And now, a creature that is better than Ranking Canopy, which was enough to wipe out every faerie deck... making them kill themselves with Bitterblossom and nullifying the shroud granted by Scion of Oona
yeah that's true. no one is running faeries anymore. raking canopy totally destroyed them! so wait, why are we complaining about this faerie hate then? it's not faerie hate because there's no faerie decks anymore. it's just some cards that have nothing to do with faeries , which no one is playing because of raking canopy.
and yea. I can see the argument for both mythic and rare, but I feel rare would be more right for the mythic feel of the "magic storyline" the mythics are supposed to uphold. Where was morphling in the storyline? it's like they stretched "magic storyline" to "magic iconic history" which means we might run into sengir vampire/serra's angel cycle as mythic in the future. woo! O.o
Thornling seems like a fine design and the haste issue doesn't seem overly important to my sense of the card. What I don't particularly like is the fact that it exists in the first place, I like the idea of Torchling in the context of planar chaos, it was really on theme, however this is just a random card in a random set. I don't understand why Morphling needs to have it's own cycle.
exactly. it's like if one of the mythic rares in conflux was a futuristic robot that shot lasers out of its eyes. it's out of place and upsets the flavor of the set.
at the same time, with the Bolas and the domain and the cycling, it's almost like they're trying to split this block between new and old players. it's a pseudo time spiral revisited anyway (despite that i still feel like thornling is out of place).
also indestructible is one of the coolest new abilities ever. when i bust out indestructible dudes, eye of the tiger plays out of thin air and when i tap them it goes in slow motion. not the matrix slow motion, but a much grainier steven seagal or chuck norris roundhouse kick slow motion.
But even if the card does not NEED blue to have its abilities, the fact that it IS blue (i.e. needs 3 colours to cast) means that the cmc is lower than it would be if only 2 colours were needed.
this is a good explanation about a lot of the three color cards with no obvious ties to each color in their cost. additionally, each color has vanillas, and you don't see anyone complaining about like...fugitive wizard or whatever (why is that stupid wizard blue? no flying, no shroud, no unblockable, etc). regardless, it's still kind of unsatisfying, which is odd because when i see woolly thoctar, it feels totally right. but if it had been a 3/3 with flying and first strike i'm sure i would be saying why is this green?
Playing this guy in a multiplayer is putting the biggest bullseye in history on your head. Even if you survive to your next upkeep, Blood Tyrant won't.
well, you'll be playing blue red and black. so uh, maybe you'll have some counterspells, removal, and direct damage. that might help out a little. i think it ultimately depends on exactly how multiplayer your multiplayer game is. three or four people? you're probably going to win. ten people? yeah i see your point.
True... or trample. Either way, he's just not quite good enough. Still, an awesome EDH card.
seriously dude? seriously? i guess i see your point. he probably should have cost 0 and had "shroud and can't be removed from the game and if you have this in your library you win the game."
Also, protection doesn't exactly gel very well with the theme of the set. What business does Grixis or Jund have in doling out protection from anything? One is a system doomed to eternal entropy, the other submits to the code of the wild. What concept of protection would either Jund or Grixis have?
Remember that one time long ago, Alara already be a entire plane, some abilities just became forgotten and dormand... (like progenitus?)
Now, with that re-joining, and strange mana flowing into the shards, strange and lost forgotten abilities will be recovered e relearned... protection is one of then...
alara used to be whole. so it makes perfect sense that as it comes together latent abilities to defend against a mortal enemy might be awakened.
i think i'll have to play with/against protection with conflux and alara cards before i get behind your non-flavor point but it has some decent logic to it. protection from a single color is a lot more devastating in an "everyone is playing 3 or more colors" environment than in any other enviroment.
edit: to respond more specifically to your point, jund and grixis are not places you'd expect to see protection in because they've been cut off from certain types of mana and have subsequently become warped. but surely you don't believe that the demons in grixis, for instance, never had any kind of defense against their enemies? or likewise for any creature that once existed in alara and had enemies.
the protection bears have protection form a certain color because its the shared enemy color of those 2 colors....not because of what shard it is from.
i.e. bant is a 2/2 for WU. for it to have pro black (warring with esper) then they would have to make it GW, since that is the enemy color of both trhose colors. we do have a GW creature that is pro black but its on "another shard"....due to the name....but those colors work on bant too.
point being, the creatures werent designed with the shard totally in mind, but more the flavor of the game itself.
actually they weren't designed with the shard in mind at all. they were appropriated and an attempt was made to rename them with shard flavor in mind. also if bant was warring with black it would be warring with grixis, because grixis is the black shard (black is the center of its arc and its philosophy). but your point is valid. what would have been more interesting is if they made new versions of the bears with shard flavor fully in mind. like for instance
U
artifact creature - vedalken scout
protection from red and green
2/2
but that would be both using hybrid and too powerful.
I think the designers have caused problems for themselves by going for multicolor themes in three of the last four years. Not only has the design space been mined heavily, but as they've recognised it has become very easy to fit pretty much any effect you want into a deck of any base color (between hybrid and easy splashes and color bleed). Planar Chaos being part of the one non multi-color block in the last 4 years didn't help.
they've done multicolor so much because it's awesome and people love it. but i think you're right. it's time to work on a really innovative non-multicolor set.
Thats stupid that the Bant one has pro red. Bant's nemesis would obviously be black. Let esper worry about pro red.
at first i agreed but if you think about it, it makes enough sense. i would make them esper ==> red, jund ==> blue, grixis ==> white, bant ==> black, and naya ==> hmmmm. now there's a problem.
so i think that's why they went the way they went.
Remember that one time long ago, Alara already be a entire plane, some abilities just became forgotten and dormand... (like progenitus?)
Now, with that re-joining, and strange mana flowing into the shards, strange and lost forgotten abilities will be recovered e relearned... protection is one of then...
i was having trouble with this flavorwise too, but i like this explanation and it makes perfect sense.
@urzassedatives: if you're right then i have nothing to complain about. like i said in my last post, it's silly to argue and complain about this (my posts included) when we don't know very much about the set. and usually i'm on the other side of things.
about domain being keyworded (or whatever the correct term is for that): it's kind of lame but it makes searches really easy so i'm for it. chroma being keyworded actually adds words to the card rather than takes them away, and domain is the same way. but the reasons for it outweigh the reasons against it.
What people need to understand is that they are reprinting some of these cards because their theme is Domain, and a card like Gaea's Might is an AMAZING domain spell...
the issue isn't that i "don't understand" why they're (maybe) reprinting these cards. the issue is the possible amount of reprints from the same set with no redefinition of the original cards, and therefore nothing new being brought to the table.
would you rather have them print crappy domain spells that you're not gonna play anyways?
no, i would rather have them print new cards that can be similar to older domain cards but put a new twist on it that fits the new set, and then reprint some functional domain cards and some cards that are really cool with domain but weren't originally intended for it. take a look at mirrodin's reprints for an example of what i'm talking about.
if i take your post literally, you're saying that the theme of the new set is domain, the same theme as an older set. our two options are: they print new cards, which suck, or they reprint old cards which are awesome. so you seem to be suggesting that R&D can't design good functional cards for domain anymore, and all its design space has been used up already. if that's the case, then why are they making the theme of the set domain, and more importantly why aren't you upset that they chose a theme that they can't print decent cards for?
it's important for me to add that arguing about some rumored cards which may or may not even be in this set that hasn't come out yet is the kind of thing i used to mock people on message boards for doing. oh well...:)
No percentages, but from modern large sets (disqualifying Time Spiral for obvious reasons) Mirrodin seems to hold the record with 21 true and functional reprints, followed by Kamigawa with 17, I think. For small sets, the most I've seen so far is 6, in Betrayers.
thanks for the numbers. mirrodin is about 7%, whereas if conflux has a might of alara cycle and a zombie outlander cycle it would be closer to 9 or 10%. and the reprints in mirrodin are from all over and for the most part they are fun because in mirrodin their usefulness is redefined. some cards that sucked before were a lot better or more fun in mirrodin. in conflux, it looks like cards that were good because of domain are going to be good because of domain. and are from the same block.
i can see being happy about specific reprints because you like the card...but it seems completely lazy to be designing a new set and say "this set is going to be like invasion...so i guess we reprint entire cycles from invasion block."
i defended wizards when people were freaking out about cylian elf. but i think there's a difference between a future set with a hybrid theme reprinting ashenmoor gouger, and a future set with a hybrid theme reprinting the 10 demigod auras.
if might of alara is just a stand-alone reprint and not part of a cycle of reprints then i will be a lot less upset.
if might of alara is part of another 5 card reprint cycle, which seems likely, that would be 14 reprints (so far) in a small set. does anyone have any stats for whether so many reprints have been done numbers-wise or percentage-wise in a single set before? it seems kind of ridiculous.
fyi, i like reprints when they're simple and useful, and not in such high numbers. but more than one full cycle of reprints is pretty depressing.
they did and it was awesome.
mine was more powerful and unpreventable than exploding borders. i made it for fun in a deck with a lot of ridiculous cards.
got the pic from hawaii.edu, just fyi
yeah that's true. no one is running faeries anymore. raking canopy totally destroyed them! so wait, why are we complaining about this faerie hate then? it's not faerie hate because there's no faerie decks anymore. it's just some cards that have nothing to do with faeries , which no one is playing because of raking canopy.
exactly. it's like if one of the mythic rares in conflux was a futuristic robot that shot lasers out of its eyes. it's out of place and upsets the flavor of the set.
at the same time, with the Bolas and the domain and the cycling, it's almost like they're trying to split this block between new and old players. it's a pseudo time spiral revisited anyway (despite that i still feel like thornling is out of place).
also indestructible is one of the coolest new abilities ever. when i bust out indestructible dudes, eye of the tiger plays out of thin air and when i tap them it goes in slow motion. not the matrix slow motion, but a much grainier steven seagal or chuck norris roundhouse kick slow motion.
shouldn't be mythic.
this is a good explanation about a lot of the three color cards with no obvious ties to each color in their cost. additionally, each color has vanillas, and you don't see anyone complaining about like...fugitive wizard or whatever (why is that stupid wizard blue? no flying, no shroud, no unblockable, etc). regardless, it's still kind of unsatisfying, which is odd because when i see woolly thoctar, it feels totally right. but if it had been a 3/3 with flying and first strike i'm sure i would be saying why is this green?
well, you'll be playing blue red and black. so uh, maybe you'll have some counterspells, removal, and direct damage. that might help out a little. i think it ultimately depends on exactly how multiplayer your multiplayer game is. three or four people? you're probably going to win. ten people? yeah i see your point.
seriously dude? seriously? i guess i see your point. he probably should have cost 0 and had "shroud and can't be removed from the game and if you have this in your library you win the game."
alara used to be whole. so it makes perfect sense that as it comes together latent abilities to defend against a mortal enemy might be awakened.
i think i'll have to play with/against protection with conflux and alara cards before i get behind your non-flavor point but it has some decent logic to it. protection from a single color is a lot more devastating in an "everyone is playing 3 or more colors" environment than in any other enviroment.
edit: to respond more specifically to your point, jund and grixis are not places you'd expect to see protection in because they've been cut off from certain types of mana and have subsequently become warped. but surely you don't believe that the demons in grixis, for instance, never had any kind of defense against their enemies? or likewise for any creature that once existed in alara and had enemies.
actually they weren't designed with the shard in mind at all. they were appropriated and an attempt was made to rename them with shard flavor in mind. also if bant was warring with black it would be warring with grixis, because grixis is the black shard (black is the center of its arc and its philosophy). but your point is valid. what would have been more interesting is if they made new versions of the bears with shard flavor fully in mind. like for instance
artifact creature - vedalken scout
protection from red and green
2/2
but that would be both using hybrid and too powerful.
they've done multicolor so much because it's awesome and people love it. but i think you're right. it's time to work on a really innovative non-multicolor set.
at first i agreed but if you think about it, it makes enough sense. i would make them esper ==> red, jund ==> blue, grixis ==> white, bant ==> black, and naya ==> hmmmm. now there's a problem.
so i think that's why they went the way they went.
i was having trouble with this flavorwise too, but i like this explanation and it makes perfect sense.
about domain being keyworded (or whatever the correct term is for that): it's kind of lame but it makes searches really easy so i'm for it. chroma being keyworded actually adds words to the card rather than takes them away, and domain is the same way. but the reasons for it outweigh the reasons against it.
the issue isn't that i "don't understand" why they're (maybe) reprinting these cards. the issue is the possible amount of reprints from the same set with no redefinition of the original cards, and therefore nothing new being brought to the table.
no, i would rather have them print new cards that can be similar to older domain cards but put a new twist on it that fits the new set, and then reprint some functional domain cards and some cards that are really cool with domain but weren't originally intended for it. take a look at mirrodin's reprints for an example of what i'm talking about.
if i take your post literally, you're saying that the theme of the new set is domain, the same theme as an older set. our two options are: they print new cards, which suck, or they reprint old cards which are awesome. so you seem to be suggesting that R&D can't design good functional cards for domain anymore, and all its design space has been used up already. if that's the case, then why are they making the theme of the set domain, and more importantly why aren't you upset that they chose a theme that they can't print decent cards for?
it's important for me to add that arguing about some rumored cards which may or may not even be in this set that hasn't come out yet is the kind of thing i used to mock people on message boards for doing. oh well...:)
thanks for the numbers. mirrodin is about 7%, whereas if conflux has a might of alara cycle and a zombie outlander cycle it would be closer to 9 or 10%. and the reprints in mirrodin are from all over and for the most part they are fun because in mirrodin their usefulness is redefined. some cards that sucked before were a lot better or more fun in mirrodin. in conflux, it looks like cards that were good because of domain are going to be good because of domain. and are from the same block.
i defended wizards when people were freaking out about cylian elf. but i think there's a difference between a future set with a hybrid theme reprinting ashenmoor gouger, and a future set with a hybrid theme reprinting the 10 demigod auras.
if might of alara is just a stand-alone reprint and not part of a cycle of reprints then i will be a lot less upset.
fyi, i like reprints when they're simple and useful, and not in such high numbers. but more than one full cycle of reprints is pretty depressing.