So at best it's WUBRG for tap 5 creatures and a repeatable WUBRG to scry 3. That's disappointing. At the very least I would have hoped that the activation also added an extra counter.
This card is seriously missing: Landfall - Put a counter on ~
This is what bothers me about the card. There's no way to add counters to it when it feels like it should be included. It feels like *something* is missing. Even the ability to keep those creatures tapped as long as the hedron remains in play makes more sense. I'm guessing it had another ability, but it was cut due to power or text. As printed, it's just a weird, awkward Send to Sleep.
No, I don't think you do understand about the card disadvantages this deck faces. Even if you play against a deck that somehow runs face first into all of your answers, you're eventually going to be holding one card or zero cards against your opponent's threats. A deck will run out of steam if all it runs is answers. This is why control decks have such a tough time in Modern. If all you're running are 1-for-1s and your opponents are running 2-for-1s, you'll eventually be overrun by card advantage. In this case, you're running 1-for-2s and even 1-for-3s and running against decks that play waaay better than 2-for-1s.
Yes, you aren't drawing lands anymore, but that doesn't eliminate dead draws. What happens if you're holding a Sunscour against an opponent's lowly Kitchen Finks and you draw... Gitaxian Probe? What happens if you're holding Commandeer with no other cards in hand and your opponent top decks... Scapeshift? What kind of disaster are you facing with zero cards in hand against ANY deck?! Without a steady supply of threats, these are the questions your deck won't have answers for.
Chancellor of the Dross brings the deck up to MAYBE nine threats out of sixty. And that's only if you draw one in your opening hand. Plus, four of those threats are entirely dependent on what your opponent plays. On top of that, you'll be facing an automatic loss if you have to run through four or more of your own threats just to keep from dying to your opponents'.
Here's another problem; what do you do on your first turn? If you go first, do you pass without playing anything? If you go second, you risk discarding if your opponent doesn't play anything that you can answer - or does play something you can't answer. Or do you mulligan no matter what just to avoid this dilemma? All three are putting you at a major disadvantage.
As I've said before, this is an interesting concept, but it just doesn't flesh out in practice without introducing some sort of persistence.
Umm... This is an interesting idea, but how does this deck win? Commandeer doesn't steal creatures, and you're going to run out of cards in hand before Soul Spike and Shining Shoal can deal 20 damage. And, even if you finagle some sort of card draw, you still have to draw and resolve at least 6 out of 8 of your only damage sources.
When people are saying "GG" or "Good game" when the match clearly wasn't close, they're either intending it as a putdown or they're saying it as thoughtless, meaningless, rote behavior. In either case, the implication is that it was not a good game. At best, it's disingenuous. At worst... Refusing to take insincerity at face value isn't a character flaw, and it certainly isn't indicative of some sort of social/behavioral disorder.
Say what you mean; mean what you say. I mean it when I say, "Good luck in future matches." Do you?
1. "GG" when it wasn't a good game. (I've replaced it with, "Good luck in the rest of the tournament." Or, "Good luck in future matches.")
2. The preemptive "GG" when the game or match isn't over yet.
3. Acting as if the match is over before we even roll a die let alone decide on mulligans.
4. Calling someone a 'barn' or any other MtG-specific insult.
5. Any exclusionary elitism, for that matter.
6. This is kind of embarrassing, but I lose my ***** when a bystander tries to tell me what mistakes I made during a match - especially if it was a tense one I lost. Honestly, it's a shade of poor sportsmanship on my part, but... I find it incredibly tilting.
7. I know it's considered the norm now to ask for concessions for a variety of reasons - and I know Paul Rietzl was just praised for it at a recent GP - but I think it's incredibly, INCREDIBLY unsportsmanlike to ask for a concession at any point from anyone who isn't a close friend - and only when money is at stake. No matter the boardstate, no matter the players' standings, and assuming both players played in a timely fashion, if you can't win during time, you don't deserve the win. Ever.
Luminumcan still has the weirdest called shot in MTGS history, but this is still pretty weird. I mean, it was a pretty logical conclusion given the information we had, but the timing of your post and the announcement...
I'm no expert on forgeries, but they seem legitimate to me. All of the coloring, markings, and wear appear consistent with my duals, and those crease marks on the upper-middle backs indicate heavy riffle shuffling. If they are fake, that's an insane level of attention to detail.
This card is no Sphinx's Revelation, but people are still seriously underestimating it.
In what situations are you playing this and getting relative value? If you're ahead on creatures, this is basically a dead card. If you're even, it's equal to or worse than any single-target removal. If you're way behind, it's still unlikely to be a blowout against decent players because of the heavy cost. Don't craft situations when it's good; tell me when it will be played.
This isn't a sweeper. It's not Hallowed Burial, Cataclysm, or any other conditional wrath that's been printed. It has so much going against it. It's conditional on your opponent attacking, conditional on your opponent attacking with a number of attackers that would be beneficial to play Aether Thingy, conditional on your opponent making the choice of top or bottom that would also be beneficial, and conditional on having your opponent blatantly run into your open 3uu. On top of that, it's virtually a dead card against several strategies. This may be the cheapest pseudo-sweeper we get, but... I think there are better, less conditional options. At best, I could see it being a one-of or two-of sideboard card.
Also, past performance is not indicative of future performance. Pointing out how wrong (or right) people were about other cards contributes absolutely nothing to the discussion. People are going to be wrong about cards. It happens all the time. I could point out all of the times people thought a card was great and it sucked. This site is famous for it. The only proof we'll get one way or the other will be when we see Standard results in a month or so.
My primary problem with this card is, I feel it's going to be fairly hard to get more than Griptide out of it. People won't swing into Aether Twister with multiple critters if they know you have it in the deck and 5 open.
Again, keep in mind that you're not playing UW. You'll have blockers, probably several, and it's unlikely single attacks will be a significant threat.
And if more aggressive decks refuse to commit multiple creatures to attack because they're playing around the card... well, isn't that a win in itself? It's not like it's going to be the only instant effect in your hand. Or that you're guaranteed to actually have it every time they play around it.
I just want to be clear on this imaginary board state... So, I have X high-toughness blockers forcing my opponent into attacking with X+1 creatures while I have 5+ untapped lands. 1. That is an incredibly specific situation to make this card good. 2. Aren't I already winning this game? Wouldn't any single-target removal accomplish the same goal while retaining some versatility when I'm not in this specific situation?
That attacking clause really puts a damper on my enthusiasm for this card. It's only effective if your opponent is attacking with 3+ creatures - which isn't a frequent occurrence - and the most aggressive decks that flood the board aren't going to care about a 5 cmc pseudo-sweeper. On top of that, it's really easy to play around. I could see it being a sideboard card or main-deck-able in an extremely removal- or sweeper-light Standard, but... I wouldn't bet on it.
Anyone tried font of fertility? It's looking promising in the w/g deck.
I have Font of Fertility in my list. When I first built the deck, I thought it was was an auto-include, but, after testing, I found it to be very wonky. Unless I drew it in my opening hand AND was able to pop it turn 2, I hated it. There's so much going on from turn 3-5 that playing it on those turns is just awkward. And there were times when I played it turn 1, but I couldn't pop it turn 2 because my opponent played something I absolutely had to answer. It was like a really bad Search for Tomorrow.
Went 3-3 at the IQ today, beating Junk, Hexproof and BG Dredge while losing to Junk, BW Humans and Br Aggro. Deck didn't feel great. It was fun, for sure, but I'm not sure if it's competitive in the current metagame. I wish the meta was such that a deck like this could compete, but dropping four mana 2/2s into 4 mana 6/6s and planeswalkers just feels pretty bad. It's hard to play from behind with the deck, and you also don't have powerful enough threats to put pressure on, both of which I had concerns about when tweaking the deck in theory.
This is pretty much where I am. When the deck hums, there's nothing that can stop it. But it's so inconsistent compared to MBD and UW. It's like an engine with a missing part.
hmm, i believe if you doubled up on fallout, mistbind clique would have died and he wouldn't have had to exile something. he can also choose not to champion something if he wanted to keep his BB.
It was a game from 2005 or 2006. I don't remember the exact details, but described them to the best of my recollection. All I know is all of the judges agreed and he ended the turn with no permanents on the board other than a Mutavault and some Islands. It's possible that I killed everything BUT the Clique and he had no choice in what he Championed/sacrificed. It's possible that I described it exactly right in my initial post and I and all of the judges screwed up, but it seems more likely that I just mixed up the details. I do remember something about the timing of how I cast the Fallouts, but it's a foggy memory. I think the point remains that he was a sloppy, sketchy player that tried to work one over on me multiple times. I mean, I had to call the judge three times on him AFTER I missed that he Cliqued without champion-ing in game one.
*EDIT* I think... I think he wanted to exile his Bitterblossom, but, after I doubled-up on Volcanic Fallout, he wanted it to come back into play. The judges told him he could still Champion the Bitterblossom, but it would be permanently exiled. Then he tried to bring up the Mutavault even though he was tapped out. That sounds about right. So, he had no other non-land permanents save a Bitterblossom? Crap, I don't remember now. Again, it was, like, eight years ago.
At the same tournament that I just mentioned in the worst opponent thread...
I played against a young woman in the first round of Lorwyn/Shards regionals. We had three intense, back and forth games in a match I eventually pulled out. It was such a good match, I was a little sad that it had to end. She was competitive, but still very nice. Even though we were opponents, it was more like I was playing with her rather than against her. I hope she had some success after that tournament.
Mike Turian was really nice, too. I always had good experiences playing against him. He also bought us all dinner after he won the Masters tournament at PT Barcelona in 2001.
I mean... The guy's a jerk, but he realized the only way he could win was by exploiting your lack of knowledge regarding the rules. While it sucks that you fell into his perception that you were a noob, you did poorly misplay that situation. That's not his fault, and I don't really consider it 'rules lawyer'-ing - especially considering you were in the top 8 of a competitive tournament. But his behavior earlier was totally out of line, and bouncing his life counter off your noggin probably should have warranted a call for a judge.
About the only poor experience I've had with an opponent was during Lorwyn/Shards regionals, which was the height of Faeries domination. I was manning an early iteration of Jund that played Banefire and (ugh) Gift of the Gargantuan over BBE and Blightning. After two epic rounds that saw my avalanche of card advantage overwhelm my opponents, I ran into the bogeyman Faeries. My opponent seemed like a nice guy, but he was also very sloppy and didn't know the rules at all. At one point in the first game, he activated one of his two Mutavaults so he had something to exile with a fresh Mistbind Clique. The next turn, he attacked with Mistbind Clique and two Mutavaults... And I didn't catch it. Which cost me the game. I won the second game rather handily (that included a couple calls to a judge due to my opponent's sloppy play and lack of rules knowledge), but found myself way behind in the third. Luckily, I had two Volcanic Fallouts in hand and was waiting to spring the trap. With a bunch of faeries and a Bitterblossom in play, my opponent cast Mistbind Clique on my upkeep. I allowed the ability on the stack, and doubled up on Volcanic Fallout, wiping his board and leaving the Champion ability to exile his Bitterblossom, the only Faerie permanent in play. At least, that's how it should have gone. My opponent tried to finagle the situation so he could keep his Bitterblossom by exiling his Mistbind Clique, but I was having none of it. I called a judge, and still my opponent tried to argue his way into keeping the Bitterblossom. The judge said, no, that's not how it worked. Then my opponent tried to work an already tapped, non-active Mutavault into the argument, again attempting to keep his Bitterblossom. Again, no, that doesn't work. The argument continued, and the head judge was brought in. My opponent tried to argue his case, and was just not letting go. In exasperation, I yelled, "The ability is on the stack. You have to exile something." The head judge told me to quiet down, and I threw my hands up, got up from the table, and walked away. Eventually I was called back from my walkabout, and all of my opponent's non-land permanents were in the graveyard or exiled. We played the rest of the game with a judge (thankfully) hovering behind me, and we finished without further incident. Unfortunately, because it was Faeries and I was playing an inferior version of Jund, I still lost the match. As I got up from the table, I murmured to the judge to keep an eye on him and stomped off. I ended up going 2-1-1 for the rest of the tournament, with the elimination loss to a deck maining Burrenton Forge-Tender and Ranger of Eos, but that Faeries match really left a bad taste in my mouth and soured my attitude for the rest of the day. (To top it off, as I pulled out of the parking garage in frustration and anger, I scraped the driver's side door against a red concrete pillar. Unlike Burrenton Forge-tender, my car does not have protection from red.)
After the Alex Bertoncini scandal broke, I wondered if he was my opponent since the situations sounded so similar. Nope, just a sloppy, borderline-cheaty player who didn't really know the rules.
This is what bothers me about the card. There's no way to add counters to it when it feels like it should be included. It feels like *something* is missing. Even the ability to keep those creatures tapped as long as the hedron remains in play makes more sense. I'm guessing it had another ability, but it was cut due to power or text. As printed, it's just a weird, awkward Send to Sleep.
Yes, you aren't drawing lands anymore, but that doesn't eliminate dead draws. What happens if you're holding a Sunscour against an opponent's lowly Kitchen Finks and you draw... Gitaxian Probe? What happens if you're holding Commandeer with no other cards in hand and your opponent top decks... Scapeshift? What kind of disaster are you facing with zero cards in hand against ANY deck?! Without a steady supply of threats, these are the questions your deck won't have answers for.
Chancellor of the Dross brings the deck up to MAYBE nine threats out of sixty. And that's only if you draw one in your opening hand. Plus, four of those threats are entirely dependent on what your opponent plays. On top of that, you'll be facing an automatic loss if you have to run through four or more of your own threats just to keep from dying to your opponents'.
Here's another problem; what do you do on your first turn? If you go first, do you pass without playing anything? If you go second, you risk discarding if your opponent doesn't play anything that you can answer - or does play something you can't answer. Or do you mulligan no matter what just to avoid this dilemma? All three are putting you at a major disadvantage.
As I've said before, this is an interesting concept, but it just doesn't flesh out in practice without introducing some sort of persistence.
Say what you mean; mean what you say. I mean it when I say, "Good luck in future matches." Do you?
2. The preemptive "GG" when the game or match isn't over yet.
3. Acting as if the match is over before we even roll a die let alone decide on mulligans.
4. Calling someone a 'barn' or any other MtG-specific insult.
5. Any exclusionary elitism, for that matter.
6. This is kind of embarrassing, but I lose my ***** when a bystander tries to tell me what mistakes I made during a match - especially if it was a tense one I lost. Honestly, it's a shade of poor sportsmanship on my part, but... I find it incredibly tilting.
7. I know it's considered the norm now to ask for concessions for a variety of reasons - and I know Paul Rietzl was just praised for it at a recent GP - but I think it's incredibly, INCREDIBLY unsportsmanlike to ask for a concession at any point from anyone who isn't a close friend - and only when money is at stake. No matter the boardstate, no matter the players' standings, and assuming both players played in a timely fashion, if you can't win during time, you don't deserve the win. Ever.
*EDIT* 6 year anniversary today... Huh.
In what situations are you playing this and getting relative value? If you're ahead on creatures, this is basically a dead card. If you're even, it's equal to or worse than any single-target removal. If you're way behind, it's still unlikely to be a blowout against decent players because of the heavy cost. Don't craft situations when it's good; tell me when it will be played.
This isn't a sweeper. It's not Hallowed Burial, Cataclysm, or any other conditional wrath that's been printed. It has so much going against it. It's conditional on your opponent attacking, conditional on your opponent attacking with a number of attackers that would be beneficial to play Aether Thingy, conditional on your opponent making the choice of top or bottom that would also be beneficial, and conditional on having your opponent blatantly run into your open 3uu. On top of that, it's virtually a dead card against several strategies. This may be the cheapest pseudo-sweeper we get, but... I think there are better, less conditional options. At best, I could see it being a one-of or two-of sideboard card.
Also, past performance is not indicative of future performance. Pointing out how wrong (or right) people were about other cards contributes absolutely nothing to the discussion. People are going to be wrong about cards. It happens all the time. I could point out all of the times people thought a card was great and it sucked. This site is famous for it. The only proof we'll get one way or the other will be when we see Standard results in a month or so.
I just want to be clear on this imaginary board state... So, I have X high-toughness blockers forcing my opponent into attacking with X+1 creatures while I have 5+ untapped lands. 1. That is an incredibly specific situation to make this card good. 2. Aren't I already winning this game? Wouldn't any single-target removal accomplish the same goal while retaining some versatility when I'm not in this specific situation?
I have Font of Fertility in my list. When I first built the deck, I thought it was was an auto-include, but, after testing, I found it to be very wonky. Unless I drew it in my opening hand AND was able to pop it turn 2, I hated it. There's so much going on from turn 3-5 that playing it on those turns is just awkward. And there were times when I played it turn 1, but I couldn't pop it turn 2 because my opponent played something I absolutely had to answer. It was like a really bad Search for Tomorrow.
This is pretty much where I am. When the deck hums, there's nothing that can stop it. But it's so inconsistent compared to MBD and UW. It's like an engine with a missing part.
It was a game from 2005 or 2006. I don't remember the exact details, but described them to the best of my recollection. All I know is all of the judges agreed and he ended the turn with no permanents on the board other than a Mutavault and some Islands. It's possible that I killed everything BUT the Clique and he had no choice in what he Championed/sacrificed. It's possible that I described it exactly right in my initial post and I and all of the judges screwed up, but it seems more likely that I just mixed up the details. I do remember something about the timing of how I cast the Fallouts, but it's a foggy memory. I think the point remains that he was a sloppy, sketchy player that tried to work one over on me multiple times. I mean, I had to call the judge three times on him AFTER I missed that he Cliqued without champion-ing in game one.
*EDIT* I think... I think he wanted to exile his Bitterblossom, but, after I doubled-up on Volcanic Fallout, he wanted it to come back into play. The judges told him he could still Champion the Bitterblossom, but it would be permanently exiled. Then he tried to bring up the Mutavault even though he was tapped out. That sounds about right. So, he had no other non-land permanents save a Bitterblossom? Crap, I don't remember now. Again, it was, like, eight years ago.
I played against a young woman in the first round of Lorwyn/Shards regionals. We had three intense, back and forth games in a match I eventually pulled out. It was such a good match, I was a little sad that it had to end. She was competitive, but still very nice. Even though we were opponents, it was more like I was playing with her rather than against her. I hope she had some success after that tournament.
Mike Turian was really nice, too. I always had good experiences playing against him. He also bought us all dinner after he won the Masters tournament at PT Barcelona in 2001.
About the only poor experience I've had with an opponent was during Lorwyn/Shards regionals, which was the height of Faeries domination. I was manning an early iteration of Jund that played Banefire and (ugh) Gift of the Gargantuan over BBE and Blightning. After two epic rounds that saw my avalanche of card advantage overwhelm my opponents, I ran into the bogeyman Faeries. My opponent seemed like a nice guy, but he was also very sloppy and didn't know the rules at all. At one point in the first game, he activated one of his two Mutavaults so he had something to exile with a fresh Mistbind Clique. The next turn, he attacked with Mistbind Clique and two Mutavaults... And I didn't catch it. Which cost me the game. I won the second game rather handily (that included a couple calls to a judge due to my opponent's sloppy play and lack of rules knowledge), but found myself way behind in the third. Luckily, I had two Volcanic Fallouts in hand and was waiting to spring the trap. With a bunch of faeries and a Bitterblossom in play, my opponent cast Mistbind Clique on my upkeep. I allowed the ability on the stack, and doubled up on Volcanic Fallout, wiping his board and leaving the Champion ability to exile his Bitterblossom, the only Faerie permanent in play. At least, that's how it should have gone. My opponent tried to finagle the situation so he could keep his Bitterblossom by exiling his Mistbind Clique, but I was having none of it. I called a judge, and still my opponent tried to argue his way into keeping the Bitterblossom. The judge said, no, that's not how it worked. Then my opponent tried to work an already tapped, non-active Mutavault into the argument, again attempting to keep his Bitterblossom. Again, no, that doesn't work. The argument continued, and the head judge was brought in. My opponent tried to argue his case, and was just not letting go. In exasperation, I yelled, "The ability is on the stack. You have to exile something." The head judge told me to quiet down, and I threw my hands up, got up from the table, and walked away. Eventually I was called back from my walkabout, and all of my opponent's non-land permanents were in the graveyard or exiled. We played the rest of the game with a judge (thankfully) hovering behind me, and we finished without further incident. Unfortunately, because it was Faeries and I was playing an inferior version of Jund, I still lost the match. As I got up from the table, I murmured to the judge to keep an eye on him and stomped off. I ended up going 2-1-1 for the rest of the tournament, with the elimination loss to a deck maining Burrenton Forge-Tender and Ranger of Eos, but that Faeries match really left a bad taste in my mouth and soured my attitude for the rest of the day. (To top it off, as I pulled out of the parking garage in frustration and anger, I scraped the driver's side door against a red concrete pillar. Unlike Burrenton Forge-tender, my car does not have protection from red.)
After the Alex Bertoncini scandal broke, I wondered if he was my opponent since the situations sounded so similar. Nope, just a sloppy, borderline-cheaty player who didn't really know the rules.