No, the appearance of Grixis decks in the Top 8 did not save U or the Control archetype. It was a metagame call against a deck with low threat count, a work control decks never had trouble executing. As the format adapts to Death's Shadow, it is realistic to expect it to drop from "Deck to Beat" to just another solid strategy available in Modern.
Every once in a while, Jeskai and Grixis control decks make an appearance in Top 8 (or even Top 16) and leave people hopeful for a Modern format where every color and archetype is fairly represented, but unlike the Splinter Twin days, we don't have an interactive U control deck that persists on Tier 1 through multiple metagame changes and establishes itself as the premier police deck of the format. While some people argue that a Splinter Twin unban would be an effective way of helping the format, i think it is worth trying to fulfill Wizards' objective of promoting a greater diversity of U decks in the meta.
The present tournament may and will probably not be representative of the metagame for months to come, but it certainly reinforces the point that control decks have enough removal to have a fair chance against racing decks with low threat count, such as Death's Shadow, Infect and Affinity (this last one may have a lot of creatures, but few of them are the actual payoff cards capable of ending the game quickly, i.e. few must-answer cards). If control has trouble consistently getting access to those answers, unbanning card selection tools would help with the problem. For this purpose, we have Ponder and Preordain. Preordain is less powerful than Ponder, a safer option if we were to be provided a better low mana cantrip.
Other point about U decks this tournament reinforces is how unreliable Ancestral Vision is as a card advantage engine. The payoff takes a lot of time to arrive even when cast at the optimal opportunity (Turn 1), and the worst-case scenario of a terrible topdeck is really disheartening. A common argument against the unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor is that the card doesn't help against racing decks and would be mostly useful versus GBx decks and other midrange strategies. Looking at the decent performance of Grixis decks against Death's Shadow, as well as the overall efficiency of one mana removal spells when it comes to keeping cheap creatures in check, i don't think Wizards really needs to unban a card that is particularly good at dealing with aggro.
On the other hand, we have three midrange decks on Tier 1, two of them being GBX, and no U control decks to keep them in check. With the addition of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, WUR and UBR control decks could consolidate themselves on Tier 1 with favorable matchups against Affinity, Death's Shadow, Infect, Jund, Junk and unfavorable matchups versus Bant Eldrazi, Breach, Burn, Scapeshift and Tron, a very balanced metagame position. For people worried about Jace "running away" with the game, let's not forget that the modern card pool is strong enough to fight a deck that consistently gets the tron engine online by turn 4, as well as that other one that Lightning Storm's you into oblivion if it goes unchecked.
I agree with ktkenshinx: between Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Preordain, i believe the former is a safer unban, since it doesn't enable wins before (neither during) turn 4. I also believe that many player's conservative mentality is preventing the format from improving: many people asking for bans against every new threat, freaking out on unban suggestions for no reason etc. Wizards' new banlist update schedule gives them more flexibility to unban cards and ensure nothing ever gets out of control for too long. If Jace get unbanned in the March 13 announcement, and proves to be above the acceptable power level for the format, it will take just over a month to fix the problem.
The potential to bring Gearhulk after Gearhulk until reaching the ultimate ability is not to be underestimated. With a 3UB cost, the card could have been the mainstream Tezz. Best PW in PW currently available on the market.
I sincerely find this card more interesting than both Ajanis.
From the moment i read the slogan "Draft Through Eternity", i knew this set would be an utter failure.
In their effort to please everyone, they ended up doing a sub-par job in all aspects. Just like a duck, Eternal Masters tries to fly, run and swim, but does neither of those things well.
For starters, drafting an expensive, limited run product is like having the best sex of your life the night before the divorce: a living dream while it lasts, but after you wake up comes the realization that you just lost a good chunk of your savings in a temporary, relatively vain experience. You can eventually download an adult simulation program and have another go for free, but it will never be like that time.
When it comes to Legacy players, both novice and veterans were shafted. The format didn't become any easier to get into. For every staple revealed this week, another important, non-spoiled card became more expensive. Furthermore, the concentration of high value cards into mythic slots guarantee that the prices are likely to bounce back eventually. As for old timers, while some of them have the opportunity to grab some extra cards for their collection, chances are most already had the most playable ones in the first place, and their collection is now suffering a temporary devaluation. Also, let's have a moment of silence for all those who just sold their Rishadan Ports.
Those who appreciate the art style are likely to be very disappointed with the lack of contextual fidelity of many cards. Winter Orb's new art, for example, is an insult to the iconic card from my childhood, which i still have with me despite not playing paper magic for more than a decade. Whereas the old art depicted the harsh life in a gelid environment, the new one is but a floating ball in a snowy place. The picture choices for Hymn to Tourach and Necropotence, among others, are a missed opportunity. Changing the art is not necessarily bad, but some standards must be met in order for this to be an exciting re-experience of the old times. Cards like Chrome Mox and Wasteland are spot-on in this aspect, and i feel sad to see that they are not representative of the set as a whole.
Last, but certainly not least are the MTGO players, who rightfully complained about how little their needs were taken in consideration. And to be honest, i believe the online hole is much deeper than the lack of important reprints: the whole concept of digital scarcity is disgusting, and people who take advantage of that should never, ever be taken in consideration when designing each new set. That is, of course, subject to another topic.
For now, i will wrap it up by saying i am not going to buy Eternal Masters products. High price, low utility relative to the huge accessibility issue that killed older formats, questionable art direction and a big middle finger to online players. My condolences to all players who started to regret their preorders after the Friday spoilers.
Liliana 3BB
+1: Return up to one target creature card from your graveyard to your hand, then discard a card.
-X: Put the top X cards of your library into your graveyard. Target player loses 2 life for each creature card put into your graveyard this way.
-6: Exile all cards from target player's graveyard. For each creature card exiled this way, put a 2/2 black Zombie creature token onto the battlefield under your control.
(4)
Tamiyo 2UU
+1: Investigate.
-2: Look at the top five cards of your library, then put them back in any order.
-5: You get an emblem with "Whenever you cast an instant spell, draw a card."
(3)
Emrakul 10CCC
+5: Until end of turn, up to one target creature gets +10/+10 and gains trample and annihilator 2.
-7: Take an extra turn after this one.
-20: Cast any number of Eldrazi cards you own from outside the game without paying their mana costs.
(13)
Oh boy...i am generally not the kind to give detailed point-by-point responses, but this passive-aggressive guilt-tripping article from WotC surely deserves it.
It's an enormously complex project getting the content laid out such that we can present the set to the Magic community.
In other words, they do work very hard to hype the **** out of every new set in order to persuade the players into making impulsive decisions which generally involve the investment of good sums of money. Honestly? Every successful company puts a lot of effort into marketing their products and services, and that's perfectly fine. Yeah, it is fine. As a consumer, you are the one to blame if you buy a product before careful consideration of its real value. However, do not try to sugar-coat your marketing strategies and put on an entertainer mask pretending you are so preoccupied with our amusement. There is no fooling us: you are just salty about us getting the raw deal, an actual preview without a whole article rationalizing the cards value and artificially inflating its price.
Magic's entire premise is that of constant change, and this tantalizing premise creates a constant tension between our storytelling and players wanting to know what comes next.
Let's not kid ourselves here. Magic is like porn: a very pleasureful hobby that (almost) no one plays for the story.
Furthermore, due to how the game is played, the flavor of individual cards is far more important than the story as a whole. Years of build-up around Planeswalkers and their sets combined still don't hold a candle to Kamigawa. And even if i am appreciative of flavorful sets, still having my bottom tier Kamigawa cards, such aspect ranks nowhere near Magic's core premises.
As a person who used to run a fan site that would occasionally leak something, I know the lure for content creators.
Well, there goes your moral high ground. Nothing like getting a taste of your own medicine, am i right?
There's no secret exposé about the working conditions of goblins on Ravnica, or the water quality on Zendikar, or the climate change on Mirrodin (though that one might have something). Leaks are all things that the public will find out eventually.
I know, right? What would be the meaning of our lives if we didn't get a professional report on Zendikar's water quality?! There is no doubt that whatever year that was, someone stole your Nobel Prize for unveiling us such crucial bit of information!
Would you go on your friend's Facebook page and announce a pregnancy if you found a positive pregnancy test in their bathroom? No, that would make you a terrible human being! Because it's not your news to give, and when the world gets to know it is up to that person and their significant other.
Not only this example is completely out of place, it doesn't even help the point he is trying to make. Getting angry at having your pregnancy "spoiled" would be such an infantile reaction from an actually selfish human being, since the conception of a new human life is something that everyone close to the couple should know as soon as possible. Life should be celebrated, not hidden from people who care about it.
This was a really cheap attempt to guilt trip us for enjoying the spoilers, and makes me think about who is really behaving like a "terrible human being". Keep it classy, Mr. Jarrett.
Unfortunately though, much of the community had already seen Kozilek. So his rising out of the ocean at Sea Gate? Not that exciting. Our revealing of him on stream? Boring. The presence of the colorless mana symbol? Confusing. Because it was done out of context and out of order, the entire plan suffered and our fans were cheated out of the best experience we could deliver.
You couldn't be further from the truth.
Compared to other Eldrazi, Kozilek is a relatively weak, boring card. No matter how much you try to enhance the frame, the picture is simply not that good. A Hollywood World Premiere of Kozilek would still be less exciting than a casually revealed Emrakul. The content is far more important than the context.
Secondly, the leak was actually much more exciting and controversial than your planned reveal could ever hope to be. Immediately explaining the new mana symbol would prevent a lot of interesting discussions that happened all over the internet.
When it comes to hearing about an upcoming movie, which would you rather see: A prepared movie trailer crafted by artists and directors and marketers to most hype you about the film? Or would you prefer to read early drafts of the script that cover several key story moments?
Except movies are all about the story, so spoiling it can effectively ruin the experience. Magic is mostly about the game itself, so spoiling yourself can actually improve your experience, as there is a lot of concentrated discussion about the new cards before you can get to play them.
Other than that, it is worth noting that in both examples the consumer goes all the way to spoil himself. It was a risk he was willing to take, so whether his experience ended up being ruined or not is none of your business.
We have and will continue to not just ban leakers from the DCI and cancel their Planeswalker Points accounts, but pursue whatever criminal and civil actions necessary to protect our intellectual property and the Magic community.
This is where you show off your true colors. After writing so many paragraphs about improving our experiences, caring about the fans and whatnot, you enforce your position to sue the leakers and prevent them from playing the game, a clearly unproportional reaction given the fact that most people who have been spoiled are not complaining at all. Make no mistake: it's not about our interest as players.
Leaks create an unfair advantage as—because they do not go out over official channels—they are not as widely distributed to less-enfranchised players, thus creating an unfair advantage for some players.
Wait, what?! If leaks were harmful as it was claimed during the whole article up until this paragraph, why are they suddenly an "unfair advantage" in favor of those who were spoiled? Wouldn't it be the opposite: an advantage to those who don't see it and get the full experience as it was intended?
I really, really hope he is not referring to gameplay advantage, as it would award it the title of single worst article of the year. In the past, The Rumor Mill was spoiler heaven. Entire sets getting leaked before Wizards could finish the last article of their first preview week. And guess what? No unfair advantages! No one started winning every subsequent tournament because of this sub-forum.
And even if there was some advantage to gain, competitive players would be the first ones to spoil themselves.
Leaks often lead to bad first impressions. Not always. But it is unrealistic (and would be unhealthy for the game) for every card to be designed in such a way that it would be 100% exciting when viewed out of context and on its own. That would force power creep in design to levels that would surely ruin the game.
Is he admitting that power levels in Magic: The Gathering can be forced by hype - or the lack of - alone? I mean, it was pretty obvious for anyone playing this game for years, put feels pretty bad to see an official article confirming it.
When a set is well designed from both gameplay and flavor perspectives, it doesn't matter what the first impressions are. People will buy it, play it and enjoy the heck out of it. The original Ravnica, for example, was spot on in all aspects and ended up as one of the most popular blocks of all time; deservedly so, in my opinion. Battle for Zendikar, on the other hand, was disappointing and no amount of Gideon first impressions could save it.
The MtG Community is smart and more than mature enough to accurately evaluate a set's worth for the competitive scene, casual play, collection and speculation values. We don't need good first impressions. What we need - desperately so - is a good set that addresses the problems BFZ had and hopefully alleviates some bad trends we have going on for years (such as the power creep of creature cards or the abuse of chase-mystics).
I love Magic. After playing it for more than 15 years and still caring about the game, i can't help but feel sad about this article, as it reveals some questionable design decisions and shows that developers are clearly focusing on the wrong issues...
Anyway, thank you Mr. Leaker for the damn good job. I would gladly give you an OGW box before anyone else could get it, if i could.
Landfall is just a simple trigger that is thematically aligned (to Zendikar). It isn't good nor bad. But being rewarded for playing the game is where the line is crossed.
I'm not happy to see it return as it will undoubtedly see some new form of fetchland price hike.
Can we all be glad Annihilator isn't back, yet.
Agreed, specially with the Annihilator relief. We can be glad...for now.
Disheartening to see first turn accelerators go, but it was bound to happen sooner or later as Wizards started changing the game to be heavily creature-centric.
Magic: the Gathering has a peculiar kind of power creep where creature cards tend to become stronger over the years, but everything else ends up being nerfed for the sake of PETA. After the game becomes zoo-centric, any card that is particularly good against creatures gains the potential to dominate the meta and must be tightly controlled. This is why cards like Wrath of Gods are now considered too strong after being playable in standard for a long time. Likewise, combo decks were also bound to be dismantled, as the battle phase is generally irrelevant to their mechanics.
After reducing the power level of artifacts, enchantments, instants and sorceries, all that was left were creatures with non combat-oriented abilities. Since green is highly favored in a creature-centric environment, it was an easy choice to go for the accelerators. The death of turn one accelerator is but a symptom of a long process of the Magic's decline, which further isolates creature cards from the rest of the game.
No matter how many gimmicks Wizards tries to add to their creature cards, without the much needed balance with the many other game play elements, standard will continue to be a stale, one dimensional format.
In my opinion, 1-cmc manadorks should stay. They are not the problem.
Looking back at some of these threads, i can see that whenever someone makes a topic about a new set being bad or disappointing , there's always a big vanguard defending it, not matter how much the topic creator is right.
The Saviors of Kamigawa topic is hilarious. There were actually people defending the Kamigawa block's power level back then. The fallacies seem to remain the same:
1. Limited bomb argument: saying that a crappy card is a "limited bomb" or amazing in some other casual format, implying that being good at crippled power levels makes a set competitive (and by the way, most cards labelled as "limited bomb" cards are actually pretty average even in limited).
2. Flavor argument: saying that while the set was below average power levels, the set theme and flavor text on some cards more than make up for it. Ironically, the Mirrodin block not only was very powerful and had competitive cards for every format, but also had, flavor-wise, some of the best designs in the game. Urza block, which was also extremely powerful, had probably the best story so far. And even the Kamigawa block, the scapegoat for many people that defend the idea of sacrificing power levels in favor of some flavor, had strong cards for every format, like Gifts, Kokusho, Needle, Sensei's Divining Top and many others. Kamigawa didn't ruin standard, since it had either Mirrodin's power or Ravnica's balance. Today's standard is composed of one weak set after another.
3. Power creep terrorism: more like "creature creep" accompanied with a lot of artifact-phobia, enchantment-phobia, instant-phobia, spell-phobia (combo and control-phobia while we are at it). And the decks aren't even powerful. You can see how the game is overly dependent on creatures by reading the comments on the new cards. Every creature who dies to [insert creature destruction spell that is a watered down version of a past card] is "not viable at standard" and a "limited bomb" at best. The entire creature "New World Order" idea, making the game more combat-centric, created a bubble that is slowly, but surely going to pop. It's ruining the deck diversity and toning down the game to the combat phase.
Both BNG and Theros have worse flavor, worse top cards and are less relevant to the eternal formats than Kamigawa. Unlike Kamigawa, however, they are highly relevant to shape standard, and are not doing a good job at it. The problem, other than being excessively combat-centric, are the very slow gameplay (overcosted cards) and uninspired mechanics.
There are some few good cards in BNG, such as Bile Blight, Brimaz (despite being 1 mana too slow to justify more P/T than necessary), Satyr Firedancer and Xenagos, but the overall set, just like every set these last years, has mediocre power levels and boring mechanics.
The first bunch of preview cards were actually exciting and got my hopes up that this set would finally recover the game's balance between power, flavour and fun design that i used to love. However, the true is that the developers were just hiding the dust under the carpet.
Some few interesting cards, like Search the City, Underworld Connections, Epic Experiment and Azor's Elocutors are completely suffocated in a desert filled with little else than generic cards. There is no potential for them in standard, as the available cards in the format don't allow competitive creative deck building. The player is only allowed to play the obvious choices. Is like everyguild now has to adopt a simplistic playstyle, like the boros deck back then, which severely dumbs down the diversity between the guilds.
Ravnica's appeal was returning the meta to a much needed diversity, which was suffocated by Mirrodin's strong cards and the fact that Kamigawa did nothing but make things worse, as its only good cards only served to make Mirrodin decks stronger. In terms of power, Ravnica was an average block. It wasn't strong like Mirrodin, nor weak like Kamigawa. Therefore, the Ravnica block had diversity and balance.
In comparison, RTR is weak and repetitive. There are some really good cards like Abrupt Decay and Detention Sphere, of course, but there are too few of them. Furthermore, they are standalone cards. No sinergy with anything. They do their job by themselves. A good set needs to have a significant number of useful cards, and if its not possible to make all of them powerful, at least make the normal cards become actually useful when combined with other cards.
Making normal cards become special is a perfect job for the set mechanics. Unfortunately, the mechanics here are very uninspired.
- Detaining creatures for one turn is not a good ability. For starters, creatures are the worst card type in the game. For a creature to be relevant, it either has to have some kind of protection against removal or anything else the opponent throw at them, or the player needs to summon a lot of them, making it imposibile for the opponent to properly react before the game is over. In either of those cases, detain becomes nearly useless.
- Unleash is by far the worst mechanic. Most of the unleash cards would still be unplayable even it they were printed with 1 more P/T from the start. It is such irrelevant ability, a waste of such cool word. Unleashed should be about specific effects, and not a generic P/T upgrade.
- Scavenge is basically a superior unleash. The design is far more intelligent and alows both simplistic and complex gameplay, depending on how you manage your graveyard. Most scavenge abilities are overcosted, but that doesn't matter much, as the set itself is very slow.
- Overload is irrelevant because: a) Overloading is almost never going to be worth the additional cost and b) Too situational, as there are going to be many situations where there is going to be only one target anyway. The overload cards are very generic, as they use the most basic blue or red effects, like counters and damage. Blue + Red is the weirdest color combination in the game, so i expected the developers to be more creative with this one.
- Populate is slow and overcosted, to the point that Selesnya players are better not even using the mechanic, as they are a waste of card slot and mana. The first tokken, in most cases, is more than enough. Populate cards generally depend on other cards, as many of them don't generate their own tokens. Therefore, overcosted, slow and even situational.
Outside scavenge, the mechanics are weak and uncreative.
I feel that this set was not properly planned. It seems to me that the developers just gathered some rejected designs that were originally planned to Ravnica and made them in to a set. There are a few brilliant cards, many of which are unplayable, but the set as a whole -the sum of its parts- is very badly put together.
RTR may not be as bad as Innistrad or Avacyn Restored, but, in my opinion, is still far from a decent product.
Last, but not least, the whole "New World Order" thing is amazingly accurate. After reading all the spoiler threads this season, i felt that the masses are indoctrinated to glorify limited. It really seems like a communist conspiracy, where everyone is induced to dislike competitive cards ("capitalism") and satisfy themselves with low hierarchy cards (third rate estatal services). I applaud users like the topic creator, for not sucumbing to the political correctness that are the so called "limited bombs".
It costs 4 mana to play and each of its four abilities cost 1 mana. You pay a price (card, life, creature, artifact) to gain a prize (life, creature, artifact, card), in a way that you can sort your priorities first and gain what you have lost later.
The reason M13 and current standard are bad is the excessive focus on combat.
Creatures are by far the worst type of card in this game. They are slow, fragile and since most of them can attack, their effects are always worse than their instant, sorcery, artifact and enchantment counterparts. When creatures become the main focus of development, the developers start to make the other cards to support your creatures, severely reducing gameplay variety because this lessens the number of independent cards that are not creatures. MTG stopped being the versatile game i fell in love with, and became very similar to Yu-Gi-Oh. Creatures are no longer expendable, non-creatures were watered down to accessory level.
If that wasn't enough, WotC realized that appealing to the masses sells more than maintaining the hardcore status. Fast, intelligent strategies that required the player to think before playing and punished any mistake are long gone. Slow, simplistic gameplay is the norm, and overcosted predictable cards are the center of all attention, so any player can take it easy, play it at his own pace. Before the casualization of this game, the player had to constantly adapt to different opponents, predict what cards he or she would play and chose between several possibilities in order to be closer to victory. Logic gave place to emotions. If a vocal minority feels opressed by decent cards, these cards have a good chance of being banned. Standard is no longer about competition, because any strong card will be labeled as overpowered, and since WotC wants to appeal to the masses, the developers are forced to babysit those players.
The cards are overcosted. Most of them could perfectly cost 1 ou 2 less mana than they actually do. It is a quite obvious case of lazy design. If they make standard slow and overcosted, they don't need to study how the new cards will affect vintage, legacy, modern and extended, since they are going to be unplayable in those formats. The effects are weak and for the most part are directed against creatures, so that they can only grant advantage against one kind of card, which makes the set much easier to balance. The card design is politically correct, as spells that were used to bully your opponent in the past, such as counterspells and land destruction for example, are too weak to be playable. I mean, you can counter spells or destroy lands, but only occasionally, in a way that you can never dominate the other player with those cards.
The power levels are made to people who are satisfied with subpar achievements.
"Wow, this card is going to be amazing in EDH!"
"Holy ****, this is a limited bomb!"
This is like praising someone who failed to beat a game in normal mode by saying that he or she would win easily on very easy mode. It is such a sad conformism. Casual formats are actually very fun to play, but should never be the meat of a game. They should always be secondary. The quality of a set is measured by its T2 potential.
If M13 was a CONTRUCTED BOMB, but bad for both limited and EDH, it would be an amazing, memorable set. As it is, M13 is a CONTRUCTED FAILURE, but a limited and EDH bomb, which makes it a nearly worthless set.
Finally, FINALLY some powerful hate cards. \o/
Every once in a while, Jeskai and Grixis control decks make an appearance in Top 8 (or even Top 16) and leave people hopeful for a Modern format where every color and archetype is fairly represented, but unlike the Splinter Twin days, we don't have an interactive U control deck that persists on Tier 1 through multiple metagame changes and establishes itself as the premier police deck of the format. While some people argue that a Splinter Twin unban would be an effective way of helping the format, i think it is worth trying to fulfill Wizards' objective of promoting a greater diversity of U decks in the meta.
The present tournament may and will probably not be representative of the metagame for months to come, but it certainly reinforces the point that control decks have enough removal to have a fair chance against racing decks with low threat count, such as Death's Shadow, Infect and Affinity (this last one may have a lot of creatures, but few of them are the actual payoff cards capable of ending the game quickly, i.e. few must-answer cards). If control has trouble consistently getting access to those answers, unbanning card selection tools would help with the problem. For this purpose, we have Ponder and Preordain. Preordain is less powerful than Ponder, a safer option if we were to be provided a better low mana cantrip.
Other point about U decks this tournament reinforces is how unreliable Ancestral Vision is as a card advantage engine. The payoff takes a lot of time to arrive even when cast at the optimal opportunity (Turn 1), and the worst-case scenario of a terrible topdeck is really disheartening. A common argument against the unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor is that the card doesn't help against racing decks and would be mostly useful versus GBx decks and other midrange strategies. Looking at the decent performance of Grixis decks against Death's Shadow, as well as the overall efficiency of one mana removal spells when it comes to keeping cheap creatures in check, i don't think Wizards really needs to unban a card that is particularly good at dealing with aggro.
On the other hand, we have three midrange decks on Tier 1, two of them being GBX, and no U control decks to keep them in check. With the addition of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, WUR and UBR control decks could consolidate themselves on Tier 1 with favorable matchups against Affinity, Death's Shadow, Infect, Jund, Junk and unfavorable matchups versus Bant Eldrazi, Breach, Burn, Scapeshift and Tron, a very balanced metagame position. For people worried about Jace "running away" with the game, let's not forget that the modern card pool is strong enough to fight a deck that consistently gets the tron engine online by turn 4, as well as that other one that Lightning Storm's you into oblivion if it goes unchecked.
I agree with ktkenshinx: between Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Preordain, i believe the former is a safer unban, since it doesn't enable wins before (neither during) turn 4. I also believe that many player's conservative mentality is preventing the format from improving: many people asking for bans against every new threat, freaking out on unban suggestions for no reason etc. Wizards' new banlist update schedule gives them more flexibility to unban cards and ensure nothing ever gets out of control for too long. If Jace get unbanned in the March 13 announcement, and proves to be above the acceptable power level for the format, it will take just over a month to fix the problem.
I will close this post by inviting people to actually test Jace and Preordain on Modern Reformed: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/770299-reformation-of-modern-if-you-want-something-done.
I sincerely find this card more interesting than both Ajanis.
In their effort to please everyone, they ended up doing a sub-par job in all aspects. Just like a duck, Eternal Masters tries to fly, run and swim, but does neither of those things well.
For starters, drafting an expensive, limited run product is like having the best sex of your life the night before the divorce: a living dream while it lasts, but after you wake up comes the realization that you just lost a good chunk of your savings in a temporary, relatively vain experience. You can eventually download an adult simulation program and have another go for free, but it will never be like that time.
When it comes to Legacy players, both novice and veterans were shafted. The format didn't become any easier to get into. For every staple revealed this week, another important, non-spoiled card became more expensive. Furthermore, the concentration of high value cards into mythic slots guarantee that the prices are likely to bounce back eventually. As for old timers, while some of them have the opportunity to grab some extra cards for their collection, chances are most already had the most playable ones in the first place, and their collection is now suffering a temporary devaluation. Also, let's have a moment of silence for all those who just sold their Rishadan Ports.
Those who appreciate the art style are likely to be very disappointed with the lack of contextual fidelity of many cards. Winter Orb's new art, for example, is an insult to the iconic card from my childhood, which i still have with me despite not playing paper magic for more than a decade. Whereas the old art depicted the harsh life in a gelid environment, the new one is but a floating ball in a snowy place. The picture choices for Hymn to Tourach and Necropotence, among others, are a missed opportunity. Changing the art is not necessarily bad, but some standards must be met in order for this to be an exciting re-experience of the old times. Cards like Chrome Mox and Wasteland are spot-on in this aspect, and i feel sad to see that they are not representative of the set as a whole.
Last, but certainly not least are the MTGO players, who rightfully complained about how little their needs were taken in consideration. And to be honest, i believe the online hole is much deeper than the lack of important reprints: the whole concept of digital scarcity is disgusting, and people who take advantage of that should never, ever be taken in consideration when designing each new set. That is, of course, subject to another topic.
For now, i will wrap it up by saying i am not going to buy Eternal Masters products. High price, low utility relative to the huge accessibility issue that killed older formats, questionable art direction and a big middle finger to online players. My condolences to all players who started to regret their preorders after the Friday spoilers.
Very well played by Simon. Round 2 was particularly impressive.
+1: Return up to one target creature card from your graveyard to your hand, then discard a card.
-X: Put the top X cards of your library into your graveyard. Target player loses 2 life for each creature card put into your graveyard this way.
-6: Exile all cards from target player's graveyard. For each creature card exiled this way, put a 2/2 black Zombie creature token onto the battlefield under your control.
(4)
Tamiyo 2UU
+1: Investigate.
-2: Look at the top five cards of your library, then put them back in any order.
-5: You get an emblem with "Whenever you cast an instant spell, draw a card."
(3)
+5: Until end of turn, up to one target creature gets +10/+10 and gains trample and annihilator 2.
-7: Take an extra turn after this one.
-20: Cast any number of Eldrazi cards you own from outside the game without paying their mana costs.
(13)
In other words, they do work very hard to hype the **** out of every new set in order to persuade the players into making impulsive decisions which generally involve the investment of good sums of money. Honestly? Every successful company puts a lot of effort into marketing their products and services, and that's perfectly fine. Yeah, it is fine. As a consumer, you are the one to blame if you buy a product before careful consideration of its real value. However, do not try to sugar-coat your marketing strategies and put on an entertainer mask pretending you are so preoccupied with our amusement. There is no fooling us: you are just salty about us getting the raw deal, an actual preview without a whole article rationalizing the cards value and artificially inflating its price.
Let's not kid ourselves here. Magic is like porn: a very pleasureful hobby that (almost) no one plays for the story.
Furthermore, due to how the game is played, the flavor of individual cards is far more important than the story as a whole. Years of build-up around Planeswalkers and their sets combined still don't hold a candle to Kamigawa. And even if i am appreciative of flavorful sets, still having my bottom tier Kamigawa cards, such aspect ranks nowhere near Magic's core premises.
Well, there goes your moral high ground. Nothing like getting a taste of your own medicine, am i right?
I know, right? What would be the meaning of our lives if we didn't get a professional report on Zendikar's water quality?! There is no doubt that whatever year that was, someone stole your Nobel Prize for unveiling us such crucial bit of information!
Not only this example is completely out of place, it doesn't even help the point he is trying to make. Getting angry at having your pregnancy "spoiled" would be such an infantile reaction from an actually selfish human being, since the conception of a new human life is something that everyone close to the couple should know as soon as possible. Life should be celebrated, not hidden from people who care about it.
This was a really cheap attempt to guilt trip us for enjoying the spoilers, and makes me think about who is really behaving like a "terrible human being". Keep it classy, Mr. Jarrett.
You couldn't be further from the truth.
Compared to other Eldrazi, Kozilek is a relatively weak, boring card. No matter how much you try to enhance the frame, the picture is simply not that good. A Hollywood World Premiere of Kozilek would still be less exciting than a casually revealed Emrakul. The content is far more important than the context.
Secondly, the leak was actually much more exciting and controversial than your planned reveal could ever hope to be. Immediately explaining the new mana symbol would prevent a lot of interesting discussions that happened all over the internet.
Except movies are all about the story, so spoiling it can effectively ruin the experience. Magic is mostly about the game itself, so spoiling yourself can actually improve your experience, as there is a lot of concentrated discussion about the new cards before you can get to play them.
Other than that, it is worth noting that in both examples the consumer goes all the way to spoil himself. It was a risk he was willing to take, so whether his experience ended up being ruined or not is none of your business.
This is where you show off your true colors. After writing so many paragraphs about improving our experiences, caring about the fans and whatnot, you enforce your position to sue the leakers and prevent them from playing the game, a clearly unproportional reaction given the fact that most people who have been spoiled are not complaining at all. Make no mistake: it's not about our interest as players.
Wait, what?! If leaks were harmful as it was claimed during the whole article up until this paragraph, why are they suddenly an "unfair advantage" in favor of those who were spoiled? Wouldn't it be the opposite: an advantage to those who don't see it and get the full experience as it was intended?
I really, really hope he is not referring to gameplay advantage, as it would award it the title of single worst article of the year. In the past, The Rumor Mill was spoiler heaven. Entire sets getting leaked before Wizards could finish the last article of their first preview week. And guess what? No unfair advantages! No one started winning every subsequent tournament because of this sub-forum.
And even if there was some advantage to gain, competitive players would be the first ones to spoil themselves.
Is he admitting that power levels in Magic: The Gathering can be forced by hype - or the lack of - alone? I mean, it was pretty obvious for anyone playing this game for years, put feels pretty bad to see an official article confirming it.
When a set is well designed from both gameplay and flavor perspectives, it doesn't matter what the first impressions are. People will buy it, play it and enjoy the heck out of it. The original Ravnica, for example, was spot on in all aspects and ended up as one of the most popular blocks of all time; deservedly so, in my opinion. Battle for Zendikar, on the other hand, was disappointing and no amount of Gideon first impressions could save it.
The MtG Community is smart and more than mature enough to accurately evaluate a set's worth for the competitive scene, casual play, collection and speculation values. We don't need good first impressions. What we need - desperately so - is a good set that addresses the problems BFZ had and hopefully alleviates some bad trends we have going on for years (such as the power creep of creature cards or the abuse of chase-mystics).
I love Magic. After playing it for more than 15 years and still caring about the game, i can't help but feel sad about this article, as it reveals some questionable design decisions and shows that developers are clearly focusing on the wrong issues...
Anyway, thank you Mr. Leaker for the damn good job. I would gladly give you an OGW box before anyone else could get it, if i could.
Agreed, specially with the Annihilator relief. We can be glad...for now.
Magic: the Gathering has a peculiar kind of power creep where creature cards tend to become stronger over the years, but everything else ends up being nerfed for the sake of PETA. After the game becomes zoo-centric, any card that is particularly good against creatures gains the potential to dominate the meta and must be tightly controlled. This is why cards like Wrath of Gods are now considered too strong after being playable in standard for a long time. Likewise, combo decks were also bound to be dismantled, as the battle phase is generally irrelevant to their mechanics.
After reducing the power level of artifacts, enchantments, instants and sorceries, all that was left were creatures with non combat-oriented abilities. Since green is highly favored in a creature-centric environment, it was an easy choice to go for the accelerators. The death of turn one accelerator is but a symptom of a long process of the Magic's decline, which further isolates creature cards from the rest of the game.
No matter how many gimmicks Wizards tries to add to their creature cards, without the much needed balance with the many other game play elements, standard will continue to be a stale, one dimensional format.
In my opinion, 1-cmc manadorks should stay. They are not the problem.
Excellent post!
Looking back at some of these threads, i can see that whenever someone makes a topic about a new set being bad or disappointing , there's always a big vanguard defending it, not matter how much the topic creator is right.
The Saviors of Kamigawa topic is hilarious. There were actually people defending the Kamigawa block's power level back then. The fallacies seem to remain the same:
1. Limited bomb argument: saying that a crappy card is a "limited bomb" or amazing in some other casual format, implying that being good at crippled power levels makes a set competitive (and by the way, most cards labelled as "limited bomb" cards are actually pretty average even in limited).
2. Flavor argument: saying that while the set was below average power levels, the set theme and flavor text on some cards more than make up for it. Ironically, the Mirrodin block not only was very powerful and had competitive cards for every format, but also had, flavor-wise, some of the best designs in the game. Urza block, which was also extremely powerful, had probably the best story so far. And even the Kamigawa block, the scapegoat for many people that defend the idea of sacrificing power levels in favor of some flavor, had strong cards for every format, like Gifts, Kokusho, Needle, Sensei's Divining Top and many others. Kamigawa didn't ruin standard, since it had either Mirrodin's power or Ravnica's balance. Today's standard is composed of one weak set after another.
3. Power creep terrorism: more like "creature creep" accompanied with a lot of artifact-phobia, enchantment-phobia, instant-phobia, spell-phobia (combo and control-phobia while we are at it). And the decks aren't even powerful. You can see how the game is overly dependent on creatures by reading the comments on the new cards. Every creature who dies to [insert creature destruction spell that is a watered down version of a past card] is "not viable at standard" and a "limited bomb" at best. The entire creature "New World Order" idea, making the game more combat-centric, created a bubble that is slowly, but surely going to pop. It's ruining the deck diversity and toning down the game to the combat phase.
Both BNG and Theros have worse flavor, worse top cards and are less relevant to the eternal formats than Kamigawa. Unlike Kamigawa, however, they are highly relevant to shape standard, and are not doing a good job at it. The problem, other than being excessively combat-centric, are the very slow gameplay (overcosted cards) and uninspired mechanics.
There are some few good cards in BNG, such as Bile Blight, Brimaz (despite being 1 mana too slow to justify more P/T than necessary), Satyr Firedancer and Xenagos, but the overall set, just like every set these last years, has mediocre power levels and boring mechanics.
The first bunch of preview cards were actually exciting and got my hopes up that this set would finally recover the game's balance between power, flavour and fun design that i used to love. However, the true is that the developers were just hiding the dust under the carpet.
Some few interesting cards, like Search the City, Underworld Connections, Epic Experiment and Azor's Elocutors are completely suffocated in a desert filled with little else than generic cards. There is no potential for them in standard, as the available cards in the format don't allow competitive creative deck building. The player is only allowed to play the obvious choices. Is like everyguild now has to adopt a simplistic playstyle, like the boros deck back then, which severely dumbs down the diversity between the guilds.
Ravnica's appeal was returning the meta to a much needed diversity, which was suffocated by Mirrodin's strong cards and the fact that Kamigawa did nothing but make things worse, as its only good cards only served to make Mirrodin decks stronger. In terms of power, Ravnica was an average block. It wasn't strong like Mirrodin, nor weak like Kamigawa. Therefore, the Ravnica block had diversity and balance.
In comparison, RTR is weak and repetitive. There are some really good cards like Abrupt Decay and Detention Sphere, of course, but there are too few of them. Furthermore, they are standalone cards. No sinergy with anything. They do their job by themselves. A good set needs to have a significant number of useful cards, and if its not possible to make all of them powerful, at least make the normal cards become actually useful when combined with other cards.
Making normal cards become special is a perfect job for the set mechanics. Unfortunately, the mechanics here are very uninspired.
- Detaining creatures for one turn is not a good ability. For starters, creatures are the worst card type in the game. For a creature to be relevant, it either has to have some kind of protection against removal or anything else the opponent throw at them, or the player needs to summon a lot of them, making it imposibile for the opponent to properly react before the game is over. In either of those cases, detain becomes nearly useless.
- Unleash is by far the worst mechanic. Most of the unleash cards would still be unplayable even it they were printed with 1 more P/T from the start. It is such irrelevant ability, a waste of such cool word. Unleashed should be about specific effects, and not a generic P/T upgrade.
- Scavenge is basically a superior unleash. The design is far more intelligent and alows both simplistic and complex gameplay, depending on how you manage your graveyard. Most scavenge abilities are overcosted, but that doesn't matter much, as the set itself is very slow.
- Overload is irrelevant because: a) Overloading is almost never going to be worth the additional cost and b) Too situational, as there are going to be many situations where there is going to be only one target anyway. The overload cards are very generic, as they use the most basic blue or red effects, like counters and damage. Blue + Red is the weirdest color combination in the game, so i expected the developers to be more creative with this one.
- Populate is slow and overcosted, to the point that Selesnya players are better not even using the mechanic, as they are a waste of card slot and mana. The first tokken, in most cases, is more than enough. Populate cards generally depend on other cards, as many of them don't generate their own tokens. Therefore, overcosted, slow and even situational.
Outside scavenge, the mechanics are weak and uncreative.
I feel that this set was not properly planned. It seems to me that the developers just gathered some rejected designs that were originally planned to Ravnica and made them in to a set. There are a few brilliant cards, many of which are unplayable, but the set as a whole -the sum of its parts- is very badly put together.
RTR may not be as bad as Innistrad or Avacyn Restored, but, in my opinion, is still far from a decent product.
Last, but not least, the whole "New World Order" thing is amazingly accurate. After reading all the spoiler threads this season, i felt that the masses are indoctrinated to glorify limited. It really seems like a communist conspiracy, where everyone is induced to dislike competitive cards ("capitalism") and satisfy themselves with low hierarchy cards (third rate estatal services). I applaud users like the topic creator, for not sucumbing to the political correctness that are the so called "limited bombs".
It costs 4 mana to play and each of its four abilities cost 1 mana. You pay a price (card, life, creature, artifact) to gain a prize (life, creature, artifact, card), in a way that you can sort your priorities first and gain what you have lost later.
Very interesting design. My favorite M13 card.
Creatures are by far the worst type of card in this game. They are slow, fragile and since most of them can attack, their effects are always worse than their instant, sorcery, artifact and enchantment counterparts. When creatures become the main focus of development, the developers start to make the other cards to support your creatures, severely reducing gameplay variety because this lessens the number of independent cards that are not creatures. MTG stopped being the versatile game i fell in love with, and became very similar to Yu-Gi-Oh. Creatures are no longer expendable, non-creatures were watered down to accessory level.
If that wasn't enough, WotC realized that appealing to the masses sells more than maintaining the hardcore status. Fast, intelligent strategies that required the player to think before playing and punished any mistake are long gone. Slow, simplistic gameplay is the norm, and overcosted predictable cards are the center of all attention, so any player can take it easy, play it at his own pace. Before the casualization of this game, the player had to constantly adapt to different opponents, predict what cards he or she would play and chose between several possibilities in order to be closer to victory. Logic gave place to emotions. If a vocal minority feels opressed by decent cards, these cards have a good chance of being banned. Standard is no longer about competition, because any strong card will be labeled as overpowered, and since WotC wants to appeal to the masses, the developers are forced to babysit those players.
The cards are overcosted. Most of them could perfectly cost 1 ou 2 less mana than they actually do. It is a quite obvious case of lazy design. If they make standard slow and overcosted, they don't need to study how the new cards will affect vintage, legacy, modern and extended, since they are going to be unplayable in those formats. The effects are weak and for the most part are directed against creatures, so that they can only grant advantage against one kind of card, which makes the set much easier to balance. The card design is politically correct, as spells that were used to bully your opponent in the past, such as counterspells and land destruction for example, are too weak to be playable. I mean, you can counter spells or destroy lands, but only occasionally, in a way that you can never dominate the other player with those cards.
The power levels are made to people who are satisfied with subpar achievements.
"Wow, this card is going to be amazing in EDH!"
"Holy ****, this is a limited bomb!"
This is like praising someone who failed to beat a game in normal mode by saying that he or she would win easily on very easy mode. It is such a sad conformism. Casual formats are actually very fun to play, but should never be the meat of a game. They should always be secondary. The quality of a set is measured by its T2 potential.
If M13 was a CONTRUCTED BOMB, but bad for both limited and EDH, it would be an amazing, memorable set. As it is, M13 is a CONTRUCTED FAILURE, but a limited and EDH bomb, which makes it a nearly worthless set.