For what it's worth, I still don't play DFCs on principle, so I cannot comment on the Mayor either way. On paper, I think it is a high risk high reward card, and these are quite often either loved or hated.
As for Call of the Herd, I still play it because it is a reasonably priced source of card advantage. However, it not being a creature is bad for quite a few cards in my green section now, the elephants having a CMC of 0 is bad for Birthing Pod and it being vanilla is generally bad. I can see cutting it in the not-so-distant future.
I love Call of the Herd in my 800 card list. I wouldn't touch the Mayor with a stick... Maybe it's my playgroup as well, but I'm with wtwlf here...
The bottom line is people didn't want to draft it. The 3-slot was better off being used for tempo spells like bounce or LD. Honestly, I like Mayor, but only because it's a two drop that helps me support a few archetypes. I haven't personally played with it yet, but he's had good reviews from others in my group. I'm also a sucker for Anthem and token effects, so he gets extra consideration
Quote from kmclaugh »
Kind of a tangent, but Call was completely absurd when it was first printed. Did you ever play 4ED-Odyssey extended? Every deck splashed green for it. It was pretty damn silly.
For the record, I have both cards in my 540.
I probably shouldn't have been so hyperbolic with my evaluation of Call of the Herd. Yes, I played with Call quite a bit when it was in standard, played Dumbo Drop in old Extended, and shed a tear when I picked up 12 copies at the Time Spiral prerelease only to have them sit in my binder unused for the entire block. Creatures are much better than 3-mana 3/3s these days and the removal and sweepers have grown up as well. It's still in my on-deck binder so I still may give it another run, but it was the card that tabled more than any other card in my list (no hyperbole). Several people insisted it was good, but when I asked our draft table one night when the last time they remember killing anyone with Call and no one could respond, it was promptly benched. Maybe Mayor is getting played because it's new or maybe because it's better than Call? It's hard to say, but my personal experience shows Mayor to be more useful and much more worthy of the slot.
@rantipole: perhaps Mayor --> Albino Troll would be a good test swap? The troll has a similar "risk/reward" dilemma.
Eh. Troll can block almost every other 2-drop and lots of 3- and 4- drops the turn he comes down without me even leaving up regeneration mana. Swinging for 3 on turn 3 isn't bad either. Sure, Troll will eventually be outclassed but I don't think Mayor is the card that outclasses him. Mayor does not reliably flip, and I tend to value consistency over explosiveness.
Call of the Herd is still pretty great. Two threats from one card for a reasonable mana investment is nothing to sneeze at.
By my quick and probably innaccurate count there were 50sih instants or flash cards in my cube, which is 13% of my cube. Of those only 20 (5%) weren't Counterspells or removal, which leads me to believe that the passing your turn only to have your opponent keep it from flipping isn't as likely as it was made out to be. I'll say it again a 2 drop eating a removal spell is pretty much a victory for any deck. I'd say passing your turn against any non blue deck means he's flipping or eating a removal spell on average, and even against blue it should happen on occasion. Again only recommended if you have something else to do with your mana or are ahead on board.
If you have something to do with your mana that isn't casting a spell on your turn (man-lands, equipment, instants, etc) the card is insane.
I realize we're not likely to convince each other, but I really wanted to check my numbers on instants an flash cards to see how likely your opponent is to keep him from flipping.
Perhaps this thread hijacking should be moved to its own post?
@wtwlf: Again, I'm just interested in hearing reports about when he was bad. Theorycrafting various situations in which a card doesn't work out has very limited usefulness in card evaluations, and outside of your testing, I have not read of any meaningful reports. It seems that most people took the easy road of (a) analyze the situations in which the werewolves are bad, (b) refer to your testing as proof of the analysis, (c) do not include them in their list. This leads to a lower number of cubes running the card, which means new cubes are less likely to include it (because eidolon's lists are such a double edged sword), and so few people end up playing with this new mechanic. Parts (a) and (c) are inherent problems, but part (b) can easily be changed.
As far as your testing goes, testing a deck with 6 werewolves against a cube precon is probably not the most instructive situation.
Here are some reasons
1) The deck had lower than average power level. Mayor, Daybreak Ranger, and Reckless Waif are the only 3 werewolves that are actually cube-able -- instigator gang is borderline, the rest are too weak. Thus, the deck had a lower powerlevel than average.
2) Predictability. Knowing that you are playing against such a deck makes it clear what kind of opening hand you need, what your opponent is going to try to do, and what kind of plays are going to be best. If I know my opponent has 6 creatures with echo, I know that I can get a free time walk by saving my removal for the right moment.
3) Lack of synergy. Since this was your first experience with them, it is unlikely that you knew which cards synergize well. Since you have not posted decklists, this is only speculation, but somehow I doubt you included cards that would really let WWs shine. I think we can all agree that many cube cards are confusing or seem weak until one understands the correct synergies available.
4) Lack of experience. By your numerous claims that it is simply not worth it to skip your turn to let them flip, you may not have played them correctly all the time. It is not always best to skip your turn, but many times it is. Werewolves are extremely skill testing for both players, and some experience with them can go a long way.
5) The other decks. Again, since you posted no decklists, it is entirely speculation, but I imagine the other decks were probably a good bit stronger. This ties into #1 and #3. Additionally, the matchups may have been bad in traditional ways -- eg. midrange vs control is bad for midrange, etc...
Testing a handful of new additions to your cube spread over several cube precons is fine. You are right, lots of people do this, and it is legitimate. But concentrating every card with a new and strange mechanic intro the same deck is essentially forcing the cards to fail. I invite you and some others to give it some testing in a more general situation, and if it doesn't work out, I'd love to hear about it. I'm willing to admit my ranking for Mayor is too high once I hear some situations that actually happened. Until then, I can only go based on my personal experience, and that experience has me wanting to live the turn 1 Mayor dream (in my friends powered cube) over and over and over.... A green 2 drop that wins the game entirely by itself is just completely nuts, and it's done it more than enough times for me.
Maybe Mayor is getting played because it's new or maybe because it's better than Call? It's hard to say, but my personal experience shows Mayor to be more useful and much more worthy of the slot.
I like the arguments provided for the anti-precon decks, but I don't think that's the only testing wtwlf123 used. I agree with you that the precon testing thing might not be the most reliable form of testing, but I think it's acceptable even if it has flaws. I personally like seeding the cards into winstons or draft pools because that's the most natural way of drafting for us, but I don't think precons are a bad idea.
I find that wtwlf123's experiences with certain cards are pretty different than my own, but I attribute this mostly to player preference and cube differences moreso than the cards themselves actually being different. In certain cubes with certain players, Mayor is awesome and in other ones it's not so great.
1) The deck had lower than average power level. Mayor, Daybreak Ranger, and Reckless Waif are the only 3 werewolves that are actually cube-able -- instigator gang is borderline, the rest are too weak. Thus, the deck had a lower powerlevel than average.
Actually, all 6 werewolves were pretty bad, which lowered the powerlevel of the deck pretty significantly. And contrary to your opinion, the Ranger was the only one of those three that was even playable. The other 3 of the six played significantly better than the Waif and Mayor, including the Shepherd!
Quote from takiguy »
2) Predictability. Knowing that you are playing against such a deck makes it clear what kind of opening hand you need, what your opponent is going to try to do, and what kind of plays are going to be best. If I know my opponent has 6 creatures with echo, I know that I can get a free time walk by saving my removal for the right moment.
This is legitimate. But it still didn't change the fact that when my opponent played his normal game, the wolves didn't flip. And not playing spells to flip my wolves was sometimes the right call (and we did it when appropriate) but it's also more risky. It's easy to have your Mayor die to a removal spell after passing to flip him manually, and it hurts more than echo when it happens.
Quote from takiguy »
3) Lack of synergy. Since this was your first experience with them, it is unlikely that you knew which cards synergize well. Since you have not posted decklists, this is only speculation, but somehow I doubt you included cards that would really let WWs shine. I think we can all agree that many cube cards are confusing or seem weak until one understands the correct synergies available.
Actually, there were a lot of cards that had synergy with the wolves in that RG beatdown deck. Instant, equipment, manlands... the whole suite. The problem was in the situations that I didn't have them available, the card rotted on the board on the front side, unable to profitably transform. And my opponent was able to swiftly get the upper hand on the board state when your wolves remain face-up too long.
I'd also argue that having multiple wolves out at the same time increases the synergy; as passing the turn to self-transform a pair of them doubles the effective value of that play. The deck probably had more synergy than the average deck that plays a lone wolf.
Quote from takiguy »
4) Lack of experience. By your numerous claims that it is simply not worth it to skip your turn to let them flip, you may not have played them correctly all the time. It is not always best to skip your turn, but many times it is. Werewolves are extremely skill testing for both players, and some experience with them can go a long way.
We passed to flip when the opportunity was available and correct. It still doesn't always make it worthwhile, as it often led to blowouts worse than removal after echo. The only wolf that proved worth skipping a turn to flip was the Ranger (which I think is a pretty solid card, actually), because he had an effect I could immediately get value from, that was guaranteed to trigger. None of the other wolves have that impact on the backside, and it's high-risk to try and flip and hope to not run into removal. Everything can die to removal; that's not the issue. But very few cards die to removal after taking up a play and an additional turn, and can leave the board without me getting anything.
Quote from takiguy »
5) The other decks. Again, since you posted no decklists, it is entirely speculation, but I imagine the other decks were probably a good bit stronger. This ties into #1 and #3. Additionally, the matchups may have been bad in traditional ways -- eg. midrange vs control is bad for midrange, etc...
There was one extra deck of each theater leftover from the 4-man draft. So we got to play an aggro mirror, and a matchup against mid-range and control. The aggro mirror was ROUGH. The mid-range matchup is already an uphill battle, and the matchup against control I feel I was in a better position to win with other creatures.
As far as their strength goes, it was on par with what we typically saw at 4-man drafts.
..........
I'm glad you like the cards. But we had extensive proper cube playtesting and they failed to prove their worth again and again.
However, I have high hopes for the Wolfbitten Captive. He has the two key aspects that all the others are missing -- he's still worth the mana if he doesn't flip and he provides an outlet within itself that encourages transformation (ie, a built-in mana sink).
I'm willing to admit my ranking for Mayor is too high once I hear some situations that actually happened. Until then, I can only go based on my personal experience, and that experience has me wanting to live the turn 1 Mayor dream (in my friends powered cube) over and over and over.... A green 2 drop that wins the game entirely by itself is just completely nuts, and it's done it more than enough times for me.
We tested Mayor ourselves because I really wanted the card to be amazing. It looks pretty solid on paper, because it forces your opponent to play a particular way to keep it from getting out of control and the upside is ginormous. I thought of werewolves like planeswalkers - they change the landscape of the game, so I had high hopes for him.
I was disappointed in practice. Around here decks pretty much always curve out perfectly, and most decks can even re-flip him easily enough if you do spend a turn to force flip him yourself. The only deck it worked out well in was the U/G control deck which dropped him early and held instants to protect it. I think the card has lots of potential, and in slower cubes with later critical turns than mine, he probably does extremely well.
The new card Wolfbitten Captive is doing extremely well in testing, and already secured a spot.
Actually, all 6 werewolves were pretty bad, which lowered the powerlevel of the deck pretty significantly. And contrary to your opinion, the Ranger was the only one of those three that was even playable. The other 3 of the six played significantly better than the Waif and Mayor, including the Shepherd!
This is actually exactly what I found after putting them into random decks. Kruin Outlaw and Instigator Gang were a lot better than Waif, Ranger and Mayor in my testing owing to the fact that they at least actually do something reasonably costed on the front side. Mayor has to be relied upon to flip, or it's a dead card bar random pumps. Waif is often great on turn one but dead elsewhere. Ranger is actually pretty good but can't compete with the other G/R cards. The flier shock ability was useful on occasion.
I'm still running Gang and Outlaw at 400 and they are nearer the block than most cards at that level but still fine for the time being. The evasive 3/3 double striker is great and being a 2/2 first strike on the front makes it useable with burn and equipment. Gang would be a lot better if red had more token producers, but it's great with first/double strikers.
I'm pretty sure that Wolfbitten Captive is the best WW by a fair margin, even though I haven't tested him yet. A potential 8/8 for one mana is absolutely mad.
As for Call of the Herd, I still play it because it is a reasonably priced source of card advantage. However, it not being a creature is bad for quite a few cards in my green section now, the elephants having a CMC of 0 is bad for Birthing Pod and it being vanilla is generally bad. I can see cutting it in the not-so-distant future.
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
I probably shouldn't have been so hyperbolic with my evaluation of Call of the Herd. Yes, I played with Call quite a bit when it was in standard, played Dumbo Drop in old Extended, and shed a tear when I picked up 12 copies at the Time Spiral prerelease only to have them sit in my binder unused for the entire block. Creatures are much better than 3-mana 3/3s these days and the removal and sweepers have grown up as well. It's still in my on-deck binder so I still may give it another run, but it was the card that tabled more than any other card in my list (no hyperbole). Several people insisted it was good, but when I asked our draft table one night when the last time they remember killing anyone with Call and no one could respond, it was promptly benched. Maybe Mayor is getting played because it's new or maybe because it's better than Call? It's hard to say, but my personal experience shows Mayor to be more useful and much more worthy of the slot.
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Eh. Troll can block almost every other 2-drop and lots of 3- and 4- drops the turn he comes down without me even leaving up regeneration mana. Swinging for 3 on turn 3 isn't bad either. Sure, Troll will eventually be outclassed but I don't think Mayor is the card that outclasses him. Mayor does not reliably flip, and I tend to value consistency over explosiveness.
Call of the Herd is still pretty great. Two threats from one card for a reasonable mana investment is nothing to sneeze at.
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If you have something to do with your mana that isn't casting a spell on your turn (man-lands, equipment, instants, etc) the card is insane.
I realize we're not likely to convince each other, but I really wanted to check my numbers on instants an flash cards to see how likely your opponent is to keep him from flipping.
@wtwlf: Again, I'm just interested in hearing reports about when he was bad. Theorycrafting various situations in which a card doesn't work out has very limited usefulness in card evaluations, and outside of your testing, I have not read of any meaningful reports. It seems that most people took the easy road of (a) analyze the situations in which the werewolves are bad, (b) refer to your testing as proof of the analysis, (c) do not include them in their list. This leads to a lower number of cubes running the card, which means new cubes are less likely to include it (because eidolon's lists are such a double edged sword), and so few people end up playing with this new mechanic. Parts (a) and (c) are inherent problems, but part (b) can easily be changed.
As far as your testing goes, testing a deck with 6 werewolves against a cube precon is probably not the most instructive situation.
Here are some reasons
1) The deck had lower than average power level. Mayor, Daybreak Ranger, and Reckless Waif are the only 3 werewolves that are actually cube-able -- instigator gang is borderline, the rest are too weak. Thus, the deck had a lower powerlevel than average.
2) Predictability. Knowing that you are playing against such a deck makes it clear what kind of opening hand you need, what your opponent is going to try to do, and what kind of plays are going to be best. If I know my opponent has 6 creatures with echo, I know that I can get a free time walk by saving my removal for the right moment.
3) Lack of synergy. Since this was your first experience with them, it is unlikely that you knew which cards synergize well. Since you have not posted decklists, this is only speculation, but somehow I doubt you included cards that would really let WWs shine. I think we can all agree that many cube cards are confusing or seem weak until one understands the correct synergies available.
4) Lack of experience. By your numerous claims that it is simply not worth it to skip your turn to let them flip, you may not have played them correctly all the time. It is not always best to skip your turn, but many times it is. Werewolves are extremely skill testing for both players, and some experience with them can go a long way.
5) The other decks. Again, since you posted no decklists, it is entirely speculation, but I imagine the other decks were probably a good bit stronger. This ties into #1 and #3. Additionally, the matchups may have been bad in traditional ways -- eg. midrange vs control is bad for midrange, etc...
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I like Mayor more than Call of the Herd, for what it's worth.
@Takiguy
I like the arguments provided for the anti-precon decks, but I don't think that's the only testing wtwlf123 used. I agree with you that the precon testing thing might not be the most reliable form of testing, but I think it's acceptable even if it has flaws. I personally like seeding the cards into winstons or draft pools because that's the most natural way of drafting for us, but I don't think precons are a bad idea.
I find that wtwlf123's experiences with certain cards are pretty different than my own, but I attribute this mostly to player preference and cube differences moreso than the cards themselves actually being different. In certain cubes with certain players, Mayor is awesome and in other ones it's not so great.
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Actually, all 6 werewolves were pretty bad, which lowered the powerlevel of the deck pretty significantly. And contrary to your opinion, the Ranger was the only one of those three that was even playable. The other 3 of the six played significantly better than the Waif and Mayor, including the Shepherd!
This is legitimate. But it still didn't change the fact that when my opponent played his normal game, the wolves didn't flip. And not playing spells to flip my wolves was sometimes the right call (and we did it when appropriate) but it's also more risky. It's easy to have your Mayor die to a removal spell after passing to flip him manually, and it hurts more than echo when it happens.
Actually, there were a lot of cards that had synergy with the wolves in that RG beatdown deck. Instant, equipment, manlands... the whole suite. The problem was in the situations that I didn't have them available, the card rotted on the board on the front side, unable to profitably transform. And my opponent was able to swiftly get the upper hand on the board state when your wolves remain face-up too long.
I'd also argue that having multiple wolves out at the same time increases the synergy; as passing the turn to self-transform a pair of them doubles the effective value of that play. The deck probably had more synergy than the average deck that plays a lone wolf.
We passed to flip when the opportunity was available and correct. It still doesn't always make it worthwhile, as it often led to blowouts worse than removal after echo. The only wolf that proved worth skipping a turn to flip was the Ranger (which I think is a pretty solid card, actually), because he had an effect I could immediately get value from, that was guaranteed to trigger. None of the other wolves have that impact on the backside, and it's high-risk to try and flip and hope to not run into removal. Everything can die to removal; that's not the issue. But very few cards die to removal after taking up a play and an additional turn, and can leave the board without me getting anything.
There was one extra deck of each theater leftover from the 4-man draft. So we got to play an aggro mirror, and a matchup against mid-range and control. The aggro mirror was ROUGH. The mid-range matchup is already an uphill battle, and the matchup against control I feel I was in a better position to win with other creatures.
As far as their strength goes, it was on par with what we typically saw at 4-man drafts.
..........
I'm glad you like the cards. But we had extensive proper cube playtesting and they failed to prove their worth again and again.
However, I have high hopes for the Wolfbitten Captive. He has the two key aspects that all the others are missing -- he's still worth the mana if he doesn't flip and he provides an outlet within itself that encourages transformation (ie, a built-in mana sink).
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We tested Mayor ourselves because I really wanted the card to be amazing. It looks pretty solid on paper, because it forces your opponent to play a particular way to keep it from getting out of control and the upside is ginormous. I thought of werewolves like planeswalkers - they change the landscape of the game, so I had high hopes for him.
I was disappointed in practice. Around here decks pretty much always curve out perfectly, and most decks can even re-flip him easily enough if you do spend a turn to force flip him yourself. The only deck it worked out well in was the U/G control deck which dropped him early and held instants to protect it. I think the card has lots of potential, and in slower cubes with later critical turns than mine, he probably does extremely well.
The new card Wolfbitten Captive is doing extremely well in testing, and already secured a spot.
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This is actually exactly what I found after putting them into random decks. Kruin Outlaw and Instigator Gang were a lot better than Waif, Ranger and Mayor in my testing owing to the fact that they at least actually do something reasonably costed on the front side. Mayor has to be relied upon to flip, or it's a dead card bar random pumps. Waif is often great on turn one but dead elsewhere. Ranger is actually pretty good but can't compete with the other G/R cards. The flier shock ability was useful on occasion.
I'm still running Gang and Outlaw at 400 and they are nearer the block than most cards at that level but still fine for the time being. The evasive 3/3 double striker is great and being a 2/2 first strike on the front makes it useable with burn and equipment. Gang would be a lot better if red had more token producers, but it's great with first/double strikers.
I'm pretty sure that Wolfbitten Captive is the best WW by a fair margin, even though I haven't tested him yet. A potential 8/8 for one mana is absolutely mad.
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