MTG Salvation

I think the difficult thing with wither is the whole "this replaces damage" thing. That might be a bit much for a coreset, especially the interaction with wither and damage prevention.

I don't like that Magic is conforming to other card games. I think the rarities were fine as they were and I don't think the mithic rares will attract new players or the games lack thereof has scared any away.

The land in booster packs doesn't really affect us that much, so we lose 3 cards in booster draft, how many of the pack isn't playable anyway, plus with fewer cards I imagine that extra card would have been redundant anyway. My only quam is that if your only way to acquire lands is through booster packs, you're kinda screwed as you're going to have to buy an entire booster box to get lands for one deck. The solution isn't really fixing the problem.

But in the end, people said they would quit magic when they changed the card frames, and the game doesn't seem to have suffered since then. I like the new intro decks, they're going to make theme decks more attractive to current players. I'm not happy with some of the other changes but I'm sure they'll grow on me and I don't think they're going to affect us that much. If they can attract new players and keep the game healthy in the end, its fine by me.

I think Primus is a good add, great finisher and great with the kinship treefolk that brings cards from your deck into play, not sure of the name at the moment.

i dont like doomed necromancer because while he has summoning sickness your opponent can shock it and then its just a dead card. There's enough reanimation spells right now at 4 and 5 mana, we dont need one at 3

My version uses oona's prowler and Vexing Sphinx so geting reanimation targets is not the end. What I try to do is have multiple threats you can reanimate and multiple ways to get them in play. the two akromas, hellkite, and I'm testing scourge of kher keep. I like him because he can get rid of weenie hords. So if they extirpate one of your fatties, dig further and try again. All the while you're hitting them with ur Sphinx and Prowler. I think thats the most important thing, applying pressure before you reanimate. If reanimating is the first thing u do all game and they 'pate u, that sucks. If u've got creatures already on the board, they're just ignoring your threats.

I also love the new reanimator, torrent of souls. Pumps up the creatures you have out now and gives Akroma, angel of Fury, or Hellkite haste when they reanimate. Totally worth it. I also like running body double so that if they 'pate you in response you can still find something in ur graveyard, he doesn't fizzle and if there's something saucy in their graveyard you can get theirs instead.

@Talon, I think if you want to add draw to the deck I'd just stick with harmonize, no need to mess up the mana base with blue and a UU spell, Harmonize works just as well and is cheaper anyway. I think its certainly a possibility 2 or 3 for late game when ur running out of steam.

@Belier-I like mercy killing because it costs 3 so if you can manage to tap 3 elves to play it and then sac a 3/3 you get 3 more elves which you can then tap.

Turn 1-llanowar
Turn 2- wren's run vanquisher and heritage
Turn 3- play bramblewood paragon and tap 3 elves to play mercy killing, sacing the vanquisher and getting 3 2/2 elves which you tap to play imperious perfect
Turn 4 coat of arms or gaea's anthem

or on turn 3 you can play imperious perfect first and then play mercy killing, netting you 4 elves which you can then tap to play hunting triad or something.

I like it!

I think that the reason to not play Bridge is because more often than it will "mess up your draw" it will mess u up by setting you back one mana. In Belier's example you could have had a really good hand that would have set you up for a turn four win. I think we should forgo CITPT lands, the advantage they give is just too small for the chance to upset the flow of the deck. You NEED to hit your land drops every turn and I'm even hesitant to put something like Mutavault in since there is such a heavy green investment. If you do choose to use a man-land to protect against wrath effects etc Mutavault is the way to go.

I've tested simian spirit guide a little bit and it can really create some explosive draws.

Turn 1: Pitch the Spirit Guide, Devoted Druid
Turn 2: Imperious Perfect, heritage, elvish champion
Turn 3: coat of arms, swing for exactly 20 (the druid has 3 counters on him so that negates the coat of arms but is still a 2/4 thanks to the champion and the perfect)

So you have to be unbelievably lucky to draw that but its the only way i've found that you can get a 3rd turn kill
on turn two you have to tap the druid and ur two lands to play the perfect (druid is a 1/3 thanks to perfect) add a counter and tap the druid again to play heritage druid (devoted druid is 0/2) then untap devoted druid and tap everyone to play the champion (devoted druid is 0/2 with 2 counters)
turn three tap 3 lands and druid twice (he has 3 counters) to play coat of arms

takes nine cards and if a single one of those creatures are blocked or killed you dont deal 20. I'm not that impressed with the simian spirit guide but I really like the druid, he works really well with all the +1+1 effects in the deck, especially coat of arms. Thoughts?

I think one of the one drops NEEDS to be essence warden you're tapping her anyway to use heritage's ability and she's VITAL in the mirror match and if you get stalled. I'm getting a list together but I think I'd run her and possibly some harmonize in sideboard against a heavy burn person.

I tried out gilt-leaf ambush thought it would be cool since it costs 3 but its better to just cast two other elves on their own...silly me

This is such a cool deck, I really think it has potential. My one worry is that once it becomes popular people will save up for shocks etc the turn you play heritage druid. Transformational sideboard with chameleon collossus and/or masked admirers?

One of the things that MaRo has talked about all the time is how much he wanted planeswalkers to be special, and they should be. They're supposed to be almost as powerful as you are, they're new, really cool, and should be special. If they print them every other set its going to seem like major overkill and they won't be as unique anymore. They also can't just rehash them and come out with another set of 5 with different abilities. They're going to have to spice them up in some way to make them different from the Planeswalkers we've already seen.

Another thing, Shadowmoor does not look like a place I'd want to visit as a planeswalker, Lorwyn was a great vacation spot, Shadowmoor, not so much.

The ONLY reason I could see them puting planeswalkers in Eventide is if they are Hybrids. I think thats highly unlikely though because they'd probably want to wait a while so they're not running out of ideas too quickly.

Quote from PorcelainGod

Not to overstep myself but the debate is about established Magic locations.
I have never heard of Argentum or of a set based around it so they were able to mess with it. As powerful as the old-walkers were I don't think they could make a world from scratch Karn had to start somewhere.

I wouldn't mind a revisit but right now I would like to see a few new worlds first.

Argentum was what Karn called the plane he created before the crazy guy took over who called it Mirrodin, you don't hear of it much because it was mostly just discussed in the books.
The old planeswalkers were definitely powerful enough to create their own planes, they just weren't as stable as natural planes. Look at Serra's Realm, Phyrexia, and Mirrodin. I'm sure there's plenty more examples but those are the main ones.

Anyway back to the topic, I don't think they're rehashing Arrabian Nights, I think the hint was an emphasis on mono colored decks. From what we know Alara (sp?) is five seperate planes, meaning lots of mono colored stuff. And we also have a lot of mono color matters in Shadowmoor. I'm not saying thats going to be the theme of the set but its going to be a nice segue from Shadowmoor which helped monocolored decks so much

I think another reason this is probably not plausible is the fact that there is little to no cards that care about or effect your graveyard in this set, and if they want to help the next block they'd probably put at least a few things in. All we have now are a few reanimators, Puppetteer Clique, and the red black one about souls or something. And one of the main mechanics of this set actually hurts graveyard themes. Persist keeps creatures from dying.

totally the Effigy. Its an artifact so its going to go into any deck you make, its re-usable instant speed removal/combat trick which is in short order in this set. And its also really versatile because it can turn off creatures with Persist. Jaws of Stone is really good but I think it puts way too much pressure on you to go Red.
I really don't like Puca's Mischief

I think this was a cool card to reprint because it does work interestingly with the mechanics of the set
a)if they have a power 2 or less creature with persist this will kill it without chance of persisting
b)if you've withered an opponent's creature down to 2 power with enough counters this will finish it off
c)there are some creatures that have abilities once they hit the graveyard like dusk urchins that draws u cards based on number of counters on it, etc. This escapes the grave so they dont reap those benefits.

nice choice, good limited pick. Could be played in constructed control but certainly not an aggro deck

Quote from Cloud_821

This is a pretty comprehensive list. I will tell you from my limited testing that I was terribly unimpressed with Shard Volley, Oona's Prowler (flying is kind of bad right now) and Ashenmoor Gouger (lots of chump blockers). Morsel Theft was surprisingly powerful when are essentially playing it as a Night's Whisper that gains you three life. The Neo-Char was amazing for me every time I drew it, due to the flexible mana cost (it was always 3 or 4 mana). I didn't try Sparky, Marauders or any of the blue cards; U/R's manabase is kind of bad right now.

Are you running B/U/r or B/R? You didn't like Oona's Prowler? I think she's important to have because we should try to curve out as much as possible and right now everything on turn two is either Sygg or a burn spell and we're very 3 drop heavy.

responding to wildfire's list, I think all those are great except I don't like Spark Elemental, the il-Vec (although I really like the trespasser Il-Vec since we'll have such good card advantage) I also don't think the neo-char is necessary since we have psionic blast which would be much easier to cast. It seems like its going to be a 3 color deck and 3 red seems a bit steep. Most of the other cards on the list cost one of their respective mana or multiple of different colors. I think the biggest thing with this deck is keeping the mana curve pretty low so that you can be playing a creature on your turn and then a burn on theirs

Some other creatures that could work Sulfur Elemental shadowmage infiltrator I know he's not going to deal 3 damage but he'll be drawing cards which might get you to a burn spell. Remember we won't always have Sygg in play so it might be nice to have backups.

One creature that I know probably won't work but I would love to try and make work is Jaya Ballard, Task Mage If you can get her and Sygg online you'll have an incinerate every turn. And even though I don't really like Spark elemental Sparkspitter turns a useless draw into another Spark elemental which may draw you another card. The one problem is that the elemental might not make it to their dome in which case you wasted a card.

If you look at most of the creatures we have so far we have Sygg, Trespasser il-Vec, and oona's prowler that are all rogues. We could go the rogue route and add in morsel theft and Oona's Blackguard

I just threw together a merfolk deck with burn I'm thinking of adding black for Shadowmage infiltrator