not every deck is a "good stuff" pile. building around synergy for powerful enabling cards is a totally legit way to make a deck, as can be seen from the success of Mono Blue Devotion, which is just the most recent in a long line of decks using this strategy.
I like this card. It can be really bloodbraidy at times.
except that Bloodbraid basically draws you the card that it casts for free where as this requires you to already have it in your hand and thus provides no card advantage.
we'll see about that. I think you're probably under-estimating Brimaz by a lot though. I understand where you're coming from but I think the card is extremely good and in most situations will be better than Loxodon Smiter.
This Eidolon guy, on the other hand, seems much more limited and inconsistent. I don't think its a bad card but it certainly requires building a deck to take advantage of it and its got some serious weaknesses against removal heavy strategies. Its a really bad card to draw after your opponent has already killed several of your creatures.
So do all aura "bestow" creatures count as two +1? If so it could be very good.
no. they're either an Aura or a Creature, but not both simultaneously. they'll always count as 1 regardless of which mode they're in, but they will never count as two.
the problem isn't whether or not Mill is playable, or has a good curve, or anything like that.
the problem is that this design is lazy and boring and continues the unfortunate trend of forcing the UB color combination to be monomaniacally focused on milling to the exclusion of the many other interesting things that color pair is capable of doing.
nope. not excited by this card at all. seems crap. I kinda assume it always comes in as a 5/3 haste. That's not even a good creature. Its so easy to block and/or remove. Its going to trade down most of the time, dying in a block trade with a 2 drop 3/1 or something.
Even Nightveil Specter was panned by the community before it caught on.
because its legitimately not good. its more valuable now for its casting cost than its abilities. it was temporarily well positioned because its good in mirror matches and for a little while black devotion was very popular. that doesn't make the card actually good though.
The set so far seems pretty dope for Commander and draft.
cool your jets. Magic sets aren't designed to be hit parades of competitive constructed viable cards. this is really typical stuff as far as set power level goes. usually something on the order of 1/10th of cards in a set are really up for consideration for competitive standard. thats just how it is. no point in complaining about it.
the fact is R+D wants to and needs to support many different ways to play Magic. its good for the game as a whole to support this diversity. perhaps consider expanding your horizons beyond just competitive standard. there's room for competitive play and other forms of play at the same time.
Just one thing: does this mean that when I shock a T2 tidebinder mage as a response to a cloudfin raptor's evolve trigger, the raptor doesn't evolve?
Evolve checks twice. It checks when the evolve trigger is initially placed on the stack and it checks again at resolution. Because of the resolution check, I believe shocking the Tidebinder Mage (in that scenario) will cause the Evolve trigger to resolve but not place a +1/+1 counter on the Raptor since no creature with greater power or toughness will be in play.
Brimaz is cheap enough that his vulnerability to targeted removal is not a major concern. The worst case scenario is that he eats a Doom Blade that the opponent was saving mana for. That's a tempo loss of about 1 mana on your part, which is not that big of a deal. Quite a lot of the removal that kills Brimaz is sorcery speed and/or 3+ mana, which means you stay at parity (measured in both cards and tempo/mana) with your opponent so its not a major vulnerability.
The upside is gigantic. This creature is extremely efficient and its threat level actually compounds turn over turn (as long as you get to attack with it). More than worth it.
Vulnerability to removal is always relevant in creature evaluation but I think Brimaz comes out on top even when evaluated against the removal in the format.
except that Bloodbraid basically draws you the card that it casts for free where as this requires you to already have it in your hand and thus provides no card advantage.
This Eidolon guy, on the other hand, seems much more limited and inconsistent. I don't think its a bad card but it certainly requires building a deck to take advantage of it and its got some serious weaknesses against removal heavy strategies. Its a really bad card to draw after your opponent has already killed several of your creatures.
Brimaz is significantly better.
no. they're either an Aura or a Creature, but not both simultaneously. they'll always count as 1 regardless of which mode they're in, but they will never count as two.
the problem is that this design is lazy and boring and continues the unfortunate trend of forcing the UB color combination to be monomaniacally focused on milling to the exclusion of the many other interesting things that color pair is capable of doing.
because its legitimately not good. its more valuable now for its casting cost than its abilities. it was temporarily well positioned because its good in mirror matches and for a little while black devotion was very popular. that doesn't make the card actually good though.
cool your jets. Magic sets aren't designed to be hit parades of competitive constructed viable cards. this is really typical stuff as far as set power level goes. usually something on the order of 1/10th of cards in a set are really up for consideration for competitive standard. thats just how it is. no point in complaining about it.
the fact is R+D wants to and needs to support many different ways to play Magic. its good for the game as a whole to support this diversity. perhaps consider expanding your horizons beyond just competitive standard. there's room for competitive play and other forms of play at the same time.
Evolve checks twice. It checks when the evolve trigger is initially placed on the stack and it checks again at resolution. Because of the resolution check, I believe shocking the Tidebinder Mage (in that scenario) will cause the Evolve trigger to resolve but not place a +1/+1 counter on the Raptor since no creature with greater power or toughness will be in play.
The upside is gigantic. This creature is extremely efficient and its threat level actually compounds turn over turn (as long as you get to attack with it). More than worth it.
Vulnerability to removal is always relevant in creature evaluation but I think Brimaz comes out on top even when evaluated against the removal in the format.