[+1] Put a 3/1 red Elemental creature token with trample and haste onto the battlefield.
[-2] Chandra, Princess of Ash deals X damage divided as you choose amongst any number of target creatures and/or players where X is her loyalty.
[-7] Exile all non token permanents.
Exile all notoken permanents not only isn't red, but its essentially Gideon, Champion of Justice's Ult
I'm sorry Peters but that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'm a business owner and been in management for over 35 years. Ever heard the saying "The customer is always right?" Translation: CATER TO THE CUSTOMER.
It is perfectly reasonable and correct for him to want Wizards to cater to him. He's the customer.
When you walk into a restaurant do you demand a table and menues and a beverage. When you are a customer of any business, is the first thing you do when you enter the establishment, demand whatever product or service they provide? No! Of course not, because to do so would make it appear as if you believe to be more important than the other patrons. Its fine for businesses, and in this case Wizards to design/cater the game to its players preferances, but going around demanding things, demanding to have your specific wants catered to makes you sound like an extremely inconsiderate person to say the least.
I don't think Magic will end because Wizards makes good Dimir cards, but the issue is sort of irrelevant. Why do you spend money on Magic cards rather than on starving children in Africa? You literally have the power to google "the life you can save peter singer" and start donating your surplus income. Why don't you do it? It's because you care more about your own desires than you do about the desires of others, and spend your time and money making yourself happy. That doesn't make you a bad person, and neither does wanting companies to cater to you rather than someone else. People are selfish, and that's okay.
Wanting people to cater to you is not okay. I'm not sure how to explain that to you...it just seems like a given.
You missed the point, which is that there is nothing wrong with wanting Wizards to do what I want, even if that makes other players less happy. Your need to learn how to read for comprehension. I never said Wizards has to print cards that I like.
You haven't been following: PetersPonders : "Getting your hopes up for a two cost catch all removal spell or the reprinting of Counterspell or just getting your hopes up for powerful spells in general is unwise"
You can "want wizards to do what you want" all day long, you can go and make posts on MTGS about what you WANT. In fact thats what you did. What I'm saying is that in the long run what you as an individual, or I as an individual WANT is nearly irrelevant to wizards' decision making process, especially when what you want is clearly, overpowered, an infringement on the colorpie, unprecedented, and foolish.
TomThumb: "I just want some solid constructed cards for dimir."
To this I say. Please wait for spoilers to be over.
I had every intention of adding the word "tempo" to that to that list:
Tempo, or as we sometimes called it back in the day "Aggro/Control" is the other big victor because of what I mentioned, so yeah people used creatures backed by whatever disrupted the "Control or combo" deck of the time. Be that duress or bloodbraid elf being able to get around "True Control" as people keep saying is why that worked at all.
1994 World Championship[9] - Zak Dolan – Angel Stasis Control
1995 World Championship[10] Alexander Blumke – Rack Control Control
1996 World Championship Tom Chanpheng - White Weenie Aggro
1997 World Championship Jakub Slemr – Grixis Control Control
1998 World Championship Brian Selden – RecSur Combo
1999 World Championship Kai Budde – Wildfire [Ramp/Control]
2000 World Championship Jon Finkel – Tinker [Combo]
2001 World Championship Tom van de Logt – Machine Head [Agg/control]
2002 World Championship Carlos Romão – Psychatog [Control]
2003 World Championship Daniel Zink –Wake [Control]
2004 World Championship Julien Nuijten – W/G Astral Slide [Combo]
2005 World Championship Katsuhiro Mori – Ghazi Glare [Umezawas' jitte]
2006 World Championship Makihito Mihara –Dragonstorm [combo]
2007 World Championship Uri Peleg – Doran Rock [Midrange]
2008 World Championship Antti Malin – Faeries [Control]
2009 World Championship André Coimbra – Naya Lightsaber [midrange]
2010 World Championship Guillaume Matignon - Blue-Black Control [Control]
2011 World Championship Jun'ya Iyanaga – Wolf Run Ramp [midrange]
Then in 2012 that horrible team system they produced became the thing and ... well
R/B Zombies, but the team didn't just win off that 1 deck alone to be honest.
So I'm gonna not count it.
So briefly back to the question:
18 world tourney's before the restructure
9 Control decks:: 4 Combo decks:: 4 midrange decks:: 1 aggro control deck::
1 aggro deck.
1 of those midrange decks was really an umezawa's jitte deck which is to say... a hacked inclusion.
even if you say Creature decks v Non creature decks you're looking 66% non creature. 3 of those decks occurring in the last 5 years of 20 years of magic. So ... yeah.
Newer players don't know what's good for the game.
As I said before, if you nerf control as much as what they have done/are doing, it will give any deck that control is is supposed to beat like say mono red in block, free reign, isn't it less fun to play against a deck that shouldn't be as powerful as it is just because it's natural predator has been given the shaft?
I think it would be better for newer players to come into a balanced format where every archetype is playable be it control, aggro, midrange, reanimator, or something wierd like omnidoor. The problem is that they made control too powerful in past sets making them a larger portion of the metagame. So all of the new players say "man, I hate getting my cards countered", rather than "I just got blown apart by aggro", or "God I hate Thragtusk".
So when they take polls of course new players are going to talk about hating that their spells got countered, because it's all they played agianst, since it was too powerful in past sets, thus making it a lager part of the meta than it should have been.
They shouldn't be nerfing anything, all the power in a set needs to be evenly distributed. If that happened then new players wouldn't be against counter spells as much as they are, since they also got beaten by everything else evenly.
But it's okay, after this block the new player will complain about aggro, then theros will be all about control
There are so many things wrong with this. Ugh. I sympathize with you i really do. I agree that the metagames need to be balanced and ...you know what they are as balanced as they have ever been. This standard is wide open. Go play Esper Control its a great deck. Sphinx's Revelation is the best control engine that we have seen in a very very long time. There are so many viable decks right now. Esper Control being one of the very best.
They have nerfed nothing. Aggro is not dominant right now, Magic has not degenerated into creature combat only. We have control cards, very good control cards legal right now. Go play them and have fun. All I am saying is that when wizards goes to design a set they consider everyone who loves the game of magic. First they consider the majority of people who love magic, the kitchen table, casual fnm-ers, then they consider the more serious competitve community. The latter will NOT get precedent when they begin designing cards. They will give us cards that push the meta-game they are intrinsically interested in maintaining a balanced metagame. I urge you to be patient and to seriously enjoy of the most balanced standard I have had the privilege to be a part of.
You could use all of the money you spend on magic and other forms of entertainment to feed starving children in Africa and other poverty stricken areas of the world. That would make more people better off in very substantial ways. Are you a bad person for wanting to keep your money and spend it on yourself? People are not obligated to want what is best for other people at the expense of their own happiness, that's just a not a reasonable point of view.
The first half of your post is hilarious. O_O you are not worth arguing with. You can spend your money on whatever you like Tomtumb. If Wizards doesn't print cards at the power level that makes you happy you don't have to buy any of it. Wizards is obligated to print whats best for the majority of the market at the expense of your happiness because its what makes them the most money and money is the way Magic continues its existence and puts paychecks in employees pockets.
This is also why they are nerfing control, because the new players hate playing against it, but they need to get used to it, it's not fair that wizards hurts an archetype so much because it's not friendly to new players. Do you make more money by keeping an old customer, or making a new one?
Control has always been one of the top archetypes in this game. They shouldn't be hosing it as much as they are. I understand that it was a little too strong in other sets, but it doesn't need to be as weak as it is. All they need to do is level the playing field across the board. Without a strong control strategy you will see less and less diversity in the format because the decks that control is suppossed to beat will go unopposed.
And that is what's unfun to newer players, playing a deck that destroys all other playable decks, just because control has been hated out of the format.
Wizards makes all of their MONEY from those new players. Right now wizards is generating far more new players than they are losing old ones which is why they are continuing on the design strategy that they are on.
Let me preface this by saying that I'm with you. I love powerful control decks and wish that we could have that archetype prosper.
The competitive or even semi competitive magic consumer is something like 10% of the market. The people that are diehard control players are an even smaller precentage of that 10%. It does not make fiscal sense for them to pander to that small of a market, when their surveys and statistics of the 90% say that they don't like getting their spells countered and don't like playing against nearly non-interactive control decks. Listen to Mark Rosewater's recent Drive to Work Podcast where he talks about creatures and hear it from the head designer himself. http://media.wizards.com/podcasts/magic/drivetowork29creatures.mp3
I'm not trying to get in the same boat as tomthumb as he says a lot of things I think are pretty ridiculous and narrow-minded...
However... he's right about that, its not selfish at all. It really reasonable.
It as reasonable as all those people who take the time to point out:
"Wotc is a company. Them doing things that make money is what they're SUPPOSED to do"
So a consumer saying and believing things like that AREN'T being selfish, but practical. "Spending my money on things that I want..." is what consumers are supposed to do.
So voting with your dollars is the best thing you can do. I'd be super impressed if the control players boycotted or something and made the sales drop, so wizards changed policy... I wouldn't participate in it but I'd be pretty damned impressed.
Still people come here complain, and then endure through sets they hate, or quit individually, and comeback later...or whatever but its not enough to hurt wotc into changing.
Lastly... I think all those control people are ACTUALLY blowing it all out of proportion. Learn to play esper, your control deck right now. Its good and if MORE people played it? It'd have more winning big matches. Everyone though doesn't like that style of play. "True Control" w/e that might mean to you.
With any business all you have to do is follow the money to understand their decision making. That i agree with, but disregarding the entire process of making a set and implementing design practices so on and so forth, because they didn't give the guild you like the goodies you think it deserves is absurd. Wizards knows for a fact that the way they make money is not printing power for control players, or power for aggro players for that matter. They know to make money they need to make interesting cards that make people that just play with their friends at their houses go "OOOO thats cool" those people and the casual fmn-ers are the people Wizards makes the bulk of their money from. That means that they are going to print Blue-black spells that to a seasoned tournament player or just an fnm spike look overcosted and trivial and unplayable. But to a kitchen table player, you know that 80% of the market, they see "Last Thoughts" and go cool thats that last one of I need for my Cipher deck or what have you, so they go buy a couple boosters at Target to get one. Tomthumb's disregard for both the effort Wizards puts into a set and for the play style of the rest of non-vocal 80% of the community is what makes me not so much angry, but alittle disgusted with the vocal part of the community. I WANT MY X REPRINT or I WANT X REMOVAL SPELL I HATE THIS SET. Just harping on what you want from wizards because you're more entitled as a customer than everyone else? Seriously? That. That is selfish.
Only half of the cards are spoiled, but the waahmbulance is already needed. "Blue got shafted again, waah!" Seriously people, why don't you wait until more cards are spoiled?
The wretched fanboyism around here make me ill sometimes. I totally agree.
2. I don't accept the premise that Wizards always makes corrects decisions about the "balance" of the game
3. As a customer, I don't care what Wizards is trying to do, I only care about what I want from them.
4. Dimir was incredibly shafted in Gatecrash, which was already enough to annoy me. It doesn't matter if they get something good now, I'll still be angry. There is nothing hasty about it.
5. OH NO PEOPLE HAD TO THINK ABOUT THE FACT THAT BOLT WAS IN THE FORMAT, CLEARLY BOLT IS AWFUL FOR MAGIC BOO HOO
6. I was using UB destroy a creature as an example of the power level that I wanted
1) Not sure how relevant your favorite guild is but sure.
2) They do not always make correct balancing decisions but we have no say in the matter regardless.
3) That is incredibly selfish
4) Getting mad over something you can't control isn't going to make anything better.
5) I love bolt and honestly i'd like it back. I know its not going to happen thats why you don't see me going around making threads about my desire to have lightning bolt back in standard. Its power level defined how they needed to print cards, thats just a fact, no one thought it was bad for magic, no one was complaining about it being in standard at all, but Wizards obviously thought that it would be better for magic if moving forward in standard, for a time, they didn't have to print every meta-pushing card with four toughness. Thats what happens when you print efficient removal, same thing happened with dismember.
6) I'm letting you know that the power level you want isn't going to happen. It would be bad if it happened in fact. Power Creep no bueno. Also it would be a gross invasion of the color pie see above posts.
7) Please formulate better arguments than BAAWAA RIDICULOUS ALL CAPS OVER EXAGGERATION DON'T YOU LOOK SILLY.
that card is not anywhere near as good as "UB - destroy target creature it can't be regenerated" which is already a card (Terminate) and color-pie wise has been given to red. This card is much more situational, has design precedent (Agony Warp) and could conceivably be used as a pump spell if you so chose. Extremely different cards. So whats your argument exactly?
Exile all notoken permanents not only isn't red, but its essentially Gideon, Champion of Justice's Ult
What would make you think Spiritmonger would be in Theros?
When you walk into a restaurant do you demand a table and menues and a beverage. When you are a customer of any business, is the first thing you do when you enter the establishment, demand whatever product or service they provide? No! Of course not, because to do so would make it appear as if you believe to be more important than the other patrons. Its fine for businesses, and in this case Wizards to design/cater the game to its players preferances, but going around demanding things, demanding to have your specific wants catered to makes you sound like an extremely inconsiderate person to say the least.
GatheringMagic just spoiled the izzet-boros split card Catch//Release
Wanting people to cater to you is not okay. I'm not sure how to explain that to you...it just seems like a given.
You haven't been following: PetersPonders : "Getting your hopes up for a two cost catch all removal spell or the reprinting of Counterspell or just getting your hopes up for powerful spells in general is unwise"
You can "want wizards to do what you want" all day long, you can go and make posts on MTGS about what you WANT. In fact thats what you did. What I'm saying is that in the long run what you as an individual, or I as an individual WANT is nearly irrelevant to wizards' decision making process, especially when what you want is clearly, overpowered, an infringement on the colorpie, unprecedented, and foolish.
TomThumb: "I just want some solid constructed cards for dimir."
To this I say. Please wait for spoilers to be over.
Faeries was tempo but I'm nitpicking ;]
There are so many things wrong with this. Ugh. I sympathize with you i really do. I agree that the metagames need to be balanced and ...you know what they are as balanced as they have ever been. This standard is wide open. Go play Esper Control its a great deck. Sphinx's Revelation is the best control engine that we have seen in a very very long time. There are so many viable decks right now. Esper Control being one of the very best.
They have nerfed nothing. Aggro is not dominant right now, Magic has not degenerated into creature combat only. We have control cards, very good control cards legal right now. Go play them and have fun. All I am saying is that when wizards goes to design a set they consider everyone who loves the game of magic. First they consider the majority of people who love magic, the kitchen table, casual fnm-ers, then they consider the more serious competitve community. The latter will NOT get precedent when they begin designing cards. They will give us cards that push the meta-game they are intrinsically interested in maintaining a balanced metagame. I urge you to be patient and to seriously enjoy of the most balanced standard I have had the privilege to be a part of.
The first half of your post is hilarious. O_O you are not worth arguing with. You can spend your money on whatever you like Tomtumb. If Wizards doesn't print cards at the power level that makes you happy you don't have to buy any of it. Wizards is obligated to print whats best for the majority of the market at the expense of your happiness because its what makes them the most money and money is the way Magic continues its existence and puts paychecks in employees pockets.
Wizards makes all of their MONEY from those new players. Right now wizards is generating far more new players than they are losing old ones which is why they are continuing on the design strategy that they are on.
Let me preface this by saying that I'm with you. I love powerful control decks and wish that we could have that archetype prosper.
The competitive or even semi competitive magic consumer is something like 10% of the market. The people that are diehard control players are an even smaller precentage of that 10%. It does not make fiscal sense for them to pander to that small of a market, when their surveys and statistics of the 90% say that they don't like getting their spells countered and don't like playing against nearly non-interactive control decks. Listen to Mark Rosewater's recent Drive to Work Podcast where he talks about creatures and hear it from the head designer himself. http://media.wizards.com/podcasts/magic/drivetowork29creatures.mp3
With any business all you have to do is follow the money to understand their decision making. That i agree with, but disregarding the entire process of making a set and implementing design practices so on and so forth, because they didn't give the guild you like the goodies you think it deserves is absurd. Wizards knows for a fact that the way they make money is not printing power for control players, or power for aggro players for that matter. They know to make money they need to make interesting cards that make people that just play with their friends at their houses go "OOOO thats cool" those people and the casual fmn-ers are the people Wizards makes the bulk of their money from. That means that they are going to print Blue-black spells that to a seasoned tournament player or just an fnm spike look overcosted and trivial and unplayable. But to a kitchen table player, you know that 80% of the market, they see "Last Thoughts" and go cool thats that last one of I need for my Cipher deck or what have you, so they go buy a couple boosters at Target to get one. Tomthumb's disregard for both the effort Wizards puts into a set and for the play style of the rest of non-vocal 80% of the community is what makes me not so much angry, but alittle disgusted with the vocal part of the community. I WANT MY X REPRINT or I WANT X REMOVAL SPELL I HATE THIS SET. Just harping on what you want from wizards because you're more entitled as a customer than everyone else? Seriously? That. That is selfish.
The wretched fanboyism around here make me ill sometimes. I totally agree.
1) Not sure how relevant your favorite guild is but sure.
2) They do not always make correct balancing decisions but we have no say in the matter regardless.
3) That is incredibly selfish
4) Getting mad over something you can't control isn't going to make anything better.
5) I love bolt and honestly i'd like it back. I know its not going to happen thats why you don't see me going around making threads about my desire to have lightning bolt back in standard. Its power level defined how they needed to print cards, thats just a fact, no one thought it was bad for magic, no one was complaining about it being in standard at all, but Wizards obviously thought that it would be better for magic if moving forward in standard, for a time, they didn't have to print every meta-pushing card with four toughness. Thats what happens when you print efficient removal, same thing happened with dismember.
6) I'm letting you know that the power level you want isn't going to happen. It would be bad if it happened in fact. Power Creep no bueno. Also it would be a gross invasion of the color pie see above posts.
7) Please formulate better arguments than BAAWAA RIDICULOUS ALL CAPS OVER EXAGGERATION DON'T YOU LOOK SILLY.
that card is not anywhere near as good as "UB - destroy target creature it can't be regenerated" which is already a card (Terminate) and color-pie wise has been given to red. This card is much more situational, has design precedent (Agony Warp) and could conceivably be used as a pump spell if you so chose. Extremely different cards. So whats your argument exactly?