Darksteel Colossus is a golem. Since he's only playable in legacy as of Scars, there are presumably less clunky ways to cheat him into play than putting out a Precursor Golem and Zombifying one. But on the plus side, if that's really how it works, it would let you get all 4 of them out of your graveyard at once if you somehow managed to have put them there.
edit: oh wait, you can't get him in there anyhow. so an alpha strike of phyrexian colossi is the only decent thing you could do with that. sadface.
I love how every metalworking card that is spoiled has people imagining how nice it would work out with Ornithopters and Memnites. C'mon, nobody is seriously running that garbage. I'd like to see the card so amazing that it makes devoting 8 slots of a deck to ornithopters and memnites seem like a good idea, but this ain't it.
With Prophetic Prism and Mox Opal, splashing a secondary color (probably blue for countermagic) in a mostly black Phylactery Lich deck could be a real possibility.
I've never understood what's quite so exciting about the Lich. He's undercosted, but that's not so amazing to warrant adding in otherwise suboptimal cards to play him. His indestructibility is less than amazing in an environment with many ways to eliminate creatures that aren't "destroy". And you're just begging to get 2-for-1'd by artifact removal, which just might be maindeckable in another month or two. Everybody seems to want to find a way to play with him, but he's just not dominating enough to justify reaching for ways to include him, no matter how small the reach may become.
How about the original Elspeth, Path to Exile and O-Ring?
Yeah, gotta agree there, those are big losses and so far U/W control hasn't gotten any new playables from what's been spoiled, as neither of these pw's in our colors are going to fit. They're just plain worse than the other 5cmc options. Probably not going to get a pw for u/w control in this set from the looks of it, unless there's something splashable like ajani was, which would be tough in any color BUT red with only enemy color fetchlands available. Gonna keep fingers crossed for some removal for non-creatures, and something better than Condemn to deal with creatures.
And that mox opal is like the new time reversal, I wonder how many pre-sales SCG is raking in at $40 for what will be a $4 card two weeks after release?
When I first heard about this variant and saw people playing it I didn't realize they actually had to be legendary creatures, so I spent most of an hour idly ruminating about ways to exploit a deck made up of Guardian Beast and a bunch of artifact creatures (The Abyss and Worldslayer both seemed promising) But all for naught.
Interesting early reference to netdecking. I originally quit in spring or summer of 97, and I don't remember netdecking being much of a factor at all back then, so I guess it sprang up sometime between then and '99. Or it was going on in Usenet and I just wasn't tuned in, because it certainly seemed odd when overnight everybody on earth was playing with Necropotence, though IIRC there was a Scrye article on it roughly contemporaneously with its popularity so it may have been that.
Anyhow, the biggest difference I've noticed between the late 90's and now is that nearly everybody plays a handful of elite netdecks from which they only seem to deviate for poorly-concealed budget reasons, everybody plays with 2-4 more lands than they used to, and that people use a TON more one-of's and two-of's then they used to for unrestricted cards.
What would people say if Force of Will were printed now instead on in Alliances?
Is FoW actually Standard-playable? What spells currently in Standard do you really need to counter that badly that a Standard deck could possibly play on turns 1 or 2? FoW is only really necessary against the kind of early game broken spells you have in eternal formats. And when you get into the midgame, how many spells in Standard are worth two-for-one'ing yourself to prevent at ANY point in the game?
They could reprint FoW tomorrow, all the u/w tapout crew would immediately replace Mana Leak with it so they could go back to tapping out, but I think they'd hate it after just a couple weeks. I've never tracked it, but I don't know how often I have a pitchable blue card in my hand playing u/w, and if I didn't then it would just become a more expensive Cancel. I played during Alliances, and I didn't think it was broken then, and I certainly don't think it's broken now. It's no Jace.
Well it was nice to pull foil baneslayer (second straight limited that i got one, both foil no less) and a primeval titan, but bombs are bombs and that's nothing new. Green Titan is kinda underwhelming in limited, since there are other green creatures aplenty that have body and trample, but he does thin the land out of the deck nicely and is a great mana-fixer for some splashed color.
But what I really learned from this sealed event is that having two Crystal Balls running is godlike in limited. It's like a lim-dul's vault every turn. If you have an out anywhere in your next 5 cards, you're saved. I don't think I would ever cut one from the deck if I got one.
First off, any decklist on here not running 4 tendrils should be running them. That card is just insane. What other card would you run over it? After playing mono black for a couple years now, tendrils has always been a mainstay in the deck at 4 and extremely important. Personally, I consider deck lists that don't run tendrils no good.
Anyways, my deck still has some problems, the main thing is dealing with manlands/planeswalkers. Some things are very much debatable, such as duress or inquisition... I might switch to inquisition soon. Vapors has also proven to be quite slow. Shade is wonderful as a late game drop, but almost any other time he dies too easily. Tutelage has proven to be just amazing... Just need to find decent ways to deal with walkers/manlands. The lich is also wonderful against red deck wins but useless against white and jund if they hit a pulse. Any ideas?
What's with the Chalices? They ramp you from 2 to 4, but you have no 4 CMC spells you'll actually want to play on turn 3 except for Persecutor, and that's only a two-of in your deck. And you have no X spells to sink mana into late either. It really looks like the Chalices are in there only to enable playing the Lich. I like the Lich, but unless the artifacts you're using do something independently useful to your deck, I don't feel like it's good to run him. And if you DO ramp to 4 for Persecutor, you're not playing the turn 3 Lich anyhow.
Is this still an aggro deck? Splashing green just seems like the wrong direction to take because of the need to run taplands in an aggro deck. I know Knight of the Reliquary is awesome and all, just have my doubts whether that's the right direction to take. Why not just mono-white, run HotP and Elspeth?
Untill there is a profitable answer to jace 2.0 (i.e a 1 for 1 answer like a 5 damage red spell that also draws you a card)
I've been out of magic for the last 12 years until very recently, but during that time I played a bunch of Decipher games (SW, ST, LOTR) and their games were riddled with "magic bullets" for cards they printed that had become overpowered, and it really was to the detriment of the game. A lot of those magic bullets simply did massive hate to the card specifically by name.
The existence in MTG of uber-powerful cards, and the need to counter them not with magic bullets but with better play and synergistic strategies, or if all else fails with your OWN uber-powerful cards, has always been one of the things I thought MTG had right and the Decipher games had wrong. The way Decipher games always magic bulleted the good cards in an attempt to force you to play "their way" (boring vanilla mission decks in ST, etc.) was a real constant battle between developer and competitive player. I always felt the nagging suspicion back in the late 90's that Wizards was trying to make magic a game filled with mid-range creature decks and totally reliant on creature combat, which none of the competitive players wanted. If you want that there's booster draft, which I quite enjoy. But constructed decks need to feel powerful to be fun, and that vanilla garbage never does, as much as it might be friendlier to new players.
So I guess my feeling is that magic bulleting Baneslayer was tacky, and magic bulleting Jace 2.0 would be just as tacky and not a good direction for the game. If he's overpowered, restrict him.
I'm newly returned to the game after 12 years, so I may be rusty at this, but I wanted to comment on the feasibility of Knight Exemplar.
The main complaint I hear is that she'll get killed by spot removal. Although it seems silly on first glance, I went through the scenarios and maybe protecting her with Whispersilk Cloak shroud isn't as crazy as I thought intially.
If you're running the Stoneforge Mystics variant, you'd only need maybe 1 cloak, so it's not that card intensive really. If you get her shrouded, they could really only get her with Wrath, which would be likely to leave you untapping on your turn with a board consisting solely of your other knights, the unequipped Cloak, and maybe planeswalkers. I don't see much artifact removal in the game these days except O-Ring and Maelstrom Pulse. They could kill the cloak, then spot-remove her, THEN Wrath your dudes, but that would certainly reduce the card advantage of playing Wrath, not to mention use up a great removal spell to get rid of a Cloak instead of get rid of Gideon or Elsbeth.
Anyhow, it sounds plausible, though if you're reaching midgame maybe it would be better just to have Baneslayer Angels instead of trying to beef your other dudes. I'm only thinking along these lines because there's a lot of people in my playgroup running Wrath.
Darksteel Colossus is a golem. Since he's only playable in legacy as of Scars, there are presumably less clunky ways to cheat him into play than putting out a Precursor Golem and Zombifying one. But on the plus side, if that's really how it works, it would let you get all 4 of them out of your graveyard at once if you somehow managed to have put them there.
edit: oh wait, you can't get him in there anyhow. so an alpha strike of phyrexian colossi is the only decent thing you could do with that. sadface.
I've never understood what's quite so exciting about the Lich. He's undercosted, but that's not so amazing to warrant adding in otherwise suboptimal cards to play him. His indestructibility is less than amazing in an environment with many ways to eliminate creatures that aren't "destroy". And you're just begging to get 2-for-1'd by artifact removal, which just might be maindeckable in another month or two. Everybody seems to want to find a way to play with him, but he's just not dominating enough to justify reaching for ways to include him, no matter how small the reach may become.
Yeah, gotta agree there, those are big losses and so far U/W control hasn't gotten any new playables from what's been spoiled, as neither of these pw's in our colors are going to fit. They're just plain worse than the other 5cmc options. Probably not going to get a pw for u/w control in this set from the looks of it, unless there's something splashable like ajani was, which would be tough in any color BUT red with only enemy color fetchlands available. Gonna keep fingers crossed for some removal for non-creatures, and something better than Condemn to deal with creatures.
And that mox opal is like the new time reversal, I wonder how many pre-sales SCG is raking in at $40 for what will be a $4 card two weeks after release?
Anyhow, the biggest difference I've noticed between the late 90's and now is that nearly everybody plays a handful of elite netdecks from which they only seem to deviate for poorly-concealed budget reasons, everybody plays with 2-4 more lands than they used to, and that people use a TON more one-of's and two-of's then they used to for unrestricted cards.
Is FoW actually Standard-playable? What spells currently in Standard do you really need to counter that badly that a Standard deck could possibly play on turns 1 or 2? FoW is only really necessary against the kind of early game broken spells you have in eternal formats. And when you get into the midgame, how many spells in Standard are worth two-for-one'ing yourself to prevent at ANY point in the game?
They could reprint FoW tomorrow, all the u/w tapout crew would immediately replace Mana Leak with it so they could go back to tapping out, but I think they'd hate it after just a couple weeks. I've never tracked it, but I don't know how often I have a pitchable blue card in my hand playing u/w, and if I didn't then it would just become a more expensive Cancel. I played during Alliances, and I didn't think it was broken then, and I certainly don't think it's broken now. It's no Jace.
But what I really learned from this sealed event is that having two Crystal Balls running is godlike in limited. It's like a lim-dul's vault every turn. If you have an out anywhere in your next 5 cards, you're saved. I don't think I would ever cut one from the deck if I got one.
What's with the Chalices? They ramp you from 2 to 4, but you have no 4 CMC spells you'll actually want to play on turn 3 except for Persecutor, and that's only a two-of in your deck. And you have no X spells to sink mana into late either. It really looks like the Chalices are in there only to enable playing the Lich. I like the Lich, but unless the artifacts you're using do something independently useful to your deck, I don't feel like it's good to run him. And if you DO ramp to 4 for Persecutor, you're not playing the turn 3 Lich anyhow.
I've been out of magic for the last 12 years until very recently, but during that time I played a bunch of Decipher games (SW, ST, LOTR) and their games were riddled with "magic bullets" for cards they printed that had become overpowered, and it really was to the detriment of the game. A lot of those magic bullets simply did massive hate to the card specifically by name.
The existence in MTG of uber-powerful cards, and the need to counter them not with magic bullets but with better play and synergistic strategies, or if all else fails with your OWN uber-powerful cards, has always been one of the things I thought MTG had right and the Decipher games had wrong. The way Decipher games always magic bulleted the good cards in an attempt to force you to play "their way" (boring vanilla mission decks in ST, etc.) was a real constant battle between developer and competitive player. I always felt the nagging suspicion back in the late 90's that Wizards was trying to make magic a game filled with mid-range creature decks and totally reliant on creature combat, which none of the competitive players wanted. If you want that there's booster draft, which I quite enjoy. But constructed decks need to feel powerful to be fun, and that vanilla garbage never does, as much as it might be friendlier to new players.
So I guess my feeling is that magic bulleting Baneslayer was tacky, and magic bulleting Jace 2.0 would be just as tacky and not a good direction for the game. If he's overpowered, restrict him.
The main complaint I hear is that she'll get killed by spot removal. Although it seems silly on first glance, I went through the scenarios and maybe protecting her with Whispersilk Cloak shroud isn't as crazy as I thought intially.
If you're running the Stoneforge Mystics variant, you'd only need maybe 1 cloak, so it's not that card intensive really. If you get her shrouded, they could really only get her with Wrath, which would be likely to leave you untapping on your turn with a board consisting solely of your other knights, the unequipped Cloak, and maybe planeswalkers. I don't see much artifact removal in the game these days except O-Ring and Maelstrom Pulse. They could kill the cloak, then spot-remove her, THEN Wrath your dudes, but that would certainly reduce the card advantage of playing Wrath, not to mention use up a great removal spell to get rid of a Cloak instead of get rid of Gideon or Elsbeth.
Anyhow, it sounds plausible, though if you're reaching midgame maybe it would be better just to have Baneslayer Angels instead of trying to beef your other dudes. I'm only thinking along these lines because there's a lot of people in my playgroup running Wrath.