White
Armament of Nyx: Makes a creature worthless or makes one of your's double strike. Amazing with Skyguard or Wingsteed.
Leonin Iconocast: this is a bomb at uncommon, a little slow to get going in draft, but ridiculous in sealed
Mortal Obstinacy: Probably best white common, triggers heroic and gives +1/+1 for just one mana and can kill a nimbus naid, i'll take that.
Oppressive Rays: Pretty good psuedo-removal early game
Phalanx Formation: Amazing with Skyguard and Wingsteed. Triggers heroic and double strike is strong
Reprisal: Pretty good removal for 1W
Blue
Aerial Formation: Triggers heroic and is a good finisher to get through ground guys. Real good in U/G i think
Cloaked Siren: 3/2 flying for four with flash, pretty good value
Hour of Need: Amazing using it on your own guys, a late game finisher
Hubris: Best blue common by far, probably first pickable.
Pin to the Earth: Great early psuedo-removal to stop those heroic fliers
Black
Bloodcrazed Hoplite: This seems game changing against certain decks
Feast of Dreams: This is just ridiculous at 1B
Pharika's Chosen: Great in control decks, hopefully U/B is back
Red
Magma Spray: good removal early
Satyr Hoplite: makes W/R even better
Sigiled Skink: seems good if you have some removal, can get off multiple scry
Green
Nature's Panolpy: triggers heroic and adds another counter, real good
Solidarity of Heroes: This seems ridiculous in the right deck
My first broad impression is that control strategies didn't really get any love, and white at least got plenty of solid aggro tools, so I wouldn't expect full-block draft to slow down.
The voltron approach does seem to be a lot less supported, however... with no cantrip auras and Bestow being scarce, higher rarity, and coming with drawbacks, the set doesn't offer "safe" ways to load up one designated hitter and go to town (and there are some anti-voltron cards now). Strive gives you a way to trigger heroic with less risk of a blowout, but it does it by encouraging you to build up multiple smaller heroes instead of one voltron. I think the only evasive heroes are the white prerelease promo and War-Wing Siren in blue.
Red doesn't have good common removal this time; just Magma Spray and some bad stuff.
Hubris is much worse than Voyage's End, but probably still good because tempo has been so key this block.
It's pretty expensive, but I like the blue-green cockatrice. I've always been a sucker for Spire Monitors, and "deathtouch" and "monstrosity 3" are both extremely complementary abilities to put on a flier with flash. I expect it to be a rockstar at the prerelease, when the limited format is at it's slowest and people are still walking into the flash creatures, and to eventually settle somewhere around "decent".
I've been doing my usual analysis of the Limited format... while I'm still crunching numbers and data, I did come to the following initial conclusion. Basically, each color pairing ties together really well with a specific mechanic. Really, really well.
OP, I think you read armament of nyx's text incorrectly. It gives double strike to enchantment creatures, not non-enchantment creatures so it'll make wingsteed rider deal no damage, making it pretty bad with those two. The card is actually more on the lines of unplayable I think if you guys remember ghostly possession in innistrad. I can see it acting as a guard duty in UW fliers, but don't see the double strike being used at all considering how enchantment creatures don't have heroic and how you would never play a 3 mana "give target creature double strike" enchantment on a vanilla enchantment creature.
Hubris is generally worse than voyages end, but it gains an absurd amount of tempo if you cast it on a creature that's been bestowed, making it a lot better in that scenario.
Hubris is generally worse than voyages end, but it gains an absurd amount of tempo if you cast it on a creature that's been bestowed, making it a lot better in that scenario.
Yeah, I guess you're right that returning a bestowed creature to your opponent's hand will often be a bigger tempo hit than just knocking it off (assuming the board state is such that the bestow creature would be relevant on its own, of course).
I think that puts it into the category a lot of the new removal fits into, i.e., better on offense than on defense. If you're playing defense and trying to dismantle your opponent's voltron, resetting their bestow guy for them is exactly what you don't want to do. But if you've already got them under significant pressure and just want to keep pushing damage through, I think you're right that you'd often prefer to not give them the blocker now, in exchange for them having a chance to rebuild their voltron later if they're still alive.
I'm glad to see there's more cards to punish voltron strategies (and cards that cost less than 6 mana to boot!). I feel like red got shafted pretty hard though. It seems very weak in this set with only the 1 drop heroic guy and Magma Spray being quality commons. The red removal is also probably even more clunky than what Red got in Theros.
Reading the spoiler today has given me some hope for the format. Lo and behold, here are all the Bestow hosers we've been asking for. They're so prevalent in Journey that I can't help but think this was all part of the plan:
Set 1: Introduce Bestow, make it awesome, and eliminate all hosers so that the mechanic really shines.
Set 2: More of the same -- make the players desperate for a solution.
Set 3: Here you go, all the hosers are back, have fun playing a properly balanced format for the first time in months.
The Heroic menace is not going away, it's still quite strong, but at least now the informed drafter has a handful of tools to defeat it other than racing.
I still prefer Voyage's End to Hubris by quite a bit. I feel like I have more ways to beat bestow creatures that have fallen off vs. ones that are coming back as bestows in a turn or two. Also, Hubris lets them re-use all of the non-bestow Auras instead of just destroying them. Many of the good non-bestow Auras also have good ETB effects.
Hubris is only better if you're in a position to win right away.
It seems like there are a lot of cards that punish the heroic voltron strategy.
Yes. They are moving away from the voltron and moving towards spreading out the love. They said they would do that and they actually delivered it appears. I guess in a few weeks we'll really be able to judge if they achieved their goal fully. I think this is quite healthy for the format. Perhaps we're done with 9/11 loltroll Favored Hoplites running around and instead it will look like every heroic deck has a Phalanx Leader because of strive.
I know strive is really just multikicker, but I like kicker in the first place, so I'm pretty happy with it. It will also be interesting to see if people are able to ever reach a critical mass of constellation guys. I don't think there's quite enough there just like there's not really enough support to make the inspired deck.
Agree that Constellation is something that just exists, and you don't draft around it in the full block format. Similar to Inspired, only value the effect as often as you can tap that creature without help. Only value Constellation for the creature's base stats + self-triggering effect and consider everything else an unreliable bonus that comes along every now and then.
Black looks SO much better now, as do minotaurs. Black gets common, instant-speed, cheap removal. Multiples. It gets deathtouch aplenty it seems. I already liked black for the pre-release, stuff like bloodcrazed hoplite are just fantastic.
Oh! I really like nessian game warden! 4/5 for 5 *and* almost guaranteed extra creature? That is really good in limited. There are many built-in two for one in this set at uncommon.
What a surprise, for the millionth time, red is the worst color in a set. All bad removal, at least in Theros it had lightning strike. Few good creatures. Also, all of red's possible seeded pack rares (not the promo) are either overcosted, situational, or just weak.
What a surprise, for the millionth time, red is the worst color in a set. All bad removal, at least in Theros it had lightning strike. Few good creatures. Also, all of red's possible seeded pack rares (not the promo) are either overcosted, situational, or just weak.
So much salt... Red actually has a number of good ones this time around, even if you choose to ignore them.
What a surprise, for the millionth time, red is the worst color in a set. All bad removal, at least in Theros it had lightning strike. Few good creatures. Also, all of red's possible seeded pack rares (not the promo) are either overcosted, situational, or just weak.
So much salt... Red actually has a number of good ones this time around, even if you choose to ignore them.
At common it has Satyr Hoplite and Magma Spray as cards I'd consider above average. Bladetusk Boar is probably fine, albeit maybe a bit too slow in this format compared to something like a coreset. The 2/1 scry lizard might be okay but you have to support it with buffs to get any longterm benefits. After that it's just a bunch of curve fillers and clunky, overcosted removal. At uncommon the only card that would really push me towards playing red is Forgeborn Oreads, which may or may not be something you can build around. Riddle of Lightning is okay, but as we've seen with cards like Rage of Purphoros and Lash of the Whip, 5 mana removals that can't kill everything aren't exactly amazing in this format. None of the rares are really bombs either outside of Spawn of Thraxes (and Spawn is glacially slow). Prophetic Flamespeaker might be okay if you can support it with some buffs as well, but it's not like Two-Headed Cerberus ever tore up 3x THS or BTT with any frequency.
Even though white is by far the best color in the set for limited, red is still not that bad.
I actually think Sigiled Skink (the scry lizard) is amazing.
In a format with plenty of enchantment buff's and combat tricks, it shouldn't be had to make him attack around 3 times.
At that point, you get to scry 1 three times for free, which I consider to be more than a one card's worth of advantag
Out of uncommons, Akroan Line Breaker and Mogis's Warhound look pretty good to me, in addition to cards already mentioned by Dromar.
On a different topic, I've noticed that there are a lot of random mill cards in blue and black.
Can mill be a viable strategy in JOU-BNG-THS drafts?
The mill cards available below uncommon are:
Countermand (mill 4), Dakra Mystic (UC, mill 1), Thassa's Devourer (constellation to mill2), Returned Reveler (mill 3), Returned Centaur (mill 4), Evanescent Intellect (pay 2mana to mill 3), Siren of the Silent Song (Inspired mill 1), and Thassa's Bounty (mill 3).
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Please check out my 360 unpowered, non-PW cube!
It's got more than 10 different strategies you can choose from.
Comment about it here.
is there a marketing strategy where you release a product you know people will hate (but still grudgingly buy), and then release a "fixed" product after [or go back to what the old product was] and people buy tons of it because they're so happy to relieve quality product after having taken it for granted? does suck a strategy exist?
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----------------------------
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
The mill cards available below uncommon are:
Countermand (mill 4), Dakra Mystic (UC, mill 1), Thassa's Devourer (constellation to mill2), Returned Reveler (mill 3), Returned Centaur (mill 4), Evanescent Intellect (pay 2mana to mill 3), Siren of the Silent Song (Inspired mill 1), and Thassa's Bounty (mill 3).
Thassa's Devourer is potentially good enough on its own to mill someone out, the rest of them are so incidental to the strategy that there's not much reason to bother unless you want them independent of the mill effect.
is there a marketing strategy where you release a product you know people will hate (but still grudgingly buy), and then release a "fixed" product after [or go back to what the old product was] and people buy tons of it because they're so happy to relieve quality product after having taken it for granted? does suck a strategy exist?
This isn't a marketing strategy so much as a retroactively applied excuse to the new-coke debacle...
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So first impressions
White
Armament of Nyx: Makes a creature worthless or makes one of your's double strike. Amazing with Skyguard or Wingsteed.
Leonin Iconocast: this is a bomb at uncommon, a little slow to get going in draft, but ridiculous in sealed
Mortal Obstinacy: Probably best white common, triggers heroic and gives +1/+1 for just one mana and can kill a nimbus naid, i'll take that.
Oppressive Rays: Pretty good psuedo-removal early game
Phalanx Formation: Amazing with Skyguard and Wingsteed. Triggers heroic and double strike is strong
Reprisal: Pretty good removal for 1W
Blue
Aerial Formation: Triggers heroic and is a good finisher to get through ground guys. Real good in U/G i think
Cloaked Siren: 3/2 flying for four with flash, pretty good value
Hour of Need: Amazing using it on your own guys, a late game finisher
Hubris: Best blue common by far, probably first pickable.
Pin to the Earth: Great early psuedo-removal to stop those heroic fliers
Black
Bloodcrazed Hoplite: This seems game changing against certain decks
Feast of Dreams: This is just ridiculous at 1B
Pharika's Chosen: Great in control decks, hopefully U/B is back
Red
Magma Spray: good removal early
Satyr Hoplite: makes W/R even better
Sigiled Skink: seems good if you have some removal, can get off multiple scry
Green
Nature's Panolpy: triggers heroic and adds another counter, real good
Solidarity of Heroes: This seems ridiculous in the right deck
The voltron approach does seem to be a lot less supported, however... with no cantrip auras and Bestow being scarce, higher rarity, and coming with drawbacks, the set doesn't offer "safe" ways to load up one designated hitter and go to town (and there are some anti-voltron cards now). Strive gives you a way to trigger heroic with less risk of a blowout, but it does it by encouraging you to build up multiple smaller heroes instead of one voltron. I think the only evasive heroes are the white prerelease promo and War-Wing Siren in blue.
Red doesn't have good common removal this time; just Magma Spray and some bad stuff.
Hubris is much worse than Voyage's End, but probably still good because tempo has been so key this block.
It's pretty expensive, but I like the blue-green cockatrice. I've always been a sucker for Spire Monitors, and "deathtouch" and "monstrosity 3" are both extremely complementary abilities to put on a flier with flash. I expect it to be a rockstar at the prerelease, when the limited format is at it's slowest and people are still walking into the flash creatures, and to eventually settle somewhere around "decent".
WU - Heroic
UB - Inspired
BR - Minotaurs
RG - Monstrosity
GW - Bestow
WB - Devotion
UR - Scry
BG - Constellation
RW - Strive
GU - Tribute
WotC, please hire me already.
Hubris is generally worse than voyages end, but it gains an absurd amount of tempo if you cast it on a creature that's been bestowed, making it a lot better in that scenario.
Yeah, I guess you're right that returning a bestowed creature to your opponent's hand will often be a bigger tempo hit than just knocking it off (assuming the board state is such that the bestow creature would be relevant on its own, of course).
I think that puts it into the category a lot of the new removal fits into, i.e., better on offense than on defense. If you're playing defense and trying to dismantle your opponent's voltron, resetting their bestow guy for them is exactly what you don't want to do. But if you've already got them under significant pressure and just want to keep pushing damage through, I think you're right that you'd often prefer to not give them the blocker now, in exchange for them having a chance to rebuild their voltron later if they're still alive.
Set 1: Introduce Bestow, make it awesome, and eliminate all hosers so that the mechanic really shines.
Set 2: More of the same -- make the players desperate for a solution.
Set 3: Here you go, all the hosers are back, have fun playing a properly balanced format for the first time in months.
The Heroic menace is not going away, it's still quite strong, but at least now the informed drafter has a handful of tools to defeat it other than racing.
Hubris is only better if you're in a position to win right away.
Yes. They are moving away from the voltron and moving towards spreading out the love. They said they would do that and they actually delivered it appears. I guess in a few weeks we'll really be able to judge if they achieved their goal fully. I think this is quite healthy for the format. Perhaps we're done with 9/11 loltroll Favored Hoplites running around and instead it will look like every heroic deck has a Phalanx Leader because of strive.
I know strive is really just multikicker, but I like kicker in the first place, so I'm pretty happy with it. It will also be interesting to see if people are able to ever reach a critical mass of constellation guys. I don't think there's quite enough there just like there's not really enough support to make the inspired deck.
Oh! I really like nessian game warden! 4/5 for 5 *and* almost guaranteed extra creature? That is really good in limited. There are many built-in two for one in this set at uncommon.
So much salt... Red actually has a number of good ones this time around, even if you choose to ignore them.
At common it has Satyr Hoplite and Magma Spray as cards I'd consider above average. Bladetusk Boar is probably fine, albeit maybe a bit too slow in this format compared to something like a coreset. The 2/1 scry lizard might be okay but you have to support it with buffs to get any longterm benefits. After that it's just a bunch of curve fillers and clunky, overcosted removal. At uncommon the only card that would really push me towards playing red is Forgeborn Oreads, which may or may not be something you can build around. Riddle of Lightning is okay, but as we've seen with cards like Rage of Purphoros and Lash of the Whip, 5 mana removals that can't kill everything aren't exactly amazing in this format. None of the rares are really bombs either outside of Spawn of Thraxes (and Spawn is glacially slow). Prophetic Flamespeaker might be okay if you can support it with some buffs as well, but it's not like Two-Headed Cerberus ever tore up 3x THS or BTT with any frequency.
I actually think Sigiled Skink (the scry lizard) is amazing.
In a format with plenty of enchantment buff's and combat tricks, it shouldn't be had to make him attack around 3 times.
At that point, you get to scry 1 three times for free, which I consider to be more than a one card's worth of advantag
Out of uncommons, Akroan Line Breaker and Mogis's Warhound look pretty good to me, in addition to cards already mentioned by Dromar.
On a different topic, I've noticed that there are a lot of random mill cards in blue and black.
Can mill be a viable strategy in JOU-BNG-THS drafts?
The mill cards available below uncommon are:
Countermand (mill 4), Dakra Mystic (UC, mill 1), Thassa's Devourer (constellation to mill2), Returned Reveler (mill 3), Returned Centaur (mill 4), Evanescent Intellect (pay 2mana to mill 3), Siren of the Silent Song (Inspired mill 1), and Thassa's Bounty (mill 3).
It's got more than 10 different strategies you can choose from.
Comment about it here.
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
Thassa's Devourer is potentially good enough on its own to mill someone out, the rest of them are so incidental to the strategy that there's not much reason to bother unless you want them independent of the mill effect.
This isn't a marketing strategy so much as a retroactively applied excuse to the new-coke debacle...