If you just want to build a deck that is moderately successful at FNM, I would recommend purchasing a few copies of a preconstructed deck, and putting the best cards together. This is probably your best bet if you can't make a purchase online. If you can, it may be better to purchase the singles you want from the preconstructed decks since that would be cheaper.
The people saying Sin Prodder is unplayable in constructed are the same people who were saying Flip Jace "doesn't look that good". Sin prodder is excellent. Any card revealed to it that your opponent chooses to bin could just as easily be assumed to be on the bottom of your library. Not to mention all of the graveyard interactions and things like Delerium. People are assuming that because this ability gives your opponent some control over the advantage this card generates for you that it is not an advantage. That is foolish. There are many ways this card could work for you. Talk about binning a lightning bolt for 1, but now you took 1 damage for 0 mana, I draw, and you have to block my 3/2 with 2 creatures or take 3 anyways, and hope to god I didn't just draw 2-3 damage in my red aggro deck.
I'm really not sure where the disconnect is for these folks. Tracker looks pretty good too, I'm a fan of any card that provides incidental advantages.
EDIT: I just wanted to drop in and point out that this does not significantly affect your ability to hit land drops or avoid flooding provided your deck is truly randomized. Just imagine the ability revealed the bottom card of your library instead. Same thing.
This is pretty interesting; it seems like the community neglected the learning curve of the new mechanics. For beginners, most stores offer free basic decks (with a bunch of single color commons and uncommons and an instruction manual) but to be honest with you, learning from scratch is very difficult. These decks are great for the basics; the rules insert talks about the basic rules of the game while the single color nature of the deck helps you understand the "theme" behind each color. There are many mechanics and interactions that can cause things to be difficult once you move on from these basic decks. Even experienced players have difficulty explaining all of the rule complexities.
The best method for learning in my experience has been the "Duels of the Planeswalkers" series of games, as each explains what each color in magic is about, as well as providing an explanation of the different basic (or 'evergreen') mechanics like flying and vigilance.
Until WotC prints a set that is worse than Homelands (and let's be clear: BFZ is nowhere near that bad), you will ALWAYS find at least a couple Standard-playable cards in any given set. So, saying, "You guys will eat crow when Brutal Expulsion makes a Top 8 decklist" is setting an incredibly low bar. That's not a good litmus test of set quality.
But OK, let's entertain the possibility that BFZ is just different, and subject to a completely unusual process of discovery, and that a couple months from now, everybody will finally "get" how to build competitive Constructed decks with BFZ, and the evaluation of tons of cards completely reverses. Will the naysayers need to eat crow then? Maybe a nibble. But the fact will remain that BFZ is an ugly, flavor-confused set that adheres poorly to quality design principles. I also doubt that this turnaround will occur.
So really, the competitive / casual divide is not the distinction of interest. I am primarily a kitchen-table player that attends a few Limited events a year. I don't like the set because, quite frankly, a team of designers over in the CCC forum could have done this better. That is usually not the case. WotC are supposed to be the best of the best, here. BFZ is amateur hour.
All of this. This is so very true. Pushing aside the fact that wizards decided to drop power levels off of a cliff and have the resultant set feel terrible on the wallet when attending sealed events, that is so much less of a problem than the fact that this set is just awfully confused. All of the past sets seem to have a clear story in the cards, with different creature types doing some things, tribes with unique mechanics and styles... it was all so flavorful.
This set doesn't feel exciting at all. Some creature are allies while others are inexplicably not allies. Some random creatures have "lifegain matters" mechanics, and then awaken just randomly appears on some cards, and devoid on others. This set feels messy, low power level aside. Don't even get me started on converge, as that tends to make even less sense than awaken. It's on one of the strongest cards in the set (Bring to Light) and one of the weakest (The blue prism enchantment) Some allies have it, but then eldrazi appear to be rewarded for playing all five colors too. Radiant flames wipes out all of the allies small creatures and can't scale to hit the big eldrazi, but eldrazi have tiny creatures too, and it doesn't exile. There are a bunch of sick colorless lands in the set and a mechanic that punishes colorless lands as well.
So while I especially don't understand the debate behind "this set isn't low power level, it's just misunderstood", I don't think that's the problem with the set. Especially because the cards just fill different roles. For example, the "new blood artist" has a clearly weaker effect, as it only triggers for your creatures. However, it is an ally, and it has power, and it may have merit alongside a sacrifice creature with Abzan Ascendency. The new 2 mana ramp thing is a hasty 1/1 that can only ramp creatures out, and itbis worse than caryatid by a mile. But I think it is an ally, and haste enables some neat tricks with different cards.
I didn't want Guesswork's post to get overlooked here on this board; he hit the nail on the head here, dead center. Well-put, sir.
Curves right after the Seige, and goes infinite with those two cards alone. Can also help you find Sage of Hours, more copies of Ajani, or counter-generating auras (a la Ordeal of Heliod or your sunbond).
I understand that there is some amount of excessive violence in Magic art that might make you uncomfortable. In a similar vein, their inclusion of religious characters such as angels and demons are highly controversial as well. A great portion of the appeal behind the Magic story is that it is not limited by the propriety of it's content for small children.
I deal with accusations of Magic being a children's game often enough that I can point to the art as an example of the ignorance of that statement. The end state of the matter is that there are things in all forms of media that are controversial and perhaps excessive. My parents had an argument over whether or not I could watch the Return of the Jedi movie when I was younger because of the sexually-charged slave leia outfit. The outfit contributed very little to the story, and likely could have been a slave sweater or some such appropriate and moderate clothing.
Unfortunately, if the movie was redone by Disney and her outfit was changed, there would be public outcry. The point is that if you're looking for it, you can find inappropriate content in nearly every form of media. The onus lies with the individual to decide what is appropriate for them and their children.
I was not allowed to watch Anastasia as a child due to demonic overtones, and I couldn't watch the Gargoyles cartoon because "the bad guys always win" in that show. It's absolutely your right not to like the art in Magic, but I'm certain that if you changed it to nonviolent, peaceful, or mild artistic tropes you would experience some form of pushback from the playerbase.
You won't find much else that cheap and still competitive. If you're just looking for decks that win, UW heroic is still good for another few months and is basically a $20 deck.
I'm on board with red being the strongest color in this set for a few reasons:
1. It pairs well with all of the colors. Red white aggro, blue red tempo, black red removal, and green red ramp are all viable strategies in this limited format, with some particularly significant synergies in blue (artifacts and soft lock bounce combos) and black (gain control and sacrifice effects with tokens).
2. It has the most removal. While the argument against this is that it is conditional removal primarily, it removes most renown creatures before they can get off the ground. Also small roadblocks that your opponent may attempt to stymie your offensive with.
3. It is the least color intensive. While all of the colors in the set have around the same number of cards with double colored mana symbols, these cards encompass a majority of the powerful cards in white and black. Red has more powerhouse commons and uncommons with a single red mana symbol in it's casting cost than the other colors.
I intend to go red this prerelease and look to splash or play my strongest color from the other 6 packs. Even if my rare isn't great, I should bolster the strength of my deck from the likely powerful commons and uncommons in the seeded pack and play a different primary color.
Quick edit: there are no donate effects in standard, but it may be relevant to play something like Daring Thief. Certainly not viable in competitive magic and still the wrong thread. Carry on.
Because a combo that gives you infinite power and toughness and can cycle you to a card that instantly mills your opponent out needs to also put a stupid and unnecessary amount of tokens on the board.
Everyone that complains about Theros not making enchantments relevant in standard is going about it the wrong way. Theros was not Wizard's best set. It was screwy and we had more "mana-symbols matter" cards for the majority of the set than enchantments.
However, the block itself was very well designed around enchantments. In a vacuum, the cards had flavor and only failed to encourage their play in standard. Archetypes, Bestow creatures, the gods, the god's weapons, some creatures with the enchantment supertype, and even the constellation card that rewarded you for playing enchantments while they were on the battlefield.
The power level and synergies weren't there in the Theros set. Even though more enchantments saw play in standard, there were problems with the amount of hate enchantment cards are kept down by and the other powerful interactions in the set. I am by no means defending Mark Rosewater or the set, but I still think it's super dumb to say that Theros wasn't an enchantment set and enchantments didn't matter in that block.
People are whiny because they didn't see the interactions they wanted to in standard, and the deck that rewards you for playing enchantments that did make it to standard has a single iteration. You guys are upset that Theros was a weak block, not that it wasn't enchantment-y enough.
It's like the pasta you're eating tastes bad, so you complain that your spaghetti bolognese isn't italian enough.
On the card, reprints do nothing for modern so I'm slightly disappointed to see this in the rare slot. For those concerned about having it as an uncommon because it would be too powerful in limited, Elite Scaleguard says hello. I think it would be fine at uncommon.
But Theros wasn't really an enchantment block, just ranom creatures given the enchantment supertype. Very little "enchantments actually matter" which is important to a theme until Journey. Look at elves in origins and how much the cards care about elves. That's what Theros block needed.
I don't understand, did they miss some design space or something that I can't see? They had entire "Enchantment Matters" mechanics! They had enchantments that made enchantments, enchantment creatures, effects that reward you for casting enchantments, enchantment destruction, and even modal "god" enchantments that became creatures and had synergy with their enchantment artifact weapons. How can people hold this position at all? There was a boardwipe that killed all nonenchantment creatures even.
This point of view is still ridiculous in my eyes. It's like saying your spaghetti bolognese isn't italian enough.
On a side note, they could have really pushed this card by making it so enchantments activated abilities were cheaper too.
All of the posts on this thread have made me really appreciate what Wizards of the Coast does. This happens quite often, where they release support cards and powerful interactions that last for 3 months or so. This happened with Green Summer (that crazy Primeval Titan elves deck), Omnidoor (my personal favorite), and Rancor Infect. I have seen personally the effects the interactions have on people, and it really makes for an interesting dynamic with card design. The more "fun" or "exciting" a card is, the faster the card will cause burnout in the format.
Wizards should be cautious during periods where a card will remain in a format for a long time. I played during the era of Caw-Blade, and I personally witnessed quite a few people leave the game because the cards were too pushed, and the format was legitimately mirror matches and decks optimized to fight the deck.
It's not right to attack designers because they wanted to keep the playing field even. Especially considering the attacks they get from the same group of people after the format becomes degenerate due to the power level of particular interactions. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
And an equal number of people complained that Theros wasn't enchantment-y enough as complained Dragons of Tarkir wasn't a Dragon set. Both positions were and continue to be ridiculous.
This is a nice card and the enchantment deck will be fun for the time that all these cards are in standard. Back to Nature might be a legitimate card, too.
That blue sorcery...instant sideboard against Scapeshift.
"Find Scapeshift, sac all your lands, choose to find all your Valukuts and no mountains, pass turn."
I think you misread the card... since you cast the spell, you would be the controller of the scapeshift and would only get to sacrifice your own lands.
It's exactly like dietl says. We have whelps and lizards, but they're not dragons. Making a small dragon doesn't feel dragonlike. You would run into the problem of basically violating what everyone feels is "correct" for a dragon, and that is likely worse than the all too common mythic spell doesn't feel mythic. If you have a flying 5/5 that makes 5 1/1 flyers (or 0/0 flyers and gives all flyerss +1/+1), that feels like a dragon.
If you make a 2/2 that makes 1/1 flyers, that's strange. How do you explain that flavorwise? Why is the Dragon so weak? How do you explain the other dragons being 1/1s? Small creatures don't fit the role of dragon. 1/1 dragon is a flavor no-no.
Dr. Death the problem is that Dragons have never been a playable archetype. Channel Fireball did top 8 dragons last night and there were some pretty lackluster ones in there. 6 mana cards need to be impactful to see constructed play. The top one on the list was one that was never even cast (Bogardan Hellkite) just cheated out with Dragonstorm. No dragon has ever been close to the power of the titans or some of the power angels like Baneslayer. The only ones that have even seen constructed play in the modern era are 4-5 mana hasters or extreme value creatures like Broodmate.
I am not quite in agreement with all the points of the poster you quoted, but I shared some of those concerns. The only spicy cards so far released are non dragons. Wotc made some nice cards here that are a lot better if you have dragons but the main problem is the dragons they made suck. Part of it is that it is hard to make good 5-7 mana playable creatures for constructed. Part is just lackluster design on many of them. As of right now there is one good playable in the red Regent and three maybe playables in Ojutai, Silumgar and the blue regent. The rest is just stuff for limited.
I think you're identifying a strange cross-type player, one that values competitive play and flavortext, caring about how cool a card is as well as what it does. A spike-vorthos, maybe? That aside, I think the issue lies in what dragons are expected to do. They need to be flying, and that alone creates an issue with design, as flying has a exponentially higher value the larger the creature is. Then, the size of the creature needs to be dragonlike. Just reprinting some cards as dragons would be odd and wouldn't feel dragonlike, as I mentioned in the earlier post. So we have size and flying, how do you scale that to be insane? If any of the titans had flying, they would be ridiculously overpowered. Essentially to get a spicy dragon you need an aggressively costed large flyer that does something when you cast it or when it enters the battlefield, and that just pushes some abilities over the top.
There are people already designing Jund Dragons decks, so if you're wanting a dragon tribal to be competitive in standard, I think you have most of what you need.
Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa said that the best dragon spoiled so far was Atarka (before Ojutai was spoiled), and that it would be quite powerful in Green devotion or ramp decks. I think many of the dragons push the envelope here, but people are undervaluing them because of their costs. One of the plays I would watch for in standard is turn 3 thunderbreak regent into turn 4 stormbreath, while accellerating towards Atarka. Not sure why that is disappointing or unexciting.
I'm really not sure where the disconnect is for these folks. Tracker looks pretty good too, I'm a fan of any card that provides incidental advantages.
EDIT: I just wanted to drop in and point out that this does not significantly affect your ability to hit land drops or avoid flooding provided your deck is truly randomized. Just imagine the ability revealed the bottom card of your library instead. Same thing.
The best method for learning in my experience has been the "Duels of the Planeswalkers" series of games, as each explains what each color in magic is about, as well as providing an explanation of the different basic (or 'evergreen') mechanics like flying and vigilance.
All of this. This is so very true. Pushing aside the fact that wizards decided to drop power levels off of a cliff and have the resultant set feel terrible on the wallet when attending sealed events, that is so much less of a problem than the fact that this set is just awfully confused. All of the past sets seem to have a clear story in the cards, with different creature types doing some things, tribes with unique mechanics and styles... it was all so flavorful.
This set doesn't feel exciting at all. Some creature are allies while others are inexplicably not allies. Some random creatures have "lifegain matters" mechanics, and then awaken just randomly appears on some cards, and devoid on others. This set feels messy, low power level aside. Don't even get me started on converge, as that tends to make even less sense than awaken. It's on one of the strongest cards in the set (Bring to Light) and one of the weakest (The blue prism enchantment) Some allies have it, but then eldrazi appear to be rewarded for playing all five colors too. Radiant flames wipes out all of the allies small creatures and can't scale to hit the big eldrazi, but eldrazi have tiny creatures too, and it doesn't exile. There are a bunch of sick colorless lands in the set and a mechanic that punishes colorless lands as well.
So while I especially don't understand the debate behind "this set isn't low power level, it's just misunderstood", I don't think that's the problem with the set. Especially because the cards just fill different roles. For example, the "new blood artist" has a clearly weaker effect, as it only triggers for your creatures. However, it is an ally, and it has power, and it may have merit alongside a sacrifice creature with Abzan Ascendency. The new 2 mana ramp thing is a hasty 1/1 that can only ramp creatures out, and itbis worse than caryatid by a mile. But I think it is an ally, and haste enables some neat tricks with different cards.
I didn't want Guesswork's post to get overlooked here on this board; he hit the nail on the head here, dead center. Well-put, sir.
Curves right after the Seige, and goes infinite with those two cards alone. Can also help you find Sage of Hours, more copies of Ajani, or counter-generating auras (a la Ordeal of Heliod or your sunbond).
*Drops mic*
I deal with accusations of Magic being a children's game often enough that I can point to the art as an example of the ignorance of that statement. The end state of the matter is that there are things in all forms of media that are controversial and perhaps excessive. My parents had an argument over whether or not I could watch the Return of the Jedi movie when I was younger because of the sexually-charged slave leia outfit. The outfit contributed very little to the story, and likely could have been a slave sweater or some such appropriate and moderate clothing.
Unfortunately, if the movie was redone by Disney and her outfit was changed, there would be public outcry. The point is that if you're looking for it, you can find inappropriate content in nearly every form of media. The onus lies with the individual to decide what is appropriate for them and their children.
I was not allowed to watch Anastasia as a child due to demonic overtones, and I couldn't watch the Gargoyles cartoon because "the bad guys always win" in that show. It's absolutely your right not to like the art in Magic, but I'm certain that if you changed it to nonviolent, peaceful, or mild artistic tropes you would experience some form of pushback from the playerbase.
1. It pairs well with all of the colors. Red white aggro, blue red tempo, black red removal, and green red ramp are all viable strategies in this limited format, with some particularly significant synergies in blue (artifacts and soft lock bounce combos) and black (gain control and sacrifice effects with tokens).
2. It has the most removal. While the argument against this is that it is conditional removal primarily, it removes most renown creatures before they can get off the ground. Also small roadblocks that your opponent may attempt to stymie your offensive with.
3. It is the least color intensive. While all of the colors in the set have around the same number of cards with double colored mana symbols, these cards encompass a majority of the powerful cards in white and black. Red has more powerhouse commons and uncommons with a single red mana symbol in it's casting cost than the other colors.
I intend to go red this prerelease and look to splash or play my strongest color from the other 6 packs. Even if my rare isn't great, I should bolster the strength of my deck from the likely powerful commons and uncommons in the seeded pack and play a different primary color.
Quick edit: there are no donate effects in standard, but it may be relevant to play something like Daring Thief. Certainly not viable in competitive magic and still the wrong thread. Carry on.
Because a combo that gives you infinite power and toughness and can cycle you to a card that instantly mills your opponent out needs to also put a stupid and unnecessary amount of tokens on the board.
Everyone that complains about Theros not making enchantments relevant in standard is going about it the wrong way. Theros was not Wizard's best set. It was screwy and we had more "mana-symbols matter" cards for the majority of the set than enchantments.
However, the block itself was very well designed around enchantments. In a vacuum, the cards had flavor and only failed to encourage their play in standard. Archetypes, Bestow creatures, the gods, the god's weapons, some creatures with the enchantment supertype, and even the constellation card that rewarded you for playing enchantments while they were on the battlefield.
The power level and synergies weren't there in the Theros set. Even though more enchantments saw play in standard, there were problems with the amount of hate enchantment cards are kept down by and the other powerful interactions in the set. I am by no means defending Mark Rosewater or the set, but I still think it's super dumb to say that Theros wasn't an enchantment set and enchantments didn't matter in that block.
People are whiny because they didn't see the interactions they wanted to in standard, and the deck that rewards you for playing enchantments that did make it to standard has a single iteration. You guys are upset that Theros was a weak block, not that it wasn't enchantment-y enough.
It's like the pasta you're eating tastes bad, so you complain that your spaghetti bolognese isn't italian enough.
On the card, reprints do nothing for modern so I'm slightly disappointed to see this in the rare slot. For those concerned about having it as an uncommon because it would be too powerful in limited, Elite Scaleguard says hello. I think it would be fine at uncommon.
I don't understand, did they miss some design space or something that I can't see? They had entire "Enchantment Matters" mechanics! They had enchantments that made enchantments, enchantment creatures, effects that reward you for casting enchantments, enchantment destruction, and even modal "god" enchantments that became creatures and had synergy with their enchantment artifact weapons. How can people hold this position at all? There was a boardwipe that killed all nonenchantment creatures even.
This point of view is still ridiculous in my eyes. It's like saying your spaghetti bolognese isn't italian enough.
On a side note, they could have really pushed this card by making it so enchantments activated abilities were cheaper too.
Wizards should be cautious during periods where a card will remain in a format for a long time. I played during the era of Caw-Blade, and I personally witnessed quite a few people leave the game because the cards were too pushed, and the format was legitimately mirror matches and decks optimized to fight the deck.
It's not right to attack designers because they wanted to keep the playing field even. Especially considering the attacks they get from the same group of people after the format becomes degenerate due to the power level of particular interactions. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
And an equal number of people complained that Theros wasn't enchantment-y enough as complained Dragons of Tarkir wasn't a Dragon set. Both positions were and continue to be ridiculous.
This is a nice card and the enchantment deck will be fun for the time that all these cards are in standard. Back to Nature might be a legitimate card, too.
I think you misread the card... since you cast the spell, you would be the controller of the scapeshift and would only get to sacrifice your own lands.
If you make a 2/2 that makes 1/1 flyers, that's strange. How do you explain that flavorwise? Why is the Dragon so weak? How do you explain the other dragons being 1/1s? Small creatures don't fit the role of dragon. 1/1 dragon is a flavor no-no.
I think you're identifying a strange cross-type player, one that values competitive play and flavortext, caring about how cool a card is as well as what it does. A spike-vorthos, maybe? That aside, I think the issue lies in what dragons are expected to do. They need to be flying, and that alone creates an issue with design, as flying has a exponentially higher value the larger the creature is. Then, the size of the creature needs to be dragonlike. Just reprinting some cards as dragons would be odd and wouldn't feel dragonlike, as I mentioned in the earlier post. So we have size and flying, how do you scale that to be insane? If any of the titans had flying, they would be ridiculously overpowered. Essentially to get a spicy dragon you need an aggressively costed large flyer that does something when you cast it or when it enters the battlefield, and that just pushes some abilities over the top.
There are people already designing Jund Dragons decks, so if you're wanting a dragon tribal to be competitive in standard, I think you have most of what you need.
Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa said that the best dragon spoiled so far was Atarka (before Ojutai was spoiled), and that it would be quite powerful in Green devotion or ramp decks. I think many of the dragons push the envelope here, but people are undervaluing them because of their costs. One of the plays I would watch for in standard is turn 3 thunderbreak regent into turn 4 stormbreath, while accellerating towards Atarka. Not sure why that is disappointing or unexciting.