This card doesn't seem very flavorful. Yay a snake lady that makes snakes. I thought she was supposed to be the god of malady and mending. I feel like the snakes should have had deathtouch and lifelink maybe that would be too good but it would at least be flavorful.
This. I don't know about power level, even if I think she is better than she looks at first sight. But flavorwise, I find her ability quite uninspired for a God wich is all about about the borderline between life/cure and death/poison. When you pray for healing, you don't want to die and be resurected as a shiny snake, IMO.
In many ancient cultures, including Greece, snakes were viewed as sources of both life and death. The latter is obvious, as their venom could kill, but the former is a little more elusive. It was due to the fact that, before shedding their skin, snakes become very, very still and are discolored. They looked like they had died one day and come back to life the next day, since by then they had shed their skin and were back to normal.
Unfortunately most people do not know this and only think of snakes being associated with death. Since Wizard's has said that you have to play to what people expect and not what is the truth, I think that they could have worked the "cure" part of Pharika in a little more.
I was slightly underwhelmed upon seeing her. But then i realized the application of her ability. With hall of triumph we enter a scenario like moorland haunt and honor the pure. in fact she seems very much an aggro god actually. Making post sweeper combat very distasteful and with my homey lotleth troll out an opponent never knows when a deathtouch token is coming down. Dont whine just because cards challenge your creativity. Blue devotion was a crzy idea at some point too...
Moorland haunt tokens had flying, moorland haunt was a land, white aggro is a supported archetype and was complimented by aggressive blue creatures like snapcaster and delver, etc. etc. There are a multitude of reasons why the comparison is ill-advised. And lastly, don't talk about "challenging creativity." Bearer of the Heavens challenges my creativity; Riptide Chimera challenges my creativity; even Sage of Hours, for all it's combo-breaking anti-loophole design, challenges my creativity. Pharika does not. Pharika says: "Play dudes, trade them with other dudes, get pseudo-evasive dudes from their corpses. If the opponent is playing graveyard strats...real talk? Just play Scavenging Ooze. Come talk to me in seven months, then we'll see how it shakes out."
In many ancient cultures, including Greece, snakes were viewed as sources of both life and death. The latter is obvious, as their venom could kill, but the former is a little more elusive. It was due to the fact that, before shedding their skin, snakes become very, very still and are discolored. They looked like they had died one day and come back to life the next day, since by then they had shed their skin and were back to normal.
Unfortunately most people do not know this and only think of snakes being associated with death. Since Wizard's has said that you have to play to what people expect and not what is the truth, I think that they could have worked the "cure" part of Pharika in a little more.
I think mechanics directly related to her supposed domains of mastery would have been better than referencing them via roundabout mythological minutiae. Thanks for the factoids though, I love this stuff and the chalice and staff that were mentioned a few pages back. Your bit completes his, explaining why snakes are part of the gods' symbols.
Hey Yebisu, both Carrie Oliver and Josh Silvestri from Channelfireball and Evan Erwin from SCG have all said she is a solid card that is likely to see play in B/G/X Graveyard based decks and Midrange lists for you guessed it! Repeated value. Me-Over 9000 You-i, as in imaginary
Not using THAT logical fallacy. Using experts as evidence is how debate works. Didn't say it was fact, rather that they agree with me on the card for the same reasons. Burden of proof is now on HIM to prove why it is a bad card.
TBH I'm not quite sure what to make out of "pros" advice like Carrie Oliver's, Josh's and Evan's. These are people hired by their respective companies to preview cards, promote decks, so as to help the company/store sell them. This is why I find Ben Blewiess and the like who gives "financial advice" to be a little bogus. I just feel a little queasy when someone who used (and still is) to write a building on a budget column becoming a financial manager and advocating financial strategies.... And overnight cards like Zen fetches, Wastelands and FoW shot up...
These people (pros and financial advisers) are always ahead of you. What they provided you is a bunch of outdated information. It is up to you, as a reader, gamer, or someone vested in the game to constantly update yourself with the latest happenings. Gerry T and Pat Chapin are perfect examples. They write about an awesome decklist, pull/hook you in so you'll play said hyped deck in the next GP and bam! They pounced you with a deck that beats it. It's not rocket science.
Others times, they provide you info that is already pandering/accumulating in your thoughts. So much for self-fulfilling prophecies... We magic players are capable of thinking great things on our own. Some of us just require a bit more experience, that's all.
However, they're some good Samaritans out there who gives good honest advice because they really care. And also because they're candid about it without peppering certain cards with candies. Good examples are the Peach Garden Oath brothers, Ben Stark and PV. If they say the card sucks, it's because it is. I love LSV and his puns, but you have to remember his ties. He's the VP of CFB.
But back to Carrie, Josh and Evan. Granted, I'm not sure how to evaluate their advice but do so at your own risk. Weigh their advices with your gut feeling and research and I think normal people like us can do a decent job at evaluating cards. For me I think Pharika is niche for standard. She'll pop up once in a while in a GY shell, but she's not gonna displace Scooze.
TBH I'm not quite sure what to make out of people like Carrie Oliver, Josh and Evan. These are people hired by the respective companies to preview cards, promote decks, so as to help the company/store sell them. This is why I find Ben Blewiess and the like who gives "financial advice" to be a little bogus. I just feel a little queasy when someone who used (and still is) to write a building on a budget column becoming a financial manager. And overnight cards like Zen fetches, Wastelands and FoW shot up...
These people (pros and financial advisers) are always ahead of you. What they provided you is a bunch of outdated information. It is up to you, as a reader, gamer, or someone vested in the game to constantly update yourself with the latest happenings. Gerry T and Pat Chapin are perfect examples. They write about an awesome decklist, pull/hook you in so you'll play the next GP and bam! They pounced you with a deck that beats it. It's not rocket science.
What they sometimes provide you are info that is already pandering/accumulating in your thoughts. So much for self-fulfilling prophecies...
However, they're some good Samaritans out there who gives good honest advice because they really care. And also because they're candid about it without peppering certain cards with candies. Good examples are the Peach Garden Oath brothers, Ben Stark and PV. If they say the card sucks, it's because it is. I love LSV and his puns, but you have to remember his ties. He's the VP of CFB.
But back to Carrie, Josh and Evan. Granted, I'm not sure how to evaluate their advice but do so at your own risk. Weigh their advices with your gut feeling and research and I think normal people like us can do a decent job at evaluating cards. For me I think Pharika is niche for standard. She'll pop up once in a while in a GY shell, but she's not gonna displace Scooze.
Just remember Carrie and Evan HAVE top 8'd although Evan hasn't been on the pro circuit in quite some time.
Card is obviously not meant to be played in a reanimator/dredge deck. It's an aggressively costed creature that survives wraths and helps you recover from them, with the niche ability to hate on reanimation. I don't know that it's amazing but the purpose of this card is certainly not to just self mill to fill your yard with donks and make snakes. This is one of the rockiest cards I have seen in a long time.
Card is obviously not meant to be played in a reanimator/dredge deck. It's an aggressively costed creature that survives wraths and helps you recover from them, with the niche ability to hate on reanimation. I don't know that it's amazing but the purpose of this card is certainly not to just self mill to fill your yard with donks and make snakes. This is one of the rockiest cards I have seen in a long time.
Bingo. She's meant to cause problems for decks willing to play 4cmc+ creatures without solid evasion. It doesn't hurt that she's also quite good at becoming a creature herself in that particular color combination. I'm excited to try out a Junk value deck that uses her in a similar fashion to Xenagod in Jund.
I said a scenario like moorland haunt. Sorry if that offends you. We are never going to have the same scenario that rocked a standard format that's why we see rampant growths that cost three mana and counterspells that cost three mana. Its designed that way. The comparison illustrates unseen value with a similar ability. truth be told i just like having a god in my colors. As for challenging your creativity, it takes no skill to be negative about anything so i challenge you to give things a fair chance before you dismiss them
Just remember Carrie and Evan HAVE top 8'd although Evan hasn't been on the pro circuit in quite some time.
"Carrie is relatively new to Magic, with a grand total of three years of play under her belt. In this short time, she has already made three Pro Tour appearances, finishing 32nd at Nagoya in 2011"".
Appeal to authority is only a fallacy when the authority in question is not an authority in the specific topic being discussed. A fallacious appeal to authority would be to bring up some expert physicist who says this card is great. If someone who plays magic (especially people on the team that created and dominated with MUD, which many spectators thought had no chance) professionally suggests it's a good card it's perfectly legitimate to offer this as evidence it's a good card.
it [is not] reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence. However it is… entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not.
Yeah, people just need to think for themselves when it comes to card evaluation.
One underrated factor is if you enjoy playing with a card. For instance, I personally appreciate Delver of Secrets as a card, but I simply don't like playing with it.
I personally think I'm going to enjoy playing with Pharika, even if she is bad.
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
Appeal to authority is only a fallacy when the authority in question is not an authority in the specific topic being discussed. A fallacious appeal to authority would be to bring up some expert physicist who says this card is great. If someone who plays magic (especially people on the team that created and dominated with MUD, which many spectators thought had no chance) professionally suggests it's a good card it's perfectly legitimate to offer this as evidence it's a good card.
No, this is an incorrect description of what an appeal to authority fallacy is. Being an expert in a field doesn't automatically make whatever they say related to that field true or a valid argument either.
If you say B and an expert related to the field also says B it doesn't logically follow that B is valid. Why? because who knows why the expert says B? What you can do is quote the expert's argument (be careful that you don't fall into a different fallacy of course) and give reasons why you agree with the expert.
Except that's sort of misconstruing how evidence works. Nothing can be proven by argument outside of tautologies. Expert opinion on an argument relevant to their field of expertise is supposed to be both more compelling and (this is the important part here) relevant evidence to the argument being built. Appeals to authority outside of a field of relevance are considered fallacious not because they're not necessarily true (because no evidence is necessarily true [outside of tautologies]), but because they're irrelevant.
It's true that presenting an argument specifically tailored to your situation made by that expert is even more compelling than simply, I dunno, a shortened argument (opinions about a thing are arguments and we've already established that the expert in question has to be talking about the situation being argued in the first place in order for it to have any meaning in an argument at all. Saying that an expert in magic said that the sky was blue doesn't provide any information about whether a card is good, saying that an expert in magic said that pharika was "probably pretty good" is of supreme relevance to the argument, if just not a particularly substantial statement. Given what we know about the expert's abilities and assuming they haven't been unduly influenced by an outside source we can make a reasonable assumption that they have a good reason for saying what they did, even if they did not provide their specific line of reasoning) about the situation, but less compelling =/= a fallacy.
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In many ancient cultures, including Greece, snakes were viewed as sources of both life and death. The latter is obvious, as their venom could kill, but the former is a little more elusive. It was due to the fact that, before shedding their skin, snakes become very, very still and are discolored. They looked like they had died one day and come back to life the next day, since by then they had shed their skin and were back to normal.
Unfortunately most people do not know this and only think of snakes being associated with death. Since Wizard's has said that you have to play to what people expect and not what is the truth, I think that they could have worked the "cure" part of Pharika in a little more.
Moorland haunt tokens had flying, moorland haunt was a land, white aggro is a supported archetype and was complimented by aggressive blue creatures like snapcaster and delver, etc. etc. There are a multitude of reasons why the comparison is ill-advised. And lastly, don't talk about "challenging creativity." Bearer of the Heavens challenges my creativity; Riptide Chimera challenges my creativity; even Sage of Hours, for all it's combo-breaking anti-loophole design, challenges my creativity. Pharika does not. Pharika says: "Play dudes, trade them with other dudes, get pseudo-evasive dudes from their corpses. If the opponent is playing graveyard strats...real talk? Just play Scavenging Ooze. Come talk to me in seven months, then we'll see how it shakes out."
I think mechanics directly related to her supposed domains of mastery would have been better than referencing them via roundabout mythological minutiae. Thanks for the factoids though, I love this stuff and the chalice and staff that were mentioned a few pages back. Your bit completes his, explaining why snakes are part of the gods' symbols.
Many thanks to DNC at Heroes of the Plane Studios
Ahem…
Not using THAT logical fallacy. Using experts as evidence is how debate works. Didn't say it was fact, rather that they agree with me on the card for the same reasons. Burden of proof is now on HIM to prove why it is a bad card.
Many thanks to DNC at Heroes of the Plane Studios
TBH I'm not quite sure what to make out of "pros" advice like Carrie Oliver's, Josh's and Evan's. These are people hired by their respective companies to preview cards, promote decks, so as to help the company/store sell them. This is why I find Ben Blewiess and the like who gives "financial advice" to be a little bogus. I just feel a little queasy when someone who used (and still is) to write a building on a budget column becoming a financial manager and advocating financial strategies.... And overnight cards like Zen fetches, Wastelands and FoW shot up...
These people (pros and financial advisers) are always ahead of you. What they provided you is a bunch of outdated information. It is up to you, as a reader, gamer, or someone vested in the game to constantly update yourself with the latest happenings. Gerry T and Pat Chapin are perfect examples. They write about an awesome decklist, pull/hook you in so you'll play said hyped deck in the next GP and bam! They pounced you with a deck that beats it. It's not rocket science.
Others times, they provide you info that is already pandering/accumulating in your thoughts. So much for self-fulfilling prophecies... We magic players are capable of thinking great things on our own. Some of us just require a bit more experience, that's all.
However, they're some good Samaritans out there who gives good honest advice because they really care. And also because they're candid about it without peppering certain cards with candies. Good examples are the Peach Garden Oath brothers, Ben Stark and PV. If they say the card sucks, it's because it is. I love LSV and his puns, but you have to remember his ties. He's the VP of CFB.
But back to Carrie, Josh and Evan. Granted, I'm not sure how to evaluate their advice but do so at your own risk. Weigh their advices with your gut feeling and research and I think normal people like us can do a decent job at evaluating cards. For me I think Pharika is niche for standard. She'll pop up once in a while in a GY shell, but she's not gonna displace Scooze.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Just remember Carrie and Evan HAVE top 8'd although Evan hasn't been on the pro circuit in quite some time.
Many thanks to DNC at Heroes of the Plane Studios
Bingo. She's meant to cause problems for decks willing to play 4cmc+ creatures without solid evasion. It doesn't hurt that she's also quite good at becoming a creature herself in that particular color combination. I'm excited to try out a Junk value deck that uses her in a similar fashion to Xenagod in Jund.
I said a scenario like moorland haunt. Sorry if that offends you. We are never going to have the same scenario that rocked a standard format that's why we see rampant growths that cost three mana and counterspells that cost three mana. Its designed that way. The comparison illustrates unseen value with a similar ability. truth be told i just like having a god in my colors. As for challenging your creativity, it takes no skill to be negative about anything so i challenge you to give things a fair chance before you dismiss them
Speaking of Melissa she defends this card too.
Many thanks to DNC at Heroes of the Plane Studios
One underrated factor is if you enjoy playing with a card. For instance, I personally appreciate Delver of Secrets as a card, but I simply don't like playing with it.
I personally think I'm going to enjoy playing with Pharika, even if she is bad.
"OH GOD MY BRAIN IS EXPLOADING AT HOW BAD THE ART IS ON MY OWN CARD"
-A friend's first impression of Ancestral Recall
10/10, I tapped.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Except that's sort of misconstruing how evidence works. Nothing can be proven by argument outside of tautologies. Expert opinion on an argument relevant to their field of expertise is supposed to be both more compelling and (this is the important part here) relevant evidence to the argument being built. Appeals to authority outside of a field of relevance are considered fallacious not because they're not necessarily true (because no evidence is necessarily true [outside of tautologies]), but because they're irrelevant.
It's true that presenting an argument specifically tailored to your situation made by that expert is even more compelling than simply, I dunno, a shortened argument (opinions about a thing are arguments and we've already established that the expert in question has to be talking about the situation being argued in the first place in order for it to have any meaning in an argument at all. Saying that an expert in magic said that the sky was blue doesn't provide any information about whether a card is good, saying that an expert in magic said that pharika was "probably pretty good" is of supreme relevance to the argument, if just not a particularly substantial statement. Given what we know about the expert's abilities and assuming they haven't been unduly influenced by an outside source we can make a reasonable assumption that they have a good reason for saying what they did, even if they did not provide their specific line of reasoning) about the situation, but less compelling =/= a fallacy.