Quote from -spooky- »Commune With the Gods is pretty sweet tech. How does the deck play for you?
It's surprisingly good against slower midrange decks, I had a game where I was able to loop 2 eternal winesses against Jund to hold off a tarmgoyf until I drew into the white source for congregation. Commune is a solid dig spell to replace the sunstrike legionaries.
We are getting those. There are plenty of Commons and uncommons in standard at that level like Chart a Course and Abrade. Some, like Fatal Push, are even more powerful. Meanwhile, Mortify and Putrefy see zero play and are worth practically nothing. Putrefy didn't even see play in RTR-THS standard.
Lightning Helix isn't too powerful for standard, given Lightning Strike is fine, but there are issues with it other than power level. Burn spells have to be treated differently than regular removal. A deck with 40 Fatal Push is unplayable, but a deck with 40 Lightning Bolt kills on turn 4. Having multiple nearly-identical burn spells in Standard is a bad idea, and Lightning Helix forces players into white-red while Lightning Strike goes in any deck.
"Make a good set" is not a simple task, and having lots of high-demand cards won't make a set good. There's a cap to how valuable a set's cards can be due to basic economics - opening packs can never be profitable, because if it is people will open packs until supply exceeds demand and the card prices drop. You can make a set with too little value certainly, but there's a cap and only the weakest sets fail to reach it.
What's important is spreading the value out. If you don't do that you end up with a single card holding most of the set's value, as with Jace, Vryn's Prodigy or Voice of Resurgence.
The set was. The block overall was weak, with Gatecrash and Dragon's Maze both being bad sets, but Return to Ravnica itself had plenty of good cards (Several of which see play in eternal formats) and was an excellent draft environment. Return to Ravnica was also when MTG saw its playerbase grow the most.
The problem right now is simply that Ixalan's tribes aren't supported by the rest of standard. Energy is strong, because it has two set's worth of cards backing it up. Amonkhet has a strong presence in the format with monored and UW decks. Meanwhile, outside of Ixalan there are:
- Two vampires
- Two pirates
- Zero dinosaurs
- Zero Merfolk
We're looking at a 5-set standard, and one of those sets isn't properly supported. Rivals will of course bring more support for those tribes, and Dominara will likely have some cards to help them as well.
I expect Magic will recover when Dominara is released, for several reasons:
- The impact of the return to year-long rotation schedules. We're still in a five-set standard right now, and we haven't had a seven-plus set standard in a long time.
- Dominara itself is a big draw to long established players the same way Return to Ravnica was; a return to some of the most fondly-remembered locations and characters in Magic's history.
- Most likely we'll see continued support for Ixalan's tribes in Dominara to make them viable in standard. Right now, outside of Ixalan, there are two pirates, two vampires, and zero merfolk or dinosaurs in standard.
Yes, Magic just needs to go back to the era it came closest to dying in.
Remember, you aren't allowed to repeat a loop an infinite number of times. So, you can't use infinite of a resource to pay for the same ability over and over. (so no using infinite life to draw cards with Griselbrand, for example.) You can activate infinite separate abilities, if you create infinite separate permanents with the same ability. You can have an infinite number of triggers created by infinite of something else.
Obviously you can get infinite life with Lifelink. Note that this doesn't allow us to get infinite of something by paying life, because that's still a repeatable but finite loop. We can still use infinite life to get:
Infinite tokensAjani, Caller of the Pride.
Infinite toughness from Serra Avatar.
Using Infinity Elemental's power with other cards, we can also:
Deal infinite damage to a creature using any fight spell.
Get infinite life loss from Dread Defiler.
Create a creature with base power AND toughness of infinity using Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet.
Get infinite energy with Peema Aether-Seer.
Draw infinite cards with Prime Speaker Zegana.
Discard infinite cards with Tormented Thoughts.
Use Tainted Strike to put infinite -1/-1 counters on a creature. (The only way to make them stick around is with a creature that has infinite toughness.)
Get infinite +1/+1 counters on any creature with Vigor.
Give something - infinity / - infinity with Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter
Of course, that's not all. With infinite tokens from the previously listed sources, we can then:
Get infinite colored mana with Cryptolith Rite
Use Aura Shards to destroy an infinite number of artifacts or enchantments.
Use Emrakul's Evangel to sacrifice an infinite number of creatures.
I'm sure there's a lot more possibilities we can find here - I haven't even looked at what you can do with Mycosynth Lattice or things that rigger when creatures die. So what else can we make infinite of?
1/1 flying tokens aren't all that rare, and trade with this just as easily as they trade with most 2/2 creatures.
Going to the command zone is a replacement effect. The commander never actually enters exile in the first place, so there's no "exiled card."
You're completely missing the point here. Bolas isn't interested in randomly conquering planes, he wants to regain his power. We know he wants to transport the eternals somewhere using the planar gate, but where does he want to go and what is he going to use the Eternals to fight?
Think of it more like "the lake and the river are both made of H2O molecules."