i think this set just handed us the best solution card to GW tokens, in nahiri's wrath. its a three cmc card that can roast multiple planeswalkers and creatures at once. yes you discard a lot of your hand for it, but you can still madness a card or two if you have the mana, and red has a Hellbent theme in this set. I honestly don't see anything else yet in the spoilers that could dethrone GW yet, so at odds with the set. but im a red player through and through, so seeing the best GW tokens hate just got spoiled in my color lifts my spirits a lot for the set. put in the hellbent vampire, the 8 mana devil with cost reduction, and the amazing mirrorwing dragon and you have a base to start building a deck that might give GW a run for its money
Oh I forgot, if you are playing against the top deck in the format you aren't allowed to cast any spells when they are tapped out on turns 3 and 4. If dromokas command stops you, you are not actually a smart player and probably should just buy the top deck and become a spike. It's just easier that way than to think for yourself, really.
No one has really mentioned this (that I noticed in this thread anyway), but I feel like the biggest problem with the flavor for the last few sets has been the "super friends" stuff. Feels forced, the 'walkers that Wizards is focusing on are tedious (how many Jace and Chandra stories and cards do we need?), and it is ridiculous that post-mending 'walkers are killing eldrazi that gave pre-mending Sorin and Nahiri problems.
Once they've mined the Super Friends/Gatewatch for a few sets, they'll probably start working on an anti-Gatewatch/Injustice League (Nicol Bolas and company) to work against them. Tedious, and a poor fit for the game. It feels cartoonish to me.
I can already see that this is one of my top5 favorite sets ever. Almost every card feels interesting and amazing. Of course, it's very subjective, but feel like return to Innistrad was worth it in comparison to Zendikar.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have divined your fate. You shall find your nemesis, a catastrophic clash. Devastation, misery for all, the unleashing of horrible curses and ferocious powers. Ruin, such ruin that I dream each night of blessed peace, assured that the universe is in balance once more...
There is an issue that I didn't see anyone mentioning so far. Magic has been depowered and pushed towards creature strategies. The best colors for creatures are and always have been green and white, both in terms of the creatures themselves and spells to support them (eldritch evolution and gideon come to mind). Maybe the fact that G/W is dominant is not just a particular case for this set, but a 'feature' of all future sets that are to come given the new paradigm in Magic.
Remember that back in Khans abzan stayed as one of the absolute strongest decks, playing the best creatures (such as the siege rhinocerus). Now it is harder to splash so you don't play abzan, you play G/W, the color pair out of abzan that has the best creatures. That said, G/B seems to be coming up hard this next season, and so is U/W tempo. What I think is that decks without green or white are soon going to become unplayable. Monored? Nope. Blue/Black? Nope. Black/Red? Nah. Red/Blue? Ha! Never. I think you can see my point. Grixis and its colors combinations are getting shafted.
Should rename the game Creatures:The Gathering
You mean 'creatures and walkers: the gathering'. Is the full set available tomorrow?
Full set is up, and I must concede the point to those that said that blue and red are underpowered, along with noncreatures. I call this set Magic: The Abzaning.
I call this set "The set that finally compelled me to quit Magic altogether (except for one EDH deck I'll be updating periodically)"
So much flavor, so much potential, all the gameplay and design experience of a Design and Development team that should know better. This should have been the greatest Magic set of all time.
It is considerably less than that. "Disappointing" doesn't even begin to describe it. "Infuriating" is closer.
I can see in a few cards (Lone Rider in particular) what this set really wanted to be and should have been. But, as I believed to be the case from the beginning, it ended up being a handful of chase cards buried in a pile of delusions of mediocrity.
Saying that Wizards "dropped the ball" doesn't go far enough. More accurately, they dropped the ball, booted it onto the freeway, and caused a 26-car pileup.
Haven't made my way through the full set yet but I do have one very specific disappointment.
Why did they bother doing ANOTHER Gisa & Geralf but we didn't finally get Ludevic? I mean--they mentioned him about a million times in flavor text. Did we really need another Gisa/Geralf card that badly? Makes no sense. I was really looking forward to finally meeting him. I secretly hoped Geralf was going to kill him and turn him into a Zombie. Or maybe MELD with him... And what they gave us is hardly an interesting card to begin with. Wtf, R&D?
I mean---how perfect? Such a missed opportunity. I don't generally get 'mad' over MtG but I actually want to yell at someone in R&D over this.
Oh well. I can only assume he is a LOCK for a future Commander deck.
I love the set. The only thing that disappoints me is: No legendary spirit, no Jenrik and no Ludevic. I would have preferred a mono-Blue Tamiyo but Bant colors is suitable as a reason to print her, and I can play those colors in at least one EDH deck. So overall, I'm pleased. Spirits are strong, have good tribal support, set is flavorful and light enough on Eldrazi while maintaining Cosmic Horror themes to be enjoyable.
Haven't made my way through the full set yet but I do have one very specific disappointment.
Why did they bother doing ANOTHER Gisa & Geralf but we didn't finally get Ludevic? I mean--they mentioned him about a million times in flavor text. Did we really need another Gisa/Geralf card that badly? Makes no sense. I was really looking forward to finally meeting him. I secretly hoped Geralf was going to kill him and turn him into a Zombie. Or maybe MELD with him... And what they gave us is hardly an interesting card to begin with. Wtf, R&D?
I mean---how perfect? Such a missed opportunity. I actually want to yell at someone in R&D over this. Idiocy.
Oh well. I can only assume he is a LOCK for a future Commander deck.
I would hope he shows up in 4-color commander as the face card or the "lieutenant" like how there was Meren/Maziek was in the previous commander decks. But I do agree with you. His name, his experiments and flavor text is mentioned EVERYWHERE! It's a damn shame that he did not show up somehow. I don't mind the siblings showing up together but I am rather disappointed on the card itself of G+G. It could have been a Gisa card and no one would bat an eye. G+G is an ok card but I don't think a "everyone is a gravecrawler for one turn" effect is that powerful. Zombie players are bunch of dirty cheaters like Gisa and just cheat zombies into play. Who pays for actual mana costs? Of course I am saying this jokingly. Love you Zombie guys <3
Overall I am disappointed in the Legendary creatures (Aside from Thalia which will probably go into Stax decks for multiple formats and Emrakul which I think is pretty nifty because you can break the extra turn with Strangehold and Ugin's Nexus to be a real meanie).
Gisela and Bruna: Going from rather unique abilites for their respective cards in two different colors then get shifted to being a dumb flying beater and a 7 mana restricted Rezz spell that only works on CAST? So no flicker shennigans. Just mono-white? Then Meld at end of turn? That is not going to survive a full rotation on the any Commander table.
Ishkanah: The legendary spider that most people been asking for and it's a resounding "okay...?" I think the delirium effect needed that "at opponent's upkeep you get this if you have delirium" like the other Delirium cards had. As a one shot ETB and such weak tokens, it is rather dull. Then the life loss ability? Nothing that great. Granted... I'm still going to build her but it will probably be a way to exploit her token making ability. But at that rate there are better generals for that so it would just be out of love of spiders.
Ulrich: It's a werewolf. That's it. I don't understand the non-werewolf clause. It should try to beat up whatever it wants. HE IS A ALPHA! If he was some sort of lovechild of Huntmaster of the Fells and Geier Reach Bandit, slap it on a 6 drop and BOOM! Werewolves can have a shot. Honestly there should have been more cards that liked Transforming back and form. It's a shame that only mythic werewolves actually like going back and forth.
One thing that kinda peeved me off is the power drop in some cards. Ghostly Flicker vs Displace. WHY? Was ghostly flicker that busted?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To the people that say that a card needs to be a higher rarity because of Limited... I hate you guys so much. I present to you with this.
This set is a huge miss for me as a Standard player, Green and White just continue to get good cards, blue and red are pointless and Black is literally being supported by Languish.
A great deal of my feelings for this set are tied into the playability of Vampires and madness, which after seeing the full spoiler I dont feel will make it to constructed playable. While I appreciate that the tribe finally got a 2 mana lord (Stromkirk Condemned) it is still lacking in many aspects, especially when compared to the various G/W/x decks. I was really hoping we might get another good 1 mana madness spell or any 0-1 mana madness creatures.
While I am personally frustrated with the set for failing to meet my expectations I can understand why others might be excited for it, the art is mostly great (Field Creeper and Oath of Liliana stand out as especially good examples) and all things considered there is some sweet flavor. While I am tired of seeing the Eldrazi I overall enjoy their execution here more so than in BFZ. I must at add that Zendikar to me was much more disappointing as the various tribes were combined into allies and reduced to sad limited fodder while the Eldrazi were spread so thin across so many cards that most lacked creative and artistic intrigue.
Did they just forget about WW and throw in a couple at the end of design? And WTF is the under powered Moon Mist, only one of my guys flips...rough. Not to mention no Tovolar, I was also hoping to get at least one playable Instant burn spell. However they did print some fun looking cards and a few cards that have very high potential in Grim Flayer, Bedlam Reveler and the Flash Spirit that removes a spell.
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.
Sorry buddy, but the set is crap and the cards that aren't green and white are crap. There's no misjudging poor design and blatantly, pushed and overpowered cards.
Sorry buddy, but the set is crap and the cards that aren't green and white are crap. There's no misjudging poor design and blatantly, pushed and overpowered cards.
I do agree that they pushed GW and Abzan way too far around, but I kind of disagree. Yes, GW is probably the top dog, but B/X decks got some really interesting tools. BG Delirium seems like a very strong contender with Gnarlwood Dryad, Grim Flayer, Whispers of Emrakul, Liliana, the Last Hope and maybe even Distended Mindbender. U got reduced to a support color yet again, but there are some interesting possibilites for brewing in it. I'm really surprised to say it, but Spirit Tribal may be not actually terrible this time around. Congrats WotC, you have been only trying it since Kamigawa! Mausoleum Wanderer, Rattlechains, Selfless Spirit... honestly, a UW Tempo or even Aggro deck seems like a solid possibility. Zombies could also be a contender, but only time will tell.
Now, as for R... they took a huge steaming one on poor R. What is there to say? One of the R cards that will probably impact Standard the most is god-freaking-damn Harmless Offering. If Red sees any play whatsoever, it will be in either Vampires or Superfriends, because Chandra, Flamecaller is still good. But, honestly, I expect Red to see little to no play.
My overall sentiment with the set remains the same as it was in the last page, with just one tiny addition. It is a very good set in a vacuum, and I will in no way call it "crap". It brings great flavor, awesome mechanics and amazingly playable cards to the table, and it just looks fun. I'm excited, and I know Modern and Commander players will find some darlings amongst it, and casual tables will throughly enjoy this.
But in the current Standard, this set seems like a disappointment. It does not brings nearly enough to the table and honestly seems very unbalanced even in Limited. I hope to be wrong with this.
Yet another set where the vast majority of the constructed power is in a small handful of mythics and rares. Get ready for another pack lottery and for some super pricey mythics that tank in value the second they rotate from Standard.
That last one plus Mausoleum Wanderer should make Spirits viable in Standard, if not Modern.
There are some disappointments- these new werewolves are not what anybody wanted, and the Eldrazi flavor is too high overall,
but this set has accomplished a lot for a small set as far as I'm concerned.
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
Sorry buddy, but the set is crap and the cards that aren't green and white are crap. There's no misjudging poor design and blatantly, pushed and overpowered cards.
I do agree that they pushed GW and Abzan way too far around, but I kind of disagree. Yes, GW is probably the top dog, but B/X decks got some really interesting tools. BG Delirium seems like a very strong contender with Gnarlwood Dryad, Grim Flayer, Whispers of Emrakul, Liliana, the Last Hope and maybe even Distended Mindbender. U got reduced to a support color yet again, but there are some interesting possibilites for brewing in it. I'm really surprised to say it, but Spirit Tribal may be not actually terrible this time around. Congrats WotC, you have been only trying it since Kamigawa! Mausoleum Wanderer, Rattlechains, Selfless Spirit... honestly, a UW Tempo or even Aggro deck seems like a solid possibility. Zombies could also be a contender, but only time will tell.
Now, as for R... they took a huge steaming one on poor R. What is there to say? One of the R cards that will probably impact Standard the most is god-freaking-damn Harmless Offering. If Red sees any play whatsoever, it will be in either Vampires or Superfriends, because Chandra, Flamecaller is still good. But, honestly, I expect Red to see little to no play.
My overall sentiment with the set remains the same as it was in the last page, with just one tiny addition. It is a very good set in a vacuum, and I will in no way call it "crap". It brings great flavor, awesome mechanics and amazingly playable cards to the table, and it just looks fun. I'm excited, and I know Modern and Commander players will find some darlings amongst it, and casual tables will throughly enjoy this.
But in the current Standard, this set seems like a disappointment. It does not brings nearly enough to the table and honestly seems very unbalanced even in Limited. I hope to be wrong with this.
I agree with you almost entirely, however, the black decks really aren't b/x but more g/b/x. Black is the same as blue, a support color for green in a midrange/control style deck. Black creatures, as a whole, are of poor quality and can't stand alone on their own. Also, black has some of the worst card advantage in the game right now. The real card advantage is in green and white, which is why both colors are so strong. Without green, black would be just as bad as red.
I'm not sold on Liliana, the Last hope, yet. She has weak abilities, but in the right deck she may be a powerhouse. Liliana's ultimate is good, but her ultimate requires zombies in order to impact the board when you activate it. Most planeswalkers have an immediate impact if not a game winning impact, not so with Liliana.
I'm actually excited for the direction red is taking in this set. I'm not denying the claims that red is underpowered, because I haven't analyzed power levels closely. Mostly, I'm excited that they are giving red more things to do. In my view, red has never been able to do as many different things as the other colors. For ages, it seemed like all red could do was deal direct damage and play Goblins. In the past few years it seems like they've ramped up red's ability to copy spells, play cards impulsively (meaning exile a card from somewhere and then be able to cast it), and do discard/draw.
Now, I also see them adding Reach to red creatures, and finally getting creative with more complicated effects - like the ones on Nahiri's Wrath and Mirrorwing Dragon - that appear fun and also powerful in limited, cube, and casual. Red also now has a straightforward and effective evasion ability in Menace.
Additionally, they tentatively tried out another new direction for red in this set: tapping lands, via Stensia Innkeeper. It feels off to me, as I think red should be destroying lands, not tapping them. I've always been put off by red's occasional tap-down effects (such as Uphill Battle and Urabrask the Hidden), because tapping has always been the province of blue/white. Flavor-wise, those colors use repression to get their way, such as Arresting creatures or inducing Claustrophobia, so tapping is a good fit, whereas red is supposed to be about freedom and explosiveness, not calculated or authoritarian repression. Yes, it'll be a strange world if red starts "repressing" lands instead of just blowing them up. However, I applaud them for trying new things in red, even if I personally don't feel good about this one.
Finally, it took them 23 years, but they finally gave red a vanilla 2/2 for two mana. Symbolically it feels important, but only time will tell if they follow it up and actually make the color as a whole stronger.
Being a modern player I'm incredibly disappointed. No reprints of any value at all, not even lands. No good removal spells, no counterspells, no Innocent Blood reprint, no nothing. This is the first set I'll skip completely. Hopefully Kaladesh will be better.
Being a modern player I'm incredibly disappointed. No reprints of any value at all, not even lands. No good removal spells, no counterspells, no Innocent Blood reprint, no nothing. This is the first set I'll skip completely. Hopefully Kaladesh will be better.
This set has more modern playable cards than SOI...
I'll be adding the grand total of six new cards from this set to my collection. Two of them will slot into my casual standard decks, the other four are all bolstering my commanders. I can't remember ever going through a new card list and finding so few I wanted. Such a shame after SOI, which as a casual player I thought was a great set. Ah well, Conspiracy, Commander, and Kaladesh to look forwards to!
Overall I'm happy with it. Love the flavor/design behind Meld and Emerge, lots of fun stories being told on the cards. Hard to tell just by looking, but on the surface it looks like an interesting set for limited, which is how I'll experience most of the cards.
I agree with you almost entirely, however, the black decks really aren't b/x but more g/b/x. Black is the same as blue, a support color for green in a midrange/control style deck. Black creatures, as a whole, are of poor quality and can't stand alone on their own. Also, black has some of the worst card advantage in the game right now. The real card advantage is in green and white, which is why both colors are so strong. Without green, black would be just as bad as red.
I'm not sold on Liliana, the Last hope, yet. She has weak abilities, but in the right deck she may be a powerhouse. Liliana's ultimate is good, but her ultimate requires zombies in order to impact the board when you activate it. Most planeswalkers have an immediate impact if not a game winning impact, not so with Liliana.
Read Liliy's Emblem again, you get free zombies every End step even if you have zero, it is X+2. Way to many people fail at reading her emblem and ***** on her ultimate. Yes it is a slow ultimate, but most walkers NEVER use their ultimate.
Sorry buddy, but the set is crap and the cards that aren't green and white are crap. There's no misjudging poor design and blatantly, pushed and overpowered cards.
No, in fact, there's misjudging when you are pronouncing wildly subjective and biased judgement before even touching the first card of the set, let alone before the community has played with them extensively. How do I know it? Because that paragraph of yours is repeated almost word by word eeeeevery new set between the very first spoiler and the first couple weeks after release... and in the end, most sets turn out similarly ok.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
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Oh I forgot, if you are playing against the top deck in the format you aren't allowed to cast any spells when they are tapped out on turns 3 and 4. If dromokas command stops you, you are not actually a smart player and probably should just buy the top deck and become a spike. It's just easier that way than to think for yourself, really.
Once they've mined the Super Friends/Gatewatch for a few sets, they'll probably start working on an anti-Gatewatch/Injustice League (Nicol Bolas and company) to work against them. Tedious, and a poor fit for the game. It feels cartoonish to me.
You mean 'creatures and walkers: the gathering'. Is the full set available tomorrow?
So much flavor, so much potential, all the gameplay and design experience of a Design and Development team that should know better. This should have been the greatest Magic set of all time.
It is considerably less than that. "Disappointing" doesn't even begin to describe it. "Infuriating" is closer.
I can see in a few cards (Lone Rider in particular) what this set really wanted to be and should have been. But, as I believed to be the case from the beginning, it ended up being a handful of chase cards buried in a pile of delusions of mediocrity.
Saying that Wizards "dropped the ball" doesn't go far enough. More accurately, they dropped the ball, booted it onto the freeway, and caused a 26-car pileup.
This set is bad, and Wizards should feel bad.
Why did they bother doing ANOTHER Gisa & Geralf but we didn't finally get Ludevic? I mean--they mentioned him about a million times in flavor text. Did we really need another Gisa/Geralf card that badly? Makes no sense. I was really looking forward to finally meeting him. I secretly hoped Geralf was going to kill him and turn him into a Zombie. Or maybe MELD with him... And what they gave us is hardly an interesting card to begin with. Wtf, R&D?
I mean---how perfect? Such a missed opportunity. I don't generally get 'mad' over MtG but I actually want to yell at someone in R&D over this.
Oh well. I can only assume he is a LOCK for a future Commander deck.
Fully-powered 600-Card "Dream Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/dreamcube
450-Card "Artificer's Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/artificer
Cubing in Indianapolis...send me a PM!!
|| 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 would hope he shows up in 4-color commander as the face card or the "lieutenant" like how there was Meren/Maziek was in the previous commander decks. But I do agree with you. His name, his experiments and flavor text is mentioned EVERYWHERE! It's a damn shame that he did not show up somehow. I don't mind the siblings showing up together but I am rather disappointed on the card itself of G+G. It could have been a Gisa card and no one would bat an eye. G+G is an ok card but I don't think a "everyone is a gravecrawler for one turn" effect is that powerful. Zombie players are bunch of dirty cheaters like Gisa and just cheat zombies into play. Who pays for actual mana costs? Of course I am saying this jokingly. Love you Zombie guys <3
Overall I am disappointed in the Legendary creatures (Aside from Thalia which will probably go into Stax decks for multiple formats and Emrakul which I think is pretty nifty because you can break the extra turn with Strangehold and Ugin's Nexus to be a real meanie).
Gisela and Bruna: Going from rather unique abilites for their respective cards in two different colors then get shifted to being a dumb flying beater and a 7 mana restricted Rezz spell that only works on CAST? So no flicker shennigans. Just mono-white? Then Meld at end of turn? That is not going to survive a full rotation on the any Commander table.
Ishkanah: The legendary spider that most people been asking for and it's a resounding "okay...?" I think the delirium effect needed that "at opponent's upkeep you get this if you have delirium" like the other Delirium cards had. As a one shot ETB and such weak tokens, it is rather dull. Then the life loss ability? Nothing that great. Granted... I'm still going to build her but it will probably be a way to exploit her token making ability. But at that rate there are better generals for that so it would just be out of love of spiders.
Ulrich: It's a werewolf. That's it. I don't understand the non-werewolf clause. It should try to beat up whatever it wants. HE IS A ALPHA! If he was some sort of lovechild of Huntmaster of the Fells and Geier Reach Bandit, slap it on a 6 drop and BOOM! Werewolves can have a shot. Honestly there should have been more cards that liked Transforming back and form. It's a shame that only mythic werewolves actually like going back and forth.
One thing that kinda peeved me off is the power drop in some cards. Ghostly Flicker vs Displace. WHY? Was ghostly flicker that busted?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY8h2vp5Xis
I'm not buying a thing
While I am personally frustrated with the set for failing to meet my expectations I can understand why others might be excited for it, the art is mostly great (Field Creeper and Oath of Liliana stand out as especially good examples) and all things considered there is some sweet flavor. While I am tired of seeing the Eldrazi I overall enjoy their execution here more so than in BFZ. I must at add that Zendikar to me was much more disappointing as the various tribes were combined into allies and reduced to sad limited fodder while the Eldrazi were spread so thin across so many cards that most lacked creative and artistic intrigue.
Sorry buddy, but the set is crap and the cards that aren't green and white are crap. There's no misjudging poor design and blatantly, pushed and overpowered cards.
I do agree that they pushed GW and Abzan way too far around, but I kind of disagree. Yes, GW is probably the top dog, but B/X decks got some really interesting tools. BG Delirium seems like a very strong contender with Gnarlwood Dryad, Grim Flayer, Whispers of Emrakul, Liliana, the Last Hope and maybe even Distended Mindbender.
U got reduced to a support color yet again, but there are some interesting possibilites for brewing in it. I'm really surprised to say it, but Spirit Tribal may be not actually terrible this time around. Congrats WotC, you have been only trying it since Kamigawa! Mausoleum Wanderer, Rattlechains, Selfless Spirit... honestly, a UW Tempo or even Aggro deck seems like a solid possibility. Zombies could also be a contender, but only time will tell.
Now, as for R... they took a huge steaming one on poor R. What is there to say? One of the R cards that will probably impact Standard the most is god-freaking-damn Harmless Offering. If Red sees any play whatsoever, it will be in either Vampires or Superfriends, because Chandra, Flamecaller is still good. But, honestly, I expect Red to see little to no play.
My overall sentiment with the set remains the same as it was in the last page, with just one tiny addition. It is a very good set in a vacuum, and I will in no way call it "crap". It brings great flavor, awesome mechanics and amazingly playable cards to the table, and it just looks fun. I'm excited, and I know Modern and Commander players will find some darlings amongst it, and casual tables will throughly enjoy this.
But in the current Standard, this set seems like a disappointment. It does not brings nearly enough to the table and honestly seems very unbalanced even in Limited. I hope to be wrong with this.
and it could possibly shake up Modern more than most small sets (OGW's mistakes nonwithstanding).
Splendid Reclamation, Eldritch Evolution, Emrakul, the Promised End, Liliana, the Last Hope, and Tamiyo, Field Researcher all have excellent Modern prospects,
and we have not one but three new ways to deal with "uncounterable" spells-
Unsubstantiate, Summary Dismissal, and Spell Queller.
That last one plus Mausoleum Wanderer should make Spirits viable in Standard, if not Modern.
There are some disappointments- these new werewolves are not what anybody wanted, and the Eldrazi flavor is too high overall,
but this set has accomplished a lot for a small set as far as I'm concerned.
Reprint Stasis!
Control needs more love.
EDH:
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm
WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW
WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
I agree with you almost entirely, however, the black decks really aren't b/x but more g/b/x. Black is the same as blue, a support color for green in a midrange/control style deck. Black creatures, as a whole, are of poor quality and can't stand alone on their own. Also, black has some of the worst card advantage in the game right now. The real card advantage is in green and white, which is why both colors are so strong. Without green, black would be just as bad as red.
I'm not sold on Liliana, the Last hope, yet. She has weak abilities, but in the right deck she may be a powerhouse. Liliana's ultimate is good, but her ultimate requires zombies in order to impact the board when you activate it. Most planeswalkers have an immediate impact if not a game winning impact, not so with Liliana.
I'm actually excited for the direction red is taking in this set. I'm not denying the claims that red is underpowered, because I haven't analyzed power levels closely. Mostly, I'm excited that they are giving red more things to do. In my view, red has never been able to do as many different things as the other colors. For ages, it seemed like all red could do was deal direct damage and play Goblins. In the past few years it seems like they've ramped up red's ability to copy spells, play cards impulsively (meaning exile a card from somewhere and then be able to cast it), and do discard/draw.
Now, I also see them adding Reach to red creatures, and finally getting creative with more complicated effects - like the ones on Nahiri's Wrath and Mirrorwing Dragon - that appear fun and also powerful in limited, cube, and casual. Red also now has a straightforward and effective evasion ability in Menace.
Additionally, they tentatively tried out another new direction for red in this set: tapping lands, via Stensia Innkeeper. It feels off to me, as I think red should be destroying lands, not tapping them. I've always been put off by red's occasional tap-down effects (such as Uphill Battle and Urabrask the Hidden), because tapping has always been the province of blue/white. Flavor-wise, those colors use repression to get their way, such as Arresting creatures or inducing Claustrophobia, so tapping is a good fit, whereas red is supposed to be about freedom and explosiveness, not calculated or authoritarian repression. Yes, it'll be a strange world if red starts "repressing" lands instead of just blowing them up. However, I applaud them for trying new things in red, even if I personally don't feel good about this one.
Finally, it took them 23 years, but they finally gave red a vanilla 2/2 for two mana. Symbolically it feels important, but only time will tell if they follow it up and actually make the color as a whole stronger.
SOI also sucks, I'm not going to deny that.
Read Liliy's Emblem again, you get free zombies every End step even if you have zero, it is X+2. Way to many people fail at reading her emblem and ***** on her ultimate. Yes it is a slow ultimate, but most walkers NEVER use their ultimate.
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Standard Deck:
BUPirates
Modern Deck:
B8-Rack
No, in fact, there's misjudging when you are pronouncing wildly subjective and biased judgement before even touching the first card of the set, let alone before the community has played with them extensively. How do I know it? Because that paragraph of yours is repeated almost word by word eeeeevery new set between the very first spoiler and the first couple weeks after release... and in the end, most sets turn out similarly ok.