Er...I suspect there's a timbre that I'm missing, but doesn't "warp" suggest that something was done wrong?
That said, I'm still trying to figure out if ones like the topic creator are trying to get an adrenaline rush out of the game (q.v. referring to things like Thoughtseize as "GOD" cards; as much the word choice as the capitalization). I suppose chess and shogi are out of the question for them...But if adrenaline is part of it, I suppose that WOULD make "reasonably sedate" a bad thing for them.
(And the less said about hyper-unalloyed-tunnel-vision-Spikes, the better. As in, the sort that you'd swear thinks a win streak is necessary and sufficient for enjoyment. What's their failsafe to make sure they get enjoyment even if they lose several times in a row? Although whether they exist in sizable numbers...)
No, in my opinion formats need to be warped every once in a while.
Lol. I get where your coming from, but both the block and spoiler are still young. Plus, I think a lot of people don't truly realize how awesome a card is until it's shuffled and drawn
True. What we really need are blocks that are able to warp the eternal formats around them without needing bans in Standard (see Innistrad's effect on Legacy and Modern).
Certainly so. I disliked last standard for the most part, but it's more to do with a perfect storm situation than to do with anything else. You had some obviously pushed and powerful cards(Geist, Resto Angel, Huntmaster, Snapcaster, LotV, Thrag among others), an incredible mana base(There was no good nor discernible reason to run 2 color over 3), and just straight up huge value/interaction (Farseek into anything, Thrag+Resto annoyance, Bant Hexproof, incredible instants+Flashback+Snapcaster, etc).
Now, I normally wouldn't have a problem with any of these. And all of these things are obviously in eternal formats in spades. But standard has an incredibly limited cardpool comparatively, and personally I think suffers from too many things going on at once. It was a money format, certainly, but it's a bit easier to swallow spending a lot of money on a format that doesn't rotate over one that does every year.
That all said, and my complaining aside, I do honestly agree with you. I would love to see an Innistrad-ish level of power to show up. I honestly never saw much a problem with the cross-format staples, really. Snapcaster was actually fair in standard; I won plenty of games against a Resolved LotV also; Resto Angel was a mistake in my opinion, but I still won games against it due to just pure attrition; I think Standard can easily handle cards like this, and others. And I think that a decent amount of cards should be at least considerable.
I will admit I know little about Modern, however. But shaking things up is always good, otherwise you enter a period of staleness. Which is never good for any format.
A cursory look at Theros, for instance, is pretty bleak. I've seen some people say that nothing in Theros will or has seen play in modern, which is demonstrably false. I simple look at top 8s from the past few weeks indicates a few cards showing up. The problem, however, is that even with my limited knowledge of the format, I can easily see when a card is merely included in a deck that and when a card(or cards) actually significantly alter the game plan. Certainly, there have been small inclusions(And some that surprised me). But from what I've seen, it's more a "This is a good utility spell/creature that fits very well into my current gameplan; so I'll just add 1-2" over "This will bring new things to Modern".
Funny that, I think Theros is one of the best sets ever. Want to talk about power levels, flavour, art or what? OP's complaint is pretty nebulous. You should see how many cards from that set made it into the average cube.
BNG, so far, is not looking as hot - but it's early days yet. Kiora, Herald of Torment and the new Cat legend are great.
Is there even a single card in the entirety of Homelands that is played even at the most fringe level in any format? ....
Ihsan's Shade saw alot of play in mono black necro decks to combat STP back in the day. And Serrated Arrows was in most sideboards at least. Though they were the easiest card to put in any deck when they started forcing players to play Homelands in tourneys. Yes they forced players to play bc noone used them otherwise.
So mostly no, not very many cards made any splashes in any tournament setting in any format other than the two I mentioned. Shame because the setting and story were great.
Funny that, I think Theros is one of the best sets ever. Want to talk about power levels, flavour, art or what? OP's complaint is pretty nebulous. You should see how many cards from that set made it into the average cube.
BNG, so far, is not looking as hot - but it's early days yet. Kiora, Herald of Torment and the new Cat legend are great.
This is true, from a cube point of view Theros is one of the *best* sets in Magic.
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Rest in RIP My Signature, I guess. 2015-2016, we hardly knew ye.
Total side note but I like how people are discussing running this over itself.
Well, it has to be said that Kolaghan is clearly better than Kolaghan. Considering what BR decks usually want and how stiff the competition in this guild is, there is no way that I would run Kolaghan over Kolaghan! Kolaghan might make it in as the sixth guild card or so. Kolaghan on the other hand ranks several places below that.
It was so funny to me when they described this as a downgrade to the original Zurgo during the Pax East panel. I was thinking if this is a downgrade, they should really "downgrade" all legendary creatures. Haha.
My deck designing is quite concise at this point:
1. Come up with deck idea
2. Realize this idea is somehow fundamentally similar to another deck I have or that is commonly played in my group
3. Decide I don't want to disassemble one of my existing decks
4. Give up and do nothing
I don't see the point of this new shroud mechanic. It's strictly worse than Hexproof. Threshold is pretty bad too, Delirium is a much better mechanic and probably easier to activate.
Otherwise this card is a pretty neat guy. Dodges removal and grows into a Primal Huntbeast. 3/5
Theros was intended to shift standard back to a 1-2 color format. Because of this, a lot of its cards were designed for mono-colored decks. Most of the really powerful Theros cards simply don't work in the multicolor format of modern, and aren't powerful enough on their own to warrant a monocolored deck. Cards like Master of Waves and Thassa are really powerful, but don't fit in any of the decks that are good in modern. Stormbreath Dragon sees play. BNG will have a few modern playables. Spirit of the Labrynth seems like it could be good in Modern or Legacy (it's discussion thread is full of people saying it's amazing in legacy, I'm not familiar enough to know if that's just hype). Drown in Sorrow will see some fringe SB play (infest gets used, drown is strictly better and will replace it).
Man do I hate Theros and I'm almost convinced I hate bng more. The mechanics are boring and too heavily tied to limited. I'm interested in seeing the sealed box value a few years down the road.
I got back into the game just as Innistrad rotated. I looked at it and thought, well if the game is that good now it must be a good time to get back into it.
Monstrosity is nice, they should have went with more of that just tried to push the boundaries. Polukranos and Stormbreath are absolutely wild when going monstrous.
The mythics in Born of the Gods just look like pure jank.
Theros was pretty good. So far BNG is worse, putting it in "okay/meh" set territory. I'm not very excited. If you're not into the minor gods (like me) then there are A LOT of DUDS at mythic/rare. Brimaz and Kiora look good but otherwise I'm avoiding this set the way things look now. In time we might see more playables in BNG and appreciate it more but that isn't changing my level of excitement...
Yea remember when everyone was saying ZOMG PRE-BAN TEMPORAL MASTERY and how Vexing Devil was "HOLY **** WTF POWER CREEP LOL GG WIZARDS" and not even talking about Bonfire of the Damned, Angel of Serenity, and claiming Restoration Angel was "too slow and too low impact"? Nobody even talked about Delver of Secrets, people thought Geist was "easy to block"
Remember when Sphinx's Revelation was a 5 dollar mythic because everyone said "it's just worse than Blue Sun's Zenith since it isn't a win condition and you don't get it back"?
The majority of people on this website can't evaluate cards for ****, there aren't very many great cards spoiled so far, but it's just over 1/3 of the set, hardly enough to claim it's jank.
I'm a Limited player and I'm thrilled by BNG up to now. I'm just annoyed they dumped Monstrosity in favor of the weaker (opponent gets a choice) Tribute, but the rest looks fine.
Yea remember when everyone was saying ZOMG PRE-BAN TEMPORAL MASTERY and how Vexing Devil was "HOLY **** WTF POWER CREEP LOL GG WIZARDS" and not even talking about Bonfire of the Damned, Angel of Serenity, and claiming Restoration Angel was "too slow and too low impact"? Nobody even talked about Delver of Secrets, people thought Geist was "easy to block"
Remember when Sphinx's Revelation was a 5 dollar mythic because everyone said "it's just worse than Blue Sun's Zenith since it isn't a win condition and you don't get it back"?
The majority of people on this website can't evaluate cards for ****, there aren't very many great cards spoiled so far, but it's just over 1/3 of the set, hardly enough to claim it's jank.
Thumps up.
That's why making definite statements about cards and their playability in spoiler season gets you nowhere.
Nobody thought Devotion would be a thing until it took a Pro Tour by storm as the most recent example.
What about Born of the Gods? Well, we have Brimaz, the new Xenagos, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Pain Seer, a few good uncommons... and that's it. Of course something else will see play, but doesn't look like much.
I've been playing magic since 93, and I will agree to a point that this block isn't that great. My perspective comes from somebody who prefers legacy playable cards, so standard stuff that may be good doesn't excite me much. There are some good cards in this block, but nothing overly exciting. With that said, it isn't Homelands. Also we haven't seen everything yet. What is nice about this set is some of the uncommons. Unfortunately, when evaluating a set, many people just look at the mythic and rare cards and ignore the rest. Delver was a common and he is wildly used in legacy. There seem to be a few common and uncommon cards in this block that could have potential in the future. Lastly, we have finally seen a few upper rarity cards that should hit the older formats. The spirit is great, and the cat king may even make it to modern and maybe, just maybe a fringe deck in legacy.
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All your base are belong to us!
RIP Batman guy. I hope somebody picks up the slack now that you are gone. Sick children need their Batman.
BNG suffers from the same problem as the last few sets before it, in that it's design by numbers. With the exception of one or two cards, there really aren't many interesting or creative cards, and the power level on anything that isn't a creature is seriously held back. I mean, we have scry 1 on just about everything, and half the time, you can only scry on your own turn. I'm not interested in voltron limited, and the spells just don't interest me as a player. Meanwhile, in what is ostensibly an enchantment-themed set, we haven't had any interesting world enchantments; rather, we got the word enchantment tacked onto creatures, and a series of intellectually lazy arguments as to why this had to be the case. There hasn't been any new ground broken in terms of the colour pie (and let's face it, some colours like red could really use some expansion), and instead we get what feels like very stagnant design.
I'll get the singles I need, but as with every set since DGM, I'll hold off from buying a box.
Here we go again, literally every block, no matter how good stuff is, or how even mildly okay they are, someone makes this thread about the block, always before stuff is even tested out. How can Theros be one of the worst sets in magic history if it has warped standard into a few really good decks like r/g monsters, mono u devotion, and mono b devotion? Just because you don't like the cards, doesn't make the set or or sets bad, especially when there are plenty of cards seeing play.
Theros' claim on standard may also be due to RtR's really lackluster mechanics that turned constructed-unworthy. Had RtR been stronger in constructed formats I wouldn't expect Theros had had such an impact on Standard. Just imagine Innistrad being the prior block to Theros.
I can understand that some sets suck, but this set is awesome. It has great uncommons. We got some great Commander cards. We may even have a Legecy Staple(ish card), Spirit of the Labyrinth.
This thread is more for the cynical *******. See south park episode for understanding.
Ihsan's Shade saw alot of play in mono black necro decks to combat STP back in the day. And Serrated Arrows was in most sideboards at least. Though they were the easiest card to put in any deck when they started forcing players to play Homelands in tourneys. Yes they forced players to play bc noone used them otherwise.
So mostly no, not very many cards made any splashes in any tournament setting in any format other than the two I mentioned. Shame because the setting and story were great.
Also this set is setting up for a tremendous limited format. I think we are in the low part of the power curve but still it is not that bad. People want Format warping Gods but I think for the lsting effect of theros block on the game it is probably better for that not to happen.
This block is historically bad when it comes to its effect on non-rotating formats...maybe not the absolute worst, but when there are 2 non-reprint playables in modern that don't see play in legacy/vintage (those being Master of Waves and Thassa) that is pretty bad. Tack that on that NOTHING in BNG looks modern playable atm, and you have a pretty poor block when it comes to constructed playability. If you look up, that would make it by far the worst in a long time.
This block is historically bad when it comes to its effect on non-rotating formats...maybe not the absolute worst, but when there are 2 non-reprint playables in modern that don't see play in legacy/vintage (those being Master of Waves and Thassa) that is pretty bad. Tack that on that NOTHING in BNG looks modern playable atm, and you have a pretty poor block when it comes to constructed playability. If you look up, that would make it by far the worst in a long time.
No, in my opinion formats need to be warped every once in a while.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Certainly so. I disliked last standard for the most part, but it's more to do with a perfect storm situation than to do with anything else. You had some obviously pushed and powerful cards(Geist, Resto Angel, Huntmaster, Snapcaster, LotV, Thrag among others), an incredible mana base(There was no good nor discernible reason to run 2 color over 3), and just straight up huge value/interaction (Farseek into anything, Thrag+Resto annoyance, Bant Hexproof, incredible instants+Flashback+Snapcaster, etc).
Now, I normally wouldn't have a problem with any of these. And all of these things are obviously in eternal formats in spades. But standard has an incredibly limited cardpool comparatively, and personally I think suffers from too many things going on at once. It was a money format, certainly, but it's a bit easier to swallow spending a lot of money on a format that doesn't rotate over one that does every year.
That all said, and my complaining aside, I do honestly agree with you. I would love to see an Innistrad-ish level of power to show up. I honestly never saw much a problem with the cross-format staples, really. Snapcaster was actually fair in standard; I won plenty of games against a Resolved LotV also; Resto Angel was a mistake in my opinion, but I still won games against it due to just pure attrition; I think Standard can easily handle cards like this, and others. And I think that a decent amount of cards should be at least considerable.
I will admit I know little about Modern, however. But shaking things up is always good, otherwise you enter a period of staleness. Which is never good for any format.
A cursory look at Theros, for instance, is pretty bleak. I've seen some people say that nothing in Theros will or has seen play in modern, which is demonstrably false. I simple look at top 8s from the past few weeks indicates a few cards showing up. The problem, however, is that even with my limited knowledge of the format, I can easily see when a card is merely included in a deck that and when a card(or cards) actually significantly alter the game plan. Certainly, there have been small inclusions(And some that surprised me). But from what I've seen, it's more a "This is a good utility spell/creature that fits very well into my current gameplan; so I'll just add 1-2" over "This will bring new things to Modern".
BNG, so far, is not looking as hot - but it's early days yet. Kiora, Herald of Torment and the new Cat legend are great.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
Ihsan's Shade saw alot of play in mono black necro decks to combat STP back in the day. And Serrated Arrows was in most sideboards at least. Though they were the easiest card to put in any deck when they started forcing players to play Homelands in tourneys. Yes they forced players to play bc noone used them otherwise.
So mostly no, not very many cards made any splashes in any tournament setting in any format other than the two I mentioned. Shame because the setting and story were great.
BUG Reanimator
BWG Nic-Fit
BGR Punishing Nic-Fit
This is true, from a cube point of view Theros is one of the *best* sets in Magic.
Monstrosity is nice, they should have went with more of that just tried to push the boundaries. Polukranos and Stormbreath are absolutely wild when going monstrous.
The mythics in Born of the Gods just look like pure jank.
Remember when Sphinx's Revelation was a 5 dollar mythic because everyone said "it's just worse than Blue Sun's Zenith since it isn't a win condition and you don't get it back"?
The majority of people on this website can't evaluate cards for ****, there aren't very many great cards spoiled so far, but it's just over 1/3 of the set, hardly enough to claim it's jank.
Bident Layers
B Devotion
RG Devotion
UW Control
Modern:
Jund
UW Control
Combo Pod
Legacy:
DeathBlade
RUG Delver
BUG Control
I'm a Limited player and I'm thrilled by BNG up to now. I'm just annoyed they dumped Monstrosity in favor of the weaker (opponent gets a choice) Tribute, but the rest looks fine.
Dega midrange 1-0
Thumps up.
That's why making definite statements about cards and their playability in spoiler season gets you nowhere.
Nobody thought Devotion would be a thing until it took a Pro Tour by storm as the most recent example.
What about Born of the Gods? Well, we have Brimaz, the new Xenagos, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Pain Seer, a few good uncommons... and that's it. Of course something else will see play, but doesn't look like much.
RIP Batman guy. I hope somebody picks up the slack now that you are gone. Sick children need their Batman.
I'll get the singles I need, but as with every set since DGM, I'll hold off from buying a box.
This thread is more for the cynical *******. See south park episode for understanding.
Multiplayer Decks- Memnarch - Animar, Soul of Elements - Zur, the Enchanter - Atraxa, Praetors' Voice - Food Chain Tazri - Teysa Karlov
Modern BUMill and Bant Spirits.
Thank you Xenphire for the signature!
Reveka, Wizard Savant is pretty sweet in Derevi lists. Also Memory Lapse and Merchant Scroll is also very fine cards.
Also this set is setting up for a tremendous limited format. I think we are in the low part of the power curve but still it is not that bad. People want Format warping Gods but I think for the lsting effect of theros block on the game it is probably better for that not to happen.
Not only is the design incredibly lazy, but it also managed to be terrible while claiming to be a block centered around my favorite card type.
The limited is awful, the constructed is worse, and it took my favorite card type and turned it into my least favorite card type.
This calls for another update to the list:
Born of the Gods
Theros
M14
Dragon's Maze
Gatecrash
Return to Ravnica
M13
Avacyn Restored
Dark Ascension
Innistrad
M12
New Phyrexia
Mirrodin Besieged
Scars of Mirrodin
M11 <-- Titans. No complaints here, it seems. Personally, my favorite core set.
Rise of Eldrazi
Worldwake
Zendikar
M10
Alara Reborn <-- People also seemed to enjoy [ARB].
Conflux
Shards of Alara
Eventide
Shadowmoor
Morningtide
Lorwyn
10th Edition
Future Sight
Planar Chaos
Time Spiral
Coldsnap
Dissension
Guildpact
Ravnica <-- Also generally well-liked, though MTGS had a lot less traffic back then.
9th Edition
Saviors of Kamigawa
Betrayers of Kamigawa
Swan Song
Bident of Thassa
Hero's Downfall
Whip of Erebos
Anger of the Gods
Purphoros, God of the Forge
Stormbreath Dragon
Bow of Nylea
Mistcutter Hydra
Polukranos, World Eater
Sylvan Caryatid
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Daxos of Meletis
Reaper of the Wilds
Steam Augury
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
All Modern playable. Some are even Legacy playable. Swan Song is playable in every format
Also, Spirit of the Labyrinth and Kiora's Follower say hi
Standard:
GU Prophet
Legacy:
WBU Shared Fate
Trades