Yeah, you get to search their library if you have delirium.
Also, its DELIRIUM goddamnit, not DELERIUM >_<
-
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 - Shadows over Innistrad |OT| Blue's Clues
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
- Start date
- Status
Yeah, you get to search their library if you have delirium.
Also, its DELIRIUM goddamnit, not DELERIUM >_<
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I'm a little surprised that most of the Madness stuff we've seen are dudes and not spells.
You can sacrifice a creature in response to a kill spell, you can sacrifice a chump blocker, you can sacrifice a creature with a "when it dies" trigger, you can sacrifice a clue (you can't draw from that same sacrifice, no, they are different abilities) or you can sacrifice a land if you are flooded or whatever you don't need at the moment.
Creatures are way safer than spells
Maybe I'm way off but isn't it because the spells are going to have the discard to enable the madness. When you have madness on a spell you need to play 2 spells to use it kind of?
Edit. I guess there are def some discard built into some dudes like ravenous bloodseeker
Thank you for the refresher.you also have 2 play 2 mana for his transform but that actually seems like one of the easier ones to meet so far as long as you have a deck willing to sac something.
What card are you talking about?
Pick your brain. Soi. I only talk about limited tho.
Hmm. I had brain a jar rated very low or unplayable but that scry effect could be useful in a blue deck that tends to leave some mana up anyways
Vessel of Volatility is WotC's attempt to make a Dark Ritual that's always fair.
They succeeded!
The losing 4 life drawback doesn't eff you in standard?
It's only playable if you can get Delirium going, which might require a bit of work (e.g. Evolving Wilds). Maybe too much work for the card.
I'm sure someone out there is going to look at the statistics to see if it's feasible though.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Rewatching rounds I missed yesterday and in 3 games this one guy didn't draw a single CoCo, despite his deck being tailored to that card
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Or how the counter placed on Brain in the Jar can't be removed before the ability resolves.
Edot: NM
Nice. I would've asked if you wanted to trade your Catacombs for my Flooded Strand lol. I'd say do what I did and trade them for some modern or legacy staples. If it's just modern stuff you're getting, trade up if possible. I just took the Bayou and a few standard cards at equal value because I think Bayou's value will go up at the same rate as expedition lands.
That's wrong. Like miracle, Madness represents 2 separate abilities. The first is "if you would discard this, exile it instead." The second is "When you discard this into exile, you may cast it for it's madness cost. If you don't put it into your graveyard."
Because the second part is a triggered ability, it uses the stack and can be responded to. It also means that if you have 4 cards in your yard and you pitch a madness card to Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, he won't flip since the card will be in exile at the time that his ability finishes resolving.
New card
https://mobile.twitter.com/hareruya_Media/status/711568518529966080
Burn From Within XR
Sorcery
Burn From Within Deals X Damage To Target Creature Or Player. If A Creature Is Dealt Damage This Way, It Loses Indestructible Until End Of Turn. If That Creature Would Die This Turn, Exile It Instead.
Seems like a bit of a (limited) bomb. The exile is nice in this set, but the flexibility of this card is the nuts. Obv the indestructible is probably just flavor text in limited unless someone has that green white angel.
https://mobile.twitter.com/hareruya_Media/status/711568518529966080
Burn From Within XR
Sorcery
Burn From Within Deals X Damage To Target Creature Or Player. If A Creature Is Dealt Damage This Way, It Loses Indestructible Until End Of Turn. If That Creature Would Die This Turn, Exile It Instead.
Seems like a bit of a (limited) bomb. The exile is nice in this set, but the flexibility of this card is the nuts. Obv the indestructible is probably just flavor text in limited unless someone has that green white angel.
Giant Panda
Member
I actually like that card a lot. Burn spells have felt pretty inadequate lately with all the indestructibility and death triggers running around.
GregLombardi
Member
I don't think there has been a card that removes indestructible before, has there?
charlequin
Banned
Remembrance
Member
It's the new Disintegrate. It would be silly if this became the new bury clause.
"All creatures lose indestructible until end of turn. Destroy all creatures."
"All creatures lose indestructible until end of turn. Destroy all creatures."
Disintegrate still looks better though. Who is that in the art? He has amazingly bad fashion sense.
GregLombardi
Member
Bonds of Mortality just came out in OGW.
Good point, completely forgot.
That said, this card seems slightly better, at least at this moment ;0)
charlequin
Banned
Bury doesn't circumvent indestructible, actually, which seems like one reason it's good they got rid of it.
Bury doesn't circumvent indestructible, actually, which seems like one reason it's good they got rid of it.
Not actually true, bury in some case was errataed to sacrifice and in some others to "can't be regenerated". They could simplify things and errata all old bury cards into "put in the graveyard from play" and it would circumvent indestructible and work with all old errataed cards instead of having two different errata depending on whether you control or not the buried creature.
SigmasonicX
Member
There's also the fact that they don't use "can't be regenerated" nor "loses indestructible" enough to justify making it a keyword as opposed to writing it out. Plus, Neo Blaze exiles and doesn't stop regeneration, so it wouldn't use "bury" even with your definition.
Image, by the way.
I never said this had to be keyworded with bury tho'? I just said that if they really want to do something that prevent regeneration and and indestructibility they could just bring back bury and keyword it appropriately.
SigmasonicX
Member
But they don't want to do that, which is the first point I made.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I guess they just like fireball variants at rare now. All of the most recent ones are.
divisionbyzorro
Member
They're absurdly powerful in limited.
And we did just have Rolling Thunder at uncommon.
All this talk about regeneration made me think that the keyword as a whole has been underutilized and underpowered as of late (AFAIK), which is really weird since they supposedly got rid of all the "can't be regenerated" riders on creature destruction spells to make them more relevant.
The ability seems particularily powerful when it's cheaply costed on finisher-type creatures, but on smaller ones that aren't too agressively costed for their stats it doesn't appear to be all that crazy, mostly because of the way regeneration ties your mana up matters a lot more during the early game when you don't have a whole lot of lands at your disposal and leaving enough mana to regen a creature once (or twice) would mean gimping your spell curve on purpose.
The ability seems particularily powerful when it's cheaply costed on finisher-type creatures, but on smaller ones that aren't too agressively costed for their stats it doesn't appear to be all that crazy, mostly because of the way regeneration ties your mana up matters a lot more during the early game when you don't have a whole lot of lands at your disposal and leaving enough mana to regen a creature once (or twice) would mean gimping your spell curve on purpose.
New card
http://m.imgur.com/3Wm1M74
Can only have one copy of these legendary cards per deck but does magic have a similar card. I would assume so
I should mention it can only be played with the priest class
for hearthstone
Can only have one copy of these legendary cards per deck but does magic have a similar card. I would assume so
I should mention it can only be played with the priest class
SigmasonicX
Member
I would imagine making a "joke" spoiler for Hearthstone during spoiler season is just as frowned upon as posting a fake card and not properly labeling it. Anyway, no, I don't believe Magic has a card that makes a 1/1 copy of all of your creatures.
charlequin
Banned
Yes, because the wording of cards in old sets wasn't very precise and they used bury in situations where what they actually wanted was sacrifice, since the latter originally had an unnecessary restriction that it could only be done as part of costs. The actual rules meaning was always "destroy and it can't be regenerated," though.
Regenerate is wordier than most mechanics since it needs to be activated, it leans defensively so it incentivizes a play pattern R&D doesn't like, the line between making it too good and too bad is pretty thin, and the way it works (both the random tapping and the way that you use it before the creature actually dies) is wonky. They've pretty much said they're going to dump it as soon as they come up with a good replacement.
It's a specific character not a species, it's spelled Volazj (with a J), and Warcraft has had its own race of cthulhus since the beginning (and WoW had a whole dungeon about them back in 2005.)
charlequin
Banned
Magic's flirted a lot with modified copies but not in quite that form. The only card I can think of that grafts a different P/T onto a copy is Quicksilver Gargantuan, and I can't think of any that do this with tokens (though there are a number that graft on types or keyword abilities.) It could be a pretty interesting effect, though.
I think the biggest issue with regeneration is that has to prevent the creature from dying, but also removing combat damage and all that to make sure it doesn't die again immediately afterwards to state-based actions. Coming up with a solution that takes care of all that while being simple and elegant is a pretty tall order.
Yeah, it was just that the name reminded me too much of the eldrazi (missed the last letter actualy being a j, though).
SigmasonicX
Member
It's weird that Twilight actually was the thing used to justify Innistrad initially.
That makes me think that the unfounded rumor of this year's fall set being based on Egyptian mythology would be great if Wizards later came out and said they did it because they thought Gods of Egypt would be a big hit.
charlequin
Banned
Okay, while we're in that weekend doldrum in between spoilers, I thought I'd take a minute to put down my thoughts on return blocks and why SOI seems poised to be the best one.
The prototype for the return blocks is Time Spiral, the first serious attempt in Magic's history to return to a setting after a break and leverage the familiarity and attachment the players have to it to make the set enjoyable. (The only other early example I can think of is retelling parts of the Brother's War in Urza's Saga, which is really so far back into prehistory to skip it here.) We all know that R&D considers this block to be a glorious failure, but there's a lot of technique they developed here: returning mechanics associated with a setting; giving legend cards to story characters who never had one; making cards that mechanically reference older cards that bring back player memories; paying off storylines set up in previous visits. Pretty much every future return would use this stuff (and tend to skip some other stuff that worked less well here, like taking old obscure creature types or factions and making a huge deal of them on return.)
Scars of Mirrodin was their first attempt at a "proper" return block -- taking a one-off plane and revisiting it -- and until now it was almost certainly the best effort. The pitch was solid enough: Mirrodin was the best-selling set ever for like five years, and it was home to a lot of powerful, beloved cards. The problem was that Mirrodin was also a setting that a lot of people hate, because of how badly it screwed up the tournament environment. SoM couldn't go back to the one mechanic people tend to remember Mirrodin by (affinity) due to development veto, and with most other block mechanics either evergreen (indestructible, equipment) or off-theme (sunburst, entwine) there was pretty much just one niche option that didn't do much to deliver the Mirrodin feel. Similarly, most MIR strategies were seriously nerfed, leaving the Mirran side feeling like a pale reflection. Ultimately, it was the second "return" aspect that salvaged the block: the Phyrexians were also something super-popular to return to, but without a specific broken mechanical identity they could be jacked up and made properly terrifying. (Ironically, given that their mechanical identity is infect and phyrexian mana, they're gonna have the same problems the next time we see them.) The Phyrexians even managed to make the Mirrodin nostalgia work better by Compleating the plane's inhabitants -- stuff like Stoic Rebuttal is a thin imitation of the first Mirrodin, but something like Blightsteel Colossus calls back to the old block and makes the new version properly awe-inspiring. Ultimately the result was an uneven but interesting return effort and a decent starting point that evolves into a better ending place than it started.
Return to Ravnica had an unusual problem: the first version was too good. More specifically, Ravnica was an incredibly popular and successful block, but also the tightest-buttoned block probably ever: the sets were structured head to toe around the guild concept, meaning each one was filled to the top with 10-card cycles, large quantities of gold and hybrid cards, and all kinds of mandatory structural stuff. Ravnica's packed so tight that there's no room for anything else -- like, every one of the legendary creatures in the original RAV block is either a guild leader or champion, there's no room for even a single other character. The result is that the block has probably the fewest surprises of any, ever (the split cards in Dissention were pretty much the only one.) When Return to Ravnica decided to go back to everything people loved about the first block (shocklands! hybrids! guild leaders!) it locked itself into a similar problem: there was no room to be surprising. Callbacks like guild leaders used up a lot of the space in the block, and predictable new cycles (like Charms) burned through most of what was left. The result was that there was almost no way for RTR to make itself feel distinct and unique, so it was always going to wind up a bit of an also-ran, even if the execution was better in many places than the origial.
Battle for Zendikar is where things really went off the rails. We've been over the problems extensively in here, but there's really two key issues. For one, BFZ has to cover two entirely distinct sides of a war -- but unlike SOM, where the two sides are tied together by the artifact theme, the two really have nothing to do with one another. The result is that BFZ tries to be a return to two very differnt sets at the same time, and doesn't have the space to do justice to what made either appealing to start with -- the Zendikar side loses all the cool adventure-world stuff for a mishmash of land mechanics and incoherent tribal, while the eldrazi don't have room to be the spotlighted, alien other they are in ROE. That's exacerbated by the other problem: the people making the block don't understand what made the eldrazi cool in the first place. Instead of capturing and expanding on the alien, mind-bending, inevitably destructive horror of ROE, this block makes the eldrazi into the zerg, leaving everyone with a ton of eldrazi cards but not nearly as much of an impression as they left their first time around. (Ironically, of course, these eldrazi wound up combining with old ROE cards in Modern to create a horrifying and destructive monster much more in line with their story role.) Tack on some other assorted issues (like an incoherent limited environment) and you wind up with something that didn't make fans of either its antecedents happy.
That takes us to Shadows Over Innistrad. BFZ is so bad that expectations were at rock-bottom pretty much everywhere I looked about this set, but now that we've seen a bunch of it it seems like it's actually turning out quite well. My claim would be that it's because it manages to avoid all the issues the previous returns ran into, and it had a clearer path for evolution. Once you accept that you're gonna throw AVR in the garbage (where it belongs), most aspects of returning to Innistrad are easy. It has an ultra-popular and clean mechanic to return to in the form of DFC, and a deep theme in the form of graveyard-matters, so the mechanical connection is easy to make. The top-down setting concept is resonant and has tons of room left even after the first block, so it was easy to create the flavor connection -- just a couple cards like Topplegeist or Insidious Mist are enough to immediately set the tone. All that just gets us to successfully copying the first block, though. What seems so great about this is that this return was designed (top-down, as we discovered from Rosewater's first preview article) around a natural elaboration of the theme. By taking the theme from "traditional" Gothic horror into its real-world evolution of cosmic, Lovecraftian horror, it can keep all the elements that made the first block work but also dive into lots of new stuff that fits tonally but expands the scope of the block: evil cultists, mysterious mutations, insanity and delusion, and arcane eldritch rituals -- plus the investigation element that ties in the typical Lovecraft protagonists as well as other time-appropriate material like Sherlock Holmes. All told the block has a new, reasonably deep theme that can support both its flavor and mechanical needs, while still keeping what worked well about the setting the first time around.
The prototype for the return blocks is Time Spiral, the first serious attempt in Magic's history to return to a setting after a break and leverage the familiarity and attachment the players have to it to make the set enjoyable. (The only other early example I can think of is retelling parts of the Brother's War in Urza's Saga, which is really so far back into prehistory to skip it here.) We all know that R&D considers this block to be a glorious failure, but there's a lot of technique they developed here: returning mechanics associated with a setting; giving legend cards to story characters who never had one; making cards that mechanically reference older cards that bring back player memories; paying off storylines set up in previous visits. Pretty much every future return would use this stuff (and tend to skip some other stuff that worked less well here, like taking old obscure creature types or factions and making a huge deal of them on return.)
Scars of Mirrodin was their first attempt at a "proper" return block -- taking a one-off plane and revisiting it -- and until now it was almost certainly the best effort. The pitch was solid enough: Mirrodin was the best-selling set ever for like five years, and it was home to a lot of powerful, beloved cards. The problem was that Mirrodin was also a setting that a lot of people hate, because of how badly it screwed up the tournament environment. SoM couldn't go back to the one mechanic people tend to remember Mirrodin by (affinity) due to development veto, and with most other block mechanics either evergreen (indestructible, equipment) or off-theme (sunburst, entwine) there was pretty much just one niche option that didn't do much to deliver the Mirrodin feel. Similarly, most MIR strategies were seriously nerfed, leaving the Mirran side feeling like a pale reflection. Ultimately, it was the second "return" aspect that salvaged the block: the Phyrexians were also something super-popular to return to, but without a specific broken mechanical identity they could be jacked up and made properly terrifying. (Ironically, given that their mechanical identity is infect and phyrexian mana, they're gonna have the same problems the next time we see them.) The Phyrexians even managed to make the Mirrodin nostalgia work better by Compleating the plane's inhabitants -- stuff like Stoic Rebuttal is a thin imitation of the first Mirrodin, but something like Blightsteel Colossus calls back to the old block and makes the new version properly awe-inspiring. Ultimately the result was an uneven but interesting return effort and a decent starting point that evolves into a better ending place than it started.
Return to Ravnica had an unusual problem: the first version was too good. More specifically, Ravnica was an incredibly popular and successful block, but also the tightest-buttoned block probably ever: the sets were structured head to toe around the guild concept, meaning each one was filled to the top with 10-card cycles, large quantities of gold and hybrid cards, and all kinds of mandatory structural stuff. Ravnica's packed so tight that there's no room for anything else -- like, every one of the legendary creatures in the original RAV block is either a guild leader or champion, there's no room for even a single other character. The result is that the block has probably the fewest surprises of any, ever (the split cards in Dissention were pretty much the only one.) When Return to Ravnica decided to go back to everything people loved about the first block (shocklands! hybrids! guild leaders!) it locked itself into a similar problem: there was no room to be surprising. Callbacks like guild leaders used up a lot of the space in the block, and predictable new cycles (like Charms) burned through most of what was left. The result was that there was almost no way for RTR to make itself feel distinct and unique, so it was always going to wind up a bit of an also-ran, even if the execution was better in many places than the origial.
Battle for Zendikar is where things really went off the rails. We've been over the problems extensively in here, but there's really two key issues. For one, BFZ has to cover two entirely distinct sides of a war -- but unlike SOM, where the two sides are tied together by the artifact theme, the two really have nothing to do with one another. The result is that BFZ tries to be a return to two very differnt sets at the same time, and doesn't have the space to do justice to what made either appealing to start with -- the Zendikar side loses all the cool adventure-world stuff for a mishmash of land mechanics and incoherent tribal, while the eldrazi don't have room to be the spotlighted, alien other they are in ROE. That's exacerbated by the other problem: the people making the block don't understand what made the eldrazi cool in the first place. Instead of capturing and expanding on the alien, mind-bending, inevitably destructive horror of ROE, this block makes the eldrazi into the zerg, leaving everyone with a ton of eldrazi cards but not nearly as much of an impression as they left their first time around. (Ironically, of course, these eldrazi wound up combining with old ROE cards in Modern to create a horrifying and destructive monster much more in line with their story role.) Tack on some other assorted issues (like an incoherent limited environment) and you wind up with something that didn't make fans of either its antecedents happy.
That takes us to Shadows Over Innistrad. BFZ is so bad that expectations were at rock-bottom pretty much everywhere I looked about this set, but now that we've seen a bunch of it it seems like it's actually turning out quite well. My claim would be that it's because it manages to avoid all the issues the previous returns ran into, and it had a clearer path for evolution. Once you accept that you're gonna throw AVR in the garbage (where it belongs), most aspects of returning to Innistrad are easy. It has an ultra-popular and clean mechanic to return to in the form of DFC, and a deep theme in the form of graveyard-matters, so the mechanical connection is easy to make. The top-down setting concept is resonant and has tons of room left even after the first block, so it was easy to create the flavor connection -- just a couple cards like Topplegeist or Insidious Mist are enough to immediately set the tone. All that just gets us to successfully copying the first block, though. What seems so great about this is that this return was designed (top-down, as we discovered from Rosewater's first preview article) around a natural elaboration of the theme. By taking the theme from "traditional" Gothic horror into its real-world evolution of cosmic, Lovecraftian horror, it can keep all the elements that made the first block work but also dive into lots of new stuff that fits tonally but expands the scope of the block: evil cultists, mysterious mutations, insanity and delusion, and arcane eldritch rituals -- plus the investigation element that ties in the typical Lovecraft protagonists as well as other time-appropriate material like Sherlock Holmes. All told the block has a new, reasonably deep theme that can support both its flavor and mechanical needs, while still keeping what worked well about the setting the first time around.
SigmasonicX
Member
Nicely said. Your point about Return to Ravnica is particularly enlightening to me concerning why I didn't find that block exciting.
Another thing to note about Shadows over Innistrad is how the callbacks in art and flavor are closer to Time Spiral than any other return set, including "sequel" cards with the same artist, like Aberrant Researcher and Relentless Dead.
Another thing to note about Shadows over Innistrad is how the callbacks in art and flavor are closer to Time Spiral than any other return set, including "sequel" cards with the same artist, like Aberrant Researcher and Relentless Dead.
Planning to jump back in with SOI, and I already feel like making some dumb janky B/R Vampire Dragon Madness deck. xD
Avaricious Dragon + Asylum Visitor = 3 cards a turn + Madness enabler at EoT. Maybe even get a single Inverter of Truth in there for if your graveyard fills up too much.
Am I a crazy person for wanting that to be a thing?
Avaricious Dragon + Asylum Visitor = 3 cards a turn + Madness enabler at EoT. Maybe even get a single Inverter of Truth in there for if your graveyard fills up too much.
Am I a crazy person for wanting that to be a thing?
- Status