wotc makes me sad every new set, the only card so far i liked is the land that draws 1 discards 1, everything else seems a joke in the face of magic players :/
It looks fun, im sure it will be. I do wish the power level was maybe a bit higher, i have some troubles investing money in cards i know will drop so significantly later, but hey, at the end of the day the new mechanics look fun, the art has been stellar, and i can't wait.
wotc makes me sad every new set, the only card so far i liked is the land that draws 1 discards 1, everything else seems a joke in the face of magic players :/
These threads make me sad with every new set. Seriously, the set is perfectly fine. It has a 3-mana Liliana. It has the strongest white removal spell that we have gotten in years. It has a 6-mana spell that is basically a See the Unwritten for planeswalkers. It has a Tamiyo that is certainly powerful enough to see play. It has multiple good utility lands. It has some very strong eldrazi that work great with emerge. It has multiple strong aggressive creatures. It has a very powerful Thalia. It has decent burn spells. It has a red Donate. It has a 1-shot Birthing Pod. It has a (admittedly somewhat disappointing) legendary werewolf and a legendary blue/black zombie that actually works in Zombie tribal. It has strong cards for Vampire tribal and for madness. It has some incredibly flavorful cards. I understand not liking this set if you are a Vorthos who doesn't want the eldrazi to mutate Innistrad or if you dislike every set because of the direction of design changing (I admittedly fall a bit into that last category). But otherwise, what is wrong with this set?
HEY GAIS LET'S PASS JUDGEMENT ON THE ENTIRE SET BEFORE EVEN HALF OF IT'S BEEN SPOILED. WHO NEEDS TO ACTUALLY PLAY WITH CARDS TO TELL IF THEY'RE GOOD/FUN AM I RITE?
wotc makes me sad every new set, the only card so far i liked is the land that draws 1 discards 1, everything else seems a joke in the face of magic players :/
Hey, someone started this inevitable thread. Maybe the set will get better as we see more cards. Even with what we see, this is hardly the worst. BFZ was much more underwhelming, and it's still better than Oath.
I'm worried about the color balance of the set in regards to sealed. SOI was the worst balanced format I've seen in years with green and white dominating and blue being unplayable without something like Jace or Startled Awake to pull you into it.
I'm very glad that with our current expansion release model, formats rotate from 6x 1st expansion to 4x 2nd + 2x 1st, eg 6x SOI to 4x EMN + 2x SOI. I like that if the first expansion is unbalanced, because the next expansion will comprise the majority of your pool, the new format will be drastically different and have potential to not be unbalanced.
Unfortunately EMN carries some baggage from SOI. EMN's got two problems: red and black are still the only heavy Madness colors, and blue will not support Investigate any longer. Madness is an awkward mechanic for sealed because it requires synergy and is therefore high variance. For example, Twins of Maurer Estate may be quite good in draft where you pick from a large number of cards, but in sealed its power depends on how many Madness enablers you open. This leads to the overall power level of red and black in sealed being lower because some significant proportion of pools will lack a critical mass of Madness enablers.
Blue's problem is that there will be no more investigating. Blue was already bad enough in SOI. Now imagine opening an EMN-SOI pool and seeing an Erdwal Illuminator. How good do you expect that card to be when 2/3s of your packs have no investigate? How good do you expect Daring Sleuth to be? Fleeting Memories? So there's 3 uncommons that are likely going to be unplayable or at best mediocre. That hurts but it's not the end of the world for blue. What's worse is that there will be no cards like Graf Mole in other colors that make the blue Investigate cards more attractive to play. Blue's Investigate cards, eg Jace's Scrutiny and Drownyard Explorers, will have to pull their own weight in EMN, without synergy bonuses from cards that care about clues. But blue's card quality was already weak in SOI, so it's unlikely that blue investigate cards that couldn't hold their own weight in 6x SOI will be high value in 4xEMN 2xSOI.
A caveat to what I've said is that these problems do not bind any of the colors to being bad, or to the overall color balance of 4xEMN 2xSOI to be bad. It's possible for the developers to recognize these things and decide, for example, to make most red and black Madness cards perfectly fine without Madness and only marginally better with Madness. Bloodmad Vampire is a fine example. It's also within their power to make blue cards much stronger in this expansion to counter the weakness of blue in SOI. But since I am making a loose, highly in-the-dark prediction rather than stating what is possible, what matters is what's likely to happen, and what is likeliest is that blue will continue to underperform, red and black will continue to be high variance, and green and/or white will be top colors again.
Can't wait for limited.
Standard has failed to hook me up since my return in BFZ but I'm a brewer (Hate netdecking standard so much) so maybe I'll end up polishing one of my many ideas.
Maybe some cards will make it into some of my EDH decks.
As far as modern and legacy go I'm intrigued by Gnarlwood Dryad maybe a Canadian Threshold/Zoo with a Delirium variant will pop up, but my legacy community is Very small, So I doubt someone will play it, and I only play martyrproc and Taking Turns in modern (yes, I'm that guy, lol).
So far, It looks like a 6/10 set for me, since it has failed to hook me up with standard, yet again.
Can't wait for limited.
Standard has failed to hook me up since my return in BFZ but I'm a brewer (Hate netdecking standard so much) so maybe I'll end up polishing one of my many ideas.
Maybe some cards will make it into some of my EDH decks.
As far as modern and legacy go I'm intrigued by Gnarlwood Dryad maybe a Canadian Threshold/Zoo with a Delirium variant will pop up, but my legacy community is Very small, So I doubt someone will play it, and I only play martyrproc and Taking Turns in modern (yes, I'm that guy, lol).
So far, It looks like a 6/10 set for me, since it has failed to hook me up with standard, yet again.
i play turns and i'm going to build a martyr proc too. hi friend \o/
In the defense of the OP - he didn't title the post saying he hates this set - it's not a complain thread, this is an opinion poll basically. Generating discussion - nothing wrong with that IMO.
For me, I'm really not interested in this set. Nothing from the spoilers thus far have jumped out at me as super fun to play with. A couple singles I may pick up but I think I will be skipping over this limited season personally.
I'm extremely happy with the set--the flavor is pervasive and really interesting, and we've gotten tons of powerful and playable cards, some that fit into currently established decks, others that might push lower tiered decks into higher tiers, and still others that might require entirely new decks to be built around them.
The mechanics are very interesting--Emerge is a fresh take on Eldrazi, Meld is crazy and the flavor really makes it, and Escalate is a solid kicker variant that's produced a lot of good cards. And now that the block's mechanics have all been spoiled, it is very nice to see that there hasn't really been a 'limited only' mechanic like the last two blocks had in Cohort, Support, Outlast, Ingest, and Bolster. Even investigate has some cards that have been pushed enough to see competitive play, while being mechanically interesting on its own.
I think the merging of Innistrad's aesthetic and Emrakul's corruption has been amazing, some of Wizards' best worldbuilding to date, which is a refreshing change after Battle for Zendikar's utterly abysmal take on the Eldrazi last block. I know some people don't like Innistrad's changing aesthetic, but I think the Eldritch horror of the Eldrazi meshes very well with Innistrad's gothic horror, combining together to make something that feels unique, while not feeling totally out of context in the area they appear.
We've got some obvious standard all-stars, commander goodies, some neat tribal support, some cards that could definitely see modern play, two very powerful planeswalkers, what's not to like?
Tl;dr: Battle for Zendikar was extremely disappointing, this is everything that block was not.
Oh, so because I think that people should hold off judgement until they have all the information, I'm an apologist? Good to know.
The MTGS community is pretty consistent about completely misjudging cards and sets at first, so I think it's pretty reasonable to say that you guys should play first, form opinions second.
It's not like anyone here could ever have had prior experience / precedent to temper their opinions with. How many sets have come out that looked poor to middling during spoiler season and ended up being spectacular?
Every single set had people claiming that it's "the worst set since Homelands" at first. Even beloved sets like Ravnica, Zendikar, or Innistrad. Most people on MTGS don't actually know what a good block/set/card looks like just by eyeballing it.
Every single spoiler season there are people like you that insist we all stay hyped and hopeful about the new set, and when it inevitably turns out to NOT be all that was promised, I don't ever see anyone step up and say "Well, looks like the naysayers weren't without merit after all."
"People like me"? Since when did I say that you should be hyped about this set? I said you shouldn't draw conclusions before you have all the information. Raising your hopes really high and calling this set amazing at this point is just as bad; you're still jumping to conclusions.
From a standard perspective, I'm somewhat disappointed as it seems to not only maintains the G/W status quo, but actually *enhances* it. Meanwhile U/R are still looking like they need a massive amount of help to even begin to be playable. THere are still 100+ cards though, so I'll reserve judgment, but Green and White have received some incredibly pushed cards for the third set in a row, and frankly nothing in the other colors compares to their raw efficiency.
I mean, Bant and G/W lists are debating whether or not Tamiyo or Gisela are strong enough to play in them. That should give you have an idea of how scewed the format is when two cards which are extremely powerful 4-drops may not see play due to being weaker than other options.
Still, there is hope. Given that we just received a Lightning Strike replacement of sorts (Even though Sorc speed significantly depowers it), there might be some hope for Red. Still haven't seen much from blue that truly makes me think Blue will be a thing.
I also tend to rate decks based on how much I want to brew from it, and Eldritch Moon doesn't really excite me much on that front so far. Note: IT's not the worst set, just disappointing to see the status quo thus far being unchanged entirely.
Oh, so because I think that people should hold off judgement until they have all the information, I'm an apologist? Good to know.
The MTGS community is pretty consistent about completely misjudging cards and sets at first, so I think it's pretty reasonable to say that you guys should play first, form opinions second.
It should be noted that the title of the OP specifically refers to "so far". As such, at the time of each person's posting, that person has ALL the information necessary to respond to the question in the title.
I think it might have been fantastic if it was a set or two away from BFZ/OGW instead of being immediately after it. Give the mystery of the missing eldrizzle a little time to ripen instead of jumping straight into it.
As for the cards, most of them I'm fairly "meh" on. Being mostly an EDH/Cube player, there's only a few cards that I've seen that make me perk up and pay attention.
The flavor... nice, but it goes straight from Gothic Horror (Shadows Over Innistrad) to a "lovecraftian" sort of theme. I reckon way too many people are *****ting on this set though.
This is the worst set since Shadows Over Innistrad, which was the worst set since Oath of the Gatewatch, which was the worst set since Battle for Zendikar, which was the worst set since Magic Origins, which was the worst set since Dragons of Tarkir, which was the worst set...
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Level 1 Judge
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
It's not like anyone here could ever have had prior experience / precedent to temper their opinions with. How many sets have come out that looked poor to middling during spoiler season and ended up being spectacular?
Every single set had people claiming that it's "the worst set since Homelands" at first. Even beloved sets like Ravnica, Zendikar, or Innistrad. Most people on MTGS don't actually know what a good block/set/card looks like just by eyeballing it.
Every single spoiler season there are people like you that insist we all stay hyped and hopeful about the new set, and when it inevitably turns out to NOT be all that was promised, I don't ever see anyone step up and say "Well, looks like the naysayers weren't without merit after all."
"People like me"? Since when did I say that you should be hyped about this set? I said you shouldn't draw conclusions before you have all the information. Raising your hopes really high and calling this set amazing at this point is just as bad; you're still jumping to conclusions.
So what you're saying is I can count on you to jump up and admit that the people who didn't like this set as of now were justified a month from now when GW is still completely dominating Standard, yes?
You seem to really like putting words in my mouth.
And just because you reach the right answer, doesn't mean that the logic you used to get there was sound. Making assumptions is foolish, even if your assumptions end up true.
Oh, so because I think that people should hold off judgement until they have all the information, I'm an apologist? Good to know.
The MTGS community is pretty consistent about completely misjudging cards and sets at first, so I think it's pretty reasonable to say that you guys should play first, form opinions second.
It should be noted that the title of the OP specifically refers to "so far". As such, at the time of each person's posting, that person has ALL the information necessary to respond to the question in the title.
That's some great technicality there, but my whole point is that the question itself is moot. Nobody's gonna be drafting with half a set.
Mechanically I like the concept of Meld cards, just not how they are specifically used here. I'd love to see them return in future sets representing two people teaming up. Could even use it for something like a double Planeswalker, it just sounds really neat to me overall. More literal Emrakul merging isn't my thing though.
Overall I would say my big issues are more Vorthos than anything else. Just not a fan of the Eldrazi. It doesn't help that I wasn't super happy with the spin Shadows had, and Moon just looks to be pushing it more in an area I dislike.
That being said I still see some interesting looking cards. I'm more casual, as is my playgroup, so they're oohing and awwing over cards like the Blue enchantment today or Assemble the Gatewatch, even if I realize they aren't as good as they seem. But they're interesting, potentially big swingy effects, and that's fun.
This is the worst set since Shadows Over Innistrad, which was the worst set since Oath of the Gatewatch, which was the worst set since Battle for Zendikar, which was the worst set since Magic Origins, which was the worst set since Dragons of Tarkir, which was the worst set...
That's the point sets are getting worst and worst as time goes on. I want to play better sets that have more power . We are starving for some power creep.
This is the worst set since Shadows Over Innistrad, which was the worst set since Oath of the Gatewatch, which was the worst set since Battle for Zendikar, which was the worst set since Magic Origins, which was the worst set since Dragons of Tarkir, which was the worst set...
That's the point sets are getting worst and worst as time goes on. I want to play better sets that have more power . We are starving for some power creep.
If you're waiting for sets where every card is a multi format monster, you're going to be waiting a long time.
But my point is that people have complained about every set since this site first came about. I saw complaints about Zendikar 1.0 when I first learned about this site, and those complaints haven't slowed down since then. When people don't complain about the power level being too low, they complain about the format being solved, or being too expensive, or one deck being too strong. From Zendikar (too expensive) to Scars (too expensive) to Innistrad (format solved, boring) to Return to Ravnica (power too low) to Theros (format solved) etc etc etc. Not seeing why we needed another "complain about the new set" thread.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Level 1 Judge
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
Personally, this set so far has been rather interesting and even a little exciting. I'm just an EDH player, so I evaluate cards a little differently. However, this this is the first set where I'm constantly looking at each of the cards. There's been a lot of firsts so far and there will probably be some more.
However, my mood has been dampened a bit by all the people complaining about the set, tbh. I mean, 88 of 205 cards have been spoiled at the time of the post. There's still a 117 cards left and people seem to act like everything is already spoiled...
wotc makes me sad every new set, the only card so far i liked is the land that draws 1 discards 1, everything else seems a joke in the face of magic players :/
URW PillowFort Stasis (costruction)
modern:
U Taking Turns combo
pauper:
UB Servitor Control
xenob8 : you know you are going to have a bad time when opponent starts with snow covered island
These threads make me sad with every new set. Seriously, the set is perfectly fine. It has a 3-mana Liliana. It has the strongest white removal spell that we have gotten in years. It has a 6-mana spell that is basically a See the Unwritten for planeswalkers. It has a Tamiyo that is certainly powerful enough to see play. It has multiple good utility lands. It has some very strong eldrazi that work great with emerge. It has multiple strong aggressive creatures. It has a very powerful Thalia. It has decent burn spells. It has a red Donate. It has a 1-shot Birthing Pod. It has a (admittedly somewhat disappointing) legendary werewolf and a legendary blue/black zombie that actually works in Zombie tribal. It has strong cards for Vampire tribal and for madness. It has some incredibly flavorful cards. I understand not liking this set if you are a Vorthos who doesn't want the eldrazi to mutate Innistrad or if you dislike every set because of the direction of design changing (I admittedly fall a bit into that last category). But otherwise, what is wrong with this set?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Hey, someone started this inevitable thread. Maybe the set will get better as we see more cards. Even with what we see, this is hardly the worst. BFZ was much more underwhelming, and it's still better than Oath.
I'm worried about the color balance of the set in regards to sealed. SOI was the worst balanced format I've seen in years with green and white dominating and blue being unplayable without something like Jace or Startled Awake to pull you into it.
I'm very glad that with our current expansion release model, formats rotate from 6x 1st expansion to 4x 2nd + 2x 1st, eg 6x SOI to 4x EMN + 2x SOI. I like that if the first expansion is unbalanced, because the next expansion will comprise the majority of your pool, the new format will be drastically different and have potential to not be unbalanced.
Unfortunately EMN carries some baggage from SOI. EMN's got two problems: red and black are still the only heavy Madness colors, and blue will not support Investigate any longer. Madness is an awkward mechanic for sealed because it requires synergy and is therefore high variance. For example, Twins of Maurer Estate may be quite good in draft where you pick from a large number of cards, but in sealed its power depends on how many Madness enablers you open. This leads to the overall power level of red and black in sealed being lower because some significant proportion of pools will lack a critical mass of Madness enablers.
Blue's problem is that there will be no more investigating. Blue was already bad enough in SOI. Now imagine opening an EMN-SOI pool and seeing an Erdwal Illuminator. How good do you expect that card to be when 2/3s of your packs have no investigate? How good do you expect Daring Sleuth to be? Fleeting Memories? So there's 3 uncommons that are likely going to be unplayable or at best mediocre. That hurts but it's not the end of the world for blue. What's worse is that there will be no cards like Graf Mole in other colors that make the blue Investigate cards more attractive to play. Blue's Investigate cards, eg Jace's Scrutiny and Drownyard Explorers, will have to pull their own weight in EMN, without synergy bonuses from cards that care about clues. But blue's card quality was already weak in SOI, so it's unlikely that blue investigate cards that couldn't hold their own weight in 6x SOI will be high value in 4xEMN 2xSOI.
A caveat to what I've said is that these problems do not bind any of the colors to being bad, or to the overall color balance of 4xEMN 2xSOI to be bad. It's possible for the developers to recognize these things and decide, for example, to make most red and black Madness cards perfectly fine without Madness and only marginally better with Madness. Bloodmad Vampire is a fine example. It's also within their power to make blue cards much stronger in this expansion to counter the weakness of blue in SOI. But since I am making a loose, highly in-the-dark prediction rather than stating what is possible, what matters is what's likely to happen, and what is likeliest is that blue will continue to underperform, red and black will continue to be high variance, and green and/or white will be top colors again.
Standard has failed to hook me up since my return in BFZ but I'm a brewer (Hate netdecking standard so much) so maybe I'll end up polishing one of my many ideas.
Maybe some cards will make it into some of my EDH decks.
As far as modern and legacy go I'm intrigued by Gnarlwood Dryad maybe a Canadian Threshold/Zoo with a Delirium variant will pop up, but my legacy community is Very small, So I doubt someone will play it, and I only play martyrproc and Taking Turns in modern (yes, I'm that guy, lol).
So far, It looks like a 6/10 set for me, since it has failed to hook me up with standard, yet again.
i play turns and i'm going to build a martyr proc too. hi friend \o/
URW PillowFort Stasis (costruction)
modern:
U Taking Turns combo
pauper:
UB Servitor Control
xenob8 : you know you are going to have a bad time when opponent starts with snow covered island
For me, I'm really not interested in this set. Nothing from the spoilers thus far have jumped out at me as super fun to play with. A couple singles I may pick up but I think I will be skipping over this limited season personally.
The mechanics are very interesting--Emerge is a fresh take on Eldrazi, Meld is crazy and the flavor really makes it, and Escalate is a solid kicker variant that's produced a lot of good cards. And now that the block's mechanics have all been spoiled, it is very nice to see that there hasn't really been a 'limited only' mechanic like the last two blocks had in Cohort, Support, Outlast, Ingest, and Bolster. Even investigate has some cards that have been pushed enough to see competitive play, while being mechanically interesting on its own.
I think the merging of Innistrad's aesthetic and Emrakul's corruption has been amazing, some of Wizards' best worldbuilding to date, which is a refreshing change after Battle for Zendikar's utterly abysmal take on the Eldrazi last block. I know some people don't like Innistrad's changing aesthetic, but I think the Eldritch horror of the Eldrazi meshes very well with Innistrad's gothic horror, combining together to make something that feels unique, while not feeling totally out of context in the area they appear.
We've got some obvious standard all-stars, commander goodies, some neat tribal support, some cards that could definitely see modern play, two very powerful planeswalkers, what's not to like?
Tl;dr: Battle for Zendikar was extremely disappointing, this is everything that block was not.
The MTGS community is pretty consistent about completely misjudging cards and sets at first, so I think it's pretty reasonable to say that you guys should play first, form opinions second.
"People like me"? Since when did I say that you should be hyped about this set? I said you shouldn't draw conclusions before you have all the information. Raising your hopes really high and calling this set amazing at this point is just as bad; you're still jumping to conclusions.
I mean, Bant and G/W lists are debating whether or not Tamiyo or Gisela are strong enough to play in them. That should give you have an idea of how scewed the format is when two cards which are extremely powerful 4-drops may not see play due to being weaker than other options.
Still, there is hope. Given that we just received a Lightning Strike replacement of sorts (Even though Sorc speed significantly depowers it), there might be some hope for Red. Still haven't seen much from blue that truly makes me think Blue will be a thing.
I also tend to rate decks based on how much I want to brew from it, and Eldritch Moon doesn't really excite me much on that front so far. Note: IT's not the worst set, just disappointing to see the status quo thus far being unchanged entirely.
It should be noted that the title of the OP specifically refers to "so far". As such, at the time of each person's posting, that person has ALL the information necessary to respond to the question in the title.
As for the cards, most of them I'm fairly "meh" on. Being mostly an EDH/Cube player, there's only a few cards that I've seen that make me perk up and pay attention.
EDH:
Maelstrom Wanderer
Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
And just because you reach the right answer, doesn't mean that the logic you used to get there was sound. Making assumptions is foolish, even if your assumptions end up true.
That's some great technicality there, but my whole point is that the question itself is moot. Nobody's gonna be drafting with half a set.
Overall I would say my big issues are more Vorthos than anything else. Just not a fan of the Eldrazi. It doesn't help that I wasn't super happy with the spin Shadows had, and Moon just looks to be pushing it more in an area I dislike.
That being said I still see some interesting looking cards. I'm more casual, as is my playgroup, so they're oohing and awwing over cards like the Blue enchantment today or Assemble the Gatewatch, even if I realize they aren't as good as they seem. But they're interesting, potentially big swingy effects, and that's fun.
If you're waiting for sets where every card is a multi format monster, you're going to be waiting a long time.
But my point is that people have complained about every set since this site first came about. I saw complaints about Zendikar 1.0 when I first learned about this site, and those complaints haven't slowed down since then. When people don't complain about the power level being too low, they complain about the format being solved, or being too expensive, or one deck being too strong. From Zendikar (too expensive) to Scars (too expensive) to Innistrad (format solved, boring) to Return to Ravnica (power too low) to Theros (format solved) etc etc etc. Not seeing why we needed another "complain about the new set" thread.
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
However, my mood has been dampened a bit by all the people complaining about the set, tbh. I mean, 88 of 205 cards have been spoiled at the time of the post. There's still a 117 cards left and people seem to act like everything is already spoiled...
BK'rrik Goodstuff
GWSythis Enchantress
URYusri Coin Flip
BRGKorvold Tokens
BGUYarok Lands Matter
WUBRaffine Looter