Of course I haven't had time yet to really digest the whole set, but I'm going to guess that a 2/x creature for 2 without an exceptional ability is not going to be a playable card. This is important to note because many people rely on the "vanilla test" which assumes normal set conditions. This set obviously has more toughness than most, meaning small non-evasive creatures are less valuable.
The counter-argument is that even if a 2/2 for 2 is not a great attacker, hey it trades with Morphs early! Except 1) players don't trade good Morphs for 2/2s and 2) a lot of the Morphs that can flip early get a toughness boost when they do flip.
Leave your bears on the sidelines unless they do something late-game relevant.
This is also going to be an 18 land default format. Hitting 3 and then 5 mana is going to be critical. 3 for face-down creatures, and 5 for all the good Morph abilities to trigger.
I don't think it's that simple. There's going to be a lot of tapped lands and playing 0/Xs and morphs/outlast creatures people don't want to trade being played the first 3 mana on top of the aggressor being able to play falters, bounces, combat tricks, threatens, and removal that specifically targets larger creatures after. Then even after the board seems stable there's 2 solid anthems in trumpet blast and rush of battle that can make early drops relevant again as well as a decent amount of flyers and burn behind that. I do think this format will be slow but I think you should absolutely be looking at running some things like highland game to give you some kind of board presence to make an early trade or punish an especially slow start.
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"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?"
I rather agree with Actinium... there's certainly a bias in the cards, it seems, to play 'slowly'. Put up Walls, put down Morphs, unmorph, etc.
I think that Jeskai is actually the best placed to punish them, as the tempo color. Mardu may be able to punch through, but it may not happen. This points to the most resilient Aggro deck being WR. Ride Down seems a key card to allow you to win against stronger defensive decks. Bring Low also looks to punish people who want to sit back and Outlast. (On that note, the Salt Road Patrol actually survives Bring Low.)
Sultai looks the most combo-oriented, as you would expect. The 3/3 Flying Delve guy for 6 looks like he can easily be played turn 4. Perhaps earlier.
but I'm going to guess that a 2/x creature for 2 without an exceptional ability is not going to be a playable card
Yeah, that's what I was wondering about too with all this high toughness going around. They are a little more expensive though, so prowess tempo might be a thing that can go lategame with good flyers in blue.
A lot of the removal is kind of up there, but Debilitating Injury helps the little guys be somewhat more relevant.
I've been doing some tests with the sealed generator, and even though I know it's not totally accurate, the initial results are still very disheartening.
There are so few good Ferocious cards, and it's a very frustrating balance needing both cards that benefit from Ferocious and cards that ENABLE Ferocious.
Sultai Flayer is a good example of how problematic the Temur mechanic is. I only have 22-23 slots in my deck. I need a good number of those to be 4-power creatures to enable Ferocious. Even though Sultai Flayer is a great card, it's hard adding it into the deck because it means I have that much less of a chance to enable Ferocious. That, or it's eating into card slots which could be taking advantage OF Ferocious.
On top of that, you need cheap creatures that will help you survive long enough to reach the lategame (like walls and such), on top of all your usual spells/combat tricks/removal.
All this adds up to a deck that's surprisingly easy to dismantle since it's sooo reliant on such disparate elements working together.
Temur gets surprisingly few midrange creatures. Your Ferocious enablers are either cheap high power / low toughness guys like Alpine Grizzly (who is difficult to use because of how easy it is to lose your Ferocious benefit with) or 6+ mana guys like Glacial Stalker or Tusked Colossodon. (The former may come out on turn 5, but requires you to spend a turn on the morphed version).
It just feels like the clan with the least amount of identity. Often, I pull up a pool of cards without any good Ferocious cards at all!
Everyone seems to be valuing the cards in this set under the assumption that the clan abilities are always on. While I can see this being true for Raid and Delve and even Outlast (relatively easy to accomplish and mostly terrible without their abilities), Prowess and Ferocious very much feel like icing on the cake mechanics to me. They need to be evaluated as cards assuming that they won't get their added bonus 75% of the time that you play them, and if you get into a situation that you absolutely need the extra effect to have the right impact timing becomes key. You simply will not be able to activate prowess every turn in a limited deck, nor rely on having ferocious up in the early stages of a game unless you have a million alpine grizzlies. But I'd argue that the base power level of these cards is also much higher than the other clans, e.g. most delve cards are completely unplayable without delve, but savage punch is absolutely acceptable without the +2/+2 clause.
Maybe I'm optimistic on both these points, but KTK seems like a really rich and varied limited format to me, with strategies of all types being valid.
But is Temur strong enough to compete with the other clans without Ferocious being on? The other clans seem to do everything Temur does but better.
Hooting Mandrills can be cast early on by Sultai more reliably than Temur. The only way Temur can get its own beasties out is by relying on morph at a 5-mana minimum (I don't count stuff like alpine Grizzly since they're fragile and not true midrange like Hooting Mandrills). Armament Corps can be a 6/6 for 5 at uncommon for Abzan.
If Temur can function awesomely without needing to rely on Ferocious, I would not be so worried; but I'm very skeptical at the moment.
What I really like about this set is that EVERY mechanic has variability. There's nothing like Scry where you just get an effect for playing a spell and that's all there is to it.
Outlast -- You have to pay for it, and the flow of the game may not allow for that without compromising your board position. Also requires a certain level of concentration (sharing Outlast abilities) to be good.
Prowess -- Requires the right type of cards in hand or else is just a bluff, and similarly wants a high level of concentration to get the most out of each spell.
Delve -- You'll always be able to Delve a little, but you need enablers to really get value.
Raid -- Requires a creature able to attack, but then also loses a lot of value if you're forced to throw a creature away just to activate. Actually has 3 modes: Off, Bad, and Good.
Ferocious -- The most obvious since it has a specific requirement.
Morph -- To get max value, you're forced to play face-down and risk it getting removed.
Add in the complexity of poaching cards from other mechanics, and things get real complicated. Grading this set seems impossible. Everything is like "B if your deck is really built for it, C in most cases, D if you're doing something completely different." This set may be at the top all time in terms of you have to be able to change your mental rankings during the draft, and match your picks to your pile. Anyone trying to draft from a pick list will be dead.
Is there that many low-cost enablers that sultai can cast hooting mandrill earlier than temur? Consider that a delve deck might not be so keen to use-up its graveyard to power-out a vanilla 4/4...
The best low-cost enable for Delve is the 2G Sorcery (debatable whether that's low), and it's also available to Temur.
The best follow-up to Delving out the Mandrills is to Force Out your opponent's next plays to start refilling your graveyard.
Delvers also like Jeskai Elder (obv).
Having said all of that, I think that Sultai decks would prefer the 3/3 Flying Delve for 6 over Mandrills. It very well may depend on Ferocious vs. other cards, but flyers are relatively small in the format. The Sultai Common being a 3/4 Flyer, is the biggest thing around, IIRC. There's the 4/5 Flying Prowess dudes, but I think they are Uncommon....
Is there that many low-cost enablers that sultai can cast hooting mandrill earlier than temur? Consider that a delve deck might not be so keen to use-up its graveyard to power-out a vanilla 4/4...
The complete list of cards that put more than one card in your yard, CMC <=3:
Out of the commons, I don't think Scheming is playable; Secret might be if the format is very slow, but it's probably not best played on turn 3. Voice is actually probably the best of these to play on-curve (aside from the rare) since it means forgoing a bear rather than a morph. So actually Temur is better placed for a turn 4 monkey than sultai.
(Turn 3 monkey needs either scheming or a fetchland plus voice or Despise plus voice in your Jund shard deck.)
I don't see how Scheming isn't playable since it's basically "Scry 5" for 2, except instead of it going to the bottom, it's "your worst cards among those 5 fuel Delve." That seems like an okay thing to me. It depends on if you'll be delving, of course, but taking 1-5 off the mana cost of any delver for 1U seems like a steal. It certainly would've been in Innistrad.
"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?"
I don't see how Scheming isn't playable since it's basically "Scry 5" for 2, except instead of it going to the bottom, it's "your worst cards among those 5 fuel Delve." That seems like an okay thing to me. It depends on if you'll be delving, of course, but taking 1-5 off the mana cost of any delver for 1U seems like a steal. It certainly would've been in Innistrad.
I could definitely be wrong on this one, but it seems hardly better than Index. I guess late game it's a lot better since you just get rid of the early-game cards/lands instead of drawing them 3 turns later. Not getting a card or affecting the board seems so bad. OTOH, I guess Innistrad decks played that flashback mill spell so it depends on how valuable the self-mill turns out to be.
Taigam's Scheming ought to be a lot better than Index; pitching the unwanted cards is the more important part of the card selection. But given how putrid Index is, that's not saying much, and I don't think Scheming is playable. If you've gone really long on Delve cards then maybe, but even then you'd want it as a late play when lands and cheap creatures are dead draws, so you'll see things you want to pitch.
I don't see how Scheming isn't playable since it's basically "Scry 5" for 2, except instead of it going to the bottom, it's "your worst cards among those 5 fuel Delve." That seems like an okay thing to me. It depends on if you'll be delving, of course, but taking 1-5 off the mana cost of any delver for 1U seems like a steal. It certainly would've been in Innistrad.
The difference is that scry is usually attached to some other effect and scry is just a bonus which doesn't cost you a card. Scheming to delve...well, is dark ritual a maindeckable in limited?
I don't see how Scheming isn't playable since it's basically "Scry 5" for 2, except instead of it going to the bottom, it's "your worst cards among those 5 fuel Delve." That seems like an okay thing to me. It depends on if you'll be delving, of course, but taking 1-5 off the mana cost of any delver for 1U seems like a steal. It certainly would've been in Innistrad.
The difference is that scry is usually attached to some other effect and scry is just a bonus which doesn't cost you a card. Scheming to delve...well, is dark ritual a maindeckable in limited?
Mystic Speculation is very sad at you, though the fact it had buyback is a bit more relevant to how useful it was.
Anyway, my point is that if you have the Delve support, why wouldn't you play Scheming? It will directly fuel some of it -- potential turn 3 Hooting Mandrills, Shambling Attendants (not as likely) or Sultai Scavenger anyone? -- while simultaneously fixing your draws.
I don't see how Scheming isn't playable since it's basically "Scry 5" for 2, except instead of it going to the bottom, it's "your worst cards among those 5 fuel Delve." That seems like an okay thing to me. It depends on if you'll be delving, of course, but taking 1-5 off the mana cost of any delver for 1U seems like a steal. It certainly would've been in Innistrad.
The difference is that scry is usually attached to some other effect and scry is just a bonus which doesn't cost you a card. Scheming to delve...well, is dark ritual a maindeckable in limited?
Mystic Speculation is very sad at you, though the fact it had buyback is a bit more relevant to how useful it was.
Anyway, my point is that if you have the Delve support, why wouldn't you play Scheming? It will directly fuel some of it -- potential turn 3 Hooting Mandrills, Shambling Attendants (not as likely) or Sultai Scavenger anyone? -- while simultaneously fixing your draws.
Speculation doesn't cost you a card because of buyback. It wouldn't be played if it didn't have buyback.
Using Scheming to delve is basically casting a ritual that gives you up to 5 mana for 2cc. Has any of the black or red rituals previously printed been all that great in limited.
The "Why not?" is because it's card disadvantage. Now, if you're not playing too many of them, and you're casting them late enough in the game that you have a decent concentration of dead draws in your deck, that's offset by giving yourself more live draws over the next few turns, so it doesn't always hurt you to play it. But then you really need the cards in your graveyard to be consistently giving you value, or Scheming ends up as kind of a wash. So if we're talking about playing this, we're really talking about playing a sort of combo deck, with a ton of expensive Delve cards that need to be enabled and some cards like Taigam's Scheming that are only worth playing if they consistently set up Delve.
Will that sort of all-in, combo-ish Delve deck be a good strategy? Maybe. I'm skeptical, but it's possible.
So far, without experience, I'd rate the delves cards per rebate as:
0-1: bad to really bad.
2: okay to bad (for example, the sac 2 at 8 CMC (10-2) is still too costly.)
3: okay to good.
4-5: good to very good.
6+ amazing.
Scheming *might* set you up for a rebate of 4-5 (mill 3-4 + the scheme card). So you'd get a very good result out of your delve card... at the cost of one card. As we know, tack 'draw a card' to any crap and it becomes playable. Tack 'discard a card as an additional cost' and there is not many cards that stay very good. I'd doubt spending a card and two mana is enough.
I'm watching the magic online Khans sealed and what I think we're seeing is that more consistent, aggro decks are faring better. The final is Mardu vs Abzhan, an abzhan deck with a low, aggro curve. I didn't look at the quarter finals, and this is only one sealed, but it does look like missing colors and being on the back-pedal, especially beiung on lower life while your opponent developped his board with a few morph that hide 5 CMC unmorph, can be devastating.
Why play Dream Twist for self-mill during Innistrad if it's card disadvantage? It's the same thing! Anyway, my point isn't that Scheming isn't useful JUST for setting up Delve, it's that it's setting up Delve AND fixing your draws too. If you have the Delve support, why wouldn't you want consistency and/or enabler like you did for self-mill in Innistrad (not that Dream Twist was a draw fixer, but I wasn't insinuating that it ever was)?
I didn't see the earlier rounds (dangit), but Sean Plott's Abzan deck in the finals looks about like what I expected. He hasn't neglected the bottom of his curve, but he doesn't look particularly aggro to me.
No question that Andreasson's Mardu deck is aggro, though, what with the Act of Treason and the Trumpet Blast and all the tokens.
I think game length on it's own will be enough to fuel Delve, no need for more enablers to push it over the edge
The counter-argument is that even if a 2/2 for 2 is not a great attacker, hey it trades with Morphs early! Except 1) players don't trade good Morphs for 2/2s and 2) a lot of the Morphs that can flip early get a toughness boost when they do flip.
Leave your bears on the sidelines unless they do something late-game relevant.
This is also going to be an 18 land default format. Hitting 3 and then 5 mana is going to be critical. 3 for face-down creatures, and 5 for all the good Morph abilities to trigger.
I think that Jeskai is actually the best placed to punish them, as the tempo color. Mardu may be able to punch through, but it may not happen. This points to the most resilient Aggro deck being WR. Ride Down seems a key card to allow you to win against stronger defensive decks. Bring Low also looks to punish people who want to sit back and Outlast. (On that note, the Salt Road Patrol actually survives Bring Low.)
Sultai looks the most combo-oriented, as you would expect. The 3/3 Flying Delve guy for 6 looks like he can easily be played turn 4. Perhaps earlier.
Yeah, that's what I was wondering about too with all this high toughness going around. They are a little more expensive though, so prowess tempo might be a thing that can go lategame with good flyers in blue.
A lot of the removal is kind of up there, but Debilitating Injury helps the little guys be somewhat more relevant.
There are 4 cards that do this: Sage-Eye Harrier, Dragon's Eye Savants, Monastery Flock, and Sidisi's Pet. You can decide for yourself how playable those are, I guess, but none of them are much of a blowout if a 2/2 fails to kill them.
I've been doing some tests with the sealed generator, and even though I know it's not totally accurate, the initial results are still very disheartening.
There are so few good Ferocious cards, and it's a very frustrating balance needing both cards that benefit from Ferocious and cards that ENABLE Ferocious.
Sultai Flayer is a good example of how problematic the Temur mechanic is. I only have 22-23 slots in my deck. I need a good number of those to be 4-power creatures to enable Ferocious. Even though Sultai Flayer is a great card, it's hard adding it into the deck because it means I have that much less of a chance to enable Ferocious. That, or it's eating into card slots which could be taking advantage OF Ferocious.
On top of that, you need cheap creatures that will help you survive long enough to reach the lategame (like walls and such), on top of all your usual spells/combat tricks/removal.
All this adds up to a deck that's surprisingly easy to dismantle since it's sooo reliant on such disparate elements working together.
Temur gets surprisingly few midrange creatures. Your Ferocious enablers are either cheap high power / low toughness guys like Alpine Grizzly (who is difficult to use because of how easy it is to lose your Ferocious benefit with) or 6+ mana guys like Glacial Stalker or Tusked Colossodon. (The former may come out on turn 5, but requires you to spend a turn on the morphed version).
It just feels like the clan with the least amount of identity. Often, I pull up a pool of cards without any good Ferocious cards at all!
But is Temur strong enough to compete with the other clans without Ferocious being on? The other clans seem to do everything Temur does but better.
Hooting Mandrills can be cast early on by Sultai more reliably than Temur. The only way Temur can get its own beasties out is by relying on morph at a 5-mana minimum (I don't count stuff like alpine Grizzly since they're fragile and not true midrange like Hooting Mandrills). Armament Corps can be a 6/6 for 5 at uncommon for Abzan.
If Temur can function awesomely without needing to rely on Ferocious, I would not be so worried; but I'm very skeptical at the moment.
Outlast -- You have to pay for it, and the flow of the game may not allow for that without compromising your board position. Also requires a certain level of concentration (sharing Outlast abilities) to be good.
Prowess -- Requires the right type of cards in hand or else is just a bluff, and similarly wants a high level of concentration to get the most out of each spell.
Delve -- You'll always be able to Delve a little, but you need enablers to really get value.
Raid -- Requires a creature able to attack, but then also loses a lot of value if you're forced to throw a creature away just to activate. Actually has 3 modes: Off, Bad, and Good.
Ferocious -- The most obvious since it has a specific requirement.
Morph -- To get max value, you're forced to play face-down and risk it getting removed.
Add in the complexity of poaching cards from other mechanics, and things get real complicated. Grading this set seems impossible. Everything is like "B if your deck is really built for it, C in most cases, D if you're doing something completely different." This set may be at the top all time in terms of you have to be able to change your mental rankings during the draft, and match your picks to your pile. Anyone trying to draft from a pick list will be dead.
The best follow-up to Delving out the Mandrills is to Force Out your opponent's next plays to start refilling your graveyard.
Delvers also like Jeskai Elder (obv).
Having said all of that, I think that Sultai decks would prefer the 3/3 Flying Delve for 6 over Mandrills. It very well may depend on Ferocious vs. other cards, but flyers are relatively small in the format. The Sultai Common being a 3/4 Flyer, is the biggest thing around, IIRC. There's the 4/5 Flying Prowess dudes, but I think they are Uncommon....
The complete list of cards that put more than one card in your yard, CMC <=3:
BUG:
Sultai Ascendancy (rare) CMC 3
Sultai Charm (uncommon) CMC 3
Green:
Scout the Borders (common) CMC 3
Red:
Tormenting Voice (common) CMC 2
Black:
Rakshasa's Secret (common) CMC 3
Blue:
Taigam's Scheming (common) CMC 2
Out of the commons, I don't think Scheming is playable; Secret might be if the format is very slow, but it's probably not best played on turn 3. Voice is actually probably the best of these to play on-curve (aside from the rare) since it means forgoing a bear rather than a morph. So actually Temur is better placed for a turn 4 monkey than sultai.
(Turn 3 monkey needs either scheming or a fetchland plus voice or Despise plus voice in your Jund shard deck.)
Past Ruminations
Links are broken, will fix in near future.
- Kaladesh
- Zendikar
- Rise of the Eldrazi
- Alara Reborn
- Innistrad <- Personal Favorite
- Dark Ascension
- Avacyn Restored
- Theros
- Return to Ravnica
- Tarkir
I could definitely be wrong on this one, but it seems hardly better than Index. I guess late game it's a lot better since you just get rid of the early-game cards/lands instead of drawing them 3 turns later. Not getting a card or affecting the board seems so bad. OTOH, I guess Innistrad decks played that flashback mill spell so it depends on how valuable the self-mill turns out to be.
The difference is that scry is usually attached to some other effect and scry is just a bonus which doesn't cost you a card. Scheming to delve...well, is dark ritual a maindeckable in limited?
Anyway, my point is that if you have the Delve support, why wouldn't you play Scheming? It will directly fuel some of it -- potential turn 3 Hooting Mandrills, Shambling Attendants (not as likely) or Sultai Scavenger anyone? -- while simultaneously fixing your draws.
Past Ruminations
Links are broken, will fix in near future.
- Kaladesh
- Zendikar
- Rise of the Eldrazi
- Alara Reborn
- Innistrad <- Personal Favorite
- Dark Ascension
- Avacyn Restored
- Theros
- Return to Ravnica
- Tarkir
Speculation doesn't cost you a card because of buyback. It wouldn't be played if it didn't have buyback.
Using Scheming to delve is basically casting a ritual that gives you up to 5 mana for 2cc. Has any of the black or red rituals previously printed been all that great in limited.
Will that sort of all-in, combo-ish Delve deck be a good strategy? Maybe. I'm skeptical, but it's possible.
0-1: bad to really bad.
2: okay to bad (for example, the sac 2 at 8 CMC (10-2) is still too costly.)
3: okay to good.
4-5: good to very good.
6+ amazing.
Scheming *might* set you up for a rebate of 4-5 (mill 3-4 + the scheme card). So you'd get a very good result out of your delve card... at the cost of one card. As we know, tack 'draw a card' to any crap and it becomes playable. Tack 'discard a card as an additional cost' and there is not many cards that stay very good. I'd doubt spending a card and two mana is enough.
Past Ruminations
Links are broken, will fix in near future.
- Kaladesh
- Zendikar
- Rise of the Eldrazi
- Alara Reborn
- Innistrad <- Personal Favorite
- Dark Ascension
- Avacyn Restored
- Theros
- Return to Ravnica
- Tarkir
No question that Andreasson's Mardu deck is aggro, though, what with the Act of Treason and the Trumpet Blast and all the tokens.