason the competitive community has agreed to participate in a farcical wink-wink nudge-nudge pretense that tournaments are "pure". Is this facade really so valuable that we're willing to throw well-meaning players trying to do the right thing under the bus, while shady individuals can freely game the system without repercussion?

 

[Matriox]

Other spoiler, but it's not that great anyway:

I first looked at this I thought it was decent.. Then I saw it wasn't giving +1/+1 counters and just EoT +x/+x... Blech.

 

[Hero]

Another savannah lions is an auto include for my cube. Please have more to give.

 

[MjFrancis]

While I like this card enough, I can't get over the name Mardu Woe-Reaper. It's roughly analogous to Mardu Harvester of Sorrow, but it seems Woe-Reaper took up less space so they went with that. He's the heavy metal of white weenies.

He's the perfect minion for Alesha, Who Smiles at Death.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

As a cube curator, he's the first card that actually made me really happy.

The Temur Sabertooth is going to get a tryout, as will the Abzan Beastmaster, but no guarantees they stay. I might give Humble Defector a shot, but I'm not 100% convinced yet.

 

[Matriox]

Pretty mana expensive Imo, but a really cool effect.

 

[Lucario]

Nifty. Going into a lot of pauper cubes, I imagine.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Nifty. Going into a lot of pauper cubes, I imagine.

At first I thought it was garbage, and then I realized that it's almost strictly better than Hellspark Elemental. And then I started to wonder why Hellspark Elemental was in my cube if I thought this was garbage. And then I realized that I forgot Hellspark has trample and this doesn't, so it's not better. And now I don't know what I think of this card.

Basically I surfed quite the wave of emotion reading this card for about thirty seconds.

 

[Matriox]

Basically I surfed quite the wave of emotion reading this card for about thirty seconds.

I get it. Because hes surfing.

 

[The Technomancer]

People get the thread title, right? RIGHT?

 

[Matriox]

People get the thread title, right? RIGHT?

I was hoping for someone to explain it outside of obvious magic references. Otherwise I have a slightly harder time looking for the thread when it doesnt have KHAAAAANNN at the back of it in the list of OT thread titles

To be fair, I never understand the references in titles without it being spelled out for me lol.

 

[Hero]

The scout is okay but Hellspark has trample and unearth. Scouts not too bad to use the dash ability and keep him in hand when you want to swarm or something. Probably not good enough though.