I don't know Wombat for Journey prerelease I went red and that 7 drop Spawn of Thraxes was awesome for me. Usually I find it easy to hit land drops in sealed and they always have a mana artifact or two. That one creature they just previewed that is red and sacks for two colorless mana could make your angel hit play turn 5 if your lucky, or your demon turn 3 lol. Plus Elvish mystic is back so there's one more to use even it its just to add to the colorless you need.
I just find that, in sealed at least, 7 drops can be used pretty consistently and I wouldn't right anything off especially that flies and resets your life to 20. Right now for me anyways its a toss up between black and white for what I'd want to play. The demon is a fast clock once it hits play but damn I know that watching my opponent reset to 20 after I beat um down to 1 or 2 life is gonna give me fits.
Now I have a question I've seen the five promos but I haven't actually seen anything for the packaging(for the sealed) that shows you get a choice and the store owner where I'm playing doesn't have any info on it either. So do we get to chose a color, which would be cool for a coreset , or are the promos part of something else and nonplayable?
I think the "best" is obvious, but here would be my stab at ranking them all:
1) duh. 5-mana dragons are good. Ones that generate card advantage before they even turn sideways are WTF
2) Red. Dragons that blow things up are pretty awesome, though costing 7-mana makes this clearly worse than the black one. Not that 7-mana makes it unplayable (I'd slam this almost as early as Spawn of Thraxes), but obviously there are more games where it is dead or comes online too late to help as much.
3) Green. Not flying and entering tapped (i.e. being usable every second turn) makes it a slow win condition. Inevitability is nice, but this is easy to stall for 2-4 turns by chumping with bears. You need to be able to stall out the game to really start generating an advantage. If you can do that, then this should dominate grindy games. Not a bad card, but just less bomby and slower, gets a bit worse when you're falling behind and you just need to block some aggressive creatures.
4) White. Eh, lifegain is meh, clock is slow, generates no card advantage (unlike the other 3) and 7-mana. What's nice is that, unlike some of the other ones, this actually does immediately save you if you're falling behind (assuming you can hit 7 mana), resetting your life and giving you a decent flying body. I think people are rating this too highly though. It's very strong in a grindy game where you are a bit behind on tempo and far behind on life and the 10-15 life gained allows you to swing with more guys to generate a winning scenario. But if you're already winning it's just a really expensive 4/4 angel token. If you're losing by a lot (few creatures compared to opponent), the life will stall you out a few turns but you may not be able to get much of an advantage over those turns if you have nothing to swing back with (the Angel is probably stuck playing defense if your board is really that much worse). The life stalls but doesn't make up for the inferior board position. I might be proven wrong, but I suspect this is the type of card that is best at just below parity, god awful when winning and mediocre when losing badly.
5) Blue. What, Master of Predicaments was too strong? Or even good old Mahamoti? By default this will always be at best the second bombiest creature in your deck (since it is only as good as the other best creature is), whereas the others all have the potential to be your end game win condition bomb. Having power level conditional on your card pool, cards drawn and board state makes this a high variance card. If you draw something good to copy, it gets much better. If you don't, you might be forced to drop it as a 5-mana bear if you are desperate for a blocker. If you have no board and are desperate for a way to stabilize, this is a total dud. The ability is nice in theory but forces you to durdle with tons of mana open, only really being an advantage in the late game. There are some cool synergies with this card and creatures with ETB abilities (e.g. the tappers) or the color lords (not Legendary). Seems like this card could be fun to play in the right pool, but I wish they'd have just given us something more reliable.
@Arcanis: I don't mean to imply the 7-drop promos are bad, I'd expect both to be pretty good in most sealed environments. I just mean that 7 mana is always a really significant drawback vs. 5 mana, no matter how slow the format, so the gap between them and the demon is substantial. That's more to do with how silly the black promo is, though.
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I think I like FTW's ranking. The middle three are all close (IMO), but I like the way they're ordered above. And I think we're all in agreement that the clone is bad and having the demon as a promo is, as they say, borken.
Hahahahahaha how bad is the blue promo? Good grief. Guess WotC is tired of everyone picking blue. Looking at the other blue cards, it looks like the color really got shafted this time around. But I do realize that the set is not yet fully spoiled.
Makes me feel a little better about not playing the prerelease - the local store's playing space is so bad that I haven't bothered playing prereleases (or other random events) there since it opened last year. But if I were to play, I'd quite clearly pick the black promo.
What puzzles me about the Blue promo is why it needs to say "you control". Couldn't it just be a bounceable Clone for an extra mana? That seems pretty fair.
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Disclaimer: As per the norm, I am aware some people will disagree with my opinion and I acknowledge there is a possibility that my opinion is wrong. The above post is simply my musings on what I view to be the most likely scenario given the information that is available and I am aware of at the time of typing! Peace.
A small defence for the white promo, if someone is playing two headed giant, one of you is going to take white for the promo!
EDIT: I was referencing outdated 2HG rules. The Angel does reset the team's life total to 30. Sorry! The point about the Dragon only attacking one head at a time is still valid though:
The Dragon's kind of worse too because you have to pick just one of your opponents to attack. It doesn't deal 2 damage to both opponent's creatures in one attack step. It does destroy all their walls and can hit all their creatures in 2 attacks so it's still quite powerful, just not in the way I think you're thinking.
.....as much as a Loath the Seeded packs we have been getting for the past prerelease's , just curious if M15 is also going to be seeded too?...I assume so, based on having promo's in each color..
Not only do I think black has the best promo, but as of right now they have the best commons as well by a significant margin. It remains to be seen if they'll actually be the best strategy, but I think having a lot of removal and good finishers makes black the prime sealed color for the set.
This is incorrect. I believe it used to work this way some years ago, but in current rules 2HG teams have a single, shared life total, which is used whenever the game needs to know an individual player's life total. Your life will goback to thirty.
Thanks, I didn't know the rules had changed. It's hard keeping up with 2HG rules, they seem to change arbitrarily and frequently (especially for a format that is so casual). I edited my post above.
A small defence for the white promo, if someone is playing two headed giant, one of you is going to take white for the promo!
EDIT: I was referencing outdated 2HG rules. The Angel does reset the team's life total to 30. Sorry! The point about the Dragon only attacking one head at a time is still valid though:
The Dragon's kind of worse too because you have to pick just one of your opponents to attack. It doesn't deal 2 damage to both opponent's creatures in one attack step. It does destroy all their walls and can hit all their creatures in 2 attacks so it's still quite powerful, just not in the way I think you're thinking.
The only thing I was implying is that these cards get better when there are two opponents, higher life totals and that games are typically go longer.
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Disclaimer: As per the norm, I am aware some people will disagree with my opinion and I acknowledge there is a possibility that my opinion is wrong. The above post is simply my musings on what I view to be the most likely scenario given the information that is available and I am aware of at the time of typing! Peace.
My first impression is that TennesseeFireman's preliminary take was right, and black did indeed get the best commons. Some fine defensive and evasive creatures, decent removal, even a little card draw. Coupled with the silly promo, I don't see any strategic reason to consider taking any color but black for the prerelease.
The complete spoiler is out, and blue does indeed look patently putrid. As far as I can tell (unless I've skipped or misread a card), the best common by a very wide margin is the new Kor Hookmaster.
Looking at the black cards, my reaction is basically "this is not fair!"
I'm playing a 2HG next weekend, and I think we might take 2 Black packs. 2 Demons, more Black commons...I don't see the downside. Either we make one boss mono-Black deck that has a great chance of playing at least one Demon every match, or two Bx decks leveraging our other two best colors from the pool.
Black has the beat promo bu it is commons and uncommons that win matches, even in sealed. That being said i am pleased at the balance between the colors.
At my 2hg we are going white/black for access to the best removal and offesive weapons.
We did double blue at our last one to have a mono blue deck with the mass bounce leviathan. But i dont think double black is worth it in this case, maybe double white would be. The white promo is much better in 2hg than regular.
White definitely looks the strongest overall. I wish I went white instead of Black, but I think I will be fine with Black if I can get a good B/W build.
Well, bearing in mind that at this point we're all speculating and don't have any experience with the set in action, or whatever the metagame will turn out to be, I think black has the best commons by quite a bit. And it looks like a lot of the Limited forum regulars have a similar impression. How much credence you want to give that is up to you.
Black is the clear best, IMO. Flying, evasive clock with all upside.
Yes. They made a Demon that has no downside other than giving your opponent a choice between:
1. Lightning Bolt to their face
2. Edict them
3. Howling Mine for you
Just... wow. Actually.... it's like Keranos, God of Storms (lol) except there's no need to turn it on! Black Keranos ftw!
Red is alright, it blows stuff up, but 7CC is a lot more than 5CC. Green is slow as all hell, the White one is okay, and Blue.... I still don't get why it can't copy an opponent's creature. I mean, matching your opponent by cloning their bomb fits right into Blue's color pie.
I dont think that blacks commons are the best, but they are certainly very good. Coupled with the promo it is probably the beat pick. White is close behind though, the promo is meh but the commons and uncommons are pretty sweet. Blue's promo is utter crap, but their uncommons and commons are the best imho. Frost lynx and into the voice are disgustingly good and all of blues fliers are solid. I unfortunatly will most likely be green since i always go the most unpopular at my lgs. I won the last two during this though, although only cause i drew a stormbreath dragon to go with my awlful red nyx promo.
I think the real topic of discussion now is how to metagame other players at the prerelease who chose the black promo. From what I read here, I will be expecting to play players who chose black in pretty much every match. I might even choose white to counteract the black promo as it seems the best to do so other than just choosing black. I remember the Journey into Nyx prerelease where pretty much everyone and their dog chose white for the Dawnbringer Charioteers promo. To counteract this, players mainboarded Glare of Heresy rightfully expecting all the people playing white.
I just find that, in sealed at least, 7 drops can be used pretty consistently and I wouldn't right anything off especially that flies and resets your life to 20. Right now for me anyways its a toss up between black and white for what I'd want to play. The demon is a fast clock once it hits play but damn I know that watching my opponent reset to 20 after I beat um down to 1 or 2 life is gonna give me fits.
Now I have a question I've seen the five promos but I haven't actually seen anything for the packaging(for the sealed) that shows you get a choice and the store owner where I'm playing doesn't have any info on it either. So do we get to chose a color, which would be cool for a coreset , or are the promos part of something else and nonplayable?
1) duh. 5-mana dragons are good. Ones that generate card advantage before they even turn sideways are WTF
2) Red. Dragons that blow things up are pretty awesome, though costing 7-mana makes this clearly worse than the black one. Not that 7-mana makes it unplayable (I'd slam this almost as early as Spawn of Thraxes), but obviously there are more games where it is dead or comes online too late to help as much.
3) Green. Not flying and entering tapped (i.e. being usable every second turn) makes it a slow win condition. Inevitability is nice, but this is easy to stall for 2-4 turns by chumping with bears. You need to be able to stall out the game to really start generating an advantage. If you can do that, then this should dominate grindy games. Not a bad card, but just less bomby and slower, gets a bit worse when you're falling behind and you just need to block some aggressive creatures.
4) White. Eh, lifegain is meh, clock is slow, generates no card advantage (unlike the other 3) and 7-mana. What's nice is that, unlike some of the other ones, this actually does immediately save you if you're falling behind (assuming you can hit 7 mana), resetting your life and giving you a decent flying body. I think people are rating this too highly though. It's very strong in a grindy game where you are a bit behind on tempo and far behind on life and the 10-15 life gained allows you to swing with more guys to generate a winning scenario. But if you're already winning it's just a really expensive 4/4 angel token. If you're losing by a lot (few creatures compared to opponent), the life will stall you out a few turns but you may not be able to get much of an advantage over those turns if you have nothing to swing back with (the Angel is probably stuck playing defense if your board is really that much worse). The life stalls but doesn't make up for the inferior board position. I might be proven wrong, but I suspect this is the type of card that is best at just below parity, god awful when winning and mediocre when losing badly.
5) Blue. What, Master of Predicaments was too strong? Or even good old Mahamoti? By default this will always be at best the second bombiest creature in your deck (since it is only as good as the other best creature is), whereas the others all have the potential to be your end game win condition bomb. Having power level conditional on your card pool, cards drawn and board state makes this a high variance card. If you draw something good to copy, it gets much better. If you don't, you might be forced to drop it as a 5-mana bear if you are desperate for a blocker. If you have no board and are desperate for a way to stabilize, this is a total dud. The ability is nice in theory but forces you to durdle with tons of mana open, only really being an advantage in the late game. There are some cool synergies with this card and creatures with ETB abilities (e.g. the tappers) or the color lords (not Legendary). Seems like this card could be fun to play in the right pool, but I wish they'd have just given us something more reliable.
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I think I like FTW's ranking. The middle three are all close (IMO), but I like the way they're ordered above. And I think we're all in agreement that the clone is bad and having the demon as a promo is, as they say, borken.
Makes me feel a little better about not playing the prerelease - the local store's playing space is so bad that I haven't bothered playing prereleases (or other random events) there since it opened last year. But if I were to play, I'd quite clearly pick the black promo.
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Edit: Same logic applying for the red promo too!
EDIT: I was referencing outdated 2HG rules. The Angel does reset the team's life total to 30. Sorry! The point about the Dragon only attacking one head at a time is still valid though:
The Dragon's kind of worse too because you have to pick just one of your opponents to attack. It doesn't deal 2 damage to both opponent's creatures in one attack step. It does destroy all their walls and can hit all their creatures in 2 attacks so it's still quite powerful, just not in the way I think you're thinking.
.....as much as a Loath the Seeded packs we have been getting for the past prerelease's , just curious if M15 is also going to be seeded too?...I assume so, based on having promo's in each color..
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Thanks, I didn't know the rules had changed. It's hard keeping up with 2HG rules, they seem to change arbitrarily and frequently (especially for a format that is so casual). I edited my post above.
The only thing I was implying is that these cards get better when there are two opponents, higher life totals and that games are typically go longer.
Looking at the black cards, my reaction is basically "this is not fair!"
At my 2hg we are going white/black for access to the best removal and offesive weapons.
We did double blue at our last one to have a mono blue deck with the mass bounce leviathan. But i dont think double black is worth it in this case, maybe double white would be. The white promo is much better in 2hg than regular.
So, outside of the promo, is black the best or the worst?
Yes. They made a Demon that has no downside other than giving your opponent a choice between:
1. Lightning Bolt to their face
2. Edict them
3. Howling Mine for you
Just... wow. Actually.... it's like Keranos, God of Storms (lol) except there's no need to turn it on! Black Keranos ftw!
Red is alright, it blows stuff up, but 7CC is a lot more than 5CC. Green is slow as all hell, the White one is okay, and Blue.... I still don't get why it can't copy an opponent's creature. I mean, matching your opponent by cloning their bomb fits right into Blue's color pie.
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