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[Zocano]

So crater elemental seems like a great way to deal with aggro line ups? Midrange ahoy?

edit: I really want to make a cool mid-range dragon deck.

 

[ironmang]

Going to be a lot of unhappy people discarding their only card on draw step.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Going to be a lot of unhappy people discarding their only card on draw step.

I'm surprised at the number of people that hate this card. All of those options are useful and the default instant bad Blightning is playable. But that's just the default if nothing else is relevant.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Hey Bigkrev, I need some deckbuilding help. I feel like I'm just missing one more push:

Joking aside, what's everyone's favorite non-Standard deck? Mine's gotta be Vintage Dredge.

 

[ironmang]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";155160535]
Joking aside, what's everyone's favorite non-Standard deck? Mine's gotta be Vintage Dredge.[/QUOTE]

Maverick in legacy and pre-pod banning Scapeshift in modern.

I have almost no knowledge of vintage since the closest place that holds tournaments is 2 hours away, once a month, and only gets 8-10 players. Plus no proxies so I'd probably be stuck taking a budget deck which kind of deflates my interest in even playing the format.

 

[Firemind]

So crater elemental seems like a great way to deal with aggro line ups? Midrange ahoy?

edit: I really want to make a cool mid-range dragon deck.

Big Mardu could be a thing. You can play Crux of Fate as a one-sided wrath!

Too bad the b/r command costs three mana. Between anger of the gods, hero's downfall, crackling doom, mardu charm, there's an abundance of three drops. Imagine Bloodbraid Elf in the format. :lol

 

[divisionbyzorro]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";155160535]Joking aside, what's everyone's favorite non-Standard deck? Mine's gotta be Vintage Dredge.[/QUOTE]

Modern: Storm, pre Seething Song ban. I never found a deck that spoke to me like that one did after that ban.

The rest of these are based on how much I love watching them on coverage.

Legacy: Elves!

Vintage: It's a very recent deck, but I never get tired of watching Mono-Blue Belcher. In terms of something a bit more traditional, I'm a fan of something "fair" like Merfolk.

Honorable Mention: Doomsday, in any format where it's legal.

 

[Joe Molotov]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";155160535]Joking aside, what's everyone's favorite non-Standard deck? Mine's gotta be Vintage Dredge.[/QUOTE]

G/W Devotion after Nykthos and Mastery of the Unseen get banned.

 

[MjFrancis]

Dragon Roar
1R
Instant
As an additional cost to cast Dragon Roar, you may reveal a Dragon card from your hand.

Dragon Roar deals 3 damage to target creature. If you revealed a Dragon card or controlled a Dragon as you cast Dragon Roar, Dragon Roar deals 3 damage to that creature's controller.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

So I'm going back and re-watching the finals of the GP because it was awesome.

The one truly positive thing about this mirror match is that it has probably the least amount of variance of any matchup in Standard right now. Because the game is going to go so long every time, the better deck will almost always win, assuming you're not playing a card-for-card mirror. What we saw at the GP was that Sam Black's version won the entire tournament, and it was clearly the superior version of the deck compared to Brad Nelson's version.

Most matches of Magic are at most 60-70% in one direction. I think that if those poor souls were trapped in the fifth circle of Hell and forced to play the mirror match for eternity, Daniel wins 95% of those matches. For the type of player who likes to build decks, it's got to be fun to play a match where the 60th card is just as important as the 1st.

Dragon Roar
1R
Instant
As an additional cost to cast Dragon Roar, you may reveal a Dragon card from your hand.

Dragon Roar deals 3 damage to target creature. If you revealed a Dragon card or controlled a Dragon as you cast Dragon Roar, Dragon Roar deals 3 damage to that creature's controller.

So the cycle was meant to be all at uncommon, but they learned their lesson from M14 and pushed Opportunity to rare. Fair enough.

 

[Firemind]

yawn

wake me up when they reveal a mini dragon.

 

[Angry Grimace]

FUS RO DAH!

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Also, I'm pretty sure at this point that this set is going to end up mostly being a failure.

 

[ElyrionX]

Also, I'm pretty sure at this point that this set is going to end up mostly being a failure.

Define "failure".

 

[Angry Grimace]

Define "failure".

I would imagine it would be a failure if the core concept of the set wasn't even useful in constructed and the limited format was just bomb bomb bomb.

 

[WanderingWind]

Have we seen any removal besides Ultimate Price?

 

[bigkrev]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";155160535]Hey Bigkrev, I need some deckbuilding help. I feel like I'm just missing one more push:

Joking aside, what's everyone's favorite non-Standard deck? Mine's gotta be Vintage Dredge.[/QUOTE]

I like the audacity of white bordered Cities.

Like divisionbyzorro, my favorite deck was pre-Seething Song ban Storm in modern.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Have we seen any removal besides Ultimate Price?

Roast.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Define "failure".

I mean it in the Mark Rosewater sense, in that he likes to come back some number of years after a set is released and call it a "success" or "failure" based on what is often an arbitrary set of criteria for each set. So sure, it's a set of moving goalposts, but considering that every set speaks to each player differently, it's hard for the distinction to not be arbitrary.

I think that they will look back on Dragons of Tarkir and realize that dragons are something special, and that trying to fill a set with dragons is a design mistake. The limited environment looks set up to be the type of bomb-driven format that people complain about (although there have been exceptions to this in the past; see ROE). The rest of the cards just don't look incredibly interesting from a constructed standpoint.

Of course, there are tons of spoilers yet to go, so...I'm probably just being stupid.

Like divisionbyzorro, my favorite deck was pre-Seething Song ban Storm in modern.

predatorhandshake.gif

(There has got to be a Chrome extension to keep track of all of these stupid gifs. Or I could just, you know, not gif-reply.)

 

[WanderingWind]

I'm of two minds, so far.

First, I love flavor over nearly everything else. I can do that considering I don't play too much limited. So, I loved Avacyn and its plethora of angels. Loved it. I loved the different flavors of angels, the fact that I could finally have some playable angels that weren't 19 mana and I loved the artistic direction. If I felt the same way about dragons as I do angels, then I'd probably be slavering over DTK. I don't so I find it hard to be too excited about Oops, All Dragons.

Second, so far the design of DTK seems to be hampered by the good ol' pigheadedness of R&D. There is nothing that says a dragon can't be non-bomby. They've experimented at times with this, but MaRo is fond of talking about how they wanted to limit that to make dragons special.

That mindset has crept into what we have seen so far of DTK. They want dragons to still be big, bombastic creatures, which fits the flavor of dragons in most mythologies. It makes sense in most scenarios, but I'd argue that if you're going to design a plane that is all dragons, all the time, then they're not all going to be big, massive creatures. They can afford to have small dragons, wurms, welps, broodlings, etc. After all, if the theme is a dragon plane, it goes to reason that not all dragons are special.

But, we haven't seen all the filler cards yet, though I think we've probably seen all the good cards that remain at this point.

 

[kirblar]

So I'm going back and re-watching the finals of the GP because it was awesome.

The one truly positive thing about this mirror match is that it has probably the least amount of variance of any matchup in Standard right now. Because the game is going to go so long every time, the better deck will almost always win, assuming you're not playing a card-for-card mirror. What we saw at the GP was that Sam Black's version won the entire tournament, and it was clearly the superior version of the deck compared to Brad Nelson's version.

I actually suspect this is one of their real issues with ROE limited, unfortunately- it's not just the "bear trap" but the bad/new players just get repeatedly crushed because the games are going long every time, letting the better deck/player win out repeatedly because no one ever gets manascrewed.

Hence why they repeatedly push aggro formats like M12, Zendikar and GTC all the time which end up playing like dogshit, but result in shorter games and more bad players winning due to manascrew.

 

[Kacar]

That command is sweet. Right in my colors.

 

[Firemind]

It's actually pretty funny how Akroma, Angel of Fury, a rare morph creature in a block with more than a dozen keywords, feels more mythic than any dragon spoiled so far, with megamorph as one of the keywords, or any other creature in Khans block for that matter.

Just goes to show that Time Spiral block is one of the GOATs.

 

[Angry Grimace]

It's actually pretty funny how Akroma, Angel of Fury, a morph creature in a block with more than a dozen keywords, feels more mythic than any dragon spoiled so far, or any other creature in Khans block for that matter, with megamorph as one of the keywords.

Just goes to show that Time Spiral block is one of the GOATs.

Mythic rarity continues to be gross shit. Its either expensive as fuck constructed staples that are just pushed as shit on power level for no logical reason (e.g. Brimaz, King of Oreskos) or stupid gross limited bombs that ruin draft, so they stick them at Mythic (basically 9/10th of all mythics).

How about instead of hiding stupid gross limited-ruining bombs at Mythic, you just don't design stupid gross limited-ruining bombs? I mean, that one guy that gets Wingmate Roc or Stormbreath Dragon is probably happy, but its kind of bullshit for everyone else.

 

[kirblar]

Roc and Dragon are both perfectly fair/fine constructed cards. Variance is part of the game.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Grimace's problem has more to do with the state of removal in Limited than the power of the Mythics.

 

[bigkrev]

Grimace's problem has more to do with the state of removal in Limited than the power of the Mythics.

Yeah, there needs to be a something between Doom Blade at common and Rite of the Serpant at Common.

I thought Murder was a step in the right direction, but apparently they thought that was too good as well?

 

[kirblar]

Yeah, there needs to be a something between Doom Blade at common and Rite of the Serpant at Common.

I thought Murder was a step in the right direction, but apparently they thought that was too good as well?

M13 was intentionally an old school card advantage removal-heavy format. Zac Hill did an incredible job with it. Unfortunately it definitely ran counter to all of the way winds are blowing in their other designs.

 

[Firemind]

Removal makes for great limited. Just look at the original Ravnica block and Time Spiral. Didn't they learn anything from Avacyn Restored?

 

[divisionbyzorro]

M13 was intentionally an old school card advantage removal-heavy format. Zac Hill did an incredible job with it. Unfortunately it definitely ran counter to all of the way winds are blowing in their other designs.

I say this with complete sincerity: M13 is one of the greatest limited formats of all time.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Roc and Dragon are both perfectly fair/fine constructed cards. Variance is part of the game.

Yeah, but I'm not talking about Constructed.

"How about instead of hiding stupid gross limited-ruining bombs at Mythic, you just don't design stupid gross limited-ruining bombs? I mean, that one guy that gets Wingmate Roc or Stormbreath Dragon is probably happy, but its kind of bullshit for everyone else."

The constructed quality mythics are usually complete bombs in limited and all of the other mythics are also complete bombs in limited too. Just don't design a billion limited bombs with no real way to get rid of them. If your opponent pulls Stormbreath in a Theros draft, what exactly do you even do to remove it or not just swiftly die to it?

 

[kirblar]

"How about instead of hiding stupid gross limited-ruining bombs at Mythic, you just don't design stupid gross limited-ruining bombs? I mean, that one guy that gets Wingmate Roc or Stormbreath Dragon is probably happy, but its kind of bullshit for everyone else."

Because limited is not the only format that matters. We shouldn't have to deal with underpowered constructed cards because a card is good in limited or EDH. What really becomes a problem is when a card like Drana is only good as a limited bomb and thus has no reason to exist.

You can't get a format with 1:1 parity with removal and threats- games would just never end.

 

[Hero]

Limited is only part of design. I would rather have them design mythic cards that are good/very good in constructed and broken in limited than not have them at all. They will only show up so often in limited for the majority of people it will never greatly impact them. What is the alternative?

 

[bigkrev]

M13 was intentionally an old school card advantage removal-heavy format. Zac Hill did an incredible job with it. Unfortunately it definitely ran counter to all of the way winds are blowing in their other designs.

I haven't enjoyed a Limited as much as it since then. Hell, I played it enough on Magic Online I was able to redeem a set!

I loved how the insane removal played with Exalted

 

[manipulate]

Bombiness of limited is definitely bad. Playing against a turn four Citadel Siege for example is just impossible unless you draw disruption for it. What's the reasoning against cheap efficient common-level removal, anyway?

 

[divisionbyzorro]

This is why I love Cube, by the way. You get to craft a Limited environment specifically to your tastes (although if you get too esoteric, it can be difficult to find players, but that's a purely personal problem at that point).

 

[kirblar]

Bombiness of limited is definitely bad. Playing against a turn four Citadel Siege for example is just impossible unless you draw disruption for it. What's the reasoning against cheap efficient common-level removal, anyway?

It ends up being the best thing available at common by an absolutely gigantic margin.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Limited is only part of design. I would rather have them design mythic cards that are good/very good in constructed and broken in limited than not have them at all. They will only show up so often in limited for the majority of people it will never greatly impact them. What is the alternative?

I was trying to explain to a guy at my LGS why Fate Reforged has been mostly sucky - because of shit like Sieges, but he was insistent its the best format ever. There are people who apparently just like gross bombs, even ones that aren't actually good in constructed but still gross bombs in limited, e.g. Citadel Siege.

I wouldn't have an argument if they actually just used Mythics to keep the constructed level stuff from ruining limited, but half of a sets mythic or more are only even good in Limited as insane bombs. This is because there isn't actually a design space for 15 "Mythics" so they make like half of them unbeatable bombs and just argue you'll never see them. There's a lot of problems with that kind of design.

 

[manipulate]

It ends up being the best thing available at common by an absolutely gigantic margin.

Even at four (conditional) to five (unconditional) mana?

 

[bigkrev]

Even at four (conditional) to five (unconditional) mana?

I wouldn't call 4 mana conditional or 5 mana unconditional "cheap"

 

[Angry Grimace]

At least her official flavor text is less torture-y.

 

[kirblar]

Even at four (conditional) to five (unconditional) mana?

That's not what I'd call efficient though. 2-3 mana is in that range.

Citadel Siege is a very real constructed card, btw.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Yeah, it's cards like Doom Blade/Pacifism that are problems in Limited. Two mana can undo six mana worth of work at card parity. If I can remove your thing and play my own thing, that's a huge blowout.

Once you start getting to 3 mana, it starts to be less of a disparity.

 

["God's Beard!"]

I like the audacity of white bordered Cities.

I feel like when you're playing a deck like bogles, every card choice has to distract and annoy your opponent as much as possible. White and black borders side by side, playsets with multiple languages between them, heavily bent cards from single-sleeved constant riffle shuffles, foil and non foil cards.

Even at four (conditional) to five (unconditional) mana?

4-mana conditional probably doesn't count as efficient removal.

 

[manipulate]

I wouldn't call 4 mana conditional or 5 mana unconditional "cheap"

Well Rite of the Serpent is six. Can shift a step down to 3/4, but unless the creatures are also really efficient that seems potentially problematic?

Edit: I guess everyone would want Dark Banishing back then? Trying to think how that would play in current Limited.

 

[Angry Grimace]

uh...okay, I guess that's a 2 mana firebreathing mythic with a hardcore winmore ability.


Here's some hate cards:

 

[Angry Grimace]

Its not even attacking. It just does nothing unless it has an ETB.

Edit: Derp, you put it on an opposing guy!

 

[Joe Molotov]

Its not even attacking. It just does nothing unless it has an ETB.

I assume you're supposed to enchant your opponent's creatures and then block it with the token.

 

[manipulate]

Four colour good stuff so you can put that on rhino to be tier 1 deck

Edit: I kinda like the red mythic

 

[divisionbyzorro]

We found the "piss and moan because I opened two of this stupid rare in my Sealed pool" card for the set.