That's true. They are just forcing us to play bad overcosted cards to remove it. I guess Fate Forgotten is OK though.
Perhaps they aren't such "bad over costed cards" if they are capable of answering threats that less expensive cards can't. People act like it's the end of magic as we know it if something doesn't die to our current doom blade analog. Just run a slightly more expensive or specialized removal spell if you are that worried about this card.
Of course they knew how crazy the mana base would be. WOTC cares about one thing above all others which is selling as many packs as humanly possible. There is nothing that comes close to selling packs better than a nice expensive mana base made completely from sought after rare lands. Think about it. The most valuable and sought after rares are those that are run in not one but many tier one deck archetypes. Hanger back is a great example of this, but the best examples have always historically been high end multi-color rare lands. If you look at BFZ as a set is there really anything in it other than the lands that would make this set empty the store shelves and people's wallets the way it has?
It looks like somebody already mentioned the archive. I think this combo is too clunky to be competitive but if you run the archive as part of the engine then you don't need to rely so heavily on cantrips. I would personally run this as a token generating deck. We have plenty of sorceries and instants that can generate tokens in standard right now. One of the nice things about this combo is that even if you only get part of the combo on board all the rest of the cards in the deck should still have a nice synergy with whatever piece is present.
This remains one of the most interesting cards in the set. It sits right at that 6cc cusp beyond which most cards become completely unplayable in constructed, but given the amount of incidental ramping we have at the moment and the fact it uses only colorless mana I think this thing is in reach of becoming a curve topper. Which is the problem since it's effect is essentially to mega land ramp. If you are playing the sort of deck that should be running this thing you should be landing a good 4+ lands with it when it comes into play which is tremendously powerful... but mostly in the early game. Usually curve toppers at 6cc are strait up game enders where as the Sower just drops a big generic body and wants to ramp you into some even insaner finisher. It's such a powerful ramp effect that it seems like there must be a way to make it work but I'm not convinced that when its that late in the game a simple big aggressive critter with evasion and or haste wouldn't work better.
In magic Christmas land this guy ramps right into Ulamog the next round but we all know that having to depend on ramp to make a bunch of super late game cards viable is way too inconsistent for a tier one deck. Maybe the answer is to run this thing as curve topper in a deck with a lot of inexpensive landfall cards and or massive card draw. That way you don't end up with dead 10cc cards in your hand if your ramp fails to materialize and if you do hit the sower it ensures that you will still put its ability to good use. Sadly the landfall cards don't ingest and this thing loves to be run in an ingest deck. It's such a neat card but it seems like it has a split personality. Half it it wants to be fed by an ingesting exile deck and the other half wants to be the big bomb in a landfall deck. Sadly these two decks don't really overlap much.
I think this card, like many other mid to late game BFZ staples will only get its chance to shine once the Takir block is out of the picture. This entire set is shaping up to be a rather slow one. If you compare this phoenix to the other cards in this set its not half bad but like many of the other cards in this set its being eclipsed by the cards in the block that came before it. Red aggro will likely never get to recast this thing before the game ends in the current environment which leaves us with a 3/3 flier with haste for four which is alright but I think most red decks are going to want to take one of the 4 mana dragons over this thing. It might turn out to be better than we think given that the staple for black spot removal is being rotated out for a sorcery speed alternative but conversely there will be instant speed white and white/black removal still available and this thing doesn't have the toughness to face off with a proper dragon.
It's difficult to determine the overall power level of the set without seeing all of it, but it does look like the set as a whole has had the power level dialed back a bit. This is bad for eternal formats looking for new cards, but likely healthy for standard and limited where slowing it down a bit allows for more interesting, interactive and longer matches. Do we really want standard to be a place where round 3 or 4 wins which are basically determined by your starting draw luck are the norm?
The sets overall dialed back power level is the reason golden ticket lands which aren't even constructed standard legal have been sprinkled into the set. It's to give the eternal format players something to shoot for and to ensure the set will sell well even if the rest of the cards are lacking in power level compared to earlier releases. It's a clever way of fighting power creep. The only problem I see with these lands is that they are WAY too rare to offset the average players lost value when the set rotates out. Most people are not going to buy enough packs to even get one of the golden tickets which will leave them with packs of cards that won't have any real value the moment they rotate.
The only other problem I see with lowering the sets overall power level is that this set does not exist in a vacuum and I'm afraid the faster aggro strategies available in the Takir block are going to overshadow the mid and late game eldrazi and ally strategies being pushed in BFZ. Unless we have some yet unseen very serious early game mana ramp or widely available early game sweepers like Pyroclasm, I just don't think the BFZ mid and late game mechanics are going to be able to compete with the faster strategies that are lingering from the other blocks we have in standard at the moment. I have seen no signs of first round mana dorks or other early acceleration being reprinted and all of the new early game removal spells have been either slower or sub par versions of the spells rotating out. There is simply nothing to suggest this set is going to push the early game removal or mana ramp needed to make the new slower mid and late game BFZ mechanics viable compared to faster creatures and strategies we already have in place, at least up until the next rotation.
Having said this we haven't seen the whole set yet, so hopefully the trends we have seen thus far are bucked by future reveals. Maybe we will get inexpensive land ramp, early game rally allies and powerful round two or three sweepers that will enable the fun later game strategies being pushed in this set or maybe we will just have to wait until the Takir block rotates out to get to play with them properly.
I think transgress the mind is yet another card signaling that the entire standard format is being slowed down. The more cards that are spoiled for this set the more evident it becomes that this is going to be a very slow set. There is a reason we are seeing golden ticket lands in BFZ which is because WOTC wants to slow down standard and prevent power creep but doesn't want to take a massive hit in sales. If they print pretty much an entire set that is too slow to see use in most of the eternal formats then they know their sales will tank. The obvious solution would be to do something like add golden ticket lands that are coveted in these same formats but make them illegal in constructed standard.
Having said this, I think the problem this set is going to have initially is that we are getting a bunch of mechanics and cards that are simply too slow to be competitive against the stuff we already have from sets like Kahns which are still standard legal. Thus extremely fast aggro elements are still going to be present in a meta environment that wants us to play 6+ mana eldrazi and allies that reach critical mass at around that same mana threshold. Until the Takir block rotates out, I think the faster more aggro elements of those sets will overshadow the slower BFZ mechanics. We keep assuming we will get good early game mana acceleration to enable all the nice mid and late game cards they keep spoiling in this set, but the thing is we haven't seen a single early game mana accelerator. I get the feeling we will not be seeing any first round mana dorks or other first round acceleration. My guess is that most of the new mana acceleration is going to be round 3 or later with a couple of choice round 2's if we are lucky. I hope I am wrong.
The thing that truly puzzles me is that the most obvious way to slow down the format and keep early aggro elements from previous blocks from eclipsing the new mid and late game stuff they are pushing in this set is to release a load of early game board wipes like pyroclasm and we haven't seen anything like that. Even early game targeted burn spells seem to be missing. In fact the only semi early game sweeper we have seen is a terrible multi colored rare in the form of radiant flames. Plus our Thought Seize replacement, aka Transgress the Mind, is intentionally terrible against aggro. If anything it looks like our removal and disruption spells have been slowed down even more so than the creatures in this set. I hope as the rest of the set is printed I am proven wrong and we see fast early game removal and some solid early game mana acceleration or it's going to be a long wait before much of this set becomes playable in competitive standard due to the faster elements from earlier sets getting in the way.
The second round drop in a deck is a much more crucial one than the first. It's one thing to skip first round board presence for the ability to consistently cripple your opponents hand, but skipping your round two drop is quite a bit more painful. We already have despise and duress in standard and they are first round. I just don't see exile being worth the extra cost unless consuming exiled cards is an incredibly important theme to your deck. If you draw this card later in the game it's also a lot harder to sneak it in on top of your mid game drops due to that extra cost. One extra black to drop a top decked despise in the mid game before it's useless will mess up your tempo way less than trying to cast this spell in that same situation.
The death of the one mana dork saddens me in that it is yet another symptom of larger trend I have seen in MTG for years.
I've been playing magic since back in the era when Mirage came out and I must say I have seen a disappointing trend in the game's design changes, particularly in the last few years or so. I took an extended break from the game which has made the changes all the more evident upon returning. The trend I have seen basically boils down to the dumbing down and narrowing of the game by nerfing and killing off the majority of non-creature based decks and strategies. It's turning MTG into a game much more akin to Yugioh or Pokemon where matches all seem all come down to racing to get a creature advantage and then turning them sideways.
Literally all of the standard competitive decks I have seen or played against since returning are vanilla creature-centric set-ups with varying degrees of aggression and removal. I haven't seen one untap/go, prison, land breaker, or pure burn deck since returning to the game. I haven't even seen what I would call a proper combo deck. This lack of variety in the meta game is not healthy. The classic mana ramp deck is one of the few slightly different archetypes I still see around and with the removal of first round mana dorks it appears that it is next on their list to go after.
Creatures beat sticks have seen absolutely massive power creep while all other spell types have taken serious hits, particularly instants and sorceries. The removal spells which would naturally hold these creatures in check are the weakest I have seen since I started playing magic yet the creatures these spells are supposed to remove are so much more powerful than they were back in the day. In this lies the problem. The massive increase in creature power has warped the entire game to the point where a first round mana elf is now considered OP because it lets people get out their 3 mana juggernauts one round early.
Reducing the diversity of the number of viable strategies that can be run hurts the entire game. Magic isn't supposed to be Yugioh or Pokemon. What sets this game apart is the deeper and more varied game play and strategies available, or at least that is how it is supposed to be. Reducing magic to a game of just turning creatures sideways may make the game much more accessible and appealing to new players who are familiar with Yugioh and Pokemon, but it is not healthy for the game as a whole.
Sorry, I swerved a bit off topic, but I see the death of round one mana accelerators as a symptom of a much larger shift in the game's design philosophy which has been playing out for years and it is one I find quite disappointing.
Perhaps they aren't such "bad over costed cards" if they are capable of answering threats that less expensive cards can't. People act like it's the end of magic as we know it if something doesn't die to our current doom blade analog. Just run a slightly more expensive or specialized removal spell if you are that worried about this card.
In magic Christmas land this guy ramps right into Ulamog the next round but we all know that having to depend on ramp to make a bunch of super late game cards viable is way too inconsistent for a tier one deck. Maybe the answer is to run this thing as curve topper in a deck with a lot of inexpensive landfall cards and or massive card draw. That way you don't end up with dead 10cc cards in your hand if your ramp fails to materialize and if you do hit the sower it ensures that you will still put its ability to good use. Sadly the landfall cards don't ingest and this thing loves to be run in an ingest deck. It's such a neat card but it seems like it has a split personality. Half it it wants to be fed by an ingesting exile deck and the other half wants to be the big bomb in a landfall deck. Sadly these two decks don't really overlap much.
The sets overall dialed back power level is the reason golden ticket lands which aren't even constructed standard legal have been sprinkled into the set. It's to give the eternal format players something to shoot for and to ensure the set will sell well even if the rest of the cards are lacking in power level compared to earlier releases. It's a clever way of fighting power creep. The only problem I see with these lands is that they are WAY too rare to offset the average players lost value when the set rotates out. Most people are not going to buy enough packs to even get one of the golden tickets which will leave them with packs of cards that won't have any real value the moment they rotate.
The only other problem I see with lowering the sets overall power level is that this set does not exist in a vacuum and I'm afraid the faster aggro strategies available in the Takir block are going to overshadow the mid and late game eldrazi and ally strategies being pushed in BFZ. Unless we have some yet unseen very serious early game mana ramp or widely available early game sweepers like Pyroclasm, I just don't think the BFZ mid and late game mechanics are going to be able to compete with the faster strategies that are lingering from the other blocks we have in standard at the moment. I have seen no signs of first round mana dorks or other early acceleration being reprinted and all of the new early game removal spells have been either slower or sub par versions of the spells rotating out. There is simply nothing to suggest this set is going to push the early game removal or mana ramp needed to make the new slower mid and late game BFZ mechanics viable compared to faster creatures and strategies we already have in place, at least up until the next rotation.
Having said this we haven't seen the whole set yet, so hopefully the trends we have seen thus far are bucked by future reveals. Maybe we will get inexpensive land ramp, early game rally allies and powerful round two or three sweepers that will enable the fun later game strategies being pushed in this set or maybe we will just have to wait until the Takir block rotates out to get to play with them properly.
Having said this, I think the problem this set is going to have initially is that we are getting a bunch of mechanics and cards that are simply too slow to be competitive against the stuff we already have from sets like Kahns which are still standard legal. Thus extremely fast aggro elements are still going to be present in a meta environment that wants us to play 6+ mana eldrazi and allies that reach critical mass at around that same mana threshold. Until the Takir block rotates out, I think the faster more aggro elements of those sets will overshadow the slower BFZ mechanics. We keep assuming we will get good early game mana acceleration to enable all the nice mid and late game cards they keep spoiling in this set, but the thing is we haven't seen a single early game mana accelerator. I get the feeling we will not be seeing any first round mana dorks or other first round acceleration. My guess is that most of the new mana acceleration is going to be round 3 or later with a couple of choice round 2's if we are lucky. I hope I am wrong.
The thing that truly puzzles me is that the most obvious way to slow down the format and keep early aggro elements from previous blocks from eclipsing the new mid and late game stuff they are pushing in this set is to release a load of early game board wipes like pyroclasm and we haven't seen anything like that. Even early game targeted burn spells seem to be missing. In fact the only semi early game sweeper we have seen is a terrible multi colored rare in the form of radiant flames. Plus our Thought Seize replacement, aka Transgress the Mind, is intentionally terrible against aggro. If anything it looks like our removal and disruption spells have been slowed down even more so than the creatures in this set. I hope as the rest of the set is printed I am proven wrong and we see fast early game removal and some solid early game mana acceleration or it's going to be a long wait before much of this set becomes playable in competitive standard due to the faster elements from earlier sets getting in the way.
I've been playing magic since back in the era when Mirage came out and I must say I have seen a disappointing trend in the game's design changes, particularly in the last few years or so. I took an extended break from the game which has made the changes all the more evident upon returning. The trend I have seen basically boils down to the dumbing down and narrowing of the game by nerfing and killing off the majority of non-creature based decks and strategies. It's turning MTG into a game much more akin to Yugioh or Pokemon where matches all seem all come down to racing to get a creature advantage and then turning them sideways.
Literally all of the standard competitive decks I have seen or played against since returning are vanilla creature-centric set-ups with varying degrees of aggression and removal. I haven't seen one untap/go, prison, land breaker, or pure burn deck since returning to the game. I haven't even seen what I would call a proper combo deck. This lack of variety in the meta game is not healthy. The classic mana ramp deck is one of the few slightly different archetypes I still see around and with the removal of first round mana dorks it appears that it is next on their list to go after.
Creatures beat sticks have seen absolutely massive power creep while all other spell types have taken serious hits, particularly instants and sorceries. The removal spells which would naturally hold these creatures in check are the weakest I have seen since I started playing magic yet the creatures these spells are supposed to remove are so much more powerful than they were back in the day. In this lies the problem. The massive increase in creature power has warped the entire game to the point where a first round mana elf is now considered OP because it lets people get out their 3 mana juggernauts one round early.
Reducing the diversity of the number of viable strategies that can be run hurts the entire game. Magic isn't supposed to be Yugioh or Pokemon. What sets this game apart is the deeper and more varied game play and strategies available, or at least that is how it is supposed to be. Reducing magic to a game of just turning creatures sideways may make the game much more accessible and appealing to new players who are familiar with Yugioh and Pokemon, but it is not healthy for the game as a whole.
Sorry, I swerved a bit off topic, but I see the death of round one mana accelerators as a symptom of a much larger shift in the game's design philosophy which has been playing out for years and it is one I find quite disappointing.