Still, Innistrad has everything. It has awesome flavor, large amount of synergy, and a high power-level. I'd say that it is probably the best block of all time in all aspects.
I would probably agree with you if it wasn't for AVR which pretty much took a giant dump on the previous two sets.
That set was only bad in Draft. It is at the core of Modern, Legacy, and formerly Standard.
I'm not talking about the playability of the set here. I'm talking about everything else: design, flavor, mechanics.
First of all, it completely abandoned all the themes from the previous two sets: no Werewolves, no flashback, no morbid, no curses. The only thing we got back was Undying which wasn't even worth returning as it's not a very interesting mechanic. And on top of that we got Miracles, a highly despised mechanic, and a lot of boring sub-themes like angels, flicker, loner and human tribal.
If you enjoyed the set, great, more power to you, but I don't even consider AVR to be part of Innistrad block.
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AVR had a ton of awesome cards for Constructed though, so I can forgive the rest. It made control decks playable in Legacy (Terminus, Entreat), it gave tribal Legacy decks and EDH an awesome land (Cavern of Souls), it changed the face of Legacy with Griselbrand (arguably a negative, but whatever), and it had some really popular casual cards (Avacyn, Gisela, et. al.)
I've pretty much avoided this thread because I've still gotten a lot of enjoyment out of Theros, and don't have much experience with pre-Innistrad-RTR standard environments. I think I can safely say now that the JOU spoilers already have me far more excited than I was for THS or BNG. Not saying they are bad sets, but seeing this many genuinely cool cards from JOU makes me realize how lacking THS and BNG were. I know people will still think JOU sucks compared to other sets, but from my limited perspective I definitely now feel like THS and BNG were relatively weak. I still had fun playing them, but the set really felt incomplete without JOU. I'm surprised they didn't put a few more splashy JOU cards in BNG--I bet JOU boxes will outsell BNG by a huge margin.
Thats from my favorite to least favorite. THS was pretty rock solid start on the set I'd say. BNG was pretty meh. Had some okay cards and chase rares (screams dragons maze to me). JOU so far seems very nice though.
This block have been amazingly fun to draft, Im mostly a limited player, but its been fun to draft and play sealed in.
Agreed. Theros Limited has been pretty unique to past Limited environments, and the format is fun with a diverse number of archetypes. For me, it is second only to 3x Ravnica: City of Guilds draft, which was absurdly awesome.
This block have been amazingly fun to draft, Im mostly a limited player, but its been fun to draft and play sealed in.
Agreed. Theros Limited has been pretty unique to past Limited environments, and the format is fun with a diverse number of archetypes. For me, it is second only to 3x Ravnica: City of Guilds draft, which was absurdly awesome.
There really was nothing wrong with Ravnica, was there?
Nope. It was the perfect set. I dare say only Innistrad matches up.
Agreed. And even Innistrad didn't have a Standard meta with every archetype being viable (no combo). Ravnica had one with viable combo decks.
Yeah but combo is bad.
How can anyone possibly think Theros block is the worst set? Or even a bad set? It's not the most fun to draft, sure, but jeez. Nerds are such whiners.
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“A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
AVR had a ton of awesome cards for Constructed though, so I can forgive the rest. It made control decks playable in Legacy (Terminus, Entreat), it gave tribal Legacy decks and EDH an awesome land (Cavern of Souls), it changed the face of Legacy with Griselbrand (arguably a negative, but whatever), and it had some really popular casual cards (Avacyn, Gisela, et. al.)
In my opinion control was very viable in legacy before miracles and it was much more interesting format before that. Now it is just those blue tempo decks, miracles and combo decks staring at each other and no true creature decks at all. It is very stupid engine. You are supposed to play cards from your hand not from your library. The format is turning very hard into total non-interactive because mechanics like miracle because it doesn't allow you to play around it almost at all.
Griselbrand isn't even that bad because Show and Tell and reanimator are already doing broken things and 90% of the time it is completely irrelevant do they animate/cheat Iona, Griselbrand, Emrakul or Inkwell Leviathan.
Nope. It was the perfect set. I dare say only Innistrad matches up.
Agreed. And even Innistrad didn't have a Standard meta with every archetype being viable (no combo). Ravnica had one with viable combo decks.
Yeah but combo is bad.
How can anyone possibly think Theros block is the worst set? Or even a bad set? It's not the most fun to draft, sure, but jeez. Nerds are such whiners.
Born of the Gods is horrible (low power-level, not enough strong support for major themes, etc.). Theros is passable, but when you compare it to the other recent large sets, it is clearly more of a Gatecrash set than an Innistrad set.
Also, combo isn't bad. People should be able to play the archetypes that they want to play, regardless of whether you personally like them.
AVR had a ton of awesome cards for Constructed though, so I can forgive the rest. It made control decks playable in Legacy (Terminus, Entreat), it gave tribal Legacy decks and EDH an awesome land (Cavern of Souls), it changed the face of Legacy with Griselbrand (arguably a negative, but whatever), and it had some really popular casual cards (Avacyn, Gisela, et. al.)
In my opinion control was very viable in legacy before miracles and it was much more interesting format before that. Now it is just those blue tempo decks, miracles and combo decks staring at each other and no true creature decks at all. It is very stupid engine. You are supposed to play cards from your hand not from your library. The format is turning very hard into total non-interactive because mechanics like miracle because it doesn't allow you to play around it almost at all.
Griselbrand isn't even that bad because Show and Tell and reanimator are already doing broken things and 90% of the time it is completely irrelevant do they animate/cheat Iona, Griselbrand, Emrakul or Inkwell Leviathan.
If control was viable, then why wasn't it doing well?
As for Griselbrand, there is a big difference in Show and Tell and Reanimator between a Griselbrand and an Inkwell Leviathan. Against combo decks, Inkwell isn't necessarily good enough. Iona isn't always good enough against opposing multicolor decks that are not combo. Iona and Inkwell are also much worse with Sneak Attack than Griselbrand and they are more vulnerable to Liliana of the Veil (Griselbrand can draw cards in response).
I am a member of a playgroup with players whom have been playing since The Dark. The general consensus of BotG amongst our playgroup is that the set is pretty much junk. Not Homelands bad, but bad nonetheless. I personally would say that the last set I've seen which was this bad would be Saviors of Kamigawa. Gatecrash had Prime Speaker Zegana and Shock lands, and Dragon's Maze had Voice of Resurgence, Progenitor Mimic, and a few other EDH cards which see play at my group. The Theros gods were mostly very interesting flavour-wise and were actually playable.
Also, combo isn't bad. People should be able to play the archetypes that they want to play, regardless of whether you personally like them.
Of course it's bad. Combo is the least fun thing to play against, and is often the least fun thing to even play. I applaud WOTC's efforts to stamp it out of standard and modern, and encourage you to go play solitaire or something if you want to flip cards by yourself.
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“A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Let's see, excessively low power-level, barely even affected Standard, and a horrible punisher mechanic. It has few constructed playable cards (and only 2 cards that are playable in Modern or Legacy). It did almost nothing to stop Mononblack Devotion and in fact made it stronger. I'd define it as horrible, especially when you compare it to literally any other set since Saviors of Kamigawa.
Also, combo isn't bad. People should be able to play the archetypes that they want to play, regardless of whether you personally like them.
Of course it's bad. Combo is the least fun thing to play against, and is often the least fun thing to even play. I applaud WOTC's efforts to stamp it out of standard and modern, and encourage you to go play solitaire or something if you want to flip cards by yourself.[/quote]
Fun is subjective. Also, you do realize that combo is often interactive, right? And combo decks are the most played kind of decks in Modern right now. Finally, you are going to have to deal with combo in Standard that Dictate of Karametra exists. Stop trying to ruin other people's fun and learn how to play the game.
Combo is far from unattractive and I'd go as far as to say that most players carry a Johnny inside and really want things in their decks to have synergy and often also a combo.
It's often also viewed as a more creative deck-building style as the idea is to see patterns and match effects so it all ends up at a higher level.
Just mashing power-stuff into a deck and play it without any direct pattern can quite quickly become no-brainer and I think a large portion of players wish to be able to make combos - some just don't like to play with it or against it for that matter.
It also really depends on the combo as some are indeed quite boring because they are close to non-interactive or requires very specific counter-tools while others are a bit more impressive - and also closer to casual. Spike-combos tend to get used beyond the point where people just despise seeing the same few pieces stuck together.
Even when combo is uninteractive, it's often far from boring. Back when I played Eggs in Modern, many of my opponents didn't mind sitting there and seeing if my combo fizzled. They found it interesting to watch Eggs go off. Honestly, I like it when Standard has a deck like Twin or Humanimator, and I'm a pure Spike.
Since this thread is about how BNG and Theros are supposedly horrible, I'm just going to say this: BNG and Theros are underwhelming sets, but we're coming off two Standard formats with Innistrad block, and before that two Zendikar blocks. The power level of Standard in those days was way higher than it is now. Yes, BNG is a horrible set, but Dragon's Maze was even worse, and Theros produced plenty of decent cards, a few of which see play in Modern and even Legacy.
Even when combo is uninteractive, it's often far from boring. Back when I played Eggs in Modern, many of my opponents didn't mind sitting there and seeing if my combo fizzled. They found it interesting to watch Eggs go off. Honestly, I like it when Standard has a deck like Twin or Humanimator, and I'm a pure Spike.
Since this thread is about how BNG and Theros are supposedly horrible, I'm just going to say this: BNG and Theros are underwhelming sets, but we're coming off two Standard formats with Innistrad block, and before that two Zendikar blocks. The power level of Standard in those days was way higher than it is now. Yes, BNG is a horrible set, but Dragon's Maze was even worse, and Theros produced plenty of decent cards, a few of which see play in Modern and even Legacy.
Dragon's Maze was better than Born of the Gods. Not only did it have a card that was much more playable in Modern than anything in Born of the Gods (Voice of Resurgence), but it also allowed for large amounts of brewing in Modern with Possibility Storm and Breaking // Entering for a couple of months. BNG did not give any powerful interesting cards.
Hey @Valanarch Didn't i said that we would see global enchantments ( non-Creatures ) In JIN ?
Are you Liking it NoW ?
Yep. What's even better is that combo is back in Standard. As I said before, now was the best time for Wizards to bring back combo if they wanted to because of the existence of cards like Slaughter Games and Thoughtseize to keep it in check. I am pretty sure that I am quitting Modern for Standard temporarily. All of the expensive cards that I want are stuff like Shocklands that I need to get for Modern anyways. And what could possibly be bad about casting Colossus of Akros or Worldspine Wurm on turn 6 and attacking for the win on turn 7?
Dave Humphreys is our current champion. leading with 3 counts; namely Avacyn Restored, Gatecrash, and Born of the Gods.
As for the rest, no one is close enough to catch him. lol
Although based on the new cards, JOU is fated/destined to fall with the first 2 sets...
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
I'm not talking about the playability of the set here. I'm talking about everything else: design, flavor, mechanics.
First of all, it completely abandoned all the themes from the previous two sets: no Werewolves, no flashback, no morbid, no curses. The only thing we got back was Undying which wasn't even worth returning as it's not a very interesting mechanic. And on top of that we got Miracles, a highly despised mechanic, and a lot of boring sub-themes like angels, flicker, loner and human tribal.
If you enjoyed the set, great, more power to you, but I don't even consider AVR to be part of Innistrad block.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
0 Karn
W Darien
U Arcanis
B Geth
R Norin
G Yeva
UW Hanna
RB Olivia
WB Obzedat
UR Melek
BG Glissa
WR Aurelia
GU Kraj
BRU Nicol Bolas
RGB Prossh
BGW Ghave
GUB Mimeoplasm
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
GWU Treva, the Renewer
EDH Spike:
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Trades
THS -> JOU -> BNG
Thats from my favorite to least favorite. THS was pretty rock solid start on the set I'd say. BNG was pretty meh. Had some okay cards and chase rares (screams dragons maze to me). JOU so far seems very nice though.
Melira Pod - Modern
Agreed. Theros Limited has been pretty unique to past Limited environments, and the format is fun with a diverse number of archetypes. For me, it is second only to 3x Ravnica: City of Guilds draft, which was absurdly awesome.
There really was nothing wrong with Ravnica, was there?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Agreed. And even Innistrad didn't have a Standard meta with every archetype being viable (no combo). Ravnica had one with viable combo decks.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
What deck was that?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Seriously, a rad deck.
Yeah but combo is bad.
How can anyone possibly think Theros block is the worst set? Or even a bad set? It's not the most fun to draft, sure, but jeez. Nerds are such whiners.
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
In my opinion control was very viable in legacy before miracles and it was much more interesting format before that. Now it is just those blue tempo decks, miracles and combo decks staring at each other and no true creature decks at all. It is very stupid engine. You are supposed to play cards from your hand not from your library. The format is turning very hard into total non-interactive because mechanics like miracle because it doesn't allow you to play around it almost at all.
Griselbrand isn't even that bad because Show and Tell and reanimator are already doing broken things and 90% of the time it is completely irrelevant do they animate/cheat Iona, Griselbrand, Emrakul or Inkwell Leviathan.
Modern
WUBRG
Might not be fun for you, but theros cards are fun for me.
This is clearly one of opinion, so don't state it as fact.
Born of the Gods is horrible (low power-level, not enough strong support for major themes, etc.). Theros is passable, but when you compare it to the other recent large sets, it is clearly more of a Gatecrash set than an Innistrad set.
Also, combo isn't bad. People should be able to play the archetypes that they want to play, regardless of whether you personally like them.
That's pretty cool. I still think that Ravnica-Time Spiral seems more awesome.
If control was viable, then why wasn't it doing well?
As for Griselbrand, there is a big difference in Show and Tell and Reanimator between a Griselbrand and an Inkwell Leviathan. Against combo decks, Inkwell isn't necessarily good enough. Iona isn't always good enough against opposing multicolor decks that are not combo. Iona and Inkwell are also much worse with Sneak Attack than Griselbrand and they are more vulnerable to Liliana of the Veil (Griselbrand can draw cards in response).
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Nah.
Of course it's bad. Combo is the least fun thing to play against, and is often the least fun thing to even play. I applaud WOTC's efforts to stamp it out of standard and modern, and encourage you to go play solitaire or something if you want to flip cards by yourself.
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Let's see, excessively low power-level, barely even affected Standard, and a horrible punisher mechanic. It has few constructed playable cards (and only 2 cards that are playable in Modern or Legacy). It did almost nothing to stop Mononblack Devotion and in fact made it stronger. I'd define it as horrible, especially when you compare it to literally any other set since Saviors of Kamigawa.
Of course it's bad. Combo is the least fun thing to play against, and is often the least fun thing to even play. I applaud WOTC's efforts to stamp it out of standard and modern, and encourage you to go play solitaire or something if you want to flip cards by yourself.[/quote]
Fun is subjective. Also, you do realize that combo is often interactive, right? And combo decks are the most played kind of decks in Modern right now. Finally, you are going to have to deal with combo in Standard that Dictate of Karametra exists. Stop trying to ruin other people's fun and learn how to play the game.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
It's often also viewed as a more creative deck-building style as the idea is to see patterns and match effects so it all ends up at a higher level.
Just mashing power-stuff into a deck and play it without any direct pattern can quite quickly become no-brainer and I think a large portion of players wish to be able to make combos - some just don't like to play with it or against it for that matter.
It also really depends on the combo as some are indeed quite boring because they are close to non-interactive or requires very specific counter-tools while others are a bit more impressive - and also closer to casual. Spike-combos tend to get used beyond the point where people just despise seeing the same few pieces stuck together.
Since this thread is about how BNG and Theros are supposedly horrible, I'm just going to say this: BNG and Theros are underwhelming sets, but we're coming off two Standard formats with Innistrad block, and before that two Zendikar blocks. The power level of Standard in those days was way higher than it is now. Yes, BNG is a horrible set, but Dragon's Maze was even worse, and Theros produced plenty of decent cards, a few of which see play in Modern and even Legacy.
Dragon's Maze was better than Born of the Gods. Not only did it have a card that was much more playable in Modern than anything in Born of the Gods (Voice of Resurgence), but it also allowed for large amounts of brewing in Modern with Possibility Storm and Breaking // Entering for a couple of months. BNG did not give any powerful interesting cards.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Are you Liking it NoW ?
Yep. What's even better is that combo is back in Standard. As I said before, now was the best time for Wizards to bring back combo if they wanted to because of the existence of cards like Slaughter Games and Thoughtseize to keep it in check. I am pretty sure that I am quitting Modern for Standard temporarily. All of the expensive cards that I want are stuff like Shocklands that I need to get for Modern anyways. And what could possibly be bad about casting Colossus of Akros or Worldspine Wurm on turn 6 and attacking for the win on turn 7?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.