I'm still reserving judgment on SoI let alone EMN so far. I had time enough to look back at BFZ and came to my same conclusion as at first, that it was a stinkeroo. I thought SoI was passably good, some borderline but not weak mechanics and designs, a better showing than DKA at least and certainly putting BFZ to shame, but not a slam dunk like the original innistrad. But both SoI and EMN at least have been flavor successes, and EMN some creative designs but sparingly- emerge is competent, but escalate is not, so I'm more impressed with what I've seen so far than I was with SoI but its still not great
I don't have the same hangup on the eldrazi flavor some people are having. They were done far better here than on BFZ, it showed a good way to return the eldrazi without falling into the trap of just recycling the old thematics and content and creating nothing new and spreading too little content over too many cards. Heres its been reined in and done conservatively. The meld mechanic too conservatively, but the flavor isn't bad. Its no NPH quality, but I'm favorable to it.
I'm sure in time I'll get those strong opinionated criticisms for the block like I did all the previous ones
Time to just be honest. This set sucks. Once again blue so far is absolute trash. Limited is completely color inbalanced. Standard is even more color inbalanced. Sick of Eldrazi. New Liliana is crap. New Emrakul is crap. Spirits continue to underwhelm. Zombies are not good enough. No cool graveyard cards. Everything super creature combat Magic. This isn't Yu-Gi-Oh. But Wizards keeps pushing the game in that direction. And no one seems to care. Well I will with my wallet. I ain't buying this trash no more.
The flavour is still awesome, off the charts. There are so many cards that are calling me to build whacky decks with.
but
I am sick of do everything play 4 of mythics like Giesla and that 2 drop mythic why mythic! that is driving me nuts.
I am also annoyed at everything being sorcery speed take inventory and the exile lightning strike.
Why does White and WG keep getting more and more powerful cards!
So while I think this set is good, it is being tainted by continuing niggling issues like this.
I'd love to play these whacky decks but the GW decks crush them okay then I'd like to then try to build a powerful control deck to fight the GW decks but I can't do that either because there is too much power in GW and too little in control.
No, I don't like what I've seen from this set much. I find this meld mechanic particularly distasteful; they took an already awkward mechanic (DFCs) and ratcheted up that awkwardness. I'm most excited about reprints of cards that were formerly marginal (Murder) or nerfed versions of past standouts (Take Inventory and Galvanic Bombardment). Blue and red look like they're still going to be, by far, the worst colors in standard.
Can't say I'm fond of this set... A few gems for standard I guess, not much to hit modern or other older formats. There are better alternatives for these cards in the commander card pool, so few wins there... And since there is a new product coming out virtually every month this year, I find it even harder to be enthused. The flavor is good, but the mechanics are clunky and the cards underwhelming.
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.
Not everyone is drafting.
People are free to make up their own minds on when they seen enough & speak accordingly.
Also, when & how people comment in itself is indicative of how well Wizards is pacing the spoiler season. In this respect this thread is also a commentary on the effectiveness of Wizard's pre-release marketing efforts.
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.
Not everyone is drafting.
People are free to make up their own minds on when they seen enough & speak accordingly.
Also, when & how people comment in itself is indicative of how well Wizards is pacing the spoiler season. In this respect this thread is also a commentary on the effectiveness of Wizard's pre-release marketing efforts.
The constructed players have even less reason to complain at this point, since only a small percentage of the set would end up in their decks, even if every card in the set is a home run. You never know when a constructed playable will pull a Boros Reckoner, and get spoiled on the last day.
But whatever, be as pessimistic or optimistic as you want. I'm tired of trying to fight it. Almost nobody on this site is evenhanded about things. Everything is declared either the Best Thing Ever or the Worst Thing Ever, and such opinions are almost always formed with as much immediacy as humanly possible. And every time someone tries and point out that, hey, maybe this thing is just average, not amazing nor terrible, just okay, all these accusations of being a doomsayer or a WotC apologist start getting thrown around. I'm sick of it.
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.
Not everyone is drafting.
People are free to make up their own minds on when they seen enough & speak accordingly.
Also, when & how people comment in itself is indicative of how well Wizards is pacing the spoiler season. In this respect this thread is also a commentary on the effectiveness of Wizard's pre-release marketing efforts.
The constructed players have even less reason to complain at this point, since only a small percentage of the set would end up in their decks, even if every card in the set is a home run. You never know when a constructed playable will pull a Boros Reckoner, and get spoiled on the last day.
But whatever, be as pessimistic or optimistic as you want. I'm tired of trying to fight it. Almost nobody on this site is evenhanded about things. Everything is declared either the Best Thing Ever or the Worst Thing Ever, and such opinions are almost always formed with as much immediacy as humanly possible. And every time someone tries and point out that, hey, maybe this thing is just average, not amazing nor terrible, just okay, all these accusations of being a doomsayer or a WotC apologist start getting thrown around. I'm sick of it.
I think the *biggest* problem for me is that they essentially have been giving both Green and White essentially all of the toys in this set, which is *doubly* frustrating given the sorry state that Standard is in (Dominated by Green and WHite decks). U/R are effectively shafted for the format, where the most exciting card revealed so far for red is... a Sorcery Speed Lightning Strike variant. A decently card is the most interesting card in the entire set for red in standard, a color that effectively has no impact on Standard currently. Blue equally is pretty hosed, with only a sorcery speed Accumulated Knowledge-lite that has any meaningful relevance for blue. Pretty much everything else in those colors is far, far below what both Green and White have received. Black equally isn't getting much out of EMN, though I do like the Lily. Green doesn't get a *ton*, but it doesn't need it either (What it does get, however, is lawlsy potent). White gets just a boat load of good stuff, which is great because every once in a while a non-white list was making its way into a top 8 and we really need to stop that. And the Bant lists are just looking miserable from here on out with what they received.
Frankly, I'm for the first time unexcited by a set. Hell, I defended Born of the Gods back then as a reasonably inclusion to the set. BFZ was a "worse" set, and I can certainly name others (BotG and Saviors trump it by far as far as "modern" sets are concerned, and it certainly isn't Homelands or FE). But it certainly has been the most dissappointiong spoiler season for me to watch unfold as I see that G/W only continue to beef themselves into complete domination of standard.
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.
Not everyone is drafting.
People are free to make up their own minds on when they seen enough & speak accordingly.
Also, when & how people comment in itself is indicative of how well Wizards is pacing the spoiler season. In this respect this thread is also a commentary on the effectiveness of Wizard's pre-release marketing efforts.
The constructed players have even less reason to complain at this point, since only a small percentage of the set would end up in their decks, even if every card in the set is a home run. You never know when a constructed playable will pull a Boros Reckoner, and get spoiled on the last day.
For what reason people have to complain is strictly up to them. They may value things (& pacing of the spoiler season) differently than you or I do. Thus is the purpose of this thread. So there shouldn't be much surprise when you get some Newtonian-scaled answers to your efforts to temper the opinions voiced so far.
But whatever, be as pessimistic or optimistic as you want. I'm tired of trying to fight it. Almost nobody on this site is evenhanded about things. Everything is declared either the Best Thing Ever or the Worst Thing Ever, and such opinions are almost always formed with as much immediacy as humanly possible. And every time someone tries and point out that, hey, maybe this thing is just average, not amazing nor terrible, just okay, all these accusations of being a doomsayer or a WotC apologist start getting thrown around. I'm sick of it.
What are you really fighting? Just let people vent, regardless of right or wrong. Agree to disagree & move on.
Still if it really bothers you, then figure out how to be a mod.
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
Here's what I dislike so far:
New Emrakul; really wish they'd chosen some other effect over mindslaver on a stick
New Liliana; art and abilities are nowhere near Liliana of the Veil
New Tamiyo; bant tamiyo just seems so randomly forced. also, "moon sage" had a nice ring to it, felt very ethereal and mystical. "field researcher" sounds like some unpaid college internship
And here's what I very much enjoy about this set:
Harmless Offering; whose a good little kitty? ow my finger
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.
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Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
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.
I don't really care for flavor very much. I think Emrakul appearing on innistrad is cool, but I find it annoying that she is just corrupting everything with out any meaningful interactions. I feel like many cards are just normal creatures that now are turned inside out or have tentacles coming out of them. Design wise it feels kind of lazy and is not as self-explanatory as they might think it is.
Now as far as many of the cards are concerned, I think the power level is where it should be and I look forward to playing with many of them. They really got creative with their game mechanics this time around. There are many unique effects that will birth new brews.
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.
I've alluded to it before, and it's one of my biggest problem with standard (Keep in mind I'm not even a Control player much of the time). The issue we are seeing in standard is that Wizards *wants* the games to be played to the board in standard as much as possible. While I can understand this in principle, the problem is in part their execution, and in part because Blue and Red are very heavily spell based colors, where as Green and White are very much about raw efficiency.
Simply put they are unwilling to print good Red or Blue creatures within their philosophies, and when they do (Such as with Young Pyromancer) you can be certain that they won't print the type of cards for them to function at a reasonable level (Cheap and efficient tempo based spells). The sort of synergy based cards that you see out of Blue and Red simply cannot compete with the raw power of Green and White given the current philosophy of R&D. The colors simply do not have a critical mass to function, and that's on a *good* day.
As it is currently, Red and Blue can't even get good synergy based creatures that can even come remotely close to competing with White & Green's power. They can't effectively deal with the resolved creatures *or* planeswalkers that G/W has to offer. And frankly, this isn't changing. People are going crazy over Nahiri's Wrath as though it is a game changer; the fundamental issue, however, is that is only middle against Token, poor against CoCo (Due to instant speeding everything), and only okay against Mono-white. The cost of discarding cards is very real, and given the sorry state of playable Madness cards this isn't changing. Equally, these decks have a lot of ways of making you a very sad person; both Dromoka's Command and the new O-Ring for spells spirit crap all over wrath. The ability to get *any* value out of it for madness is equally unlikely given that you will have to wait till turn 5, 6, or even 7 to have enough mana to cast it and you madness spells, at which point your are near dead on cards. Given that these decks typically do not have a means os recouping their hand (Which is what Madness really needs to function in constructed), I simply think it's a lot of hype over a card that won't do a damn thing.
So, what they have done is take many of the tools that Red & Blue are known for, weakened their creature that are *already* not particularly strong, nerfed what is left, and have printed some of the strongest Green and White cards ever printed.
As I said, it's not that I'm a control player. It's that this philosophy that Magic can only be about decks that are piles of exceedingly efficient cards needs to stop. Because it will lead to more and more skewed meta games, which in turn will have a negative impact on the overall game (Which I have already seen locally due to plummeting standard attendance at FNMs and other events). The game is far better off when there is a plethora of options, not when there is only a few.
They love to talk about how they prefer to print cards that are 1's or 10's, and that they can't please everyone. Frankly, it's become apparent that this philosophy does not apply to either Blue or Red where certain types of cards are killed off because players don't like them.
Flavor: Eldritch Moon is Bloodborne personified: it started as a mystery/gothic horror theme and switched to a cosmic horror story midway. It is a really fun idea, as BB showed us, but there are a few hiccups on the execution here and there. Mainly, it is too unfocused to do most of its main tropes straight. It tries to show Innistrad grouping up against Emrakul. It tries to continue Sorin and Nahiri's story. It tries to keep the flavor of the original Innistrad's gothic horror. It tries to show the corruption of the familiar in Innistrad, with cards like Grapple with the Past, Tree of Perdition, Prey Upon and Final Iteration. And it throws some cosmic horror tropes in the mix, with the fishmen turning into monsters, the ritualistic cult that worship the monsters, Arkham Asylum, Miskatonic University. Now, don't misunderstand me, there are definitely some massive hits here and very few misses, but as a whole I would feel better if they just focused on the gothic horror / cosmic horror aspects and reduced the Gatewatch and Sorin vs Nahiri elements.
Mechanics: Right now I feel that Delirium is definitely a solid contender, Tribal is being pushed pretty far, Emerge is very fun and potentially playable, and Escalate seems to have some very interesting gameplay on it, as choices are always fun, despite being somewhat boring design. The miss on the block is, strangely enough, Meld. Limiting Meld to only 3 cards seems like a huge letdown, and the support for it to work seems almost nonexistant. Now, Meld as a mechanic seems crazy fun - pretty much any mechanic that came from Unglued is a sure hit. The execution is what kinda let me down. Hoping that Meld makes a return soon in a block that actually supports the crazy hijinks it brings to the table.
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
Yes I am.
I reentered magic with Theros, which I found nice. From there it only got more awesome for me.
From EMN there are already about 30 cards for edh on my want list.
Nope.
Too much Emrakul and Eldrazi all over, not enough eye-popping "gimme gimme gimme" cards and while there are a few spells that make me think, everything seems very "nichey". I await Kaladesh and hope we don't see Eldrazi for another 10-15 years. New people, new places, new takes.
Will be skipping the pre-release for the first time in a while. (I did skip the 2HG prerelease because I want to play on my own, but went to events around that set.)
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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.
Nope.
Too much Emrakul and Eldrazi all over, not enough eye-popping "gimme gimme gimme" cards and while there are a few spells that make me think, everything seems very "nichey". I await Kaladesh and hope we don't see Eldrazi for another 10-15 years. New people, new places, new takes.
Will be skipping the pre-release for the first time in a while. (I did skip the 2HG prerelease because I want to play on my own, but went to events around that set.)
Mechanic-wise, I do quite like this set. It does continue on themes and mechanics from the previous set, (madness, delerium) and has a new take on Transform in the shape of Meld. (which is an interesting, yet criminally underused mechanic). Despite my increasing hatred of the Eldrazi, Emerge is also a great mechanic. Escalate is Entwine++. Nothing special about it, but it has some decent cards. I am not too fond of that all cards needs to transform into Eldrazi, I had hoped to see more "Weird" transform cards, such as a creature that transforms into a sorcery.
Storyline wise, I am not a fan. I needed a break from the horrible Eldrazi badness that was BFZ-OGW, and continuing isn't to my taste. Couple them with my least favorite characters - The Gatewatch, and you have a storyline I really dislike. Though I must admit they did the Eldrazi alright this time around, but it would be so much better if we didn't had an Eldrazi block before this one.
Final point, I wanted more Investigate cards. It seemed like an interesting mechanic, but it was abandoned before it could bloom. A shame.
Well, judging by what I seen so far, the set seems to be shaping up decently so far. It does feel that some of the cards were designed too safely, while others were pushed beyond reason, though.
It honestly looks WAY better than Battle of Zendikar, but then again, I am still pretty salty about that set, so take that with grain of salt.
I don't have the same hangup on the eldrazi flavor some people are having. They were done far better here than on BFZ, it showed a good way to return the eldrazi without falling into the trap of just recycling the old thematics and content and creating nothing new and spreading too little content over too many cards. Heres its been reined in and done conservatively. The meld mechanic too conservatively, but the flavor isn't bad. Its no NPH quality, but I'm favorable to it.
I'm sure in time I'll get those strong opinionated criticisms for the block like I did all the previous ones
The flavour is still awesome, off the charts. There are so many cards that are calling me to build whacky decks with.
but
I am sick of do everything play 4 of mythics like Giesla and that 2 drop mythic why mythic! that is driving me nuts.
I am also annoyed at everything being sorcery speed take inventory and the exile lightning strike.
Why does White and WG keep getting more and more powerful cards!
So while I think this set is good, it is being tainted by continuing niggling issues like this.
I'd love to play these whacky decks but the GW decks crush them okay then I'd like to then try to build a powerful control deck to fight the GW decks but I can't do that either because there is too much power in GW and too little in control.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
I'll be taking a pass.
Not everyone is drafting.
People are free to make up their own minds on when they seen enough & speak accordingly.
Also, when & how people comment in itself is indicative of how well Wizards is pacing the spoiler season. In this respect this thread is also a commentary on the effectiveness of Wizard's pre-release marketing efforts.
But whatever, be as pessimistic or optimistic as you want. I'm tired of trying to fight it. Almost nobody on this site is evenhanded about things. Everything is declared either the Best Thing Ever or the Worst Thing Ever, and such opinions are almost always formed with as much immediacy as humanly possible. And every time someone tries and point out that, hey, maybe this thing is just average, not amazing nor terrible, just okay, all these accusations of being a doomsayer or a WotC apologist start getting thrown around. I'm sick of it.
I think the *biggest* problem for me is that they essentially have been giving both Green and White essentially all of the toys in this set, which is *doubly* frustrating given the sorry state that Standard is in (Dominated by Green and WHite decks). U/R are effectively shafted for the format, where the most exciting card revealed so far for red is... a Sorcery Speed Lightning Strike variant. A decently card is the most interesting card in the entire set for red in standard, a color that effectively has no impact on Standard currently. Blue equally is pretty hosed, with only a sorcery speed Accumulated Knowledge-lite that has any meaningful relevance for blue. Pretty much everything else in those colors is far, far below what both Green and White have received. Black equally isn't getting much out of EMN, though I do like the Lily. Green doesn't get a *ton*, but it doesn't need it either (What it does get, however, is lawlsy potent). White gets just a boat load of good stuff, which is great because every once in a while a non-white list was making its way into a top 8 and we really need to stop that. And the Bant lists are just looking miserable from here on out with what they received.
Frankly, I'm for the first time unexcited by a set. Hell, I defended Born of the Gods back then as a reasonably inclusion to the set. BFZ was a "worse" set, and I can certainly name others (BotG and Saviors trump it by far as far as "modern" sets are concerned, and it certainly isn't Homelands or FE). But it certainly has been the most dissappointiong spoiler season for me to watch unfold as I see that G/W only continue to beef themselves into complete domination of standard.
For what reason people have to complain is strictly up to them. They may value things (& pacing of the spoiler season) differently than you or I do. Thus is the purpose of this thread. So there shouldn't be much surprise when you get some Newtonian-scaled answers to your efforts to temper the opinions voiced so far.
What are you really fighting? Just let people vent, regardless of right or wrong. Agree to disagree & move on.
Still if it really bothers you, then figure out how to be a mod.
New Emrakul; really wish they'd chosen some other effect over mindslaver on a stick
New Liliana; art and abilities are nowhere near Liliana of the Veil
New Tamiyo; bant tamiyo just seems so randomly forced. also, "moon sage" had a nice ring to it, felt very ethereal and mystical. "field researcher" sounds like some unpaid college internship
And here's what I very much enjoy about this set:
Harmless Offering; whose a good little kitty? ow my finger
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.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
Should rename the game Creatures:The Gathering
Now as far as many of the cards are concerned, I think the power level is where it should be and I look forward to playing with many of them. They really got creative with their game mechanics this time around. There are many unique effects that will birth new brews.
I've alluded to it before, and it's one of my biggest problem with standard (Keep in mind I'm not even a Control player much of the time). The issue we are seeing in standard is that Wizards *wants* the games to be played to the board in standard as much as possible. While I can understand this in principle, the problem is in part their execution, and in part because Blue and Red are very heavily spell based colors, where as Green and White are very much about raw efficiency.
Simply put they are unwilling to print good Red or Blue creatures within their philosophies, and when they do (Such as with Young Pyromancer) you can be certain that they won't print the type of cards for them to function at a reasonable level (Cheap and efficient tempo based spells). The sort of synergy based cards that you see out of Blue and Red simply cannot compete with the raw power of Green and White given the current philosophy of R&D. The colors simply do not have a critical mass to function, and that's on a *good* day.
As it is currently, Red and Blue can't even get good synergy based creatures that can even come remotely close to competing with White & Green's power. They can't effectively deal with the resolved creatures *or* planeswalkers that G/W has to offer. And frankly, this isn't changing. People are going crazy over Nahiri's Wrath as though it is a game changer; the fundamental issue, however, is that is only middle against Token, poor against CoCo (Due to instant speeding everything), and only okay against Mono-white. The cost of discarding cards is very real, and given the sorry state of playable Madness cards this isn't changing. Equally, these decks have a lot of ways of making you a very sad person; both Dromoka's Command and the new O-Ring for spells spirit crap all over wrath. The ability to get *any* value out of it for madness is equally unlikely given that you will have to wait till turn 5, 6, or even 7 to have enough mana to cast it and you madness spells, at which point your are near dead on cards. Given that these decks typically do not have a means os recouping their hand (Which is what Madness really needs to function in constructed), I simply think it's a lot of hype over a card that won't do a damn thing.
So, what they have done is take many of the tools that Red & Blue are known for, weakened their creature that are *already* not particularly strong, nerfed what is left, and have printed some of the strongest Green and White cards ever printed.
As I said, it's not that I'm a control player. It's that this philosophy that Magic can only be about decks that are piles of exceedingly efficient cards needs to stop. Because it will lead to more and more skewed meta games, which in turn will have a negative impact on the overall game (Which I have already seen locally due to plummeting standard attendance at FNMs and other events). The game is far better off when there is a plethora of options, not when there is only a few.
They love to talk about how they prefer to print cards that are 1's or 10's, and that they can't please everyone. Frankly, it's become apparent that this philosophy does not apply to either Blue or Red where certain types of cards are killed off because players don't like them.
Flavor: Eldritch Moon is Bloodborne personified: it started as a mystery/gothic horror theme and switched to a cosmic horror story midway. It is a really fun idea, as BB showed us, but there are a few hiccups on the execution here and there. Mainly, it is too unfocused to do most of its main tropes straight. It tries to show Innistrad grouping up against Emrakul. It tries to continue Sorin and Nahiri's story. It tries to keep the flavor of the original Innistrad's gothic horror. It tries to show the corruption of the familiar in Innistrad, with cards like Grapple with the Past, Tree of Perdition, Prey Upon and Final Iteration. And it throws some cosmic horror tropes in the mix, with the fishmen turning into monsters, the ritualistic cult that worship the monsters, Arkham Asylum, Miskatonic University. Now, don't misunderstand me, there are definitely some massive hits here and very few misses, but as a whole I would feel better if they just focused on the gothic horror / cosmic horror aspects and reduced the Gatewatch and Sorin vs Nahiri elements.
Mechanics: Right now I feel that Delirium is definitely a solid contender, Tribal is being pushed pretty far, Emerge is very fun and potentially playable, and Escalate seems to have some very interesting gameplay on it, as choices are always fun, despite being somewhat boring design. The miss on the block is, strangely enough, Meld. Limiting Meld to only 3 cards seems like a huge letdown, and the support for it to work seems almost nonexistant. Now, Meld as a mechanic seems crazy fun - pretty much any mechanic that came from Unglued is a sure hit. The execution is what kinda let me down. Hoping that Meld makes a return soon in a block that actually supports the crazy hijinks it brings to the table.
Playability: Eldritch Moon is a set that focuses heavily in synergy, thus evaluating it from a glance is extremely hard. How good Delirium is going to be? Are Zombies playable? Vampires are getting the push they need? Could Brisela be a thing, maybe in some kind of Reanimation strategy? Are Eldrazi back in Standard? Is Superfriends a thing? Can Demonic Pact see play in a Combo deck now? Is Spirit Tribal going to be a oh who am I kidding I can't even finish that one.
But Eldritch Moon has some amazingly powerful cards, and brings up immense possibilites to the table. Anyone saying Liliana, the Last Hope, Tamiyo, Field Researcher, Emrakul, the Promised End, Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Whispers of Emrakul, Eldritch Evolution, Grim Flayer, Spell Queller, Gisela, the Broken Blade, Eternal Scourge, Collective Brutality, Noose Constrictor, Gnarlwood Dryad and other amazing goodstuffs are unplayable should be shot. And there are some cool cards in lower rarities as well, like Take Inventory, Cemetery Recruitment, Galvanic Bombardment, Grapple with the Past, Ulvenwald Captive, Mournwillow, Cryptolith Fragment, Kessig Prowler, Unsubstantiate, Blessed Alliance and so on. I do expect some bulk from now on, but this set is so filled with goodies it's hard to complain. The only color I'd say should get some more goodstuffs IMO is Red, but Bedlam Reveler definitely has massive potential, so who knows.
Overall, an enjoyable set all around. Not much to complain so far.
lol no, read dromoka's command
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
I reentered magic with Theros, which I found nice. From there it only got more awesome for me.
From EMN there are already about 30 cards for edh on my want list.
Too much Emrakul and Eldrazi all over, not enough eye-popping "gimme gimme gimme" cards and while there are a few spells that make me think, everything seems very "nichey". I await Kaladesh and hope we don't see Eldrazi for another 10-15 years. New people, new places, new takes.
Will be skipping the pre-release for the first time in a while. (I did skip the 2HG prerelease because I want to play on my own, but went to events around that set.)
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.
Completely agree with this
It honestly looks WAY better than Battle of Zendikar, but then again, I am still pretty salty about that set, so take that with grain of salt.
Special thanks to XenoNinja of Heroes of the Plane Studios for the awesome avy!