Dinosaurs proved an easy set to teach with.
Throw big creatures and sometimes pay for their upkeep.
My players were happy to keep playing them
from last new years set.
If you look at the whole ecology of the thing, Expeditions give speculators and shops a reason to open a lot of sealed product, which floods the market with mythics and rares, which in turn depresses the price of basically every other card in the set -- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is at ~$23 and falling right now, with three weeks left of 3x BfZ drafs -- this is good for the Standard crowd because it keeps the entire set easily attainable, and while the real power is in sets that sets that aren't being opened much anymore, it's promising in the long term. Now is a great time to pick up a bunch of $1-$3 mythics and rares that will likely be very playable after rotation. So it's a win-win for both elite collectors and budget players.
That's a very optimistic view. The fact that nearly no cards from BFZ are worth anything is mostly due to the extremely low power level of the cards, not due to a flooded market. Those cards are at the price they should be considering they're for the most part not played anywhere, and I'd say expeditions are the only thing keeping BFZ afloat. And $1-3 rares gaining value after rotation happens every year, it's simple speculation. None of that would be any different without Expeditions.
I think it's a combination of flooding the market and low power level, but I'm not an economist. The difference between this rotation and other, it seems to me at least, is that the low power is so extreme and so extremely temporary. Cards like Greenwarden of Murasa, Void Winnower and Part the Waterveil are perfectly playable, as are Scatter to the Winds, Painful Truths and Ruinous Path, and could very easily be staples after Shadows of Innistrad. I guess that's technically speculation, but if it's a pretty safe bet as it's clear Khans block is holding a lot of the best BfZ cards back.
Compare this to Dragons of Tarkir Standard, which I personally found very frustrating because every deck I wanted to build was prohibitively expensive. Stuff like Deathmist Raptor, Dragonlord Ojutai, Dromoka's Command, and even Den Protector, which was a bit of a sleeper, didn't need Theros to rotate to be valuable, sought-after cards. There was no opportunity to pick up a playset of any card you would need from the set for a song. But the cost of BfZ singles being so comparatively low means a lot more people will be able to play a lot more decks next season based on the dirt-cheap cards from this set. I think that's good for Standard, especially the FNM crowd, as more people get to compete on a level playing field.
Good ideas like the processors were wasted on few, limited-only *****ty cards
While I continue to be mystified by the concept that a card is a waste of paper if it's only relevant in Limited, I think Blight Herder would like to have a word with you.
Personally, I hate the implementation of Processors. If you're going to make an entire tribe that drags cards back from exile en masse, it should only be cards your opponent controls that you put in exile.
Allies were the worst part of the first Zendikar block, deciding to bring them back while abandoning traps and quests wasn't the smartest move. Also the Eldrazi received Ingest, which is a very underwhelming keyword.
I really like Devoid and Ingest but there weren't enough "brokens" with the mechanic tied to them, and there were not enough pushed cards for me to care for it past the prerelease.
I did not care about the ALly mechanic the first time and the second time? Just mega indifference, if that's even possible. I like cards that work well on their own and that have cool synergies with other cards, but the allies looked so, so puny that I did not want to play them.
The Eldrazi were all over the place. Newlamog and Kozilek II are sweet, some of the processor cards are nice, but I'm not getting that feeling of "OH MAN THE WORLD IS ENDING!" that I got from Emrakul or the Annihilator 4 creatures.
On the prerelease, 2HG ensured that my friends and I will not attend. I just wrote off an email to MaRo about it as well, informing him that we won't be attending and stick to the regular way please. It's great to have a team concept for the cards and game, but I like things as is for the prerelease events.
So yeah, pretty disappointing overall. Let's hope Return to Innistrad is a massive haymaker of power.
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The "Crazy One", playing casual magic and occasionally dipping his toes into regular play since 1994.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
On the prerelease, 2HG ensured that my friends and I will not attend. I just wrote off an email to MaRo about it as well, informing him that we won't be attending and stick to the regular way please. It's great to have a team concept for the cards and game, but I like things as is for the prerelease events.
I don't like 2HG either. What does that have to do with emailing Maro, though? If your LGS has no individual events for you to attend, you should talk to them. Nothing at all is changing in my store's schedule because of this; they're alternative single sealed with 2HG sealed all weekend, just like always. Only difference is some of the cards will be more interesting (or, you know, playable) in that environment.
Magic is too big and has too many types of players to satisfy en masse.
The set feels like the past few years do in that the story tail seems yet again to wag the game dog. The constant fixation on planeswalkers is especially unappealing and leads to tired design, and the set feel designed to draw new players in. Origins felt like a simple but balanced set with some well-designed cards. The planeswalkers felt a bit too intrusive, though, but you could draft the set and not notice the planeswalkers some days. Here the whole set seems to be designed around getting the flavor out there, not about making a good set and adding flavor after. How many mechanics would have turned up in a non Eldrazi/Zendikar set? Very few, because they are not especially interesting. They had the plot idea and had to come up with mechanics to match, but with the constraint that they must fit into their idea of Standard, which is devoid (pun intended) of things that new players hate, as has been the case for a few years.
The set is quite decent to draft, although not balanced. If you spend time bigging up the feel and story, there will only ever be a lot of disappointed people because it is a game, and it is not possible to tell a really engaging original story in a CCG game medium. That is what books are for. Consequently we get a product that is neither here not there, too much emphasis on flavor for the players and not enough of a compelling story for those that want it and are promised it.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
I know I've been a pretty vocal critic of the direction the game has gone since Gatecrash, and I'm in the minority in that I didn't like Khans block very much, but BFZ takes the cake in terms of disappointment. It seems meandering, like everything was an afterthought. The Eldrazi are boring and interchangeable. The power level is a joke. The whole set seems lazy and confused. I make it a habit to pick up a pack of every new set, even if I'm underwhelmed by it, just for tradition's sake. BFZ is the first set I ignored entirely in a very, very long time.
That said, OGW seems at the very least more interesting than its predecessor, if still a little underpowered for my tastes. I'll still hold out hope for SOI, because I'm a moron.
OGW is undoubtably bringing a higher power level than BFZ even if its not great, but the design elements are still just as lacking; the mechanics are bad, the art is bad, the story is bad, and they errataed the whole first set. For some people, the playable cards in OGW will be enough to react favorably to the set, but I only cared about the design in the first place, so from what we've seen so far its still two thumbs firmly down. Support & Cohort are two real stinkers. Support is at odds with Megamorph for the least inspired mechanic (and name) of all time
It is the first set since Prophecy where i didn't play a game of limited. Wordy/dull mechanics, Nerf'd power level, stupid gimmick that depressed the price of singles (killing the ev of a draft). I feel like every card is just a more expensive, or powered down version of a previous card. Its a half baked set.
I dislike this block for various reasons. Zendikar was my favorite setting and story, followed by Lorwyn/ Shadowmoor. I guess I'll stick to Lorwyn/ Shadowmoor again. Sadly.
If anyone cares about my humble opinions, here they are: Regarding the flavor:
As Ugin said: "They come as three". That's a completely false statement and a stupid cliffhanger. I've waited years for this battle and my favorite Eldrazi is completely absent.
Emrakul is not even mentioned, neither are her (?) minions (though some of the new Eldrazi card designs are open to interpretation, e.g. Rush of Ice looks like an Emrakul spawn).
I hope Emrakul appears on some other plane, still it's massively disappointing.
The way the battle is shown on the cards is kinda disappointing. One card shows Ulamog being trapped, but in Oath, he's suddenly free again. It's just confusing, the conflict feels like
it doesn't have a result at all. You could completely remove this block from continuity.
Appearently, Gideon is dead. You have to read stories online to even figure this out. I wish there was a card to show what happened, it's kinda hinted in flavor texts, but come on!
It's confusing what the Eldrazi actually do. First, they suck the color out of the landscape, which was an amazing idea. But now, Kozilek distorts reality or something, and transforms
the landscape yet again into something... even more... colorless?
Many ideas ended up completely untouched, which was majorly disappointing. Maybe this should have three sets. You never see Eldrazis fighting Merfolk underwater (now that they finally dive).
You don't see enslaved vampires starting to build temples in honor of the Eldrazis again (huge disappointment, I loved the design!). Ob Nixilis becomes this evil, Galactus-looking planeswalker
supporting the Eldrazi, but sadly his abilities got nothing to do with the Eldrazi mechanics, instead he's totally generic. Doing stuff like turning lands to Wastes or something, searching the deck for Eldrazis,
that would be cool. Or his overall design changing even more.
It was kinda weird to have a few Ugin cards inbetween, but neither Ugin nor Sorin participating in the battle at all. Next time maybe?
The block could have used more cards in the style of the ruined Oran-Rief. There wasn't enough flavor like this. Who cares about Seagate anyway?
Lorthos is mentioned in the stories and Kiora meets him. However, he's not a legend in this block. Same with Nissas Elemental, which sadly isn't worth more than a weak token.
Iona is mentioned on cards, but isn't a legend either. And she's much more interesting than Linvala. Why did Linvala even reappear and Iona didn't?! So random.
What I like:
Eldrazis underwater and sea-life Eldrazi designs. It was also cool which colors were used for their artworks.
The ability "Devoid", even though it contradicted the mana costs. But there are many cards which are useful with devoid.
The colors being sucked out of the landscape in BFZ and it often looks like the colors and outlines are sucked out from the artworks, too (Consume the Meek Duel Deck print).
Lots of Eldrazis. Some interesting Eldrazi fatties, but not enough.
Ulamog, which I got from my BFZ prerelease-box both as foil and regular.
The Ally-mechanic was surprisingly helpful to support my Eldrazi-Deck in Two-Headed prerelease. BFZ was overall fun to play in prerelease.
Returning places and legendaries.
Non-Eldrazis got love, too. Undergrowth Champion is a cool card for example.
Gideon is dead and hopefully stays dead. He was boring, just like his abilities.
Oath FINALLY got a Planeswalker tutor. And for some reason, it's white...
Origins had some really neat ideas, flavors, cards and artworks and it really seemed like a creativity boost. But this, considering it already had a block to introduce the setting and blocks with storylines leading to this conflict (Return to Ravnica, Khans of Tarkir) - so underwhelming. Let Emrakul appear on Innistrad, then we can have Bloodborne meets MTG.
Okay, you probably missed the part where Wizards said that they will tell the story by many channels, the main being the Uncharted Realms / official fiction. Then you would know why Ulamog was freed. No problem there, just do not expect everything served to you on a silver platter at the cards. Way too past this approach (approximately some 16 years)
Similarly, sorry to ruin your celebrations, but Gideon is not dead. Have you even looked at the cards? Lead by Example, Fall of the Titans? Oath of Gideon?
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Former Fact Prospector of the Greek Alliance.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
1) Tribal in the worst sense - Innistrad was good tribal. Even Lorwyn, in hindsignt. This whole either Eldrazi or Allies for limited was awful.
2) Devoid made Eldrazi color-matters anyway. And Allies were largely Multicolor. Original ZEN was largely monochrome. Limited just felt weird between tribal, colors, not-colors, maybe-kinda-color-but-not-color, then no color because wastes, then blah blah blah.
3) Too many Eldrazi - Literally half the set was Eldrazi. It looked basically like Alien cousins of the Kami that everyone hated in Kamigawa (which compromised an otherwise pretty plane). You're either an Eldrazi fan or you're not. Polarizing.
4) Eldrazi, except Ulamog, were nerfed.
5) Nostalgia - This was Return to New Eldrazia, not Zendkiar. Aesthetically, Zendikar was a wasteland here. Not Adventure World. This was not the Return set everyone wanted.
5) Power Level - OGW is respectable. BFZ power level is embarrassing.
6) Excessive ugly art, poor quality CGI art, Zendikar looking trashed - When players think of Zendikar, they think large lush landscapes, sepia maps, traditional art. Not CGI aliens and trashed, sloppy sketches of desiccated wasteland. Thank God we got the Oath semi-cycle I wanted and a few standout pieces like Kiora, etc. Otherwise? Yikes.
7) Story was mismanaged. New, inexperienced authors. Spoiling major plot points. Filler stories. Shout out to Kelly Digges for always delivering though - great work. Ob was a fan favorite of many too.
8) Too much emphasis on "Magic is a war game" and not enough "look at a glimpse of this plane, its magic, its biology, etc." Tarkir was wasteland war world. Now BFZ is too. Well great! Let's trash Innistrad next!
1) Tribal in the worst sense - Innistrad was good tribal. Even Lorwyn, in hindsignt. This whole either Eldrazi or Allies for limited was awful.
2) Devoid made Eldrazi color-matters anyway. And Allies were largely Multicolor. Original ZEN was largely monochrome. Limited just felt weird between tribal, colors, not-colors, maybe-kinda-color-but-not-color, then no color because wastes, then blah blah blah.
3) Too many Eldrazi - Literally half the set was Eldrazi. It looked basically like Alien cousins of the Kami that everyone hated in Kamigawa (which compromised an otherwise pretty plane). You're either an Eldrazi fan or you're not. Polarizing.
4) Eldrazi, except Ulamog, were nerfed.
5) Nostalgia - This was Return to New Eldrazia, not Zendkiar. Aesthetically, Zendikar was a wasteland here. Not Adventure World. This was not the Return set everyone wanted.
5) Power Level - OGW is respectable. BFZ power level is embarrassing.
6) Excessive ugly art, poor quality CGI art, Zendikar looking trashed - When players think of Zendikar, they think large lush landscapes, sepia maps, traditional art. Not CGI aliens and trashed, sloppy sketches of desiccated wasteland. Thank God we got the Oath semi-cycle I wanted and a few standout pieces like Kiora, etc. Otherwise? Yikes.
7) Story was mismanaged. New, inexperienced authors. Spoiling major plot points. Filler stories. Shout out to Kelly Digges for always delivering though - great work. Ob was a fan favorite of many too.
8) Too much emphasis on "Magic is a war game" and not enough "look at a glimpse of this plane, its magic, its biology, etc." Tarkir was wasteland war world. Now BFZ is too. Well great! Let's trash Innistrad next!
I'll try to respond to generate a discussion.
1) It's not tribal in the normal sense. The eldrazi interact in weird and interesting ways. The other groups are disparate factions thrown together. I believe that it's supposed to feel chaotic.
2) Zendikar is being deconstructed, so the colors are being leeched by Ulamog and then twisted by Kozilek. I believe the confusion is somewhat deliberate. The sudden change to a two-block structure probably added to the confusion, though.
3) Isn't that kinda like saying that there were too many monsters on Innistrad? Innistrad also had a polarizing feel to it between the monsters and the humans. The Eldrazi are supposed to be overrunning everything; otherwise, the threat they represent isn't that real.
4) Agree that the Eldrazi were nerfed but only with the understanding that Annihilator is a horridly overpowered ability. I don't think anyone wanted Annihilator everywhere in this set. The new colored eldrazi have some interesting abilities.
I do not like the end of the story since it diminishes the impact of the titans themselves.
5.1) Nostalgia can be a good thing, but it's also limiting in what new sets can accomplish. Return to Ravnica suffered from having to adhere to the guild structure too much. Maze was a horrid set because of it.
5.2) Power level is always a tricky balance to achieve. Khans block is very powerful because of its multicolored nature. BFZ suffers by comparison to it. Toning down the power level is probably a good thing since it allows people to actually play the game. The real test will be seeing how Battle and Oath interact with Shadows over Innistrad.
6) The art in BFZ should be more varied, more epic. But it's also meant to express how much damage the eldrazi have done to the plane itself. There are some truly standout pieces of art in this set, especially in Gatewatch. The bismuth effect that Kozilek's brood creates is well done and thematically ties things together.
7) Agreed. The story feels very disjointed. Ugin does almost nothing of importance except hang out in a cave. Ob Nixilis, though, was a joy to read. I'm hoping he's not dead. I want to see what further mischief he creates.
8) The name Battle for Zendikar indicated the nature of what the set was doing. Back to Back War! settings does feel rather monotonous after a while.
I'm biased in that I like these new sets. The designers are at least trying to do new and interesting things.
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The world is on fire
and you are here to stay and burn with me.
1) Tribal in the worst sense - Innistrad was good tribal. Even Lorwyn, in hindsignt. This whole either Eldrazi or Allies for limited was awful.
As windstrider says. This is not tribal, this is The Good and the Bad versus the Ugly. In Limited you were far from forced to CHOOSE between playing Allies and playing Eldrazi.
2) Devoid made Eldrazi color-matters anyway. And Allies were largely Multicolor. Original ZEN was largely monochrome. Limited just felt weird between tribal, colors, not-colors, maybe-kinda-color-but-not-color, then no color because wastes, then blah blah blah.
If you think so, you were doing it wrong. BFZ Limited was about synergies, looking for them and exploiting them. After Tarkir, MM15 and Origins, where we got our archetypes on a silver platter,pre-cooked and spoon-fed, it was welcome.
3) Too many Eldrazi - Literally half the set was Eldrazi. It looked basically like Alien cousins of the Kami that everyone hated in Kamigawa (which compromised an otherwise pretty plane). You're either an Eldrazi fan or you're not. Polarizing.
Yes, it is the Kami War, and Phyrexian Invasion part 1 (Dominaria) and part 2 (Mirrodin) again. By design. No problem here.
4) Eldrazi, except Ulamog, were nerfed.
Well, RoE just skimmed the surface of Eldrazi. These sets brought wonderful new levels of weird interactions.
5) Nostalgia - This was Return to New Eldrazia, not Zendkiar. Aesthetically, Zendikar was a wasteland here. Not Adventure World. This was not the Return set everyone wanted.
What did you expect after the Rise of the Eldrazi, Jenrik? Blossoming meadows, crystal lakes and lush jungles, birds singing and adventurers doing their adventuring, happily oblivious to world-eating threat? I understand that you would like to ignore the Rise events to get your dreamed-of Zendikar 2:Relic Hunter Boogaloo, but come on, you cannot be so naïve to expect it to look anything significantly else after RoE. Everyone knew that the next stop on Zendikar HAS to be about the Zendikari dealing with what was unleashed and trying to survive.
Also, you are the only one I have ever seen here to complain about this particular problem. So not "everyone".
I admire your stubborn fixation on your own opinions face to face with overwhelming forces like logic and sheer facts. But let's be serious here.
5) Power Level - OGW is respectable. BFZ power level is embarrassing.
BFZ is weaker than previous sets. That is good and inevitable. There must be such set once a while to prevent incessant power creep.
6) Excessive ugly art, poor quality CGI art, Zendikar looking trashed - When players think of Zendikar, they think large lush landscapes, sepia maps, traditional art. Not CGI aliens and trashed, sloppy sketches of desiccated wasteland. Thank God we got the Oath semi-cycle I wanted and a few standout pieces like Kiora, etc. Otherwise? Yikes.
Translated to English: I did not get my Zendikar 2: More of the Same, so everything stinks (and I have an irrational crush on all things blue).
Again, an average player who understood what happened in Rise of the Eldrazi would expect to see some serious wasteland, aliens and damage done to the "lush landscapes". And *traditional* art? That ship sailed about Onslaught block...
Please, do not try to pass your personal feelings as the players' voice.
Though I must agree that especially all the Ulamog brood in BFZ looked very, very similar and after a very long time I had problems to identify a card by its art alone. On the other hand, Kozilek's bismu-thing is something visually truly amazing, and his psychedelic drones are awesome.
7) Story was mismanaged. New, inexperienced authors. Spoiling major plot points. Filler stories. Shout out to Kelly Digges for always delivering though - great work. Ob was a fan favorite of many too.
They are learning this new way of telling stories literally on the run. Yeah, I hated much of Kreines's work and the predictability of the story. But let's give them some time to find the right combination of means and timing.
8) Too much emphasis on "Magic is a war game" and not enough "look at a glimpse of this plane, its magic, its biology, etc." Tarkir was wasteland war world. Now BFZ is too. Well great! Let's trash Innistrad next!
Huh? Jenrik, quite frankly...EVERY block has some conflict and/or war in it, since the very beginning of Magic. Khans Tarkir was a wasteland, Dragon Tarkir just a war world with draconic magic. As windstrider down here says, back to back war settings would get quickly old, but well, they HAD to resolve the Zendikar conflict and establish the Avengers Gatewatch. So they killed two birds with one stone.
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Former Fact Prospector of the Greek Alliance.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Why does Battle for Zendikar feel so unappealing? Before anyone gets mad, I'm sure people have other opinions about the block. But it seems like many people don't like the set, myself included. I know we can't Judge oath yet, but so far they haven't really shown anything too exciting. What's wrong with it?
Because, like Kamigawa, it's a chance for WOTC to press the reset button on power/speed and slow the game down again.
I might be alone with that opinion but I hate the colorless symbol and Wastes, at least as a permanent change instead of a change just for this block.
Basically nothing changes, but it still led to my confusion. According to some of the Oath cards, sources which create "mana of any color" also create "colorless mana",
but back then "colorless mana" was "any color", so is "colorless mana" now something else than "any color"? The webcomic "Cardboard Crack" mocks such questions,
but I think it's a legit question, because it's really confusing! Saying "LOL you noob, it's just colorless mana!" is easy to say, but being able to now say "colorless mana"
as something an "any color" source can create, instead of an explicit color to pay an "any color" cost, is something completely different depending on game situations!
And if the mechanic didn't change and it's all in my head, WHY EVEN CHANGE ANYTHING AT ALL!?
Just because "can be paid with any color" and "colorless mana" meant different things? It's now more confusing to explain an extra symbol to a new player imo.
Also, how stupid would a reprint of e.g. Thran Dynamo look now? Add Symbol-Symbol-Symbol to your mana pool. Ah cool, so we'll never have a card e.g. producing 5 colorless mana, cause it
would look stupid. Didn't anyone think of that?
It's all in your head. Nothing really changed, just they decided to do something with colorless mana, because hey, here's a thing we haven't tried that would be interesting. I had fun with it, but that's only one data point. You might think it's dumb and that's fine.
I think it's unfair and misleading to describe it as "an extra symbol" that's confusing a new player, though. The thing that's been confusing up to this point is that one symbol has meant two different things. To bring up the class example again, Sol Ring costs 1 but produces 2... now if we were saying that out loud we'd say it costs 1 generic and produces 2 colorless, but as a shorthand a long time ago they decided to conflate these two symbols even though the game technically treats the objects differently. The new symbol clears up the confusion, and going forward will be just how it always was to new players.
Saying apples are apples and oranges are oranges is only confusing if you happen to refer to all fruit as apples, and have trouble telling different types of apples apart. New players will simply learn what an orange is.
It's all in your head. Nothing really changed, just they decided to do something with colorless mana, because hey, here's a thing we haven't tried that would be interesting. I had fun with it, but that's only one data point. You might think it's dumb and that's fine.
I think it's unfair and misleading to describe it as "an extra symbol" that's confusing a new player, though. The thing that's been confusing up to this point is that one symbol has meant two different things. To bring up the class example again, Sol Ring costs 1 but produces 2... now if we were saying that out loud we'd say it costs 1 generic and produces 2 colorless, but as a shorthand a long time ago they decided to conflate these two symbols even though the game technically treats the objects differently. The new symbol clears up the confusion, and going forward will be just how it always was to new players.
Saying apples are apples and oranges are oranges is only confusing if you happen to refer to all fruit as apples, and have trouble telling different types of apples apart. New players will simply learn what an orange is.
Strangely, the new mana symbol was most confusing over the weekend to experienced players, and new players didn't have any issues as far as I could tell with it (Aside from a few instances of not getting that you can't port your Wastes from one sealed pool to another, thanks in no small part due to poor communication from the owner of the store). Still, it was never a major problem.
What *was* a weirdly prevalent problem, however, is Support, which I had to correct a dozen or so times with new players (And a few experienced players). It seems as though it isn't quite clear enough with the language in the reminder text that you can't put all the counters on a single creature. A good many still didn't get it after multiple reads, and trying to explain it to them. It seems there is something odd about that mechanic that is not intuitive.
For me, the Eldrazi mechanics were just woeful. In a vacuum, they're OK, but BFZ simply didn't support them.
So you hand all your shiny new Eldrazi cards Devoid... fantastic! Now where are the usual hoser cards in the block against this mechanic? Why haven't the allies, at least by the time OGW rolls around, figured out how to hose colourless things in some way? Where are the cards that care about coloured/non-coloured? Non-existent. It makes Devoid feel like a mechanic that someone slapped on at the last minute, but doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of the block.
Ingest is not far behind. It at least has a few Eldrazi that throw exiled things back into the graveyard, but still, a fair lack of support for the mechanic. Where was the Eldrazi that had power and toughness equal to the number of ingested cards owned by opponents? Surely that would have been a fair, flavourful thing to have printed? Way too many missed opportunites with both of those mechanics.
And I also agree with others that we should have seen Wastes turn up in BFZ. It could easily have been introduced quietly in the sideshow in BFZ, and then hammered home in OGW. Another missed opportunity.
[quote from="Jenrik »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/new-card-discussion/657027-bfz-block-why-is-it-so-unappealing?comment=83"]1)
The designers are at least trying to do new and interesting things.
This has got to be the most wrong thing I have ever read.
If they wanted to depower standard, at least make it interesting. Loose three-four color blobs grinding each other out with uninteresting creatures should not define a year of standard. I think cohort could have been intersting, not standard/modern playable, but worth making a quirky casual fnm deck around. I feel like wizards is too afraid that mechanical new ground will lead to a broken deck, and so builds what they want standard to be and insures that all else is chaff.
I do like colorless, but it was the only truly new or interesting aspect of the block.
Throw big creatures and sometimes pay for their upkeep.
My players were happy to keep playing them
from last new years set.
#dinosaurDynasty
processing payment should have been a repeatable on a permanent
I think it's a combination of flooding the market and low power level, but I'm not an economist. The difference between this rotation and other, it seems to me at least, is that the low power is so extreme and so extremely temporary. Cards like Greenwarden of Murasa, Void Winnower and Part the Waterveil are perfectly playable, as are Scatter to the Winds, Painful Truths and Ruinous Path, and could very easily be staples after Shadows of Innistrad. I guess that's technically speculation, but if it's a pretty safe bet as it's clear Khans block is holding a lot of the best BfZ cards back.
Compare this to Dragons of Tarkir Standard, which I personally found very frustrating because every deck I wanted to build was prohibitively expensive. Stuff like Deathmist Raptor, Dragonlord Ojutai, Dromoka's Command, and even Den Protector, which was a bit of a sleeper, didn't need Theros to rotate to be valuable, sought-after cards. There was no opportunity to pick up a playset of any card you would need from the set for a song. But the cost of BfZ singles being so comparatively low means a lot more people will be able to play a lot more decks next season based on the dirt-cheap cards from this set. I think that's good for Standard, especially the FNM crowd, as more people get to compete on a level playing field.
While I continue to be mystified by the concept that a card is a waste of paper if it's only relevant in Limited, I think Blight Herder would like to have a word with you.
I did not care about the ALly mechanic the first time and the second time? Just mega indifference, if that's even possible. I like cards that work well on their own and that have cool synergies with other cards, but the allies looked so, so puny that I did not want to play them.
The Eldrazi were all over the place. Newlamog and Kozilek II are sweet, some of the processor cards are nice, but I'm not getting that feeling of "OH MAN THE WORLD IS ENDING!" that I got from Emrakul or the Annihilator 4 creatures.
On the prerelease, 2HG ensured that my friends and I will not attend. I just wrote off an email to MaRo about it as well, informing him that we won't be attending and stick to the regular way please. It's great to have a team concept for the cards and game, but I like things as is for the prerelease events.
So yeah, pretty disappointing overall. Let's hope Return to Innistrad is a massive haymaker of power.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
I don't like 2HG either. What does that have to do with emailing Maro, though? If your LGS has no individual events for you to attend, you should talk to them. Nothing at all is changing in my store's schedule because of this; they're alternative single sealed with 2HG sealed all weekend, just like always. Only difference is some of the cards will be more interesting (or, you know, playable) in that environment.
The set feels like the past few years do in that the story tail seems yet again to wag the game dog. The constant fixation on planeswalkers is especially unappealing and leads to tired design, and the set feel designed to draw new players in. Origins felt like a simple but balanced set with some well-designed cards. The planeswalkers felt a bit too intrusive, though, but you could draft the set and not notice the planeswalkers some days. Here the whole set seems to be designed around getting the flavor out there, not about making a good set and adding flavor after. How many mechanics would have turned up in a non Eldrazi/Zendikar set? Very few, because they are not especially interesting. They had the plot idea and had to come up with mechanics to match, but with the constraint that they must fit into their idea of Standard, which is devoid (pun intended) of things that new players hate, as has been the case for a few years.
The set is quite decent to draft, although not balanced. If you spend time bigging up the feel and story, there will only ever be a lot of disappointed people because it is a game, and it is not possible to tell a really engaging original story in a CCG game medium. That is what books are for. Consequently we get a product that is neither here not there, too much emphasis on flavor for the players and not enough of a compelling story for those that want it and are promised it.
That said, OGW seems at the very least more interesting than its predecessor, if still a little underpowered for my tastes. I'll still hold out hope for SOI, because I'm a moron.
It is the first set since Prophecy where i didn't play a game of limited. Wordy/dull mechanics, Nerf'd power level, stupid gimmick that depressed the price of singles (killing the ev of a draft). I feel like every card is just a more expensive, or powered down version of a previous card. Its a half baked set.
In Progress
GBIshkanah, Grafwidow ~ BWGRTymna the Weaver & Tana, the Bloodsower ~ UGRashmi, Eternities Crafter ~ RGAtarka, World Render
Too many whiny players afraid of change.
The world is on fire
and you are here to stay and burn with me.
Commander: Hazezon Tamar (GRW), Arjun, the Shifting Flame (UR), [Waiting on Amonkhet]
Tiny Leader: [Waiting on Amonkhet]
Peasant Dragon: [Waiting on Amonkhet]
Modern: Orzhova Spirits (WB)
Legacy: Burn (R)
Vintage: Bazaar Dredge (B)
Okay, you probably missed the part where Wizards said that they will tell the story by many channels, the main being the Uncharted Realms / official fiction. Then you would know why Ulamog was freed. No problem there, just do not expect everything served to you on a silver platter at the cards. Way too past this approach (approximately some 16 years)
Similarly, sorry to ruin your celebrations, but Gideon is not dead. Have you even looked at the cards? Lead by Example, Fall of the Titans? Oath of Gideon?
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
2) Devoid made Eldrazi color-matters anyway. And Allies were largely Multicolor. Original ZEN was largely monochrome. Limited just felt weird between tribal, colors, not-colors, maybe-kinda-color-but-not-color, then no color because wastes, then blah blah blah.
3) Too many Eldrazi - Literally half the set was Eldrazi. It looked basically like Alien cousins of the Kami that everyone hated in Kamigawa (which compromised an otherwise pretty plane). You're either an Eldrazi fan or you're not. Polarizing.
4) Eldrazi, except Ulamog, were nerfed.
5) Nostalgia - This was Return to New Eldrazia, not Zendkiar. Aesthetically, Zendikar was a wasteland here. Not Adventure World. This was not the Return set everyone wanted.
5) Power Level - OGW is respectable. BFZ power level is embarrassing.
6) Excessive ugly art, poor quality CGI art, Zendikar looking trashed - When players think of Zendikar, they think large lush landscapes, sepia maps, traditional art. Not CGI aliens and trashed, sloppy sketches of desiccated wasteland. Thank God we got the Oath semi-cycle I wanted and a few standout pieces like Kiora, etc. Otherwise? Yikes.
7) Story was mismanaged. New, inexperienced authors. Spoiling major plot points. Filler stories. Shout out to Kelly Digges for always delivering though - great work. Ob was a fan favorite of many too.
8) Too much emphasis on "Magic is a war game" and not enough "look at a glimpse of this plane, its magic, its biology, etc." Tarkir was wasteland war world. Now BFZ is too. Well great! Let's trash Innistrad next!
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
I'll try to respond to generate a discussion.
1) It's not tribal in the normal sense. The eldrazi interact in weird and interesting ways. The other groups are disparate factions thrown together. I believe that it's supposed to feel chaotic.
2) Zendikar is being deconstructed, so the colors are being leeched by Ulamog and then twisted by Kozilek. I believe the confusion is somewhat deliberate. The sudden change to a two-block structure probably added to the confusion, though.
3) Isn't that kinda like saying that there were too many monsters on Innistrad? Innistrad also had a polarizing feel to it between the monsters and the humans. The Eldrazi are supposed to be overrunning everything; otherwise, the threat they represent isn't that real.
4) Agree that the Eldrazi were nerfed but only with the understanding that Annihilator is a horridly overpowered ability. I don't think anyone wanted Annihilator everywhere in this set. The new colored eldrazi have some interesting abilities.
I do not like the end of the story since it diminishes the impact of the titans themselves.
5.1) Nostalgia can be a good thing, but it's also limiting in what new sets can accomplish. Return to Ravnica suffered from having to adhere to the guild structure too much. Maze was a horrid set because of it.
5.2) Power level is always a tricky balance to achieve. Khans block is very powerful because of its multicolored nature. BFZ suffers by comparison to it. Toning down the power level is probably a good thing since it allows people to actually play the game. The real test will be seeing how Battle and Oath interact with Shadows over Innistrad.
6) The art in BFZ should be more varied, more epic. But it's also meant to express how much damage the eldrazi have done to the plane itself. There are some truly standout pieces of art in this set, especially in Gatewatch. The bismuth effect that Kozilek's brood creates is well done and thematically ties things together.
7) Agreed. The story feels very disjointed. Ugin does almost nothing of importance except hang out in a cave. Ob Nixilis, though, was a joy to read. I'm hoping he's not dead. I want to see what further mischief he creates.
8) The name Battle for Zendikar indicated the nature of what the set was doing. Back to Back War! settings does feel rather monotonous after a while.
I'm biased in that I like these new sets. The designers are at least trying to do new and interesting things.
The world is on fire
and you are here to stay and burn with me.
As windstrider says. This is not tribal, this is The Good and the Bad versus the Ugly. In Limited you were far from forced to CHOOSE between playing Allies and playing Eldrazi.
If you think so, you were doing it wrong. BFZ Limited was about synergies, looking for them and exploiting them. After Tarkir, MM15 and Origins, where we got our archetypes on a silver platter,pre-cooked and spoon-fed, it was welcome.
Yes, it is the Kami War, and Phyrexian Invasion part 1 (Dominaria) and part 2 (Mirrodin) again. By design. No problem here.
Well, RoE just skimmed the surface of Eldrazi. These sets brought wonderful new levels of weird interactions.
What did you expect after the Rise of the Eldrazi, Jenrik? Blossoming meadows, crystal lakes and lush jungles, birds singing and adventurers doing their adventuring, happily oblivious to world-eating threat? I understand that you would like to ignore the Rise events to get your dreamed-of Zendikar 2:Relic Hunter Boogaloo, but come on, you cannot be so naïve to expect it to look anything significantly else after RoE. Everyone knew that the next stop on Zendikar HAS to be about the Zendikari dealing with what was unleashed and trying to survive.
Also, you are the only one I have ever seen here to complain about this particular problem. So not "everyone".
I admire your stubborn fixation on your own opinions face to face with overwhelming forces like logic and sheer facts. But let's be serious here.
BFZ is weaker than previous sets. That is good and inevitable. There must be such set once a while to prevent incessant power creep.
Translated to English: I did not get my Zendikar 2: More of the Same, so everything stinks (and I have an irrational crush on all things blue).
Again, an average player who understood what happened in Rise of the Eldrazi would expect to see some serious wasteland, aliens and damage done to the "lush landscapes". And *traditional* art? That ship sailed about Onslaught block...
Please, do not try to pass your personal feelings as the players' voice.
Though I must agree that especially all the Ulamog brood in BFZ looked very, very similar and after a very long time I had problems to identify a card by its art alone. On the other hand, Kozilek's bismu-thing is something visually truly amazing, and his psychedelic drones are awesome.
They are learning this new way of telling stories literally on the run. Yeah, I hated much of Kreines's work and the predictability of the story. But let's give them some time to find the right combination of means and timing.
Huh? Jenrik, quite frankly...EVERY block has some conflict and/or war in it, since the very beginning of Magic. Khans Tarkir was a wasteland, Dragon Tarkir just a war world with draconic magic. As windstrider down here says, back to back war settings would get quickly old, but well, they HAD to resolve the Zendikar conflict and establish the
AvengersGatewatch. So they killed two birds with one stone.Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Because, like Kamigawa, it's a chance for WOTC to press the reset button on power/speed and slow the game down again.
My current trade binder.
"People most likely to cry "troll" are those who can't fathom holding a position for reasons unrelated to how they want to be perceived"
It's all in your head. Nothing really changed, just they decided to do something with colorless mana, because hey, here's a thing we haven't tried that would be interesting. I had fun with it, but that's only one data point. You might think it's dumb and that's fine.
I think it's unfair and misleading to describe it as "an extra symbol" that's confusing a new player, though. The thing that's been confusing up to this point is that one symbol has meant two different things. To bring up the class example again, Sol Ring costs 1 but produces 2... now if we were saying that out loud we'd say it costs 1 generic and produces 2 colorless, but as a shorthand a long time ago they decided to conflate these two symbols even though the game technically treats the objects differently. The new symbol clears up the confusion, and going forward will be just how it always was to new players.
Saying apples are apples and oranges are oranges is only confusing if you happen to refer to all fruit as apples, and have trouble telling different types of apples apart. New players will simply learn what an orange is.
Strangely, the new mana symbol was most confusing over the weekend to experienced players, and new players didn't have any issues as far as I could tell with it (Aside from a few instances of not getting that you can't port your Wastes from one sealed pool to another, thanks in no small part due to poor communication from the owner of the store). Still, it was never a major problem.
What *was* a weirdly prevalent problem, however, is Support, which I had to correct a dozen or so times with new players (And a few experienced players). It seems as though it isn't quite clear enough with the language in the reminder text that you can't put all the counters on a single creature. A good many still didn't get it after multiple reads, and trying to explain it to them. It seems there is something odd about that mechanic that is not intuitive.
So you hand all your shiny new Eldrazi cards Devoid... fantastic! Now where are the usual hoser cards in the block against this mechanic? Why haven't the allies, at least by the time OGW rolls around, figured out how to hose colourless things in some way? Where are the cards that care about coloured/non-coloured? Non-existent. It makes Devoid feel like a mechanic that someone slapped on at the last minute, but doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of the block.
Ingest is not far behind. It at least has a few Eldrazi that throw exiled things back into the graveyard, but still, a fair lack of support for the mechanic. Where was the Eldrazi that had power and toughness equal to the number of ingested cards owned by opponents? Surely that would have been a fair, flavourful thing to have printed? Way too many missed opportunites with both of those mechanics.
And I also agree with others that we should have seen Wastes turn up in BFZ. It could easily have been introduced quietly in the sideshow in BFZ, and then hammered home in OGW. Another missed opportunity.
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This has got to be the most wrong thing I have ever read.
Said with no hyperbole at all, I'm sure.
You know, if you're going to say something like that, at least present reasons why you feel that way.
Personally, I like devoid, the new colorless mana, and the colorless-matters theme. They open up new design space to be explored.
The world is on fire
and you are here to stay and burn with me.
I do like colorless, but it was the only truly new or interesting aspect of the block.
By "loose 3-4 color blobs" you mean things like these Abzan Blue, Abzan Red, Dark Jeskai, etc. ? These defined Standard even before BFZ came out
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)