There's not a whole lot of answers for this guy. Let's assume that a standard deck has 3 answers for it, and it's cast mid-late game (turn ~10). Statistically, your opponent has cast one answer already and has 24 cards or so left, leaving a 1 in 12 or so chance to draw the answer per turn. 5/5 flier is basically a 2-3 turn clock at that point of the game. Ignoring chumping and races (the rest of your deck is doing something I hope), that means you've got a 75%+ chance to get those 2-3 swings in before your opponent draws an answer via the extra card.
(Ironically, playing on turn 3 means your opponents have 3 answers with ~30 cards or a slightly better 1 in 10 chance per draw. Draw out that removal)
Actually, even though I'm pretty sure Oppressive Rays is awful, I could actually see siding it in against this guy just to watch my opponent squirm. Pin to the Earth is probably pretty playable and there's little reason not to like it.
I think perhaps a weird but fitting analog to this guy is the Ordeals from Theros (minus heroic combo potential of course). It's a high risk early game play that may win you the game or give your opponent a 2(or more) for 1. I mean Ordeals have a ton of answers that can deal with them and give the opponent solid card advantage, but they're still widely played. I expect this guy to be in the same sort of boat, with a more devastating upside (since he wins on his own) and downside (if he's blockable or incapacitated but not removed, opponent gets a massive advantage)
I think Pin to the Earth is very playable in this format, and it's quite possibly a very good playable. I think of it as essentially half of a Pacifism in many situations. And, for the decks that want this card, the "can't attack" side of Pacifism is easily the most important. Getting a Wingsteed Rider offline for two is a nice play enabling U/B to grind.
Imagine two cards, measured according to the following metrics: Likelihood of being unnecessary to a win, Likelihood of being a critical component of a win, Likelihood of being insufficient to win, Likelihood of causing a loss.
Say the first card is 10%/40%/50%/0%, and the second card is 15%/45%/30%/10%. Which card is better? Obviously the first one, right? Even though it's a critical component less often, it's also less damaging to your record when it goes bad.
(I am not making any assertions about actual metric values here. This is an example only, using purely hypothetical numbers to demonstrate a concept.)
You may want to rework your numbers or explain better. In your first hypothetical, you win 50% of the time it's played. In the second, you win 60% of the time it's played. I don't care if the card is insufficient to save me or directly causes my loss - a loss is a loss. Card B is clearly superior.
If the numbers don't work for you, I'm sure you can come up with some that do, on your own. The only point I was trying to make was that some non-trivial fraction of your games will involve this card not having an impact on the outcome of the game, and therefore, saying that the card is good every time it doesn't kill you, is farcical.
If the numbers don't work for you, I'm sure you can come up with some that do, on your own. The only point I was trying to make was that some non-trivial fraction of your games will involve this card not having an impact on the outcome of the game, and therefore, saying that the card is good every time it doesn't kill you, is farcical.
Which is true of literally every card ever printed. Well played.
I don't understand. Of course it's true of every card ever printed. That is entirely the point. Go back and read the actual conversation that inspired this tangent.
I read the conversation. Your last post didn't give any even remote evaluation of the card. You basically said "Master of the Feast is a MTG card." Indeed it is - probably a good one.
I very specifically didn't say even one word about Master of the Feast, because I wasn't arguing about the quality of the card. I was refuting the point that a card - any card - is useful whenever it isn't killing you, which was the idea expressed in the previous post.
I want to say it (yet) again: I did not argue that MotF is a bad card in general. At no point did ever do that. If you think I am trying to argue that, you are arguing over nothing because I'm not disagreeing with you.
I very specifically didn't say even one word about Master of the Feast, because I wasn't arguing about the quality of the card. I was refuting the point that a card - any card - is useful whenever it isn't killing you, which was the idea expressed in the previous post.
You're refuting a point I didn't make. I was simply pointing out that the card is so strong in the vast majority of games, that it's still very good even if it's not worth playing once in a while when drawn in the late game. Your "...if it loses you the game even 10% of the time, it's not worth playing" argument is a poor one. That's all I was pointing out.
You're refuting a point I didn't make. I was simply pointing out that the card is so strong in the vast majority of games, that it's still very good even if it's not worth playing once in a while when drawn in the late game. Your "...if it loses you the game even 10% of the time, it's not worth playing" argument is a poor one. That's all I was pointing out.
"A card that wins me the game/gives me a strong advantage 90% of the time is an excellent top deck to have available in my deck." Is this what you meant to say? Regardless, can you name another card that loses you the game sometimes as an actual, intended function of the card, which has ever turned out to be considered good in limited?
It is a well-researched fact that very high quality bombs win the games in which they appear no more often than 60-70% of the time; there are some websites that aggregate MtGO data that show that conclusively.
Now, with that in mind, it should also be obvious that some of those wins are not a function of the quality of the card, but rather the deck in which it appears (i.e. sometimes Elspeth comes out but you would have won regardless.) There's no real data to say how often that's true for an average card, but if I were going to go with my gut I'd say that my wins are on average a product of about 10-12 cards: 5-6 lands, and enough spells to establish a strong board presence. Everything else I draw is just gravy. It is a well understood fact that the average number of cards drawn in a game is just about 15, so in an average game, an average card will be inconsequential to you winning about 20-30% of the time. Now, obviously, some cards are higher impact than others: 3-drops are going to matter far more often than extra lands will, for example, but again, going with my gut, I'd feel hard-pressed to say that any card you draw is going to be inconsequential less than 10% of the times you win.
What that amounts to is that there's a ceiling on how helpful a card can really be towards winning the game, and it isn't that much higher than 50% for extremely high-impact cards. So even if we take it as read that *some generic card that loses the game 10% of the time which may or not be MotF* is peerlessly high-impact, like Umezawa's Jitte or Pack Rat, it would have a net win rate that would only be comparable with medium quality bombs.
Now, speaking less generically, a 3rd turn 5/5 flier is pretty high-impact, but a 6th turn one is much less so. So for the sake of evaluation, let's pretend that the early game 5/5 and the late game 5/5 are different cards. The former would have an excellent win rate, which, tempered by a drawback which causes you to lose 10% of the time, would still be a very playable card. The latter would have a decent win rate, which, tempered in the same way, would turn out to be pretty dismal. And in fact, the late game version would comparatively be even more impacted by the drawback than the early game version because the availability of answers increases as the turn number goes up.
Now, people can make (and have made) two arguments that relate tangentially to this: firstly, that 10% is a big overestimate as the argument applies specifically to MotF, and second, that judging MotF based only on the late game version of the card is unfair, when the early game version is so good. This is where I stress again, those are totally valid points which I am not disputing. I don't know what the actual loss rate is that the drawback will cause, and I have never said that MotF is not a good early game card. The only thing I am arguing is that it is a bad late game card and that it should not be played in decks which expect the late game to be a big factor in their strategy.
Which honestly, is really obvious? I mean, five paragraphs later and all I've really said is that cards get worse the more opportunities people have to answer them. That's not a deep concept that requires any special nuance to apply. If someone asks you "which would you rather have as a game ender in a slow deck, a card that gets worse as time goes on or a card that doesn't?" I'd be really surprised if you answered differently from me.
Regardless, can you name another card that loses you the game sometimes as an actual, intended function of the card, which has ever turned out to be considered good in limited?
Herald of Torment, to name one from just the most recent set. There are have been many good limited cards that punish the player or help the opponent.
As to the overall point...bad in the late game as compared to what? As compared to a 6 mana 5/5 flier with no drawback? Sure, it's worse. As compared to the average card you'll have access to in a draft environment, it's still fantastic for your late game. In most late game situations, I would be very happy to top deck Master of the Feast (there aren't likely to be many better top decks in the average draft deck)...and would still happily include the card in any black draft deck, regardless of expected game length....I can't imagine the draft it would take for MotF to be worse than my 23rd card assuming I'm playing black.
If MotF had additional text that said "you cannot play this until your sixth turn", it would still be a decent playable...probably a mid-pack pick, and a card I'd expect to make the maindeck every time, perhaps getting sided out against heavy flier decks.
Here's why the master is not that amazing: pretty much all arguments center on "a 5/5 flyers wins games". The thing that seems to be forgotten is that "a 3/3 flyer wins games", too. Would you play a card that was a 3/3 flyer with the rider "draw an extra card every turn"? Yeah, that's a slam dunk pick. The master is beefy, but it's not like your opponent is doing nothing in the meantime. And he's drawing an extra card every turn. Which mean: extra mana, extra removal, extra attackers, extra bounce, extra bestow / buff, … 5/5 is big, but it's not *that* much bigger than a 3/3 when racing *and* (and this is the whole fraking point) drawing an extra card every turn.
I've read so many posts in this thread that boldly claim "sure, sure my opp is drawing extra cards, but they won't matter and I'll win before it matters". Good luck with that. Sure, you'll win games with the master where you opponent has too few chump blockers and his double-draws give him no answer nor racer. It's very far from clear that's the majority of the cases.
Like puddle jumper is trying to argue, the split between the times Master of the feast wins you the game vs. loses you the game is probably much lower than its defender pretend. We won't know for sure until we play in the new environment, but my guess is that the split must be something like 55/45 or 60/40. (And, wait before you exclaim 'that's 20% win!'. That 40 percent are games that are lost exclusively because your played MotF. IOW, games you'd maybe have won had you not plucked him down. How many cards in your deck *actively* makes you lose? Usually, zero. MotF win-rate has to be very high for it to be good, because when it doesn't win you the game, he's probably a huge factor in losing the game. Extra cards are nothing to sneeze at. Cantrip makes crap unplayable junk playable. This is anti-cantrip on steroid for the benefit of a larger body.)
A 3/3 flyer wins games in 7 turns on its own. Master wins games in 4 turns on its own. They have 7 draws to find an answer to a 3/3 flyer. They have 8 draws to answer Master of the Feast. That said, Master is significantly harder to answer. A huge percentage of the answers to a 3/3 flyer do not stop Master.
MotF win rate IS going to be absurdly high. The majority of games in an environment like Theros where he's played, he'll be played by turn 3 or 4 where only a small handful of answers exist. You also act like people can chump in the air all day. Some decks literally just plain lose to a single, unpumped Vaporkin because they have so few ways to deal with flyers, let alone a 5/5. When he comes down early, which he will the majority of games he's drawn, your opponents still have very low odds of finding an answer in time (I can't think of more than a handful of decks I've ever drafted that had more than 2-3 actual answers for him) and it's not like they're going to have the mana to throw down all of the extra cards. I played against someone yesterday who opened with that Mystic both games. He just gave me a crapload of cards with it, but I couldn't play them in time because it was too early and I didn't have the mana. The card is going to be good and that's fairly obvious to anyone who has any actual experience with Theros's limited environment.
Sure, you'll win games with the master where you opponent has too few chump blockers and his double-draws give him no answer nor racer. It's very far from clear that's the majority of the cases.
Thank you!
(Although you'd have to be a pretty bad player to play this card when you actively know it's going to hurt you, so the loss rate is unlikely to be that extreme. Most of the times it has the potential to kill you it'll just be a dead card stuck in your hand instead.)
A 3/3 flyer wins games in 7 turns on its own. Master wins games in 4 turns on its own. They have 7 draws to find an answer to a 3/3 flyer. They have 8 draws to answer Master of the Feast. That said, Master is significantly harder to answer. A huge percentage of the answers to a 3/3 flyer do not stop Master.
MotF win rate IS going to be absurdly high. The majority of games in an environment like Theros where he's played, he'll be played by turn 3 or 4 where only a small handful of answers exist.
Look, it's clear from all you've said in this thread that no logical argument is going to sway you, so we will just have to wait and see how you really fare with MotF. That being said, I'm still going to fruitlessly reply.
You just stated the exact argument that I was refuting. What can I say? You talk as if, once a 3/3 flyers lands, its controller doesn't play a single otehr spell all game. Same for the MotF. That's not how it going to play out. They will have 4 turns of playing and attacking *and* they will have 4 extra cards to choose to play from. And you know what? That's the magical Christmas land scenario for MotF. It's the *best-case* scenario.
Let's see:
- 50% of the games, you won't ever draw MotF.
- 25% of the games, you'll pluck it down in turn 3 (10 cards out of 40). Of these, sometimes you opponent is going to have removal, bounce, freeze effect and chump blockers. Every turn gained is an extra card for them. And don't come saying they've spend a card by playing sudden storm on MotF. They'd play sudden storm on any creature you'd have. It just happens that MotF is one of them. They will also be playing more creatures, more lands, more spells. They'll hit their bestow and have a voltron bigger than your MotF faster thanks to him.
- 25% of the games, he'll come late. In all those games where your opponent is ahead, MotF is not a good play. You'll be giving them more advantage. If you're ahead, are you going to risk running out MotF? It all depends how much ahead you are, what colour and thus the probability of a debilitating answers your opponent might get.
(So, as we can see, 75% of the times it can't *mathematically* get played by turn 3, it can't possibly "be played by turn 3-4 a majority of the times".)
In all those games, once you land MotF, you're committed to attacking every turn. There is no way you can keep MotF back to block. If the game is anywhere close, it will slowly but surely fall off your grasp.
Will MofT single-handedly win games? Sure. Is it a huge evasive threat? Obviously! Is it total crap and unplayable? No. It's just not that great. There are plenty of big plays in the block. There are plenty of ways to build a threat just as big without giving away free card advantage.
Final point: blue is about the best colour of theros. White is pretty good, WR and WU (see? blue!) are really, really good. Blue has plenty of crippling play against MotF. And I guarantee you, you'll still face a *lot* of Ux deck in JBT drafts. And white is hardly bad against MotF, it has plenty of flyers, heroic and removal.
And about that vaporkin comment: if people lose to vaporkin (and I'm not arguing against that, I've won on the back of vaporkin) it was because they had plenty of answers. When I win with vaporkin, it's because I wavecrash triton'd them into oblivion. I've unleashed sudden storms. I used the tritons' excellent tactics. All of which rip MotF to shred. And vaporkin doesn't give a card each turn.
In those game you lost to him, why didn't you race him? Sounds to me you had bad draws while you opp lucked into the 12% of matches where he'll land him turn 3 both games.
The fact that you're including the 50% of games where you don't draw him at all as a point against him demonstrates how incapable you are of card evaluation. Elspeth doesn't help you win games when you don't draw her, either.
Plus, you think blue is the best color.
There's no reason to make it personal. Infraction issued for flaming.
-rujasu
The fact that you're including the 50% of games where you don't draw him at all as a point against him demonstrates how incapable you are of card evaluation. Elspeth doesn't help you win games when you don't draw her, either.
Plus, you think blue is the best color.
Bah, you are *totally* hopeless as far as arguing goes. You claimed that MotF will win the majority of games where you have him in your deck. I was answering that. You chose, as usual for you, to post a one-liner dismissive, belittling reply instead of some cogent argument.
WR and WU are two top decks, if not *the* two top decks in Theros. Both laugh at the card advantage MotF gives them. Both race easily and take advantage of every extra card they'll draw. They will still be top deck in JBT. Keep saying blue is not a top colour in Theros. At least that way people can really judge where you come from.
If this card were not an enchantment and therefore not subject to the approximately 1000 enchantment answers in the block he would be really, really good in Limited. As is, I would probably maindeck it and then side it out after the opponent brings in more enchantment removal.
The fact that you're including the 50% of games where you don't draw him at all as a point against him demonstrates how incapable you are of card evaluation. Elspeth doesn't help you win games when you don't draw her, either.
Plus, you think blue is the best color.
Bah, you are *totally* hopeless as far as arguing goes. You claimed that MotF will win the majority of games where you have him in your deck. I was answering that. You chose, as usual for you, to post a one-liner dismissive, belittling reply instead of some cogent argument.
WR and WU are two top decks, if not *the* two top decks in Theros. Both laugh at the card advantage MotF gives them. Both race easily and take advantage of every extra card they'll draw. They will still be top deck in JBT. Keep saying blue is not a top colour in Theros. At least that way people can really judge where you come from.
Quote me, please. Fairly sure I said you will drop him early the majority of games you draw him (which is factual - if you're going to draw him, it's about twice as likely to happen by turn 3 or 4 after 9-11 draws than from turn 5 to turn 10 or so when the vast majority of games are over) and he'll win a very high percentage of games where he's played by turn 3/4. Also, did your response not start off with stating that we're completely hopeless and impossible to argue with? Yet you complain that my argument belittled your response? Also, you literally know nothing about me. "As usual" is absurd. I argue very in depth as long as there's a reason to do so. If someone doesn't understand why 2+2=4, I'm not going to spend a half hour explaining it to them. Your entire argument was based on a nonsensical premise and then argues entirely with "but x makes y bad and x is totally super common, so y is bad." That's not an argument.
Enough with the vibe. Get back to discussing the card, not the discussion, in a civil and respectful manner.
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There's not a whole lot of answers for this guy. Let's assume that a standard deck has 3 answers for it, and it's cast mid-late game (turn ~10). Statistically, your opponent has cast one answer already and has 24 cards or so left, leaving a 1 in 12 or so chance to draw the answer per turn. 5/5 flier is basically a 2-3 turn clock at that point of the game. Ignoring chumping and races (the rest of your deck is doing something I hope), that means you've got a 75%+ chance to get those 2-3 swings in before your opponent draws an answer via the extra card.
(Ironically, playing on turn 3 means your opponents have 3 answers with ~30 cards or a slightly better 1 in 10 chance per draw. Draw out that removal)
Pin to the Earth and Oppressive Rays are extremely playable and will be played.
You may want to rework your numbers or explain better. In your first hypothetical, you win 50% of the time it's played. In the second, you win 60% of the time it's played. I don't care if the card is insufficient to save me or directly causes my loss - a loss is a loss. Card B is clearly superior.
Which is true of literally every card ever printed. Well played.
I want to say it (yet) again: I did not argue that MotF is a bad card in general. At no point did ever do that. If you think I am trying to argue that, you are arguing over nothing because I'm not disagreeing with you.
Infraction for Trolling issued. -Hardened
You're refuting a point I didn't make. I was simply pointing out that the card is so strong in the vast majority of games, that it's still very good even if it's not worth playing once in a while when drawn in the late game. Your "...if it loses you the game even 10% of the time, it's not worth playing" argument is a poor one. That's all I was pointing out.
"A card that wins me the game/gives me a strong advantage 90% of the time is an excellent top deck to have available in my deck." Is this what you meant to say? Regardless, can you name another card that loses you the game sometimes as an actual, intended function of the card, which has ever turned out to be considered good in limited?
It is a well-researched fact that very high quality bombs win the games in which they appear no more often than 60-70% of the time; there are some websites that aggregate MtGO data that show that conclusively.
Now, with that in mind, it should also be obvious that some of those wins are not a function of the quality of the card, but rather the deck in which it appears (i.e. sometimes Elspeth comes out but you would have won regardless.) There's no real data to say how often that's true for an average card, but if I were going to go with my gut I'd say that my wins are on average a product of about 10-12 cards: 5-6 lands, and enough spells to establish a strong board presence. Everything else I draw is just gravy. It is a well understood fact that the average number of cards drawn in a game is just about 15, so in an average game, an average card will be inconsequential to you winning about 20-30% of the time. Now, obviously, some cards are higher impact than others: 3-drops are going to matter far more often than extra lands will, for example, but again, going with my gut, I'd feel hard-pressed to say that any card you draw is going to be inconsequential less than 10% of the times you win.
What that amounts to is that there's a ceiling on how helpful a card can really be towards winning the game, and it isn't that much higher than 50% for extremely high-impact cards. So even if we take it as read that *some generic card that loses the game 10% of the time which may or not be MotF* is peerlessly high-impact, like Umezawa's Jitte or Pack Rat, it would have a net win rate that would only be comparable with medium quality bombs.
Now, speaking less generically, a 3rd turn 5/5 flier is pretty high-impact, but a 6th turn one is much less so. So for the sake of evaluation, let's pretend that the early game 5/5 and the late game 5/5 are different cards. The former would have an excellent win rate, which, tempered by a drawback which causes you to lose 10% of the time, would still be a very playable card. The latter would have a decent win rate, which, tempered in the same way, would turn out to be pretty dismal. And in fact, the late game version would comparatively be even more impacted by the drawback than the early game version because the availability of answers increases as the turn number goes up.
Now, people can make (and have made) two arguments that relate tangentially to this: firstly, that 10% is a big overestimate as the argument applies specifically to MotF, and second, that judging MotF based only on the late game version of the card is unfair, when the early game version is so good. This is where I stress again, those are totally valid points which I am not disputing. I don't know what the actual loss rate is that the drawback will cause, and I have never said that MotF is not a good early game card. The only thing I am arguing is that it is a bad late game card and that it should not be played in decks which expect the late game to be a big factor in their strategy.
Which honestly, is really obvious? I mean, five paragraphs later and all I've really said is that cards get worse the more opportunities people have to answer them. That's not a deep concept that requires any special nuance to apply. If someone asks you "which would you rather have as a game ender in a slow deck, a card that gets worse as time goes on or a card that doesn't?" I'd be really surprised if you answered differently from me.
Herald of Torment, to name one from just the most recent set. There are have been many good limited cards that punish the player or help the opponent.
As to the overall point...bad in the late game as compared to what? As compared to a 6 mana 5/5 flier with no drawback? Sure, it's worse. As compared to the average card you'll have access to in a draft environment, it's still fantastic for your late game. In most late game situations, I would be very happy to top deck Master of the Feast (there aren't likely to be many better top decks in the average draft deck)...and would still happily include the card in any black draft deck, regardless of expected game length....I can't imagine the draft it would take for MotF to be worse than my 23rd card assuming I'm playing black.
If MotF had additional text that said "you cannot play this until your sixth turn", it would still be a decent playable...probably a mid-pack pick, and a card I'd expect to make the maindeck every time, perhaps getting sided out against heavy flier decks.
As compared to a vanilla 2/1 for 6. Unplayably bad.
I've read so many posts in this thread that boldly claim "sure, sure my opp is drawing extra cards, but they won't matter and I'll win before it matters". Good luck with that. Sure, you'll win games with the master where you opponent has too few chump blockers and his double-draws give him no answer nor racer. It's very far from clear that's the majority of the cases.
Like puddle jumper is trying to argue, the split between the times Master of the feast wins you the game vs. loses you the game is probably much lower than its defender pretend. We won't know for sure until we play in the new environment, but my guess is that the split must be something like 55/45 or 60/40. (And, wait before you exclaim 'that's 20% win!'. That 40 percent are games that are lost exclusively because your played MotF. IOW, games you'd maybe have won had you not plucked him down. How many cards in your deck *actively* makes you lose? Usually, zero. MotF win-rate has to be very high for it to be good, because when it doesn't win you the game, he's probably a huge factor in losing the game. Extra cards are nothing to sneeze at. Cantrip makes crap unplayable junk playable. This is anti-cantrip on steroid for the benefit of a larger body.)
MotF win rate IS going to be absurdly high. The majority of games in an environment like Theros where he's played, he'll be played by turn 3 or 4 where only a small handful of answers exist. You also act like people can chump in the air all day. Some decks literally just plain lose to a single, unpumped Vaporkin because they have so few ways to deal with flyers, let alone a 5/5. When he comes down early, which he will the majority of games he's drawn, your opponents still have very low odds of finding an answer in time (I can't think of more than a handful of decks I've ever drafted that had more than 2-3 actual answers for him) and it's not like they're going to have the mana to throw down all of the extra cards. I played against someone yesterday who opened with that Mystic both games. He just gave me a crapload of cards with it, but I couldn't play them in time because it was too early and I didn't have the mana. The card is going to be good and that's fairly obvious to anyone who has any actual experience with Theros's limited environment.
This is utter and complete nonsense.
Thank you!
(Although you'd have to be a pretty bad player to play this card when you actively know it's going to hurt you, so the loss rate is unlikely to be that extreme. Most of the times it has the potential to kill you it'll just be a dead card stuck in your hand instead.)
Look, it's clear from all you've said in this thread that no logical argument is going to sway you, so we will just have to wait and see how you really fare with MotF. That being said, I'm still going to fruitlessly reply.
You just stated the exact argument that I was refuting. What can I say? You talk as if, once a 3/3 flyers lands, its controller doesn't play a single otehr spell all game. Same for the MotF. That's not how it going to play out. They will have 4 turns of playing and attacking *and* they will have 4 extra cards to choose to play from. And you know what? That's the magical Christmas land scenario for MotF. It's the *best-case* scenario.
Let's see:
- 50% of the games, you won't ever draw MotF.
- 25% of the games, you'll pluck it down in turn 3 (10 cards out of 40). Of these, sometimes you opponent is going to have removal, bounce, freeze effect and chump blockers. Every turn gained is an extra card for them. And don't come saying they've spend a card by playing sudden storm on MotF. They'd play sudden storm on any creature you'd have. It just happens that MotF is one of them. They will also be playing more creatures, more lands, more spells. They'll hit their bestow and have a voltron bigger than your MotF faster thanks to him.
- 25% of the games, he'll come late. In all those games where your opponent is ahead, MotF is not a good play. You'll be giving them more advantage. If you're ahead, are you going to risk running out MotF? It all depends how much ahead you are, what colour and thus the probability of a debilitating answers your opponent might get.
(So, as we can see, 75% of the times it can't *mathematically* get played by turn 3, it can't possibly "be played by turn 3-4 a majority of the times".)
In all those games, once you land MotF, you're committed to attacking every turn. There is no way you can keep MotF back to block. If the game is anywhere close, it will slowly but surely fall off your grasp.
Will MofT single-handedly win games? Sure. Is it a huge evasive threat? Obviously! Is it total crap and unplayable? No. It's just not that great. There are plenty of big plays in the block. There are plenty of ways to build a threat just as big without giving away free card advantage.
Final point: blue is about the best colour of theros. White is pretty good, WR and WU (see? blue!) are really, really good. Blue has plenty of crippling play against MotF. And I guarantee you, you'll still face a *lot* of Ux deck in JBT drafts. And white is hardly bad against MotF, it has plenty of flyers, heroic and removal.
And about that vaporkin comment: if people lose to vaporkin (and I'm not arguing against that, I've won on the back of vaporkin) it was because they had plenty of answers. When I win with vaporkin, it's because I wavecrash triton'd them into oblivion. I've unleashed sudden storms. I used the tritons' excellent tactics. All of which rip MotF to shred. And vaporkin doesn't give a card each turn.
In those game you lost to him, why didn't you race him? Sounds to me you had bad draws while you opp lucked into the 12% of matches where he'll land him turn 3 both games.
Plus, you think blue is the best color.
There's no reason to make it personal. Infraction issued for flaming.
-rujasu
Bah, you are *totally* hopeless as far as arguing goes. You claimed that MotF will win the majority of games where you have him in your deck. I was answering that. You chose, as usual for you, to post a one-liner dismissive, belittling reply instead of some cogent argument.
WR and WU are two top decks, if not *the* two top decks in Theros. Both laugh at the card advantage MotF gives them. Both race easily and take advantage of every extra card they'll draw. They will still be top deck in JBT. Keep saying blue is not a top colour in Theros. At least that way people can really judge where you come from.
Quote me, please. Fairly sure I said you will drop him early the majority of games you draw him (which is factual - if you're going to draw him, it's about twice as likely to happen by turn 3 or 4 after 9-11 draws than from turn 5 to turn 10 or so when the vast majority of games are over) and he'll win a very high percentage of games where he's played by turn 3/4. Also, did your response not start off with stating that we're completely hopeless and impossible to argue with? Yet you complain that my argument belittled your response? Also, you literally know nothing about me. "As usual" is absurd. I argue very in depth as long as there's a reason to do so. If someone doesn't understand why 2+2=4, I'm not going to spend a half hour explaining it to them. Your entire argument was based on a nonsensical premise and then argues entirely with "but x makes y bad and x is totally super common, so y is bad." That's not an argument.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge