• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Magic: the Gathering |OT4| Izzet Me; Izzet You? A Love Story

Status
Not open for further replies.

kirblar

Member
This has to the weirdest of your hate boners to date. Dissolve? It's barely playable, much less the enabler of unfun gameplay.
I don't really think you need to be giving consistency to decks that want to play a draw-go style pattern.

Scorn ended up stupid good and ended up showing how busted Counterspell actually is, Mana Leak's OP as hell, and I don't like card filtering on a counterspell at 3cc. The third one isn't necessarily a shared opinion, but seeing it played in games where it's 1 for 1ing big spells it feels off.

I love Mystic Snake, Undermine and Absorb, if that makes you feel better!
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
I don't really think you need to be giving consistency to decks that want to play a draw-go style pattern.

Well, considering it's not exactly taking over standard or modern, it's pretty quantifiable that the effect isn't as good as you seem to think. It's an okay effect. Nothing more.

EDIT: Ah. You just hate playable counters and like unplayable ones. I thought at a certain point in your MtG life span you were supposed to get over that particular hurdle.
 

kirblar

Member
Well, considering it's not exactly taking over standard or modern, it's pretty quantifiable that the effect isn't as good as you seem to think. It's an okay effect. Nothing more.

EDIT: Ah. You just hate playable counters and like unplayable ones. I thought at a certain point in your MtG life span you were supposed to get over that particular hurdle.
Have you ever played with Absorb?
 

G.ZZZ

Member
Why is scry 1 worth 3 and half a mana on a red card jesus. It's like half as good as cantripping which is valued 2 on blue cards zzz
 

kirblar

Member
Considering it's not playable in modern, no. But I did see Render Silent at the same CMC fail spectacularly. The 3 life gain would be irrelevant in today's card pool.
Card is A+ tier and apparently Dev feels its "too strong for standard." (I disagree.)

By the way, the most fun I had playing a deck in the last few standard cycles is when I got to go Dr. No in a deck with Rewinds, Snapcasters, Resto Angels, Augurs, and would use Devil's Play as a finisher. Was amazing until people started playing Cavern. I like playing Esper Dragons/Mono-U Dragons. My preferences aren't my design preferences in all cases. (My Inn-era deck would be terrible for the game as the best deck in a format.)
 
Considering it's not playable in modern, no. But I did see Render Silent at the same CMC fail spectacularly. The 3 life gain would be irrelevant in today's card pool.

No, it'd be huge for mainboard games as control vs aggro, and we've already seen the power of Radiant Fountain this season. That said, Dissolve is still better.
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
I can't think of a single card I would swap Absorb out in any modern UB/UW or Esper Control deck. It's worse than any of the counters being played in modern. It may have been good for its day, but I don't see it cutting the mustard with the card pool in 2015.
 
The problem is that you don't really want counterspells to also take care of the other problems that draw-go decks naturally have. In the case of Absorb you get some built-in protection against aggressive decks. In the case of Dissolve you get some digging power to find your next answer.

You want counterspells to be 1-for-1s. That's not to say that they can't be more than that on occasion, but you have to watch it.
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
The problem is that you don't really want counterspells to also take care of the other problems that draw-go decks naturally have. In the case of Absorb you get some built-in protection against aggressive decks. In the case of Dissolve you get some digging power to find your next answer.

You want counterspells to be 1-for-1s. That's not to say that they can't be more than that on occasion, but you have to watch it.

Yeah, that all makes sense. But we also have to look at it outside of the thought exercise and see how the card actually performs. I think that's where we get tripped up a lot. In a vacuum some cards seem like they could be problems. But when you look at the hard data and see that something like Dissolve just isn't a great card, that counts for way more in my view.

I don't think anybody is really saying that counters shouldn't be tightly controlled, but I also have never heard of Dissolve as being a dangerous or unfun card until a few minutes ago. It's played in UB sometimes as a 4 of, more often as a 2 of and doesn't even rate a spot in most standard Esper decks. It's also totally unplayed in any serious quantity in modern.

I guess in a vacuum, I can see how scry on a counter can be seen as unfun, but the reality of the card just doesn't bear that out.
 

Firemind

Member
Serum Visions in Standard! Sweet! Hoping for some excellent artwork!

I would cut Simian Spirit Guide, Swan Song, one of the Diamonds, Lotus Petal, Fireminds Foresight, Dizzy Spell, Reforge the Soul at a glance.
I like the free mana because I can go off with Conflagrate in the event I'm completely tapped out. (Draw entire deck, use one mana to cast Conflagrate and two mana and discard x cards to deal x damage.) The free mana also doesn't hurt when I'm cycling through my deck with Wheels. Reforge the Soul combos with Mystical and Personal Tutor and is otherwise Wheel 2.0. It's better than Wheel of Fate or Winds of Change I reckon. Firemind's Foresight is probably too cute, yeah, and I can probably cut Swan's Song, Dizzy Spell and Drift of Phantasms.

And you could replace several counters with a Forbid.

And why aren't you playing Epic Experiment? That card would be bananas in your deck.

Edit: and you're running red and a ton of ramp, so I would, personally, play Insurrection. It's one of the finest multiplayer laxatives around. If you need it in your group.
I like the free counters to protect the combo, but I can cut a few counters to make the combo more easy to disrupt for other players, yeah. I have a lot of ramp, but in my experience there's never enough mana available unless you're green, because everyone keeps blowing everything up. It's a real shame Epic Experiment is Genesis Wave for spells; I'd have liked if it said noncreature, nonland spells. Insurrection is sweet and already in my mono red deck.There's otherwise no way to interact with creatures except for Cyclonic Rift. Hope I don't draw too much ire. :lol
 

Firemind

Member
If I want to get more cards and increase my knowledge on the cards that exist, should I play drafts buy boosters or something else?
Play drafts and join prereleases.

Unrelated, but I don't know how I should feel about Prowess being the U/R keyword ability. Good for limited, but constructed, eh. Maybe they'll print Delver 2.0 with Prowess.

Kung Fu Master U
Prowess
Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, Kung Fu Master gains flying until end of turn.
1/1
 
T

Transhuman

Unconfirmed Member
Where do you get 3.5? Bolt of Keranos is the exact same card for 1RR. Volcanic Hammer is it minus scry for 1R.

It gets 3 for being an expensive lightning bolt, and the 1/2 is because it's sorcery speed.
 

OnPoint

Member
I like Scry a lot and keywording War Drums is nifty so this is cool by me. A little sad we didn't see replacements for Regen. and Prot. but what can you do.
 
I love menace already. I was able to replace some landwalk and intimidate in my set with it. I wonder if they'll make it tertiary in blue? I can imagine some giant leviathan with menace.
 

OnPoint

Member
I love menace already. I was able to replace some landwalk and intimidate in my set with it. I wonder if they'll make it tertiary in blue? I can imagine some giant leviathan with menace.

I'd say it's more of a 1. Red - 2. Black - 3. Green if i had to guess.

Edit: I see the layout of it in article now guys. I get it.
 

OnPoint

Member
I imagine they'll treat it like they treat flying in green, or haste in white. Extremely rare, but justifiable on flavor grounds.

Yeah, makes sense.

Honestly I hope it sees a decent amount of play in black. I think the idea of something being so horrifying it can't be faced alone is great flavor for a black creature. Bring back the horrors!
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
MaRo say in his article Menace is primary black and secondary red, which strikes me as odd as Goblin War Drums is a red card. Red gets shafted again!

Between Haste, First Strike and now Prowess at the low end of the curve and Flying higher up red isn't exactly lacking for creature keywords. I can see that black needs it more
 

OnPoint

Member
MaRo say in his article Menace is primary black and secondary red, which strikes me as odd as Goblin War Drums is a red card. Red gets shafted again!

I literally did the whole "head down into hand, rub eyes" disbelief thing when I read that just now. How did I miss that before? Why does Red always get screwed.

What's primary for Scry?
 

Yeef

Member
I'd say it's more of a 1. Red - 2. Black - 3. Green if i had to guess.
In the article it already says that it's replacing intimidate and therefore will be primary black, secondary red.

There's a total of 3 non-red, non-black intimidate cards; two are green and one is white. Chances are green will be a distant third when it comes to menace.
 
I don't mind red getting menace secondary if it's still getting effects that stop a creature from blocking in general. Red is also getting a piece of the prowess and scry pie, so I think it made out pretty good.
 

Firemind

Member
The problem with red is that it doesn't have a strong identity apart from being the most aggressive YOLO colour. Haste is primarily red, but what else? Land destruction and Rituals are dead.
 
Menace is fine centered in black, since it needs it at common more now that intimidate is gone. Red already has a bunch of creature keywords at common, including the newly evergreen prowess.
 
Menace is fine centered in black, since it needs it at common more now that intimidate is gone. Red already has a bunch of creature keywords at common, including the newly evergreen prowess.

Black desperately needed something they could put on a 1/1 for B that was simple. I await the 1/1 for B menace guy.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
You know what I'm surprised we've never seen?

"The first time this creature would die during a turn, regenerate it instead"

...probably because its actually not very fun to play against...same reason we're never seeing Absorb
 

Crocodile

Member
Scry evergreened? Ehhhhhhh. Not a fan of that. I like seeing them come up with various filtering mechanics like Cycling

They pretty much said in the article "if it ain't broke, don't try yo fix it". Scry is the most flexible given the types of cards you can put it on (they often talk about avoid feel-bad scenarios with cycling so they often put it on marginal cards you won't feel bad about cycling away). My only concern is that they don't try to overcost all the scry cards (see many of the cards in Theros) and we get some with actually competitive mana costs.

I literally did the whole "head down into hand, rub eyes" disbelief thing when I read that just now. How did I miss that before? Why does Red always get screwed.

What's primary for Scry?

Prowess: Blue > Red > White

As for Black vs. Red in creature mechanics

Regenerate, Deathtouch, Lifelink, Haste, Flying, Trample, Menace
vs
First Strike, Double Strike, Prowess, Haste, Flying, Trample, Menace

Seems about equal to me unless I'm forgetting anything
 
Man i still really want to play that puresteel deck in modern.

seems like a good idea to spend money on mox's then fetches that will get reprinted in the fall...
 
As for Black vs. Red in creature mechanics

Regenerate, Deathtouch, Lifelink, Haste, Flying, Trample, Menace
vs
First Strike, Double Strike, Prowess, Haste, Flying, Trample, Menace

Seems about equal to me unless I'm forgetting anything

I don't think trample really counts for black, in that it doesn't appear at common and every color is able to use trample at higher rarities.
 
The problem with red is that it doesn't have a strong identity apart from being the most aggressive YOLO colour. Haste is primarily red, but what else? Land destruction and Rituals are dead.
Agreed. I wouldn't mind if they played up Red artifice more, as a way of showing reds creative side. Daretti was a step in the right direction, imo.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom