And now we have clarification for so much. You're basing your designs on a combination decade old gameplay experience and math theory without updating your knowledge of the game, rules, strategies or power levels.
//
Also, go play actual magic. Arena is free, so there's no excuse not to update your play experience.
No, I think it's just moreso in the fact missing that I never recall a time when MTG wasn't a steaming pile of **** in some way, I could never unsee. And ever since have sought to devise solutions and schematics on how to fix all the major malfunctions/improficiencies/counter-productivities.
Go play actual Magic. That's a big negative. I honestly could only begin to explain my great disappointment in the current product; and can just sum up the fact that I wouldn't begin to invest my time or attention into it in this state. MTG needs a major rollback, something the truly narrow-minded "blind pioneers" would never consider (or admit) is necessary for doing. But stripping the product of coherence, and force majeure; while making it a tacky mess; though additions that impede on characteurs, identities, and dignities; should be expected to produce this result. What was available to be salvaged and recovered has nothing left anymore. Rollback and total overhaul would be the only option.
And now we have clarification for so much. You're basing your designs on a combination decade old gameplay experience and math theory without updating your knowledge of the game, rules, strategies or power levels.
//
Also, go play actual magic. Arena is free, so there's no excuse not to update your play experience.
No, I think it's just moreso in the fact missing that I never recall a time when MTG wasn't a steaming pile of **** in some way, I could never unsee. And ever since have sought to devise solutions and schematics on how to fix all the major malfunctions/improficiencies/counter-productivities.
Go play actual Magic. That's a big negative. I honestly could only begin to explain my great disappointment in the current product; and can just sum up the fact that I wouldn't begin to invest my time or attention into it in this state. MTG needs a major rollback, something the truly narrow-minded "blind pioneers" would never consider (or admit) is necessary for doing. But stripping the product of coherence, and force majeure; while making it a tacky mess; though additions that impede on characteurs, identities, and dignities; should be expected to produce this result. What was available to be salvaged and recovered has nothing left anymore. Rollback and total overhaul would be the only option.
So... you don't play (or necessarily understand) modern magic, have no intention of learning more about modern magic, and are only willing to design cards to fit into your imagined halcyon golden age of MTG card design?
Edit: misread your post. I now see that there was never a time when you liked this game. You aren’t designing for this game in any period. You are using the basic framework of MTG for an “MTG that should have been” that has no obligations to the actual rules or cards of MTG in any sense... which isn’t better.
With all do respect, it sounds like you are creating cards for an audience that does not exist outside of yourself on this forum. Why are you even here when virtually nobody else seems to understands your methods or goals (As can be objectively verified by looking at 95% of your threads)?
Well I'm not flaming you. Thank you for being honest. I'll go into a little detail about why Death's Shadow is as good as it is.
The concept is to play Death's Shadow as early as possible in these builds. Ideally they will play a fetchland and get a shockland. That's puts the life total to 17. Off of that shockland they again ideally want to play a Thoughtseize. Life is now 15. Cycling a Street Wraith puts them down to 13. Next turn another fetch into shock puts them at 10. Now they can play a 3/3 for 1 Mana that only gets bigger and better as the game goes on. At 4/4 their counter of choice isn't a force spike but a 1 Mana counterspell. They also run Gofy and Angler to make use of this. Once their life total gets really low they can use a card to give Shadow double strike and trample. So it swings in as like a 10/10 double strike trample creature as early as turn 3 if you have lots of fetches, Thoughtseize, or Wraiths. That's a very fast clock that has the best disruption spell in the game and a very efficient counterspell.
Yes it's a good time against burn. It becomes who will reduce their life total first. If the burn player does it then they fetch and preserve their life. If the Shadow player does it they run the risk of being burned out. But if the burn player waits too long they may get the best spells stripped out by IoK and seize to be left with nothing but a few bad spells. Not to mention that the burn players creatures very much pale in comparison to the Shadow player. It's one of my favorite modern matchups to watch and play.
Well I'm not flaming you. Thank you for being honest. I'll go into a little detail about why Death's Shadow is as good as it is.
The concept is to play Death's Shadow as early as possible in these builds. Ideally they will play a fetchland and get a shockland. That's puts the life total to 17. Off of that shockland they again ideally want to play a Thoughtseize.
Here's where you lost me that this deck is alpha, as even with 4 copies, there's only a 46% chance of pulling a Thoughtseize in your opening hand; which in the way probability works, will play out as an even lesser success ratio (given how far below the 100% threshold that it falls—and that its below the 50% threshold even).
Stack this up with an additional 46% chance of getting Death's Shadow (even though you get a few turns give or take). Typically in Pokemon TCG, you need to secure a percentile clench of 8~12 copies (across your spread and/or via extensions) for great success.
While probability isn't everything, what you are missing is that, between 4-8 fetchlands, Mishra's Bauble and Street Wraith the deck had effectively 44-48 cards instead of 60 since all of those cards were "free draws" and the life payments fed the deck's plan instead of being a detriment. The low curve also meant the deck could mulligan more aggressively as well. The deck lost some umph when Gitaxian Probe got banned (free card plus life loss plus check for opponent's removal) but Bauble was an okay replacement.
While probability isn't everything, what you are missing is that, between 4-8 fetchlands, Mishra's Bauble and Street Wraith the deck had effectively 44-48 cards instead of 60 since all of those cards were "free draws" and the life payments fed the deck's plan instead of being a detriment. The low curve also meant the deck could mulligan more aggressively as well. The deck lost some umph when Gitaxian Probe got banned (free card plus life loss plus check for opponent's removal) but Bauble was an okay replacement.
It also created interesting interactions like a player giving Death's Shadow doublestrike and trample with Temur Battle Rage and then Lightning Bolting themself to pump the combat damage by 6.
Death's Shadow (and the suggested play strategy) isn't what makes that deck competitive—it's Tarmogoyf—and the mass of control spells (with that broken Companion card).
Lets not. Because you're wrong. The reality is multiple versions of Deaths Shadow Decks - Rakdos, Jund, Grixis, Temur - were dominant forces in Modern for quite some time, Tarmogoyf was not a common denominator between them, and Lurrus didn't even exist in the deck's height. Your opinions lack any sense that there might be understanding beyond what you see right in front of your face and you refuse to engage with any idea that contradicts your view of reality.
If you don't have a desire to get constructive feedback and learn from others experience with a game that you say you haven't played in ten years and thought was "steaming pile of ****", you are wasting your time here.
I have to side with Rowanalpha on this one. Goyf isn't what makes this deck good. At it's highest point Gofy wasn't even in the deck. Grixis Death's Shadow was the deck to beat for a little over a year. That version had a nice strangle hold on the format that only lost it's position because of newer more powerful cards allowing decks to compete.
No—it most certainly is—because in order to secure all the resources (card discarding—Reincarnation spots) to buffer your low cost creature, you'll be losing all the control spells that give that deck its edge.
It can't be done to the safe efficiency; and will lose crucial ground, and become vulnerable,just as I said.
While I was referring to your wrongness specifically about the analysis you made of Deaths Shadow strategy, you are also wrong about the play impact of your,as written, costless recurring high power creature buffing ability. Since you said you haven't played the game in ten years and have no clue about the competitive magic metagame, your "feelings" have no bearing on reality of gameplay. The difficulty if getting 1-3 of your "reincarnation" cards into the graveyard is negligible with discard and dredge abilities and the fact that it triggers for free without exiling itself means removal is irrelevant - kill the first creature you reincarnated onto and the cards go right back to the graveyard to be used on the next 1-drop nobody you play, assuming your opponent even draws one of the few spells that can kill a high toughness creature for 1-2 Mana.
Your mechanic is broken because you lack the experience and knowledge base to address why, and your self superior attitude and unwillingess to play the game you feel compelled to design for for some reason means your cards will remain poorly made messes in the eyes of anyone evaluating them instead of the artistic masterpieces that your ego wants them to be.
Other good deck comparisons for the ability as written would be Dredge (gets power on tbe board for free) and Affinity (Hard to get rid of their constantly recycling power boosts).
What these decks and Death's Shadow have in common is that they are "make them have it" decks. The opponent has a very narrow window to respond, often only one or two turns, and they have to have the correct type of interaction. If they don't, they lose.
Yes, these decka are completely built around tbeir core strategy and yes, they fold hard to certain sideboard cards. But you can't say that they aren't effective. They were borderline broken at their height, because they circumvent the normal cadence of play.
As an example of how bad it could be, imagine this scenario:
It is the finals of a Modern tournament. You are on the draw.
If each Reincarnation card adds an average of 3 power, you are dead before your first turn. The higher the power added, the fewer Reincarnators you need to get into the graveyard to make this possible. Since there is no cost, it doesn't even matter which Reincarnators get pitched. They might have discarded and utilized cards of all 5 colors, even though their deck can only produce red mana.
This is Christmasland, of course, but there is no "dies to removal" in this example. There is no response at all. Even a nominal cost would prevent this from being possible.
You can automatically disqualify anything that requires pocket cards (a pair of two cards in the opening hand); as there's only a 38% chance of that happening. No tournament could ever be won on probability like this.
Also consider the entire deck is shut-down by Leyline of the Void and alike effects.
And this is an amazing conflict of interest, that you are all presenting to me the notion of "playing Magic will make you a better designer/developer"; when everything truly comes down to the math and physics (domain influence); where playing Magic doesn't seem to have granted any of you the perception or understanding of.
I used to play Reanimator. It's way cheaper, way stronger, and is able to secure way better odds; while also preserving control spell domain influence. Even this was not absolute, liable even, and there was means to balance it.
A person could run 4 Leyline of the Void and/or any combination of Rest in Peace, Scavenger Grounds, Sentinel Totem as extensions, to create a spread that secures extremely successful odds of shutdown every game.
You might not want to admit it, but this keyword doesn't necessarily need an additional costs. It does need to exile though after, which does increase the text space beyond comfortable means, especially with the new vulgar card templating.
Your probability assumes people aren't going to mulligan for their combo, which increases the odd highly. And assuming the meta is expecting some graveyard heavy decks, yes, your opponent can side in Leyline and mulligan aggressively to get it out, but you'll have sided in answers to Leyline/Rest in Peace/etc as well. That's how tournament play works.
Going into exile is a step in the right direction, but you'll still need to address the power level of this on cheap, early creatures. Discard outlets are plentiful for decks that want to use them proactively and there are few removal options that can deal with a high toughness creature on turn 1/2. Since you love probability, I'm sure you can figure out the odds of the opponent just happening to have an answer on Game 1, Turn 1 when they don't know they need to mulligan to have one ready - A white or black deck might have 3-4 copies of Path to Exile or Fatal Push in the main, red won't be able to deal with anything more that 3 toughness with only one card, blue might have Spell Pierce, and green's got nothing to even block with for a few turns if your creature has flying. All the decks will get better after sideboard, but you'll be siding in things to protect your combo as well.
If you limit the ability to cards with toughness 2 or less, you'll be mostly on balance for a Modern glass cannon deck, but any higher than that and you'll need some balancing factor (like paying a cost) to keep them from being oppressive. Its still too strong for Standard unless the format is warped around this particular ability.
You could also have commented that two of the cards in my combo have a random effect, making it even less likely that they do what you want. The point is not "this will happen every game", just that it is possible.
As far as sideboard tech, I did mention in my post that those decks get hosed by certain cards.
Dredge loses out to any form of grave hate.
Affinity's whole deck gets turned off by Stony Silence, including some of their mana.
Yet those decks remained popular for years and required bannings to keep them in check. Why?
Because they are so proactive. They only have to worry about executing their own strategy, the opponent is the one who has to worry about thinking on the fly and finding a way to stop it.
If the opponent doesn't find their tech fast enough, they lose.
If the opponent draws too much sideboard tech, they probably still lose, because those cards are blanks beyond the first. The proactive deck will just play and attack with creatures while the opponent draws cards that might as well be basic lands.
Beyond the decks I already mentioned, look at decks like Ad Nauseum and Storm. They fold to sideboard tech even harder, require a specific combination of cards and also require at least a little luck. But they remained popular choices over many years. Why?
I have to argue that yes that can happen in the finals of any tournament. There was a point in time where flash hulk was the deck to beat. If you are not familiar then allow me the pleasure of explaining this to you. And yes it was the only tier 0 deck in magic history. (One could argue that mono white in time spiral was also tier 0 since 8 of the top 8 at some tourney was all mono white, but that's opinion so let's not go there.)
So flash hulk (and this used the old mulligan rules) wanted to allow the opponent to play first. Then in the first upkeep they wanted to put in a Gemstone Cavern, then use Simian Spirit Guide to cast Flash, the card in hand they wanted to put into play for free was Protein Hulk. That's 4 very specific cards with bad mulligans and no draws. That deck was and will always be (hopefully) the most powerful deck in Magic's history. So needing pocket cards isn't much of a stretch with the new mulls. Plus some of the cards in the above scenario could be exchanged. Let's say they also ran SSG and used Goblin Lore for instance. Now they have 8 turn 1 discards. It also doesn't need to be the above listed Haster. Could be Goblin Guide or Raging Goblin for that matter. It would be easy to design the deck with 12 to 16 1 Mana haste guys.
No, I think it's just moreso in the fact missing that I never recall a time when MTG wasn't a steaming pile of **** in some way, I could never unsee. And ever since have sought to devise solutions and schematics on how to fix all the major malfunctions/improficiencies/counter-productivities.
Go play actual Magic. That's a big negative. I honestly could only begin to explain my great disappointment in the current product; and can just sum up the fact that I wouldn't begin to invest my time or attention into it in this state. MTG needs a major rollback, something the truly narrow-minded "blind pioneers" would never consider (or admit) is necessary for doing. But stripping the product of coherence, and force majeure; while making it a tacky mess; though additions that impede on characteurs, identities, and dignities; should be expected to produce this result. What was available to be salvaged and recovered has nothing left anymore. Rollback and total overhaul would be the only option.
Geiaz Gauntlet 5
Legendary Artifact — Equipment
Equipped creature loses all abilities or gains an additional instance of each ability it has.
Equip 0
Maybe Equip —but is that even a challenge of any kind? Just would look cool—feign that utility (which is bad for face).
So... you don't play (or necessarily understand) modern magic, have no intention of learning more about modern magic, and are only willing to design cards to fit into your imagined halcyon golden age of MTG card design?
Edit: misread your post. I now see that there was never a time when you liked this game. You aren’t designing for this game in any period. You are using the basic framework of MTG for an “MTG that should have been” that has no obligations to the actual rules or cards of MTG in any sense... which isn’t better.
With all do respect, it sounds like you are creating cards for an audience that does not exist outside of yourself on this forum. Why are you even here when virtually nobody else seems to understands your methods or goals (As can be objectively verified by looking at 95% of your threads)?
The concept is to play Death's Shadow as early as possible in these builds. Ideally they will play a fetchland and get a shockland. That's puts the life total to 17. Off of that shockland they again ideally want to play a Thoughtseize. Life is now 15. Cycling a Street Wraith puts them down to 13. Next turn another fetch into shock puts them at 10. Now they can play a 3/3 for 1 Mana that only gets bigger and better as the game goes on. At 4/4 their counter of choice isn't a force spike but a 1 Mana counterspell. They also run Gofy and Angler to make use of this. Once their life total gets really low they can use a card to give Shadow double strike and trample. So it swings in as like a 10/10 double strike trample creature as early as turn 3 if you have lots of fetches, Thoughtseize, or Wraiths. That's a very fast clock that has the best disruption spell in the game and a very efficient counterspell.
Yes it's a good time against burn. It becomes who will reduce their life total first. If the burn player does it then they fetch and preserve their life. If the Shadow player does it they run the risk of being burned out. But if the burn player waits too long they may get the best spells stripped out by IoK and seize to be left with nothing but a few bad spells. Not to mention that the burn players creatures very much pale in comparison to the Shadow player. It's one of my favorite modern matchups to watch and play.
Here's where you lost me that this deck is alpha, as even with 4 copies, there's only a 46% chance of pulling a Thoughtseize in your opening hand; which in the way probability works, will play out as an even lesser success ratio (given how far below the 100% threshold that it falls—and that its below the 50% threshold even).
Stack this up with an additional 46% chance of getting Death's Shadow (even though you get a few turns give or take). Typically in Pokemon TCG, you need to secure a percentile clench of 8~12 copies (across your spread and/or via extensions) for great success.
Here's a current cardlist for your edification.
Let's consider this point invalidated.
Lets not. Because you're wrong. The reality is multiple versions of Deaths Shadow Decks - Rakdos, Jund, Grixis, Temur - were dominant forces in Modern for quite some time, Tarmogoyf was not a common denominator between them, and Lurrus didn't even exist in the deck's height. Your opinions lack any sense that there might be understanding beyond what you see right in front of your face and you refuse to engage with any idea that contradicts your view of reality.
If you don't have a desire to get constructive feedback and learn from others experience with a game that you say you haven't played in ten years and thought was "steaming pile of ****", you are wasting your time here.
No—it most certainly is—because in order to secure all the resources (card discarding—Reincarnation spots) to buffer your low cost creature, you'll be losing all the control spells that give that deck its edge.
It can't be done to the safe efficiency; and will lose crucial ground, and become vulnerable,just as I said.
Your mechanic is broken because you lack the experience and knowledge base to address why, and your self superior attitude and unwillingess to play the game you feel compelled to design for for some reason means your cards will remain poorly made messes in the eyes of anyone evaluating them instead of the artistic masterpieces that your ego wants them to be.
What these decks and Death's Shadow have in common is that they are "make them have it" decks. The opponent has a very narrow window to respond, often only one or two turns, and they have to have the correct type of interaction. If they don't, they lose.
Yes, these decka are completely built around tbeir core strategy and yes, they fold hard to certain sideboard cards. But you can't say that they aren't effective. They were borderline broken at their height, because they circumvent the normal cadence of play.
As an example of how bad it could be, imagine this scenario:
It is the finals of a Modern tournament. You are on the draw.
On their first turn, your opponent goes: Mountain,Simian Spirit Guide, Pyretic Ritual, Burning Inquiry, Burning Inquiry, Monastery Swiftspear, attack.
If each Reincarnation card adds an average of 3 power, you are dead before your first turn. The higher the power added, the fewer Reincarnators you need to get into the graveyard to make this possible. Since there is no cost, it doesn't even matter which Reincarnators get pitched. They might have discarded and utilized cards of all 5 colors, even though their deck can only produce red mana.
This is Christmasland, of course, but there is no "dies to removal" in this example. There is no response at all. Even a nominal cost would prevent this from being possible.
You can automatically disqualify anything that requires pocket cards (a pair of two cards in the opening hand); as there's only a 38% chance of that happening. No tournament could ever be won on probability like this.
Also consider the entire deck is shut-down by Leyline of the Void and alike effects.
And this is an amazing conflict of interest, that you are all presenting to me the notion of "playing Magic will make you a better designer/developer"; when everything truly comes down to the math and physics (domain influence); where playing Magic doesn't seem to have granted any of you the perception or understanding of.
I used to play Reanimator. It's way cheaper, way stronger, and is able to secure way better odds; while also preserving control spell domain influence. Even this was not absolute, liable even, and there was means to balance it.
A person could run 4 Leyline of the Void and/or any combination of Rest in Peace, Scavenger Grounds, Sentinel Totem as extensions, to create a spread that secures extremely successful odds of shutdown every game.
You might not want to admit it, but this keyword doesn't necessarily need an additional costs. It does need to exile though after, which does increase the text space beyond comfortable means, especially with the new vulgar card templating.
Going into exile is a step in the right direction, but you'll still need to address the power level of this on cheap, early creatures. Discard outlets are plentiful for decks that want to use them proactively and there are few removal options that can deal with a high toughness creature on turn 1/2. Since you love probability, I'm sure you can figure out the odds of the opponent just happening to have an answer on Game 1, Turn 1 when they don't know they need to mulligan to have one ready - A white or black deck might have 3-4 copies of Path to Exile or Fatal Push in the main, red won't be able to deal with anything more that 3 toughness with only one card, blue might have Spell Pierce, and green's got nothing to even block with for a few turns if your creature has flying. All the decks will get better after sideboard, but you'll be siding in things to protect your combo as well.
If you limit the ability to cards with toughness 2 or less, you'll be mostly on balance for a Modern glass cannon deck, but any higher than that and you'll need some balancing factor (like paying a cost) to keep them from being oppressive. Its still too strong for Standard unless the format is warped around this particular ability.
As far as sideboard tech, I did mention in my post that those decks get hosed by certain cards.
Dredge loses out to any form of grave hate.
Affinity's whole deck gets turned off by Stony Silence, including some of their mana.
Yet those decks remained popular for years and required bannings to keep them in check. Why?
Because they are so proactive. They only have to worry about executing their own strategy, the opponent is the one who has to worry about thinking on the fly and finding a way to stop it.
If the opponent doesn't find their tech fast enough, they lose.
If the opponent draws too much sideboard tech, they probably still lose, because those cards are blanks beyond the first. The proactive deck will just play and attack with creatures while the opponent draws cards that might as well be basic lands.
Beyond the decks I already mentioned, look at decks like Ad Nauseum and Storm. They fold to sideboard tech even harder, require a specific combination of cards and also require at least a little luck. But they remained popular choices over many years. Why?
So flash hulk (and this used the old mulligan rules) wanted to allow the opponent to play first. Then in the first upkeep they wanted to put in a Gemstone Cavern, then use Simian Spirit Guide to cast Flash, the card in hand they wanted to put into play for free was Protein Hulk. That's 4 very specific cards with bad mulligans and no draws. That deck was and will always be (hopefully) the most powerful deck in Magic's history. So needing pocket cards isn't much of a stretch with the new mulls. Plus some of the cards in the above scenario could be exchanged. Let's say they also ran SSG and used Goblin Lore for instance. Now they have 8 turn 1 discards. It also doesn't need to be the above listed Haster. Could be Goblin Guide or Raging Goblin for that matter. It would be easy to design the deck with 12 to 16 1 Mana haste guys.
4 Monistary Swiftspear
2 Legion Loyalist
4 Fanatical Firebrand
4 Simian Spirit Guide
12 Reincarnation guys
18 lands
4 Goblin Lore
4 Burning Inquiry
4 Pyretic Ritual
Would give you an insane amount of turn 1 kills on the play. Would be a glass cannon deck but the win rate would be very high.