Define best. Is it play across formats? I think Unclaimed Territory will see play in tribal decks in Standard and Modern. Most play? Depends on what the dominant archetypes across all the metas between now and Rotation in two years.
I think Walk the Plank will be a contender, but Lightning Strike will have much more impact (in multiple senses).
For a deck that can't trigger Raid, Strategic Planning seems better than Chart a Course. Chart a Course needs a tempo deck that runs cards like Siren Stormtamer would need to be good for Chart a Course to be good. But that deck might well be running Lightning Strike also.
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- Vulcain666
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Sep 25, 20171
Skitzafreak posted a message on U/B Pirate TempoPosted in: Standard ArchivesQuote from headminerve »Might be a good card. The problem I have with this is you can hardly attack with it, a 3/3 on the ground is tiny in this format. And it's not easy to crew it. I can see it be good in control MUs where there's nothing in front of it, but still you need 2 creatures or a 2/x on the board to crew it, which leads to over-commitment. Could it be better than Aethersphere Harvester ?
I feel like it would play optimally in an aggro shell with slightly bigger pirates overall (Skyship Plunderer, Stormfleet Aerialist, etc...). What do you think ?
Fell Flagship is fine as a 3/3 Vehicle. In the match-ups where crewing it is good, it is really good. But it being a Vehicle is only one of the things it does.
That very first line of text is monumentally important. Here I'll type it out as a reminder:
Pirates you control get +1/+0
Now this seems like a very innocent, unmattering ability. However consider the creatures the deck is running. Siren Stormtamer, Kitesail Freebooter, Fathom Fleet Captain. These creatures hit for very little, but are evasive threats. Making them hit harder helps end games faster, and enables you to actually trade up on some of the creatures. That it is also a Vehicle with a relevant combat damage effect is gravy.
If the card was just 3 for +1/+0 to all Pirates, it wouldn't be good enough. If it was just the Vehicle half, it wouldn't be good enough. But both parts of the card together make something that is quite strong for the deck. -
Sep 7, 20172
SyloRiyami posted a message on Chart a CourseIt should've read:Posted in: Chart a Course
Draw two cards, then discard a card.
Raid - draw two cards instead. -
Jun 16, 201717
Folza posted a message on Uhh I think wizards has a problem on their hand (Ixalan)How did they....that's not good. Nope, no way. Please, for the love of all that is the health of the Magic game, MTGSalvation community, I urge you not to try to enhance this photo further. Instead I really think we should be focusing on the here and now of Hour of Devestation and let Wizards determine how to best resolve this matter.Posted in: The Rumor Mill
Spoilers aren't good for us, and is certainly even worse for Wizards. Think about all the time and effort they put into spoilers, promotional campaigns, set teases and the like: entire careers are built on spoilers being prevented. This is Godbook unprecedented, and I am VERY concerned as to how someone got their hands on a full rare/Mythic sheet. I'm dumbfounded, and don't even care about these spoilers. -
Apr 23, 20171
Dusk707 posted a message on Top 5 best AMK split cardsPosted in: Standard ArchivesQuote from Radekas »Quote from Dusk707 »Commit // Memory for the sole reason I flash in Gearhulk end of their turn and target Memory to start my turn with 7 cards
Memory is a sorcery.
Yes, but in the graveyard the entire card is an instant sorcery, meaning you can target either half. It doesn't become a sorcery only until on the stack, after gearhulk's etb trigger resolves -
Apr 19, 2017
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Dusk707 posted a message on Top 5 best AMK split cardsCommit // Memory for the sole reason I flash in Gearhulk end of their turn and target Memory to start my turn with 7 cardsPosted in: Standard Archives -
Mar 27, 20177
AvalonAurora posted a message on Dear Wizards, we need to talk about Standard balancingDear Wizards,Posted in: Standard Archives
You have started to see the results of changes you've been making in set design. Standard has been suffering. You've had to ban cards and created backlash from that. It hasn't gotten better on it's own like you hoped when you delayed another set of bans. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place, bans are horrible for Standard, but Standard is horrible anyway, and there is no guarantee that new bans will fix the format. You seem to have noticed that the answers in the format just don't match up to the threats.
But I want you to know that isn't the only problem with your Standard design. There are a number of things you really need to work on right now in order to make a varied and relatively balanced Standard format. The Answers vs. Threats equation is just a small part of the equation, and hints at a larger underlying perspective with how you design sets, particularly in regards to marketing cards to the player archetypes, Timmy, Spike, Johnny, and recently Vorthos, and also how you address limited in regards to card rarity and power.
Imagine a skyline with a mountain range, a cityscape or a mix of both. Each point along the skyline, and it's height, represents the rough power level of a card within the context of Standard and the cards it can synergize with and that fight against it which can turn up in the main board (side board has reduced effect compared to the main-board). Historically, this skyline has been a bunch of gradually sloping hills and mountains and mid-tall buildings with the occasional skyscraper, but the recent standard has been closer to a situation where there are tiny spiky hills and a scattering of huge skyscrapers and a handful of taller buildings. Now imagine this in the context of deck archetypes and colors. The recent Standard has had those skyscrapers and tall buildings focused almost entirely into setups that work well with each-other, while older standards tended to spread the skyscrapers out in ways that they never had more than one or two in a single deck, and there was always a number of similar height skyscrapers that fit into other decks and archetypes and colors, and that was on top of more even slopes to the hills and more mid-range height buildings rather than a lack and tiny spiky hills.
If we arranged this like numbers, from 1 to 10, it would be something like this, 10's are those skyscrapers, 1 and 2 cards are limited fodder that are just too bad to play in standard, likely due to having strictly better or close to that options for their archetypes:
Standards that work well:
Deck type/color A:
1 2 1 4 3 5 4 7 3 10 8 2
Deck type/color B:
1 3 2 5 2 8 9 8 2 1 4 7
Deck type/color C:
10 2 4 8 5 2 5 7 6 3 1 1
Deck type/color D:
1 1 3 4 3 6 7 6 8 9 3 9
Recent Standard on the other hand has been more like:
Deck type/color A:
1 2 1 4 3 1 2 1 2 2 9
Deck type/color B:
2 8 9 10 10 10 9 4 6 7 1
Deck type/color C:
1 4 2 10 10 9 9 8 9 4 2
Deck type/color D:
1 2 1 2 1 2 4 8 2 5 6
As you can see, the card pool in this case heavily favors the deck type/color B and C. Of course, some of those numbers are cards that fit within multiple decks, but might have different scores depending on which deck they are in. For instance, a card that is an 8 in deck B might be the 5 in deck D, certainly one of the better cards in that deck type, but it is far more powerful in the context of deck B. This recent Standard also has much more limited fodder as a percentage of the card pool, and not enough non-limited fodder to fill out all the deck archetypes roughly evenly, on top of basically a couple of the archetypes having too many powerful cards focused in them.
This happens as a result of multiple set design policies, the first is the practice of keeping down the power level of common cards, and focusing the most powerful cards into the rare and mythic rarities. Due to the ratios of each type of card in Standard, there simply aren't enough rares and mythics in ANY standard format to support having them as the only card types where a significant percentage of them are the most powerful cards in the format. And you aren't even just doing that, you seem to be jamming more limited fodder into rares and even mythics than before, even while the limited fodder in uncommon and common rarities has pushed out the non-limited fodder cards in those rarities by huge margins.
A healthy standard should have non-limited fodder cards be at least something like:
Mythics 80%
Rares 75%
Uncommons 50%
Commons 20%
Recently though, it's seemed like the limited fodder cards of sets lately have been something like:
Mythics 50%
Rares 65%
Uncommons 80%
Commons 95%
Note, I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, it's just the overall _feel_ of how cards power levels are distributed in regards to constructed options.
This means, regardless of how big the actual card pool is, the effective _constructed competitive_ card pool is much smaller than it perhaps used to be or should be. A small card pool isn't inherently bad for Standard, it's one of it's benefits, you just need to make sure that the constructive competitive portion of the card pool is balanced in how much of it goes into different colors and deck archetypes, which it has not been, and that there is enough of a constructive competitive card pool to fill in the cards needed for a full set of different archetypes and some other optional lesser budget decks and the like to encourage brewing and the occasional metagame surprise, and not too much of the highest power constructed cards are focused in a stuff that can fit into a single deck.
Now, I'll admit, restricting power of commons and uncommons can actually help limited environments, and there is limited design space for cards that are good in competitive constructed but not so powerful in limited that they aren't forced into mythic or rare rarities.
This, I think, is one of the biggest drawbacks to having small sets. Larger sets let you control the ratios of strong limited cards, while also letting you make sure you have enough competitive constructed cards. If you really want to insist on current power level ratios in the cards for the sake of limited based on rarity, I think the best way to allow you to also save Standard might be to eliminate the use of the current rough sizes of small sets, switching to the current large-set sizes, and introduce a new even bigger set size. This may increase the costs of Standard, but it would help make it easier to fit in a large enough diversity of constructive competitive cards without hurting limited too much.
The other option, the one I'd recommend, is cutting away a lot of the limited fodder at all rarities. The success of cube formats proves that you don't need to have weaker cards all over the place to get a good limited format, it might be a more challenging and swingy one, but it'll still be playable, especially if the limited environment also has strong answers at lower rarities to let players counteract the swinginess.
The next point I'd like to bring up is well illustrated by elements from the Return to Ravnica and Theros block era Standard, and some of the misconceptions you may have developed from it. One of the things I've heard is that you think Thoughtsieze was too strong for Standard, and was a good reason to avoid a needed reprint like Liliana of the Veil. The real problem was too much power was focused overall in mono-black devotion, not that one specific strong tool, and that other colors didn't have comparable tools to help them compete with thoughtseize. For instance, Thoughtseize would have been a lot more fair in a Standard that also, say, had Counterspell for blue, Goblin Guide for red, Vengevine for Green, and Path to Exile for white, and where black didn't have so big a set of cards that would count as above a '7' in Mono-black devotion, on top of powerful ways to hate on some of the otherwise strongest cards in that Standard in the form of Lifebane Zombie, which was devastating against cards that could have been much better like Brimaz, King of Oreskos, giving what was already shaping up to be a powerful deck on it's own strong hate against some of the best cards of the format.
In general, I think you should make sure that strong cards are roughly evenly distributed, and you don't give powerful hate against middle-range power decks to the most powerful decks. Giving Lifebane Zombie to mono-black devotion in that Standard was a problem, but giving something similarly powerful to a theoretically powerful mono-white deck that would hate on mono-black devotion might have been okay, especially since mono-black devotion would still have been about as strong against other decks since it had some other options besides the life-hater in the 3 drop slot that were plenty strong and good at granting devotion. So if you have a deck that looks like it'll be very strong, don't give it powerful hate cards against other decks, but if you have middle-range decks, give them powerful hate cards against the strongest decks.
Next is an issue that revolves around limited and rarity to some degree. The dreaded Pack Rat. Pack Rat is an example of a card that is a complete monster in limited, to the point I'd hesitate to print it at all, and if I did, it would probably only be as a mythic while some degree of hate against it is found in every color at uncommon, and possibly at least once at common in one of the enemy colors, but isn't nearly as powerful in constructed, although still a pretty good card in that. This is a type of card design I strongly suggest you avoid having too much of. It's okay occasionally, just because it's interesting, but there are never enough mythic slots in Standard to justify putting many cards that aren't major powerhouses in constructed competitive into those slots, and mythics don't turn up often enough in limited to justify putting a card in a set that is not good in constructed, but is at mythic because it is too powerful for limited. Pack Rat wasn't that bad, but some cards have been. Just watch out for printing at all cards that are so powerful in limited they have to be mythic, but not powerful enough in constructed to justify use of a mythic slot.
The next problem that leads into is Vorthos. The Vorthos in me has been looking at you funny for a while now. You've been playing favorites a bit too much, granting pet characters powerful cards that you know might be broken just because you want to illustrate how strong they are _in the card game_ when they are powerful in the story, but some other characters who are supposed to be powerful in the story get outright bad cards that are bad in every format just because you don't care much for them, or because you don't care enough and did a last minute nerf that you wouldn't have dared do to one of your precious ones. This causes a lot of story significant cards that have high rarity for their story significance, especially things like planeswalkers and legendary creatures, to have wildly varying power levels compared to each-other even within the same rarity, and creates a lot of the worst and most unplayable cards found in the top rarities, whose only justification for those rarities is that they are story relevant. Don't do this. Seriously, don't, Vorthos is mature enough that the most effective constructed and limited strategies don't also have to use the most powerful in-game cards. Mana costs are there for a reason. You can make something very powerful in effects and abilities, then give it a mana cost appropriate to those. Don't over-do last-minute nerfs to characters you don't care about (such as, say, Emmara Tandris) while also holding holy some other character cards that might deserve nerfs (a more recent example being
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar), treat characters equally balance wise, regardless of how much you like them or story wise, if you want to make them more powerful, raise the mana costs as well to appropriate levels for that power.
The next issue is ramping and mana cost reductions... you're doing it wrong, and I feel like I need to bring it up with how much you've done of it lately, what with Emerge, Emrakul, Delve and Improvise. The think I think you need to take to heart with mana cost reductions and ramping is to remember that the more drastic the potential cost reduction, the more of a combo card something becomes. Something that shifts a single mana for lower cost stuff, or a couple mana for higher cost stuff is fine as a thing that encourages synergy, when things start having the potential to basically be free, or bring powerhouses down to 1-2 mana, that is when things start behaving more like combo than synergy cards. Players will find a way, and given the kind of things that can slip through your testing, like copy-cat, it isn't worth the risk. Cards like Elvish Mystic and Stoic Rebuttal are fine, small potential cost adjustments and synergy are the name of the game there. Things like Tasigur, the Golden Fang is the kind of thing I'd be much more wary of, a large potential cost reduction on a card that is already powerful with a much smaller cost reduction, if Tasigur had been without delve, but a similar mechanic that exiled 4 cards from your graveyard (only once) to reduce his cost to 3B he'd still have been a great card. For cost reductions of cards not intended for combo deck (but for synergy focused decks), I'd avoid letting cards reduce their mana cost by more than 1 for cards at 2-3 mana, and by more than 2 for cards that cost 4+ mana. Otherwise, I'd design the card as if it were a combo card. For ramp, 1-2 mana range costing ramp would only ramp you by 1, 3 mana range would ramp you by 2 if it's easy to get rid of or prevent and otherwise tend to be more of a resilient 1 mana ramp, while 4+ mana costing ramp could ramp you by 2, even for stuff hard to get rid of or stop, like Explosive Vegetation, and I'd avoid things that ramp you by 3 or more outside of things clearly intended for combo, for the same reasons as noted above.
Another thing to remember for Standard is that you want flexibility to do minor brewing. Minor brewing should be encouraged most by budget players, this means they need decent tools at common and uncommon to play around with lots of different strategies. Things like uncommon engine cards, full suites of aggro cards in red, white, and black across cmcs that a deck would need, full suites of tempo cards in blue with the right cmc distribution, full suites of midrange or ramp or aggro or something in green. At least one semi-viable control-ish deck that only needs perhaps one rare as a sweeper and only 2 colors but can the rest of the way be made up of commons and uncommons, without missing out on format relevant hate cards like ways to fight different card types that commonly turn up in the format's top decks (which means you need uncommon or common planeswalker hate that is constructed viable if you have a main-deck planeswalker staple like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar). At least one semi-viable combo deck that relies entirely on uncommon and common cards. These decks may use options that are not quite as good overall as the top decks, but they should generally still be using some stuff that is viable enough to sometimes turn up in meta-shifts, that aren't strictly worse than the rare equivalents for the archetypes involved.
The next issue is inflated CMCs you've been sticking on answer cards. Here are some guidelines I'll give you. The turn that a nut-draw aggro deck can win? That cmc has to be the one that your sweeper that hits all the aggro cards comes online. So if a nut-draw aggro or tempo deck can kill you at turn 4, you need a sweeper that kills everything in the deck permanently (the aggro deck that can do this can't have recursive options) at 4 cmc, such as Languish or Day of Judgment. When the midrange starts getting strong recursive creatures or creatures that ignore an aggro-focused sweeper (such as stuff that can tank a Languish) or otherwise strong removal resistant creatures (such as stuff with constant indestructibility or hexproof), 1 higher cmc is where you need the format's 'hard sweeper' so if you have something at 3 cmc like Predator Ooze,
Dungrove Elder, Leatherback Baloth or Troll Ascetic, you need your hard sweeper to be 4 cmc like Supreme Verdict or Day of Judgment, with Languish not being good enough. If you restrict that kind of thing to 4 cmc, like having Primal Huntbeast, Cudgel Troll, Ember Swallower, or Phyrexian Obliterator, but don't have any 3 cmc resilient midrange threats, it's fine for your hard sweeper to be 5 cmc like Fumigate and to let yourself have a 4 cmc sweeper for anti-aggro like Languish. This sweeper needs to kill or partially kill at least some of the midrange threats either way, they can't all be 2 for 1 -ing both the sweepers and hard removal when they are the only creature on the board, for a midrange deck, so you need to be careful to vary up the midrange defenses available in Standard.
This is part of the reason why vehicles is such a problem this Standard. It's essentially a midrange deck that has too many threats that all defend from the same sort of single target answers and sweepers, with too low cmcs compared to when the sweepers come online.
Single target answers, of course, need to come even earlier than sweepers. Anti-aggro ones need to come online by turn 2 if aggro on a nut draw can win before turn 6 (basically all the time) and destroy the majority of aggro creatures, and hit at least part of the suite of midrange creatures in the format, at least enough of them that a good aggro deck can't be entirely made up of things it destroys permanently. It also needs to be instant speed and uncommon rarity at the worst, as well as 'main-deck worthy'. These 'single target answers' need to be in _every color_ including something like a counterspell in blue, and a fight spell in green, and permanently kill almost every strong aggro creature at 2 cmc or below. It's fine if these spells don't take out bigger stuff. You _do_ need to be able to start taking out bigger stuff as white, black, or blue by 3 cmc range, and do so at instant speed for black or blue, with cards along the lines of Murder or Cancel, unless something very weird is going on in the format, this is the point where you need much more resilient answers. If 2 cmc is the realm of stuff like Mana Leak, Smother, and Victim of Night, 3 cmc is the realm of stuff like Banishing Light, Cancel and Murder. 3 cmc and some more restrictive 2 cmc stuff might also be the realm where you start getting stronger answers to resilient threats that can counteract 2-for-one or stopping elements, using stuff like sacrifice effects, exile, and the like, while 4 cmc answers will generally just kill it dead for good regardless of it's special defenses somehow (so in a format with Thrun, the Last Troll you need something along the lines of Wrath of God).
For fighting combo 2 card combo, it's important to pay attention to discard and counterspells, so blue and black in particular, unless the combo is entirely creature-centric. If the first part of the combo comes online turn 3, then you need a main-deck counterspell that comes online turn 2, and a main-deck discard spell that comes online turn 1, both of which hit both parts of the combo, both the earlier part (which comes online turn 3) and the latter part (which comes online any time afterwards). If the first part of the combo comes online turn 4, then you are fine with just Cancel or Cancel+ and Distress. For instance, a combo that the first piece comes down turn 3, Saheeli, and the 2nd piece comes down turn 4 like the cat, then you need something like Counterspell or this in the format:
Counterbomb UU
Instant
Counter target spell with cmc 4 or less.
For the discard, you'd need something like Thoughtseize for CopyCat environment with Saheeli and the cat.
The counters AND discard have to BOTH be main-deck worthy at hit _both_ the combo pieces of _every_ 2 card combo of this type in the game, so things like Duress or Negate, which are sideboard cards, aren't sufficient, even if they hit both pieces of all the combos.
For combo that requires 3+ pieces or the first piece comes down turn 4 or later, you can be a bit more flexible with the cmcs, allowing for stuff like Cancel and Distress to fulfill the needs of the format.
I actually think that only blue and black having the ability to reliably deal with many sorts of spell-based combos might be one of the bigger problems with the way the color pie is set up.
That is all I can think of for now. Hope this helps.
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Sep 9, 2016
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psychosmurf96 posted a message on Midnight Oilget your value off of it then donate it with harmless offering, might keep the deck working post demonic pact rotationPosted in: Midnight Oil -
Sep 9, 2016
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Butterqup posted a message on Acrobatic ManeuverGoblin Dark-Dwellers with 4 of these in the yard. The dream.Posted in: Acrobatic Maneuver -
Sep 8, 2016
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slightlynobody posted a message on Acrobatic ManeuverI Guess Wizards likes Reflector Mage destroying the meta game? -.- Awesome card... can't deny that.Posted in: Acrobatic Maneuver - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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Made me realize that Reddit / Twitter is an extremely small but loud minority of players. They in no way represent the pulse of the greater worldwide community. Sadly WotC only seems to listen to them and they block / dismiss every other criticism.
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My main concern is that the sets could be too similar in terms of visuals , returning characters and mechanics. And this could make Ravnica get old really fast. Like, I was already tired of the Eldrazis by the time SOI / EMN came out, and those were relatively small sets compared to what we're about to experience.
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The best is when they try to convince you that a card in your deck is unplayable, then you crush them with it and 2 weeks later everyone and their mothers is playing it in tournaments.
I wouldn't say this is toxic though, just a normal community full of know it alls and sore losers. I mean every community has their fair share of jerks and elitists. It's just part of competitive games and you have to learn to deal with criticism. Sometimes it's good criticism and we just don't want to accept it. Some people view any form of criticism as a personal attack and that's not a healthy reaction to have either.
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I agree about Walk the Plank and Unclaimed Territory being contenders. Walk the Plank will be everywhere unless Merfolk is tier 1 or if control isn't good enough or if Spell Pierce / Carnage Tyrant runs rampant. As for Unclaimed Territory, I like the card but I think vampires and merfolk will need more support to be viable and therefore only a couple of standard decks will run 4x Unclaimed Territory. Foils will be expensive though due to modern and EDH demand.
I honestly think Chart a Course has a chance of being played in modern Delver, sultai tempo and modern Merfolk. On top of seeing play in standard pirates, standard merfolk and other blue decks like Temur / Grixis / Sultai / Jeskai. And of course all of the cubes.
A small note about Strategic Planning: This card does not "draw" and does not "discard", it only looks at the top 3, you keep one and put the rest in the graveyard. Many cards in Magic trigger when you either draw or discard and you don't get those benefits with Strategic Planning. Current examples is standard include Hollow One which cares about how many cards you discard in a turn, and The Locust God which cares about how many cards you draw. You also can't dredge or madness off of a Strategic Planning. This might seem like a small detail but it's still relevant.
Also sometimes you have a bad hand but see 3 cards you need with Strategic Planning but you can only keep one of those cards. Chart A Course allows you to keep the 2 cards you draw and discard the worst card in your hand. This also matters.
If pirates are tier 1 though, then it's likely that Siren Stormtamer and/or Lookout's Dispersal end up being more expensive as everyone runs to netdeck the best deck.
I also like Merfolk Branchwalker and Seekers' Squire. These could see lots of standard play in multiple different decks since explore is so good on turn 2.
edit: Wow so many great uncommons in this set! It's kind of crazy how the uncommons are more playable than 75% of the mythics.
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The only thing that makes me really sad is that we're losing Elvish Visionary and that little guy was one of my favs.
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