Most likely because of slots, there is only that much room in a set, so cramming all 5 swords in AND all 10 Horizon lands takes to much space away from other inclusions (especially the Swords since they are Mythic).
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Most likely because of slots, there is only that much room in a set, so cramming all 5 swords in AND all 10 Horizon lands takes to much space away from other inclusions (especially the Swords since they are Mythic).
Greetings,
Kathal
Also lets them test the waters to see how much we want something like this without eating up a ton of space. I'm glad they didn't print the sword cycle, without stoneforge the existing stronger ones don't even see play.
Both of these swords are objectively worse than at least 3 of the existing swords (Feast/Famine, Fire/Ice, Light/Shadow). They will never see play in Modern without Stoneforge. And probably wouldn't see play with her either, in favor of Batterskull, and one or two of the others listed above.
Both of these swords are objectively worse than at least 3 of the existing swords (Feast/Famine, Fire/Ice, Light/Shadow). They will never see play in Modern without Stoneforge. And probably wouldn't see play with her either, in favor of Batterskull, and one or two of the others listed above.
Both of these swords are objectively worse than at least 3 of the existing swords (Feast/Famine, Fire/Ice, Light/Shadow). They will never see play in Modern without Stoneforge. And probably wouldn't see play with her either, in favor of Batterskull, and one or two of the others listed above.
I kind of just think Shadow & Light is better for their protections.. Like Fatal Push Protection and Path to Exile, and on a x/2 body it survives bolt. Sure they could double bolt or something but I'll trade that easily enough.
How much will the cantrip lands (e.g. Fiery Islet) encourage mono-coloured decks? From my testing of Mono-Red Phoenix with 8 cantrip lands, 8 (on-colour) cantrip lands produce insanely more gas than 4, but as seen by the lack of Horizon Canopy in BG/UG/RG decks, the colour un-fixing 2-coloured decks would need to do to fit these lands in (in enemy-coloured and GW decks' cases, more than 4 of these lands in) comes at a real cost.
I only do these for Standard sets. It's only been one month after War of the Spark and while some winners and losers are emerging (Blast Zone, Karn, blue PWs good, Neoform not good) let's not get too hasty on those, shall we?
On Horizons itself, it's a nostalgia set so a lot of cards are going to be subject to rose tinted glasses. Cards that were once good in Standard, Extended, or the early days of Legacy might not cut it in current Modern.
- Giver of Runes
- On Thin Ice. Path is still the boss, but this is an acceptable 5th removal spell in UW.
- Serra the Benevolent
- Force of Negation
- Carrion Feeder
- Mind Rake. Making yourself discard turns on Ensnaring Bridge faster.
- Plague Engineer
- Unearth
- Firebolt. Its usefulness is tempered somewhat by the fact that Snapcaster Mage exists.
- Lava Dart, but only for prowess decks.
- Pillage. This card can be hard to cast in Ponza as it plays upwards of six basic Forests, so it's not the automatic upgrade that everyone seems to think it is (Q: why is Ponza playing Stone Rain when Molten Rain exists?) It is, however, a good SB card that hits two types of decks, in the same vein as Abrade or Damping Sphere.
- Shenanigans, aka "can't Cage this" and "how does it feel to draw 2 mana Vindicates for the rest of the game"
- Collector Ouphe
- Crashing Footfalls. I'm probably too hopeful on this one.
- Force of Vigor
- Scale Up
- Eladamri's Call
- Kaya's Guile. Shame about the color combination though.
- Wrenn and Six. Loam has some problems (bad vs combo and persistent grave hate) but I believe they are solvable. I don't think this card is great in non-Loam midrange decks though.
- Scrapyard Recombiner
- Cycling lands
- Horizon Canopy-type lands
- Hall of Heliod's Generosity
- Astral Drift. If you're looking to abuse ETBs, Restoration Angel takes up fewer deck slots (you don't need to play cyclers with it) and provides immediate board presence. Snapcaster Mage + Restoration Angel was once a legitimate strategy in 2012 Modern, and even that seems better than Eternal Witness + Astral Drift + a bunch of other cyclers. Also relevant: damage on the stack doesn't exist any more.
- Ranger-Captain of Eos. Controversial opinion! Yes, Ranger of Eos was a playable card. What kind of stuff has Ranger traditionally been used to get? Death's Shadows Serra Ascendant + Martyr of Sands Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel Champion of the Parish + Norin the Wary (I know, I play weird decks)
Two things stand out here:
1) Most 1-drops suck on turn 5 (4 with acceleration) so Ranger usually ends up getting a 2-card combo. Ranger-Captain only gets one guy at a time.
2) Ranger is easily splashable with only one white in its cost. Ranger-Captain has two white. I don't want to try fitting this into a DS deck.
- Vesperlark
- Archmage's Charm. What makes Cryptic Command so good is that it covers all your bases. If your opponent is going to attack, you tap his creatures before combat and draw a card. If your opponent casts a spell, you counter it and draw a card. Rarely will your opponent not do either of the above unless the game is already out of his reach, but you're OK with that anyway; your deck is set up to win a long game, so both players draw-going benefits you. Archmage's Charm doesn't cover you when your opponent attacks.
- Echo of Eons
- Fact or Fiction
- Marit Lage's Slumber
- Prohibit. This card never trades up on mana, and is quite bad on the draw when they start casting 3s and you're on 2 lands (Spell Snare is good because it lets you fight back from behind). It's a bit like Spellstutter Sprite in that sense, but Spellstutter has Bitterblossom (and isn't great even with it). Prohibit has...Baral? Anyway, it's probably not a good idea to go deep on counterspells when one of the tier 1 decks plays Cavern of Souls.
- Tribute Mage
- Urza, Lord High Artificer. He's not good when you're behind, and the Unexpected Results ability is at odds with your deck probably consisting of a lot of 0-mana artifacts.
- Cabal Therapist
- Force of Despair. There's multiple ways to look at this card; if you see it as a Wrath, you need to draw it before they start dumping their hand. If you see it as Cradle to Grave, whatever you're killing had better be worth 2-for-1ing yourself. It's quite a headache for Storm since it answers both Baral, Chief of Compliance and Empty the Warrens.
- Goblin Matron. No Goblin Ringleader
- Seasoned Pyromancer. As a discard outlet it's nothing spectacular, you could have discarded one or two turns ago with Looting/Reunion. In theory fair black decks that play discard should want it, since discard gets worse as the game drags on so you'll have useless spells to pitch, and if you trade your discard spells for cards in the opponent's hand and end up hellbent then there's no drawback. The problematic scenario is when you're holding removal in your hand and want to advance your board with Pyromancer - if you cast it and discard your removal, you could be left without an answer in the two draws it grants you.
- Nimble Mongoose. The LD tools that Legacy has (Wasteland, Stifle) aren't in Modern, and without them it's hard to make Mongoose a 3/3 and keep your opponent from doing stuff at the same time.
- Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. This is another one of those cards that does nothing when you're behind, "behind" being defined as "not having at least two creatures on the field".
- Ice-Fang Coatl
- Kess, Dissident Mage. This was the card that demonstrated the problem with foil-only printings in paper before Nexus of Fate. Once upon a time it was played in Legacy, then Deathrite Shaman got banned and that was the end of it.
- Unsettled Mariner. Humans and Spirits already have plenty of ways to protect their creatures, a lot of which are on the "hard" side (Kitesail Freebooter, Meddling Mage, Drogskol Captain, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, Spell Queller) than the "soft" side (Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Mausoleum Wanderer). Kira is better than Kopala, Warden of Waves in Merfolk, and Monastery Siege is unplayable if these are any indication. More importantly, the soft counters stop combo decks from going off and not just their wincons - if you don't stop them from going off, they're just going to draw their Echoing Truth, bounce your hatebear, then kill you.
- Flusterstorm. This is only great in counter wars or against Storm. Dispel is a harder counter and Spell Pierce hits more things.
How much will the cantrip lands (e.g. Fiery Islet) encourage mono-coloured decks? From my testing of Mono-Red Phoenix with 8 cantrip lands, 8 (on-colour) cantrip lands produce insanely more gas than 4, but as seen by the lack of Horizon Canopy in BG/UG/RG decks, the colour un-fixing 2-coloured decks would need to do to fit these lands in (in enemy-coloured and GW decks' cases, more than 4 of these lands in) comes at a real cost.
not much. youd have to presume that the benefits of some added consistency points outweighs the benefits of a strategy having access to another color. a good number of strategies wouldnt even function on one color, meaning their is no mono-colored version to be pushed to in the first place.
the horizon lands also cant be leveraged to the same extent in every type of strategy, and each additional copy put into the deck increases the chances the life loss could impact the outcome of a game or match. i get that the lands are good, but it is most assuredly incorrect to play the full set of any of the on-color versions in any and all decks that can. for intents and purposes the lands are worse versions of pain lands until the moment you sac them for the effect in a game. in essence they make existing decks better, rather than being the basis for the deck itself or enabling anything in it (sans things specifically leveraging lands in the GY and putting them there).
as for limitations of the horizon lands; life-loss is the obvious drawback, but there is also the cost of stunting your mana development as the game progresses. where horizon canopy has primarily showcased its strength, and where more copies are typically seen, is in decks that have some sort of mana acceleration and or have a low enough average cmc.
for example think of some mono blue deck with thing in the ice, snapcasters, and the relevant blue control spells up through to cryptic command (maybe even including the new archmage charm). is the payoff of adding 8 blue horizon lands worth it? hardly, because the deck has powerful things to be doing even at 6 mana with snapcaster + cryptic command.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
I only do these for Standard sets. It's only been one month after War of the Spark and while some winners and losers are emerging (Blast Zone, Karn, blue PWs good, Neoform not good) let's not get too hasty on those, shall we?
On Horizons itself, it's a nostalgia set so a lot of cards are going to be subject to rose tinted glasses. Cards that were once good in Standard, Extended, or the early days of Legacy might not cut it in current Modern.
- Giver of Runes
- On Thin Ice. Path is still the boss, but this is an acceptable 5th removal spell in UW.
- Serra the Benevolent
- Force of Negation
- Carrion Feeder
- Mind Rake. Making yourself discard turns on Ensnaring Bridge faster.
- Plague Engineer
- Unearth
- Firebolt. Its usefulness is tempered somewhat by the fact that Snapcaster Mage exists.
- Lava Dart, but only for prowess decks.
- Pillage. This card can be hard to cast in Ponza as it plays upwards of six basic Forests, so it's not the automatic upgrade that everyone seems to think it is (Q: why is Ponza playing Stone Rain when Molten Rain exists?) It is, however, a good SB card that hits two types of decks, in the same vein as Abrade or Damping Sphere.
- Shenanigans, aka "can't Cage this" and "how does it feel to draw 2 mana Vindicates for the rest of the game"
- Collector Ouphe
- Crashing Footfalls. I'm probably too hopeful on this one.
- Force of Vigor
- Scale Up
- Eladamri's Call
- Kaya's Guile. Shame about the color combination though.
- Wrenn and Six. Loam has some problems (bad vs combo and persistent grave hate) but I believe they are solvable. I don't think this card is great in non-Loam midrange decks though.
- Scrapyard Recombiner
- Cycling lands
- Horizon Canopy-type lands
- Hall of Heliod's Generosity
- Astral Drift. If you're looking to abuse ETBs, Restoration Angel takes up fewer deck slots (you don't need to play cyclers with it) and provides immediate board presence. Snapcaster Mage + Restoration Angel was once a legitimate strategy in 2012 Modern, and even that seems better than Eternal Witness + Astral Drift + a bunch of other cyclers. Also relevant: damage on the stack doesn't exist any more.
- Ranger-Captain of Eos. Controversial opinion! Yes, Ranger of Eos was a playable card. What kind of stuff has Ranger traditionally been used to get? Death's Shadows Serra Ascendant + Martyr of Sands Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel Champion of the Parish + Norin the Wary (I know, I play weird decks)
Two things stand out here:
1) Most 1-drops suck on turn 5 (4 with acceleration) so Ranger usually ends up getting a 2-card combo. Ranger-Captain only gets one guy at a time.
2) Ranger is easily splashable with only one white in its cost. Ranger-Captain has two white. I don't want to try fitting this into a DS deck.
- Vesperlark
- Archmage's Charm. What makes Cryptic Command so good is that it covers all your bases. If your opponent is going to attack, you tap his creatures before combat and draw a card. If your opponent casts a spell, you counter it and draw a card. Rarely will your opponent not do either of the above unless the game is already out of his reach, but you're OK with that anyway; your deck is set up to win a long game, so both players draw-going benefits you. Archmage's Charm doesn't cover you when your opponent attacks.
- Echo of Eons
- Fact or Fiction
- Marit Lage's Slumber
- Prohibit. This card never trades up on mana, and is quite bad on the draw when they start casting 3s and you're on 2 lands (Spell Snare is good because it lets you fight back from behind). It's a bit like Spellstutter Sprite in that sense, but Spellstutter has Bitterblossom (and isn't great even with it). Prohibit has...Baral? Anyway, it's probably not a good idea to go deep on counterspells when one of the tier 1 decks plays Cavern of Souls.
- Tribute Mage
- Urza, Lord High Artificer. He's not good when you're behind, and the Unexpected Results ability is at odds with your deck probably consisting of a lot of 0-mana artifacts.
- Cabal Therapist
- Force of Despair. There's multiple ways to look at this card; if you see it as a Wrath, you need to draw it before they start dumping their hand. If you see it as Cradle to Grave, whatever you're killing had better be worth 2-for-1ing yourself. It's quite a headache for Storm since it answers both Baral, Chief of Compliance and Empty the Warrens.
- Goblin Matron. No Goblin Ringleader
- Seasoned Pyromancer. As a discard outlet it's nothing spectacular, you could have discarded one or two turns ago with Looting/Reunion. In theory fair black decks that play discard should want it, since discard gets worse as the game drags on so you'll have useless spells to pitch, and if you trade your discard spells for cards in the opponent's hand and end up hellbent then there's no drawback. The problematic scenario is when you're holding removal in your hand and want to advance your board with Pyromancer - if you cast it and discard your removal, you could be left without an answer in the two draws it grants you.
- Nimble Mongoose. The LD tools that Legacy has (Wasteland, Stifle) aren't in Modern, and without them it's hard to make Mongoose a 3/3 and keep your opponent from doing stuff at the same time.
- Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. This is another one of those cards that does nothing when you're behind, "behind" being defined as "not having at least two creatures on the field".
- Ice-Fang Coatl
- Kess, Dissident Mage. This was the card that demonstrated the problem with foil-only printings in paper before Nexus of Fate. Once upon a time it was played in Legacy, then Deathrite Shaman got banned and that was the end of it.
- Unsettled Mariner. Humans and Spirits already have plenty of ways to protect their creatures, a lot of which are on the "hard" side (Kitesail Freebooter, Meddling Mage, Drogskol Captain, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, Spell Queller) than the "soft" side (Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Mausoleum Wanderer). Kira is better than Kopala, Warden of Waves in Merfolk, and Monastery Siege is unplayable if these are any indication. More importantly, the soft counters stop combo decks from going off and not just their wincons - if you don't stop them from going off, they're just going to draw their Echoing Truth, bounce your hatebear, then kill you.
- Flusterstorm. This is only great in counter wars or against Storm. Dispel is a harder counter and Spell Pierce hits more things.
There are some controversial cards and/or some cards I think have promise in at least one deck that you didn't cover above; what do you think about them?
-kind of met expectations, nothing at first sight that will change Modern forever but a bunch of cool tools for existing decks
-Very happy with Force of Negation but sour about half of the force cycle being awful
-really hope Goblins becomes a real deck, Sling-Gang Lieutenant is going to be relevant I think. Wish we got Ringleader though.
-I don't see any of the other mechanics they pushed taking off in modern (i.e. slivers, snow and astral drift)
-really would have liked to see more interesting reprints, so many cards in the common and uncommon slot that will just fade into obscurity. It could have been nice to have some iconic but most likely not Modern playable cards in the low rarity slots like Jackal Pup.
-biggest failure I still think is how this set was hyped up as THE Modern set. Together with the months of blueballing, discovering we have to share the spotlight with commander product rejects and cute but never intended to be playable callbacks like Ponder Mage is a tad frustrating.
-kind of met expectations, nothing at first sight that will change Modern forever but a bunch of cool tools for existing decks
-Very happy with Force of Negation but sour about half of the force cycle being awful
-really hope Goblins becomes a real deck, Sling-Gang Lieutenant is going to be relevant I think. Wish we got Ringleader though.
-I don't see any of the other mechanics they pushed taking off in modern (i.e. slivers, snow and astral drift)
-really would have liked to see more interesting reprints, so many cards in the common and uncommon slot that will just fade into obscurity. It could have been nice to have some iconic but most likely not Modern playable cards in the low rarity slots like Jackal Pup.
-biggest failure I still think is how this set was hyped up as THE Modern set. Together with the months of blueballing, discovering we have to share the spotlight with commander product rejects and cute but never intended to be playable callbacks like Ponder Mage is a tad frustrating.
7/10
90%.
While not featuring gamechanger cards, there is seriously *a whole lot* of tools to meddle with in Modern. I think 8/10 it's fair.
-biggest failure I still think is how this set was hyped up as THE Modern set. Together with the months of blueballing, discovering we have to share the spotlight with commander product rejects and cute but never intended to be playable callbacks like Ponder Mage is a tad frustrating.
I want to pose to you the same question I posed to others: where did your hyped expectations come from? Was it a specific Wizards quote? Was there an article you read or a citable stream/podcast/interview you heard? I'm just going to paste my take on this from a different thread. Some elements of this quote won't apply here, but the vast majority of what I said here can be taken as a response to your quoted "biggest failure":
I really don't understand the negative reception to MH. It feels like many of the people who are disappointed set their own expectations and standards based on personal preferences, and then when Wizards failed to meet those subjective, personal, impossible expectations, they were disappointed/frustrated. Can people who are unhappy with MH actually cite a Wizards pitch, advertisement, promise, or claim that justified expectations of stuff like Sinkhole at uncommon?
"Powerful new options mixed with flavorful updates for favorite characters means Modern Horizons is going to be a wild ride. The set is full of cards that build up favorite Modern strategies, create new ones, and bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal."
Breaking this promise down, I'd identify five distinct expectations we should have:
1. "Powerful new options"
2. "Flavorful updates for favorite characters"
3. "Cards that build up favorite Modern strategies"
4. Cards that "create new ones"
5. Cards that "bring plenty of flavor to matches where Modern cards are legal
Three of these have unquestionably been met: 1, 2, and 5. Two of those objectives are flavor-based, not even power-based, and #1 has plenty of cards that fit the mold. 3 and 5 remain to be seen. I will remind everyone that even pros and pundits are notoriously inconsistent at card evaluation. Almost everyone missed the impact of stuff like Narset in non-rotating formats. Literally every author I've read missed Arclight Phoenix as a Tier 1 Modern enabler.
If someone can point me towards a different promise or advertisement by Wizards that promised something else/more, I'd love to read it. But most people who are disappointed with MH are not citing a claim that was unmet.
You can lawyer it all you want that they tEcHnIcAlLy never said it was purely a Modern set, but when we get cards that are clearly designed for commander, people will feel robbed. I've seen plenty of people make the "Commander Horizons" joke, which although I think is way too cynical shows that there are a lot of people who are disappointed in sharing the spotlight. Commander gets their own product every year; those cards aren't even Modern legal AND have brought Legacy cards like True-Name Nemesis, Council's Judgment and Leovold which are design disasters for a 1v1 format. Add to that the two-month silence between the spoilers of Serra/Cabal Therapist and the rest and you fuel false expectations even if you don't set it black on white.
I don't even really want to argue this point because as I said I'm satisfied with the set, but these apparent 5c Commander precon rejects are a blight on an otherwise good product.
EDIT: Leovold and Council's Judgment actually weren;t in commander precons now I think about it, but they were originally in sets designed for multiplayer
I want to pose to you the same question I posed to others: where did your hyped expectations come from?
I went back and rewatched the announcement and they literally say (@14:48) "you don't have to worry about putting cards that are too broken into Standard. They can just skip into where they're meant to be" then the other two just agree, then they name a couple cards that have made a difference in Modern. Then @21:03 Nassif, "... as you were saying, sets generally don't have that big of an impact on Modern. Maybe 5ish cards can break through and make an impact because for whatever reason in the context of Modern they are more powerful than in the context of Standard, so there are things that can be printed into Standard safely while being powerful in Modern, but the majority of the time it's tough to do that. With this set you can just push the boundaries completely" then goes on to describe some things that would be too much for Standard (despite WotC admittedly considering Counterspell for Standard).
On the other hand... The dude in red does temper Nassif's statement a bit by saying that Nassif doesn't know what's in the set. Then after the cards are revealed, the guy in Blue says, "...an opportunity to deliver a bunch of stuff from a creative, or flavor, or mechanical direction that we've been wanting to do for awhile but couldn't find a place... Of course we try to fit them into Standard if we can but there's alot of ways that they can't. Either for complexity or the wrong audience and the answer just has to be 'no'".
I mostly wanted to include that first paragraph to show that the initial announcement of the set does set a power level expectation in the vein of "this will impact Modern more than a Standard set" and "we can print things that are too good for Standard". You can argue that all that doesn't matter because of the statements in the second paragraph, but frankly they don't actually relate to reining in the power level expectations that have now been set on an official WotC announcement.
Maybe there are more relevant quotes, maybe not. But evidence has been provided.
Yeah, for Modern players, I don't think this is _enough_ better than any old standard set to justify the price of boxes properly, and the thing has Modern in it's name. Not being a limited print run helps it from being as problematic as Modern Masters, which is essential given that it introduces some brand new cards, but those cards are likely to end up with inflated prices compared to what they would be if they'd gotten a standard printing, not just because the base prices of the packs they are in is higher, but the set isn't enough better than standard sets to encourage people to open the packs as much at the prices given. Especially when this has the additional disadvantage compared to a Standard set of stuff not being also playable in Standard while it's in print (which thus produces some extra, temporary value in play-ability). It might have somewhat less chaff than most Standard sets, but I don't think it is to the degree needed to justify the price.
While I'd prefer it to be priced more like conspiracy, with the same prices as Standard packs, I'd be okay with it being priced, based on what is in the set, something like $4.99 a pack, and $120 for a box, not roughly double the price of Standard stuff, if they were to promise some kind of minor bonus like a guaranteed extra token card or snow basic or something in each pack.
I went back and rewatched the announcement and they literally say (@14:48) "you don't have to worry about putting cards that are too broken into Standard. They can just skip into where they're meant to be" then the other two just agree, then they name a couple cards that have made a difference in Modern. Then @21:03 Nassif, "... as you were saying, sets generally don't have that big of an impact on Modern. Maybe 5ish cards can break through and make an impact because for whatever reason in the context of Modern they are more powerful than in the context of Standard, so there are things that can be printed into Standard safely while being powerful in Modern, but the majority of the time it's tough to do that. With this set you can just push the boundaries completely" then goes on to describe some things that would be too much for Standard (despite WotC admittedly considering Counterspell for Standard).
Except this set will impact modern more than most standard sets, and it undoubtedly contains cards that would never see the light of standard. Expecting something that just about everybody knows would be acceptable in modern such as Counterspellis one thing, but some people's expectations involved some of the most powerful cards in Legacy such as Force of Will and True-Name Nemesis, which absolutely nothing in that interview supports. There's a whole lot of space between putting out a set that is pushed compared to standard and turning Modern into some kind of no-RL Legacy.
Players have every right to be disappointed about this product's pricing or the lack of personal favorite cards, but we were never, from the start, entitled to seeing the Legacy-caliber cards around which many players based their expectations.
Except this set will impact modern more than most standard sets, and it undoubtedly contains cards that would never see the light of standard. Expecting something that just about everybody knows would be acceptable in modern such as Counterspellis one thing, but some people's expectations involved some of the most powerful cards in Legacy such as Force of Will and True-Name Nemesis, which absolutely nothing in that interview supports. There's a whole lot of space between putting out a set that is pushed compared to standard and turning Modern into some kind of no-RL Legacy.
Players have every right to be disappointed about this product's pricing or the lack of personal favorite cards, but we were never, from the start, entitled to seeing the Legacy-caliber cards around which many players based their expectations.
How effective the set is compared to a Standard set is clearly up for debate but the fact that it's even debatable is really frustrating to people; I'm just trying to establish where the set expectations could have come from.
As for people wanting Force of Will, Wasteland, TNN, and Black Lotus, I'm not giving sanctuary what actual predictions people made. I'm just pointing out a WotC announcement that hypes up the set as something that will impact Modern more than a Standard set.
I'm really disappointed they didn't take this opportunity to make an equipment that is decently playable in modern, something they really cannot do in a standard set. We don't need an ally-color cycle of swords that are worse than the swords that already don't see play. Put that garbage in a commander set.
Other than that I like MH.
Does anyone have any long term speculation targets on cards prices for this set? Such as X card is good and it's under $5. Or X card is only $15 better get it while you can. For me the set seems price out already with no real targets. I wouldn't speculate on anything more $5 or else even long term I wouldn't make that much money. All of the mythics are obvious targets. Does anyone one have a few long term targets at rare ? Everyday I look at the prices and they keep decreasing so the set isn't even at bottom price yet. Bottom price is usually a month or two after release. I'm personally wondering how low they can go. I'm looking at the bottom 30 rares in the set all priced in the $1 to $2 range. That's a lot of low value cards. So clearly players aren't going to feel the singles price. Some of those Canopy lands are at $13.
Well, recents metagame developments have reenforced the saying "Always invest in pitch spells" - I'd buy up all the forces in this set, they *will* gain value a few years down the road. The horizon lands, too, will probably always be in demand. Also, the full art snow lands. People love full art lands, and I'm sure Snow.dec will have its time in the sun in the near future.
There are some controversial cards and/or some cards I think have promise in at least one deck that you didn't cover above; what do you think about them?
Alright, since you asked nicely:
- Hexdrinker: this sort of mana sink card never does well. Figure of Destiny, Student of Warfare, Warden of the First Tree, Kessig Prowler...the irony is that it gains protection from instants, but its ability must be activated at sorcery speed.
- Splicer's Skill: hardcasting it is nothing special. Splicing it is quite expensive. Even if your deck is nothing but 1-mana instants or sorceries, you can't splice this until turn 5.
- Winds of Abandon: about as good as Declaration in Stone. 2 mana, sorcery, with drawback.
- Wing Shards: good players play spells during their second main phase (corollary: good players don't play prowess decks ) so you can expect to kill one attacker with this.
- Mirrodin Besieged: harder-to-kill alternative to Sai (Saheeli is primarily used in Phoenix so she doesn't count). Playable for this reason, but not spectacular - Sai is a SB card.
- Winter's Rest: Narcolepsy.
- Crypt Rats: what are you hoping to accomplish with this card? If you want to Wrath, play wraths.
- Dead of Winter: unlike On Thin Ice it needs more than one snow land to be good. I think the possibility of maybe having it be a Damnation/Languish for one mana cheaper isn't worth the deckbuilding constraint.
- First-Sphere Gargantua: this is a payoff for looting that doesn't require you to jump through hoops like reanimating another creature or playing two creatures in one turn - you just pay mana for it (gasp!) instead. Unfortunately I think that makes it a bit too fair.
- Nether Spirit: not worth the deckbuilding constraint. You almost certainly have other creatures in your deck, yes, even the fair decks (Snapcaster Mage).
- Ransack the Lab: too expensive at 2 mana.
- Sling-Gang Lieutenant: seems pretty expensive, and we don't have Goblin Lackey to make that a non-issue. The good Goblin deck in Modern has a curve that stops at 2.
- Shatter Assumptions: doesn't seem great against Tron. It's not cheap enough to rip out their land search cards, so they will have Tron, and once they do they are but a topdeck away from getting back into the game after you shatter their assumptions.
- Yawgmoth, Thran Physician: Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet seems better at 4. Helps you when you're behind, etc.
- Aria of Flame: Guttersnipe.
- Geomancer's Gambit: this is like Field of Ruin in spell form, except it is not an instant. Pass.
- Goblin Engineer: PV had a rather amusing Modern Horizons review article which could just have been titled "First Impressions of Goblin Engineer". He does make very convincing arguments for the card. It's a tough call, but I think it's more trouble than it's worth. For the sake of a balanced view I'll list out what I don't like about Engineer:
1) The reanimation ability requires sacrificing an artifact, marring the Stoneforge Mystic comparison. Sometimes the artifact you sacrifice is going to be the weak link that lets your opponent dismantle your lock.
2) It introduces vulnerability to the deck. Yes, you can get back your Bridge through other ways if they kill your Engineer, but that takes time and your opponent can mount an attack while you're defenseless.
3) Abrade answers Engineer if you draw it and your other lock pieces if you don't.
- Igneous Elemental: this is not playable even if it always cost 2RR and didn't have the land check.
- Magmatic Sinkhole: Harvest Pyre, but better. It kills both Crackling Drake and Gurmag Angler while Flame Slash or Roast would miss one of the two, and PWs are no longer safe if they go for the + (well, other than every Karn). Playable in fair UR decks as complementary removal to Bolt.
- Ore-Scale Guardian: Q: How much does this need to be reduced by for it to be a good deal? A: Maybe four. Q: Can you get that many lands into your graveyard quick enough? A: Probably not. Even if you crack fetches from turn 1-3 you still need one more land through some other means.
- Tectonic Reformation: Doesn't seem much better than Molten Vortex, which makes lands in your hand have R: Shock instead of R: draw 1.
- Throes of Chaos: 4 mana for a random spell that costs less than 4 mana sounds like a bad deal.
- Ayula's Influence: hampered by its mana cost. In Life from the Loam decks you want red on turn 1 for Looting to dump lands and Loam in your graveyard. R on turn 1 into RG on turn 2 (for Wrenn/Loam) into RRR on turn 3 for Seismic Assault is easily achievable. If turn 3 is Ayula's Influence, it's technically still doable, but your mana base will be heavier on basic Forests so you might miss those T1 Lootings more often.
- Genesis: too expensive.
- Llanowar Tribe: trite, but dies to Bolt. If you are playing some kind of devotion deck with Leyline of Vitality then it just flips the bird to Bolt, but that seems a little inconsistent, even with the London mulligan.
- Regrowth: probably not good enough. The cards that dump themselves in the graveyard after use are instants and sorceries, and we have Snapcaster Mage to get those back.
- Wall of Blossoms: the OG Wall of Omens, and about as good in the current meta (which is to say, not very). There are decks that want it - Astral Drift is one of them - but I'm not a believer in those decks.
- Weather the Storm: this is not a counter to Storm, they will have enough resources to Grapeshot a second and then third time on the same turn. It is a counter to Burn about as much as Nourish is, i.e. if you're willing to play a card that only counters Burn and is dead in all other matchups, it's there.
- Winding Way: not good, I posted about this already.
- Collected Conjuring: sorcery only kills it. The fun things like Bolts and rituals are instants.
- Ruination Rioter: Like Ore-Scale Guardian, I ask "how much damage does this need to do?" My answer is probably 3; Viashino Pyromancer is unplayable at 2 and player/PW only. That's one less than Guardian, but still a lot of fetches that need to be cracked. Don't play this in a Loam deck of any kind; the whole point of Loam is to get lands out of your graveyard.
- Altar of Dementia: As a Johnny I really like this card since it not only sacs for free but also kills them directly, unlike Viscera Seer/Carrion Feeder/Greater Gargadon. Before this, there was Blasting Station, which was 1 mana too expensive. The Spike in me says that they're never going to print a creature that can be sacced infinitely by itself, so your combo is going to involve at least three pieces (Altar, recurring dude, enabler for recurring dude), one of which can't be grabbed with Collected Company.
- Fountain of Ichor: just play a manland instead.
- Cave of Temptation: see Fountain of Ichor.
- Frostwalk Bastion: oh hey, a manland. Unfortunately, it doesn't tap for colored mana, and Field of Ruin isn't worth cutting for it.
- Prismatic Vista: not playable. In mono-color you shouldn't be playing fetches. In 2-color, use the on-color fetches. If you need more, the question is whether you would rather be able to fetch main color basic + shockland (with an off-color fetch) or main color basic + secondary color basic (with Vista), and I think you'll find the answer to be the former. In 3-color, use fetches in every combination of your colors instead.
- Cloudshredder Sliver: pseudo Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel combo when paired with Gemhide Sliver or Manaweft Sliver. The main difference is that each piece is more expensive than the Elves, and multiple Cloudshredders don't stack like multiple Sentinels.
- Dregscape Sliver: feels too defensive. You either have to wait for your Slivers to die, or go through the trouble of discarding them yourself. If you're playing the 16 rainbow land mana base, you can't play Looting, and Ancient Ziggurat won't pay for unearth.
Izzetmage can make only one more post before mtgs closes so he ends on 6666. Either that or he has to go on a spamming constructive posting spree to make 6969
Most likely because of slots, there is only that much room in a set, so cramming all 5 swords in AND all 10 Horizon lands takes to much space away from other inclusions (especially the Swords since they are Mythic).
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Also lets them test the waters to see how much we want something like this without eating up a ton of space. I'm glad they didn't print the sword cycle, without stoneforge the existing stronger ones don't even see play.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Spirits
I mostly agree. The protections from Sword of Sinew and Steel might come in quite handy though!
Legacy: Death&Taxes (almost there)
EDH: Squee, Goblin Nabob / Phelddagrif
I kind of just think Shadow & Light is better for their protections.. Like Fatal Push Protection and Path to Exile, and on a x/2 body it survives bolt. Sure they could double bolt or something but I'll trade that easily enough.
On Horizons itself, it's a nostalgia set so a lot of cards are going to be subject to rose tinted glasses. Cards that were once good in Standard, Extended, or the early days of Legacy might not cut it in current Modern.
- On Thin Ice. Path is still the boss, but this is an acceptable 5th removal spell in UW.
- Serra the Benevolent
- Force of Negation
- Carrion Feeder
- Mind Rake. Making yourself discard turns on Ensnaring Bridge faster.
- Plague Engineer
- Unearth
- Firebolt. Its usefulness is tempered somewhat by the fact that Snapcaster Mage exists.
- Lava Dart, but only for prowess decks.
- Pillage. This card can be hard to cast in Ponza as it plays upwards of six basic Forests, so it's not the automatic upgrade that everyone seems to think it is (Q: why is Ponza playing Stone Rain when Molten Rain exists?) It is, however, a good SB card that hits two types of decks, in the same vein as Abrade or Damping Sphere.
- Shenanigans, aka "can't Cage this" and "how does it feel to draw 2 mana Vindicates for the rest of the game"
- Collector Ouphe
- Crashing Footfalls. I'm probably too hopeful on this one.
- Force of Vigor
- Scale Up
- Eladamri's Call
- Kaya's Guile. Shame about the color combination though.
- Wrenn and Six. Loam has some problems (bad vs combo and persistent grave hate) but I believe they are solvable. I don't think this card is great in non-Loam midrange decks though.
- Scrapyard Recombiner
- Cycling lands
- Horizon Canopy-type lands
- Hall of Heliod's Generosity
- Ranger-Captain of Eos. Controversial opinion! Yes, Ranger of Eos was a playable card. What kind of stuff has Ranger traditionally been used to get?
Death's Shadows
Serra Ascendant + Martyr of Sands
Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel
Champion of the Parish + Norin the Wary (I know, I play weird decks)
Two things stand out here:
1) Most 1-drops suck on turn 5 (4 with acceleration) so Ranger usually ends up getting a 2-card combo. Ranger-Captain only gets one guy at a time.
2) Ranger is easily splashable with only one white in its cost. Ranger-Captain has two white. I don't want to try fitting this into a DS deck.
- Vesperlark
- Archmage's Charm. What makes Cryptic Command so good is that it covers all your bases. If your opponent is going to attack, you tap his creatures before combat and draw a card. If your opponent casts a spell, you counter it and draw a card. Rarely will your opponent not do either of the above unless the game is already out of his reach, but you're OK with that anyway; your deck is set up to win a long game, so both players draw-going benefits you. Archmage's Charm doesn't cover you when your opponent attacks.
- Echo of Eons
- Fact or Fiction
- Marit Lage's Slumber
- Prohibit. This card never trades up on mana, and is quite bad on the draw when they start casting 3s and you're on 2 lands (Spell Snare is good because it lets you fight back from behind). It's a bit like Spellstutter Sprite in that sense, but Spellstutter has Bitterblossom (and isn't great even with it). Prohibit has...Baral? Anyway, it's probably not a good idea to go deep on counterspells when one of the tier 1 decks plays Cavern of Souls.
- Tribute Mage
- Urza, Lord High Artificer. He's not good when you're behind, and the Unexpected Results ability is at odds with your deck probably consisting of a lot of 0-mana artifacts.
- Cabal Therapist
- Force of Despair. There's multiple ways to look at this card; if you see it as a Wrath, you need to draw it before they start dumping their hand. If you see it as Cradle to Grave, whatever you're killing had better be worth 2-for-1ing yourself. It's quite a headache for Storm since it answers both Baral, Chief of Compliance and Empty the Warrens.
- Goblin Matron. No Goblin Ringleader
- Seasoned Pyromancer. As a discard outlet it's nothing spectacular, you could have discarded one or two turns ago with Looting/Reunion. In theory fair black decks that play discard should want it, since discard gets worse as the game drags on so you'll have useless spells to pitch, and if you trade your discard spells for cards in the opponent's hand and end up hellbent then there's no drawback. The problematic scenario is when you're holding removal in your hand and want to advance your board with Pyromancer - if you cast it and discard your removal, you could be left without an answer in the two draws it grants you.
- Nimble Mongoose. The LD tools that Legacy has (Wasteland, Stifle) aren't in Modern, and without them it's hard to make Mongoose a 3/3 and keep your opponent from doing stuff at the same time.
- Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. This is another one of those cards that does nothing when you're behind, "behind" being defined as "not having at least two creatures on the field".
- Ice-Fang Coatl
- Kess, Dissident Mage. This was the card that demonstrated the problem with foil-only printings in paper before Nexus of Fate. Once upon a time it was played in Legacy, then Deathrite Shaman got banned and that was the end of it.
- Unsettled Mariner. Humans and Spirits already have plenty of ways to protect their creatures, a lot of which are on the "hard" side (Kitesail Freebooter, Meddling Mage, Drogskol Captain, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, Spell Queller) than the "soft" side (Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Mausoleum Wanderer). Kira is better than Kopala, Warden of Waves in Merfolk, and Monastery Siege is unplayable if these are any indication. More importantly, the soft counters stop combo decks from going off and not just their wincons - if you don't stop them from going off, they're just going to draw their Echoing Truth, bounce your hatebear, then kill you.
- Flusterstorm. This is only great in counter wars or against Storm. Dispel is a harder counter and Spell Pierce hits more things.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
the horizon lands also cant be leveraged to the same extent in every type of strategy, and each additional copy put into the deck increases the chances the life loss could impact the outcome of a game or match. i get that the lands are good, but it is most assuredly incorrect to play the full set of any of the on-color versions in any and all decks that can. for intents and purposes the lands are worse versions of pain lands until the moment you sac them for the effect in a game. in essence they make existing decks better, rather than being the basis for the deck itself or enabling anything in it (sans things specifically leveraging lands in the GY and putting them there).
as for limitations of the horizon lands; life-loss is the obvious drawback, but there is also the cost of stunting your mana development as the game progresses. where horizon canopy has primarily showcased its strength, and where more copies are typically seen, is in decks that have some sort of mana acceleration and or have a low enough average cmc.
for example think of some mono blue deck with thing in the ice, snapcasters, and the relevant blue control spells up through to cryptic command (maybe even including the new archmage charm). is the payoff of adding 8 blue horizon lands worth it? hardly, because the deck has powerful things to be doing even at 6 mana with snapcaster + cryptic command.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)There are some controversial cards and/or some cards I think have promise in at least one deck that you didn't cover above; what do you think about them?
-kind of met expectations, nothing at first sight that will change Modern forever but a bunch of cool tools for existing decks
-Very happy with Force of Negation but sour about half of the force cycle being awful
-really hope Goblins becomes a real deck, Sling-Gang Lieutenant is going to be relevant I think. Wish we got Ringleader though.
-I don't see any of the other mechanics they pushed taking off in modern (i.e. slivers, snow and astral drift)
-really would have liked to see more interesting reprints, so many cards in the common and uncommon slot that will just fade into obscurity. It could have been nice to have some iconic but most likely not Modern playable cards in the low rarity slots like Jackal Pup.
-biggest failure I still think is how this set was hyped up as THE Modern set. Together with the months of blueballing, discovering we have to share the spotlight with commander product rejects and cute but never intended to be playable callbacks like Ponder Mage is a tad frustrating.
7/10
90%.
While not featuring gamechanger cards, there is seriously *a whole lot* of tools to meddle with in Modern. I think 8/10 it's fair.
I want to pose to you the same question I posed to others: where did your hyped expectations come from? Was it a specific Wizards quote? Was there an article you read or a citable stream/podcast/interview you heard? I'm just going to paste my take on this from a different thread. Some elements of this quote won't apply here, but the vast majority of what I said here can be taken as a response to your quoted "biggest failure":
You can lawyer it all you want that they tEcHnIcAlLy never said it was purely a Modern set, but when we get cards that are clearly designed for commander, people will feel robbed. I've seen plenty of people make the "Commander Horizons" joke, which although I think is way too cynical shows that there are a lot of people who are disappointed in sharing the spotlight. Commander gets their own product every year; those cards aren't even Modern legal AND have brought Legacy cards like True-Name Nemesis, Council's Judgment and Leovold which are design disasters for a 1v1 format. Add to that the two-month silence between the spoilers of Serra/Cabal Therapist and the rest and you fuel false expectations even if you don't set it black on white.
I don't even really want to argue this point because as I said I'm satisfied with the set, but these apparent 5c Commander precon rejects are a blight on an otherwise good product.
EDIT: Leovold and Council's Judgment actually weren;t in commander precons now I think about it, but they were originally in sets designed for multiplayer
I went back and rewatched the announcement and they literally say (@14:48) "you don't have to worry about putting cards that are too broken into Standard. They can just skip into where they're meant to be" then the other two just agree, then they name a couple cards that have made a difference in Modern. Then @21:03 Nassif, "... as you were saying, sets generally don't have that big of an impact on Modern. Maybe 5ish cards can break through and make an impact because for whatever reason in the context of Modern they are more powerful than in the context of Standard, so there are things that can be printed into Standard safely while being powerful in Modern, but the majority of the time it's tough to do that. With this set you can just push the boundaries completely" then goes on to describe some things that would be too much for Standard (despite WotC admittedly considering Counterspell for Standard).
On the other hand... The dude in red does temper Nassif's statement a bit by saying that Nassif doesn't know what's in the set. Then after the cards are revealed, the guy in Blue says, "...an opportunity to deliver a bunch of stuff from a creative, or flavor, or mechanical direction that we've been wanting to do for awhile but couldn't find a place... Of course we try to fit them into Standard if we can but there's alot of ways that they can't. Either for complexity or the wrong audience and the answer just has to be 'no'".
I mostly wanted to include that first paragraph to show that the initial announcement of the set does set a power level expectation in the vein of "this will impact Modern more than a Standard set" and "we can print things that are too good for Standard". You can argue that all that doesn't matter because of the statements in the second paragraph, but frankly they don't actually relate to reining in the power level expectations that have now been set on an official WotC announcement.
Maybe there are more relevant quotes, maybe not. But evidence has been provided.
"Reveal a Dragon"
While I'd prefer it to be priced more like conspiracy, with the same prices as Standard packs, I'd be okay with it being priced, based on what is in the set, something like $4.99 a pack, and $120 for a box, not roughly double the price of Standard stuff, if they were to promise some kind of minor bonus like a guaranteed extra token card or snow basic or something in each pack.
Except this set will impact modern more than most standard sets, and it undoubtedly contains cards that would never see the light of standard. Expecting something that just about everybody knows would be acceptable in modern such as Counterspellis one thing, but some people's expectations involved some of the most powerful cards in Legacy such as Force of Will and True-Name Nemesis, which absolutely nothing in that interview supports. There's a whole lot of space between putting out a set that is pushed compared to standard and turning Modern into some kind of no-RL Legacy.
Players have every right to be disappointed about this product's pricing or the lack of personal favorite cards, but we were never, from the start, entitled to seeing the Legacy-caliber cards around which many players based their expectations.
As for people wanting Force of Will, Wasteland, TNN, and Black Lotus, I'm not giving sanctuary what actual predictions people made. I'm just pointing out a WotC announcement that hypes up the set as something that will impact Modern more than a Standard set.
"Reveal a Dragon"
Other than that I like MH.
Modern decksscrapped for parts.EDH decks
WB Daxos the Returned
BR Rakdos, Lord of Riots
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage
That's every single set ever, though. You either draft or buy singles
Well, recents metagame developments have reenforced the saying "Always invest in pitch spells" - I'd buy up all the forces in this set, they *will* gain value a few years down the road. The horizon lands, too, will probably always be in demand. Also, the full art snow lands. People love full art lands, and I'm sure Snow.dec will have its time in the sun in the near future.
GWUBRDraft my Old Border Nostalgia Cube! and/or The Little Pauper Cube That Could!RBUWG
Modern:WDeath & TaxesW | RUGRUG DelverRUG
Alright, since you asked nicely:
- Splicer's Skill: hardcasting it is nothing special. Splicing it is quite expensive. Even if your deck is nothing but 1-mana instants or sorceries, you can't splice this until turn 5.
- Winds of Abandon: about as good as Declaration in Stone. 2 mana, sorcery, with drawback.
- Wing Shards: good players play spells during their second main phase (corollary: good players don't play prowess decks ) so you can expect to kill one attacker with this.
- Mirrodin Besieged: harder-to-kill alternative to Sai (Saheeli is primarily used in Phoenix so she doesn't count). Playable for this reason, but not spectacular - Sai is a SB card.
- Winter's Rest: Narcolepsy.
- Crypt Rats: what are you hoping to accomplish with this card? If you want to Wrath, play wraths.
- Dead of Winter: unlike On Thin Ice it needs more than one snow land to be good. I think the possibility of maybe having it be a Damnation/Languish for one mana cheaper isn't worth the deckbuilding constraint.
- First-Sphere Gargantua: this is a payoff for looting that doesn't require you to jump through hoops like reanimating another creature or playing two creatures in one turn - you just pay mana for it (gasp!) instead. Unfortunately I think that makes it a bit too fair.
- Nether Spirit: not worth the deckbuilding constraint. You almost certainly have other creatures in your deck, yes, even the fair decks (Snapcaster Mage).
- Ransack the Lab: too expensive at 2 mana.
- Sling-Gang Lieutenant: seems pretty expensive, and we don't have Goblin Lackey to make that a non-issue. The good Goblin deck in Modern has a curve that stops at 2.
- Shatter Assumptions: doesn't seem great against Tron. It's not cheap enough to rip out their land search cards, so they will have Tron, and once they do they are but a topdeck away from getting back into the game after you shatter their assumptions.
- Yawgmoth, Thran Physician: Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet seems better at 4. Helps you when you're behind, etc.
- Aria of Flame: Guttersnipe.
- Geomancer's Gambit: this is like Field of Ruin in spell form, except it is not an instant. Pass.
- Goblin Engineer: PV had a rather amusing Modern Horizons review article which could just have been titled "First Impressions of Goblin Engineer". He does make very convincing arguments for the card. It's a tough call, but I think it's more trouble than it's worth. For the sake of a balanced view I'll list out what I don't like about Engineer:
1) The reanimation ability requires sacrificing an artifact, marring the Stoneforge Mystic comparison. Sometimes the artifact you sacrifice is going to be the weak link that lets your opponent dismantle your lock.
2) It introduces vulnerability to the deck. Yes, you can get back your Bridge through other ways if they kill your Engineer, but that takes time and your opponent can mount an attack while you're defenseless.
3) Abrade answers Engineer if you draw it and your other lock pieces if you don't.
- Igneous Elemental: this is not playable even if it always cost 2RR and didn't have the land check.
- Magmatic Sinkhole: Harvest Pyre, but better. It kills both Crackling Drake and Gurmag Angler while Flame Slash or Roast would miss one of the two, and PWs are no longer safe if they go for the + (well, other than every Karn). Playable in fair UR decks as complementary removal to Bolt.
- Ore-Scale Guardian: Q: How much does this need to be reduced by for it to be a good deal? A: Maybe four. Q: Can you get that many lands into your graveyard quick enough? A: Probably not. Even if you crack fetches from turn 1-3 you still need one more land through some other means.
- Tectonic Reformation: Doesn't seem much better than Molten Vortex, which makes lands in your hand have R: Shock instead of R: draw 1.
- Throes of Chaos: 4 mana for a random spell that costs less than 4 mana sounds like a bad deal.
- Ayula's Influence: hampered by its mana cost. In Life from the Loam decks you want red on turn 1 for Looting to dump lands and Loam in your graveyard. R on turn 1 into RG on turn 2 (for Wrenn/Loam) into RRR on turn 3 for Seismic Assault is easily achievable. If turn 3 is Ayula's Influence, it's technically still doable, but your mana base will be heavier on basic Forests so you might miss those T1 Lootings more often.
- Genesis: too expensive.
- Llanowar Tribe: trite, but dies to Bolt. If you are playing some kind of devotion deck with Leyline of Vitality then it just flips the bird to Bolt, but that seems a little inconsistent, even with the London mulligan.
- Regrowth: probably not good enough. The cards that dump themselves in the graveyard after use are instants and sorceries, and we have Snapcaster Mage to get those back.
- Wall of Blossoms: the OG Wall of Omens, and about as good in the current meta (which is to say, not very). There are decks that want it - Astral Drift is one of them - but I'm not a believer in those decks.
- Weather the Storm: this is not a counter to Storm, they will have enough resources to Grapeshot a second and then third time on the same turn. It is a counter to Burn about as much as Nourish is, i.e. if you're willing to play a card that only counters Burn and is dead in all other matchups, it's there.
- Winding Way: not good, I posted about this already.
- Collected Conjuring: sorcery only kills it. The fun things like Bolts and rituals are instants.
- Ruination Rioter: Like Ore-Scale Guardian, I ask "how much damage does this need to do?" My answer is probably 3; Viashino Pyromancer is unplayable at 2 and player/PW only. That's one less than Guardian, but still a lot of fetches that need to be cracked. Don't play this in a Loam deck of any kind; the whole point of Loam is to get lands out of your graveyard.
- Altar of Dementia: As a Johnny I really like this card since it not only sacs for free but also kills them directly, unlike Viscera Seer/Carrion Feeder/Greater Gargadon. Before this, there was Blasting Station, which was 1 mana too expensive. The Spike in me says that they're never going to print a creature that can be sacced infinitely by itself, so your combo is going to involve at least three pieces (Altar, recurring dude, enabler for recurring dude), one of which can't be grabbed with Collected Company.
- Fountain of Ichor: just play a manland instead.
- Cave of Temptation: see Fountain of Ichor.
- Frostwalk Bastion: oh hey, a manland. Unfortunately, it doesn't tap for colored mana, and Field of Ruin isn't worth cutting for it.
- Prismatic Vista: not playable. In mono-color you shouldn't be playing fetches. In 2-color, use the on-color fetches. If you need more, the question is whether you would rather be able to fetch main color basic + shockland (with an off-color fetch) or main color basic + secondary color basic (with Vista), and I think you'll find the answer to be the former. In 3-color, use fetches in every combination of your colors instead.
- Cloudshredder Sliver: pseudo Heritage Druid + Nettle Sentinel combo when paired with Gemhide Sliver or Manaweft Sliver. The main difference is that each piece is more expensive than the Elves, and multiple Cloudshredders don't stack like multiple Sentinels.
- Dregscape Sliver: feels too defensive. You either have to wait for your Slivers to die, or go through the trouble of discarding them yourself. If you're playing the 16 rainbow land mana base, you can't play Looting, and Ancient Ziggurat won't pay for unearth.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
spammingconstructive posting spree to make 6969