The format is already slow enough without the need for t1 tapland, t2 tapland, t3 monument and finally t4 game starts. The mono/2 colour aggro decks will run over the field if this happens.
I do wish people would stop whining about cards that it's been shown are necessary nuts and bolts for limited primarily. Not every card can be an awesome, obviously powerful 4 of if you want to make the game actually playable and functional. Yes we've seen this a million times but I can't believe people are so jaded that they're ragging on these when we know what purpose they serve and they do so fine.
I do wish people would stop whining about cards that it's been shown are necessary nuts and bolts for limited primarily. Not every card can be an awesome, obviously powerful 4 of if you want to make the game actually playable and functional. Yes we've seen this a million times but I can't believe people are so jaded that they're ragging on these when we know what purpose they serve and they do so fine.
The problem is that these cycles have been proven time and again to be bad even for limited. The Cluestone and Banner cycles are basically unplayable unless you have a really greedy deck or are just desperate for fixing. The Keyrunes were okay if they came with a decentbody, but even then you probably were better off with any other solid creature or spell. These are much worse than the Keyrunes as their body will come into play pretty rarely, so once again we have a cycle of cards that are basically blanks for draft. Unfortunately it seems these cycles of mana rocks are exceedingly hard to balance, as adding one additional mana to the cost takes them from amazing to basically unplayable, even when an ability is added. At this point if they can't make these things a little more competitive I'd rather Wizards just printed more lands or used these slots for something else entirely.
Compare these to Celestial Colonnade. Colonnade is much better, but for being a mana rock and 1 mana more expensive you get a same stat (no vigilance, but meh) flying creature who interacts favorably with a number of cards in the set.
By no means a powerhouse, but in limited, this is one of those sinks you'd like to have in play when you topdeck a land instead of action, and these things were never hyped as "Here comes your new super-efficient finisher!" or anything.
Fairly bad at 3 mana, but still more usefull than the horrible Banners.
If you truly flood out, you get at least a 4/4 dragon to punsh with, and in super worst case, you at least get to keep your mana open to have a blocker ...
No matter what, you can at least play these cards without feeling bad about it.
For the design yes, i also think they missed the chance to make them different.
Time Spiral had the Totems which actual were really different, i liked them a lot. Here we just get a 4/4 dragon no matter what, all the time, everytime.
I'm excited for how much better Dragons is going to be than Khans as a sealed format. Not only do you not have to worry about supporting 3+ colors, but you also get playable rocks instead of those garbage Banners. AND we get Evolving Wilds! I look forward to playing fewer non-games decided by color screw on either side of the table.
The only reason I bothered to check them all was the flavor text, which is fine worldbuilding aid. Some variety when it comes to their sizes/abilities certainly wouldn't hurt.
I do wish people would stop whining about cards that it's been shown are necessary nuts and bolts for limited primarily. Not every card can be an awesome, obviously powerful 4 of if you want to make the game actually playable and functional. Yes we've seen this a million times but I can't believe people are so jaded that they're ragging on these when we know what purpose they serve and they do so fine.
As a casual poster.. it really does feel like 90% of the people here are expecting 250 cards for their legacy deck.. every set.
I do wish people would stop whining about cards that it's been shown are necessary nuts and bolts for limited primarily. Not every card can be an awesome, obviously powerful 4 of if you want to make the game actually playable and functional. Yes we've seen this a million times but I can't believe people are so jaded that they're ragging on these when we know what purpose they serve and they do so fine.
As a casual poster.. it really does feel like 90% of the people here are expecting 250 cards for their legacy deck.. every set.
i think its more that people expect something different. we want more than mundane chaff to fill shoe boxes with. we want to be inspired. to open a pack or see a new card and go yes. that. i want to build a deck around that. or to think oh, that fits right into this deck i have. we want our packs to matter, be them bought or won. being competitive helps, being decent enough to be played helps more.
these rocks... do none of this.
they're lacking in just about everything, and people are bored with them. the design space isn't even being fully explored. just 3 mana mana rock, that gives you a generic dragon, oh and they're the same across all 5. exactly the same. part of what made the keyrunes in ravnica more well liked is that they were all different, they were also cheaper to activate.
these rocks scream "oh *****, we forgot to add a 3 mana mana rock. OH AND DRAGONS! THEY NEED MORE DRAGONS!"
so yeah, of all the things that could've been done with these... they didn't, and as a result they're extremely boring.
i play a lot of kitchen table casual magic, i would never put these in any deck given all the other mana rock alternatives out there.
I don't care if they're jank, I like them. They're like Keyrunes on steroids, minus the variance in types, power, toughness, and abilities. So, basically Azorius Keyrune on steroids. I wonder if they have any application in a control deck? Artifact removal makes dragonrocks less viable than manlands, but control can always run some counterspells to cover the Ojutai and Silumgar monuments.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I do wish people would stop whining about cards that it's been shown are necessary nuts and bolts for limited primarily. Not every card can be an awesome, obviously powerful 4 of if you want to make the game actually playable and functional. Yes we've seen this a million times but I can't believe people are so jaded that they're ragging on these when we know what purpose they serve and they do so fine.
The problem is that these cycles have been proven time and again to be bad even for limited. The Cluestone and Banner cycles are basically unplayable unless you have a really greedy deck or are just desperate for fixing. The Keyrunes were okay if they came with a decentbody, but even then you probably were better off with any other solid creature or spell. These are much worse than the Keyrunes as their body will come into play pretty rarely, so once again we have a cycle of cards that are basically blanks for draft. Unfortunately it seems these cycles of mana rocks are exceedingly hard to balance, as adding one additional mana to the cost takes them from amazing to basically unplayable, even when an ability is added. At this point if they can't make these things a little more competitive I'd rather Wizards just printed more lands or used these slots for something else entirely.
Yeah, I was thinking they could cost 2 mana and come into play tapped, but then they'd be superior to the mirage diamonds on two levels (mana fixing and turning into creatures). There's kind of nowhere to go with this, though they could have made the dragons a little bigger/better.
I would have, at the very least, made kolaghan's a 5/4, dromoka's a 4/5, atarka's a 4/4 with trample, ojutai's a 4/4 with hexproof and silumgar's a 4/4 with deathtouch.
I agree with Xcric, and I think the problem is that cycles amplify how boring a card is when every card in the cycle is symmetrically boring. They could have reprinted a single card like Manalith and it would get a quiet yawn and few complaints, because it is what it is and it's only one card. But a cycle of bland crap takes up 5 cards, 5 missed opportunities to do something cool.
I'm guessing that here, the problem was that each "keyrune" had to be a dragon, so they were all going to be big. That reduces flexibility in activation cost, which reduces range in power/toughness and abilities. To makes things worse we already have that bland cycle of french vanilla megamorph dragons. So it would be weird to tack on Hexproof, lifelink, trample, etc to these rocks. The boring solution was to make them all the same.
I do wish people would stop whining about cards that it's been shown are necessary nuts and bolts for limited primarily. Not every card can be an awesome, obviously powerful 4 of if you want to make the game actually playable and functional. Yes we've seen this a million times but I can't believe people are so jaded that they're ragging on these when we know what purpose they serve and they do so fine.
The problem is that these cycles have been proven time and again to be bad even for limited. The Cluestone and Banner cycles are basically unplayable unless you have a really greedy deck or are just desperate for fixing. The Keyrunes were okay if they came with a decentbody, but even then you probably were better off with any other solid creature or spell. These are much worse than the Keyrunes as their body will come into play pretty rarely, so once again we have a cycle of cards that are basically blanks for draft. Unfortunately it seems these cycles of mana rocks are exceedingly hard to balance, as adding one additional mana to the cost takes them from amazing to basically unplayable, even when an ability is added. At this point if they can't make these things a little more competitive I'd rather Wizards just printed more lands or used these slots for something else entirely.
These are better than Banners or cluestones in their respective formats. This format looks pretty slow. The ramp is going to be relevant and they synergize with other cards in the format unlike banners and cluestones.
Being able to go t4 5 cmc dragon into t5 6 cmc dragon is going to be a thing. It will also help you get to 7 to megamorph the "lord" dragons.
I don't think these are fantastic but they will see a lot more play than banners.
Wow, really? They couldn't have made each one unique in terms of what creature it becomes? That's just pure laziness. Like the UB one could have easily been a 3/3 unblockable, RB could have been a 4/3 with first strike, GW could have been a 4/4 with lifelink, and UW could have been a 3/4 hexproof. Honestly just 4/4 fliers for days is so boring.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
My theory is they tried having different power/toughness or abilities, but drafters would take the monuments for the stats rather than for the mana fixing. So in order to make the mana fixing be the major factor of needing them they standardized the creatures the mana rocks could turn into.
I do wish people would stop whining about cards that it's been shown are necessary nuts and bolts for limited primarily. Not every card can be an awesome, obviously powerful 4 of if you want to make the game actually playable and functional. Yes we've seen this a million times but I can't believe people are so jaded that they're ragging on these when we know what purpose they serve and they do so fine.
The problem is that these cycles have been proven time and again to be bad even for limited. The Cluestone and Banner cycles are basically unplayable unless you have a really greedy deck or are just desperate for fixing. The Keyrunes were okay if they came with a decentbody, but even then you probably were better off with any other solid creature or spell. These are much worse than the Keyrunes as their body will come into play pretty rarely, so once again we have a cycle of cards that are basically blanks for draft. Unfortunately it seems these cycles of mana rocks are exceedingly hard to balance, as adding one additional mana to the cost takes them from amazing to basically unplayable, even when an ability is added. At this point if they can't make these things a little more competitive I'd rather Wizards just printed more lands or used these slots for something else entirely.
These are better than Banners or cluestones in their respective formats. This format looks pretty slow. The ramp is going to be relevant and they synergize with other cards in the format unlike banners and cluestones.
Being able to go t4 5 cmc dragon into t5 6 cmc dragon is going to be a thing. It will also help you get to 7 to megamorph the "lord" dragons.
I don't think these are fantastic but they will see a lot more play than banners.
Too slow for constructed though.
We've only seen a handful of commons so far. Judging the speed of a limited format by the uncommons and rares is a rookie mistake. The fact that megamorph is in this set means that third turn is stilll going to be pivotal. Tapping out for one of these third turn is going to put you at risk of being tempo'd out just like in Khans.
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The format is already slow enough without the need for t1 tapland, t2 tapland, t3 monument and finally t4 game starts. The mono/2 colour aggro decks will run over the field if this happens.
Since the animated monument is not the real Silumgar, it logically must be his subordinate. And Silumgar makes sure he KNOWS it.
Feel free to tell me yours!
By no means a powerhouse, but in limited, this is one of those sinks you'd like to have in play when you topdeck a land instead of action, and these things were never hyped as "Here comes your new super-efficient finisher!" or anything.
Playable/10
If you truly flood out, you get at least a 4/4 dragon to punsh with, and in super worst case, you at least get to keep your mana open to have a blocker ...
No matter what, you can at least play these cards without feeling bad about it.
For the design yes, i also think they missed the chance to make them different.
Time Spiral had the Totems which actual were really different, i liked them a lot. Here we just get a 4/4 dragon no matter what, all the time, everytime.
Thats boring, super boring.
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i think its more that people expect something different. we want more than mundane chaff to fill shoe boxes with. we want to be inspired. to open a pack or see a new card and go yes. that. i want to build a deck around that. or to think oh, that fits right into this deck i have. we want our packs to matter, be them bought or won. being competitive helps, being decent enough to be played helps more.
these rocks... do none of this.
they're lacking in just about everything, and people are bored with them. the design space isn't even being fully explored. just 3 mana mana rock, that gives you a generic dragon, oh and they're the same across all 5. exactly the same. part of what made the keyrunes in ravnica more well liked is that they were all different, they were also cheaper to activate.
these rocks scream "oh *****, we forgot to add a 3 mana mana rock. OH AND DRAGONS! THEY NEED MORE DRAGONS!"
so yeah, of all the things that could've been done with these... they didn't, and as a result they're extremely boring.
i play a lot of kitchen table casual magic, i would never put these in any deck given all the other mana rock alternatives out there.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Yeah, I was thinking they could cost 2 mana and come into play tapped, but then they'd be superior to the mirage diamonds on two levels (mana fixing and turning into creatures). There's kind of nowhere to go with this, though they could have made the dragons a little bigger/better.
I would have, at the very least, made kolaghan's a 5/4, dromoka's a 4/5, atarka's a 4/4 with trample, ojutai's a 4/4 with hexproof and silumgar's a 4/4 with deathtouch.
I'm guessing that here, the problem was that each "keyrune" had to be a dragon, so they were all going to be big. That reduces flexibility in activation cost, which reduces range in power/toughness and abilities. To makes things worse we already have that bland cycle of french vanilla megamorph dragons. So it would be weird to tack on Hexproof, lifelink, trample, etc to these rocks. The boring solution was to make them all the same.
These are better than Banners or cluestones in their respective formats. This format looks pretty slow. The ramp is going to be relevant and they synergize with other cards in the format unlike banners and cluestones.
Being able to go t4 5 cmc dragon into t5 6 cmc dragon is going to be a thing. It will also help you get to 7 to megamorph the "lord" dragons.
I don't think these are fantastic but they will see a lot more play than banners.
Too slow for constructed though.
Tedious mana rocks are tedious. I don't see how each mana rock making an identical creature is flavorful, nor is the power level high enough.
I love cards in cycles, but there are way too many redundant ones here.
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