Colfenor's plans was quite good in the right deck in Lorwyn limited. This is very similar, as the drawback ends up being very similar to "can't play more than one spell per turn" eventually.
I think it's also important that people get rid of the notion of "It's an 8-9 drop".
No, that's silly thinking. When you drop it, you're basically saying, "Okay, I need spells to cast more than I need lands right now." When you drop it, you either have the spell in hand already to play for 4-5 mana, or you're gambling that the next two will be those. It also takes at least a semblance of knowing what your deck's normal curve is. In Limited, I do my best to never go above 6 mana. If I'm sitting there with 9+ lands, I'm not going to just sac all of the lands till I get the cards I need, that'd be silly.
It's interesting to note that this feels like a very black effect: drawbacks for the sake of cards. I think that the only reason that it's red is because it deals with lands.
Keep in mind, by no means am I saying that this card is great. I'm half playing the devil's advocate, half just personally evaluating the card. This is NOT an explosively great card, but it's definitely something people shouldn't just throw away and call it a day without proper evaluation.
Also important to point out: the whole set isn't spoiled yet, so maybe there'll be a few enablers at common/uncommon that would help this in Limited.
I think it's also important that people get rid of the notion of "It's an 8-9 drop".
No, that's silly thinking. When you drop it, you're basically saying, "Okay, I need spells to cast more than I need lands right now." When you drop it, you either have the spell in hand already to play for 4-5 mana, or you're gambling that the next two will be those. It also takes at least a semblance of knowing what your deck's normal curve is. In Limited, I do my best to never go above 6 mana. If I'm sitting there with 9+ lands, I'm not going to just sac all of the lands till I get the cards I need, that'd be silly.
You've not offered a counter-argument; the example you give is a case where the enchantment is acting exactly as a 9-drop.
I think it's also important that people get rid of the notion of "It's an 8-9 drop".
I wasn't super jazzed on the analogy either, but considering you need to sac two lands to get value from it and can't play any more, playing it with six lands out is the absolute minimum (assuming you'll want to be able to cast a four-mana spell.) Eight is where you'd want to be to get real value, barring a sweet enabler.
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The more I think about this card, and reading through the several comments indicating that the card is usable, in my view this is a truly horrible card for limited. Regarding some of the previous comments, I rarely play a game in which I have 10 or more lands, 9 lands is very infrequent, and the games in which I am in top deck only mode are infrequent although not rare. And I consider myself not an aggro player at all.
Playing this with 6 lands reduces you to being only able to play 1 of those cards you drew per turn (and having to just eat any lands you draw) unless you are just playing weenies, so the extra cards don't give you nearly as much benefit as if you had available mana. And how many lands can you sac to be able to draw enough cards making it worth it? Whatever is the answer, you then don't have enough land to cast meaningful spells and not two per turn.
I think it's also important that people get rid of the notion of "It's an 8-9 drop".
I wasn't super jazzed on the analogy either, but considering you need to sac two lands to get value from it and can't play any more, playing it with six lands out is the absolute minimum (assuming you'll want to be able to cast a four-mana spell.) Eight is where you'd want to be to get real value, barring a sweet enabler.
Sorry, friend, but take a quick glance back: You sacrifice only one land for two cards. (You'll sacrifice two for four, and then have four mana to work with).
Trust me, I understand the implications, which is why I bring up that it's a skill-intensive card. High risk/High reward. I suppose we'll see as time passes.
I think it's also important that people get rid of the notion of "It's an 8-9 drop".
No, that's silly thinking.
If by "silly" you mean "essentially accurate," then yes, I agree.
Seriously though, I could see calling it a mediocre draw spell as a 7- or even 6-drop, given the right curve/board state, but that's not much of a point in its favor.
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Edit: I see that after walking away for awhile in the middle of posting, several other people have responded along the same lines. Serves me right. Sorry for piling on.
Sorry, friend, but take a quick glance back: You sacrifice only one land for two cards. (You'll sacrifice two for four, and then have four mana to work with).
Trust me, I understand the implications, which is why I bring up that it's a skill-intensive card. High risk/High reward. I suppose we'll see as time passes.
I don't think you're getting it. 1 Sorcery + 1 sacrificed land + 1 drawback = 2 cards. Not good, in fact far worse than Divination. 1 Sorcery + 2 sacrificed lands + 1 drawback = 4 cards over 2 turns. Now we can at least discuss the possibility of value. It might be better than just playing 2 Divinations! #lowbar Before you sacrifice two lands, you're way behind in terms of value.
This is indeed a skill testing card. The skill is whether or not you can appropriately resist the urge to play a fancy but terrible rare, on the hopes that you randomly "go off" and get to brag to your friends about that one awesome game while you went 1-3 in the prerelease tournament.
Actually, I just noticed that you can activate the ability at instant speed, which makes it a card that you can feel safe drafting around if you consider it a 6-drop and build accordingly. I still think it should lap the majority of the time, and it should never be in a sealed deck ever.
um.. i just noticed that you are allowed to sac a tapped land for its activation.
(i also didn't realize until later that you may sac a land on your opponent's turn).
out of curiosity, am i the only one who missed these things, or did some of you miss them initially, too?
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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.
um.. i just noticed that you are allowed to sac a tapped land for its activation.
(i also didn't realize until later that you may sac a land on your opponent's turn).
out of curiosity, am i the only one who missed these things, or did some of you miss them initially, too?
I noticed, but saccing on your opponent's turn is somewhat meaningless (unless they're playing LD, which is rare, or you desperately need to dig for an answer before your turn starts) and saccing a tapped land only mitigates the drawbacks a small bit for one phase.
I don't think you're getting it. 1 Sorcery + 1 sacrificed land... = 2 cards.
This. Of course, it remains to be seen if there are sweet enablers in the set, but I doubt there are simply due to this card's existence. Also, consider how the benefit of saccing unneeded lands compares to the drawback of every land being a "dead" draw. I love finding uses for niche cards, but I don't think this is gonna have much of a home. Few cards are stone-cold unplayable, but this, I think, will be close.
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I hate judging cards in limited without knowing the full set first, but here's what I'm thinking:
People have mentioned using this card to deal with having too many lands late game in an aggressive, low-curve deck. The problem is that you have to get flooded *before* you play this card for it to have any value. So if you have this card in your deck, drawing it before the turn you can play it means losing a draw step--it's a spell you'd use to deal with having had too many dead draws, even though in most game states it's also a dead draw.
If you're playing an aggressive deck that curves out at 3, and you're getting flooded with lands, what are you going to draw into that's going to win you the game? If you're behind on board, you're probably not going to catch up if you can only play one spell per turn and your curve is that low. If you're left with enough lands to play two spells per turn, how often is this card going to get you farther ahead than a reliable 5-drop or 6-drop? If you're ramping into this with mana-producing creatures in a R/G deck, shouldn't you have bigger creatures that are worth playing instead of this?
If the limited format is slow enough, this will be very good. It pretty much guarantees you a victory in a long drawn out board stall.
Only if it's enough of a stall that you've already hit 8 or 9 lands by the time you play it. In the vast majority of formats that's not your average game, and to get the benefit in those games you have to run a card that does nothing in all the other games where you don't stall and flood.
There are plenty of limited formats where that's the case. You are right that the most recent trend is pretty miserable formats where the best cards in the format are two drops, but it hasn't always been like that. For example, I would have been very happy to play this in M14.
Seems good in the Rx aggro decks that top off the curve around 4-5. Hard to say what m15 format will look like yet, but if such a deck is viable that's probably where it will go. Probably a late draft pick since few decks can use it but the ones that can use it can use it well.
Sure, it's a hail mary, but it's a pretty effective hail mary in decks that normally have few ways to win from behind. You can draw into multiple bears and combat tricks that you can still cast with few lands left. Digging for an out with floated mana seems better than losing. Red decks normally lack ways to dig that deep. If the format has ways to sacrifice enchantments easily, then this card gets significantly better (because then you can actually play the lands you draw into). That doesn't mean the card is good in Limited, but if the format shapes up to allow a strong viable Rx aggro deck, this seems like a reasonable late pick insurance policy.
The only interesting thing about this card is that it was designed by Notch, the creator of Minecraft. Hence the name, flavor, and art. It's an excellent example of a top-down design answering the question "What would Minecraft as a Magic card look like?"
Without something to combo with it, I wouldn't consider playing this in limited. Unless the format is slow enough that you're consistently getting to 8+ lands (and even then, are okay with regularly having a dead card for the first 8-10 turns of the game), it's mostly just going to be a divination that you can't play early.
It really does seem more like a dead-card generating engine more than a CA engine... especially considering it's a "dead" draw itself until, at the earliest, turn 8 or so.
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If you're playing an aggressive deck that curves out at 3, and you're getting flooded with lands, what are you going to draw into that's going to win you the game?
Removal, cheap evasion, threaten effect or burn. Sometimes you just need to dig for an out to their defensive keystone so you can alpha strike. Or you just need a burn spell to finish them off after they stabilize.
That's the main reason aggro loses. You deal a bunch of damage, then they stabilize before you get enough gas to push the final damage through. This helps convert dead draws into gas. That usually makes this just worse than being a burn spell/threaten effect itself. But if you don't have more copies of those, or if you need to dig into multiple effects, there could be potential with this card.
But let's say you're in a game where your opponent's stabilized on board, and you need to draw into something that's going to help you push through for the last point of damage. If you draw this card then, it does nothing. You can't even play it the turn you draw it, then hope to use it if you end up drawing into more lands later. If you have this card in your hand, and you draw spells, whether they're enough to win you the game or not, then this card does nothing, and you effectively lost a draw step for the game. If you have this card in hand and you draw spells and lands, then if those spells don't win you the game, you're still likely to not have enough lands for the card to be effective.
It's a spell that you literally can't cast the vast majority of the time, and then when you do cast it, it can't even win the game on its own (and essentially stops you from ever casting more than one spell per turn. I believe there are scenarios where it could help you win, but if, even with an ideal curve, 95% of the time it does less than any other spell or land, that's a good reason to not put it in your deck.
I'd think of it like this. Even in an aggro deck with an extremely low curve, this is still going to be at least a 5-drop, probably a 6-drop if you want it to be genuinely good when you cast it. Aggro decks with extremely low curves don't generally want 5-6 mana card draw spells, even if they draw a lot of cards. This may be better than an additional basic land in such a deck, though, so I suppose it's not always completely unplayable, but it will always be a bad card in limited, barring a specific, weird format.
Here's a little thought exercise. Let's say you build a nice aggro UR deck. Ignore the fact that Blue usually isn't that aggro -- in this hypothetical format you have the aggro deck that's almost all 1-3 drops and cheap removal, you're all set to steamroll the competition.
Opportunity is much better than Aggressive Mining in this scenario, which is essentially the best case for Mining per comments above.
I'm not sure I'd want Opportunity. The entire strategy of an aggro deck is to skimp on the land count and just overrun them with cheap drops. Kill them before they can even play out their hand. Most of the time Opportunity would sit in my hand doing nothing, and by the time I could cast it, my opponent would have stabilized anyway.
If you wouldn't play Opportunity in an aggro deck, then you definitely shouldn't play Aggressive Mining ever.
Ultimately, on its own, the card is practically unplayable. It may get help and have a decent little combo within the set, but that's impossible to tell now.
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I think people using abstract words like "good", "bad" and "unplayable" is confounding the discussion.
I don't think anyone is arguing this card is even a 5/10 card. I think the people who are saying it has "uses" are saying it's a 2/10 or 3/10 instead of a 0/10. Since this card will always wheel, it's pretty much a free pick for any mediocre aggro draft that might be able to eke some small value out of it.
Instead of comparing to Opportunity, notice this card is strictly worse than Divination if you only activate it once (costs more, stops subsequent land drops, trades 2 cards for 2 cards instead of 1 for 2). If you activate it twice, then it's still worse than casting 4-mana Divination with Rebound (4-for-3 over two turns instead of 4-for-1), blocking up to 2 land drops. If you activate it 3 or more times then you start generating actual card advantage but there are a ton of asterisks on the board state for that to be helpful. Still, RB aggro may not have any other dig effects in this format and we don't know if there are any ways to profit from discarding lands from hand or sacrificing enchantments for value.
I mean, people thought Steppe Lynx was pretty mediocre for Standard/Limited until they also spoiled enemy fetches in ZEN
Longstanding posters actually have called this card "far from unplayable," "very good," etc. in this thread, so I do think there's an actual debate taking place here, even if the zeitgeist is pretty lopsided towards "bad."
The point about it being possible that there could be as-yet-unknown card synergies in the set is well-taken, though. I'll be surprised if there's enough going on to even bring this up to "meh" level, but you never know.
It has synergy with the ultimate of the Nessa Revane: put all your lands into play, draw a ton of cards. Of course, you're almost always better off turning all those 4/4 sideways...
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No, that's silly thinking. When you drop it, you're basically saying, "Okay, I need spells to cast more than I need lands right now." When you drop it, you either have the spell in hand already to play for 4-5 mana, or you're gambling that the next two will be those. It also takes at least a semblance of knowing what your deck's normal curve is. In Limited, I do my best to never go above 6 mana. If I'm sitting there with 9+ lands, I'm not going to just sac all of the lands till I get the cards I need, that'd be silly.
It's interesting to note that this feels like a very black effect: drawbacks for the sake of cards. I think that the only reason that it's red is because it deals with lands.
Keep in mind, by no means am I saying that this card is great. I'm half playing the devil's advocate, half just personally evaluating the card. This is NOT an explosively great card, but it's definitely something people shouldn't just throw away and call it a day without proper evaluation.
Also important to point out: the whole set isn't spoiled yet, so maybe there'll be a few enablers at common/uncommon that would help this in Limited.
I wasn't super jazzed on the analogy either, but considering you need to sac two lands to get value from it and can't play any more, playing it with six lands out is the absolute minimum (assuming you'll want to be able to cast a four-mana spell.) Eight is where you'd want to be to get real value, barring a sweet enabler.
My Decks:
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Playing this with 6 lands reduces you to being only able to play 1 of those cards you drew per turn (and having to just eat any lands you draw) unless you are just playing weenies, so the extra cards don't give you nearly as much benefit as if you had available mana. And how many lands can you sac to be able to draw enough cards making it worth it? Whatever is the answer, you then don't have enough land to cast meaningful spells and not two per turn.
I hope I play against this card frequently.
Sorry, friend, but take a quick glance back: You sacrifice only one land for two cards. (You'll sacrifice two for four, and then have four mana to work with).
Trust me, I understand the implications, which is why I bring up that it's a skill-intensive card. High risk/High reward. I suppose we'll see as time passes.
Seriously though, I could see calling it a mediocre draw spell as a 7- or even 6-drop, given the right curve/board state, but that's not much of a point in its favor.
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Edit: I see that after walking away for awhile in the middle of posting, several other people have responded along the same lines. Serves me right. Sorry for piling on.
I don't think you're getting it. 1 Sorcery + 1 sacrificed land + 1 drawback = 2 cards. Not good, in fact far worse than Divination. 1 Sorcery + 2 sacrificed lands + 1 drawback = 4 cards over 2 turns. Now we can at least discuss the possibility of value. It might be better than just playing 2 Divinations! #lowbar Before you sacrifice two lands, you're way behind in terms of value.
This is indeed a skill testing card. The skill is whether or not you can appropriately resist the urge to play a fancy but terrible rare, on the hopes that you randomly "go off" and get to brag to your friends about that one awesome game while you went 1-3 in the prerelease tournament.
(i also didn't realize until later that you may sac a land on your opponent's turn).
out of curiosity, am i the only one who missed these things, or did some of you miss them initially, too?
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.
I noticed, but saccing on your opponent's turn is somewhat meaningless (unless they're playing LD, which is rare, or you desperately need to dig for an answer before your turn starts) and saccing a tapped land only mitigates the drawbacks a small bit for one phase.
This. Of course, it remains to be seen if there are sweet enablers in the set, but I doubt there are simply due to this card's existence. Also, consider how the benefit of saccing unneeded lands compares to the drawback of every land being a "dead" draw. I love finding uses for niche cards, but I don't think this is gonna have much of a home. Few cards are stone-cold unplayable, but this, I think, will be close.
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
People have mentioned using this card to deal with having too many lands late game in an aggressive, low-curve deck. The problem is that you have to get flooded *before* you play this card for it to have any value. So if you have this card in your deck, drawing it before the turn you can play it means losing a draw step--it's a spell you'd use to deal with having had too many dead draws, even though in most game states it's also a dead draw.
If you're playing an aggressive deck that curves out at 3, and you're getting flooded with lands, what are you going to draw into that's going to win you the game? If you're behind on board, you're probably not going to catch up if you can only play one spell per turn and your curve is that low. If you're left with enough lands to play two spells per turn, how often is this card going to get you farther ahead than a reliable 5-drop or 6-drop? If you're ramping into this with mana-producing creatures in a R/G deck, shouldn't you have bigger creatures that are worth playing instead of this?
There are plenty of limited formats where that's the case. You are right that the most recent trend is pretty miserable formats where the best cards in the format are two drops, but it hasn't always been like that. For example, I would have been very happy to play this in M14.
Sure, it's a hail mary, but it's a pretty effective hail mary in decks that normally have few ways to win from behind. You can draw into multiple bears and combat tricks that you can still cast with few lands left. Digging for an out with floated mana seems better than losing. Red decks normally lack ways to dig that deep. If the format has ways to sacrifice enchantments easily, then this card gets significantly better (because then you can actually play the lands you draw into). That doesn't mean the card is good in Limited, but if the format shapes up to allow a strong viable Rx aggro deck, this seems like a reasonable late pick insurance policy.
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
Removal, cheap evasion, threaten effect or burn. Sometimes you just need to dig for an out to their defensive keystone so you can alpha strike. Or you just need a burn spell to finish them off after they stabilize.
That's the main reason aggro loses. You deal a bunch of damage, then they stabilize before you get enough gas to push the final damage through. This helps convert dead draws into gas. That usually makes this just worse than being a burn spell/threaten effect itself. But if you don't have more copies of those, or if you need to dig into multiple effects, there could be potential with this card.
It's a spell that you literally can't cast the vast majority of the time, and then when you do cast it, it can't even win the game on its own (and essentially stops you from ever casting more than one spell per turn. I believe there are scenarios where it could help you win, but if, even with an ideal curve, 95% of the time it does less than any other spell or land, that's a good reason to not put it in your deck.
Would you play Opportunity?
Opportunity is much better than Aggressive Mining in this scenario, which is essentially the best case for Mining per comments above.
I'm not sure I'd want Opportunity. The entire strategy of an aggro deck is to skimp on the land count and just overrun them with cheap drops. Kill them before they can even play out their hand. Most of the time Opportunity would sit in my hand doing nothing, and by the time I could cast it, my opponent would have stabilized anyway.
If you wouldn't play Opportunity in an aggro deck, then you definitely shouldn't play Aggressive Mining ever.
Or some common/uncommon enablers, like Farhaven Elf or Centaur Rootcaster.
Ultimately, on its own, the card is practically unplayable. It may get help and have a decent little combo within the set, but that's impossible to tell now.
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
I don't think anyone is arguing this card is even a 5/10 card. I think the people who are saying it has "uses" are saying it's a 2/10 or 3/10 instead of a 0/10. Since this card will always wheel, it's pretty much a free pick for any mediocre aggro draft that might be able to eke some small value out of it.
Instead of comparing to Opportunity, notice this card is strictly worse than Divination if you only activate it once (costs more, stops subsequent land drops, trades 2 cards for 2 cards instead of 1 for 2). If you activate it twice, then it's still worse than casting 4-mana Divination with Rebound (4-for-3 over two turns instead of 4-for-1), blocking up to 2 land drops. If you activate it 3 or more times then you start generating actual card advantage but there are a ton of asterisks on the board state for that to be helpful. Still, RB aggro may not have any other dig effects in this format and we don't know if there are any ways to profit from discarding lands from hand or sacrificing enchantments for value.
I mean, people thought Steppe Lynx was pretty mediocre for Standard/Limited until they also spoiled enemy fetches in ZEN
The point about it being possible that there could be as-yet-unknown card synergies in the set is well-taken, though. I'll be surprised if there's enough going on to even bring this up to "meh" level, but you never know.