It's all in the title
I'm going to prerelease tomorrow, and it would be great to know which cards exceeded expectations, and which fell short
favorite card?
most unexpected?
how did the new mechanics perform?
I have a couple of standouts. Markov Crusader was great at winning any race and is a pretty decent threat at uncommon - the haste is gravy (shows you how stupid good gisela is). Likewise, geist-fuelled scarecrow is a suprisingly powerful card - 4/4 is a very relevant body in the format and the downside is pretty neglible if you play around it and can slot easily into any deck. Borrowed Grace is probably the best common I played with today - if you get them, play them and if you don't, be real careful of people with white mana up. It can do some suprisjngly nasty things. Also, although it's an SOI card shout out to grotesque mutation for a card that can totally swing the game in your favour with good timing. Same with borrowed malevolence. For a 1-3 mana common it's extraordinarily flexible.
On the other side of things, Eternal Scourge is a card that felt overhyped to me. His ability isn't as relevant as it seems as he isn't enough of a threat on his own to really change the game and his lack of evasion or haste hurts a lot. Not to mention, it's stupidly easy for the opponent to bounce him with combat tricks or ping abilities which just wastes your mana. He's still a 3 mana 3/3 but he isn't as good as he was made out to me in my (limited) experience. The lack of madness in the newer set made Olivia's Dragoon and call of the bloodline pretty scrappy in my deck, but depends on your pulls I guess. I saw a couple of people play Oath of liliana .... Don't do that.
Mechanics... In my experience, emerge is good but not crazy, delerium is easy to achieve and can be game changing if you build for it, madness feels a bit thin on the ground with only two packs of SOI, I like that transforming is easier to deal with since you don't have to remember all the triggers and all the escelate cards seem ppayable.
Noosegraf Mob is very good. If you dropped it on a board that's even remotely at parity and the opponent can't remove it, there's no way you'll fall behind.
Bloodbriar played far better than i thought it would. Clues (and Terrarion) make this guy sweet. Prey Upon was not nearly what it needs to be, too many fat butts. Cryptbreaker is disgusting.
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My Decks: EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn Modern: Polytokes IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
My best card that actually won me matches was Boon of Emrakrul. The worst card in my deck was Voldaren Pariah. I never wanted to cast her, or there weren't ever enough creatures to bother with her flipped side.
I played B/G at a prerelease this morning. I actually did amazingly well for rare power (for once), ending up with 8 playable rares in my colors. However, the card that shined above all others was Distended Mindbender. Against one opponent, I cast it turn 5 both games, and it utterly and completely dismantled him. It was absolutely fantastic whenever it hit the table.
I ended up playing an aggressive RB deck which had my creatures top out at 4 mana for a Mindrack Demon which I never got to actually play. But there are so many discard outlets in these colors madness will be even more of a thing now I think.
Cards that always did good things: Olivia's Dragoon: 2/2 for 2 with fairly good upside. Enables madness, can fly over stalled boards, enables delirium always happy to play it. Alchemist's Greeting: Killed pretty much what ever needed to go and was great with madness enabelars. Never had to pay 5 for it so may have just been the deck making it good. Incendiary Flow: To the suprise of no one 3 damage for 2 is good. Sorcery is unfortunate but kills a thing and can go to the face. Smoldering Werewolf: Didn't get to kill a thing on entry because it made my opponent use up a pump spell to save his creature. So it 0 for 1 just casting it, and got bigger later allowing me to throw it in to kill some stuff and whatever ends up blocking it. Thermo-Alchemist: My deck was supposed to be Aggro but this card was great even in that deck. With this on board, throw a incendiary flow at their face plus 2 activations of this is a lava axe for 1R. Holds the ground while your other guys get in. Collective Defiance: Top performer. Usually only activated the last two abilities bur for 2RR kill a creature and then 3 to the face is a great rate. Again too bad on the Sorcery part but can't have it all.
Cards I thought would be better: Collective Brutality: Always wanted to do other things than this when I had a choice because -2/-2 didn't let me do what I wanted at the time. If this was an instant that would be probably good but they couldn't do that because the discard mode so while it should have been good it was always wanting and the escalate cost was too high even in a deck that could use discard sometimes. Skirsdag Supplicant: Was an ok blocker but the ability just was too scary to use in a board stall which is when it should shine, though it can be inevitability allowing me to send guys in to die just to get opponent to 2. Just don't over estimate the ability and it will be ok.
Cards in my pool I wish showed up to try: Liliana's Elite: This could have been huge as I would actively trade my guys or force my opponent to make trades so this could have gotten big, but there were some times where I was ahead where drawing a 3 mana unruly mob would probably not been good and slowed me down. Probably worth it though.
Cards opponents played that seemed good: Blessed Alliance: all modes seem pretty good and in board stalls, kills the one flyer that could get in.
The emerge crab that gets back a spell: The 5 toughness was difficult for my red deck to deal with and getting back business spell is the business.
This set seems much more aggressive than I had originally expected. Maybe just since agro is good when a new set is released but it seems like a viable strategy to me.
This also came to mind immediately for me as a card that was better than expected. Played well in multiple sealeds and then a draft.
Also generally speaking ALL of the werewolves played well. The sealed format seems relatively slow, and at least in my games myself and my opponents consistently had time to flip our wolves. In draft they might lose a little value, but I expect they will still be pretty high picks for the most part, as the combination of early action and late power is just so valuable.
In draft I lost to a werewolf-heavy deck with my UW flyers/tempo deck. It would have been a great matchup for me if not for him drawing one card early in both matches: Savage Alliance. It was a 2-for-1 on turn 4 both games, which bought him the time he needed to take over the game with the superior late game power of his werewolves.
Vildin Pack Alpha and Smoldering Werewolf were very good for me. Smoldering killed one creature on ETB and 3 or 4 after flipping with the on-attack trigger; there are a lot of /2 creatures in the format. Vildin-Pack is just too big for most forms of removal. The threat of flipping at instant speed for 3 extra toughness is strong, and putting 8+ mana into him after flipping quickly ends games. Even the base 4/4 trades with the large number of 3/4s.
Borrowed Hostility was my primary combat trick, and it was a good one. I used it with Bloodmad Vampire to kill several creatures (I connected with him 3 or 4 times; I won those games). What makes it really good is its versatility. It worked really well with both high power/low toughness creatures like Bloodmad and low power/high toughness creatures like Thermo-Alchemist. Speaking of, while I only drew Thermo-Alchemist early one game he did real work, hitting for 8-10 points of damage over the course of the game.
I imagine almost all the escalate cards are great, along with Dark Salvation and the Eldrazi Werewolves. The format was relatively slow (I got to 8-10 mana consistently and hardcasted my Emerge card more than sac-casted), so cards that can scale up can be really strong. I won two games with a 4 zombie Rise from the Tides, so imagine doing that with Dark Salvation AND killing a creature AND having the zombies for blocking purposes.
Suprising no-one, Sigardian Priest is absolutely great in this format being able to deal with just about anything for one mana a turn. I wasn't expecting too much from blood mist because of it's timing restrictions and that but it's just crazy good with any of the big werewolves in the set. Just breaks the ground stalls you get into with red by making it impossible to stop your transformed dudes from either trading for insane value or hitting to face for silly amounts of damage.
Good Noose Constrictor... opponents just scared to attack into or block with 2/3 cards in hand. Grapple with the Past... fix your mana, draw that ko'd bomb back into your hand. Between this and Oath of Nissa, green has amazing card draw (in standard) right now. Woodcutter's Grit... good as removal, vs removal and getting in a few extra points for the kill.
Bad
Anything with a */3 arse (*= greater than 3). Too many 3/2's running around getting value kills on my critters.
Not only is Borrowed Grace extremely powerful as a surprise, I think a lot of the format's board states don't give you much of route for playing around it.
In a draft, someone actually played Emakrul's Influence against me, she ended up drawing like 8 cards PLUS cast triggers of 4 emerge cards, because the ground was completely clogged up when we both played Thornhide Wolves
I did manage to win that game but only because she could not answer a flipped Westvale Abbey (although she staved it off for a while with Niblis of Frost).
I thought this was stone unplayable, but I think there is a sideboard case for it; if you are running full blown emerge (4-5 emerge cards) AND facing a deck that you are likely to board stall (nothing that a bunch of the emerge guys are big-butt dummies) it's probably not the worst card in your deck.
I agree. If you're drafting a grindy Emerge deck, it's less likely that you're gonna fight another grindy deck, but when you do, Emrakul's Influence cranks sooo much value. Definitely a card you want to keep in your pocket as an Emerge deck.
Cathar's Shield has been rather decent honestly, the lack of instant-speed unconditional removal means it can really slow down the aggressive decks and there are a lot of those so far I find.
Anything involving double strike or first strike is pretty strong in this format because most boards naturally tend towards double block solutions with the P/T spreads.
My best card that actually won me matches was Boon of Emrakrul. The worst card in my deck was Voldaren Pariah. I never wanted to cast her, or there weren't ever enough creatures to bother with her flipped side.
Why would you not want a 3/3 flying?
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I'm going to prerelease tomorrow, and it would be great to know which cards exceeded expectations, and which fell short
favorite card?
most unexpected?
how did the new mechanics perform?
On the other side of things, Eternal Scourge is a card that felt overhyped to me. His ability isn't as relevant as it seems as he isn't enough of a threat on his own to really change the game and his lack of evasion or haste hurts a lot. Not to mention, it's stupidly easy for the opponent to bounce him with combat tricks or ping abilities which just wastes your mana. He's still a 3 mana 3/3 but he isn't as good as he was made out to me in my (limited) experience. The lack of madness in the newer set made Olivia's Dragoon and call of the bloodline pretty scrappy in my deck, but depends on your pulls I guess. I saw a couple of people play Oath of liliana .... Don't do that.
Mechanics... In my experience, emerge is good but not crazy, delerium is easy to achieve and can be game changing if you build for it, madness feels a bit thin on the ground with only two packs of SOI, I like that transforming is easier to deal with since you don't have to remember all the triggers and all the escelate cards seem ppayable.
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
Modern Tallowisp Spirits - A Modern Tallowisp Deck UW
Eldrazi Ninjas - Summoning Octopus Jutsu YYYYAAAHHHH!
STANDARD
Naban Wizards
Aside from that, I had The Gitrog Monster, Asylum Visitor, Sage of Ancient Lore (probably the biggest underperformer of the day), two Noosegraf Mobs, Spirit of the Hunt and Emrakul's Evangel (which was stupidly powerful with two Bloodbriars and a Noosegraf Mob in play).
GGG [Primer] Omnath, Big Green Beatstick Machine GGG
That is all I have to report.
Cards that always did good things:
Olivia's Dragoon: 2/2 for 2 with fairly good upside. Enables madness, can fly over stalled boards, enables delirium always happy to play it.
Alchemist's Greeting: Killed pretty much what ever needed to go and was great with madness enabelars. Never had to pay 5 for it so may have just been the deck making it good.
Incendiary Flow: To the suprise of no one 3 damage for 2 is good. Sorcery is unfortunate but kills a thing and can go to the face.
Smoldering Werewolf: Didn't get to kill a thing on entry because it made my opponent use up a pump spell to save his creature. So it 0 for 1 just casting it, and got bigger later allowing me to throw it in to kill some stuff and whatever ends up blocking it.
Thermo-Alchemist: My deck was supposed to be Aggro but this card was great even in that deck. With this on board, throw a incendiary flow at their face plus 2 activations of this is a lava axe for 1R. Holds the ground while your other guys get in.
Collective Defiance: Top performer. Usually only activated the last two abilities bur for 2RR kill a creature and then 3 to the face is a great rate. Again too bad on the Sorcery part but can't have it all.
Cards I thought would be better:
Collective Brutality: Always wanted to do other things than this when I had a choice because -2/-2 didn't let me do what I wanted at the time. If this was an instant that would be probably good but they couldn't do that because the discard mode so while it should have been good it was always wanting and the escalate cost was too high even in a deck that could use discard sometimes.
Skirsdag Supplicant: Was an ok blocker but the ability just was too scary to use in a board stall which is when it should shine, though it can be inevitability allowing me to send guys in to die just to get opponent to 2. Just don't over estimate the ability and it will be ok.
Cards in my pool I wish showed up to try:
Liliana's Elite: This could have been huge as I would actively trade my guys or force my opponent to make trades so this could have gotten big, but there were some times where I was ahead where drawing a 3 mana unruly mob would probably not been good and slowed me down. Probably worth it though.
Cards opponents played that seemed good:
Blessed Alliance: all modes seem pretty good and in board stalls, kills the one flyer that could get in.
The emerge crab that gets back a spell: The 5 toughness was difficult for my red deck to deal with and getting back business spell is the business.
This set seems much more aggressive than I had originally expected. Maybe just since agro is good when a new set is released but it seems like a viable strategy to me.
This also came to mind immediately for me as a card that was better than expected. Played well in multiple sealeds and then a draft.
Also generally speaking ALL of the werewolves played well. The sealed format seems relatively slow, and at least in my games myself and my opponents consistently had time to flip our wolves. In draft they might lose a little value, but I expect they will still be pretty high picks for the most part, as the combination of early action and late power is just so valuable.
In draft I lost to a werewolf-heavy deck with my UW flyers/tempo deck. It would have been a great matchup for me if not for him drawing one card early in both matches: Savage Alliance. It was a 2-for-1 on turn 4 both games, which bought him the time he needed to take over the game with the superior late game power of his werewolves.
Otherworldly Outburst was always a back-breaker.
Of course I had none of these cards but my opponents had plenty.
Frenzy-Affinity-Ghost Quarter-Rock-Tokens- RGWPhyrexian Zoo- WVial KnightsStandard:
BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
It's very splashable.
Borrowed Hostility was my primary combat trick, and it was a good one. I used it with Bloodmad Vampire to kill several creatures (I connected with him 3 or 4 times; I won those games). What makes it really good is its versatility. It worked really well with both high power/low toughness creatures like Bloodmad and low power/high toughness creatures like Thermo-Alchemist. Speaking of, while I only drew Thermo-Alchemist early one game he did real work, hitting for 8-10 points of damage over the course of the game.
I imagine almost all the escalate cards are great, along with Dark Salvation and the Eldrazi Werewolves. The format was relatively slow (I got to 8-10 mana consistently and hardcasted my Emerge card more than sac-casted), so cards that can scale up can be really strong. I won two games with a 4 zombie Rise from the Tides, so imagine doing that with Dark Salvation AND killing a creature AND having the zombies for blocking purposes.
Noose Constrictor... opponents just scared to attack into or block with 2/3 cards in hand.
Grapple with the Past... fix your mana, draw that ko'd bomb back into your hand. Between this and Oath of Nissa, green has amazing card draw (in standard) right now.
Woodcutter's Grit... good as removal, vs removal and getting in a few extra points for the kill.
Bad
Anything with a */3 arse (*= greater than 3). Too many 3/2's running around getting value kills on my critters.
http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/20765
I did manage to win that game but only because she could not answer a flipped Westvale Abbey (although she staved it off for a while with Niblis of Frost).
I thought this was stone unplayable, but I think there is a sideboard case for it; if you are running full blown emerge (4-5 emerge cards) AND facing a deck that you are likely to board stall (nothing that a bunch of the emerge guys are big-butt dummies) it's probably not the worst card in your deck.
Why would you not want a 3/3 flying?