MTG Salvation

I find Rest in Peace is actually pretty bad in EDH. Sure you can build around not being able to use your graveyard, but it cuts off so many good cards and strategies that unless the whole table is playing out of the graveyard I'd rather use something with a bit more finesse.

Great article, points out some very good cards I hadn't previously considered. I've never actually played with Stonecloaker. Is he really good enough?

Silly oversight, but I forgot to actually explain what Dunes actually are:

Dune
Basic Land - Desert (B)
(T: Add 1 to your mana pool.)

Yes I will be including a new basic land type, Desert, a topic which deserves its own series of posts, so hold of commentary on that topic for now.

Facevaulter - The perfect Goblin, therefore the perfect Magic card.

Trait Doctoring probably isn't as good as I initially thought it was, but it does serve a role as one of the better Cypher cards, mainly for its use as part of combos. I think this card in particular shows a big issue with Cypher, the need to attack makes it that much more interesting in Limited, but really hampers the mechanic's constructed viability.

Renegade Krasis' ability is incredibly strong. Evolving him just once or twice is enough to get value out. Combined with Evolve all stars such as Fathom Mage and Cloudfin Raptor, I see him being very strong in more casual EDHs and in Limited. I think he'll definitely find a home but not as a staple.

Abbey Gargoyle - Too big with too many abilities for its cost. I'd either make it a 2/4 (1/4 in a weaker format) or give it defender.

Abbey Matron - Fine. Can't target your opponent's stuff, so fewer shennanigans.

Aysen Bureaucrat - This could be more powerful, but I think this is the right version of this card. Gideon's tapper is too good in my opinion.

Aysen Crusader - My only issue with this card is that it feels green, or green-white. If it's ability hit only white creatures I'd say good.

Rashka, the Slayer - Couple of things. A) This needs a new name, as Raksha already exists; B) I want this to do more, as is it is kind of an underwhelming card. Perhaps she blows up black permanents on the attack?

Serra's Silencing - Nice Pacifism rif. Not spashable, so I'd say good.

AEther Storm - Too good of a hoser I think, especially in uncommon. I'd move it to rare and change the sacrifice cost.

Baki's Curse - Not blue. White or green. Blue moves Auras, that's all it does with enchantments.

Chain Stasis - I always liked Chain Lightning.

Dark Maze - Too good for common. Make it uncommon, its activated ability 2U, and I think its good.

Dwarven Sailor - THIS IS NOT BLUUUUUE!!!! Blue gets the worst one-drops, not ones that can kill just about every other one-drop out there.

Forget - Ooh! I like this. Its like Sign in Blood, but better in mill decks.

Giant Albatross - What is it with you and blue creatures? This is too big for its mana cost. If this were 2U, it would be a very good common, but still fair.

Labyrinth Minotaur - Fair I guess, but why is a Minotaur blue?

Marjhan - Good till you get to the last ability. That ability is red, or black with the -1/-1.

I challange you to build a pair of decks with just vanillas and "vanilla spells" (Giant Growth and such). Find a friend with the same play level as you, and play some games. I guarantee you will have fun. What Wizards has been doing recently is lower the complexity level of commons, while raising the complexity of higher rarities(read MaRo's recent article for more in depth on the topic). What this means is more common vanillas and fewer uncommon and rare vanillas. You've also got to consider the set from which those cards were drawn. One is a rare from an expert level expansion, while the other is an uncommon from a core set. If you don't understand the distiction I just made there, you should not be complaining about vanilla creature's existing.

Aw frick! I misread Foundry! Time to rebuild red-white Golems...

I understand what your saying. I've understood it all along. What I'm saying is that it doesn't break the game to the degree your proposing. Really what needs to be made is a Poison-Life converter of some sorts, that would allow the two totals to be controlled to the same degree. Remember that they still have two whole sets in which to fix Infect.

Your not getting what I'm saying. I agree with what your point. MY point is that Infect is in its own design space, with absolutly nothing around it to support Poison. Imagine if you will all mechanical components of Magic in visual form, with lines connecting related mechanics. Every block theme save Poison is already interconnected into the rest of the game. However Poison is not, and therefore Infect will suck until Poison gets more stuff. That is my point.

I see the point that your making. Really that is a problem with Poison, not directly with Infect. Infect is a perfectly fine mechanic which I expect will see a lot of play in the coming year. If they somehow bring back more Poison in later years, I expect Infect will become even stronger. Your point is a valid one, and I agree somewhat.

I agree in that Infect is an exclusive mechanic. It does encourage playing almost excusively with Infect. However I would like to make the counter point that Infect is really the first of its kind. It is the first Poison mechanic to actually have any major effect, and as such will be very exclusive. You could make the same point about tribal when Lorwyn came out, if there were absolutly no tribal cards prior to Lorwyn. My point is really that Infect occupies its own design space, with absolutly no connected mechanics. So yes, judge it. But do not throw it away out of hand.

I see your problem with Infect. It is basically the same with most linear mechanics. Slivers beget slivers, allies beget allies, infect begets infect, I agree completly. I also agree that Infect is particularly guilty in this category, having only a couple of creatures (Putrefax, Necropede, or Blight Mamba in my mind) that can be played outside Infect decks. I would also like to point out that this is a three part block, not the two parters which we have had since Time Spiral (I call Alara a two part block because Conflux and Reborn went so off theme from Shards, that togethor only one sets worth of Shards theme cards were produced), each set of which will feature Infect. I expect that come Febuary Infect/Proliferate will become one of the stronger constructed forms. MaRo has made a major point of several of his design articles that one should not spoil all their good stuff in one go, but rather spread it out across all the sets which share the theme.

Rant aside, I agree Infect is a very linear mechanic and there aren't many cards to play with, but I also say that there are more on the horizon. I know this point has been made before, but you can't dismiss Infect till we have seen its complete cycle of existance. If you were writting this after the release of Besieged, I'd have less of a beef. But you cannot dispell Infect simply because of its linearity.

I completly agree with Persist. It is basically flashback for creatures, albeit with a way to get them to come back. I love Persist, and I hope to get my hands on a couple of boxes of Shadowmoor/Eventide to round out my collection. That being said, it does mess with the game and the right deck can manage to get an infinate mass of creatures. This is hard however, as the correct tools aren't really availible. This is one of the simplest, but not neccessarily the best ways to balance a mechanic. I really dislike this methodology however, and really wish they would have (or do in the future) print more persist/Persist support, and balance it by putting the mechanic in the appropriate enviornment.

I believe the reason that Instant still exists is two-fold: A) They've been a part of the game, in one form or another, since the beginning, and most player's don't find a major problem with them; and B) wording. I accept that the first arguement is weak, but honestly, which is more intuitive: an Instant or a sorcery with flash? Maybe to an experienced player like you or myself, but not to a young inexperienced player. My second point is basically that it would require a huge overall of thousands of cards, and fundamentaly change the way the game works. Plus flash is defined as "playable at instant speed", so flash itself would need to be reworked, in a way which would require more text on cards with flash, limiting its uses.

I would have to disagree with your ordering of these mechanics, but I agree with the general gist of your list.

Cycling is a fine mechanic. Everyone loves drawing cards, and almost every deck is improved by having a couple of decent cyclers. The big problem with cycling is that it fundamentaly changes the way the game works. If everyone is drawing cards more effeciently, then the game gets accelerated. However lands are not being played any faster (assuming your using a single block which has cycling), so player's access to mana doesn't really shift. This hurts blue, one of whose primary attractors is amazingly efficient card-drawing spells. Cycling is a good, straight-forward mechanic for players, but a headache for designers.

Dredge is one of the worst mechanics in the game. It is also one of the most fun mechanics in the game. The player who intelligently uses Dredge in their deck design will almost invariably end up with a powerful deck, with plenty of options. However the player who isn't playing dredge loses game time, as they have so many fewer relative options, dragging the game out. Dredge also messes with two of the balancing elements of the game: the random draw and the graveyard. The random draw is what makes Magic work, as it stops any one deck from automatically winning, as a player doesn't neccessarily draw everything they need. The graveyard is where dead cards go to die, and should, for the majority of the game, remain untouched. Of course there are obvious exceptions to these rules, as there should be. The problem is that Dredge breaks both of these rules, without much cost to the dredge player. I personally love dredge, but I also think it is one of the worst mechanics for the game as a whole.

Flashback almost falls into the category of Dredge, but doesn't due to the exile clause and the generally high mana cost for the effect. I'll be honest, I don't have that much experience with flashback, but from what I have played with it, it seems to be a fine mechanic.

Scry is a simple way to allow a player to alter the random element of the card draw, without overtly changing the shape of their library. One of the better mechanics I have seem, its primary weakness is wordiness, and an expodential power level as the Scry # gets higher and higher.

Wither is a strange creature mechanic. I call it strange in that it doesn't really effect how my creature works, rather how your creature will work in the future. Due to this, there is very little design space within the mechanic. This is really its only weakness, as it is hard to break such an obviously abusable mechanic.

Kicker is an option giver. That is all it does. Period. This makes it, in my opinion, among the best mechanics ever printed. It adds options to one player, without detracting from the balancing elements of the game (like dredge or cycling) or taking options away from your opponents.

Metalcraft is Affinity V 2. That's all it was designed to be, that's all I expect it ever will be. Overall a limited/casual mechanic, I have no issue with a power pumper like this. One of several of the block mechanics, it encourages a certain theme in a set.

Landfall. Another block mechanic, landfall is simply a way to push the importance of lands without fundamentaly changing the lands. Personally one of my favourites, I'd rank Landfall up for originallity and uniqueness.

Affinity is another one of the worst mechanics in the game, and another of my favourites. While Dredge broke card drawing and the graveyard, Affinity breaks mana. Without the balancing effect of mana, the game breaks down into a "I win, you lose" scenario, without an opportunity for the loser to respond. And it wasn't the artifact lands that broke affinity, it was affinity that broke affinity. Anything which fundamentaly alters one of the game's balancing aspects on a large scale is a bad mechanic.

Infect is a block mechanic. Nothing more. It is meant to sell Scars and to be a powerful casual/limited mechanic. Your primary beef with it seems to be that it is linear, but I would disagree and say that this is a good thing. For a set to be successful, it should have at least one or two linear mechanics which players can immediatly lock onto and play with. One of the reasons Ravnica was so successful was that each Guild was very well defined. Sure, players played multiple guilds in limited. But they almost always worked best with other cards of the same guild.

Just some thoughts. By the way, what was with the etc? It is not immediatly apparent what you are talking about there.

Whenever I draft Shards block, I always go ALA-ALA-ALA, or occacionally ALA-ALA-REB. I do this because I completly agree with you. I started playing in regualr limited and standard events right after Conflux came out (I think I started the week after the release), and it was a very bad way to start my competative career. In my first draft, I was all over the place, as I hadn't been able to catch onto the shards just by the cards themselves. The one thing I think Alara did well was Esper. Being artifacts, almost everything meshed and it was really easy to build mechanically and flavourfully around the shard. Alara should have taken a que from Ravnica, but not in block design and set distrebution. They should have had three sets of roughly the same stuff flavourfully (with new mechanics obviously), but they should have also included a watermark for each of the shards. This would have given new players, like myself at the time, an opportunity to better understand the set. I remember first organizing my Alara cards by shard, but I couldn't with some of the stuff from Conflux and Reborn. If Conflux had had an enemy bi-color (rather than five-color) theme, that would have been excellant. Reborn's dilution of flavour broke the already Maelstroming block, severing any hope Wizards had of building a good, solid-gold set in the year 2009.