What's this going to cost? Rare playset in every standard control build? Screw this. I mean the card is very good, but a Cancel variant at rare is a restrictive cash grab. This is a bread and butter card, any blue control variant starts with four of these and builds from there.
Out of curiosity, do you guys believe that Draining Whelk should have been an Uncommon?
This card is not as powerful, no, but it's in the same vein as Whelk, and hey, it can cost 3 and not 6.
Well whelk will have varying levels of size Whelk was not always used to counter some huge 6+ mana spell. This card in some cases can be more powerful than Draining Whelk because sometimes you use Whelk to counter that 2 mana spell or less.
What's this going to cost? Rare playset in every standard control build? Screw this. I mean the card is very good, but a Cancel variant at rare is a restrictive cash grab. This is a bread and butter card, any blue control variant starts with four of these and builds from there.
I doubt it. My guess is 3 is more correct than 4, and 2 may be correct in some decks.
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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.
- Manite
and here I was thinking this would be an uncommon. **** you wizards I hate you too. God this is ******* stupid. First vanilla removal becomes rare and now vanilla counterspells too. So basically in order to have a slightly better Cancel I'm going to have to fork out for a rare. Muh limited!
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and here I was thinking this would be an uncommon. **** you wizards I hate you too. God this is ******* stupid. First vanilla removal becomes rare and now vanilla counterspells too. So basically in order to have a slightly better Cancel I'm going to have to fork out for a rare. Muh limited!
Calling this a slightly better cancel is just plain incorrect. Scatter is dramatically better than Cancel.
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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.
- Manite
I don't get why people are upset about 'weak' and 'bland' cards being rare while 'strong' or 'cool' cards are uncommon. Isn't that... better? You see the fun stuff more often in limited and in constructed you don't have to get 10$ rares.
That aside: Amazing art and the effect is nice for control decks. Using target removal on an animated land isn't exactly what anyone wants to do against control on turn 6 or later, so the only worry would be something like Languish from Abzan.
except scatter turns on your opponents removal letting them stonerain you if you pay the 6. It doesn't actually provide card advantage either unlike the cards it keeps getting compared to. The only deck I could see it actually being that relevant in is a full draw go style deck with no win conditions other than this. A 3/3 that takes a mana to attack isn't great and hardly relevant unless you already have control over the game. Other win conditions like ugin can swing the game back in your favor so I don't see any reason this won't be played as a cancel 95% of the time. Sure awaken will come up from time to time but much more rarely than the dissipate exile clause or the dissolve scry 1. If either of those weren't rotating I wouldn't bother playing this in standard.
This should have been an uncommon so people could complain that whatever card replaced it as a rare was bad.
I agree, but probably for different reasons. I believe that uncommon should make up the bulk of playable cards with rares having unique effects. I truly and honestly believe that "limited" + mythic rarity is just an excuse to make chase cards and that limited is actually a lot more fun with strong cards available to everyone as opposed to the luck few who pull a mythic. That's why Modern Masters' limited is widely regarded as the best limited format of all time.
1. 100% guarantee we have a cycle of "playable control cards with Awaken" at rare. We already have the white boardwipe and the black spot removal. This fits the cycle.
2. What rarity is Mystic Snake? Rare. This is like a bigger Mystic Snake with "Evoke 1UU," and mechanically it adds more complexity because of counter/land interactions.
3. This is not an effect that should be readily available in a limited set where you want people to actually cast Eldrazi.
4. The cost on all rares in this set is going to be much lower than normal because over-opening for lands; see Khans.
Out of curiosity, do you guys believe that Draining Whelk should have been an Uncommon?
This card is not as powerful, no, but it's in the same vein as Whelk, and hey, it can cost 3 and not 6.
A great point, but I'd go further and say it's not at all clear that Draining Whelk is better than Scatter to the Winds. What you get for six mana with Whelk is significantly better, of course (though maybe not by as much as some think, it's easy to get into best case scenario thinking and forget that Whelk wasn't always very big). But the option to cast Scatter for 3 mana is a huge upgrade, to the point I suspect that Scatter is the better card overall. This is unquestionably a Rare effect.
Out of curiosity, do you guys believe that Draining Whelk should have been an Uncommon?
This card is not as powerful, no, but it's in the same vein as Whelk, and hey, it can cost 3 and not 6.
Draining Whelk had a lot more complexity. It had an X counters effect and did something unique. This is just the blandest of all staple cards with a keyword stapled to it. The entire card is four words of english rules text long. Its filling a niche that has historically been at common/uncommon, and the cancel it riffs off was always at common
I think people are forgetting that awaken makes it possible to play a control-deck without actually having to play any threats (drawing too many late game threats and no enough answers is a good way to lose as a control deck). That's usually a very powerful thing, but I guess only time will tell if this is as bad as people say it is.
Except when that "powerful thing" requires 10+ lands on the field before it becomes relevant, with which an Awaken only deck, it does. That's why awaken only can be used as secondary mechanic/backup plan/mana sink in a true control deck. It's not relevant until the game should already be in hand.
Maybe making an extra creature out of land (which will be tapped that turn if it was t6) really justifies it being a rare, but initially the person reading this sees rare which is identical to cancel, and then the effect is added in the very end, so that's rather frustrating experience.
It's not that it's not powerful enough to be rare. This card is very good. It's the fact that if you don't have this, you don't have your bread and butter counterspell, as I doubt they're going to include another Cancel variant in addition to this.
It's comparable to Hero's Downfall. Want to play something that uses black removal? Gotta have four of those. And since so many need a full set, they are going to be expensive.
I was going to keep playing UR Counterburn on the cheap, because I rarely have time to play standard, so budget is a factor. Not having this year's Cancel variant would/will be a glaring hole in that strategy.
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Mystic snake was definitely a novel, unique and complex idea by its day. The concept of a flash creature that counters a spell with an ability was mechanically complex, counterspell was the normal, done via an instant/interrupt. Being a creature gave mystic snake interactions that didn't exist for instants, it let you sneak it into play, reanimate it, flicker it, that sort of thing. If you really wanted to rub on about counterspells at rare, you should go after absorb / undermine / overrule / punish ignorance.
This is just a cancel with a set keyword stapled to its butt. Its not mechanically interesting or unique, its not complicated, its only argument for being at rare is that it would warp limited, which I must say, if it was too strong at uncommon when cancel has always been common, yeesh, this limited format will be demented
Now if they HAD reprinted undermine and put it at rare, everyone would be happy eh
I don't get why people are upset about 'weak' and 'bland' cards being rare while 'strong' or 'cool' cards are uncommon. Isn't that... better? You see the fun stuff more often in limited and in constructed you don't have to get 10$ rares.
That aside: Amazing art and the effect is nice for control decks. Using target removal on an animated land isn't exactly what anyone wants to do against control on turn 6 or later, so the only worry would be something like Languish from Abzan.
I don't think anyone's ever complained about strong cards being at uncommon. Ideally that's where they'd all be. Putting cards that are basic constructed staples, as in this case, at rare is annoying.
I remember when I cast Draining Whelk targeting Emrakul, the Aeons Torn on the stack (in a casual match of course), the look in the face of my opponent was priceless...
he got that extra turn with emrakul in play....
and decided not to attack with it against my 16/16 Draining Whelk
it was one of those times I laught so hard it hurt... lol
Countered Emrakul eh? Better read the first line of text on Emrakul again lol.
I remember when I cast Draining Whelk targeting Emrakul, the Aeons Torn on the stack (in a casual match of course), the look in the face of my opponent was priceless...
he got that extra turn with emrakul in play....
and decided not to attack with it against my 16/16 Draining Whelk
it was one of those times I laught so hard it hurt... lol
Countered Emrakul eh? Better read the first line of text on Emrakul again lol.
I haven't countered emrakul.
I just targeted it so the counter would fail, but I'd get a 16/16 flier to block it.
I don't get why people are upset about 'weak' and 'bland' cards being rare while 'strong' or 'cool' cards are uncommon. Isn't that... better? You see the fun stuff more often in limited and in constructed you don't have to get 10$ rares.
That aside: Amazing art and the effect is nice for control decks. Using target removal on an animated land isn't exactly what anyone wants to do against control on turn 6 or later, so the only worry would be something like Languish from Abzan.
I don't think anyone's ever complained about strong cards being at uncommon. Ideally that's where they'd all be. Putting cards that are basic constructed staples, as in this case, at rare is annoying.
This is what bothers me the most. Anything before 6 mana... this thing is just a Cancel. Like... was Cancel that BUSTED in limited for them to make this into a rare? "BUT IT MAKES A GUY!" ... at 6 mana! Like clan-iraq said... Cancel never warped the limited format. Also you would need 7 lands if you want to live in the christmasland of countering a spell and then using the creature to block.
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To the people that say that a card needs to be a higher rarity because of Limited... I hate you guys so much. I present to you with this.
I mean if the argument is, "we don't want people countering big eldrazis", well, one, wizards has explicitly said this isn't a battlecruiser limited format again like RotE, and the spoilers have made that abundantly clear, so its not comparable anyway, but two, even if it was comparable, RotE had deprive at common, and the lesser lay bare (not so much unified will). People deprived the crap out of ulamog's crusher and hand of emrakul
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
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Getting owned by this in Limited is going to suck
I doubt it. My guess is 3 is more correct than 4, and 2 may be correct in some decks.
- Manite
Calling this a slightly better cancel is just plain incorrect. Scatter is dramatically better than Cancel.
- Manite
That aside: Amazing art and the effect is nice for control decks. Using target removal on an animated land isn't exactly what anyone wants to do against control on turn 6 or later, so the only worry would be something like Languish from Abzan.
I agree, but probably for different reasons. I believe that uncommon should make up the bulk of playable cards with rares having unique effects. I truly and honestly believe that "limited" + mythic rarity is just an excuse to make chase cards and that limited is actually a lot more fun with strong cards available to everyone as opposed to the luck few who pull a mythic. That's why Modern Masters' limited is widely regarded as the best limited format of all time.
Spirits
1. 100% guarantee we have a cycle of "playable control cards with Awaken" at rare. We already have the white boardwipe and the black spot removal. This fits the cycle.
2. What rarity is Mystic Snake? Rare. This is like a bigger Mystic Snake with "Evoke 1UU," and mechanically it adds more complexity because of counter/land interactions.
3. This is not an effect that should be readily available in a limited set where you want people to actually cast Eldrazi.
4. The cost on all rares in this set is going to be much lower than normal because over-opening for lands; see Khans.
Draining Whelk had a lot more complexity. It had an X counters effect and did something unique. This is just the blandest of all staple cards with a keyword stapled to it. The entire card is four words of english rules text long. Its filling a niche that has historically been at common/uncommon, and the cancel it riffs off was always at common
Except when that "powerful thing" requires 10+ lands on the field before it becomes relevant, with which an Awaken only deck, it does. That's why awaken only can be used as secondary mechanic/backup plan/mana sink in a true control deck. It's not relevant until the game should already be in hand.
Everyone talking about Mystic Snake seems to be forgetting that Ulamog's nullifier was a 4 mana counter creature too...
It's comparable to Hero's Downfall. Want to play something that uses black removal? Gotta have four of those. And since so many need a full set, they are going to be expensive.
I was going to keep playing UR Counterburn on the cheap, because I rarely have time to play standard, so budget is a factor. Not having this year's Cancel variant would/will be a glaring hole in that strategy.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
This is just a cancel with a set keyword stapled to its butt. Its not mechanically interesting or unique, its not complicated, its only argument for being at rare is that it would warp limited, which I must say, if it was too strong at uncommon when cancel has always been common, yeesh, this limited format will be demented
Now if they HAD reprinted undermine and put it at rare, everyone would be happy eh
I don't think anyone's ever complained about strong cards being at uncommon. Ideally that's where they'd all be. Putting cards that are basic constructed staples, as in this case, at rare is annoying.
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
Countered Emrakul eh? Better read the first line of text on Emrakul again lol.
I haven't countered emrakul.
I just targeted it so the counter would fail, but I'd get a 16/16 flier to block it.
better read my post you quoted again lol
This is what bothers me the most. Anything before 6 mana... this thing is just a Cancel. Like... was Cancel that BUSTED in limited for them to make this into a rare? "BUT IT MAKES A GUY!" ... at 6 mana! Like clan-iraq said... Cancel never warped the limited format. Also you would need 7 lands if you want to live in the christmasland of countering a spell and then using the creature to block.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY8h2vp5Xis