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Magic: The Gathering |OT3| Enchantment Under the Siege
- Thread starter The Technomancer
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The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
The Jeskai look fine. The Abzan are the ones I'm not sure about, I guess they're going for a bit of an Indian influence with them?
Hey, I wrote a thing! (mostly about stuff we've discussed that hasn't moved into the larger sphere.) http://blog.mtgprice.com/2014/08/14/guest-article-future-future-sight/
They're definitely going "Continental Asian Multicultural" here, which is a good idea given the setup.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Yeah, that's why I'm so excited. The Jeskai stuff looks like it has a strong identity, and it also looks really cool so far. Currently Abzan and Mardu feel a bit generic, but we've seen like three pieces of art each
"God's Beard!"
Member
SULTAI SULTAI SULTAI
Only thing i'll disagree with is Fetchlands and Modern Masters. I think they learned their lessons, and Modern Masters 2 will not be a limited product- they will print as much as people are willing to buy. I bet they even show up at mass market like Target and Walmart. I don't think they want to print fetchlands into standard- they do add a lot of shuffling to matches, and they are very powerful. Just reprinting the 5 Modern ones in Modern Masters at rare will help the entry level (when Modern Masters was around, it did drop the price of several rares before they spiked again when the set vanished)
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Imagine that Goblin riding on a Fleecemane Lion. Maybe its Maybelline?
"God's Beard!"
Member
All 10 at Uncommon let's go.
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";125392109]All 10 at Uncommon let's go.[/QUOTE]
That is how you get another Chronicles situations- when money rares like Carrion Ants and Killer Bees (STOP LAUGHING, THIS WAS ACTUALLY A BIG DEAL THEN) get reprinted at uncommon, it pisses people off, and leads to stuff like the reserved list.
That is how you get another Chronicles situations- when money rares like Carrion Ants and Killer Bees (STOP LAUGHING, THIS WAS ACTUALLY A BIG DEAL THEN) get reprinted at uncommon, it pisses people off, and leads to stuff like the reserved list.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";125392109]All 10 at Uncommon let's go.[/QUOTE]
Run a deck with nothing but Fetchlands and then fail to find a Swamp.
Run a deck with nothing but Fetchlands and then fail to find a Swamp.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Fuck the collectors.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
As a person who bought a lot of Chronicles, it was shit. Oh, woo hoo a white-bordered unplayable Nicol Bolas, hurr durr.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Well, yeah that's what I thought at the time. But if I could still have the cards, I think I would have purchased some Alliances packs.
Chronicles was worth it for City of Brass and Erhnam Djinn at the time. That was about it.
I think I blew most of my money on Chronicles and Homelands as a kid since it had so many cool legends, probably traded a lot of good stuff for a Baron Sengir and the Elder Dragons.
I think the most important thing is that you need to focus on whether you want an aggressive deck or a more controlish one. Try looking at the curve of your deck since running super aggresive creatures like Rakdos Cackler and Chainwalker really don't work too well with slower cards like Garruk and Scuttle Doom Engine.
Here's an example of an aggressive build: http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/116799
In the future, try to post your deck list with some sort of order(like Creatures, spells, lands), because otherwise it's very hard to eyeball what is going on.
As mentioned, you lack some focus, and you also lack land. I only counted 19- at the point you are at in the game, you need to have a good reason to run less than 24 lands, which your deck does not have.
My older brother was very proud of his full set of the Elder Dragons from Chronicles back in the day. Apparently they got misplaced at some point over the years. I know I could just go and buy the Chronicles ones for like a buck, but I'd love to find the ones from childhood. For both the nostalgia and that I'm convinced they are "lost" in the same binder that has all the valuable cards. I'm convinced we had some dual lands at some point but haven't been able to turn anything up despite rooting through most of the closets and the basement at my parent's house over the years since I started playing again.
I did find a Chronicles Blood Moon last time I was there, so that was at least nice to drop right into my Affinity sideboard. I'd overlooked it in previous attempts because it was on a page in a binder with mostly Active Volcanos and Cuombajj Witches. I have no idea why.
Thanks, I edited the order accordingly. I think I'm going to put 3 heroes downfall in and take out scuttling doom engine for master of the feast. I'm looking for an aggressive deck. suggestions welcomed.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Here's a good example of a pretty reasonable red/black deck:
Creatures(27):
4x Rakdos Cackler
4x Gnarled Scarhide
4x Spike Jester
4x Rakdos Shredfreak
4x Mogis' Marauder
3x Xathrid Necromancer
4x Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch
Spells(10):
3x Dreadbore
3x Boon of Erebos
4x Lightning Strike
Lands(23):
4x Blood Crypt
4x Mana Confluence
3x Mutavault
5 Swamps
5 Mountains
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Sideboard(15):
4x Duress
3x Mizzium Mortars
1x Erebos, God of the Dead
2x Sire of Insanity
3x Ultimate Price
2x Phyrexian Revoker
Creatures(27):
4x Rakdos Cackler
4x Gnarled Scarhide
4x Spike Jester
4x Rakdos Shredfreak
4x Mogis' Marauder
3x Xathrid Necromancer
4x Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch
Spells(10):
3x Dreadbore
3x Boon of Erebos
4x Lightning Strike
Lands(23):
4x Blood Crypt
4x Mana Confluence
3x Mutavault
5 Swamps
5 Mountains
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Sideboard(15):
4x Duress
3x Mizzium Mortars
1x Erebos, God of the Dead
2x Sire of Insanity
3x Ultimate Price
2x Phyrexian Revoker
It was a good read, kirblar.
Do most people around here who play the competitive formats also play EDH?
I thought about it and it's probably the best way for me to play with cards like Jace Mind Sculptor where I wouldn't have a chance to otherwise. I was thinking of just building UW Angels and Wizards dual -tribal deck with a control shell. It's definitely janky but that's the point of the format right?
divisionbyzorro
Member
I play two formats: Limited and EDH. I had to re-evaluate my relationship with Magic at the beginning of the year, and had to come to grips with the fact that competitive constructed was just not something I could reasonably do. So when I want to be competitive and work on my game, I play Limited (either Cube or whatever the current draft format is). When I want to unwind and do some casual spellslinging, I play EDH.
I thought I would hate EDH, but my gaming crew here has found just the right balance; no serious bitching over power level, while managing to avoid a constant arms race. It's turned out to be a lot of fun.
"God's Beard!"
Member
I play EDH for fun, but competitive EDH decks are just about the least fun thing ever.
I'm typically a limited-only guy. I'm a Tournament Organizer, so I'll do constructed formats when we run them just to support the event, but I enjoy draft, cube and sealed league way more than constructed formats.
I'm not a fan of EDH at all though. I have so many different board games and card games that play so much better than magic in multiplayer; if I'm going to play something like that, I'd rather play a game that's actually designed around it rather than a game where it's shoehorned in.
I'm not a fan of EDH at all though. I have so many different board games and card games that play so much better than magic in multiplayer; if I'm going to play something like that, I'd rather play a game that's actually designed around it rather than a game where it's shoehorned in.
Yeah I just thought it'd be fun to create an EDH deck and just stuff it full of my favourite cards without caring about synergies. Angels and wizards are my favourite creatures so that's how the dual tribal theme came about. And then I'm going to have every single version of Jace PW in there lol. And stuff like Jitte which are banned in Modern and I have fond memories of abusing in DoTP.
SigmasonicX
Member
Interesting Mothership article about the way they plan on changing removal. Basically, in the past, they tried to encourage creatures being played instead of all-"removal and card draw" decks with creatures with powerful enter the battlefield effects (the Titans), and then with small hexproof creatures (Geist of Saint Traft), but decided they weren't satisfied with either. By generally making both spot and wrath removal weaker, they feel that they can get away with creating generally weaker creatures, and hopefully promote gameplay styles that aren't just super-aggro vs. control where everything is decided on turn 4. In particular, they point at the use of Bile Blight and Ultimate Price in current black decks, where the use of both is switched depending on what the environment is like, as a good thing, and the time period when M10 was released where the cheapest wrath was Hallowed Burial at 5 mana as being a nice change. This means that we aren't going to have any 4 mana unconditional wrath spells for at least this Standard, and unconditional creature destruction will be 3 mana at the very least. They also don't intend to print many hexproof creatures at less than 3 mana.
Also, another survey!
Also, another survey!
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I'm not really sure why they would approve an article that says, "we're making removal weak so we can make the creatures weak." Unless Yawgmoth's Will is coming back, that doesn't sound like a super fun environment.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
It makes games have more evolution and back and forth, is the idea I think. Rather than a question of who can "go off first" (or who can stall the game out longest). The stronger the individual cards are, the more impact they have on the game and they feel that currently there's too much single card impact, is what I'm getting?
"God's Beard!"
Member
Basically announcing to legacy and modern players that they never need to buy packs again.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Yeah, but who really likes having weaker creature and removal other than players who aren't aware that Modern, Legacy and Vintage exist? I'm not saying Standard should be combo paradise, but weaker overall cards aren't really "fun" in my mind.
:loooooooooooool
The power creep of creatures got out of hand; it's not that the removal had gotten too good. It's the primary reason you see midrange everywhere.
I for one wouldn't mind if creatures and therefore removal got downgraded, but it was their own fault it spiraled out of control. Titans were broken.
The creatures being super-good like Titans and GoST was super-obnoxious.
Also, 4cc Wraths being an issue has been getting more and more obvious as cheap creatures have been getting more and more stupid. (The impact when you're on the draw being so much more backbreaking, for example.)
Also, 4cc Wraths being an issue has been getting more and more obvious as cheap creatures have been getting more and more stupid. (The impact when you're on the draw being so much more backbreaking, for example.)
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Well thats kind of the problem with eternal formats, no? They force you into power creep because if you don't make new cards that are better than the old cards then people just play with the older, better cards. I think focusing on Standard is the right call, as cool as Modern is
SigmasonicX
Member
They seem to view it the other way around: removal was too good, so they started making more creatures that could have a big benefit even if they were killed or couldn't be killed by spot removal. They do feel that the power creep of creatures got out of control, so they are dialing it down, and in order to encourage the new weaker creatures to see play, they are weakening the removal available.
EDIT: More Khans art.
Some guy
Almost surely an artifact that allows you to look at face-down creatures
I don't think "weaker" is necessarily what they're going for; just "more conditional."
Swords to Plowshares, for example, deals with everything. If you're running white and it's in the format, there's little reason not to run it, which makes deckbuilding less interesting and makes the format become "solved" a lot more quickly. Now imagine if Swords was, instead "exile target creature with power 3 or less" and there was another card that was the same, but only hit creatures with power 4 or greater. Depending on the matchup, you're going to want one over the other, but in order to figure out which, you need to know the meta. If everyone is running big creatures, lots of people will mainboard the second one, but then, in turn, people who can read the meta will start running smaller creatures to make it a dead card.
He also says that cards like lightning bolt and path to exile can still show up in standard, just not frequently:
The main takeaway is that having too many cards that are good in any deck makes deckbuilding and the meta game stagnant. By making things more conditional all-around, it allows the format to evolve over time.
I miss the Titans. I miss Wurmcoil. I miss Geist. I miss Karn.
I miss rewarding people for building up to something. The Primeval Titan deck that used Temporal Mastery and Glimmerpost was awesome. I miss Naya Pod and Bant Pod standard. I even miss old standard Delver to a degree.
It was inevitable that they were going to scale things back. Simply scaling spells up wouldn't do the trick. I think it might be a poor time to do so, since the player base is big, why would you want to create potentially less exciting matches, but they probably know something I don't. Maybe this NWO of Standard will create awesome stuff.
I miss rewarding people for building up to something. The Primeval Titan deck that used Temporal Mastery and Glimmerpost was awesome. I miss Naya Pod and Bant Pod standard. I even miss old standard Delver to a degree.
It was inevitable that they were going to scale things back. Simply scaling spells up wouldn't do the trick. I think it might be a poor time to do so, since the player base is big, why would you want to create potentially less exciting matches, but they probably know something I don't. Maybe this NWO of Standard will create awesome stuff.
I, on the other hand, felt like (some of) the Titans and Wurmcoil had voided all other 6+CMC creatures while they were in Standard. Creating a metagame with few must-run cards means more experimentation and actual metagaming can go on, all while still rewarding the more skilled players (as in, the ones who manage to read and adapt to the metagame).
It's kind of like limited, where some weaker cards get to shine only because you can't get your hands on playsets of the better uncommons and rares. If the formats had less auto-includes, then it'd mean that you'd have to choose among several cards with similar uses but slight pros and cons that all depend on which other cards you and your opponent are running. Still, I guess that kind of balance is hard to reach, and overdoing it could lead to more boring games, as creatures and removal become unexciting to both old and new players alike.
I will never argue that the titans weren't overpowered. They were. But I don't think the presence of a powerful cycle would really be all that restrictive on the game.
Is there really a need for a huge number of viable 6 CMC creatures in standard at a time? Perhaps they should concentrate on expanding the versatility and usefulness of the lower creature CMC slots and let people build archetypes that may eventually build into a few standout finishers. Elspeth Sun's Champion is basically a titan in current standard. Why can't there be a handful of haymaker cards in each color that do what a card priced at a higher CMC is designed to do -- swing the tide in your favor?
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Iterating on my Modern Faeries deck, but I still can't figure out what I want in the sideboard. There's a few cards in the main that I don't love either, mostly Pharika's Cure (double black is bad, but I can't think of other options for lifegain) and Sword of Light and Shadow (which is almost always worse than Feast and Famine). Any ideas?
Deck: U/B Faeries
//Lands
1 Cavern of Souls
2 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Darkslick Shores
3 Island
4 Mutavault
4 River of Tears
4 Secluded Glen
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
//Spells
4 Bitterblossom
3 Cryptic Command
2 Dismember
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Mana Leak
2 Pharika's Cure
2 Remand
2 Spell Snare
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
2 Thoughtseize
//Creatures
3 Mistbind Clique
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendilion Clique
//Sideboard
3 Damnation
2 Thoughtseize
2 Leyline of the Void
1 Hurkyl's Recall
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Not buying more Hurkyl's Recall. The card is $60 on MODO. It's not as good, but running Damnation as a substitute seems to work pretty well.
In my opinion, that kind of thing is wrong because it tends to overcentralize the metagame: Say, if you were running a deck that aimed to do its thing during the midgame, then you basically had to own a few titans in your colors (or wurms), or you wouldn't stand a chance against decks which did pack those cards, making them expensive as well, which would act as a deterrent for newer players who can't afford higher-end cards.
Having a bunch of cards that are good but not one-size-fits-all would help keep individual card prices in check, and also allow deckbuilders more chances to build their decks differently, placing further emphasis in the skill required to decide on one of the many available cards that gives you more of an edge in the current metagame you plan to take on with that deck.
I'm not good at analyzing individual MtG cards, but I'd say that the stronger cards are the ones that give you as many choices for as few risks as possible. Say, like how Cryptic Command gets to do an awful lot of stuff for 1UUU, or how Snapcaster lets you recast any card in your graveyard with an attached 2/1 body on top of that. Also, toning down the value you get for your mana over time means that they can experiment a bit more with spell effects, like how Counterspell was too strong at UU and constricted the design of "worse" variants to 1U or less, while Cancel at 1UU gave designers more leeway to work with (2U, UU, 1U and U), or how Shock rather than Lightning Bolt allowed them to fine-tune how much damage and/or added effects you'd be getting on top of your baseline 2 damage for R at instant speed.
As a relatively new player (just started playing in Theros) it's quite obvious that the power level of the creatures is somewhat insane at the moment and even THOSE creatures aren't getting played. What's the point of trying to play a 5 cmc creature with no protection ? Planeswalkers are harder to hit and don't die to doomblade/ultimate price and at least make the person have an answer specifically for a planeswalker.
Look at a card like Polukranos; a 5/5 on turn 4; a card that should be a powerhouse, but with all the cheap removal around how many winning decks have you seen play him ? Off the top of my head I can only think of when R/G Monsters, or Jund monsters was a thing. It never made sense to me from a perspective of; I can kill your guy outright for 2 or 3 mana that it cost you 5 or 6 mana to put on the board.
I think this is the way they are going; if you look at the white removal spells; Pillar of Light, Devouring Light, Banishing Light, Reprisal.
One exile's for toughness greater than 4, one kills power greater than 4, one exiles on attacking, and one can be removed and you get your creature back. All of them have drawbacks to playing them and makes it so you have to choose which card to take depending on the matchup.
Look at a card like Polukranos; a 5/5 on turn 4; a card that should be a powerhouse, but with all the cheap removal around how many winning decks have you seen play him ? Off the top of my head I can only think of when R/G Monsters, or Jund monsters was a thing. It never made sense to me from a perspective of; I can kill your guy outright for 2 or 3 mana that it cost you 5 or 6 mana to put on the board.
I think this is the way they are going; if you look at the white removal spells; Pillar of Light, Devouring Light, Banishing Light, Reprisal.
One exile's for toughness greater than 4, one kills power greater than 4, one exiles on attacking, and one can be removed and you get your creature back. All of them have drawbacks to playing them and makes it so you have to choose which card to take depending on the matchup.
One thing I hope they revise is white's removal suite. Over the years white has been getting great removal cards which is baffling to me. Black/red should have the strongest/most efficient creature removal, white and blue situational creature removal and green the worst of the bunch.
It's insane how much better white removal is than black in Vintage Masters.
It's insane how much better white removal is than black in Vintage Masters.
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