If it is an ability, and you've gone a long way towards proving something we all knew, then perhaps the reason it's not in the CRs is that it doesn't do anything. Perhaps the reason is that it doesn't do anything yet.
Perhaps Magic is a game intended to be fun, and after spending 30,000 words to explain the point that you don't like it when they poke fun at you, you've overreacted considering the scope of the item in discussion. It's one card in a 180 card set in a 14,000 card game. Let's march to Renton with pitchforks and torches on my command, k?
SSSSHHHHH.....don't set him/her off........
His/her response will be that OWN did exactly what it said it would do, you discarded your hand.
But Steamflogger doesn't do what it says it will, because contraptions don't exist and riggers don't make them.
Actual use is not the question, as I understand it, it's about functionality.
And Lack of functionality greatly, greatly offends him/her.
Use of him/her is not meant to offend, it is simply based on lack of knowledge and unwillingness to make a blind assumption.
I'm gonna also assume he/she (oh who am I kidding, no female has this much time to waste on something this stupid) also knew there were going to be red herrings in the set, because a.) it was explicitly stated and b.) this is the portion of the site where people find things out about a set in advance.
So he's basically whining and moaning because he bought a bill of goods he was sold? Hm. Funny, that.
So I avoided this thread because I thought "Who wants to watch people speculate over whether or not contraptions are real AGAIN."
And lo and behold, it's a dude having a conniption fit over a bad rare.
This is priceless.
BTW, One with Nothing didn't "enable hellbent" until 3 sets later. Even then it wasn't that good. So why are you okay with OWN but not Steamflogger Boss? By your own logic in the future it may be of some use, then your whole argument falls apart.
Of course I don't expect you to see that, I expect a long, rambly reply. Go ahead, I'm making popcorn. This is funny.
Um... Slivers prove my point exactly. When wizards pushed their power level (Crystaline Sliver, Muscle Sliver, etc) they were played, but it was like the deck was already there for you, there was no creative deckbuilding. When slivers weren't pushed in power (Legions slivers, for example), they weren't played at all. Now they've been pushed a little again with Sedge Sliver, Sinew Sliver, and Cautery Sliver mainly, and again they are seeing play in entirely non-creative decks.
This is the problem with linear mechanics, and it proves my point entirely.
And yes, Wizards is trying to avoid linear mechanics, at least on the Onslaught/Mirrodin level. Slivers have been pushed a little, and have seen a little play, but no where near the all-dominating popularity of linear mechanics like Tribal (goblins), Cycling (astral slide), or Affinity (affinity).
This was the real problem with Kamigawa really. Coming off of two Linear-centric blocks that were dominated by linear mechanic decks, they didn't want the same thing happening again. So despite the entire block being riddled with linear mechanics, the overall powerlevel of those mechanics was toned WAAAAY down. This is why most Kamigawa decks were simply "Good Stuff" decks that used Kamigawa's few good, non-linear cards. And since, linear mechanics have been almost entirely removed, making "good stuff" decks (which require far more creativity to come up with good designs) the dominant ones. (There have been a few linear mechanics in RAV and TS though. Dredge was linear, and eventually broken. Though the mechanic itself wasn't, the combination with a number of other graveyard-based cards was. This made for linear decks that actually required a lot of thinking to make, like Ichorid. Convoke should have been linear, but was massively underpowered to the point where only 1 card is really playable. Ditto with Hellbent).
I agree with you. Which is why I shudder when people mention that Lorwyn might be tribal. Tribal is the definition of linear. Just choose the best creatures from the tribe, and voila. At least Slivers require you to run all over the place finding the right ones of different colors (or specifically limiting yourself from getting certain abilities). Goblins help other goblins and are almost universally red. Whoopie.
To the poster right above me, they could have printed an Arcane spell or something, but it would have required a splice onto arcane spell too. That's Wildfire's point. Kami's cards only worked with other Kami cards. I can take a Rav block BDW and still find stuff to add to it from TSP block without blowing up the deck's internal synergy. Not so with Kamigawa.
Also, printing a spirit or arcane spell (in the Kamigawa sense) would have implied they are planning to go back there ever in the future, which apparently (and thankfully), they aren't.
Do you ever tried to build a deck like this? I, infact, did. And it's not competitive at all.
I did. It's got a few variations, and it's fairly competitive. Not my favorite rogue deck but it can manage a win between turns 4-6. Street Wraith and Pact of Negation should make it that much more competitive.
Textless cards - Hoping the big art will distract from the boring vanilla design?
I don't think that was it at all. Obviously they are vanilla creatures. Nothing's going to distract from that. I can't believe people are complaining about these. It's like getting nice lands in Unglued/Unhinged.
And Blade of the Sixth Pride pushes the power level for WW. Did the textless frame distract you from seeing that?
The purpose of these was twofold, one was to preview some races/classes from upcoming blocks, the other to (hopefully) say that in the future, realizing that vanilla creatures are boring but necessary for the game (especially the core set), that maybe they can do some things to spice them up.
You couldn't be further from the truth here if you tried. Spikes are not people who can't see anything other than a quick win. They are people who are the best at this game. This means that they are good at evaluating cards. Sure, they can be unable to see some interactions, but only because specifically looking for the interactions is a big waste of resources. Spike prefers to use all his resources to succeed at a given task: winning something by playing this game. That's why they will always see the truly powerful interactions. They knew how good Dralnu could be in a deck made to abuse Dralnu. They were certainly not the people who laughed.
I disagree. Spikes may win more games, but that doesn't make them better at the game. There is a tremendous difference between figuring out how a deck works once it's put together and being able to evaluate possible interactions in a vacuum. Most spikes are netdeckers who play what is popular and what others have finally told them is great. The ability to play a deck well in constructed doesn't mean a whole lot in and of itself, which is why limited is so important to tournament Magic.
There are some Spike masterminds out there (as well as Johnny/Timmy) who can immediately see how powerful certain under-the-radar cards are, but the majority of them aren't initially interested in a card if it doesn't scream "BAH-ROKEN". To be fair, there are probably a significant number of Johnny's out there trying to make it happen with Blood Funnel, so no one's particularly immune to it.
Personally I always rate sets in terms of potential, rather than what screams out at me as an obvious combo or hoser. To me, this set has tremendous amounts of potential. Delve, Gravestorm, Grandeur and mechanics like it scream "build around me!". New decks can and will be born from this set, and old archetypes will get shots in the arm. In constructed, a deck type can be 1 to 2 cards away from becoming viable again. Is Pyromancer's Swath what sligh or satanic sligh needs to be a powerhouse? Who knows. But we certainly have a lot of tools to play with for the next several months, if nothing else.
There are many decks that are wading in the water until turn 4 to cast Wrath, gain the board advantage and then slowly take over the game (in fact, I believe there's a whole giant archetype known as "control" that does just this).
Remand is a very good card in this slot, because it guarantees on Turn 4 you don't see Wrath or Damnation. But without another counter in your hand (and Remand gives you 1 opportunity with its cantrip, plus your own card draw on your turn), you're going to see that spell again on Turn 5. Delay is even better in this regard, because it absolutely guarantees you won't see that card on Turn 5, Turn 6 or Turn 7 (depending on who went first). Also in the scope of that lingering suspend spell, you are drawing 1, 2, 3 cards to find an ultimate solution to that spell, IF (and this is not a big if in aggro if you get 2 more turns to fight before Wrath wipes the board) the game hasn't ended in your favor from your creature advantage. It's not only 3 extra draws, it's 3 untaps, 3 combat phases, 6 main phases, etc.
In Control vs. Control, card advantage isn't nearly as important, and Remand in the late game is nothing but a 1U: Draw a card. Delay in the late game is still as relevant as it is in the early game. Against spells like Cancel/Rewind, Seething Song, Auras, Lightning Axe, etc, Delay turns those cards into hard counters because their targets will very likely be irrelevant in the intervening turns.
And against Gruul type aggro, delaying their direct damage as you're setting up the board with damnation or wrath, and slapping down Teferi essentially neuters their ability to get you within burn range (as these decks typically play out their hands by turn 5-6).
Overall, a fantastic card that may not become a staple until Rav rotates out, but I have a feeling we'll see it in many, many T8's (it also might make Scryb/Force type aggro a lot more viable).
-E
Edit: I should also note that Remand is useless against the Pacts, and so useless against Combo's newest weapon to force its win conditions through. It might as well be a Blasted Landscape.
Funny how no one says that the Rav duals are terrible vs. aggro. Potentially, you're running 8-12 of them in Rav/TSP to stay competitive in some decks (and additional painlands).
2 life is an absolutely negligible cost unless you are in burn range. The fact that this card is an instant speed card draw for 2 life means you can draw into threats in response to your opponent.
Control uses Remand even in the late game when it knows the spell will be recast because it's at least a cantrip that gives you an opportunity to draw into a hard counter. This card, for 2 life, gives you an opportunity to draw into your final combo piece or answer for something on the board or the stack.
Combo will LOVE this card, because it wants to run as few cards as possible. I have played both with and against Mishra's Bauble and the delayed card draw is a significant drawback.
Just ask yourself, the next time you're playing Dragonstorm and it's about to go off, would you rather have Mishra's Bauble on the table (or even its delayed ability on the stack) or this guy in your hand? What does that 2 life matter then? (And more importantly, pray to God your Voidslime or whatever is sitting on the top of your deck ).
That makes no sense. You wouldn't have to check your opponent's deck after a match anymore than you do now, because there's already a restriction on the number of copies of a card that can be in a deck: four, for any card in Standard except for basic land. You could go to an FNM and play against some jerk who's running six copies of Dragonstorm, and never know about it unless you checked after.
The reason you don't have to do that or submit decklists at low-level tournaments like FNM is because there's not very much at stake, and most people aren't big enough jerks to cheat at a thing like that.
Yet only type 1 restricts because of this reason. Restricted cards in the hands of a standard scene will result in a lot of people either a.) cheating or b.) making mistakes and will bog down tournaments.
(You may only own one copy of a planeswalker card in your deck)
They are not going to print cards that are going to force players to check their opponent's decks in low level DCI tournaments at the end of every match (since this can't be verified at the end of every game for obvious reasons). It's an awful idea, and one of the reasons they haven't self-restricted themselves, even though they could have a long, long time ago.
As far as Steamflogger Boss goes, it reminds me of the Texans last year, who drafted Mario Williams instead of Reggie Bush, because the "smart" play in the draft was to draft the player that no one expected you to draft. There is no way this card is real, except possibly timeshifted from a third Un-set (as someone else said). It's so obviously, stupidly, bald-facedly fake that the smart play here (calling it fake) starts to look bad. It's so obvious it invites the sort of overthinking that makes people want to think it's real.
Same goes for Tarmogoyf. Vanguard wasn't fun, and no one has really suggested a way for making a type (not a supertype as in the post above) for Planeswalker that would significantly work differently than Vanguard that wouldn't break the game wide open or turn it into something like Warcraft.
The most obvious reason it's a red herring is that it's in the reminder text of a card. Reminder text is NOT rules text. It has no bearing on the game, if it is contradicted by the comprehensive rules. Until Planeswalker is added to the CRs as an actual type (and unfortunately the unintuitive mess that is Tribal as a non-super type looks like it might make it in), then there's nothing here to get excited about. Like Maro said, this is a meta-set. Putting something like Planeswalker in the reminder text acts as an in-joke for players, like the Superman you can find in every episode of Seinfeld.
Perhaps Magic is a game intended to be fun, and after spending 30,000 words to explain the point that you don't like it when they poke fun at you, you've overreacted considering the scope of the item in discussion. It's one card in a 180 card set in a 14,000 card game. Let's march to Renton with pitchforks and torches on my command, k?
-E
I'm gonna also assume he/she (oh who am I kidding, no female has this much time to waste on something this stupid) also knew there were going to be red herrings in the set, because a.) it was explicitly stated and b.) this is the portion of the site where people find things out about a set in advance.
So he's basically whining and moaning because he bought a bill of goods he was sold? Hm. Funny, that.
Pass the popcorn!
-E
So I avoided this thread because I thought "Who wants to watch people speculate over whether or not contraptions are real AGAIN."
And lo and behold, it's a dude having a conniption fit over a bad rare.
This is priceless.
BTW, One with Nothing didn't "enable hellbent" until 3 sets later. Even then it wasn't that good. So why are you okay with OWN but not Steamflogger Boss? By your own logic in the future it may be of some use, then your whole argument falls apart.
Of course I don't expect you to see that, I expect a long, rambly reply. Go ahead, I'm making popcorn. This is funny.
-E
I agree with you. Which is why I shudder when people mention that Lorwyn might be tribal. Tribal is the definition of linear. Just choose the best creatures from the tribe, and voila. At least Slivers require you to run all over the place finding the right ones of different colors (or specifically limiting yourself from getting certain abilities). Goblins help other goblins and are almost universally red. Whoopie.
To the poster right above me, they could have printed an Arcane spell or something, but it would have required a splice onto arcane spell too. That's Wildfire's point. Kami's cards only worked with other Kami cards. I can take a Rav block BDW and still find stuff to add to it from TSP block without blowing up the deck's internal synergy. Not so with Kamigawa.
Also, printing a spirit or arcane spell (in the Kamigawa sense) would have implied they are planning to go back there ever in the future, which apparently (and thankfully), they aren't.
-E
If Tribal doesn't show up in the CRs as a type but a supertype (as it appears it is), then Tarmogoyf doesn't interact with it.
If they don't ever print Planeswalkers then (that part of) Tarmogoyf's reminder text might as well be flavor text.
Which it is.
-E
I did. It's got a few variations, and it's fairly competitive. Not my favorite rogue deck but it can manage a win between turns 4-6. Street Wraith and Pact of Negation should make it that much more competitive.
-E
I don't think that was it at all. Obviously they are vanilla creatures. Nothing's going to distract from that. I can't believe people are complaining about these. It's like getting nice lands in Unglued/Unhinged.
And Blade of the Sixth Pride pushes the power level for WW. Did the textless frame distract you from seeing that?
The purpose of these was twofold, one was to preview some races/classes from upcoming blocks, the other to (hopefully) say that in the future, realizing that vanilla creatures are boring but necessary for the game (especially the core set), that maybe they can do some things to spice them up.
Man, people complain about everything.
-E
-E
I disagree. Spikes may win more games, but that doesn't make them better at the game. There is a tremendous difference between figuring out how a deck works once it's put together and being able to evaluate possible interactions in a vacuum. Most spikes are netdeckers who play what is popular and what others have finally told them is great. The ability to play a deck well in constructed doesn't mean a whole lot in and of itself, which is why limited is so important to tournament Magic.
There are some Spike masterminds out there (as well as Johnny/Timmy) who can immediately see how powerful certain under-the-radar cards are, but the majority of them aren't initially interested in a card if it doesn't scream "BAH-ROKEN". To be fair, there are probably a significant number of Johnny's out there trying to make it happen with Blood Funnel, so no one's particularly immune to it.
Personally I always rate sets in terms of potential, rather than what screams out at me as an obvious combo or hoser. To me, this set has tremendous amounts of potential. Delve, Gravestorm, Grandeur and mechanics like it scream "build around me!". New decks can and will be born from this set, and old archetypes will get shots in the arm. In constructed, a deck type can be 1 to 2 cards away from becoming viable again. Is Pyromancer's Swath what sligh or satanic sligh needs to be a powerhouse? Who knows. But we certainly have a lot of tools to play with for the next several months, if nothing else.
-E
Remand is a very good card in this slot, because it guarantees on Turn 4 you don't see Wrath or Damnation. But without another counter in your hand (and Remand gives you 1 opportunity with its cantrip, plus your own card draw on your turn), you're going to see that spell again on Turn 5. Delay is even better in this regard, because it absolutely guarantees you won't see that card on Turn 5, Turn 6 or Turn 7 (depending on who went first). Also in the scope of that lingering suspend spell, you are drawing 1, 2, 3 cards to find an ultimate solution to that spell, IF (and this is not a big if in aggro if you get 2 more turns to fight before Wrath wipes the board) the game hasn't ended in your favor from your creature advantage. It's not only 3 extra draws, it's 3 untaps, 3 combat phases, 6 main phases, etc.
In Control vs. Control, card advantage isn't nearly as important, and Remand in the late game is nothing but a 1U: Draw a card. Delay in the late game is still as relevant as it is in the early game. Against spells like Cancel/Rewind, Seething Song, Auras, Lightning Axe, etc, Delay turns those cards into hard counters because their targets will very likely be irrelevant in the intervening turns.
And against Gruul type aggro, delaying their direct damage as you're setting up the board with damnation or wrath, and slapping down Teferi essentially neuters their ability to get you within burn range (as these decks typically play out their hands by turn 5-6).
Overall, a fantastic card that may not become a staple until Rav rotates out, but I have a feeling we'll see it in many, many T8's (it also might make Scryb/Force type aggro a lot more viable).
-E
Edit: I should also note that Remand is useless against the Pacts, and so useless against Combo's newest weapon to force its win conditions through. It might as well be a Blasted Landscape.
2 life is an absolutely negligible cost unless you are in burn range. The fact that this card is an instant speed card draw for 2 life means you can draw into threats in response to your opponent.
Control uses Remand even in the late game when it knows the spell will be recast because it's at least a cantrip that gives you an opportunity to draw into a hard counter. This card, for 2 life, gives you an opportunity to draw into your final combo piece or answer for something on the board or the stack.
Combo will LOVE this card, because it wants to run as few cards as possible. I have played both with and against Mishra's Bauble and the delayed card draw is a significant drawback.
Just ask yourself, the next time you're playing Dragonstorm and it's about to go off, would you rather have Mishra's Bauble on the table (or even its delayed ability on the stack) or this guy in your hand? What does that 2 life matter then? (And more importantly, pray to God your Voidslime or whatever is sitting on the top of your deck
-E
Yet only type 1 restricts because of this reason. Restricted cards in the hands of a standard scene will result in a lot of people either a.) cheating or b.) making mistakes and will bog down tournaments.
-E
They are not going to print cards that are going to force players to check their opponent's decks in low level DCI tournaments at the end of every match (since this can't be verified at the end of every game for obvious reasons). It's an awful idea, and one of the reasons they haven't self-restricted themselves, even though they could have a long, long time ago.
As far as Steamflogger Boss goes, it reminds me of the Texans last year, who drafted Mario Williams instead of Reggie Bush, because the "smart" play in the draft was to draft the player that no one expected you to draft. There is no way this card is real, except possibly timeshifted from a third Un-set (as someone else said). It's so obviously, stupidly, bald-facedly fake that the smart play here (calling it fake) starts to look bad. It's so obvious it invites the sort of overthinking that makes people want to think it's real.
Same goes for Tarmogoyf. Vanguard wasn't fun, and no one has really suggested a way for making a type (not a supertype as in the post above) for Planeswalker that would significantly work differently than Vanguard that wouldn't break the game wide open or turn it into something like Warcraft.
The most obvious reason it's a red herring is that it's in the reminder text of a card. Reminder text is NOT rules text. It has no bearing on the game, if it is contradicted by the comprehensive rules. Until Planeswalker is added to the CRs as an actual type (and unfortunately the unintuitive mess that is Tribal as a non-super type looks like it might make it in), then there's nothing here to get excited about. Like Maro said, this is a meta-set. Putting something like Planeswalker in the reminder text acts as an in-joke for players, like the Superman you can find in every episode of Seinfeld.
-E