My problem with this leak is very simple. Midnight Scavengers has the "(Melds with Graf Rafts)" in italic, however italic things in the bottom of cards tend to be flavor text (Could be reminder text but doesn't follow a keyword)...
People who are complaining (I scoff at the notion that they will listen to me, but here I go) need to realize that both of these cards are cards that Wizards would print in a regular limited environment. Black has had 2 mana 2/1s, and 5 mana bad 3/3 Gravediggers before. If these two cards were spoiled when the set spoiler went up, and they didn't have any abilities, you'd just accept them and move on. Limited fodder, meh.
That's what these cards are, limited fodder, with marginal upside. We can't know how much payoff you'll get for drafting both halves, but the reason Soulbond was so good in AVR was because that format had no removal. We already have plenty of removal in SOI that can kill a 3/3. They've done a fine job of putting this mechanic on two otherwise printable limited fodder cards specifically so that you don't have a dead card if you open this and can't draft the other half. It stands to reason that the other commons with this ability will be priced the same, giving you a nice bonus if you assemble the combo, not hamstringing you if you can't. Also, since these are double faced cards, you should be able to see who opens what at your table and draft accordingly.
I imagine the rares will have much more upside, because there's little to no chance of you drafting two particular rares or mythics in a set, so any constructed applications will be entirely separate from the limited filler cards. Rarity plays such a huge part of this mechanic that you really can stick it on mediocre commons and powerful rares.
Another point: Assuming the result of the meld acts as a single creature, it would suffer from the issue of Auras in being potential card disadvantage. If you meld these two cards and your opponent kills it, you just lost two cards to their one. It's a potentially explosive mechanic but one that is not without inherent risk.
Though without actually knowing the rules of the mechanic, a lot of this is simply speculation. I'm mostly super curious right now about what the back faces look like; do both "halves" of the meld have the same back face? What happens when they're melded? Does one remain in exile, or do they both return being treated as a single object? This is by far the most complicated mechanic in the block, though I don't think it's too far given the relative simplicity of the non-DFC mechanics.
I'm also really glad that this leaked only a single day before official previews and the new mechanics article are published, to avoid the worst of the consequences of the Kozilek/colorless mana symbol leak fiasco. We have less than a day of rampant speculation and jumped conclusions before we get a proper explanation.
You probably stack them on top of each other. What if you have to use two kill spells to destroy a Melded creature? That would make it badass and make Declaration In Stone and Ever After shoot up.
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My problem with this leak is very simple. Midnight Scavengers has the "(Melds with Graf Rafts)" in italic, however italic things in the bottom of cards tend to be flavor text (Could be reminder text but doesn't follow a keyword)...
Isn't reminder text always in parentheses and italics?
Yeah I was thinking the same thing GAThraawn. 2 mana 2/1 in limited is not bad. Conditional gravedigger at 5? Yeah these are cards they would print. Now they just have a little more upside. In fact, this could make drafting REALLY interesting in terms of pick order and such. Isn't that what limited is all about or am I missing something.
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Query: if one casts Coax from the Blind Eternities to get the other component for a meld combo from the sideboard, can one choose a card based on its Eldrazi face-down side? Because this makes for an interesting connection with the Sideboard discussion and why we are getting such an unusual tutor.
Cards in all areas are considered to be their front face, so you wouldn't be able to get Hanweir from an "Eldrazi" card, the same way that Startled Awake isn't found by things that care about creatures.
Unless the front is "Eldrazi town" or something obviously.
The joke is that you play the rats on turn 2 and trade it for your opponent's 2-drop, then later the Scavengers disentomb the rats to upgrade themselves.
And the power level seems well-tuned, so you can actually pick them up. Neither is an extremely high pick, but Scavengers is a good Limited card if you have some 2-3 drops with late game utility (fliers, deathtouchers, Duskwatch Recruiter). Then once you have a Scavenger, the rat (which is normally marginally playable) becomes more attractive, so the drafter with the Scavengers can get rats late in the pack.
The joke is that you play the rats on turn 2 and trade it for your opponent's 2-drop, then later the Scavengers disentomb the rats to upgrade themselves.
And the power level seems well-tuned, so you can actually pick them up. Neither is an extremely high pick, but Scavengers is a good Limited card if you have some 2-3 drops with late game utility (fliers, deathtouchers, Duskwatch Recruiter). Then once you have a Scavenger, the rat (which is normally marginally playable) becomes more attractive, so the drafter with the Scavengers can get rats late in the pack.
I accept the reasonable rewards for drafting synergy like this. If you draft this and reap the rewards for it, more power to you. It's sealed that I find this to be an absurd hit-or-miss mechanic. You don't have any control in sealed whether you get the matching set or not. Sure, the cards may be playable sealed cards on their own so you didn't pull dead cards if you only got one half or the other. But the players that pulled both halves will likely have a substantial gameplay advantage relative to those who pulled nonmatches.
The joke is that you play the rats on turn 2 and trade it for your opponent's 2-drop, then later the Scavengers disentomb the rats to upgrade themselves.
And the power level seems well-tuned, so you can actually pick them up. Neither is an extremely high pick, but Scavengers is a good Limited card if you have some 2-3 drops with late game utility (fliers, deathtouchers, Duskwatch Recruiter). Then once you have a Scavenger, the rat (which is normally marginally playable) becomes more attractive, so the drafter with the Scavengers can get rats late in the pack.
I accept the reasonable rewards for drafting synergy like this. If you draft this and reap the rewards for it, more power to you. It's sealed that I find this to be an absurd hit-or-miss mechanic. You don't have any control in sealed whether you get the matching set or not. Sure, the cards may be playable sealed cards on their own so you didn't pull dead cards if you only got one half or the other. But the players that pulled both halves will likely have a substantial gameplay advantage relative to those who pulled nonmatches.
I don't disagree, but... well, that's Sealed for you, right? Synergy mechanics always do that in Sealed, and they're such a positive for draft that I don't want R&D to stop making them.
Just take a break for a while man. Everyone gets burnt out. I honestly wouldn't be shocked if the world continues to rotate as normal even if this does turn out to be real.
This isn't burnout. This is losing any and all faith I had in WotC to be able to differentiate good design philosophy from bad. Not every mechanic was good from a power standpoint, but they at the very least were never this blatantly contrived.
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Usually i hate cards that refer to "specific" other cards by name, as it hurts me if WotC "forces" me to play cards together and does it in such a blatant obvisious way ; bad for deckbuilding jonny (and super terrible in EDH and the like).
HOWEVER, for a mechanic that would actually use 2 cards and the back as a big double card fusion, thats kinda necessary and this cool ability trumps this aspect.
Theres not too many of these cards and its a cool throw in mechanic.
If two reasonable cards can "fuse" into an alien eldrazi, well thats pretty cool and it plays well in terms of Limited, as the cards are well worth being played without that interaction, but if you can get it, you play them together in your deck.
People who are complaining (I scoff at the notion that they will listen to me, but here I go) need to realize that both of these cards are cards that Wizards would print in a regular limited environment. Black has had 2 mana 2/1s, and 5 mana bad 3/3 Gravediggers before. If these two cards were spoiled when the set spoiler went up, and they didn't have any abilities, you'd just accept them and move on. Limited fodder, meh.
That's what these cards are, limited fodder, with marginal upside. We can't know how much payoff you'll get for drafting both halves, but the reason Soulbond was so good in AVR was because that format had no removal. We already have plenty of removal in SOI that can kill a 3/3. They've done a fine job of putting this mechanic on two otherwise printable limited fodder cards specifically so that you don't have a dead card if you open this and can't draft the other half. It stands to reason that the other commons with this ability will be priced the same, giving you a nice bonus if you assemble the combo, not hamstringing you if you can't. Also, since these are double faced cards, you should be able to see who opens what at your table and draft accordingly.
I imagine the rares will have much more upside, because there's little to no chance of you drafting two particular rares or mythics in a set, so any constructed applications will be entirely separate from the limited filler cards. Rarity plays such a huge part of this mechanic that you really can stick it on mediocre commons and powerful rares.
You make some good points. One thing to keep in mind is that there is no requirement for rares to meld with rares. I could definitely see rares melding with commons. The card with the meld trigger has a lot of text that doesn't do anything without its partner. These otherwise vanilla cards fit very nicely in the common slot. Its rare partner then has room for interesting abilities. This ups the frequency of rares being able to meld in draft, which is probably desirable.
Overall, it seems a like cool mechanic. The biggest downside for me is that I'm sad they meld into Eldrazi. I'm tired of those guys.
I said something similar re: DFCs the first time we went to Innistrad. even took 4 months off. but I got over it.
it's not the end of the game. it's not the end of limited. if you can't handle it, take a break and come back fresh for Kaladesh. (you even get a reprieve with Conspiracy if you want it).
You remember AVR limited? Where soulbond was key and whoever had it best won while one color practically never existed?
This mechanic's sheer EXISTENCE makes limited prone to be even more tilted towards whoever is lucky enough to get a pair of matching meld cards. It's also needlessly complex, and above all it's incredibly worrying that not only someone at wizards thought this was a good idea, but that NO ONE shot it down at any point.
Whoever designed this needs to get fired, and anyone who gave it a pass needs to get yelled at. If mechanics this unbelievably asanine are what pass for "good design" then it's time to move to a game that doesn't have their head up their ass.
If you feel so strongly about it you should probably put your money where your mouth is. Would probably bring your blood pressure down a few notches.
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Just take a break for a while man. Everyone gets burnt out. I honestly wouldn't be shocked if the world continues to rotate as normal even if this does turn out to be real.
This isn't burnout. This is losing any and all faith I had in WotC to be able to differentiate good design philosophy from bad. Not every mechanic was good from a power standpoint, but they at the very least were never this blatantly contrived.
That is quite interesting. So you are a designer? And you are able to differentiate good from bad design based on only one card (for mechanical reasons I'm treating them as one for now)? Not even that, without even knowing the other half? That is pretty impressive. Which is sarcasm of course. You didn't even say what exactly your reasons are for this assessment.
I find this mechanic delightfully weird, perfect in flavor and I really can't judge how well designed it is or how powerful it is at the moment. But I wouldn't pretend to be able to do it either.
Hows that? Doing something "new" that isn't new is lazy. Stealing another game's gimmicks is pretty lazy.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
The joke is that you play the rats on turn 2 and trade it for your opponent's 2-drop, then later the Scavengers disentomb the rats to upgrade themselves.
And the power level seems well-tuned, so you can actually pick them up. Neither is an extremely high pick, but Scavengers is a good Limited card if you have some 2-3 drops with late game utility (fliers, deathtouchers, Duskwatch Recruiter). Then once you have a Scavenger, the rat (which is normally marginally playable) becomes more attractive, so the drafter with the Scavengers can get rats late in the pack.
I accept the reasonable rewards for drafting synergy like this. If you draft this and reap the rewards for it, more power to you. It's sealed that I find this to be an absurd hit-or-miss mechanic. You don't have any control in sealed whether you get the matching set or not. Sure, the cards may be playable sealed cards on their own so you didn't pull dead cards if you only got one half or the other. But the players that pulled both halves will likely have a substantial gameplay advantage relative to those who pulled nonmatches.
Even if you pull a match, it's still a 2 card combo that you only have 1 copy of each of the pieces for. Most games you won't even draw it and the upside for melding a pair of commons is probably not tremendously high anyway.
What I'd worry about is someone pulling a matching pair of rares, that could be really powerful, but this problem has always existed (you could also pull just Archangel Avacyn and Nahiri)
Just take a break for a while man. Everyone gets burnt out. I honestly wouldn't be shocked if the world continues to rotate as normal even if this does turn out to be real.
This isn't burnout. This is losing any and all faith I had in WotC to be able to differentiate good design philosophy from bad. Not every mechanic was good from a power standpoint, but they at the very least were never this blatantly contrived.
Seems like a potentially interesting mechanic to me. But if one spoiled card of one mechanic you really hate is enough to drive you from the game, then it seems MTG isn't the game for you. It contains different things for different people. Even if the mechanic does end up sucking horribly, I for one am glad that they are willing to try new things. If you aren't, again, please jump ship. Don't let the proverbial door hit you.
Another point: Assuming the result of the meld acts as a single creature, it would suffer from the issue of Auras in being potential card disadvantage. If you meld these two cards and your opponent kills it, you just lost two cards to their one. It's a potentially explosive mechanic but one that is not without inherent risk.
Though without actually knowing the rules of the mechanic, a lot of this is simply speculation. I'm mostly super curious right now about what the back faces look like; do both "halves" of the meld have the same back face? What happens when they're melded? Does one remain in exile, or do they both return being treated as a single object? This is by far the most complicated mechanic in the block, though I don't think it's too far given the relative simplicity of the non-DFC mechanics.
I'm also really glad that this leaked only a single day before official previews and the new mechanics article are published, to avoid the worst of the consequences of the Kozilek/colorless mana symbol leak fiasco. We have less than a day of rampant speculation and jumped conclusions before we get a proper explanation.
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Isn't reminder text always in parentheses and italics?
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Yeah, me neither.
Cards in all areas are considered to be their front face, so you wouldn't be able to get Hanweir from an "Eldrazi" card, the same way that Startled Awake isn't found by things that care about creatures.
Unless the front is "Eldrazi town" or something obviously.
The joke is that you play the rats on turn 2 and trade it for your opponent's 2-drop, then later the Scavengers disentomb the rats to upgrade themselves.
And the power level seems well-tuned, so you can actually pick them up. Neither is an extremely high pick, but Scavengers is a good Limited card if you have some 2-3 drops with late game utility (fliers, deathtouchers, Duskwatch Recruiter). Then once you have a Scavenger, the rat (which is normally marginally playable) becomes more attractive, so the drafter with the Scavengers can get rats late in the pack.
I accept the reasonable rewards for drafting synergy like this. If you draft this and reap the rewards for it, more power to you. It's sealed that I find this to be an absurd hit-or-miss mechanic. You don't have any control in sealed whether you get the matching set or not. Sure, the cards may be playable sealed cards on their own so you didn't pull dead cards if you only got one half or the other. But the players that pulled both halves will likely have a substantial gameplay advantage relative to those who pulled nonmatches.
This isn't burnout. This is losing any and all faith I had in WotC to be able to differentiate good design philosophy from bad. Not every mechanic was good from a power standpoint, but they at the very least were never this blatantly contrived.
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HOWEVER, for a mechanic that would actually use 2 cards and the back as a big double card fusion, thats kinda necessary and this cool ability trumps this aspect.
Theres not too many of these cards and its a cool throw in mechanic.
If two reasonable cards can "fuse" into an alien eldrazi, well thats pretty cool and it plays well in terms of Limited, as the cards are well worth being played without that interaction, but if you can get it, you play them together in your deck.
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You make some good points. One thing to keep in mind is that there is no requirement for rares to meld with rares. I could definitely see rares melding with commons. The card with the meld trigger has a lot of text that doesn't do anything without its partner. These otherwise vanilla cards fit very nicely in the common slot. Its rare partner then has room for interesting abilities. This ups the frequency of rares being able to meld in draft, which is probably desirable.
Overall, it seems a like cool mechanic. The biggest downside for me is that I'm sad they meld into Eldrazi. I'm tired of those guys.
-Chandra Nalaar
That is quite interesting. So you are a designer? And you are able to differentiate good from bad design based on only one card (for mechanical reasons I'm treating them as one for now)? Not even that, without even knowing the other half? That is pretty impressive. Which is sarcasm of course. You didn't even say what exactly your reasons are for this assessment.
I find this mechanic delightfully weird, perfect in flavor and I really can't judge how well designed it is or how powerful it is at the moment. But I wouldn't pretend to be able to do it either.
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I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Even if you pull a match, it's still a 2 card combo that you only have 1 copy of each of the pieces for. Most games you won't even draw it and the upside for melding a pair of commons is probably not tremendously high anyway.
What I'd worry about is someone pulling a matching pair of rares, that could be really powerful, but this problem has always existed (you could also pull just Archangel Avacyn and Nahiri)
Seems like a potentially interesting mechanic to me. But if one spoiled card of one mechanic you really hate is enough to drive you from the game, then it seems MTG isn't the game for you. It contains different things for different people. Even if the mechanic does end up sucking horribly, I for one am glad that they are willing to try new things. If you aren't, again, please jump ship. Don't let the proverbial door hit you.
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