Cards like this make me really sad that WotC blacklisted Tribal Cards from ever being designed again
Something like this would be interesting and justifiable if it was at least technically a Dinosaur as well
Putting an axe to the Tribal subtype mechanic made me sad as well. I think that mechanic is very fun, creates cool synergies, was powerful, but not so powerful it warps the game like Phyrexian Mana or whatever.
I just wonder why rampant growth is "too strong". I've never felt like it was that strong, am I missing something or is WoTC just being incredibly stingy with their power budget?
Short version? When Land destruction was a thing land tutoring wasn't as defended from interactivity. But as they dialed back land interaction that means that freely ramping in a land is very safe compared to a mana dork, which is very unsafe as every color has an answer to them (blue a little less so than the others). With them moving a way from 'T1 Dork T2 Ramp T3 Big things' you can't expect someone to play a T2 Dork when a T2 Ramp spell exists. Thus, we get here, T2.5 Ramp spells.
The changes to other parts of the meta do swing into each other like this. I mean, if you want back Rampant Growth we'd need efficient unfettered Land Destruction. Who is in on that?
I just want a set where they don't have to hold back for once...like Kaladesh block.
I 100% disagree. After playing magic for 15 years and seeing what power creep does to the game I would love a couple of kamigawa level blocks. Kaladesh was a mistake. Gideon ally of zendikar was a mistake. Emrakul was a mistake. Collected company was a mistake. Fetchlands with fual lands was a mistake. Siege rhino was a mistake.
These cards that demand an immediate answer or else sorten games and increase variance. It sells product in the short term because of the dragonball z effect, but the quality of gameplay diminishes in favor of swingy games the devolve into topdecks. I'm more eexcited about the direction magic is going now than I have been since lorwyn.
And I 100% agree with Kinto. They know that with Dominaria bringing back older playets (myself since Mirage... Whatever year that was) they need to tone down the shinanigans that keep us snubbing the game. Kaladesh had potential but Energy turned out to be toi gimicky. I really wish still we had the 18 month rotation so it would go at the start of Dominariq but no such luck.
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The changes to other parts of the meta do swing into each other like this. I mean, if you want back Rampant Growth we'd need efficient unfettered Land Destruction. Who is in on that?
I am - bring on the land destruction and efficient mill decks. Also - get rid of cards like Evolving Wilds that make it too easy for non green-centric decks to access all colours (im extremely annoind it is being reprinted this set - i was hoping to see it rotate out) Three colour goodstuff is in my opinion one of the main things killing the game right now. Colour strengths and weaknesses mean less when you can cherrypick.
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Rampant Growth isn't actually too strong. It just limits design space. Its difficult to make cards with set specific things added to Rampant Growth without making something strictly better. Often this means they make a worse Rampant Growth by increasing mana cost or adding restrictions. However, I'd rather they keep certain bread and butter cards like Rampant Growth and explore set specific mechanics in other ways.
I am - bring on the land destruction and efficient mill decks. Also - get rid of cards like Evolving Wilds that make it too easy for non green-centric decks to access all colours (im extremely annoind it is being reprinted this set - i was hoping to see it rotate out) Three colour goodstuff is in my opinion one of the main things killing the game right now. Colour strengths and weaknesses mean less when you can cherrypick.
I'm more okay with the idea of land control (land doesn't untap during controller's untap) and land destruction if it doesn't out and out prevent the other player from playing. Same with Mill. Both need to be stronger, but not in such a way that the game stops being fun.
For instance destroying their lands if they have more than you, or if they have more than X reasonable count of land feels more like playing a game then 'I'm going to keep you at zero lands have fun playing!' decks of yore.
Mill itself I have no immediate fix ideas, other than 'I drink your milkshake' mill like Dead Man's Chest, or a less fragile version of Circu (copies of cards milled/exiled can't be cast). So that mill actually does something to the game state on its own, while you work them to zero.
I just want a set where they don't have to hold back for once...like Kaladesh block.
I 100% disagree. After playing magic for 15 years and seeing what power creep does to the game I would love a couple of kamigawa level blocks. Kaladesh was a mistake. Gideon ally of zendikar was a mistake. Emrakul was a mistake. Collected company was a mistake. Fetchlands with fual lands was a mistake. Siege rhino was a mistake.
These cards that demand an immediate answer or else sorten games and increase variance. It sells product in the short term because of the dragonball z effect, but the quality of gameplay diminishes in favor of swingy games the devolve into topdecks. I'm more eexcited about the direction magic is going now than I have been since lorwyn.
And I 100% agree with Kinto. They know that with Dominaria bringing back older playets (myself since Mirage... Whatever year that was) they need to tone down the shinanigans that keep us snubbing the game. Kaladesh had potential but Energy turned out to be toi gimicky. I really wish still we had the 18 month rotation so it would go at the start of Dominariq but no such luck.
What do you mean Energy was too gimmicky? I've been meaning to ask this but didn't get around to it.
This is a strictly worse rampant growth. It is uncommon. Growth was common. I wonder why some people feel like this game is getting bland. Apparently only dumb creatures and 6 cmc removal can be common now.
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EDH Decks UWB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic's spring of life RUG Animar, Soul of the Elements and friends... lots of them WBG Karador king of two worlds (value and attrition) WRKalemne's Angels BRUG Yidris's Wild Party UWBR Breya's Terrifying Tinker Toys UBRThe Pretender
As an EDH player, i already find Rampant Growth surpassed by nature's lore and farseek, so when i see a card that is even weaker than rampant growth.. just why?
EDH player, please realize that you are playing an Eternal -i. e. non-rotating- format. A Constructed format without cards rotating out will due to its increasing card pool and fluctuatiing power levels in new releases by the nature of its card selection see diminishing returns. That's the deal you get with the format you decide to play. You get the good with the bad and the bad with the good.
If you want to play with all the toys of the game's history, you don't get to complain about not getting as many interesting new toys as players following rotation - that's the deal ever since there is a distinction between rotating and non-rotating formats and shouldn't be news to anyone. That's why.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
The changes to other parts of the meta do swing into each other like this. I mean, if you want back Rampant Growth we'd need efficient unfettered Land Destruction. Who is in on that?
I am - bring on the land destruction and efficient mill decks. Also - get rid of cards like Evolving Wilds that make it too easy for non green-centric decks to access all colours (im extremely annoind it is being reprinted this set - i was hoping to see it rotate out) Three colour goodstuff is in my opinion one of the main things killing the game right now. Colour strengths and weaknesses mean less when you can cherrypick.
Sigh...this is another case of what I call "spike blindness". Of course players used to pushed land destruction won't see a problem with it, because from their perspetive as long as it doesn't keep them from winning there is no problem as playing overpowered cards doesn't ruin their fun. If it ruins the opponent's fun? Oh well, step up or step out; that's the attitude I get from players who push for stuff like Bolt, Counterspell, and LD, and I find it very destructive to the game's long-term interests, not to mention very alienating to the majority of the customer base. If players with spike blindness got their way the game would devolve to a three-turn arms race of 1-2 mana spells with little room for versatility. There might as well not even be 4+ mana spells in such a game, because the Good ol' Days Spikes apparently don't have the patience for them.
And I don't think Evolving Wilds is the main contributing factor to three-color goodstuff compared to the Kaladesh Fastlands, Amonkhet Cycling Lands, and Ixalan Checklands providing high T1-2 mana base consistency. Temur Energy? No Wilds. Ramunap Red? No Wilds. U/W Gift? No Wilds. As the INN-RTR Standard of Checks and Shocks might remind us, anytime you have two highly synergistic cycles of duals in Standard, you're going to have greater than average tricolor presence. This is especially true when dual land types are involved.
And of the top three decks, only one uses more than two colors. The top deck, maybe, but it ain't three colors making Temur Energy a dominant force. Tricolor is only a problem when the individual cards of those colors synergize too effectively, as Temur's energy cards are doing (even after Aetherworks Marvel's banning, though less so).
If you think tricolor's a problem now, you bring pushed LD back, you're either enabling red multicolor control decks or Monored to take over, depending on how splashable that LD is (imagine Ramunap Red with Molten Rain). The only way you're getting a LD spell that costs less than 4 is if it has a conditional cost reduction clause, like the Tectonic Edge condition. "4R LD Spell costs 2 less to cast if it targets a land controlled by a player who controls four or more lands."
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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.
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.
LOL and yet MaRo complains about magic being too "texty". OF COURSE, the more stipulations you add the more wordy the game gets.
Having said that, I'm not exactly opposed to this. My only gripe is that they should allow the land to come in untapped. It's also less wordy this way. Are they so afraid of having a basic land come untapped?
LOL and yet MaRo complains about magic being too "texty". OF COURSE, the more stipulations you add the more wordy the game gets.
Having said that, I'm not exactly opposed to this. My only gripe is that they should allow the land to come in untapped. It's also less wordy this way. Are they so afraid of having a basic land come untapped?
C'mon Wizards.
How long until basic lands will be too powerful for Standard?
]
How long until basic lands will be too powerful for Standard?
Basic lands have become overpower when they removed the mana burn rule.
But I'm sad that after 1 mana manadorks, now 2 mana ramp also has become "too good." Well, at least it gives me another rampant growth effect in Dinosaur EDH, even if it's not the most optimal version, redundancy is great.
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W get cards slightly better or worse than other cards all the time. If one of those changes is aimed at more subtle levels of tuning the environment than "obviously format-warping" that's ridiculous? Do you react the same way when they make a strictly better card or are you fine with that because it benefits you as a player?
What - as an EDH player - is the problem with getting this card over a Rampant Growth reprint? With the reprint your card pool is increased by one less card. With Thunderherd Migration the pool is increased by one card that can reliabl act as an additional copy of Rampant Growth in the Singleton format in a Dinosaur deck, but is of little interest to anyone else.
So where is making this card -created, as always, with Limited and Standard in mind- a problem to the EDH player? What's the joke?
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
The fact that this is uncommon is what bothers me the most.
I can get behind Rampant Growth being a little powerful for a limited environment in today standards, being creatures so pushed. But, c'mon, this is just insulting.
I can't understand WotC's policy for balancing cards nowadays. You see cards like The Scarab God but somehow Rampant Growth is too powerful? I mean, we can't even get a Terror nowadays . . . I have to pay 5 mana to kill a creature with Contract Killing
My conclusion from this spoiler season is that WotC already has the metagame they want for standard/limited in mind while designing the sets, which I think is horrible. The good things about new sets is brewing decks, finding great interactions with the variety of cards, finding cool value combos. But it seems like we will have yet another 4 months of stale & uninteresting decks.
Please someone tell me if I'm wrong or WotC is lacking some balls. . .
Fair enough - the last time I was seriously into Standard was during EMN when none of the lands mentioned esxisted. It was all painlands and wilds. These lands where what turned Bant CoCo from a fringe strategy to a consistant threat due to colour accessibility.
As for the comment directed at me about r/x (im on my phone and its hard to trim a long post chain so i didnt quote) While my last competitve deck was mono-red (Vampire Madness mainly) I typically play two colour decks - and usually not red. Actually im ususally in GW, GU or WB. I guess I do like WR now and then.
I come from an era where two colour decks were at risk of colour screw unless you were mainly green, and three colour decks were a huge risk.
It greatly bothers me that three colour decks can hit their manabase consistently and play all the besr cards for their colour - three colour decks should be a risk outside of sets like Karns or Alara where this is the set's focus. Again - unless you are heavy green, since that's part of what green should be bringing to the table.
There is nothing wrong with this spell and it will work perfectly fine for Standard. If you already have a dinosaur in hand this is even better than the other cmc 3 land tutors we already have, Beneath the Sands and Spring // Mind. If ramp is your goal and you are playing dinosaurs then you are already using a full set of Ranging Raptors, anyway, so I don't see a problem here.
The most efficient ramp in Standard, though, is a card no one is using: Harvest Season. If you have a vehicle you can tap everyone to crew it (only the minimum is required, there is no max limit) or you can attack with everyone then use Season to look for as many lands as you have tapped creatures. The opportunity cost is leaving your shields down for only one turn...unless you happen to have a Dramatic Reversal in hand.
I expect a tribal card to be stronger in a tribal deck than it's norml counterpart. This card should be stronger in a dinosaur deck but it simple isn't. So yeah i find a little ridicolous that a card made for a certain tribe is weaker than a normal rampant growth.
That's the point though. Rampant Growth is not "the normal counterpart" any more than Counterspell is... even Cancel is not "the normal counterpart". We have designers (some of them what then would have been called developer and now (play) designer) on record stating that the reference value they associate with some effect would best be reflect with "half mana" costs - which means that the old "normal counterpart" like Counterspell/Rampant Growth is no longer what you are supposed to get.
So overall none of that is an explanation at all why you think the official stance on Rampant Growth is ridiculous and more a testament that you do not comprehend the official stance. And that is: For the moment Rampant Growth is not "the normal counterpart" - instead it's somewhere above... and with this card we can sevely assume that "somewhere above" is at approximately one green and one-and-a-half generic mana.
I can understand that. Rampan Growth is one of those cards I always could rely on an put in my deck without a second though - like Last Gasp or Mana Leak. If deck building wants to "smart up", then why not not have it?
They could have added a "you may put a +1/+1 on target dinosaur you control" or "you gain 1 life for every dinosaur you control" or something like that, just to try. They didn't even tried.
They could also have put on it "you gain 1 life if you control exactly two Dinosaurs with a total converted mana cost of exactly 7." or "Put a creature card with trample from your graveyard on the bottom of your library"
That's just a more extreme example of what you are suggesting: An additional line on a card that could instead be straight-forward and diludes what the card is meant to provide.
Heck, one of your suggestions even would mean that you cannot cast your ramp spell unless you already control a Dinosaur. That's a silly side effect. It's easy to find a better wording that fixes this issue, but the fact that your spontaneous ideas introduce side effects in the first place can serve as an example.
I really don't understand how this relates to your position as an EDH player and how your argument not allowing downward correction is anything but asking for power creep in rotating Standard based on the perspective of non-rotating EDH; the very thing Standard as a principle is meant to avoid is being beholden to the past though. So any argument of "This cannot be strictly worse than <past card> or it's ridiculous" is itself absurd - unless you already are a militant opponent of Standard.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Cards like this are the reason why I no longer play retail Magic. Cube and Kitchen Table are where it's at. I'm not going to shell out $5 for Vraska's Contempt when Doom Blade is an infinitely better card at $.25 . I'm thankful that I got back into the game around Zendikar/Scars. Unlike the trash printed these days, those cards have stood the test of time and are still very playable (and they make up like half of the entire playable Modern pool).
Cards like this are the reason why I no longer play retail Magic. Cube and Kitchen Table are where it's at. I'm not going to shell out $5 for Vraska's Contempt when Doom Blade is an infinitely better card at $.25 . I'm thankful that I got back into the game around Zendikar/Scars. Unlike the trash printed these days, those cards have stood the test of time and are still very playable (and they make up like half of the entire playable Modern pool).
Unless you need to kill a Black creature, a creature with Regenerate, or a Planeswalker, and in all cases you want them not to get it back with an E Wit or other forms of recursion. The card price variation is, yes, all standard, but even when Contempt isn't in standard it'll find homes in decks.
Yes, Doom Blade is cheaper in a lot of cases, but it's also flat junk useless in a lot of cases too. So your comparison falls very flat here. Especially if you think Rampant DinoGrowth will be a five dollar card.
Cards like this are the reason why I no longer play retail Magic. Cube and Kitchen Table are where it's at. I'm not going to shell out $5 for Vraska's Contempt when Doom Blade is an infinitely better card at $.25 . I'm thankful that I got back into the game around Zendikar/Scars. Unlike the trash printed these days, those cards have stood the test of time and are still very playable (and they make up like half of the entire playable Modern pool).
Unless you need to kill a Black creature, a creature with Regenerate, or a Planeswalker, and in all cases you want them not to get it back with an E Wit or other forms of recursion. The card price variation is, yes, all standard, but even when Contempt isn't in standard it'll find homes in decks.
Yes, Doom Blade is cheaper in a lot of cases, but it's also flat junk useless in a lot of cases too. So your comparison falls very flat here. Especially if you think Rampant DinoGrowth will be a five dollar card.
How did I know someone would read my post and immediately read the card back to me as if I didn't have any idea what the text on Doom Blade was. I reference Doom Blade because it represents an entire category of Magic cards (black removal). Vraska's Contempt would be a fine draft uncommon at its mana cost. Judging by pure power-level though, no it is not even in the same ball park as Doom Blade. It doesn't so much as crack the top 20 as far as targeted black removal goes. Yet here we are in 2017 being asked to pony up real money for a $5 rare that will NEVER see play outside the money pit that is limited/standard and is COMPLETELY outclassed by common cards printed 5 years ago.
How did I know someone would read my post and immediately read the card back to me as if I didn't have any idea what the text on Doom Blade was. I reference Doom Blade because it represents an entire category of Magic cards (black removal). Vraska's Contempt would be a fine draft uncommon at its mana cost. Judging by pure power-level though, no it is not even in the same ball park as Doom Blade. It doesn't so much as crack the top 20 as far as targeted black removal goes. Yet here we are in 2017 being asked to pony up real money for a $5 rare that will NEVER see play outside the money pit that is limited/standard and is COMPLETELY outclassed by common cards printed 5 years ago.
You made the common blunder of thinking a very good common from back in the day is a universal answer in all situations? I agree that Contempt shouldn't be a five dollar cards, but if you think that every possible deck would rather have Doomblade, you're just flat out wrong.
In faster formats, where every point of mana counts, you'd rather have Doomblade... unless you know the format swings toward walkers then you probably want Downfall instead. Because if you can't get in on their walkers with creatures, and you're in black, you probably want to just kill them. I'd take Contempt if I know I have to deal with things that recur easily or are generally indestructible. You're mistaking 'usually better' or 'often better' as 'always better this other card is garbage' which is just patently untrue.
I just checked the most recent Standard Top8, every deck has something Doomblade is just a dead draw against that Contempt actually solves.
I get why they made it this way, but I still think it could've been made in a way that gives dino decks what they need: another way to trigger enrage. This should've been GR +2 if no dino in hand, and may deal 1 damage to target creature. Alas we get just a maybe rampant growth. C'mon, I want my ramp to be able to ping ranging raptors for so I can get to 8-9 and cast all those awesome Timmy cards!
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How did I know someone would read my post and immediately read the card back to me as if I didn't have any idea what the text on Doom Blade was. I reference Doom Blade because it represents an entire category of Magic cards (black removal). Vraska's Contempt would be a fine draft uncommon at its mana cost. Judging by pure power-level though, no it is not even in the same ball park as Doom Blade. It doesn't so much as crack the top 20 as far as targeted black removal goes. Yet here we are in 2017 being asked to pony up real money for a $5 rare that will NEVER see play outside the money pit that is limited/standard and is COMPLETELY outclassed by common cards printed 5 years ago.
You made the common blunder of thinking a very good common from back in the day is a universal answer in all situations? I agree that Contempt shouldn't be a five dollar cards, but if you think that every possible deck would rather have Doomblade, you're just flat out wrong.
In faster formats, where every point of mana counts, you'd rather have Doomblade... unless you know the format swings toward walkers then you probably want Downfall instead. Because if you can't get in on their walkers with creatures, and you're in black, you probably want to just kill them. I'd take Contempt if I know I have to deal with things that recur easily or are generally indestructible. You're mistaking 'usually better' or 'often better' as 'always better this other card is garbage' which is just patently untrue.
I just checked the most recent Standard Top8, every deck has something Doomblade is just a dead draw against that Contempt actually solves.
What format are you talking about? There isn't a format that exists that would objectively put Vraska's Contempt ahead of Doom Blade (except maybe EDH, but that format doesn't want either of them). Your mistaking "format" for "match-up." Of course I'm going to sideboard out Doom Blade against something like Mono-Black Devotion. But if Doom Blade were to be spoiled today, Vraska's Contempt would be bulk tomorrow. And believe me, by the end of standard it will be bulk because the card sucks compared to wealth of options available for non-rotating formats (kitchen table included).
Like I originally said, I don't touch retail Magic (though I'd dabble if they brought back Block). You might as well just light your money on fire if you're spending it on Standard. I'm not about to waste money on cards that aren't even good enough to compete at the kitchen table. If Hasbro wants my money, watered down versions of Doom Blade and Rampant Growth aren't going to motivate me to open up my wallet.
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Putting an axe to the Tribal subtype mechanic made me sad as well. I think that mechanic is very fun, creates cool synergies, was powerful, but not so powerful it warps the game like Phyrexian Mana or whatever.
This set would be way cooler with Tribal spells.
The changes to other parts of the meta do swing into each other like this. I mean, if you want back Rampant Growth we'd need efficient unfettered Land Destruction. Who is in on that?
And I 100% agree with Kinto. They know that with Dominaria bringing back older playets (myself since Mirage... Whatever year that was) they need to tone down the shinanigans that keep us snubbing the game. Kaladesh had potential but Energy turned out to be toi gimicky. I really wish still we had the 18 month rotation so it would go at the start of Dominariq but no such luck.
I am - bring on the land destruction and efficient mill decks. Also - get rid of cards like Evolving Wilds that make it too easy for non green-centric decks to access all colours (im extremely annoind it is being reprinted this set - i was hoping to see it rotate out) Three colour goodstuff is in my opinion one of the main things killing the game right now. Colour strengths and weaknesses mean less when you can cherrypick.
For instance destroying their lands if they have more than you, or if they have more than X reasonable count of land feels more like playing a game then 'I'm going to keep you at zero lands have fun playing!' decks of yore.
Mill itself I have no immediate fix ideas, other than 'I drink your milkshake' mill like Dead Man's Chest, or a less fragile version of Circu (copies of cards milled/exiled can't be cast). So that mill actually does something to the game state on its own, while you work them to zero.
What do you mean Energy was too gimmicky? I've been meaning to ask this but didn't get around to it.
Thats exactly whats wrong with magic ...
Strictly worse, make it uncommon, because, well, its worse than a common, so it has to be uncommon ... derp ... herp ...
I cant stand this card ...
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EDH Decks
UWB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic's spring of life
RUG Animar, Soul of the Elements and friends... lots of them
WBG Karador king of two worlds (value and attrition)
WRKalemne's Angels
BRUG Yidris's Wild Party
UWBR Breya's Terrifying Tinker Toys
UBR The Pretender
EDH player, please realize that you are playing an Eternal -i. e. non-rotating- format. A Constructed format without cards rotating out will due to its increasing card pool and fluctuatiing power levels in new releases by the nature of its card selection see diminishing returns. That's the deal you get with the format you decide to play. You get the good with the bad and the bad with the good.
If you want to play with all the toys of the game's history, you don't get to complain about not getting as many interesting new toys as players following rotation - that's the deal ever since there is a distinction between rotating and non-rotating formats and shouldn't be news to anyone. That's why.
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Sigh...this is another case of what I call "spike blindness". Of course players used to pushed land destruction won't see a problem with it, because from their perspetive as long as it doesn't keep them from winning there is no problem as playing overpowered cards doesn't ruin their fun. If it ruins the opponent's fun? Oh well, step up or step out; that's the attitude I get from players who push for stuff like Bolt, Counterspell, and LD, and I find it very destructive to the game's long-term interests, not to mention very alienating to the majority of the customer base. If players with spike blindness got their way the game would devolve to a three-turn arms race of 1-2 mana spells with little room for versatility. There might as well not even be 4+ mana spells in such a game, because the Good ol' Days Spikes apparently don't have the patience for them.
And I don't think Evolving Wilds is the main contributing factor to three-color goodstuff compared to the Kaladesh Fastlands, Amonkhet Cycling Lands, and Ixalan Checklands providing high T1-2 mana base consistency. Temur Energy? No Wilds. Ramunap Red? No Wilds. U/W Gift? No Wilds. As the INN-RTR Standard of Checks and Shocks might remind us, anytime you have two highly synergistic cycles of duals in Standard, you're going to have greater than average tricolor presence. This is especially true when dual land types are involved.
And of the top three decks, only one uses more than two colors. The top deck, maybe, but it ain't three colors making Temur Energy a dominant force. Tricolor is only a problem when the individual cards of those colors synergize too effectively, as Temur's energy cards are doing (even after Aetherworks Marvel's banning, though less so).
If you think tricolor's a problem now, you bring pushed LD back, you're either enabling red multicolor control decks or Monored to take over, depending on how splashable that LD is (imagine Ramunap Red with Molten Rain). The only way you're getting a LD spell that costs less than 4 is if it has a conditional cost reduction clause, like the Tectonic Edge condition. "4R LD Spell costs 2 less to cast if it targets a land controlled by a player who controls four or more lands."
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.
Having said that, I'm not exactly opposed to this. My only gripe is that they should allow the land to come in untapped. It's also less wordy this way. Are they so afraid of having a basic land come untapped?
C'mon Wizards.
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
How long until basic lands will be too powerful for Standard?
Basic lands have become overpower when they removed the mana burn rule.
But I'm sad that after 1 mana manadorks, now 2 mana ramp also has become "too good." Well, at least it gives me another rampant growth effect in Dinosaur EDH, even if it's not the most optimal version, redundancy is great.
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W get cards slightly better or worse than other cards all the time. If one of those changes is aimed at more subtle levels of tuning the environment than "obviously format-warping" that's ridiculous? Do you react the same way when they make a strictly better card or are you fine with that because it benefits you as a player?
What - as an EDH player - is the problem with getting this card over a Rampant Growth reprint? With the reprint your card pool is increased by one less card. With Thunderherd Migration the pool is increased by one card that can reliabl act as an additional copy of Rampant Growth in the Singleton format in a Dinosaur deck, but is of little interest to anyone else.
So where is making this card -created, as always, with Limited and Standard in mind- a problem to the EDH player? What's the joke?
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The fact that this is uncommon is what bothers me the most.
I can get behind Rampant Growth being a little powerful for a limited environment in today standards, being creatures so pushed. But, c'mon, this is just insulting.
I can't understand WotC's policy for balancing cards nowadays. You see cards like The Scarab God but somehow Rampant Growth is too powerful? I mean, we can't even get a Terror nowadays . . . I have to pay 5 mana to kill a creature with Contract Killing
My conclusion from this spoiler season is that WotC already has the metagame they want for standard/limited in mind while designing the sets, which I think is horrible. The good things about new sets is brewing decks, finding great interactions with the variety of cards, finding cool value combos. But it seems like we will have yet another 4 months of stale & uninteresting decks.
Please someone tell me if I'm wrong or WotC is lacking some balls. . .
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As for the comment directed at me about r/x (im on my phone and its hard to trim a long post chain so i didnt quote) While my last competitve deck was mono-red (Vampire Madness mainly) I typically play two colour decks - and usually not red. Actually im ususally in GW, GU or WB. I guess I do like WR now and then.
I come from an era where two colour decks were at risk of colour screw unless you were mainly green, and three colour decks were a huge risk.
It greatly bothers me that three colour decks can hit their manabase consistently and play all the besr cards for their colour - three colour decks should be a risk outside of sets like Karns or Alara where this is the set's focus. Again - unless you are heavy green, since that's part of what green should be bringing to the table.
The most efficient ramp in Standard, though, is a card no one is using: Harvest Season. If you have a vehicle you can tap everyone to crew it (only the minimum is required, there is no max limit) or you can attack with everyone then use Season to look for as many lands as you have tapped creatures. The opportunity cost is leaving your shields down for only one turn...unless you happen to have a Dramatic Reversal in hand.
That's the point though. Rampant Growth is not "the normal counterpart" any more than Counterspell is... even Cancel is not "the normal counterpart". We have designers (some of them what then would have been called developer and now (play) designer) on record stating that the reference value they associate with some effect would best be reflect with "half mana" costs - which means that the old "normal counterpart" like Counterspell/Rampant Growth is no longer what you are supposed to get.
So overall none of that is an explanation at all why you think the official stance on Rampant Growth is ridiculous and more a testament that you do not comprehend the official stance. And that is: For the moment Rampant Growth is not "the normal counterpart" - instead it's somewhere above... and with this card we can sevely assume that "somewhere above" is at approximately one green and one-and-a-half generic mana.
I can understand that. Rampan Growth is one of those cards I always could rely on an put in my deck without a second though - like Last Gasp or Mana Leak. If deck building wants to "smart up", then why not not have it?
They could also have put on it "you gain 1 life if you control exactly two Dinosaurs with a total converted mana cost of exactly 7." or "Put a creature card with trample from your graveyard on the bottom of your library"
That's just a more extreme example of what you are suggesting: An additional line on a card that could instead be straight-forward and diludes what the card is meant to provide.
Heck, one of your suggestions even would mean that you cannot cast your ramp spell unless you already control a Dinosaur. That's a silly side effect. It's easy to find a better wording that fixes this issue, but the fact that your spontaneous ideas introduce side effects in the first place can serve as an example.
I really don't understand how this relates to your position as an EDH player and how your argument not allowing downward correction is anything but asking for power creep in rotating Standard based on the perspective of non-rotating EDH; the very thing Standard as a principle is meant to avoid is being beholden to the past though. So any argument of "This cannot be strictly worse than <past card> or it's ridiculous" is itself absurd - unless you already are a militant opponent of Standard.
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Yes, Doom Blade is cheaper in a lot of cases, but it's also flat junk useless in a lot of cases too. So your comparison falls very flat here. Especially if you think Rampant DinoGrowth will be a five dollar card.
In faster formats, where every point of mana counts, you'd rather have Doomblade... unless you know the format swings toward walkers then you probably want Downfall instead. Because if you can't get in on their walkers with creatures, and you're in black, you probably want to just kill them. I'd take Contempt if I know I have to deal with things that recur easily or are generally indestructible. You're mistaking 'usually better' or 'often better' as 'always better this other card is garbage' which is just patently untrue.
I just checked the most recent Standard Top8, every deck has something Doomblade is just a dead draw against that Contempt actually solves.
UG Tishana, Voice of Thunder GU
UBW Sen Triplets WBU
WUBGAtraxa, Praetors' Voice GBUW
WUBRGJodah, Archmage Eternal GRBUW
GWR Mayael the Anima RWG
RWB Edgar Markov BWR
WG Gaddok Teeg GW
W Oketra the True W
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Like I originally said, I don't touch retail Magic (though I'd dabble if they brought back Block). You might as well just light your money on fire if you're spending it on Standard. I'm not about to waste money on cards that aren't even good enough to compete at the kitchen table. If Hasbro wants my money, watered down versions of Doom Blade and Rampant Growth aren't going to motivate me to open up my wallet.