Outlast will suck unless the print one amazing card with a very low outlast cost. Spending most of your turn's mana and tapping down your own guy for improve it a little bit is not worth it much. Are you going to bopth use your mana *and* leave yourself up defenseless?
Obvious outlast is meant to be:
1. Used on at most one guy per turn. (Cause: mana, being defenseless.)
2. Not used in the early game, but in the late game. (Cause: being defenseless, not giving up board devleopment early on.)
So, it's clear that what they mean by endurance is that outlast is meant to be triggered and used in the late game to get board advantage. It's still easily punished because it tied up your mana, reduced your defense and can be rendered useless by removal or bounce. We can bet they balanced it (obviously, it could not be instant speed nor free), so it means abzan will be clugging up the board early on or maybe have move lifelink guys to be able to stay alive long enough?
I'm still on the tamur or jeskai plan for now, with a healthy fear or mardu.
(On the sultai side, looking at the spoiled cards again, I see that delve for two gives you an meh-to-okay card (for example a 3/5 deathtouch for 6), delve for 3 is good (same for 5, or the demon 4/5 flyer for 6) and anything higher is really under costed. With the revealed excellent card drawing / miller (take best two cards out of 4 for 4 mana + 2 life), it seems reasonable. *assuming* you do draw and play the enablers. Otherwise...
I'm a bit concerned about the format - I think how good it is will hinge almost entirely on the common manafix. And one cycle of Panorama-like lands will not do the trick unless we've seen a high percentage of the tricolored cards already. Two good cycles at common are required, I think. Otherwise this could very easily end up being a format that looks like and tries very hard to be a three-color format (obviously), but the best decks are actually two-colored ones that can reliably cast their spells.
@Outlast sucking: That's nonsense. Looking at the common outlast card that has been spoiled so far, Ainok Bond-Kin, it seems clear to me that these are reasonably-costed dudes that have a pretty good upside should you at any point have some spare mana. The Bond-Kin is perfectly serviceable as a two mana 2/1, and should you have extra mana to spend, it grows. Things are different if the body is terribly small for the cost, like a 2/2 for 3W with outlast 1W or a 2/3 reach guy for 4G with outlast 1G. That's really bad, since you need to spend additional mana and turns to build a creature that would have been appropriately sized for the initial cost, but as long as we're dealing with 2/1s for 2, 3/2s for 3, that kinda stuff, outlast is pure upside on already decent cards, and ways to make use of extra lands in the late game are always welcome in my book.
@Outlast sucking: That's nonsense. Looking at the common outlast card that has been spoiled so far, Ainok Bond-Kin, it seems clear to me that these are reasonably-costed dudes that have a pretty good upside should you at any point have some spare mana. The Bond-Kin is perfectly serviceable as a two mana 2/1, and should you have extra mana to spend, it grows. Things are different if the body is terribly small for the cost, like a 2/2 for 3W with outlast 1W or a 2/3 reach guy for 4G with outlast 1G. That's really bad, since you need to spend additional mana and turns to build a creature that would have been appropriately sized for the initial cost, but as long as we're dealing with 2/1s for 2, 3/2s for 3, that kinda stuff, outlast is pure upside on already decent cards, and ways to make use of extra lands in the late game are always welcome in my book.
Right. Think about how many aggressive white decks you have drafted and just ran out of gas. They stabilized the board and now you can pump a guy or two each turn rather than just passing and hoping they get gas. I would almost expect a proliferate style guy at rare or mythic that can +1/+1 your whole team (or maybe an instant at uncommon). That way you can get the bonuses w/out having to outlast.
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Right, the card themselves are okay. The ability is bad until the late game, and then you still have to tap it down during your turn and spend mana on it.
W for a 1/2
Outlast ability is 2W, and when you outlast you get a 1/1 Warrior.
Drawing as much as we can from 2 cards it does seem that the Outlast abilities will generally have more benefits than just the counter. This one lets you keep growing the guy while getting a chump blocker into play (or start building an army of 1/1s), where the first guy made you very inclined to trigger the ability at least once for the first strike.
If this pattern continues outlast has a lot more design space than just very slowly making a guy huge.
Come to think of it, this format already seems to be very Spike-centric.
-Being a 3 color format inherently rewards those who value fixing appropriately.
-Outlast, Delve, and Prowess have a ton of sequencing options to weigh.
-Raid will frequently require you to weigh the value of your worst creature vs the value of the effect you'll be getting.
-The Prowess/Raid/Morph dynamic incentivizes bluffing very heavily.
I think this is a really great point. I hadn't really thought about it in these terms, but there will be a LOT of decisions in KTK games, and ones that normally aren't as important in other formats. Even though the mechanics are pretty simple to understand, I think they'll be very difficult to play optimally. I guess the Temur one is somewhat difficult to mess up, but the others could easily be mis-sequenced. And, as you mentioned, prowess, raid, and morph are all conducive to bluffing (and morph even allows you to bluff with an empty hand, something which normally isn't a thing).
Another thing is that Outlast and Delve are both resource-management mechanics, which I think are very skill-testing. Delve obviously allows you to turn cards in the graveyard into mana, but you might not always want to cast the most expensive card in your hand for the cheapest possible. Outlast allows you to use up mana in the late game at the cost of blockers/attackers. I think the natural tendency is to cast an outlast creature and then want to build it up rather than develop the board, which I can't imagine will be good.
When I first saw the mechanics I wasn't too thrilled (other than for delve) but the more I think about it, I think this will be a very difficult format to crack/master, which means it should have depth to it. Obviously, still early and we only have 60 cards, but I'm excited!
cferejohn: Agreed. BTW, calling the Uncommon Outlast guy that gives Vigilance now. (Vigilance allows Outlast creatures to at least attack.)
foxtrot: I'm really hoping that there is a Jeskai Morph card like Fathom Seer, but more like Augur of Bolas.
That is, when you turn it face-up (hopefully for a very low cost), you can look at the top X cards (3 or 4) of your library, and put a noncreature spell revealed this way into your hand.
While you're correct that Morph allows you to bluff with an open board, Prowess at least doesn't allow you to bluff much at all with an empty hand.
Even now that we've seen a few Delve enablers, I'm still not loving it as a build-around mechanic. So instead of Night's Whisper, you get Look at 4 cards, Draw 2, Discard 2, Lose 2 life for 4 mana. I guess that's an enabler and you follow up with a Delve spell on the next turn, but geez you're spending \Turn 4 mana not developing your board AND hurting yourself. That 5-drop better be amazing because you've put yourself in a hole. And if that 5-drop really is amazing then we run into the other problem...
...which is that the Sultai deck is a combo deck where you either draw your enablers + Delve cards and smash face, or you don't draw them together and you're just plain dead because either you can't profit off all this self-milling you've wasted your time on, or you can't cast your 8-mana spells with an empty graveyard. Fun for a short tournament, but can you imagine trying to run Sultai at a GP where you need consistency?
It just feels like an extremely high variance mechanic for Limited and 40 card decks.
Outlast I'm coming around on, but I still think it will be terrible if the format is too fast. And R&D has a spotty history of accurately predicting the speed of a format.
Honestly, I don't think this is going to be a fast format. The last three color set, Alara, was pretty slow. The last time morph was a big thing was in in ONS and it wasn't a fast format, it was very tempo oriented but not fast by any stretch. Looking at the set's mechanics, only Mardu's Raid is geared specifically for aggro
Phyrre: I definitely hear you on your Delve concerns, and I would hope that R&D's already extant discussion on how difficult Delve would be as a set mechanic would mean that they figured it out for this. (Although, MaRo's article today says that Sultai was the last Clan, and that means their mechanic might not have been as well-thought-out.)
I think Sultai is going to be like MonoB Devotion in triple Theros. Theros was fairly fast, as formats go, but certain decks could play things like Read the Bones and still come out ahead. This is better than that, for one more.
What's interesting is that we haven't seen any multicolor cards yet with Delve. These might be like 2UBG with Delve. So Delve on a card like this turns into 'if you get your mana right early--especially with Fetchlands--get something out cheap. Otherwise turn 5+.'
I dunno. What would be excellent/terrifying is if there's a card that lets you mill for mana, like that blue card from Innistrad. If so, you could get a Psychatog vibe from Sultai, which is certainly explosive.
Dunno... Delve is certainly more Constructed-oriented as keywords go.
I imagine the 6/6 Trample, Hexproof, Morph 3GU rare will produce a lot of angry prerelease stories. Tough to beat that short of killing every morph on sight (if you can).
Well we do already have 2 deathtouchers spoiled, maybe beating it in combat won't be impossible. You do bring up a good point about killing every morph in sight, was there such a thing as a bad front side to a morph? Like a morph you would rather keep as a 2/2 or that you'd be happy to have the opponent burn a shock or mardu heart-piercer on? Is there a way to get more value out of a morph dying than by it completing it's whole flipping process or is it always the right play to cut it off before it gets the chance?
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Phyrre: Interestingly, the Abzan 4/4 Lifelinker (same cost, same Morph cost) I think beats this in a straight beatdown?
I have 4/4 Lifelink, you have 6/6 Trampling Hexproof
You attack. 14/20 you.
I attack. 18/16 me.
You attack. 12/16 you.
I attack. 16/12 you.
You attack. 10/12 you.
I attack. 14/8 you.
At this point, I win with 10 life if I continue going.
Lifelinker is Common, too, while this thing is Rare, right?
I dunno... I think that most cards will have to just... outgrow it? Jeskai probably handles this the worst of any of the Clans. Abzan apparently has the big butts/abilities to deal with this well.
Well we do already have 2 deathtouchers spoiled, maybe beating it in combat won't be impossible. You do bring up a good point about killing every morph in sight, was there such a thing as a bad front side to a morph? Like a morph you would rather keep as a 2/2 or that you'd be happy to have the opponent burn a shock or mardu heart-piercer on? Is there a way to get more value out of a morph dying than by it completing it's whole flipping process or is it always the right play to cut it off before it gets the chance?
There used to be morphs with terrible bodies with conditionally good abilities (1/2 pro black for example) or that you play for the triggered ability. But that was a decade ago with creature making philosophy of that time. Playing off color morphs were also a thing since there were less playables back then. So there was a real guessing game whether a morph was worth killing. Also, removal were scarce in ONS block so you simply can't kill every morph.
I think we're going to see not only Delve enablers, but cards that are enabled by Delve.
Take a look at (possibly approximate wording) Rakshasa Vizier from the deciphering intro pack rares thread. It grows whenever you Delve, and while it's likely the only card with that exact ability, I'm thinking we'll see more cards along those general lines, at lower power levels and rarities.
The other day Mark Rosewater was responding to Khans of Tarkir questions using cookie metaphors (yes, really), and in response to someone saying they were concerned that Delve cards cost too much to be playable without getting a large Delve discount, he said:
Quote from Mark Rosewater »
"Eggs? I don’t know about these cookies?" : )
This joke will make sense soon. : )
At the time I was thinking "Maybe a cmc-matters theme? Probably rewards for Delving, like things that trigger based on it, or rewards for emptying/thinning your graveyard." I didn't want to say anything at the time, since that's some pretty thin speculation off of a bit of cookie-metaphor-based foreshadowing. Having seen Rakshasa Vizier, though, I feel pretty confident that we can expect to see more Delve rewards, in addition to Delve enablers.
I think Rosewater's comment means you can't judge a final product without knowing all of the ingredients. If all you knew about a cookie was "it's made with eggs," that wouldn't give you a good idea of what a cookie is. I think he's saying -- wait until you see the full list of ingredients before you judge the final product.
Maybe he's right. Either way, Delve is going to be a combo deck or else not really a thing. You can print enablers for Delve, but that still means drawing two or more different types of cards together to get the mechanic working properly.
Yeah, I don't want to get carried away with reading too much into Rosewater's statement, since over-parsing offhand comments like that quickly leads to exegesis ad absurdum.
However, based on his comments, Rakshasa Vizier, and R&D's certain knowledge that Delve is something of a cannibal mechanic (i.e., it's anti-synergistic with itself), I think we'll see its incorporation into the set end up as more than just "here's some self-mill, go nuts."
Phyrre: True. Though, granted, Heroic in that sense also required two or more different types of cards to get it working properly.
So hope isn't lost.
A bit of speculation, but the easiest enabler for Delve is the ability
'Whenever a card is exiled from your graveyard, mill a card.'
It shifts Delve to eating your library, but it gives you control over exactly which cards are eaten.
Also, anyone else note that there seems to be a lot of 5-cost creatures running around? 2CDE costs at that... the Intro Rare 'cycle', the 4/4 Lifelinker... seems a bit... interesting. I realize Morph allows for... variable slots in your curve, but we need more Commons.
It's a crying shame that Sultai won't be in the same Standard as Golgari. The ideal card to use with Delve, I think, is Deadbridge Chant. On color, gives you ten cards to Delve with, and Chant wants a way to make the return less random.
Heroic was combo-y and led to the most degenerate plays in the block as well as the occasional useless hand of all Heroes and nothing to trigger them. It was pretty consistent but only because there were a ton of Heroes, Bestow creatures, and combat tricks in multiple colors.
My concern is that with the Delve tribe only getting access to ~1/5 of the card pool, there won't be enough slots to build it up into something consistent. Imagine Heroic in Theros block if both Heroes and Bestow creatures only existed in White, for example.
Obvious outlast is meant to be:
1. Used on at most one guy per turn. (Cause: mana, being defenseless.)
2. Not used in the early game, but in the late game. (Cause: being defenseless, not giving up board devleopment early on.)
So, it's clear that what they mean by endurance is that outlast is meant to be triggered and used in the late game to get board advantage. It's still easily punished because it tied up your mana, reduced your defense and can be rendered useless by removal or bounce. We can bet they balanced it (obviously, it could not be instant speed nor free), so it means abzan will be clugging up the board early on or maybe have move lifelink guys to be able to stay alive long enough?
I'm still on the tamur or jeskai plan for now, with a healthy fear or mardu.
(On the sultai side, looking at the spoiled cards again, I see that delve for two gives you an meh-to-okay card (for example a 3/5 deathtouch for 6), delve for 3 is good (same for 5, or the demon 4/5 flyer for 6) and anything higher is really under costed. With the revealed excellent card drawing / miller (take best two cards out of 4 for 4 mana + 2 life), it seems reasonable. *assuming* you do draw and play the enablers. Otherwise...
@Outlast sucking: That's nonsense. Looking at the common outlast card that has been spoiled so far, Ainok Bond-Kin, it seems clear to me that these are reasonably-costed dudes that have a pretty good upside should you at any point have some spare mana. The Bond-Kin is perfectly serviceable as a two mana 2/1, and should you have extra mana to spend, it grows. Things are different if the body is terribly small for the cost, like a 2/2 for 3W with outlast 1W or a 2/3 reach guy for 4G with outlast 1G. That's really bad, since you need to spend additional mana and turns to build a creature that would have been appropriately sized for the initial cost, but as long as we're dealing with 2/1s for 2, 3/2s for 3, that kinda stuff, outlast is pure upside on already decent cards, and ways to make use of extra lands in the late game are always welcome in my book.
Right. Think about how many aggressive white decks you have drafted and just ran out of gas. They stabilized the board and now you can pump a guy or two each turn rather than just passing and hoping they get gas. I would almost expect a proliferate style guy at rare or mythic that can +1/+1 your whole team (or maybe an instant at uncommon). That way you can get the bonuses w/out having to outlast.
W for a 1/2
Outlast ability is 2W, and when you outlast you get a 1/1 Warrior.
Drawing as much as we can from 2 cards it does seem that the Outlast abilities will generally have more benefits than just the counter. This one lets you keep growing the guy while getting a chump blocker into play (or start building an army of 1/1s), where the first guy made you very inclined to trigger the ability at least once for the first strike.
If this pattern continues outlast has a lot more design space than just very slowly making a guy huge.
I know it's kind of a pipe dream / not in Limited, but Abzan playing Ready // Willing fused is crushing.
And, again, the gods match up nigh-perfectly with the Clans (again, not Limited, but it's interesting nonetheless).
Outlast as a mechanic, though, benefits quite nicely from untap effects, and will probably get a cost-reducer somewhere.
I think this is a really great point. I hadn't really thought about it in these terms, but there will be a LOT of decisions in KTK games, and ones that normally aren't as important in other formats. Even though the mechanics are pretty simple to understand, I think they'll be very difficult to play optimally. I guess the Temur one is somewhat difficult to mess up, but the others could easily be mis-sequenced. And, as you mentioned, prowess, raid, and morph are all conducive to bluffing (and morph even allows you to bluff with an empty hand, something which normally isn't a thing).
Another thing is that Outlast and Delve are both resource-management mechanics, which I think are very skill-testing. Delve obviously allows you to turn cards in the graveyard into mana, but you might not always want to cast the most expensive card in your hand for the cheapest possible. Outlast allows you to use up mana in the late game at the cost of blockers/attackers. I think the natural tendency is to cast an outlast creature and then want to build it up rather than develop the board, which I can't imagine will be good.
When I first saw the mechanics I wasn't too thrilled (other than for delve) but the more I think about it, I think this will be a very difficult format to crack/master, which means it should have depth to it. Obviously, still early and we only have 60 cards, but I'm excited!
foxtrot: I'm really hoping that there is a Jeskai Morph card like Fathom Seer, but more like Augur of Bolas.
That is, when you turn it face-up (hopefully for a very low cost), you can look at the top X cards (3 or 4) of your library, and put a noncreature spell revealed this way into your hand.
While you're correct that Morph allows you to bluff with an open board, Prowess at least doesn't allow you to bluff much at all with an empty hand.
...which is that the Sultai deck is a combo deck where you either draw your enablers + Delve cards and smash face, or you don't draw them together and you're just plain dead because either you can't profit off all this self-milling you've wasted your time on, or you can't cast your 8-mana spells with an empty graveyard. Fun for a short tournament, but can you imagine trying to run Sultai at a GP where you need consistency?
It just feels like an extremely high variance mechanic for Limited and 40 card decks.
Outlast I'm coming around on, but I still think it will be terrible if the format is too fast. And R&D has a spotty history of accurately predicting the speed of a format.
I think Sultai is going to be like MonoB Devotion in triple Theros. Theros was fairly fast, as formats go, but certain decks could play things like Read the Bones and still come out ahead. This is better than that, for one more.
What's interesting is that we haven't seen any multicolor cards yet with Delve. These might be like 2UBG with Delve. So Delve on a card like this turns into 'if you get your mana right early--especially with Fetchlands--get something out cheap. Otherwise turn 5+.'
I dunno. What would be excellent/terrifying is if there's a card that lets you mill for mana, like that blue card from Innistrad. If so, you could get a Psychatog vibe from Sultai, which is certainly explosive.
Dunno... Delve is certainly more Constructed-oriented as keywords go.
I have 4/4 Lifelink, you have 6/6 Trampling Hexproof
You attack. 14/20 you.
I attack. 18/16 me.
You attack. 12/16 you.
I attack. 16/12 you.
You attack. 10/12 you.
I attack. 14/8 you.
At this point, I win with 10 life if I continue going.
Lifelinker is Common, too, while this thing is Rare, right?
I dunno... I think that most cards will have to just... outgrow it? Jeskai probably handles this the worst of any of the Clans. Abzan apparently has the big butts/abilities to deal with this well.
We'll see.
There used to be morphs with terrible bodies with conditionally good abilities (1/2 pro black for example) or that you play for the triggered ability. But that was a decade ago with creature making philosophy of that time. Playing off color morphs were also a thing since there were less playables back then. So there was a real guessing game whether a morph was worth killing. Also, removal were scarce in ONS block so you simply can't kill every morph.
Take a look at (possibly approximate wording) Rakshasa Vizier from the deciphering intro pack rares thread. It grows whenever you Delve, and while it's likely the only card with that exact ability, I'm thinking we'll see more cards along those general lines, at lower power levels and rarities.
The other day Mark Rosewater was responding to Khans of Tarkir questions using cookie metaphors (yes, really), and in response to someone saying they were concerned that Delve cards cost too much to be playable without getting a large Delve discount, he said:
At the time I was thinking "Maybe a cmc-matters theme? Probably rewards for Delving, like things that trigger based on it, or rewards for emptying/thinning your graveyard." I didn't want to say anything at the time, since that's some pretty thin speculation off of a bit of cookie-metaphor-based foreshadowing. Having seen Rakshasa Vizier, though, I feel pretty confident that we can expect to see more Delve rewards, in addition to Delve enablers.
Maybe he's right. Either way, Delve is going to be a combo deck or else not really a thing. You can print enablers for Delve, but that still means drawing two or more different types of cards together to get the mechanic working properly.
However, based on his comments, Rakshasa Vizier, and R&D's certain knowledge that Delve is something of a cannibal mechanic (i.e., it's anti-synergistic with itself), I think we'll see its incorporation into the set end up as more than just "here's some self-mill, go nuts."
So hope isn't lost.
A bit of speculation, but the easiest enabler for Delve is the ability
'Whenever a card is exiled from your graveyard, mill a card.'
It shifts Delve to eating your library, but it gives you control over exactly which cards are eaten.
Also, anyone else note that there seems to be a lot of 5-cost creatures running around? 2CDE costs at that... the Intro Rare 'cycle', the 4/4 Lifelinker... seems a bit... interesting. I realize Morph allows for... variable slots in your curve, but we need more Commons.
My concern is that with the Delve tribe only getting access to ~1/5 of the card pool, there won't be enough slots to build it up into something consistent. Imagine Heroic in Theros block if both Heroes and Bestow creatures only existed in White, for example.