One of my play groups are currently playing Un-Commander, which is a blast btw, and I'm running it in my Ol' Buzzbark deck.
Haven't seen it yet however. I'm 50, so when I do get to cast it, hoorah.
Seriously though at eight mana it's too expensive for anything other than Commander. Even in Commander it's only a nominal card. It does scale, obviously, so for a player like me the benefit is so much better. I only run it because of flavor reasons, and Un-.
For eight mana, you should be getting better bang for your buck, is my final assessment.
Un-commander? that sounds absolutely ridiculous and amazing.
It's a shame though that it's not more powerful. I suppose the point is to be used by a grandmother who would presumably be able to get on average 70-80 life for 8 mana. In two headed giant, it would probably be powerful enough to survive an alpha strike from the other team, even in the late game.
Based solely on the fact that it's a pure lifegain card, I would say no. Lifegain, unless it's cheap and extremely efficient, is never worth spending an entire card on. It doesn't get you closer to winning, only further from losing, which is not the same. And during an unfavorable board state, your opponent will easily deal damage to undo the lifegain, and you're back where you started, minus a card. That's the standard logic of why lifegain-only cards are bad. Lifegain is good as a rider, such as lifelink on creatures, or being a bonus effect on an instant or sorcery.
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UBR Sedris RG Omnath, Locus of Rage UB The Scarab God RUG Maelstrom Wanderer WU Dragonlord Ojutai
Based solely on the fact that it's a pure lifegain card, I would say no. Lifegain, unless it's cheap and extremely efficient, is never worth spending an entire card on. It doesn't get you closer to winning, only further from losing, which is not the same. And during an unfavorable board state, your opponent will easily deal damage to undo the lifegain, and you're back where you started, minus a card. That's the standard logic of why lifegain-only cards are bad. Lifegain is good as a rider, such as lifelink on creatures, or being a bonus effect on an instant or sorcery.
So goes the common thinking. A card to gain one life isn't useful enough. Same as a card to gain 3 life. But at some point a card like
Lifegain Gain G
Gain n life.
is going to be good enough to play. The question is, what is n? I'd argue that if n is 10, it would be strong enough to hose aggro. And if n were 20, it would definitely hose aggro and heavily swing the pendulum in favor of a combo or control meta.
Does this card specify what units your age has to be in... I am sure if we measured in days or hours it might be extreemly playable.
Like all Magic cards, basic English and standard nomenclature would be used. So the unit of measurement for age would be presented as Earth years. No reasonable person would assume that a person who presents their age as say, "13," would assume that person is referencing any other metric.
That being said, this is an Un-Set card. So if you can convince the rest of the table to use a different metric then I would suggest you go ahead and try.
If a card is all about life gain it has to be massive and cheap to matter.
Or its a constant stream of life so you can actually use it as a win condition (but that also takes very long to deck the opponent etc.).
No matter what pure life gain is always a metagame call. If the opponent has means to ignore life to win it wont matter and even against aggro decks there are options to win regardless (infect, poison, forms of "infinited combos").
That said, gain like 100 life for 3 mana would be crazy enough to ensure that all decks would need a way to win ignoring life points.
You can try to lower that amount, but thats just cosmetics.
In normal magic life gain against say a burn deck usually translates to 3life = 1 card , so gaining like 9 life kinda means you "countered" 3 cards from them. If that tempo is enough to give you the edge, its a playable card, but its still very narrow as it wont really be doing anything against lots of other opponents.
----
So even really crazy life gain cards tend to be just terrible.
In a normal game of limited dealing like 20 damage a turn becomes not much of a problem if an opponent can outclass all your creatures.
However, they have to survive the back attack from you.
Gaining like 100 life gives you quite a bunch of buffer and time, so thats a real thing in limited. A "fog" effect to prevent a single combat will usually be better than gaining 10 life and force them into attacking so you can hopefully counter-attack for the win (which is especially true if they totally commit to an attack with something like an Overrun effect).
In a more casual approach of an Un-Set Granny's Payback could indeed be somewhat of an win-option.
Its still a pretty "bad" card, but if you can gain enough life to squeeze like 10 fog effects out of it, that helps quite a bit if you can actually use the time you gained from that to win in some way.
Gaining 30+ life is just barely acceptable, if you get 80+ thats much more reasonable. But even then, its far from being a real "win".
If a card is all about life gain it has to be massive and cheap to matter.
Or its a constant stream of life so you can actually use it as a win condition (but that also takes very long to deck the opponent etc.).
No matter what pure life gain is always a metagame call. If the opponent has means to ignore life to win it wont matter and even against aggro decks there are options to win regardless (infect, poison, forms of "infinited combos").
That said, gain like 100 life for 3 mana would be crazy enough to ensure that all decks would need a way to win ignoring life points.
You can try to lower that amount, but thats just cosmetics.
In normal magic life gain against say a burn deck usually translates to 3life = 1 card , so gaining like 9 life kinda means you "countered" 3 cards from them. If that tempo is enough to give you the edge, its a playable card, but its still very narrow as it wont really be doing anything against lots of other opponents.
----
So even really crazy life gain cards tend to be just terrible.
In a normal game of limited dealing like 20 damage a turn becomes not much of a problem if an opponent can outclass all your creatures.
However, they have to survive the back attack from you.
Gaining like 100 life gives you quite a bunch of buffer and time, so thats a real thing in limited. A "fog" effect to prevent a single combat will usually be better than gaining 10 life and force them into attacking so you can hopefully counter-attack for the win (which is especially true if they totally commit to an attack with something like an Overrun effect).
In a more casual approach of an Un-Set Granny's Payback could indeed be somewhat of an win-option.
Its still a pretty "bad" card, but if you can gain enough life to squeeze like 10 fog effects out of it, that helps quite a bit if you can actually use the time you gained from that to win in some way.
Gaining 30+ life is just barely acceptable, if you get 80+ thats much more reasonable. But even then, its far from being a real "win".
The big one shot life gain however will only "really" matter in Limited as a means to generate multiple fog effects, simply because the absolute no. go to win option is to deal damage , and if a deck will do that with flyers over a longer amount of time, it might not even be able to win a given game before decking out.
In any other format it will simply not be relevant or extremely narrow.
Granny's Payback
7G
Gain life equal to your age.
Ignore the fact it comes from an "Un-" set
Is this viable in any format? Why or why not?
*by playable i meant viable.
Haven't seen it yet however. I'm 50, so when I do get to cast it, hoorah.
Seriously though at eight mana it's too expensive for anything other than Commander. Even in Commander it's only a nominal card. It does scale, obviously, so for a player like me the benefit is so much better. I only run it because of flavor reasons, and Un-.
For eight mana, you should be getting better bang for your buck, is my final assessment.
It's a shame though that it's not more powerful. I suppose the point is to be used by a grandmother who would presumably be able to get on average 70-80 life for 8 mana. In two headed giant, it would probably be powerful enough to survive an alpha strike from the other team, even in the late game.
UBR Sedris
RG Omnath, Locus of Rage
UB The Scarab God
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer
WU Dragonlord Ojutai
So goes the common thinking. A card to gain one life isn't useful enough. Same as a card to gain 3 life. But at some point a card like
Lifegain Gain G
Gain n life.
is going to be good enough to play. The question is, what is n? I'd argue that if n is 10, it would be strong enough to hose aggro. And if n were 20, it would definitely hose aggro and heavily swing the pendulum in favor of a combo or control meta.
Like all Magic cards, basic English and standard nomenclature would be used. So the unit of measurement for age would be presented as Earth years. No reasonable person would assume that a person who presents their age as say, "13," would assume that person is referencing any other metric.
That being said, this is an Un-Set card. So if you can convince the rest of the table to use a different metric then I would suggest you go ahead and try.
Or its a constant stream of life so you can actually use it as a win condition (but that also takes very long to deck the opponent etc.).
No matter what pure life gain is always a metagame call. If the opponent has means to ignore life to win it wont matter and even against aggro decks there are options to win regardless (infect, poison, forms of "infinited combos").
That said, gain like 100 life for 3 mana would be crazy enough to ensure that all decks would need a way to win ignoring life points.
You can try to lower that amount, but thats just cosmetics.
In normal magic life gain against say a burn deck usually translates to 3life = 1 card , so gaining like 9 life kinda means you "countered" 3 cards from them. If that tempo is enough to give you the edge, its a playable card, but its still very narrow as it wont really be doing anything against lots of other opponents.
----
So even really crazy life gain cards tend to be just terrible.
In a normal game of limited dealing like 20 damage a turn becomes not much of a problem if an opponent can outclass all your creatures.
However, they have to survive the back attack from you.
Gaining like 100 life gives you quite a bunch of buffer and time, so thats a real thing in limited. A "fog" effect to prevent a single combat will usually be better than gaining 10 life and force them into attacking so you can hopefully counter-attack for the win (which is especially true if they totally commit to an attack with something like an Overrun effect).
In a more casual approach of an Un-Set Granny's Payback could indeed be somewhat of an win-option.
Its still a pretty "bad" card, but if you can gain enough life to squeeze like 10 fog effects out of it, that helps quite a bit if you can actually use the time you gained from that to win in some way.
Gaining 30+ life is just barely acceptable, if you get 80+ thats much more reasonable. But even then, its far from being a real "win".
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Instead of considering life as a fog-like affect, you could consider it as an asset to spend ala Necropotence(Necro-Impotence?), Pox or Juzaam Djinn-like cards.
Sure, but how often do you draw like 10+ cards of a Necro and not win immediately ?
The super old school Ivory Tower made that job.
The big one shot life gain however will only "really" matter in Limited as a means to generate multiple fog effects, simply because the absolute no. go to win option is to deal damage , and if a deck will do that with flyers over a longer amount of time, it might not even be able to win a given game before decking out.
In any other format it will simply not be relevant or extremely narrow.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
I was merely pointing out that a life gain card could have other potential uses besides being the annoying-cousin-at-the-party to Fog.
I mean, if you're the oldest player, Granny could always Channel a Fireball.