The two abilities of the Golem are separate in order to make your opponent tell you on announcement that he's pumping the creature. If it was one ability, the choice of whether to pump or give an ability would be made on resolution. As it stands, everyone will say on announcement which of the abilities they're giving even though they don't have to, just to speed things up.
The total rating is a rather strange beast. I'm pretty awful at constructed, and rarely play in events, so if my constructed rating tends to stay level my total will go down. However, if in Limited I get a lot of pairings against people that are relatively weak at Limited, my total rating can increase while my Limited rating stays the same.
You can maintain a good Total rating by completely ignoring the format you're bad in, something not true for Composite - although back when Composite was used there were single-format PTs that invited from that format's rating. My total rating is higher than my Limited rating despite me being terrible at Constructed, presumably by playing (in Limited) people who excelled at Constructed. If I were to play more Constructed, I probably would see my Total rating fall. It's still completely reasonable to qualify for PTs by playing only one format, whether by rating or PTQ, just like it's always been. If they stuck with Composite-only invites for the current multi-format PTs, that wouldn't be true.
I was under the impression that the PRC uses simplified, but Taiwan uses traditional. So in that sense, yes, "most people" would use simplified, but there is still a significant market for traditional.
I first picked one once - I already had two Teachers, multiple Wavewatches, and no Drakes starting pack 3. Its power is very heavily correlated with the number of Wavewatches and Teachers you have; both of those cards give you easy access to the Drake's bonus.
Venerated Teacher is first pick pack 1 around here quite often. They get abandoned a ton, but they are that good. You really don't want to pass one if you're playing blue.
After reading the Echo Mage question, I realized there are a number of ways you could go infinite with him. Both Turnabout and Toils of Night and Day will get you infinite untaps (and taps for that matter) of permanents if you have two islands. Vitalize (or Turnabout for that matter) doesn't even need him leveled up fully if you have enough mana critters that can produce blue, and Toils works at one copy if you have a permanent that can produce UU plus something else.
Sounds like I must make a fun deck based on this. It'll definitely have Enclave Cryptologist and Venerated Teacher to help out.
"Reject Rare Draft" to me is rares in which the drafted cards are "donated" in exchange for raffle tickets or something similar. They are not necessarily bad in Limited, but they are worthless for constructed and hence worth only bulk prices.
I'm not particularly going through the long lists of cards other people posted, but am sticking to older cards since most seem to be focusing on ones in the past few years. Each is memorable to me in some way and each hopefully is in the recommended power level.
Venerated Teacher and Champion's Drake are very solid cards in a U/x leveler deck; while they may be somewhat dead in the wrong circumstances, they are never 100% dead: you at least get a body from them. Halimar Wavewatch looks unimpressive, but it holds the ground cheap and can transform into a mighty attacker if needed. I paired it with white due to getting a white Invoker and Mammoth Umbra, but I would consider going with black if it was there: Zulaport Enforcer, Nirkana Cutthroat and Null Champion are all fine levelers to have out when playing Venerated Teacher, and Black has that awesome, awesome Vendetta.
I seriously would consider taking Venerated Teacher extremely early: there's plenty of level up cards that are only so-so that become absolutely insane if you can cheat the level counters on. That you get a 2/2 body with the Teacher is what really makes him shine; I could easily have seen him printed as a 1/1 and end up only mediocre.
Counters are a very important part of the archetype, especially Deprive. Being able to leave only 2 mana open is quite important when you want to sink mana into your levelers. While you might be able to race an Ulamog's Crusher (which there are plenty of, and sometimes turn 5-6), it's a bit better to just have it not get into play.
As for ranking the colors in Limited, the group I drafted with believes blue is ok but shallow, while green gets fought over. I don't have enough experience with the format to say much more myself, other than that Red has *tons* of removal.
Smite - Again, another card that two-for-ones you but is somewhat necessary to deal with opponents' bombs. It's not so bad if you block with a spawn token, though.
Huh? It doesn't destroy the blocked attacking creature at end of combat, it destroys it immediately. Get attacked with Fatty, block with chump, cast Smite before damage, chump lives.
The problem with the card is that it doesn't deal with evasion creatures; that's why it's much cheaper and has no other restrictions compared to other methods white has to kill attackers.
And World at War, while losing a lot of the surprise value of Relentless Assault, is still probably the best relentless assault variant ever. Tat422 - the templating is especially awkward on WaW because it to be cast before your first attack, in order for it to work properly with rebound.
You cast World at War during your first post-combat main phase, not your first main phase. It's effectively a slightly redone Relentless Assault with Rebound for 1 more mana.
It seems like it might just be as simple as the OP mistyping or misremembering the text.
I did confirm by looking through gatherer that, not only has Doran kept "assign", older versions of similar effects have been changed from "deal" to "assign" - see Tornado Elemental, Cunning Giant, etc.
The problem is that if the card lets any creature deal combat damage equal to its toughness, the word "assign(s)" should be present. We have a good idea what the ability should do by extrapolating the lyric changes, but we don't seem to understand how such an ability would actually be worded since a word that should be used does not show up on the Orb.
I really hate to be someone that says "fake", especially as believable as the card is, but to me it just doesn't check out in the Orb.
Both assigns and assign are 0 on the Orb while Doran still has "assign" in his Oracle text; something's fishy. Although they could make some rules/templating changes, the first thing you do in the combat damage step is assign damage, and then damage is dealt as assigned. Even though players no longer get priority between the two events, they are definitely still different and need to be in order to be able to determine whether the damage is going to be dealt in a legal manner. I admit that's it's possible they'll change the terminology, but it seems like a strange time to change it.
I'm fairly confident that we have a 3W 0/5 flying defender, and you can pay 3W at the beginning of your upkeep to let your guys with defender attack. Beyond that, the apparent lack of appropriately templating makes guessing exactly what the second part of the ability will do. I suppose it's probably dealing combat damage equal to their toughness, but there's no "combat" in there.
As for the Lucifer Sam lyrics, what's with "Ginger Ginger"? The lyrics are "Jennifer Gentle, you're a witch", as I've just confirmed online and in my liner notes from Piper at...; I suppose it sounds a *little* like "Ginger Ginger", but only metrolyrics.com (which I never heard of before) has the wrong ones.
Abusable? Maybe. But you'd need a very specific deck: guys cheap to Evoke and Phyrexian Dreadnought are good with him, but little else. You need something to swing for lots because you only get it for one turn. Perhaps you could play it in Sneak Attack style decks, giving you an extra fatty that you can sorta keep around.
Having this copy allies is sorta weak - you get one more ally if you play something that counts allies when it comes into play, but you could just have played another cheap ally instead.
Having this copy level up creatures that cost one mana to level, and then copying ones that cost 3 or more to level is a cute trick, but that's probably about it. You need a significant amount of mana to be able to play the level up guy and pump up your shapeshifter, who then is nearly useless on future turns unless you play another level up guy.
All in all, a neat idea and probably great fun casually, but I don't see it having many serious applications.
I play Lands in Legacy and I don't see this getting used. Intuition is just so much better. You can't really get enough lands that you want to have access in order for it to be good by itself. If you do not have an active Life from the Loam or Crucible of Worlds then you will be stuck with the worse cards of the bunch and you will have wasted a card.
If you are just trying to accel or use a utility land then this becomes applicable because you will always hit the land drops.
tl;dr It will have more of an application in Standard and EDH than in Legacy
I generally agree with this sentiment. I just don't see how this card is inherently amazing; it only has some very good synergies with other cards. You'll get two lands of questionable utility put into your hand, and two good lands put into your graveyard. This card is not worth casting unless you have Life from the Loam or Crucible of Worlds going. Will it be a great addition to such decks? Probably, but Gifts is still far better, costing only one more mana to get rid of the restriction to lands. It might allow decks without blue to abuse Life from the Loam better I suppose.
To be fair, that this card isn't constructed playable has nothing to do with power creep. 5 mana is just too much to pay for a vanilla creature unless it is ABSURDLY big - let's say 9/9. That has nothing to do with the power level of other creatures, it is just the existence of creature removal (you know, CREATURES DIE TO REMOVAL). Every creature that costs more than 4 mana just has to pay a lot better dividends than just being big to offset its cost disadvantage.
I thought "power creep" when I first saw it, but then came to the same general realization. There's a reason that there's famous quote from Finkel (I think) back in the day (Tempest or so) that went "I like all four colors equally": all green has big creatures, and the spells of the time were much stronger than those in modern times. The next few blocks featured some cheap good green guys to help reverse this notion, but R&D has shifted those efficient weenies to white. So green is left with merely extremely efficient fatties. Which is all this guy is. Without any sort of evasion or way to dodge (non-red) removal, it really isn't getting the job done outside of limited. Even in Limited, there are many ways to deal creatures like this, especially since it can just be chump blocked while you win with evasive guys.
You can maintain a good Total rating by completely ignoring the format you're bad in, something not true for Composite - although back when Composite was used there were single-format PTs that invited from that format's rating. My total rating is higher than my Limited rating despite me being terrible at Constructed, presumably by playing (in Limited) people who excelled at Constructed. If I were to play more Constructed, I probably would see my Total rating fall. It's still completely reasonable to qualify for PTs by playing only one format, whether by rating or PTQ, just like it's always been. If they stuck with Composite-only invites for the current multi-format PTs, that wouldn't be true.
Venerated Teacher is first pick pack 1 around here quite often. They get abandoned a ton, but they are that good. You really don't want to pass one if you're playing blue.
Sounds like I must make a fun deck based on this. It'll definitely have Enclave Cryptologist and Venerated Teacher to help out.
I'm not particularly going through the long lists of cards other people posted, but am sticking to older cards since most seem to be focusing on ones in the past few years. Each is memorable to me in some way and each hopefully is in the recommended power level.
Enough for one post.
I seriously would consider taking Venerated Teacher extremely early: there's plenty of level up cards that are only so-so that become absolutely insane if you can cheat the level counters on. That you get a 2/2 body with the Teacher is what really makes him shine; I could easily have seen him printed as a 1/1 and end up only mediocre.
Counters are a very important part of the archetype, especially Deprive. Being able to leave only 2 mana open is quite important when you want to sink mana into your levelers. While you might be able to race an Ulamog's Crusher (which there are plenty of, and sometimes turn 5-6), it's a bit better to just have it not get into play.
As for ranking the colors in Limited, the group I drafted with believes blue is ok but shallow, while green gets fought over. I don't have enough experience with the format to say much more myself, other than that Red has *tons* of removal.
Huh? It doesn't destroy the blocked attacking creature at end of combat, it destroys it immediately. Get attacked with Fatty, block with chump, cast Smite before damage, chump lives.
The problem with the card is that it doesn't deal with evasion creatures; that's why it's much cheaper and has no other restrictions compared to other methods white has to kill attackers.
You cast World at War during your first post-combat main phase, not your first main phase. It's effectively a slightly redone Relentless Assault with Rebound for 1 more mana.
The problem is that if the card lets any creature deal combat damage equal to its toughness, the word "assign(s)" should be present. We have a good idea what the ability should do by extrapolating the lyric changes, but we don't seem to understand how such an ability would actually be worded since a word that should be used does not show up on the Orb.
I really hate to be someone that says "fake", especially as believable as the card is, but to me it just doesn't check out in the Orb.
I'm fairly confident that we have a 3W 0/5 flying defender, and you can pay 3W at the beginning of your upkeep to let your guys with defender attack. Beyond that, the apparent lack of appropriately templating makes guessing exactly what the second part of the ability will do. I suppose it's probably dealing combat damage equal to their toughness, but there's no "combat" in there.
As for the Lucifer Sam lyrics, what's with "Ginger Ginger"? The lyrics are "Jennifer Gentle, you're a witch", as I've just confirmed online and in my liner notes from Piper at...; I suppose it sounds a *little* like "Ginger Ginger", but only metrolyrics.com (which I never heard of before) has the wrong ones.
Having this copy allies is sorta weak - you get one more ally if you play something that counts allies when it comes into play, but you could just have played another cheap ally instead.
Having this copy level up creatures that cost one mana to level, and then copying ones that cost 3 or more to level is a cute trick, but that's probably about it. You need a significant amount of mana to be able to play the level up guy and pump up your shapeshifter, who then is nearly useless on future turns unless you play another level up guy.
All in all, a neat idea and probably great fun casually, but I don't see it having many serious applications.
I generally agree with this sentiment. I just don't see how this card is inherently amazing; it only has some very good synergies with other cards. You'll get two lands of questionable utility put into your hand, and two good lands put into your graveyard. This card is not worth casting unless you have Life from the Loam or Crucible of Worlds going. Will it be a great addition to such decks? Probably, but Gifts is still far better, costing only one more mana to get rid of the restriction to lands. It might allow decks without blue to abuse Life from the Loam better I suppose.
I thought "power creep" when I first saw it, but then came to the same general realization. There's a reason that there's famous quote from Finkel (I think) back in the day (Tempest or so) that went "I like all four colors equally": all green has big creatures, and the spells of the time were much stronger than those in modern times. The next few blocks featured some cheap good green guys to help reverse this notion, but R&D has shifted those efficient weenies to white. So green is left with merely extremely efficient fatties. Which is all this guy is. Without any sort of evasion or way to dodge (non-red) removal, it really isn't getting the job done outside of limited. Even in Limited, there are many ways to deal creatures like this, especially since it can just be chump blocked while you win with evasive guys.