I am not much of a fan of Cluestone Maze either... I have opened up an over abundance of those darn things.
Think of them as limited tools. Most cards are designed to be played on limited rather than constructed. And, as far as I heard the feedback, they do a great job.
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Nothing. All I want is Heroes vs. Monsters spoilers.
I totally get what you mean. I'm absolutely certain that when Wizards got together and discussed the best ways to make the set, their primary goal became to hose U/B. Not to provide a variety of new, interesting cards; or to have a good limited format; but to screw Dimir. It all makes since now.
Please quit making these threads. #kthxby
They did screw blue, and somewhat green. This is also why Simic is just so awful now. Here's the number of keywords per color in DGM. The first number is mono color, the second number is multicolor (which means each multicolor card is counted twice as Varolz counts as both a green and a black scavenge card). Totals are mono colored/mono+multi.
White
Battalion - 1 (1)
Detain - 1 (1)
Extort - 0 (1)
Populate - 2
Total 4/7
Blue
Detain - 0 (1)
Cipher - 2
Overload - 0 (1)
Evolve - 0
Total 2/4
Black
Extort - 1 (1)
Cipher - 0
Unleash - 1 (1)
Scavenge - 1 (1)
Total 3/6
Red
Battalion - 0 (1)
Overload - 1 (1)
Unleash - 0 (1)
Bloodrush - 2
Total 3/6
Green
Populate - 0
Evolve - 2
Scavenge - 1 (1)
Bloodrush - 0
Total 3/4
A 40 dollar mythic rare would constitute a must have 4 of that goes in many decks.
Stats About Mythics
-Mythics are on average 40% rarer than pre-mythic rares
(old blocks about 200 rares, Mythic blocks 35+ mythics)
-They are printing more new cards a year not less
(about 665 now vs. 630 in most pre-mythic block)
-To drop the value of a rare by $1 a mythic must go up $2
-In a 3 year time span deck prices doubled. I am petitioning for the removal of mythic rarity. Sig this to join the cause.
I quite enjoy how the draft format evolved. I'm also pleased that a lot of people feel compelled to high pick gates and cluestones over playables, so while they spend their early turns playing tapped lands and stones, I can just curve into 2-3-4 drops creatures and have them start playing ana ctual game at 12 life.
This aside, re: U gets the hose, I actually think that red got a lot of love in this limited format, anything with good red in it seems quite strong.
I quite enjoy how the draft format evolved. I'm also pleased that a lot of people feel compelled to high pick gates and cluestones over playables, so while they spend their early turns playing tapped lands and stones, I can just curve into 2-3-4 drops creatures and have them start playing ana ctual game at 12 life.
This aside, re: U gets the hose, I actually think that red got a lot of love in this limited format, anything with good red in it seems quite strong.
the set is based off of hating on blue/black and all control plus the set is filled with horse crap commons/rares/mythics/uncommons.
While I think Dragon's Maze is still an awesome set, I do feel your pain about blue/black.
I believe this is the last set that Zac Hill worked on, so it will be interesting to see if this focus on hating blue changes next block (of course, giving the way Magic sales are booming, Wizards might keep this trend going)
i feel like my thread has turend into a huge discussion on different formats
Just like that law where any sufficiently long discussion inevitably includes Nazis, MTGS has a variant where all discussions eventually devolve into discussion about either people's pet formats and/or the reserved list.
What's funny is that from reading thread titles you'd think Dragon's Maze was the worst set yet, but the thing is that usually only the first person to post hates the set and everyone else is bumping it by posting their disagreement :P.
- It does not seem to further the block design as a whole; too few cards support the guilds themselves, and there are too few mono-colored "guildless" cards.
- Reprinting the gates with new art was silly; they should have printed new gates (maybe tri-color gates, or single color gates or even both), and more cards that work with them.
- The cluestones should not have been printed as they were; they were all "the same". They should have done something different that related to each guild.
- The set seemed too small. There didn't seem to be enough variety within the cards themselves. Everything was too concentrated in order to give each guild the one card from "the group" it needed (one split uncommon each, one rare that was split between two guilds, etc). It should have been a large set, and it should have had more variety within it.
- Most of the legends seem very underwhelming, and don't seem to work with the guild mechanics as a whole. As well, the guild mechanics were far too little represented, and there are too few cards that seem to "take advantage" of the mechanics to build decks around.
Hopefully Theros will be a better designed block. I think that Return to Ravnica was very well done with the first two sets, but the 3rd was a big let down, especially after all the hype and build-up surrounding it.
I don't play Magic anymore but I don't like Dragon's Maze because every time someone posts the abbreviation (DGM), I think they're talking about the anime, D. Gray Man.
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Oh look, it's this post that happens every set release. It's called adapting the meta. Producing answers for standard. Standard isn't one deck type unless CawBlade and/or Ravffinity is legal. Answers need to be provided for the health of the format. Not every set can add for certain decks. Humans got no additions from this set either. Deal with it. Think of the anti-control cards as sideboard options agaisnt mirror matches.
- Reprinting the gates with new art was silly; they should have printed new gates (maybe tri-color gates, or single color gates or even both), and more cards that work with them.
Making guildgates with more/less colors would totally go against the flavor/lore of the sets. There are only 10 guilds, and therefore 10 guildgates on ravnica. Furthermore, what are you going to do with a 1 color guildgate?
The cluestones should not have been printed as they were; they were all "the same". They should have done something different that related to each guild.
They already made the keyrunes, and those were uncommon. We have a new special uncommon cycle in the split cards. I like the cluestones, they're great for commander, much better than printing some useless common like a 5 CMC enchantment that gives a creature haste. They also give people who can't afford to pay for shock lands a way to fix their mana and not cost them a card later.
- The set seemed too small. There didn't seem to be enough variety within the cards themselves. Everything was too concentrated in order to give each guild the one card from "the group" it needed (one split uncommon each, one rare that was split between two guilds, etc). It should have been a large set, and it should have had more variety within it.
Pretty much all 3rd sets in blocks are smaller than the other 2. It's not meant to be a stand alone set, its meant to augment the other 2 sets in the block.
- Most of the legends seem very underwhelming, and don't seem to work with the guild mechanics as a whole. As well, the guild mechanics were far too little represented, and there are too few cards that seem to "take advantage" of the mechanics to build decks around.
I agree with you to a certain extent on this. However, i think a lot of us got our hopes up too much when we heard about the maze runners. After thinking about it, they already printed the guild leaders, and they couldn't make the maze runners better than the guild leaders (except gruul lol), so i think we just got our hopes up too high. Some are cool though, and i think most have a great casual/commander appeal.
Making guildgates with more/less colors would totally go against the flavor/lore of the sets. There are only 10 guilds, and therefore 10 guildgates on ravnica. Furthermore, what are you going to do with a 1 color guildgate?
Lore can be whatever they (they being the designers of the sets) deign to write. If they wish there to be another guildgate (maybe it's a Zameck Guildgate instead of a Simic Guildgate...?) or create 3 color guilds to go along with the set, that is totally their prerogative, and they can write whatever they want to "make" it fit. How well they do it is another story. 1 Color guildgates (maybe referring to the areas the guildless inhabit?) can be 1 color mana-fixers or any other such thing they want (storage lands, card draw, etc.) The point is, when creating a Mythic rare that is designed around gates, and having cards that are designed around gates, maybe they should create more gates to make those decks feasible...?
They already made the keyrunes, and those were uncommon. We have a new special uncommon cycle in the split cards. I like the cluestones, they're great for commander, much better than printing some useless common like a 5 CMC enchantment that gives a creature haste. They also give people who can't afford to pay for shock lands a way to fix their mana and not cost them a card later.
That doesn't change the fact that when you opened a pack that contained 2-3 of them on average, as well as a guildgate, you felt as if you were drawing the same card multiple times. If they had the cards do something to do with their guild, it would have mitigated that somewhat.
Pretty much all 3rd sets in blocks are smaller than the other 2. It's not meant to be a stand alone set, its meant to augment the other 2 sets in the block.
I understand that, hell, most sets have 1 large one and 2 small ones. But RtR has set out to do quite a lot within its borders, and this set was simply too small to do everything it tried, especially with the many duplicate cards within it.
I agree with you to a certain extent on this. However, i think a lot of us got our hopes up too much when we heard about the maze runners. After thinking about it, they already printed the guild leaders, and they couldn't make the maze runners better than the guild leaders (except gruul lol), so i think we just got our hopes up too high. Some are cool though, and i think most have a great casual/commander appeal.
I will say that yes, some are decent in their own ways, but overall very lacking, and I would say that our hopes being high was partly the product of Wizards themselves. It just feels like they failed to follow through. A lot of the cards feel like they were designed by entirely different people, rather than the ones who designed the 1st two sets.
Out of the entire set there was a whole 1 card I wanted, which I choose to get as a single rather than trying my luck with any sealed product since the value of the set is so damn low that were I to not pull the Notion Thief I was looking for, which was already less than the price of a pack anyways, it would be pretty hard to actually make value back.
Even ignoring the fact that my colors were completely shafted aside from having what is probably the best card for EDH from the set, the set itself is still really bad. It's nothing but cycles, and primarily ones with limited in mind. So if you aren't planning on drafting every week, the set is just no bueno.
Think of them as limited tools. Most cards are designed to be played on limited rather than constructed. And, as far as I heard the feedback, they do a great job.
(Give your LGS judge a hug. He deserves it.)
They did screw blue, and somewhat green. This is also why Simic is just so awful now. Here's the number of keywords per color in DGM. The first number is mono color, the second number is multicolor (which means each multicolor card is counted twice as Varolz counts as both a green and a black scavenge card). Totals are mono colored/mono+multi.
That's actually exactly how many you should have gotten. In DGM there is one shock every 24 packs.
Stats About Mythics
-Mythics are on average 40% rarer than pre-mythic rares
(old blocks about 200 rares, Mythic blocks 35+ mythics)
-They are printing more new cards a year not less
(about 665 now vs. 630 in most pre-mythic block)
-To drop the value of a rare by $1 a mythic must go up $2
-In a 3 year time span deck prices doubled.
I am petitioning for the removal of mythic rarity. Sig this to join the cause.
This aside, re: U gets the hose, I actually think that red got a lot of love in this limited format, anything with good red in it seems quite strong.
That overload +1/+0 and first strike is bananas
I got 3 renounce the guilds in one fat pack thats 1/3 of my rares.... it definetly is a weird distribution this run.
While I think Dragon's Maze is still an awesome set, I do feel your pain about blue/black.
I believe this is the last set that Zac Hill worked on, so it will be interesting to see if this focus on hating blue changes next block (of course, giving the way Magic sales are booming, Wizards might keep this trend going)
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Just like that law where any sufficiently long discussion inevitably includes Nazis, MTGS has a variant where all discussions eventually devolve into discussion about either people's pet formats and/or the reserved list.
- It does not seem to further the block design as a whole; too few cards support the guilds themselves, and there are too few mono-colored "guildless" cards.
- Reprinting the gates with new art was silly; they should have printed new gates (maybe tri-color gates, or single color gates or even both), and more cards that work with them.
- The cluestones should not have been printed as they were; they were all "the same". They should have done something different that related to each guild.
- The set seemed too small. There didn't seem to be enough variety within the cards themselves. Everything was too concentrated in order to give each guild the one card from "the group" it needed (one split uncommon each, one rare that was split between two guilds, etc). It should have been a large set, and it should have had more variety within it.
- Most of the legends seem very underwhelming, and don't seem to work with the guild mechanics as a whole. As well, the guild mechanics were far too little represented, and there are too few cards that seem to "take advantage" of the mechanics to build decks around.
Hopefully Theros will be a better designed block. I think that Return to Ravnica was very well done with the first two sets, but the 3rd was a big let down, especially after all the hype and build-up surrounding it.
If you have any comments, or notice any mistakes, please let me know.
Just my 2 cents' worth.
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Will be kept until 12/31/2013 to prove if Right or Wrong.Proven right 1/27/2013Making guildgates with more/less colors would totally go against the flavor/lore of the sets. There are only 10 guilds, and therefore 10 guildgates on ravnica. Furthermore, what are you going to do with a 1 color guildgate?
They already made the keyrunes, and those were uncommon. We have a new special uncommon cycle in the split cards. I like the cluestones, they're great for commander, much better than printing some useless common like a 5 CMC enchantment that gives a creature haste. They also give people who can't afford to pay for shock lands a way to fix their mana and not cost them a card later.
Pretty much all 3rd sets in blocks are smaller than the other 2. It's not meant to be a stand alone set, its meant to augment the other 2 sets in the block.
I agree with you to a certain extent on this. However, i think a lot of us got our hopes up too much when we heard about the maze runners. After thinking about it, they already printed the guild leaders, and they couldn't make the maze runners better than the guild leaders (except gruul lol), so i think we just got our hopes up too high. Some are cool though, and i think most have a great casual/commander appeal.
Lore can be whatever they (they being the designers of the sets) deign to write. If they wish there to be another guildgate (maybe it's a Zameck Guildgate instead of a Simic Guildgate...?) or create 3 color guilds to go along with the set, that is totally their prerogative, and they can write whatever they want to "make" it fit. How well they do it is another story. 1 Color guildgates (maybe referring to the areas the guildless inhabit?) can be 1 color mana-fixers or any other such thing they want (storage lands, card draw, etc.) The point is, when creating a Mythic rare that is designed around gates, and having cards that are designed around gates, maybe they should create more gates to make those decks feasible...?
That doesn't change the fact that when you opened a pack that contained 2-3 of them on average, as well as a guildgate, you felt as if you were drawing the same card multiple times. If they had the cards do something to do with their guild, it would have mitigated that somewhat.
I understand that, hell, most sets have 1 large one and 2 small ones. But RtR has set out to do quite a lot within its borders, and this set was simply too small to do everything it tried, especially with the many duplicate cards within it.
I will say that yes, some are decent in their own ways, but overall very lacking, and I would say that our hopes being high was partly the product of Wizards themselves. It just feels like they failed to follow through. A lot of the cards feel like they were designed by entirely different people, rather than the ones who designed the 1st two sets.
If you have any comments, or notice any mistakes, please let me know.
Even ignoring the fact that my colors were completely shafted aside from having what is probably the best card for EDH from the set, the set itself is still really bad. It's nothing but cycles, and primarily ones with limited in mind. So if you aren't planning on drafting every week, the set is just no bueno.
Yeah, Dragon's Maze sucks.
UBBreya's Toybox (Competitive, Combo)WR
RGodzilla, King of the MonstersG
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UBLazav, Dimir Mastermind (Competitive, UB Voltron/Control)UB
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